Never mind French doctors, there’s an avenue leading up to Hampstead Heath which really is French. Whitish. Plane trees with patches on the trunks come straight out of the tarmac walk (that’s blue and humped) and join twenty feet aloft – the same height as the stained glass windows in Gerona cathedral. You get your daylight stained green or amber but always with rose in it, due to the flush that lies over London on a good September afternoon. All those plate-glass windows down there behind you throw up a pink sky from three o’clock. And the man treading firmly up the path beside you is, if you are lucky … Billy!
We go through the leaves together, not bothering to talk. Our feet are scrunching things up; and in a moment or two we shall look at one another to find out how far we’ve got. But just now we’re enjoying the new dimension we’ve added to our relationship with this daylight rendezvous. How did it come about? Two diehard metropolitans taking an afternoon off and walking under trees? And I used to be the sort of person who could only take a walk down the Charing Cross Road and then only at certain times of the day when I knew I’d meet someone I know and be interrupted. Ah, I can just hear the distant klaxon of the police cars. Thank God there’s trouble somewhere.
These wooden seats have been carved to pieces by lovers. I respect the quickly scratched initials, which suggest that things are going well. But the ambitious calligraph is out; what it really says is: ‘Help! I’m carving my tombstone.’
No, we’re still not looking at one another. This slight awkwardness is most pleasant. Billy’s shoulder, the one nearest to me, is much more powerful and attractive by day. The tweed coat he’s wearing is almost a hacking jacket. I must say rough outdoor clothes have a physical power which is the equal of an animal’s coat. Am I suitably dressed for this avenue of terracotta light? I’ve got some extremely expensive brown wool stockings on, and my skirt cuts them at thigh level; this gives me a rounded but delicate leg, and I rather fancy myself running along a skyline in them at top speed.
Billy has a naturalness about him which is breathtaking. For instance, I know that at any moment now he’ll seek my hand and hold it. And we’ll walk along like two contented children. I’ll begin to chatter about the old days in Paris, or my school, or the Bloater … oh, I don’t know, about anything young, haphazard and amusing. Billy will listen, smiling and admiring me. His regard from those hazel eyes of his is always steady and interested, and his step is light and quick, just like my own, with the indiarubber spring in it suppressed for the sake of decency. The only thing about him which unsettles me is the delicate finish of his fingers. I once said to him:
‘I’m afraid your fingers … are cruel.’
He was completely disconcerted, and looked at them as though they’d signed away all his money.
‘Cruel, are they? What makes you say that?’
‘I’m sorry. I was just speaking out carelessly. It’s just the fastidious moulding of the tops of the fingers that frightens me.’
‘It frightens me too, now you’ve told me about it. Shall I change them?’
‘No! And besides big, flat, obtuse male fingers wouldn’t do for me at all.’
Still, he never quite got over it. And even now he’ll look down at them, and then glance up at me enquiringly. ‘Cruel, are they? Shall I change them?’
Billy’s head is so intelligent it doesn’t seem to matter that it hasn’t any especial feature to which one can point and say: ‘Look at that curly brown hair’ or ‘What a manly nose, what thickets of eyebrows!’ There’s not a moment when it isn’t giving out life, restraining its humour and emotions, perfectly at ease with itself. I have this tendency to boil down my whole past life into a sort of pure beef essence before I can begin anything new. But Billy moves straight into the future without effort. In fact he’s one of the few people who are simultaneously alert to their own past, present, and future.
We’ve come to a crossroads. One path slopes down between the fishing ponds.
‘This way,’ says Billy, taking my hand.
Oh, what a warm, nervous, knowledgeable hand. I trot beside him like a little girl. No need to look at one another now, we are in complete harmony.
The path is lined with boys fishing. The water is just as it should be, full of moods. Down at the edge here it’s a transparent brown sugar aquarium with fudge-coated leaves at the bottom. Over there, it’s impenetrable, white, glossy, and the fishing lines go into it at an angle and disappear. The smell of freshwater is so new.
‘Mind your eyeballs as we go through them, Billy! They can’t cast for toffee nuts, but they’re really good at hooking out the eyeballs of people on the path.’
He minds his eyeballs, and we hurry through.
‘Here’s the kite-flying hill, Billy. Isn’t it lovely!’
‘Lovely!’
‘Look at all these dogs, they’re so big. God, I loathe them.’
‘Do you loathe them, Min?’ asks Billy, with a genuine wish to know.
‘Of course. I loathe them because they’re big. They ought to be in cages. Look at that one, it’s the size of a human being. And they’re sexless, almost, it’s fantastic. You never see two of them … Well, anyway, it’s a good thing because we don’t want them to reproduce themselves. I tell you, Billy, all these dogs care about is meat, walks, master, and barking loudly. They’re the most bourgeois eunuch dogs in the world.’
