The Blue Book (7 page)

Unable, perhaps, to bear anything.

He coughs, clears his throat, coughs again. And this time it's Elizabeth who wags her head and she isn't sure of why.

Wrong move – like trying to make fun of him – trying to mirror him.

Mirror and you show him you'll follow his lead, give him sympathy and dominance, you prove you're alike. People like people they're like. People remember their fathers, mothers, the peering down of family faces, smile answering smile, leading smile – seeing their own muscles apparently move someone else, a proof of mind-in-mind, of love.

Which is completely fucking obvious and he's not stupid.

Fit his shape and you might understand him, though . . .

Lockwood notices her efforts and only smiles – this young, gentle look which meets her and isn't answered, which pierces and leaves. After this he seems to relent, there's a sort of sinking in his spine, a withdrawal of engagement. His head falls and he murmurs to the tabletop, ‘No, don't answer. Don't. Personal question. All
personal questions and inappropriate from a stranger. My
comments have been an unsuitable intrusion and I should apologise but will, of course, not.'

He pauses and the floor bucks, shivers, rests.

Then Lockwood fades himself close to whispering, each word sounding on the same low note before breaking into breath, raw breath. ‘You touched my arm.'

Elizabeth can't swallow. Inside she is filling with silence. It tastes like milk – yes, it's milky and thick in her mouth.

So concentrate on that.

‘You touched my arm.'

Milk and stillness.

Not that it isn't hard to hold.

Stillness.

It's the worst thing to keep, but I do want it – a rest from the gabbling, the nonsense, keeping up the pace and always being tired from not sleeping because of the noise – my noise – because of the rubbish just spooling away in here beneath the hair, the skin, the bones, just mazing around and around in the brain.

Distraction.

A distraction that doesn't distract me enough – an inadequate misdirection from the forthcoming panic, which might as well panic me now because I know it's on the way.

Then again, I no longer need the gabble. No more diversions required, because right here is the perfect fear for me and I can step out of hiding.

Should be a relief.

‘You touched my arm.'

No more guesses, worries: the real thing.

And at that same moment, both of them – Elizabeth and Lockwood – become aware of Derek. He's weaving back from the toilets, greyish and heavy-limbed, skin shining with water or sweat. He is obviously ill. Both of them – Elizabeth and Lockwood – follow his progress and, if he were inclined to give them his attention, he might perhaps be puzzled by their very similar expressions of true concern.

Another and a better worry: altruistic, practical. He's poorly, seasick. He's plainly a priority.

And a reason to leave.

Thank fuck.

Elizabeth gets up from the table, ‘I'll have to . . . He needs . . .' and she motions to Derek that they will go – head for the cabin and peace, take care of his ills.

Give him the tablets to settle him – he should have taken them before – and then he can lie down.

See how things are in the morning.

Not a fucking clue about the morning.

Lockwood snaps into the actions and the tones of a man who is saying goodbye to an acquaintance. He meets her eye and then quickly states, ‘You touched my arm.' Before Derek is near enough to hear. Then Lockwood shakes her hand, releases, nods to Derek, nods to her.

As she goes, Elizabeth does not nod and does not tell anyone –
Yes. Yes, I did touch your arm. For 361 reasons, I touched you.

Derek wants to lie. Nothing but that. He says so.

Like a kid.

He is curled in their bed, arms folded around his own shoulders although – if he wanted – Elizabeth would hold him. Derek doesn't want. He is miserable. They didn't make it to the cabin without him throwing up again. And he has thrown up since. Horizontal, he isn't sick, but says that he feels as if someone is squeezing his skull. Because he can't tolerate seeing, she has darkened the room and so she sits in a generalised gloom on the miniature sofa beside their broadish and expensive window, through which is clearly visible a pattern of stars and cloud, rain spatters, the idea of a moon, hints of its greater light. And the shipglow – there's always that – if she went outside she could see how they burn as they go. But she has to stay in with Derek. She draws the curtains.

Derek breathes as if doing so annoys him.

The room is too hot, smells sweaty and sour – oddly like the back of a late-night taxi – and the floor is pressing up beneath them and then flinching away. They have entered a storm, or perhaps simply the ocean's accustomed state: no more pretending, a week of this.

Derek is a dim curve, there's a deeper shade of shadow where he is slanted across the bed – on his side, knees tucked – the shape is vague, more a suggestion, but he's familiar all the same.

I should think so, by now – we've been together for nearly a year.

More like thirteen months. And they didn't move in with each other until quite late. She went to him.

Slightly surprising.

His place was nicer than mine – bigger.

Surprising nonetheless.

Beth still has some furniture in storage, odds and ends – that's mostly to do with lack of space, not to provide her with resources should she ever wish to bolt. Derek lives in a thirties bungalow with strangely extensive gardens, even a stream transecting it and adorned with a Japanese-flavoured bridge. The interior is markedly less generous, because of the clutter. Derek inherited a plethora of ugly pieces from his mum and dad – vast sideboards, grandfather clock like a coffin – and he hasn't been able to throw them away so far – sentimental.

Sentimental man. Soft areas. He's still cautious in case I damage one.

And I'm not absolutely unguarded myself.

And this is not a disadvantage – it means I can be clear-headed and take care of everyone. It means that I know Derek shouldn't see Lockwood again – we'll dodge him. He's the sneaking type, but we'll manage so there'll be no more enquiries – nothing about what Derek and I may or may not do, or how.

It's nobody's business who I fuck.

Or that I do fuck.

And I do fuck – we do – we do fuck.

Lockwood's voice still there in the verb, his taste – so she uses it to spite him, tries to.

Derek's like a kid when we fuck – when we do fuck – and once he's over, once we're there, he's all pleased, like a boy – happy the way he would be if he'd learned a trick and showed it and you'd been honestly amazed.

Cute.

Not that he knows any tricks.

But still cute.

Sort of.

Cute could describe it.

In the distances of the ship, components she cannot name are chafing and whining. There is, intermittently, the reverberating slam of big water against the bows and – although she can't currently say so – this sense of struggle is enjoyable and what she'd hoped for. She wanted the din and fight of a genuine journey, of something large being achieved.

Derek, in contrast, is much quieter than he has been and she guesses he's fallen asleep.

Good. So I can stop failing to comfort him.

Her efforts have been mainly useless and uninspired. She has cleaned up the bathroom, set a cool cloth on his forehead – which he liked – refilled his water glass.

Which he did not like – the water bounced back up and out of him as soon as he drank it.

Horrible how sad he's got about this – a bit of his holiday spoiled by a misfortune and him not feeling the way that he'd want. He's disappointed – as if he's five and needs his mum to get him through it.

Horrible and – again – cute.

So he's abject and I find it appealing. Does that mean I'm peculiar?

I don't think so. We tend to those we love and more so when they're troubled.

Not that I'm being his mother. Not that.

Too many wardrobes and antimacassars and ottomans involved with that.

Ottomans or ottomen?

Undoubtedly there are stewards and sundry other
members of staff who are practised in the ways of
mal de mer
and its relief and she should probably call them – but Derek really wouldn't want strangers pestering in at him.

Tomorrow morning – we'll check on his progress then and decide the best course.

And meanwhile – because he's well out of it – she won't have to keep on throwing him perky sentences of invalid-encouraging stuff.

It doesn't matter.

It's all right.

There's no need to worry.

You'll be fine. It'll all be fine. You'll be all right.

She didn't necessarily believe these things were true, but they seemed constructive, padded out uneasy pauses and have been – naturally – a distraction.

Can't beat me for that. Past master. Past mistress, I suppose, except that sounds louche.

And distracting Derek has prevented her from being forced to hear what she's saying and saying inside – the slither and pelt of that.

Noise is all I'm full of and no one should have to tolerate noise. It's harmful to health and safety.

She folds her arms, adjusts, clutches her shoulders. There's a shiver in her breath and she can't stop it, has no way to halt the fretting as her time sheers by.

Let me yammer away for long enough and I'll maybe just drown myself out.

Which doesn't make any kind of sense – my only emergency plan and it makes no sense.

She's been talking crap again, inside and out – but it doesn't matter. It's all right. There's no need to worry. She'll be fine. It'll all be fine. She'll be all right.

Some people whistle, or doodle – Beth chatters. It doesn't mean that she's silly, or callous, or weak.

You understand about this. You're an understanding person.

And, like Elizabeth, you've attempted to lighten a mood when no positive information was to hand – so you've made something up, built it out of optimism and eagerness to please and if you thought of it as mainly music rather than meaning, you've been able to absolve yourself for passing on information that's actually false. And if the information is good – has good intentions – then it might even end up making itself true. Any word can work a spell if you know how to use it.

Plus, honesty does have its savage side – you're well aware, quite frankly, that it wouldn't always be your first or even last option. The fabrications of kindness, of courtesy, of optimism: they're very necessary – and, by accident, or in a pressured circumstance, there may have been occasions when you haven't been utterly accurate in what you've said.

This can feel ugly and uncomfortable to you, alien – because you have integrity, and dishonesty doesn't suit you, how could it? But nobody is fastidious all the time, unremittingly brave: you can be scared off to this or that edge of the truth – like anyone. And if, for example, you did in actuality do some unfortunate thing and it was completely unlike you – the word, the thought, the act, the total mistake – if it was so far from who you are that describing it, admitting it, would be misleading – then a deception might be called for, a silence might be justified.

And what if you're simply finding a way of practising your dreams, letting them play, sharing? What if you're pronouncing incantations, inventing happy prophecies? That surely must be pure and harmless. The friends, the relatives, the loves, the ones who know you: they can see through to your heart no matter what you tell them, so your fantasies can be something they'll enjoy – secrets that join you closer to them, enlarge their definitions of who you are – a person's choice of lies being dependably diagnostic.

Not lies, though – that's too harsh a term. When you thoroughly study yourself, you know that you're better than that, than a liar. You've only avoided being truthful, pedantic, when it would hurt somebody – somebody including yourself – and self-defence is nothing shaming.

It's an indication of your moral sensitivity that you do sometimes feel ashamed.

You have in the course of your entire life occasionally erred, drifted, been too instinctive. You admit that.

And not everyone would admit that.

Also, there were days when you said the true thing even though it would hurt. You withstood the injury. You could make yourself admired for that, but instead you don't talk about it. There are several things – when you reflect – that you don't talk about and it's significant that the very good aren't mentioned any more than the very bad. They can both unnerve you.

You tend to give others your middle ground. Which is prudent. Human beings are not intended to be comprehensive in their expression of themselves. If they were, they would be terrifying. They would always mean too much.

There would be layers revealing layers and meanings that double and on and on and where would it end?

It would end in a room.

It would end with a man standing in a doorway and walking back into a room.

It would end with this room.

He's in this room.

The man is in this room.

In another hired-for-the-evening stuffy little room – stage at the far wall, away from the door, and the rows of stackable seating set out neatly with an aisle – a shuttered hatch to one side that will roll up and open through to the tiny kitchen where someone will make the tea and coffee, serve up biscuits in the interval.

And every room will never be anything but stuffy – what the man does perhaps affecting the atmosphere's density, he can't be sure – and the biscuits will never be anything but stale – snack density
not
down to him: it's because they buy cheap biscuits – no matter who or where they are, they go in for own-brand, nasty biscuits and ignore the sell-by dates, don't bother to store them in a tin, which shows a breathtaking lack of foresight. Tight-fisted town after town and in every venue the fund-raising raffle to open the evening and the prizes of unconvincing electrical goods, or personal readings at later dates, free healings, the sending of amplified prayers on the winner's behalf.

And the man is there with her – with the woman, with his love – and they are there together and smiling where no one can see it, giggling just beneath the skin. They are being the secret of who they are, one with the other, and everything of them that's important is tucked out of sight. The man and the woman are hidden in amongst these strangers and having their fun, a tight fit so that they're cosy, no matter what. They could do this forever, the pair of them – if forever could be reached – swapping and making the codes: the counting, the signals and counter-signals – like kiss against kiss.

They'll give the full show tonight, a good one – no one will ever understand how good. A night to remember all ready and dancing in them, wanting to start now, to play: they can feel it like breath on their necks.

A night made of what they have on file from last time and what the man's found out since he arrived – this in the days before Facebook, Twitter, before lives were bent over for better inspection everyfuckingwhere. The man has to work for what he knows, gather overhearings and gossip and newspaper cuttings and In Memoriams and graveyard tours and averages, statistics and guesses that are always educated – unless he and his love just busk it, improvise – unless they're riding the room and it's racing them somewhere and they let it. And they like the riding and racing – it's what they perfectly do and – for this evening – they'll be doing it in the Church of Eternal Love, Light and Hope.

Says so on the posters and the song sheets – Eternal Love, Light and Hope upstairs and to your left, second floor of the Municipal Hall.

Have to be upstairs if you're after Eternal Love, Light and Hope, stands to reason.

He takes it they didn't go for the Hope, Eternal Light and Love option – H.E.L.L. not being quite the initials they'd prefer.

Shouldn't knock it, though – either you tour the churches or else it's the pub function suites – clattery stage and a star cloth background if you're lucky – might as well be a stripper, ventriloquist, some shaky-handed magic boy wadding silks into his thumb tip, clanging a dove pan – no dignity there.

Not much here, unless you bring it – which we do.

His crowd's in and he's had a look round – it's the usual selection of regulars, virgins, occasionals, desperates: big women in sparkly tops, short sleeves on hefty arms,
purple spangles and silvers and pinks, butterflies, starbursts,
little girl images of fun.

No black, you won't see black unless it's on a sceptic: the way they insist on mourning for everyone else: all pain, no consolation and fucking smug.

But no sceptics tonight – tonight is leather jackets, smokers' coughs – lockets and bracelets and necklaces with names on and even more so for the men – they get the heavy gold, thick links, substantial watches, the sovereign rings and Mason's symbols, Pioneer symbols, Union symbols, AA symbols, lettered fingers and swallows inked on the webs of thumbs and solo earrings – whole libraries of themselves set out on offer – and the loud shirts and fastidiously well brushed hair. Mainly women here, though – this a matter for women, a women's mystery – chatting women, raucous women, thoughtful women – little love heart tattoos, or coloured stars – in couples and groups and outings: family resemblances, office parties – borrowed clothes, shared clothes, pinched clothes, eBay clothes – styles of make-up – special friends – and they're giddy, nervy, anticipating – good night out – they'd like to be entertained and have no commitment, not noticeably: they're keeping it light-hearted, they imagine – but odd silences, nevertheless – curiosity, mild interest is what they'd admit to – they'd explain how they're nobody's fools, would love it to happen, a contact, they'd be overjoyed, they'd be put at rest, but nobody's bought and sold them – even the man hasn't bought and sold them – they're going to keep an open mind – this being, although they don't know it, the Great Requirement – just open the mind.