Stanley and the Women by Kingsley Amis Read Free Book Online Page A

attitude
sleeping people get into. Apart from the unmade bed he was lying on I noticed
two rather neat piles of sheet-music and a newish bar-billiards table. That set
me wondering, a third of a ton of slate and mahogany lifted all this way, and
how, and why, but I soon dismissed it from my mind when I took another look at
Steve.
    ‘What
about getting on home?’ I said. ‘There’s nothing for us here.’
    He
muttered something I failed to catch, just a few words, rather fast.
    ‘Sorry,
what did you say?’
    ‘No, I
was just …’ His voice petered out in a sort of quiet gabble.
    I tried
again. ‘Let’s be off. We could take in a beer at the Pheasant.’
    ‘Possessing
all the relevant information to the most incredible degree,’ he said quickly.
    ‘What?’
I said, though I had heard well enough.
    No
reply. After a pause he suddenly swung his legs round and sat on the edge of
the bed so as to face the main window. Then he raised one hand in what might
have been a waving movement. Obviously there was nothing out there, but I went
and looked to make sure and that was what there was, just a lot of roofs and
down below not a soul in sight, a cat sitting on a wall and that was it. When I
turned back to Steve I thought his face was not quite the same as what I was
used to, not in any way I could have described but enough so that if I had seen
him unexpectedly in the street I might not have recognized him for a second.
Yes, it was something about the way his features related to each other. There
was so much I wanted to ask him, no deep stuff, no more than what he had
actually been doing before he turned up the previous night and what he had in
mind to do, but there seemed to be no way to start. Another pause.
    ‘Let’s
get going, shall we?’ I said, trying not to sound too jolly. ‘I’ve got the car
outside.’
    ‘Do you
believe in past lives?’ he asked me, in a rush as before.
    ‘Eh? I’m
sorry, son, I just don’t understand what you mean.
    ‘You
know, people living before and then being born again. Do you believe in it?’
    ‘Oh,
reincarnation. No, I don’t think so. I haven’t really … How do you mean,
anyway?’
    ‘People
that lived a long time ago — right? — being born again now, in the twentieth
century.’
    ‘But
they …’ I stopped short — there was no sense in starting on what was wrong
with that. ‘Say I do believe in it, what about it?’
    Steve
was staring out of or towards the window. The line of his mouth lengthened
slowly in a thin, tight, horizontal grin, and he began to giggle through his
closed lips in a half-suppressed kind of way, not a habit of his. Nothing much
seemed to be happening to the rest of his face, except perhaps his eyes widened
a bit. After a few moments he stopped, but started again almost straight away,
this time putting his hand over his mouth. Even though it was not a specially
disagreeable sound in itself I had soon had all I needed. I went brisk and
businesslike, looked at my watch and turned to the door.
    ‘I must
remember to get petrol,’ I said. ‘Would you keep a look out for a place on the
way? I had a full tank on Tuesday, you know. It’s all the low-gear work in
town.’
    He
nodded and got to his feet, but then he said, ‘Are they still there, those
people downstairs?’
    ‘What?
Well, they were when I came up. Why?’
    ‘What
were they saying?’
    ‘I don’t
know. Nothing of any consequence, I imagine. Mum was listening to that
white-haired —’
    ‘What
were they smirking and carrying on about?’
    ‘They
weren’t carrying on about anything that I could see. They were just —’
    ‘Why
are you pretending?’ He sounded no more than irritated.
    ‘Steve,
I honestly —’
    ‘Don’t
try and tell me you don’t know what I mean.’
    I failed
to come up with any answer to that one. For the first time I wondered what the
horrible things had been that Nowell had told me over the phone he had said to
her. She tended to have horrible