Getting It Right (27 page)

Then immediately he said, ‘I’m sorry; can’t think why on earth I said that. It must be ever so late; I’ve got to go soon anyhow.’ She laughed then, and said:
‘Oh, Gavin! What do you mean “anyhow”?’ – and took off her glasses. Then, he was hardly aware of how it happened, she put her hands round the back of his neck and
kissed him, or rather simply put her mouth gently against his. The most extraordinary thing about this was that while it was happening he didn’t feel anything – except her mouth –
anything at all: no thoughts, no time, nothing, as though the whole of him was holding its breath.

She withdrew and, at arm’s length, she looked at him. Her eyes were a dark brown that was almost black, so that the pupils were almost lost in the iris. Being able to see her eyes changed
her whole face for him, or, it occurred to him, it had changed anyway. Now, the orange hair and orange-painted mouth seemed no more than clownish trappings – clapped on to conceal some
reality – a sense of sadness so private that he could only receive it in silence.

Without taking her eyes from his face, she moved one hand from his neck, lifted the orange wig from her head and let it drop to the ground behind her. Her own hair, dark brown and perfectly
straight, sprang to life from a deep and irregular peak on her broad forehead; he could see, now, her real mouth curving to a smile inside the painted paeony, and he put his finger on that to rub
it out. She pulled out a handkerchief then, from the grey and green robe, and scrubbed until the paint, still perceptible, was almost gone. There was a new and separate silence.

‘Here I am,’ she said.

There ensued, for Gavin, a time so far exceeding his dreams of what might ever occur that he could never go back to what for ever after seemed to him mawkish invention; nor could he dream at all
of any woman without this one lending something of herself. There were moments that he could afterwards clearly recapture – when he pulled the robe from her shoulders, apart from her breasts,
wide of her belly and across one thigh until she was lying, like some beautiful sprawled painting to be seen and touched and stirred to life. There was the moment when she set him free within her,
and there was a hush even to sensuality; they remained locked, motionless, eye drinking eye, until he moved in her and the trance was broken by a shock of ecstasy – of feeling so deep, so
sharp, so near, so new and so shared that he was engulfed. And, after that, a kind of adoring sadness when he knew they were again separate – the magic fusion gone – that, in touching
her, he was touching someone else. He would always remember her face then, ageless, pagan, washed of thoughts, with a beauty that was at once hers and belonging to the whole world.

And that was just the beginning: there was, there turned out to be, the whole night. There was a bed behind the Chinese screen and at some point they repaired to that. ‘Let’s move it
by the fire,’ she said. The bed was on castors, and moved at a touch; it seemed all part of the dream-like ease – only it wasn’t a dream, it was reality. All through the night, he
kept rediscovering that: the third time that he wanted her, and she said, ‘It doesn’t all have to be Wagner; we could be at home with Mozart,’ and there began to be an element of
lightness, of playful gaiety that in no way diminished passion. Her body bore no resemblance to those bodies of his dreams; it was heavier, fuller, older, and, released from the tube dresses,
deeply curved. Her skin smelled of some fruit or fruits, sometimes sweet like melon, sometimes sharper, like strawberries. He had not imagined that skin smelled of anything. When he told her, she
said, ‘I know,’ and a look of child-like complacency flitted across her face that made him want to laugh, it was so endearing. Once, he said: ‘Tell me what you like,’ and,
without saying anything, she showed him and he could watch her face change. But perhaps the most amazing discovery that he made was that responsibility for what happened was no more his than hers.
One of the things that had frightened him all his life was the idea that he would have this responsibility alone; that the other person expected him to take entire charge; they would simply lie
there and judge him afterwards . . . When he told her this, she simply said that it would be a lonely way of going about it. There was a wonderful time when she found out what
he
liked,
which turned out to be practically everything. At some point he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep and when he woke the stars had gone from the sky which was now the colour of grey pearls and the
room was filled with a discreet early light. She was not there, and for a moment the night did seem like a dream and he felt panic and fear that it should come to so arbitrary an end. But,
‘I’m making tea,’ she said, and he saw her, wearing the robe again, pouring real water into a real teapot.

