It was the ageing man’s failing of shortening the link between the words in his mind and the words on his tongue. Rick was regarding me intently. Of course—he’d been there, shot by an air gun, the whole scene as deeply engraven in his memory as in mine. I shook my head and gave him what I hoped was an inscrutable smile. A shadow passed over the professor’s face (as we say in our extravagant way) when he saw the shop was no longer open.
Lucinda was more of a problem, more mixed, more nearly on the grey edge of the impermissible. So much of it, though, if not all of it, was her idea, not mine. When it came to sex, Lucinda was a genius. If she chose to write her memoirs! Dear God, Domine defende nos! A book for none but the gallant investigators of the human farmyard. She was such an inventor! Folks, what you have been looking for, take it home with you, a present for the wife, the kiddies, the dear old folks in whose toothless caverns marge will not melt—something new!
It was the Jiffy camera—a sort of proto-Polaroid, I think. She had one before they were even on the market. She would, of course, she knew a man. Trust Lucinda! Even her car was a one-off job. But using the camera was her idea, and God knows why it was so exciting but it was and made you feel like the chap in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, above a mortal man impassioned far, practically bank clerk standard, in fact. She was ten years older than me, preserved carefully and very nearly the last relic of the BUF. But to strip off the rectangle of film, then together, naked or half-naked in bed, to watch the faint shadows, shapes hardly filled with colour, which way up, and she’d cry, “There I am!” or “There you are!” Of course, she wanted faces, her own mostly and mine sometimes, but rarely on the same pic, not possibly on the same pic.
I know now that her compulsion to have her face photographed in such situations and only seconds later to see it again in full colour was a substitute for having it off at the crossroads and stopping the traffic; or like the empress who performed on stage with peas and a duck to roars, one must suppose, of Byzantine applause. One day she remarked casually that we’d better wait for a bit as she thought she might have caught a dose of clap. I have never dodged so fast, even on the rugger field. After that—long after that—was the letter I’d torn up, together with photographs showing her and mostly anonymous bits of me, and thrown in the dustbin—fool!—only to have the resurrection man fish them out again. She kept the ones with my face on. Yet all that was before the days of Elizabeth—so why did memory of Lucinda in this most permissive age make me quiver so with unease?
Margaret. That was the connection. Directly I remembered, I twinged inside. I had done my best to forget the whole business with Margaret and succeeded pretty well. Only Lucinda was a part of it. I’d asked her advice. I’d told her about the mad, obscene letters I’d written Margaret, the only woman I’d wanted and couldn’t have, the accusations, the curses on her marriage, oh impossible, vile—I must have been mad, literally mad. When I recovered I was desperate to get the letters back—mad all over again.
Lucinda was full of contempt.
“It’s quite simple. The easiest thing in the world. You find a bent solicitor, give him her address and a hundred pounds. Go back after a month and he’ll hand you your letters in a plain envelope. Nothing said. It’s done every day. All finished, my dear little man. What a little man it is, den! God. I ought to charge you thousands for those pics.”
“It would be—illegal.”
“Criminal,” she agreed cheerfully, “but that’s the solicitor’s affair. You’re making a packet out of the film aren’t you?”
“A small packet.”
“If a man with money can’t indulge himself with such services,” said Lucinda with an air of calm reason, “what’s money for?”
“I
Lucinda was more of a problem, more mixed, more nearly on the grey edge of the impermissible. So much of it, though, if not all of it, was her idea, not mine. When it came to sex, Lucinda was a genius. If she chose to write her memoirs! Dear God, Domine defende nos! A book for none but the gallant investigators of the human farmyard. She was such an inventor! Folks, what you have been looking for, take it home with you, a present for the wife, the kiddies, the dear old folks in whose toothless caverns marge will not melt—something new!
It was the Jiffy camera—a sort of proto-Polaroid, I think. She had one before they were even on the market. She would, of course, she knew a man. Trust Lucinda! Even her car was a one-off job. But using the camera was her idea, and God knows why it was so exciting but it was and made you feel like the chap in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’, above a mortal man impassioned far, practically bank clerk standard, in fact. She was ten years older than me, preserved carefully and very nearly the last relic of the BUF. But to strip off the rectangle of film, then together, naked or half-naked in bed, to watch the faint shadows, shapes hardly filled with colour, which way up, and she’d cry, “There I am!” or “There you are!” Of course, she wanted faces, her own mostly and mine sometimes, but rarely on the same pic, not possibly on the same pic.
I know now that her compulsion to have her face photographed in such situations and only seconds later to see it again in full colour was a substitute for having it off at the crossroads and stopping the traffic; or like the empress who performed on stage with peas and a duck to roars, one must suppose, of Byzantine applause. One day she remarked casually that we’d better wait for a bit as she thought she might have caught a dose of clap. I have never dodged so fast, even on the rugger field. After that—long after that—was the letter I’d torn up, together with photographs showing her and mostly anonymous bits of me, and thrown in the dustbin—fool!—only to have the resurrection man fish them out again. She kept the ones with my face on. Yet all that was before the days of Elizabeth—so why did memory of Lucinda in this most permissive age make me quiver so with unease?
Margaret. That was the connection. Directly I remembered, I twinged inside. I had done my best to forget the whole business with Margaret and succeeded pretty well. Only Lucinda was a part of it. I’d asked her advice. I’d told her about the mad, obscene letters I’d written Margaret, the only woman I’d wanted and couldn’t have, the accusations, the curses on her marriage, oh impossible, vile—I must have been mad, literally mad. When I recovered I was desperate to get the letters back—mad all over again.
Lucinda was full of contempt.
“It’s quite simple. The easiest thing in the world. You find a bent solicitor, give him her address and a hundred pounds. Go back after a month and he’ll hand you your letters in a plain envelope. Nothing said. It’s done every day. All finished, my dear little man. What a little man it is, den! God. I ought to charge you thousands for those pics.”
“It would be—illegal.”
“Criminal,” she agreed cheerfully, “but that’s the solicitor’s affair. You’re making a packet out of the film aren’t you?”
“A small packet.”
“If a man with money can’t indulge himself with such services,” said Lucinda with an air of calm reason, “what’s money for?”
“I
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