I got up restlessly, moved to the window and tilted the slats of the blinds so that I could stare across the dark park to
the lights of Queens. The thought of my ambition had reminded me of Cornelius again. What did I feel towards Cornelius now?
An exasperated dislike? No, not even that. Once long ago I had hated him but that white-hot hatred had burnt up all emotion
and left only the scorched scars of indifference. Scott had made sure of that. Scott had understood that a man makes mistakes
when he’s under the influence of hatred, just as he makes mistakes when he’s under the influence of love. Scott had made it
clear to me that there was no room in my life for the violent extremes of emotion, and anyway Scott was fond of Cornelius
and found him amusing. Cornelius had been very good to Scott, a fact which meant nothing to me, but of course it was not surprising
that Scott should feel grateful.
The truth was Cornelius was just an object to me now, a little ivory figure retreating before me upon the chessboard, and
one day soon I’d be able to reach across that board, pick him up and toss him into the garbage can along with his grandsons.
Would I then feel some emotion? Yes, I’d probably feel the most acute relief that the long game had finally been concluded,
and then …
Then
I’d be able to set aside my fear of death at last, then I’d be able to lead a normal life—
The telephone rang.
‘Hi, Scott. Cornelius – no relax! I’m not about to haul you over here for a game of chess – I know you’re getting ready for
your vacation. I just wanted to say have a good time and send me a card if you get the chance, and … say, how about telling
me where you’re going? You’re always so close-mouthed about your vacations!’
‘California.’ I often lied to Cornelius about my destination because I didn’t want him dragging me back to the office if some
unforeseen crisis arose.
‘That sounds nice! And November’s a good time to go chasing the sun.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay. Well … that’s all, I guess. So long and good luck.’
Scott said goodbye and vanished. I hung up the phone, and wondered with a detached intellectual curiosity whether it was abnormal
to
feel such an absence of emotion. Then I decided that abnormal or not, lack of emotion was safe. It merely proved I was totally
in control of my life.
I went to bed and dreamed I was halfway through a bottle of scotch and smashing a bloodstained faceless head against a wall.
[9]
I was alive. I had cast aside the dead weight of Scott’s persona and my spirits were soaring as high as the Pan Am 707 which
swept me off the tarmac in New York and climbed up and up into the coruscating sunlight of my liberation. The bank was far
away now, as far away as the recluse’s life I had to lead off-duty to recuperate from my working hours, and as far away as
the Middle Ages where myth and reality had mingled so effortlessly in that war-torn, plague-infested, death-ridden landscape.
I was in the twentieth-century present, surrounded by twentieth-century technology. I was a twentieth-century American with
Time
magazine in my hands and a pretty young stewardess at my elbow.
‘Can I get you a drink now, sir?’
I smiled at her, and as she turned a delicious shade of pink I suddenly wanted all the pleasure I could get; I wanted champagne
foaming from a gold-necked bottle, I wanted caviar, I wanted a king-sized bed with a mirror above it in the ceiling, I wanted
six women one after the other, I wanted to spend a thousand dollars a minute for twenty-four hours straight, I wanted each
one of the Seven Deadly Sins gift-wrapped in gilt and garnished with a scarlet bow.
I laughed at myself and the pretty stewardess laughed with me, not understanding but responding instinctively to my mood.
‘How about that champagne?’ she said, remembering I had declined champagne earlier.
‘Make it a ginger ale. Say, how long’s your stop-over in Puerto Rico?’
It was six o’clock that evening when I reached the Sheraton Hotel in San Juan and checked into a suite overlooking the ocean.
The lobby, bedroom and bathroom covered a bigger area than my New York apartment. After a shower I towelled myself down by
the windows facing the sea and thought how much ascetic, intellectual Scott would have detested the plush American hotels
overseas, but I was entertained by their twentieth-century opulence and the brash vulgarity of those guests celebrating life
as crudely as they knew how.
I went downstairs to the bar.
A brunette of uncertain age but certain obvious charms was killing time drinking daiquiris before heading to the airport to
take a plane home to New Orleans. I offered to pick up the tab for the drinks and was accepted. Two hours later after I had
seen her into a cab I only just had time to run back to my room to straighten the bed before the pretty stewardess called
me from the lobby on the house-phone.
The stewardess had to leave me by nine o’clock the next morning, but by nine-thirty I was sunning myself by the pool. I wore
my tightest, whitest pair of swimming shorts, but I needn’t have troubled to make myself so noticeable. All I had to do was
lie on my chaise in the sun and admire the originality of all the women who devised ways of striking up a conversation.
