Without her outer garment — which she hung carefully over the back of the chair — she all at once appeared bigger than I had thought. She exceeded the generous standards of the country. Her arms were wide and slack. Her breasts had been pulled tightly upwards and flattened against her chest; even so they had appeared full and large. Now, with a sigh from my companion that turned into a laugh, these breasts were released. They cascaded heavily down. They were enormous, they were grotesque, empty starved sacks which yet contained some substance at their tips, where alone they had some shape. She unbound, untied, released herself. Flesh, striped, indented, corrugated, fell helplessly about her. Below those breasts, wide flabby scabbards which hung down to her middle, her dimpled, loose belly collapsed; flesh hung in liquid folds about her legs which quivered like risen dough. She was ghastly, tragic, a figure from hell with a smiling girl’s face, the thin starved face of the slimmer. Tormented by flesh, she offered knowledge of flesh. Fat, fat, she kept on saying, smiling, tragic; and courtesy, compassion answered for me, No, no. I knew I would never touch; and I feared being touched. Yet I never moved. Flesh, flesh, I thought: how could I disdain? How could I even judge? She lifted herself off the bidet and sat on the bed, liquescent flesh running laterally, her breasts touching what passed for thighs. I closed my eyes and waited.
No damp, flat, smothering embrace came; only the softest of words, the sweetest of breaths, a brushing — of those breasts? — against my nipples, the barest touch of a fingernail circling my areola. I never touched; my hands still lay at my side. Yet I was already turning in on myself; judgement was disappearing. Nails, tongue, breath and lips were the instruments of this disembodied probing. Two light lines drawn down my chest, a quick tongue against the side of my belly, and my tense abdominal muscles quivered, rippled, liquefied. The probing went lower; no effort of concentration was now required, no need to shut out the world, the liquid sighs and sounds. Judgement disappeared, I was all painful sensation. Flesh, flesh: but my awareness of it was being weakened. I was turned over on my belly. The probing continued, with the same instruments. The self dropped away, layer by layer; what remained dwindled to a cell of perception, indifferent to pleasure or pain; neutral perception, finer and finer, having validity, existing only because of that probing which, growing fainter, yet had to be apprehended, because it was the only proof of life: fine perception reacting minutely only to time, which was also the universe. It was a moment that was extended and extended and extended. There could be no issue; it was a moment which, when release without fruition came and perception widened again, defined itself as an extended moment of horror. It is a moment that has remained with me. After three years I can call it back at wilclass="underline" that moment of timelessness, horror, solace. The Highway Code! Through poor, hideous flesh to have learned about flesh; through flesh to have gone beyond flesh.
But, monstrous, she was in despair. The smile, of hysteria, was replaced by tears; she reproached herself for my failure. I comforted her; at that moment I was genuine. Fat, fat, she said, lifting her breasts, lifting her belly; and I said No, no. She began to smile again; she rinsed out her mouth, made up her face, rearranged her hair. We talked, imperfectly, in her language. She misunderstood something I said. She said, as though replying to a question, ‘During those moments I never open my eyes. I never think.’ I was too moved to speak. I watched her re-erect her body for the café, without disdain or judgement; it was all I could offer her. I walked her back to the revolving door. Less than an hour had passed.
In the hotel that night I was awakened by a sensation of sickness. As soon as I was in the bathroom I was sick: all the undigested food and drink of the previous day. My stomach felt strained; I was in some distress. On the plastic bell-push the chambermaid still stared and the waiter still raced. But it was just past three; the hotel was still. I began to wait for morning. I had not slept well. In a serial dream I had found myself on my back, on my belly, in a London street or tunnel through which red underground trains careered on crisscrossing tracks. Beyond the trains I could see Sally, Sandra, my father, Lord Stockwell, anxious to come to me, who could not move towards them. As I slept and awakened, waiting for the light to come to the fantasy city, known and unknown, memory and the dream flowed together. When the light came I was weak and ill. The stopover was at an end. It was necessary to rise and prepare for another departure.
8
MY arrival was quiet. I was not expected. My stopover arrangements of the previous day had given rise to the rumour that I had disappeared or fled. It was as a private person, then, that I took a taxi to the Roman house. I required sleep. The drive was swift; it was later represented, not unjustly, as furtive. Indeed it astonished me that, on an island where I had needed notice and drama to sustain me, I should now relish privacy. For a little I played with the idea of the impossible, of prolonging this enjoyment by resignation and silence. It was impossible, of course, in the nature of our political life.
I was not allowed to be a private person for long. News of my return quickly spread. In the morning there was a police guard outside my house. The guard was needed. My stopover had frustrated a demonstration that had been arranged to meet me at the airport; public feeling was aggravated. I learned that at this airport demonstration I would have been allowed to make a statement and answer questions; it would have been part of the show. But I was not allowed to speak at the meeting which was now hurriedly called. I was not even invited to attend.
At this meeting a massive, contradictory but satisfying case was made against me. My private life — my methodical making of money, the racial exclusiveness of my development at Crippleville, my marriage to Sandra, my relationship with Wendy, my escapade with Stella — all this was used to heighten the picture of my public imposture. I had sold out on the nationalization issue; it was my playboy attitude to distress. At the same time my steady advocacy of nationalization, of benefit mainly to Asiatics, had been an attempt to create racial divisions to ensure my own continued power. My attitude to distress had always been equivocal. I had joined the movement, had helped to create it, only to destroy what it stood for. I had even tried to gain control of the police and had secretly recommended that it should remain under British control. It was a massive charge, as I say. In the hysteria of a public meeting it must have been overwhelming. It could not be answered reasonably, and from a position of weakness, because it contained too many points of truth. It could be answered only with a challenge, and from a position of strength.
But no one was interested in my answer. In a month I had thrown away my power. In a month I had been discredited. The newspapers were free, but no one spoke up for me. No restriction of any sort had been placed on me, but no one came to the Roman house and I never left it. We had created drama, an awareness of strength and vulnerability; we had created an unwillingness to offend. My mother came to see me, and my sisters and their children. We splashed about in the swimming-pool. Strange this privacy that had been granted me, whose misdemeanours filled the newspapers. I read them every morning like any other private citizen. I soon ceased to react to the sight of my name; it was no longer something I could attach to myself. I followed the fortunes of others. I read the announcement of Wendy’s engagement in Montreal to someone with a French name. A photograph, affectionately captioned. The medium-visioned, the surviving!