‘Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.’
Matthew Arnold
The Grande Chartreuse
It smelt of the Mersey; of silt and salt. And it was there – at Suzanna’s instigation – they went. They walked without exchanging a word, down Jamaica Street to the Dock Road, then followed the high, black wall that bounded the docks until they found a gate that gave them access to the wharfs. The region was deserted. It was years since the last of the big cargo vessels had berthed here to unload. They wandered through a ghost-town of empty warehouses to the river itself, Cal’s gaze creeping back, and back again, to the face of the woman at his side. There was some change in her, he sensed; some freight of hidden feeling which he couldn’t unlock.
The poet had something to say on the subject.
‘Lost for words, boy?’ he piped up in Cal’s head. ‘She’s a strange one, isn’t she?’
That was certainly the truth. From his first sight of her at the bottom of the stairs, she’d seemed haunted. They had that in common. They shared too the same determination, fuelled perhaps by an unspoken fear that they’d lose sight of the mystery they’d dreamt of for so long. Or was he kidding himself, reading lines from his own story into her face? Was it just his eagerness to find an ally that made him see similarities between them?
She was staring into the river, snakes of sunlight from the water playing on her face. He’d known her only a night and a day, but she awoke in him the same contradictions – unease and profound contentment; a sense that she was both familiar and unknown – that his first glimpse of the Fugue had aroused.
He wanted to tell her this, and more, if he could just find the words.
But it was Suzanna who spoke first.
‘I saw Immacolata,’ she said, ‘while you were facing Shadwell …’
‘Yes?’
‘… I don’t quite know how to explain what happened …’
She began haltingly, still staring at the river as though mesmerized by its motion. He understood some of what she was telling him. That Mimi was part of the Seerkind, the occupants of the Fugue; and Suzanna, her granddaughter, had that people’s blood in her. But when she began to talk about the menstruum, the power she’d somehow inherited, or plugged into, or both, he lost any hold on what she was saying. In part because her talk became vaguer, dreamier; in part because staring at her as she struggled to find the words for her feelings gave him the words for his own.
‘I love you,’ he said. She had stopped trying to describe the torrent of the menstruum; just given herself over to the rhythm of the water as it lapped against the wharf.
He wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She didn’t move; didn’t speak.
Finally, she just said his name.
He suddenly felt foolish. She didn’t want professions of love from him; her thoughts were somewhere else entirely. In the Fugue, perhaps, where – after this afternoon’s revelations – she had more right to be than he.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, attempting to cover his faux pas with further fumblings. ‘I don’t know why I said that. Forget I spoke.’
His denial stung her from her trance. Her gaze left the river. and found his face, a look of hurt in her eyes, as though drawing her gaze from its brilliance pained her.
‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘Never say that.’
She stepped towards him, and put her arms around him, holding him hard. He answered the demand and hugged her in return. Her face was hot against his neck, wetting him not with kisses but with tears. They didn’t speak, but stood like that for several minutes, while the river flowed on at their side.
Eventually he said:
‘Shall we go back to the house?’
She stepped back and looked at him, seeming to study his face.
‘Is it all over; or just beginning?’ she asked.
He shook his head.
She made a tiny, sideways glance back at the river. But before its liquid life could claim her again he took hold of her hand and led her back towards the concrete and the brick.
The only token they had of their adventures to date was the carpet fragment, and it offered up no clues.
The exchange dwindled, half-finished sentences punctuated by longer and still longer silences.
Around eleven, Brendan came home, hailing Cal from below, then retired to bed. His arrival stirred Suzanna.
‘I should go,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’
The thought of the room without her made Cal’s heart sink.
‘Why not stay?’ he said.
‘It’s a small bed,’ she replied.
‘But it’s comfortable.’
She put her hand to his face, and brushed the bruised place around his mouth.
‘We’re not meant to be lovers,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re too much alike.’
It was bluntly put, and it hurt to have it said, but in the same moment as having any sexual ambition dampened he had a different, and finally more profound, hope confirmed. That they belonged together in this enterprise: she the child of the Fugue, he the innocent trespasser. Against the brief pleasure of making love to her he set the grander adventure, and he knew – despite the dissension from his cock – that he had the better of the deal.
‘Then we’ll sleep,’ he said. ‘If you want to stay.’
She smiled. ‘I want to stay,’ she said.
They stripped off their dirty clothing, and slipped beneath the covers. Sleep was upon them before the lamp had cooled.
It