Authors: Kingsley Amis
‘As to
my 2nd, & larger, I mean not larger but INFINITELY GREAT purpose, I will
say nothing at the present, but this,
Hee who knows my mind
cannot but
know too, & for certain, What is the lastg Repository
where I have hid
what
will enable him to aid this purpose
&,
in process learn the Secret
which will render him
Master of Himself,
& who is master of himself
is master of every thing (vide Car
s
Voldemar Prov., Verum Ingenium).’
This
almost filled up a right-hand page. When I turned over I found nothing more;
the final twenty or thirty leaves of the notebook were blank. I poured more
whisky and considered.
Thornton,
as I had decided earlier, had not had the experience I had had in the wood
above my house, and so had been unable to make anything of the reference to
that wood on the last page of the diary. He must then have dismissed
Underhill’s first purpose as too nebulous to be worth recording, possibly as
empty vaunting or delusion. As regards the second purpose, Thornton had not,
again, had the benefit of a conversation with Underhill’s ghost, as I had had,
and could not have been expected to realize that this purpose had had to do
with some form of survival after death. If Thornton had deduced the nature of
the hiding-place referred to in the closing paragraph, he had no doubt been, as
I could very well suppose from my reading of his book, too pious a man to
contemplate disturbing the remains of a departed soul, even those of an
‘infamous creature’ like Thomas Underhill. I had no such inhibitions; and I
was going to open that grave and coffin and see what ‘books and papers’ (as
mentioned by Thornton) and other extras were to be found there.
As I
sat on the hard scholar’s chair with the diary before me, I felt as elated and
unsettled as I had done just before setting off today—more so. I see well enough
now that a little more prudence would have been in order, but at the time I was
revolted by the thought of prudence. Until Diana came along, I had had nothing
to be more than trivially imprudent about for years, and never anything on this
scale. There might even be something in—anyway, something interesting about—the
supposed secret which was going to render me master of myself. I, of all
people, could afford to learn that sort of secret. Not that I had forgotten
what had become of the promises Underhill had made to the Tyler girl, and
presumably to the Ditchfield girl also. These two, in fact, figured somehow in
my motives for going on with the investigation, though I could not then have
said how or how importantly.
But,
talking of Diana … It was five-and-twenty to three, comfortable time to copy
out Underhill’s last page, pack up and lock up here, return the key to Ware in
the library, leave a thank-you note for Duerinckx-Williams at St Matthew’s
lodge, drive down to Royston, have a furious argument there with the tiny
wizened young man who supplied me with my drink and see to it that he would
never again try to sell me pre-tax-increase stock at the increased price, go on
to Fareham and the appointed corner and pick up Diana at three thirty.
That was
just how it went. Diana’s questionings covered some of the same ground as those
of the previous afternoon, eventually branching out into the general topic of
what it was, or what I thought it was, that made men so different from women,
by and large an easier assignment. Then, before we had quite reached the hollow
on the hill, she started stripping with creditable speed. Everything was rather
different from last time. When she was naked, and I was still stepping out of
my trousers, she lay down on her back, stared at me and moved about a good deal
on the ground. As soon as I reached her, she made it very clear that what the
books used to call fore-play was not needed now; in fact, I had no chance to so
much as kiss her until after the main stage of the whole business had been set
in vigorous motion. It seemed to go on for hours, with Diana showing incredible
energy. Whether this was natural or assumed I did not bother to wonder then,
and quite right too. The distinction is in any case a doubtful one: orgasm
itself is a reflex, but nothing much that accompanies even orgasm can be called
so (let alone what people get up to during other parts of the performance). Nor
did I ask myself whether Diana was reaching that point as often as her
behaviour claimed, or indeed at all. That is not my way at such times, and even
more quite right too. The mystery, the emotional secretiveness, the
self-distancing of women, all the luggage of feeling they go about with and
expect men to handle for them—these and countless more concrete manifestations
start, not from the minor circumstance that women carry and bear and rear children,
but from the fact that they do not have erections and do not ejaculate. (And,
while we are about it, it is the fact that men do that deprives the passive
homosexual’s role of any real depth or credibility.)
Ejaculation,
as all good mistresses know, is a great agent of change of mind and mood. As,
now, I lay beside Diana, it occurred to me first that she had been
demonstrating her un-predictability: nothing but receptiveness yesterday, all
positive action today. A moment later, perhaps more charitably, though perhaps
not, I decided that yesterday she had been too excited not to behave as she
really wanted to, whereas today’s gymnastics were designed to make me admire
her sexual prowess: a move from involuntary narcissism, so to speak, into the
purposeful kind. What of it, anyway? Both kinds suited me.
I told
her more or less how unpredictable she was, and this went down all right. I was
ready with further material of the same sort when she said:
‘About
your idea that we all ought to go to bed, you and I and Joyce.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve
been thinking about it.’
‘Good.’
‘Maurice.’
‘Yes?’
‘Maurice,
what would you get out of it exactly? I mean, I can see what I’d get out of it,
at least I think I can, but where would you come in?
No,
Maurice, you’re
not to be horrid and awful. You know what I mean.’
‘I
think so, yes. Well, seeing that it’s so much fun to go to bed with one
beautiful girl, it ought to be twice as much fun to go to bed with two, if not
more. More than twice as much fun. Worth trying, anyhow.’
‘Mm.
You want to watch us at it, kind of thing, too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I
do rather. I’ve never been able to see anything wrong with the idea of watching
people at it, provided that’s not all you’re doing, and that won’t apply in my
case, of course. And provided, as far as I’m concerned, that neither of the
people is a chap, and that’s not going to apply either.’
‘I …
see.
