Getting It Right (5 page)

So, although in a sense Gavin had got away with it, in another sense, he hadn’t.

‘Tell you what, dear boy. There’s going to be a little party shortly; perhaps you’d like to come to that?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not much of a one for parties.’

‘Have a go. I mean you can’t spend your whole life working and going on holidays alone and all that. Take the plunge: be open-minded.’

‘I’ll think about it. Have to be getting along.’ Once a week he went to work at a quarter-past eight in order to wash and set a Cabinet Minister whose hair had to be done, as
she put it, ‘before breakfast’.

Harry accompanied him solicitously downstairs to his bike. ‘Sorry about the slight difficulties earlier in the evening.’

‘That’s all right. I hope it’ll all work out.’

‘It’ll work
out
. Deep down, we’ve got quite a lot going for each other. Mind you,’ he added, as Gavin was unlocking his bike, ‘if it is a girl you’re
after, and I’m wrong – if I am, mind you, you’re not going to meet her in that salon of yours, are you? They all sound a bit long in the tooth there, apart from anything else.
What are you doing on Sunday? Winthrop and I were thinking of that exhibition at the V. and A.’

‘I’ve got to go to my sister’s. Take my mother over.’

‘Oh well – you mustn’t miss that. Another time then. Look after yourself.’

‘You too.’

The ride back was refreshing. But, if what had happened earlier was what Harry described as ‘slight difficulties’, Gavin trembled to think what full-scale ones would be, and the
hazards of any close personal relationship – with either sex – appalled him. Even if he went to the terrifying lengths of finding somebody, how could he rely upon them not to behave
with the dangerous unpredictability of a polar bear? It seemed to him that with all couples there was the placator and the placated, and he was pretty sure which he would turn out to be. He was far
more like Harry or his dad, than he was like either his mum or Winthrop. He put his bike away with the uneasy feeling that he was not
up
to real life, although real life was supposed to be
what he was in. It was quite chilly – felt like frost.

The house was dark, except for the lantern light in the hall, and it smelled faintly of curry; and Ronuk: ‘keeping everything nice’ did not extend to smells. His mother’s
activities could always be traced by smell: on Mondays, the washing; on Tuesdays, the furniture polishing; on Wednesdays, the disinfectant (on the rubbish bin after the dustman had been); on
Thursdays, the cakes she made for the weekend; on Fridays, the fish. He went – quietly – into the kitchen and got himself a glass of Express Dairy orange juice out of the fridge; he
felt it was good for his awful blood, and it was the size of whim that his mother fell in with. His thirst had not abated in spite of the tea. Breakfast was laid with military precision: his cereal
by his place, his father’s knife and fork at the ready for his fried bread and tomatoes. The sugar bowl had a muslin cloth weighted with beads on it; the electric toaster a linen cosy
embroidered with a cottage and hollyhocks – his mother’s precautions against flies and germs combined in the case of the cosy with a general feeling that things were more refined if
they appeared to be other than they were. The lavatory was particularly like that. The seat was covered in candlewick, the paper in a felt box appliquéd with sequins. In the bathroom he
cleaned his teeth, surveyed the battlefield of his face (his spots really were a case of swings and roundabouts – whenever half a dozen swings subsided, the roundabouts got cracking: nothing
seemed to finish them off; if one generation succumbed to calamine, disinfectant creams or even surgical spirit, another thrived on just the same treatment). He had tried the school of
‘don’t touch them leave them alone’, but this simply meant that they took their own interminable time to burgeon. He had tried the ‘nip them in the bud’ school which
simply meant that they redoubled their efforts. Discrimination was the best method and careful timing. There came a moment with each one when it could be effectively squeezed, disinfected and left
to heal. He dealt with two such, took out his contact lenses and bathed his eyes. After reading Huxley’s book, he had taken to a modified version of the Bates method – the exercises,
and hot and cold water bathing. His eyes were the colour of ginger nuts, and gave the impression of resting widely apart upon very shallow declivities – he had been called Froggy at school.
Somehow, he thought wearily (because he had thought it so often before and knew that it didn’t help), the things that were
better
about his face – a broad forehead with
knowledgeable bumps, finely-arched brows of a pleasing bronze shade and high cheekbones – seemed merely to make the bad things worse. It was as though two conflicting forces had composed his
features and a kind of angry democracy had ensued. He did not know that his smile made everything not only all right but unusually better than that. He never smiled at himself in a glass –
could see nothing to smile at.

