‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ I replied.
‘We’re on the trip, then.’
‘Looks like it.’
Our singularity made us both seem insubordinate, as if we were refusing to enter into the spirit of the evening, which was how, to my regret, I’d been as a young man — rebellion as affectation. Not that anyone seemed to notice. With the arrival of Princess Patricia in a long tie-dyed skirt and with flowers in her hair, the party became impossible to resist.
At Patricia’s entrance, I said to Alicia, ‘I didn’t realise we were attending a film premiere!’
After posing in the door until everyone became silent and took her in, she came to me, kissed me on the lips, patted my face, licked her lips, and refused to acknowledge Alicia.
‘Are we ready?’
She held my arm and pulled me along, telling the others to follow. It was clear: she wanted to go on the cruise because she wanted to show me off.
Patricia and I led what became a kind of procession through the village to the beach. The old men, sitting at café tables watching us pass, seemed not only to be from another era, but appeared to be another kind of species altogether.
On the beach, where other foreigners from the island were gathering, a band greeted us. In the distance, the yacht, the only bright thing in the dark ocean, glittered beneath the emerging stars. Despite Patricia’s attention, I was glad to be there.
Small boats carried us to the yacht. Patricia sat beside me, holding my hand. ‘I’ve been walking on air ever since our love-making. You were just what I needed.’ She kept leaning across me.
‘Patricia …’ I was going to tell her, coyly, that I didn’t want things to ‘move along’ too quickly. ‘I think we —’
She interrupted me. ‘You didn’t even get changed,’ she said. ‘Hold still, then. Let me put this in.’ She was fiddling with my ear. ‘Now we have matching ear-rings.’ She patted my face, sat back and looked at me.
I touched my ear. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, perplexed. ‘I must have forgotten I’d had it pierced.’
‘There are several holes. What a funny boy you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched you dancing. You do it wonderfully. You must have trained somewhere.’
‘I did.’
‘Where?’ She went on, ‘Will you dance with me all night?’
‘Not all night, Patricia.’
She took my hand and slipped it between her thighs. ‘Most of it, then, darling boy.’
We were helped from the boat onto the yacht. The owner, Matte, an excitable young man, greeted us on deck.
‘Thank you, Patricia, for bringing your crew! You are all welcome!’ he said. He waved at the women following us. ‘Come along, girls! Let’s get down!’
As we looked around the boat, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in the von Karajan version began playing. I adore Richard Strauss, but am ready to admit how much great music has been turned into kitsch. Where is there to turn for something that sounds fresh today, except to the new or weird? You couldn’t turn Bartók’s quartets or Webern’s meditations into easy listening.
Oddly, though, the Strauss didn’t seem only sententious. Against the sea and sky, in this place, and taken by surprise — which, it seems to me, is often the best way to hear music; walking into a shop one Saturday morning and hearing Callas; tricked into amazement — it thrilled and uplifted me again.
This was what I, as a young man, would have wanted.
Food, drink and sexual possibility appeared to be limitless. Matte’s uniformed staff walked about with trays, some of which held sex toys and condoms. There was a disco and a band. Those people already there appeared to be British, American and European playboys, models, actors, singers, pleasure-seekers, indolent aristocrats. There were also people that even I recognised from the British newspapers, pop stars and their partners, and actors from soap operas. These were people with groovy sun glasses and ideal bodies — I guessed that different parts of their bodies were of different ages and materials — who made it clear they had seen all this before, and liked being looked at.
Alicia nudged me. ‘Someone’s staring at you.’
A young woman was indeed looking at me. I smiled, and received a timid wave.
‘As always, you’re popular,’ said Alicia. ‘Can I ask who it is?’
‘I don’t know. She looks like a movie star.’
‘You know movie stars?’
‘Of course not, but they all know me.’ I returned the woman’s wave. ‘Come on.’
We all strolled around. Patricia seemed to be doing a fine impression of Princess Margaret in her heyday. Alicia and I, at least, weren’t sure whether to resist or swoon at the sight of so much gold. Alicia said she liked the way English Londoners were sneery and hated to be credulous, whereas I now found that tedious. This time round I wanted to like things.
When, for a moment, Alicia went to fetch a drink, the ‘film star’ who’d waved earlier covered herself up and hurried over.
‘How funny to meet you here,’ she said, kissing me.
I kissed her back; I had to. But I was afraid she’d known me as ‘Mark’; perhaps we’d been ‘married’. I vowed that when I next saw Ralph I would put an end to his immortality.
‘Don’t you know me?’
I looked at her until a picture came into my mind. It was of an old woman in a wheelchair wearing a pink flannel night-gown. This woman and I had become Newbodies on the same day. We were, in a sense, the same age.
I said, ‘Good to see you. How are you enjoying it?’
‘I don’t know. Wherever I go, people try to touch or have me. If I don’t comply, they’re nasty. Still,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have men fighting over me if I were a pile of ash.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. What else will you do?’
‘I’ve got a record contract,’ she said. ‘And you?’
‘It’s strange, like being a ghost.’
She glanced around. ‘I know. Relax now. There are others here like us. Everyone else is so silly and blind.’
‘How many others like us?’
I looked at the faces and bodies behind her. How would I know who was who?
‘More than you think. We play tennis and we stay up late at cards, talking about our lives. We have plenty of time, you see. Like pop stars and royalty, we stick together.’
I thought of them, the beauties around a table together, like moving statues, an art work.
I said, ‘Soon, everyone in the world will know.’
‘Oh, yes, I think so. Does it matter? Come and talk to me later.’ She was looking down at her feet. ‘Do you love your body now?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘I’m a little too tall and my waist is too thick. My feet are big. Overall, I’m not comfortable.’
She left when Alicia rejoined me. ‘You say you don’t know that woman. Will you go with her now?’
‘Go where? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You can if you want,’ Alicia said. ‘There is time. We’ve set sail.’
‘Set sail for where?’
Alicia was laughing at me. ‘I don’t know. But I do know that setting sail is what boats tend to do. We’re on here until dawn.’
I ran to the side of the boat. We were already in motion. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to escape at any time. I considered jumping into the sea, but wasn’t convinced I could swim so far. Anyway, Patricia was beside me straight away. She seemed to be insisting that I stay beside her all night. Not only at her side, in fact, but within touching distance.