“A fortnight.”
Vlasta looks at Alan and shouts, “Take your fingers out of your ears!”
Lillian holds out the figurine by its feet at the angle of a Nazi salute. Vlasta shouts, “Remember the talent and skill which made this statue! Will you see them leave the world forever because you are ashamed of hearing a few simple facts?”
Alan withdraws fingers from ears and covers his face with them. The women contemplate him for a minute, then Vlasta says, “What monologues has he used on you?”
“The king and queen one.”
“That is new to me.”
“He pretends we are a king and queen making love on top of a tower in the sunlight. There is a little city below with red roofs and a harbour with sailing ships going in and out. The sailors on the sea and farmers on the hills round about can see us from miles away. They’re very glad we’re doing that.”
“Very poetic! Yet the scene is strangely familiar — Ah, I remember now! It is a picture in a book I lent him, Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy. But have you never had to be Miss Blandish?”
Alan stands up looking dazed and walks, snapping fingers, to the bed, on which he flings himself flat with face pressed deep into coverlet. The women arise and follow him, Lillian with the figurine still cradled in her arms. They sit primly on the foot of the bed with Alan’s heels between them.
“No,” says Lillian, “I have never had to be Miss Blandish.”
“He would have made you that eventually. No Orchids for Miss Blandish was a sadistic American thriller which made a great impression on him when he was ten or eleven. It is a pity Britain has no respectable state-inspected brothels, male adolescents here get initiated into sex through books and films which leave them with very strange ideas. Alan is such a milksop that I expected his intimate fantasies to be masochistic — no such luck! I had to be Miss Blandish while he raved like a madman in a phoney Chicago accent. Does that connect with his feelings for food? Yes of course! Too little breast feeding in infancy has made him an oral sadist. At the same time his clinging attitude to objects is a transference from the oral to the anal retention syndrome.”
Alan, without moving, emits a small but sincere scream.
“End of round two,” says Vlasta happily, “Enemy flat on canvas.”
But Lillian is not happy. She lays the figurine carefully on the floor and says sadly, “You know, when he spoke to me at these times I used to feel so special…”
“And now you know you have been to bed with a second-hand record player.”
Speaking with difficulty Alan turns his head sideways and says, “If I — sometimes — said the same thing to both of you — it was only because you both — sometimes — made me feel the same way.”
“How many women have made you feel the same way?” demands Vlasta, then sees Lillian is sobbing. Vlasta places a hand on her shoulder and says hoarsely, “Yes weep, weep little Lillian. I wept when I came here. YOU have not wept yet!” she tells Alan accusingly.
“And I’m not going to,” he declares, sitting up and wriggling down to the bed-foot on Lillian’s side. He hesitates then says awkwardly, “Lillian, I haven’t had time to tell you this before but I love you. I love you.”
He looks at Vlasta and says, “I don’t love you at all. Not one bit. But since you don’t love me either I don’t know why you’re so keen to crush me.”
“You deserve to be crushed, Alan,” says Lillian in a sad remote voice. He wriggles close to her pleading: “I honestly don’t think so! I’ve been selfish, greedy, stupid and I told Vlasta a lot of lies but I never tried to hurt anyone — not even for fun. My main fault was trying to please too many people at the same time, and believe me it would never have happened if only you had been punctual Lillian…”
In order to see her face he stands up and shatters the figurine under foot. The women also stand and look down at the fragments.
Slowly he kneels, lifts the two biggest fragments and holds them unbelievingly at eye-level. He places them carefully on the floor again, his mouth turning down sharply at the corners, then lies flat again on the bed. Lillian sits beside him, supporting herself with an arm across his body. She says sadly, “I’m sorry that happened, Alan.”
“Are you sympathizing?” cries Vlasta scornfully.
“I’m afraid so. He’s crying, you see.”
“You do not think these tears are real?”
Lillian touches his cheek with a fingertip, licks the tip, touches the cheek again and holds out her finger to Vlasta saying, “Yes, they are. Taste one.” Vlasta sits down too, presses Lillian’s hand to her lips, keeps it there. Vlasta says, “What beautiful fingers you have — soft and small and shapely.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’m more than a little butch, you know. How else could I have given myself to a thing like THAT?”
But Lillian is tired of this game and pulls her fingers away.
And leans closer to Alan, lays her hand gently on his neck and murmurs, “I’m sure Archibald Shanks has made hundreds of little statues. You can always get another.”
In a muffled voice he says, “’Snot just that. I’ve ruined everything between you and me, you and me.
Lillian says, “I don’t hate you, Alan,” and snuggles closer. Vlasta, watching them, feels excluded again, but knows anger and denunciation will exclude her even more. She also feels a softening toward Alan. Is it pity? No, it is certainly not pity, she has no pity for men and enjoys destroying them, especially smart manipulators like Alan. But when you have knocked such a man down, and don’t want to go away and be lonely, what can you do but help set him up again, like a skittle?
“I too cannot exactly hate you Alan,” she says, snuggling close to his other side. And he, with heartfelt gratitude, thanks God he is home again.
Loss of the Golden Silence
In her mid-twenties she does not move or dress attractively so only looks handsome when still, like now. She sprawls on floor, arms folded on seat of the easy chair she uses as desk. Pencil in hand, notepad under it, she studies open book propped against chairback: the one book in a room whose furnishings show only that the users are neither poor nor rich. This a room to lodge, not live in, unless your thoughts are often elsewhere. She frowns, writes a sentence, scores it out, frowns and writes another. A vertical crease between dark eyebrows is the only line on her face.
A door opens so she puts cushion over book and notepad then sits back on heels, watching a man enter. Ten years older than she he wears good tweed overcoat and looks about in worried way muttering, “Keys. Forgot keys.”
“There!” she says, pointing. He takes keys from top of sound-deck, returns toward door but pauses near her asking, “What did you hide under the cushion?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Why not look and see?”
“Thanks. I will.”
He grasps cushion, hesitates, pleads: “Do you mind if I look?”
“Oh look look look!” she cries, standing up, “I can’t stop you. It’s your cushion. It’s your room.” He moves cushion, lifts book and turns to the title page: The Pursuit of the Millennium, a Study of Revolutionary Anarchism in the Middle Ages. “Very clever,” he murmurs, and puts the book where he found it and settles on a sofa, hands clasped between knees. This depressed attitude angers her. Looking down on him she speaks with insulting distinctness. “Shall I tell you what’s in the battered green suitcase under our bed? Sidney’s Arcadia. Milton’s Paradise Lost. Wordsworth’s Prelude. And a heap of notes for a thesis on the British epic.”