As I turned I saw Jenny on the chesterfield in the adjoining room, curled up on her knees, haggardly smoking a cigarette. I stepped towards her, but as I did so she made a movement, hardly perceptible, a shrug or a wave of the hand, which told me that she was content to be alone. I closed the door behind me, and went to bed.
Thirty-five minutes past eight: The Rachel Papers, volume one
Over by the window now, I effortfully uncork the second bottle of Chateau Dysentery. Red spots fly over my twentieth-birthday present from Rachel, the new Longman’s Blake. It’s very dark outside, so it seems appropriate to ask out loud:
Can delight Chained in night The virgins of youth and morning bear?
On my desk, a sea of pads, folders, envelopes, napkins, notes, the complete Rachel Papers stand displayed. Four-eyed, I indent subject-headings, co-ordinate footnotes, mark cross-references in red and blue biros.
We have to begin with a tolerably even development, characterized though it is by chance meetings, botched preparations, half-successes. Referring to Conquests and Techniques: a Synthesis, I write on the inside cover of the Rachel folder itself:
Initial 2B
Compensatory A3 tendencies
Emily gambit
Marilyn variation deferred.
I erase ‘deferred’ and put in ‘declined’. This doesn’t tell me much.
The first day at school was intensely embarrassing, not for me (I felt) so much as for the directress and her staff, unhelpful as these distinctions generally turn out to be.
On my way there, walking up attractive Addison Avenue, I took out the two letters I had received that morning. It was a clear day, and so, being morbidly early for school, I slipped between the bird-pats on a pavement bench to take a proper look at them.
The fact that my mother had in her life made any written contact whatever with the outside world was in itself a moving tribute to the British GPO. My name mis-spelt, an address which even I could make little of, four ip stamps upside down in the top left-hand corner. I put on my glasses and began worrying a few key phrases: pity missed you Sunday … clearing up? got sick … Your father in London two weeks but … giving rather grand house-party … the ? of one college is coming … you come? … Love to Jenny … Norman is behaving … Mrs Wick found vests you forgot … My face burned. What was the point? There always was a point. Ah, sinisterly clear ending … take care. Find out from him how many are coming. He can be reached at 01-937 2814.
9-3-7, W-E-S, Western: Kensington area; must be his slag’s place. Why didn’t she ring him at the office ? Or was this some wily show of uninterest? The whole thing would have depressed me, but I happened to be having tea with Rachel that afternoon – d deux. And the telephone number might come in useful.
The second letter was airmail, garishly stamped. It was from Coco.
‘Coco’ was the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Lebanese economics professor (cultivated by my father when he was visiting lecturer at Cambridge the year before last). Towards the end of the summer the family had come out for three weekends. Coco was tanned, minx-like, exotic; she was, furthermore, a girl, and I was just old enough and rude enough to seem quite unimprovable to her. The first weekend I kissed Coco on the landing. The second I smoothed her shy breasts in the greenhouse. The third I persuaded her to come to my room at 12 p.m. – a perfect night, though intercourse did not take place. She was barely fifteen then and I didn’t want to come out of jail when she was barely twenty-one. Besides, she wouldn’t let me. I kept up our correspondence because it made me feel sexually active and in demand, and because I like showing off (doubtless to myself only) in letters. I read:
Dear Charles,
Thank you for your letter – at last! Shame on you for not writing to me sooner! I am very pleased that you did so well in your exams. My o levels were not so good! ?