Saviour. Joyce immediately hardened.
“Look here, it’s not as if we’re bringing a bloody cross into the house. It’s just a tree. A pagan symbol.”
“Yes, but –”
“Look at it another way. He was a Jew, wasn’t he? Naturally I don’t accept any of that Immaculate Conception crap –”
“All those women washing his feet
must
have given him an erection.”
“Absolutely. But the fact is he was a great Jewish radical leader.”
“All the same –”
“Ignoring his birthday, well, it could, you know – it just could be interpreted as anti-Semitic.”
So Mortimer got his tree and even Joyce, he liked to think, came to enjoy it.
This year, however, was something else. This year, Mortimer felt, he was already in trouble, walking the most hazardous of tightropes, with three weeks still to go until Christmas. All because of the group he had joined for Agnes Laura Ryerson’s sake.
Joyce, encouraged by Dougie, thought he was coming home late from the office two nights a week because he was having it off with Rachel Coleman. His job was to nourish this suspicion without ever offering Joyce proof positive. Joyce would be frightfully displeased if it turned out he was having an affair with another woman, but at least she was colored, which made the prospect interesting, even progressive, and so she would not be humiliated before her friends. Even so, Mortimer was ashamed of the deceptions he had practiced in order to conceal his real lapse and feed Joyce’s belief that he was being unfaithful. On Tuesdays and Thursdays after he had taken leave of his group, Mortimer sneaked off to a pub and knocked back two hasty brandies, acquiring a liquored breath. Or he stole a pack of Durex from his hoard, discarded the prophylactics in a convenient toilet and forgot the empty pack in his jacket pocket. He had also once asked Miss Fishman to kiss him on the cheek and then rubbed her lipstick into his handkerchief.
Joyce could not be unstuck from the
TV
set on Wednesday nights.
Insult
night on
BBC
-2, with the celebrated inquisitor, Digby Jones. Last Wednesday Dig had made a young Tory backbencher, one of the most independent and progressive in the House, his target. He was shown, by astute questioning, to be something less than an idealist. “He is,” Dig asked, turning to his studio audience, signaling for what had become the weekly battle cry, “what, fans?”
“No better than the rest of us.”
Tonight, which was to bring Joyce the last
Insult
before Christmas, was vintage stuff. Somehow or other tricksy old Dig had cajoled Sister Theresa, a nun renowned for her goodness, to appear on his show.
Breaking Sister Theresa down slowly, leading her on by paying tribute to the fact she lived in self-imposed slum conditions in Brixton, taking in old lags, giving succor to meths men, maintaining an orphanage for unwanted children, he suddenly lashed out at her: “But can you tell me, Sister, if you have ever had intercourse with a man?”
“No.”
“With another woman, then?”
“No.”
“Isn’t it possible, then, that your
goodness
, this meddling into the lives of the poor, is not divinely motivated, but borne of sexual frustration?”
“I think not, Mr. Jones.”
“You think not.” Dig scowled at the studio audience, choking their laughter. “But if one may lapse into street argot, you’re not getting it regular, are you?”
“No.”
“Tell me this: Does helping unwed mothers and alcoholics, taking the unwanted to your bosom, metaphorically speaking, make you feel good?”
“It makes me feel useful.”
“Does it make you feel good?”
“Well, it doesn’t make me feel bad, certainly.”
“In other words, helping the oppressed affords you … pleasure?”
Sister Theresa sighed; she nodded weakly.
“Would it be altogether unfair, then, to describe you not as suppressed –
but as a sexually diverted nymphomaniac?
A pornographer of the do-good?”
As the unlying camera zoomed in on Sister Theresa’s sobbing face, Dig demanded, “What is she, fans?”
“As shitty as we are!”
Winding up for the Christmas break, Dig looked into the cameras and repeated his invitation to the Star Maker to appear on
Insult
.
Five previous invitations had gone unanswered, even though the Star Maker no longer had a valid excuse for his absence, the sight of his bad eye having been miraculously restored.
Swaggering down Kensington Church Street, his shoulders bent forward, his bloodshot eyes narrowed and menacing, fists ready inside his belted mac, Hy Rosen was totally unaware that he was being shadowed by a towering shiksa who held a field hockey stick inside her coat. A tall, gray-haired man came strolling toward him. Immediately Hy slammed into him, using his shoulder as a wedge.
