by Tobias Hill
–Of course. She’ll be down later.
He looked towards the hall. Through the doorway he could see the first turn of the stairs. –Vanessa?
–Resting in the arms of Morpheus.
–I’d like to see them.
–Yes. This must be difficult for you. You look hot.
–I’m fine.
–Would you like to see the garden? The winter aconites–
–No.
–No, you don’t like flowers, do you? Emine said. Stupid of me. A drink, then.
He took two glasses of wine from a passing tray, spilling one a little as he handed it to Ben. –I’m sorry. There, well. What shall we drink to?
–I don’t really care. You choose.
He was a handsome man but small, so that he had to look up to meet Ben’s eye. His voice was shy and his neck thin. A grey vein pulsed there.
–Alright. To Emine. I think I would like us to drink to Emine.
It’s not me. It’s you.
As if they were a comfort, he thought sometimes of all the other things she might have meant.
There had been the money. For some people that might have been fault enough. Emine liked money, was used to it, was adapted to its environment, and he had none. Even before she had entered the law her allowance had sustained them both. Her family owned a shipping company with fleets in Marseilles, Algiers and Istanbul, an old, declining business which had accumulated fortunes over the course of five lifetimes. Emine’s father had taken well to Ben but friends of hers, he knew, had talked about him behind his back, had said that he lived off her. They had never been equal partners in those terms, but then there had never been much prospect of him attaining such an equality. And they had been complicit in it: if he had used her then she had allowed him to do so. She might even have liked it, he had suspected. The power it gave her and the hunger of his lack. The additive of that desire.
There had been her faith, or his lack of it. He had not been raised with the Church and had never had any cause to distrust religion, though he had never believed in anything much either. Her faith had been far stronger than his lack of it, and he had acceded to Catholicism as best he could; had been baptised, since it meant nothing to him and everything to her. That had been a mistake, of course. It had been harder to see the same done to Ness and to keep his mouth shut. He had not anticipated how it would rankle with him, that she should be claimed in that way before she knew her own mind. Marked; booked; brought to book. They had argued about it, and Emine had been angry, had stormed and wept.
And in other ways, too, he had not been faithful. It had happened three times in their years together. He would meet a woman whose need was a reflection of his own, whose desire was like a mirror. Each time he had been careful, and Emine had never given any sign of knowing. He could have done without any of them, if it had meant risking Emine or Ness, but they had talked about infidelity often, it had been one of the many What-Ifs, the things spoken of in the small hours, each looking not into the other’s face but off into the confessional darkness.
He had been surprised to discover how much less than him she claimed to care about faithfulness. It meant less to her than their marriage and her own happiness. She was practical about it. If he slept with someone else she didn’t want to know about it. What good would knowing do her? She loved him and wanted to be happy with him, even if it meant he had to lie to her. And he had respected that at least. He thought he had lied well.
Those were all reasons, but they were not reasons enough for Emine. She had divorced him against the grain of her faith. She would never marry again within the Church. She had said that he was a danger to her, body and soul. He had always known that it was Ness that she meant. First the What-If children and the One-Day children, then the child born after them.
When they had first met Emine had wanted four children. He had laughed at her then and had regretted it later. She was an only child of estranged parents, a Catholic father and a mother who had been a moderate Turkish Muslim by birth and Catholic by marriage and finally and passionately Muslim again. Her cousins were all on her mother’s side and separated from Emine by the Mediterranean and her parents’ mutual hostility. All through her childhood she had wanted siblings.
He had missed the moment when their roles had reversed. He had always liked the idea of family without having any ambition to be a father. He had agreed as he had agreed to much else; because it had made him happy to see her happy. If there had always been an anxiety when she had brought the subject up then he had only noticed it in retrospect. In retrospect, too, he had wondered if she had already begun to fall out of love with him then. She had stopped mentioning children, and when she began again it was to speak of the sense there might be in childlessness.
The first time he had discovered himself arguing for a family he had burst into laughter. They had been driving somewhere or other. He had tried to explain it to Emine, the way they had twisted round, but she hadn’t found it funny, had told him to watch the road. And it hadn’t been funny, of course, simply strange. He had been laughing at his own bewilderment.
It was later that day, when he was alone again, that the bewilderment had begun to crystallise into fear.
The night Nessie was conceived–certainly the night they both believed her to have been conceived–they had been to dinner with a colleague in London. It was May and hot, the Oxfordshire landscape acid-yellow with rape. The evening was one of duty rather than pleasure. They had both been working long hours that week and Emine drank too much in recompense.
Did he know what he was doing? He had to think so. He knew the chance and the mischance. He knew, when she prayed at nights, when the wishbone split her way, not what she wished for but what not. He knew what a vain and selfish hope it was, to wish for both conception and acceptance. That he would be forcing her, that he would be taking something she had denied to him: he had understood that.
He watched her all night, half a table away. Wanting nothing there but her, wanting her for good. He drove back through the sweltering London gloom while she talked in an effort to keep him awake, dissecting the evening, retelling bad jokes, laughing at embarrassments and petty misdemeanours. They were both tired on the way but the sight of home refreshed them.
