by William Boyd
While they roared up the main road north Morgan plotted unspeakably crude and violent acts of revenge which he intended personally and lingeringly to visit on her corrupt body, but as they steadily approached his house his more immediate problems began to reoccupy his mind. As he turned into his driveway and parked his car in the garage the options that were available to him presented themselves and were discarded. One: be honest, tell her the truth, or as much of it as was necessary. But no, he thought almost at once, that was impossible. What if it got back to her mother? And also it would rule out any hope of marriage—people just didn’t get these afflictions in her world. Two: forget it, simply go ahead as if nothing were wrong. He almost passed out as he considered the possible consequences of this course of action. Priscilla would get it, he’d infect his future wife, and then … he stopped thinking about that one. Three: lie. His old friend Mendacity, or its siblings Delay and Prevarication, however unlikely they might seem. He saw now that in reality his only hope lay in keeping himself and Priscilla out of the same bed.… He thought suddenly and maniacally of a self-inflicted wound—perhaps he could slice his hand while making sandwiches, or trip on the way back into the house and crack his head on the doorstep. But he knew he just didn’t have the guts to carry it off. Maybe he could simulate some other more sympathetic disease, like epilepsy, dropsy or sleeping sickness.…
“Come on, slowcoach,” Priscilla’s voice was a little woozy. “I’m not going to wait all night.” Morgan got out of the car and walked back to the house with her, his arm round her shoulders. She hugged herself to him and in this way they awkwardly shuffled to the door.
Fifteen minutes later Morgan fought himself free of Priscilla’s embrace and stumbled over to his drinks trolley where, despite Murray’s warning, he poured himself a huge measure of whisky. He hoped the alcohol would somehow inspire him, lend whatever feeble excuse he managed to dream up authenticity. He contemplated the idea of drinking himself unconscious but he realised with renewed despair that it would only postpone the inevitable crunch. Tomorrow would bring no escape; the problem would still be there as it was clear that, although Priscilla might accept drunken senselessness for one night, she was generally behaving in a way that suggested she saw sexual congress with him as a desirable thing in principle. This was no one-night stand, after all, and there was no telling how long he might have to abstain. “Let abstinence be your watchword,” Murray had said in typical fashion, like some doom-laden sybil or prophetic crone in a morality play. Recalling his words, Murray’s features swam into his mind: the unsmiling blue eyes, the stern accent. Morgan felt positively light-headed with hatred. It was Murray’s fault, he accused with passionate illogicality—Murray’s intervention had landed him in this wickedly, poignantly ironic situation. He’d been trying to get into Priscilla’s pants ever since she had arrived, and, now that she was actively encouraging this move, he was the one who had to advocate restraint.
“What are you doing, Morgie?” he heard Priscilla ask. He wasn’t sure now that he liked the effect alcohol had on her: it made her winsome, lewdly coy, like some depraved child-prostitute.
“Nothing, darling,” he said, putting down his glass and turning round. She had risen from the couch, her mouth bruised from their kissing, her dress rumpled. She held out her arms towards him. Reluctantly he took her hands in his. She tugged him in the direction of the bedroom.
“Let’s go, Morgie.”
He applied gentle braking pressure. He willed the alcohol to percolate through his system. “Darling,” he said, trying to imbue his voice with subtle gradations of regret, prudence and reluctant moral wisdom. “Let’s not. I think we … Well, we should just stay here.…”
Simultaneously he tried to mould his features into a complementary amalgam of love, respect and sage sincerity. Somewhere along the line his conception of facial expressions and tones of voice and Priscilla’s refused to coincide. A look of delighted, sly adventure came into her eyes. He watched this transmogrification with all the horror of a scientist observing the first stirrings of a monster he’s unwittingly created.
