I got off at the next stop, Notting Hill, went home, had a bath, gargled with after-shave, changed my clothes, spring-cleaned my room, and rang my doctor and dentist making appointments for the next day but one. That night, Norman sat alone at the breakfast-table, shuffling the cards and glancing uncertainly at me. However, I plucked up the courage to say I was too tired, and so he went to his room and had a row with Jenny instead.
On the Tuesday I put in an appearance at school. Everyone behaved either as if I had never been away or as if I had never enrolled there in the first place. Dead Feet tied himself up in knots trying to explain why x to the power of zero always equals one. The clay-thighed Mrs Tregear told me why she thought it was Dido’s own fault that Aeneas cooled her. Derek forgot to beat me up. I signed forms enabling me to take Oxford Entrance on November 21st and 22nd. This was some four weeks away now.
Later, I sat at my desk with a cup of tea. The sun found its way into the room about this time, and, drugged by its warmth on my shirt, I used often to stare at the coalshed wall and railings. Occasionally my mind would go quite blank for as long as ninety seconds or two minutes and I would close my eyes and almost sigh with gratitude.
I wondered why I felt saddest about Rachel at early evening. I couldn’t muster much jealousy for DeForest and I was unconvinced that Rachel had behaved cruelly. If she had, and if DeForest were some snarling fat-cock, then I would have known what to do: there’d be some well-charted escape-route. Impartially, shrewdly, I considered suicide, though not in my worst moments. The bottle of pills. The note: ‘No hard feelings, everyone, but I’ve thought about it and it’s just not on, is it? It’s nearly on, but not quite. No? Anyway, all the best, C.’ Only it might be a bore for Jenny and Norm. And where would I find a responsible literary executor for the Notebooks ?
I tried writing letters to Rachel but although elegant and conscientious they made no sense to me and I merely filed them away. I seemed incapable of using words without stylizing myself. And the telephone was out. I wanted to send her vials of my tears at dusk, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Keats’s ‘Bright Star’, a videotape of me getting into bed and coughing and going on being here alone.
Kensington Town Hall seemed a reasonable enough place. I didn’t dare go in, but when a stray Nigerian staggered out of it at five fifteen or so, having no doubt fucked up some O Level, I assumed an American accent and questioned him about supervision, seating arrangements, and so on.
I drank an orangeade, rather solemnly, in the High Street Bar-B-Q Lounge, and thought about ringing Gloria. During the first week of the Low I had gone to see the queer doctor and he had let it slip out that I was all clean and needn’t come and get touched up by him again. (I probably flatter myself; my rig was too shrunken with fright to arouse much more than laughter.) Yes, Gloria. For old times’ sake.
I did ring her, too, as soon as I got back. I had to keep it down to a sexy whisper because there were voices corning from the breakfast-room – principally Norman’s. First, I waited while the urchin who usually answered Gloria’s (neighbour’s) telephone ran down the street to get her. Then, when she came on, I wisecracked for a bit, got her laughing, and wondered what she was doing later. Gloria switched from breathlessness to gravity. She told the foul-mouthed little oik to stop pinching her arse and bugger off. ‘How about it,’ I said. In a lowered voice Gloria informed me that she was sorry but she just so happened to be ‘courting’ (really) – Terry Tricho-monas, what’s more – and therefore had no wish to endanger her happiness at this moment in time. She was convinced I’d understand.
Sweating with shame I crept into the kitchen and steadied myself against the table.