Tuttle-MeetingTheMuse.txt

by Meeting The Muse(Lit)

  She developed a superstition about the key-ring, which had not been off her

  finger since she found it, but it was not something she was able to put into

  words -- it would have sounded too silly. Yet she had not gone back to

  Harrow-on-the-Hill, or even thought about it, during her week of writing, and

  now, as she began to think about Graham Storey again, feeling that old familiar

  tug of longing, the thought of having to give the ring up, to give it back to

  him, was almost painful enough to make her abandon her original plan to meet

  him.

  Finally she shut herself into a telephone box and dialed the number she knew by

  heart although she'd never used it. A man's voice answered, repeating the last

  four digits she had dialed. Unable to think of any response, she hung up.

  She put all her recent poems into a big brown envelope and set off for Harrow.

  She didn't know what she would say, but she would let him see that she wore the

  ring, let him read her poems--and then he would decide her fate. Standing before

  his green door, her hand poised to knock, something else seemed to take over and

  decide for her. Instead of knocking she bent down and leaned a little forward

  and pushed the envelope containing her poems through the letter-slot. Feeling as

  free, happy and satisfied as when she read through a poem she had just written

  and found it good, she walked away from his door.

  Haft-way down the hill on her way to the station she remembered her name was

  nowhere on any of the poems or the envelope. He would have no idea who had

  written them, and of course none at all of how to get in touch with her. But

  that didn't matter. She understood now that she had written them for him, and

  now he had them. She would get in touch with him after he'd had time to digest

  what she had written, and then they would meet, two poets together at last.

  She had grown tired of city life and the turmoil of London, so the next morning

  she took the train down to Cornwall, dreaming of high white cliffs above the

  slate-blue sea, of quaint fishing villages, of ancient stone circles and wild

  moorland ponies.

  The weather was kind. She sat and wrote in the sun in the ruined castle of

  Tintagel, and in quayside cafes in half a dozen Cornish fishing villages. She

  lived each day -- walking, looking, eating and writing --without thinking beyond

  the moment, and she was happy. When the weather turned and rain swept in from

  the sea, she got back on the train. She visited Exeter, Bristol, Bath and

  Brighton. And then one night, sitting in a pub in Brighton with a halfpint of

  bitter and her notebook and pen, she saw two lovers, a few feet away from her,

  holding hands and kissing. She felt a pang of loneliness as she remembered how

  she had loved Graham Storey, yet never met him. She was scheduled to fly back to

  Texas in just over a week.

  The next day saw her back in Harrow. She pushed her latest poems through his

  letter-slot, but then, instead of retreating to a hotel in London, she hauled

  her duffle bag further up the hill where a pub called The King's Head had rooms

  for rent. She spent the rest of the day wandering around the hill, browsing in

  antique shops, gazing at the picturesque old buildings of Harrow School, and

  reading inscriptions on tombstones in the churchyard. She had dinner in the

  hotel restaurant, and afterwards settled herself in a quiet comer of the lounge

  bar, having decided to spend the rest of the evening writing.

  She hadn't been there long enough to set pen to paper when Graham Storey walked

  in. He wore jeans, an opennecked white shirt, and a scruffy old tweed jacket

  going at the elbows. He looked around with a gaze as wide-open and innocently

  curious as a baby's and intercepted her stare. She was unable to look away.

  After a moment his eyes left hers and he turned to the bar. She shoved notebook

  and pen away in her bag. She was trembling. A few minutes later, as she had

  known he would, he carried his drink away from the bar, across the room, and

  joined her at her table.

  It was an ordinary sort of pick-up, with nothing poetic about it. Probably, if

  she hadn't known who he was, she would have brushed him off -- she had no liking

  for the sort of casual encounters that began in bars -- but if she hadn't known

  who he was, she would never have stared at him in that way which encouraged,

  practically demanded, his attention.

  When they got around to exchanging names, she did not reveal that she knew who

  he was. He touched her left hand very lightly. "Married?"

  Her heart pounding very hard, she turned the ring on her hand so that the key

  was visible. "No. You?"

  If he recognized the ring he gave no sign. "Never. Women never stay with me for

  very long. I can't blame them. I'm a selfish bastard, and my work comes before a

  relationship. No woman likes to feel she's second-best, not even those who seem

  the most sympathetic, even those originally drawn to me by the work." He

  hesitated, as if expecting her question, and then explained, "I'm a poet, you

  see, and one with a rather old-fashioned attitude toward the Muse. Oh, don't

  feel embarrassed because you haven't heard of me! I'm quite successful as a

  poet, but I know how little that means in this country today!"

  When closing time was called, he gave her a look shifty and shy and invited her

  home with him.

  This was the invitation she had longed for, the answer to her dreams, yet she

  hesitated at the intrusion of an unwelcome memory. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

  He gazed at her with unbelievably guileless eyes. "Not yet. But I'd like to." He

  put out his hand and caught her fingers. "What do you say?"

  She said yes. They were up most of the night talking and making love. In the

  morning they went back to the King's Head to get her things, and she moved in

  with him.