“You drunken idiot,” the man said. “Look where you’re going.”
“Drunken idiot? I’m as good as you are. Better, probably.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why, you fucking anti-Semitic whoremaster. You –”
Hy ducked under the tall, gray-haired man’s clumsy right and, eyes jammed shut, let rip with a looping left of his own.
“Oooo,” the gray-haired man moaned, sinking to the pavement.
Heh-heh. I’ve done in another Jew-baiter, Chaym ben Yussel thought, unperturbed to look up and see three teenagers come charging toward him. “Hey, we saw you,” one of the boys shouted.
“Come and get me,” Hy called back, leading with his left.
But the boys ran past him, round the corner. “Hey! Hey you! Stop!”
Chicken, Hy thought, immediately giving chase. “Here I am, you bastards! Here I am!”
“Joyce? I’m home.”
But she was already asleep. So Mortimer settled down on the sofa with his
Evening Standard
, where he read that the Star currently in London filming for the Star Maker had once more refused to see reporters about his rumored romance with a famous British duchess. As it happened, one of the Star’s old movies was showing on
TV
, the late movie, and so Mortimer flicked it on. It was uncanny, truly amazing, Mortimer thought, but looking from the Star’s photograph
in the
Standard
to his fifteen-year-old image on the
TV
screen, he hardly seemed to have aged at all in the years between.
Following the movie, Mortimer stayed up for the news, which was how he first found out that the dreary Labour politician, who was the subject of the first biography in the Our Living History series, had killed himself, with publication day only ten days off. The politician had been found dead in his Hampstead flat. He had hanged himself with a black silk stocking from a chandelier in a room replete with two-way mirrors, rhino whips, dildos, and other erotic paraphernalia.
God damn it. Dino Tomasso, stupidly lucky, Mortimer thought, had obviously got himself a best seller, but he was bound to burn his fingers with the next title in the series, the faded film star’s biography.
18
“I
T’S GOING TO BE PUBLISHED,” AGNES LAURA RYERSON
said, defiantly pleased. “By the Free Presbytery of Glasgow. Their
Annual Report on Public Questions, Religions, and Morals
. Do you mind if I read a point or two aloud to you?”
“Oh, please do,” Joyce said icily.
Mortimer hastily freshened his drink.
“All must be prostrated,” Miss Ryerson read, “before the great Hedonistic Juggernaut; this has been the year of the Parliamentary campaign to stamp the foul brand of Sodom upon the nation’s brow and it has been the year of Parliamentary activity to have the future of our island race in part decided in the broiler-house minds of eugenists and abortionists; it has been the year of the meeting of Canterbury and Rome and it will be too much to hope that it will be abortive.” Miss Ryerson paused; she looked over the rims of her glasses to see if Mortimer and Joyce were being attentive. “The quality of our culture is signalised by the fact that the accolades of royal recognition are given to maestros of moronic music. What this represents is cultural cretinism –”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Ryerson,” Mortimer interrupted, “but I’m afraid we really must run.”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” Joyce asked, beaming. “Miss Ryerson is coming with us.”
“What?”
“I’ve already invited her.”
Mortimer refilled his glass and promptly drained it. “We’re going to be late,” he said gloomily.
And they were. Excuse me, beg your pardon, Mortimer muttered, leading Joyce and Agnes Laura Ryerson to their seats in the Beatrice Webb auditorium, which was gaily tricked out with reams of colored ribbons, balloons, and mistletoe, for the Christmas play. A rosy-cheeked boy skipped across the stage waving a placard which read
PHILOSOPHY IN THE BEDROOM
. He was followed by a giggly, plump ten-year-old girl with another placard:
DIALOGUE THE FOURTH
.
Mortimer focused on the stage, where four nude ten-year-olds (two boys, two girls) were frolicking on an enormous bed. The effect was comic, making Mortimer recall an old
Saturday Evening Post
cover by Norman Rockwell, which had shown a freckled little girl sitting at her mother’s dressing table, the gap between her teeth showing as she puckered her lips to try on her mother’s lipstick.
The boy playing Dolmance said, “I see but one way to terminate this ridiculous ceremony: look here, Chevalier, we are educating this pretty girl, we are teaching her all a little girl of her age should know and, the better to instruct her, we join – we join – we join –”
“Some practice to theory,” the prompter hissed.
