In Between the Sheets

by Ian Mcewan

  Stephen stood up and raised his hand like an Indian chief. “Let’s not,” he said. “Let’s not.” She nodded and returned to the door and called out to their daughter in a steady tone, immune to imitation. Then she said quietly, “I’m talking about Charmian. Miranda’s friend.”

  “What’s she like?”

  She hesitated. “She’s upstairs. You’ll see her.”

  “Ah…”

  They sat in silence. From upstairs Stephen heard giggling, the familiar, distant hiss of the plumbing, a bedroom door opening and closing. From his shelves he picked out a book about dreams and thumbed through it. He was aware of his wife leaving the room, but he did not look up. The setting afternoon sun lit the room. “An emission during a dream indicates the sexual nature of the whole dream, however obscure and unlikely the contents are. Dreams culminating in emission may reveal the object of the dreamer’s desire as well as his inner conflicts. An orgasm cannot lie.”

  “Hello Daddy,” said Miranda. “This is Charmian, my friend.” The light was in his eyes and at first he thought they held hands, like mother and child side by side before him, illuminated from behind by the orange dying sun, waiting to be greeted. Their recent laughter seemed concealed in their silence. Stephen stood up and embraced his daughter. She felt different to the touch, stronger perhaps. She smelled unfamiliar, she had a private life at last, accountable to no one. Her bare arms were very warm.

  “Happy birthday,” Stephen said, closing his eyes as he squeezed her and preparing to greet the minute figure at her side. He stepped back smiling and virtually knelt before her on the carpet to shake hands, this doll-like figurine who stood no more than 3 foot 6 at his daughter’s side, whose wooden, oversized face smiled steadily back at him.

  “I’ve read one of your books” was her calm first remark. Stephen sat back in his chair. The two girls still stood before him as though they wished to be described and compared. Miranda’s T-shirt did not reach her waist by several inches and her growing breasts lifted the edge of the shirt clear of her belly. Her hand rested on her friend’s shoulder protectively.

  “Really?” said Stephen after some pause. “Which one?”

  “The one about evolution.”

  “Ah …” Stephen took from his pocket the envelope containing the record gift certificate and gave it to Miranda. “It’s not much,” he said, remembering the bag full of gifts. Miranda retired to a chair to open her envelope. The dwarf however remained standing in front of him, regarding him fixedly. She fingered the hem of her child’s dress.

  “Miranda told me a lot about you,” she said politely.

  Miranda looked up and giggled. “No, I didn’t,” she protested.

  Charmian went on. “She’s very proud of you.” Miranda blushed. Stephen wondered at Charmian’s age.

  “I haven’t given her much reason to be,” he found himself saying, and gestured at the room to indicate the nature of his domestic situation. The tiny girl gazed patiently into his eyes and he felt for a moment poised on the edge of total confession. I never satisfied my wife in marriage, you see. Her orgasms terrified me.

  Miranda had discovered her present. With a little cry she left her chair, cradled his head between her hands and stooping down kissed his ear.

  “Thank you,” she murmured hotly and loudly, “thank you, thank you.” Charmian took a couple of paces nearer till she was almost standing between his open knees. Miranda settled on the arm of his chair. It grew darker.

  He felt the warmth of Miranda’s body on his neck. She slipped down a little farther and rested her head on his shoulder. Charmian stirred. Miranda said, “I’m glad you came,” and drew her knees up to make herself smaller. From outside Stephen heard his wife moving from one room to another. He lifted his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, careful not to touch her breasts, and hugged her to him.

  “Are you coming to stay with me when the holidays begin?”

  “Charmian too …” She spoke childishly, but her words were delicately pitched between inquiry and stipulation.

  “Charmian too,” Stephen agreed. “If she wants to.” Charmian let her gaze drop and said demurely, “Thank you.”

