Imago Bird Page 3

  I did have this fantasy about Sheila perhaps using me to find out things about Uncle Bill that she could pass on to her Trotskyite friends. But when I thought about this, it did not seem to matter. I thought—Why shouldn’t she, if we are not in love, and what we are doing is for our own advantage?

  Or even—If it helps to make love.

  However—But if it is difficult, do I love her then?

  I said ‘Perhaps I do love you.’

  She said ‘Love me!’

  Sheila had a way of looking at me when I said things like this as if she were protecting herself from torpedoes. The torpedoes were any words of tenderness that I might launch towards her.

  I thought—For in love, might not the experience be overwhelming and thus castrating too?

  She said ‘Use your hands.’

  I said ‘I am.’

  She said ‘That’s better.’

  I thought—If you don’t feel happy, smile: don’t wait to smile till you feel happy.

  Or—Do you know the story of Miss Paragon and the Belgian Schoolgirls?

  When I did in time manage to make love to Sheila she did become soft, compliant; almost like another person. I thought—One day I will know someone who from the beginning is hot and dusty and like a nut in front of a fire.

  Sheila said ‘Oh God that’s fine!’

  I thought—But in love, O God, one would not be thinking of one’s own performance.

  Sheila put her head back and opened her mouth like people do in films.

  I think I could always make love to Sheila after a time because we distanced ourselves from ourselves and from each other: we were runners coming into the last straight: seeing her head roll, I knew I could pass her. Or we were the judges with our record-books and stop-watches: it was in the performance that there was power.

  I do not know how much in this we were in fact influenced by films. In films there are bodies writhing like caterpillars because there has to be activity in front of cameras: you cannot be still: you cannot portray the nervous system. But men in films do not often seem to have erections. If one wanted to film the thing truly, one would have to go inwards; like a hand finding another hand at the beginning of a journey.

  Sheila opened her eyes and looked at me fiercely; as if she were the figurehead of her ship and were turning and considering embracing it.

  ‘Was that all right for you too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You promise?’

  I said ‘Yes!’

  I thought—You should have learned not to ask that!

  Then when I lay back again I wondered—Does it always have to be such a risk? Would I not rather be picked up, sometimes, and pushed as if in a pram towards the sea —

  I said ‘Don’t go!’

  She said ‘I’m not going to go!’

  She used to sit up on the bedsprings and light a cigarette.

  She said ‘Why don’t you like me to go?’

  I thought—If you picked me up and pushed me, would I drown?

  I said ‘Oh, because I am the tortoise and you are the hare.’

  I thought—Where did that come from? That’s clever!

  When Sheila got to her feet and moved about the room she had that odd bird-like walk of women with no shoes and no clothes on: as if their bodies have not quite got used to being out of water.

  Then she came back to the bedsprings and poked at me with her foot. She said ‘All right. Give!’

  ‘Give what?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  I had wondered—But would I in fact like it, if she tried to get something out of me?

  She said ‘You like that don’t you—’

  I said ‘Tell you what.’

  I thought—It is this that is like being put in a pram and pushed towards the sea?

  She said ‘About your uncle.’

  ‘What about my uncle?’

  ‘Who pays his bills?’

  I said ‘What bills.’

  She said ‘He can’t live as he does on his salary.’

  She stood on my stomach; balancing there on one foot.

  I thought—Is Eros, seen from the bottom, like a female wrestler? Then—This is a game.

  Then—Well men do like this, don’t they?

  I said ‘I swore never to tell—’

  She said ‘Then never do.’

  She stepped off me.

  I thought—Oh dear.

  I could say to Dr Anders—This is why politics is like sex then?

  Sheila said ‘You wouldn’t know about politics if it was under your nose like a smell.’

  I was thinking—But wouldn’t it be better if politicians knew they were in the business as it were for the sake of the smell?

  She came and put her foot on me again.

  I said ‘Ow!’

  Then—‘The Libyans.’

