“I’m sure it was enormous,” cried Sophy, curving at Fido. “It must be marvellous to be able to lift as much as that!”
Fido agreed that yes it was rather marvellous. Sophy emitted some perfume at him and allowed all the lines to stretch in his direction. There was a mutual expansion of pupils. Fido’s eyes were rather small and the expansion improved them. He told the boys to stay where they were but jump about a bit. Gerry said they’d seen the name of the school on the map and having seen Fido on the box thought that they might look him up—and now here he was!
“Keep warm, you men,” shouted Fido. “We’ll be going on in a jiffy.”
“You must be an inspiration to them, Mr Masterman.”
“Fido, please. I come when you whistle.”
He danced, fisted the air a bit then gave an ejaculatory laugh that really was rather like a bark. He went on to say that she could whistle for him when she liked and it would be a pleasure.
Gerry broke in.
“How’s the job, then, Fido?”
“Schoolmastering? Well, you can see I manage to keep fit on it. Do a lot of this stuff. Of course, it’s not the same as proper road-work. You can’t have the little men really going at it. So most days I carry weights. Besides—” He glanced round them cautiously, inspected the downs, bare of all but sheep and boys. “I have to keep a careful eye on them you know.”
Sophy trilled.
“Oh Fido! You’re stuck away here at the end of nowhere—”
He leaned towards her, reached out a hand to grasp her arm, then thought better of it.
“That’s just it. You see the little fellow there? No—don’t let him know you’re looking. Be subtle about it like me. Out of the corner of your eye.”
Sophy looked. The little boys were just little boys, that was all, except that three of them were black and two brown. Most were the usual sort of whiteish.
“The one thumping the nig?”
“Careful! He’s royal!”
“But Fido, how thrilling!”
“His parents are really nice people, Sophy. Of course they don’t get down here much together. But she actually spoke to me, you know. She said, ‘Build him up, Mr Masterman.’ She has a marvellous memory for names. They both have. He follows weight-lifting with keen interest, you know. He said ‘What d’you reckon your limit’ll be in the snatch?’ I tell you, as long as we have them—”
Gerry tapped him on the shoulder and turned him from his exclusive attention.
“And you have another job as well as running the P.T.?”
“I’m not saying, am I? The little men don’t know, you see. But it’s such a load—why, good Lord, the lad his little highness was toughing up—and take that little brown fellow for example—he’s the son of an oil sheik. Got to call him a prince, though of course it’s not the same. More like a laird who’s struck it lucky when deer-stalking or something. His old man could buy this country.”
“I expect he has,” said Gerry with uncharacteristic feeling. “Nobody else would.”
“You mean his father’s really rich, Fido?”
“Billions. Well. Mustn’t let the old gluteus maxima get a chill. Sophy, you two—I’m free for a bit round about four. Tea in the village? Scones? Home-made stuff?”
Before Gerry could answer, Sophy accepted.
“Super, Fido!”
“The Copper Kettle then. About half an hour. See you.”
“We’ll be there.”
Fido gave her a last expanded pupil then bounded off up the track. He chased the little boys about and made noises like a dog tormenting cows. The little boys responded with mooing and shrieks of laughter. Fido was evidently popular. Sophy stared after him.
“They actually spend their time lifting up weights?”
“For God’s sake, you saw them on the box!”
“So I did.”
“Dear thing, you’re not into the modern scene.”
She saw that for all his twinship he was irritated by the traffic in pupils and she was pleased and amused.
“Don’t be dumb, Gerry. It couldn’t have happened better.”
“I’d forgotten what a thick oaf he is. Christ.”
“He’s our way in.”
“Yours, you mean.”
“You agreed to it.”
“I’m only just beginning to find out what we’ve taken on. You heard what he said. They’ll have the works here, the complete works! We’re probably on tape already.”
“I don’t believe it.” She moved close to him. “You don’t know about being invisible, do you?”
