The Loo Sanction

bracing, and the only wine available at temperature was a Pouilly-Fuisse, that atonic white that occupies so large a sector of British taste. But Jonathan enjoyed the evening immensely. She was a charmer, this one, and the quality of the food did not matter, save as another subject for laughter. The lilt and color of her accent was contagious, and he had to prevent himself from slipping into an imitation of it.

She ate with healthy appetite, both her portions and his, while he watched her with pleasure. Her face intrigued him. The mouth was too wide. The jawline was too square. The nose undistinguished. The amber hair so fine that it seemed constantly stirred by unfelt breezes. It was a boyish face with the mischievous flexibility of a street gamine. Her most arresting feature was her eyes, bottle green and too large for the face, and thick lashes like sable brushes. Their special quality came from the rapid eddies of expression of which they were capable. Laughter could squeeze them from below; another moment they would flatten to a look of vulnerable surprise; then instantly they were narrow with incredulity; then intense and shining with intelligence; but at rest, they were nothing special. In fact, no single element of her face was remarkable, but the total he found fascinating.

'Do you find me pretty?' she asked, glancing up and finding his eyes on her.

'Not pretty.'

'I know what you mean. But it's a good old face. I enjoy doing self-portraits. But I have to suppress this mad desire I have to add to my measuring thumb. Your face is not so bad, you know.'

'I'm glad.'

She turned to her salad. 'Yes, it's an interesting face. Bony and craggy and all that. But the eyes are a bother.'

'Oh?'

'Are you sure you're not hungry?'

'Positive.'

'Actually, they're smashing. But they're not very comfortable eyes.' She glanced up and looked at them professionally. 'It's difficult to say if they're green or gray. And even though you smile and laugh and all that, they never change. You know what I mean?'

'No.' Of course he knew, but he liked having her talk about him.

'Well, most people's eyes seem to be connected to their thoughts. Windows to the soul and all. But not yours. You can't read a thing by looking into them.'

'And that's bad?'

'No. Just uncomfortable. If you're not going to eat that salad, I'll just keep it from going to waste.'

Over coffee, over cognac, over more coffee, they talked without design.

'Do you know what I've always wished?'

'No. What?'

'I've always wished I was a tall, terribly handsome black woman. With long legs and a chilling, disdainful sideways glance.'

He laughed. 'Why have you wished that?'

'Oh, I don't know really. But think of the clothes I could get away with wearing!'

'...oh, it was a typical middle-class Irish childhood, I suspect. Cooed over and spoiled as a baby; ignored as a child. Taught how to pass tests and how to stand with good posture. My father was a rabid Irish nationalist, but like most he had suspicions of inferiority. He sent me off to university in London—to get a really good education. And they were delighted when I came back with an English accent. I hated school as a girl. Sports and gymnastics particularly. I remember that we had a very, very modern physical culture teacher. A great bony woman, she was, with a prissy voice and a faint moustache. She tried to introduce the girls to the joys of eurythmics. You should have seen us! A gaggle of awkward girls—some with stick legs and knobby knees, others placid and fat—all trying to follow instructions 'to writhe with an inner passion and reach up expressively for the Sun God and let him penetrate your body.' We'd giggle about inner passions and penetrations, and the teacher would call us shallow, silly girls and dirty-minded. Then she'd writhe for us to show how it should be done. And we'd giggle some more. Cigarette?'

'I don't smoke.'

She didn't seem to realize that she had stopped her story midway and had turned her thoughts inward.

He allowed the silence to run its course, and when she focused again on him with a slight start, he said, 'So you won't be going back to Ireland?'

She butted her cigarette out deliberately. 'No. Not ever.' She lit another and stared at the gold lighter as though she were seeing it for the first time. 'I should never have gone to the North. But I did and... too much happened there. Too much hatred. And death.' She sighed and shook her head briskly. 'No. I'll never go back to Ireland.'

'Say, do you like Sterne?' she said.

'Ah... funny you should mention him.'

'Why?'

'I haven't the slightest idea who you're talking about.'

'Sterne,' she said, 'the writer.'

'Oh. That Sterne.'

'I've always had this deep intuition that I would get on well with any man who had a fondness for Sterne, Trollope, and Galsworthy.'

'Has it worked out like that?'

'I don't know. I've never met anyone who liked Sterne.'

'More coffee?'

'Please.'

'...and you took up painting?'

'Oh, little by little. Not with much courage at first. Then I took the plunge and decided I would do nothing but paint until my money ran out. The family was dead against it, especially as they had wasted so much money sending me over here to school. I suppose they would have been happier if I had gone into prostitution. At least they would have understood the profit motive. Well, I painted and painted, and nobody at all noticed. Then I ran out of money and sold everything I had of any value. But the first thing I knew, I was stoney broke and didn't even have rent money.'

'And that was that.'

'And that was that.' She looked up and smiled 'And here I am.'

'I have a confession to make,' he said seriously.

'You're a typhoid carrier?'

'No.'

'You're designed to self-destruct in seven minutes?'

'No.'

'You're a boy.'

'No. You'll never guess.'

'In which case I give up.'

'I have never liked the films of Eisenstein. They bore me to screaming.'

'That is serious. What do you do for espresso talk?'

'Oh, I'm not excusing myself. I recognize it to be a great flaw in my character.'

'...oh, I love to drive! Fast, at night, in back lanes, with the lights off. Don't you?'

'No.'

'Most men do, I think. British men especially. They use fast cars sexually, if you know what I mean.'

'Like Italians.'