  She said ‘The Libyans!’

  She took her foot off me.

  Then she said ‘What do you mean, the Libyans?’

  She seemed to have been hurt

  I had meant it as a joke—That is where my uncle gets his money from.

  I had been thinking—Well, I suppose it’s true Uncle Bill can’t live as he does on his salary.

  Sheila’s face seemed to have become flattened as if someone had sat on it I was not quite sure if she was still acting, or was anxious because she was not.

  I said ‘Why did you ask me then?’

  I thought I should explain—It just came into my head, a joke about the Libyans!

  She said ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  She went to the window and looked out.

  I was not sure what was happening.

  I had thought of another thing I could say to Dr Anders—If this is the way in which human beings can make love, is it also the way they can alter things—by letting out the things that just come into their heads?

  I said ‘Have you got a pencil?’

  I had at the same time thought—But isn’t there another very interesting thing here, which is that if all politics is like this sort of sex divorced from love, then isn’t it the case that each side wants to be the one that’s lying down, while the other side is on top —

  Sheila said ‘What do you want a pencil for?’

  I said ‘I’ve got too many things coming into my head. I’ve got to write them down.’

  When Sheila came back and stood over me her face still seemed to have been wounded. I thought—But it was you, wasn’t it, who wanted to break up the game?

  Also—Is it only in literature then that you can say two or more things at once?

  And then—There really are girls who like to kick people and people who want to be kicked —

  She said ‘You and the bloody things in your head!’

  I got up and looked in my clothes for a pencil. Then I prowled around the room.

  She said ‘What is it you want to write down?’

  I said ‘That each side of politics is the one that wants to be lying down. But for custom’s sake, each has to pretend that it’s the one that wants to be on top.’

  Then Sheila said ‘Are you using me?’

  I found a pencil. I began writing.

  I said ‘No.’

  Then I thought—Why did she say that?

  I looked up at her.

  I thought—This is what happens when the game stops?

  She said ‘Because don’t.’

  I said ‘And that’s why people are so awful, because they’re never at home in what they like.’

  Sheila was standing like the prow of a ship again: a big girl, shining, with water in her eyes.

  IV

  The party for Mr Perhaia, the Asian or African Prime Minister, was to take place at 10 Downing Street, where Uncle Bill and Aunt Mavis and I were to be driven after we had had supper on trays at Cowley Street. Uncle Bill and Aunt Mavis and Mrs Washbourne often had supper on trays: they would try to time their meals at home in order to coincide with current-affairs programmes on television;
which they took trouble to watch as if by this they might find out what was going on in the world which to some extent they were supposed to be ordering.

  I had been asked to go to the reception for Mr Perhaia I think because there was little social life at Cowley Street in which I could be included, and Uncle Bill and Aunt Mavis must have felt (they were wrong) that I might mind about this. At this reception there were going to be writers and artists, Uncle Bill had said, because Mr Perhaia had himself once written a book upon cultural anthropology, and was thus supposed to like the company of intellectuals. I do not think Uncle Bill now had much time for books himself: I had once been reading in the drawing-room at Cowley Street and he had come up to me and had taken the book out of my hands and had turned the back towards him to look at the title, and then had handed the book back to me as if he were just giving it clearance through the customs.

  In my family I had for some reason always been supposed to be literary: I think this was because of my way of not speaking very much, and when I did, of its having been such a struggle that it had been worth my while to have tried to think of something witty.

  When Uncle Bill had told me about my coming to Mr Perhaia’s party—he had come across me on the landing when I had been trying to get to the bathroom as usual without being seen—he had said—All the medusas and flatworms will be there. This was a reference to a conversation I had had with him some time before, when I had said that it seemed to me that writers and artists were like coelenterates, whose mouths are the same as their anuses. Uncle Bill had said—I must remember that for the Royal Academy dinner. I used to get on quite well like this with Uncle Bill. Of course I tried to charm him, as everyone did, because he was Prime Minister.

  When we left the house at Cowley Street for Mr Perhaia’s party there was a chauffeur and a big black car and a detective going from the back door to the front and jumping in almost as the car was moving. A few people on the pavement were waving and shouting at Uncle Bill: I think it was something to do with Mr Perhaia. Mr Perhaia was either popular or unpopular with regard to Central Africa; I was not sure which; he was temporarily a celebrity. I think politicians get pleasure from all sorts of publicity because they are people who have been brought up to need just to be the centre of attention; and detectives and big black cars and people on the pavement cheering or booing are like the toys in the nursery that their mothers either did or did not give to them.

  I sat on the back seat of the car between Aunt Mavis and Uncle Bill. Mrs Washbourne, it had been made clear, was being driven separately. This was a time when efforts were being made to make Uncle Bill and Aunt Mavis seem happily married. The three of us sat straight-backed in a row; like those toys which have spikes up their arses to make them, I suppose, look upright and pleased and respectable.

  In Downing Street there was another small crowd and flashing lights and a thin sort of cheering. Uncle Bill was to get out first; after Uncle Bill there would come Aunt Mavis who would have to climb out over me; and lastly myself. I had been instructed in all this: there were ways of doing things as there had been in the nursery. When Uncle Bill was on the pavement he appeared not quite to know where he was: as if he had been dumped there like a genie out of his bottle. Thus he could appear somewhat half-witted as well as magical; so people would not envy him. Then he seemed to remember to put a hand out for Aunt Mavis, to express solidarity. When it was my turn to emerge from the car the photographers were paying no attention to me: I was thankful, then sorry: after all, everyone has primitive gratifications. I had never been able to get an answer to the question of what clothes I should wear for the party, so I had on an old brown suit of my father’s. I seemed to come out of it in tufts like celery. Uncle Bill and Aunt Mavis were posing on the pavement with their arms entwined like wisteria. Then we were going through that door and across the hall and down the corridor and it seemed as if it might be proper for us to act a bit dazed like Uncle Bill; banging off furniture as if we were balls on a pin-table; protecting ourselves like schizophrenics from the eyes that they insist are watching them.

  Each time I went to Downing Street I meant to notice more of what it was like inside: but the place was so powerful; you wanted to keep your eyes down so the portraits on the walls would not get you. We went up the stairs. There were so many pictures of men in wigs it was like a brothel. Uncle Bill walked ahead with his feet turned out and that peculiar rolling gait that had made him be so often portrayed in cartoons as a sea-captain: or perhaps more, I thought, like Sheila with no clothes on. He held his hands in his pockets with his thumbs pointing forward; his elbows ready to ward off things like knobs and springs or transvestites that he might bump into on his pin-table.

  The reception was in a drawing-room on the first floor where there were gilt chairs and pillars and Mrs Washbourne at the door in front of us. I thought we had left her in Cowley Street. Mrs Washbourne did in fact sometimes seem to be able to be in two places at once; as if she were a witch, or a part played by two actresses.

  In the blue-and-gilt drawing-room there were about a hundred people, mostly in dinner jackets and evening dress but some rather ostentatiously not: they were standing in twos and threes and looking round, it seemed, to see if they should be part of any group more important than their own; as if this was their job, to be always ready for some aggrandisement. They were talking as if to the group of people they were with but with their eyes and mouths turned towards the door; as if, like adventists, they were waiting for their messiah.

  I thought—But what if God, like Godot, only ever sends a child?

  I took a glass of champagne and drank it quickly and grabbed another as it went past Then I went to a fireplace and put a foot up on the fender and stared down at glowing coals as if I were concentrating on some alchemical experiment there that might make me immune from intruders.

