Suzerain: a ghost story

by Adrian John Smith

  I recall these lost and losing days not so much in narrative form, but in a kaleidoscopic, mnemonic rush which resists connection. There have been moments of anger, moments when our words have detonated like bombs in a market place to leave us stunned and reeling. Mostly, these days have been characterised by tension and opposition. Here is Suzy nervously pacing the cottage, wishing she were elsewhere, wishing she were with Moira, so like a cat that I stroke her. Suzy pointing out Moira's house as we walk the embankment, a moment of perturbation as I witness the lost look in her eye, the way she draws her teeth over her bottom lip. The jolt, the instant of terror when Suzy wakes to sit bolt upright in the bed beside me: I've done something awful, she says. Really, truly fucking awful. But I don't know what it is. I just don't know what it is. The following afternoon, Suzy stares at the river, biting her lip, trying to penetrate the still surface of her own lacunae. She is losing weight.

  One hot night, I elect to find a lover of my own. I want a big cock to clamp myself around; a Heinrich kind of guy to pound Suzy right out of my system. I wear a black dress that clings, eye-shadow which sparkles, lip-stick that accentuates and thickens. I muss my hair into an attitude. And who wouldn't want to fuck me?

  I wander pub to pub like a lost soul, finding only couples and old men. In the final desperate stand of the evening I enter a pub of smoke and rock-and-roll. Very drunk, drunker even that I realised, I fall from my shoes and crash down on a table full of drinks. Glasses smash. Beer foams on the floor. Stupid cunt! Somebody strophes. Poor fucking grockle, somebody anti-strophes. I beg to differ but I just make stupid gurning noises. There's a minor cut on my forearm and I lick at the blood. My dress is soaked and beer is pooled between my splayed legs so that it looks as if I've pissed myself - pissed myself hugely.

  They pick me up and put me in the back of a car- I've no idea what kind. I manage to open the window and vomit hot acid with essence of white wine down the door. It's a couple of kids, a boy and a girl. They say their names which I promptly forget. I start to tell them about Steve, and then stop when it starts to sound like the truth. I ask them in for a drink. I think they're both quite taken with me, and if I could just stop feeling sick I think we could have some fun. As I open the door I at last sense their embarrassment. They leave me on the doorstep chasing a flickering lighter flame with the unsteady tip of my cigarette.

  I wake on the couch. It's still dark and there's a treacly dribble of pit-of-stomach vomit on the cushion by my head. I rise unsteadily and search the cottage without hope.

  The blue pills. Suzy produces two of them. Just something Moira keeps around, she says. They're very powerful, she adds. We drop one each. I forget everything, forgive everything. I sink deeper and deeper into the bed, while simultaneously feeling so close to escaping my body, to achieving a floating ecstasy, that I cry and tremble and gibber like a lunatic. When Suzy brings me to orgasm, my cartwheeling brain is sick and demented with pleasure. Suzy seeks my mouth, empties herself into me like a dark afflatus, arching my floating body until I am filled with her, until my eyes roll back in my head and I drown in sweet darkness.

  I wake to Suzy stroking my back, gently tracing my musculature. The raucous shriek of gulls pierce the yellow bubble of non-thought floating in the front of my brain. I stretch like a cat, smiling at the after-glow, the wild too-much-ness of sex - there like a body memory in my nerves, there deep in my tissue. But, as I open my eyes, I realise that there is no - or little - actual memory of sex at all. I remember the kiss, remember it like drowning. Then another, like the antithesis of the first - Suzy drawing me back down from the heights of an orgasm I can't remember, leaving me panting in the pre-dawn dark, her hand nestled flatly against my wet and parted labia, whispering in my ear, my head in the crook of her arm so that she clamps my sweat-running brow, calming me, soothing me (weeping, trembling me) - it's you Karen, she whispers. You're the one. You've always been the one.

  Are you awake? Suzy says.

  Mmmm, I say. Barely. Pleasure throbs through my brain. Don't stop, I say. I want to be stroked.

  Like a cat.

  Like a cat. Purrr. I saw you, I say. At that - the Blue Moon. I ran.

  It doesn't matter, Suzy says.

  Then I remember something. I had a dream, I say. A strange dream.

  Tell me, Suzy says.

  I thought other people's dreams bored you. They bore me.

  Only the dreams of boring people, Karen. And you (she kisses my shoulder) are far from being one of those. Come on, tell me.

  I turn onto my stomach. Suzy kneels, the better to massage my back.

  I dreamed I was at Moira's house. It was … there was an oak-panelled lobby. A hall. At the bottom of a staircase. I pressed my cheek to the wood. To the wall. Then I splayed my fingers against it either side of my head. You know - as if I were listening for a heartbeat. As if the house had a heart. As if it were alive.

  Wow. And was it?

  No. But I was happy to be there. It was like going home. I wanted the house more than I've ever wanted anything. I wanted … I wanted to make love to it. Christ, that's weird.

  It's a dream. Dreams are weird. That's the point of them. Anything else?

  No. I remember - I was wearing some kind of necklace. No. It was a locket. Some kind of locket. Silver? Yes. A silver, locket.

  It felt right that I should be wearing it. I kissed it. Like some kind of - what? - sacrament. But it burned me, as if were full of fire. Ice and fire. Suze? Are you going to stay? Let's pack up and get the fuck out of this place. It's a bad place for us.

  The dream Karen. Finish the dream.

  I saw Moira. In the dream, I saw Moira. I saw her and I hated her. She was in a cellar. God, how awful! She was in a cellar. The walls were painted white. It was very real. She was chained to the wall by a collar around her neck. Like a dog. I despised her for her weakness. She was terrified of me. I had such power - I wanted to kill her.

  Do you want to kill her now? Or just in the dream?

  I don't know, I say. Not knowing.

  She's not what you think, Suzy says. Don't tense up on me Karen. And did you? In the dream, did you kill her?

  No. I laughed at her, I say. She was so weak, so pathetic with that collar around her neck. Do we know anyone called Martha?

  Do we? Suzy wonders. I don't think so.

  In the dream, I say, I remember, she called me Martha. She begged. Please let me go, she said. Martha, please.

  Well, Suzy says, I don't know anyone called Martha. She's probably a character in one of those novels you've so thoroughly digested. Don't worry about it. Why don't you go back to sleep?

  I feel the weight of her as she leaves the bed. I don't turn to watch her dress. Instead, I close my eyes to sleep. Then I remember something else from the dream. I'm going to drown you like a dog, I said.

  Even after sleep I feel the effects of the blue pill, and I sit stunned over my work for most of the day, as if contemplating an epiphany, smiling feebly as Suzy leaves for Moira's. Have fun, I say.

  I walk a lot. I walk the coast path, as planned, walking in earnest, walking as I had in the spring. The path is high and rugged, sunshine and breeze. I wear my hiking boots, a lumber shirt and jogging pants; shades and bandanna tied pirate-fashion to keep my hair from my eyes. A day-sack on my back. A thermos flask of Whitards tea (which promises to be full-bodied and strong), a bottle of mineral-water, an ordnance survey map and a pocket book on bird identification which I had found in the cottage. Note-book and pens which I pack purely out of habit. Heather and gorse with yellow flowers. Wind singing in the wires of a mast on a headland. Kestrels hover over the gorse slopes and diving birds plummet from the cliffs. Auk and cormorants. Black-headed gulls and herring gulls. If gulls were rare you'd see their beauty. (I write this down.)

  On one walk I pack a melon in the day-sack. I descend into a cove by way of some stone steps and a wooden ladder with a smooth-worn handrail. I slice the melon on a tea-towel, scrape out the seed, t
hen chomp into the juicy flesh while I watch the lazy roll of the sea, keeping an eye out for the fabled local seals. Not thinking of Suzy. Not thinking of Moira. But a booming sound rumbles in from the horizon - a sound like gunnery practice - not loud enough to startle me, but disconcerting enough to remind me how provisional is this feeling of tranquillity, of emotional composure and integrity. The moment detonates, splitting me into my many selves. Karen who wipes melon juice from her chin. Karen who needs to work well again. Karen who treats literature as an extension of politics, the site of ideological and class conflict; Karen who wants to feel her way back to the simple thrill of language. Karen who wants out of history; Karen who is horribly fascinated by how and where history is taking us. Karen who sleeps (slept?) with Suzy. Who (is this my first real admission?) desires Moira, desires the unknown. Karen who wants married life with children. Who will buy a cat, move to the country, have flowers in tubs by the door. A horse in a paddock. Who wants to get her career back on track. Who wants to sober up, get a grip, live well and cleanly. Who wants to party her way to senseless and sensuous oblivion. Karen who wants a blue pill. Dr Karen Moor of the mid-night lamp, nursing Steve to his death with tender and stoical care in a poignant but fictitious tragedy (small t). Karen who had found Steve dead in his flat three days after communications had ceased. Steve wearing Karen's underwear, a rope cutting into his neck and the paraphernalia of a pharmaceutical and pornographic orgy scattered over the bed and floor. A smell of death, corruption, stale semen. A terribly articulated question.

