He slithered around in his chair and made a noise intended to drown something out — my God: pornography turned the world upside down. You gave your head away, and what your mind liked no longer mattered; now the animal parts were in the driving-seat — and tall in the saddle. As Lolita took her Amazon from the rear, Brendan attended to the ordeal of his own arousal. You’d better hope that this doesn’t happen, he thought, when you’re watching the one about the oversexed undertaker, the coprophagic pigfarmer, the ladykilling ladykiller …
By this stage Brendan expected to be twitching and twisting for the full ninety minutes. Yet only one more revelation awaited him, and this was insidious or cumulative, like the reluctant awareness of footsteps behind you, at night, on a lonesome road. Quite soon, exposure to Lolita’s sentimental education was reminding him of his only bullfight, in Barcelona: after the third kill, fascination and disquiet remained, but these feelings were quietly joined by boredom. As the heroine sedulously dallied — now with a jodhpured Spanish grandee, now with a rude young groom, now with a spangled diplomat, now with a rugged derelict plucked off the street — it seemed to Brendan that the performers, with more haste than lust, were working their way through a checklist or duty-roster: some of this, then some of that, and then this and then that, including some of this, not forgetting that, and then maybe this, and then always that. Always that — at the end. Grinning, and grinning gratefully, on her knees, Princess Lolita, awaiting anointment.
When it was over he went through it again, availing himself of the remote control. Watching pornography, watching the sex of others (this was already clear to him), you were constantly saying, No don’t do that — do this, stop, don’t stop, proceed, desist. The viewer was helpless before the spatial dimensions, but the remote control gave him power over time. Deploying this power, Brendan concentrated on freeze-framed close-ups of the actress’s face. From certain angles, yes, remarkably like, remarkably like. But older. And not just a year older … If Princess Lolita had shape or form, then power was its pattern. The exertion of that power remained symbolic, and counterintuitive: it was the handsome derelict who pinioned the Princess with a pair of paper handcuffs; it was the sleek grandee who followed her about on all fours, led by a gossamer leash. Yet always this moment at the end, when power was no longer held in balance. The face, smiling, with male seed dripping from it, hanging from it. Brendan didn’t like this spectacle. But his blood did.
It was with a sense of himself revised dramatically downward that he stood, and pressed the eject. For a moment he entertained the informed certainty that the machine would now seize (trapping its contents for later delectation — Henry’s, Victoria’s), and he would have to wrench it apart with his teeth and fingernails. But here it came, disgustedly expectorated on to the tiled floor … On the way to his room he came round a corner and almost fell over her: the Princess. He flung out both hands in her direction, to catch or steady her, and so released what was lodged beneath his armpit: and in clear contravention of all life’s laws (which demand that every dropped object lands the wrong way up), Princess Lolita came to rest face-down, and in near silence, on the tussocky pelt of the carpet. Even so he had time to think that his greatcoat and dressing-gown would now fly open, to reveal not the full complement of his pyamas but a pair diligently savaged by scissors, with the trousers, secured by elastic bands, ending just above the knee.
‘I’m so sorry, ma’am. I do apologise.’
Victoria hugged her robe to her. Plainly she was heading for the cavernous bathroom which the three of them shared (along with the rabbits and the archery sets). He expected, as he focused, to find her poetically pale, as pale as the weak dawn that was now almost upon them. But she wore an uneven flush and a roseate brocade on her upper lip and septum — she had not been well, was not well, was of course not well, this Christmas, this long January …
‘Oh never mind,’ she said, and stepped round him. At the corner she bent and turned, saying, ‘Brendan — you know there’s only one thing he can do.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am?’
She flipped a hand in his direction, and was gone.
An hour later Brendan was still muttering into his pillow … How did it go again? Oh yes: work. That’s all you were doing. Making ‘headway’, was it? And rousing yourself from the enforced torpor of Ewelme … Working is what they’re doing and that’s why they look so old: old in the eyes. Is pornography just filmed prostitution or is it something more gladiatorial? Those hospitalic condoms: they don’t keep them on at the end. And the face has holes in it … Gladiators: were slaves. But could win their freedom. What exactly has happened to you? he asked himself. Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse. If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body … Tori Fate turned seventeen on January 3. Princess Lolita was begun on January 12 and released on January 19, the day after the Victoria story metastasised. So hard upon — it followed hard upon. And thus the phenomenon explained. At the back of the common mind, for reasons fair or foul, was a virgin princess. A fifteen-year-old girl — but the most brilliant edition.
* * *
3. Apologia—2: Keith the Snake
‘Did you dear? Did you dear? Ah. I trust me wreath was in its proper place? Ah. Did you dear? Did you dear? Ah. He’s coming is he? Handsome. Yes dear. God bless.’
Joseph Andrews put down one instrument and picked up another. Click.
‘Going through what I done so far, I think I could’ve give the wrong impression. You must think I’m a stubborn sort of so-and-so — a bit too stubborn, sometimes, for me own good! And it could be you ain’t that far wrong. On the last day of me eighteen months for [click] Jesus. Oh yeah [click] for uh, for Affray, some bloke come up to me and says, “Fancy a run at the wall, mate?” They had a uh, refectory table in the yard — must have been fifteen feet, we’ve reckoned, on its end. So I said I’d be absolutely delighted. I fancied it the more as they’d already give me me civvies. In a pillowslip. Lob it over — up and away. As it was we was only gone half an hour. And of course, when they’ve dragged you back in, they lay about you with a will. Course that: does the bear do its business in the woods? They’ve stuck me with the eighteen months again plus another six for the break, plus another year for what we done to the couple whose car we’ve took. Now I’ve said at the time that having a run at the wall was the right thing to do and I’d do it again. You got to keep on having a go at them. You got to keep — kicking up, we call it. But then it comes over you that … that prison is like the sea. You can be the strongest swimmer there ever was and you can keep kicking up, and kicking up, and kicking up, like grim death with all you got till your very last gasp. But the sea is the sea. It’ll stay where it is and it’ll never tire. [Click … Click.]
‘So when I come out from doing me eight I threw in me lot with Tony Eist and Keith the Snake. Import-export business on the Costa del Sol. Me and Tony’ve gone back a way, through Wormwood Scrubs, Borstal, Detention Centre and Approved School. But this Keith the Snake was a new one on me. And you know what? Don’t ask me why, but there was something about Keith the Snake that I didn’t quite … Call it a sixth sense, if you like. I couldn’t put me finger on it, but there was something about Keith the Snake that come over a bit offo. Lovely dresser, Keith the Snake. Not flash. Smart. Always beautifully turned out.