I felt myself glaring at her, in disbelief. “Don’t you ever get tired?”
“What do you want me to do? I like fucking. I like fucking with you. Amazing, isn’t it? Poor old Scrooge, he can’t accept the good things life offers him.” Her gorgeous amber-hued eyes glowed at me. I felt I had never seen anything quite so beautiful in all my life. I inclined my head and pressed my lips reverentially to her hand.
These antics continued for several days, all heady and new. I didn’t need any encouragement, almost felt I was receiving an education. I found myself confronting a sort of prurience in myself, confirming something I had always known: I am no sexual explorer. For instance, it gave me no great pleasure to have to penetrate her from behind, whilst she straddled the floor like a dog and exposed her odoriferous rump. Call me a prude, but I have no great regard for such practices.
In the evenings, after these sexual marathons, we ate plenty of beef and seafood and salad, then slept like Trojans.
After a week I was exhausted. By the seventh day, the mere sight of her made me feel like a galleon slave at the approach of the Empress.
VIII
Finally, we had the post-mortem.
“I think your feelings for me have abated somewhat,” she said.
“I’m tired, I suppose.”
“It’s so much more than that, Chuck. Isn’t it?”
“It’s exhaustion.”
“No. It’s matter.”
I looked at her, interested in spite of myself. “What do you mean by that?”
“The inherent imperfection of matter.” She flashed a sudden smile. “The old dualist problem. The body is the abode of the incarcerated soul, doomed to wait for its release. Every sexual act, even within the bonds of marriage, is a spiritual transgression.”
“Are you serious?”
“The way I see sex is, it’s a degrading act between two people looking for misplaced ecstasy. In the end, the unfortunate by-product of sex is another imprisoned soul subject to the very same pull of Lucifer; and so the world of matter prolongs itself, like an alcoholic who can’t stop drinking.”
“Does sex really have to be so very degrading? I mean, are you sure you’re not exaggerating all this. Is it really so bad, so awful?”
Archie pursed her lips. “Look. For a week we fucked each other’s brains out. Now what? What is there between us?”
“Physical intimacy?”
“No. When you met me you thought me wonderful. You said so to Jimmy. You admired me. Now I’m no longer any use to you. You don’t even like me particularly.”
“I do like you perfectly well, Archie. But it’s all been a bit impersonal, hasn’t it?”
“Chuck, I don’t think you’ve ever felt for any woman what you feel for me. You have to be much more honest emotionally if you want to avoid the fate of millions of your fellow Englishmen. You know, all those sad blokes down the pub drinking bitter
and pretending they care about the cricket scores.”
That was the last meaningful conversation we had for a long time. The only tangible result of the week was that my stomach seemed flatter and I had to take my belt in a notch.
Soon I was packed and gone. London received me in its cool, disinterested embrace. I was back on Pudding Island, eating muffins and drinking Darjeeling with acquaintances all apparently eager to discuss David Hare’s latest play. There were chestnuts roasting outside the British Museum and, on every street corner, free newspapers stuffed with information about those fascinating princes Harry and Will, the rigors of Afghanistan and Robbie Williams’s Ferrari collection.
Oh dear, oh fuck! What a load of second-hand nonsense.
I always wanted the world to be a little wilder than this.
IX
The trouble with sexual experiments, however consensual, is that they tend to destroy friendships.
I didn’t see Jimmy and Archie for about a year and a half after the events I have related. Then I bumped into Jimmy in Berlin, at an art fair. By then Jimmy and Archie had divorced, and Archie had spent several months living in Sai Baba’s ashram in India, before coming back to Europe, weighed down by dubious spiritual baggage.
Jimmy’s attitude to me was vaguely hostile, but not as much as I’d expected. I ate a hell of a lot of humble pie, while he stood there smiling at me then cut me off in the middle of my apologetic ramblings.
“I knew what she was planning all along, Chuck. She’d already told me she liked you.”
“She had?”
“Yeah. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist her. She said you were perfect because you wouldn’t get too involved. Or pester her afterwards. The perfect English gentleman. She had you figured, Chuck.”
“So you really knew?”
“Kind of.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Who cares? It’s all old hat now.”
