The Pregnant Widow

by Martin Amis

  She smiled and said, “Do you remember?”

  “The orphanage?”

  He said no, he didn’t remember … He remembered another orphanage, and another orphan. Every weekend, for a year or two, they drove there, the whole family (it was the sort of thing this family did), and took him out for the afternoon—little Andrew. And the orphanage was like a Sunday school or a seminary that went on for twenty-four hours a day: blocklike wooden pillars, benches laid out in lines, and assemblages of eerily silent little boys. Andrew himself was largely silent. There were many silences, in the Morris 1000, in the seaside tea shop, in the market-town museum—the kind of silences that roar in a child’s ears. Then they dropped him off again. Keith remembered the silent quality of Andrew’s pallor, on his coming out, on his going back in.

  “You don’t mind talking about it?”

  “No.” And he thought, It’s about me, isn’t it? “Being an orphan’s not nothing. But it’s not everything. Nowhere near. It’s just—there. Christ. Is that Frieda Lawrence?”

  “Mm. Oh they came here several times. In the Twenties. I was a little girl, but I remember them.”

  Keith had in his hand a soft photograph—Frieda’s ripe, rural, misleadingly honest face. And D.H. in quarter-profile, with his stubborn, bloody-minded chin and his black beard cut close and dense. The two of them were standing in front of the fountain. The fountain down there in the courtyard. Keith said,

  “The Lawrences, here … I read the Italy trilogy just before we came. In the books he calls her the q-b. The queen bee.”

  “Well in life he called her the shitbag. In public. That’s right. He was very advanced. Betty was fascinated by Frieda. You know, Frieda betrayed him every day. Frieda. One of nature’s infidels. But she did it on principle. She thought free love would free the world.”

  Lily said, “Where did they sleep when they were here?”

  “In the south tower. Either your room or Scheherazade’s.”

  “Christ,” said Keith. A little later he thought of Mexico (and of Germany—Frieda Lawrence, née von Richthofen), and he said, “I wonder how Conchita’s doing. I hope she’s all right.”

  “Conchita?” said Oona, with something like suspicion in her frown. “Why shouldn’t she be?”

  “No reason.” He was thinking about Conchita in Copenhagen, in Amsterdam, in Vienna—in Berlin, where two world wars were made. “I just wondered.”

  Eleven o’clock had not yet struck, but the evening started coming to an end—out of deference to Oona, who would soon be leaving them, for Rome, for New York. There would be no Red Dog, no All Fours, with Scheherazade, no Racing Demon, not tonight. Holding a lantern, under a skull-like moon, Keith went with the two girls to the dark tower.

  Does it bother you, Keith? his father asked him more than once—he meant the afternoons with orphan Andrew. Would you rather not go? And Keith said, No. We ought to … He was nine and not yet happy; but he was an honest and sensitive little boy. And went on being honest and sensitive when happiness came—honest and sensitive. One of these two attributes, or perhaps both, would now have to give.

  Baa, said the sheep. Gaa. Daa …

  He was in the process of making love to Lily.

  When Keith inveigled her into going topless at the pool, he had three objectives. First, it would lessen his unease when he looked at the breasts of Scheherazade (mission accomplished); second, it would fractionally increase her resemblance, when naked, to Scheherazade (mission accomplished); third, he thought it might be good for her sexual confidence, so diminished, he felt, by the constant proximity of Scheherazade (outcome unclear).

  He was in the process of making love to Lily.

  The arms and legs of his spectral sister still went where they went, where they used to go, the hands smoothed, his two tongues explored her two mouths …

  He was in the process of making love to Lily.

  Years ago he had read that sexual union without passion is a form of suffering, and also that suffering isn’t relative. Is pleasure relative? Compare a dance hall with a prison, compare a day at the races with a day in the madhouse. Or if you want to see them both in the same place, pleasure and pain—a night in a brothel, a night in the delivery ward.

  He was in the process of making love to Lily. Paa. Maa. Nah! …

  “Jesus,” said Lily, later, in the dark.

  “The sheep. What’s the matter with them. Traumatised.”

