A Personal History of Thirst Read online

  My own body had not fared much better. I had kept my hair, but it was graying around the temples, shockingly white on my chest. My arms and legs were as wiry as ever, but too many business lunches and beers after work had swollen my gut, and a career spent on my bum had flattened it.

  Yet these recent defects were openings, invitations to tenderness rather than disappointments. Despite her nerve-racked state, Daisy’s body loved love, and it was in the security of warm flesh to warm flesh that she was best able to relax. Orgasms were no longer torn from her amidst exaggerated moaning. They seemed to bubble up to the surface in multiple ripples that sometimes went on so long that she apologized for being greedy. My own virility was so flattered by such appreciation that it surpassed, in stamina at least, the heroic feats of my youth. My body liked her body and was inclined to burrow inside it for animal warmth.

  Daisy had made it a condition of the deal I had negotiated with her on that Sunday that we would not use contraceptives. I continued to find the prospect of fatherhood daunting, but my reasons were different than they had been a decade earlier. I had the money now but was not at all sure that I had the energy. Even Daisy was not wholly without reservations.

  “What about adolescence?” I said. “We were bad enough, but at least there was still some respect left. Kids today leave school barely numerate, obsessed with sex, drugs, and shoplifting.”

  Her eyes darted. I bit my tongue, embraced her.

  “I’m sorry—that was a stupid thing to say.”

  “No, too close for comfort, that’s all.” She held my hand for a moment, patted it. “I suppose I ought to tell you that I got caught in the end—shoplifting. It was a pair of tights. Fined twenty pounds at Tottenham Magistrates Court. It was awful.” She gave a quick smile. “But you’re right, I am numerate at least—modern education is appalling. I suppose that’s another contribution—teaching, I mean—that I made rather a mess of.” She looked at me. “I want to have done something, James—something real, even if it kills me.”

  —

  After the initial excitement of the first few days, I wondered what to do about this new awareness that I was not alone. I began to go for long walks over the Heath. When I returned, Daisy would make a pot of tea. I found the idea that someone would remember how many sugars I took quaint and disarming. I answered questions about what kind of bread I liked, what did I eat in the evenings, where was the nearest bakery.

  “Look, you don’t have to do all that, you know.”

  She put up her hands. “Don’t deprive me of a chance to grow up. I’ve spent a long time thinking that the only salvation is to be useful to at least one other person. I want to be useful, I even want to be used.”

  “But aren’t we getting into traditional sexual role play—all that?”

  “Don’t gloat. Yes, I admit that in the end there’s nothing you can’t politicize if you really want to. Let’s start with fulfilling my need to feel useful and see what happens.”

  —

  I do believe that for a while both of us forgot that our idyll was made possible because somebody had murdered Oliver Thirst. Until, of course, George Holmes returned to remind us.

  7

  We were in my study, which was large enough to serve as a sitting room. Daisy sat on a new sofa under the van Gogh that had never been quite the same for me since she had made fun of it. An old cardigan over a thin cotton dress kept her warm against the slight spring chill.

  She was sewing a button back on one of the collarless shirts I used for court. She wore spectacles for reading and close work now. Every so often she peered over them to look at me. I was rereading Anna Karenina. I knew whenever she looked at me and made a point of returning her ironic smile. We had examined times and dates and decided that if she was ever going to conceive, she would have done so the night before. I had never taken seriously until then women’s claims that one can “just know.”

  “Done. Would you like a cup of tea?” She put the shirt on the sofa beside her.

  “You’re being exceptionally kind,” I said.

  “I know—well, you lost a lot of protein last night. I expect you’re still weak.”

  “That’s true. Nonetheless, I’d like to stand behind and fondle you while you’re making the tea.”

  “At your age? I’m beginning to think you’ve had some kind of operation you haven’t told me about—isn’t there something they do with monkey glands? Last night was like being impaled by a scaffold pole.”

  “You say the nicest things.”

  She leaned over to kiss me on my forehead. “Toast?”

  “Wonderful.”

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Daisy said.

  “No, I will. You make the tea.”

