In Between the Sheets

by Ian Mcewan

  I closed my eyes and, in the manner of those who, poised above the pan, fleetingly hug their feces to their bowels, retained the moment. For the sake of future recollection, I concentrated on the precise nature of my expectations. I was well aware of the universal law which pre-ordains a discrepancy between the imagined and the real—I even prepared myself for a disappointment. When I opened my eyes a number filled my vision—54. Page 54. Below that I found myself halfway through a sentence which had its origins on page fifty-three, a sentence sinister in its familiarity. “said Dave, carefully wiping his lips with it and crumpling it on to his plate.” I turned my face into the pillow, sickened and stunned by an apprehension of the complexity and sophistication of Sally Klee’s species and the brutish ignorance of my own. “Dave stared intently through the candlelight at his sister-in-law and her husband, his brother. He spoke quietly. ‘Or again, some think of it as a sharp, womanly odor (he glanced at Moira) … exciting. Certainly it suggests sexual activity of some…’” I threw the sheet aside and clutched at another, page 196: “of earth struck the coffin lid, the rain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Moira detached herself from the main group and wandered across the cemetery, reading without real comprehension the inscriptions on the stones. She felt mellow, as if she had seen a depressing but ultimately good film. She stopped under a yew tree and stood there a long time, abstractedly picking at the bark with her long orange fingernails. She thought, Everything changes. A sparrow, its feathers fluffed against the cold, hopped forlornly at her feet.” Not one phrase, not one word modified, everything unaltered. Page 230: “‘-ing on clouds?’ Dave repeated peevishly. ‘What exactly does that mean?’ Moira let her gaze fall on a flaw in the Bokhara design and said nothing. Dave crossed the room and took her hand. ‘What I mean when I ask that,’ he said hurriedly, ‘is that I have so many things to learn from you. You’ve suffered so much. You know so much.’ Moira released her hand to pick up her cup of barely warm, weak tea. She thought listlessly, Why do men despise women?”

  I could read no more. I squatted on the bedpost picking at my chest listening to the ponderous tick of the clock in the hallway downstairs. Was art then nothing more than a wish to appear busy? Was it nothing more than a fear of silence, of boredom, which the merely reiterative rattle of the typewriter’s keys was enough to allay? In short having crafted one novel, would it suffice to write it again, type it out with care, page by page? (Gloomily I recycled nits from torso to mouth.) Deep in my heart I knew it would suffice and, knowing that seemed to know less than I had ever known before. Two and a half next April indeed! I could have been born the day before yesterday.

  It was growing dark when I finally set about arranging the papers and returning them to the file. I worked quickly, turning pages with all four limbs, driven less by the fear of Sally Klee returning home early than by an obscure hope that by restoring order I could erase the afternoon from my mind. I eased the file through the back of the desk and into its drawer. I secured the jagged segment of wood with drawing pins hammered down with the heel of a shoe. I threw the splinters of wood out the window and pushed the desk against the wall. I crouched in the center of the room, knuckles barely brushing the carpet, questioning the semidarkness and the frightful hiss of total silence about my head … now everything was as it had been and as Sally Klee would expect it to be—typewriter, pens, blotting paper, a single withering daffodil—and still I knew what I knew and understood nothing at all. Simply, I was unworthy. I did not wish to turn on the light and illuminate my memories of the happiest eight days of my life. I groped, therefore, in the gloom unique to bedrooms until, vibrant with self-pity, I had located all of my few possessions—hairbrush, nail file, stainless-steel mirror and toothpicks. My resolve to leave the room without once looking back failed me when I reached the bedroom door. I turned and peered, but I could see nothing. I closed the door softly behind me and, even as I set my hand on the first step of the narrow attic staircase, I heard Sally Klee’s key scratching for leverage in the front door lock.