His room, the door of which he kept shut, did not smell of curry. He had tacked a piece of felt to the bottom of the door (to exclude draughts he had told his mother but really it was to shut
out the various consequences of his mother keeping everything nice). He allowed her into his room once a week – on Saturdays, when he was there; she exclaimed over the dirt, barked his shins
on the Hoover and wondered incessantly what things were
for
. He liked order, and did not mind dust.

Without his lenses, the Persian rug had a kind of suffused glow – its casual geometric patterns were all of the colours that reminded him of a really good azalea garden – startling
but compatible pinks and oranges and reds and yellows – it made his bed look very inviting.

When he had undressed and laid his clothes for tomorrow carefully out on the red sofa he went to the dormer window the shelf of which was occupied by his little bonzai elm and opened the
casement: fresh cold air streamed in. He hopped into bed and drew the rug up to his chin to enjoy its faint, musty smell. Then he turned out the light and shut his eyes.

Where was he? Oh yes – he always went back a little bit, so that he could recapture the last thrill from last time. He had been walking – well, here he was, walking along the cliff
path. It was noon and high summer – the hot air spiced with thyme and the countless little flowering plants. The sky was serenely blue and the faint, chalky path – circuitous and full
of small declivities and ascents – gave him a feeling of mystery and of purpose. The sea was not visible but he knew it was there, and part of the adventure was to find it. The path was
ascending more and more steeply until he was using his hands to help him climb, and then, but suddenly, he was at the top – a spur of land curving away to his left and looking down upon a
perfect little bay the shape of a scallop shell, invaded by a pale-green sunlit sea and edged with pure sand. In the centre of the bay and lying on the sand with her long red-gold hair fanned out
round her head, lay a girl . . .

He enjoyed again that first powerful shock of discovery and delight, and then, because her hair was so beautiful, he put an iris-coloured towel under her to protect her from the sand. She wore
– she was wearing a lilac cotton bikini with the straps off her shoulder, but even though she was lying on her back her breasts were well defined. Her skin was like pale brown eggshell and
she did not know he was there. He lay down upon the turf to watch her. After a minute, she rose to her feet and walked – no, and then she
ran
down to the sea and cast herself upon
the pale green water with a graceful abandon – but she was not a mermaid – she had beautiful legs. She dived, and when she emerged shaking drops from her streaming, coppery curtain of
hair he saw that she had forgotten her shoulder straps and he glimpsed her breasts – like mother of pearl touched with coral. He waited; he wanted her to finish her bathe – to enjoy her
pleasure in it. The cliff below him was steep – a good twenty feet – and he wondered whether it was possible to get down. His heart was pounding and he did not want to frighten her.
But, when she came out of the water and was trying to cover her breasts again, she saw him. He waved so that she should know he wanted to be seen and she looked up at him and smiled – and
when she did that she was suddenly much nearer – it seemed no distance at all – for he could see nothing but her face which was – her face was – well, as she was unlike
anyone he had ever
seen –
how could he describe her? All the words seemed so
used
: she struck him, as though he was looking straight into the sun, and like the sun, even
when he looked away, her face, anonymously dazzling, was still before his eyes. (Tolstoy: never mind.) She was far away again, combing her hair with her fingers and, it seemed to him, waiting. Then
she made a gesture which said ‘Come down’. He looked at the precipice, spread out his hands with a gesture implying that it looked impossible. Then he called: ‘Can you come up to
me?’ As he said that, he realized that the light was dying with tropical, theatrical speed; from gold to dark yellow to a rose-coloured dusk, to hyacinth to violet to silver-brushed indigo,
and she was standing motionless, darker than the dying light. Then one of them called (he was not sure which, but he heard the voice), ‘It’s hard to go up – it’s easy to
come down,’ and he was standing on the very edge of the cliff and she was holding out her arms and calling, but faintly, ‘Just let yourself go,’ and he felt fear like a cold heavy
weight creeping up his body – turning first his feet, then his legs then his stomach to stone, creeping inexorably up him at an even pace and leaving paralysis and insensibility in its wake;
he knew if it reached his heart he would be done for. And it was as though she understood the danger because she suddenly called out – and it was unmistakably her voice this time –
clear and serene – ‘Only trust me. Just let yourself go!’ And he lifted his arms, spread them out and plunged down and down into the feathery warm dark.