“Here?” she said. “On the floor, Morgie? Oh, Morgie.” In front of his dumbfounded face she turned to the sofa and with a vandal’s relish flung its cushions on the floor, hastily piling them into a makeshift harem-bed. She quickly switched off all the lights but one, running around excitedly, paying no heed to Morgan’s beseeching rejoinders of “Priscilla, wait. No, I didn’t mean … Priscilla, please.” She kicked off her shoes and slid onto the cushion pile, giggling tipsily as she stretched and pouted in cinematic sensual abandon. “Come on, Morgan,” she simpered. “Don’t keep a girl waiting.”
Morgan felt he couldn’t go on much longer. What had happened to her? He had always suspected she was something of a goer—she had hinted as much herself—but it could only be drink that was producing this ghastly parody of a Hollywood vamp. Of course, he thought, remembering Olokomeji, she had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be highly stimulated by these sexy cavortings. He groaned softly, looking wildly around his room as if the Medici Gallery prints on its wall held some encoded inspiration. His eyes swivelled reluctantly back to Priscilla and he almost screamed when he saw she was wriggling out of her pants. She slipped them over her ankles and flung them playfully at him. She smiled in his direction, her eyes a little glazed. She reached up and undid the bows of her dress. The front flap dropped forward to reveal a lacy strapless bra that needlessly supported her small breasts. Morgan’s mouth opened wordlessly as she reached behind her to unclasp it, the joints in her shoulders bulging roundly, her bottom lip caught in her teeth in exaggerated concentration. The bra fell away and for a brief moment he saw the pink nipples, before, in mad spontaneity, doing the only thing that came into his mind—he leapt across the room, dropped to his knees beside her and frenziedly replaced the bra over her breasts, like some fervent sexual reformer at a burlesque show.
“No!” he gasped. “Don’t, Priscilla. For God’s sake, don’t go on.”
Astonishment registered for a second in her eyes before she giggled again, drunkenly enjoying the game. He looked in appalled consternation as she tried to wriggle free, one breast pinging out of its ill-applied cup, and grabbed at Morgan’s crutch.
“No!” he yelped, attempting to fend her off with one hand while still using the other to keep her bra roughly clamped to some portion of her body above the waist. Her dress had rucked up to her thighs in the struggle and Morgan caught a flash of her dark triangle which he promptly tried to cover up, maintaining his fight against nudity, with his one unencumbered hand, hoping to flip the skirt back in place. Suddenly unimpeded now, Priscilla’s fingers fastened on his fly-zip and before he knew it the zip was down and her right hand was thrust energetically into the gap. Morgan felt her sharp nails on his thighs, felt her fingers slip beneath his underpants and close round his infected organ.
“Don’t touch it!” he shrieked violently, as though to an innocent child about to pet an adder, and leapt immediately to his feet, backing away from the cushions, his hand groping along the wall behind him. He switched on the main light and stood panting in aghast dismay by the door to the front verandah.
The sudden illumination from the twin ceiling lights dazzled Priscilla and for a moment she looked about her uncomprehendingly, before the harshness of her exposure dawned on her: the knowledge that in fact it hadn’t been a game, that, after all, there was no fun involved slowly penetrated her drink-befuddled mind.
Morgan looked at her in dismal misgiving, as if she were a bloodied corpse planted in his sitting room. Her dress girdled her thighs, the brassiere lay strung over a cushion, her small pink-tipped breasts heaved from the recent exertions. He watched her pass the back of her hand slowly across her eyes like someone awakening from a sleep. Awkwardly, almost meekly, she pulled her dress down over her legs and covered her exposed breasts with her arms.
“You bastard,” she said softly and then, suddenly, she snatched
up the bra and her shoes and crouch-ran past him through the screen door and up the passage to the bathroom. Morgan hung his head in shame and abject despondency. He experienced Priscilla’s humiliation as if it had been his own: the defenceless prurience of her position on the floor, the retroactive embarrassment, the baleful unsympathetic light, him standing over her, shock written across his face. But he knew too, instinctively, and with an assurance gained from his own experience that, publicly at least, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The self-defence mechanisms of the human psyche would swing efficiently into action, shrouding the truth, reallocating the shame, imposing new guilts and transferring the disgrace to him, where, he confessed, it properly belonged.