  Proust had made use of this terrible world of grand people who come to parties to rub their legs together and keep themselves polished; who make noises like crickets not for the passing of information nor for love but for the sake of establishing status and location; their calling-songs being those to attract other important insects, their courting songs those to bemuse the opposite sex, their fighting songs those to scare off rivals. By becoming part of this scene and yet standing back from it Proust had made out of it his marvellous work of art: yet what did he feel about the whole activity, did he or did he not love it? Standing by my ring of fire in the gilded drawing-room I thought—With even such a work of art, is it more than protecting yourself against something you dislike yet are attracted to?

  I had once told Dr Anders a story of how I had been walking one day on Hampstead Heath and I had been talking to myself and I had said aloud—Oh I do love you! I had asked Dr Anders—Whom do you think I was talking to? and Dr Anders had said—I thought you said you were talking to yourself.

  Someone took me by the elbow by the fireplace and said ‘Now let’s get you out of that shell, shall we?’

  It was Mrs Washbourne. She looked, as she often did, as if she were the Jack of Clubs. I thought—But, if she is in two places at once, might she be a man in drag?

  I said ‘No, really.’

  She said ‘The shrinking violet!’

  She began pulling me across the room. I thought I might drop down on one hand and hang from her arm, as if I were a child, or her partner in a ballet.

  She said ‘We’re not gorgons you know. We won’t eat you!’

  I wondered what Dr Anders would make of this. Gorgons are medusas, whose mouths are the same as their anuses.

  We arrived at a group of men in a corner who were not wearing dinner jackets and some not even ties. I supposed that this was the artistic lot, brought in for Mr Perhaia.

  ‘This is Bert—’

  ‘Hullo, Bert.’

  For some reason I am called Bert; although I was christened Benjamin Ariel. My surname is Anderson.

  ‘—who lives with Bill and Mavis.’

  ‘Who
lives with Bill and Mavis —?’

  ‘dies for England!’

  They were talking to, or about, Mrs Washbourne. She had closed her eyes and was leaning back like someone trying to solve a crossword puzzle.

  I was on the edge of the group, standing first on one leg and then on the other. I thought—I will slowly topple sideways; like a Tower of Pisa made out of plasticine.

  ‘Tell us the dirt, Connie.’

  ‘I don’t know any dirt.’

  ‘—I’m jutht theventeen—’

  ‘—and never been—’

  ‘—oh don’t say that!’

  ‘—kiththed—’

  ‘—or kinned—’

  ‘—but never less than kind—’

  I had never heard people talk like this before to Mrs Washbourne. I thought I should try to like these people. They were doing some sort of cross-talk act: as if this were the best they could do in the circumstances. But there was something desperate about them: as about the comedian who puts his arm round his own neck and drags himself off the stage.

  ‘Who’s going to be Archbishop of Canterbury, Connie?’

  ‘Are you going to be Archbishop of Canterbury, Connie?’

  ‘Can’t one be a suffragan from having been a suffragette?’

  I did not think I could after all talk to these people. They were like electricity conducted on silver paper. They might curl up and fuse; like the lights going on in the theatre.

  Someone new had come in at the door. It was Mr Perhaia. He was a small man with dark glasses and a white cylindrical hat. He wore a grey smock down to his knees. He began to be led round the gathering by Uncle Bill; who, beside him, was like a huge white child with an Indian nanny.

  I began to dream that I might make friends with Mr Perhaia. When he was introduced to me, he would hold my hand slightly longer than was usual; and I would see behind his eyes something like a bird trying to get out.

  Then we might discuss cultural and anthropological questions; such as the cricket-songs that were the customs of this strange tribe.

  A voice behind me said ‘Like a bird on a tea-tray.’

  I was not quite sure if I had heard this right. I said ‘A tea-tray?’

  There had been one man in the group to whom I had been introduced who had remained slightly apart from the rest: he was wearing a dinner jacket but with a dark blue shirt, he was with a black-haired woman like a film-star. This man had stayed beside me, or slightly behind me, while the others had moved to be somewhere in the line for their introduction to Mr Perhaia.