  “Traumatised. By Tom Thumb.”

  Adriano, two nights ago, had come to dinner by helicopter. And until two nights ago the dreadful cries of the sheep on the upper terrace had done no more than express boredom: the entirely understandable boredom (ragged, end-of-tether) that went with being a sheep. Sheep don’t bleat. Sheep yawn. But then Adriano, like a furious asterisk, came clattering and battering down on them from out of the starry night …

  “They don’t sound like sheep any more,” said Keith. “They sound like a crowd of mad comedians.”

  “Yes. Like impressions of sheep. And completely overdoing it.”

  “Completely overdoing it. Yeah. Sheep aren’t that bad.” He said, “See? It’s easier, or quicker, for Tom Thumb to get here by helicopter. Rather than by Rolls Royce. And now we’re all being tortured by the fucking sheep.”

  “Do you know how tall Tom Thumb was? I mean the real Tom Thumb. The one in the story? … Okay. Multiple choice. Four inches, five inches, or six inches?”

  Keith said, “Four inches.”

  “No. Six inches.”

  “Oh. So not too bad. Comparatively.”

  “As tall as his father’s thumb … I’ve thought of one,” she said.

  “Alone of All Her Hysterical Sex.”

  “That’s not a proper one, Lily. The gentler hysterical sex. The weaker hysterical sex. It doesn’t work like that. Okay—Courtly Hysterical Sex. That’s a proper one. Yours isn’t a proper one.”

  Naa, said the sheep. Nah. Nah!

  Making love to a fragrant twenty-year-old girl, in summer, in a castle, in Italy, while the candle wept its light …

  Action is transitory—a step, a blow.

  The motion of a muscle—this way or that—

  ’tis done, and in the after-vacancy

  We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:

  Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark.

  And shares the nature of infinity.

  Making love to a fragrant twenty-year-old girl, in summer, in a castle, in Italy.

  Christ, even in heaven they couldn’t stand it. Even in heaven they couldn’t stand it another second, and made war. Just under half of them: angels and archangels, virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, seraphim and cherubim—they couldn’t stand it another second. Even in heaven, strolling the impurpled pavements soft with smiling roses, lolling on ambrosial clouds, and quaffing immortality and joy—even in heaven they couldn’t stand it another second, and rose up, and gave battle, and lost, and were hurled over the crystal battlements, and toppled down into Chaos, there to raise the black palace of Pandemonium, the place of all devils, in the Deep of Hell. Satan, the Adversary. And Belial (the worthless), and Mammon (the covetous), and Moloch (the child-eater), and Beelzebub, whose name means Lord of the Flies.

  They were on the floor of the gunroom, stacking cards in the wooden box, Scheherazade in a thin blue dress, sitting side-saddle, Keith in shirt and jeans, sitting Indian-style. Keith was remembering that at home, for a while, he and his brother were known as the Two Lawrences. He was D. H. and Nicholas was T. E.. Thomas Edward (1888–1935); David Herbert (1885–1930). The golden archaeologist and man of action; the tubercular son of a Nottingham miner. Lawrence of Arabia and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Keith said,

  “It’s an exciting thought. I mean historically. David and Frieda sleeping in the tower. I wonder which turret.”

  “From the sound of it,” said Scheherazade, “Frieda slept in both.”

  “Depending on who was in the other one.”<
br />
  “Mum said she used to brag about how quickly she seduced David. After fifteen minutes. While her husband poured sherry in the other room. Not bad going for—when?”

  “I don’t know, about 1910? Scheherazade. There’s something I must …” He lit a cigarette. He sighed and said … Some sighs can drift away on the leaves of the trees. Some sighs can dissipate themselves on flags of stone, on grass, on grains of sand. Some sighs seep down to the crust, some to the mantle. The sigh Keith needed would have to go as close to Hell as possible. But he couldn’t reach it, and just sighed and said, “Scheherazade, there’s something I must say to you. I ask in advance for your forgiveness, but there’s something I must say.”

  Her brows were as level as the floor they sat on. “Well,” she said. “You’re probably forgiven.”

  “… I don’t think you should get involved with Adriano.”