  I wake from my after-dinner sleep into silence. Perhaps silence, the sudden cessation of Sally Klee’s typewriter, has awakened me. My empty coffee cup still hangs by its handle from my finger, a viscous residue of tinned foods coats my tongue, whereas a trickle of saliva from my sleeping mouth has stained the paisley pattern of the chaise longue. Sleep after all solves nothing. I rise scratching and long for my toothpicks (fishbone in chamois pouch) but now they are at the very top of the house and to fetch them I should have to pass Sally Klee’s open door. And why should I not pass her open door? Why should I not be seen and be taken account of in this household? Am I invisible? Do I not deserve for my quiet, self-effacing removal to another room a simple acknowledgment, the curt exchange of nods and sighs and smiles between two who have known both suffering and loss? I find myself standing before the hallway clock, watching the small hand edge towards ten. The truth is that I do not pass her door because I smart from being ignored, because I am invisible and of no account. Because I long to pass her door. My eyes stray to the front door and fix there. To leave, yes, regain my independence and dignity, to set out on the City Ring Road, my possessions clasped to my chest, the infinite stars towering above me and the songs of nightingales ringing in my ears. Sally Klee receding ever farther behind me, she caring nothing for me, no, nor I for her, to lope carefree towards the orange dawn and on into the next day and again into the following night, crossing rivers and penetrating woods, to search for and find a new love, a new post, a new function, a new life. A new life. The very words are deadweight on my lips, for what new life could be more exalted than the old, what new function rival that of Sally Klee’s ex-lover? No future can equal my past. I turn towards the stairs and almost immediately begin to wonder if I could not convince myself of alternative descriptions of the situation. This afternoon, blighted by my own inadequacy, I acted for the best, it was in both our interests. Sally Klee, returning home from a troubled day, must have entered her room to discover it bereft of a certain few familiar articles and she must have felt then that her only source of comfort had left her side without a word. Without one word! My hands and feet are on the fourth stair. Surely it is she, not I, who is hurt. And what are explanations but silent, invisible things in your head? I have appropriated more than my fair share of damage and she is silent because she is sulking. It is she who longs for explanations and reassurance. She who longs to be esteemed, stroked, breathed on. Of course! How could I have failed to understand that during our silent meal. She needs me. I gain this realization like a mountaineer a virgin summit and arrive at Sally Klee’s open door a little out of breath, less from exertion than from triumph.

  Wreathed by the light from her writing lamp she sits with her back to me, elbows resting on the desk, head supported under the chin by her cupped hands. The sheet of paper in her typewriter is crowded with words. It has yet to be pulled clear and laid in the blue clasp file. Standing here directly behind Sally Klee I am stuck by a vivid memory from my earliest infancy. I am staring at my mother, who squats with her back to me, and then, for the first time in my life, I see past her shoulder as through a mist pale, spectral figures beyond the plate glass, pointing and mouthing silently. I advance noiselessly into the room and squat down a few feet behind Sally Klee’s chair. Now I am here, it seems an impossible idea she will ever turn in her chair and notice me.

  Two Fragments: March 199-

  Saturday

  Towards dawn Henry woke, but did not open his eyes. He saw a luminous white mass fold in upon itself, the residue of a dream he could not recall. Superimposed black shapes with arms and legs drifted upwards and away like crows against a blank sky. When he opened his eyes the room was sunk in deep blue light and he was staring into the eyes of his daughter. She stood close to the bed, her head level with his. Pigeons grunted and stirred on the window-ledge. Father and daughter, they stared and neither spoke. Footsteps receded on the street outside. Henry’s eyes narrowed. Marie�
��s grew larger, she moved her lips faintly, her tiny body shivered under the white nightgown. She watched her father drift into sleep.

  Presently she said, “I’ve got a vagina.”

  Henry moved his legs and woke again. “Yes,” he said.

  “So I’m a girl, aren’t I?”

  Henry supported himself on his elbow. “Go back to bed now, Marie. You’re cold.”

  She moved away from the bed, out of his reach, and stood facing the window, facing the gray light. “Are pigeons boys or girls?”

