We picked up a bottle of madeira, against the chill, and went back up to our room to put up our feet and see what cube was like in England. Their major networks are also owned by the government, but the programming seemed more intelligent, and the commercials more witty and straightforward, not scary appeals to the subconscious.
Neither of us had had madeira before, sweet and strong. We drank the whole bottle and passed quickly from giddiness to sleepiness. We wound up sleeping together, innocently, like girls. I woke up at dawn with her naked body warm against me, and though it felt nice I was vaguely disturbed by the lesbian-ness of it, and managed to disentangle myself without waking her. I drank about a liter of water, which was a mistake, but did find the hangover pills, and left them out for Violet. Then crawled into the cold bed and waited for the dizziness to subside.
Violet wanted to spend the day visiting literary land-marks, and I tagged along, though I don’t know too much about English literature (I would have, if I’d taken a full certificate in American Lit).
Dickens’s house was fascinating because it was full of nineteenth-century memorabilia, and quite a bit of it was about America. Dickens had nothing but contempt for the young country, but he evidently wasn’t averse to taking their money, giving readings. From there we went to Dickens’s favorite pub and had a couple of literary pints, getting a start on tomorrow’s hangover.
Samuel Johnson’s house was a couple of hundred years older, the wooden steps worn round by centuries of trudging tourists, but it was more like a museum. Hard to be properly awed when I’ve never read anything of the gentleman’s work. (Our guidebook was enthusiastic about his pub as well as Dickens’s, a “chophouse” that had been in continuous use since 1667. But it was lunchtime, and the place was so crowded we literally couldn’t get near it, a knot of beer-drinkers filling the alley in front of its door.)
The morning was bright and unseasonably warm, but the afternoon compensated with sleet and bitter wind. We decided it would be a good policy to spend the rest of the day indoors, and went back toward Kensington to wander through the Victoria and Albert Museum. We split up there, since Violet wanted to study the paintings and I wanted to spend a couple of hours with their marvelous collection of antique musical instruments. They were all functional, and you could listen with earclips to period music being played on them.
I was engrossed in a basset horn (which looks like a clarinet assembled by a cubist maniac, and sounds like a bad cold) and jumped when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Jeff Hawkings.
“Jeff! You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “You’re the first person I know I’ve seen all day.”
“What’ve you been doing?”
“Walking, riding the tube. Saw Scotland Yard. Waited in line for the Tower, but it got too cold.” He shook his head “There’s so much… how about you?”
I gave him a quick summary of our literary day. “Sounds interesting,” he said, smiling. “Have any plans for dinner?”
Violet and I were going to an Indian restaurant the sandwich vendor had recommended. He asked whether he and a friend could come along. I said sure, but for some reason thought the friend would be female, and felt a little twinge of disappointment, maybe jealousy.
The friend was male, and obviously brought along for symmetry, with Violet At the time, I was amused, and a little flattered.
Looking back. What if I’d been in a different mood, and been annoyed by Jeff’s directness? What if he hadn’t gone to the museum, or hadn’t signed up for the tour course, or hadn’t gone to the University, or hadn’t been born? Life would have been simpler, though I would certainly be dead.
32. Diary of a Traveler (excerpts)
23 December. …the curry was pretty much like home, except for a side dish of vegetables, which didn’t seem spicy at all, at first, and then ignited a few minutes later. Quenched it with a lot of beer and bread. Have to watch that; up to 52 kg. yesterday.
Worked off a few grams dancing. We went with Jeff and Manny to a place called the Denatured Alco-Hall, a dance hall in East Kensington. It was a big round room, garishly lit, with tables and chairs jumbled around a wooden dance floor. They were doing the Mash, this month’s dance (fashions change more slowly here than in N.Y.). It’s done in a circle, with no bodily contact other than hand-holding, but a rather complicated step that looks like the Big Apple we saw in Entertainment. The music was a half-century off, though, Beatles.
I would have preferred that Jeff hold more than a hand—in fact, by the end of the evening I felt like a bunny bitch in heat. Must have been the curry.
He seemed more interested in Violet, anyway, maybe not because of the reputation Nevada women have. If he were Worlds I would have asked him straight out and politely dragged him back to the room, ask Violet to knock loud and wait. But not here.
Just as well. I don’t need yet another man complicating my life. (Why can’t groundhogs see that it doesn’t have to be complicated? Some of them can, I guess, but not Jeff. He’s serious about everything. Strong, cool. Maybe smoldering. Wonder if anything will happen between him and Violet)
Violet and I agreed this morning that it was a little cold to be sleeping in our skins, so we bought pajamas while we were wandering. Tonight she dressed with her back to me and slipped immediately under the covers. She’s obviously bothered by last night. We were both pretty drunk; maybe she thinks something happened and she doesn’t remember. Have to find some innocuous way to reassure her.
But god, I don’t want to sleep alone tonight. I’m sitting here alone in the john, writing and fighting back tears for no reason. I’m going to take another Klonexine.
24 December. What a wonderful place this is to be, on Christmas Eve. It snowed heavily all day, and if you squint a little you can be back in the nineteenth century, or the twelfth. Most of us went to Albert Hall, where a man portraying Dickens read a Christmas story. It was curiously moving, wistful. I would be glad to take religion if you could turn it off and on at will.
Jeff caught me completely off guard by giving me a present. It wasn’t very fancy, a realtime currency converter (I’d seen his and admired it), but it threw me into a real dither. He rescued me by saying he knew my line didn’t celebrate the holiday, and he didn’t expect anything in return, except maybe a holiday kiss.
It was a casual, cousinly kiss, but I think we were reading each other furiously.
He didn’t give anything to Violet
25 December. Stayed up late last night, watching the cube with the sound turned down to a whisper. The mid-night news confirmed that the New New referendum had been defeated soundly, and there was no word of reaction from the Lobbies. But Congress won’t be in session today.
Stonehenge was truly weird. I didn’t really follow all the astronomical explanations, about why they lined it up the way they did, but it’s marvelous that it was built at all, by prehistoric men. Some of the huge rocks were dragged from as far away as Wales.
We also saw the remnants of a Roman road, but it was not even 2,000 years old. Built yesterday.
Spent the afternoon in Bath, which was interesting. The town itself is beautiful, with an impressive cathedral and so forth, but the main attraction is the baths, both of them. They have the historic bath, that goes back to the eighth century B.C. (King Lear’s father supposedly took a cure there) and is made over into a museum, and the Disney bath outside of town, which is a reconstruction of the Roman facility, lead-lined hot and cold pools surrounded by elegant tilework and sculpture.