She listened to Edward at night, his orderly pattern of preparations for his bed and sleep, and she rested in her room with his videos and books and was secure and undisturbed. She felt her conduct and presence here were justified, were all right, and her memory started her life with the day she stepped up from the underground at Gloucester Road. Glasgow wasn’t hard to keep out of mind.
Helen came to believe she was good and could have good things. She didn’t deserve them any less than other people she could think of. Edward was right, if she accepted all the facts about herself— the ugly and the clean—she understood who she was precisely, all the time. She hadn’t done anything bad since she’d known her own nature and its controls. She had come to no harm and had been offered the chance to change away from what might be called sin.
There was always the possibility of sin with Edward. Undoubtedly what she felt for him was love, she admitted that, but her love need not be expressed in ways that were wrong and had to be paid for. She was learning how much salvation there was in the passage of time; it could re-form passion into friendship and let her live here, growing well and strong. Her sleep was obedient and prompt, her dreams unmemorable but happy, and if her God was watching she couldn’t feel it and couldn’t feel His loss.
Edward pursued his work, sometimes shouting in his study, emerging and pacing, then diving back again, but with an underlying air of fixed content. He began to make sentences involving the word we and talked about taking pains with his appearance because this made him feel clean and as if he were leading an upright life.
“Come and see my study.”
Helen was newly back from buying milk, her face and hands anxious for the warmth of the flat. The warmth of home.
“It’s nothing very interesting, but I thought you might like to see.” He held the door for her, which was something he liked to do.
Only one wall was occupied with shelves. The other three were covered in photographs, drawings and picture postcards, fixed over each other like scales.
“They’re lots of little slices through my head—the things I like to remember. I can focus on one picture and it will fire off through the whole day. It’s a sort of music; so I can sit in here with an old friendship playing, or a nice day, or a good argument. I occasionally like to argue.”
Helen was more interested in his dark, monstrous desk and its huge computer. “I thought you didn’t approve of them.”
“Computers? They’re things, instruments, nothing to approve or disapprove. I have a problem with the people who use them. The person who uses this one is me, so I like it fine. And it gets me into the Net. I love the Net. It carries proper information, facts with added emotional interference, irrelevancies, passions, general human subversiveness. People keep overrunning the machine and so it’s full of Completed Facts and nobody in there has to forget what they are— human. They may forget who they are, but anyone can be lost in thought—thought is a very big place. Every day, I make a point of feeding the Net with new things conventional programming would not like: ethics, nonsense, morality.”
“And I thought you were working in here.”
“I do that, too. Honestly.”
He looked so suddenly earnest, she had to rub his shoulder to make him smile.
“I know. You work hard, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure also. Sadly, the Nobel people don’t agree. Not this year.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. Not this year. I couldn’t spare the time.” He brushed her with a soft glance. “They’ll have to give me one in the end. But back to morality . . .”
“Yes?” She noticed a beat between them, a flicker of something that quieted again.
“There is, of course, very human and understandable im morality on the Net. My printer could stay active, day and night, discharging uncontrolled configurations of anatomy. I could spend all day in here, having virtual sex. The screen’s radiation makes you sterile but the text still makes you come. Neat, isn’t it?” He didn’t smile.
“And is that what you do?”
“No. I’ve never tried sex on the Internet. Not because I disapprove—”
“Obviously.”
He pinned her with a tiny look. “Yes, quite obviously. I have never gone in there because I know I haven’t got the strength of character to ever climb out again. I do harmless things in cyberspace: talk to colleagues, work. I spend my days at work. That’s what I wanted to report. That all is safe and well in here.”
“Um, good. Well done, then.”
“Yes.”
She felt very much as if she should shake his hand now, but didn’t.
Edward appeared happy in a tentative way, grabbed a pencil from his desk and put it back down again. “Mm hm.”
Helen’s time gently expended itself in reading or walking, playing the tourist. At first she was unsettled by the air of satisfaction she noticed in so many of the people she passed in the street. Faces and bodies moved under a thin but unmistakable sheen of health. The shops that were closest to her calmly charged ridiculous prices and sold ridiculous foods while their staff seemed to appraise her and find her an introduction they did not wish to make. Locked gardens and high windows and craftsman-applied paintwork were all wadded in with a cool lead-and-smoke-flavoured air, only occasionally coloured by the stench of crumbled drains. But her new district’s little brushes with squalor and the repetitive fuss of its prettiness gradually eased into normality. A person can grow used to anything. Helen learned that when she ceased to care about it, the city—like God—receded and let her be.
Sometimes she wished she had money to spend on Edward’s house—to buy an ornament or picture that he wasn’t expecting—but then, as he said, he didn’t actually need any more than he had. Helen did no housework at all, not even the toasting of toast. Edward’s cleaning lady looked after the house twice a week, taking care of everything but Edward’s study and Helen’s room—the two places she was asked not to disturb. Because she never saw where Helen slept, she made assumptions, but Edward and Helen did not. They made a point of dressing fully for breakfast and rarely kissed.