  Henry lay on his back and said, “Boys and girls.”

  Marie moved closer to the sound of the pigeons and listened. “Do girl pigeons have a vagina?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do they?”

  “Where do you think?”

  She considered, she listened. She looked back at him over her shoulder. “Under their feathers?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed delightedly. The gray light was brightening.

  “Into bed now,” Henry said with faked urgency.

  She walked towards him. “In your bed, Henry,” she demanded. He moved over for her and pulled back the covers. She climbed in and he watched her fall asleep.

  An hour later Henry slipped from the bed without waking the child. He stood beneath the dribbling shower and afterwards paused for a moment in front of a large mirror and regarded his naked dripping body. Lit from one side only by the watery light of first day he appeared to himself sculpted, monumental, capable of superhuman feats.

  He dressed hurriedly. When he was pouring coffee in the kitchen he heard loud voices and footsteps on the stairs outside his flat. Automatically he glanced out the window. A light rain was falling and the light was dropping. Henry went to the bedroom to watch out the window. Behind him Marie still slept. The sky was thick and angry.

  As far as he could see in either direction the street was filling with people preparing to collect rain-water. They were unrolling canvas tarpaulins, working in twos, in families. It grew darker. They stretched the canvases across the road and secured the ends to drain-pipes and railings. They rolled barrels into the center of the street to collect water from the tarpaulins. For all this activity there was silence, jealous, competitive silence. As usual fights were breaking out. Space was limited. Beneath Henry’s window two figures wrestled. It was hard to make them out at first. Now he saw that one was a heavily built woman, the other a man of slight build in his early twenties. With their arms locked about each other’s necks they edged sideways like a monstrous crab. The rain fell in a continuous sheet and the wrestlers were ignored. Their tarpaulins lay in piles at their feet, the disputed space was taken by others. Now they fought for pride alone and a few children gathered around to watch. They rolled to the ground. The woman was suddenly on top, pinning the man to the ground with her knee pressed against his throat. His legs kicked uselessly. A small dog, its pink member erect and vivid in the gloom, threw itself into the struggle. It clasped the man’s head between its front paws. Its haunches quivered like plucked strings and its pink tongue flashed from the root. The children laughed and pulled it away.

  Marie was out of bed when he turned away from the window. “What are you doing, Henry?”

  “Watching the rain,” he said, and gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the bathroom.

  It took an hour to walk to work. They stopped once, halfway across Chelsea bridge. Marie climbed from her pushchair and Henry held her up so she could look down at the river. It was a daily ritual. She gazed in silence and struggled a little when she’d had enough. Thousands walked in the same direction each morning. Henry rarely recognized a friend but if he did they walked together in silence.

  The Ministry rose from a vast plain of pavement. The pushchair bumped over green wedges of weed. The stones were cracking and subsiding. Human refuse littered the plain. Vegetables, rotten and trodden down, cardboard boxes flattened into beds, the remains of fires and the carcasses of roasted dogs and cats, rusted tin, vomit, worn tires, animal excrement. An old dream of horizontal lines converging on the thrusting steel-and-glass perpendicular was now beyond recall.

  The air above the fountain was gray with flies. Men and boys came there daily to squat on the wide concrete rim and defecate. In the distance, along one edge of the plain, several hundred men and women still slept. They were wrapped in striped, brightly colored blankets which in day time marked out shop space. From that group came the sound of a child crying, carried on the wind. No one stirred. “Why is that baby crying?” Marie shouted suddenly, and her own voice was lost in that big, miserable place. They hurried on, they were late. They were tiny, the only moving figures on the great expanse.

  To save time Henry ran down the stairs to the basement with Marie in his arms. Even before he was through the swing doors someone was saying to him, “We like them to be on time.” He turned and set Marie down. The play-group leader rested her hand on Marie’s head. She was over six feet tall and emaciated, her eyes were sunk deep and broken blood vessels danced on her cheeks. When she spoke again she stretched her lips tightly around her teeth and rose on her toes. “And if you don’t mind … the subscriptions. Would you care to settle now?” Henry was three months behind. He promised to bring money the next day. She shrugged and took Marie’s hand. He watched them pass through a door and caught a glimpse of two black children in a violent embrace. The noise was shrill and deafening, and cut off dead when the door closed behind them.