‘And they all seem to be the same colour …’
‘Yes, like pease pudding. Except for the black ones.’
‘It might be different if we got to know them,’ says Billy temperately.
‘Do I lose marks for not being a dog-lover?’
‘You know perfectly well that in England, only in England, you gain full marks for not being a dog-lover. Actually, you rather like them, Min. If you saw a little dog that took your fancy you’d go straight up and talk to it. It’s just that you treat them as you treat strange human beings.’
‘How do I treat you, Billy?’
‘I’m not sure yet. But I’m a Min-lover, so it doesn’t really matter.’ He puts a little pressure on my hand and his eyes are brightly lit and tender.
‘Billy, you make the sky bluer.’
‘So do you.’
Dare we stop and embrace? It’s a rotten place. On the side of a hill, with no cover, not even a scruffy little bush. And here come two panting runners in blue track-suits! We walk on up the hill pondering it, that embrace which we put aside for the moment. I decide to ask obvious, awkward questions.
‘Billy, what was your motive in coming out with me today?’
‘I wanted to walk beside you in the fresh air, and just listen to you talking about things.’
‘You make me so interested in myself! But seriously … I’ve got this tendency to tremble, Billy. It worries me. Anything new or strange, or you, and lo and behold I tremble.’
‘I know. I love it. I want you trembling in my arms.’
‘Oh, Billy!’
I’m flabbergasted. It’s a complete emotional scoop. But for the forward action of our walk, I’d probably fall down. I say in a low voice:
‘Why do you say things like that? It’s so frightening.’
‘I’m glad. I meant it to be.’
Now we can never go back, and we both know it. When we get to the bottom of the hill and reach that little group of trees, Billy will kiss me. And I shall begin to think, and to long, and to be jealous. My peace of mind and my gaiety will be gone for ever. I shall have to be balanced and to keep my heart strong, to fight and to be catty, and to reinvent my arrogance all over again by an effort of will. It’s almost too much. My much prized, friendly, reliable Billy will turn into a male whose flesh will keep me awake at night, and I shall have no one to phone up and complain to when he makes me unhappy. It really is the limit. I say sharply:
‘Do you want to see my favourite places on the Heath, or don’t you?’
‘I do. Of course.’
‘Do you want me to whistle a theme from Trovatore while standing on that old tree-trunk, or not?’
‘Yes, I’ll lift you up.’
‘I don’t want to be lifted up yet.’
He waits to see how I shall protect myself in the next few minutes. He knows I’ll invent tirelessly all the way down the side of the hill, so as to make myself too weak to resist him at the bottom. Everything I do or say will hurt and please him. I say nastily:
‘Do you want to hear what the Bloater did the very last time I was in a restaurant with him?’
‘What?’
‘He ordered jugged hare, and it took ages. In the end I couldn’t stand it any longer so I said: “Your jugged hare is holding us up. It can’t be my trout or George’s mussels, so it’s your stupid jugged hare. And anyway, it’s not hare at all these days, it’s cat. So if you swallow a bit of fur-coat, it’s pussy.” And, Billy, you know what makes me rage? He laughed as though it was funny, when it wasn’t. I know when I’m making a joke and when I’m just making conversation.’
‘Yes, that’s terribly annoying.’
‘One jugged hare after another. And what good does it do him?’
‘Obviously very little.’
We’re nearly at the bottom of the hill, so naturally I’m getting more and more petulant and spiteful. I stamp on the ground and want everything. I must touch him on a raw edge before we reach the trees. I’m taking revenge, you see, already, for all the suffering which is to come.
‘I hope,’ my voice at its most exquisite, frozen and bitchy, ‘you’re not making the mistake of thinking you can sum me up?’
Billy frowns very quickly, but it’s only a thoughtful frown. Suddenly he takes my other hand in his empty one and holds each separately, so that we have to come slowly to a halt. I say:
‘Gosh, what an excellent way to hold hands. No one would ever think you’d had a divorce.’
The trees are over us, and I cry out desperately:
‘Billy, winter’s coming and I don’t like it.’
‘No, darling, but I’m here.’
I’m here. What a lie. It’s started already. What’s the use of being amusing, when it’s all going to end with a moan and my head laid submissively under his chin?
At first when his mouth touches mine, he kisses almost badly, not a seeking kiss, not a careful well-educated movement, and I think with real despair: ‘Good heavens, that’s the worst first kiss I’ve ever had.’ Also he astounds me by taking his mouth away, just long enough to look at me closely and say ‘Isn’t it like Chez Victor’s?’ (the restaurant where we’ve dined so often).
