His face.
Pardon, he asks.
His bewilderment.
Um, you hear yourself laughing, off-key, too much, OK, I’m sorry, and your face is stinging with embarrassment. But the letters you begin to say and then you stop and you snap: it doesn’t matter. You excuse yourself, you have to go, you have to get out. You grab your bag, it’s caught round the chair leg and you stumble out and walk down the street, bashing into shoulders and almost walking into posts and wait…wait…you hear behind you, but you don’t turn back and at last there’s the mouth of the tube station in which to disappear, to sink.
What have you done, what have you done?
Your head is in your hands on the tube hurtling home, knuckling your temples, trying to press it all out.
Fool, fool.
To think you knew him.
never remain in wet clothes or boots
There’s a light from under your front door. Your face is rearranged. Cole’s cooked dinner, it’s a mess, the water that was steaming the vegetables has boiled dry and the apartment’s filled with the sour smell of a saucepan caked black. But he’s tried.
A tight smile.
You haven’t been writing me any letters, have you, the jittery blurt.
Letters, no. Why would I do that? What letters?
Oh nothing, nothing. I got a couple of letters. They were a bit strange. It might be this kid down the street.
What’s going on? Is someone harassing you? Should we call the police?
God no, forget it. It’s silly, harmless. What’s to eat?
There’s a Pandora’s box of questions flying open in Cole’s head, it is all in his face. You excuse yourself, can’t force food down, feel sick. You’ve blundered from Gabriel, he’s slipped from your life.
Fool, fool.
Is there something you want to tell me? Cole’s voice is at the locked bathroom door.
No, no, forget it.
Let me see the letters. Who is this kid? There’s concern in his voice, he will not let up.
I lent him some money for the bus and he’s been on at me ever since. It’s nothing, really, I can handle it. You manage a laugh. It’s OK. All right? Your fingers twist your hair until it hurts.
OK, OK. A pause. Want a cuppa?
You wilt, you slam your eyes shut, you smile with your lips pressed tight.
Yes. Yes, thanks; your voice all choked. And then in the gap under the bathroom door a slim bar of Lindt chocolate appears. You can hardly voice your thank you. For at moments like these the charge in your marriage is suddenly, beautifully, back.
You succumb.
sweeping and dusting
But not for long.
For the next day there’s no call from Gabriel, or the next. Through late winter and early spring there’s no contact, just an answering machine to receive your carefully rehearsed messages and he never returns your calls. The wind of agitation blows through all your nights, blowing away sleep until you fall, finally, into fitful technicolor dreams at dawn. Involving him, more often than not. He’s wended his way into every corner of your life, he’s a plasterer’s fine residue, dust under a bed, a white film on a shower screen that keeps coming back and back no matter how furiously you wipe. You will him to surprise you, knowing in your heart he won’t.
Just to hear his voice, so you can have your strength back.
You never imagined you had the capacity for such annihilation, never dreamt you could be reduced to something like this. The days stretch on, and the silence in the flat, and your nails are gnawed to the ragged quick and you draw blood chewing on your inner lips. You replay his bewilderment over and over in your head and exclaim out loud at the horror of it. It’s like when your faculty boss years ago told you that his wife had just had a baby and how sad you’d replied, God knows why, how sad, and your strange, stupid words have haunted you ever since.
Why won’t he call, to put your mind at rest? Did he never want to fuck you? Did he just want a friendship, do heterosexual male friends ever just want that? Was he stricken with embarrassment? Did he find himself falling for you and think it could never work? Your Elizabethan author’s no help, she just ignites more questions, more doubt:
Witness the man who loved a woman so wretchedly and dishonestly that he could not be at rest until he defiled her; he forced her to lie with him, and afterwards, to make up the measure of his wickedness, he hated her more than he loved her before.
Is it easier to just disappear?
The questions, the questions and the wind blows through all your nights, rattling the panes and whining to be let in. You toss and turn, as if you’re vomiting sleep.
poisons act in a way which are injurious to life
But then another letter, more beautiful, more urgent than all the rest.
…You help me to live. You soak through the skin of my days, it’s wonderful, torturous, transcendent all at once.
Rubbing and rubbing at the line between your brow. Why won’t he just ring, why is he so opaque, does he always retreat? You’re singed by the uncertainty, can’t be strong in it by yourself, you’ll run from the mess of your world if you have to and be alone, maddened, if you must.
There’s no one to talk to, to ask advice. You want Theo’s blunt opinion, miss the small pop when the cigarette is taken from her mouth and the talking begins, well, this is what you must do, girl. How many times has she said that in your past? She told you early in your relationship with Cole that she wasn’t sure he was good enough for you; she said remember the Madonna song, don’t settle for second-best, baby. But then she changed her tune when she saw over the years his kindness to you; she stopped her doubt after you told her that his capacity for tenderness always floored you and she was very still as you spoke: she had no answer to that. You wonder where she is now and what she’s doing, as curious as an ex-lover and unhinged, hating yourself, lost.
You crawl on your knees in the kitchen, cramming your mouth with chocolate, block-sized bars of it and then biscuits, whole packets of sweetness, and ice cream and peanut butter from the jar, slurping it and sucking it from your fingers in great dollops of crunch, wanting to hurt hurt hurt and forgetting for an instant the power of slim. Unable to think, read, shop, write, to concentrate on anything very much for Gabriel invades all your actions and thoughts. All the efficiency and control of your professional self has been lost, and you’re sleeping until all hours and then lying on the couch and staring into space, trashy gossip magazines unread on your lap. You can’t bring yourself to ring any of your girlfriends, to see them for coffee or lunch, you’re not ready to explain anything, can’t. You don’t want them judging your lank hair and spots, don’t want their rallying or pity or fuss. You’re phoning Gabriel and hanging up after two rings, you’re phoning Theo and doing the same. You can hardly remember the woman you once were, the sensible university lecturer promptly awake, every morning, at six fifty-six.
Is