“– some practice to theory. She must have a tableau dressed for her: it must feature a prick –”
“Louder, please,” a parent behind Mortimer called out.
“– a prick discharging, that’s where presently we are; would you like to serve as a model?”
Le Chevalier de Mirvel, played by a big black West Indian boy, whom the audience desperately wanted to do well, responded, biting back his laughter, “Surely, the proposal is too flattering to refuse, and Mademoiselle has the charms that will quickly guarantee the desired lesson’s effects.”
Madame de Saint-Ange, a gawky child, all ribs and knees it seemed, squealed, “Then let’s go on: to work!”
Which was when they fell to wrestling on the bed, le Chevalier de Mirvel, to judge by his laughter, being the most ticklish of the four.
“Oh, indeed,” Eugénie hollered, “ ’tis too much; you abuse my inexperience to such a degree …”
The West Indian boy kissed Eugénie.
“Smack, smack,” Dolmance called out, for Miss Tanner had encouraged them to improvise.
“Here comes the mushy stuff,” Madame de Saint-Ange pitched in, alienating herself from her part. She was, after all, only playing Madame de Saint-Ange. For real, as Miss Tanner had explained, she was Judy Faversham.
“Oh, God!” the West Indian boy hollered. “What fresh, what sweet attractions!”
Agnes Laura Ryerson’s face went the color of ashes. Behind Mortimer, a man demanded gruffly of his wife, “When does Gerald come on stage?”
“Quiet, James.”
Yet another father voiced his displeasure. “There aren’t enough parts.”
“It’s a classic, Cyril.”
“All the same, it’s a school play. There should be more parts. It’s jolly unfair to the other children.”
Mortimer’s attention was gripped by the free-for-all on stage. Puzzling over the nude, goose-pimply children entwined on the bed, he wondered, le Chevalier de Mirvel aside, which leg, what rib cage, belonged to whom. Dolmance squealed, “I have seen girls younger than this sustain still more massy pricks: with courage and patience life’s greatest obstacles are surmounted –”
“Here come the clichés,” the man behind Mortimer said, groaning.
“ ’Tis madness to think one must have a child deflowered by only very small pricks. I hold the contrary view, that a virgin should be delivered to none but the vastest engines to be had …”
Suddenly the stage lights dimmed and the bed was abandoned to le Chevalier de Mirvel and Eugénie. Secondary lights brightened and behind the free-floating gauze that formed the rear bedroom wall there magically loomed the boys and girls of the second form, Doug’s form, cupids as it were, humming a nervy, bouncy tune and carrying flickering, star-shaped lights. There was enthusiastic applause and only one harsh cry of “Derivative!” from the man behind Mortimer, as the kids filed on stage and formed a circle round the bed, where le Chevalier de Mirvel and Eugénie still tussled. Then, taking the audience completely by surprise, a fairy godmother, wearing a tall pointed hat, all sparkly and wound round and round in shimmering blue chiffon, was suspended in midair over the bed. The fairy godmother was none other than Mr. Yasha Krashinsky, who taught Expressive Movement at Beatrice Webb House.
Deafening applause greeted the rotund, dangling Yasha Krashinsky, a touching measure of support, as it was widely known that he had soon to appear at the Old Bailey, charged with importuning outside Covent Garden. While the second-form choir hummed, Yasha Krashinsky chanted, “Le Chevalier de Mirvel is wilting. Our fair Eugénie is fading fast. They will only make it, grown-ups, if you believe in the cure-all powers of the orgasm. Grown-ups, do you believe in the orgasm?”
“Yes!”
The pitch of the humming heightened. Yasha Krashinsky chanted, “The young virgin and her lover cannot hear you. Louder, grown-ups. Do you believe in the orgasm?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Blackness on stage. The throbbing of drums. Squeals from the bed. One of the boys from the second-form choir took a step forward, raised his arms aloft, and shouted: “Hip! Hip!”
“Hurrah!”
returned the choir.
“Hip! Hip!”
“Hurrah!”
A spotlight picked out the fairy godmother, Yasha Krashinsky, as he was lowered with a clunk on stage; and poured a flask of red paint into a bucket.
“Now she is a woman”
the choir sang to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance.”
“Eugénie’s a woman now.”