glasses and was looking at her with bright brown eyes. ‘Surely you must. I’m Thomas Carrington, by the way.’
‘I’m Elizabeth Bonelli. In a way I do.’
‘What way? Are you Italian? You have an old-master look.’ He looked at her consideringly. ‘Giorgione, maybe. Nice.’
‘Half.’
‘Half talk to yourself or half Italian?’
‘Both, I suppose. I do talk to myself, but not out loud. At least, I don’t think so.’
‘I find I have to say things aloud so I can listen, because I’m the only person who understands me well. Where are your clothes, Elizabeth Bonelli?’ He spoke her name with an easy and enchanting familiarity.
The thought of her clothes lying exposed in the next room embarrassed her for the first time and she began to flush. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice them.’ She wished she could remember what knickers she’d been wearing.
‘I was preoccupied,’ Thomas said. ‘Talking to myself and then having to think up some answer to me. It gets wearing. Do you find that?’ He still had his glasses off and he looked at her again, his head on one side.
‘I should get dressed,’ she said, ignoring his other question.
But she didn’t get dressed. Or not for a while.
2
S HE SEEMED ANXIOUS TO ASSURE ME THAT IT WASN’T SEX which detained them. It’s a funny thing, but in my job you don’t take much interest in sex. Or rather, the interest you take is of a pretty disinterested kind. Like any other topic it can lose its appeal if it becomes a staple of your trade. I am not speaking about my personal experience, you understand.
Extensive sexual expertise is not something I can boast of. Bar was probably my most rewarding partner. It doesn’t always follow that character is consistent in the bedroom. I’ve known mousy-looking women who were tigers once they had their clothes off, and vice versa. But Bar in bed was a reflection of Bar out of it: uncloying, considerate, appreciative, kind. Olivia had none of these graces, indeed the very opposites by turn, which, I’m sorry to own, may be what attracted me to her. It is a peculiarity of the human male that the poison which can destroy us has this pernicious allure. The shrewd Elizabethans were aware of this: it’s not for nothing that their slang for orgasm was ‘to die’.
In any case, it was with no diminished interest, rather the reverse, that I heard my patient, wrapped in the borrowed bathrobe, had done no more than talk to this stranger, for, she calculated,over three hours. Only when he said, ‘You should get dressed, you’ll get cold like that,’ did she think about doing so, while he left the flat promising to be back soon.
She didn’t even go upstairs to her own place to change into something more presentable than the dull skirt and sweater she’d been wearing, or to put on the make-up she was conscious of lacking after the bath. She was too worried that he might return and, finding her gone, give up on her.
‘It sounds stupid but I prayed.’
‘You weren’t in the habit?’
‘I prayed to something, I don’t know who or what.’
Whoever her prayer was addressed to it was answered. Thomas returned with shopping bags filled with food.
‘Did you cook?’
‘He did. I couldn’t have done a thing.’
‘What did he cook?’
In fact, it was shortly after this that Maguire was dispatched for sandwiches, the description of that first shared meal activating a sudden vicarious appetite in my patient’s single audience. I could picture her hungry—not merely for the omelette that had miraculously been prepared for her, but hungrier still for the affection she had been denied—leaning, on Bainbridge’s kitchen table, towards the myopic stranger, upon whose somewhat thick lenses the light spun, in dancing dazzling points, in the tall London house, in the flat where neither belonged.
It was this air of not-quite-belonging which had so characterised her for me and it came to me that it must have filled her
‘I’m Elizabeth Bonelli. In a way I do.’
‘What way? Are you Italian? You have an old-master look.’ He looked at her consideringly. ‘Giorgione, maybe. Nice.’
‘Half.’
‘Half talk to yourself or half Italian?’
‘Both, I suppose. I do talk to myself, but not out loud. At least, I don’t think so.’
‘I find I have to say things aloud so I can listen, because I’m the only person who understands me well. Where are your clothes, Elizabeth Bonelli?’ He spoke her name with an easy and enchanting familiarity.
The thought of her clothes lying exposed in the next room embarrassed her for the first time and she began to flush. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice them.’ She wished she could remember what knickers she’d been wearing.
‘I was preoccupied,’ Thomas said. ‘Talking to myself and then having to think up some answer to me. It gets wearing. Do you find that?’ He still had his glasses off and he looked at her again, his head on one side.
‘I should get dressed,’ she said, ignoring his other question.
But she didn’t get dressed. Or not for a while.
2
S HE SEEMED ANXIOUS TO ASSURE ME THAT IT WASN’T SEX which detained them. It’s a funny thing, but in my job you don’t take much interest in sex. Or rather, the interest you take is of a pretty disinterested kind. Like any other topic it can lose its appeal if it becomes a staple of your trade. I am not speaking about my personal experience, you understand.
Extensive sexual expertise is not something I can boast of. Bar was probably my most rewarding partner. It doesn’t always follow that character is consistent in the bedroom. I’ve known mousy-looking women who were tigers once they had their clothes off, and vice versa. But Bar in bed was a reflection of Bar out of it: uncloying, considerate, appreciative, kind. Olivia had none of these graces, indeed the very opposites by turn, which, I’m sorry to own, may be what attracted me to her. It is a peculiarity of the human male that the poison which can destroy us has this pernicious allure. The shrewd Elizabethans were aware of this: it’s not for nothing that their slang for orgasm was ‘to die’.
In any case, it was with no diminished interest, rather the reverse, that I heard my patient, wrapped in the borrowed bathrobe, had done no more than talk to this stranger, for, she calculated,over three hours. Only when he said, ‘You should get dressed, you’ll get cold like that,’ did she think about doing so, while he left the flat promising to be back soon.
She didn’t even go upstairs to her own place to change into something more presentable than the dull skirt and sweater she’d been wearing, or to put on the make-up she was conscious of lacking after the bath. She was too worried that he might return and, finding her gone, give up on her.
‘It sounds stupid but I prayed.’
‘You weren’t in the habit?’
‘I prayed to something, I don’t know who or what.’
Whoever her prayer was addressed to it was answered. Thomas returned with shopping bags filled with food.
‘Did you cook?’
‘He did. I couldn’t have done a thing.’
‘What did he cook?’
In fact, it was shortly after this that Maguire was dispatched for sandwiches, the description of that first shared meal activating a sudden vicarious appetite in my patient’s single audience. I could picture her hungry—not merely for the omelette that had miraculously been prepared for her, but hungrier still for the affection she had been denied—leaning, on Bainbridge’s kitchen table, towards the myopic stranger, upon whose somewhat thick lenses the light spun, in dancing dazzling points, in the tall London house, in the flat where neither belonged.
It was this air of not-quite-belonging which had so characterised her for me and it came to me that it must have filled her
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