by James Brodie
I was getting a little irritated by this blasphemous treatment of a work of literature which I held in such reverence.
“Yeah, well the reason I mentioned it was because I think what I’ve got in this flat would make their spread look like Fortnum and Masons.”
“What have you got? I do feel rather hungry after all.” She advanced and I showed her where to look through the hole.
“It’s very nice, but I can’t see the little animal that’s meant to eat it. What did you say it was, a rat?”
I found some bread and started the fry up.
“When you do a meal like this,” I said, “... There’s a secret to enjoying it. You pretend you’re an escaped prisoner - RAF airman in the last war, Bolshevik revolutionary on the run from the Cheka... Whatever gets you going.”
“FLN freedom fighter on the run from the Paras?”
“Yeah, that’ll do.... And you haven’t eaten for three days. Then this peasant family takes you in. Needless to say they haven’t got a lot themselves, and at great risk to themselves and at great personal sacrifice they sit you down at their rough wooden table - In the middle of a forest, or the slums of Leningrad - and put this meal in front of you.” I slipped the plate onto the kitchen table in front of her.
“There you are, sit down. It’s the best meal you ever had in your life. Hold on, I’ll get the HP.”
She sat down and began to eat as if she really did believe the Paras were about to burst into the flat. It was a strange fantasy for such a fashionably dressed young lady. I made a pot of tea and got out two mugs. I gave her the Elizabeth II coronation mug to complete the effect.
“There we are. A real building site breakfast.”
She swigged at the tea like a navvy and I boiled up some more water and re-filled the pot. And as we sat and ate like pigs and swilled the lumps of egg and bacon and sausage down our throats with great draughts of hot tea, the barriers between us at last came down.
“So why are you all dressed up?” I asked between mouthfuls.
“We were going out to eat.”
“That’s nice.”
“We had a row. We’re always rowing. He’ll be round my flat now.”
“Where’s that?”
“Chester Square.”
“Not bad for a Comrade.”
“It’s not easy to commute from the Gorbals.”
“You could try the Elephant and Castle.”
The rush hour traffic had long died away and we had finished our bean-feast, but we remained in the kitchen, the dirty plates in front of us on the Formica-topped table decorated with black specks of triangles arbitrarily spread over a white background to denote gaiety, fun, the good-life.
“Why did you get mixed up in this business Alex? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Is it?”
“Of course it is, Alex. That’s why Toby’s paying you.”
I chewed on this for a moment or two and must have frowned. She brushed the hair away from my eyes.
“You’re a funny boy. You’re all on the surface aren’t you? There’s nothing underneath.”
“Not very much. I find it too hard to get hold of.”
“Where are you from?”
“Nowhere really. We lived in London when I was a kid, but then we moved round the Midlands quite a bit with my father’s job. I don’t really feel anything for any place, except perhaps Cambridge, just a bit, and now London again, just a bit.”
“How old are you?”
“Hasn’t Toby told you?” I got up and got a half bottle of scotch out of a cupboard and poured a large measure into her tea and then into mine.
“Isn’t that a waste?” she said, but she drank it just the same.
“... Of course he’s told me how old you are... twenty two.”
“How old are you?”
“How old d’you think.”
“Thirty.”
“That’s right.” She could have been lying but it didn’t matter much. She was thereabouts.
“And where are you from?” I said.
“You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“Try me.”
She told me. I hadn’t heard of it.
“It’s a small town just outside Limoges.”
We both thought for a few seconds about our respective starting points.
“And here we are,” I said, always ready to state the obvious. Knowing where she came from was simultaneously singularly irrelevant and tantalizingly satisfying. If I’d had a map of France on the wall I’d have stuck a little flag just outside Limoges.
“How did you get from Limoges to Battersea, and don’t say the forty nine bus?”
“Have you got any more of that whisky?”
I poured some into her cup which she swilled round with the last of her tea and swallowed in one go.
“Bit more,” she said. I had a feeling it was going to be a long explanation.
“.... I always wanted to be a physical training instructor.”
It wasn’t the corrupted ambition I’d expected from her, but who knows, perhaps Rosa Luxemburg had similarly thwarted plans.
