The Insect Farm Read Online Free

moment, Harriet’s look seemed timeless. While their femininity was just being discovered and then reinvented in the spirit of the age, Harriet’s brand of sexiness would have worked its magic in any decade past or future. Something about her had a particular way of reaching out and taking an intensely discomforting grip around your groin. To see her was to want her, and it was on that day in November 1969 that I saw her.
    After the concert we all headed onto the street. Angela went into a huddle with the other girls and I stood on the fringes of the group. We discussed what to do next and I saw Harriet hanging back, not quite part of the inner circle. Had she noticed me? She said later that she had, but there was nothing at the time to suggest it. As we reconciled ourselves to the fact that the pubs were closed and we would soon missthe last train home, I tried to make it seem an accident that I fell in alongside her.
    “Some concert, huh?” Her smile was a tiny flicker of warmth, but she said nothing.
    “I don’t like to talk about it.” I expected her to continue, but she did not.
    “Don’t like to talk about the concert?”
    “Not for a little while, no.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Is that just this one, or don’t you like to talk about any concerts?”
    “I don’t like to talk about rock concerts,” said Harriet, “because everything that everyone says about them seems utterly facile, and somehow talking about it devalues the experience I feel I’ve just had.”
    “I think I know what you mean,” I said, but I didn’t really, and I hadn’t often met people who used words like “facile” in ordinary conversation.
    “Some of us are going back to my place,” she said. It sounded like a statement of fact rather than an invitation and, in my adolescent infatuation, I failed to understand.
    “That’s nice.” I felt like an idiot. That’s nice? I sounded like Alec Guinness.
    There was a pause.
    “You could come too if you’d like.”
    It turned out that she lived above a shop in Carnaby Street, and she said it with an interrogative in her voice which seemed to question whether it was possible to live anywhere else.
    A dozen of us ended up walking the couple of miles or so from the Albert Hall to Harriet’s flat in the West End. There were far fewer cars on the road in those days, and by now the streets were emptying fast. Angela was immersed in conversation with two friends, and so seemed not to notice my instant infatuation with another girl.
    We were headed towards a flat above a clothes shop, halfway down the street, and next to a pair of red telephone boxes. Despite being one of the most famous streets in the world, at that time of night it was all surprisingly quiet. I learnt that the place belonged to Harriet’s uncle, who lived in the country and used it when he was in town on business; I cannot now remember the actual words she used, but they were designed, I think, to give the impression that he was some kind of a spy. Certainly Harriet’s father worked for the Foreign Office, and he and her mother were on a temporary posting in Hong Kong. They had left Harriet to finish at boarding school. The uncle was on an extended trip somewhere far away, and so she had been allowed to stay in it long term. Seventeen years old, with independence and her own flat in the West End of swinging London.
    The decor and furniture looked and felt like something out of a 1950s film set – a bolt-upright sofa and two armchairs, a small Formica-topped table with four wooden chairs, standard lamps with shades made of discoloured fabric. Someone began playing 45s on the record player and someone else started rolling some joints. It was a small work of art to pastetogether three Rizlas and roll up the end of a cigarette packet to make a roach, and it was an art form we had all practised. Angela and her friends went into the kitchen to make tea, and I did my best to position myself as close to Harriet as I could,