Martin Amis - Dead Babies

"Well," said Marvell grimly, "I can give him a wide-spectrum anxiety calmant, but I…"

Giles's head sank back on his shoulders and his slipped mouth readjusted itself, less sulky in sleep.

"A blackout," said Andy.

"I'd say it would be unwise to give him anything at this moment in time," said Marvell. "I'll lay it on him later. However, Lucy, you were.?"

"Okay, Marv, okay. Here we go. I don't want any sadness tonight. Cast off, skipper, I'm on board. I don't want to worry about anyone but me."

"Autonomous? Self-determinant? Solipsist?"

"That ought to do nicely."

"I got it." Marvell unscrewed the cap of a tube of lozenges, one of which he cautiously immersed in a saucer of crimson ointment. "Great. Now, Diana. What do you want?"

"Nothing," said Diana.

'The fuck, Diana," yawned Andy, "you've got to have

something. Why are you so fuckin' defiant all the time?" "I didn't say it defiantly, just in complete boredom. I want a drug, but I want a drug to stop me feeling anything. And to kill the past. That is, if tonight's going to be as stupid and nasty as it looks like being."

Amused comment rippled through the room. Marvell stirred himself. "That'll be no sweat to fix," he said.

Roxeanne and Skip obligingly opted for the "usual" (sense intensifiers and heartbeat accelerators respectively), while, with considerable pomp, Marvell prepared his own stimulant, setting a match to a combustible powder whose sooty residue he lollipopped onto his forefinger and dipped into his mouth. "It's called a Prospero," he said. "Makes me feel in control. Mm — hey — I forgot: Quent."

Folding his arms, Quentin sat back, his choice musculature extending itself adorably over the sofa. The residual unease that had slowed the atmosphere of the room was instantly chased away by the creamy mellifluousness of his voice.

"A hypothesis," he said. "It occurs to me that one's mannerisms, one's behavioral ticks, are neither quite innate nor quite fortuitous. We project them as mechanisms of defense and appeal, of withdrawal and capitulation; they are means of stylizing our attitude to others and to the world. Forgive me— intolerably ill-put. At any rate, as a profoundly cultivated and therefore profoundly unspontaneous creature I thought it might be interesting if I were shorn of these — my reflexes, my stock responses — so as to become, as it were, socially unclothed. My fetching manner must at times be excessively irritating so I hereby give you the chance to banish it and refurnish me. I throw the matter open: make of me what you will."

"Isn't this all somewhat unspecific?" complained Marvell.

"Not for long," said Quentin.

"To begin with," said Diana, "you could give him a stutter. That at least might make him talk less."

"Bravo, Diana!" roared Quentin. "You've got the idea. Marvell, make me inarticulate."

"Make him gauche and gawky," said Lucy.

"Why not make him rather shy," said Celia perplexedly.

"Make him as horny as a dog," said Roxeanne.

"And make him terrified," said Andy.

Quentin spread his hands and smiled. "Marvell: you have your instructions.”

: Ten minutes later, after Quentin had inhaled, sucked, and sniffed various occult compounds, Marvell brushed himself down and regained the dining table alcove. He looked around the room. "That about does it," he said.

Whitehead sat tight in his chair until the very last moment. Couples were dispersing in the direction of the bedrooms. Giles, once revived, had gaggingly swallowed his calmant and was being led by Lucy from the room. Diana had gone up, muscularly alone; Roxeanne had followed Andy, Quentin, and Celia from the room. Skip remained in his seat, his features fossilized in a blocked daze, then sloped off.

"Hey. Marvell."

"Oh yeah. Keith."

Keith left his chair, hoisted himself into the room and went nearer to Marvell, nearer and nearer until he could lift himself up onto the bench opposite him.

"Hey there," said Marvell, looking over the lid of his box. "What can I do for you?"

"Make me tall," said Keith. "Make me tall, make me tall."

Andy unbuckled his belt and lowered his jeans. "Worrr, that's better. Christ, some scene with that cow. That mad fucker really whopped it, didn't he?"

"He really is mad," said Diana, leaving her pantie suit in a white puddle on the carpet as she stepped out of it and, naked, took up her hairbrush.

"Yeah. Those dead, undersea eyes," Andy said dreamily, untying his jockey pants.

"Mm."

Diana continued to look into the mirror, continued to brush her hair.

"You're skinnier, you know. You've lost weight," said Andy experimentally. She ignored him. Encouraged, Andy leaned a hand on the lower curve of her waist, where a trace of her bikini line was still visible. "Yes, I really think you've lost weight."

"Don't touch me."

"What for?”

"Just advice." Diana turned around. "It's just advice. I mean there's Lucy to consider, and that fat Yank. You've got stiff work to do tonight, big boy."

"No, I haven't. And what if I have?"

"I don't care what you do. Look, fats, I don't care what you do so long as you're not going to come in here afterwards just kinda jogging your shoulders and just kinda talking about it and just kinda showing how casual and liberated you—"

"Liberated.?"

"As if it's really quite attractive of you to do these things. I don't mind as long as it doesn't suddenly turn into something nice about you. Okay?"

At the beginning of the first speech Andy had compressed his neck, allowing his shiny fringe to fall over his forehead. Through it he reproachfully glanced at Diana's taut symmetrical face. She looked like a granite-hard hockey player recalling, for his consideration, a bad injury. "Diana, I really don't know what's the matter with you." Andy straightened up. He smiled suddenly. "No! I don't believe it! Come on, you're— you're jealous, aren't you?"

"Like fuck."

"Christ, You are! Well well well."

"I'm not jealous, just. "

"But we've discussed this," said Andy in disbelief. "Jesus. Did I grouse when you fucked that actor while I was in Amsterdam? When you fucked Bruce Howard after that party — did I beef?"

"So who's got the perfect memory — I didn't even fuck him I"

"So you blew him then. I mean, what the fuck difference does it make."

"What about you? You fuck girls you don't even want to fuck."

"How the fuck do I know I want to fuck them till I fuck them? Be reasonable, woman. And anyway, so fucking what? Diana, it makes me sick to hear this sort of talk in this house. Christ, you think you're living with civilized people and then someone springs this sort of crap on you." His tone had become confidently indignant, regretful. "You think you know someone — you respect them as decent, genuine human beings — then you find they've still got these sick anxieties about: something as trivial as— Now, Diana, you just, you just hear me out here. Nobody's getting away with that kind of dead babies when I'm living in this house. I'm fucked if I'm going to get leant on with this trashy talk—"

Diana sat on her bed with her back to him as Andy lectured cheerfully on. Her form grew preoccupied. She spoke softly, without turning around. "Andy. Did you write this?"

"— and that's real dead babies. What?"

"Did you write this?"

"Write what?"

Diana turned and held up a sheet of foolscap paper. Her face was pale and very cold.

"What is it, man?" said Andy, with concern.

The letter was written in erect black capitals, justified at either margin, and so uniform that at first it seemed to have been typewritten or typeset. Andy frowned.