The Blue Book (5 page)

Right about being wrong – romantically mistaken.

Am I, for example, being kissed because there is something delicious on my face – my lips – possibly gravy, perhaps jam – it could be jam . . . Is he just hungry? Is this just to do with jam? I want to believe this is mainly about me, but I could be deluded.

I can't feel my irresistibility is likely.

Then again, what I can feel is blinding, incandescent, and offers no names for itself and is eating, is swallowing, all of my names for me – and the more I keep doing what we're doing – because he's still doing it, too: we're doing it together, in fact – except he's doing it in the opposite direction – and this works, really works – and I wouldn't have thought that a body, anybody's body, could be that, well, entertaining – the more we do this, whatever it is, the less I know about it, the less I know about everything, and the less I am able to care about not knowing.

I am perfectly happy and also evaporating.

Who'd have thought?

But eventually you're wholly free of thinking and can begin to uncover who you are with him, touch against touch.

And you make beauties together.

You and whoever he happens to be.

It does seem wrong to say so, but who he is can seem slightly irrelevant.

Not in a bad way – although it does sound bad – the specific identity of the gentleman does not, to be honest, matter that much.

This isn't your fault. It's nearly
their
fault: the number of – eventually a not excessive but still significant number of – gentlemen's fault, because they have been, as it were, not that outstanding or differentiated and, therefore, in order to have any fun, any modest pleasure, you have become
very
differentiated. Your heart, your mind, your body, they have become discrete. You have separated into fragments that no longer communicate and which get curious and bored and stumble, and your condition is patently not ideal, but equally you're never disappointed.

You do sometimes have a sense of waiting by which you are almost overwhelmed, but this shows you are not pathological or numb. And you bear none of the gentlemen ill will. You would smile at them in the street, be quietly fond: you would commiserate should they receive unpleasant news. This isn't love, though – this is not love, this is not in any way that word.

This is safe.

You are safe.

You are lucky and not confined – not really – it's rather that you enjoy prudent limitations, almost always have.

You are not unaware of love's damages, that chaos, and realise you have been spared, are sparing yourself. You get to pursue what are not relationships, more a series of hobbies, indoor games for rainy evenings and afternoons.

So, on several legitimate levels, you are content.

Only then, for instance – just for instance – you may stand beside a man, a not unfamiliar man, and – sharp and hard and for no reason – every shade of him will strike in through you: his angles and his musics and the subtleties of his scents: and
you cannot touch him, but want to – cannot respond, but want to – cannot move, but want to. He has, in the course of doing nothing, suspended you in want and want and want. And through you come reeling these dreadful truths: that you respect him and fully intend to be proud of him hereafter and to see him both happy and well – and you'll need him kept warm in the winter and cool when it's hot and will let no ugly breeze come near him and no wanker be permitted to annoy him and you wish for him to be comfortable, at the very least comfortable, for ever. And these are desires that ache in you deeper than sweating, or bending, or sucking, or any of the thin and predictable memories or the fantasies that might defend you from the present, too present, reality of him.

The tiny idea of naming him
darling
is almost unsurvivably arousing.

Which is beyond preposterous.

You are turning innocent and selfless to such a degree that if your absence would please him, you'd disappear.

You would have to go.

But you can't go.

You couldn't go.

You couldn't leave while his voice is purring in your skull, purring and curling and thinking your thoughts and you look at your hands and feel his fingers, as if you have become each other's gloves – and the sound of his breath and when he swallows could set you falling, could take you to a place where you might weep, where you are far out of your mind, but still at home in it, at liberty inside yourself as you have never been.

Many people take to this, are delighted to be found and lost, possessing and possessed.

You are not one of those people.

You
were
not one of those people.

But your selves have bled together now, blurred and joined. He has made of you a unified need, a piece of desperation, by being here and existing – effortless.

And his manner of existing means you will not be having sex with him.

Which is to say, you
will
have sex with him, but you also will not.

You will be complicated.

You will touch – will begin with touch – will slip and slither and hold and rock and cling. You will fuck – but you wouldn't, you truly wouldn't, if it wasn't entirely impossible to say what you need to in any other way.

It won't be
sex
, it will be
speaking
.

And – God help you – it will also be admiration, tenderness, concern – this excruciating list of necessities which are all chained to
making love
.

You will
make love
.

You are
in love
.

You weren't when he was leaning in the doorway.

Then he stepped over here and you were.

You are.

It isn't fair.

It isn't fucking fair.

Because you know what it will mean.

You will lie down with him and be naked – not en route to the usual somethings and, for the sake of practicality, undressed – no, you will be irrevocably naked, stripped – you will be all skin and jolts and talking and – for fucksake –
honesty
will break out and that's when you will come unhinged, because you aren't going to leave him while he sleeps, sneak off and never come back, and you won't act as if you expect him to smother you in the night, or that you'll wake up in a quarry later with a head injury and no shoes. And you're not going to keep it brutal and light in the morning, say
you'll call
. You're going to rest unconscious in the almost unbearable mercy of his arms and want the trust of that and like it – you're going to stretch and turn into the day for more of the same and for enquiries and delicate smiles and whispers in case he's not awake, except he
is
awake – why else would you be talking to him? – he's awake and listening and whispering as well and you both keep on whispering so you can still dream each other and be not yet in the world.

And then you'll have breakfast when it's time for lunch.

And suddenly, unforeseeably, how much you will have to do: memorising mutual preferences, habits, frustrations, ticks – and you'll discuss – you will
have
to discuss – God knows – futures and kittens, or dogs, or stealing a baby from outside a shop – you probably won't have the time to make one of your own – and, if not that, then certainly there will be carpets and curtains to consider and accommodation, gardens, flats, renting, mortgages, life insurance, drawing up your wills – and what if
he dies before you? – then you'll be upset – and planning how many you'll have at the wedding breakfast – although you might want something quick, a quiet affair with the cabby who drove you in as a handy witness – I mean, why not? – it could happen – it genuinely, horrifyingly might – when, Jesus Christ, you don't want to get married, not
you – marriage
, that's an institution – since when did you want to spend life in an institution? – this whole thing is unpicking you, reworking you into someone else – which means he will, in actuality, be marrying someone else and how could you possibly cope with that? – the jealousy alone would kill you – and the invading burdens, responsibilities, the claustrophobia, the shock, they are in the room with you like sump oil, they are rising to your chest – and this isn't how it should be, how you should be, because you love him, he is the closest you will get, the dearest, and surely this should not have to guarantee that being with him terrifies you more than dying – more than if you might die before him and end up making him upset.

He mustn't be the man you'll never have, purely because he seems to be so meant, has perfections, ends your waiting, because he opens you up to your spine and doesn't hurt.

So, although you might beg to, you don't run.

You stay and can stand with the back of your hand near enough to the back of his for you to feel him, read him, the magnificent argument of his blood, and you tremble and do nothing and this is fine.

Except.

Then your lungs fill with having to dress so you'll please someone else and vice versa – and this doesn't choke you, but is unfamiliar, is odd – and then there's going to the
pictures together, which you're bound to try eventually, it is something you see all the time and completely normal, yet somehow a threat – and there's wanting to buy a sofa, because that's what lovers do – and you are lovers – you
do
, there is no saving you from it,
love
– and undoubtedly you'll end up going with him to buy the sofa and looking in lots of places and not being able to see the perfect one – when only perfection can represent your love – or, indeed, be the decor and furnishings of your love – and eventually it's not improbable that you'll get tired – you don't want to imagine this, wouldn't wish it to be the case – but if you are both exhausted and perhaps your blood sugar is low then it's almost inevitable that you'll fight – perhaps not badly but then maybe worse, and this free-floating resentment and discontent will follow after – and maybe in the final furniture shop there's also a table lamp that you don't like – you despise it and you can't help your opinions, they are yours and your personal expression is protected under international law – but your lover
does
like the lamp, that is
his
opinion of it – he adores it, insists that it's superb, and this reignites your disagreement, kicks it into bitterness and rage and additionally looses the welling of commitment and undertakings and regulations and sameness and exposure, hideous risk, and the awful heap of this is insurmountable and sweeps hard down at you and before you can scream or prevent this, you've picked up the lamp – the tragic, frustrating, adorable, loathsome lamp – and you've hit him, you've knocked him right on his wonderful head and he's bleeding – he's crying and you're hitting him again – you're causing him pain and making him afraid and it's a nightmare, you would rather shoot yourself – although, of course, you don't have a gun, you're dangerous enough without one – and, Christ knows, you haven't a clue how this came about, but you are still hitting him, your darling, because this way you won't have the new wait for the failure of everything sweet in your life, its most beautiful thing, you have instead brought it neatly to a close.

You have killed him.

Because he was far too extraordinary.

You have murdered the one man you've ever tried to love.

And it takes a long breath to picture this, to see it, mourn it, understand.

And for this and many other reasons, you should save him from yourself.

You shouldn't take his hand and shouldn't kiss him. Your mouths shouldn't make and echo and make the shape of
love
.

But you do take his hand and you do kiss him.

Of course.

‘Oh, you can't do that, though . . .'

Elizabeth opens her eyes and discovers that she is lying on her back.

All nonsense.

I'm full of nonsense.

The ceiling is neatly above her, inoffensive cream and calm.

And where would I be without nonsense.

Here.

She is frowning, puzzled by this feeling of having run
in from somewhere without warning, of losing her breath.
‘I can't . . . ?'

‘You can't go to sleep. Not yet.' Derek sits on the bed beside her. The mattress only dips a little – it is made of stern and seafaring stuff. ‘We have to stroll about and see the premises. Then we should have dinner. If you want.' He lifts her hand, kisses her knuckles. This is nice, but also gives her the slow and far impression of punching him in the mouth. ‘I'm quite hungry. You hungry? We've missed our sitting for the wassername – for the captain's table dining palaver – but there's a buffet somewhere. I'd prefer the buffet . . .'