nudes. The flat was bare and sad but opened at back on to a little garden under a brewery. One day the sun shone hard on thegarden and I went out and sat on the grass. Before very long, however, I felt self-conscious, sitting alone on that square of grass and I went back inside to the shallow living room. In that room I slept, reluctantly leading a celibate life. Why wouldn’t Fay come to my bed at nights? The writer was never at home. He was in other beds in other parts of London. He was standing in the door of a club, fingering his lavender cuffs. I felt despised. Fay never got drunk any more. When we first knew her, three hundred parties ago, she was always falling .
— How’s Fay?
— Fell out of a car.
Downstairs, flat on the pavement, always falling when a drop of alcohol ran amuck in her brain.
Fay wanted a writer.
In order to fit herself for so precious an acquisition she read difficult books. Out of her handbag rose collections of plays by avant-garde Catalonian dramatists, commentaries on Finnegans Wake , volumes of poetry. She often toiled through these works but for all the discernible enlargement of understanding that resulted she might have restricted her reading to the labels on bottles.
She finally got her writer.
Her childhood years had been sad and sordid. There had been an orphanage, an abandoned mother, a traumatic rape on a vacant lot, or at least she said there had. Whatever the truth, it was clear that somehow, during those years, the figure of the writer had arisen in her thoughts as the antithesis to everything she disliked in experience.
Roy, whom she lived with when we first knew her, was not really a writer. He was an accountant but he had literary aspirations. Yorkshire had endowed him with the faint, harsh accent which clashed a little with his delicate, slightly decadent good looks. Roy observed Fay with intent but dispassionate interest, as if he considered her fascinating but not really hissubject. It is possible that in private he was capable of being provoked but in public his detachment was impressive. Fay screamed:
— He can’t fuck! He can’t satisfy anyone! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
The opulent car eased through the nocturnal traffic. The youngish couple, inscrutable and rich, sat in front with Roy. We shared the back seat with a drunken Fay. Against the smoky rose and sapphire of the signs the profiles of Roy and the young woman turned to each other for long, appraising looks. Fay screamed:
— You’re wasting your time. He can’t fuck! He can’t fuck! He can’t fuck!
Smoky fires, shore, rime in the morning. They’re rattling my cage. A steep street diving to the bay. Couldn’t we live on a hillside, red berries in the hedge? They’re rattling my cage. Burn the papers. The papers float in the oily swell by the jetty. The fishermen are snug in their cottages. We once had a cottage. They’re rattling my cage.
— Desolation is the gift I bear you.
— What are the symptoms of cancer of the penis?
— Oh leave me alone!
— But why? Here we are together in this flat. Why not?
— Because you don’t attract me. Go back to your wife.
Many rooms.
I kept moving.
At Mickey’s there was a knot of writhing pink worms. In the bleak hive was a mad old Jewess from Ravensbruck moaning as she ran the bath. In the bare room above the shop was an Indian girl in a sari. This I unwound. She span slowly away from me to disclose a girdle and bra beneath it. I held her luscious brown body crouched above my head. An exultant gesture. But later I wondered if that was what had forced the loop of gut through my abdominal musculature. My lips brushed her shy yet provocative ones but before I could consolidate my ascendancy over her, prudence reclaimed theGoan girl and she repackaged her clever self in the bright filament of her sari.
— I ain’t got no home.
Lost a thought. Cold on the greasy floor. A web of flesh in the syrup of time. Parting thighs. Dull red glow from the fire.
— How’s Fay?
— Fell out of a car.
Downstairs, flat on the pavement, always falling when a drop of alcohol ran amuck in her brain.
Fay wanted a writer.
In order to fit herself for so precious an acquisition she read difficult books. Out of her handbag rose collections of plays by avant-garde Catalonian dramatists, commentaries on Finnegans Wake , volumes of poetry. She often toiled through these works but for all the discernible enlargement of understanding that resulted she might have restricted her reading to the labels on bottles.
She finally got her writer.
Her childhood years had been sad and sordid. There had been an orphanage, an abandoned mother, a traumatic rape on a vacant lot, or at least she said there had. Whatever the truth, it was clear that somehow, during those years, the figure of the writer had arisen in her thoughts as the antithesis to everything she disliked in experience.
Roy, whom she lived with when we first knew her, was not really a writer. He was an accountant but he had literary aspirations. Yorkshire had endowed him with the faint, harsh accent which clashed a little with his delicate, slightly decadent good looks. Roy observed Fay with intent but dispassionate interest, as if he considered her fascinating but not really hissubject. It is possible that in private he was capable of being provoked but in public his detachment was impressive. Fay screamed:
— He can’t fuck! He can’t satisfy anyone! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
The opulent car eased through the nocturnal traffic. The youngish couple, inscrutable and rich, sat in front with Roy. We shared the back seat with a drunken Fay. Against the smoky rose and sapphire of the signs the profiles of Roy and the young woman turned to each other for long, appraising looks. Fay screamed:
— You’re wasting your time. He can’t fuck! He can’t fuck! He can’t fuck!
Smoky fires, shore, rime in the morning. They’re rattling my cage. A steep street diving to the bay. Couldn’t we live on a hillside, red berries in the hedge? They’re rattling my cage. Burn the papers. The papers float in the oily swell by the jetty. The fishermen are snug in their cottages. We once had a cottage. They’re rattling my cage.
— Desolation is the gift I bear you.
— What are the symptoms of cancer of the penis?
— Oh leave me alone!
— But why? Here we are together in this flat. Why not?
— Because you don’t attract me. Go back to your wife.
Many rooms.
I kept moving.
At Mickey’s there was a knot of writhing pink worms. In the bleak hive was a mad old Jewess from Ravensbruck moaning as she ran the bath. In the bare room above the shop was an Indian girl in a sari. This I unwound. She span slowly away from me to disclose a girdle and bra beneath it. I held her luscious brown body crouched above my head. An exultant gesture. But later I wondered if that was what had forced the loop of gut through my abdominal musculature. My lips brushed her shy yet provocative ones but before I could consolidate my ascendancy over her, prudence reclaimed theGoan girl and she repackaged her clever self in the bright filament of her sari.
— I ain’t got no home.
Lost a thought. Cold on the greasy floor. A web of flesh in the syrup of time. Parting thighs. Dull red glow from the fire.
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