“Forty-eight days.”
Sometimes, he would pop through at supper-time and clear his head of work before he went to bed.
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah. The fillings in my back teeth are fusing.”
“What?”
He flopped into an armchair. She liked that none of the chairs belonged to anyone in the flat. They could both feel at ease sitting anywhere, although she did prefer the sofa, because it allowed her to stretch out and lie. She was getting lazy. Or comfortable. Sleeping and reading paperbacks and going out to eat—it made a comfortable life.
“No, only joking. Forty-eight days. Wouldn’t have believed it.”
“How do you feel.”
“Great.”
“And more generally? All this?”
“Great.”
“Anything happening you don’t like?”
“No.”
“Anything not happening you would like?”
They both laughed instead of saying anything.
Their dinners with each other were different. She looked forward to them more.
Chapter 6
“Well?”
“I don’t know. Would it be enough, Edward?”
“For me? It would be perfectly enough for me. What about you? That’s what I’m asking. If it’s going to be . . . I don’t want to do something wrong and I might because I don’t know my way . . . around. You know I don’t.”
“It’ll be, it’ll be fine.”
“Well, yes. I hope.” He ran the curl of one finger down the slope of her cheek until the muscles in her back began to shudder. “Fine would be what I was aiming for. I haven’t exactly studied the area properly. Not in a way that would help.”
They were making Horlicks in the kitchen which seemed quite entertaining in a nicely pointless way and was also something f
or which they were both in the mood. She watched him stirring the milk and laughed.
“What? Am I a bad stirrer?” He looked worried happily, “What?” then just worried, “What?”
“I think . . . I’m not sure . . . what I think.” She stood by him and squeezed his free hand around her wrist, her pulse. “Nerves.”
“You feel frightened. I hope I don’t—”
“You don’t frighten me, I’m just nervous. Or . . .”
“What?” He danced his thumb down to the heart of her palm and left her with a broad need, drumming in the length of her arm while his eyes worried at hers. “What.”
“It might be nerves and—heartbeat-raising things . . . those sort of things.”
“Thank you for being so specific.” Again his thumb grooved a charge into her veins.
“Expecting—you know.”
“Expecting.”
“Me expecting you.”
“Ah, well, yes. That would do it. Quite possibly.”
“That’s the same speed, but not the same thing. And I’m . . . I don’t know.”
Edward turned up the gas and put her hand where she could reach her fingers in beneath his jaw so that she could understand the kind of time his blood was keeping. This meant she also touched his voice.
“After this, then. Shall we?”
“Yes, that would be—definitely, yes, fine. Hot milky drinks, though . . . they’re meant to make you relax? Should we—”
“To make you sleep, actually.” He watched her, peered clear inside her mind and tickled there. Her fingers felt him swallow once. “I should think we’ll keep lively somehow.”
“That’s not unlikely, yes.”
“Listen, it won’t be anything we don’t both agree.”
“No.” And she turned him to herself and held him because of wanting to and because she was scared. They both slipped inside a kiss, waited a slim moment while he caught her tongue between his teeth and then opened for her again, milk-sweet.
“We still have to do the Horlicks.”
“Mm hm.”
She felt him, hard in at her stomach and ribs— something to call down a murmur of sin.
“What should we do? If we’re thinking of—”
“Moving on to other things? Well, I think it doesn’t matter if the milk hasn’t absolutely boiled.” He lifted the pan experimentally, his unoccupied arm fast around her waist. “Do you understand about Horlicks?”
“As far as I can tell, you’ve been managing fine.”
They didn’t know where to start: which room would be best. The kitchen and the study were too unwelcoming, the bathroom wouldn’t do, her bedroom was full of his past, his bedroom was his bedroom and would lead to things.
Living-room.
He drew the curtains, although the flat was far too high for anybody to see in. You never could be too careful, though and, anyway, Helen had stayed nervous of that window, its hungry size, and Edward didn’t want her to be nervous, not now.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not worried?”
“I’m not worried.”
“Because I’m right here . . . well, obviously—that’s what this is all about—me being here with you. Helen, you’ll have to forgive me if I sound . . . if I stop making sense during this. It’s only that I’m getting preoccupied. With you. I want me to be with you.” He adjusted his grip on her back. “Really, I think I should go and sit down over there.
“I’ll be right here. Well . . . that’s why we’re both . . . It’s only me, though. I won’t change, because I want me to be with you.”
But they still clung against each other, as if they were saying goodbye. Something was pouncing in her chest and panic was shining the length of her bones.
He perched on a chair and sat rubbing his jaw and looking beyond her shoulder. Helen had thought of sitting, but that didn’t seem quite the right thing, so she waited as she was. She stood and braced herself against herself and the roiling need that was stroking the meat between her ribs and then dipping its head clear inside her, striking a light. It seemed superfluous that she should move in any visible way.