  Hoping that the caller was not one of the stuffier solicitors who instructed me—I was wearing jeans and a sweater, no shirt—I opened the door. George Holmes was standing on the steps holding his trilby in his hands and twisting it. Two young uniformed policemen stood uncertainly beside him.

  “I’ve come to arrest your American friend,” he said, “on a charge of murdering her husband.” He sounded nervous, even a little frightened.

  8

  “W-w-w-would you like to watch a Hit-Hitchcock film at the film soc?” was the first thing I said to her after “hello.” I could hardly believe that I’d had the guts to walk up to her in the students’ bar and ask her, much less that she’d said yes.

  We were both undergraduates at Warwick, a hip new university with a reputation for academic brilliance and radical views: left was good, right was bad; rock was better than Mozart; cinema was better than theater; drugs were better than alcohol. Che Guevara, Bertrand Russell, and Mick Jagger were heroes in more or less the same league, perhaps because they all had long hair and made attractive wall posters. Capitalism worldwide was sure to collapse the day after tomorrow. Criminals were victims of an unfair political system. Anything was better than growing old. She was twenty, I was twenty-one. I had watched her for a week in increasing anguish before I’d screwed my courage to the sticking point.

  The film was Vertigo, in which there is a poignant scene where Kim Novak says to James Stewart: “Oh, Scottie, I’m not mad—and I don’t want to die!” I remember the line because that was the moment when Daisy put her hand on my thigh. I thought it was in appreciation of Hitchcock’s stagecraft, but I wasn’t sure. After the film I managed a very hurried kiss on her cheek and said good night with a nervousness the swift brush of her hand across my face did nothing to alleviate.

  I did not sleep that night, and the next day fell into depression. It was obvious to me that I must plod doggedly on with a courtship that would quickly expose me—if it had not done so already—as manifestly unworthy of her. She was a sort of upper-class American (from New Haven, Connecticut, wherever that was) and, I feared, out of reach, despite her name. Nevertheless, I would not give up lightly, for she intrigued as well as attracted me. Even her accent was an enigma. I knew enough about her culture to realize that she came from money, but there were times when her accent sounded, to my ear, more like something from the streets of Harlem. She swore a lot (we all did in those days), but when she said a word like “shit,” it had a special authenticity: you could almost taste it.

  She telephoned me in the men’s block at about eight that night and asked if I wanted to eat with her in the dining area of her dormitory. I made no mention of the sausage, egg, beans, and chips I had eaten an hour before and stammered an affirmative.

  The dining area was at the end of a corridor of private rooms where the women undergraduates lived, two women to each room. The Women’s Student Officer had selected as Daisy’s roommate someone called Brenda. It was she who came down to meet me.

  “Daisy and I are just about to eat.”

  I followed Brenda’s authoritative buttocks up the stairs. Daisy looked up from a chopping board at which she was attacking some garlic and caught me staring at Brenda’s
vast chest, which I negotiated on entering the room. In the split second that it takes to exchange glances, Daisy colluded with me in wonderment at the size of Brenda’s free-ranging breasts. In my opinion there is nothing in nature quite so compelling as a beautiful woman with a sense of humor.

  The three of us sat down in the brittle neon-lit Formica-based decor of the dining area to a saucepan of spaghetti and a frying pan of bolognese. The spaghetti was thinner and more resilient than the ones I was accustomed to eating out of a can, but I wasn’t hungry and would have eaten anything.

  “There’s plenty, so anyone who’s hungry can just help themselves,” Brenda said.

  Daisy fixed me with her eyes. “Go ahead, James, help yourself.”

  “Here.” Brenda stood up. With a huge ladle she plunged into the depths and drew up a great tangle of gray spaghetti.

  “I’ve got a brother, so I know all about the way men eat,” Brenda said. Daisy looked away.

  “Please, you have some more, Brenda,” I said.

  “All right.” She stood up again—better leverage—and this time came up with a great coagulated knot, which she dumped on her plate.

  “There’s drama society tonight, if anyone’s interested,” Brenda said.

  “Are you interested in going?” I asked Daisy.

  “Are you?” she replied sweetly.

