Tornado Pratt (17 page)

Oh, I’d started in deadly earnest, Horace. I’d been ready to tell
any lie to hold her. But the lie then came out so rich and smooth, so complicated and fascinating in its own right, that by the time I came to the end of the story of Mrs Pope and her Sudden Yen, part of my reason for generating it had become the sheer joy of doing so.

After I’d run down, we sat in solemn silence for a while,
brooding
on the way we are all victims. Then Nat gave a little sigh and I started in gently urging her to meet Ingrid Pope.

“I think you do understand all the essentials now, honey, but for my sake I want you to confirm them.”

Then I gave a little laugh, Horace, because it suddenly occurred to me, as I impulsively admitted, that Ingrid, in certain flattering ways, was not unlike Nat. I apologized to Nat for the tactlessness, at that moment, of making the comparison but concluded:

“Who knows? You two might even get to be friends.”

Now the thought will doubtless be ballooning in your capacious brain, Horace, that I was acting like a grade-A moron. Hell, I mean with great perseverance, skill and a measure of luck I had succeeded in fobbing Nat off with a plausible tale. Then why strive to blow it to hell?

Well, in the first place it was essential that I remain convincing. And to be that, I had to establish irrefutably the reality of Ingrid Pope. Moreover I realized that Nat had to be convinced not just for the moment but maybe a year later when she thought back on it. It all had to hang together like a space ship—one tiny
component
a dud and bimbo! the oxygen would rush out.

But what if Nat had said:

“Take me to this raunchy widow.”

The answer is: I would have done just that. But not for a couple of days. Then I would have pensively driven Nat out to a villa near the lake. On the way, I’d have had second thoughts. I’d have stopped the car and tried to dissuade her from what must
inevitably
be a painful encounter. We’d have sat in the brooding car, while big trucks flicked past like memories, wrangling considerately. But she’d have prevailed and, with a sigh, I’d have ignited the Cadillac’s sweet engine once more. Finally, we’d have crawled up a neat drive, under acacia trees, with a view of the distant lake in the rear-view mirror and whirred to a halt on the gravel forecourt. A little later, I’d have rung the chimes and plump Ingrid, opening the door and taking in the situation at a glance, would have soberly invited us in.

Oh, I understood fully, as I urged Nat to agree to meet the
one-shot Jezebel, the challenge that her acceptance would mean. But, it didn’t phase me. Rather, it honed me to a razor edge. It was like whales or planes or movies: an opportunity for Pratt to triumph. The pool of energy that was my will rippled joyously to its silvery depths. For the excursion to succeed, I’d need an actress, and a darned good one because she wouldn’t have any stage or supporting cast, and a script which I’d have to write myself and a house out there near the lake and—

But I never had to rig it—because Nat resolutely refused to meet Ingrid.

“Honestly, Titch, I don’t want her to become real for me. Don’t force me.”

And reluctantly I let her off.

Sure, I was horrified with myself. To lie was one thing—a desperate man lies—but to use, to manipulate, to turn one’s beloved into a mere constituent of fantasy and, worse!—to enjoy it, to get a diabolical pleasure out of it—because I knew me and I could face me then, Horace, as I still can here at Timesend, and I recognized that I’d got kicks from the conning of Nat.

Perhaps it was the kicks that made me get more and more
reckless
in my extra-marital affairs. Affairs? That term’s too dignified for the way I started to behave. I just began to screw everything I could lay my hands on.

At first, I was pretty careful and took the dames to discreet hotels or for long drives. Moreover, I picked them with some care, for their true friendliness or venality. And Nat never suspected a thing. Time after time, I’d introduce her at a cocktail party to some girl that eyed her curiously and Nat would never read the message. So I began getting careless. I made a pass at Letty and, to my surprise but also relief, Letty promptly quit. She didn’t try to blackmail me. She just said:

“I cannot work for someone who does not think of me as a colleague but as a toy.”

