Tornado Pratt

by Paul Ableman

  “The hell with it.”

  “But, Tug—I mean—”

  She still suspected nothing. And perversely that thickened my anger. She was oblivious to the rancid cargo of fermenting desire I had to cart through the world. And this woman was supposed to love me, to be closer to me than anyone else. Surly, I muttered:

  “I was out here—there’s no law against it, is there? If you must know,. I was out here with a girl.”

  Immediately, I sensed her white flash of appalled understanding. She stopped walking. I stopped too, with feigned impatience.

  She asked:

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—a girl. Just a girl. Oh hell—that’s how it is—I didn’t want you—”

  But she was running, forging through a torrent of oncoming pedestrians, all of them glancing in steely disapproval. And I was loping beside her, pleading and exhorting, repeatedly brushed back by the dense sweep of the human current and then fighting my way back to her side to continue my protestations. But I must have got it wrong, Horace. That clip must be from some other scene because there couldn’t really have been sidewalk crowds suddenly out there by the lake. Did she jump in a cab? Hell I’ve lost the continuity.

  In the next shot we’re in our bedroom—and Nat’s packing! Yeah, packing! And I’m going crazy!

  And then, just as she reached for the telephone to call a taxi, I croaked desperately:

  “At least talk to her! You owe me that much, Nat.”

  “Talk to whom?”

  “To Ingrid, of course.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned slightly and shook her head. Understandably, she couldn’t see what I was driving at. At that stage, I was none too sure myself. The plan was inchoate and probably cuckoo. But, encouraged by its initial success in at least detaining Nat a little longer, I plunged on:

  “Hell, Nat, if you could meet her—hear it from her own lips—it was unique. I’ve never heard of anything like it and poor Ingrid—she doesn’t know what hit her, literally. She says it was like a tornado. That’s crazy, huh? But that’s really what she says—like being lifted by one of the big twisters and—let me give her a ring now, huh?”

  “I don’t want to talk to her. She’s the last person I want to talk to.”

  “She could make you understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “How it happened.”

  “Oh, don’t be so—it’s perfectly—”

  “It’s not! Now, that’s straight, Nat. It’s not what you—the ordinary—a guy cheating on his wife with some girl he scoops up. It just wasn’t like that.”

  She suddenly slumped down in the chair. I realized she was near tears again.

  “Oh, Tornado, don’t torment me.”

  This was it! The breach in her defences. She’d been so strong and determined till now. I turned up the sincerity level.

  “What you’ve got to understand, Nat, is that this was not a promiscuous girl. She hadn’t had a man—anything to do with a man—for three years, since her husband died. She was a respectable widow. So when, three hours after we’ve met, she asks me to screw her, you can imagine how I felt? It was as if our old colonel had done a handstand on parade. Anyhow, we’re in the car so I can’t just beat a retreat.”

  “Why were you alone together? Where were you going anyway?”

  “I told you, honey. I was running her home. She’d come in at our request to clear up a couple of points concerning her husband’s estate and her old coupé throws a crank-shaft. So I offered to drive her home—”

  “Why?”

  “Not for any—hey, you’ve got to see this dame! I’m surrounded everywhere I go by swell broads—in the vulgar sense—and you think I’d crave Ingrid Pope? Honey, she’s forty-two! Her face is good but her figure’s slipped its moorings. Her ass is trying to crawl out of her girdle. I mean it’d take some man to get a hard-on with her.”

  “You managed it.”

  “Yeah—well, I guess I was flattered. Oh not as a man—not that. But—”

  “Well?”

  “How can I explain? Will you listen a minute—without interrupting? Ten minutes—that’s all. Then—if you want—I’ll call you a cab myself. Okay?”

