Original Bliss

by A. L. Kennedy

  She trusted him. No matter what he did, she would still trust him. No matter what he asked, she would allow and the thought of that covered her with a dull, sweet fear. She was finding out who she was. For months, her imagination had already known that he would be terribly steady and calm against her and terribly soft. She had faith in the way that he was and would be, and it would be so hard not to stay with him now, even though she was completely certain that he could do this and things like this any and every day. There would be no standing that. She would become the kind of woman who would want him to do everything they could think of and who would love it.

  Edward had been speaking for a while without her listening, because she was only holding herself still, beneath the ebb and flurry of his breath.

  “I can’t look at you and think of the pictures. This just isn’t like them. They always end up the same way. I hate that. They always end up reaching inside women, reaching here.” She rose a little to meet his description. “It’s as if they were looking for something, just kind of searching around.” His words landed, tepid against her thigh. “They always fumble at it like a jacket pocket, or something—the crack where they lost their spare change—and this isn’t like that, this isn’t for that.” A thumb-stroke at her newer, sleeker self. “This is not a thing. This is you. But for the pictures, in they go—the same move for every possible occasion—checking for standard dimensions, getting a good grip.”

  Edward was keeping busy, fervent, while Helen felt herself slipping below his obsession.

  “Then when I watch the women grab the guys’ dicks and I look at their wrists, the action of their wrists, and they might as well be gutting fish—get the guy hard and toss him off with the minimum effort, the greatest efficiency. And you know this is something they’ve done a thousand times before, come after come after come. Repetition. When it’s real it doesn’t repeat. It’s fresh. It’s lovely. Beautiful.”

  He halted and the sudden lack of motion stung up through the muscle of her back. “This’ll never be the same. I’ll be learning you forever.” And once again, the clipping: thorough and methodical to clear the way.

  Edward didn’t have to tell her, she quite understood; he was making her look like one of the women in his films, like what he must want, a body pared down to its entrances, a splayed personality. But even her disgust yawed and clamoured for more of him when he was finally done and drew his hands away, because inside herself she was like the women in his films.

  Edward rested back on his heels, glanced at her with a type of helplessness and let his head drop. “I am going to stay here. You should get away to bed.” He seemed unsure of where to put the scissors now. “Nothing happened that was bad, did it? And we agreed—all of it. I, um, know you’ve been very good to me already. But if you didn’t mind, I would watch you walking out. If I could. The way you are now—to look at you this way would be wonderful.”

  He paused, folding his arms and possibly waiting for Helen to speak, even though he had removed her from any thought of words.

  “Tell me if I’ve pleased you, Helen. You’ve pleased me. I mean, I’ve never been in a . . . similar position.” He raised both hands to his mouth, breathed what he still had of her, and then bowed his head. “I’m very happy. I want you to be happy as well. You’re better than anything else I know. Are you happy?”

  “Yes.”

  Helen stooped extremely slowly to gather her clothes, precisely as he asked her to and then she left him.

  Edward told her, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  In her room she climbed straight into bed, still stripped and still echoing with Edward, and she curled on her side and was private too late, her knees close up to her chest. She was not happy.

  Helen did not expect to sleep, but down into unconsciousness she went, tiny cuts and strokes of horror mumbling at her as she fell.

  A garden caught her; a warm, flat green place with soft trees and bushes and the high, close buzz of insects on every side. She was naked, but as soon as she noticed this, lizards began to drop from the undulating branches above her and flattened themselves across her skin. They covered her surprisingly well, but were chill to the touch and when she walked she could feel their claws tear at her minutely.

  She passed an empty cave with a stone at its mouth and felt all the lizards raise their heads to look at it respectfully. While she brushed them back down into place, she caught sight of a bearded man, digging in one of the flower-beds with a narrow metal blade.

  The gardener raised his hand in a sort of blessing. “Hello, Helen. Your lizards are doing well.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to see my heart? It’s sacred, you know.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  He opened his shirt firmly with a shower of loosened buttons and then let his arms fall aside to unveil a plump, glossy heart, winking and panting moistly through his parted ribs. Something glowed and wormed inside it like a lightbulb element.

  “I could bless you with all of my heart.”

  “Could you?”

  “Oh, yes. But underneath the lizards, there’s nothing to you any more. A blessing won’t do any good— you’re past saving.” He smiled beatifically and Helen tried to stop herself from staring at his chest wound while it trembled and sucked, inviting. She felt sure that if she could touch the heart it would forgive her and she would be saved.

  The gardener stood, poetically casual with his arms still wide, as if he might be embracing something large she could not see. It was a simple thing to step forward while he eyed the wavering trees and to reach her hand inside him. The heart nuzzled her palm and let her touch the urgent ribbing of its veins. If she could hold it for a tiny while, then all would be eternally well, but as soon as she tried to grasp it, the heart ducked away from her and she knew this was in case her badness made it burst. Then slippery and hot, like the mouth of a meat-eating plant, the gardener’s wound began to close and clasp around her in a massive, insistent bite. It shattered the bones in her wrist with a long, creaking snap, while the heart hid itself, now entirely beyond her reach.

  The hot plumes of pain she dreamed lancing up her forearm, lingered momentarily as she woke into the silence of her room. Almost as soon as she remembered where and how she was, she realised her door had been opened and a figure was close to her bed. She lay, hypnotised by probabilities and the weight of their approach.

  Edward.

  Of course it was Edward, there was no one else for it to be. His soap, his toothpaste, his warm washed body; she could not help but breathe him in completely. Then a brief kiss, lightly clumsy, delivered above one eye and he padded away, sneaking the door shut behind him.

  Helen lay on her back and peered up at nothing with her arms folded in across her breasts because that felt correct. This way she could check how solid she was, how much of her was really here. As she moved her muscle and her skin, the places where Edward had touched her felt different and light, but underneath was the dirt of her thinking. She would have left her room and gone to Edward and talked with him about what was on her mind, but she couldn’t ask Edward for advice about leaving Edward.

  That was why she had to go. She had to leave.

  Helen was being emptied of all but the terrible things that she wanted to do. She was fading away. Odd prayers had already begun to ambush her, full of insistent requests she’d never intended to make, prayers that knew she would be disappointed when a man left her bedside after only a kiss.

  So in the morning she should go. She should make her usual breakfast and read the paper and have marmalade and toast and do nothing to cause uneasiness or alarm. She should try to wonder aloud again how a man of such undoubted intelligence couldn’t manage not to slop his saucer full of tea when he knew it made drips on the tablecloth eventually.

  “I know, it’s because I’m not awake.”

  His eyes were vaguely puzzled as he spoke. She had intended only to tease him, but had sounded bad-tempere
d instead.

  When he finally left for his study she caught him by the arm and, at once, he leaned towards her without resistance, naturally letting her kiss him on the mouth as though this was a long-established part of their morning routine. His grin, the half-halt before he turned to the doorway and the nervous rub of his hand at his hair were the last things she saw of him, which made her glad because they were all very good to remember, very like him.

  Helen left Edward’s flat as she might have for a visit to the museum or the park and took herself to Victoria where the coaches are. With money that was Edward’s, and for which she was sorry, she bought a ticket to Glasgow and then waited in the waiting area until it was time to go.

  Chapter 7

  “Helen?” Mr. Brindle sounded—how did he sound? Not angry. Almost afraid.

  “Yes, it’s me. I’m coming back.” And one more time, to convince herself, “I’m coming back.”

  “When?”

  “Now.” Silence washed back at her from the receiver. “I wanted to say . . . if you would let me come home, I would be there in half an hour.”

  “Let you?” His words were softening and softening, she could have mistaken him for someone else. “Let you? Come back. You really will? I thought . . . what I did . . . I thought. Thank God you’re back.”

  “You don’t believe in God.”

  “Thank God you’re back.”

  The house made her ashamed. Mr. Brindle had kept the place neat, perhaps only a little more tired than when she left, but still, it compared badly with the Kensington flat. Helen realised her tastes had been changed. She had come to expect the kind of simplicity expense can sometimes lend to things. Helen had stayed with someone who led the life of a wealthy man and who could afford to be careful of quality and design. Material things hadn’t mattered to her before. They did now.

  “I tried to be tidy.”

  Mr. Brindle escorted her doggedly upstairs past rooms she already found too familiar. Bathroom, boxroom, bedroom. Outside the bedroom, Mr. Brindle stopped. He was keeping his distance—possibly finding her mildly repellent and she could understand that. Frowning towards her, he mashed his hands into the pockets of his jeans: very old jeans he wouldn’t normally have worn around the house unless he was doing some type of dirty work. “Cleaning up. Dusting. It was like, it was a way of thinking of you.” Everywhere smelt mildly of his sweat. “That thing that happened . . .”

  Helen found she could meet his eyes quite firmly until his gaze withered away. He didn’t like it when she watched him.

  “That thing. I lost my temper. You know when I lose my temper . . . I don’t mean it.” She watched. “I won’t do it again. You shouldn’t have just gone, though. I worried . . . your sister, she didn’t know . . . I won’t do it again.”

  He nodded and retreated towards the head of the stairs, wiping his hands down the front of his shirt and Helen knew she did not believe him. Even if he didn’t think so, he would do it again.

  Inside the bedroom, the mirror of the vanity unit blinked at her slyly and there was nothing she could touch or see that didn’t seem ready to trip, to leap, to start up the process of making her pay for every piece of every wrong that she had done. She had come here to submit and Mr. Brindle would do God’s will to her, even though he was an atheist.

  There was, undoubtedly, the problem of her being a weak person in so many ways. She was susceptible to doubt and hesitation. When she opened her case to fetch out her bits and pieces, the atmosphere of that other place, of the flat, swam up to tug at her and make her current course of action seem confused and difficult to take. Almost all of her wanted to be in Kensington and maybe only lying on the sofa and feeling nice, at ease, and expecting that she would see someone she was very fond of quite soon, if he wasn’t already there with her. She wanted to be comfortable. She had always wanted to be comfortable. Helen didn’t like to be hurt. She enjoyed it when good things happened and she could show they pleased her.