Nothing had changed, in fact. There was still me in my moleskin trousers and scuffed brogues, and there was Jimmy, the great glittering pretend-shark, with a bloodless wound somewhere about his person.
“Were you very disappointed when it all messed up?”
He looked at me, an astonished smile on his face. “Me? Of course not! I was fucking relieved, man! I was sick of all the games, the whole mental sex thing. Women are players. They analyze the game stats. Men just want to win and get it over with. I’m no different from all the rest.”
“How is Archie?”
“Oh. Fucking crazy, of course! The divorce has been a hell of a ride.”
“Must have cost you a bit?”
“It did. I had to give her the house in Sardinia. She’s living there now. I’m still picking up the tab. She’s pretty well going nuts, I reckon.”
“Poor Archie,” I said, surprising myself. “So do you miss your life there in Sardinia?”
“To be honest I couldn’t stand the place. All that stinky old cheese, peasants on mopeds. Fucking creepy, wasn’t it?” I sensed his wound again, carefully hidden under his crumpled linen Armani suit. “What about you? Any last thoughts about Archie?”
His question set me off. At once I was back in that bed by the window, the low sunlight pouring in: Archie, her honey-colored skin, the little soft hairs round her belly-button. I felt myself quickening at the very thought of her.
“I’d like to see Archie some time. I grew to like Archie very much.”
He smirked, distinctly ill-at-ease. “She told me you didn’t like her very much at all, actually.”
“She did?”
“You were relieved to get the hell out of there. That’s what she said.”
“Yeah, but given the situation. I was racked with guilt, Jimmy.”
He came in closer, his pale eyebrows beetling. He said, “So you felt you did wrong, did you?”
“Of course I did. But she threw herself at me. I…”
“Stop!” He nodded at a good-looking blonde making her way towards us, a ferocious grin on her fake-tan face. “There’s my new wife right there. You want to meet her?”
“No offense, Jimmy, but I’ve got to go, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t worry, Chuck. This one likes fucking. Physically.”
Before I could slip away, she’d pulled up in front of us. She was Californian, with a good body, a frightening level of earnestness and an interest in yoga and macrobiotics. All this came out in the first two minutes.
“I feel we’ve met somewhere before,” I said.
“No, no, no!” she cried, grasping my arm fiercely as if to show me what a tactile person she was. “You’re getting me confused with someone else out there. And I’m very typically Californian. I mean this is actually real blonde hair!”
“Oh yeah, that’s real blonde hair all right!” Jimmy confirmed, with a grin.
“But apart from that there’s not so much that stands out about me.”
“Oh I don’t know about that,” said Jimmy, giving her rump a little playful slap. She shrieked with delight, baring her teeth in a way that would have provoked an attack among chimpanzees. Then said to me, without irony: “He’s so cute! I just love Danny de Vito types. Short, overweight professionals.” Pecking him on the cheek, she confided further: “You know he’s the kind of guy who can’t leave the airport without buying you a pair of diamond studs.”
Jimmy looked at me. “So, where are you off to in such a hurry? Can’t you stay and have dinner with us at least?”
“Yeah!” his wife cried. “Come On! Have Dinner With Us!”
I glanced at Jimmy, and it occurred to me that he looked old, tired, gone to seed, with thrombotic cheeks and watering eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get home and pack.”
“Oh yeah, where you going?” his wife asked.
Their faces dropped like blinds when I told them. “It’s been on my mind for a while. I think it’s time I went back to Sardinia.”
X
I never expected to go back to the Cathar pavilion, but what one expects is largely worthless, in my experience.
After the plane had touched down, as I crossed the tarmac into the terminal building I was already feeling the island’s powerful enchantment. The low-slung hills seemed to brood against the evening sky, and the air was pungent with wild herbs. A flock of mysterious birds arrowed through the fading light.
Standing in line by the passport control, I noticed a series of swallows’ nests—encrusted, homely balls under the eaves of the main building. One of the nests had fallen and dashed itself against the ground. It lay in smithereens all round our feet, covered in crawling insects. On the wall I counted a straight line of seven green moths, like a motif taken from a Carey Mortimer fresco. Beneath them lurked a tiny lizard, but indecision marred its progress, and it did not move.
