Mantissa (18 page)

“Be a sport. Give.”

She breathes out, half amused, half embarrassed.

“Miles, it’s rather personal.”

“I’d never tell a soul.”

She hesitates a moment. “Well… I can tell you one thing. Whatever else he was, he was never the Swan of Avon.”

He turns in excited surprise. “You don’t mean he
was
Bacon, after all?”

“No, darling. I mean that the one remembrance of things past he never managed to summon up in his sessions of sweet silent thought was anything so elementary as a bath. That’s why I came out of it seeming so stand-offish. I frankly found it about all I could face to be within shouting distance. I remember meeting him one day, he was wandering down Old Cheapside, slapping his bald head and saying the same line over and over again… he couldn’t think of one to follow it with. I jolly well yelled across the street, I was standing beside a lavender-girl for self-protection, and told him.”

“Which line was that?”

“ ‘I grant I never saw a goddess go.’ ”

“And what did you shout?”

“ ‘The reason being, you have B.O.’ Or Elizabethan words to that effect.”

He grins at the ceiling. “You’re impossible.”

“They were all the same. If literary historians weren’t so po-faced, they’d have long ago realized I had a very bad patch between the fall of the Roman Empire and the invention of internal plumbing.”

He leaves a little silence.

“If only I’d known from the beginning that the real you takes nothing seriously.”

Her hand slides down his stomach. “Nothing?”

“Apart from that.”

She pinches the lip of his navel.

“I’m only being what you want me to be.”

“Then not your real self.”

“That is my real self.”

“Then you can tell me the truth about the Dark Lady.”

“Darling, you wouldn’t have fancied her one bit. She was just like Nurse Cory.”

“Not literally – physically like Nurse Cory?”

“The spitting image. By a strange coincidence.”

Again he turns in acute surprise.

“Erato, you’re not… you’re not having me on?”

“Of course not, Miles.” She raises her eyes to meet his. “I wish I was.”

He lets his head fall back and stares at the ceiling. “My God. Black.”

“I thought we’d decided on a rich brown, darling.”

“And you didn’t mind?”

She sighs. “Darling, of course I was joking just now. About being in Old Cheapside. I was only something in his mind. It’s just that the something in his mind is remarkably like a something in yours. The difference is that you won’t leave it there – I don’t mean you in particular, but everyone these days. Everything must be ‘real,’ or it doesn’t exist. You know perfectly well the real ‘real me’ is imaginary. I’m only being real in your sense because you want me to be. That’s what I meant a moment ago.”

“But you were the one who came and really sat on my desk in the first place.”

“Darling, I just wanted to see what being real was like. Naturally I had to choose someone to be real to. Equally naturally I chose you. That’s all there is to it. Really.”

They lie in silence for a moment. Then he shifts slightly.

“Shall we go and lie on the bed now?”

“Of course, darling.”

She stands and pulls him up. They embrace tenderly, mouth to mouth, then go hand in hand and install themselves on the bed, in the same position, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her shoulder, her right leg raised across his. He speaks again.

“I’ve forgotten which unwritable variation that was.”

“The twenty-ninth.”

“I thought it was thirty.”

“No, darling. It’s two after twenty-seven, and twenty-seven was the one when you made me…” She presses closer. “You know. You wicked thing.”

“You mean when you made me make you…”

“Shush.”

She kisses his shoulder. The clock ticks, contentedly gestating its next cuckoo. The man on the bed speaks to the ceiling.

“I’d never have believed it. The way we make it a little more impossible each time.”

“I told you. Ye of little faith.”

“I know you did, darling.” He slides a hand down the slim back and pats. “You and Nurse Cory.”

She gently pinches his skin again. “
As
Nurse Cory.”

“You do her so well now. I keep forgetting you’re the same person.” He kisses her hair beside him. “Ever since that time she, I mean you – fantastic. No wonder old William… when you go wild like that. And no wonder he went bald, if it was all going on in his head.”

“It really was, darling.”

He finds her right hand. They enlace fingers, and lie for a few moments in mute recollection. “It’s what seemed wrong today. I mean, only twice. We can’t count the
interruptus.
” She says nothing. “Our average is still three, isn’t it?”