  When she’d been in that flat on her own, sometimes she’d put on the radio in the sitting-room and not exactly danced, but wriggled and bobbed, when she’d felt so inclined. Even if she hadn’t been alone, it would have been okay that she’d done this and not something she needed to worry about. She had forgotten how much space in her mind the worry had to occupy, it was already burrowing and smothering every image she was holding inside when she wanted the freedom to remember incidents and people she cared about.

  “Helen.” Mr. Brindle was shouting from downstairs, although moderately loud speech would have been perfectly audible. “You going to be up there all night? You’re home now. Okay?”

  She abandoned her case on the bed, still full.

  Mr. Brindle was calm when she joined him in the dimness of the living-room. He sat in his usual chair, watching a documentary about something to do with crime, and was not especially fatter or thinner than before, but made out of something very minorly different. His flesh seemed more porous and less convincing.

  “Sit down. You travel far? Tired?” He didn’t look at her.

  “Not really. No.”

  “Fine. You’ll sleep in the spare room. Sheets and stuff are out.” He didn’t look at her at all.

  “Yes.”

  For an hour, the television jabbered recklessly between them. They did not speak again, or draw the curtains, or turn on the lights. Helen watched the room coagulate around her under shrapnel bursts of light.

  Whatever he was planning to do with her would clearly involve a wait. Helen knew that tomorrow Mr. Brindle might consult with the men he worked beside, or ask opinions at his pub on what he should do and how he should feel about his wife. The influence of like minds could very often make him angry with her, even if she had not.

  Helen, because she could be so easily frightened, had hoped there would be no wait and no opportunity for her to break and run away to softer things again. Still, nothing was wasted in God’s economy and the time she was being offered could be put to use. She might be able to prepare herself.

  But this particular part of her waiting—waiting in the fluctuating dark with the television noise and no hope of distraction from the man and the name and the telephone number she could not think about—it was no longer bearable. “You know—”

  “What?” Mr. Brindle must have been pausing all that time, ready for when she would speak.

  “I just thought I would go up now.”

  “Well I won’t be long behind you.” He made a small, breathy laugh, either out of nervousness or disgust. “Not long now.”

  “Fine. Good night.”

  She didn’t attempt to kiss him because that would have given him the chance to turn his head away.

  Mr. Brindle had done well for her in the boxroom. The old wardrobe had been emptied and then refilled with a tangled heap which was all of her clothes. A small stack of paint tins occupied the corner furthest from the unmade bed. The carpet had been hoovered and the walls were penitentially bare. He had left her sheets and blankets and a small electric fire to annoy the damp. When she switched it on, it clicked and rang and produced a fine, acid burning of dust.

  All right, God. I’m here. What do you want me to do? Be my shepherd, be my father, let me know what I should do.

  She stopped, didn’t open her eyes, but called a halt to herself. Her breathing raced towards a strange anticipation. She listened and could hear the jump of her heart. Careful, now, be careful—this could be nothing, wishful thinking and nothing more.

  Helen was kneeling, because a person at prayer is intended to kneel, as a signal of humility and respect. Body kneeling, hands folded, eyes shut—all of her curled and closed to keep out this world and permit its better replacement to enter in. To enter in. For years she had knelt and protected the vacuum that she was, her absence of the convincing and the convinced.

  She needed to be very careful and still. As she might be if she hoped to touch a nervous bird.

  She should consider the degrees of pa
in. She should recall the degrees of pain that emptied prayer had caused her over time. To accept her loss of faith and fall silent in defeat had been a relief, but then a burden. God knew, she’d tried to be rid of it. God knew where that had got her, too.

  And then a brief stab of inspection dropped through her. The house seemed to lurch around an axis and return almost before she could think. Quiet again. But an ordered stillness, packed and immanent, laid itself down on the backs of her legs like sweat, near as live hands cupping her face.

  All right, God. I’m here.

  While she opened her mouth to breathe, an inward rush took her and squeezed to her spine. This time the sensation dissipated as gradually as smoke in her veins.

  Helen opened her eyes and the boxroom was unchanged. She couldn’t think what she’d expected.

  A sign.

  Stupid.

  Might as well hope He might leave His umbrella behind.

  And it wasn’t even that He’d been here. Not that. Only that He was close.

  Close. The kind of word to make a person cry without knowing it. Close. A movement of hope behind glass.

  Father, I’m here and I don’t know what to do.

  After that the speed of everything went wrong. Helen performed what tasks she could remember were called for about the house, even performed them over again, and was still left surrounded by abandoned hours. Walking out to the park, the shops, up and down the stairs and corridors, made no impact on her energy or pace. Every morning Mr. Brindle left her and every evening he returned and she had no sure way of judging what had passed between those two directions— it could have been a minute, it could have been a week.

  Maybe not really a week, she didn’t think they’d last a week before it happened.

  “Cunt.”

  Wednesday evening, meal over and at every point satisfactory, but then she’d tried to bring him a coffee in the sitting-room and dropped the cup. Her hand had forgotten itself. Mr. Brindle heard the impact of the china and the liquid as they came apart, stood and watched for a still moment as the dark, wet heat sank into his rug.