Then he begins to kiss with closed lips the corners and the middle of my mouth. He opens my mouth with a timing and sensibility so like my own that I get lost – what’s happened? I’m not the spectator I’m accustomed to being; I’m not in front of him, nor am I getting left behind. At the split second this occurs to me, Billy puts both his arms round me, grips closely, and his mouth begins to force and take with the greatest possible skill and passion. A cold wind touches our faces, the illusion of freedom, the open air, the ebbing of my fears, the harmonious force and movement of our warm heads – all combine to ideal forgetfulness, joy, and desire.
In a minute I wake up. I’m going to talk and torment him.
‘Billy!’
‘Min.’ He goes over my eyebrows and my temples. He’s capable of placing in the same spot, slowly, seven or eight entirely different kisses, dry, moist, affectionate, tender, seething, dominating, fraternal, and a healing, signing-off kiss on top.
We forget as we go on kissing one another that the effects are cumulative. It’s simply banking up a great fire which is going to last all the winter, at least. We break off at the same moment, smiling and overjoyed. What friends! It’s a disaster. Oh, I’d rather have an enemy any day. Billy says:
‘Shall I lift you up now?’
I know it’ll be dangerous, so I say at once:
‘Of course.’
He lifts me and swings me against him. Then he clasps his arms strongly so that I slide very slowly down inside them to my feet. Oh, what a calculating minx I am, and what a well-designed male slide that is, that allows me to fall so slowly that I can hardly bear it, and feel faint on the way down, so that when my mouth is level with his, I’m done for again. How grown-up we are this time and how fearless. Surely we’ll be arrested for this sliding embrace. I, personally, can’t stand it. I choke out:
‘Tea! I must have tea and cake.’
‘Straight away?’
‘Yes. Absolutely. I must.’
I’ve got a good idea what I look like, no make-up, bruised mouth, lumpy marks on chin. When I think I’m looking ugly I always run very fast to get rid of it. Billy seems to sense this as I pull away from him. We run together and I’m instantly out of breath, and get a stitch. Billy manages to run without being ridiculous. I can hear something clinking in his pockets, though. Luckily he has the sense not to try to overtake me, so that I can stop, with a vague feeling that I’ve won, and don’t have to go on and on.
‘Have I won?’ I ask imperiously.
‘Oh yes. Long ago.’
‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ I say without hope.
I’m gloomy, and don’t want to talk to anyone. Plim-Plam strolls through the house. Well, let it. Claudi took it off to the vet to get its teeth cleaned. The vet drugged it, poor thing, and then polished all its teeth. As soon as it came round it began eating; its appetite is like a lion’s, and with all those sparkling white teeth the food disappears quick as a flash. The only trouble is, it won’t put its tongue in. It’s quite a pleasant little tongue, but the fact is, it’s out. Claudi doesn’t feel it’s decent and is a bit upset. He follows Plim around, and when it sits down he rushes up and pokes its tongue in. ‘In, darling. Go in,’ he says. I’m in no mood for this sort of thing, and flash my cold glances to left and right.
I need new clothes. Something in P.V.C. with a vizor. I want to change the shape of my face, it should be absolutely round. Yes, I need a circular chin and a rosebud mouth to cope with Billy. And ten hours’ sleep every night and a complete ‘don’t care’ kit of cigarettes, records, hairdressing appointments, films, and so on. Once I’ve decided on that, I realise it isn’t enough. Even if I cram every hour of the day with phony pleasures I can’t get rid of the smell of Billy’s face, or of the authority and care of his arms when they grip me. Two thousand cucumber sandwiches, a Ferrari, a summer, raspberry jelly, ping-pong, a naked picnic in long grass, might possibly take my mind off him. One has to admit he knows how to woo. Oh God, why doesn’t he make a few mistakes? He’s bound to, sooner or later; you bet he’s got some dancing routine hidden away, some David-in-front-of-the-ark caper that will really let him down. And I shall pounce on it without mercy. At all costs I must go on being spoilt and petted. I need presents.
Well, there’s the D’Annunzio first edition and the painting, two of the most unsatisfactory presents I’ve ever had, intellectual hard cash. A compliment to my mind, simply asinine: D’Annunzio can’t write and won’t think for a start. Still, I like the green ribbons. No, I want something I can eat or wear or go to bed with – (Billy!). Yes, I’m ungrateful, impossible to please, inhuman, malicious, and demanding. Good! It’s the only way to fight Billy. I’ve started gliding about the house practising the way I’m going to look up at him next time we meet; in height he’s just about level with the coats hanging up in the hall. I give them my sparkling practice-glance. Not bad! And then a really wicked little squib of a smile, on and off in a flash. What a waste for a lot of overcoats! I might as well use it up on the Bloater.
My poor old Bloater, with your fifty or sixty unblocked successes! Why aren’t you any good at seducing me? It’s so easy. At least it seems to be. Have I got a roving eye, I wonder? How I hope I have!