‘You shouldn’t have let me go to sleep.’

She brought the tea over to the bed. ‘We both slept. In any case I don’t think I could have stopped you. You went out like a light.’ She sipped her tea, and then said:
‘The fire’s hopelessly dead, because there aren’t any more logs up here. I’ve just had a hot shower to warm me up.’

‘I could have warmed you up.’

She smiled and touched his face with the tips of her fingers: ‘I know.’

There was something vaguely maternal in her voice and the gesture that he did not much like, and this feeling was accompanied by a wave of anxiety – general in nature, but prepared to
attach itself to almost anything. Was he in love with her? Did she love him? What was going to happen next? What about Dmitri? Did she do this sort of thing with anyone who turned up? What did she,
or
would
she, expect of him? How did he
feel
about her?

He looked up to find her steadily regarding him. After a pause, she said: ‘You know when we played the Secrets game, I said that there was a law about not having post-mortems? Well, I
don’t think they’re ever any good. But there are one or two things I should like to tell you. You are a lovely person to go to bed with. I’m married to Dmitri, and that’s
what I want. I’m going away today for a week or so. You don’t need to feel in the least responsible for me, and I shan’t for you.’

Perversely, because a part of him felt relief, he heard himself saying: ‘What about Dmitri, then?’

‘He’s still in France, so I’m going to join him. For a bit.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘I love him.’ There was a silence while he searched for the way to ask what he discovered he really wanted to know. Before he found the way, she said: ‘He doesn’t love
me, you see. He doesn’t –
love
– anyone.’

‘Do you – sort of – hope he might?’

‘That’s it. That’s what I hope. So long as he doesn’t love anyone, he might love me. He has affairs with people, of course.’

Before he could stop himself, he said: ‘You mean, like you’ve had an affair with me?’

He felt she was angry then, as she answered coolly: ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’ Then she added more gently: ‘There’s no need, you know, to compare you and me
with anybody else in the world. One of the best things about us is the impossibility of doing that. But I will tell you something about you, if you’d like me to.’

‘I think I would.’

‘You need to trust yourself more. You don’t need reflections of yourself from other people. You’re the original. There is no one in the world exactly like you. Enjoy that.
It’s not a question of good or bad, or better or worse. Your life is simply a question of you being faithful to you. Making the most of what you are. Everything else is one kind of Jellybyism
or other. I take it you know about Mrs Jellyby?’

‘The Africans, and her own curtains being held up by a fork?’

She laughed. ‘I love you, Gavin. I really do. You know all the right things. But Dickens was writing about that syndrome on a fairly coarse level – as so often. It really applies in
all kinds of ways he probably didn’t think of at the time. That’s one definition of genius. Only knowing part of what they do. Don’t you think?’

‘Could we get back into bed now?’

‘I don’t know. Could we? What time do you have to go to work?’

‘Not now.’

This time was different; he
wanted
to be in charge – to please her, to make her remember him. Once, he whispered: ‘I shall miss you,’ and she whispered back:
‘Don’t miss me
now
, I’m here.’ This time he was more conscious of her body than of his own; her few words about Dmitri had touched him past any kind of jealousy; he
felt generous and tender towards her, and wanted to give her everything she could want. Afterwards, she lay with her face turned towards his, tears streaming out of her eyes without a sound. Then
he felt so close to her that he knew it was not comfort she needed, or words of any kind, simply time and his being there.

When it was over, she picked up his hand and kissed it. Then she said:

‘Would you like a shower while I get some breakfast?’

The remaining time seemed both rapid and vague: afterwards he had very little recollection of it, and could remember only things like the coffee scalding his tongue, that a button must have come
off his shirt when he had torn it off the previous evening, that the razor she lent him was a kind he’d never seen before. He asked her when she was leaving for France because he wanted to be
able to think of her then. He also asked her why she bothered with the red chrysanthemum wig and all that. Dmitri preferred her like that. This silenced him. She came down the stairs with him, but
left him to find his way out from the false bookcase door. ‘Don’t let’s say goodbye,’ she said. ‘You simply go.’