I spent the day much as I had spent the night, and spent the following night much as I had spent the previous day. Then I
checked out of the Sheraton and checked into the Hilton so that I had a change of pool and a new chaise. By this time I had
convinced myself I was in the midst of a highly enjoyable vacation. So far all the women had complimented me, and whenever
it had become necessary to gloss over my imperfections I had delivered my word-perfect excuse with a smoothness any con-man
would have envied.
‘I believe in conserving my energy … I don’t want to wind up worn out before I’m halfway through my vacation.’
The absurd words would have made me laugh if the situation had been less awkward, and when every woman accepted the absurdity
unquestioningly I often did laugh, particularly when admiring remarks followed about my technique and stamina and consideration
for my partner; one woman even asked if I had any tips she could pass on to her lover back home. However, when I laughed the
women just thought I was being modest, so I got away with my deception time after time and emerged from each encounter with
nothing worse than a well-exercised body, and a vague incredulity that so many women could be so easily deceived.
And then one afternoon I found myself in bed with a chaste-looking school-teacher – I was always more attracted to the ones
who looked chaste – and within minutes I knew not only that her chastity was as much an illusion as my competence, but that
she was quite sharp enough to laugh outright at any garbage I might try to hand her when the time came for an explanation.
It was not an unknown situation for me to find myself in, but it was a situation which never failed to appal me. No con-man
ever
enjoys being unmasked. The disaster would no doubt have reduced many men to impotence, but on me it had exactly the opposite
effect. As soon as I realized I was on the brink of being found out, my extreme tension not only made a climax out of the
question but made me afraid to withdraw for fear my lack of satisfaction would be so obvious.
‘What’s your problem?’ said the woman when she was well satisfied and had obviously had enough.
‘No problem. I …’ I couldn’t make up my mind what to do. With a less experienced woman I could have tried faking it; that
usually worked although the women had probably speculated afterwards about the physical evidence – or the lack of it. Then
I wondered if I could have some convenient attack of sciatica – or perhaps trouble with a disc which slipped at inconvenient
moments. I lay there propped on my elbows, sweating profusely, breathing rapidly and no doubt looking as thoroughly ridiculous
as I felt, and then before I could make up my mind how I should extricate myself from the mess, the woman herself took charge
of the situation.
‘Let’s call it a day, shall we?’ she said, pushing two competent hands firmly against my chest. ‘I’ve met guys like you before.
You’re not interested in your partner – you don’t have the time. You’re too busy worrying over your ego and wondering why
the hell you can’t get all the fancy equipment to work properly.’
I somehow managed to pull out and drag the sheet up to cover myself, but I was trembling and it was hard to make even the
simplest movements. I was also in considerable physical discomfort. I managed to say without looking at her: ‘I’m satisfied
with the equipment. If you’re not, shop around,’ and then I blundered away into the bathroom to relieve myself. It was several
minutes before I could summon the nerve to go back into the bedroom, but when I eventually opened the door I saw the bed was
empty and I knew I was alone again in yet another hotel room a long way from home, unbearably alone, unbearably humiliated,
unbearably conscious of an unbearable failure.
I wanted to rest but I couldn’t. I got dressed and went right down to the nearest bar and picked up another woman. Then I
went through the whole performance again, except that this time the woman went away happy and unsuspecting. But I was still
alone, still a failure. I said aloud to myself: ‘It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.’ But I knew that it did. I wanted
to get drunk then, but I knew that was the one escape-route I must never try, so I went down to the casino instead and dropped
a thousand dollars at the tables. It took me
all night to lose the money, but I didn’t mind that because I didn’t want to go back to that empty room.
I felt glad I was due to leave the hotel the next morning to join my cruise ship at the docks. As I knew from past experience,
it was almost impossible to feel alone on a cruise ship. That was one of the reasons why I so often spent my vacations at
sea; the other reason, of course, was that a cruise provided unlimited opportunities for casual sexual connections.
Blotting out the memory of my disastrous encounter with the school-teacher I checked out of the hotel, took a cab to the docks
and boarded the snow-white European ship with a determination to recapture my high spirits and salvage my vacation.
My stateroom on A-deck seemed more than adequate for nocturnal adventures. Checking the stewardess I found her unattractive,
but undaunted I unpacked my suitcase and strolled back to the promenade deck to inspect the public rooms. The bars where I
would be consuming vast amounts of ginger ale were plush, the ballroom large but not cavernous, the inevitable casino well-appointed
but discreet. The passengers as always would be an unknown quantity, but since the cruise was short it was likely that a high
percentage of them would be young; I always avoided the longer cruises dominated by the geriatric set.