Out of the blue I quickly pile up all my hair on top of my head and fix it with one sumptuous gesture, as though I’ve been doing it all my life. Then I pick a gigantic pink rose from the bunch Claudi brought me and fix it, all wet, at the summit. I look at myself in the mirror. What am I capable of? Almost anything today. ‘Mademoiselle Min, grande horizontale of the gout culture, needs Monsieur Billy, the amber musicologist, for a long, refreshing wooing with a happy ending’. If you put that on the sleeve of a record it would sell out. I float my head to and fro in the mirror until I get tired of it. I’m looking at my reflection but in my inner ear I can just hear Jenny saying something funny: (‘You know there are men who want to cut off their right hands to prove their love, when there is absolutely no necessity!’)
Claudi seems to know there’s been a change in my metabolism. He furbishes himself up more than ever, and keeps calling. Sometimes he says: ‘I’m protecting you from yourself, Min.’ He’s fretting for his tea at the Ritz, but I obstinately refuse to go. Haven’t time at the moment; it’ll take me too far away from my thoughts – of Billy. ‘Anyway, the Waldorf is the place for tea,’ I say to him, and I’m heartily shocked to hear myself double-crossing him.
‘But you said the Ritz!’ says Claudi, knowing I’ve broken the code of honour.
‘I know I said the Ritz. But you don’t want me to keep my word, do you? The only thing that keeps me healthy and young is my dishonesty.’
‘Nonsense. You are the most trustworthy woman I know.’
‘I’m not going to the Ritz.’
Claudi makes a circular promenade of the rug he’s standing on, saying:
‘If you were not a very a-ttt-ra-c-tive woman with a really superb figure—’
‘The Waldorf.’
‘But at the same time a very snappy, really a thoroughly evil-tempered little bitch—’
‘And when George makes a noise these days and irritates me, I don’t hesitate to go downstairs and shout “Bang, bang, bang!”’
‘No, you don’t hesitate to make a perfect little bitch of yourself.’ He seems to be quivering as though he’s on fire. Is there nothing he won’t do to draw attention to himself? He’s pretending to be really angry. After all we’ve been through together! His cheeks are roasting hot, and there are far too many veins at the front of his neck.
I touch his coat.
‘Do be careful, darling. Or I’ll have to cool you down with a watering can.’
He sulks and roasts, looks at the ground like a ten-year-old, and mumbles out some more mischief:
‘You don’t care about anybody these days, Min. You are getting so wrapped up in yourself, you just don’t give a damn. Do you know you nearly lost your poor old friend the other day?’
He comes up close and makes the expression of a crazily faithful sheepdog; he practically sticks his tongue out like Plim-Plam.
‘Did I, darling? How was that?’
‘I had to go away for the weekend, and I couldn’t get a taxi, so I tried to park on King’s Cross Station …’
Claudi really is unscrupulous. He’s actually gone to the trouble of inventing an emotional situation so that he can cram down my throat some boring old parking story. And it was only yesterday he made me look up Cadogan Street for him, so that he could force an opportunity to enjoy his ‘parking and suffering’ routine well in advance.
‘… I’d no sooner stopped the car, just to take my bearings, when a policeman put his head in at the window and said: “You can’t stop here.”’
‘Just a minute!’ I raise my hand in imitation of such a policeman holding up the traffic. ‘You, Claudi, would not have the barefaced cheek … to dare to tell me the story of how you got a parking ticket? You wouldn’t darling, would you? Because if so, I shall stop believing in human nature.’
He stops. His expression is now even more comical. The parking ticket story is waiting to be born, lying just inside his lips, and has obviously, I would judge from his eager manner, been there for quite some time. And since he hasn’t been able to get rid of it on anyone else it must be a thing with overwhelming boredom value. I shudder.
From his scarlet countenance and his animated lips you can see his guilt laid bare. Finally he gabbles out what is obviously the end of a hellishly long zig-zag story:
‘They towed it away to Waterloo Pound and the keys were still at the bottom of the lift-shaft!’
I smile with a mock sweetness I haven’t felt since Billy kissed me, and say cheerfully:
‘Well, thank God I nipped that in the bud.’
Claudi, in order to justify himself, shouts:
‘You’re going off with your Bloater!’
‘Well, you didn’t make a very good job of getting rid of him!’
‘You didn’t want me to. I was obeying your unspoken wishes, the secret desires of your bosom.’
‘Claudi, you’ve got your tongue out just like Plim-Plam!’
‘Yes, my dear, I’m slavering with lust like your great big baritone.’
‘Ah, my beautiful baritone!’
‘So that’s the way it goes?’
‘With his panache what else can you expect?’
‘What goes on inside that little pink and white porcelain face of yours, Min, I shall never know. Either you are the most terrible female plotter I have ever met, or else you’re just a little schoolgirl chattering away about things she doesn’t understand.’