But I digress. I bore you with lyricism. The days came and passed. I saw her this day and not that, and perhaps twice on another day. Imperceptibly seeing her and not seeing her became a factor in my life, and then before I knew it, it passed from factor to structure. Would I see her today? Would all my hours and minutes be redeemed? Would she look at me? Did she remember me from one time to another? Was there a future for us together… would I ever have the courage to approach her? Courage! What did all my millions mean now, what now of my wisdom matured by the ravages of three marriages? I loved her… I wished to possess her. And to possess her it seemed I would have to buy her.
I must tell you something about myself. I am wealthy. Possibly there are ten men resident in London with more money than I. Probably there are only five or six. Who cares? I am rich and I made my money on the telephone. I shall be forty-five on Christmas Day. I have been married three times, each marriage lasting, in chronological order, eight, five and two years. These last three years I have not been married and yet I have not been idle. I have not paused. A man of forty-four has no time to pause. I am a man in a hurry. Each throb of jism from the seminal vesicles, or wherever it originates, lessens the total allowance of my life-span by one. I have no time for the analysis, the self-searching of frenzied relationships, the unspoken accusation, the silent defense. I do not wish to be with women who have an urge to talk when we’ve finished our coupling. I want to lie still in peace and clarity. Then I want to put my shoes and socks on and comb my hair and go about my business. I prefer silent women who take their pleasure with apparent indifference. All day long there are voices around me, on the telephone, at lunches, at business conferences. I do not want voices in my bed. I am not a simple man, I repeat, and this is not a simple world. But in this respect at least my requisites are simple, perhaps even facile. My predilection is for pleasure unmitigated by the yappings and whinings of the soul.
Or rather it was, for that was all before… before I loved her, before I knew the sickening elation of total self-destruction for a meaningless cause. What do I, now, forty-five on Christmas Day, care for meaning? Most days I passed by her shop and looked in at her. Those early days when a glance was sufficient and I hurried on to meet this business friend or that lover… I can pick out no time when I knew myself to be in love. I have described how a factor in my life became a structure, it merged as orange to red in the rainbow. Once I was a man hurrying by a shop window and glancing carelessly in. Then I was a man in love with… simply, I was a man in love. It happened over many months. I began to linger by the window. The others… the other women in the shop-window display meant nothing to me. Wherever my Helen stood I could pick her out at a glance. They were mere dummies (oh my love) beneath contempt. Life was generated in her by the sheer charge of her beauty. The delicate mold of her eyebrow, the perfect line of her nose, the smile, the eyes half closed with boredom or pleasure (how could I tell?). For a long time I was content to look at her through the glass, happy to be within a few feet of her. In my madness I wrote her letters, yes, I even did that and I still have them. I called her Helen (“Dear Helen, give me a sign. I know you know” etc.). But soon I loved her completely and wished to possess her, own her, absorb her, eat her. I wanted her in my arms and in my bed, I longed that she should open her legs to me. I could not rest till I was between her pale thighs, till my tongue had prised those lips. I knew that soon I would have to enter the shop and ask to buy her.
Simple, I hear you say. You’re a rich man. You could buy the shop if you wanted. You could buy the street. Of course I could buy the street, and many other streets too. But listen. This was no mere business transaction. I was not about to acquire a site for redevelopment. In business you make offers, you take risks. But in this matter I could not risk failure, for I wanted my Helen, I needed my Helen. My profound fear was that my desperation would give me away. I could not be sure that in negotiating the sale I could keep a steady hand. If I blurted out too high a price the shop manager would want to know why. If it was valuable to me, why then, he would naturally conclude (for was he not a businessman too?) it must be valuable to someone else. Helen had been in that shop many months. Perhaps, and this thought began to torment my every waking minute, they would take her away and destroy her.
I knew I must act soon and I was afraid.
I chose Monday, a quiet day in any shop. I was not sure whether quietness was on my side. I could have had Saturday, a busy day, but then, a quiet day… a busy day… my decisions countered each other like parallel mirrors. I had lost many hours of sleep, I was rude to my friends, virtually impotent with my lovers, my business skills were beginning to deteriorate, I had to choose and I chose Monday. It was October, raining a fine, bitter drizzle. I dismissed my chauffeur for the day and drove to the shop. Shall I slavishly follow the foolish conventions and describe it to you, the first home of my tender Helen? I do not really care to. It was a large shop, a store, a department store and it dealt seriously and solely in clothes and related items for women. It had moving staircases and a muffled air of boredom. Enough. I had a plan. I walked in.
How many details of this negotiation must be set down before that moment when I held my precious in my arms? A few and quickly. I spoke to an assistant. She consulted with another. They fetched a third, and the third sent a fourth for a fifth who turned out to be the under-manageress in charge of window design. They clustered around me like inquisitive children, sensing my wealth and power but not my anxiety. I warned them all I had a strange request and they shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and avoided my eye. I addressed these five women urgently. I wanted to buy one of the coats in the window display, I told them. It was for my wife, I told them, and I also wanted the boots and scarf that went with the coat. It was my wife’s birthday, I said. I wanted the dummy (ah my Helen) on which these clothes were displayed in order to show off the clothes to their best advantage. I confided in them my little birthday trick. My wife would open the bedroom door lured there by some trivial domestic matter invented by myself, and there would stand… could they not see it? I recreated the scene vividly for them. I watched them closely. I brought them on. They lived through the thrill of a birthday surprise. They smiled, they glanced at each other. They risked glancing into my eyes. What a kind husband was this! They became, each one, my wife. And of course I was willing to pay a little extra… but no, the under-manageress would not hear of it. Please accept it with the compliments of the shop. The under-manageress led me towards the window display. She led, and I followed through a blood-red mist. Perspiration dribbled from the palms of my hands. My eloquence had drained away, my tongue glued to my teeth and all I could do was feebly lift my hand in the direction of Helen. “That one,” I whispered.