Sweet Agony by Charlotte Stein Page B

myself.

    But then comes the second time, when I actually see it before he smothers it. I’m busy brewing tea and suddenly feel a bristling, prickling sensation all over my body. When I glance back, his gaze is resting on me so strangely that I struggle to know what it reminds me of. I think of scientists watching experiments, and of people seeing something shocking, and then on the third try it comes.
    He looks at me as though unable to believe that I am real. Like someone seeing the ghost of their long-dead wife, or some member of an alien species, come to tell him he is not alone. There are other worlds out there, that expression says, far better and sweeter than this one. And if you want, you can go there with me. I’m waiting for you, whenever you’re ready.
    God, I wish he was ready now.
    I wish those eyes did not seem so haunted when I steal a look at them. They are almost vulnerable, and not just because of the light in them. They make his face look suddenly younger, as though all the years he wears are not the product of cigarettes or centuries but of stress. He so desperately wants to keep himself closed that he ages himself to do so. And once he lets go – if only in the moments when he thinks I’m not watching – he becomes a boy again. He becomes even more beautiful than he already is.
    I almost stumble the first time I see it.
    Nothing in my life has ever been so sweet – or so painful. It won’t compromise you, I want to say to him, but even that might disturb his fragile peace. His guard is up, just waiting for me to get in again. He is watchful and wary, wounded by fuck knows what.
    So I have to be even more skilful than I was the last time. Just let him come to me, somehow, though it takes time to hit on the right way to go about it. I finally find it almost by accident. I put his extensive and ancient encyclopaedias in the wrong order, and as soon as he sees he turns into the withering, sarcastic arsehole I’ve come to know and adore. ‘Honestly, Molly, do you really think M follows K? Did L suddenly cease to exist? I can see we are going to have to have a talk,’ he says, but something happens just before he finishes. He seems to catch himself on that final ‘to’, as though holding back some other word that wants to come out.

    Then he simply substitutes ‘talk’ at the last second.
    But I don’t think that was what he intended to say. I can almost smell the scent of punishment in that sentence. I can even guess what word it was going to be – something about correction ,I think, but of course correction is far too telling. It could lead him back down that terrible path of temptation. He might suddenly find himself with something swishy in his hand again, and I can see that the idea disturbs him. That indifference was just a ruse, a cover, and now it’s starting to peel back. One more push and it might disappear altogether.
    Though still I proceed as carefully as I can.
    Especially now that I know how to go about it. He can hardly resist a mistake, and there are so many I can make. I can forget to put milk in his tea, and remove bookmarks from important pages. He likes the ornaments on the mantelpiece to face forwards, so I just turn them a quarter of an inch. Not a lot, but enough to drive him to distraction. Soon after I’ve done it I see him standing there, hands in pockets, one foot tapping and tapping, as though he can restore them to their positions just by being supremely irritated.
    The second I step into the room I know he’s going to say something.
    So, when he doesn’t, I feel momentarily confused. I watch him sweep into his favourite chair with a great flourish and take up his paper, without a second glance at me. And when he finally acknowledges me, it’s only to say, ‘So what did you make of Nabokov?’Which is fine, I have to admit. I like the fact that he randomly asks me about books I’m reading. It means three things: that he is different from everyone I’ve ever