“... But my eye, my left eye, it’s weak. You wouldn’t notice, but it is. In France you have to pass a very tough medical to become a physical training instructor..... and so I failed because of my eyesight.... that messed me up quite a bit, because that was the only thing I’d ever wanted to do, the only thing I’d tried hard at, at school, so when they said no it was too late for almost everything else, too late for university...” Gym Mistress, that was quite a turn-on. I nodded earnestly to conceal my inner thoughts. As if to emphasise her fall from physical fitness she lit a cigarette. “... When I was at lycee in Limoges I had a boyfriend, he was a sort of unofficial fiancé. But then I went to secretarial school in Nantes because I had to do something, and I met a group of boys and after a few months I broke off my engagement with Paul. He was very upset. We were both very young. Then I had one or two jobs, but I didn’t like offices. And then a boy I knew said he could get me a job modelling in Paris. I went to live there with him; it was all a con but I ended up living with a journalist - He was keeping me really. He was very political, on the left and I met lots of people, went to lots of parties. I sort of got involved without realizing it. It was before De Gaulle, a lot of things were up in the air... and as I say, I gradually got more and more involved...” That was as much as she was going to tell me. Most stories get misty as they recede further into the past, this one was the opposite. I was certain I could have had the physical training medical, chapter and verse had I requested it, but yesterday evening wouldn’t have come quite so easily.
Being egocentric I had listened without hearing. Towns, people, dates, had all gone in one ear and out the other. What had been retained was an impression that made Pascale even more desirable in my eyes - an impression of promiscuity, loose living, lots of different men fancying her and making it with her, so that if I thought back to anything I’d been doing in the last twelve years I could almost guarantee that at the same time Pascale was lying flat on her back with a Frog on top of her, a smooth sophisticated Frog who knows what a woman likes and how to give it to her; behind them an open window revealing a vista of Paris roof-tops and the Eiffel Tower..... It’s all part of my complex, I’ve learned to live with it. She asked me my story and I gave it to her with the same degree of superficial candour she had injected into hers. I was happy to do this as, by adopting the style of ruthless précis, I could imply a life crammed full of incident, whereas nothing was further from the truth. Thus far I had been cushioned from every dirty trick fate had to throw at me - I hadn’t even failed medicals I didn’t care about. Moreover, even at that time I was beginning to get strong suspicions that my personality wasn’t particularly attractive except to myself, and possibly my mother. I therefore cut it very short and in conclusion drained the remains of the whisky into our mugs.
“It looks as if we’ve got it all in front
of us if either of us is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize,” she said.
“Yes,” I said reflectively. “... Did you love any of those guys you fucked?”
“Alex, you’re not jealous are you?” she laughed in a way that made me feel very young.
“... One or two of them, yes. Did you love any of the girls you fucked at Cambridge that you didn’t tell me about?”
“No.”
“Why not Alex?” she touched my face gently.
“There was nothing special about them.”
“Not even the first?”
“Particularly the first.”
She continued to touch my face for a second or two and she continued to laugh gently. I felt my prick stir in my pants. I put my hand to her hand and softly held it in front of me to look at. She had a ring on the second finger, gold with a small oval face with a design in bass-relief. As I looked at the ring she looked through our hands into my eyes and I could see that she had that urgent, intent look that I had dreamed for a month of seeing on her face. I kissed her hand on the back, then kissed the palm, then the fingers. We were standing by the sink and I drew her to me and she sank into me in a way that told me it was going to be beautiful, and down below my cock started to bounce against my Y-Fronts. She drew herself away with a sophistication that was not rejection and we looked at each other in recognition of what had just passed. At that moment the kitchen was a magic grotto with every household object - the meat-mincer that I could see lying on a shelf, a plastic cruet in faded orange with a black base, a bulldog clip on a hook holding an old electricity bill - endowed with the mystic power of having existed for that moment in time in that space. I was reluctant to break the spell by leaving it for I knew that once we did it would become a piece of history, retained in the memory for a period of time yet to be determined, but history nevertheless.
But there was nothing in the kitchen to detain us. The meal was finished, the whisky too. I looked at her. She was restless but composed, she had been there many times before.
