The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two

He was not taken in. The lonely fever in her black eyes, the muscles showing rodlike in the flesh of her upper arm, made him feel how much she wanted him to go; and he thought, sharp because of the sharpness of his need for her: There’s something unhealthy about her, yes … The word caused him guilt. He accepted it, and allowed his mind, which was over-alert, trying to pin down the cause of his misery, to add: Yes, not clean, dirty. But this fresh criticism surprised him, and he remembered her obsessive care of her flesh, hair, nails and the long hours spent in the bath. Yes, dirty, his rising aversion insisted.

Armed by it, he was able to turn, slowly, to look at her direct, instead of through the cold glass. He was a solid, well-set-up, brushed, washed young man who had stood several inches shorter than she at the wedding a month ago; but with confidence in the manhood which had mastered her freakish adolescence. He now kept on her the pressure of a blue stare both appealing (of which he was not aware) and aggressive – which he meant as a warning. Meanwhile he controlled a revulsion which he knew would vanish if she merely lifted her arms towards him.

‘What do you mean, he might?’ he said again.

After some moments of not-answering, she said, languid, turning her thin hand this way and that: ‘I said, he might.’

This dialogue echoed, for both of them, not only from five minutes before; but from other mornings, when it had been as often as not unspoken. They were on the edge of disaster. But the young husband was late. He looked at his watch, a gesture which said, but unconvincingly, bravado merely: I go out to work while you lie there … Then he about-turned, and went to the door, slowing on his way to it. Stopped. Said: ‘Well in that case I shan’t be back to supper.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, languid. She now lay flat on her back, and waved both hands in front of her eyes to dry nail varnish which, however, was three days old.

He said loudly: ‘Freda! I mean it. I’m not going to …’ He looked both trapped and defiant; but intended to do everything, obviously, to maintain his self-respect, his masculinity, in the face of – but what? Her slow smile across at him was something (unlike everything else she had done since waking that morning) she was quite unaware of. She surely could not be aware of the sheer brutality of her slow, considering, contemptuous smile? For it had invitation in it; and it was this, the unconscious triumph there, that caused him to pale, to begin a stammering: ‘Fre-Fre-Fred-Freda …’ but give up, and leave the room. Abruptly though quietly, considering the force of the horror.

She lay still, listening to his footsteps go down, and the front door closing. Then, without hurrying, she lifted her long thin white legs that ended in ten small pink shields, over the edge of the bed, and stood on them by the window, to watch her husband’s well-brushed head jerking away along the pavement. This was a suburb of London, and he had to get to the City, where he was a clerk-with-prospects: and most of the other people down there were on their way to work. She watched him and them, until at the corner he turned, his face lengthened with anxiety. She indolently waved, without smiling. He stared back as if at a memory of nightmare; so she shrugged and removed herself from the window, and did not see his frantically too-late wave and smile.

She now stood, frowning, in front of the long glass in the new wardrobe: a very tall girl, stooped by her height, all elbows and knees, and even more ridiculous because of the short nightshirt. She stripped this off over her head, taking assurance in a side-glance from full-swinging breasts and a rounded waist; then slipped on a white négligé that had frills all down it and around the neck, from which her head emerged, poised. She now looked much better, like a model, in fact. She brushed her short gleaming black hair, stared at length into the deep anxious eyes, and got back into bed.

Soon she tensed, hearing the front door open, softly; and close, softly again. She listened, as the unseen person also listened and watched; for this was a two-roomed flatlet, converted in a semidetached house. The landlady lived in the flatlet below this one on the ground floor; and the young husband had taken to asking her, casually, every evening, or listening, casually, to easily given information, about the comings and goings in the house and the movements of his wife. But the steps came steadily up towards her, the door opened, very gently, and she looked up, her face bursting into flower as in came a very tall, lank, dark young man. He sat on the bed beside his sister, took her thin hand in his thin hand, kissed it, bit it lovingly, then bent to kiss her on the lips. Their mouths held while two pairs of deep black eyes held each other. Then she shut her eyes, took his lower lip between her teeth, and slid her tongue along it. He began to undress before she let him go; and she asked, without any of the pertness she used for her husband: ‘Are you in a hurry this morning?’

‘Got to get over to a job in Exeter Street.’

An electrician, he was not tied to desk or office.

He slid naked into bed beside his sister, murmuring: ‘Olive Oyl.’

Her long body was pressed against his in a fervour of gratitude for the love name, for it had never received absolution from her husband as it did from this man; and she returned, in as loving a murmur: ‘Popeye.’ Again the two pairs of eyes stared into each other at an inch or so’s distance. His, though deep in bony sockets like hers, were prominent there, the eyeballs rounded under thin, already crinkling, bruised-looking flesh. Hers, however, were delicately outlined by clear white skin, and he kissed the perfected copies of his own ugly eyes, and said, as she pressed towards him: ‘Now, now, Olive Oyl, don’t be in such a hurry, you’ll spoil it.’

‘No, we won’t.’

‘Wait, I tell you.’

‘All right then …’

The two bodies, deeply breathing, remained still a long while. Her hand, on the small of his back, made a soft, circular pressing motion, bringing him inwards. He had his two hands on her hipbones, holding her still. But she succeeded, and they joined, and he said again: ‘Wait now. Lie still.’ They lay absolutely still, eyes closed.

After a while he asked suddenly: ‘Well, did he last night?’

‘Yes.’

His teeth bared against her forehead and he said: ‘I suppose you made him.’

‘Why made him?’

‘You’re a pig.’

‘All right then, how about Alice?’

‘Oh her. Well, she screamed and said: “Stop. Stop.”’

‘Who’s a pig, then?’

She wriggled circularly, and he held her hips still, tenderly murmuring: ‘No, no, no, no.’

Stillness again. In the small bright bedroom, with the suburban sunlight outside, new green curtains blew in, flicking the too-large, too-new furniture, while the long white bodies remained still, mouth to mouth, eyes closed, united by deep soft breaths.

But his breathing deepened; his nails dug into the bones of her hips, he slid his mouth free and said: ‘How about Charlie, then?’

‘He made me scream, too,’ she murmured, licking his throat, eyes closed. This time it was she who held his loins steady, saying: ‘No, no, no, you’ll spoil it’

They lay together, still. A long silence, a long quiet. Then the fluttering curtains roused her, her foot tensed, and she rubbed it delicately up and down his leg. He said, angry: ‘Why did you spoil it then? It was just beginning.’

‘It’s much better afterwards if it’s really difficult.’ She slid and pressed her internal muscles to make it more difficult, grinning at him in challenge, and he put his hands around her throat in a half-mocking, half-serious pressure to stop her, simultaneously moving in and out of her with exactly the same emulous, taunting but solicitous need she was showing – to see how far they both could go. In a moment they were pulling each other’s hair, biting, sinking fingers between thin bones, and then, just before the explosion, they pulled apart at the same moment, and lay separate, trembling.

‘We only just made it,’ he said, fond, uxorious, stroking her hair.

‘Yes. Careful now, Fred.’

They slid together again.

‘Now it will be just perfect,’ she said, content, mouth against his throat.

The two bodies, quivering with strain, lay together, jerking involuntarily from time to time. But slowly they quietened. Their breathing, jagged at first, smoothed. They breathed together. They had become one person, abandoned against and in each other, silent and gone.

A long time, a long time, a long …

A car went past below in the usually silent street, very loud, and the young man opened his eyes and looked into the relaxed gentle face of his sister.

‘Freda.’

‘Ohhh.’

‘Yes, I’ve got to go, it must be nearly dinnertime.’

‘Wait a minute.’

‘No, or we’ll get excited again, we’ll spoil everything.’

They separated gently, but the movements both used, the two hands gentle on each other’s hips, easing their bodies apart, were more like a fitting together. Separate, they lay still, smiling at each other, touching each other’s face with fingertips, licking each other’s eyelids with small cat licks.

‘It gets better and better.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you go this time?’

‘You know.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘You know. Where you were.’

‘Yes. Tell me.’

‘Can’t.’

‘I know. Tell me.”

‘With you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are we one person, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

Silence again. Again he roused himself.

‘Where are you working this afternoon?’

‘I told you. It’s a baker’s shop in Exeter Street.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘I’m taking Alice to the pictures.’

She bit her lips, punishing them and him, then sunk her nails into his shoulder.

‘Well my darling, I just make her, that’s all, I make her come, she wouldn’t understand anything better.’

He sat up, began dressing. In a moment he was a tall sober youth in a dark blue sweater. He slicked down his hair with the young husband’s hairbrushes, as if he lived here, while she lay naked, watching.

He turned and smiled, affectionate and possessive, like a husband. There was something in her face, a lost desperation, that made his harden. He crouched beside her, scowling, baring his teeth, gently fitting his thumb on her windpipe, looking straight into her dark eye. She breathed hoarsely, and coughed. He let his thumb drop.

‘What’s that for, Fred?’

‘You swear you don’t do that with Charlie?’

‘How could I?’

‘What do you mean? You could show him.’

‘But why? Why do you think I want to? Fred!’

The two pairs of deep eyes, in bruised flesh, looked lonely with uncertainty into each other.

‘How should I know what you want?’

‘You’re stupid,’ she said suddenly, with a small maternal smile.

He dropped his head, with a breath like a groan, on to her breasts, and she stroked his head gently, looking over it at the wall, blinking tears out of her eyes. She said: ‘He’s not coming home to supper tonight, he’s angry.’

‘Is he?’

‘He keeps talking about you. He asked today if you were coming.’

‘Why, does he guess?’ He jerked his head up off the soft support of her bosom, and stared, his face bitter, into hers. ‘Why? You haven’t been stupid now, have you?’

‘No, but Fred … but after you’ve been with me I suppose I’m different …’

‘Oh Christ!’ He jumped up, desperate, beginning movements of flight, anger, hate, escape – checking each one. ‘What do you want, then? You want me to make you come, then? Well, that’s easy enough, isn’t it, if that’s all you want. All right then, lie down and I’ll do it, and I’ll make you come till you cry, if that’s all …’ He was about to strip off his clothes; but she shot up from the bed, first hastily draping herself in her white frills, out of an instinct to protect what they had. She stood by him, as tall as he, holding his arms down by his sides. ‘Fred, Fred, Fred, darling, my sweetheart, don’t spoil it, don’t spoil it now when …’

‘When what?’

She met his fierce look with courage, saying steadily: ‘Well, what do you expect, Fred? He’s not stupid, is he? I’m not a … he makes love to me, well, he is my husband, isn’t he? And … well, what about you and Alice, you do the same, it’s normal, isn’t it? Perhaps if you and I didn’t have Charlie and Alice for coming, we wouldn’t be able to do it our way, have you thought of that?’

‘Have I thought of that! Well, what do you think?’

‘Well, it’s normal, isn’t it?’

‘Normal,’ he said, with horror, gazing into her loving face for reassurance against the word. ‘Normal, is it? Well, if you’re going to use words like that …’ Tears ran down his face, and she kissed them away in a passion of protective love.

‘Well, why did you say I must marry him? I didn’t want to, you said I should.’

‘I didn’t think it would spoil us.’

‘But it hasn’t, has it, Fred? Nothing could be like us. How could it? You know that from Alice, don’t you, Fred?’ Now she was anxiously seeking for his reassurance. They stared at each other, then their eyes closed, and they laid their cheeks together and wept, holding down each other’s amorous hands, for fear that what they were might be cheapened by her husband, his girl.

He said: ‘What were you beginning to say?’

‘When?’

‘Just now. You said, don’t spoil it now when.’

‘I get scared.’

‘Why?’

‘Suppose I get pregnant? Well, one day I must, it’s only fair, he wants kids. Suppose he leaves me – he gets in the mood to leave me, like today. Well, he feels something … it stands to reason. It doesn’t matter how much I try with him, you know he feels it … Fred?’

‘What?’

‘There isn’t a law against it, is there?’

‘Against what?’

‘I mean a brother and sister can share a place, no one would say anything.’

He stiffened away from her: ‘You’re crazy.’

‘Why am I? Why, Fred?’

‘You’re just not thinking, that’s all.’

‘What are we going to do, then?’

He didn’t answer and she sighed, letting her head lie on his shoulder beside his head, so that he felt her open eyes and their wet lashes on his neck.

