Turning Back the Sun(6)

Ivar”s eyes flickered between bar and stage and floor. He was totting up costs and income, and eventually said, “Felicie”s father must make a packet out of this rubbish.”

“Is she your girlfriend now?” Rayner had watched Ivar change girlfriends unscathed. Of all the enigmas in Ivar, this was the deepest and most enviable to him.

“Yes. But I”m not interested in her money. She”s just a nice girl. A bit simple. Her people came from the capital twenty years ago, and she”s got this fantasy about going back.”

“I don”t blame her,” Rayner said. “What”s there for her here?” He noticed Ivar flinch with annoyance. “Unless you”re serious about her.”

Ivar said, “There”s no point in her dreaming of going back when she can”t. This town is basically as good as anywhere else.” He spoke in the reasonable tones which at once impressed and maddened Rayner—Ivar so reeked of comfort and self-control. “There”s nothing in the capital that you can”t buy here. I”ve been away twelve years now and I don”t miss a thing. Not a thing.”

Rayner was amazed. “Christ, Ivar, don”t you remember anything? Do you really not remember? You may be able to buy the same things—I can”t recall much of that—but the whole spirit of the capital is different. It”s another climate, different history, different—You must remember the girls, at least. Just take our gang. Jarmila, Miriam, Adelina …”

“There are plenty of girls here.”

“But they don”t think the same way.” Rayner heard his own cruelty, he couldn”t help it. “They”ve no—no quality. And how could they have? Things are tough here. It”s not only the way people look. This is a practical place. Possessions, entertainment. There”s nothing more. Does anybody talk about anything else here?” His words grew loud against the music. “God, Ivar you must remember. The capital just breeds another kind of person. Perhaps it”s because the sea”s there, while we”ve only got desert …”

But a slow frown had gathered on Ivar”s forehead. He just said, “I think it”s much the same everywhere. And even if it isn”t, you have to adjust.” He touched Rayner”s arm with the strange, sudden warmth which always surprised Rayner: a concession to their schooldays, to the shared past, a leftover (Rayner felt, ironically) from the lost capital. “If you don”t adjust, you”re history.”

Rayner thought: he must be protecting himself, he must remember as well as I do.

Rayner remembered them in the capital walking through a park by the ever-present sea. Over the years this image had often recurred to him, yet it recorded a moment of so little import that he wondered why it was by this that he so often remembered the city. Perhaps the picture had implanted itself simply because it was typical. But there they were, Ivar and he, with Miriam and Jarmila between them, wandering through the autumn leaves of giant sycamores, while beside them ran the wrought-iron railings ubiquitous in the city: heavy, grand and thickened by a hundred repaintings; and beyond them rose their own tall, terraced houses. In this image all their surroundings were much older than they were, and he thought of this ancientness—a benign security stretching back almost forever—as peculiar to the capital.

Suddenly the curtains parted and Felicie appeared, touching a microphone to her lips like a baby”s dummy. A see-through chiffon dress tinged her white body in watery blue. Her bare feet poked out waifishly beneath it, and her head was coddled in a silver cap flecked with small wings, like an effete Valkyrie.

Then she sang, and for the first and last time that evening Rayner felt like a voyeur. Every other artiste had shaped a real performance, however inept, but under Felicie”s foolish costume and ingénue masquerade was only her naked self, and this she gave in the pathetic confidence that it must have value.

Sometimes at night I dream

I”m in your arms again

Sometimes at night return

To that lost room



Rayner felt he was staring into a vacuum: just borrowed yearnings and self-pity. Her voice whimpered and squeaked like a mouse. If the proprietor had not been her father, he thought, she wouldn”t have passed an audition. He found himself deeply, inexplicably pained by it, as if he were somehow himself the victim of her humiliation. And he dared not even look at Ivar.

If you remember me

I”ll journey home …



Yet when the curtains closed on her, there was desultory clapping. The bleary music continued. The audience went on knocking back its eau-de-vie. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything, or to have shared his vicarious pain. Ivar just smiled at him suavely and said, “You won”t find many women of thirty looking like that.”

So Ivar had not listened to her, Rayner thought—and who could blame him? He”d just watched her body. “Yes,” Rayner said, “she”s … pretty”—and the word extinguished her.

“You could make a decent life here with the right girl,” Ivar said. “Men of our age should think of settling down. Not much more of this …” He gestured at the stage, where the first of the strippers was starting on her ritual of petty disclosures and delays.

Ivar passed laconic judgement on them. “Bottom”s too slack … that one won”t last … good breasts … there”s ugly muscle tone …”—and about one, a coffee-skinned siren with the betraying loose limbs and knotted brows of another people: “Reckon she”s got savage blood.”