Famished Lover (27 page)

Dorothy hated cold fingers. I would beat my hands against my thighs as I approached her door, down the gloomy hallway and around to the right. I imagined myself some sort of native warrior enacting an elaborate, perplexing ritual, a shivering, hand-slapping dance after climbing such slopes, the rivals — those whirring, feckless cars on the streets — left far below.

She ate almost nothing — bits of toast with coffee, a meagre half-sandwich at her desk for lunch. Her bones felt hollow, the outline of her ribs showed through her skin. And yet her appetite for other things . . .

It was the heat of her that was so impressive.

I would be shivering like a child even after those five, hard-pulling flights of stairs. But there were days when she would fly straight at me, she wouldn't even let me get the door closed. And if she wasn't much for the eyes across a
room, a desk even, she was overwhelming and radiant from close range.

Sometimes she would order me straight into the bath, I was so cold. And those fragile hands would start to unbutton, to pull me free of my chilly clothes and soothe down my battered body.

Once, that was all we had time for. She filled the tub and submerged me in the heat — her building had a good boiler, and you could usually count on hot water, at least — and we kissed and kissed until her face and hair and blouse were soaked.

“My train,” I said. “I have to —”

“Yes.”

“Michael is in a show after school . . . I have to, really —”

“Yes,” she said, and, still clothed, climbed in on top of me, the water flooding onto the floor like something biblical.

From a few inches she was incandescent. I've never known anyone else who could change that way, absorb in an instant so much of the wattage around her. Her eyes crimped half-shut and she smiled as if these were the moments of a lifetime, right now,
this instant
.

I did know love.

Love had a way with clocks, of burning through stolen hours like a gambler spending found cash. I remember fighting my way out of that bath and sloshing on the cold tiles, my feet suddenly pointed at the ceiling — those were high, shadowed ceilings — and my head slamming down. For a moment I thought that God Himself — Lillian's God — had reached out to smash my brains for such behaviour.

“
Froggie Went a-Courtin'
,” I blabbered. “I said I'd be there. Michael is playing the cornbread.”

I scrambled up, towelled and dressed myself in a panic.
I'd lost a sock. I searched on my knees, underneath the chesterfield, by the umbrella stand near the door, while Dorothy laughed, her clothes soaked and her face still flushed with desire and heat.

“You're never going to make it!”

Under the coffee table and through her closet and behind the radiator upon which she kept an ancient row of African violets. I upset one with my sleeve and caught it awkwardly, spilling half the earth onto my wet trouser leg.

“Get going!”

“I can't go with just one sock!” I yelled at her, as if determined the entire building should know what we were up to. She was normally obsessed with secrecy, but the madness of the moment had taken us both over.

“Why not?”

As I ran out I glanced back to see her framed in the doorway, her blouse half-torn from her shoulder, bathwater dripping down her hair and face and legs. Her skirt was plastered to her slight frame but her expression was Amazonian, as if she could take on all the storms of the world and blow them off in a dozen directions.

I sat on the train with my chest heaving from the exertion of making it to the platform, and crossing and then uncrossing my legs, ashamed of my one bare ankle. I was convinced that everyone on that crowded, smoky car knew every black mark smudged and etched on my soul.

Seconds after I got home Lillian asked, “Where's your sock?” She saw my bare ankle all the way across the house from the kitchen.

“It was soaked and I took it off,” I said, too quickly. “I put it in my pocket but it must have fallen out.”

She pressed her lips into a flat, unimpressed line. When I'd left early in the morning she'd been at the dishes, and here she was still, with her hands plunged in suds as if she hadn't moved the entire day.

“I put your dinner aside,” she said. “Was the train late again?”

She looked steadily a few feet to my right at some invisible thing of interest on the floor.

“Work was piled up, so I took a later train. Where's Michael?”

