Read Online London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp - Free Book Online Page A

during that period.
    She agreed to marry me with a tender glee. In our own way, we were happy. We knew that we enjoyed each other’s company, and she seemed relieved by my reluctance on our nights out to impose upon her any physical contact. Joan herself was fast approaching thirty, and when I think about her now I know that there must have been some unspoken acknowledgement which passed between us, a tacit agreement that our life together was to be little more than a convenience for which we were both truly grateful.
    Our marriage had about it the air of two people stranded on a desert island who, just at the point of accepting that they would never be rescued, spot a sail on the horizon. That isn’t to say it was devoid of love. Love and gratitude are not so far apart. It’s hard to underestimate the happiness that someone can bring to you when they do exactly what you need them to do. My parents were content, and pleasing them was really all I cared about in those days.
    No children, of course. We tried sexual intercourse only once, on our wedding night, but a barely veiled disgust on Joan’s part and a distinct lack of enthusiasm on mine left us reluctant to try again. It was a massive relief for both of us, I think, to discover that life was much easier that way. I’m fairly certain that Joan herself had certain lesbian tendencies. Over the years of our marriage there were one or two very close friendships with women. She would see an awful lot of one particular woman for a while and then it would end abruptly, without much explanation. I, for my part, masturbated occasionally, swiftly and guiltily, as if undergoing an unpleasant though necessary bodily function. Visions of men fuelled these sessions, images I had taken in the street and preserved like photographs in my memory: a coal delivery man stripped to the waist, blackened and shining in the sunlight; a bus conductor’s handsome smile; the bulge in the trousers of our office boy; the outline of a cock in the swimming trunks of a bather down by the Serpentine; the tanned and dark-haired forearms of a road-sweeper. I would roam the city, picking up these faces and crotches and limbs and storing them like treasure. Then I would spread them out before my mind’s eye, imagining all the terrible things I longed to do with these men. I was always assaulted afterward by a horrible sense of shame. I thought myself a monster and yet could not do otherwise. It was my nature, that much I accepted. I had to learn to rise above it, that was all; had to discipline myself to channel my desires into these harmless pursuits. I had read too many newspaper accounts of men whose lives had been ruined by this inclination ever to risk being foolish enough to act upon my desires, to solicit from another man the acts to which I gave my imagination free rein in order that I might quench its appetite. I even prided myself on my restraint, like a fool who thinks himself virtuous for permanent fasting. Permanent fasting brings only death. I suppose I let my desire die.
    Joan was killed in June 1944, in an air raid. While I was posted to Hampshire, she had stayed in London, working as a secretary for British Intelligence. From her letters it was clear she loved the work. In losing her I lost the best friend I ever had. She and I would spend our evenings basking in the glow of each other’s company, listening to the radio or reading. It was the closest I ever came to finding whatever it is I am looking for. She had few friends; I had none apart from her. After her death I became extremely lonely extremely quickly. I tried to make friends at work, but found it impossible. It was too late: I had been cast, or had cast myself, in the role of someone friendless and unapproachable and, once a role has been cast, it’s difficult to play another part.
    I wish I’d been able to tell Joan that I loved her. But it was just something that we never said. Silly, really, but even during the brief