Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [54]
He sat there oozily in his dark gray suit. John wore a plain white shirt—but, as always, an eye-catching tie. Some internal heat source fueled his bleeding eyes; otherwise his fat face was worryingly colorless, like an internal organ left too long on its tray. His chin toppled into his breasts and his breasts toppled into his belly … With some makes of car, the bigger the model, the smaller the mascot on its bonnet; and so, alas, it was with John. A little shy sprig for his manhood from which Mother, at bathtime, would politely avert her gaze. Water seeped and crept and tiptoed from his eyes all day and all night. Mother loved him with all her heart. This was her life’s work: that John should feel no pain.
“Yes,” said Mother, leaning forward to thumb his cheeks, “he’s still a child really—aren’t you, John? Come with Mother now, darling. Come along.”
Mr. and Mrs. Brine watched them start to make their way below. The little woman leading her heavy son by the hand.
At eight o’clock every morning they were brought tea and biscuits and the Cruise News in their cabin by the adolescent steward: Mother thought he looked like the Artful Dodger with rickets, for all his cream blazer and burgundy slacks. With a candid groan John rolled off the lower bunk and sat rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, very like a child, as Mother nimbly availed herself of the four-runged wooden ladder. She drank two cups of the taupe liquid, and then gave John his bottle—the usual mixture she knew he liked. Next, tenderly grunting, she inserted his partial (John fell down often and heavily, and one such fall had cost him two incisors—years ago). As she withdrew her hand, threads of saliva would cling yearningly to her fingers: please don’t take your hand away, please, not yet. In the bright stall of the bathroom she put him through his motions. And at last she clothed his cumbrous body, her tongue giving a cluck of satisfaction as she furled the giant Windsor of his flaming tie.
Dreamily she said, “Do you want to go down for your breakfast now, John?”
“Gur,” he said. (“Gur” was yes. “Go” was no.)
“Come along then, John. Come along.”
Out through the door and the smell of ship seized you by the sinuses: the smell of something pressurized, and ferociously synthetic. They entered the zigzagged dining room, with its pearl-droplet lighting, its submarine heat, and its pocket-sized Goanese staff in their rusty tuxedos. In a spirit of thrift Mother consumed the full buffet grill—omelette, sausage, bacon, lamb chop—while John did battle with a soft-boiled egg, watched with enfeebled irony by Mr. and Mrs. Brine. There were two other guests at their table: a young man called Gary, who had thoughts only for his sunbathing and the inch-thick tan he intended to present to his co-workers at the ventilation-engineering plant in Croydon; and a not-so-young woman called Drew, who came largely for the sea air and the exotic food—the chop sueys, the Cheltenham curries. Then, too, perhaps, both Drew and Gary had hopes of romance: the pretty daughters, the handsome officers … There’d been a Singles’ Party in the Robin’s Nest, hosted by the Captain himself, on the night they sailed. An invitation was waiting for John when he and Mother came staggering into their cabin. She slipped it out of sight, of course, being always very careful, you understand, not to let him get upset with anything of that sort. Taking a turn on deck that evening, they passed the Robin’s Nest and Mother, with maximum caution, peered in through the wide windows, expecting to witness some Caligulan debauch. But really: whyever had she bothered? Such a shower of old bags you’d never seen. Wherever were the pretty daughters? And wherever were the officers? “At it already,” said Mr. Brine at dinner that night, in a slurred undertone. “The officers nail down all the talent before the ship weighs anchor.