Deaf Sentence (19 page)

I laughed at the transparency of this gambit. ‘I can’t tell you that! I’m not your supervisor.’

She pulled a face. ‘No, alas. I can tell you, Desmond - may I call you Desmond? “Professor Bates” sounds so stiff.’

‘If you like,’ I said, hesitantly.

‘Well, Desmond, I can tell you this discussion we’ve just had has been more useful than all my supervisions with Colin put together.’

‘It’s nice of you to say so,’ I said, noting the familiar ease with which she referred to ‘Colin’. ‘But the amount of help I can give you is strictly limited.’

‘What are the limits, then?’ she said, with a smile.

‘Well, I can’t keep coming here, for one thing.’

‘Why not?’

‘My wife might get suspicious,’ I said lightly.

‘Does she know you’re here?’ Alex asked.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, but I couldn’t meet her unblinking blue gaze as I said it, and I suspect she knew I was lying. ‘But if it became a habit she might reasonably wonder why I was giving so much unpaid assistance to a good-looking young postgraduate student.’

She looked troubled. ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford to pay you right now, but -’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that,’ I protested.

‘But if I get a teaching job in the Department -’ she went on.

‘For heavens sake, I don’t want you to pay me for anything,’ I said in a fluster. ‘No. That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just that Fred . . .’ My sentence trailed away. She had a knack of wrong-footing me in conversation, and now I had forgotten precisely what I
did
mean.

‘Fred?’

‘My wife. It’s short for Winifred.’

She threw back her head and laughed. She almost chortled. ‘You call her Fred? And she doesn’t mind?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said feebly.

‘What does Fred do?’ she asked.

‘She doesn’t mind me calling her Fred, but she doesn’t like other people doing so,’ I said.

‘Sorry. What does Winifred - Mrs Bates - do? Or is she just a faculty wife?’

‘Far from it. She and a partner have a shop-cum-gallery in the city centre.’ I told her something about
Décor
.

‘It sounds fascinating, I must go there. I need some drapes for these windows.’ She gestured at the rain-smeared windows, which were fitted with venetian blinds but lacked curtains.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ I said. ‘Their prices are very steep.’

‘You don’t have to worry,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be indiscreet.’

I could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t say too much.

‘I’ll go make some tea,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Assam, right?’

While she was in the kitchenette I stood up to stretch my legs and wandered over to look at the contents of the bookshelves. As I passed the table which served as her desk my glance fell on a turquoise felt-tip highlighter lying in a small tray with a number of pens and pencils.

As I sit at my desk, writing this in the Anglepoise lamp’s cone of light, I still feel the shock of that observation, and the mental turmoil into which it plunged me. I pretended to carry out my intention of examining the books on the bookshelves, but I did not take in the titles inscribed on their spines. I told myself it was just a coincidence, that turquoise highlighters were ubiquitous, and I must not jump to conclusions, but some instinct told me that this was the murder weapon, covered with fingerprints and dripping with blood. Then my eye was caught by a familiar paperback on one of the shelves,
Analysing Discourse:An Introduction
, by Desmond Bates. I took it down and opened it. Alex’s name was written inside the front cover in small, neat handwriting: ‘
Alex Loom
’. I flipped through the book. On many pages passages of the text had been highlighted in turquoise. Hearing the tinkle of tea things being placed on a tray I hastily replaced the book on the shelf, and returned to my seat.

Though I tried to remain calm, Alex obviously noticed some change in my demeanour when she came back into the room. ‘You’re looking very serious,’ she said, as she poured the tea. ‘Is there something about my chapter you’ve been holding back?’

‘Not about the chapter, no,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if you know a book called
Document Analysis
, by a chap called Liverwright.’

‘Read it!’ she said triumphantly.

‘Have you got it here?’

‘No, it was a library copy. Much too expensive to buy, and anyway I didn’t get a lot out of it.’

‘The University library?’ I asked.

At this point she picked up the inquisitorial tone of my questions and paused for a second before replying. ‘Yes. Why d’you ask?’

‘Well, I happened to borrow the library’s copy myself the other day, and I found that it had been defaced by some previous reader. It was covered in marks made with a turquoise highlighter.’

‘Really?’ She didn’t blush or show any other sign of guilt. Her bright blue eyes met mine without wavering.‘It was unmarked when I borrowed it.’

‘Then perhaps you marked it,’ I said.

She laughed, but it was a forced laugh.‘What makes you think that?’

‘I noticed a turquoise highlighter on your table.’

She laughed again. ‘They’re quite common, Mr Holmes,’ she said.

‘And I just had a look at your copy of my book on discourse analysis, which is marked in the same way.’ She dropped her eyes and said nothing. ‘Of course you’re perfectly entitled to mark your own books in any way you like,’ I went on. ‘But doing that to a library book is sheer vandalism.’

‘I forgot it was a library book,’ she said. ‘I was working late, very tired, going from one book to another, some mine, some library copies . . .’

‘You don’t expect me to believe that,’ I said.

‘It’s true. I didn’t do it maliciously. Anyway, is it such a big deal? It’s not as if I ripped the pages out of the book. It’s still readable.’

‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ I said, getting to my feet.

‘Oh, don’t go!’ she said urgently, getting up too, and looking as if she might at any moment fall to her knees. ‘Don’t go while you’re angry with me.’

‘I’m not angry,’ I said. ‘I’m embarrassed.’

‘Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything you say. I’ll buy a new copy for the library.’

‘That would be a good idea, certainly. But how many other books have you vandalised?’

