Quicksand (36 page)

 

 

Against this one, alcohol, blessing the liberal laws of France compared
to the time-now-gentlemen- if-you-please of the Needle in Haystack,
but it stole through anyway and put on words like clothing.

 

 

-- I think Urchin, in whose face you can read experience and wisdom
enough for her to borrow Iris's passport age of twenty-six, is in her
body a prepubescent child. And sterile.

 

 

What he would have done faced with the imminence of a baby under these
circumstances, he had no idea. All consequent thoughts were formless,
looming at the back of his mind like thunderclouds seen lately on the
horizon of this balmy sea. Before he could discern their actual nature,
there would have to be a rebirth of Paul Fidler as total as that which
had preceded his departure from home, work, and ancient hopes, and he
shrank from that second reconstructive agony.

 

 

--
Tjachariva.
Let it not happen. Let it drift on, somehow, by a
succession of miracles, till I no longer care, till I have been reworked
into a new strange person whose core of being is not shaped around a
certain incredible girl.

 

 

And here, as of today because he had heard a chance remark from a couple
passed on the way to this café, was the latest of the disturbing points
he shied away from: a girl, her accent suggesting she might be German,
had said to her French boy-friend in the latter's language,
"J'espčre
que ça n'arrive pas!"

 

 

-- And Shoemaker the philologist told me about a girl who claimed to
understand Martian, only it was bastard French.

 

 

He gulped the rest of his drink angrily, as though the idea were a fire
in his belly and he could put it out with liquor. Urchin's glass was
still half full; as was his usual habit, he reached for it to finish
it. But her hand caught his wrist to prevent him.

 

 

"I want it," she said.

 

 

He looked at her. There was an expression on her face which frightened
him. Lately, since he had had to explain about getting rid of the car
so that they would have enough money to carry on with, she had been
drinking nearly as much as he was.

 

 

-- Why? If I knew I think I would refuse to tell myself.

 

 

He made no demur. He was coming to realise that he was always afraid of
this inexplicable person to whom he had chained his life, then thrown
away the key. A week or so ago he had had the first of what now amounted
to almost half a dozen nightmares, different in details, sharing always
the common image of her turning on him as she had turned on Faberdown,
on the nurse at Blickbam, on Riley and at last on Maurice Dawkins,
making some sudden hurtful move that be was powerless to guard against,
leaving him sprawling on the pound while she . . . went away.

 

 

Risking it, he had traded on his British medical degree, vouched for
by his passport, to obtain some sleeping tablets, and last night he had
been free of the bad dreams, but at the cost of being logy this morning.

 

 

"I'd like to go for a swim," she said abruptly. "I like a rough sea."

 

 

"Go ahead, then," he muttered.

 

 

-- It would help if I could find some single physical thing I could do
better than she does. While I paddle awkward in the shallows, she goes out
of sight, her stroke peculiar, a little like a crawl but with a different
rhythm, or dives from rocks that make my nape crawl and explores the
underside of them until I'm ready to believe she's hit her head and
drowned. And as to what I've learned from her in bed . . . She'd have
learned to drive equally quickly, I'm sure, but I clung to an excuse
about foreigners having too much trouble with red tape when she asked
about it, certain this would make her drop the suggestion. Although now
we've lost the car, what difference does it make?

 

 

She had drained her glass, but made no move to go for the swim she had
talked about. Across the promenade from where they sat, a policeman was
strolling at leisure, swinging a long baton, his eyes on the boats in
the harbour and not on them. Nonetheless Paul flinched. Some day soon
there might be a hand on his shoulder; he had compounded his offences
when he sold the car.

 

 

There was no market for it through regular channels. Apart from the need
to get official clearances, which would have meant too many bureaucrats
examining his papers, thanks to Britain's stupid insistence on driving
on the left the car's controls were wrong for Continental use, and this
reduced its price to a fraction of its value at home.

 

 

At last a man he suspected of being a petty criminal, met at the casino
here in Louze, had made him an offer the night his plan for keeping them
going let him down. He had heard from one of Iris's wealthy friends about
the professional gamblers who can survive a whole season at Monte Carlo on
their daily winnings, never trying to stretch their luck beyond the budget
for the day's food and lodging. He had been looking presentable enough
on their arrival at Louze to ask for a visitor's ticket at the casino,
his beard by then being long enough to comb into neatness. Applying
what he had learned of the professionals' caution -- backing only the
opposite colour after a run of five or six the same, doubling up if
he did not win the first time -- to Urchin's admiration he won enough
to pay for their room and meals for six successive days. Then he grew
overconfident, fell down on a freak run of eleven blacks, and lost even
the sum he needed to renew his membership.

 

 

So the car went for a pittance to this sympathetic fellow gambler.

 

 

Leaving . . .

 

 

"Are we going to sit here all day?" Urchin demanded petulantly.

 

 

"I feel a bit dopy," Paul told her. "Go for your swim and let me sit
here a while longer."

 

 

A couple of young men, in sweaters against the cool wind, walked past.
They whistled at Urchin, who was wearing only a hip-long beach-wrap
over her bikini. She smiled and got up, crossing the road towards the
beach. Paul kept his eyes on the young men to see if they would follow
her, but they walked on.

 

 

Alone, he brought out from under the table Urchin's portfolio with the
handle of braided string. It contained what he hoped might be the key
to getting out of his present mess. He had thought of teaching English
to earn some money, but so had everyone else, and his French was poor;
he had inquired about casual work, and found out about labour permits
and other alarming rigmarole, and decided he dare not expose himself to
the investigation of the French authorities. But there was one unique
secret he shared only with Urchin.