I had just decided with satisfaction that I could spend ten entertaining days and ten equally rewarding nights aboard this
particular ship when a brace of well-manicured college girls asked me the way to the aft bar and I had to pause to get my
bearings. Ahead of me I could see the main hall, and after I had dispatched the girls up the nearest stairway I moved on towards
the purser’s office with the idea of cashing a traveller’s cheque.
The main hall was crowded as passengers were still boarding, and as I stepped sideways to avoid a seaman wheeling a baggage
cart I bumped into a woman who was standing in front of a notice board with her back to me. Her huge straw hat was tipped
askew by the collision, and as the strap of her bag slipped off her shoulder she turned with annoyance to face me.
‘Excuse me!’ I exclaimed. ‘I—’
The words died.
Scott tried to step in front of me but Scott was in New York and there was no summoning him. I stood there, stripped of my
protective persona, and felt as defenceless as if I’d been staked stark naked to an ant-hill.
‘Scott!’ The familiar voice was appalled.
Like the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers, the sound of his name jolted
me into action. It was useless even to pretend to be Scott. Scott would never set foot on a cruise ship, never wear bright,
tight casual clothes or a silver medallion, never find himself face to face with the wrong women in the wrong place at the
wrong time.
‘Scott? Scott, it
is
you, isn’t it? Or is it your double?’
‘Of course it’s me!’ I said laughing, but as she spoke I realized with astonishment that she was just as disorientated as
I was. For she had left Vicky behind in New York, just as I had left Scott behind, and like me she had come to the ship in
her other identity to pursue that twentieth-century chastity: pleasure without involvement, total abstention from a commitment
of any kind.
‘Why, what a surprise to see you, Vicky!’ I heard myself say smoothly. ‘Welcome to good times!’
[1]
She wore a dusky-orange sundress cut low, and a thin gold pendant round her neck. Her short bright hair was barely visible
beneath the huge hat. She already had a delicate tan. Her wide grey eyes remained dismayed.
‘But what in heaven’s name are you doing here, Scott?’
‘Guess!’
I had never seen her look so baffled.
‘Relax, Vicky, there’s no problem! We’ll make a pact. You go your way and I’ll go mine and neither of us will say one word
afterwards to either Cornelius or anyone else in New York. Okay?’
‘Okay … You mean you’re not exactly a eunuch after all?’
I just laughed.
She blushed. ‘I’m sorry, I know I’m behaving stupidly, but it was just such a shock to see you like this—’
‘Then I’ll leave you alone to recover. So long, Vicky – enjoy yourself.’
I moved on through the crowd but when I reached the purser’s office and glanced back I saw she had remained motionless, the
bemused expression still in her eyes but a faint smile curving the corners of her father’s firm familiar mouth.
[2]
The ship departed for St Thomas, and soon the passengers had sloughed off the polite mannerisms of twentieth-century convention
and had adopted the bawdy camaraderie displayed by Chaucer’s pilgrims on their immortal journey to Canterbury. Abandoning
all memory of Scott in his New York role of the Clerk of Oxenford I adopted the role of the Knight and set out to see the
world with my own code of chivalry stamped well in the forefront of my mind. I saw a young girl I liked, but rejected her
as too vulnerable; I met someone older but rejected her as too neurotic. I had no wish to hurt them. However within hours
I had found a widow of my own age from Atlanta, and once I had discovered that her attitude to vacations coincided with mine
we were soon busy proving our mutual theory that cruises had more to offer than vacations ashore.
I did my best to avoid Vicky, but on a ship it’s hard, if not impossible, to overlook a glamorous young divorcée who attracts
more than her fair share of attention. Resplendent in their white uniforms, the officers fluttered around her as soon as the
sun sank into the sea; the cruise staff, personable young men hired to look after the passengers, recklessly ditched their
attentive wallflowers to dance with her. At first it seemed Vicky preferred the cruise staff because the majority of them
were uninterested in smothering her with sexual attention, but presently she eyed the officers and selected the Chief Engineer.
The Captain, an inscrutable man who operated with great discretion, had probably signalled that he was willing to wait.
I enjoyed my widow from Atlanta, but of course I had to move on; the disaster in San Juan had only enhanced my dread that
my incompetence would be discovered unless I changed partners regularly. But it was with genuine regret that I edged away,
trying a quick fling with another widow before making a fleeting connection with a B-deck stewardess who turned out to be
frigid. I was just beginning to feel depressed again when on the approach to Martinique I spotted an interesting-looking woman
who was sharing a cabin with an individual soon known to one and all as ‘Old Blue-Rinse’. The interesting woman, who was plain
but with an excellent figure, proved to be a poor relation of this formidable Miami matron, and had been offered a free cruise
on condition that she waited on her benefactor daily from dawn till dusk.
