As Near as I Can Get (9 page)

October of the phantoms, Nicholas or Nicky Baillet, and a little later, bequeathed to me accidentally by Otterley, for a transient (characteristically so, I later discovered)
association
, the celebrated Jane Paget, tidings of whom had
already
reached me.

Strange that these two most—what?—rootless, unattached, unreal beings I ever knew should have converged (though only psychically, or perhaps referentially,
in the case of Baillet) on Rodney Street that mild October

It was, in fact, several years before I actually set eyes on the agitator, at close quarters that is, for once the taller of two drawling young men, hemmed in against me at a dense party in a balconied room, gave a little start and then bobbed and grimaced so convulsively that his companion, who had been talking about mayonnaise, broke off, pursing his lips slightly and lowering his eyes.

‘There’s Nicky Baillet!’ exclaimed the transported man, before, oblivious of his disapproving companion and with yearning arm outstretched, ploughing off through the throng towards a long, lean, merry face thrust, for the purpose of a quick survey, and with insufficient caution to obviate
all
chance of being recognized, around the door.

‘The agitator, do you mean?’ I answered mechanically when someone, Peter Oglethorpe possibly, mentioned Nicholas Baillet in a pub one day.

Peter (it must have been, for the shadowy cerebral image of my companion on that occasion cuddles his pint mug in the way Peter did) eyed me blearily.

‘Agitator? My dear chap—who are we talking about?’

‘You said Nicholas Baillet.’

‘Exactly. Nicholas Baillet was a—a sort of a—look, why do you say agitator? I say, do you know him?’

‘No. I thought—— Well, what is he?’

‘He’s a journalist, isn’t he?’

And sure enough, laboured and unromantic pieces on improbable subjects, ‘The Economic Significance of Copra in Micronesia’ or ‘Coco Cola Imperialism’ above his name, found one’s eye occasionally from the columns of dull,
expensive
little periodicals.

But nothing sharp or definite ever emerged in connection with my former landlady’s husband and the sum impression of fifty passing, sometimes respectful, references was of a daring, big-hearted fellow, too responsive to the fullness of life to confine himself rigidly to the Marxist
principles he had effortlessly and appreciatively assimilated in his youth. In the war he had allegedly done something pretty marvellous, although whether with parachute and blade, pistol and platoon, or psychology remained obscure.

And, in truth, the general impression conveyed by the lean, bearded man, somewhat preoccupied by the availability of the next drink, whom I ultimately found myself sitting next to around a pub table did conform to the above specifications. He had obviously travelled widely, felt a warm, instinctive sympathy for the exploited and deprived everywhere, and liked women and drink. I listened appreciatively to his willing reminiscences and it wasn’t for quite a long time before I began to fancy I discerned a certain—a certain lability of emotional response, an absence of
objectivity
which tended to convey the impression of a world insufficiently differentiated, containing, in fact, it began to seem, only a vast, listless corps of extras and a single actor. And with this, a lack of coherence, on the highest level, began to emerge.

‘Then they sent me to Nigeria. That was just what I wanted. Naturally as soon as I got there I wrote and told them I quit. The things I found in Nigeria! I had
intended
to be in the East that summer. I thought that was where—anyone getting the next round? I thought that was where they were going to need us, but the things I found in Nigeria—incidentally, the dances! What life! But as for the political situation—what about that drink?—no one in Europe
knew
what was going on. I told you about this woman, Mary Chang, in Singapore? Marvellous person, full of life—well she ran an organization—we ran it together later—with contacts all over the East. Now one of the things we needed to know—Scotch again, please, with a little water—oh Hell, my poor wife!’

‘Your wife?’ I remember asking with a faint, speculative frown, as, stemming possibly from dim, residual memory of the fleeting glimpse I had obtained of this man, unbearded, that once in the past, but seeming to me to
depend
,
as is perhaps just conceivable, upon the peculiar and complacent way he sighed ‘my wife’, I suddenly sensed the connection. A little later, someone addressed him by name and confirmed that I had in fact, been holding
converse
with Nicholas Baillet, agitator, whose wife had once collected my rent and, for a brief period, my desire.