They had made love before sleep, without protection–Emine had never been at ease with that–and easily inciting one another to desire, knowing one another as they did. But already something new had crept into it for him. A novel hunger.
Dimly, through the drink, he had thought it through again. Then he had begun to fuck her. He had raised her legs up over his shoulders, moving gently at first as her body adjusted. He remembered looking down into her dark eyes and seeing all the gentleness gone, the pupils huge and avid for him. Her own orgasm had been little and slow to break, muted by alcohol, but when he came himself he had almost fainted from the force of it. Old voices had come back to him in that state, London men boasting to one another.
I reamed her mate, I’m telling you. I slipped it up her sweet as that. I banged her up I swear, and oh my God you should have heard her singing…
He had come deep inside her, pushing desperately hard. He had put everything of himself into it. And as she had realised what he was doing she had tried to pull away, agile as a cat but not strong enough, and screaming all the while, Ben Ben Ben! as if he had scalded her.
In the aftermath he had been dazed by what he had done. They had talked half the night, in the dark, Emine exhausted and restless, pointlessly washing herself, kneeling above him in disarray, a silhouette against the window asking him what he had meant to do and why–why?–trying to understand him as he had tried to understand himself, raging one moment and weeping or laughing the next, but falling asleep finally in his arms.
It was not the last time they slept together, but certainly it was the last night they made love. In the morning she had been cold, and the coldness had never thawed. He had revealed an avarice in himself which could not
be taken back or explained away. Besides, she had refused to speak about it again until the day she had left him. Sometimes it was almost as if it had never happened at all.
Several times, over the years, he had seen the vehemence with which she argued against abortion. He had never liked that in her, had hated the convictions which her beliefs instilled in her, but he had put his trust in them. It had shaken him when he came across the torn-up remains of an advice pamphlet, and much later a scribbled note of a doctor’s appointment which she had never spoken of. It was a shock, to know not only that she was pregnant, but that she would ever have considered a termination. He had not known her decision until he woke another morning to hear her vomiting in the pre-dawn light. By then he couldn’t quite believe that she would keep the child.
She had not let him be with her at the birth. She had named Nessie herself. Vanessa Catherine Alia Mercer. Emine had grown to love her as clearly as she had grown out of love with him. She had moved away from him perceptibly, inexorably, despite his best efforts to bring her back. It was as if what he had done were unpardonable, a crime, and he had known himself that it was, in a way, even if there was no name for it.
Loving lies, he remembered his mother saying of a girl in the street, four months gone the day she married. But that was different. That was not the same at all. Rape was a better name for it. From the Latin, rapere. To seize. To take by force. That was what he had done.
He had done it out of love for her. Out of the need to have her love him. And then–he had never known when or where–she had come across Foyt again, waiting for her. In the right place, at the right time. A famous man, faded but handsome. Secure. And old enough–as everyone said–to be her father, with his own children all grown and gone.
Monday he woke to the sound of rain. When he went to the window he could barely make out the streets and lots below. The swimming pool was a field of smashed safety glass. The reflections and multiplications of streetlights and brakelights were festive in the dark. A pink umbrella bobbed like a Chinese lantern from one awning to the next.
He got downstairs to find the lobby awash, the cockatoo screaming with girlish laughter, its left eye peering at the flood, dilating like a camera lens. Crossword and Sudoku were sweeping water from the courtyard into the street. They rested on their brooms to let him pass.
–What did I tell you?
Sudoku-Marina, grim and triumphant.
–What did I say, heh? It rains!
He waved a capitulation at her, hauling himself down the cascade of the steps. The van was outside, Chrystos leaning across to open the door. Again there was no Giorgios.
–My lazy brother gives you thanks.
–Why me?
–He thinks it’s because you got sick he can sleep all morning.
–I wasn’t sick.
–Sick or crazy, to walk in the rain. Either way, you make the director worry.
He sat back to hide his irritation. His mouth still tasted of last night’s meal; cheap meat, cheap wine. As they pulled out he raised his voice against the thud of the wipers and the drumming of the rain. –So we’re going up there? What for, if there’s no work?
–Not up there. No work for us. For the sick boy the director has other ideas.
They turned right into Lycurgus Street. Ahead of them, towards Mystras, the foothills were all inkwash and watercolour. Just after the cathedral plaza they turned right again and stopped in a street of small shops. Chrystos pointed towards one. Mavrakis Bakery & Imported Products.
–Here.
–The director wants me to bake?
–Funny boy. Upstairs. Go to the side door, they’ll be waiting for you.
–I’ll see you tomorrow, then?
–Of course. Here, you forgot your souvenirs.
The HellaSpar bag. The martial clink of the tools inside. He shook hands and got out, ducking under the bakery’s green awning as Chrystos drove away, his salute indistinct through the mottled glass.
