‘What ? More … substantial ? More … definite about yourself?’
‘Suppose so. No. It’s not that. It just makes me feel less pathetic.’
Her voice sounded altogether different.
‘Less pathetic,’ she said.
‘ … oh, baby, come on, don’t worry. I honestly couldn’t care less.’
While Rachel cried on my shoulder I reviewed the fiction that was Jean-Paul d’Erlanger. There were one or two felicitous touches, certainly. I liked the irate telephone calls, for example. And it was impressive that she had covered her tracks so well: those finely gauged remarks about how tactful everyone was, how good they were at not bringing it up. Presumably DeForest was in the dark even now. But the Passionate Parisian Painter – and all that catchpenny nonsense about the Spanish Civil War: I mean … really, I ask you.
With fresh curiosity, with a revived sense of the mysterious in her, I kissed the damp corners of Rachel’s eyes. Because, come on, she must be mad, mustn’t she. I lied and fantasized and deceived; my existence, too, was a prismatic web of mendacity – but for me it was far more – what? – far more ludic, literary, answering an intellectual rather than an emotional need. Yes, that was the difference. I hugged her again. What an unknown little thing she was. It felt like being in bed with someone else.
An hour later Rachel was pretty well won round to the opinion that I liked her and found her not entirely contemptible. She then asked:
‘What was the thing you were going to tell me?’
Some of my mind must have been ticking over on this. When I spoke it was without any mental hesitation.
‘Oh, that. Well – seems silly really. No. it’s just that I think I’ve … ballsed up my papers and won’t get into Oxford. I feel I’ve misjudged it all, in a quite fundamental way.’
As Rachel gushed reassurances, the wind outside, which had been strong all evening, started to make cornily portentous noises, cooed from behind the cellar door, fidgeted with the window-frames.
Midnight: coming of age
So I am nineteen years old and don’t usually know what I’m doing, snap my thoughts out of the printed page, get my looks from other eyes, do not overtake dotards and cripples in the street for fear I will depress them with my agility, love watching children and animals at play but wouldn’t mind seeing a beggar kicked or a little girl run over because it’s all experience, dislike myself and sneer at a world less nice and less intelligent than me. I take it this is fairly routine ?
Now I tap The Rachel Papers into a trim pile. The hands of the alarm-clock form a narrowing off-centre V-sign. In seven minutes they will be one.
Of course, I was absolutely delirious the next morning. (I feel the effects still, forty hours later; it occurs to me that exhaustion is the cheapest and most accessible drug on the market.)
Rachel, normally wide-awake at the slightest twitch from me, slept through my hot-lidded fumbling with clothes and Interview literature. At three o’clock, five hours earlier, I promised I would say goodbye before I left. But there seemed little point.
On an impulse, I decided to take The Rachel Papers with me, instead.
Norman sat alone in the kitchen, poring over the Sun glamour section. Jen had evidently ceased to concern herself with the propriety of my breakfast.
‘When’s your train ?’
‘Nine five.’
(You went along to the college to find out the time of your interview. However, I was a mid-alphabet man and didn’t reckon on it being before ten thirty.)
‘Ages,’ said Norman.
In silence we had some tea and bread-and-butter – again, coffee was the breakfast of queers, toast that of left-wingers. My tongue felt hirsute and my teeth itched.
Twenty to nine: ‘Come on, let’s go. You look fucking chronic in that suit. Where’d you get it? Army surplus? Here, there’s a letter for you. Foreign.’
Norman revved his Lotus Cortina at the top of the square, blue serge jacket on the rear hook. The car smelled of oil, new plastic, see-through Bri-nylon shirts, and essence of old man’s sweat. I glanced at the envelope and put it in my pocket. Coco.