The Rachel Papers (1987) by Martin Amis

Author:Martin Amis
Format: epub
Published: 1987-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

7

Ten five: the spinney

Less than two hours to go and more than two months to come. But things get simpler as I get older.

Now I open the window that looks on to the woods. It’s December, and very cold, so I close it again soon.

On the train to Oxford, Rachel took up the subject of her father—apparently, he had written her a ‘stinking’ letter that morning. She developed the real-bastard theme and filled in some early history. Her last brush with ‘Jean-Paul d’Erlanger’ (Rachel used her mother’s maiden name; don’t ask me why) had been earlier that summer, when DeForest himself had taken her to Paris for a couple of weeks. Apart from some unpleasant incidents, a ‘marvellous time’ was had by all. I bucked up slightly when Rachel made it clear that these unpleasant incidents had consisted of M. d’Erlanger hinting at and then articulating his immense hatred and contempt for DeForest, who had in fact got one of his ears further cauli-flowered by the passionate Frenchman. Rachel invited me to see this as a testament to her father’s boorishness. DeForest, I learned, was most understanding about it all and had never mentioned the matter since.

When I asked what the letter had said Rachel stared out of the window at the Reading suburbs for a full half-minute before telling me that it was too awful to repeat. I decided to let it go at that, giving her the scene with good grace. To fill in time, and to offer her some indirect comfort, I told a few rather vague lies about parental atrocities I had suffered, featuring my father in the role of Bacchic hooligan, moody night-owl, au pair-buggerer, and so on.

We were the first to arrive.

Mother appeared to have contracted hydrophobia at some point in the afternoon. She was in such a blind frenzy that, before hellos or introductions, Rachel and I asked immediately if there was anything we could possibly do—while there was still time, still hope. It seemed that what Rachel could do was help the (quite fetching) au pair peel potatoes. What I could do, indeed what I simply had to do, was drive into Oxford and fetch Valentine.

‘But I can’t drive,’ I said.

‘But you had lessons?’

‘I know.’ (Driving-lessons were the statutory seventeenth-birthday present in the mobile Highway family.)

‘And you took the test?’

‘I know. But I failed it.’

‘But you took it again?’

‘I know. And I failed it again.’

‘Well, it’s too late now. Where did I put the keys?’

I went in mother’s Mini, and nearly got old woman all over the bonnet, too.

After going through an affected little toll-bridge—the toll was the twee sum of three and a half pence—I got up to forty miles per hour as the road straightened out. At this kind of speed it was advisable to place the stiletto-heeled shoe, kept in a side-pocket for this purpose, over the gear-stick to prevent it jiggering like a pump-drill. As I did so. I noticed a scrawny figure two hundred yards ahead, motionless in the right-hand half of the road.

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