“It looks like there’s only one place left to go,” I said, beginning to feel my cock shrivel with the tension of fulfilled anticipation.
“You’d better show me the way then, hadn’t you, Alex.” She had a way of saying my name that could really get me going. I took her hand. I think I mumbled something gratuitous like “It’s down here,” and then I led her into the bedroom. Outside it was dark, but there was no great view anyway. Inside the first thing one noticed was a large, torn print of a Toulouse Lautrec poster over the bed, my predecessor’s one concession to the world of art, a gatehouse to the bohemian life for which he didn’t have a visa.
“It’s not much of a room,” I said, suddenly wishing I wasn’t such a slob and unnecessarily wishing it was more like the sophisticated interiors I imagined she had entered in past affairs.
“It’s a lovely room,” she said. I hadn’t previously realized she had a taste for cigarette ends stubbed into saucers half full of cold tea, nor friezes of stained underpants round the tops of wire guards to gas fires. The bed was unmade. I decided it was better to leave the door open and let the sole illumination be the romantic glow shed by the light at the other end of the corridor. I felt her hand reach down my body to where my prick should have been throbbing and erect, forcing its way through the flimsy fabric of my trousers - It wasn’t.
“What’s happened? Doesn’t he like it?” she said quietly. “... Has he gone small on us? Yes I think he has.” She undid the top of my jeans and slid her hand inside, with a practised ease she circumnavigated my pants and touched the offending organ. I felt her fingers stroke my shrivelled prick. “... He’s naughty isn’t he?”
“Recalcitrant,” I murmured.
“What’s the matter with him?....Don’t worry,” she said, “... I like him in all his different moods.” I felt a stirring. “... But what’s he doing now, he’s waking up again, ... yes he’s definitely awake.”
I started to kiss her on the neck and at the same time to undress her. As I did so I slid down to kiss her breasts and we sank onto the bed as she continued to caress my prick.
“... Oh, yes, he’s wide awake now.”..... and it was true, he was.
Morning over Battersea. The sky cloudy, a flight of geese commuting in from one of the royal parks, slumming it in suburbia south of the river. I lay awake looking out of the window. I was wondering whether the last goose would disappear out of the side or the top of the end window pane; it deviated slightly and went out of view through the top of the middle window pane - bad luck! I leaned on my side to look at my watch and felt a sudden pang of pain. I looked down and saw a red scratch mark halfway down my back. She lay sleeping beside me, a serene smile as if I had given her the best fuck of her life. I paused for a second fantasising that this might be the case and that when she awoke her passion for me would be beyond restraint. It was not a dream I could sustain for very long for shortly after she stirred and opened her eyes.
“Hello.”
“Hello.” She looked at our clothing strewn around the room and then laughed.
“Well, was I as good as you expected?” she said and I leaned across and kissed her.
“Now you’ve had me, I suppose I’m no longer a woman of mystery to you.” All this with the edge of sarcasm. This line of coy questioning, though it wasn’t driving me into a frenzy of adoring passion, wasn’t exactly making me throw up either.
“You’re still a mystery, don’t worry.” She was beginning to get me going and again I leaned across to kiss her and she began to run her foot up my leg under the bedclothes. It was a happy moment, possibly my happiest moment since I got my first train set. It was then that I made the fatal mistake. As I bent down to kiss the tips of her breasts I said casually:
“It’s a mystery to me why you bother with all this communist shit.” It was said without thought - a filler piece to account for two seconds. It was instinctive, from nowhere, going nowhere, it hadn’t been passed up to my brain for clearance. I felt her body go stiff and her hand reached up and turned my head away, not roughly but eloquently.
“So it’s a mystery is it, Alex?” She was wide awake, reaching for the fags which she must have left by the bedside table after I had dropped off to sleep. She took the inevitable deep, meaningful first drag and exhaled for a duration that made me think she would pass the fire brigade medical even if the education authorities didn’t want her.... It was too late for me to retract, it was done.
“To be honest yes... have you got a fag?”
She passed them across. I had thought that perhaps she mightn’t.
“Perhaps I should be like you, a Nihilist.”
