The Blue Book (31 page)

‘I made you lonely.'

‘You didn't mean to.'

‘I made you lonely.' He kisses her forehead, eyes. ‘But you're not lonely at the moment?'

‘No.'

‘Tell me if you are. Because . . . I can't get it wrong again and you have to
tell me
if I'm heading that way and . . . I can . . . improve. If I know – can attempt to, possibly not, but I'd have the chance . . . I mean what is the point of us both over-thinking if we can't get any use out of it.' And he kisses her again. ‘I'm sorry. I'm very sorry.' With a kind of furious searching: face, neck, collar bone, breasts.

Beth has no answer for him until he slows and she can meet his mouth with her own and –
true
– ‘I'm not lonely. And I don't think I will be. I think it's all right.'

And something scrambles in her chest to be nearer than she is to him, to be fastened – arms straining with being so very hard fastened – and round his breathing.

He tells her, ‘Yes. Hello. Yes. It's fine. Yes. It's fine.' Until she can be more sane, less almostpainful and Arthur clears his throat and quietly offers, ‘But the work – my work – that is a problem. Currently. And permanently. We know that. I know that . . .' He draws one finger down – slow, slow, slow – finds her nipple, begins to wake it. ‘I know that . . .' It's easily woken, grows fretful for him, but then he relents. ‘Sorry. Mustn't distract – we have to concentrate . . . No hiding. Not the way we do. Because at the moment we should . . .' He leans the next sentences in, careful. ‘It has to be only the scary type of thinking – one thing at a time and
about what we need it to be about, not running off
. Because I do that and you do that, too and . . . we won't. No distractions. Not at the moment. So I won't lie here and feel this and just . . .' He brushes the crown of her nipple. ‘Except for feeling it then. Checking it's
OK
. . . You distract me. A lot. But this of you mustn't distract me from the rest of you . . .' A grin in this, an ease.

‘Or vice versa.' Because she agrees and because it's true.

So no more thoughts than necessary. Which is good.

One thing at a time and about what we need it to be about.

Not everything.

Everything would be too much.

Which suggests to her that she's being distracted by how she shouldn't be distracted, ‘I mean, I want to talk.' But there are worse things.

Ssssshhh.

‘And I want to talk, Beth. I do. And I have to behave. Not get disgraceful . . . I do love you being here, though – if I haven't said. I do.' Then she can feel him focus, still himself. ‘I didn't know the work was between us when we were like this – or not like this, not as together as I imagined – but in this position and I am sorry. I've said I'm sorry . . . but I am additionally sorry for that. At least it shows I wasn't reading you. It shows I was paying no bloody attention at all. So sorry.'

‘Or else I was too good at hiding.'

Ssssshhh.

‘Well, we both aren't going to hide any more. And so . . . I want to ask you, if you don't mind, I do want to ask you . . . please don't – if I can ask – two things – please don't ever be – if I can use the word –
polite
that way again. Do tell me when I've screwed up. I'm repeating myself, but do tell me . . .' And a sense that he is calculating a drop now, judging if he will be harmed when he jumps and, ‘Second thing – if this isn't what you want any more – if I'm no longer required – and you have to go, please say so and then go. Don't, please, do the slipping away thing and seeing whoever is next and pretending you're still with me. I'm not saying that you would, but you might want to be kind – you are kind – but please don't let me think you're with me and we're together when we're not and you're also with somebody else. You've been slipping away to me all these years and it's the last thing I can comment on, or complain about . . . it kept me going . . . But if you do that to me, then . . . Sorry, no ultimatums – no ultimata, whatever the word is. Just, please, just, don't hide it when you're going –
if –
if you're going. I'm not criticising, I'm not . . . it's a skill, that kind of hiding, not a moral failing, and I'm not saying it's a failing of yours, or that it's habitual – it's my fault, in fact, if anybody's, in a way . . . it was circumstances . . . But please just don't, though . . .'

‘I won't.'
True.
‘I promise.'
True.

‘You don't have to promise.'

‘But I am. And I think I do have to.' And she feels in him how his body is restless with driving to be precise and to keep his emotions tidied away from hers and leave her free, unpressed. The gentleness in this bright against her. ‘Arthur—' And if he can be precise, brave, and they are alike and with each other and together and they have love and are in love, are inside love, then it ought to be possible for her to tell him everything. Her everything.

Ssssshhh.

But he prevents her confession with his own and she lets him.

Because I am a coward.

True.

‘You should know, Beth – what I do . . . It's insufficient, it's only a gesture, but something with me has become habitual . . . It developed. That is, I'm more insane than you might suppose . . . I presume you do suppose that . . . You should. And I live incredibly well, unnecessarily well, and I'm used to it and I wouldn't want to lose that. I give some of the money away – of course I do – but I don't give it all away – easy to forget that you didn't have money, very hard not to remember that you did . . . I've seen that. The refugees, some of them . . . losing your money, it isn't like losing a relative, a love: but it's being less, having worse health, bad food, fewer freedoms – it is losing a part of yourself. A partial death. For them it's . . . it can eventually kill them . . . Me – fuck . . . I'd miss the boats, the tailors, the pretty hotels . . . that type of selfishness . . .' And he strokes his knuckles absently across her stomach, there's no intention in the touch. ‘And . . . I'm not trying to make a point with this, but if I kept on with the work – and I did keep on with the work because it made me money and it makes me money and because I believe in it, some of it, some elements I can render acceptable to myself – if I kept on with it, then I understood that I couldn't have you – I would only get whatever you decided you could bear, the number of days you could cope with, or that you sneaked away from whoever was saving you from me . . . um, an occasional . . . well, I'd get an occasional fuck. Sorry, but that. I'd be an occasional fuck. And I believed, as I've said, in the work, but I also believed that the work is a terrible thing, so I decided I should pay for it and there's this . . . there's a plant called Jack in the Pulpit – I even enjoyed the name . . . This plant, it grows big, dark, glossy, tropical-looking leaves and in the autumn there are clumps of berries – orangey-red packs of berries at the end of a single stem. I see them growing when I'm upstate in New York and brain-fucking people who are pleasant and very grateful to me while I'm earning my comforts and my stock tips and my little gifts – there are the Jacks in their pulpits: watching, growing, building up to the autumn. I always make a trip over then and I don't see anyone. I don't consult. I go and I'll pick the berries and I take them back to my hotel – to the Carlyle – where they look after me and are used to me and what I like and the guys on the door and in the lifts, they shake my hand and call me Mister Arthur, because that's friendly and respectful at the same time – first name, but I'm also a Mister – and I go to my suite, which has very pleasant views down on to Madison and
76
th and I wash the berries, because they've been outside and you can't be too careful and then I sit on the sofa and I take one and I chew it. And it hurts me. If you chew the berries, they hurt. If you touch them, they sting your fingers. They contain oxalic acid and in your mouth they burn like fuck.'

‘Art.' A bleak turn in her stomach and then angry with him, outraged. ‘Arthur—'

‘Ssssshhh.'

‘Arthur.'

But, ‘Ssssshhh.' And he shakes his head and is placid, factual. ‘They burn. Certain indigenous nations would use them to poison their enemies: give them spiked meat, because it does act as a poison. Or peoples used it as a trial, an ordeal. I was told that . . . I'll chew a berry but I don't eat – you mustn't: the acid causes inflammation and the swelling in my throat could choke me, so I avoid it, because I don't want to die. I want to be in pain. That is, I don't want it, but I should have it. I punish my mouth. I say bad things, so I punish my mouth.'

Beth sets two fingers on his lips and cannot imagine, does not want to imagine how he has been living, how he has governed and ruined his days. ‘Don't do that again.' His soft mouth, the soft of his mouth.

‘It helps.' Words on her fingers, between her fingers. ‘Then I wash my mouth with milk.'

‘Don't do it again. Arthur? I want you to promise me that you won't do it again.'

He turns and frees himself to speak, ‘That's . . . Yes . . . I can't. I can't do it again. If you don't want me to, I can't, Beth. If you don't want me to I can't do any of it again. I can't have anything in the way any more – there has to be you and . . . I'm giving it up, Beth. I'm retiring. Early retirement.'

‘You wouldn't be happy. You'd miss it. If you still worked . . . I could deal with it. I could . . .' A misuse of her mouth.

‘You wouldn't deal with it – you might tolerate it, but then eventually the tolerating would wear you out and you would leave me and I can't . . . I couldn't . . .'

His knuckles drift lower and she wishes them lower still, because otherwise this is hearing him tear down his life for her, hearing him offer everything, and how can she reciprocate and this morning is a beauty for them and it should be that they can have the beauty and Arthur can be here and happy and allowed it and she can be here and happy and allowed it with him and they can be uncomplicated.

Surely that isn't a criminal possibility.

Beth shifts her hips a fraction and he responds.

Beautiful.

Beth feels his thinking glide until his thumb is tracing back and forth to the root of her thigh while his fingers reach into the hair and tease, press – once, twice. But then he simply moves to hold her waist, snugs words beside her ear – there's a heat in them, but his need to explain is hotter. ‘This lady called Peri – a few others like her, but especially I have Peri and I can't just cut her off and I can't tell her what I am, that I've lied for all these years. It would kill her. I'm not being dramatic, I'm almost certain that's what it would do and I can't risk it. I like her the best and I do the worst things to her and I have made her need them . . .' His thumb makes tiny arcs at the small of Beth's back, requesting, irreversibly interested. ‘But I can, I can . . . I won't frighten her any more. I'll tell her that everything's fine and that she's protected permanently. But that will involve an amount of convincing. And she'll miss her husband, I would have to . . . I'll have to keep seeing her. She wouldn't understand if I just went away. It would take a while to finish, if you'd allow that.' And then his hand gives in, returns to her thigh and then runs and seeks and slips, it grazes the furrow that will mean there is no more thinking, only opened distraction, only themselves. His fingers prove her wet, let her be wet, make her wet and prove her wet and round and round. ‘That's . . . that's for in a minute, though.' Before they calm, brush so faintly they are almost absent, so faintly that her mind aches and yelps with trying to feel them, have them more. Which he understands, ‘Beautiful. For in a minute.' And chooses to ignore.

Beth needs to see his face, but they aren't going to turn on the light.

Ssssshhh.

So she tastes his mouth again – tender place, clever place, hurt place – and he continues, ‘Some of them – the ones I've used for money – they'll still want to talk to me and I can not take their money – make them think it's to do with purity, or something . . . that it's no longer pure if I do it for cash. I've . . . But I would have to keep . . . There would be maintenance – especially for Peri. Closing it down would take so long . . . Christ, Beth. I don't want to harm them.'

And she's moving for him, lifting as he plays in the groove of her, flickers a spark and then down, precise, and pushes in, clean in and, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?' She can hear his purr – and his smile – Arthur happy because of her.

Like him happy.

Love him happy.

Feel in him the way he's dancing, close to the surface, the boy who's dancing, the man who's dancing – full of happy.

‘How many fingers?'

‘One.'

‘And now.'

‘Two.'

‘And we won't do three because three is a crowd and two is absolutely perfect. Two is just exactly right. And I'm sorry, I can't talk any more except about you and this and that it's perfect. Can't tell you anything else about anything else. Can't. Should, but I can't. Hiding.'

‘We can hide.'

True.

‘Sorry, Beth.'

‘I'm not sorry.'

True.

‘Hiding my fingers first . . . I like it when you hide me. Good place to hide. Best place to hide . . . But if you won't hold still, you'll end up coming. You know that. You do know that. And if I keep doing this. Then you'll come. Would you like that? Would you like to come round my fingers? I take off my shirts with those fingers, stir my tea, they get all about the place. And. Right. Up. You. That's their favourite. They love that.' Good hands, always good hands, speaking and dirty hands, fucking dirty and fucking extraordinary and in tight with the strength of his voice. ‘And I'll love looking at them and thinking: Beth came round those fingers – we started all over again and we started with her coming and that's a good thing – she had a nice come, she had a lovely little come round those fingers – want you to come round my fingers, Beth – so it gets in my bones – and you've been wanting it for ages – and all today – it was such a bad day, love – not bad now, though – and you should have a come and I've been wanting it . . . I have . . . I have . . . Or maybe . . . If I take these away and just . . .' And the beautiful leaving, the withdrawal, almost enough, but not, ‘Oh, I'm sorry darling, were you nearly there and I stopped . . . That's such a shame, Beth, when you were very close. You were. You were really very close to such a nice come.' While he folds and rolls with her, holds, sways, the small warm tic of amusement where he's neat against her. ‘And then I don't let you . . . that's really very inconsiderate of me.' Almost unbearable against her. ‘But there's always the possibility that we could do this instead.' And the rock of the bed and the rock of the room and his weight on her and he's feeling out and finding out his way, looking and shifting and the blunt nudge and here's itself and searching and playing and the in and in and in, and the rock of him, ‘And that's because I love you and that's because I love you and that.'