Her face shone out at him. And he was freshly startled by her eyes. Normally Phoebe’s snuff-coloured eyes seemed to address you through a lens of detachment, as fixed and unrevealing as damp brownstone. Now they had a glisten and a crackle, like caramelised sugar. She went on,
‘All their past stars, Mart. All their pets and playmates.’ She jolted to her feet and surged outward. ‘Don’t move a muscle. I’ve got an offering for you.’ And as she left the room she gave vent to a glissade of laughter…
He heard her next door – the snaps of the suitcase, the rummaging. Phoebe strode out of there and offered it to him like a waitress with a tray (and she curtsied when he took it). The nude magazine was called Oui.
‘My bit’s under a false name,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to keep some things secret…’
For a moment he thought she was about to sneeze; but now the head went back and she laughed again. And the sound of it, vaguely surprisingly, made him feel exhausted, physically exhausted; and he even felt that if she laughed again he might have to curl up and fade away, just from physical exhaustion…
‘Concentrate, Martin.’
Very much as if in an uneasy dream (the succession of strange challenges, the strange weakening of cause and effect, together with the proximity, well known to male dreamers, of a strange and equivocal woman), he mustered his urbanity…
The nine-page section bore the title ‘Tycoon Tanya’. And there she was, Phoebe, in the year – he checked the cover – 1971. So she was twenty-nine, but not looking qualitatively younger: the angular bonescape fully formed (fully and interestingly evolved and completed). Tycoon Tanya was to be seen methodically removing her businesswear in a narrow variety of settings: a penthouse roof garden, a softly lit boardroom, a brass-bright City office. Tycoon Tanya, ran the text, is a stratospheric financier who is also versed in the more intimate skills and arts. Sometimes she likes to cast off her burdensome responsibilities and relax in the…And what struck him and held him was her face. All along the way, unconcernedly shedding this or that article of clothing until there was nothing left to shed, Phoebe went on looking as though she had just punished the weak yuan, or approved that astronomical loan to the Argentinians, or pulled the plug on General Motors.
‘Mm. I thought you’d like that one.’
He had reached the page immediately following the centrefold (where Phoebe was up to her knees in an executive Jacuzzi). In the photo now before him she was in a luminous steel-ribbed kitchen wearing only a pair of white tights; and her pubic shield was the shape and size of a halved apple. Getting the picture? ran the text. Tanya has curves in places where other girls don’t even have places! Small wonder she’s decided to spearhead the much ballyhooed ‘Ess Es’ (turn to page 5).
‘And what d’you think you’re doing?’
‘Turning to page five.’
‘You certainly are not turning to page five. Hand it over. Now.’
‘…Well that was a classy shoot, Phoebe. Your expression is very good. Not all bashful or dreamy – or witchy. Serious. Mm. Serious.’
‘And you’re shocked.’
‘Hardly.’ Hardly, because even this wasn’t a new one on Martin: two earlier girlfriends, Doris and Aramintha, had posed in nude magazines.*8 Yes, but he wasn’t living with Aramintha, he hadn’t devoted two years of his life to Doris, and with neither were there presentiments of love…This last consideration pained him and made him jealous of other men’s eyes. But he wasn’t shocked.
‘Do I sound or look shocked? I’m not. I’m curious though. Was it just an impulse, or did you have a reason?’
‘Yes. There was a reason. I was under massive pressure at Ess Es.’
‘What is this Ess Es business?’
‘I’ll explain later.’ She turned to the window. ‘There won’t be any taxis – not in this muck. And if we took the Mini, where would we stick it? Anyway! Time to get ready. For the function for the nude magazine!
…Now what type of pants shall I wear?’
Phoebe had two types of pants, which she called cheap and dear: she bought her cheap pants in Woolworth’s, and her dear pants at a place in Mayfair called Mirage. Both had their own charm. He said,
‘Your very dearest. Tonight you’ll have some real competition for once.’
‘Ooh. I know what it is. You just don’t like it when I’m being friendly.’
‘No. When you’re being friendly, you’re not being friendly to me. It’s torture.’
‘Huh.’ She leaned into him and quickly and wetly licked his lips. ‘What makes you think you know the first thing about torture?’
She went next door and reappeared almost naked. ‘How about these?’
‘They’re not dear. They’re your very cheapest.’
‘Yeah. That’s rig ht.’
They were close, the two of them; he was there and she was there; they were near.
And tonight, he knew, he would get closer to that part of her which he had never been able to broach or breach – what was unnearable in her.
The Inn on the Park
Evening.
Now they splashed their way south from Marble Arch Underground, moving through shift after shift of hot rain – sultry, sticky rain. Sweaty rain: the black Saturday dusk was sweating, heavily sweating, in the form of rain. Under its shunting curtains they ducked and hurried; and all along Park Lane the wedged traffic, red-eyed or yellow-eyed, trembled and steamed. Martin had a soaked copy of Friday’s Evening News plastered over his hair, while Phoebe wielded her single-occupancy umbrella – a polythene sheath with a rectangular slit at chin height, like the mouth of a postbox, and through it she said,
‘Look at them. Already written off.’
She meant her high heels. Courtesy of which she was five foot eleven. To his five foot six (and a half). He was yawing along beside her.
Now wait. Suddenly there is an exchange of words (unstrident but earnest) and the man halts. The woman walks on, then swivels and lingers, like a mother with a sullen child;