Numbly he replaced the scattered cushions on the sofa. He wanted to bawl like a baby, cry his frustration to the world, but instead he drank some more whisky, sat down and waited for Priscilla to reappear.
Presently the sharp clicks of her heels on the concrete floor of the corridor told him that, as expected, more than fresh make-up had been applied in her absence. In glum trepidation he noted the frozen little smile on her face.
“Will you take me home, please,” she spoke as to a waiting taxi-driver. They walked out to the car in silence, Morgan wondering what he could possibly say to prevent this damage from becoming irreparable. Priscilla got into the car and sat stiffly erect.
“Priscilla,” he began. “I can explain. You see I thought it would be best if …”
“Would. You. Just. Take. Me. Home.” There was no trace of dejection in her voice, just cold, emphatic hatred. He started the car and backed it out into the driveway. The return journey to the Commission passed without another word being exchanged.
As he drove along the road Morgan saw his future disappearing in front of him with the remorseless inevitability of a torpedoed liner slipping beneath the waves. Already, only the creases in Priscilla’s dress, like the bubbling ripples of water, bore witness to their former intimacy. But then they too would be ironed out tomorrow. It would be like nothing had ever happened. Morgan found it hard to believe that such glowing possibilities—an actual breathing state of affairs—could be blotted out with such ease; that all the hints and talk of love, the moments of passion, his eminently realisable dreams, could be erased, as he surely knew they would be, so abruptly. But the bitter chill that existed in the car confirmed this fact unsparingly.
He pulled up outside the Fanshawes’ house. He said immediately, pleadingly “Priscilla, believe me, darling, there is an explanation for all this. I can explain. Please don’t feel that because I didn’t …”
She turned to face him. “I feel sorry for men like you,” she said softly and venomously. “What I can’t understand is how I failed to see it in the beginning. It’s so obvious. You’re pathetic creatures, all of you, with your big talk, your sexy swaggering behaviour. Pathetic, feeble, weak creatures. I don’t hate you, Morgan, I pity you.”
As Morgan listened to this his faltering hopes turned on one wing and went into a howling death-dive. He was horror-struck at her version of his behaviour: she thought he’d chickened out, couldn’t take the heat, hadn’t the lead in his pencil, which was absolutely the last thing he wanted. He had been assuming that she would think he was too “nice,” too “decent” to compromise their love with a bit of fornication, but he saw the utter vanity of his wishes. His assault on her at Olokomeji on the river bank made any connection between him and ideas of gentlemanly restraint singularly inappropriate. With a sudden sickening feeling he saw just how apt Priscilla’s interpretation of his behaviour was. It was also clear to him that for all this talk of pity on her part what she really felt for him was seething contempt. Then he was shocked to see Fanshawe walk on to the verandah and beckon them inside.
“Goodbye,” Priscilla said quickly, and got out of the car. She ran up the steps towards her father. Morgan gave a casual wave and drove off promptly so as not to see them talking. He tried not to think what Priscilla might say, what explanation she would provide for her early return and his refusal to join the family inside. He tilted his head towards the window and let the breeze play across his face. He couldn’t actually recall from his anthology of personal disasters a more traumatic and ruinous evening; and yet it had hovered so tantalisingly close to being perfect, to cementing firmly the first bricks in the new future he had planned to build for himself.
With a surge of faint hope he thought that it might, just, be possible to salvage something from the wreckage: perhaps by dint of tears or lovelorn propositions convince her that he was truly sincere and hadn’t wanted to affect or alter their relationship by making it sexual at this early stage. He tried out an impromptu draft apologia on himself, but it sounded irredeemably bogus and unlikely. And he saw too, with a soured midnight clarity, that it had all gone too far, that after what Priscilla had in fact done—ripping off her clothes, practically begging him—there was no chance of rewriting her version of the night’s events. He saw himself cast permanently in the role of rugby club braggart, victim of his own preposterous lifeguard conceit, the trumpeted exploits of the local stud exposed as sham, the empty, well-hung innuendoes of a redundant gigolo. He felt his face go red with anger as he saw the details of the portrait emerge. If only she knew what he was really capable of … but then his choler turned to shame as he saw the stereotype close in around him. He didn’t care what people said. Women always held the last card—he couldn’t win this one.
