Paul Theroux - My Secret History

In the train he explained that the cards were put up by prostitutes. It was very straightforward. You called them and made an appointment. The price was agreed over the phone. And then you paid them a visit. Prasad saw that his explanation, even in his disgusted voice, had given me a thrill.

“Sex is everywhere in this country,” he said. “It’s the new mood. It’s on everyone’s mind. It’s all people think about. It has become a kind of obsession.”

He was biting his pipe. The passengers on the train were wearing heavy coats and scarves and hats, and their thick-soled shoes were scuffed and wet, and their faces were very white. Over their heads pink-faced women were shown in fancy underwear ads, and with red lips advertising lipstick, and in sunshine modeling bathing suits.

“Let them carry on,” Prasad said. “I don’t want to suppress it. I want everyone to be completely satisfied and then to stop. Let them get it over with. Let them burn.”

He looked around this Northern Line train and went on, “I want that urge to burn itself out. And then I want to hear no more about it.”

We went to Wheeler’s Restaurant. We both ordered sole.

“Shall we have a carafe of the house wine?” Prasad said in a discouraged voice. “Oh, let’s have a classic wine. You have a job, you have a few pence — didn’t you say you’re on expenses? And this way we’ll remember it. People say, ‘I drink plonk.’ But why? Surely life’s too short for that. Let’s have a classic, one of the great wines, perhaps a white burgundy.”

We had a bottle of Montrachet 1957. Eight pounds, ten shillings.

“Taste that,” Prasad said, urging me to drink. “You’re going to remember that.”

After lunch Prasad took me to his publisher, where he intended to drop off the corrected proofs of his book. I knew nothing about it other than it was his hotel novel, the one he had carried around East Africa, on his search for the perfect place to write it.

Howletts Ltd., Prasad’s publisher, occupied a small gray building of misshapen brickwork near the British Museum. The British Museum was to be our second stop — Prasad wanted to show me the manuscripts in the glass cases: “Johnny Keats, Jimmy Joyce, Sammy Johnson — even a bit of Shakey. They’ve got them all.”

But there was a problem with the proofs, or perhaps it was the foreign rights. Whatever — it meant that Prasad would be detained.

“Oh, God,” he said, in real misery. “I’ve let you down. And after that lovely lunch.”

He said he would be busy all afternoon, but perhaps I could find my own way to the BM? It was just over the road. He would see me later at home.

“Don’t be depressed,” he said.

“I’m not depressed,” I said, though I felt a little drunk from the wine and might have been looking rather frog-eyed. “I’ll find the way.”

“You’re so resourceful,” he said. He gave me his latchkey for the front door, in case I happened to come home late.

As I was leaving Howlett’s a blonde girl was also leaving, and I held the door open for her. She was very pretty, about my age, and was dressed like a Cossack in the fashion that was then in vogue — a fur hat, a long dark coat, and high boots. I sized her up quickly and then asked her directions to the British Museum.

“I’m going right past it,” she said. “Follow me.”

It was her way of conveying that she was interested in me, too. She could so easily have given me directions.

Her name was Rosamond. She worked at Howlett’s as an editor. But it was a small firm; she also did typing, publicity, and ran errands.

Hoping to impress her, I said that I had been to her offices with one of Howlett’s writers, and I told her who it was.

“Roger thinks he’s a genius,” Rosamond said, hinting in her tone that she didn’t agree.

“Who is Roger?”

“Roger Howlett. He’s sort of the owner.”

She had long hair which she swung back and forth as she walked, and her stride was brisk and Cossack-like, her sleeves thrashing and her boots clumping. People stared at her and I drew closer to her side.

“Everyone’s afraid of Prasad. He’s frightfully direct sometimes, and he has a beastly temper.” She smiled as though remembering an incident. “What are you doing at the BM?”

“Just killing time.”

She thought this was funny, but she tried to hide her reaction — probably for fear I’d be offended.

Then we were at the gates of the British Museum.

“Want to have a drink sometime?”

She shrugged and said, “My friends and I usually go to that pub after work.” She pointed across the street.

“Let’s meet there at six o’clock.”

“All right,” she said.

Inside I thought: If I hadn’t had that bottle of wine for lunch I wouldn’t have spoken to her, and when I thought of Rosamond’s face I remembered Prasad saying Let’s have a classic . I might marry her, I thought — my whole life changed by a bottle of white burgundy.

I was at the Museum Tavern when it opened at five-thirty, and so I saw her enter with her friends — a young woman named Philippa wearing a fur coat and a thin-faced, damp-haired young man named Ronnie.

After we had told each other our names, they asked me what I was doing in London. I mentioned Uganda, my university job there, and S. Prasad. They seemed uninterested in what I said, and so I knew they were impressed: it was the English way — pride and shyness and obliquity. Most of my colleagues were English, after all. They supposed I was an American among Africans.

Finally Philippa said that she would quite like to go to Africa.

Rosamond said that Africa had never interested her but that she would do anything to go to Hong Kong. I thought that this was her English way of pinching me, but affectionately.

Ronnie said, “You think Africa’s all elephants and lions and naked savages, but actually the animals are all in game parks and the Africans are hideously respectable. They’re always quoting the Bible, and they’re desperate for knighthoods.”

He said this with great certainty, but it was similar to what Rosamond had said and for the same reason — he was trying to provoke me.

When I smiled at him, he said, “They all wear ties and waistcoats and striped trousers. I’ve seen them on telly. And those cities are fantastically suburban. Andrew here probably lives in a very boring flat, or the sort of dreary maisonette you might find in a market town in the midlands.”

I smiled again and said, “I guess I do.”

“You see!” Ronnie laughed hard and squeezed my leg, but the pressure lingered a fraction too long, and I knew he was a homosexual.

He was the sort of boisterous, unhappy, abusive, eager-to-beloved Englishman who always went too far in order to be the center of attention. We had them in Uganda; the Staff Club was full of them. “You’ll be here next month, won’t you?”

I said no.

“What a shame,” he said. “We’re going to have a huge demo in Grosvenor Square in front of the American Embassy. We’re planning to break things.”

“I’ll be in Africa.”

“How dull,” Ronnie said, and then he turned to Rosamond. “Africa’s just like Surrey.”

“On the other hand, hyenas get into my trash can about once a week. I found a snake in my kitchen last year. And last month I found a bush-baby hanging on to my window.”

“What’s a bush-baby?” Rosamond said. All this time she had been listening very intently to Ronnie hectoring me.

“It’s a ball of fur with big round eyes — a monkey,” I said. “I’ve only seen them at night. It’s about the size of a big tomcat. The first thing you notice is its dark eyes, and once you see them you know it won’t do you any harm — you want it to stay. I was just going to bed and I heard it scratching on the window bars. It was holding on with its little monkey-hands and sort of sitting on the sill as though it wanted to come in and get into bed with me. It wasn’t startled to see a human being. It just looked at me with those lovely pleading eyes.”