  She sighed and said:

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well—Thursday—what was it? We’re zipping along the highway, doing a steady sixty and it’s a hot, muggy day and I’m thinking: after I drop her, I’m gonna get me a nice, cool beer somewhere, and I’m feeling real happy. Now if I think back, Nat, I realize that I’m happy because Ingrid Pope and I have been having such a good conversation. We’ve been talking about—yeah, well, nothing and everything: opera, business, the war and particularly love and death. She’s told me how much she loved Ralph—that was her husband whom I remember as a creep but no matter—and I’ve told her with joy about us. Maybe that was the heart of it. She was such a good listener about us and, honey, that always gives me a lift. Then, after a pause—quite a long pause—maybe quarter of an hour—she addresses me in a different tone of voice—trembly and intense. She says something like: Mr Pratt—no, that’s silly, I have to call you Tornado for this. Tornado, I don’t know how to say it so that it doesn’t sound just awful, so I must just say it: will you make love to me? Hell, I nearly drove straight off the highway. The last thing—okay, so there’s always a kind of erotic dust floating between any man and woman anywhere—but I never was less aware of breathing it than during that car ride with Ingrid Pope and then—out of the blue—she says that. First thing I sift for misunderstanding: I mean, maybe I heard wrong or maybe ‘make love’ means something different to her—like it does in old novels. I mean, it seems to me that I can’t take what she says at face value, so, ungraciously I guess, I just gulp and ask: how do you mean? Then it pours out in a breathless torrent: I don’t understand it myself—I’m not a voluptuous girl—you must believe that, Tornado. Before marriage, I only had one proper boy-friend. I loved my husband and was very happy with him but not demanding if you understand me. And since he’s died, I’ve never thought about it—that’s the truth—I’ve never even thought about sex. I know that some women dream about men and—lovemaking. Well, I never do—never—so I can’t explain it—I really can’t. She sounded real distressed, Nat, and she was so candid, so—obviously—bewildered herself that it was just as if we were talking about mortgages or something. I asked her: what happened then? She came back: I guess—I don’t know—I just suddenly darn near fainted. I suddenly heard you—that’s the truth—I heard you!—the roar of your—being—soul—I was so conscious of you, I had to gasp for breath and then my whole body yearned towards you like—like a tree—in a gale—and I’ve been sitting here—trying to suppress it—and I can’t—I just can’t. And then she burst into a great long wail—as if her heart were busting—crying and crying with shame and I guess desire—all mixed up. And I was flattered—yeah, not as a man—because it could have been any man but because—somehow she trusted me—and—that’s it, Nat. That’s how it happened.”

  Can you guess, Horace, what I felt as I served up this stuff? Relief, sure, that she was swallowing it. But I also felt delight and pride. Because the yarn came out as natural and fluent as if I’d been spinning them all my life. I wasn’t exactly lying and I wasn’t exactly inventing. I was more—creating. Yeah, creating a new continent of reality and, as I talked, it opened up before me as rich and unpredictable as life itself.

  We went on chewing it over for maybe an hour and I became bold and experimental, changing the direction of the narrative, as well as adding whole new provinces. Once I suddenly altered a key episode, which Nat had already swallowed, just out of bravado. It was a tricky thing to do because I was secure with what I’d already put over and I could tell Nat was melting but I suddenly undercut the tale and plunged Nat right back to the edge of distrust. Then for a while my invention flagged and I inwardly reproached myself that I hadn’t let well enough alone but then it started flo
wing again and soon I realized that my instinct had been sound. My apparent confusion and reversal now seemed to ratify the essential truth of the thing.

  Oh, I’d started in deadly earnest, Horace. I’d been ready to tell any lie to hold her. But the lie then came out so rich and smooth, so complicated and fascinating in its own right, that by the time I came to the end of the story of Mrs Pope and her Sudden Yen, part of my reason for generating it had become the sheer joy of doing so.

  After I’d run down, we sat in solemn silence for a while, brooding on the way we are all victims. Then Nat gave a little sigh and I started in gently urging her to meet Ingrid Pope.

  “I think you do understand all the essentials now, honey, but for my sake I want you to confirm them.”

