The Pillow Friend (28 page)

She could not imagine living in it. She felt certain, within hours if not minutes of being shown through her new home by Graham, that there could be no room for her own life in the little house so crowded with his furniture, memories and ghosts. She'd already heard from him that rental properties were scarce and expensive in London, but she didn't need a whole house. Surely she could find a room to rent for a few months. This idea went ticking through her head when he took her out for a walk up the hill and a pub lunch, but she didn't mention it to him. It would have been too rude to start talking about leaving when he had just finished showing her the preparations he'd made for her arrival: the table and chair he'd set up for her to work on in a corner of the bedroom; the space he'd cleared for her clothes in the huge mahogany wardrobe; the flowers, wine, and French cheeses he'd bought to welcome her.

But she was certain he felt just as she did: shocked and disappointed by the realization of the wish he'd made two months ago in the Houston airport.

That first day they made conversation like people on a first date. They were excessively polite and restrained, trying to avoid talking about anything with a potential for stirring up troublesome emotions. Agnes went to bed early that night, completely wiped out by jet lag, and didn't wake when Graham came to bed. In the morning she opened her eyes to find him gazing at her, his head close to hers on the pillow. When he saw she was awake, he kissed her.

Hope, like a flame, surged up inside, and she moved eagerly to embrace him. But the kiss had not been a prelude to intimacy; he pulled away. “Would you like a bath? The water will be hot; I put the immersion heater on last night.”

“Why don't you have one with me?”

“I had one last night.”

She heard the simple statement as a criticism—she hadn't bathed, she was dirty and smelled bad, how could she expect him to want to make love to her? She scrambled out of bed. “I'll go wash.”

“The green towel on the rail behind the door is yours.”

She bathed as quickly as she could, wishing for a shower, hoping he would still be waiting for her in bed when she emerged. But the smell of coffee drifted in to her as she was drying herself, and when she came out, she found him in the kitchen, fully dressed, slicing bread for toast.

The school summer holiday had started just before her arrival, which meant Graham would be home all day. But, as he told her over breakfast, he still had work to do. He was revising some poems, and had been sent a stack of books for review. Although he intended to spend a lot of time with her during the holidays, he said he would feel happier if he could clear away his work first. “Then I can concentrate on you,” he said, looking anxious. “If you don't mind too much?”

“I don't mind at all,” she said quickly. “I always meant to visit London on my own, anyway, before I met you. I can do all the touristy things by myself—I'll be perfectly happy. You don't have to worry about me; I speak the language!”

“I'm not so sure about that.” He grinned, not wholly convincingly. “Well, if you wouldn't mind . . . there should be plenty to keep you happy in London for a few days. And then we can take some time off, to travel around the country together, the way we did in Texas.”

Agnes wasn't sure she believed that the trip he spoke of would ever happen; or that it was desirable. She'd realized, since his good-morning kiss, that she still wanted Graham, and wanted him to want her. She wasn't as reconciled to the notion that their brief love affair had been a mistake which was now ended as she'd tried to make herself believe. She still wanted to have a future with Graham. But if it wasn't to be, she could still be happy. And she could still have London.

She said, “I don't want you to give up your writing for me. After all, it was your poetry which first attracted me to you. I don't need to be entertained all the time. Don't forget, I'm a writer, too.”

“I know,” he said. “I can't believe how lucky I am, to have found you. Oh, Nancy, I'm so glad you came!” He got up from the table and came to embrace her. She should have been glad, she thought, yet it seemed to her that the passion in his voice was there in an attempt to convince himself, as much as her, that he meant what he said, and there was something awkward, forced about his hug. She was sure that when she hugged him back he flinched away.

She went up to London on the train, and found it thrilling and awesome just to be there. She walked around, staring, until she practically reeled with sensory overload from trying to take it all in. She couldn't make up her mind which of the many starred attractions in her guidebook to visit first, so, after stumbling through the streets of Bloomsbury and Soho and around Trafalgar Square until she was footsore, she bought a ticket to ride on the top of a special double-decker tour bus, and let the guide's amplified descriptions go in one ear and out the other while she stared and stared at the city from this new angle.

When she got back to Harrow in the evening and told Graham what she'd done he laughed disapprovingly and told her that tour buses were as naff as Madame Tussaud's.

“Naff?”

“Unbelievably.”

She didn't know the word, but it was obviously undesirable to be naff. “So, no Madame Tussaud's tomorrow?”

“Certainly not. But you can go and see the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London with all the other Japanese and American tourists if you really want.”

Once again she was poleaxed by jet lag and went to bed early. When she woke, Graham was already up. She could hear him talking, low-voiced, to someone in the next room.

He was just hanging up the telephone when she opened the door to his office. He turned and scowled at her. “What do you want?”

“I . . . just wondered where you were.”

“In my office, working, as you can see.”

“But it's so early.”

“I'm not required by law to stay in bed until eight o'clock.”

“I'm sorry.” She backed away from his anger, but instantly his expression changed; he was contrite.

“No,
I'm
the one who's sorry—a sorry excuse for a human being!” He caught her in his arms. “Forgive me, Nancy, please. I'm an old curmudgeon. I'm so used to living by myself, having everything my own way—I'm not used to having to explain myself to anyone else.”

“You don't have to explain yourself to me.”

“No, but I want to.”

She waited, hopefully, but that seemed to be the end of it. He let her go. “Bear with me, please,” he said. “Give me a little more time. Don't give up on me.”

“I won't.”

And she hadn't given up hope, although she thought, as the days passed, that her expectations were unwise. They spent a lot of time apart, and when they were together they talked mostly about what they had done or thought or seen on their own. They talked about external, impersonal things, never about their relationship. Agnes didn't know what their relationship was. After a whole week together, they still had not made love, and they did not talk about the future, as if life would continue in this way forever. They were like strangers brought together in some dramatic way: survivors of a plane crash, the only two English-speakers in a hostile foreign place. They had shared something once, long ago, but it was hard now to remember exactly what it had been, or if it was still important, and undoubtedly they each remembered it differently. He stirred a complex of emotions in her which were powerful but not happy.

Traveling around the great foreign city where she knew no one, where no schedule or expectations bound her, Agnes was not exactly happy, either, but she was always interested. She felt sometimes as if her own identity had slipped away. She could be anyone—at least, until she opened her mouth and identified herself for anyone who could hear as another American tourist. But, as her second week in England began, she recognized that she was getting tired of being a tourist, spending her days in museums, galleries and bookshops. She needed to start getting on with her new life, she thought: have things out with Gray, find herself a place to live, get into a routine, start writing again.

On her seventh journey into London she wandered a bit farther afield than before, and it was getting late in the day when she came upon a neighborhood of quiet streets with names that sparked no literary associations. It was too quiet—looking down a curving lane of old, high buildings, which all seemed to be small businesses shut up for the day, she was suddenly aware that it was nearly six o'clock. She was footsore and hungry and thirsty, but although a “Coca-Cola” sign beckoned, it turned out to belong to a snack bar as dark and closed as if it had never been open.

She had a
London A to Z
in her bag, but as she couldn't see any street signs she chose a direction at random and set off walking. Navigating by map was difficult and time-consuming. The way the streets curved here and ran out and changed their names—and the way the street names were often hidden away—confused her, but luckily it never took her very long to find an Underground station.

A porcelain doll, a stack of wooden boxes, a jumble of ornaments in a cluttered shop window caught her eye from across the road, and she walked across the silent, empty, narrow street (noting the cobbles underfoot) to have a better look. An antiques shop, or a junk shop, she couldn't tell. Displayed in the window were lots of china ornaments, bric-a-brac, the doll, a somewhat moth-eaten old teddy bear. She put her hand against the glass and leaned close, peering into the darkened interior of the shop. That was an attractive old dresser, she thought. The top drawer had been pulled out halfway and was filled with stuffed animals and dolls, but her eyes scanned past them at first; she was more interested in the furniture.

Something familiar wrenched at her attention, and she looked again at the toys in the dresser drawer, her heart beating harder even before she understood what she was looking at.

There, wedged in between another moth-eaten teddy and a peculiar golliwog thing was a small, old-fashioned doll that she recognized as immediately as her own face in a mirror: it was Myles.

Her breath fogged the glass and she had to move, to look again. It was harder to make him out from this angle—if she moved too far one way he was blocked by the golliwog; from another direction he was lost in the shadows, a pale gleam, a slim, featureless toy.

For one moment she had been absolutely certain. Now she was less so. There was only so much she could see from this distance. It might be another doll that looked like Myles. There must be some: other dolls made by the same doll maker, in the same year. She'd always believed he was English.

But what if it was
her
doll? All at once it seemed absurd, impossible, that she didn't know, couldn't remember what had happened to Myles. He'd been so important to her once, and then—then she'd stopped believing he could talk. He'd no longer seemed alive, and the sight of him had been the memory of loss, so she'd lost sight of him. Probably her mother had taken him; maybe Marjorie had reclaimed him. And maybe Marjorie had come to London and, being hard up, had sold him to an antiques dealer. . . .

It stretched credibility. And yet . . . there was the doll. It might have been hers.

Impatiently, she moved away from the window and looked up and around. There wasn't a sign; the shop didn't seem to have a name, although there was the number 6 on the door. If she could find the street name she could come back in the morning, when the shop would be open.

As she entered the house she heard the telltale cutoff bell sound that meant the telephone receiver had been replaced, and a few seconds later Graham came thudding down the stairs. He looked nervous. “Where've you been?”

“I'm sorry. I got lost, I lost track of time.”

“Have you eaten?”

She shook her head. “It just took me a long time to get back out here.”

“Let's go for a meal, then. I'm starved.”

Over plates of pasta and a carafe of red wine he asked about her day, and she told him about finding Myles.

“But surely . . . it isn't likely it's the same doll? All the way from Texas?”

“Myles wasn't an ordinary doll. My mother said he was a valuable antique, but he was more than that. He was real. I mean, I thought he was alive, in a sort of way. He used to tell me stories.” She felt her face getting hot, and was almost sorry she had told him even that much until she realized how his expression had changed. He was looking at her with open interest and excitement, as if he had just made a wonderful discovery. He had not looked at her like that since Texas.

“Go on. Please.”

“My aunt Marjorie gave him to me, to be my pillow friend, when I was seven. He'd been hers. My mother didn't want me to have him, I never knew why. When she had the chance to steal him from me she did, and she tried to destroy him. I don't mean literally destroy him, I mean . . . she wrapped him up in these strips of black silk and somehow that would destroy the magic in him. Or at least, that's what I thought. God, I must sound crazy.”

“Not at all. Not at all.” He leaned over to refill her wineglass. “Things happen to us as children, we can see things in ways that are lost to us when we grow older. That doesn't mean they're not real. Far from it. It would be interesting to know what your mother thought she was doing.”

“I think she thought she was protecting me.” She surprised herself with that knowledge. “But I could never ask her. Even now. She'd look at me like I was making this crazy thing up. She wouldn't remember anything about it. But Myles was real. I mean, whatever he was, whether he was magic, or I only dreamed about him being alive, he did exist, and if I didn't find him again today it must have been another doll like him. God, I wish that shop had been open!” She ate some linguini.