‘Yes ? Knowing her, what ? Cos if you want to know I’ll tell you.’
‘Well, I mean, don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t give a fuck. Just don’t start—’
We heard something fall down the stairs. Tom limped into the room.
‘You’re looking good,’ I said.
‘Where’s Geoff?’ Tom asked.
‘Puking downstairs.’
‘Sorry, man, I can’t make it. I’m going to split.’
‘Wait. Hang on. I’ll get him.’ I stood up.
‘No, I’m gonna fade.’
I followed Tom as he backed away unhappily into the passage.
There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘I’ll get him.’
He gestured with his hands, like a comedian quelling applause.
‘It’s cool,’ Tom claimed.
Norman brushed past us as we stood in the hall. He called out: ‘Jenny!’
I knelt on the bathroom floor. Geoffrey fluttered his fingertips at me in shy recognition.
‘Christ, I’m a drag,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, helping him into my room. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘Where’s Tom?’
‘He buggered off. What did you give him?’
‘Half a Mandie, a Seconal – I can’t remember – and two Mogadon, I think. Is he gonna be okay ?’
‘Yeah.’ I sat him on my bed. ‘How’s Sheila?’
‘That’s the point. She cooled me. The night before last.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Cooled me. Isn’t it a scene?’
‘Do you want an apple?’
Apparently what happened was this. Sheila returned from work (she was a sec in an alternative weekly) to find Geoffrey supine on the bedroom floor, a gramophone speaker propped up against either ear, a joint gone out in one hand, an overturned glass quite near the other, tinted saliva oozing from the corners of his mouth. He had been on plonk since breakfast. He had been on plonk since breakfast since September. On rising, Geoffrey found an envelope under his chin. In it was a precis of this state of affairs and a five-pound note.
‘And I’m sure I didn’t fuck her enough.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Too smashed all the time.’ He prodded the ashtray with his cigarette. Put it wouldn’t go out.
‘No hard-ons?’
‘No hard-ons. And I kept puking in the bed.’
‘How of ten?’
‘More often than not.’ He shook his head. ‘How’re you making out with that Jewish chick?’
I wanted to tell him about it, only I felt this might dash him. ‘She wasn’t Jewish in the end.’
‘Fuck her?’
‘Oh yeah. You know, it’s not bad, bit boring. You know. Nothing special.’
I’m afraid the next two-and-a-half weeks are rather a blur. The days soon cease to be distinguishable. In my diary several sheets are quite blank, and The Rachel Papers, at this point, are a sorry jumble of cold facts and free-associative prose. However, this prompts me to take a structural view of things -always the very best view of things to take, in my opinion. The dates are there, so are most of my significant thoughts and feelings. And we’ve only half an hour left. I sip my wine. I turn the page.
Things start well.
Kneeing impedimenta into the kitchen. Rachel and I were met by Norman and Jenny. They had taken up formal positions before the window; each held a bottle of champagne, and a third stood by on the coffee-table, surrounded by half a dozen Guinnesses for Norman to dilute his with. I was embarrassed to find how much this moved me. But what I felt even more strongly – looking at Rachel’s smiles, her adult handbag and dinky suitcases – was a sense of her independence and separateness. Rachel had her own identity, you see – here saluted by Jenny and Norm – her own belongings and her own autonomy. She wasn’t just a sum total of my obsessions; she simply chose to be with me.
With fizzy noses we sang ‘Happy Birthday To Rachel’.
Champagne: more than a drink, a drug. It seems curious in retrospect, too teenage somehow: like cornering the fat girl after school behind the pavilion, fingertips on navy knickers for me, palmful of inconclusive breast for you, flattering and degrading for her (but who is she to be critical ?); or like the friend’s elder sister (or mother) glimpsed naked coming from the bathroom; or like the parties knee-deep in duffle-coats and corduroy, beery mouths and sagging bodies conjoin like slow-motion road accidents; or, most obviously, like the endless foursomes of adolescence, when I’ve got a hand down her shirt, but then again you’ve got a hand up her skirt, but then again yours is struggling more, who’s first? At least, that’s how it felt to me, the only teenager in the room, more alive to incongruities.