face.
We recoiled from one another. I was hurt. An elbow or a knee had caught me square in the chest. Hissing with the pain, I hunched in one corner of the space and drew up my legs. I sensed the woman in the further corner, doing the same, withdrawing as far from me as she could. But the space was small. It steamed up, with the heat of her wet body and wet clothes. I could hear her shivering.
‘The storm woke me,’ she said at last, in a thin little voice. ‘I came downstairs and you weren’t there... I looked out and saw the light in your car...’
I paused before answering. There were bewildering words in my head, left behind when the torch had failed. I said, ‘I couldn’t sleep. I came outside and down here. I was listening to the wind and the rain and reading last year’s news...’
I heard her moving towards me. ‘Help me, will you?’ she whispered. ‘I can’t... I’m cold and it’s so wet it’s sticking to me...’
I reached for her in the darkness. I pulled her shirt up and over her head. I took off my own shirt so she could dry herself with it, and then we lay together on the narrow bed, under my father’s old blanket.
Chapter Eleven
I N THE FIRST light of dawn, I was aware of her leaving. She slid away from me, thinking I was asleep, and I watched her wriggling into her shirt and working out how to undo and push open the heavy door at the back of the hearse. Probably she’d never tried to get out of a hearse before. But she managed it, she pushed with all her weight and slipped outside, and I heard her quick soft footsteps in the wet grass as she hurried away.
It was the first time I’d seen her, that night. From the startling, explosive moment when she’d burst inside, until her furtive exit, it had been as dark as the grave. Really, not a glimmer of anything: the same blackness that the Daimler’s long-ago passengers had seen, screwed into their coffins and wafted to the cemetery or the flames of the crematorium.
Juliet had made love to me, first of all with an almost animal urgency, and then again and again, with a lingering tenderness. Dark... more than dark... only the light of our imagination inside our heads.
No. Twice, or maybe three times, there’d been a faraway flicker of lightning as the storm roared over and around us, and I’d seen her looming above me; a ghostly shape, her silvery skin, the gleam of her eyes or her mouth. And then the darkness again.
She wouldn’t let me move. She bit my ear and her breath was hot, she told me I was wounded I was hurt I mustn’t move... she bit my lip and her mouth was hot, she told me I was hurt I was wounded I mustn’t move. I lay back and submitted to her healing. And I felt that she needed me.
But no, she didn’t need me. In that impenetrable darkness, it wasn’t me she wanted. She whispered a name. Once, in a glimmer of lightning, she shouted a name. Not mine. All the time she was on me and I was in her, she was with someone else.
In the first light of dawn I watched her leaving. I watched the wriggle of her body. I heard her, an elf, tip-toe through the dew.
I WAITED UNTIL the light was better, before I reached for the newspapers. And then I hesitated. I was afraid of what I was going to read. I lay and waited longer than I needed to. And still I waited. I’d seen enough, before the torch went out, to make me sick of what I might read. And so I hid under the blanket. I pulled it over my head and closed my eyes. I smelled my body and I smelled the woman’s body on mine.
At last I threw off the blanket and sat up. I rummaged among the newspapers. I read this, I read that, I crumpled them up and tossed them aside... I uncrumpled and re-read them, I screwed them into tighter and angrier fistfuls and flung them into a blizzard of paper. But the story I’d glimpsed in the night wasn’t there.
A FEELING OF apprehension, almost a nausea in my stomach... I went slowly up the garden, barefoot, in my
We recoiled from one another. I was hurt. An elbow or a knee had caught me square in the chest. Hissing with the pain, I hunched in one corner of the space and drew up my legs. I sensed the woman in the further corner, doing the same, withdrawing as far from me as she could. But the space was small. It steamed up, with the heat of her wet body and wet clothes. I could hear her shivering.
‘The storm woke me,’ she said at last, in a thin little voice. ‘I came downstairs and you weren’t there... I looked out and saw the light in your car...’
I paused before answering. There were bewildering words in my head, left behind when the torch had failed. I said, ‘I couldn’t sleep. I came outside and down here. I was listening to the wind and the rain and reading last year’s news...’
I heard her moving towards me. ‘Help me, will you?’ she whispered. ‘I can’t... I’m cold and it’s so wet it’s sticking to me...’
I reached for her in the darkness. I pulled her shirt up and over her head. I took off my own shirt so she could dry herself with it, and then we lay together on the narrow bed, under my father’s old blanket.
Chapter Eleven
I N THE FIRST light of dawn, I was aware of her leaving. She slid away from me, thinking I was asleep, and I watched her wriggling into her shirt and working out how to undo and push open the heavy door at the back of the hearse. Probably she’d never tried to get out of a hearse before. But she managed it, she pushed with all her weight and slipped outside, and I heard her quick soft footsteps in the wet grass as she hurried away.
It was the first time I’d seen her, that night. From the startling, explosive moment when she’d burst inside, until her furtive exit, it had been as dark as the grave. Really, not a glimmer of anything: the same blackness that the Daimler’s long-ago passengers had seen, screwed into their coffins and wafted to the cemetery or the flames of the crematorium.
Juliet had made love to me, first of all with an almost animal urgency, and then again and again, with a lingering tenderness. Dark... more than dark... only the light of our imagination inside our heads.
No. Twice, or maybe three times, there’d been a faraway flicker of lightning as the storm roared over and around us, and I’d seen her looming above me; a ghostly shape, her silvery skin, the gleam of her eyes or her mouth. And then the darkness again.
She wouldn’t let me move. She bit my ear and her breath was hot, she told me I was wounded I was hurt I mustn’t move... she bit my lip and her mouth was hot, she told me I was hurt I was wounded I mustn’t move. I lay back and submitted to her healing. And I felt that she needed me.
But no, she didn’t need me. In that impenetrable darkness, it wasn’t me she wanted. She whispered a name. Once, in a glimmer of lightning, she shouted a name. Not mine. All the time she was on me and I was in her, she was with someone else.
In the first light of dawn I watched her leaving. I watched the wriggle of her body. I heard her, an elf, tip-toe through the dew.
I WAITED UNTIL the light was better, before I reached for the newspapers. And then I hesitated. I was afraid of what I was going to read. I lay and waited longer than I needed to. And still I waited. I’d seen enough, before the torch went out, to make me sick of what I might read. And so I hid under the blanket. I pulled it over my head and closed my eyes. I smelled my body and I smelled the woman’s body on mine.
At last I threw off the blanket and sat up. I rummaged among the newspapers. I read this, I read that, I crumpled them up and tossed them aside... I uncrumpled and re-read them, I screwed them into tighter and angrier fistfuls and flung them into a blizzard of paper. But the story I’d glimpsed in the night wasn’t there.
A FEELING OF apprehension, almost a nausea in my stomach... I went slowly up the garden, barefoot, in my
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