“I’m a soldier. Try and find me when I want to hide.”
“Not just hiding. I’ve known it for these last three days. We’re invisible. No, not because of some magic or other—though perhaps—but anyway; not because of magic; but just because. That he’s here and you know him. That I can—manage him—Sometimes there are coincidences; but sometimes the arrangement of things is—deliberate. I know about that.”
“Well I don’t.”
“When I was in the travel agency I did a lot of looking-up tables and things, and dates and numbers. I understand them. I really do understand them, you see, the way Daddy understands his chess and all that. I’m just not used to putting that kind of knowing into words. Perhaps it won’t go anyway. Listen. Those numbers. The girl who was there when I first got there. Well. She was a dim blonde. She was a smasher too. The manager knew how to pick them. Not all that good for business, but why should he worry? You’d have popped your eyes at her, my dear. But she, she was dim. D’you know? I watched her use tables to work out what ten per cent of a bill came to!”
“Just the way she should be. Keep a lot of chaps very happy.”
“The point is this. She had to fill in a date and it went, the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventy-seventh year; so it was seven, stroke, seven, stroke, seven, seven. Well. Alice filled it in, looked at it with her bulging great blue eyes, gave her idiotic laugh—the one the manager said was like a bird-trill—he was wet, he couldn’t keep his hands off anything; and she said, ‘It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’”
Gerry turned away and began to walk down by the wire.
“So it was.”
“But—”
She ran after him, caught his arm and pulled him round.
“Don’t you see, dear, my, my lovely—it wasn’t! A coincidence comes out of the, the mess things are, the heap, the darkness and you can’t tell how—But these four sevens—you could see them coming and wave goodbye to them! It was the system—but coincidences—more than coincidences—”
“Honest to God, Sophy, I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Everything’s running down. Unwinding. We’re just—tangles. Everything is just a tangle and it slides out of itself bit by bit towards something that’s simpler and simpler—and we can help it. Be a part.”
“You’ve got religion. Or you’re up the wall.”
“Being good is just another tangle. Why bother? Go on with the disentangling that will happen in any case and take what you can on the way. What it wants, the dark, let the weight fall, take the brake off—”
A truth appeared in her mind. The way towards simplicity is through outrage. But she knew he would not understand.
“It’s like the collapse of sex.”
“Sex, sex, there’s nothing like sex! Sex for ever!”
“Oh yes, yes! But not the way you mean—the way everything means, the long, long convulsions, the unknotting, the throbbing and disentangling of space and time on, on, on into nothingness—”
And she was there; without the transistor she was there and could hear herself or someone in the hiss and crackle and roar, the inchoate unorchestra of the lightless spaces.
“On and on, wave after wave arching, spreading, running down, down, down—”
The leaden roofs of the school came back into focus then moved out of it as she stared up into Gerry’s worried face.
“Sophy! Sophy! Can you hear me?”
That was why this vast body she inhabited was being moved backwards and forwards; and becoming known now as a girl’s body, and man’s hands shaking it by the shoulders.
“Sophy!”
She answered him with lips that could hardly move.
“Just a moment can’t you? I was speaking to—of—I was someone—”
His hands stilled but held her.
“Take it easy then. Better?”
“Nothing wrong.” As the words fell out of her mouth she saw how funny they were and started to giggle. “Nothing wrong at all!”
“We need a drink. My God, it was like—I don’t know what it was like!”
“You’re so wise, my dear!”
He was peering closely into her face.
“I didn’t approve one little bit, old soul. It was damned weird, I can tell you.”
With that, there was clear daylight, sun, breeze, downs, a known date and place.
“What did you call it?”
“Bloody worrying for a moment.”
“You said ‘Weird’.”
All things flowed together. Power filled her.
“You talked about guards round this place and about tapes. But we’re in a special time. They come, you see. It’s not that they can’t see us. It’s that they don’t. Why when I was small—It’s the tangle untangling, sorting itself, slipping and sliding. You must be simple. That’s the real thing.”
