Getting It Right (15 page)

‘Of course I like you,’ he said, at once wondering whether that was true.

‘You don’t sound at all sure. Is it sex you don’t like then?’

‘I don’t feel like answering that question.’

‘Oh – all right: I can see you’re not in the mood.’ She started to walk him along the side of the square. ‘It was just an idea. Forget it.’

Forget it! How on earth was he to do that! He realized they were walking. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Barnet. I ought to be getting back: catch the last train.’ He couldn’t just walk off and leave her on her own somewhere in South Kensington at night. ‘Where do you
live?’

‘Actually, I’m not sure how much
I
like sex: I adore what it stands for, though. Being stroked and people making the best of me. But the actual
thing
seems to need
a lot of practice – it’s much trickier than people tell you . . .’ She shivered and, to change the subject, he asked her whether she was cold.

‘I’m always cold. I’m cold so much of my life that usually I hardly notice it.’

He thought of saying, well why didn’t she eat more and wear more clothes, but he also thought that this would provoke some dull answers that he felt too tired to argue about. Really, he
wanted to go home – get shot of her and get back to his bed.

She had stopped in front of a battered and travel-stained Mini and immediately opened its boot.

‘The key’s in a packet of Smarties,’ she said. The boot seemed to be loosely packed with old bulging carrier bags.

‘I didn’t know you had a car.’ This was a relief; it meant she was independent – he could go.

‘It isn’t
my
car,’ she said. ‘
I
wouldn’t have a crummy motor like this. It was lent to me. I borrowed it as they were away. Here it is!’ She
opened the cylinder of Smarties and shook out the key. ‘You can’t get in through the passenger door, the handle’s gone. You’ll have to come through my door.’

‘I’ve got a train to catch,’ he said, ‘I can walk to South Kensington.’

‘Oh, do let me give you a lift! It’s the least I can do. You want the Northern Line anyway, don’t you? I’ll take you to one of its stations.’

She had tugged the driver’s door open and now held it for him.

‘Which way are you going?’ He hadn’t wanted to get in, but he did.

‘Oh – northish.’ She wriggled in after him and took off her shoes. Inside, the car was, if possible, even dirtier – and, while he was thinking this, she said: ‘A
friend of mine said it’s rather like being inside an ashtray.’

As they set off, he realized that she hadn’t answered his question.

‘Where
do
you live?’

There was a pause, and then she said: ‘A secret. So I can’t tell you.’

‘It seems a funny thing to have a secret about.’

‘Does it?’

They were approaching the Victoria and Albert Museum and Gavin thought how marvellous it would be to have the whole museum to himself: he supposed that would mean going at night – like
now; they would turn on all the lights for him and he would have the freedom of the whole place.

‘Do you like being a hairdresser?’

‘I like it all right.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘I’ve done it for so many years; I’m used to it, you see . . .’

‘Are you ambitious?’

‘What about?’

‘
You
know. Do you want to be the world’s best hairdresser – opening salons in New York and Paris and Palm Beach – being photographed with film stars and models
– all that sort of thing?’

‘Good Lord no!’

‘Do you have your own salon now?’

‘No. I work for someone, I wouldn’t be any good at the business side of it.’

‘So you’re not ambitious about that. What
do
you want?’

As he answered mildly that he enjoyed a lot of things, he became aware of how irritated she was making him feel. She kept trying to have conversations with him on too intimate a level: a chance
encounter a few hours ago didn’t rate her hectoring, childish curiosity. He remembered Joan and the astounding sense of ease and intimacy he had felt with her, and then wondered fleetingly
whether he had dreamed all that. The thought was painful and he withdrew from it. That left him with the irritation. She was jabbering on about enjoyment having nothing to do with ambition.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘just drop me off at any old tube. I can find my way home. Marble Arch will do nicely.’

‘That’s not on the Northern Line. I’m going to take you home.’

‘I’m not going home. I’ve got to collect my bike.’

‘Where’s your bike?’

‘It’s at Whetstone.’ He wasn’t going to mention Harry because of Winthrop.