‘None!’ she said. ‘Trust me.’

‘I’m afraid I could never trust someone who would make irremovable marks in a library book,’ I said.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Desmond!’ she said with a pouting smile, trying a change of tack. ‘Just listen to yourself. “
Irremovable marks in a library book . . .
” Lighten up!’

But I was not to be teased out of my anger. ‘And after that foolishness with your underwear the other day . . . I’ve had enough,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving now, and I won’t be coming back. Or giving you any more advice about your research.’ I picked up my document case and closed it, leaving the copy of her chapter on the coffee table.

‘Oh no!’ she wailed.

‘Oh yes,’ I said, and walked out of the room. Behind my back I heard her say ‘Stupid! Stupid!
Stupid!
’ I think she was addressing herself. I grabbed my coat from the hook in the lobby, and left the flat. As I pulled the front door shut behind me I heard a sound as if she had flung the tea tray and its contents across the room. I took the stairs rather than wait for the lift. A fine drizzle was still falling outside, and I realised I had forgotten my umbrella, but I did not go back for it.

 

 

 

25
^th
November.
I didn’t imagine Alex would accept the severance of relations between us without an attempt at reconciliation. I thought she might offer to return my umbrella, and make that the pretext for another meeting. Instead I got this email from her this morning:

I must have read this through half a dozen times and every time I had an erection. I have no intention of keeping the proposed appointment, but I can’t get the Sadean scenario out of my mind. It is so easy to picture myself approaching the apartment building, as if in a film, checking my watch, pressing the bell push for flat 36 three times at precisely three o’clock, hearing the buzz and click as the lock on the entry door is released, ascending to the third floor, stealthily entering the apartment, closing the door behind me, taking off my coat in the almost dark hall, lit only by a dim red glow from the living room.When I enter the room it is exactly as she described: the blinds are down, the room illuminated by a red lamp in one corner, and there she is, bent across the table, her head turned sideways on a cushion, away from me so that I cannot see her face, wearing a black top on the upper half of her body, but naked from the waist down, except for a pair of shiny black high-heeled shoes (a detail my imagination added), her rosy buttocks exposed. I take off my jacket, roll up my right shirtsleeve, then with the fingers of two hands adjust the angle of her hips and lightly caress the curve of her buttocks, like a dog fancier steadying his trembling thorough-bred for display. I draw back my arm and then swing it forward, bringing my open palm smack into contact with her bottom. The sound and the sensation of my flesh against her flesh explodes in my head. I hear her gasp. I let my hand rest for a second where it landed before withdrawing it and smacking her again, and again, and again, pausing deliberately between each smack, favouring one cheek, then the other, in alternation, each time letting my stinging hand rest a little longer where it landed . . .

I have never had such a fantasy before. How did this woman intuit that somewhere in my psyche it was lurking, unsuspected, only waiting to be released?

 

 

 

26
^th
November.
Yesterday evening Fred came home from the shop a little late but in a good mood, having had a Happy Hour drink with Jakki to celebrate the sale of a quite expensive painting that afternoon. Over the chicken casserole I had prepared for us, and another glass of wine, she told me, with giggles, Jakki’s confidential account of her sex life with Lionel. Apparently they have erotic theme nights from time to time, dreamed up by him. For instance an Indian Night with incense burning in the bedroom, a raga on the tape-recorder, and the illustrated Kama Sutra open for reference on the bedside table. Or a Japanese Night: sexual congress on a floor mat with cushions, dressed in yukatas, with little cups of sake to hand for refreshment. Or Italian sex, with Amoretti sweetmeats to nibble, Asti Spumante to drink, and Puccini arias as background music. We amused ourselves with thinking up additional themes that would test their imagination and/or stamina: Eskimo Night, Roman Orgy Night, D.H. Lawrence Night . . . Though we mocked them it was not without a tinge of envy on my part, and, I sensed, on Fred’s too. ‘Oh well, good luck to them,’ she said, pouring herself another glass of wine. ‘They obviously enjoy it, and why not?’ ‘Would you like to try something of the sort?’ I ventured. ‘We’re too old for high jinks of that kind, darling,’ she said, generously including herself in the same age bracket as myself. ‘Besides, to enjoy that type of thing you have to take it absolutely seriously, and I’m afraid I would burst out laughing at the absurdity of it.’ ‘True, laughter is the enemy of the erotic,’ I said, a little sadly. ‘But we could have a little old-fashioned sex tonight, if you feel like it,’ she said. ‘OK,’ I said, corking the wine bottle.

Later, in the bedroom, as we came naked from our respective bathrooms and embraced, she said: ‘If you
did
have a theme night what would it be?’ I said: ‘Spanking Night.’ She drew back her head and stared. ‘
Darling!
What an idea! Who would spank whom?’ ‘I would like to spank you,’ I said, ‘but I suppose we could take turns, if you fancy it.’ She laughed almost hysterically. ‘You want to take me over your knee? Wouldn’t I be a bit heavy?’ I looked round the room. ‘You could clear the top of your dressing table and bend over that.’ She gave me quite a hard slap on the bottom, and I yelped, ‘
Ow!
’ ‘You see?’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t really like it.’ ‘You took me by surprise,’ I said, ‘but the effect is actually quite stimulating. Look.’ Grinning, she gave me another, harder slap. I retaliated. Struggling and laughing, we collapsed on to the bed. Later, not laughing, I did to Fred what Alex had forbidden me to do to her, closing my eyes and imagining myself in that red-lit room. It was the best sex we have had for a long time.