  I read Moira's book - I have little trouble finding it, local authors being well-placed in local bookshops. I study the photograph of Moira on the jacket - study it with as much care as I study the text. I take it with me on one of my walks and read it in another secluded cove. A slim volume, I get through it in a couple of hours. It's about a carceral society. The population, docile - kept terrified by propaganda describing the enemy without, the enemy within - have accepted chip implants, electronic tagging, Orwellian surveillance - all in the name of security. Premeditated acts, political organisation, dissent, are impossible. There is food control, thought control. Drugs to keep the consumer/citizen happy, a battering of entertainment to keep her dim, unthinking. There are chemical lobotomies available for those who desire them and people of intelligence opt for this, because thought without action, without even voice, is unbearable. The only form of pure expression is sudden, explosive violence. Murder and suicide are the last remaining creative acts. The society is overseen by a super-computer, the eponymous Suzerain. The novel is an update of every dystopian novel from Orwell to Atwood. It also sounds like tomorrow's truth. I read the final page and throw the damn fucking thing into the gentle swell which sways the weeds between the rocks. The novel disgusts me. I circumvent years' worth of academic cant and conflate the novel's narrator with Moira Craft herself, slipping between her feeble ironies, unpacking the distancing effects of her textual strategies. I make the judgement that she actually admires the Suzerain, that she is enthralled by its cold, all-pervasive, totalizing control. When I return to David's cottage that day, Suzy, of course, is absent.

  I micro-wave a processed beef stew (I'm shopping for one now of course) which is exactly what I need. I dry my hair, then watch TV desultorily for an hour or so, knowing what I will eventually do but not wanting to admit to it. Then I admit it. I turn off the TV, open a bottle of wine, then pace while I drink. I watch the rain-lashed darkness through the window, the cascade of rain-water patterning the glass.

  I climb the spiral staircase, enter the bedroom, snap on the bedside lamp. I need some grass. But before I can open Suzy's drawer, I see a white envelope on my pillow - the letter K inscribed on it. I look at it for a moment and then I pick it up. I feel something heavy inside. Something metallic? Something lapidary? A gift of hope or the thing which will break my heart? I tear open the envelope and tip the object onto the bed. I stare at the locket from my dream. I stare at it for a long time. An innocent, innocuous-looking thing, just lying there being silver. Yet I cannot bring myself to touch it. Then, as if to guard a secret, I close the door. There's a fluttering sensation in my stomach. I sit on the bed, take up the locket, trace my fingers over its filigreed edge. I press it to my cheek and smile at its cold touch. Then I open it. Resting on a bed of amber, like a boat on a still pond, sits a blue pill. I shift closer to the light so that I can study its colour, the sheen of its texture, its perfect shape, like a blue moon. A kingfisher blue, a Moira blue, a swallow-me-whole blue. Suzy says swallow. Moira says swallow. I moisten just looking at it, feeling it, caressing it between finger and thumb. The pill seems to promise some ultimate union, a surrender to Moira in some indefinable way. I am tortured by her, fascinated by her, repelled by her. I want her. Why did I flee the restaurant terrace that night if not for this reason? Why am I aroused when I smell Moira's perfume, Moira's sex, on Suzy's clothes, her skin, her breath? If not because I want her. Should I tell? Yes, I'll tell. Three times (always after thinking back to the night with the blue pill) I have picked up the phone and dialled the number to Moira's house, not to speak to Suzy, but hoping to speak to Moira. Three times I have put it down again. Once, when she called back, I could not, simply could not speak. Karen? she said. I listened, mutely, biting my lip. Come on Karen, I know you're there. Hey, she said, maybe I'll come see you one night. How would that be? Then I hung up. But she is present in this pill, desire distilled into this tiny blue artefact. I raise my hand to my mouth.