‘Where’s that? Is that on the Northern Line too?’

‘The station’s Totteridge. It’s miles. It’s probably miles out of your way.’

‘No! Not a single mile!’

Due to the wretched door, he couldn’t get out of the car anyway . . . Resolving to stand no more personal nonsense from her, he tried to find a more comfortable position for his legs.

‘Do you like animals?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘Just trying to find something you don’t mind talking about. I thought of animals because I know your seat’s too far forward. It’s my parrot in the back.’

‘A parrot?’ He didn’t believe her.

‘Yep. If you don’t believe me, feel behind your seat for his cage.

‘Mind his blanket,’ she added as his hand reached the wide bars of the cage.

‘He’s very quiet.’

‘It’s his sleep time. He can be very noisy especially if he gets hold of any drink . . . He loves whisky. He gets very noisy when he’s drunk.’

‘Should he drink whisky?’

‘He doesn’t exactly pour it out for himself, you know. And I don’t either, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just if – well, if we’re at a
party and other people are drinking it. Then he just whizzes over and sinks his beak into their glass . . .’

‘Why is he in the car?’

‘He goes everywhere with me. That’s why. He’s my worldly good. An Admiral gave him to me,’ she added as an afterthought. They were stopped at signal lights and she turned
towards him as she said this. The street lighting made her eyes look much darker and the rest of her face waxen. He wondered fleetingly whether she was a little mad, and realized that he had
several times wondered this already. Her eyes, intent, and rather knowing, seemed like lenses photographing his response. People one met at parties need not become friends, if one didn’t want
them to. He needn’t ever see her again. This made him feel sorry for her.

‘Do people actually call you Minerva?’

‘Not much. Only if they’re cross with me, so some people –’ she giggled – ‘yes,
do
call me it quite a lot. At the agency they call me Munday, but
they spell it like a day of the week. They think it sounds chic.’

‘What’s the agency?’

‘For modelling. Cheer up! You are being driven home by a model. Although, really, of course, I’m an actress. But I’ve been ill, so it’s been silly to look for
work.’

‘Are you queer?’ she asked some minutes later.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I don’t particularly want to
know.
I don’t
care
what you are. But you look as though you might be – a hairdresser and all that – you
needn’t think I’m not broad-minded. I know it takes all sorts to make a world, I just like to know which sort I’m dealing with.’

‘I’m not queer.’ The moment he had said that, he wondered whether it was true – whether Harry, who, after all, knew him better than anyone, mightn’t be righter
about him than he knew how to be about himself. After all, here he was with a girl who had offered to go to bed with him, not feeling anything like as frightened of her as he had always told
himself he would be, but certainly not feeling – well – anything about her that would lead to anything. Irritated, more like. But the thought of Harry being right induced new waves of
terror: how
could
he cope with people like Winthrop; the scenes, the tantrums – the seemingly continuous search for someone more attractive. And even if things were going well . . .
the sight of Spiro astride Winthrop in the bath recurred – something he had really tried not to think about since he had seen it. Never, in a thousand years, would he find himself in that
sort of situation unaccompanied by anything but terror and disgust. Was this true though? Was he suppressing all his
real
feelings (the kind most vulnerable to suppression, they all said);
was the disgust a mere rationalization of terror? It occurred to him that perhaps sex was some kind of addiction – like alcohol or drugs – you did it – not initially for
enjoyment, but because of the effects, which once experienced became more and more desirable, and, eventually, indispensable: in the end, you would put up with anything in order to have it. Or,
perhaps sex was simply an experience whose fearful intimacy could only be endured because other feelings for the person transcended . . . There was nobody about whom he had had any of those
feelings – indeed, he was not sure what they might be. Perhaps it was simply for breeding purposes. Many species of animal didn’t seem to enjoy it much – if at all . . . Take the
mink, for instance. They were simply driven by powerful instinct. When it came to powerful instinct then, he seemed to be stationary – completely unmoved . . . These ruminations ended, as he
found they usually did, with some anonymous, irascible comment of the ‘what on earth was
wrong
with him?’ variety.