  Then I gave a little laugh, Horace, because it suddenly occurred to me, as I impulsively admitted, that Ingrid, in certain flattering ways, was not unlike Nat. I apologized to Nat for the tactlessness, at that moment, of making the comparison but concluded:

  “Who knows? You two might even get to be friends.”

  Now the thought will doubtless be ballooning in your capacious brain, Horace, that I was acting like a grade-A moron. Hell, I mean with great perseverance, skill and a measure of luck I had succeeded in fobbing Nat off with a plausible tale. Then why strive to blow it to hell?

  Well, in the first place it was essential that I remain convincing. And to be that, I had to establish irrefutably the reality of Ingrid Pope. Moreover I realized that Nat had to be convinced not just for the moment but maybe a year later when she thought back on it. It all had to hang together like a space ship—one tiny component a dud and bimbo! the oxygen would rush out.

  But what if Nat had said:

  “Take me to this raunchy widow.”

  The answer is: I would have done just that. But not for a couple of days. Then I would have pensively driven Nat out to a villa near the lake. On the way, I’d have had second thoughts. I’d have stopped the car and tried to dissuade her from what must inevitably be a painful encounter. We’d have sat in the brooding car, while big trucks flicked past like memories, wrangling considerately. But she’d have prevailed and, with a sigh, I’d have ignited the Cadillac’s sweet engine once more. Finally, we’d have crawled up a neat drive, under acacia trees, with a view of the distant lake in the rear-view mirror and whirred to a halt on the gravel forecourt. A little later, I’d have rung the chimes and plump Ingrid, opening the door and taking in the situation at a glance, would have soberly invited us in.

  Oh, I understood fully, as I urged Nat to agree to meet the one-shot Jezebel, the challenge that her acceptance would mean. But, it didn’t phase me. Rather, it honed me to a razor edge. It was like whales or planes or movies: an opportunity for Pratt to triumph. The pool of energy that was my will rippled joyously to its silvery depths. For the excursion to succeed, I’d need an actress, and a darned good one because she wouldn’t have any stage or supporting cast, and a script which I’d have to write myself and a house out there near the lake and—

  But I never had to rig it—because Nat resolutely refused to meet Ingrid.

  “Honestly, Titch, I don’t want her to become real for me. Don’t force me.”

  And reluctantly I let her off.

  Sure, I was horrified with myself. To lie was one thing—a desperate man lies—but to use, to manipulate, to turn one’s beloved into a mere constituent of fantasy and, worse!—to enjoy it, to get a diabolical pleasure out of it—because I knew me and I could face me then, Horace, as I still can here at Timesend, and I recognized that I’d got kicks from the conning of Nat.

  Perhaps it was the kicks that made me get more and more reckless in my extra-marital affairs. Affairs? That term’s too dignified for the way I started to behave. I just began to screw everything I could lay my hands on.

  At first, I was pretty careful and took the dames to discreet hotels or for long drives. Moreover, I picked them with some care, for their true friendliness or venality. And Nat never suspected a thing. Time after time, I’d introduce her at a cocktail party to some girl that eyed her curiously and Nat would never read the message. So I began getting careless. I made a pass at Letty and, to my surprise but also relief, Letty promptly quit. She didn’t try to blackmail me. She just said:

  “I cannot work for someone who does not think of me as a colleague but as a toy.”

  It made me abashed, Horace, and for a while I stopped plucking at passing dames. But then I’d find that when I was screwing Nat a thousand lewd phantoms would crowd round the bed. And soon I was out hunting again, hunting that fresh, fragrant flight which only a new conquest gives you. I began to get insanely careless. I’d meet girls in clubs where I was known, lunch them in restaurants where acquaintances dined and even, now and then, screw them in my office. I even once took a girl back to the house, knowing Nat was out, and Harvey caught me in flagrante delicto.

  The girl screamed—dumb broad!—dumb, because Harvey, who had come into the room for a book he’d lent Nat, hadn’t even seen us on the bed. He was beginning to get absent-minded in those days and was probably in ancient Greece or somewhere. But then this nit-witted girl screams and Harvey spins round in fear. When he sees what’s going on, he stops, contemplates us mournfully and then murmurs:

  “Why on earth don’t you lock the door?”

  And shuffles out. Would he tell Nat? No, of course he wouldn’t. But how’s this for psychological perversity? To demonstrate to myself that I wasn’t intimidated by being, as it were, in Harvey’s power, I took to bullying my old friend and picking on him. I see now that I was just challenging him to hit back. But, of course, he didn’t. But my evil conduct finally goaded him into visiting me at the office one day and begging me to restrain myself. He analysed the situation and protested that he had no intention of getting involved in my private life. And I meekly apologized for my atrocious bullying. Then, to my surprise, he asked:

  “What do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Why are you bringing girls back to the house? You must want to get caught.”

  “Don’t be crazy.”

  “Well, think about it.”

  So I thought about it and I decided maybe he was right. But I couldn’t think why. Was it just to get some excitement into my life? But surely the possible rewards couldn’t be balanced against the risk of losing Nat. Then did it somehow make the sex more exciting? I couldn’t discover, by probing my responses, that it did. I guess really I was begging Nat to catch me out and then forgive me. I can’t get any closer to it, Horace. So fetch me a dry martini and I’ll tell you about the

  EROTOMANIA OF TORNADO PRATT

  or perhaps it would be better to characterize it, in view of the profound element of masquerade involved, as the

  EROTIC FOLLY OF TORNADO PRATT

  When I survey that period, Horace, I see Nat’s lovely face drawn or tearful. I spy her bristling with wrath or slumped weeping in an armchair. I see her fleeing down a steamy corridor beneath a nightclub while, loud with entreaty, I pound after her. I discern her endlessly packing and phoning for cabs, whisked from stations and airports by my frenzied grasp, dressing stealthily by moonlight. I behold myself smiting locked doors, irrupting into the apartments of astounded friends, tugging cab drivers from their cabs, once dragging—Venus forgive me!—Nat by her long, fine hair across a Persian carpet. I hear passionate and extravagant pleas gushing from my lips, pledges of change and reform, declarations of unalterable devotion, promises of speedy decline if denied forgiveness. I hear Nat repudiate all former love, consign me and my sex to the hell reserved for the wanton wreckers of noble things, vow future avoidance of the human male and ultimately, thinly, with brimming eyes or wagging head, weaken and make the fatal (fatal because it inevitably set the whole cycle off again) admission that she still loved me. The tragedy was shot through with farce, naked girls leaping out of automobiles, actors forgetting their lines and veering ludicrously fr
om their alleged character, dodgings and weavings through mansions and offices, sudden flights to remote places—once to Labrador—to shore up a crumbling alibi.

  It went on for years, Horace, becoming thicker and steamier and more highly charged until—

  Oh God! Nat began to die!

  Then a great wail of anguish for the wasted years sounded through the lurid caverns of my mind and I dammed near slumped into useless remorse. But I rallied, Horace, and I said to Nat:

  “Oh, my love, what a cruel thing is this life which appears to mean one thing even as a new and terrible dawn breaks behind your back. But there is still a future for us, Nat, and we will keep it to ourselves. No one else, from now on, will be allowed a single moment of our lives.”

  And she said:

  “Wouldn’t that be a lie, Tornado?”

  “No, my love. The others have been the lie. None of them had any valid claim on me. They were tiny girls I kept in drawers and pockets. Listen, I heard a story about a famous writer—I can’t remember his name. He was working on his masterpiece or was supposed to be. But every day he went and played pinball instead. He just couldn’t tear himself away from those pinball machines to work on his great book. That’s how it’s been with me.”

  And we rocked and moaned in each other’s arms, Horace, through ecstatic days in Australia and nights when the aura of our devotion tinged everything with gold until—

  Nat cooled into wax and left me alone with my searing regrets. These took up residence in my throat, just below my gullet, and every day tried to climb into my mouth and choke me to death. But finally I marched out of Chicago with the aim of starving them out.