The Blue Book (10 page)

And perhaps it isn't a trick.

Because he takes care to avoid breaking completely and makes himself unsympathetic, fends her off. ‘I can smell him on you. I can smell his pedestrian little cock.' He studies her expression then releases her, appears satisfied, sets the heels of his hands to his eyes and rubs.

She should get away now. She knows he would let her go, but she's already begun, ‘Art. I can't deal with this. Derek's a good man. He's a reliable man. He doesn't do appalling things.' Before she can prevent herself or regret it.

Before they can both regret it.

And he tells her, ‘
Please.
'

He is so particularly eloquent with that word –
please.
No one should be able to ask so well, it lets them grow accustomed to more than they deserve.

‘Please.'

She fails to leave and this means he can say, ‘Beth, just let me . . . I was rude and I'm sorry and I apologise and I will be perpetually sorry if you want and I will apologise and apologise . . . I was . . . Let me . . .' He reaches out and then she discovers she's holding his hand. Anyone who saw them would think they were lovers – hand in hand in the privacy of night.

But I'm so cold I can't feel him.

And then Arthur frees her, unbuttons his overcoat – this takes a clumsy while, he's clearly also numbed. He turns himself away from the hardest edge of the weather and opens the long, brown cloth of his coat before he folds her in, hugs her in with the sky blue lining which is probably silk and shouldn't be near salt water. He gives her what's left of his heat.

And anything but this and anything but this and anything but this she can deal with.

Anything but him.

Like lovers.

We were lovers.

We are.

We were.

We are.

Cold cheeks, cold lips, like a dead man's, his words fumbling a little for this reason, or for other reasons. ‘Beth, I didn't tell you where I live.' But his voice in her hair, quick beside her ear, and it feels like inside, it has the temperature of inside who he is, of who they have been together – it touches her like a long time ago and like their being other people, like her being someone else and with him. ‘You don't know where I live, Beth.'

‘What?'

