Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

Back at the Lord Jim I got a knife out of my bag — a French one with a four and three-quarter-inch blade that folds into the wooden handle. I’d never used it for anything but cutting baguettes and sausages but I kept it razor-sharp. I put it in my jacket pocket and went back to Earl’s Court Road.

I thought I might have dinner at the Vegemania but when I got there I saw Mr Rinyo-Clacton at a table by the window. Zoé and Rima were busy at other tables and Serafina was serving him, yes, potato pancakes while he smiled up at her. My right hand fitted itself around the smooth and shapely handle of the knife in my pocket. Forget it, I said to myself — you’re not cut out for this sort of thing.

As I stood there watching I could almost smell the whole scene, him and her and the potato pancakes — bitter aloes, fear and desire, and the crispy golden-brownness that was the ultimate expression of the art of frying. Everything I saw seemed more so: Serafina in jeans, grey jumper, and leopard-spotted scarf, blushing slightly as she looked down at him from under her long lashes, her face thoughtful; Mr Rinyo-Clacton elegant in a black suit, white shirt and what was probably a regimental tie; his black brows and moustache, his rosy cheeks and bright eyes as he smiled up at her; the warm lustre of the varnished pine tables; the soft glow of the bell-flower lamps; the gleam of the bentwood chairs; the pancakes on the blue-and-gold-rimmed plate with the little tubs of apple sauce and sour cream.

As if it were a scene in an opera I could see the Daimler pulling up later and Serafina getting into it while the music voiced its foreboding with strings and woodwinds. I could see Mr Rinyo-Clacton, delaying not, hurrying not, rising and falling like the sea as he took his pleasure on the long body of Serafina. On the leopardskin back seat, on the silken sheets of his bed, perhaps even standing up in his white-pillared doorway. Mr Rinyo-Clacton who had never been HIV-tested.

He’d probably leave the Vegemania after his second or third order of potato pancakes but he’d be back between ten-thirty and eleven when Serafina finished for the evening, and if I waited until the Daimler came round it would be too late to warn her. The wholefood shop was still open and there was access to the kitchen through it. I told Ron I needed a quick word with Serafina and went into the kitchen where more potato pancakes were sizzling on the griddle and sending out their pheromones. Serafina half-smiled when she saw me. ‘If you want some,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to sit down at a table like the rest of the punters.’

‘Not this time, Fina. That man out there with the moustache, the one who looks like Lord Lucan — I know he had lunch here and I saw you talking to him before…’

The half-smile vanished. ‘Should I have asked your permission?’ Zoë came in at that moment, gave me a less than friendly look, and became busy with tortellini.

‘Please listen to me,’ I said to Serafina. ‘I know him and he’s bad news. If he asks you to go out with him, don’t do it. He’s not to be trusted.’

‘What else is new?’

‘Maybe we should talk about this privately.’

‘If you’ve got anything to say, say it now.’

I paused while Zoé, shaking her head, exited with the tortellini. ‘He’s not to be trusted,’ I said, ‘because one way or another he’ll get you into bed and he won’t use a condom and he might well be HIV-positive.’

‘What?’ Serafina’s eyes were suddenly very large. ‘How do you know that? Oh, no!’ Smoke was rising from the griddle as the pancakes burned. ‘Shit!’ she said, and with the spatula she lifted them up and dropped them into the bin.

‘Fina!’

‘What?’ Her face was turned away from me.

‘Look at me!’

When she turned towards me she was blushing. ‘Serafina, you’ve slept with him, haven’t you?’

‘Jonathan, tell me how you know so much about this man’s sex life.’

‘Will you answer my question if I answer yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘What I’m going to tell you — it isn’t how it might sound; I’m still the same Jonathan, I haven’t changed and become something else, I … ’

‘For God’s sake, Jonathan, just say it.’

‘Goddam it, Fina, I don’t think you know what it did to me when you left. I was depressed all the time and drunk a lot of the time and I was really at an all-time low when I met this guy and he invited me to his box at the opera … ’

‘Go on,’ she was looking at me as if everything that had been between us was suddenly wiped out and she didn’t know who or what I was.

‘Well, I had a lot of champagne and we went back to his place and he …’

‘He what? I need to hear you say it.’

‘Well, he had me.’

‘He had you. Are you telling me that he buggered you?’

‘Yes — it just sort of happened without my intending it.’

‘Without a condom?’

‘Without a condom.’

‘How come? Why didn’t you ask him to use one?’

‘Jesus, Fina, don’t make me give you a play-by-play description. We didn’t talk about what was going to happen — it was a situation where he just took charge and there we were.’

‘And how was it for you, Jonathan?’

‘Embarrassing.’

She shook her head. ‘Whew! This is a side — or should I say a backside? — of you that I’d no idea of. When you were having all those affairs with the Excelsior ladies, were you doing it with the men as well?’

‘Give me a break, Fina — nothing like that ever happened before.’

‘Well, I’m thankful for that. I mean, I’d like to think that something of what we had was real.’

‘You know it was, it is, real — all of it.’

‘You can say that but I don’t know what I know any more.’

‘Yes, you do. But let’s come back to my question — I’ve answered yours and now it’s your turn to answer mine.’

She was blushing furiously but she looked me in the eye with something like defiance. ‘The short answer is that he’s had me too.’

I shook my head as I tried not to see her and Mr Rinyo-Clacton naked on that bed. ‘When, for God’s sake?’

‘This afternoon.’

I ground my teeth. I’d been thinking of him as dangerous only at night and I’d forgotten that Serafina was off between three and five. ‘I don’t believe this. Have you ever seen him before today?’

‘No.’

‘Was it rape?’

‘No.’

‘My God, I’d no idea you were that easy, Serafina. How’d he manage it — “Come up to my place and look at my African sculptures”? What?’

‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Did he say anything about me?’

‘Only that you were a friend of his and he’d heard about the Vegemania and my potato pancakes from you.’

‘My friend Mr Rinyo-Clacton! O God, who would have thought you and I would ever be having this conversation! Did he use a condom?’

‘Goddam it, Jonathan, you’re not in a position to play the outraged husband.’

‘All right, but did he?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘O God, what if you get pregnant from him?’

‘Wrong time of the month.’

‘But the other possibility! Why couldn’t you have been more careful?’

‘Like you, right? Somehow there isn’t always the moment for careful; there wasn’t for you and there wasn’t for me. We’d been to a place in Sloane Square and I’d had a lot to drink and I was feeling low the same as you and I think I just wanted some consolation. He knew how to say the right things, he was very sweet and gentle and it just happened the way it happened.’

‘And how was it for you, Serafina?’

‘Oh God, I don’t think I’ve got the words for it. It was like an out-of-body experience where I was looking down at the two people on the bed and I knew that I was one of them but it was all so strange, so strange!’ She covered her face with her hands.