  During the following week Stephen made preparations. He swept the floor of his only spare room, he cleaned the windows there and hung new curtains. He rented a television. In the mornings he worked with customary numbness and entered his achievements in the ledger book. He brought himself at last to set out what he could remember of his dream. The details seemed to be accumulating satisfactorily. His wife was in the café. It was for her that he was buying coffee. A young girl took a cup and held it to the machine. But now he was the machine, now he filled the cup. This sequence, laid out neatly, cryptically in his journal, worried him less now. It had, as far as he was concerned, a certain literary potential. It needed fleshing out, and since he could remember no more he would have to invent the rest. He thought of Charmian, of how small she was, and he examined carefully the chairs ranged around the dining-room table. She was small enough for a baby’s high chair. In a department store he carefully chose two cushions. The impulse to buy the girls presents he distrusted and resisted. But still he wanted to do things for them. What could he do? He raked out gobs of ancient filth from under the kitchen sink, poured dead flies and spiders from the lamp fixtures, boiled fetid dishcloths; he bought a toilet brush and scrubbed the crusty bowl. Things they would never notice. Had he really become such an old fool? He spoke to his wife on the phone.

  “You never mentioned Charmian before.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s a fairly recent thing.”

  “Well…” he struggled, “how do you feel about it?”

  “It’s fine by me,” she said, very relaxed. “They’re good friends.” She was trying him out, he thought. She hated him for his fearfulness, his passivity and for all the wasted hours between the sheets. It had taken her many years of marriage to say so. The experimentation in his writing, the lack of it in his life. She hated him. And now she had a lover, a vigorous lover. And still he wanted to say, Is it right, our lovely daughter with a friend who belongs by rights in a circus or a silk-hung brothel serving tea? Our flaxen-haired, perfectly formed daughter, our tender bud, is it not perverse?

  “Expect them Thursday evening,” said his wife by way of goodbye.

  When Stephen answered the door he saw only Charmian at first, and then he made out Miranda outside the tight circle of light from the hall, struggling with both sets of luggage. Charmian stood with her hands on her hips, her heavy head tipped slightly to one side. Without greeting she said, “We had to take a taxi and he’s downstairs waiting.”

  Stephen kissed his daughter, helped her in with the cases and went downstairs to pay the taxi. When he returned, a little out of breath from the two flights of stairs, the front door of his flat was closed. He knocked and had to wait. It was Charmian who opened the door and stood in his path.

  “You can’t come in,” she said solemnly. “You’ll have to come back later,” and she made as if to close the door. Laughing in his nasal, unconvincing way, Stephen lunged forwards, caught her under her arms and scooped her into the air. At the same time he stepped into the flat and closed the door behind him with his foot. He meant to lift her high in the air like a child, but she was heavy, heavy like an adult, and her feet trailed a few inches above the ground, it was all he could manage. She thumped his hand with her fists and shouted.

  “Put me…” Her last word was cut off by the crash of the door. Stephen released her instantly. “… down,” she said softly.

  They stood in the bright hallway, both a little out of breath. For the first time he saw Charmian’s face clearly. Her head was bullet shaped and ponderous, her lower lip curled permanently outwards and she had the beginnings of a double chin. Her nose was squat and she had the faint downy grayness of a moustache. Her neck was thick and bullish. Her eyes were large and calm, set far apart, brown like a dog’s. She was not ugly, not with those eyes
. Miranda was at the far end of the long hall. She wore ready-faded jeans and a yellow shirt. Her hair was in plaits and tied at the ends with scraps of blue denim. She came and stood by her friend’s side.

  “Charmian doesn’t like being lifted about,” she explained. Stephen guided them towards his sitting room.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Charmian and laid his hand on her shoulder for an instant. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I was only joking when I came to the door,” she said evenly.

  “Yes of course,” Stephen said hurriedly. “I didn’t think anything else.”

  During dinner, which Stephen had bought ready-cooked from a local Italian restaurant, the girls talked to him about their school. He allowed them a little wine and they giggled a lot and clutched at each other when they fell about. They prompted each other through a story about their headmaster who looked up girls’ skirts. He remembered some anecdotes of his own time at school, or perhaps they were other people’s time, but he told them well and they laughed delightedly. They became very excited. They pleaded for more wine. He told them one glass was enough.