‘We can’t do anything but go on like this, you’ve got to see that.’

Then I’ve got to be nice to him, otherwise he’s going to leave me, and I don’t blame him.’

She wept silently; and he held her, silent.

‘It’s so hard – I just wait for when you come, Fred, and I have to pretend all the time.’

They stood silent, their tears drying, their hands linked. Slowly they quieted, in love and in pity, in the same way that they quieted in their long silences when the hungers of the flesh were held by love on the edge of fruition so long that they burned out and up and away into a flame of identity.

At last they kissed, brother-and-sister kisses, gentle and warm.

‘You’re going to be late, Fred. You’ll get the sack.’

‘I can always get another job.’

‘I can always get another husband …’

‘Olive Oyl … but you look really good in that white naygleejay.’

‘Yes, I’m just the type that’s no good naked, I need clothes.’

‘That’s right – I must go.’

‘Coming tomorrow?’

‘Yes. About ten?’

‘Yes.’

‘Keep him happy, then. Ta-ta.’

‘Look after yourself- look after yourself, my darling, look after yourself…’

Homage for Isaac Babel

The day I had promised to take Catherine down to visit my young friend Philip at his school in the country, we were to leave at eleven, but she arrived at nine. Her blue dress was new, and so were her fashionable shoes. Her hair had just been done. She looked more than ever like a pink and gold Renoir girl who expects everything from life.

Catherine lives in a white house overlooking the sweeping brown tides of the river. She helped me clean up my flat with a devotion which said that she felt small flats were altogether more romantic than large houses. We drank tea, and talked mainly about Philip, who, being fifteen, has pure stern tastes in everything from food to music. Catherine looked at the books lying around his room, and asked if she might borrow the stories of Isaac Babel to read on the train. Catherine is thirteen. I suggested she might find them difficult, but she said: ‘Philip reads them, doesn’t he?’

During the journey I read newspapers and watched her pretty frowning face as she turned the pages of Babel, for she was determined to let nothing get between her and her ambition to be worthy of Philip.

At the school, which is charming, civilized, and expensive, the two children walked together across green fields, and I followed, seeing how the sun gilded their bright friendly heads turned towards each other as they talked. In Catherine’s left hand she carried the stories of Isaac Babel.

After lunch we went to the pictures. Philip allowed it to be seen that he thought going to the pictures just for the fun of it was not worthy of intelligent people, but he made the concession, for our sakes. For his sake we chose the more serious of the two films that were showing in the little town. It was about a good priest who helped criminals in New York. His goodness, however, was not enough to prevent one of them from being sent to the gas chamber; and Philip and I waited with Catherine in the dark until she had stopped crying and could face the light of a golden evening.

At the entrance of the cinema the doorman was lying in wait for anyone who had red eyes. Grasping Catherine by her suffering arm, he said bitterly: ‘Yes, why are you crying? He had to be punished for his crime, didn’t he?’ Catherine stared at him, incredulous. Philip rescued her by saying with disdain: ‘Some people don’t know right from wrong even when it’s demonstrated to them.’ The doorman turned his attention to the next red-eyed emerger from the dark; and we went on together to the station, the children silent because of the cruelty of the world.

Finally Catherine said, her eyes wet again: ‘I think it’s all absolutely beastly, and I can’t bear to think about it.’ And Philip said: ‘But we’ve got to think about it, don’t you see, because if we don’t it’ll just go on and on, don’t you see?’

In the train going back to London I sat beside Catherine. She had the stories open in front of her, but she said: ‘Philip’s awfully lucky. I wish I went to that school. Did you notice that girl who said hullo to him in the garden? They must be great friends. I wish my mother would let me have a dress like that, it’s not fair.’

‘I thought it was too old for her.’

‘Oh did you?’

Soon she bent her head again over the book, but almost at once lifted it to say: ‘Is he a very famous writer?’

‘He’s a marvellous writer, brilliant, one of the very best.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, for one thing, he’s so simple. Look how few words he uses, and how strong his stories are.’

‘I see. Do you know him? Does he live in London?’

‘Oh no, he’s dead.’

‘Oh. They why did you – I thought he was alive, the way you talked.’