  I was about to concoct some excuse, when I saw her barely suppressed grin and stopped.

  “I’m not really the acting type,” I said.

  “Not really a thespian,” Brenda said.

  “A what?”

  “A thespian—it’s a better way of saying ‘acting type.’ ”

  I blushed. “I thought…”

  “We know what you thought,” Daisy said.

  “What?” Brenda demanded. “What did he think?”

  “He thought a thespian was a lesbian with a lisp—didn’t you?”

  “Something like that.”

  This time Brenda blushed. “Well, I fail to see any reason for confusion.”

  “Just my ignorance,” I said, catching Daisy’s eye.

  “What about you, Daisy?” Brenda asked.

  “I’m not really the acting type.” Daisy winked at me. “But don’t let us stop you.”

  “Oh, no! I wouldn’t go without you,” Brenda said.

  “We’re very close, you see,” Daisy said.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Brenda’s face lit up. “We’re only one month into our first term. I was nervous about sharing with an American, but now I feel as if Daisy and I have known each other all our lives. It was a kind of instant bonding. Couldn’t believe my luck.”

  “That was a wonderful movie you took me to last night, James,” Daisy said.

  “One of his best, I think—it’s that point in his career where he becomes an artist rather than just a craftsman.”

  “Who?” Brenda said.

  “Alfred Hitchcock,” Daisy said.

  “Oh, I’ve never liked him. All that Psycho stuff. Did you say he was an artist? I’ve never heard that said before. Surely all he does is make films? Frankly I think it’s silly to call a filmmaker an artist.”

  “What a wonderfully basic conversation,” Daisy said. “Well, if he’s had enough to eat, I’ll walk James back to his dorm.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “In case someone tries to mug him.”

  “Don’t be silly—mugging is an American problem.”

  “That’s why I have to protect him.” She pulled up her sleeve and crooked an arm to show practically no biceps. “Yep, honed my survival skills on the streets of the Big Apple.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Brenda said.

  “No you won’t, darlin’,” Daisy said, exaggerating her accent.

  Brenda sagged. “Oh well, you’re the boss.”

  “Better believe it.”

  —

  As we left the overlit area of her dormitory I experienced a jolt. Daisy had taken my hand.

  “What the fuck do I do, tell me what do I do?” she said.

  “About Brenda?”

  “Who else?”

  “She obviously—”

  “Thinks I walk on water and hasn’t even begun to come to terms with the fact that she’s a goddamn dyke to the fingertips. I’ve never felt so claustrophobic in my life.”

  “You’d better be careful,” I said. Only the week before I had seen a film about a psychopathic lesbian who killed her best friend. “Can you change rooms?”

  “If I do she’ll be suicidal.”

  “That’s better than getting so involved she harms you.”

  Daisy grinned. “Harms me? What I’m afraid of is that if it goes on much longer I’ll wring her neck. Ever loathed someone’s smell, Jimmy? I don’t mean their bad smells, I mean just their basic who they are odor.”

  “Nobody called me ‘Jimmy’ before.”

  “Sorry—it’s an American reflex.”

  “I like it—a lot.”

  We’d reached a wall that ended in the entrance to my dormitory. Not exactly a secluded area, but I had made a vow to myself that I would kiss her properly that night, and there didn’t seem to be any other opportunities. I drew her to me.

  As I put my arms around her waist, her hands grasped my bum in a kind of lascivious bonhomie.

  “Do you know you have a great ass?”

  “I c-c-can’t believe you said that.”

  “Why not? Never dated an American before? You want to bonk me, don’t you?”

  “Bonk you?”

  “Yes, sweetheart—isn’t that what you call it over here? How about fuck, then? I’m sure that’s Anglo-Saxon.”

  “For G-G-God’s sake, of course I want to b-b-bonk you. I’ve thought of it every second for the past thirty-six hours.”

  She giggled. “Better take me for a walk in the woods, then, Englishman, or it’ll be wet dreams for you again all night.”

