sitting on the train to Brighton I wonder if he had diabetes, if that was what was wrong. I suddenly think that if only he would get his bloods done, we could do something about this, because maybe his drinking isn’t the problem, after all.
Then I realise that he is dead.
And, of course, his drinking was an existential statement, how could I forget? There was certainly nothing metabolic about it. There was no cause.
Was he pissed when he died? Probably. And now, what tide runs in his veins? Blood, sea water, whiskey. He was a maniac on whiskey. He probably thought he was swimming to fucking France.
I close my eyes against the warm sunlight and doze beside the dozing stranger on the Brighton train.
10
HERE’S ADA AND Charlie in bed a year later. Charlie as sleek as a seal with his long, plump, stomach; his languid genitals blushing pink against his fat, white thigh. It is Saturday morning, and every stray breeze, every shift from Ada under the eiderdown can tease him aloft, until an angle is reached–say, fifty degrees–that seems to him both stern and kind. He muses on it for a while–forty might be considered awkward, any lower merely blundering and shy–and then it is something he has to share, this question of degree. He swims back under the bedcovers to Ada’s skinny shanks and she laughs and lifts her knees. They have done this so often in the last few hours that it is hard to tell the difference between outside and inside. Also the difference between the covers and the air of the room, between their clothes and their hands: everything seems to stroke them. They are a bundle of nerves, frayed at the ends. They are wearing each other away; both of them amazed by the thinness of skin that happens just there; how close they can be, blood to blood, so that the ticking, afterwards, of one inside the other, might be a joke, or a pulse–the beating in your veins of someone else’s heart.
Of course Charlie, at thirty-three, has more sense than to end up inside Ada more often than he can help it (though sometimes, it is true, he can not help it at all), and so he hoists himself out at the last to flop like a drowning man, spilling sea water on the quay. And Ada is raw not just from love but also from the vinegar she uses in her special French bag; a present from Charlie–so outrageous and sly–after they were engaged. They are lovers. Even though they are married they are lovers. There is no talk of children: nothing happens in the dark. Their courtship was a violent affair; the engagement, it seemed, just an excuse to protract the sweetness, so by the time they got between legitimate sheets they were worn out from it all and looked to their wedding night as to a final wreck. Ada undressed by the side of the bed like a woman getting into a bath, Charlie squinted under the lamp to wind his watch. After which, with a sudden, awful intercourse–Ada’s eyes locked wide and open–they found they had everything to learn, after all.
‘Don’t worry.’ It seems as though Charlie has said nothing else since the day they met. ‘Don’t worry, you will come to no harm.’
Ada did not know why she trusted him, but she did. And she was right. And that itself was a kind of triumph for her; skinny, practical Ada, with her weather eye. She trusted him at once, and she never stopped trusting him, even as, in time, he brought the bailiffs to the door. Now, on this Saturday morning, she picks up his hand and sets it down on her overused pubis, so the weight and warmth of it will settle her back together, somehow. Everything hurts a little. They are not very good at this yet. They have great intimations of what is to come.
The bed is a mahogany affair, with two swags of little flowers joining in a bow on the headboard. It is a little soft–obliging the lovers, at some grinding extremity, to take to the floor. But it is luxury to lie in and Ada has come into her estate: her own bed, with her own bottles and potions on the
Then I realise that he is dead.
And, of course, his drinking was an existential statement, how could I forget? There was certainly nothing metabolic about it. There was no cause.
Was he pissed when he died? Probably. And now, what tide runs in his veins? Blood, sea water, whiskey. He was a maniac on whiskey. He probably thought he was swimming to fucking France.
I close my eyes against the warm sunlight and doze beside the dozing stranger on the Brighton train.
10
HERE’S ADA AND Charlie in bed a year later. Charlie as sleek as a seal with his long, plump, stomach; his languid genitals blushing pink against his fat, white thigh. It is Saturday morning, and every stray breeze, every shift from Ada under the eiderdown can tease him aloft, until an angle is reached–say, fifty degrees–that seems to him both stern and kind. He muses on it for a while–forty might be considered awkward, any lower merely blundering and shy–and then it is something he has to share, this question of degree. He swims back under the bedcovers to Ada’s skinny shanks and she laughs and lifts her knees. They have done this so often in the last few hours that it is hard to tell the difference between outside and inside. Also the difference between the covers and the air of the room, between their clothes and their hands: everything seems to stroke them. They are a bundle of nerves, frayed at the ends. They are wearing each other away; both of them amazed by the thinness of skin that happens just there; how close they can be, blood to blood, so that the ticking, afterwards, of one inside the other, might be a joke, or a pulse–the beating in your veins of someone else’s heart.
Of course Charlie, at thirty-three, has more sense than to end up inside Ada more often than he can help it (though sometimes, it is true, he can not help it at all), and so he hoists himself out at the last to flop like a drowning man, spilling sea water on the quay. And Ada is raw not just from love but also from the vinegar she uses in her special French bag; a present from Charlie–so outrageous and sly–after they were engaged. They are lovers. Even though they are married they are lovers. There is no talk of children: nothing happens in the dark. Their courtship was a violent affair; the engagement, it seemed, just an excuse to protract the sweetness, so by the time they got between legitimate sheets they were worn out from it all and looked to their wedding night as to a final wreck. Ada undressed by the side of the bed like a woman getting into a bath, Charlie squinted under the lamp to wind his watch. After which, with a sudden, awful intercourse–Ada’s eyes locked wide and open–they found they had everything to learn, after all.
‘Don’t worry.’ It seems as though Charlie has said nothing else since the day they met. ‘Don’t worry, you will come to no harm.’
Ada did not know why she trusted him, but she did. And she was right. And that itself was a kind of triumph for her; skinny, practical Ada, with her weather eye. She trusted him at once, and she never stopped trusting him, even as, in time, he brought the bailiffs to the door. Now, on this Saturday morning, she picks up his hand and sets it down on her overused pubis, so the weight and warmth of it will settle her back together, somehow. Everything hurts a little. They are not very good at this yet. They have great intimations of what is to come.
The bed is a mahogany affair, with two swags of little flowers joining in a bow on the headboard. It is a little soft–obliging the lovers, at some grinding extremity, to take to the floor. But it is luxury to lie in and Ada has come into her estate: her own bed, with her own bottles and potions on the
Similar Books
