But for Rod and Sasha they all went home. In the course of the day Sasha looked in on Troy more times than he could count, and he realised that she did indeed mean to adopt him. To nurse him, insofar as she knew anything about nursing beyond plumping pillows and saying, ‘Do you fancy a little drinkie?’ She appeared in his father’s study amid the dust and junk with her mid-morning coffee. And again at lunchtime. He walked around the garden to escape her, felt tired and retreated to his bedroom, and she called on him again. And just before seven in the evening she swanned in for ‘a natter’.
She was, he thought, on her third gin of the evening.
‘Do you think there were people like us fifty years ago?’ she said, à propos of nothing.
Troy had no idea what she was talking about.
‘Or even twenty or ten. Except of course for us – I mean. Were there people like us?’
Troy said nothing.
‘Didn’t you grow up– didn’t we both – feeling, well, different, sort of ?’
‘Sort of ? How sort of ?’
‘Remember that bit in Jude the thingumajig?’
‘Obscure.’
‘Quite. Jude the Obscure. He’s married, well, come to think of it he hasn’t married, this silly tart who says something like, “We weren’t meant to be, we were born before our time, too sensitive for the age we live in.” Bit of a moan really. Silly tart. Never liked her, but you turn it around and it just about makes sense. We were ahead of our time. We did not, and I could not – dunno about you – behave as others did or as others expected of me. But we were not too sensitive. Far from it.’
What was the damn woman blathering on about?
‘Tell me, how many women have you had?’
‘Dunno,’ Troy lied. He knew exactly. There had not been many.
‘Do you know there are some women who’ve only ever slept with their husbands? Most women in fact have only ever known one man.’
She was pissed, definitely pissed.
‘I’m fifty-three years old. In my prime I had most of the men I knew. Fucked all your friends.’
Troy knew this. Charlie had simply been the first.
‘I cuckolded Hugh at the reception. Had one of his ushers in your bedroom.’
Troy didn’t want to hear this. And he’d still no idea where she was heading. Then she threw down the newspaper she’d been clutching. More sleazy headlines from the Summer of the Sleazy. Troy gave it the merest glance. ‘Britain’s Raunchiest Bishop. The Duchess speaks out!’ It was the composite headline. Next Sunday they’d simply transpose the nouns. Somewhere in the bowels of Fleet Street a subeditor on night shift flicked through a thesaurus for synonyms of ‘raunchy’.
‘We lived rather fast, I think. I don’t think we let our morals be decided for us.’
‘Rod did,’ said Troy, and it sounded like a miserable bleat even to him.
‘Oh yes, Rod did. But I didn’t and you didn’t and Masha didn’t. But don’t you think the world is catching up with us?’
‘Are you saying you’re the new moral standard?’
‘No. I’m not.’
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘Not sure.’
‘The cakes of custom cracking open?’
‘Dunno. Why does custom come in cakes? Why not tins or packets?’
This was a classic twins remark, either one of them could have uttered it. Troy wished she’d just go away. He was not at all sure how long he could refrain from saying it.
‘I think I’m saying that things are breaking up. And the more the world becomes more like the one in which I have lived all my life, the less I like it.’
The woman could drive him mad.
‘Because it inverts, it becomes the new moral imperative. Decided from outside, by popular acclaim. If you see what I mean?’
‘People expect loose morals?’
‘Sort of. And it won’t work. It’s a false freedom. It’s prurience, and prurience does not do what it wants, it does what outrages. One eye always over the shoulder looking back at the moral code, seeking permission in defiance. It won’t work because it only works in dissent. If it becomes, as it were, “permissive”, if we are now entering upon a permissive society—’
‘A what?’
‘A permissive society.’
‘What’s that? What the hell is a “permissive society”?’
‘I rather think I just made it up. But it does describe pretty well the society we are becoming, but if we are “permissive” – can you hear the inverted commas, Freddie? – then are we not forced to ask “whose permission?” I never needed anyone’s permission. I did what I did because it was what I wanted to do. Not because it outraged the bourgeoisie. Fuck ’em, I say.’
It was the most complicated statement he had ever heard the wretched woman make. She who lacked all self-awareness, a born anarchist, who did first and thought about doing, if at all, much much later, had come up with something that passed for analysis. A statement of her ‘position’. ‘She didn’t need ’em.’ And Troy did not need Sasha.
‘Sasha. Could you just fuck off ?’
She stood up, little legs ramrod straight, the lips a letterbox line. Picked up her drink and her newspaper and stared at him.
‘You know, Freddie. When you were young you were very pretty. A complete shit but a very pretty boy. One forgave you everything. Now you’re an emaciated wreck, you’re going to have to be a lot more careful about playing the complete shit!’
She slammed the door on the way out. He knew now. He’d have to go to London or they’d all drive him totally mad.