‘Ssssshhh. Why should you? You didn't want to. You don't want to. Sound decision – you needn't. But . . . I have the flat in London, that you . . . there was that afternoon when you nearly visited and I can see why you wouldn't – that's all right – and I also have regular hotels . . . but that's not where I live, not home, I . . .' He's shivering – a delicate instrument, Arthur, tends to show his shocks, his unfavourable circumstances. He's built to indicate distress. He needs gloves. They both ought to have gloves, and his fists should at least be in his pockets, but Beth feels them knotted close at the small of her back. Her fingers are against his chest, his ribs, his breathing, the way that he's thin, broken back to his final limits, to the fights in his thinking, his intention. ‘Listen, Beth. Listen. There are bluebells. In the spring. Campion, sea campion, primroses, thrift, violets, bird's-foot trefoil, wild garlic in white drifts – all kinds of flowers – but I love the bluebells – in the dusk, they glow – they return all the shine of the day and I walk out past the bank around my house – high, high bank – and that's what I see there and I can smell that blue – it has a smell – and the powdery, perfumey, sugary gorse: it's like cheap sweets and face powder and I love it, too – and under that is the scent of the island – like a big dog – a big, warm animal – woody and clever and dusty and living and salt and I love it the most – boots covered in live dust and after the first night I smell of the island, too, and I forget who I am and what I do and I tramp – yes, still avoiding the sun, I am mostly still avoiding the sun – you know I have to, because of . . . and I'd burn – blonds burn and it's forever since I was out in the summer, fully under it – because of the other things, too – but I can stop – I could stop, I . . . and sometimes I sit in the garden under the tree – but mainly I tramp out at night with a torch or by memory – there are no street lights on the island, not anywhere, so we're good at the dark – we all keep our secrets – we all know them, but we keep them, we're polite – and I go along the cliffs, judge where I'll be safe by the ocean's breathing – the same way it's breathing here – a dark that's alive in the dark – not too near the edge and not too far, that's what I aim for, I don't want to fall – same ocean as this – and I'm on paths that are warm still, that are skin heat – and it is dangerous – slightly – occasionally – depends where I go – but not so much so, because I remember, I have learned the shapes of places and how they are and what they want – and then I get home again safe and behind my bank, inside my bank – the place is set back from the deep of a path – it's been worn in, you see, feet and carts, cutting it down for so very long – and the house above – all hidden and hedged – wrens nesting in the hedge – blackthorn and brambles and honeysuckle, the tangle they like . . . Did you ever see a wren in spring? He's so tiny you could lose him in your hand and with the ticked-up tail and he'll sit and pour out music – huge music – flares his wings, bristles with it, all unfolded by the way he is, has to be – he wants to be bigger and he is – I have a wren – a pair – they live in next to me – and I have my house, walls of pink and grey granite made feet thick for the winters and with stones for the witches to sit on built into the chimneys, so you won't have them pestering you in your house – believe that you
could have the witches and then you'll believe you need
the stones – the fact that you don't see the witches means the stones repel them – that's how it works – matters of faith – I am aware you understand, even if you no longer want to – and I have a porch for boots and with hooks for hanging up – my boots, my coats, my hats – serious fireplace in my living room – the stone is old, is huge – fat mantelpiece, not much on it, I like it as itself – no ornaments on it and no photographs – no photographs – and rugs, two armchairs – mine and a spare, or rather mine and another, but only for balance because I don't have visitors – lots of whitewash – and my desk is in the study with a sensible chair and some cabinets you'd want me to be rid of – you wouldn't like their contents – some books that you wouldn't like either – and a big kitchen you can sit in and eat breakfast on the table – eat whatever you like – which is what I do – and upstairs there's a bathroom which looks out to the ocean and another little room with just ordinary, good books for reading and then my bedroom with wardrobes and a double bed – and I don't need a double bed – and I can lie in it, if I prop myself up, and I can watch the sunset and everything there is perfect – it is fucking perfect – and remember that summer bedroom? Remember the rose scent from the garden at that hotel and the big squares of sun on the carpet and nobody saw us, because we never left the room. Remember? The first time after Beverley, remember? And my house is ready and it's nice and you should just once, just once . . . there are so many stars, thick stars – I can get drunk with staring at them . . . just once . . . You know I wouldn't . . . I don't . . . That's what I wanted to talk about, to tell you in the buffet. Not the other stuff. But
I couldn't tell you, so you got the other stuff, because I
couldn't, that's why . . . I wanted you to be here on the ship, so that I could tell you about my house. That's what I wanted.'

And what answer could there possibly be to this? It is unforgivable.

‘It's . . . Art, please, I—'

‘It's a kind place. All prepared and if it's comfortable for me and we're alike – and we
are
alike . . . It's a kind place.'

And Beth can't accept this and she can't refuse, so she tries, ‘You really live there?'

‘Yes!' It hurts her when he yells, seems to hurt him
too, and they stand apart again and he refastens his buttons
while, ‘Jesus, Beth. Yes. I really live there. I don't lie about everything. I hardly lie at all. The bare minimum. And not with you.'

‘Because lies don't work.'

‘That's
not why
.'

‘On your island – do they know who you are?'

‘What?' And for a naked second he is baffled, simply a man she ought to help because he is overwrought. ‘No. Not really . . .' And then he is Art again, defended, describing a way in which he lies. ‘As far as they're concerned I'm some eccentric with money – a lot of that about on the island – and I have vague health trouble, pay a servant who gathers supplies, oversees repairs and gardening, is sworn to secrecy and who therefore lays down inaccurate gossip which is, in turn, not believed. But, no, they don't know who I am.'

‘And they don't know what you do.'

‘Fuck, Beth – nobody knows that. The only one who might is you.'

‘Because when you tell me
361
people have been photographed . . . Look, we have to get out of this cold or we're going to get hypothermic.'

‘If we go in then we can be seen, so we can't . . .' He's shuddering, they both are – perishing. ‘Yeah, we'll have to go in. Yeah . . .' And he hunches his shoulders and returns very mildly to the halting twitching man he'd decided to be in the queue.

Elizabeth follows him round to the nearest door, shouts
into the wind before he opens it, ‘
Three six one
. I remember.'

‘On the Right Hand List.'

‘
three six one
.'

