The chenille spread

Is this where you're living? she says. She twists the gloves in her hands, as if they're wet and she's wringing them out.

This is where I'm staying, he says. It's a different thing.

The house is one of a row, all red brick darkened by grime, narrow and tall, with steeply angled roofs. There's an oblong of dusty grass in front, a few parched weeds growing beside the walk. A brown paper bag torn open.

Four steps up to the porch. Lace curtains dangle in the front window. He takes out his key.

She glances back over her shoulder as she steps inside. Don't worry, he says, nobody's watching. This is my friend's place anyway. I'm here today and gone tomorrow.

You have a lot of friends, she says.

Not a lot, he says. You don't need many if there's no rotten apples.

There's a vestibule with a row of brass hooks for coats, a worn linoleum floor in a pattern of brown-and-yellow squares, an inner door with a frosted glass panel bearing a design of herons or cranes. Birds with long legs bending their graceful snake-necks among the reeds and lilies, left over from an earlier age: gaslight. He opens the door with a second key and they step into the dim inner hallway; he flicks on the light switch. Overhead, a fixture with three pink glass blossoms, two of the bulbs missing.

Don't look so dismayed, darling, he says. None of it will rub off oh you. Just don't touch anything.

Oh, it might, she says with a small breathless laugh. I have to touch you. You'll rub off.

He pulls the glass door shut behind them. Another door on the left, varnished and dark: she imagines a censorious ear pressed against it from the inside, a creaking, as if of weight shifting from foot to foot. Some malevolent grey-haired crone-wouldn't that match the lace curtains? A long battered flight of stairs goes up, with carpeting treads nailed on and a gap-toothed bannister. The wallpaper is a trellis design, with grapevines and roses entwined, pink once, now the light brown of milky tea. He puts his arms carefully around her, brushes his lips over the side of her neck, her throat; not the mouth. She shivers.

I'm easy to get rid of afterwards, he says, whispering. You can just go home and take a shower.

Don't say that, she says, whispering also. You're making fun. You never believe I mean it.

You mean it enough for this, he says. She slides her arm around his waist and they go up the stairs a little clumsily, a little heavily; their bodies slow them down. Halfway up there's a round window of coloured glass: through the cobalt blue of the sky, the grapes in dime-store purple, the headache red of the flowers, light falls, staining their faces. On the second-floor landing he kisses her again, this time harder, sliding her skirt up her silky legs as far as the tops of her stockings, fingering the little hard rubber nipples there, pressing her up against the wall. She always wears a girdle: getting her out of it is like peeling the skin off a seal.

Her hat tumblesoff, her arms are around his neck, her head and body arched backwards as if someone's pulling down on her hair. Her hair itself has come unpinned, uncoiled; he smoothes his hand down it, the pale tapering swath of it, and thinks of flame, the single shimmering flame of a white candle, turned upside down. But a flame can't burn downwards.

The room is on the third floor, the servants' quarters they must once have been. Once they're inside he puts on the chain. The room is small and close and dim, with one window, open a few inches, the blind pulled most of the way down, white net curtains looped to either side. The afternoon sun is hitting the blind, turning it golden. The air smells of dry rot, but also of soap: there's a tiny triangular sink in one corner, a foxed mirror hanging above it; crammed underneath it, the squareedged black box of his typewriter. His toothbrush in an enamelled tin cup; not a new toothbrush. It's too intimate. She turns her eyes away. There's a darkly varnished bureau scarred with cigarette burns and the marks from wet glasses, but most of the space is taken up by the bed. It's the brass kind, outmoded and maidenish and painted white except for the knobs. It will probably creak. Thinking of this, she flushes.

She can tell he's taken pains with the bed-changed the sheets or at least the pillowcase, smoothed out the faded Nile-green chenille spread. She almost wishes he hadn't, because seeing this causes her a pang of something like pity, as if a starving peasant has offered her his last piece of bread. Pity isn't what she wants to feel. She doesn't want to feel he is in any way vulnerable. Only she is allowed to be that. She sets her purse and gloves down on top of the bureau. She's conscious suddenly of this as a social situation. As a social situation it's absurd.

Sorry there's no butler, he says. Want a drink? Cheap scotch.

Yes please, she says. He keeps the bottle in the top bureau drawer; he takes it out, and two glasses, and pours. Say when.

When, please.

No ice, he says, but you can have water.

That's all right. She gulps the whisky, coughs a little, smiles at him, standing with her back against the bureau.

Short and hard and straight up, he says, the way you love it. He sits down on the bed with his drink. Here's to loving it. He raises his glass. He's not smiling back.

You're unusually mean today.

Self-defence, he says.

I don't loveit, I love you, she says. I do know the difference.

Up to a point, he says. Or so you think. It saves face.

Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just walk out of here.

He grins. Come over here then.

Although he knows she wants him to, he won't say he loves her. Perhaps it would leave him armourless, like an admission of guilt.

I'll take my stockings off first. They run as soon as you look at them.

Like you, he says. Leave them on. Come over here now.

The sun has moved across; there's just a wedge of light remaining, on the left side of the drawn blind. Outside, a streetcar rumbles past, bell clanging. Streetcars must have been going past all this time. Why then has the effect been silence? Silence and his breath, their breaths, labouring, withheld, trying not to make any noise. Or not too much noise. Why should pleasure sound so much like distress? Like someone wounded. He'd put his hand over her mouth.

The room is darker now, yet she sees more. The bedspread heaped onto the floor, the sheet twisted around and over them like a thick cloth vine; the single bulb, unshaded, the cream-coloured wallpaper with its blue violets, tiny and silly, stained beige where the roof must have leaked; the chain protecting the door. The chain protecting the door: it's flimsy enough. One good shove, one kick with a boot. If that were to happen, what would she do? She feels the walls thinning, turning to ice. They're fish in a bowl.

He lights two cigarettes, hands her one. They both sigh in. He runs his free hand down her, then again, taking her in through his fingers. He wonders how much time she has; he doesn't ask. Instead he takes hold of her wrist. She's wearing a small gold watch. He covers its face.

So, he says. Bedtime story?

Yes, please, she says.

Where were we?

You'd just cut out the tongues of those poor girls in their bridal veils.

Oh yes. And you protested. If you don't like this story I could tell you a different one, but I can't promise it would be any more civilised. It might be worse. It might be modern. Instead of a few dead Zycronians, we could have acres of stinking mud and hundreds of thousands of…

I'll keep this one, she says quickly. Anyway it's the one you want to tell me.

She stubs out her cigarette in the brown glass ashtray, then settles herself against him, ear to his chest. She likes to hear his voice this way, as if it begins not in his throat but in his body, like a hum or a growl, or like a voice speaking from deep underground. Like the blood moving through her own heart: a word, a word, a word.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 643