Love, Leda

I have just stolen ten pounds. Feeling very conservative in my way of living, this is what money does to me. No philosophy left. I drill my hands right through my pockets only to hold onto myself for warmth. It’s mid morning. Cool. Not many coffee bars open. I, the brave one, god of any telephone kiosk, walk down Dean Street, see the man of the day; raincoat, shoulders round, hair black, falling out; heavenly blue eyes cast down into his own hell. Bold as brass I cross the road, stopping dead in front of him. He raises his eyes, so sadly that I love him for it.

Can I offer you a coffee? He nods. Off we go to find a coffee bar or café. He indifferent; I dreaming. In the end we finish up at Lyons. For a start they make good coffee, but the place is overheated.

What’s your name? His colourless voice belongs to a virgin.

Leda. It’s not my name, but people call me that; elegant joke nick-name.

Mine’s John.

The coffee is hot. Bitterly sweet. People in Lyons are passing through the City or out of work; all of them murdering time. We too have time on our hands to murder.

What are you doing — now and tomorrow?

Nothing. Life frightens me. I need to run somewhere.

He says this biting his lip, blowing into his empty coffee cup, out of sheer not-knowing what to do with himself. I race to the counter, order two more coffees and walk slowly, romantically (to please myself) back to our table. I sit down slowly.

Would you like to go to Sussex, a cottage, now —?

His gaze cruises around the tables, but there is only me and my offer. His eyes hit mine, smiling (a Father Benedictine smile).

Yes.

Leicester Square. The sun flickers through rain. He walks one step behind me, uncomfortable but sweet. He is ten years older than me, at least. Not yielding to lust I reject his manhood. I see a friend. My mind goes white. Avoid busy idleness. Talk of my beauty bores me. I overlook friendship for the happiness of now.

Waterloo, a kind of limbo, is never heaven. A place for abandoned lovers. We wait in silence, my heart steering every gland in my body. I have a hard time looking cool.

The train pulls in. People pour by. I look him over, as he stands, a knowing bird about to be shot. I could eat him and he knows it.

Sitting in the train; a little dene; all brown and dusty; not built for love. My thoughts are inside him crying. For myself too.

Loving my pride, killing a silent mind, all the pop songs of the day rush through my head, hoping one might fit him. I give in, say to myself, ‘The last symphony has not yet been composed —’

The thought lost, we pull out.

He looks out of the window. Only house after house. Parks seem larger, then houses fewer. Odd tombs of God appear, a cross at the top. We run through fields, look each other up and down, smile and lock our legs together, falling back into our seats, pretending sleep and no interest. True of him. Now the sun is in full strength and I away and apart in full intercourse. The train breaks speed and I return. We are alive again.

We get off the train. Doors slam — bang — slam. The sky is plastic blue. A crow screeches a question mark for the night. We walk uphill to the centre of the village. On our way we pass eight cows and a farmer. Beside the green I lead him to a tea shop. We sit down.

Would you like to eat now or later?

Later will do, he says gently.

A little old lady comes out of the back room wearing a pinafore of wild yellow roses.

Can I help you?

Could we have a pot of tea for two? She shuffles slowly back to her sanctum.

The tables, floor, every surface the eye can see is varnished. Over the fireplace hangs a picture of the Queen and underneath a small model of a man pinned to a cross. A silent reproach, like having a policeman around all day, knowing what he does and accepting his discomfort. The old lady fusses out again with a neatly laid tray. The tea set is of bone china. He plays mother, pouring the tea. After drinking it, I pay the old lady and we are in the street again where I give him two pounds to buy groceries and arrange to meet him later outside the tea shop. I make my way to the off license for whiskey and brandy, knowing we’ll need every drop. Then back to the tea shop, waiting country hours, longer than city hours. Wait; seeing the bus we need pull in, pause a few minutes, and pull out. The sun falls behind the clouds.

I see him coming towards me with the lethargy of a cat. He carries a box of food.

We’ve missed the bus so we might as well walk.

We walk, he silent as his heart, down the hill, past the station, along the highway, turn into a lane. The trees make a tunnel of darkness, light-speared by the sun. A bird sings. A dog barks. Sounds of the odd car fade. The lane twists from right to left and we come to the field which I know off-by-heart. I open the gate; he passes and I close it. I look at him, knowing he smells the greenness in the grass. We cross the field and I open another gate for him. He follows me into the wood, unchanged in thought, and I start to pick up pieces of dead timber. He is waiting at the edge of the wood, by the cornfield.

At the further end is the cottage. The field between slopes down and up again. Country lore has it that we go around the crop, but I go into the corn waist high. He follows like a child.

The cottage is a picture; Woolworth hand-painted. Inside it’s damp, cold and smells of old oak. Above our heads is a spider’s web, powdered dry. He dumps the box on the table and I hunt around for cups. He lights six candles. There is one cup in the sink and a tin can. I put them both under the tap for a second and shake them almost dry.

What will you have … whiskey or brandy?