It made me abashed, Horace, and for a while I stopped plucking at passing dames. But then I’d find that when I was screwing Nat a thousand lewd phantoms would crowd round the bed. And soon I was out hunting again, hunting that fresh, fragrant flight which only a new conquest gives you. I began to get insanely careless. I’d meet girls in clubs where I was known, lunch them in restaurants where acquaintances dined and even, now and then, screw them in my office. I even once took a girl back to the house, knowing Nat was out, and Harvey caught me
in
flagrante
delicto
.

The girl screamed—dumb broad!—dumb, because Harvey, who had come into the room for a book he’d lent Nat, hadn’t even seen us on the bed. He was beginning to get absent-minded in those days and was probably in ancient Greece or somewhere. But then this nit-witted girl screams and Harvey spins round in fear. When he sees what’s going on, he stops, contemplates us mournfully and then murmurs:

“Why on earth don’t you lock the door?”

And shuffles out. Would he tell Nat? No, of course he wouldn’t. But how’s this for psychological perversity? To demonstrate to myself that I wasn’t intimidated by being, as it were, in Harvey’s power, I took to bullying my old friend and picking on him. I see now that I was just challenging him to hit back. But, of course, he didn’t. But my evil conduct finally goaded him into visiting me at the office one day and begging me to restrain myself. He analysed the situation and protested that he had no intention of getting involved in my private life. And I meekly apologized for my atrocious bullying. Then, to my surprise, he asked:

“What do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

“How do you mean?”

“Why are you bringing girls back to the house? You must want to get caught.”

“Don’t be crazy.”

“Well, think about it.”

So I thought about it and I decided maybe he was right. But I couldn’t think why. Was it just to get some excitement into my life? But surely the possible rewards couldn’t be balanced against the risk of losing Nat. Then did it somehow make the sex more exciting? I couldn’t discover, by probing my responses, that it did. I guess really I was begging Nat to catch me out and then forgive me. I can’t get any closer to it, Horace. So fetch me a dry martini and I’ll tell you about the

or perhaps it would be better to characterize it, in view of the profound element of masquerade involved, as the

When I survey that period, Horace, I see Nat’s lovely face drawn or tearful. I spy her bristling with wrath or slumped weeping in an armchair. I see her fleeing down a steamy corridor beneath a
nightclub
while, loud with entreaty, I pound after her. I discern her
endlessly packing and phoning for cabs, whisked from stations and airports by my frenzied grasp, dressing stealthily by moonlight. I behold myself smiting locked doors, irrupting into the apartments of astounded friends, tugging cab drivers from their cabs, once dragging—Venus forgive me!—Nat by her long, fine hair across a Persian carpet. I hear passionate and extravagant pleas gushing from my lips, pledges of change and reform, declarations of
unalterable
devotion, promises of speedy decline if denied forgiveness. I hear Nat repudiate all former love, consign me and my sex to the hell reserved for the wanton wreckers of noble things, vow future avoidance of the human male and ultimately, thinly, with brimming eyes or wagging head, weaken and make the fatal (fatal because it inevitably set the whole cycle off again) admission that she still loved me. The tragedy was shot through with farce, naked girls leaping out of automobiles, actors forgetting their lines and veering ludicrously from their alleged character, dodgings and weavings through mansions and offices, sudden flights to remote places—once to Labrador—to shore up a crumbling alibi.

It went on for years, Horace, becoming thicker and steamier and more highly charged until—

Oh God! Nat began to die!

Then a great wail of anguish for the wasted years sounded through the lurid caverns of my mind and I dammed near slumped into useless remorse. But I rallied, Horace, and I said to Nat:

“Oh, my love, what a cruel thing is this life which appears to mean one thing even as a new and terrible dawn breaks behind your back. But there is still a future for us, Nat, and we will keep it to ourselves. No one else, from now on, will be allowed a single moment of our lives.”

And she said:

“Wouldn’t that be a lie, Tornado?”

“No, my love. The others have been the lie. None of them had any valid claim on me. They were tiny girls I kept in drawers and pockets. Listen, I heard a story about a famous writer—I can’t remember his name. He was working on his masterpiece or was supposed to be. But every day he went and played pinball instead. He just couldn’t tear himself away from those pinball machines to work on his great book. That’s how it’s been with me.”

