Martin Amis - Dead Babies

Quentin and Andy regarded each other uneasily. For Keith had said this in one of his "funny voices," an Americanized treble, as it might be Jiminy Cricket challenging Pinocchio with some pedagogic taunt.

"What?" said Andy.

"Cos I want some of the old dippy-dippy-dippy!"

Keith smiled at the silence as his words swung out into the room and hovered in the air above the round glass table. Each of them simultaneously became aware of a lone bird gurgling doggedly somewhere among the branches that swathed the sitting room windows.

"Dippy-dippy?" said Andy.

Keith strove on in a precarious Yogi Bear falsetto: "Dippy-dippy — the old in-out, in-out — dunking the dagger — some of the other — a bit of the old. " Whitehead trailed off.

Andy looked at Quentin again.

"Does he mean fucking, or what?"

"That's right," said Keith defeatedly, in his normal voice.

"Fucking Lucy?" asked Quentin.

"Mm. That's right. I only thought. "

Just then the telephone peeped and Quentin swayed across the room to answer it.

Andy joined Keith on the sofa. "Well, why the fuck didn't you say so, Keith?" Andy's tone grew earnest. "Keith, listen."

"What?"

"Don't ever speak in that voice again. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Christ, Keith. I really got the horrors for a moment. Thought you were going mad again."

"But I've used that voice before?"

"I know that," said Andy, "but don't ever use it again. Or any other of your funny voices. Okay? Now." He took a handful of pills from his pocket and sprinkled them onto the coffee table. "We'd really like you to take two, but they're semi-barbits so you won't be able to lush much, so one's okay, though I'd prefer it if you could handle two. I'll give you some for a present, but you—"

"Hey!" cried Quentin, muffling the telephone. One blue-jeaned leg emerged from the folds of Quentin's satin housecoat to rest on the arm of a nearby chair. "It's Lucy herself. Hello Lucy! And whose bed might you be in?" he asked, and started chuckling grandly at her reply.

Keith looked wildly around.

"Well, Lucy, if you will bathchair-snatch. Yes, once— for a dare. One moment, Andy should like a word. And when are you coming?" he added in an aggrieved voice. "Very well, see you then. No, I'm a one-girl guy now. The same to you."

As Quentin whisperingly handed the telephone to Andy, Keith took a pill from the small mound and rolled it thoughtfully in his palm.

"Luce? Andy! Incredible. How many? Yeah? Mythical. And" — he turned and winked at Keith—"we've got a little surprise for you, too. Someone very anxious to make your acquaintance. You wait and see. Keith Whitehead. Well, he's tall, dark — ooh, about six-one, six-two? — chiseled features—"

Whitehead gave a groan of protest.

"— thick black hair, absolute dynamite in the cot, I hear, rich as Croesus—"

"Andy, please."

"— thin as a blade, but, what with his height, you know, really built —'

"Andy."

" —take him in yourself tonight. Okay, kid. Bye!"

The telephone chirruped faintly as Andy replaced the receiver and turned grinning to Quentin. "That's what they call a soft sell," Quentin remarked.

"You appreciate," said Keith hoarsely, "you appreciate what you've just done, don't you?" The shape of Keith's mouth was such that his upper front teeth were always partly exposed; now the semicircular stripe of chapped red rubber virtually obscured his nostrils.

Andy hurried across the room and crouched blinking in front of him. "What?"

"You've just, you've…"

"What? Now you take your pills like a good little boy. What have I done?”

Keith waved a hand impotently.

"C'mon, Mac, fill me in."

Keith rested his head against the back of the sofa and swallowed something deep in his throat. His voice was speedy and distant. "If you hadn't said those things to Lucy I might have had a slim chance—"

"Slim chance? Slim chance? Fat chance, boy, fat chance."

"I might have had a… Oh, Christ, I might have had a chance to make. Ah, how could you conceive—"

"To make a good impression?" interjected Quentin, who had been watching the squat pair with twinkly disinterest. "What Keith is trying to say, Andrew, is that he harbors doubts about living up to the rather stylized picture of himself with which you have just furnished Miss Littlejohn. That lady now expects to be welcomed by a tall, slender, dark, handsome stranger and—"

"— And all she'll get is fat, fair, rough, little Keith. Yeah, of course, but I was only fucking about — she knows that. Christ, where's your sense of humor?"

"Well, Keith. Satisfied?"

Whitehead wasn't. "I was hoping you'd sort of talk to her, Andy, use your influence." He gestured at the pills. "I do you all these favors, couldn't you ask her to do me one?"

Andy seemed genuinely puzzled. "Why not just try her, like anyone else?"

"Look at me." Keith spread out his arms. He appeared to be about to cry. "I'm not like anyone else."

"I can't. " Andy clicked his tongue and stood up. "Okay. I'll, you know, I'll— Christ I hate all this pervert talk. Now fuckin' take those pills, Keith, and let's have no more of this shit."

When Andy had left the room Quentin walked over to the sofa and sat down on its arm. "Try not to be hurt by what Andy says," he murmured. "I dote on him, as you know, but I'm afraid that — if he has a fault — it might be a certain parsimony of imagination."

"Pardon?"

"I mean he tends to assume that everyone is very much like himself. Keith, are you all right?"

Whitehead sniffed and ran a finger along the isthmus that separated his nose and his mouth, collecting a bubble of snot which he wondered vaguely where to deposit. Quentin: held out his fringed silk sudary and Keith blew into it with grateful enthusiasm. It had occurred to him, working on the assumption that insensitivity must have its limits, that Andy had seen no important connection between Keith's ill looks and his ability to attract Lucy, that it might be all one to her, that she was as undiscriminating as people regularly suggested she was; but Quentin's compassionate words had burst even this tiny pimple of expectation. Keith sniffed again. "I don't care any more, anyway," he said.

"Keith, you must never talk like that," said Quentin.

The room paled as a cloud passed between it and the sun, then brightened again. Quentin leaned forward and gently tousled Keith's hair: the artfully posed strands scattered beneath his palm to divulge a broad area of unoccupied scalp. Quentin's fingers retreated.

"Don't worry," he said softly. "I'll make sure something unusual happens to you this weekend. Something or other, if not with Lucy."

Lucy Littlejohn lived in a top-floor Knightsbridge maisonette with three other girls. It was not by any means an atypical household and we would do well to look at it closely. On a normal day they rise between one and two in the afternoon either for long Badedas ablutions in the luxury bathroom or scathing showers in the downstairs closet. Then, while the color television flashes and rumbles in the background, they sprawl about the sitting room in nighties and dressing gowns, angelically aglow in the penthouse cloudscape, sipping coffee from French-style bowls and talking about their respective nights out. At four they wander off to shop in Sloane Street and Beauchamp Place, returning at six for glasses of Tio Pepe and further chat before drifting upstairs to change. Between telephone calls they flit in and out of each other's rooms to borrow scent, swap tights, crave advice. Their voices glide out from brightly lit bedrooms to congregate in the