I was still young enough to consider this a backhanded compliment, but old enough not to be seen to take it as such.
“Why not?” The hardened embittered throwaway. There was a silence, I wondered whether my last line was effective enough to leave hanging in it, or if I could improve on it. “... Who’s it for anyway?... who cares?” I realized immediately that this wasn’t an improvement.
“D’you mean that?” I could see that I had her really angry now, but I was committed to my position, there was no percentage in backing down.
“They don’t you know.... they don’t give a monkies.”
“Don’t give a ....?”
“They don’t give a fart.”
“Who don’t?”
“The Working Classes”.
“I suppose Alex that you require a guaranteed vote of thanks from the National Assembly before you take action.”
“It would be a nice gesture.”
Flippancy annoyed her.
“You’re just a spoiled little kid.”
“Perhaps I am, perhaps I am short-sighted not to adhere to a party that needs an endless supply of ice-picks.”
“Why not give me George Orwell as well?”
“Yes, maybe even Bertrand Russell.”
“You, you... you.... fucking little idiot. Do you get taken
in by every last drop of propaganda the Capitalist Media throw at you? Remind me to renew your subscription to Readers Digest.”
“There’s some very good articles in Readers Digest.” It seemed to me that she was now more sad than angry.
“It’s the only way, Alex,” she said at last. “... It’s going to happen whether you like it or not, with or without people like me.... It’s inevitable. I know that. That’s what keeps me going... D’you think I didn’t have to ask myself that question ever...” She’d written me off.
“The trouble is,” I said “... it’s not like that anymore. It’s not the Abraham Lincoln Division defending a poxy little Spanish hill outside Madrid to affirm their belief in the solidarity of the workers. Haven’t you ever heard of the Mini, it’s a car, it’s supposed to be classless, everybody wants one... and they also want a twenty one inch television set and a Hoover Keymatic washing machine and a vacuum cleaner that will reach to the top of the stairs... and they’ve never heard of the Struggle of the Proletariat because they’re not listening... I don’t know who’s worse, you or the Trots. Probably the Trots... just. It’s NOT going to happen because there’s nothing to happen. This class you’ve adopted, they don’t exist any more, they’ve dissolved. They’re still there, working at their lathes, getting drunk on Friday nights, having romantic black and white movies made about them by romantic pseudo new wave film directors, but they’re as clued up as the monkeys on the Brooke Bond Tea advert. That cherished consciousness of theirs begins and ends in the minds of well meaning middle class pricks. They’re crap, your noble savages. If I had the money to float a company I could make a fortune mashing cloth caps into pulp and reconstituting it into navy blue blazers and sewing on brass buttons and a badge.... They’re born to serve, and they love it.”
I had a lot more to say along these lines but I suddenly noticed that her eyes had glazed over and I was talking to myself. We didn’t say much after that. It was the sort of situation where the act of pulling on a pair of trousers is laden with symbolic significance. The energy had drained from my body and it seemed to me then that I would never be able to exert sufficient will power to rise from that bed. I knew I’d gone over the top but I reasoned she’d asked for it, but where, I reasoned in response, did that get me. We lay there for an awfully long time, smoking and saying nothing. Probably both of us were wondering how we could bring it to an end. Eventually I said I was going to make a cup of tea and went off to the kitchen, conscious of my bare arse waving goodbye as I went out of the door. As I was making the tea I heard a noise as she got off the bed, followed by further sounds of movement. I finished making the tea and sat on a stool with a green plastic top while I listened to her pulling on her pants and then her stockings. It’s an erotic sound. When the tea had stood for a minute or two I poured myself a mugful. I used the mug she had used the night before, a stupid gesture. I could hear the sounds of things being collected together, then fresh sounds as she left the bedroom and went into the living room. I continued to drink and look at an old ‘Gambols’ cartoon strip that was part of a sheet of the Daily Express lying in the bottom of an open drawer - it wasn’t very funny. I heard the door open and then after a long pause close, not with a bang, but with sufficient strength to avoid the bathos of failure at the first attempt. Steps receded and I drained the cup. I noticed with satisfaction that it was beginning to rain.