stay. There’s a lot I want to find out.’
‘Then see Father Wingate. I know that’s all nonsense, but I can’t think of anything else that might help you.’
‘Father Wingate handed his church over to me this morning.’
‘Why? What does he imagine you’re going to do with it?’
‘Conduct a marriage ceremony – of a special kind?’
Laughing, she moved my hands from her breasts, as if nervous that I might transform her into a thousand-breasted Diana. ‘That’s strange. Do you know, Blake, as a schoolgirl I often had a fantasy of being married in an airliner – I think I was in love with a pilot I saw at Orly while changing planes with my parents. For some reason I was terribly keen on the idea of a wedding ceremony held ten miles up in the air.’
‘Miriam, I’ll rent an aircraft.’
‘Again? By the way, Stark’s a pilot – of a sort. Like you.’
‘But not a real one.’
‘Are you, Blake?’
I had recovered my strength after the swim, and could easily have lifted her from the floor on to the bed. But I was thinking of my own dream of flight. Had she really had a childhood fantasy of being married in the air, or had I imposed it upon her? A sickly cyclamen sun touched her hair, the trees in the park, the grass in the water-meadow, my blood itself irrigating all the secret possibilities of ourlives. I wanted to mate with Miriam St Cloud on the wing, sail with her along the cool corridors of the sky, swim with her down this small river to the open sea, drown the currents of our love in the ebb and flow of oceanic tides …
‘Blake—!’
Gasping for breath, she struggled from me. She tore her arms free and struck out at my face with her hard fists. For a moment, as she sucked at the air, she stared at me with real terror. When she ran to the door I felt my bruised mouth, aware that I had begun to crush the life from her lungs as I had done from her mother’s.
Later, sitting naked in a high-backed chair by the window, I looked down at the river in the dusk, at the now cerise water through which I had leapt as a right whale, my sleek body dressed in foam like the lace ruffs of the Shakespearian actors. What disturbed me was not my apparent attempt to smother Miriam St Cloud, but that I no longer wished to escape from Shepperton. Already I felt committed to the people here, almost as if I was their pastor. The unseen powers who had saved me from the aircraft had in turn charged me to save these men and women from their lives in this small town and the limits imposed on their spirits by their minds and bodies. In some way my escape from the Cessna, whose drowned wraith I could see in the dark water below the window, had gained me entry to the real world that waited behind the shutter of every flower and feather, every leaf and child. My dreams of flying as a bird among birds, of swimming as a fish among fish, were not dreams but the reality of which this house, this small town and its inhabitants were themselves the consequential dream.
As the night air soothed my bruised chest I sensed the power flowing from my body, filling the river and the park. I was sorry to have frightened Miriam – I wanted her to be the vessel of my transforming lust, and our marriage to be not a rape but a private coronation. I watched a shoal ofanimalcula swarming in a halo around the Cessna, marine creatures from some warm pelagic deep which had crossed the oceans to swim up the Thames and release their light for me.
As for the corpse in the Cessna, this imaginary body no longer frightened me. I even welcomed its challenge, the duel between us for the domination of this river and town.
All night the people of Shepperton continued to stroll along the river bank. They gazed at the vivid foliage in the park that seemed to glow in the darkness like the forest at the fringes of a tropical city. Father Wingate walked along the beach by the illuminated water, fanning himself with his straw hat. He had recovered from our
‘Then see Father Wingate. I know that’s all nonsense, but I can’t think of anything else that might help you.’
‘Father Wingate handed his church over to me this morning.’
‘Why? What does he imagine you’re going to do with it?’
‘Conduct a marriage ceremony – of a special kind?’
Laughing, she moved my hands from her breasts, as if nervous that I might transform her into a thousand-breasted Diana. ‘That’s strange. Do you know, Blake, as a schoolgirl I often had a fantasy of being married in an airliner – I think I was in love with a pilot I saw at Orly while changing planes with my parents. For some reason I was terribly keen on the idea of a wedding ceremony held ten miles up in the air.’
‘Miriam, I’ll rent an aircraft.’
‘Again? By the way, Stark’s a pilot – of a sort. Like you.’
‘But not a real one.’
‘Are you, Blake?’
I had recovered my strength after the swim, and could easily have lifted her from the floor on to the bed. But I was thinking of my own dream of flight. Had she really had a childhood fantasy of being married in the air, or had I imposed it upon her? A sickly cyclamen sun touched her hair, the trees in the park, the grass in the water-meadow, my blood itself irrigating all the secret possibilities of ourlives. I wanted to mate with Miriam St Cloud on the wing, sail with her along the cool corridors of the sky, swim with her down this small river to the open sea, drown the currents of our love in the ebb and flow of oceanic tides …
‘Blake—!’
Gasping for breath, she struggled from me. She tore her arms free and struck out at my face with her hard fists. For a moment, as she sucked at the air, she stared at me with real terror. When she ran to the door I felt my bruised mouth, aware that I had begun to crush the life from her lungs as I had done from her mother’s.
Later, sitting naked in a high-backed chair by the window, I looked down at the river in the dusk, at the now cerise water through which I had leapt as a right whale, my sleek body dressed in foam like the lace ruffs of the Shakespearian actors. What disturbed me was not my apparent attempt to smother Miriam St Cloud, but that I no longer wished to escape from Shepperton. Already I felt committed to the people here, almost as if I was their pastor. The unseen powers who had saved me from the aircraft had in turn charged me to save these men and women from their lives in this small town and the limits imposed on their spirits by their minds and bodies. In some way my escape from the Cessna, whose drowned wraith I could see in the dark water below the window, had gained me entry to the real world that waited behind the shutter of every flower and feather, every leaf and child. My dreams of flying as a bird among birds, of swimming as a fish among fish, were not dreams but the reality of which this house, this small town and its inhabitants were themselves the consequential dream.
As the night air soothed my bruised chest I sensed the power flowing from my body, filling the river and the park. I was sorry to have frightened Miriam – I wanted her to be the vessel of my transforming lust, and our marriage to be not a rape but a private coronation. I watched a shoal ofanimalcula swarming in a halo around the Cessna, marine creatures from some warm pelagic deep which had crossed the oceans to swim up the Thames and release their light for me.
As for the corpse in the Cessna, this imaginary body no longer frightened me. I even welcomed its challenge, the duel between us for the domination of this river and town.
All night the people of Shepperton continued to stroll along the river bank. They gazed at the vivid foliage in the park that seemed to glow in the darkness like the forest at the fringes of a tropical city. Father Wingate walked along the beach by the illuminated water, fanning himself with his straw hat. He had recovered from our
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