I circled the pair warily. First I decided that an unmarried, obviously chaste woman in her mid-thirties would expect too
much if I started paying her attention, but then I changed my mind. The sheer
misery of life as Old Blue-Rinse’s lackey would hardly have encouraged the woman to hold high expectations of the cruise,
and any encounter, no matter how fleeting, was likely to be gratefully received.
I rashly decided to give her a voyage to remember.
‘Hi Judy!’ I said one afternoon when we met by chance outside the library. ‘Are you free for shuffle-board?’
It was hardly a brilliant opening but on cruises even the most unoriginal proposal will suffice.
Judy was obviously pleased to be noticed but she declined the invitation. Having just taken a book from the library she was
on her way back to the tyrant for the afternoon reading session.
‘How about a drink this evening? I persisted, spelling out the proposition in letters a yard high.
‘Gee, I’d love to, but …’ Judy was entranced by the offer but terrified of Old Blue-Rinse.
‘I can wait,’ I said, ‘until after Mrs Miami-Beach is stashed in bed in her curlers.’
‘Oh! Well …’
‘Think about it,’ I said kindly, moving past her into the library doorway. ‘I’ll be in the forward bar.’
Judy stammered her thanks and rushed off in confusion to her jailer. Feeling somewhat as Santa Claus might feel after paying
a pre-Christmas visit to a deserving child, I strolled on into the library to cast a glance over the shelves.
Sitting just inside the door, her feet tucked up beneath her on the couch, was Vicky.
‘Hi!’ I said. ‘Reading something mindless?’
‘Deliciously banal!’ She showed me the title of the costume romance and we laughed together.
I was more at ease with this other Vicky now because I had trained myself to think of her as someone entirely different from
the Vicky Scott knew in New York. That Vicky had a narrow uneducated mind and irritated Scott by her phony intellectual poses.
This Vicky was smart enough to know poses were a waste of time. The New York Vicky, surrounded by children, servants and a
doting husband or father, was distracted and moody, totally encased in a rich spoilt woman’s discontent. This Vicky was as
direct and relaxed as her father when Scott met him at night for a game of chess.
I looked at the costume romance in her hands and thought of Cornelius reading a book by Harold Robbins. It was odd that Vicky
should remind me of Cornelius, not Emily, but I had long known that Vicky was radically different from her aunt, just as I
had long realized
the great irony implicit in Cornelius’ relationship with his daughter. He had wanted a daughter who was the mirror-image of
the sister who had personified all the traditional virtues of womanhood to him, but instead he had produced a daughter who
was far too like him for him to dare to accept her as she was.
If Cornelius had been able to see his daughter as she was, he would hardly have wasted time worrying about whether she was
drinking, drugging or sleeping herself into an early grave. This woman was a survivor. She had that same frail delicate look
which Cornelius had perfected to fool his enemies, but I wasn’t fooled for a minute. In my detachment I saw so clearly that
this was a woman who had endured a broken home, two unfortunate marriages, five children, the Van Zale fortune, even the efforts
of Cornelius himself to bend her into Emily’s image – and yet still she had emerged from the wreckage with enough strength
to carve out a new life of her own. I was reminded of Cornelius enduring a secluded childhood, poor health, a domineering
mother, years of stupefying middle-class boredom in Velletria – and yet still managing not only to escape but to grab the
Van Zale bank and the grudging respect of everyone who had previously written him off as a nonentity.
Yet no matter how admirable their survival record, survivors should always be treated with care. They’re tenacious, going
after what they want and clinging on till they get it, and such single-mindedness can be dangerous; having long ago bracketed
Vicky with her father as a survivor, I had simultaneously resolved to keep her at arm’s length at all times.
‘Aren’t cruises extraordinary?’ she was remarking amused. ‘I’ve never before stepped into such an unreal world!’
‘I don’t see anything unreal about everyone running around submitting to their basic instincts. You could even argue that
this is a more real world than the world we know in New York!’
‘Some reality! Say, Scott, I sure hope Judy can escape tonight. If I were in her shoes I’d have murdered that old bag on the
first day out of San Juan!’
‘I believe you!’ I drifted away again, reflecting idly on the difference between Judy’s vacation and Vicky’s. Vicky had discarded
the Chief Engineer after Martinique and to everyone’s astonishment had annexed the Chief Officer before Barbados. The Captain
was still waiting discreetly in the wings. I guessed he’d make his move as we sailed out of Curaçao on the last section of
the voyage back to Puerto Rico.
