Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [96]
‘You’ll have to cover his cage with the cloth,’ said Lucy.
Walter turned back towards her and angrily began to kiss her. The parrot yelled again. Lucy’s laughter redoubled.
‘It’s no good,’ she gasped. ‘He won’t stop till you cover him.’
The bird confirmed what she had said with another scream of mirthful agony. Feeling furious, outraged and a fool, Walter got up from his knees and crossed the room. At his approach the bird began to dance excitedly on its perch; its crest rose, the feathers of its head and neck stood apart from one another like the scales of a ripened fir-cone. ‘Good-morning,’ it said in a guttural ventriloquial voice, ‘good-morning, Auntie, good-morning, Auntie, good-morning, Auntie….’ Walter unfolded the pink brocade that lay on the table near the cage and extinguished the creature. A last ‘Good-morning, Auntie’ came out from under the cloth. Then there was silence.
‘He likes his little joke,’ said Lucy, as the parrot disappeared. She had lighted a cigarette.
Walter strode back across the room and without saying anything took the cigarette from between her fingers and threw it into the fireplace. Lucy raised her eyebrows, but he gave her no time to speak. Kneeling down again beside her, he began to kiss her, angrily.
‘Walter,’ she protested. ‘No! What’s come over you?’ She tried to disengage herself, but he was surprisingly strong. ‘You’re like a wild beast.’ His desire was dumb and savage. ‘Walter! I insist.’ Struck by an absurd idea, she suddenly laughed. ‘If you knew how like the movies you were! A great huge grinning close-up.’
But ridicule was as unavailing as protest. And did she really desire it to be anything but unavailing? Why shouldn’t she abandon herself? It was only rather humiliating to be carried away, to be compelled instead of to choose. Her pride, her will resisted him, resisted her own desire. But after all, why not? The drug was potent and delicious. Why not? She shut her eyes. But as she was hesitating, circumstances suddenly decided for her. There was a knock at the door. Lucy opened her eyes again. ‘I’m going to say come in,’ she whispered.
He scrambled to his feet and, as he did so, heard the knock repeated.
‘Come in!’
The door opened. ‘Mr. Illidge to see you, madam,’ said the maid.
Walter was standing by the window, as though profoundly interested in the delivery van drawn up in front of the opposite house.
‘Show him up,’ said Lucy.
He turned round as the door closed behind the maid. His face was very pale, his lips were trembling.
‘I quite forgot,’ she explained ‘I asked him last night; this morning rather.’
He averted his face and without saying a word crossed the room, opened the door and was gone.
‘Walter!’ she called after him, ‘Walter!’ But he did not return.
On the stairs he met Illidge ascending behind the maid.
Walter responded to his greetings with a vague salute and hurried past. He could not trust himself to speak.
‘Our friend Bidlake seemed to be in a great hurry,’ said Illidge, when the preliminary greetings were over. He felt exultantly certain that he had driven the other fellow away.
She observed the triumph on his face. Like a little ginger cock, she was thinking. ‘He’d forgotten something,’ she vaguely explained.
‘Not himself, I hope,’ he questioned waggishly. And when she laughed, more at the fatuous masculinity of his expression than at his joke, he swelled with selfconfidence and satisfaction. This social business was as easy as playing skittles. Feeling entirely at his ease, he stretched his legs, he looked round the room. Its richly sober elegance impressed him at once as the right thing. He sniffed the perfumed air appreciatively.
‘What’s under that mysterious red cloth there?’ he asked, pointing at the mobled cage.
‘That’s a cockatoo,’ Lucy answered. ‘A cock-adoodle-doo,’ she emended, breaking out into a sudden disquieting and inexplicable laughter.
There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently