Incarnate (30 page)

“Have you a favorite?”

“Oh, yes, I think so.”

“Will you tell it to me?”

“If you like.” He knew at once what their best time had been, and he’d just opened his mouth when he came to himself. Good God, he had been thinking of the early years of his marriage, when Joyce and he had conquered their shyness and inexperience in bed. He’d never felt so positively young as then, so agile and so passionately in love with Joyce. Surely he hadn’t been going to tell that to the old lady. “I suppose it was when we went walking in Wales,” he said.

“I went there too. It was like another world, wasn’t it? Do you remember?”

“I can see it now.” He closed his eyes to recall the physical ache of climbing and forcing himself to keep on to the next view, the breath harsh as mist in his throat, the weight of the knapsack, the patch of sweat beneath it that felt as if the flask were leaking. Here was a rocky ledge to flop on, the aches in his throat and chest and legs were already fading into the sudden peace and wholeness that the landscape gave him, the diamond clarity of villages, the tiny perfect chime of a church bell, the glowing fields and valleys sweeping like waves to their jagged stony crests. He was in another world where storms prowled the crags, pathless mountains loomed out of the clouds, peak after darkening icy peak until they merged with the sky. He couldn’t express what all this said to him, seemed to promise him. It didn’t matter, she had been there too, she must know how it felt to realize you could never go back, you were no longer young. His body wasn’t up to it now, neither climbing mountains nor climbing Joyce, and he couldn’t help shuddering as he thought of their infrequent coupling, creaking bones and dry flesh scraping together, insects mating. Better to remember being young, and that took him back to the mountain, except that now the young woman with him in the sparkling sunlit field above the crags wasn’t Joyce but someone else, someone he should know. He was so stunned by her beauty that he hardly realized he was getting up from his chair and going to the bed, hardly dared admit to himself what he hoped. But it was true: there in the bed she was young and slim and impossibly beautiful, and he was almost at the bed and ready to take her in his arms before he wondered what had become of the rest of her, before his feet slipped on the pats of flesh that littered the floor around the bed. The floor was so thick with them he couldn’t keep his balance and was falling into her outstretched arms. Somehow he managed to fall back into his chair and woke.

The old lady was asleep, her face toward him. He clapped his hands over his mouth to keep in his cry of waking. He didn’t know how much he had said to her, didn’t know when he had stopped talking and begun dreaming, if indeed the one had put an end to the other.

He stood up as soon as he felt able to, and tiptoed to make sure she was asleep. He couldn’t help glancing down to make sure the floor was clear. Her puffy eyelids flickered, the only movement in the inflated porous face, and suddenly he had the notion that she was dreaming what he’d dreamed, that her dream hadn’t ended where his had. He wanted to step back, but he was stooping closer, for what he really wanted was to climb into bed with her just as she was, while the room was bright with a gap in the overcast. As he realized what he was thinking, he recoiled so violently that his head and his joints ached. All at once he was convinced that though her eyes were closed she had been watching him.

He crept out with his chair in his arms, and couldn’t breathe until he reached the landing. He sat in his office and sorted stamps, and tried not to think about himself. Perhaps he hadn’t been fully awake, perhaps his feelings had been as much of a delusion as the rest of it, but nevertheless they had been his. He stayed in his office while the day darkened and lit windows stamped the houses on Muswell Hill; he didn’t even go out when he heard Joyce closing the front door. “In here,” he murmured when she called his name, though he wasn’t certain that he wanted her to hear.

She came in beaming. “The hamburger people let me have it, Geoffrey. I knew the television would do the trick. I must phone Molly to thank her.” Her eyes clouded momentarily. “Or perhaps she would rather I didn’t. She’ll know how grateful I am. I’ll have to clean it and paint it before we can use it but, oh, Geoffrey, we’ve got somewhere at last,” she said, and he had to smile in response. It wasn’t just because the old lady would soon have somewhere to go, thank God, that he was beginning to feel better; it was more that he was simply grateful for Joyce. Maybe he was under stress, maybe exhaustion had almost let loose feelings he would have to control or preferably deny altogether, but he couldn’t believe there was any actual danger when he had Joyce to remind him what was real. He hugged her as if they were just married and didn’t mind the breathing from the guest room. “Thank you whoever you are,” he whispered into her hair, “Molly Wolfe.”

28

T
HE NIGHT
before New Year’s Eve, Susan couldn’t sleep. At first she thought the patterns of light would help, opening over and over again in front of her eyes like a hypnotist’s hands, but they only interrupted the dark. She hid under the blankets where the dark was warmer and usually sleepier, but then sounds began to poke her ears like blades of grass, distant music that seemed not to have stopped since Christmas Eve. She thought how many Eves there were, Christmas and New Year’s and the other one she hadn’t seen for more than a week, not since Susan had given her back her fairy tales. Susan made herself a promise that, in the dark, seemed meaningful and convincing: after tomorrow there would be no more Eves. The promise and her own breath had begun to lull her to sleep, and so when she struggled awake she first felt resentment, not fear. Someone was speaking near her in the dark.

It was Mummy in the main room. She must be talking in her sleep, unless she was awake and talking to herself. It made Susan feel lonely and afraid, because it meant that Mummy was still strange. She strained her ears to hear what Mummy was saying, then reluctantly she climbed out of bed. She was sure she had heard her own name.

When she edged open her bedroom door and crept out. Mummy’s voice was louder but no clearer. She kept falling silent as if she were waiting for an answer.

Susan had just reached the streamers and their cracks of dimness when Mummy said quite loudly, “She’ll have to, won’t she.” The shock made Susan feel she was falling dizzily; she put out a hand to support herself. The streamers rattled, and Mummy cried, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me. Mummy.” All Susan’s fears made her add, “Who did you think it was?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know, with you creeping around in the dark like that? What’s wrong with you?”

Susan could just see the room now, a dimness tinged green, and Mummy was alone. She had been talking to herself. Susan searched desperately for a reason to be up, and could only think of something she’d imagined years ago. “I thought someone was looking out of my mirror.”

“Go back to your room and don’t you dare come out until morning. I’m sick of your imagination. I’m sick of you.”

At least she believed that was what had been wrong, but Susan wished she’d thought of something else. She lay in bed and thought of someone watching her out of the mirror, someone who could see in the dark. She remembered the time she had stared at her own face for so long it had ceased to be hers. She hadn’t heard Mummy when she fell victim to the worst dream she’d ever had, of being so terrified to look in mirrors that she had to blind herself rather than see. Her eyes wouldn’t come out, no matter how hard she dragged at the skin beneath them; they just ached, worse and worse. She woke in the dark, lay dreading sleep, and woke again in the dark, she wasn’t sure how many times before she noticed the thread of light under the door.

She took her time in the bathroom. When at last she went into the kitchen. Mummy gave her her morning milk without a word. It wasn’t until they were sitting down to breakfast that she said, “Susan, don’t you like your room?”

“How do you mean. Mummy?”

“I mean exactly what I say. I want to know what all that fuss was about last night. Is it too dark in your room, is that what you don’t like?”

“It is dark without any windows,” Susan admitted, wondering if Mummy didn’t even remember talking to herself.

“All right then, now we’re getting somewhere. Do you want to change rooms?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The idea of Mummy in the total darkness made her uneasy without knowing why.

“I should think you’d be glad to. I can’t see what alternative there is. Sometimes, Susan, I don’t understand you at all. I’m sure you think I’m always nagging you but it’s only because I worry about you. I just don’t want you turning out like I nearly did.” Mummy stared at her and shook her head. Eventually she said, “Well, what are you going to do today?”

“You said we could go to the Tower of London one day when you weren’t working.”

“So I did.” Mummy’s tired eyes flickered. “Sorry, it’ll have to be another day. Why don’t you go and join the library? See if you can find a few sensible books for a change.”

“Can I go and look at the theaters and see what the pantomimes are?”

“Yes, all right, I said we’d go to one. You see which one you’d like.” An hour later, as Susan kissed her goodbye, Mummy said, “Nothing too scaring.”

Susan walked to Oxford Circus and into Regent Street. She would have gone the quicker way if Mummy hadn’t told her to stay out of Soho. The pavement in Carnaby Street was multicolored as the boutiques, a winged stone boy with a bow and arrow hopped in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Feeling venturesome and grown-up and very like a Londoner, Susan turned along Shaftesbury Avenue.

When she came back along St. Martin’s Lane, past photographs the size of doorways, she hadn’t found many pantomimes. She’d crossed a busy road to look at Puss in Boots only to find it wasn’t Puss but Pussy, showing at a cinema from which a man in pointed scaly shoes had chased her away. The best she could find was Dick Whittington, by which time she’d known to make sure what kind of Dick, and the ticket prices made her gasp. Mummy was hard up; Susan had seen her biting her lip over her accounts in her exercise book. Perhaps they should do without a pantomime this year. She headed back toward Marble Arch and her real reason for going out, which had been in the wings of her mind all the time.

The lobby of MTV was crowded with men in new clothes that looked forty years old. All the men had their hair cut short, back and sides. Susan went to the circular desk. “Not here today,” the man in the braided uniform said gruffly. “Can’t tell you where to find her, sorry.” Susan knew where Molly lived, but the trouble was that she had exhausted her resolve: she’d come prepared to start talking at once about Mummy and Eve, and now that she would have to get ready all over again she wasn’t sure she could.

She picked her way along Bayswater Road, watched for patches that looked like frozen slush but were the crusts of puddles. She must go to Molly. Molly had said they could talk again soon. Even if talking about Mummy made her feel disloyal, she was sure that was nothing compared to what Eve was doing to Mummy. But it had begun to hail, small hard stones that stung her cheeks and the backs of her bare knees until she trod straight into a crusty puddle. She turned before she reached Molly’s hill and ran home. Molly mightn’t be at her flat, and Susan would be left without shelter. Perhaps she could find an excuse to sneak away after lunch.

Her drowned foot squelched as she hurried upstairs, but she faltered on her landing: was Mummy talking to herself? She stood as long as she could bear the smell of cats and the chill of her soggy shoe, long after the hail had stopped rattling the windows, but she heard nothing further. When she knocked, Mummy came to the door at once.

“Good heavens, Susan, have you been paddling? Change your shoes and socks before you catch your death.” Her concern seemed oddly mechanical, as if it were a disguise. “Go on, get those wet things off,” she cried, but her impatience was more like nervous eagerness. “And then I’ve got a surprise for you.”

There it almost was. “What is it?” Susan demanded.

“Get changed and then you’ll see. Put your slippers on, you won’t be going out again.” She pushed Susan into a chair and untied the soaked laces herself. She was too eager, her eagerness seemed to be a disguise too. Susan was so intent on her face, so anxious to make out what had happened to Mummy now, that she didn’t glance up when the streamers rattled, didn’t look until Eve had stepped into the room.

For a moment Susan thought she couldn’t speak. “What’s she doing here?”

“That was your surprise. Eve is coming to stay with us for a while.”

Eve smiled at her and then at Susan. “I’ve brought your slippers.”

Susan snatched them and couldn’t look at her. Speaking again was even more of a struggle. “There’s nowhere for her to sleep.” .

“Of course there is. You can both sleep out here and I’ll have your room, since you don’t like it anyway. There isn’t space in there for both of you. You can have the sofa and Eve will put the chairs together. She says she doesn’t mind.” She stood up to end the discussion. “Ready for lunch? Lots of turkey to finish. More than enough for two big girls.”

“I’ll carry the plates, M—” Eve looked shyly at her scuffed shoes with their frayed laces. “Can I call you Mummy?” she said, just loud enough to be heard.

“Of course you can, love.” Mummy was blinking as she patted Eve’s bruised cheek gently as a feather. “I’d like you to.’”

“I’ll help you then, Mummy.” Eve jumped up and skipped toward the kitchen with Mummy. Eve carried in the plates and smiled at her, a smile that looked innocently grateful, and Susan felt in danger of shaking until she couldn’t stop. Eve went through the streamers, Mummy appeared with the turkey while they were still swaying, and Susan ran to her. “Don’t let her stay, Mummy,” she whispered.

“Susan, why are you speaking to me in that silly voice? Eve has nowhere else to go, do you understand? Her mother was hurting her and leaving her alone all night, and now she’s gone to live with someone Eve’s afraid of. The social workers wouldn’t do anything for Eve before, and all they’d do now would be put her in a children’s home. Would you like that to happen to you?”