  “Oh,” she said. And blinked slowly. “Well I’m not going to get involved with Adriano. All right, I’m cross with Timmy at the moment, it’s true. But I’ll probably stop being cross with him once he comes. Adriano’s always on about love. And I don’t want all that. He’d’ve been much better off just making a tactful little pass. And then I would’ve found out how I felt.”

  The pivot of the hips, the swivel of the thighs. She knelt, she stood (it was over).

  “I just wonder how I’m going to extricate myself without … Poor Adriano. He’s started to appeal to my pity, and I’m an absolute sucker for that. There’s a trip to Rome he’s planning. For some surprise. I’ll tell him then. And I’ll feel freer in my mind … Oof. Bit exhausting, saying all that. Let’s go to bed. Now if you get those glasses over there I’ll bring the lamp.”

  2

  BODY PARTS

  The neck of the loved one resembled those cylindrical shafts of light you saw in uncertain weather, when the rays of the sun began to find their way through the colander of the clouds. Like a tall lampshade of white lace…. This style of thought, Keith knew, was of no help to him, and he turned his attention elsewhere.

  “It’s too big,” said Lily. “Much too big.”

  “I feel as if I’m seeing it for the first time,” said Scheherazade. “And it’s absolutely enormous, isn’t it.”

  “Absolutely enormous.”

  “… And you wouldn’t call it fat exactly.”

  “No. And it’s—quite high up.”

  “It’s high. And it’s not a bad shape.”

  “As far as one can tell.”

  “No. There’s just too much of it,” said Scheherazade.

  Lily said, “Much too much.”

  Keith listened. It was good, hanging around with girls: after a while, they thought you weren’t there. What were they talking about, Lily and Scheherazade? They were talking about Gloria Beautyman’s arse … On the exercise frame, utterly unregarded, Adriano coiled, whirled, and stretched, his legs outthrust and rigid to the very nails of his toes.

  “It’s so out of proportion,” Lily resumed, staring at it from under her hand. “It’s like those tribes on TV. The ones who have big arses on purpose.”

  “No. I’ve seen them in the flesh—the arses that are big on purpose. And Gloria’s—Gloria’s … Maybe it is as big as the arses that are big on purpose. She’s a dancer. I suppose it’s a dancer’s arse.”

  “Have you ever seen anything that size in a leotard?”

  Gloria Beautyman, in a petalled bathing-cap and a slightly furry dark-blue one-piece, was under the pool hut’s external shower: 5′ 5,″ 33-22-37. She was a dark, pained, and grimly self-sufficient figure, with a frown fixed above the bridge of her nose like an inverted V (lower-case and italicised). This one-piece of Gloria’s continued on downward for an extra couple of inches, like a not very daring miniskirt; and its awkward modesty, hereabouts, made you think of bathing machines and dipping-stools …

  “She’s turning round again,” said Scheherazade. “Whew, it’s a whopper, isn’t it. She’s lost weight and it really sticks out at you. Awful swimsuit. Virginal.”

  “No, spinsterish. What are her tits like?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her tits. They’re almost the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh are they now. Describe.”

  “You know, like the upper bit of those dessert glasses. For um, parfait. Just full enough to have a touch of heaviness. I wish I had tits like that.”

  “Scheherazade!”

  “Well I do. Hers’ll last. And I don’t know how long mine’ll be able to keep this up.”

  “Scheherazade!”

  “Well I don’t. You’ll see them when Jorquil comes. He’ll be wanting to show them off. Poor Gloria. She’s all atremble about Mum. Who doesn’t know the half of it.”

  Lily said, “You mean she only knows about the one hairy mitt inside her pants.”

  “Impossible to imagine, isn’t it. Look at her. Almost frumpish.”

  “Like a sensible young wife. Very …”

  “Very Edinburgh. Look. Oh no. She’s had all her hair cut off too. And I liked it long. That’s why her head seems so small in comparison. More penance. More sackcloth and ashes. No, it’s not the tits.”

  “No. It’s the arse.”

  “Exactly. It’s the arse.”