  Then, jangling and jarring my nerves, the phone rings. I smooth out a patch of quilt with the heel of my hand and then tip the pill very carefully onto it, teasing it from my palm with a fingernail. I descend the spiral staircase, thwarted expectation trembling my limbs. I take a deep breath and pick up the phone. It's David. I feel compelled to gabble, to let him know that I've been doing head stuff, serious stuff, academic stuff, as if to deny the experience of the last few minutes, as if David could somehow know about the little blue pill that I'd been an inch from ingesting. I race into some discourse or other …

  "Karen," David says, reprising a phrase he'd used in our tete a tete in his office all those moons ago, "stop talking. Please, just stop talking." This time, however, his voice is bleached of authority, a pleading quality privileging the word "please".

  "What's wrong David?" I say. A death. A colleague? A mutual acquaintance? God forbid one of his sons.

  "I've made a terrible mistake, Karen," David says. "I've done something awful."

  The echoing of Suzy's words scurry shivers over the nape of my neck - I actually put my hand there to catch them, to still them.

  "I'm a selfish and foolish old man," David goes on, "and I have made - I have taken an hamartia, a miss-shot."

  Despite his usual precision of language - his careful self-correction, his clarifying translation of the Greek "hamartia" - a verbal tick which allows him to teach without condescension (I had actually forgotten the word myself) - I realise that David is drunk. His voice catches as if he is about to start sobbing and then there is silence.

  "David?" I say.

  "Have you met Moira Costigan yet?" David says.

  "No," I hesitate, thinking: well of course, silly me, what the fuck else would this be about? She haunts me David, I want to scream. She fucking haunts me.

  "Thank God," David says. "Stay away from her Karen. Please. She's not what she seems. And don't trust your friend. You may be able to help her. But don't trust her."

  "David," I start, but David hangs up. I ring him back but he doesn't pick up.

  I return to the bedroom. I check the envelope and find a folded note. Karen: Wear the locket. Take the pill. Then, when you want us most, we'll be there. PS, text yes, or no.

  I drink. Calming down I drink. Re-reading the note, touching the word "us" with a trembling finger, I drink. The centre of an enigma, I drink. Praying for a signal, texting YES!, I drink. Waiting for confirmation, I drink. Hearing my phone beep, reading OK, I drink.
Putting on the locket, wearing it in the mirror, adjusting it between my naked breasts, I drink. The rain pelts the windows and the wind groans and murmurs.

  Sitting in the armchair in the living room I swallow the blue pill the Suzy pill the Moira pill. It doesn't take long. I smile so widely I think my face will split back to my ears. The room turns blue with blue desire, I float and hover, fall deep into the earth, moan and sigh. Ooooo oooo coos my grockle mouth. Suzy's mouth. Moira's mouth. A white-hot orgasm melts me in the chair, a seething heap of pleasured marrow. I wake at midnight and take myself to bed where I vibrate in my reconstituted bones until sleep.

  But through it comes the sound of an outboard motor. The night has stilled itself, the sound of the motor comes in sonic sheets, an aural pattern of wave slap and dipping prow, resonating through the very fabric and structure of the cottage. The pills afterglow setting off a corresponding throb of pleasure in my nerves. The scrape of the keel on the little beach scrapes the back of my eyes. I groan a frown and flutter my eyelids, at the ambiguous, pleasure/pain sensation. The turn of a key in the lock. A barefoot pad across the kitchen floor, silence of carpet, the slap of skin on wood coming up the staircase, a rhythm slapped along my spine. I stretch and smile, look to the open doorway. A line of poetry comes to me: Fires of hell and thunderbolts will soon consume my body….

  It's Suzy. Suzy alone. My disappointment is brief. I watch her undress in darkness, in silence. I can sense her smile. She slips back the quilt, covering me instead with her body, her cold wet body which makes me shiver and squirm. She kisses the locket and then presses it to my throat. It burns, I whisper, in cold delight. Yes, Suzy says. It burns. Will you bite me? I say. No, she says, this will be better. When she kisses me, I draw her in. I feel the flow of her, the ingress of her. I grow very small inside myself, until there is nothing left of me. Nothing left at all.