The side door lay beyond the awning’s submarine shelter. He ducked through a frill of rain and leaned on the buzzer, shouting his name twice into the unintelligible crackle of the intercom. By the time the door opened he was already drenched. He edged forward into an unlit hallspace, narrow stairs leading upwards into darkness, his feet squeaking on bare boards. The door at the top was ajar, a gamma of light showing. He pushed it open and went through.
A Formica table twice the length of a body. A stereo playing Radiohead to the audience of a human skull. Tupperwares, gigantic outsized tubs and kindergarten lunchboxes, their contents as indistinct as Chrystos’s hand through the wet glass. A map of the ancient Laconian heartland, from Sparta down to Gythion. An aerial shot of Therapne on one wall, a Harris matrix facing it, the strata of the excavation reformed as diagrams. Electrics–a fridge, two laptops–murmuring to themselves in the shadows. The room’s natural occupants–giant TV, davenport sofa, hatstand, smoked-glass coffee table–huddled around the far door, like refugees seeking asylum. An ouzo carafe full of spring squills. Two trays lined with silica gel, the spearhead in one encrusted with rust, the matter in the other riddled with verdigris. A laser scale, its twin red dots glittering on the fanned length of a shoulder bone. Natsuko bent over a microscope, her head raised, watching him.
A funny old bird, Missy had called her. She did not look funny to Ben. Frightened, maybe, frightened but brave. Righteous, too, like a cat discovered with a kill. Her eyes were like those of a deer, very dark and shaped like teardrops. He tried to think why she would ever be frightened of him, and then recalled the undelivered message, the day he had walked to Therapne. She must have imagined he would be angry, he realised, and then wondered if he was, and then why he was not.
–Hi, he said, too eagerly, making them both jump. Natsuko’s voice lapped his own as faintly as an echo.
–Hi.
–Missy sent me. Doctor’s orders.
–Oh!
He closed the door. It was ill-fitting: he could still hear rain blowing. –So, what do I do?
–Oh…
He wondered if her English had failed her, though he had heard her talking to the others in both English and Greek, laughing at Jason’s jokes and jibes. If it wasn’t that she had misunderstood him, it might be that she didn’t know what to say to him.
–Is it just you here? he asked, and wished the words back as her shoulders drew together. She looked towards the far door and shook her head.
–Right. Well, I’ll just. I’ll put these down…
The hatstand was behind her. He dumped his stuff in the wiry corner by the computers instead. Another image of Therapne was tacked up in the shadows, a magnetometrical survey–the composition of the earth revealed in peacock-eyes of burnt orange and indigo–and he stood looking up at it as he shrugged off his wet jacket, trying to ignore the uncomfortable prickling of hairs on the back of his neck.
If he turned round she would already be at work again, he was sure, peeking into the otherworld of the microscope. But it felt as if she was watching him.
–You’re wet.
It was the first time she had said more than a word to him. As he turned he imagined that she was smiling; then he saw her and wondered why he had believed so. Her expression hadn’t altered at all.
–A bit.
–No. Very.
–Well, it’s pouring out there, you know. Cats and dogs, he added, angling for the smile, disappointed when she only blinked in incomprehension. –Doesn’t matter. English saying. Anyway, here I am. You don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, then?
She shook her head, then reached up to tuck her hair back. She had gloves on, thin white ones, like a surgeon. For a long time–four seconds, five–she went on looking at him. She didn’t seem especially frightened any more, only curious. Cautiously speculative.
Radiohead interposed themselves between them.
You’re so very special
I wish I was special
But I’m a creep<
br />
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here
When I don’t belong here?
–Eleschen will know, she said finally. What to do with you.
–Is she–?
–She is washing her hair.
–Oh, right.
–She has lice.
–…She has what?
–Lice. They like clean hair.
–I remember that.
–She is embarrassed about it.
–I won’t mention it, then.
–No, don’t.
Her face was guileless. If she was teasing him he couldn’t be sure of it. If the three of them had been friends she might have been laughing at Eleschen. Except they were not that. Natsuko had avoided him since his arrival, after all, had barely spoken to him in a week. She wouldn’t have shared anything with him at Eleschen’s expense.
Lice. Nessie had had them, that last year, had cried inconsolably when he had used his mother’s old nit comb on her. It was a children’s affliction, to him. It wasn’t something Eleschen would have, surely, nor something that Natsuko would share with him. Not with him, not so simply, after so many days of distance.
There were stools at the table, a scarred chrome-and-faux-leather set that looked like it might have been bought second hand from a twentieth-century cocktail bar. He perched.
–What are you up to, then?
She looked down at the microscope, as if surprised to find it there. –I am examining faecal deposits for intestinal parasites.
–Interesting.
–No. It is very boring, she said, and the smile broke through at last, her eyes diminishing to crescents.
Her front teeth were slightly crooked. She had a pock-mark on one temple, quite close to her ear. He only noticed it because her skin was otherwise perfect. He found himself remembering her morning swims. The slicked-back boy, loitering in the shadows. The gasp of breath that had echoed up to him, sometimes, as she turned between metronomic lengths. Her endless, effortless strength.
He leaned forward. –Is that true, about the lice?