‘Perhaps you’re not anything.’

As he rather surprisingly retorted, ‘Don’t be silly,’ he thought, goodness, she couldn’t have
heard
what he’d been thinking, surely? Of course not. He just
wished that he was safe and comfortable and alone at home.

‘This is Golders Green,’ she said in her humbler voice. ‘Up there’s where they burn people. I went to a cremation there once. My goodness, that’s an awful way to
end up. Canned music and teeny little services, and afterwards relatives walk about reading wreaths. Are your parents alive?’

‘Yes. What about yours?’

‘Well – they’re not actually
dead.
If you saw my mother, that might surprise you. She looks as though she
ought
to be dead. Neither of them cares for me at
all. I should think they’re very sorry they adopted me by now.’

‘Are you adopted?’

‘I’ve just said I was. I wasn’t a baby,’ she added: ‘I can remember things.’

‘What sort of things?’

She paused: ‘Someone in velvet and diamonds crying a lot; and stone passages. And servants saying to each other how sad I wasn’t a boy. That’s why I had to be adopted, you see
– my mother had to have a son or nothing. Do you know what I think happened? I think some coarse common child was adopted and I was sent off in his place. To coarse common parents . . . I
don’t
feel
like them at all. I’ve never felt like them.’

There was a silence. Gavin really didn’t know what to make of it all; wasn’t, indeed, sure that he wanted to make anything of it. Then he remembered that earlier she had said she was
a Lady; thought of taking this up with her and decided against it. He felt rather than saw her looking at him as she said: ‘Don’t think I’m a snob: nobody can help their
birth.’

As he still said nothing, she drove rather faster for a bit, until, waiting for the lights to change, she said:

‘You’re not very easy to talk to, are you? What do you like most in the world?’

Because he always thought people meant him to say what he meant, Gavin found these blanket questions outfacing – the sort of thing an old and intimate friend might work up to, and this
girl was hardly a friend at all. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t
know
?’ she predictably shrieked. ‘Don’t know? You must have some idea!’

‘I mightn’t feel like telling you.’

‘Oh! Something to do with sex. I thought so.’ He didn’t answer so she went on: ‘Because men think about sex all the time.’

‘And what do women think about?’

‘Men – thinking about sex. I expect. It really doesn’t interest me. There must be something to it or else it’s some sort of fabulous conspiracy: everybody
knows
it’s no good really, but they get on with people more easily if they pretend it is.’ There was a pause, and then, in a manner that was engaging in its genuine disappointment, she said:
‘I was hoping you’d tell me something true about it.’

Every time he’d begun to feel that she was absolutely impossible, she said something unusually possible. ‘I’m sorry I can’t,’ he said.

‘Okay.’ The following silence was more comfortable: imbued with that nervous good-will that comes out of just managing to understand each other in time. She was simply confused, he
thought; he knew what that felt like, and naturally it took her another way from the way it took him . . . ‘I like music,’ he said suddenly, offering her what intimacy he felt he could
afford.

‘What kind?’

‘Several kinds. Classical mostly. Some jazz. I’ve no time for pop.’

‘You mean you’re a snob.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said mildly. ‘I just don’t enjoy it.’

‘I mean you’re a snob about music. I didn’t mean a general snob.’

‘I know you meant that. And I still don’t think so.’

‘Pop is the people’s music.’

‘Nonsense. Everything’s the people’s everything.’

‘Someone said that to me: I didn’t make it up.’

‘Does your parrot talk?’

‘
He
didn’t say it to me, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You have to turn off in a minute.’ He had realized suddenly that they were in Whetstone, and nearing Harry’s flat. ‘Here.’

‘He says a few boring things – like “hello”, and “how
are
you”.’

‘You go right here.’

Havergal Heights was now in view, and Gavin noticed that the lights were on in Harry and Winthrop’s flat. A quick, quiet get-away was the thing to aim at. ‘Here we are,’ he
said, ‘that’s my bike over there. It was very nice of you to bring me so far.’

She got out of the car to let him out from her door, but, as his feet touched the pavement, she clutched his arm, and said: