The Pregnant Widow (3 page)

Keith knew. From Gk
oistros
“gadfly or frenzy.” Heat. Whittaker said,

“So arselike breasts sweetened the bitter pill of the missionary position. Just a theory. No, I understand about Scheherazade’s breasts. The secondary sexual characteristics in their Platonic form. Plan A for the tits. I understand—in principle.” He looked at Keith with affectionate contempt. “I don’t want to squeeze them or kiss them or bury my sobbing face in them. What d’you guys
do
with breasts? I mean they don’t lead anywhere, do they.”

“I suppose that’s true. They’re sort of a mystery. An end unto themselves.”

Whittaker glanced over his shoulder. “I can tell you they’re not universally admired. Someone I know had a very bad reaction to them. Amen.”

“Amen?” Amen—pronounced
Ahmun
—was Whittaker’s reclusive Libyan boyfriend (who was eighteen). Keith said, “What’s Amen got against Scheherazade’s breasts?”

“That’s why he never goes down to the pool any more. He can’t take her breasts. Wait. Here they come.”

Did this mean—could this truly mean—that Scheherazade, down by the pool (as Lily had hinted), sunbathed topless? There was still time for Keith to say, “Are you seriously telling me her tits look like an arse?”

He himself paid a quick visit to the basement—before they all filed out into the street … The Italian toilet, and its negative sensual adventure: what was it trying to say? Southern Europe in its entirety had it like this, even France, the grime-scored crouchpads and flowing knee-high stopcocks and the fistfuls of yesterday’s newspaper wedged between
pipe and brickwork. The stench that threaded acid into the tendons of the jaw, and made the gums sting. Don’t flatter yourself, the toilet was saying. You are an animal, made of matter. And something in him responded to this, as if he sensed the proximity of a beloved beast, moist and leathery in the spiced darkness.

Then they all filed out into it—past the female mannequins in the boutique windows, and into the swirling oestrus, the pitiless verdict, the mortifying unanimity of the young men of Montale.

So they drove from town to village—to the castle, perched like a roc on the mountainside.

Y
ou know, I used to have a lot of time for Keith Nearing. We were once very close. And then we fell out over a woman. Not in the usual sense. We had a
disagreement
over a woman. I sometimes think he could have been a poet. Bookish, wordish, letterish, with a very peculiar provenance, a committed romantic who, nonetheless, found it fairly difficult to get any kind of girlfriend—yes, he could have been a poet. But then came his summer in Italy.

Keith lay between the sheets, up in the south tower. He was thinking, not very constructively, about the frayed burlap sack Whittaker had slung over his shoulder as they left the bar.
What’s that?
Keith asked.
Mail?
Italian mailbags, he assumed, like English mailbags, were manufactured in the nation’s prisons; and Whittaker’s burlap sack did indeed look felon-woven (it seemed most disaffectedly thrashed together), with a sociopathic, faintly purplish tint somewhere in its weft. Keith found, these days, that his thoughts often turned to law enforcement. Or, rather, to its absence, its inexplicable laxity …
Not mail
, said Whittaker.
Mail gets delivered direct. In here is—the world. See?
And there it was, the world:
Times, Lifes, Nations
, and
Commentarys, New Statesmans, Listeners, Spectators, Encounters
. So it was still out there—the world. And the world already seemed very quiet and very distant.

“So I suppose you agree,” said Lily in the dark, “with the young men of Montale.”

“No I don’t,” said Keith. “I wanted to do a jumping jack at you. To tell you so.”

“… Have you any idea what that was like? For me?”

“Yeah, I think I have. I get that when I’m with Kenrik. They don’t do jumping jacks at him, but they—”

“Well he is beautiful.”

“Mm. It’s hard to take, but remember. The world has bad taste. It goes for the obvious.”

“What’s
obvious?”

“Come on, you know what I mean. The superficial. Her looks may please the vulgar, Lily. But you’re much cleverer and more interesting.”

“Mm. Thanks. But I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to
fall in love with her. Not that you’ve got a hope, of course. But you will. How could you not? You. You fall in love with anything that moves. You’d fall in love with female football teams. And Scheherazade. She’s beautiful and sweet and funny. And madly grand.”