  It was only supposed to be for a week. But when the time came to fly home, she

  forfeited her ticket and let the plane go without her. Graham was overjoyed, but

  as soon as they had celebrated, he told her she would have to find a place of

  her own.

  "I love you, but I can't live with you-- how can I work when I'm always aware of

  you in the next room, and wanting to make love to you? I can't live with anyone.

  Poets shouldn't."

  She had never told him that she was a poet, too, although she continued to

  write, often early in the morning while he still slept, and was producing a

  complete poem nearly every day. Each one she left as a love-offering on his

  desk. Neither of them ever spoke of this.

  She believed that she would be the exception, the one woman he could live with,

  but obviously it would take him some time to come around to this realization. In

  the meantime, she was not going to be a drag on him in any way. It turned out to

  be surprisingly easy to tap into the blackmarket world of low-paying jobs,

  despite the soaring unemployment figures currently making headlines, and soon

  she was working as a cook-waitress at a care in South Harrow. She found a room

  to rent nearby, but spent little time in it. Now that she had a place of her

  own, Graham wanted her in his place as much as possible, and they spent every

/>   night together.

  Two months passed, then three. She was still happy, although no longer writing.

  It might have been lack of time and energy -- it was difficult, between her job

  and Graham, to ever get two consecutive hours to herself--but she felt the real

  reason lay deeper, that the well of creativity she had magically tapped into had

  run dry. Or maybe it was just the need to write which had gone. She didn't

  really regret it. Once she had wanted to be a great poet, but now she just

  wanted Graham to marry her. She'd be legal then, she could give up the smell of

  stale fat frying that always clung to her hair and clothes and get a decent job,

  she could give up that poky furnished room in South Harrow and live honestly

  with her husband, maybe they would have a baby . . .

  One day after work as she let herself in to Graham's house she was aware of a

  changed,charged, atmosphere. The skin on her arms and back prickled. She thought

  she smelled something in the entrance hall, like a woman's perfume, but when she

  sniffed it was gone. She went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and

  found the kettle still warm from recent use. Yet Graham never drank tea. The

  last of a pot of coffee, well-stewed by now, still simmered away on the

  hot-plate of his coffee-maker.

  It was at that moment, sensing the recent presence of some possibly threatening

  stranger, that she realized the key-ring was gone.

  She clutched her left hand in her right, tightly, as if she'd cut it and had to

  staunch the flow of blood. She couldn't remember the last time she'd noticed it,

  but surely it had been there this morning?

  More than three months, almost more than four, now, since she'd first walked

  into this house, a stranger, and found the ring and put it on. She had never

  taken it off since, she was sure she hadn't taken it off, and it had always been

  a perfect fit, so how could she have lost it?

  She began to search, frantically, crawling around on the kitchen floor, then

  rummaging through the cushions of the sofa and the easy chair in the lounge,

  aware even as she did so that she was more likely to have lost the ring at work.

  Maybe she had taken it off to wash her hands and left it beside the wash-room

  sink.

  She didn't find it, not that day and not ever, no matter where she searched.

  Graham was no help. He said he hadn't noticed that she wore a ring. When,

  indignantly, she described it, he said yes, he remembered something like that,

  but he hadn't seen her wearing it for ages. He also denied that he'd had a

  visitor that day, gazing at her with his unbelievably guileless blue eyes, and

  she was afraid to insist. She had the sudden cold unwelcome thought, as he

  kissed her gently and told her not to worry, commented that she looked tired and

  perhaps should have an early night tonight, that he had fallen out of love with

  her.

  She got up early the next morning and tried to write. It was the old, nearly

  forgotten struggle in the dark once again, and she knew, in the certainty of

  despair, that it would always be like this from now on, since she had lost the

  ring.

  That evening he took her out to dinner at the Indian restaurant at the bottom of

  the hill. Over the nanns and the curry he told her he needed to go away for

  awhile, by himself. He thought he'd probably go to the Lake District, or to the

  Highlands of Scotland. He needed to do some walking and some thinking. The Muse

  hadn't been answering his call lately; he was in a rut. And while on that

  subject, he rather thought the two of them were in a rut as well; some of the

  magic had gone. A little time apart would be good for them. When he got back,

  they'd see how they felt. He'd give her a ring when he got back.

  She clung to the fragile hope he offered, struggling to believe that when he got

  back all would be well, that all was not yet lost. He made love to her that

  night as one who performs a familiar task, his thoughts far away, yet she still

  tried to tell herself that it was as good between them as it had ever been.

  The next morning she woke before he did, and wondered as she lay there beside

  him if there was any point in getting up and trying to write. She had just about

  decided there was not when she heard something fall through the letter-box. An

  image came into her mind as she heard the sound, of a large, brown envelope

  containing a sheaf of unsigned poems. It was hours still before the postman

  would come--this had to be a personal delivery, and the person who delivered it,

  she knew with absolute certainty, would be wearing a gold key-ring. Her name

  didn't matter, only her function as Graham Storey's muse.