She motioned over her shoulder. The upstairs had been finished for some time and I knew she had given him permission to range around my studio. I pulled off my hat, shook the rain from my overcoat, fought down the rising anger. Lillian's face was headache-pale. The right thing would have been to embrace her in the middle of the kitchen, to take her hair in my hands.

Instead I walked up the stairs, terribly conscious of my sockless foot. She took a step towards me and I lengthened my stride, ascended two stairs at a time.

I entered the studio. “What are you doing?” My voice was harsher than I wanted. In the north corner, where there was a little floor space, a train set I'd bought for the boy was partially assembled. But he was on the south side and half the canvasses I'd done since the fire were ranged out on the floor.

“
Stand up!
” I said as I stamped towards him.

“I'm sorry. Papa, I'm sorry!” Already Michael was in tears.

He was playing among landscapes, nothing he shouldn't have seen — a frozen field in late fall, the furrows raggedly ploughed; a skier cutting through the bush in winter. But I
was mad with the tension of the moment, with what he might have dragged into plain view.

I pulled him several feet away from the paintings. He was six years old, small for his age but getting stronger.

“
I told you!
”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Papa!” he blubbered.

“He didn't hurt anything!” Lillian said.

My hand was raised above him and I felt my whole body shaking.

“Ramsay, let him go!”

I dropped my arm and staggered off a few steps.
It's all right
, I thought.
Walk softly, and maybe this house will not explode
.

“I'm sorry, Michael,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

He ran to his mother, of course, and buried his face in her apron.

Later I sat alone and quietly read the newspaper, close to boiling. Lillian was fiercely mending by the fire, the silence welding our jaws shut. Eventually I rose and slipped into the boy's room and ran my hand through his soft, soft hair. He opened his eyes and gazed at me the way I wanted him to — with the gentle trust of half-sleep.

“Forgive me, Michael. How was it? Were you a terrific cornbread?”

He nodded his head sleepily.
“Was there a big crowd? Can you say your line for me now just the way you did in front of everyone?”

He sat up and thrust out his chest importantly. “I
f you want any more you can sing it yourself!
”

“Excellent!”

“Everyone laughed!” he said. Then he got very thoughtful.

“Do you think, one day, when we all have our own planes, there will be runways everywhere instead of roads?”

“I don't know. I haven't thought about it.”

“And would there have to be flags flying in the air to show us where to go?”

“Maybe.”

He closed his eyes and I thought he was going to drift back into sleep. Then he opened them again. “They would have to be suspended from balloons.”

“What would?”

“The flags,” he said. “Did Mummy tell you about the letter? Three cousins are coming. But I can't remember their names. Except for Alexander. That was the boy.”

“Cousins?”

“And two girls. Mummy was reading it. I read some words too. They're coming for a visit.”

He finally drifted back to sleep, and I found Lillian staring hard at a pair of Michael's trousers worn through the knee. I asked her about the letter.

“It's from Rufus,” she said curtly. “He wants to bring her here.”

“Who?” I stayed standing where I was, the blood now pounding to my brain.

Lillian got up abruptly and walked to the desk at the other end of the room where we kept the family papers. She picked up the letter, returned and threw it at me.

“It was addressed to both of us. That's why I opened it. I'm going to bed!” Then she marched off to her room. I glanced at Rufus's writing.

3 March 1937

Dear Ramsay and Lillian
,

How we used to regret Father's lack of letters when he was off draining the swamps of Nicaragua, and yet here I am pursuing some interesting travels of my own and can hardly find time to write. Well, to remedy that, I can say that Vanessa and I are just back from London, where besides a spot of business now and again I managed to hook up with some of the English relatives. Uncle Manfred and Aunt Harriet both send their love, Ramsay — they remember you so clearly as a young private. Though frail, of course, they are both in fine form although Manfred has lost most of his hearing and rails at top voice about the communists and the government and of course about this pipsqueak Hitler who thinks he has become so important in the world. Harriet does her best to reign him in. Manfred that is, although I imagine she could do a fine job on Hitler too if given the chance!
.