  Charmian and Miranda said they wanted to do the dishes. Stephen sprawled in an armchair with a large brandy, soothed by the blur of their voices and the homely clatter of dishes. This was where he lived, this was his home. Miranda brought him coffee. She set it down on the table with the mock deference of a waitress.

  “Coffee, sir?” she said. Stephen moved over in his chair and she sat in close beside him. She moved easily between woman and child. She drew her legs up as before and pressed herself against her large shaggy father. She had unloosened her plaits and her hair spread across Stephen’s chest, golden in the electric light.

  “Have you found a boyfriend at school?” he asked.

  She shook her head and kept it pressed against his shoulder.

  “Can’t find a boyfriend, eh?” Stephen insisted. She sat up suddenly and lifted her hair clear of her face.

  “There are loads of boys,” she said angrily, “loads of them, but they’re so stupid, they’re such show-offs.” Never before had the resemblance between his wife and daughter seemed so strong. She glared at him. She included him with the boys at school. “They’re always doing things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t know… the way they comb their hair and bend their knees.”

  “Bend their knees?”

  “Yes. When they think you’re watching them. They stand in front of our window and pretend they’re combing their hair when they’re just looking in at us, showing off. Like this.” She sprang out of the chair and crouched in the center of the room in front of an imaginary mirror, bent low like a singer over a microphone, her head tilted grotesquely, combing with long, elaborate strokes; she stepped back, preened and then combed again. It was a furious imitation. Charmian was watching it too. She stood in the doorway with coffee in each hand.

  “What about you, Charmian,” Stephen said carelessly, “do you have a boyfriend?” Charmian set the coffee cups down and said, “Of course I don’t,” and then looked up and smiled at them both with the tolerance of a wise old woman.

  Later on he showed them their bedroom.

  “There’s only one bed,” he told them. “I thought you wouldn’t mind sharing it.” It was an enormous bed, seven foot by seven, one of the few large objects he had brought with him from his marriage. The sheets were deep red and very old, from a time when all sheets were white. He did not care to sleep between them now, they had been a wedding present. Charmian lay across the bed, she hardly took up more room than one of the pillows. Stephen said good night. Miranda followed him into the hall, stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

  “You’re not a show-off,” she whispered and clung to him. Stephen stood perfectly still. “I wish you’d come home,” she said.

  He kissed the top of her head. “This is home,” he said. “You’ve got two homes now.” He broke her hold and led her back to the entrance of the bedroom. He squeezed her hand. “See you in the morning,” he murmured, left her there and hurried into his study. He sat down, horrified at his erection, elated. Ten minutes passed. He thought he should be somber, analytical, this was a serious matter. But he wanted to sing, he wanted to play his piano, he wanted to go for a walk. He did none of those things. He sat still, staring ahead, thinking of nothing in particular, and waited for the chill of excitement to leave his belly.

  When it did he went to bed. He slept badly. For many hours he was tormented by the thought that he was still awake. He awoke completely from fragmentary frightful dreams into total darkness. It seemed to him then that for some time he had been hearing a sound. He could not remember what the sound was, only that he had not liked it. It was silent now, the darkness hissed about his ears. He wanted to piss, and for a moment he was afraid to leave his bed. The certainty of his own death came to him now as it occasionally did, as a sick revelation, not the dread of dying, but of dying now, 3:15 A.M., lying still with the sheet drawn up around his neck and wanting, like all mortal animals, to urinate.

  He turned the light on and went into the bathroom. His cock was small in his hands, nut brown and wrinkled by the cold, or perhaps the fear. He felt sorry for it. As he pissed his stream split in two. He pulled his foreskin a little and the streams converged. He felt sorry for himself. He stepped back into the hallway, and as he closed the bathroom door behind him and cut off the rumble of the cistern he heard that sound again, the sound he had listened to in his sleep. A sound so forgotten, so utterly familiar that only now as he advanced very cautiously along the hallway did he know it to be the background for all other sounds, the frame of all anxieties. The sound of his wife in, or approaching, orgasm. He stopped several yards short of the girls’ bedroom. It was a low moan through the medium of a harsh, barking cough, it rose imperceptibly in pitch through fractions of a tone, then fell away at the end, down but not very far, still higher than the starting point. He did not dare go nearer the door. He strained to listen. The end came and he heard the bed creak a little, and footsteps across the floor. He saw the door handle turn. Like a dreamer he asked no questions, he forgot his nakedness, he had no expectations.

  Miranda screwed up her eyes in the brightness. Her yellow hair was loose. Her white cotton nightdress reached her ankles and its folds concealed the lines of her body. She could be any age. She hugged her arms around her body. Her father stood in front of her, very still, very massive, one foot in front of the other as though frozen mid-step, arms limp by his side, his naked black hairs, his wrinkled, nut-brown naked self. She could be a child or a woman, she could be any age. She took a little step forward.

  “Daddy,” she moaned, “I can’t get to sleep.” She took his hand and he led her into the bedroom. Charmian lay curled up on the far side of the bed, her back to them. Was she awake, was she innocent? Stephen held back the bedclothes and Miranda climbed between the sheets. He tucked her in and sat on the edge of the bed. She arranged her hair.

  “Sometimes I get frightened when I wake up in the middle of the night,” she told him.

  “So do I,” he said, and bent over and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “But there’s nothing to be frightened of really, is there?”

  “No,” he said, “Nothing.” She settled herself deeper into the deep red sheets and gazed into his face.

  “Tell me something though, tell me something to make me go to sleep.”

  He looked across at Charmian.

  “Tomorrow you can look in the cupboard in the hall. There’s a whole bag of presents in there.”

  “For Charmian too?”

  “Yes.” He studied her face by the light from the hall. He was beginning to feel the cold. “I bought them for your birthday,” he added. But she was asleep and almost smiling, and in the pallor of her upturned throat he thought he saw from one bright morning in his childhood a field of dazzling white snow which he, a small boy of eight,
had not dared scar with footprints.

  To and Fro

  Now Leech pushes his legs out straight till they tremble with the effort, locks his fingers behind his head, cracks them at the joints, chuckles his deliberate, dirty chuckle at what he pretends to see in the middle distance and bats me gently behind the head with his elbow. Looks like it’s over, what would you say?

  Is it true? I lie in the dark. It is true, I think the old to and fro rocked her to sleep. The ancient to and fro had no end and the suspension came unnoticed like sleep itself. Rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, between the fall and rise the perilous silent gap, the decision she makes to go on.

  The sky a blank yellow-white, the canal odor reduced by distance to the smell of sweet ripe cherries, the melancholy of airliners turning in the stack and here in the office others cut up the day’s papers, this is their work. Paste columns to index cards.

  If I lie in the dark I can see in the dark pale skin on the fragile ridge of cheekbone, it carves a dogleg shape in the dark. The deep-set eyes are open and invisible. Through almost parted lips a point of light glints on saliva and tooth, the thick belt of hair blacker than the surrounding night. Sometimes I look at her and wonder who will die first, who will die first, you or me? The colossal weight of stillness, how many more hours?

  Leech. I see Leech in this same corridor in frequent consultation with the Director. I see them, together they pace the long doorless corridor. The Director walks erect, his hands, deep in his pockets, jingle with gewgaws and Leech stoops subordinately, head twisted towards his superior’s neck, his hands clasped behind his back, the fingers of one hand rolled around the wrist of the other to check scrupulously his own pulse. I see what the Director sees, our images combine—Leech and this man; twist the bright metal ring and they spring apart, one standing, one sitting, both posing.

  Saliva glints on a point of tooth. Listen to her breathing, rhythmic soaring and plunging, deep sleep air, not her own. One animal need tracks another through the night, black-furred sleep smothered pleasure from a low branch, the old tree creaks, gone, memory, listen to her … house smells sweet. The ancient, soft to and fro rocked her to sleep. Do you remember the small wood, the gnarled and stunted trees, the leafless branches and twigs fused to one canopy, what we found there? What we saw? Ah … the tiny, patient heroism of being awake, the Arctic hole bigger than the surrounding ice widens, too large to assume a shape, inclusive of the optical limits of sight. I lie in the dark and look in, I lie in it and gaze out, and from another room one of her children cries out in her sleep, A bear!