Yet for Gracia, unseeing of the mind that had made them, they were non-existent. I had written and I had not written.
The story was there, but the words were not.
"What are you looking at?" Gracia cried, her voice rising as if frantic.
She was twisting one of the rings on her night hand.
"I'm reading."
I had found the page I wanted to show her: it was in Chapter Seven, where Seri and I first met in Muriseay Town. It paralleled our own first meeting, on the island of Kos, in the Aegean. Seri was said to be working on the staff of the Lotterie-Collago, whereas Gnacia had been on holiday; Muriseay Town was a clamorous city, and Kos had just a tiny port. The events differed, but they had the higher truth of feeling. Gracia would recognize it all.
I separated the page from the others and offered it to her. She put it on the bed between us. She had it the wrong way up.
"Why won't you look at it?" I said.
"What are you trying to do to me?"
"I just want you to understand. Please read it."
She snatched up the page, crumpled it in her hand and threw it across the room. "I can't read blank paper!"
Her eyes were moist, and she had pulled the ring until it had come off.
Realizing at last that she could not make the necessary imaginative leap, I said, as gently as possible: "Can I explain?"
"No, don't say anything. I've had enough. Are you living in total fantasy? What else do you imagine? Do you know who I am, who I _really_ am? Do you know where you are or what you're doing?"
"You can't read the words," I said.
"There's nothing there. Nothing."
I got up from the bed and retrieved the screwed-up page. 1 flattened it out with the palm of my hand, and returned it to its connect position. I began to collect the sheets, pushing them into their reassuringly familiar bulk.
"You've got to understand this," I said.
Gracia lowered her head, pressing a hand oven her eyes. I heard her say, indistinctly: "It's happening all oven again."
"What is?"
"We can't go on, you must see that. Nothing's changed." She wiped her eyes with a tissue. Leaving her cigarette to smoulder in the ashtray, she walked quickly from the room. I heard her in the hallway. She picked up the phone, and she dialled. After a moment she pushed in a coin, with that mechanical, money-box sound.
Although she spoke softly, as if her back were turned against me, I heard her say: "Steve . . . ? