Nelly on the huge bed, asleep. Her skirt disarranged at the back and her little white bottom peeping out. A single life-web. Parting thighs.
— I ain’t got no home.
Many rooms.
I sat, half-dressed, smoking on the bed and watched Fay grooming her little son. Savaging the rowdy image of the past she was impeccably maternal. A wistful tale spilled from her lips.
— My mother wanted me to marry this painter—just an ordinary house painter. And I wouldn’t have him. My mother said: ‘he’s your sort. He’s the natural one for you’, but I wouldn’t listen. Well, here I am—and John’s getting famous and—you know—just recently—I keep thinking about that painter.
I found this touching. I interpreted it as nostalgia for a lost, and now irrecoverable, simplicity. But this interpretation, it seemed, was faulty:
— John’s just waiting for me to put a foot wrong. So that he can show me the door. My sister married someone like that painter. When I think about it—it’s so easy for her. She can deceive him right, left and centre and he never notices!
Many rooms.
I found little trophies in each, of fleeting erotic thrill, insight into other life-paths, new perspectives on how we live now in the West. In some I opened tins and gulped their contents. In some I tuned in briefly on the cathode world. I flicked through magazines and books. In none could I bear to establish myself to the extent of linking words with effort or being solitary in the evening. I acknowledged no home butmy forsaken one. Opening hours of the pubs inevitably lured me out to the ersatz home of thick camaraderie. There must have been the odd occasion when virus or exhaustion chained me but, combing as thoroughly as I can that first year of our separation, I cannot retrieve a single evening when I went sober to bed.
11
The First Dream
Y OU CRIED IN that dream but not violently, not with the passionate misery of a repulsed child, as you often did. You cried gently, almost smiling, but tears forming and falling. I struggled to get near you, to comfort you and erase every source of grief. My darling, my love, my heart and life, don’t —oh don’t be sad! Then, although you were still weeping, your smile brightened a little and, with a little sigh, you murmured :
— Oh, Billy, you’ve hurt me so deeply I don’t think I’ll ever get over it!
12
N ELLY’S HUSBAND WAS in Africa, making films and having heart attacks. On the balcony over the deep well of his London studio was a large bed. I lay naked on my back on this bed. Also naked, Nelly sat on the edge of the bed, talking into the telephone. Her free hand affectionately pressed my genitals. She removed it from my genitals and clapped it over the mouthpiece.
— She says I sound different!
Then into the telephone:
— In what way? How different?
If I had known you as well then, Nelly, as I did later, I might have received the flattering implications a little more warily. Not that I leapt to my feet and cheered. I just lay in post-coital drowsiness and felt that it was agreeable to think that I had fucked a change into you.
Nelly finished telephoning, stood up and, in a practical and dainty gesture, placed a folded paper tissue in her crotch to absorb squandered life. She turned her pert smile on where I observed what she was doing.
— I’m not really used to being watched when I’m naked.
Deceit, Nelly! Oriental deception—not hypocrisy. Your Byzantine sexual politics in fact came from China. And the scholarly Chinese Don Juan who instructed you was only one of the men who had long ago accustomed you to being watched when you were naked. In fact, you adored it. I asked:
— Who was that?
— Liz Davis. She’s invited me to a dinner party. Isn’t it amazing, her saying I sounded changed?
The call had been courteously timed. We’d just finished.Fucking Nelly was like fucking a stream. She rippled beneath you. Her body, like her voice, rushed up in little trills of
— I ain’t got no home.
Many rooms.
I sat, half-dressed, smoking on the bed and watched Fay grooming her little son. Savaging the rowdy image of the past she was impeccably maternal. A wistful tale spilled from her lips.
— My mother wanted me to marry this painter—just an ordinary house painter. And I wouldn’t have him. My mother said: ‘he’s your sort. He’s the natural one for you’, but I wouldn’t listen. Well, here I am—and John’s getting famous and—you know—just recently—I keep thinking about that painter.
I found this touching. I interpreted it as nostalgia for a lost, and now irrecoverable, simplicity. But this interpretation, it seemed, was faulty:
— John’s just waiting for me to put a foot wrong. So that he can show me the door. My sister married someone like that painter. When I think about it—it’s so easy for her. She can deceive him right, left and centre and he never notices!
Many rooms.
I found little trophies in each, of fleeting erotic thrill, insight into other life-paths, new perspectives on how we live now in the West. In some I opened tins and gulped their contents. In some I tuned in briefly on the cathode world. I flicked through magazines and books. In none could I bear to establish myself to the extent of linking words with effort or being solitary in the evening. I acknowledged no home butmy forsaken one. Opening hours of the pubs inevitably lured me out to the ersatz home of thick camaraderie. There must have been the odd occasion when virus or exhaustion chained me but, combing as thoroughly as I can that first year of our separation, I cannot retrieve a single evening when I went sober to bed.
11
The First Dream
Y OU CRIED IN that dream but not violently, not with the passionate misery of a repulsed child, as you often did. You cried gently, almost smiling, but tears forming and falling. I struggled to get near you, to comfort you and erase every source of grief. My darling, my love, my heart and life, don’t —oh don’t be sad! Then, although you were still weeping, your smile brightened a little and, with a little sigh, you murmured :
— Oh, Billy, you’ve hurt me so deeply I don’t think I’ll ever get over it!
12
N ELLY’S HUSBAND WAS in Africa, making films and having heart attacks. On the balcony over the deep well of his London studio was a large bed. I lay naked on my back on this bed. Also naked, Nelly sat on the edge of the bed, talking into the telephone. Her free hand affectionately pressed my genitals. She removed it from my genitals and clapped it over the mouthpiece.
— She says I sound different!
Then into the telephone:
— In what way? How different?
If I had known you as well then, Nelly, as I did later, I might have received the flattering implications a little more warily. Not that I leapt to my feet and cheered. I just lay in post-coital drowsiness and felt that it was agreeable to think that I had fucked a change into you.
Nelly finished telephoning, stood up and, in a practical and dainty gesture, placed a folded paper tissue in her crotch to absorb squandered life. She turned her pert smile on where I observed what she was doing.
— I’m not really used to being watched when I’m naked.
Deceit, Nelly! Oriental deception—not hypocrisy. Your Byzantine sexual politics in fact came from China. And the scholarly Chinese Don Juan who instructed you was only one of the men who had long ago accustomed you to being watched when you were naked. In fact, you adored it. I asked:
— Who was that?
— Liz Davis. She’s invited me to a dinner party. Isn’t it amazing, her saying I sounded changed?
The call had been courteously timed. We’d just finished.Fucking Nelly was like fucking a stream. She rippled beneath you. Her body, like her voice, rushed up in little trills of
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