  When, thirty minutes later, Henry began to type the second letter of the morning, he could no longer remember the contents of the first. He worked from the long-hand scrawl of some higher official. When he came to the end of the fifteenth letter, shortly before lunch, he could not remember its beginning. And he did not care to move his eyes up the page to see. He carried the letters into a smaller office and gave them to someone without seeing who it was who took them. Henry returned to his desk, with only minutes now to waste before lunch. All the typists were smoking as they worked and the air was thick and sharp with smoke, not of this day alone but of ten thousand previous days and ten thousand days to come. There seemed no way forward. Henry lit a cigarette and waited.

  He descended the sixteen floors to the basement and joined a long queue of parents, mostly mothers, who came in their lunch hour to see their children. It was a murmuring queue of supplicants. They came out of need not duty. They spoke to each other in soft voices of their children while the line shuffled towards the swing doors. Each child had to be signed for. The play-group leader stood by the doors, by her presence alone conveying a need for silence and order. The parents complied, and signed. Marie was waiting for him just beyond the doors, and when she saw him she raised two clenched fists above her head and made an innocent little dance. Henry signed and took her hand.

  The sky had cleared and a sickly warmth rose from the flagstones. The vast plain teemed now like a colony of ants. Above it hung a pale sickle moon, clear against the blue sky. Marie climbed into the pushchair and Henry wheeled her through the crowds.

  All those with something to sell crammed onto the plain and spread their goods on colored blankets. An old woman was selling half-used cakes of soap arranged across a bright yellow rug like precious stones. Marie chose a green piece the size and shape of a chicken’s egg. Henry bargained with the woman and brought her down to half her first price. As they exchanged money for soap she made a show of scowls and Marie recoiled from her in surprise. The old woman smiled, she reached into her bag and brought out a small present. But Marie climbed back into her pushchair and would not take it. “Go away,” Marie shouted at the old woman. “Go away.” They walked on. Henry headed for a far corner of the plain where there was space to sit and eat lunch. He made a wide detour around the fountain, on the rim of which men perched like featherless birds.

  They sat on a parapet which ran along one side of the plain and ate bread and cheese. Below them stretched the deserted buildings of Whitehall. Henry
asked Marie questions about the play-group. There were rumors of indoctrination but his questions were casual and unpressing. “What did you play with today?”

  She told him excitedly of a game with water and a boy who had cried, a boy who always cried. He took from his pocket a small treat, cold, bright yellow, mysteriously curved and laid it in her hands.

  “What is it, Henry?”

  “It’s a banana. You can eat it.” He showed her how to peel the skin away, and told her how they grew in bunches in a far-off country. Later he asked, “Did the lady read you a story, Marie?”

  She turned and stared over the parapet. “Yes,” she said after a while.

  “What was it about?”

  She giggled. “It was about bananas … bananas … bananas.”

  They began the half-mile walk back to the Ministry and Marie chanted her new word quietly to herself.

  Far ahead the crowd was collecting around a point of interest. Some people were running past them to join it and were forming a circle around a compulsive beat, around a man with a drum. By the time Henry and Marie arrived the circle was ten deep and the cries of the man were muffled. Henry lifted Marie onto his shoulders and pushed deeper into the crowd. By his clothes the people recognized him as a Ministry worker and indifferently stood aside. Now it was possible to see. In the center of the ring was a squat, black oil drum. Animal skin was stretched over one end and the man beside it, a man the size of a great lumbering bear, banged it with his bare fist. Sacking doused in red paint wound around his body like a toga. His hair was red and coarse and reached almost to his waist. The hair on his bare arms was thick and matted like animal fur. Even his eyes were red.