"I put all your stuff in the other room. I've been cleaning the place."
I left her and hurried through to the sitting room. Beside the stereo record player, by the records--mine neatly segregated from hers--was a small pile of my books. Underneath, held together with two crossing elastic bands, was my manuscript. I snapped the bands away and turned a few pages: it was all there. A few sheets were out of order, but it was intact. I returned to the bedroom, where Gracia had lit another cigarette.
"This is what I meant," I said, holding it up for her to see. I was immeasurably relieved that it was safe. "You were reading this, weren't you?
That day."
Gracia narrowed her eyes, though I sensed it was not to see more cleanly. "I want to ask you about that--"
"Let me explain," I said. "It's important. I wrote this while I was in Herefordshire, before I went to Felicity's. I'm sure it's what was causing the trouble between us. You thought I was seeing someone else, but really I was just thinking about what I had written. It was my way of finding myself. But I never really finished it. When you were in hospital, and I knew you were being looked after, I went away to try to finish it."
Gracia said nothing, but continued to stare at me.
"Please say something," I said.
"What does the manuscript say?"
"But you read it! Or you read some of it."
"I looked at it, Peter, but I didn't read any of it."
I put the pages down, automatically reshaping them into a neat pile before letting go. I had not even thought about my writing while I was in the islands. Why was the truth so difficult to tell?
"I want you to read it," I said. "You've got to understand."
Gracia again went silent, staring down at her ashtray.
"Are you hungry?" she said at last.
"Don't change the subject."
"Let's talk about this later. I'm hungry, and you look as if you haven't had a meal in days."
"Can't we finish this now?" I said. "It's very important."
"No, I'm going to cook something. Why don't you have a bath? Your clothes are still here."
"All right," I said.
The bathroom was also fastidiously clean. It was free of the customary heaps of dirty clothes, empty toothpaste tubes and used toilet-roll wrappers.
When I flushed the lavatory the bowl filled with fizzy blue water. I bathed quickly, while in the next room I could hear Gracia moving about as she cooked. Afterwards, I shaved and put on clean clothes. I weighed myself on her scales, and found I had lost weight while I was away.
We ate at the table in the back room. It was a simple meal of rice and vegetables, but it was the best food I had eaten in a long time. I was wondering how I had survived while I was away, where I had slept, what I had eaten. Where had I been?
Gracia was eating at a moderate pace, but unlike her old self she finished the meal. She had become like someone I barely knew, yet in the same transformation she had become recognizable. She was the Gracia I had often willed her to be: free of her neuroses, or apparently so, free of the inner tension and unhappiness, free of the turbulence that brought the quicksilver moods. I sensed a new determination in her. She was making an immense effort to straighten herself out, and it made me admire her and feel warm towards her.
As we finished I felt content. The physical novelty of clean body and clothes, of a full stomach, of the belief that I had emerged from a long tunnel of uncertainty, made me feel we could start again.
Not after Castleton; that had been premature for both of us.
Gracia made some coffee, and we took the earthenware mugs through to the bedroom. We both felt more at ease there. Outside, can doors occasionally slammed, and from time to time we heard people passing the window. I sat with Gracia on the bed: she was facing me, her legs crossed beneath her. Our coffee mugs were on the floor beside us, the ashtray was between us.
She was quiet, so I said: "What are you thinking?"
"About us. You're confusing me."
"Why?"
"I didn't expect you back. Not yet, anyway."
"Why does that confuse you?"
"Because you've changed and I'm not sure how. You say you're better, that everything will be all right now. But we've both said that before, we've both heard it."
"Don't you believe me?"
"I believe you mean it . . . of course I do. But I'm still scared of you, what you could do to me."
I was lightly stroking the back of her hand; it was the first real intimacy between us, and she had not backed away.
I said: "Gracia, I love you. Can't you trust me?"
"I'll try." But she was not looking at me.
"Everything I've done in the last few months has been because of you. It took me away from you, but I've seen I was wrong."
"What are you talking about?"
"What I wrote in my manuscript, and what it has made me do."
"I don't want to talk about that, Peter." She was looking at me now, and again I saw that strange narrowing of her eyes.
"You said you would."
I swung my legs off the bed, crossed the room and picked up the thick wad of pages from where I had left them. I sat down again opposite her, but she had pulled her hand back.
"I want to read you some of it," I said. "Explain what it means."
While I spoke I was turning the pages, looking for those that had got out of order. They were mostly near the beginning. I noticed that many of the sheets had specks of dried blood on them, and the edges of the pages had a broad smudge of brown down them. Glancing through, I saw Seri's name prominently written, again and again. I would come to that eventually, explain who Seri was, what she had become to me, what I now understood of her. All that, and the state of mind the manuscript represented, the islands, the escapes, the difficult relationship with Felicity. And the higher truths the story contained, the definition of myself, the way it had made me static and inward-looking, emotionally petrified.
Gracia had to be brought into it, so that I could at last be brought out of it.
"Peter, you scare me when you get like this." She had lit a cigarette, her commonplace action, but this time there was an old tension in her. The match, flung down in the ashtray, continued to burn.
"Get like what?" I said.
"You'll upset me again. Don't go on."
"What's wrong, Gracia?"
"Put those papers away. I can't stand this!"
"I've got to explain to you."
She ran her hand acnoss her temple, her fingers wildly combing the hair.
The demure new hair style became tangled. Her nervousness was infectious; I reacted to it like I reacted to her sexuality. I could not resist it, yet it rarely satisfied either of us. I saw then what had been missing between us since I returned, because as she moved her arm her blouse lightly compressed her breast, and I wanted her body. It took the madness in us both to bring out the sex.
"What are you explaining, Peter? What's left to say?"
"I've got to read you this."
"Don't torment me! I'm not mad . . . you've written _nothing!_"
"It's how I defined myself. Last year, when I was away."
"Peter, are you crazy? Those pages are blank!"
I spread the battered pages across the bed, like a conjuror fans a pack of cards. The words, the story of my life, the definition of my identity, lay before me. It was all there: the lines of typewritten text, the frequent corrections, the pencillings and notes and deletions. Black type, blue ballpoint, grey pencil, and brown whale-shaped droplets of dried blood. It was all of me.
"There's nothing there, Peter! For God's sake, it's blank paper!"
"Yes, but--"
I stared down at the pages, remembering my white room in Edwin's cottage. That room had achieved a state of higher reality, of deeper truth, one that transcended literal existence. So too was my manuscript. The words were there, inscribed indelibly on the paper, exactly as I had written them.