Soon I’m going to stop trying — I can tell. I’m getting cordoned off. Barriers are slamming down all about me. Soon it will be too late ever to get out again.
Supplementary Bad Things continue to happen. Last week I bought a chalk-stripe suit from a second-hand shop in Notting Hill Gate. It was a ridiculous suit in all kinds of ways — obviously an incredibly old and fucked-up man had used it before me — but I knew of a good place that would taper and restyle it cheaply (that was the idea). They tapered and restyled it cheaply, I took it home and put it on, it fitted and it looked all right. Then I realized that it smelled, very very strongly, of the sweat of the dead man who had worn it all his life. Fair enough, I thought, as I soaked it in ammonia overnight, hung it out of my window ditto, buried it in the square double ditto, sprinkled it with ashtrays, steeped it with aftershave and whisky, and put it back on again. It smelled, very very strongly, of the sweat of the dead man who had worn it all his life. I threw the thing away in a dustbin. It wouldn’t go in my wastepaper-basket, which still glowers rankly at me from the corner of my room, still looking for trouble, still wanting a fight.
Nothing happens at work. The rationalization hasn’t taken place yet (we still think it’s Wark, however. Even Wark thinks it’s Wark by now). John Hain isn’t letting on (the cunning fuck was just sounding me out that time); he will not be rushed; no one can make him do anything he isn’t already very keen on doing. Work has dried up. We no longer get our sales-sheets and telephone lists in the mornings. We’re not given anything to sell (though we stillget paid for it. I hate getting my wages now. When the old woman runs her fingers over the envelopes under ‘S’, I
know
mine won’t be there). I sit at my desk all day as if I were Damon (God that boy’s teeth are a mess — he admits they’re all jangling in his head, like a pocketful of loose change), a split match in one hand, a paper-clip in the other, chewing chewing-gum and smoking fags. I can’t even read right any more. That’ll be the next thing to go. We wait and sigh and watch the rain (rain on windows always takes me back, or it tries. I’m not going back). We don’t dare talk to each other much; we’re frightened we might know something we don’t. Yesterday, a man called Veale with an immensely calm and sinister voice rang me from the Union. He’s coming to see me, he says. His voice held neither menace nor encouragement; it was just calm and sinister. I asked around a bit: he isn’t coming to see anyone else, or so everyone says. Just me. I hope he doesn’t think I’m posh.
I did ring Ursula eventually, in response to that card of hers. I’m not sure why I waited so long (she’s a girl, isn’t she?), but I did wait. I’m grateful to her, I hope, for her kindness in the past — or rather her complete lack of cruelty, which was better still under the circumstances — and I’ll do what I can to make things all right for her. I love her. Yes, I do love her — thank God for that. It’s hard to give you any sense of Ursula without making her sound a bit of a pain in the ass (which she is half the time anyway — and for Christ’s sake don’t listen to a word Greg says about her: he’s totally unreliable on this point). She is nineteen and looks about half that. I have never in my life seen anyone so unvoluptuous — pencil legs, no bum, two backs. In repose her face has an odd neutral beauty, like an idealized court portrait of someone plain. As soon as her face becomes animated it loses that beauty, but at the same time it becomes, well, more animated. (You’d fancy her, I reckon. I’d fall in love with her instantly if she weren’t my sister. But that’s not sayingmuch.) See what you think. For the record, she is in my view a pure, kind, touching, innocent, quite funny, very posh, erratically perceptive and (between
Supplementary Bad Things continue to happen. Last week I bought a chalk-stripe suit from a second-hand shop in Notting Hill Gate. It was a ridiculous suit in all kinds of ways — obviously an incredibly old and fucked-up man had used it before me — but I knew of a good place that would taper and restyle it cheaply (that was the idea). They tapered and restyled it cheaply, I took it home and put it on, it fitted and it looked all right. Then I realized that it smelled, very very strongly, of the sweat of the dead man who had worn it all his life. Fair enough, I thought, as I soaked it in ammonia overnight, hung it out of my window ditto, buried it in the square double ditto, sprinkled it with ashtrays, steeped it with aftershave and whisky, and put it back on again. It smelled, very very strongly, of the sweat of the dead man who had worn it all his life. I threw the thing away in a dustbin. It wouldn’t go in my wastepaper-basket, which still glowers rankly at me from the corner of my room, still looking for trouble, still wanting a fight.
Nothing happens at work. The rationalization hasn’t taken place yet (we still think it’s Wark, however. Even Wark thinks it’s Wark by now). John Hain isn’t letting on (the cunning fuck was just sounding me out that time); he will not be rushed; no one can make him do anything he isn’t already very keen on doing. Work has dried up. We no longer get our sales-sheets and telephone lists in the mornings. We’re not given anything to sell (though we stillget paid for it. I hate getting my wages now. When the old woman runs her fingers over the envelopes under ‘S’, I
know
mine won’t be there). I sit at my desk all day as if I were Damon (God that boy’s teeth are a mess — he admits they’re all jangling in his head, like a pocketful of loose change), a split match in one hand, a paper-clip in the other, chewing chewing-gum and smoking fags. I can’t even read right any more. That’ll be the next thing to go. We wait and sigh and watch the rain (rain on windows always takes me back, or it tries. I’m not going back). We don’t dare talk to each other much; we’re frightened we might know something we don’t. Yesterday, a man called Veale with an immensely calm and sinister voice rang me from the Union. He’s coming to see me, he says. His voice held neither menace nor encouragement; it was just calm and sinister. I asked around a bit: he isn’t coming to see anyone else, or so everyone says. Just me. I hope he doesn’t think I’m posh.
I did ring Ursula eventually, in response to that card of hers. I’m not sure why I waited so long (she’s a girl, isn’t she?), but I did wait. I’m grateful to her, I hope, for her kindness in the past — or rather her complete lack of cruelty, which was better still under the circumstances — and I’ll do what I can to make things all right for her. I love her. Yes, I do love her — thank God for that. It’s hard to give you any sense of Ursula without making her sound a bit of a pain in the ass (which she is half the time anyway — and for Christ’s sake don’t listen to a word Greg says about her: he’s totally unreliable on this point). She is nineteen and looks about half that. I have never in my life seen anyone so unvoluptuous — pencil legs, no bum, two backs. In repose her face has an odd neutral beauty, like an idealized court portrait of someone plain. As soon as her face becomes animated it loses that beauty, but at the same time it becomes, well, more animated. (You’d fancy her, I reckon. I’d fall in love with her instantly if she weren’t my sister. But that’s not sayingmuch.) See what you think. For the record, she is in my view a pure, kind, touching, innocent, quite funny, very posh, erratically perceptive and (between
Similar Books
