Martin Amis - Dead Babies

"Jesus," said Marvell, "we've got our ancestors to thank for that."

Skip leapt to his feet. "Eat shit, eat shit!" he roared, his mouth whitening.

The heifer now stood a few feet from the fence, staring at the disarray in companionable wonder. Its instincts had programmed it to run up to the picnic in that fashion, but they had programmed it also to swerve away at the last moment and trot off wondering what to do next.

"Motherfuck, motherfuck," said Skip. He uprooted a brick from the base of the fence and moved along the wire calling out softly, waving his hand.

As the animal frowned, dipped its head and moved forward, Skip brought the brick down on its pate with a long-armed swing. There was a dull crunch.

The heifer remained motionless, then jerked backward. It turned, skipped into the field, ran about in untidy decreasing circles, and keeled over onto the grass.

: There was a silence.

"You've killed it," said Andy. "It's all fucked up."

"It does seem to be totally buggered," agreed Quentin.

"I'm gonna go kick it some," said Skip, stepping forward.

Female voices were raised in protest. Andy stood in Skip's path and a halfhearted scuffle took place before Quentin lent his support. Whereas Andy restrained Skip with dislike, and because he didn't particularly want him to kick the heifer, Quentin restrained Skip considerably, in the spirit of a wise man preventing a fellow Jew from attacking a platoon of Nazis, with due respect for Skip's wrath. At length Skip relaxed.

"Just get the whiskey, man," said Quentin.

"Yeah," said Andy. "Let's get drunk."

"Yeah. Yeah!" screamed Giles.

Within half an hour the nine were re-established on the near side of the barbed-wire fence. Nobody's injuries had proved to be more serious than anything handkerchiefs and saliva wouldn't relieve — except Andy's ripped cheek, which he claimed to have "cooled" by emptying a bottle of Glenfyddich over it. This move exhausted the supply of spirits and the wine was therefore started on in earnest. Weightwatchers Celia, Diana, and Whitehead didn't object to the switch, having been on Pouilly Fume all along, but there was loud complaint from the others about the inability of wine to do much for them these days. (Giles, face downward at the corner of the blanket, had made no response to demands for his bottle of gin.) "I guess this'll keep us up till we get back," said Marvell, boredly unwrapping his hash kit. The food, also, was partaken of gingerly: pieces of meat were picked up between finger and thumb and held aloft like live worms before being quickly dispatched; offending portions of salad and cheese were disgustedly spat out on the grass; water biscuits, apples, celery, and radishes enjoyed fair popularity, but little truck was had with such greasy and malodorous dishes as sardines, liver sausage, and anchovies. The company snorted when bananas were mentioned and actually

gagged in unison when boiled eggs were produced ("No," said

Celia, putting them away, "perhaps that wasn't a good idea"). Twenty minutes with a bottle of wine apiece, however, and loquacity returned, mainly in the form of piecemeal self- congratulation about the recent escape. Quentin then began a speech on the writings of the late Alain Robbe-Grillet; its length, periodicity, and range of reference held in thrall everyone but Keith (anyway groggy enough with heat, the memory of Roxeanne's body, and his triannual deliverance from the costive state) and Andy. The restless Adorno rolled over in front of Diana and started to stroke her hair and whisper sexy things to her neck. Diana turned away toward the curved field, where without comment she saw the injured heifer climb uncertainly to its knees, its feet, then zigzag away. When she looked back at Andy she noticed that some blood from his cheek had dripped onto the downy white scants of her pantie suit. "Keep away from me," she said quietly. "Just keep, the fuck, away from me," said Diana.

Diana spends a lot of time wondering what the hell she's doing in Appleseed Rectory. Occasionally — when the attentive Villiers pours her a Tio Pepe at 11:30, or while she drives to the shopping center in Celia's I-type Jaguar, or as Giles's unsteady hand appears round his bedroom door with a wad of £20 notes to settle the quarterly accounts, or during the moments after Andy has made love to her — Diana feels, well, a sort of fleeting satisfaction with the stage her life has reached. But most days she sits there hating everything, the place she's in, the people she's living with, the light around her, the time of day it is.

