Читать книгу Promiscuous Unbound - Bex Brian - Страница 9

Ralph, that first sight of him, standing with his wife Mary at Alastair’s party in his big white house that skirted Holland Park. I sometimes forget that Ralph was married before me. But she was there that night. And looking distinctly yellow, having contracted hepatitis while accompanying Ralph on one of his trips. A or B? I can’t remember. Which one is worse? But being yellow lent her a bit of gravitas, made her one of the attractions at the party. I was the other. My father, the great Maurice Yellow, had recently died. Alastair, his friend, his true friend, was holding this party in his honor and everyone who had worked with him over the years had come to pay their respects to me, his only child. High day—sudden squalls of tears and lots of jokes. I’m all grown up at that point but more than a few guests had first seen me as I lay swaddled in a row of my father’s other prized babies, the current stars of his latest show, a feature on newborn animals: a garter snake, a chick, a kitten, a tadpole swimming in a petri dish, a blind, hairless roo, and finally, an albino baby black bear. As the TV camera would zoom in and focus on each miracle of life, Father mapped out for everyone the time and attention required of the offspring’s parents to insure survival. When the camera came to me, it slowly panned back up to my father, who stood with a wry smile on his face. “Endless, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said. “Endless.”

Bathed in late-afternoon light, each of Alastair’s guest moved ponderously, diligently about the room as though attending the stations of the cross, first to the bar, then to me: sincere condolences followed by a brief recollection of good times had. Then to the buffet table to load up before circling around to a hepatitis-stricken Mary: heartfelt sympathy followed by jokes about how there would be no more scotch in her future.

From my end of the room I could hear her laugh and say time and again that’s it’s not the scotch she was missing but the love of her man. Ralph, she said, lowering her voice, drawing the listener in, was terrified of getting sick. Ralph had his back to her, but by about the fifth time she’d confessed to everyone within earshot that she hadn’t been fucked in weeks, I remember seeing an involuntary shake of his head, as if a chill had run through him.

Grand toasts finally shut her up. “Let’s drink,” said Ralph, holding up his nearly empty beer glass and looking at me, “to a great Englishman, naturalist, and educator named Yellow and to a woman who merely looks yellow.” I knew then that he wasn’t particularly in love with her anymore. If he ever was.

Immediately afterward he came up to me. I felt Mary watching us, but not with keen interest, vain enough to believe his diminished sex drive applied to the rest of us. I could tell she was merely gathering material for some other grievance and that later in the car would come the inevitable fight. Still, her watching us made me soft somehow, and for the first time since my father died I was willing to wrap myself in grief.

“You didn’t know my father, did you?” I said. “And yet your toast was the best.”

“No. But I certainly knew of him. Well, I suppose everybody did. A chronicled life.”

“By design,” I said sourly.

“Not yours, I presume,” he said, laughing. He had amazingly straight teeth, naturally straight.

“I can’t bring myself to complain about the past.”

“How unusual.”

“You sound henpecked.”

“Do I?” He smiled. Hands deep in his pockets, he rocked back on his heels. “I suppose being a naturalist it’s either henpecked or pussy-whipped.”

I blushed. Heat all over. Mary, suddenly the little heat sensor, was over in a flash.

“We were just discussing my father,” I said to her, moving aside so she could stand by her husband

“And what about him?” Her voice was flat. Australian. She was wearing open-toed shoes with stockings.

“Whether, outside of real abuse, one gets to complain about the life your parents provide you.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d want to complain. Growing up on TV. A life lived all over the world with the famous Maurice Yellow. Ralph and I would have killed for that. What did we have instead, darling? You rooting around for insects in shitty old Orpington, me stuck at the bottom of the world with my mother, the claims adjuster, and my father, running his little money-losing revival cinema.”

“How did you end up here?” I asked.

“The same route a lot of us itching-to-get-out Aussies take. Come to England, work in a pub, go to school.”

“Mary studied film,” Ralph said, draining his beer. “She was my production assistant.”

I had to get away. I didn’t want to know any more.

“I should go speak to some of my father’s old pals,” I said, scooping up my drink. “Most didn’t get a chance to see him before he died.”

No better than walking alone on a desert road, hearing the footsteps behind you only to turn and find nothing. Ralph was stalking my thoughts, but never once did I catch him looking. The party was emptying. A “core group,” as Alastair put it, was going on to dinner at a Greek restaurant.

“Nothing so gauche as waiters smashing plates to the ground,” Alastair said, taking my hand. “So, you can get that wild look off your face.”

“How core is core?” I asked.

“You mean will anybody under fifty be coming?”

“Not that it matters.”

“I’ve asked Ralph McCrimmon and his little yellow wife. Or I should say he asked me.”

I got ready, spinning in circles, amidst a swirl of departing voices: “You come with us, dear.” “Don’t forget your coat. This house is a black hole. I lost a beautiful pair of cashmere gloves here last winter.” “Everyone, tell the driver to avoid Oxford.” “I can’t sit on the jump seat. My dress is too tight. “Well, I can’t. My knees don’t bend.” “Grab a drink, will you? Why suffer a moment.”

My coat, a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and I was off into the damp night air, flanked on one side by Alastair, on the other by . . . who was it? Lydia Lester, once my father’s mistress, shimmering with resentment and unspent love. She had me at last in her web.

Three taxis were needed, lots of bumbling, lots of hot bodies squashed together. Not the right hot bodies, but I didn’t dare ask if he was ahead. Twisted in the jump seat, I kept an eye on the taillights of the other two taxis. We passed through the city as if being squeezed from a toothpaste tube, a force seeming to push us from behind rather than pull us along. We moved in unison along wet streets, the other cars on the road falling away. The city, cloud-bound, looked squat and heavy.

The restaurant on Charlotte Street was all steamed up. More bumbling. Someone nearly fell on the steps of the restaurant but the swearing was good-hearted. I was steered away by Alastair. “Either arrive first,” he said, opening the door to the pub across the street, “and get to choose whom you want to sit with, or arrive late and demand to sit where you want. As it was, with us bringing up the rear, we would have been struck between Tim and Larry and subjected to their warped renderings of your father. Fucking sycophants.”

“This drink will put me over the top.”

“Top yourself then, I don’t give a shit.”

“Let them have my father.”

“Let them?

“Let them.”

“The fuck, always did get what he wanted. I better be canonized when I die.”

“No doubt there’ll be a boy or two in Soho who will raise a glass.”

“But now what?” Alastair asked, downing his drink.

“Now I’m looking for love.”

Fate. An empty seat. No wife in sight. A frenzy of fear. Don’t lose this drunk. Don’t dare. Alastair called for tapas. The waiter bowed his head. Tapas are not Greek. No worry, the manager solved it all, just a matter of semantics, the Greeks eat bits and pieces too. “Tasty treats.”

“Tasty treats, I like that,” Ralph whispered to me after the order had been taken.

“I like that too.”

And then shyness, that stealthy bugger, enveloped us like a caul.