Collected Short Fiction Part 47

'You've all done good deals. Who is going to write the plays? Gary?'

'It's only for happenings. No scenery or anything. Audiences walking across the stage whenever they want. Taking part even. Like Henry's in the old days.'

'Hurricane coming,' Henry said.

'It was all Gary's idea.'

'Not the hurricane,' I said.

'Even that.' She gazed at the screen as if to say, look.

Priestland, Priest, was lifting back his head. From details of death and destruction on other islands, details delivered with the messenger's thrill, he was rising to a type of religious exaltation. And now there followed not the Ma-Ho girls with their commercials but six little black girls with hymns.

She looked away. 'Come, shall I take you home?'

'You want me to see your home?'

'It is up to you.'

'Hurricane coming,' Henry said. He began to sway. 'All this is over. We all become new men.'

'Repent!' Priest cried from the television screen.

'Repent?' Henry shouted back. 'All this is over.'

'Rejoice!' Priest said. 'All this is over.'

'Why run away now?' Henry said.

'Why run away?' Priest said. 'There is nothing to run to. Soon there will be nothing to run from. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man but at the end thereof are the ways of death. Repent! Rejoice! How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation.'

'Emelda!' Henry called. 'Emelda!' To Selma and to me he said, 'Not yet. Don't go. A last drink. A last drink. Emelda!' He wandered about the kitchen and the adjoining room. 'All these plastic flowers! All these furnitures! All these decorations! Consume them, O Lord!'

Mrs Henry appeared in the doorway.

'Emelda, my dear,' Henry said.

'What get into you now?'

He unhooked a flying bird from the wall and aimed it at her head. She ducked. The bird broke against the door.

'That cost forty dollars,' she said.

He aimed another at her. 'Eighty now.'

'Henry, the wind get in your head!'

'Let us make it a hundred.' He lifted a vase.

Selma said, 'Let us go.'

I said, 'I think the time has come.'

'No. You're my friends. You must have a farewell drink. Emelda, will you serve my friends?'

'Yes, Henry.'

'Call me mister, Emelda. Let us maintain the old ways.'

'Yes, Mr Henry.'

'Vodka and coconut water, Emelda.' He put down the vase.

The black girls sang hymns.

'You let me in that night, Selma,' I said. 'I've remembered that.'

'I remember. That was why I came.'

Emelda, Mrs Henry brought back a bottle, a pitcher and some tumblers.

Henry said, 'Emelda, after all this time you spend teaching me manners, you mean you want to give my friends gla.s.ses with hairs in it?'

'Then look after them yourself, you drunken old trout.'

'Old trout, old tout,' Henry said. And then, with shouts of pure joy, the hymns pouring out in the background, he smashed bottle, pitcher and tumblers. He went round breaking things. Emelda followed him, saying, 'That cost twenty dollars. That cost thirty-two dollars. That cost fifteen dollars. In a sale.'

'Sit down, Emelda.'

She sat down.

'Show them your mouth.'

She opened her mouth.

'Nice and wide. Is a big mouth you have, you know, Emelda. The dentist could just climb in inside with his lunch parcel and sc.r.a.pe away all day.'

Emelda had no teeth.

'Frankie, look at what you leave me with. Sit down, Emelda. She and she sister setting compet.i.tion. Sister take out all her teeth. So naturally Miss Emelda don't want to keep a single one of she own. Look. I got to watch this morning, noon and night. I mad to hit you, mouth. Mouth, I mad to hit you.'

'No, Henry. That mouth cost almost a thousand dollars, you know.'

'All that, and the world ending!'

'Rejoice!' Priest called from the television screen. He lifted the telephone on his desk and dialled.

The telephone in Henry's kitchen rang.

'Don't answer,' Selma said. 'Come, our bargain. Our first evening. Let me take you home.'

Hymns from the blue screen; screams from Emelda; the crash of gla.s.ses and crockery. The main room of The Coconut Grove, all its lights still on, was deserted. The thatched stage was empty.