“I’m beginning to realize you’re an oddball. Not sure we ought to go on. There are things I just don’t—”
“We’ll go on. You’ll see.”
“Not if I say no. I’m in charge.”
“Of course, dear.”
“I’ll go exactly as far as things are—possible. When we reach the impossible we’ll stop. Understand?”
She gave him an especially brilliant smile which he kissed in a protective kind of way. He took her hand and they walked down the wire in silence. Lovers out walking.
The Copper Kettle was empty except for its fake eighteenth-century furniture and fake horse-brasses. Here they sat, viewed indifferently by a cretinous girl, and waited for Fido. He came breathlessly. Gerry played up, acting out sparks of at first amused jealousy; and then, she saw, putting a little more than acting into it. Fido was soon barking. He had brought some photographs with him. One showed him receiving a medal on a rostrum. Sophy saw to her surprise that he had not won the event but come third. Encouraged by her intense interest in his activities he took a sheaf of photographs out of his breast pocket and exposed them to her. Here was Fido, all gleaming muscle and sinew and lifting weights. Here was Fido rock-climbing and suspended, grinning over a hideous gulf. Here was Fido at the trampoline, caught upside-down in mid-air. When Sophy admitted provocatively that she had some small doubt as to the importance of all these activities, Fido simply didn’t understand her. Did she mean it was dangerous? A girl might well feel that—
Sophy took her cue.
“Oh but it must be terribly dangerous!”
Fido meditated.
“Took a tumble rock-climbing.”
Gerry spoke nastily from the place where they were ignoring him.
“Wasn’t that when you fell on your head?”
Fido responded with a precise catalogue of his injuries. Sophy broke in, hoping to conceal her giggles.
“Oh but it’s not fair! Why can’t we—?”
Gerry gave a positive guffaw.
“You! Christ!”
But Fido was already pointing out those areas of sport in which he thought female participation was allowable.
“And croquet,” said Gerry. “Don’t forget croquet.”
Fido said he wouldn’t; and gave Sophy a conquering look from his expanded pupils. After tea he walked them some way to the bus that would take them to Gerry’s car. They received a pressing invitation from him to return; and the fact that it was directed wholly at Gerry was the only false thing about it.
Sophy kissed Fido goodbye so that he barked again and she willed her scent into him. When at last they were alone in the car, Gerry looked at her, half in anger, half in admiration.
“You were half-way up his flies. Christ!”
“He might be useful. He might even come in with us.”
“Don’t be wet, dear thing. You may be fatal but you can’t do miracles.”
“Why not?”
“Think you’re something out of history, don’t you?”
“I don’t know any history.”
Gerry revved the engine viciously.
“Don’t need to. Whore’s instinct.”
He was silent after that and she considered his point of view. It was, she saw, peculiarly male. Here was Gerry—who would quite calmly suggest she should keep them both by using men and had been serious about it, she was certain—getting worked up by her approach to ridiculous Fido. Brooding on this she found it all rooted in men’s need to see. Possible customers were faceless. But Gerry knew Fido.
Two days later they had a letter from Fido repeating his invitation. Gerry was all for ignoring it, they must have been out of their minds. When Sophy said she had to think, she saw Gerry take this as meaning, “I want to do nothing.” He patted her, got pilled up and went off with Bill to arrange a job. Sophy rang Fido from a callbox. She said she didn’t think she and Gerry should come down. Interrogated insistently by Fido she admitted she had thought they weren’t easy together and Gerry had been, well, not difficult but thoughtful. She couldn’t bear the idea of breaking up an old friendship that way. No! For her part she would have liked nothing better. In fact—
She refused to be drawn on the fact. But then she heard along the miles of wire how Fido barked as a brilliant idea came to him. He invited her to a meeting in South London where she could watch him lift weights and afterwards they could discuss the situation.
