Martin Amis - Dead Babies

Celia sat up suddenly in bed, hugged her knees to her breasts, tilted her head to one side, and asked, "What shall we do with them when they arrive?"

Quentin Villiers rearranged the sheets to cover the lower half of his body. He did this rather fussily, but his voice remained genial and melodious. "I should prefer to wait and see what sort of state they're in. They'll have been driving all night and will doubtless be racked with amphetamines."

"I think I'll make them a cooked breakfast," said Celia.

"A cooked breakfast? A 'cooked' breakfast? My sweet, sometimes you are too deliciously outre. Eating a cooked breakfast — it would be like going to bed in pajamas, or reading an English novel."

"Darling, you're not to tease me."

"Well, my dearest, really. No. I rather thought a picnic. It might amuse them. " Quentin opened a hand toward the light that was gathering behind the bedroom curtains. "It promises to be a fine day and, besides, I should like some air myself."

Celia flopped back to her husband's side and nuzzled his neck with her large bruised lips. "You've been up all night, haven't you?"

Quentin released a mouthful of smoke and nodded slowly.

"What doing?"

"Cultivating the life of the mind."

"You hardly ever sleep now, do you?"

Quentin drew in a mouthful of smoke and shook his head slowly. "I do try to avoid it. It bores me so."

"Quentin?"

"Celia."

"Is it true that the three of them have scenes together?"

"Naturally. Why, haven't you ever joined in a threesome— or what I believe they call 'a troy'?"

"Never," said Celia. "Not even in my dissolute days. Have you?"

"No, I haven't either, curiously enough. They're sure to try to enlist us, by the way."

"But we won't, will we," said Celia, cuddling nearer.

Whether through regret or impatience, Quentin concealed a sigh in an emission of cigarette smoke. "Of course not," he said.

"Will the others?"

"An excellent question." He arranged the pillows behind his head to still greater advantage. "Andy most assuredly would, if given the ghost of a chance. Diana, I'm undecided about. I don't think Giles could really be bothered to. Little Keith would probably be prepared to be unseamed by Marvell and Skip if he thought that might win him an opportunity to make Roxeanne his own, which, again, I'd have thought it wouldn't. Roxeanne is fairly 'catholic' in her tastes, but in Keith's rather unsavory case.?" Quentin flapped a limp wrist.

"What about that character Lucy Littlejohn?"

"Character. My sweet, you talk as if she were forty-five. She's a colorful personality but she's hardly a character."

"She's an old flame of yours, isn't she."

"A spark, a mere cinder," protested Quentin.

Celia relaxed and the moment passed. "It sounds funny, doesn't it, darling," she said, "two men and one girl? Two girls and one man seems more on the cards. but. What do the three of them do?"

"They do most of it on a chair, I rather gather. Marvell, the little one, sits on Skip's, the big one's, lap, thereby impaling himself, and then Roxeanne impales herself frontways on Marvell's lap, so that she may kiss them both in turn. Frightfully eventful for Marvell, one imagines."

"Mm."

"There are some rather baroque variations, what they call soixante-neuf et six, but that's the main theme." Quentin gave one of his rare yawns. "They're terribly straightforward about it all. You can ask them for details when they come."

"Mm. It does sound funny, though, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Quentin, "I suppose it does."

Next door, Andy Adorno peeled back his adhesive eyelids and focused with some degree of reluctance on Diana, who was lying on her side, facing him, the cerise caftan resting here and there on her perennially olive skin. She turned a page of her magazine and glanced at him. Andy closed his eyes again. The taste of dusty stone steps which lay coiled round his senses was augmented by a noisome wave of eau de cologne.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," he murmured.

Diana turned a page. She said, "There's some coffee and toast I've brought you."

Andy correctly guessed that these nutriments were intended to moisten his mouth and sweeten his breath. Out of the corner of one of his narrow red eyes he looked at Diana again, noting the tactful makeup and the vigorously brushed black hair, through which Diana now ran a hand as she turned another page.

"What's with the glamour?" he asked.

"Just had a wash."

Andy sat up a few inches, his dark face creased with remorse. He said, "Jesus. coffee." He sighed. "And I suppose you want me to fuck you now, don't you?"

She passed him the cup, shaking her head.

"That's good. Cos I," said Andy putting his mug on the bedside table and sitting up, "feel like shit!" He juggled his face between stiff-fingered hands. Then he turned to her and added in a softer voice, "And anyway, I never do what I don't want to do. Okay?”

: "Okay."

"Aw, my fuckin' head!" roared Andy, as he sprang from the bed and stumbled from the room. Diana heard him battering violently on the bathroom door. "Christ! Who's in there?"

Keith tensed on the lavatory seat. He had been on it for fifteen minutes, soggy with constipation. "It's Keith."

"Keith! Don't you dare use this bathroom again." Andy wriggled with impatience. "Now move your arse!"

Keith's buttocks, by way of response, gave a loud yell as a pint of air rushed out between them. Both he and Andy gasped with fright.

Why, this dreadful shout from Whitehead's rear was heard by everyone in the house, by Giles as he squeezed lime juice into a frosted glass, by Celia as she marshaled her cosmetics, by Quentin Villiers as he zipped up his faded denim shirt, and by Diana as she lay on her bed, staring at the wall with cold, unblinking eyes.

Let us, then, illustrate our difficulties.

Within half an hour, three conversations were in progress.

one

En route to the kitchen for another lime, Giles Coldstream saw little Keith in the smaller of the two partitioned sitting rooms, flicking tiredly through the copy of Television Weekly which had been delivered that morning. Giles popped his head round the door.

"Hey, Keith, anything good on today? I can't remember."

"Yes, lots," said Keith.

Giles and Keith would often sit together, silently, like old men, in front of the television during the late mornings and afternoons — Giles because time and time again he found himself not thinking about his teeth, Whitehead on the broader principle that it must make useful contributions to his sanity.

"There's Imbroglio at eleven, of course," said Keith. "You

didn't see it yesterday, did you?"

"Yes I did. No I didn't," said Giles. "I missed that one, actually. What happened in it?”

"Well, the guy the photographer's wife didn't fuck went back to his son's mistress."

"Ah, I see. But. " Giles frowned gradually, "what about Jimmy?"

"What about him?"

"Jimmy. The mistress's daughter's boyfriend."

"I know who he is. He ran away from home again on Wednesday."

Giles seemed relieved. "That's right, of course he did. So all that was all right then."

"Why didn't you come down yesterday?"

"Um, sleeping or something, I think. Yesterday. was that Round the House, Chuckadoodledoo, Brumber and Al-phonse, and Tammy?"

"No, that's Tuesday."

Giles cocked his head. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, what was on yesterday. Apart, of course, from Imbroglio?"

"Young Scientist, Vespa Newtown, Cooking Without Tears, and Elephant Boy."