'The perfection of drama. No scenery. No play. No audience. Let us watch.'

She led me outside. People here. Some from The Coconut Grove, some from neighbouring buildings. They stood still and silent.

'Like an aquarium,' Selma said.

Low, dark clouds raced. The light ever changed.

'Your car, Selma?'

'I always wanted a sports model.'

'The car is the man, is the woman. Where are you taking me to?'

'Home.'

'You haven't told me. Where is that?'

'Manhattan Park. A new area. It used to be a citrus plantation. The lots are big, half an acre.'

'Lovely lawns and gardens?'

'People are going in a lot for shrubs these days. It's something you must have noticed. You'll like the area. It's very nice.'

It was a nice area, and Selma's house was in the modernistic style of the island. Lawn, garden, a swimming pool shaped like a teardrop. The roof of the veranda was supported on sloping lengths of tubular metal. The ceiling was in varnished pitchpine. The furnis.h.i.+ngs were equally contemporary. Little bits of driftwood; electric lights pretending to be oil lamps; irregularly shaped tables whose tops were sections of tree trunks complete with bark. She certainly hated straight lines and circles and rectangles and ovals.

'Where do you get the courage, Selma?'

'This is just your mood. We all have the courage.'

Local paintings on the wall, contemporary like anything.

'I always think women have a lot of courage. Imagine putting on the latest outrageous thing and walking out in that. That takes courage.'

'But you have managed. What do you sell? I am sure that you sell things.'

'Encyclopaedias. Textbooks. Inoffensive culture. Huckleberry Finn without n.i.g.g.e.r Jim, for ten cents.'

'You see. That's something I could never do. The world isn't a frightening place, really. People are playing a lot of the time. Once you realize that, you begin to see that people are just like yourself. Not stronger or weaker.'

'Oh, they are stronger than me. Blackwhite, Priest, you, even Henry you are all stronger than me.'

'You are looking at the driftwood? Lovely things can be found in Nature.'

'But we don't leave it there. Lovely house, Selma. Lovely, ghastly, sickening, terrible home.'

'My home is not terrible.'

'No, of course not to you.'

'You can't insult me. You are too d.a.m.n frightened. You don't like homes. You prefer houses. To fit into other people's lives.'

'Yes. I prefer houses. My G.o.d. I am on a treadmill. I can't get off. I am surrounded by other people's very big names.'

'You are getting worse, Frank. Come. Be a good boy. Bargain, remember. Let me show you my bedroom.'

'Adultery has its own rules. Never on the matrimonial bed.'

'Not matrimonial yet. That is to come.'

'I have no exalted idea of my prowess.'

'You were always lousy as a lover. But still.'

'What language, Selma. So snappy, man. Let me put on the old TV. I don't want to miss anything.'

The man on the screen had changed his clothes. He was wearing a white gown. He had abandoned news; he was only preaching.

He said, 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.'

As if in sympathy with his undress, I began unb.u.t.toning my s.h.i.+rt.

In the bedroom it was possible to hear him squawking on. On the bed lay a quilted satin eiderdown.

'You are like Norma Shearer in Escape.'

'Shut up. Come. Be good.'

'I will be good if I come.'

Our love-making was not a success. 'It was bad.'

'Drink is good for a woman,' Selma said. 'Bad for a man. You prepared yourself too well today, Frank. You waste your courage in fear.'

'I waste my courage in fear. "Now look what you have done." '

'Explain.'

'It was what a woman said to me many years ago. I was fifteen. She called me in one afternoon when I was coming back from school and asked me to get on top of her. And that was what she said at the end. "Now look what you have done." As though I had done the asking. Talking to me as though she was talking to a baby. Terrible. s.e.x is a hideous thing. I've decided. I'm anti-s.e.x.'

'That makes two of us.'

'All I can say is that we've been behaving strangely for a very long time.'

'You started it. Tell me, did you expect me to keep our bargain?'