So he did. Out of the flat door, down in the lift and out into the unreality of the street.

‘Gavin?’

‘Yes, Mum?’

‘Is that you?’

Of course it’s me, he thought irritably, whoever that may be. ‘Yes, Mum.’

‘Your father has been wondering where on earth you’ve been. Haven’t you, Fred?’

‘No, I haven’t . . .’ Gavin had reached the doorway to the lounge, just in time for one of his father’s inexpert winks that implied unspeakable complicity. ‘Bin out
on the tiles enjoying himself,’ he suggested unhelpfully. This, as Gavin knew it wouldn’t, didn’t go down at all well.

‘Who asked you for your opinion? He’s old enough to please himself, isn’t he? It’s none of your business
what
he does. He can stay out all night and it’s
nothing to do with you! Nasty ideas!’ she added. She was stirring something on the stove with furious energy. Mr Lamb raised his paper again to within eighteen inches of the eye he chiefly
used for reading, winked at Gavin with the other eye and made a movement with his shoulders that indicated he was opting out.

‘I got the brochures for your holiday, Mum.’

‘You weren’t getting
them
all night.’

‘I went to the opera, Mum, and met – some friends – and had dinner and it got too late to come back. I didn’t have my bike with me, you see.’

‘There’s no call to tell me you didn’t have your bike with you. I’ve got perfectly good eyes: I could see you hadn’t got your bike with you. What’s your
bike
got to do with it?’

‘I meant, I missed the last train.’

‘None of these opera dinner places had phones, you’ll tell me next.’

‘By the time I thought of phoning, it was too late.’ As he said this, he wondered if it was in the least true: he hadn’t thought of it at all until going to work in the morning
which was clearly so much too late that it couldn’t count. This made him wonder, fleetingly, how often people told
him
that sort of lie. ‘What’s for supper?’

‘It’s Chicken Mole. It’s a Mexican dish out of one of my papers. And it’ll be ready very soon,’ she threatened, as he showed signs of escaping.

‘I’ll go and wash.’

As he entered his room, he remembered – or rather he suddenly heard himself – describing it to Joan, and this rush of memory was accompanied by a longing for her so violent that for
moments he leant against the door, made dizzy by the unexpected – and, to him, quite new and strange – assault. He walked unsteadily to his red sofa and sat upon it. This was, he
realized, the first time in the day since he had left her that he was really alone. There had been the walk to the train, in the morning, which must have seemed so unreal, he felt, because in
spirit he had not really left her. Then the train – jammed with people, none of whom seemed to have noticed what had happened to him – then the salon where he had worked so continuously
that he hadn’t even got his lunch hour. Two o’clock, even, had passed before he remembered that that was the time that her plane had taken off for France. He hadn’t even
remembered her
then
, as he had planned to do. And, in the train home, he had fallen asleep – passed out – it was a guard who shook him awake at Barnet. Then, walking back home,
his thoughts had been full of what Mum would be like about his having stayed out all night, and how he was going to deal with her. He’d try and get dinner over as quickly as possible –
have some time to himself.

This resolution proved to be impossible to carry out. Chicken Mole, or Underground Chicken as Gavin privately called it, proved, gastronomically speaking, to be a hurdle that not even the
combined efforts of his father and himself were able either to circumnavigate or to overcome . . . Mrs Lamb was in a fine state of nerves about it; partly because she had never cooked it before,
and partly (or also) because, being a foreign dish, her confidence in the recipe had proved to be less even than usual . . . Mr Lamb had tried an unwise joke about moles, and not being too sure
whether he would fancy them, and been crushed.

‘Mole is Mexican for chocolate. Moles are vermin. You wouldn’t catch me serving
them
,’ she declared as she ladled huge steaming portions on to their plates . . .

‘What’s this, Mum?’ Gavin had unearthed what looked like a hippo’s tooth.

‘That? That is a Brazil nut, I should imagine. The recipe said to use that nasty, unsweetened chocolate, but I paid no regard to
that
; there’s half a pound of
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut in there.’ She picked up her crochet, which experience had taught her family in no way detracted from her being able to watch their every mouthful.