Norm and I grimaced at each other. He hadn’t spoken yet, I only once. The tea got round, then the toast, which my father refused. He wanted neither milk nor sugar. Was there a lemon? Jenny would run down, occupied as she was. No, Rachel would. Where were they kept ? She left the room.
‘They aren’t going to put up with it much longer,’ Vanessa was saying. ‘Nixon is up to here’ (neck-high) ‘in bullshit.’ She blew on her tea. For someone who hated America so much she had a very mid-Atlantic accent. ‘Soon the students and the Panthers are going to get together, and then …’ She shook her head.
There was a pause.
‘And what do you think of this frightful situation,’ said Norman in a pontifical voice. ‘Charles, I mean what’s it all coming to?’
Rachel broke the stillness. She bore a saucer on which lay a single slice of lemon.
‘Ah, thank you so much.’ My father held out his cup, a smile fossilized on his face.
‘I’ll tell you, Norman,’ I said. ‘I think it’s got very little to do with the government. It’s the people.’
‘Ah, now what do you mean by “the people”?’ my father queried. ‘Aren’t “the people” and the government, in effect, the same -‘
‘I’ll tell you, Norman. Americans will always be hell no matter who’s governing them. They’re —’
‘Okay, so you don’t like Americans,’ said Vanessa.
‘No, I don’t like Americans.’
Rachel sat down in a straight-backed chair to Norman’s left.
‘Ah, but why ? Has that got anything to do with the matter at hand?’ My father lifted his cup, watching his weight and watching me.
Stop saying ‘ah’ like that every time you open your fucking mouth. I felt hot. I didn’t think much. I said: ‘Because they’re violent. Because they only like extremes. Even the rural people, the old reactionaries in the farms, go out blowing niggers’ heads off, roast a Jew or two, disembowel a Puerto Rican. Even the hippies are all eating and mass-murdering each other. The generations of T-bone steak and bully-beef, as if they’re doing a genetics experiment on themselves. No wonder they’re so violent, with bodies like theirs. It’s like being permanently armed.’ The room sighed. ‘And I hate them because they’re so big and sweaty. I hate their biceps and their tans and their perfect teeth and their clear eyes. I hate their—’
I was interrupted by Vanessa (abusively), her boyfriend (magisterially) and Rachel (with amused dismissiveness). I let them ride over me without protest. The tirade hadn’t been contrived wholly for Rachel’s benefit. I had, in fact, before even meeting DeForest, written a sonnet on this theme – of whose sestet the speech was, in part, a prose paraphrase. It had not seemed such limelit nonsense in verse form.
Jen finally took time out from serving tea and toast. She sat on the floor at her husband’s feet. Norman, staring at me with curiosity and some affection, laid a palm the size of a violin on her head. Jenny frowned when she felt Norman’s hand, but looked grateful. It was the first time I had seen them touch since the night of my arrival. Two and a half weeks.
The argument continued. I was unable to see how the three of them could have disagreed with me so fervently and yet go on disagreeing among themselves. Vanessa had decided that it would be more swinging partially to come round to my view (she blamed the system, and ‘genocide-guilt’). Rachel was taking a conventional stand against ‘this kind of generalization’. My father umpired. I listened for a few minutes, then went downstairs.
After some words with Valentine (‘Fuck off and get Mum’) and a new au pair (‘Yes, I’m terribly sorry, would you mind waking her up, it is rather important – I do hope I’ll see you next time I’m there’), I got mother. I let her scale the lurching rope-ladder first to consciousness, then to recognition, and, at last, to intelligibility.
‘Er, no dear, yes. I wanted … I wanted just to know how many people your father was bringing. There’s Pat and Willie French, I know, but I wondered if they were bringing … someone else. Because I shall then have to move Gita out of the green room and put Sebastian’s things …’