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

things said to her more often than most
people, though most people would probably not have counted a few of them. One
lot had consisted of some stuff about his garden that a neighbour had said to
her when he could have been saying how brilliant she had been as the publican’s
wife in the film spin-off of that TV series. I remembered feeling quite
indignant with him at the time.
    Whatever
Steve might have been saying earlier he seemed peaceable enough now, and when
he and I went back to the lounge place we might have been any old visiting
father and son looking in to say goodbye. Nowell and the white-haired fellow
were not there, Bert and the child were, sprawled in front of the television
set, or rather he was sprawled while she wriggled about next to him or on him.
A cartoon was showing with the sound turned down so far that you got nothing
more than the occasional faint clatter or scream. After a minute Nowell
reappeared, having seen her chum off as I had sensed.
    ‘That
was Chris Rabinowitz,’ she explained when we were still only halfway out of a
pretty brief clinch of greeting. The name meant nothing to me, but the grovel
in her voice made me think he must be on the production side rather than just
another actor.
    Steve
seemed to take no notice and just said, rather flatly, ‘We’re off now, mum.’
    ‘Oh,
are you, darling?’
    There
was a big hug then, with her very decently forgiving him for the horrible
things. I looked at the television. The cartoon was the sort where as little as
possible moved or changed from one frame to the next so as not to overwork the
artists. Something went wrong with the hug but I missed what it was.
    ‘Cheers,
Bert,’ said Steve, and started to move away.
    ‘You must come again soon,’ said Nowell to Steve and me, as though the present
once-a-week arrangement was nowhere near good enough.
    Immediately
— though I soon saw there was no connection — Steve turned back to her and said
in the same flat way, ‘Is he a Jew, that pal of yours?’
    ‘Who,
Chris? I don’t know, darling. I suppose he is. Why, what of it?’
    ‘Do you
get many of them coming round here?’
    ‘What,
many Jews? Some, probably. But what on earth are you driving at?’
    ‘They’re
moving in everywhere to their destined positions.’
    ‘Oh,
come on, Steve, don’t be bleeding ridiculous,’ I said. ‘That’s not your style
at all.’ It certainly was not, in fact he would sometimes call me a Nazi for
making the kind of mildly anti-semitic remarks that came naturally to someone
like me born where and when I was. ‘Or is it the way your pals are talking
these days?’
    ‘You
don’t understand. This isn’t that old-fashioned shit about Yids in the fucking
golf club. None of you know what’s going on. They’re not ready, see, not even
through the whole country yet, never mind some of the other places. But the map
is there, and it projects, you know, if you can just get on to it. You want to
get your head together.’ He seemed to think that this was an important secret
and well worth knowing for its own sake too. ‘Take warning. When the pattern’s
complete, the prediction of the ages will emerge. Surely you must have seen
something, one of you. Doesn’t the colour of the sky look different after dark?’
    This
made Nowell quite cross. She tried a couple of times to interrupt and finally
got in a burst. ‘For goodness’ sake shut up, darling. I can’t bear that sort of
poppycock.’ That might well have been true — the sort of poppycock she could
bear or better, like astrology and ESP and ghosts, was well worked over and
properly laid out. ‘You’ve been reading one of these frightful mad paperbacks
about cosmonauts or flying saucers or something.’
    ‘No,’
said Steve in an agitated way, shaking his head violently. ‘No.’
    ‘Of
course you have. Or you’ve been sniffing glue or taking horrible speed. I’ve
got enough troubles of my own without listening to your nonsense hour