he smiles. That smile is far from self-conscious, or reluctant. It is sheer smile. I remember an expression that was favoured by my mother: There is no side to him. Whenever I look away, he comes with me, his image burned on to my eyes. Asleep, I dream of him. The dreams come in the mornings, when sunshine strokes my eyelids. They are close to daydreams. Too close. They are sexual dreams, dreams of sex, vocal sex; more sexual, somehow, than any sex that I have ever had. In these dreams I am not me; I am no one else, but not me. I am no one. I am desire: something fed into a vein, distilled, heavy but slick, treacly, deadly, pure.
When the dream drains away, I am beached in my bed. And for a time, the real, everyday world is beyond me. Coming to, dry-mouthed but damp everywhere else, sloppy with sexual desire, I am rudderless, a mess of limbs and linen. Then I begin to be aware of Philip. He is turned demurely away into his doze. He seems so far away, borne on his tidy half of the bedclothes, waiting patiently for the turn of consciousness. For him, sleeping, dreaming and waking are not the exertions that they have been for me. Across the expanse, he is unrecognisably-shaped and I take a moment to make sense of him. If I reach to touch him, he is dough-warm and calico-clean.
It’s nothing, it’s physical: this is what I tell myself, whenever I look at Carl.
I feel like Samantha in Bewitched, acting the model housewife and coping with a contrary nature.
Carl is scrupulously cheerful, as if to be otherwise would be to do me a disservice. He called me Mrs Summerfield until I impressed upon him not to do so. Early this morning we had coffee together. Having brought my coffee into the garden, I called: ‘Come over here, have a break.’ He had already done over an hour of hard work.
‘I’m fine, honestly, Mrs Summerfield.’
‘Don’t call me that. And I mean that.’
‘Sorry. Forgot.’
‘Come over here.’ He is younger than I am, and I am paying him: I suppose that I can issue orders.
He came over, smelling of grass.
I looked down at my tray, at my cafetière. ‘You want some water or something?’
He, too, looked at the cafetière. ‘I don’t suppose you have any spare coffee?’
‘Oh, sorry: I didn’t think you’d want a hot drink, that’s all.’
‘But there’s something about coffee in hot weather.’
‘Yes, isn’t there. I drink far more coffee during the summer.’
‘Me, too. And the treaclier, the better.’
Treaclier. I laughed. ‘Yes.’
I went to the kitchen for a cup for him. Returning, I asked, ‘Has anyone ever asked you that question: if you were on a desert island, what would you pay five hundred pounds for? Has to be a food, or a drink.’
‘No,’ he raised those eyes of standard, boyish blue; he was smiling, ‘No one has ever asked me that.’
Philip says that I am a one for creature comforts. I suspect that I am made of them: take my creature comforts away, and nothing remains.
‘Tobacco isn’t allowed?’
‘You’re a smoker! I didn’t know.’
‘Ex-. But once a smoker, always a smoker. Nothing to do with addiction, everything to do with pleasure. Ideal for a desert island. And you?’
‘Well, when I was asked, I thought I’d say chocolate but found that I went for coffee, and that was a surprise. The same reason, I suppose: I live on coffee but, until then, I’d thought that I was simply addicted, that coffee was a mere addiction, not a …’ … a what? ‘Not a …’
‘Passion,’ he said.
‘A passion, yes.’
I had some physalis on the tray – an attempt to break the habit of chocolate – and as I offered him the plate, he asked, ‘What’s your favourite fruit?’
‘Depends what for.’
He raised his eyebrows: explain.
‘Blackberries for ice-cream, I think. Apricots for juice.’
‘Apricots …’ he pondered.
‘Yes, try it. Papaya for texture. And, oh,’ of course, ‘oranges for their smell.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And raspberries for …’ but the best I could do was, ‘for themselves.’
‘Unadulterated.’ He popped a physalis into his mouth. His eyes widened slightly with the first bite. Perhaps he had never had one before. But perhaps their flavour always comes as a surprise.
‘So, they’re your passion,’ he said, when he had finished his mouthful. ‘Raspberries.’
‘Well, they have a rival: strawberries, but only for the one that’s just right, the perfect one in every punnet. There’s always that one, isn’t there.’
Smiling away over the garden, he muttered, ‘Oh, Mrs Summerfield.’
‘Don’t –’
‘I was joking, that time.’
Yesterday morning, I went upstairs to Philip’s study to look for the phone number of a particular builder who had done some work for us. Searching through his desk, the drawers, I delved into a slurry of stationery, bills, insurance policies, bank statements and passbooks. Inside the deep bottom drawer was a box, a shoe box, which contained postcards, cards, and letters. I looked at the postcard on the top of the pile. Poppies Against the Night Sky, a painting by William MacTaggart. I knew that the card must have been from me, although I had no recollection of writing it. I did not want to read it. Instead, rummaging, I confirmed my suspicion that all the cards and letters were from me. I read none of them. I had had no idea that they had been kept there; I had had no idea that they had been kept. I had forgotten that they had ever existed. They were sloughed skins. But there they were, boxed: raw, sweet sentiments, layered with pretty pictures and become rather dessicated. I returned the card unread to Philip’s makeshift treasure trove, replaced the lid, closed the drawer, covered my tracks. I wonder if the writer of that card is as dead to him as to me. Does he miss her?
He is home early today because for some reason – I forget why – he is going into work tomorrow, Saturday. When Hal and I set off to come here to the park, he was cooking. His unexpected return was not my only surprise, this afternoon. Earlier, as I opened the back door, returning from a stroll down the road with Hal to the bakery, I glimpsed a figure in my kitchen. My breath boomeranged into the reverse of a scream.
The silhouette enthused, ‘That’s the kind of response that I like.’
‘Drew!’
Drew,
