‘That bit. From there to there,’ he said, pointing. ‘This guy really wants to fuck the daughter,’ he murmured thickly, ‘but he’s got to fuck the mother instead.’
Mary narrowed her eyes.
And so I torn-peeped across the hedges of years, into wan little windows. And when, by means of pitifully ardent, naively lascivious caresses, she of the noble nipple and massive thigh prepared me for the performance of my nightly duty, it was still a nymphet’s scent that in despair I tried to pick up, as I cantered through the undergrowth of dark decaying forests.
Mary read it but she didn’t laugh or smile. She could see it was funny, she could see all its delight. But she didn’t laugh or smile. She turned to Jamie, invigorated by the expressionlessness of her own face.
He frowned and straightened up. Hurt showed in his hot eyes. ‘I suppose you have to read the whole thing,’ he said, and looked away.
Mary went to her room. In a sense she was appalled by what she had done. But it was no help being appalled. She would do the same thing again. What helped? Something did: the knowledge that she had a power. She decided she had better use it, since it was the only power at her disposal. And of course it was the power to make feel bad.
That day Mary could feel life losing its edge, and she was pleased. She looked at life and urged it to interest her, to perform some convulsion that would render it interesting. But of course life stayed inert, and she thought the less of it for that. She knew why, but this was no help, not to women. She was a woman and it was no help. She knew that it was no help, for instance, to know that she went a little mad for five days every month. She still went a little mad, five days, every month. She knew when it was she went a little mad, and knew when to expect it. But, boy, she didn’t know she was a little mad while she was a little mad. Just think: if you’re a woman you go a little mad for several years when the real age comes. Will I know it then? she wondered. Oh man … Women are the other people, yes we are. We’re deep-divers, every one. You face the surface tempest where you can thrash and shout, but we swim underwater all our lives.
Mary made Jamie feel bad by feeling bad herself. She concentrated on this feeling and it struck her with its purity. After a few days it seemed obvious, just, even admirable. God, Mary feels bad. Do you see how bad she’s feeling? Mary condensed the world and its present into a settled haze above her head. She glowed with it, her new power. It was true, it was true; how could something be as intense as this and also false? If Jamie addressed a casual remark to her, she stared at him for several seconds and then turned away, her disdain so palpable and definitive that there was no need to disclose it with her eyes. If they crossed in the passage, Mary would halt and stand her ground, daring him to travel through her force field. One day as she left the sitting-room she heard Jamie say to Lily, ‘Christ. What the fuck’s the matter with Mary?’
Mary felt a rush of exultation at this open tribute to her power. She went back and stood in the doorway.
‘Is she having her period or something?’ he said. He looked up and saw her, with terror.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ he said, writhing on the sofa and waving his hands in the air.
Mary went back to her room and sat on the bed staring at a point of air midway between the wall and herself for several hours without blinking. That was good too, and she started doing it on a regular basis. Her sorties into the sitting-room became unpredictable and dramatic. She liked to sit near Jamie and send her aura out to probe his peace. The girls avoided talking to her. Even Augusta stayed upwind of Mary now: Augusta knew that the diadem had been wrested from her hands. Jamie began going out in the evenings, something she knew he hated doing. That was good, good. She would still be here tracking him, beaming him with her power.
One Saturday night Mary and Jamie were alone together in the flat. Mary was having a good session of making Jamie feel bad by sitting on the sofa and staring palely out of the window, careful not to blink. Repeatedly she hugged her bathrobe to her as if she was cold. She wasn’t cold. Jamie churned about with a book in the armchair opposite. By this stage in the evening it hardly occurred to Mary what she was feeling bad about or what feeling bad about it would achieve. Feeling bad was the main thing. So it gave her an uneasy jolt when Jamie threw down his book, drank deeply from his glass, and turned her way with his arms folded.
‘Okay, Mary. What is all this shit?’
‘All what?’ she said simply, her face quite open.
‘All this tragedy-queen stuff. It’s like Tristan und Isolde here every fucking night. What’s going on?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said, remembering herself.
Jamie sighed and closed his eyes. Feebly he drummed his shoes on the floor. He stood up and walked sidlingly across the room towards her. He sat down on the cushion’s edge.
‘Now don’t play dumb. You walk around here with a face like a kicked butt, trying to heavy me over all the time, as if it’s all my fault. It’s only you vain, good-looking types who ever try this sort of stuff. If you were some poor dog with frizzy hair and spots, d’you think you’d be working this one on me? I just don’t need it.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with you?’
‘Forget it. I know the type, I know the type.’ He looked away, squeezing his forehead as if in pain.
‘… Have you got a headache?’
‘Of course I’ve got a headache! So what? Everyone’s got a headache.’
Mary took his hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Listen … Darling. I’m just—out of it. I’m not in that line any more. I’m not in futures any more. I’m not up to you heavy dames. I’m just wide open. You’ll chomp me up and poop me out before I know it.’ He turned to face her. ‘Now what are you looking so pleased about? You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you? Let me put it this way.’
‘Kiss my breasts,’ said Mary.
‘What? Hey now look…’
‘Oh please, kiss my breasts.’
‘… I’m no good at all this, I warn you,’ he mumbled after a few moments. But she could hardly hear him now. ‘Quiet,’ she said. ‘Oh thank God. Quiet, quiet.’
Mary woke up slowly. Before she opened her eyes a memory had time to settle and slip past. Memories happened to her quite a lot these days, but always as analogies of mood rather than deliveries of hard information; and they all seemed to antedate the crucial things in her life. Mary remembered what it was like to wake up as a schoolgirl on weekend mornings, when you coped with the subtle luxury of drowsing in bed while teasing all the time that was suddenly yours.
She opened her eyes. Yes, the eagerness, the rending had gone. She turned her head. She had never felt more radiant with generosity and relief. What she saw made her close her eyes again. What she saw wasn’t much, just Jamie, naked under his trenchcoat, smoking an early cigarette and staring at the completely grey, the emphatically neutral wash of the window-pane, his face quite numb with remorse.
20
• • •
Deeper Water
Now the tranquillized days came and Mary needed them.
The weather turned. ‘It’s turned. I knew it would,’ Jamie said to her that morning. The weather turned bad, as a matter of mere faceless routine; and it was determined to stay that way.
The balcony puddles pinged with their space invaders from the sky, helplessly reflecting this new war of the worlds. The row of damp-plug houses opposite provided good radar for the rain: you could always see how much was falling and at what angle. It was not the voluptuous rain of the hot months. It was thin needling rain, white-mouthed and unsmiling in its task. And it went on for days without getting tired and without wanting to do anything else instead. Jamie would stand seriously in front of the window for long stretches now, holding a drink and a cigarette, while behind him Carlos beat the floor with his palms and Lily and Mary gazed at the walls or at their men. ‘It’s insulting, this weather,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. It’s a fucking insult. It’s like a kick in the arse. You… it makes you keep on having to wish it away?