Would you want me to, well, be nice to Joyce as well as Joyce being nice to
me?’
‘You
can do whatever you feel like doing.’
‘No,
but would you?’
‘Well,
yes.’
‘Oh.
Maurice … Maurice, isn’t part of this whole thing doing what you’re not meant
to do?’
‘I
expect so, yes. And as good a reason as any, by God.’
‘You’re
not to be cross, but I think that’s a jolly schoolboyish view.
‘Ah, so
that’s why it’s got so much appeal.’
‘Well,
one thing to be said for a threesome is that Jack wouldn’t approve,’ she said
abruptly, so much so that she got to the end of the sentence at about the time
she would normally be drawing the first word to a close.
I
opened my eyes, on the instinct that tells us that having done so we will be
better prepared for whatever may follow, even when the view consists of as
little as, in my case, an irreducibly near cheek and part of a nose and chin.
There is that,’ I said.
‘I know
all doctors screw their patients but he might at least take the trouble to
pretend he’s not,’ she went on, sticking for the moment to her new policy of
talking at ordinary human-being speed. Then she reverted to the old one.
‘But—that’s— nuh—thing, compared to what I’ve really got against him.’
Silence
fell. One of these days I would bury her in an ant-hill up to her neck or feign
sleep when she did this to me, but not today. ‘What’s that?’
‘I hate
him. I can’t bear him.’
‘You
can’t?’ I may have sounded less mildly surprised than I felt. Diana so seldom
provoked anything more than the merest flicker of reaction (apart from lust and
annoyance in full measure) that I had probably got into a habit of overdoing
the eyes and teeth.
‘Of …
course
I can’t.
Sure-
ly
you must know that. He doesn’t
mind me, because he doesn’t mind a single blessed thing one way or the other,
but I mind him like mad.’
‘What
don’t you like about him?’
‘Oh,
everything. I’ve been trying to make up my mind to leave him for simply ages.
But, Maurice, don’t you think this is most peculiar?’
‘…
Isn’t what most peculiar?’
‘Well.
That you’ve known Jack and I for three years or more, and you’ve never noticed
the absolutely obvious and simple fact that I can’t stand him. You really do
not have, I suppose? I mean, you’re not joking?’
‘No.’
‘Are
you sure?’
‘Yes.
Yes, I’m quite sure.’
‘Maurice.’
She turned her head, and I saw a tremendous eye
looking into one of mine. ‘But that is simply the most extraordinary thing
I’ve ever heard. A man like you, whom I’ve always thought was one of the most
sensitive and observant characters one could wish to meet, and it’s never
struck you that I can’t stand the man I’m married to, and you’re supposed to be
so frightfully interested in me.’
I was
sure I had never seen or heard anything to suggest that Diana was on anything
but—at worst—tolerable terms with Jack, but could not make out whether all this
was aimed at justifying her dealing with me or, more likely but just as merely,
constituted one more tactical move in her campaign to show me up as coarser in
spirit than some other people round the place—herself, for instance. However,
before I could devise some ramshackle confession of emotional inferiority, she
had shifted a little away from me, as if to enable us to see each other’s faces
properly, but with a series of movements that involved her whole body. These
continued while I watched her jaw sink and her eyes grow fixed in the doltish
look they had taken on the previous afternoon. Arching her back, she said without
hyphens,
‘All
right, let’s do it. Whenever you like. I’ll do whatever you like.’
I was
so excited that it was all over quite soon, but I have never known a woman who
did not set a high value on male excitement, and in that short space I was able
to produce a compelling pot-pourri of everything that had happened between us
before. That is denigrating it a good deal, actually. I cannot imagine ever
quite forgetting what it was like, while I can remember anything. And if what
set it off was a little impure, in at least two senses, then let it be impure.
Alternatively, fuck you. Anybody who feels like saying that a particular
sexual act of any ordinary sort, possibly of any sort at all, ought not to have
been enjoyable is a monster, large or little.
On the
drive back to the corner, Diana was subdued. I wondered whether this was a
prelude to her making a bid for a new kind of interestingness by telling me she
had changed her mind about the orgy project, but I could not wonder very hard
or for long at a time because I was thinking how best to put another proposal
to her, one just as tricky in its way. Finally I said,
‘Diana,
there’s something else I want to ask you.’
‘What,
you and me and David Palmer?’
‘No,
quite different. I think I’ve found out about a place where there may be some
buried treasure. Would you give me a hand looking for it?’
‘Maurice,
how frightfully exciting. What sort of treasure? How did you find out about
it?’
‘I came
across some old papers to do with the house, just saying where the stuff had
been put, nothing about what it consisted of. Of course, there may be nothing
in it.’
‘I see.
Where is it?’
‘Apparently,
uh, it’s in that little graveyard just up the road from the Green Man.’
‘In a
grave? In someone’s coffin?’
‘That’s
what the papers said, yes.’
‘You’re
proposing to dig up a grave and open someone’s coffin?’ She was getting the
idea fast.
‘Yes.
It’s a very old grave and so on. There won’t be anything in it but bones. And
this treasure.’
‘Maurice
Allington, have you gone totally and completely out of your mind?’
‘No, I
don’t think so. Why?’
‘You
can’t be serious. Digging up a grave.’
‘I
assure you I am serious. I want that treasure. As I say, there may be nothing
there at all, or something quite worthless, but you never know. I asked you to
help because I must have somebody to hold the torch and lend a hand generally,
and you’re the only person I can ask who won’t be shocked out of their mind.’
That
went down very satisfactorily, but she still had a piece of finessing to do.
‘It’s not true, though, is it, about lending a hand? You want company. You’re
afraid to do it on your own.’