Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [32]
His whole approach changed. “Right, my girl,” he muttered to himself, “two can play at that game.” To begin with, Vernon had “affairs” with all his wife’s friends. The longest and perhaps the most detailed was with Vera, his wife’s old school chum. He sported with her bridge partners, her coworkers in the Charity. He fooled around with all her eligible relatives—her younger sister, that nice little niece of hers. One mad morning Vernon even mounted her hated mother. “No, Vernon, what about …?” they would all whisper fearfully. But Vernon just shoved them onto the bed, twisting off his belt with an imperious snap. All the women out there on the edges of his wife’s world—one by one, Vernon had the lot.
Meanwhile, Vernon’s erotic dealings with his wife herself had continued much as before. Perhaps they had even profited in poignancy and gentleness from the pounding rumors of Vernon’s nether life. With this latest development, however, Vernon was not slow to mark a new dimension, a disfavored presence, in their bed. Oh, they still made love all right; but now there were two vital differences. Their acts of sex were no longer hermetic; the safety and the peace had gone: no longer did Vernon attempt to apply any brake to the chariot of his thoughts. Secondly—and perhaps even more crucially—their lovemaking was, without a doubt, less frequent. Six and a half times a fortnight, three times a week, five times a fortnight …: they were definitely losing ground. At first Vernon’s mind was a chaos of backlogs, shortfalls, restructured schedules, recuperation schemes. Later he grew far more detached about the whole business. Who said he had to do it three and a half times a week? Who said that this was all right? After ten nights of chaste sleep (his record up till now) Vernon watched his wife turn sadly on her side after her diffident goodnight. He waited several minutes, propped up on an elbow, glazedly eternalized in the potent moment. Then he leaned forward and coldly kissed her neck, and smiled as he felt her body’s axis turn. He went on smiling. He knew where the real action was.
For Vernon was now perfectly well aware that any woman was his for the taking, any woman at all, at a nod, at a shrug, at a single convulsive snap of his peremptory fingers. He systematically serviced every woman who caught his eye in the street, had his way with them, and tossed them aside without a second thought. All the models in his wife’s fashion magazines—they all trooped through his bedroom, too, in their turn. Over the course of several months he worked his way through all the established television actresses. An equivalent period took care of the major stars of the Hollywood screen. (Vernon bought a big glossy book to help him with this project. For his money, the girls of the Golden Age were the most daring and athletic lovers: Monroe, Russell, West, Dietrich, Dors, Ekberg. Frankly, you could keep your Welches, your Dunaways, your Fondas, your Keatons.) By now the roll call of names was astounding, Vernon’s prowess with them epic, unsurpassable. All the girls were saying that he was easily the best lover they had ever had.
One afternoon he gingerly peered into the pornographic magazines that blazed from the shelves of a remote newsagent. He made a mental note of the faces and figures, and the girls were duly accorded brief membership of Vernon’s thronging harem. But he was shocked; he didn’t mind admitting it: why should pretty young girls take their clothes off for money like that—like that? Why should men want to buy pictures of them doing it? Distressed