And then they are tumbled through to an aching quiet, a preposterous warmth. Ahead of them is the internal door and then the expanses of carpet, the efficient lighting, the possibilities of – although it is late – inquisitive observation. Elizabeth's cheeks and ears are stinging, being hurt with comfort.

Arthur looks raw and diminished. He is frowning down towards her and bending a touch forward, crossing and uncrossing his arms. ‘
361
on the Left Hand List would be—'

‘
Loss. Betrayal. Please listen
.
But that's not what you meant. On the Right Hand List
three
is
Touch me
. And
six
is . . .' Swallowing and this airless drop that seems to take her as if she's seventeen and nothing has ever happened to her and she has been academic and a late starter. ‘
Six
is
Fuck me
.' Can't say it without saying it.

They stand between the doors and Beth wishes she could feel like crying, because that would be something to do and not a trick – not meant as a trick – just something for her to be with.

Arthur rubs his hand over his face in a long, anxious swipe. ‘And
one
is
Look at me
.' He lowers his eyes and says very softly, ‘And you did touch me when I asked, you touched my arm and I have a suite – I have a
Grand Suite
– and it's comfortable and warm and we could be comfortable and warm in it together and we could undress and we could be in my bed and you could fuck me, because I asked and you haven't done that yet and you can't start a number and not finish, you have to do the whole number and you could fuck me and then I would be with you and I would be naked and you could look at me.'

His head swinging away from her while he speaks, as if he expects to be found offensive, and he doesn't look at her, is only turning for the final door, pushing it open into the dry, anxious scent of the ship.

Arthur simply walking himself away: ‘You could look at me.'

Which means he isn't being simple.

He isn't being fair.

He shouldn't say things like that.

Any word can work a spell if you know how to use it.

Prepared.

The man sits in a bland hotel suite, curtains drawn for the third day running. Resting in the other room is a woman nobody can mend, but he will try to.

The man is hot with the idea of saving her and has already entirely committed himself to the first of his offerings: the undermining of his own fabric, the imposition of stresses, minor pains. For the woman – she's called Agathe – he has made himself unnatural. For Agathe there is nothing natural that's left.

He offers as much to every one of them, to each enquirer.

For quite a while now he's only worked with individual enquirers – the platform gigs didn't feel right to him, they lacked control. By himself in a roomful of strangers and their lacks, that never was what he'd intended.

This is better.

This is the last of three days.

The man gives enquirers three perfected days, tailored to their needs.

Bespoke service.

Three days and then no more for ever, a definitive end.

Three days prepared by a man who is prepared.

Before the start of every session, he's careful to think –
I am a man who is prepared.
Then he fits his hands one into the other and imagines the smell of caramel and sunshine on his face and reflecting on water and the sound of an easy tidal swell – that kind of breathing, the breath of a calm sea. He revisits a number of comforting places and sensations.

Nothing too pleasant, but enough.

Because I need to be defended.

I need to be prepared.

For this morning he has drunk too much coffee and taken one over-the-counter decongestant. This, combined with his anaemia, will re-pace his heart, make it gallop in his chest. And he will shake.

Which is sometimes an unavoidable requirement.

Appearances matter.

He's in an excellent suit. He can afford it.

Bespoke service.

He's been wearing it for two days straight, though, letting it wrinkle – his shirt's fresh, but wrinkled too – because he's working, shut in with Agathe and the hours racking round, accumulating. And he won't be shaving until he stops.

Here am I, gone to pieces, lost and harried in my single-minded care for you.

Symbolic devotion to their cause
.

Normally he's immaculate, keeps cleaner than clean. Shaves twice a day. Manicure once a week.

But if he's got a gig then he has to be more subtle – dishevelled but not distasteful – so no iron, and unscented soap, unscented antiperspirant. Unwanted scents can be confusing.

Additional antiperspirant for his hands.

Because he
is
devoted to their cause and his care
is
single-mindedly for each enquirer.

And, most of all, because they'll hold his hands.

They will touch him.

They will become familiar with the small knock of his pulse, its eloquent suggestions. But always formality with them, restraint.

Jacket stays on, no matter what, and have to be careful, maintain the proper distances. Be a gentleman. Be especially a gentleman for the ladies.