“Actually three point three recurring, darling.”

“Two isn’t good enough.”

“We can make up for it.”

“It’s the literary stuff. Each time we go long on that, we somehow lose sight of the basics.”

“Darling, I’m not disagreeing, but given who I am, I can’t drop that completely.”

“My angel, I know you can’t. It’s just that…”

“Just what, darling?”

He strokes her back. “Actually I was thinking of one of your new variations today.” He pats. “Of course you did it very competently, as always. But I couldn’t help wondering if it was relevant.”

“Which variation was that?”

“When you pretended to be a psychoanalyst. All that nonsense about my being a voyeur and an exhibitionist. I frankly felt it was over the top. In the circumstances. And a wee bit below the belt. Especially the thing about mother-fixation.”

She leans up on an elbow. “But Miles darling, who said only last time that he’d like to eat my breasts alive?”

“We surely don’t have to draw farfetched conclusions just because as Nurse Cory you happen to have a smashing pair of tits.”

“Only as Nurse Cory?”

“Of course not.” He gives a quick touch to the pair beside him. “Both of you.”

“Miles, I distinctly heard. You said ‘as Nurse Cory.’ ”

“A slip of the tongue.”

She looks down. “I honestly can’t see any difference at all.”

“Sweetheart, there virtually isn’t.”

She looks up. “What does ‘virtually’ mean?”

“Only the tiniest nuance. And you can’t be jealous of yourself. Just because as her you are a suspicion prouder and bolder. Even more sweetly impudent and provocative than you already are.” He reaches and pats the objects under discussion again. “Yours are subtler. More delicate.” Once more she examines their delicate subtlety, but this time with a tinge of doubt. “Let me give them a little kiss.”

She lies down in her previous position. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You are a vain thing.”

“I wish now I’d never let you talk me into being a black girl.”

“Darling, we agreed. I do need you in just one other shape – if only to remind myself how unconveyably heavenly you are in your own. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that, enjoyable though it may be to accuse me of incest and the rest, we surely have more important things to do. There were whole stretches today with hardly a whisper of sex. I sometimes feel we’re losing all sense of priorities. We need to get back to the spirit of that absolutely marvelous time – which was it? – when we hardly said a word throughout.”

“Number eight.”

“That was so superbly structured, all solid, serious, nonstop – you know. We can’t always rise to those heights, but even so.”

“I seem to remember I spent as much time being Nurse Cory as myself in that one as well.”

“Were you, darling? I’d completely forgotten.” He pats her back. “How strange. I could have sworn it was all you.”

There is a silence. Erato lies against him. There is only one small change in her previous posture; now she lies with her eyes open. One might for a moment or two suspect that she is nursing a resentment. But that is soon proved illusory, because she turns her mouth once more and kisses the skin her head lies against.

“Darling, you’re right. As always.”

“Darling, don’t say that. Only sometimes.”

“It’s just that I feel you’re becoming so much better at being impossible than I am.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s true. I don’t have your intuitive gift for ruining moods. It’s not easy, when you’ve spent the rest of your life trying to do the opposite.”

“But you did marvelously today. You said things I thought I’d never forgive.”

She kisses his shoulder again, with a sigh. “I tried.”

“You succeeded.”

She holds him a little closer. “At least it shows how right I was to come to you in the beginning.”

“That’s very generous of you, darling.”

She leaves a slight pause.

“Even though I’ve never really told you why.”

“Of course you have, darling. A dozen times, during our rest periods. How you’ve always admired my sensitivity over women, how you realized I had literary problems… all the rest of it.” She silently kisses his shoulder. He stares at the ceiling. “You mean there was some other…?”

“It’s nothing, darling.”

“Tell me.”

“You mustn’t be offended.” She smooths a hand across his chest. “It’s because I feel so close to you now. I hate having the smallest secret from you.”

“Come on. Tell me.”