‘I’m sorry, I suppose I wasn’t thinking of him as dead.’

‘When did he die?’

‘He was murdered. About twenty years ago, I suppose.’

‘Twenty years.’ Her hands began the movement of pushing the book over to me, but then relaxed. ‘I’ll be fourteen in November,’ she stated, sounding threatened, while her eyes challenged me.

I found it hard to express my need to apologize, but before I could speak, she said, patiently attentive again: ‘You said he was murdered?’

‘Yes.’

‘I expect the person who murdered him felt sorry when he discovered he had murdered a famous writer.’

‘Yes, I expect so.’

‘Was he old when he was murdered?’

‘No, quite young really.’

‘Well, that was bad luck, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was bad luck.’

‘Which do you think is the very best story here? I mean, in your honest opinion, the very very best one.’

I chose the story about killing the goose. She read it slowly, while I sat waiting, wishing to take it from her, wishing to protect this charming little person from Isaac Babel.

When she had finished she said: ‘Well, some of it I don’t understand. He’s got a funny way of looking at things. Why should a man’s legs in boots look like girls?’ She finally pushed the book over at me, and said: ‘I think it’s all morbid.’

‘But you have to understand the kind of life he had. First, he was a Jew in Russia. That was bad enough. Then his experience was all revolution and civil war and …’

But I could see these words bouncing off the clear glass of her fiercely denying gaze; and I said: ‘Look, Catherine, why don’t you try again when you’re older? Perhaps you’ll like him better then?’

She said gratefully: ‘Yes, perhaps that would be best. After all, Philip is two years older than me, isn’t he?’

A week later I got a letter from Catherine.

Thank you very much for being kind enough to take me to visit Philip at his school. It was the most lovely day in my whole life. I am extremely grateful to you for taking me. I have been thinking about the Hoodlum Priest. That was a film which demonstrated to me beyond any shadow of doubt that Capital Punishment is a Wicked Thing, and I shall never forget what I learned that afternoon, and the lessons of it will be with me all my life. I have been meditating about what you said about Isaac Babel, the famed Russian short story writer, and I now see that the conscious simplicity of his style is what makes him, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the great writer that he is, and now in my school compositions I am endeavouring to emulate him so as to learn a conscious simplicity which is the only basis for a really brilliant writing style. Love, Catherine. P.S. Has Philip said anything about my party? I wrote but he hasn’t answered. Please find out if he is coming or if he just forgot to answer my letter. I hope he comes, because sometimes I feel I shall die if he doesn’t. P.P.S. Please don’t tell him I said anything, because I should die if he knew. Love, Catherine.

Outside the Ministry

As Big Ben struck ten, a young man arrived outside the portals of the Ministry, and looked sternly up and down the street. He brought his wrist up to eye level and frowned at it, the very picture of a man kept waiting, a man who had expected no less. His arm dropped, elbow flexed stiff, hand at mid-thigh level, palm downwards, fingers splayed. There the hand made a light movement, balanced from the wrist, as if sketching an arpeggio, or saying goodbye to the pavement – or greeting it? An elegant little gesture, full of charm, given out of an abundant sense of style to the watching world. Now he changed his stance, and became a man kept waiting, but maintaining his dignity. He was well dressed in a dark suit which, with a white shirt and a small grey silk bow tie that seemed positively to wish to fly away altogether, because of the energy imparted to it by his person, made a conventional enough pattern of colour – dark grey, light grey, white. But his black glossy skin, setting of his soberness, made him sparkle, a dandy – he might just as well have been wearing a rainbow.

Before he could frown up and down the street again, another young African crossed the road to join him. They greeted each other, laying their palms together, then shaking hands; but there was a conscious restraint in this which the first seemed to relish, out of his innate sense of drama, but made the second uneasy.

‘Good morning, Mr Chikwe.’

‘Mr Mafente! Good morning!’

Mr Mafente was a large smooth young man, well dressed too, but his clothes on him were conventional European clothes, remained suit, striped shirt, tie; and his gestures had none of the in-built, delighting self-parody of the other man’s. He was suave, he was dignified, he was calm; and this in spite of a situation which Mr Chikwe’s attitude (magisterial, accusing) said clearly was fraught with the possibilities of evil.