I think the thing that prevented me, years before this meeting and when I was still at Rodney Street, from immediately adopting the move (‘stratagem’ is too suggestive of deliberation and complexity for such an obvious idea) I ultimately resolved upon was a certain doubt as to whether Otterley might not himself be on considerably closer terms with our landlady that I had any legitimate reason for supposing. Possibly, however, this is only a subsequent rationalization and it simply didn’t occur to me for several weeks that I might once more descend with my rent at a relatively late hour, that I might even take innocent steps to satisfy myself, say by listening at the door and noting the quality of light that emerged from under it, that
approximately
similar conditions prevailed.

‘I say do you know Clark Otterley?’

After three-quarters of an hour of running my eyes vacantly along pages of writing by William Blake, rolling off the divan and going to the big, wall-length window and gazing hungrily across Culverton Square to where the flaming night-signs of London diffused their surplus radiation into the moist air, of feeling my chest tightening with desire and almost allowing its force to thrust out my hand in a gesture of pleading, with the night, with the light, to the thousand bedrooms and ballrooms, to the joy and fulfilment of the world, saying, without words, ‘congratulations, urban man, on our victory over cold and emptiness’ and then returning in impatient incomprehension to Los and Enitharmon bellowing unscientifically down the centuries, I had finally permitted myself to decide that the time was ripe for the attempt. Lightly, stealthily, I had swung open the door of my room, progressed eight or nine
paces across the damping carpet to the stair-head and been just about to begin the descent when the vivid lance of that metallic voice impaled me:

‘I say, do you know Clark Otterley?’

‘Yes,’ I answered softly even before turning round, and without, I pride myself, giving a sign of discomfiture while starting inwardly like a hailed thief.

She was standing just concealed in the well of the
staircase
leading to the next flight, at the top of which, amongst others, was Otterley’s room. She didn’t move, other than her hand which tugged restlessly at the bannister.

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘No,’ I murmured, with sinking heart, discerning already, in the brittle determination of her voice, her defiantly level gaze, everything about her that one could sense in the first moment of a first encounter, that my projected exploit was being seriously threatened.

‘That’s very strange, you see——’ she began impetuously and then broke off, contemplating me. So we stood for a moment until she uttered my name, asking if I wasn’t Alan Peebles and, when I had admitted that I was, demanding unceremoniously.

‘Where’s
your
room?’

‘Just there.’

‘Were you going out? It’s getting awfully foggy. Have you got bronchitis?’

‘No.’

‘Then you probably like fog. I did, before I had
bronchitis
. Anyway, what do you suggest? Shall I sit here? On the stairs? Do you think anyone’ll mind? I must see Clark. I need some money.’

Inevitably, I had to invite her to wait in my room.

‘You’re not going out?’

‘No, I was just—um——’

‘Going for a pee?’

‘Well—um—yes——’

And so, furiously and with flaccid bladder, after having
installed her on the single chair, quite a comfortable
upholstered
one, in my narrow home, I had to go and secrete myself in the w.c. and pretend to urinate, far from having derived, from the unexpectedly intimate encounter with this undeniably attractive person, compensation for the shattering of my designs on Mrs Baillet.

When I did finally get down to my landlady’s room, after Otterley had returned and collected Jane, and after still further delay occasioned by his redescending to borrow coffee, no fillet of light showed underneath the door and when, after a moment’s thwarted deliberation, I hardily knocked anyway and, in response to the murmur from within, stated my mission, my only reward was the final indignity of being requested, in a sweet, pillow-muffled voice, to ‘leave it until tomorrow’.

As for Jane….

Some nights later, in my room, in a state of high concentration, trying to secure something with the hands of my mind, through which, I was aware with increasing desperation, cascaded valuable images to dissolve irretrievably in the acid of the unconscious, I heard the doorbell ring three times, my personal summons. As I still hesitated for a last futile attempt, my maimed concentration groaned in silent despair. Then I raced down the stairs to find her on the doorstep.

‘You’ve rung the wrong bell!’ I snarled.

She gazed at me with prim determination.

‘I didn’t want Clark. I came to see you,’ she almost whispered, in a voice too girlish for her height, carriage and lean beauty.

