Monday, 2 February, 2.15 p.m.
I am trying to piece it all together. I am trying to fill in the gaps. I am trying to recollect the things you did before this morning, when I started to record it all. I don’t want to miss out a single bit of evidence – I can’t afford to. But doing this forces me to relive it. Doing this keeps you with me, which is exactly where I don’t want you to be.
Monday, 10 November, 8.00 p.m. (Three Months Ago)
It is the night that I make the very big mistake of sleeping with you and I am in the bookshop. The shop is open just to your invited guests, to celebrate the publication of your new book about fairy tales. Only a couple of your English Department colleagues have turned up. Encouraged by my presence, they are whispering venomously about Henry. I am pretending not to notice by picking up books and acting as though I’m intensely interested in them, though the words are jumbled and about as comprehensible to me as Greek.
I’m still not sure why I’ve come, or what possesses me to mix the red and white wines you press upon me. Probably loneliness and loss: Henry has just moved from Bath to take up the professorship at Cambridge he’s been plotting all his life to get. Compassion also plays a part; you sent me three invitations.
I can’t leave until after your reading. At last, I am seated in the back row, listening to you recite from your chapter on ‘The Test of the True Bride’. You finish and your handful of colleagues asks polite questions. I am not an academic; I say nothing. As soon as the smattering of applause dies out I weave my way towards the door to escape, only to be stopped by your plea that I not leave yet. I sneak up to the art section and sit on the grubby beige carpet with a book about Munch. I turn to The Kiss, the early version where the lovers are naked.
I visibly startle when your shadow falls on the page and your voice cuts through the first floor’s deserted silence. ‘If I hadn’t found you you might have been locked in all night.’ You are standing above me, peering down from what seems to be a very great height and smiling.
I quickly close the Munch and set it aside. ‘I’m not sure that would have been such a terrible fate, sleeping with the artists.’ I wave your heavy book like an actress overdoing her use of props. It makes my wrist ache. ‘This is wonderful. It was so kind of you to give me a copy. And you read brilliantly. I loved the passage you chose.’
‘I loved the painting you chose, Clarissa.’ You set down the overstuffed briefcase you’re carrying in one hand and the two glasses of wine you’re balancing in the other.
I laugh. ‘Have you got a body in that briefcase?’
Your eyes flick to the briefcase’s lockable catch, as if to check it’s properly closed, and it occurs to me that you have secrets you don’t want exposed. But you laugh too. ‘Just books and papers.’ You stretch out an arm. ‘Come out of hiding. Let me walk you home. It’s a dark night for you to be out on your own.’
I reach up, letting you help me to my feet. You don’t release my hand. Gently, I pull it away. ‘I’ll be fine. Don’t you have a dinner to go to, Professor?’
‘I’m not a professor.’ There is a quiver in your eyelid. It vibrates several times, quickly, in succession, as if a tiny insect is hiding inside. ‘Henry got it, the year I applied. Not much chance against a prize-winning poet. Being Head of Department didn’t hurt him, either.’
Henry had more than deserved the professorship, but of course I don’t say this. What I say is, ‘I’m sorry.’ After a few embarrassing seconds of silence, I say, ‘I need to get home.’ You look so crushed I want to comfort you. ‘It’s a really interesting book, Rafe.’ I try to soften my impending exit. ‘You should be proud.’
You retrieve the wine and offer me a glass. ‘A toast, Clarissa. Before you go.’
‘To your beautiful book.’ I clink my white to your red and take a sip. You look so pleased by this small thing; it touches and saddens me. I will replay this moment too many times over the next few months, much as I would like to shut it out.
‘Drink up.’ You gulp down your own, as if to demonstrate.
And I follow your example, though it tastes like salty sweet medicine. But I don’t want to dim your already lacklustre celebration.
‘Let me walk with you, Clarissa. I’d rather walk with you than go to some stuffy dinner.’
A minute later we are out in the chill late-autumn air. Even in my wine-fuelled light-headedness I hesitate before what I say next. ‘Do you ever think about Bluebeard’s first wife? She isn’t specifically mentioned, but she must be one of the dead women hanging in the forbidden chamber.’
You smile tolerantly, as if I am one of your students. You are dressed like a preppy American professor – not your usual look. Tweedy blazer, soft brown corduroy trousers, a finely striped blue-and-white shirt, a sleeveless navy sweater. ‘Explain.’ You shoot out the word peremptorily, the way you must do it in English Literature seminars.
‘Well, if there was a secret room right at the beginning, and he commanded the very first Mrs Bluebeard not to enter it, there wouldn’t have been any murdered wives in there yet. There wouldn’t have been the stream of blood for her to drop the key into, and no stain on it to give her away. So what reason did he think he had for killing the first time? That’s always puzzled me.’
‘Maybe he didn’t invent the room until wife number two. Maybe wife number one did something even more unforgivable than going into the room. The worst form of disobedience: maybe she was unfaithful, like the first wife in the Arabian Nights, and that’s why he killed her. Then he needed to test each of the others, after, to see if she was worthy. Except not a single one was.’ You say all of this lightly, jokingly.
I should have seen, then, that you don’t joke. You are never light. If I hadn’t accepted the third glass of wine I might have seen that and averted everything that followed.
‘You sound like you think she deserved it.’
‘Of course I don’t.’ You speak too quickly, too insistently, a sign that you’re lying. ‘Of course I don’t think that.’
‘But you used the word disobedience.’ Am I only imagining that I’m beginning to wobble? ‘That’s a horrifying word. And it was never a fair promise. You can’t ask somebody never to enter a room that’s part of her own house.’
‘Men need secret places, Clarissa.’
‘Do they?’ We’ve reached Bath Abbey. The building’s west front is illuminated, but I can’t seem to focus on my favourite fallen angels, sculpted upside down on Jacob’s Ladder. The vertigo I’m beginning to feel must be like theirs, with the world up-ended.
You take my arm. ‘Clarissa?’ You wave a hand in front of my eyes, smiling. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’
That helps me to remember the point I’m trying to make, though I have to concentrate extra hard to form sentences. ‘There must have been some truly dreadful secrets in that room. It was a place for his fantasies, where he made them real.’
We’re passing the Roman Baths. I imagine the statues of the emperors and governors and military leaders frowning down at me from their high terrace, willing me to drown in