The weight-lifting competition, in which Fido won his section, struck her as so funny that that side of it was almost compensation for the pervading smell. Afterwards Fido, breathing quickly, conveyed to her that he found her exceptionally desirable. She waited for the pass; and it was an invitation to come to the school on parents’ day. Sophy, who had expected a straightforward proposition, found this as comic as weight-lifting.
“I’m not a parent.”
He explained it was the day when parents saw how agile he had made their little men. She allowed herself to be persuaded and began to suspect that the actual proposition when it came might be a moral one. Married—to a weight-lifter! Fido obviously thought that Gerry once out of sight would be out of mind as well. She listened as he, with a kind of egotistical innocence, displayed his life before her—his grandmother’s money, and that line out to the royals on which he placed such weight, intimating that one day he might be able to present her to them, or to one of them, if she agreed to come.
“Mind,” he said. “I’m not promising anything. I can only present you if I’m commanded.”
So she went to parents’ day, conspicuously inconspicuous in a cotton dress and straw hat. No royals were present and this cast a profound gloom over Fido, only lightened by a word or two with Lord Mountstephen, and the Marquis of Fordingbridge. Sophy inspected Fido’s bedsitter and found that it resembled an annexe to the gym except for the rows of photographs. She knew now that any idea of getting Fido in with them would be pointless. It was not that he would find it wrong. He would find it dangerous in a way that did not apply to rock-climbing. It would not be his scene. Nor was there any future for his girlfriend or wife. Fido’s offer of companionship and sex would be limited to what was unavoidable between the competitions. The sex would be a quick use of the body, healthy when taken in moderation. The only other use he had for a woman was as an audience for his physical perfection. Most masculine of men—how narrow his hips, how tucked in behind him the hard rondures of his bum! How wide his shoulders and glossy his skin!—He had all the narcissism of a woman or a pretty boy. He e
njoyed the beauty of his flesh more than Sophy enjoyed the beauty of hers. She knew all this, even while he put his arms round her, and the school drum-and-fife band made noises on the playing fields outside the window and the summery parents drifted round the various exhibitions. Nevertheless, she let him have her on his narrow, bachelor bed, and the exercise was only a little less boring than resisting him. But he had yet another surprise for her, announcing when he had finished that they were engaged. On the way back to London it seemed to her more and more incredible that these valuable children should be so freely available to inspection once you had joined the peculiar club that surrounded them. But she thought to herself—it’s simple—I’m inside!
Daisy’s bloke came out of jail so Bill had to move on quick. He came to tell them all about it so the three of them held a council of war in Gerry’s unkempt, uncleaned room that they called his flat. The last job had been a flop—much danger and little money. The two men were inclined to listen to Sophy if only for the sake of a little harmless fantasy. But when she began to describe the school and suggest routes, Gerry patted her as if she were a child herself.
“Sophy, like I said, they’ll have gadgets you just wouldn’t believe. For example. You walk along a path. A chopper with a gadget could follow you half an hour after you passed just by the bit of warmth where you’d walked. If you hid in a wood they could spot you by the lovely warmth, yum, yum, of your body. On the screen you’d look like a fire.”
“He’s right, see? You got to be careful.”
“Let’s plan a smack at a bank, old soul. That’s dicing with death, but not absolument daft.”
“But this is new, don’t you see? And who cares about gadgets? Once we’d got him—Fido showed me the layout. I can find out anything we want. Anything. That’s—power. He introduced me to the headmaster’s wife. You see, Daddy’s fearsomely well thought of, the last of the Mohicans and all that—last of his family, I mean Bill, never mind. And after all, I mean—chess!”
“None of them would tell you everything, Miss. There’s always something. He wouldn’t even know.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself, old thing. Covering fire. Think you’re in the clear, then paff! All fall down. Besides—wrong league.”
Darkness Visible: With an Introduction by Philip Hensher Page 19