‘Me? But I could never love you, Jane,’ I heard, with dismay, my own voice muttering.

‘Can I come in?’ she asked stiffly.

Having committed myself to burlesque, I bowed low and muttered something idiotic about the honour she was conferring on the house, but she vitiated this by tripping hastily up the stairs, prompting me to fly after her, only
to find that she had already seated herself durably in the chair, crossed her legs and assumed an air of belonging.

‘Have you known Clark long?’

‘No.’

‘Did you know that he was a criminal?’

‘No.’

Upon this arresting foundation, she started breathlessly to erect a rambling, elaborate, patently improbable (in fact, fairly obviously,
ad
hoc
and impromptu) tale of money and sex that appeared to convict, not implausibly if in this case unconvincingly, Otterley of malicious and damaging fraud. Part of the way through, I managed to suggest that we move to the local and she thoughtfully agreed. And later still, in the cheerless saloon of the ‘Brigand’, at what mercifully seemed the conclusion of her narrative, I succeeded in transferring the topic of conversation to other common acquaintances, watching (almost literally watching rather than hearing) the devious relays of her mind generating mischief. So and so was ‘amazingly dishonest’, Peter Oglethorpe, in whom I had never discerned any fault more grievous than a certain propensity for being, at quarter to eleven on any evening, both broke and in urgent, if bumbling, need of ‘just a last one, what? half pint, eh?’, turned out to be ‘a genuine sadist’ and so on through the apparently diabolically possessed ranks of mutual friends.

She seemed to be acquainted with only one fellow being whose character was not hideously deformed, and that was myself. At least, this conclusion was strongly suggested by the way in which, as new and riper examples of malice and failing were uncovered, the language of her manner grew more and more inviting.

It was while she was concluding the tale of how Alice Marks ‘My best Jewish friend’, had done something horrible (I forget what) that her arm first edged full-length against mine. It was while Tony Regan denied her a simple act of friendship (a false declaration under oath) that I suddenly sensed that her proximity had passed the barrier of the
possibly casual and my rarely sluggish sexual awareness gave a start of anticipation. My own arm, requiring no more than an imperceptible shift, covered hers and the experiment succeeding, in that she moved an inch closer rather than several away, soon swung round over her to rest lightly on her further hip. A red-faced, ugly man at the bar covertly watched us while his languid dog alternately dozed and nibbled its own back and loin.

‘Well?’

Her face, now transformed with a subtle glow of abandon, sparkled into a smile which seemed to urge that all the grievance, the pathetic secretion of inflamed nerves, had been superficial and the eagerness and gaiety now registered alone were real. Under the dripping trees, her body vibrant in the circle of my arm, I led her back to Rodney Street, finding, on being whirled, under an
unconcealing
sycamore, unexpectedly into an urgent embrace, my own impatience for once exceeded. And her impatience persisted, no increased, after we had reached my room, having the effect ultimately of thwarting its object, for embraces impeded the indispensable process of undressing and also my desire, robbed of the dominant role, became increasingly deliberate and laggard. And finally, in my narrow bed, after a storm of erotic activity which dispersed rather than satisfied my own ardour and converted hers, it seemed, into mere respiratory energy, we lay, trembling and clammy, far from that restorative,
profound
slumber which the guide-books solemnly discover at the top of Mount Orgasm, side by side on our backs watching a little restless puddle of light on the ceiling and wondering vaguely but insistently (at least I was) what could be generating it.

‘I’m glad you said that.’

As I tried to relate this remark to some recent utterance of my own, I sensed, from the renewed steel twang in her voice, that the earlier gulf of betrayal and evil yawned again.

‘What?’

‘When you opened the door you said that you could never love me. As a matter of fact no one ever has.’

‘I was only——’

‘That’s all right. I much prefer it that way. Good night.’

What a time poor Jane’s paranoid will must have had coping with all the proposals and declarations she received. Long before I knew her I had heard her spoken of, always appreciatively (for she was a lovely woman), sometimes ecstatically and yet busily, feverishly, through the years, every scrap of admiration must have been converted, by her working mind, into indispensable treachery.