“That’s what puts me off. She’s irrelevant. She’s from another world.”

“Mm. Actually you do know when you’re outclassed,” she said, making herself more comfortable on the bolster of his arm. “An A-one berk like you. A chippy little guttersnipe like you.” She kissed his shoulder. “It’s all in the names, isn’t it. Scheherazade—and
Keith
. Keith’s probably the most plebeian name there is, don’t you think?”

“Probably … No.
No,”
he said. “The earl mareschals of Scotland were Keiths. There was a line of them, each called Lord Keith. Anyway, it’s better than Timmy.” He thought of gangly, lackadaisical Timmy, in Milan, with Scheherazade.
“Timmy
. Call that a name? Keith’s a better name than Timmy.”

“All
names are better names than Timmy.”

“Yeah. It’s impossible to think of a Timmy ever doing anything cool. Timmy Milton. Timmy Keats.”

“… Keith Keats,” she said. “Keith Keats doesn’t sound very likely either.”

“True. But Keith Coleridge? You know, Lily, there was a poet called Keith Douglas.
He
was posh. His middle name was Castellaine and he went to the same prep school as Kenrik. Christ’s Hospital. Oh yeah. And the K in G. K. Chesterton stands for Keith.”

“What’s the G stand for?”

“Gilbert.”

“Well there you are then.”

Keith thought of Keith Douglas. A war poet—a warrior poet. The fatally wounded soldier:
Oh mother, my mouth is full of stars …
He thought of Keith Douglas, dead in Normandy (a shrapnel wound to the head) at twenty-four. Twenty-four. Lily said,

“All right. What would you do if she vowed to go down on you?”

Keith said, “I’d be surprised, but I wouldn’t be shocked. Just disappointed. I’d say, Scheherazade!”

“Yeah, I bet. You know, I sometimes wish …”

Keith and Lily had been together for over a year—with a recent, term-long hiatus, variously known as the Interregnum, the Intermission, or simply Spring Break. And now, after the trial separation, the
trial reunion. Keith owed her a great debt of gratitude. She was his first love, in this particular sense: he had loved many girls, but Lily was the first who loved him back.

“Lily, it’s you I love.”

The nightly interaction, the indescribable deed, now took place, by candlelight.

“Was it fun?”

“What?”

“Pretending I’m Scheherazade.”

“… Lily, you keep forgetting how high-minded I am. Matthew Arnold.
The best which has been thought and said
. F. R. Leavis.
Felt life in its full creative force
. Besides, she’s much too tall for me. She’s not my type. You’re my type, Lily.”

“Mm. You aren’t as high-minded as you used to be. Anything like.”

“Yes I am … It’s her character. She’s sweet and kind and funny and bright. And she’s
good
. That’s the real turn-off.”

“I know. It’s nauseating. And she’s grown about a foot too,” said Lily, now indignantly wide awake. “And almost all of it’s in her neck!”

“Yeah, it’s quite a neck all right.” Lily had already said a good deal about Scheherazade and her neck. She compared her to a swan and sometimes—depending on her mood—an ostrich (and, on one occasion, a giraffe). Lily said,

“Last year she was … What’s
happened to
Scheherazade?”

S
cheherazade awoke one morning from troubled dreams to find herself changed in her bed into a … According to the famous story, of course, Gregor Samsa (pron.
Zamza)
was transformed into
an enormous insect
, or alternatively
a giant bug
, or alternatively—and this was the best translation, Keith felt sure—
a monstrous vermin
. In Scheherazade’s case, the metamorphosis was a radical ascension. But Keith couldn’t fix on the right animal. A doe, a dolphin, a snow leopard, a winged mare, a bird of paradise …

But first the past. Lily and Keith broke up because Lily wanted to act like a boy. That was the heart of the matter, really: girls acting like boys was in the air, and Lily wanted to try it out. So they had their first big
row (its theme, ridiculously, was religion), and Lily announced
a trial separation
. The words came at him like a jolt of compressed air: such trials, he knew, were almost always a complete success. After two days of earnest misery, in his terrible room in the terrible flat in Earls Court, after two days of
desolation
, he phoned her and they met up, and tears were shed—on both sides of the café table. She told him to be evolved about it.