  Adriano still twirled like a catherine wheel or a propeller on the upper bar of the exercise frame. Keith thought, I’ll wait till he comes down from there—then I’ll go and tower over him for a while. And Lily, not quite prepared to leave things as they were, said conclusively,

  “It’s a farcical arse.”

  The day extended itself in unmediated heat—not a cloud. Lunch, Pride and Prejudice, tea, Pride and Prejudice, a conversation with Lily on the lawn, Scheherazade and Adriano returning from the tennis court, showers, drinks, chess … At dinner, Gloria Beautyman of course drank nothing, and said very little, her square but heart-shaped face humbly lowered over the tablecoth. Oona, continuously expected, did not appear; with every shift in the aural atmosphere, Gloria tensed and stopped chewing; then she stopped eating. While the rest of them were reaching for the fruit, she went off with a double candle, seeking, no doubt, the castle’s most distant and desolate wing. Her shorn head, her smocked shape receded down the passage. You thought she might be intending to empty the alms boxes on the way, or make her last rounds of the lepers in the cellar.

  “This early exit,” said Whittaker, following the clank of a heavy but distant door, “will cast a pall over the evening.”

  “She suffers for love, I think,” said Adriano.

  “Not for love,” said Scheherazade. “She’s just dreading Mum.”

  “Hang on,” said Keith. “Did you tell Gloria what you told Oona? That with the polo pro she was only taking cocaine?”

  Adriano looked up suddenly (alerted, perhaps, by the mention of a polo pro), and Scheherazade said,

  “Well, I was going to but she kept giving me these truly terrible looks. As if I’d just murdered all her children. So I thought, Well, I’ll let her get on with it.”

  “Trust me,” said Adriano contentedly. “She suffers for love.”

  “It isn’t love.”

  “Ah. Then I must continue to suffer alone. L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle. Love that moves the sun and the other stars. Such is mine. Such is mine.”

  “It’s the opposite of love.”

  Keith went off after dinner to the pentagonal library with his notebook. And he made a list, headed “Reasons.” It went as follows:

  1) Lily. 2) Beauty. Sche has a daily beauty in her life that makes me ugly. And beauty cannot want. Can it? 3) Fear of rejection. Of scandalised rejection. 4) Illegitimacy. In the general and the particular sense. The presumption needed is above my reach to know. 5) Fear of not seeing things clearly. Those displays in the bathroom maybe mean nothing in a world where Frieda Lawrence once put herself about. Fear of the fatal misreading.

  … He had acquired some understanding of it, by now—this business of m
aking passes at girls. You were alone in a room with the wanted one. And then two futures formed.

  The first future, the future of inertia and inaction, was already grossly familiar: it was just like the present. It was the devil you knew.

  The second future was the devil you knew nothing about. And it was a giant, with legs as tall as steeples, and arms as thick as masts, and eyes that beamed and burned like gruesome jewels.

  It was your body that decided. And he was always awaiting its instructions. On the thick-rugged floor he sat with the wanted one, and as each game reached its climax they both rose to their knees, with their faces separated only by their breath.

  At such a moment you needed despair—and that he had. He had despair. But his body wouldn’t do it. He needed that coating to seep down over his eyes; he needed to become reptilian, and receive the ancient juices and flavours of the carnivore.

  Now he returned to his list, and added a sixth item: 6) Love. And he found the poem with no trouble at all.

  Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

  Guiltie of dust and sinne.

  But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

  From my first entrance in,

  Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

  If I lack’d any thing.

  A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:

  Love said, You shall be he.

  I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,

  I cannot look on thee.

  The poem, which was essentially a religious poem, continued, and there was a happy ending. Forgiveness, and miraculous acquiescence:

  Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

  Who made the eyes but I?

  Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame

  Go where it doth deserve.

  And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?

  My deare, then I will serve.

  You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:

  So I did sit and eat.

  But it was love that was the trouble. Because that was what he had, and that was what she didn’t want. He was shrinking and she was growing. He was the incredible shrinking man. The cat, the spider, and then the subatomic—the quark, the neutrino, something so tiny that it met no resistance as it passed through the planet and out the other side.