Both, he says, warily. So I pour both for each of us. He has the cup and I the tin can (more for show). The candlelight dances and I swallow a large mouthful which clots inside me. Turning red I spit it into the fireplace, recover my senses, and put my face close to his, without satisfaction, so I begin to light the fire. He sits in an armchair. The first flames begin to grow, showing his eyes, lit up like a dog catching the smell of his master. The spirit in the tin turns my eyes red with glare. I take a candle and go upstairs where the shadows turn into men. A mouse runs over my foot and for a moment I am a pillar of ice. I stand the candle on the bedroom mantelpiece in its own wax and start making the bed, without sheets, which are too cold in the country anyway. Downstairs I hear him singing to himself, a kind of happiness. I leave the candle to burn itself out, hoping it will take the chill out of the air. Feeling with my hands I try to make my way down; stumble and fall. Limping into the main room I notice he’s broken the brandy bottle. Somewhere in that liquid on the floor is my soul. Heaven help us tonight. My leg starts bleeding; I feel it seeping through my jeans. He helps me pull the sofa in front of the fire and I sit at one end, putting my feet on the mantelpiece. He fills his cup and my tin with whiskey. Handing me the tin, he stretches himself on the sofa and drops his head into my lap. He sings:

Leda my lover, there’s no other.

My bottom begins to burn but I can’t move and don’t want to, so I brush my hand over his chest and he enjoys it. Unzip his trousers and let my hand roam. We stay like that for an hour.

He gets hold of my hair and pulls my head down to his face, whispering, Kinky!

So I kiss him.

Shall we go to bed?

He rolls his eyes and smiles, then jumps up and starts blowing out the candles. I stand up, my jeans burning the backs of my legs. Moving without thought I stub my toe, drop my whiskey, and fall back onto the sofa.

Aren’t you coming then? he asks with indeterminate voice.

I nod.

Upstairs, the candle has burnt right down to the mantelpiece, leaving a bad smell in the room. He stands in his underwear, the moonlight outlining his body before he creeps into bed. The bedsprings jangle and I whip out of my clothes. Nip in beside him and we cling together like two brass monkeys. Damn the cold night air. Warming up I become a poor man’s vampire, biting his ear, kissing him, but he doesn’t care for it. I kiss him again and this time both our minds go vacant. My body overheated, I make love to him, knowing it is painful for him; part of the pleasure. Then it’s all over and we lie stiff, like blocks of wood. I am vexed because it was too fast. My mind had built up the kind of intercourse that takes the whole night to enjoy. I run my fingers through my hair only to find the tin of Vaseline glued to my head. I throw it away and it echoes. Then I hold onto him like mad and in the stillness of the night I seem to hear his eyes watering.

I’m sorry if I hurt you…

So am I, he says, and there is nothing but night.

Sunrise breaks my sleep and he is getting out of bed, his body white as milk with black growths of hair in patches, but today his face has an everyday dullness. Silent as my heart is I love him for last night. He goes downstairs and I hear him moving about, then the smell of breakfast drifts up. I wait, sick in my stomach after last night’s drinking, and hear his footsteps come nearer. On a pane of glass are two plates of king-size breakfast. Liver, bacon, two eggs, tomatoes, sweet pickle, four slices of bread each, and a cup of tea between us. He puts the plates on my lap, hands me the tea and gets back into bed. I hand back a plate, put the other plate on the floor and drink up the tea. Placing the cup on the floor I get under the blankets in hope of getting back to sleep, but smelling human flesh, my thoughts begin to run wild. So I kiss his leg and turn the other way. I hear the plate drop, break, and that’s that.

Shall we go out for a long walk? he asks sweetly.

O.K. He jumps out of bed and I get out, frozen, without the zest of living life, put my clothes on loosely, embarrassed because I am the unbalanced one. Without a complex or a word he automatically pulls me downstairs and out we go into the cornfield, he beginning to run like a hunted thing, and I giving chase. We bend the corn this way and that, leaving passages of emptiness. Caught by the pattern of the game we run across three fields, jumping the hay-cocks, and climb a stack. I am halfway up and he knocks me down, but I climb again and he gives me his hand so we reach the top and strip bare to lie in the sun, burning.

A wind blows up so we get dressed and jump down. I let him walk ahead of me because I want to view him and dream a little, loving it when my eyes are irresponsible and my desires act out plays inside me while the spirit of my mind outlines the character of other things. (I feel the twentieth century is a masterpiece of direct existence torn from the engraved past.)

Shall we go back to town? he says, preoccupied.

I break into a trot and catch him up.

Sure, anything you say.

We make our way back to the cottage. What tinned food there is we leave on the table. He pockets the remains of the whiskey. I nip upstairs and throw the blankets into a chest, pick up the plates, run down and drop them in the sink. The fire is completely dead, but to make sure I blow at it and the grey ashes rise and fall like an explosive fall-out. No sooner have I closed the door than I begin to feel good, myself again. We run across the cornfield and into the wood. He picks up a piece of dead timber and throws it. I try to do better, but my piece hits a tree and falls to the ground. At the station we wait, trapped by the silence grown from knowing each other that much better. The little country station is a sanctuary, but I am struggling for expression rather than experience, so during the long time of waiting for the train I appoint myself as Jesse James in full drag waiting for this very train and about to steal all the cash belonging to the G.P.O.… On the opposite platform are two schoolgirls; one is singing:

Who cares for Baudelaire … Baudelaire did not care.

Anyone can see what the trouble is, but the law has it that she’s far too young, so I think of my death through her youth and the train pulls in and stops dead. In a flat second we are on it and seated. He starts drinking from the bottle, offers it to me, but I prefer to watch people forgetting the world, so shake my head. Halfway back he’s emptied it and beginning to fall asleep.