By the time I had picked up my suitcase, rented a car and stopped off for a snack it was approaching midnight. I had not told Archie I was coming. In fact I had specifically not told Archie I was coming, otherwise I could of course have telephoned. When you forewarn people, you give them the chance of acting the hypocrite. Or of saying no.
But it was a bit much arriving unannounced at two in the morning. Wasn’t it?
In the end, that was precisely how it turned out.
I left the luggage in the boot and walked through a jumble of tiny, dark lanes under a yellow, oversized moon. Thousands of moths were bombarding the metal covers of the streetlights with a sickeningly insistent sound, like tiny fingers against drums.
The abandoned piazzas, the shuttered houses, all seemed to be under the spell of this infernal sound. I erupted in goose bumps, then forced myself to stand there and watch the moths. They traced concentric circles in the air, like a Paul Nash painting of dogfights over Kent.
I realized what it all reminded me of. Chimes. Buddhist gongs. Archie in a white toga on the terrace—the sexualization of enlightenment?
I stood on a corner, gazing up and muttering to myself until I noticed a man in a singlet smoking out of a window. He did not acknowledge me, but must have found me strange. I walked on, embarrassed.
Towards the top of the town I saw the white dome of Jimmy’s house, now Archie’s. It glowed under the moon. Her window was lit, or at least there was a lit window and I assumed it must be hers. This cheered me greatly, as I had not wanted to make my entrance as a sort of Walter de la Mare traveller beating on the door of an empty, preternatural house.
There was a bell but it seemed rude to use it at that late hour. Instead I picked up some pebbles and began to throw them at the window. After a couple of direct hits, a figure appeared on the edge of one of the terraces. Archie, with her hair unkempt, like Cassandra on the battlements.
“I told you, clear off! Scram! Got it?”
“Archie. It’s me! Chuck!”
“Chuck! What are you doing here?”
“I’m not quite sure at the moment. Can I come in?”
“Yes, of course. Why didn’t you call?”
“I didn’t have time,” I said somewhat illogically. “Can I come in please? I’m shattered.”
It took five minutes for her to come down. “Sorry,” she said. “Bloody stairs.” As she walked into the lit-up hall I realized something had changed about her. She looked tired and sad, in a slightly grotty dressing gown. Gone was the femme fatale, but then what woman can keep it up round the clock?
“How are you, Archie?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to see how you were.”
“Is that all? I hope Jimmy didn’t send you.”
“Where can I sleep?”
“Not with me.”
“Of course not.”
“What do you mean, of course not? We used to sleep together, didn’t we?”
“Yes, but only for a week. And that was a year ago.”
A weary expression crossed her face. “I’m actually quite glad you’re here. Do you know that?”
“Who did you think I was?”
“Oh some Australian berk who keeps pestering me.”
I didn’t ask her anything else for the time being. She led me into one of the guest rooms, then, after a bit of idle conversation, said good night.
The bed was gritty with breadcrumbs or sand or both, and the sheets had been drenched in sweat on a few occasions. They smelled of feet, but I was too tired to care. It felt absolutely right that I should be there. I lay there for a while, wiggling my toes under those unclean sheets with a real sense of achievement. As yet I didn’t know why.
All I could say with certainty was that I was here to do good.
XI
I was woken up at a quarter past seven by Archie standing at the foot of the bed.
“Do you want coffee?” she said.
My eyelids opened like lead coffin-lids. “Coffee?” Her question seemed absurd, as if she’d offered me some roast chicken.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting toast and jam, being a bit of an English chap. Oh but of course, how could I forget? You like a cooked breakfast. You’re a bacon man, aren’t you? With poached eggs and devilled kidneys?”
“Archie! What are you doing?”
She blinked. “Oh I don’t know. I’m bored. I couldn’t sleep.” She sat down on the bed with a sigh. “Everything is so difficult now.”
I looked round, taking in the cobwebs and dust everywhere. An abandoned, half-filled cup of tea in a corner had gone rank, covered in a film of green mold. This tendency was replicated on the terrace, which had grown a covering of moss. The once-pristine plunge-pool now looked more like a garden pond suitable for goldfish.