I also met the Boultons, who came for a rollicking luncheon that stretched on for hours and then turned into a walking tour of Chelsea with Henry Boulton giving a running commentary of amazing depth and perspicacity (he did go on somewhat). His wife Margaret is our cousin, Ramsay, whom you met when you stayed with the family during the war. I suppose you must have told me at some point about all this but I'd quite lost track and so was surprised (and somewhat embarrassed) when Margaret plied me with so many questions about you and seemed to assume that you must have told me all about her
.

Perhaps you know this already, but her health I'm
afraid is not all that it should be, but she soldiers on with remarkable fortitude. They have three children — Alexander, Martha and Abigail — and by the time we needed to take our leave she seemed quite convinced that they would all be making a family trek to North America this summer to visit. She was particularly adamant about stopping in to see you. I suppose in the course of several conversations I had described somewhat the beauty of your surroundings, with those lovely hills and fields and such, and she became smitten with the idea of a visit
.

I assured her it was a splendid plan and that you would all be thrilled to meet the English side of the family and renew old acquaintances. Dates and so forth have not been set, but is there a time in the season when it would be most convenient? I told her that your rooms are not large — she was fascinated by my account of the fire and your extraordinary rebuilding — and she said they are quite happy to sleep on floors and have a truly wilderness experience
.

Well, what a quaint idea of Canadian life the British can have sometimes
.

I will write again with more details as they emerge
.

Yours as always
,

Rufus

“What a luxury a cup of tea is,” Dorothy said, and she looked into hers. She was in her light gown, which was not quite pulled around her, and it was afternoon — the sun was streaming through her window and through the smoke of her cigarette,
and her legs were crossed and her hair was free and we were both flushed still. There was a sense of the day having sunk into resin, that it would remain a quarter to five for hours if not weeks, and the steam from her tea would fill her eyes, and if we willed it we might even retract some minutes and again be joyfully skin to skin.

But the world was crowding her little kitchen. The news of the massacre at Guernica in Spain had been out for only a few days and was still fresh in our minds.

“How can the Germans sit in good conscience on the Non-Intervention Committee and commit acts like that? And those poor people in Bilbao just waiting to be slaughtered,” Dorothy said. Mola and his insurgents were narrowing in on the Basque town by then, and the newspaper was full of the British and French effort to ship out the civilians in time.

“It's the largest refugee evacuation since the Belgians in 1914,” I said.

She stubbed out her cigarette and gazed at me, some of the memory of what we'd just been up to still in her eyes. “I don't want your wife cursing me for you being late again.” I suppose I appeared in no hurry to move off. “Is there something else you need to tell me?” She looked at me in her way, her eyes like the flat head of a screwdriver prying up a lid. “You are very silent these days, Mr. Crome.”

I took a sip of my tea and avoided her gaze. “I, uh . . . I will need to take a few days off next week. My cousin is coming to visit with her family. From London.”

“You have a cousin in London?”

I nodded, and felt the warmth of the cup — a delicate, feminine thing that did not fit my hand. She blew smoke across at me. I lit a cigarette of my own, and the heat of the
afternoon — unusual for late spring — began to drain a little more quickly.

“She's, uh — I visited with them in the war,” I said, trying to keep the hesitation out of my voice. “Just for a week. And now . . . she's visiting back.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Margaret. And she has three children now, and an insufferable husband.”

“And just this slight mention of her turns Mr. Crome's face into a radish,” Dorothy said. When I did not smile, her own face paled. “Oh,” she said then. “Should I be worried about this cousin Margaret?”

My silence stretched unbearably.

“I see,” she said, and sat back and examined the edge of the table.

“It isn't what you think,” I said finally. “I love you, and I'm sorry for never saying it. I'm sorry for this skulking and hiding and sneaking around. I want to make it right. I did have feelings for Margaret — I do have them — rooted like old teeth. But it was a long time ago. And now my brother Rufus is dragging her to my house to visit and I will need to take a couple of days.”