Returning to my cabin I took a nap to catch up on all the sleep I
was missing and crawled off my bed to dress for dinner. A couple of envelopes had been pushed under the door while I slept.
One was an invitation to a party but the other was a note which read: ‘Hi! I’d love to see you this evening, but please not
in the bar in case word gets back to Mrs B. Could we get together in your cabin? Mrs B. will be asleep by 11.30 so I could
slip away around midnight. If this is okay please wear a white carnation in your buttonhole at dinner this evening. JUDY.
PS Please could the cabin be
totally dark
because I don’t usually do this kind of thing and I am
very shy
.’
I whistled my appreciation. It was true that Old Blue-Rinse would have driven even the nicest woman to a clandestine assignation
with a stranger, and it was also true that on board ship anything can happen, but I was still impressed by the panache of
the girl’s counter-proposal. A white carnation at dinner followed by a midnight rendezvous – without any boring preliminaries
– between the sheets! I was not only greatly entertained by this odd combination of the romantic and the bawdy; my palate,
which by this time was becoming jaded, even showed signs of being titillated. I certainly forgot about my depression, and
after buying a very large white carnation at the florist’s I ran down to dinner with unprecedented eagerness. If I had been
a drinker I would have ordered champagne for everyone at my table.
I smiled at Judy across the dining-room, and Judy smiled at me.
After idling away the evening in the casino without losing too much money I retreated to my stateroom and by midnight I was
tucked up in bed with the lights out. To say I was excited would have been the understatement of the year.
The door opened.
I could not see it for my cabin was L-shaped, the door opening into a tiny corridor which connected the bathroom with the
rectangular bedroom. Since the bed was in the far corner all I could see of the corridor was the beginning of the row of closets
which ran along one wall and when the door of the stateroom opened stealthily it was not the door I saw but the shaft of light
which filtered in from the main passage outside.
The door closed. The light died. There was a silence while we both held our breath.
‘Hi!’ I called softly at last. ‘Can you see anything? Sure you wouldn’t like some light?’
‘No, I’m okay,’ she whispered. ‘No lights. Please. I wouldn’t know where to look.’
‘Relax! I admire your guts in getting away for some fun! You’re wonderful!’
This seemed to give her the encouragement she needed for she groped her way to the bed and I heard the rustle as she discarded
her dress. Static from the hot nylon flashed in the dark, but apart from an anonymous moving shadow I could see nothing.
She slipped between the sheets into my arms.
Since the circumstances were unique, even in my broad experience of cruises, and since I sincerely felt that she deserved
the best possible reward for her originality, I decided I must do everything I could to make the occasion memorable for her.
So I took the time to linger over each caress, and as my hands moved across her body I discovered to my surprise that her
figure was even better than I had supposed.
Her response was silent but avid. We twisted together with increasing fervour for some minutes, and then when I felt at last
that I had completed my outside reconnaissance, I unleashed my most urgent inclinations and went in.
It was the most remarkable visit.
The most erotic part of all was that she was completely silent. I had never before made love to such a silent woman, but I
knew from the movements of her body and the texture of her hidden flesh that the experience was as exceptional for her as
it certainly was for me.
She was breathing swiftly but still not even a whisper passed her lips, and suddenly the anonymity of her silence smoothed
away all tension from my mind. I began to feel as if I were making love not to a specific woman but to an entire world which
I had been forbidden to enter, and yet I found myself enrapt by it, drawn on and on until the word ‘forbidden’ was meaningless
and all that mattered was the magnetic light of that other world, the world which existed in a dimension where death had no
part to play. And with the distractions of speech excluded and all trace of my shackled personality smoothed away I was free
to bend both mind and body towards celebrating my escape from the shadow of the death I feared so much; I was free to pass
beyond my dread that one false step would lead me to the grave with my life’s ambition unrealized; I was free to be free,
free to be myself, and free, free, free at last from my fear of losing control …
[3]
‘Oh God!’ cried the woman beneath me, rocketing me back into the other world, and the involuntary thrust of her body shoved
us both violently against the wall alongside the bed.
The shock streaked through me like a high-voltage explosion. I knew that voice and it didn’t belong to Judy.
I punched on the light.
She screamed.
For a second we both had to shield our eyes against the glare, but as we let our hands fall we stared at one another, each
of us unable to look away. Her pupils were utterly opaque. The irises were a petrified pristine grey.
Neither of us spoke.
A second later I was moving. I had kicked aside the tangled lump of sheet and was on my feet. The floor felt cold. I was so
dizzy that I had to put out a hand to steady myself against the wall, but at last I reached the sanctuary of the bathroom
and rammed home the bolt as soon as I had slammed shut the door.