Why should boys have all the fun?
said Lily, and blew her nose into the paper napkin.
We’re anachronisms, you and me. We’re like childhood sweethearts. We should’ve met ten years from now. We’re too young for monogamy. Or even for love
.

He listened to this. Lily’s announcement had left him bereaved, orphaned. That was what it meant: from Gk
orphanos
“bereaved.” Keith was actually born bereaved. And the suspicion that this would remain his natural state was clearly far too readily available to him. Desolate: from L.
desolare
“abandon,” from
de-
“thoroughly” +
solus
“alone.” He listened to Lily—and of course he knew it already. Something was churning in the world of men and women, a revolution or a sea change, a realignment having to do with carnal knowledge and emotion. Keith did not want to be an anachronism. And I think I can say that this was his first attempt at character management: he decided to get better at not falling in love.

If we don’t like it, we can always … I want to act like a boy for a while. And you can just go on as you are
.

Thus Lily had her hair restyled, and bought lots of miniskirts and cut-off culottes and halter tops and see-through blouses and knee-length patent-leather boots and hoop earrings and kohl eyeliner and all the other things you needed before you could act like a boy. And Keith just stayed the same.

He was better placed than her, in a way: he had some experience of acting like a boy. Now he took it up again. Pre-Lily, before Lily, he often encountered a difficulty more associated with acting like a girl: his emotions. And he didn’t always see things clearly. He got it completely wrong, for instance, about what everyone was calling
free love
—as a succession of horrified hippies could quietly attest. He thought it meant what it said; but it wasn’t love that was on offer from the mushroompale flower-daughters of the capital, with their charts, tarot cards, and Ouija boards. Some girls were still saving themselves for marriage;
some were still religious—and even the hippies were only very slowly going secular …

After Lily, post-Lily, the new rules of engagement seemed more firmly emplaced. The year was 1970, and he was twenty: to this historic opportunity he brought his minimal handsomeness, his plausible tongue, his sincere enthusiasm, and a certain willed but invigorating coldness. There were disappointments, near things, there were some miraculous acquiescences (which still felt like
liberties
, in the shame-and-honour sense: involving impudence, overfamiliarity, taking advantage). Anyway, the free-love business certainly worked best with girls who were acting like boys. New rules—and new and sinister ways of getting everything wrong. He acted like a boy, and so did Lily. But she was a girl, and could do more of it than he could.

Come with me
, said Lily, three months later on the phone,
come with me to Italy for the summer. Come with me to a castle in Italy with Scheherazade. Please. Let’s have a holiday from it. You know, there are people out there who don’t even
try
to be kind
.

Keith said he would call her back. But almost at once he felt his head give a sudden nod. He had just spent a night of almost artistic misery with an ex-girlfriend (her name was Pansy). He was frightened and bruised and, for the first time, obscurely but intensely guilty; and he wanted to return to Lily—to Lily, and her middleworld.

How much will it cost?

She told him.
And you’ll need spending money for when we go out. The thing is, I’m no good at being a boy
.

All right. And I’m glad. I’ll start borrowing and saving up
.

His ridiculous row with Lily. She blamed him, basically, for confusing and therefore corrupting Violet with Christianity when she was a little girl. Which was true enough as far as it went.
I tried to de-convert her when she was nine
, he explained.
I said
, God is just like Bellgrow: your imaginary friend.
And yet she stuck with it
. Lily said,
And you’d think religion would make her behave. And it’s had the opposite effect. She’s sure she’ll be forgiven for everything because she believes in a fool in the sky. And it’s all your fault
.

Lily was of course an atheist—an open-and-shut atheist. Keith argued that this position wasn’t quite rational; but then Lily’s rationalism wasn’t rational in the first place. She hated astrology, naturally, but
she hated astronomy too: she hated the fact that light bent, that gravity slowed down time. She was especially exasperated by the behaviour of subatomic particles. She wanted the universe to behave sensibly. Even Lily’s dreams were quotidian. In her dreams (this was rather shyly disclosed), she went down the shops, or washed her hair, or had a snack for lunch while she stood by the fridge. Openly suspicious of poetry, she had no patience with any work of fiction that strayed from the sternest social realism. The only novel she unreservedly praised was
Middlemarch
. Because Lily was a creature of the middleworld.