  —

  I learned more about her during hurried lunches on the way to our different lectures, on walks in the forest near the college campus, at dinners from which Brenda was ruthlessly excluded, after moviegoing, in bed. Daisy talked a lot about her parents. Her father was “a shit, I mean world class, a psychopath.”

  “Psychopath? I thought he was a professor of psychology.”

  “Mm-hm, he is. At Yale. The syndrome of the sadistic psychologist hasn’t reached these shores yet?”

  “I don’t know anything about psychologists.”

  “Which earns you ten points right off. Here’s all you need to know. Psychology majors are of two kinds. Those who start off caring about people and those who see it as the ultimate power play—mind control. But when they qualify, there’s really only one kind, that I’ve met anyway, and I’ve met dozens.”

  “The power freaks?”

  “You got it. He works a lot in industry. It’s the psychological equivalent of those Nazi doctors in the concentration camps: how will performance be altered if I cut out that bit, graft on this…see?”

  “Not really. I didn’t know that psychologists worked in industry.”

  We were walking across the campus. She stopped short under a horse chestnut tree. “You didn’t?” She grabbed my jacket, pulled me to her. “Wonderful. It’s like landing on some desert island and finding a perfect example of Natural Man. Unpolluted, pure, and free.”

  “I’ve never been called that before. I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly typical example of urban neurosis.”

  She shook her head. “You’re talking mild influenza. You ain’t got nothing I can’t fix with a sustained diet of sex and self-indulgence.”

  We walked on. “I’ll take the cure.”

  “Sure. Just wish I was in the same happy state.”

  It was my turn to stop. I held her at arm’s length. “You’ve talked like that before. What exactly do you mean?”

  She gazed at me for a moment. It was one of those May days when the English spring retreats back into wi
nter. The cold pinched her features, her nose was red from catarrh, tears formed in her eyes from the wind.

  “I mean I watched that bastard destroy my mother. He picked her up here in this country—she’s British. A pretty little specimen to experiment on, unlikely to kick him in the balls the way an American woman would have when he played his games.”

  “Games?”

  “He destroyed her. I think he wanted to see how long the human female can last without love, affection, attention, under a regime of sustained contempt. He got his answer—not very long. She had her first breakdown soon after I was born. She’s in a mental hospital here in England now. Oh, she’s not, like, sick. He just destroyed her self-esteem to the point where she can’t summon the audacity to get up in the morning.” An inner storm twisted her mouth. “She’s on welfare over here. Can you believe that? The asshole just cut her off.”

  “So that’s why you’re in England—to be with her?”

  “And to get away from him. He phones me, tries out some clever little game on me that he’s dreamed up, some way of getting me back to the States. He doesn’t like it that I’m as smart as him. Smarter. I know all he knows, and my conclusion has been to reject him all the way, including his name.”

  “Smith is your mother’s name?”

  “Right. I changed it legally when I came here. I’m no longer the daughter of Sebastian J. F. Hawkley, psychology professor, obsessive social climber, and sadist.”

  “I expect he wouldn’t approve of me.”

  “I wouldn’t touch a man he would approve of.”

  9

  Little by little I began to see my appeal. After all, I was hardly the catch of the campus. There were plenty of guys wondering openly why I was so lucky, when she could have had next year’s Young Businessman of the Year or this year’s president of the Student Union. But they would not have evoked the kind of disapproval I was likely to enjoy if I ever met the upwardly mobile professor. I stammered, my accent was unreconstructed cockney, the chips on both my shoulders frequently made me brusque and arrogant. It was obvious by looking at me that my access to tertiary education was due to various Education Acts and other socialist legislation that provided, now I think of it, a fairly generous package of maintenance and other grants for the poor and bright. I was, as one of my colleagues in the law faculty once remarked, an almost perfect example of the kind of kid the reformist legislation had all been for: my father was a carpenter who frequently fell unemployed, and my mother really did take in washing to make ends meet. Better: we really did live in a council flat in Southeast London, five minutes from the docks. There’s nothing quite as unique as a living stereotype. As far as Daisy was concerned, only an illiterate black man with a criminal record could have been more eligible. I was unprepared, though, for the proposition she put to me one night a week or so after we became lovers.