 

 

He had employed it as armour against his fearful forebodings since a
night shortly after leaving England when he had been plagued by a fit
of panic over what he had done. On impulse he had brought away with him
Maurice's clock, and it had been carried into each of their overnight
rooms to supervise their love-making. Looking at it, he had been reminded
of Llanraw. He had soothed Urchin into trance almost without intending
to, and found solace in what she told him of that miraculous land.

 

 

Since then he had grown to crave it like a drug, although he tried not
to make it an imposition on Urchin. When he detected resentment in her
face at what he could make her do -- for the months of reinforcement of
the hypnotic state had enabled him to put her under with a single word --
he postponed the moment. To console himself he one day wrote down what he
could recall of the descriptions she had given, and from that conceived
the idea of writing a book.

 

 

-- That'll put Soppy Al's nose out of joint! But I daren't use my
own name, or Urchin's; I'll have to change everything so that it's
unrecognisable, but at least no one else has ever heard of Llanraw . . .

 

 

Daydreams blossomed as he leafed through the sheets he had filled with
notes: Llanraw's customs, geography, clothing, art, even a sketch for an
understanding of the language. He had tried to make Urchin teach him to
speak it, and had been impressed by its logic compared to the ambiguity
of English, but he was a poor student and had learned only a few phrases
when he desisted for fear of angering her with such drudgery. Nonetheless
the directness implied by their common greeting, not "How are you?" but
straight out "Who are you?" seemed infinitely desirable beside the
mealy-mouthed forms of his own mother tongue.

 

 

Since taking the giant step of running away with Urchin, he had escaped
some of his recurrent visions of disaster, and in their place was able
to enjoy periods of optimism whose wildness did not seem in the least
incongruous. Now, with the pages before him on which he had caught at
least a pale reflection of Llanraw, he imagined a publisher trembling
with delight, writing a huge cheque on the spot, telephoning daily to
know how soon the manuscript would be ready, setting up press conferences,
selling screen rights . . .

 

 

Beyond that: critics raving, readers queueing to learn about the ideal
world from which Urchin hailed, clubs and societies forming to try and
enact in their members' lives the ideals to which Llanraw was dedicated
. . . By then he would be beyond reach of the consequences of his earlier
acts; he would pay some fines, perhaps, for putting Urchin on his passport
under a false name, but the judge would weep as he pronounced sentence,
mourning the shortcomings of his country and assuring Paul that if only
it had been like Llanraw this farce would have been unnecessary.

 

 

He slowly realised that on the other side of the road the policeman had
reappeared, and his gaze now was fixed on this café. A tremor crept
down Paul's spine. He called for his bill, shut up his notes in the
portfolio, and walked as steadily as he could manage in the direction
Urchin had taken.

 

 

He found her on the beach with the two young men who had whistled at her
earlier, wrestling each in turn to fall on the sand. They had warmed up
with the exercise and taken off their sweaters, and Urchin shouted in
delight as her arms locked around their sun-tanned muscular bodies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*41*

 

 

The prospect of having a row with Urchin made him terrified. Rows were
something that belonged to the epoch Paul-and-Iris, not the epoch
Paul-and-Urchin; at the back of his mind, too deeply buried for him ever
to have expressed the thought in words, lay the assumption that Urchin
would understand the magnitude of the sacrifice he had made for her sake
and devote herself to him as though he had purchased her.

 

 

He fought it, daylong; moody over their noontide meal he thought of lean
carefree youths attuned to leisure, safe from problems that made him a
worrisome companion, and said little; later he summoned energy and they
walked to the camp-site and back in the clumsy grip of the mistral. He
thought by then he had evaded the risk of what he feared, and at dinner
was almost his normal self.

 

 

But that night, when Urchin lay back naked on the bed contemplating
the ceiling and he was at the wash-basin noisily scrubbing the taste of
the day's cigarettes away with a minty paste -- she had confided that
she found the stale smoky tang unpleasant, the first fault she had
ever admitted in him -- she said suddenly, "I think I like most that
one Armand."

 

 

"What?" He turned, mopping at white foam drooled down his chin.

 

 

"Armand." She gave the name almost exactly the terminal sound of
Llanraw, and the expression of dreamy pleasure on her face made his
heart sink. "You know -- the taller one with brown eyes."

 

 

"I didn't get close enough to find out what colour his eyes were,"
Paul told her curtly.

 

 

She gave a sweet lascivious smile and closed her eyes as if to visualise
Armand. She said, "You will if you wish. I think he is a little like the
ones we met at -- what was the place called? I forget. The two men and
the two girls we spent the night with. Such people remind me so much of
Llanraw. Tomorrow I will see him without his friend Henri -- I promised.
And tomorrow night, if you like, I will teach you a . . ." She hesitated,
her eyes blinking open again. "A custom? A . . . No: more like a game
we have there."

 

 

"What sort of game?" Paul said, his voice rasping harsh past the tingling
of the strong paste on his tongue.

 

 

She giggled and did not answer.

 

 

"You didn't ask me if you could see him alone tomorrow," Paul said after
a pause, afraid of what the words might lead to yet unable to prevent
himself uttering them.

 

 

"Ask you? What for?" She raised herself on one elbow and clasped her
hands before her bare breasts to stabilise her body.

 

 

-- I keep telling myself: the only free person I ever met. But freedom
at the expense of . . .

 

 

He said, "Why do you want to see him alone, anyway?"

 

 

"Why do you think?" The hint of scorn in the voice was perfectly mimicked
from some unknown involuntary teacher back at Chent. "He has a beautiful
body and strong muscles."

 

 

Paul was silent for a while. At length he said, "And what about me?"

 

 

It was her turn to fall silent. He prompted her: "Well?"

 

 

"Paul, the night we spent on that beach you did not -- "