The work is easier with women. Their orientation doesn't matter, it's just simpler for him and smoother with the gender he should love, should be allowed to love – all
those echoes of experience, the terrible paths of tenderness
that still lead into him, he can use them – they insist on his attention, focus him – and they mean he doesn't have to fake affection. It's a pre-existing inclination.

Plus, women live longer, survive – he gets more practice with them.

Ladies' man.

Which would be funny at another time and in another place.

And if I were another man.

But here I am, myself and working.

And here's Agathe.

Her last name is undoubtedly a cautious invention, but Agathe – that's honest. That rings in her when he says it and he can watch her hollow with the wish to hear it as it once was, familiar and spoken by lost mouths. She aches. When he sits beside her the man aches, too.

At first she was excessively wary with him, furious with a desire to be gone, numb, other than she is.

The man can understand this.

And safety: Agathe still wants safety beyond speaking.

But she doesn't believe in it, of course. She has no faith in sanctuaries.

She has seen what will happen to people who do.

A challenge then, Agathe.

Not that she was beyond him.

Very few people have managed to stay beyond him.

And, when he came down to it, with Agathe there was only one real barrier to cross. This made his process simple – either break her, which he would not ever do, or find her line and then respect it, spend their first two days showing it humility and restraint: don't cross it, not until invited.

Kindness.

All done with kindness.

We are all of us done with kindness.

Right now, she will be lying on her bed, but not asleep. Agathe rarely sleeps. She will have heard him showering in his bathroom and the mild din of his feet, his ungainly knock – tired – against a chair that sent it over and on to the carpet. Every noise will have meanings for her, sensible explanations, but each will be a horror, too. Each will be the inescapable, finally here to claim her. Even a cough can jolt her, or the clatter of restless pigeons, outside on the window ledges.

He had guessed this before he met her.

No.

He had been certain.

Because he began by letting her story overwhelm him – the outrage of her experience and a sense of being
stunned, robbed, splintered, hauled down towards weeping
and giddiness: his, hers, his. He saved the flavours of this and its unfathomable size, its slipping into fury and an attentively waiting nothingness. In her absence, the patterns of what happened to her began to coalesce.

This is the least he would expect, because he has learned how to nourish facts, how to feed them and let them grow into usefulness. Threads, suggestions, scraps, they make him ready for First Sight.

Which was watching her walk out of the frost and into the milky fug of a coffee shop on the Rue Saint-Denis.

Always like the Montreal gigs – such a crazy town, so full of damage, anxious for release. And there was Agathe – the whole of her – the buried and unburied.

So there I was to be with her.

She was angular, clean-limbed, and there would have been something fluid and dignified in her walk, but it was stiffened now and locked. The upright head was anxious, throat taut. Cheap skirt to her ankles and
comforting, protecting boots for warmth – nothing dainty,
nothing female, not any more, just a defence against Quebec, the cold. A type of thin anorak, faded, not originally hers; quite likely that nothing was meaningfully hers except the scarf.

Karkade red, hibiscus red – impractical synthetic chiffon – hand touches it often – threat to the neck – a memory of threat to the neck – a knot, a fear, a choke in the throat made of words, impossible to swallow and impossible to scream.

That's
OK
, though.

I only deal with the impossible.

It's what I like.

Red bound around and around her neck. But not blood. To her it's not blood – more like giving, sharing, passion recalled, types of heat – it's something gentle near her lips, I can see her almost tasting it, a sort of response – and it isn't heat, it's primarily warmth, there's a difference, a more lasting penetration.

She has clever fingers – we can share that, don't need to translate it – only her touch has lost assurance – it's blinded – so think of gloves, keeping gloves on you, muffling constantly – and she's directionless.

There's no point to touching when what you want to touch is gone.

Hair cropped to a haze, no longer hides the skull – lovely curve there, but it's a mortified beauty. She has an impulse towards simplicity, scouring and punishment – not starting again, but freezing at nothing. No longer hiding because there is nowhere to hide. No hat. It's bitter outside but no hat.

No hiding.

But she did once, didn't she? Agathe tried to hide and it was bad. She was bad. Time enough for that, though . . .

Her mouth was used to smiling: taken altogether, she has a face that would once have been comfortable, opened, ready to show an intelligence and charm.

Charm is rare and shouldn't ever be extinguished.

Intelligence is rarer, but also more difficult to like and she's intelligent – she's bright, bright, bright.

Silly too, she could be silly, she could play – sexual play and just daftness. I would have enjoyed her. We might have flirted, talked.

She would have laughed a good deal and quite probably clapped her hands together softly when she did. She'll have covered her lips, shielded her grin for a moment, enjoyed having overstepped some tiny mark.

She hasn't been able to change her eyes – they have stayed challenging, curious. They look too much – it's almost a form of self-harm. She is learning to curb them, focus on table legs,
pavements, floors, to behave like a refugee. But she has brave
eyes, that's irreversible.

Brave and tired, tired, tired – she can no longer trust what they'll force her to see. They are beyond her.

But I'm not.

I'm right here – here with the over-priced cookies and the sugar-heavy syrups – symptoms of safe city living, this masochistic urge to spend too much on shit. We have been consistently persuaded to buy what will do us no good.

Agathe bought me.

She asked for me.

So she gets what she asked for, what she wants. People should.

She'd told him on the phone – very quiet but precise – that she wanted to meet him and to try him.

He hadn't sent for her, she'd asked.

And then he'd lifted his head on that initial afternoon, so that she could find him, and he'd sat calmly, fixed his whole strength into restfulness and tender breathing and hampered glances. He'd reached out and matched the beats and pauses of how Agathe is Agathe.

It's an animal thing, a wilderness thing – flesh echoing flesh and leading, a sense of large defence – or the child and the parent and the parent and the child, the home they make between them – and it's a sex thing and a shared will thing and a human thing and a rest thing: it's
come unto me and I will give you rest
. It's a relief.

This felt, as it always does, like hunger and freedom and finding and wearing and racing and dancing and burning and having and laughing and fucking and bracing himself in the tide of who she is, the slap of it against his chest.

He began to fix her in his mind as the scent of syruped coffee and also green mornings, the aftertaste of Fanta – popular in Rwanda, Fanta – and the nag of over-happy music and motor taxi exhausts. There was Montreal in her, too – those flattened Québécois vowels and a park bench, sitting, being startled away by clutching mission drunks, being disproportionately frightened, scared of her multiple weaknesses and how they show themselves: that was yesterday. She had that at her surface, but he pressed until she dipped into years ago and Kigali and the sway of rounded hills – no anxiety, no shocks – simply pooled mist and dust that is a pinkish khaki, that washes down on to the pavements and the tarmac when it rains.

He chooses not to admit that Rwandan earth is a colour that makes him think of taint, of spillage, of humped soil that moves, seethes, becomes remarkable with covering too much slaughtered meat. He keeps her from that – seals every thought of her away from the slip of putrefaction, tangled cloth, unbreathable streets. The least he can do.

He's seen other countries, other places that remember selections and thefts, houndings, flights, pits – Guatemala, Poland, Bosnia, Spain – an older and newer and larger list of countries every year. The man is aware that different violated earths have different colours, so he shouldn't let chance mineralogy mislead him, or trouble her.

In his thoughts, she will see no blood, not where he saves her. His mind doggedly takes her to live in a flawless space in a sunlit room in an upper storey in a row of many mansions – he's going to keep her there. Every one of his enquirers is settled safe inside imagined houses, together with the details that made them real. They are stored away with dignity, accurate tenderness.

He doesn't forget them.

They are held under love.

This is important.

As important as the fact that he works for them and then never sees them again.

No exceptions.

His necessary loneliness.

The right way to do wrong.

The man hears Agathe stirring through the wall, a toilet flush, taps running for a bath. The accommodation they share is not luxurious, but it is pleasant, allows for privacy and space. It brought her near to her earlier existence when she saw it. There was the start of tears, an anger, a shame.

He has given her salts and oils for bathing. Neither of them believes they confer any New Age benefits. They're having none of that crap. They do make her feel indulged, though, womanly and pampered and, by now – two days gone – this is something she can tolerate again. Guillaume, her husband would have bought her similar treats at their beginning, on one of his attentive, unbusied days.