Read Online Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes - Free Book Online

before she goes in and yelling at the upper windows at the Hoplite or myself, to ask if we want to come down and have anything to eat. Which, as a matter of fact, we quite often do, not really for the food, but because old Jill is very wise, in spite of being not far in her twenties, and is my chief and only confidant about Suzette who I ask her advice about but, as I need hardly tell you,haven’t produced for her inspection, for all my contacts with Suze are at her place over there in W2.
    So by now, of course, I had arrived there, and shot up the flights of no-lino stairs, which nobody keeps swept and ever lit (and the front door’s always open) into my loft, which is one big room right across the whole top of the establishment, plus bathroom on the landing minus a bath (I use the municipal), but with basin and a convenient. And I’ve decorated it all in what I call anti-contemptuous style, i.e. ancient aunt Fanny wallpapers I got from some left-overs in a paint shop in the Portobello Road. I’ve got a bed, too, a triple one, and the usual chair and table; but no other chairs, and instead a lot of cushions spread out on the floor and on top of what is my only luxury, a fitted carpet. My clothes I hang on ropes with polythene covers for the BR soot, the rest I keep in my metal cabin trunk. I don’t have curtains because I like to look out, specially at night, and I’m too high for anyone to look in. The only other objects are my record-player, my pocket transistor radio, and stacks of discs and books that I’ve collected, hundreds of them, which every New Year’s Day I have a pogrom of, and sling out everything except a very chosen few.
    I was having a wash down, at the bathroom sink, when up came the Hoplite, nervously patting his hair which was done in a new style of hairdo like as if a large animal had licked the Hoplite’s locks down flat, then licked the tip of them over his forehead vertical up, like a cockatoo with its crest on back-to-front. He was wearing a pair of skintight, rubber-glove thin, almost transparentcotton slacks, white nylon-stretch and black wafer-sole casuals, and a sort of maternity jacket, I can only call it, coloured blue. He looked over my shoulder into the mirror, patting his head and saying nothing, till when I said nothing too, he asked me, ‘Well?’
    ‘Smashing, Hoplite,’ I said. ‘It gives you a rugged, shaggy, Burt Lancaster appearance.’
    ‘I’m not so sure,’ the Hoplite said, ‘it’s me.’
    ‘It’s you, all right, boy. Of course, anything is, Fabulous. You’re one who can wear anything , even a swimsuit or a tuxedo, and look nice in it.’
    ‘I know you’re one of my fans,’ the Hoplite said, smiling sadly at me in the mirror, ‘but don’t mock.’
    ‘No mockery, man. You’ve got dress sense.’
    The Hoplite sat down on the lavatory seat, and sighed. ‘It’s not dress sense I need,’ he said, ‘but horse sense.’
    I raised my brows and waited.
    ‘Believe it or not, my dear,’ the Hoplite continued sadly, ‘but your old friend Fabulous, for the first time in his life – the very first in nineteen years (well, that’s a lie, I’m twenty, really) – is deep, deep, deep in love.’
    ‘Ah,’ I replied.
    There was a pause.
    ‘You’re not going to ask me with who?’ he said, appealingly.
    ‘I’m so sure you’re going to tell me, Hop.’
    ‘Sadist! And not Hop , please!’
    ‘Not me. No, not a bit, I’m not. Well – who is it?’
    ‘An Americano.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘What does this “Ah” mean?’ the Hoplite said suspiciously.
    ‘Several things. Tell me more. I can see it coming, though. He doesn’t care.’
    ‘Misery! That’s it.’
    ‘Doesn’t care for the angle, Hoplite, or doesn’t care for you personally, or just doesn’t care for either?’
    ‘The angle. Not bent at all, though I had hopes that perhaps he dabbled … And he’s so, so understanding, which makes it so, so, so much worse.’
    ‘You poor old bastard,’ I said