Mind you, she always appeared to like me. I used to see them around, in the Sixties, Ossie and Martina, the optimum couple. He would help her down from the running-board of the Landrover they went about in, and the tall pair would advance hand in hand into the marquee or theatre foyer or converted tramshed or through the doors of the favoured restaurant or speakeasy or eel-and-pie shop. They turned heads, those two. Part of their glamour lay in the firm fact they were so eminently and maturely a couple, rich but clean, while the groundlings were alleycatting around or blitzed on drugs: LSD, dope — yeah, and penicillin. Ossie was an actor then. He did Shakespeare. I wonder what she thinks, now that he’s just a money-man, like everyone else. I knew Martina from way back at film school, and I used to amble up with whatever stylist or make-up girl I was squiring and say hi to the talented team. It did my rep a lot of good. Martina always seemed pleased to see me. Perhaps she fancied a bit of rough, even then.
So, towards the end of dinner, as Martina stood at my side pouring out the last of the wine, I rammed my hand up her skirt and said, ‘Come on, darling, you know you love it’… Relax. I didn’t really. In fact I behaved doggedly well all evening. You see, I’d figured it out by then. Oh, I knew what her angle was — I knew what this Martina Twain character was after. Friendship. Friendship: no sex or duplicity or complication, no money, just frictionless human contact. Well that’s no fucking use to me, is it, I thought at first. I was out of my mind with sobriety, teetotalled — I felt lightheaded, I felt downright drunk, eating dinner up here with this sicko who saw nothing in me but myself. Jesus, what kind of pervert am I dealing with now? And yet I steadied, and the talk came freely enough. It takes all sorts, I concluded with a shrug, and resigned myself to the whole deal. Besides, I had this boil on my ass.
I did try a gimmick on her, though, as I took my leave at eleven-thirty. The best women, sometimes, are the most neglected, and you never know your luck.
‘Oh yeah,’ I’d just said. ‘Give me another book to read.’
‘All right, hang on then.’
It was 1984 — by George Orwell again.
I raised a finger at her. ‘No animals?’
‘No. Just a few rats.’
‘Any allegory?’
‘Not really.’
‘Say,’ I said (and here was my gimmick): ‘I had a swell dream about you the other night.’
Normally, with this line, in my experience you get either coy withdrawal or outright panic, depending on the dame. But Martina merely gazed at me with level curiosity and asked, ‘Oh yes? What happened in it?’
‘Uh — well I was sort of rescuing you from Red Indians. Except they weren’t red but white, with fair hair. I was rescuing you in my car. It’s a Fiasco. And then the car wouldn’t start.’
‘What was so swell about it all?’
‘Oh, then another car showed up and I drove you away in that. To safety.’
Actually this was my first deviation from truth. I did have a dream. What happened was, the Red Indians disappeared or went off somewhere else, the Fiasco was transfigured into a kind of playboy pad, Martina shed her cotton shirt and buckskins — and I loved her up pretty good on that oval sack.
‘Yes, it was a real bitch,’ I said, ‘my car not starting like that.’
‘It was probably drunk,’ said Martina, smiling as she opened her door to let me out.
The adult movie was a period piece and more thoughtfully plotted than usual, all about a black plenipotentiary (Ottoman? Carthaginian?) and the appetites of his talented wife (Juanita del Pablo), who, with the help of her chambermaid (Diana Proletaria), puts out not only for her husband but for most of his army too, as well as the odd handful of servants, slaves, eunuchs, acrobats and, finally, executioners. He catches Juanita at it in the end, and throws her into some stock footage, where the lions get her. As I shuffled down the aisle with my Orwell and my pint, and as an hysterical voice-over blurbed the coming attractions (‘… starring Diana Proletaria, the Princess of Pawwun. Iss whyuld. Iss hat!’), two black dudes climbed tiredly to their feet, rubbing their eyes.