And we rocked and moaned in each other’s arms, Horace, through ecstatic days in Australia and nights when the aura of our devotion tinged everything with gold until—

Nat cooled into wax and left me alone with my searing regrets.
These took up residence in my throat, just below my gullet, and every day tried to climb into my mouth and choke me to death. But finally I marched out of Chicago with the aim of starving them out.

And I—what did I do, Horace? I did something. You can’t refute that. I was somewhere at some time and I did—something. But what? And when? Are you listening, Horace? If you don’t catch it now, you never will and my life will be lost, irretrievably, in the sump of time. We get mashed, Horace, like grapes in a vat to make wine for God. Who knows the truth about the grapes? We say: there was a famous grape called Napoleon or Caesar or—or Beethoven and you read in books that this grape had a couple of wrinkles that made it different from other grapes. But all that’s left in the universe is the wine. And even if you read a whole library about some big, dead grape at the end you don’t know enough to do more than raise a grim smile in that grape if he could come back and hear what you’ve learned. Because he’d know how little you’d really discovered about the blazing, wrenching truth of his life.

So—don’t bother to listen, son. Even if I’m really talking which I’m not sure I am. How did I get here, Horace? And where’s here? Am I in bed? In a hospital? Could be just a dream, I guess, and I’ll wake up into—life. When I try to look back, I get flashes of life, not as if my life had been a river or a flow but as if it was a big hall filled with paintings and spotlights keep flashing on and showing one painting or another.

After—what was I—oh yeah, about Nat. She died and then I—I—

You’re welcome, ma’am. Whoever you might me. I don’t see you as Nat because she wouldn’t talk like that being a member of the British nobility. So—are you Betty? Shit, she wouldn’t talk like that either but would be more likely to say:

And I’m sorry, Betty. You deserved better.

What happened with Betty, after we took off together? Oh yeah, we never did go roaming in luxury as I’d figured we might. I developed a yen for stability and so we went house hunting. It didn’t take long to find that place on the West Coast and I bought it. It was a swell house for those days with indirect lighting and a
sea-gallery where you could watch the otters. But practically the minute we moved into that house, panic took over. I could hardly breathe. I wanted to run, just jack-rabbit out of there and keep going until—

I heard crazy laughter echoing back through the canyons. I felt like a trapped bear. I felt like someone who strives to achieve a goal and when he finally makes it discovers that the struggle has burned out the part of him that wanted it in the first place.

It’s crazy. Betty became a kind of vampire, a kind of demon in my mind. It seemed to me she was trying to desecrate Nat’s memory. Each time in that house I spoke Betty’s name, I felt a traitor to my beloved wife. Everything Betty said or did, I thought: Nat would have said that better, done that more sweetly. I tried to reason with myself:

“You’re crazy, Pratt. There’s nothing wrong with this kid.”

And I’d succeed for a day, maybe a couple of days, in being gentle. Poor Betty would respond and slowly approach me closer again and relax and smile and that would bring fury gushing into my veins again. I felt she had no goddamm right to mimic
gentleness
and humour and vitality. They didn’t belong to her. They were the exclusive property of Nat. I felt like thrashing the
presumption
out of her. But I only actually socked her once. It was about two weeks after we got to Cass Manor (named after the guy that built it).

Up to then I hadn’t understood my own feelings. The first
evening
we spent in the house, I’d felt restless and sad, but I couldn’t give a name to it. I prowled in the forest behind the house and took a swim. Betty stood on a high rock and watched me, the wind taking her hair back like a pennant. I recall feeling she looked like a figure-head, unmoving, and I waved joylessly. But I couldn’t figure out why I was so dispirited. We had a slap-up meal and I drank most of two bottles of claret. Then we danced to the radio and Betty playfully undressed me until we toppled together on the soft settee and had a good screw. Then she dragged me upstairs to bed.