“Helen? Should I help?”
“No.” He mustn’t touch her, that would make things go wrong. “No. I’ll start now.”
She could hear him watching, while her fingers tried to unmuzzle her buttons, but she didn’t look up. The best thing to imagine was maybe being in a changing-room at a shop. That would be the calmest option she could think of and he hadn’t asked for a performance, only that she be undressed and that he could see.
The air shivered against her. Every slip of the cloth, each release, first followed her habits of motion and then altered beneath the press of observation.
She bent forward and carefully re-learned the weight and motion of her breasts. They were waking up. She stood to catch her breath, to be more displayed, and found that she could watch Edward watching, while her body met his eyes. He sipped in a breath. She stepped out from the last thing that hid what she was and gave him what she wanted, or at least what they’d agreed.
There was a certainty in her now, cold and unchangeable and planted in the opened flutter of blood at her heart. She was naked in the eyes of God. Raising her arms and setting her hands at the back of her head, she could feel His terror drumming under her womb.
Edward’s face was lovely in an unfamiliar way and almost grave. His lips were parted, his gaze one unified, unfillable depth. Black. He blinked gently with a little frown. “Helen. You are beautiful.”
His last word tingled against her stomach and she felt she might cry.
“You’re gorgeous, that’s what you are. Gorgeous.” He murmured, making her strain to hear him, making her whole body listen in. “You needn’t say, but I would like to know—maybe you could nod or shake your head—and tell me. Are you wet? For me?”
The question which makes its own answer. If she hadn’t been, it would have made her; but she had been, so it made her more.
“Oh. That’s nice. Thank you. I have to . . . I have to step outside for a moment, you know? Maybe, if you sat down. I’ll just . . . be back soon.” And he walked around the edges of the room and out of the door.
Without him there, she felt foolish, even slightly angry, but mainly alone. The leather of his armchair felt peculiar to her, cold and unpleasantly animal. She crossed her legs at the knee and stared at her dark reflection in the blank of Edward’s television screen.
He came back and faltered to a stop when she faced him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do something that would offend you.” He studied her face. “Are you all right? I didn’t want to leave you, I know it was the wrong thing to do.”
“If you had to go . . .”
“Yes, I did.” He sat again, not so far away that she didn’t notice he smelled of soap. She was beginning to be cold.
“I know we said I wouldn’t touch you and I do understand that. You are a person of principle and there are things you can’t allow. I am not your . . . we’re not . . . able to. But I did think—you’re so far away like that. Don’t you feel far away?”
“I suppose.”
“Might I hold your hand?”
Helen let him have that: a small, formal contact they could have exchanged in the street. Either they’d already done far too much and were lost—might as well do anything now—or this was the way they’d control themselves and be reminded of how they could and could not proceed.
“I love you, Helen.” Before she understood the words, hot shards of how they felt were carving through her, every way they could. “I do. I’ve thought a lot about it and I do. I don’t want to frighten you or hurt you.”
Helen had no reply, so she kneaded his hand.
“I thought I might . . . This is nothing you couldn’t let me do, or I wouldn’t suggest it, but you don’t have to. I thought that now you’d done this for me, I could do something for you.” He studied her patiently, giving her nowhere to hi
de. “And something for me, of course.” He brought out a small pair of scissors from his pocket. “I would like to cut your hair. If I could.”
“My hair?”
He let his gaze fall against her, so that she would feel it where he meant. “Not on your head.” He nodded rather formally to the ache that was folding her back to her spine, made his proper introduction to her body. “There. I want to take care of you there. I don’t have to, absolutely I don’t have to, but you’ve let me see—and you are wonderful to see—if I trimmed, then I’d . . . see more. Will you? Let me? I promise I’ll be careful. God, I’ll be careful.”
It was only when nothing was left to stop her but her conscience, that she found how small and liquid her conscience was. Edward pressed it and it poured away as she saw the metal shine of the scissors coming and liked to think how cool and odd they were bound to be.
A man should never touch another man’s wife. The wife should not let him. If she moves she must not move to meet another man’s touch, unless she has a failure of conscience and, even then, she has the moral law.
Without morality’s prohibition to protect her, she will be stripped down to her soul and the empty fault inside it. She will feel the long, tight haul of the man being near her and the need swinging in her blood and she will move to it because she has no mind, no choice. The steel shock of twitching blades and the curiosity of fingers, they will be all she is.
Kneeling low, Edward snipped her in close to the skin, taking pains at the slick of her lips. Helen watched her body being shorn back younger and opening under something hungry and new. When she came, Edward held his blades steady, but not far away and watched her with complete attention, watched right through her as if she were a wet perspective drawn on herself.
Then he talked to her: a nervy monologue that whispered in under his work. “If you’re very still . . . really very still, that’s it. Perfect. You are perfect. Completely. Just extremely nice.”
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