For this there are excellent reasons. Diana's background may not in itself be illustrious, but it has an unquestionable luster. Always she has mingled with the great. At the age of six Diana spent the first of many summers at Moreley Court, where her ermine waterbed was maintained at body temperature and where every night she found her toothbrush pre-pasted in the ormolu bathroom. Two years later she wintered with the Beresford-Parkinsons in the famous Ariadne Palace on Lake Geneva, down whose hanging-garden avenues unsmiling dwarfs ferried her breakfast to the aviary swimming pool. As a teenager she was the perennial houseguest of the Rudolphes, the Perths, of the screen personalities Murray and Elspeth Krane, of the Balfours, the Grizes, of Sir Henry and Lady Doorlock, of the motion picture producer "Tubby" de Large and his lovely young wife, Lurleen. And, a little later, she is marriageably to be seen on the west patio of the Castello Pinero near Padua, basking naked on the glossy decks of Logo Lesbos' schooner among the Seychelle reefs, quaffing champagne in Giovanni Raffini's dune litter at the topless beaches of Acapulco. Youngish, well-connected, cosmopolitian readers can expect to see her about the place in six or seven years' time. At cockail parties, soirees, premieres, and so on, she will usually be accompanied by one or other of her parents, but after a few months she will begin to arrive alone, still a rather hesitant figure, slightly ill at ease about the aggressive sexiness of her catsuits and leotards, continually on edge about her appearance, until, during her second year of social immersion, she will be widely celebrated for her aplomb, verbal asperity, and daring and expertise in bed.

Diana's half-vicarious celebrity can be explained, on the one hand, by her mother's editrixship of "Nell's Notebook" in the pages of the distinguished glossy Euroscene, and, on the other, by her father's position as Assistant Chief Casting Director of Magnum Cinematic Promotions, Ltd., Paris and New York. Examples of that matrimonial tendency whereby unlike poles attract, Eleanor is practical, intelligent and cunning, a sharp-faced woman and angular, while Bruce is foolish, guileless, and benign, a shaggy middle-aged boy with a demeanor of nonspecific, goofy good will. Their Parisian idyll spanned Diana's conception and gestation, and survived her birth by two months, at which point Eleanor decided that she didn't much like Bruce and got on an airplane to London, where she embarked on a continuing series of compact, knowing little affairs with persons flourishing in the media; the hopeless Bruce meanwhile staggered around Paris getting drunk for six months, then took up with a Breton ingenue of such ingenuousness that she has since forgotten French and failed to learn English. Between these hearths the young Diana was patted like a listless shuttlecock for the first fifteen years of her life.

From the beginning Eleanor Parry policed her daughter's social life with astuteness and dedication. She enrolled Diana at the sort of schools where the children of the fashionable were likely to gather — Eldahurst Kindergarten, Laura and June Bateson House, The Hendlebury Association for the Furtherance of Girls' Education, Hampstead Comprehensive— then withdrew her once the requisite circle of acquaintances had been made. Selflessly Mrs. Parry attended all parents' meetings, liaison projects and school bazaars. A brief perusal of the register furnished her with remarks like, "Oh, of course, you're little Sarah's parents! My Diana absolutely adores Sarah," or, "Then Bettina's your child. Oh, dear, I'm afraid poor Diana must pester her dreadfully." Parental invitations soon followed and were as readily accepted by the young columnist. Host and hostess would then receive, consecutively, a flattering profile in "Nell's Notebook" and a long letter from Eleanor about what difficulty Diana had in making friends. And Diana was such a ferociously immaculate guest (an excellent gauger of mood, correct forms of address, prompt thank-you missives, tips for the maids) that it seemed churlish not to ask her again.