When he arrived back home he went straight to bed. Like a Napoleon at his Waterloo, he had briefly cast his eyes over the scene of his defeat—and had spotted Priscilla’s pants lying in the corner of the room where she had hurled them in pert abandon. The thought that he had driven a pantless Priscilla home was just the final ironic straw. He picked them up, successfully resisting the impulse to sniff them. They were white with blue lace trim round the leg-holes. They rested now in the drawer of his bedside table, a sad trophy of what might have been. As he masochistically re-ran the evening in his mind, he reflected that if he hadn’t met Murray at the club, if he’d even decided to have a trial pee when he reached home instead, none of this would have happened; in fact he’d be lying in bed with Priscilla at this very moment. But no, the random events and occurrences of his and Murray’s day had to, like the Titanic and the iceberg, converge outside the gentlemen’s lavatory at that precise moment with finely adjusted timing. And equally, he thought malevolently, it had to be Murray too. The man was assuming a daemonic, fatal role in his life, it seemed to him. Murray’s untimely collision had jolted his conscience out of that closet in his mind where only seconds before it had been securely enclosed for the night and Morgan strongly doubted if he could ever forgive him for that. One side of him grudgingly admitted that Murray couldn’t ever have known the effect of his on-the-spot diagnosis, but this was more than countered by the hateful aptness of his being the reminder, the catalyst that had set his rusty creaking sense of values juddering into action. For he knew that it had been his inclination to do the “decent” thing by Priscilla that had landed him in this mess—but it was with no sense of comfort or self-congratulation that he acknowledged this was so. His moral niceties—he blankly calculated—had cost him Priscilla and all the bright tomorrows that queued entrancingly behind her. With a sudden flash of prophetic inspiration he felt he knew why there was so much evil in the world—the price you paid for being good was simply quite out of proportion, preposterously over-valued. And as prime consumers of the commodity of goodness the human race had decided that as far as they were concerned they were just not prepared to pay the going rate any more. He turned over in his bed and furiously punched his pillows, tears of frustration at his own weakness pricking his eyes. That is, he thought, except for a few silly mugs, except for a few soft, stupid bastards like himself.
Chapter 10
Morgan closed the book and thought he could actually hear the blood draining from his face. He leant against a nearby wall and felt a tremor of bli
nd fear run through his body. With shaking hands he re-inserted the thick volume back in its slot in the medical section. The book was called Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
He had decided not to go into the office until after his appointment with Murray. An agonising tear-jerking session above his toilet bowl this morning had forcibly reminded him of his condition and, also, he wasn’t at all keen to confront Fanshawe. There was no telling what Priscilla might have related to her parents about the previous night. As a result he had killed time over a lengthy but morose breakfast during which he had made up his mind to face facts and be ruthlessly honest with himself. To this end he had driven up to the university bookshop to see what details he could establish about his ailment. After hovering around the medical section for a while, making sure no one was watching him, he had found the book he wanted and had uneasily opened its shiny, copiously illustrated pages.
He now gazed sightlessly out at the bright sunlit piazza of the administrative block which was visible through the windows at this side of the bookshop. His head was a glossy catalogue of frightful images, a rotten putrefying grocer’s filled with deliquescing cucumbers, split tomatoes, rancid sprouts, slime-ravaged lettuces. Crumbling noses, perforated palates, grotesquely swollen limbs danced in front of his eyes like images from some carnival for the terminally ill. His ears rang with some of the most foul, potent nomenclature he’d ever encountered: “Teeming treponemes,” “purulent meatus,” “macules,” “pustules,” trichomonas vaginilus, granuloma iguinale, bejel, venereal warts, candida albicans—the bleak, muscular terminology of medicine.