‘And where is it to be this year, Gavin?’

The question, like the half-dozen she asked each week, conveyed such stunningly liberal unconcern for the answer, that as usual he hesitated before replying; puncturing the little bottle of
Inerol and shaking its blue to purple, before he murmured that he was thinking of Greece.

‘Ah, Greece,’ she said, in exactly the same tone of voice that he felt she would have employed if he had said Madagascar or Wormwood Scrubs. ‘Greece is still very good value,
they tell me.’

Gavin massaged the setting lotion gently into her hair and then their eyes met in the mirror in front of her. ‘Your usual?’

‘Yes please, Gavin. You know me. I’m
not
very adventurous about my hair, I’m afraid.’

The ways in which The Rt. Hon. Mrs Veronica Shack might have been adventurous to make up for this lapse were unknown to Gavin, but he smiled gently and began combing out her hair. In his
experience, most women were given to statements about themselves that required contradiction – flat, but with a roguish tinge – and since they usually contained some unpalatable element
of truth which he was too honest – clumsy, he put it – to combat, he had learned to take refuge in kindly silence.

After he had secured the central front roller, he said: ‘The most important thing for you is to have a hair style you feel comfortable with and that’s easy to keep. I don’t
imagine you have much spare time.’

‘That
is
my problem. I really wish there were thirty-six hours in every day.’

‘I suppose that would help,’ he agreed, while wondering what difference it would make.

‘But I expect, if we had, we should simply fill up those extra hours with more meetings, whizzing about, decision-making and conferences. And you, I suppose,’ she ended with the
correct dose of personal touch, ‘would simply be washing more people’s hair.’

Gavin did not usually wash clients’ hair; it was done by juniors; he made an exception in the case of Mrs Shack, because she wanted her appointment before the salon officially opened. He
felt momentarily depressed that she did not seem to realize that he was doing her a favour: then he remembered reading somewhere that gratitude was only excited by new elements, and he’d been
doing Mrs Shack’s hair now for at least two years. If it was true that people could adapt to
anything
– the chances were that they would start with favours. This was
interesting because, on the whole, favours seemed to be thinner on the ground than misfortunes: he would have thought that most people had less practice at adapting to them . . .

She was asking him what he thought about something – some social issue – (high-rise flats? immigrants? the powers of the police?) – no, it was something about education –
that was it; of course she was very keen on getting rid of Grammars . . . ‘. . . at the expense of the average children, don’t you think?’

‘I think most people are more broad-minded about things when they don’t know about them.’ He was engaged in fitting a pale blue nylon net over her rollers.

‘That is a very good remark. I like that. I must remember it.’

Even her praise was tainted, but he knew by now that she neither meant nor could help it.

‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘That would be wonderful.’

He settled her under the dryer with her briefcase full of papers, and went to the small room at the back of the salon where the electric kettle sat on a draining board beside a sinkful of dirty
cups: the juniors were supposed to take turns in clearing that sort of thing up, but they were extremely unreliable about it. He filled the kettle, and washed up a cup and saucer and was drying it
on a paper towel when Daphne, the receptionist, came in.

‘Morning, Gavin. Oh, aren’t they the giddy limit! Don’t you bother with it. Complain!’

‘I don’t know which one is responsible.’

‘I don’t mean to the juniors; I mean to Mr Adrian.’

‘No – I’ll find out which one it was and blow her up.’ He knew from experience that if he told the owner of the salon
he
would be so tough with the culprit that
ten to one she would leave – and any juniors were better than no juniors.