She clings a little more. “It’s simply that I don’t think you’ve ever quite realized how attractive what you call your literary problems always were… are… to a girl like me.” She brushes her fingers across his right nipple. “I’ve never told you this, Miles, but I felt it the very first time we met. Of course you didn’t know it was me, I was hidden inside whoever it was you were trying to imagine. But, darling, I was watching you all the time.”

“And?”

“Thank heavens, I thought, here at last was a boy who would never get it right, not in a thousand years, and already half knew it. All through your adolescent phase, when you kept battering your head against a brick wall, pushing out those… darling, this is difficult, I
know
well-meant and you
were
doing your best, and I did try to help, but let’s face it, hopelessly wild and inaccurate attempts to portray me – all through that for me truly
horrid
and frustrating period, I kept faith in you. Because I knew you’d see the light one day and realize it was as absurd as a one-legged person trying to be an Olympic athlete. And then at last this lovely, lovely secret thing between us could happen.” She breaks off, then gives a little sniff of amusement. “You were so funny as Staff Sister. You do her better every time. I wanted to laugh out loud.” He says nothing. “Miles, you know what I’m trying to say.”

“Yes. Perfectly.”

Something in his voice makes her lean up quickly again on an elbow and search his face anxiously. She reaches out a hand and caresses his cheek.

“Darling, people in love must be honest with each other.”

“I know.”

“You’ve just been absolutely frank about Nurse Cory’s breasts. I’m only trying to reciprocate.”

“I realize.”

She pats his cheek.

“And you have always had such a rare talent for not being able to express yourself. That’s so much more attractive and interesting than just being clever with words. I think you undervalue yourself terribly. People who know what they mean, and can say so, are ten a penny. Never having a real clue about either makes you almost unique.” She contemplates him with a tender solicitude. “It really is why I came to you to be real, darling. Why I feel so safe with you. It’s knowing that even if you ever did by any chance – which heaven forbid and I know you never would – welsh on our little deal and tried to write all this down, you couldn’t do it, not once in a million years. As a matter of fact I did at one time consider other writers, but none gave me quite the rock-bottom feeling of security that you can.” She watches him a moment, then bends across him, her eyes brimming with sincerity, her mouth poised just over his. “Miles, you know like this you can have me whenever you want” – she kisses his mouth – “and however you want. And if it was the other thing, and you
could
write it all down, I just couldn’t be with you at all. I’d have to go back to being a shadow on the brain-cell stairs, a boring old ghost in the machine, and I can’t bear the thought of being only a thought to you.” She kisses him again, but this time her lips stay almost touching his. “And you’re much, much better at this sort of thing, anyway.”

A last and longer kiss, and she sinks back to her former position, cheek against his shoulder, right leg raised across his. He stares at the domed ceiling, then speaks.

“Just as a matter of contemporary fact, quite a lot of people –”

“Darling, I know. And I understand completely if you’d rather believe
them.
”

He takes a breath. “I do think I’m entitled to point out that you yourself have never actually had to write a line in your life and you’ve no idea how damned –”

“Darling… forgive me. There is one other tiny little secret I’ve been keeping from you.”

“What?”

“Well… as a matter of
historical
fact, right at the beginning, for several centuries after the alphabet first came into being, my literary sisters and I had problems. You see, darling, it didn’t actually catch on terribly fast. Of course we were all frightfully green still at inspiring. But it was almost as if everyone were blind or deaf. It was partly the ghastly Clio again. From the start she did what she’s done ever since – sucked up to the people in power, the famous. She’s a quite shameless snob, on top of everything else. And she’d sold practically all that lot on the idea that the alphabet was the inland revenue’s best friend. That was the only way they could see it. Goody-goody, now we can nail the tribute-dodgers. All it was used for were those ridiculous lists of oxen and honey-pots and wine-jars and ‘Dear Sir, I am in receipt of your unsatisfactory clay tablet of the tenth ult.’… you know. So the rest of us had rather a brilliant idea. You mortals obviously needed an example, something to show you there was equally good money and all sorts of other perks in literary accounts as well as their boring old financial ones. So we agreed we’d each do a sample of our own thing, just to point the way. To cut a long story short, Miles, I did once scribble a little something down.”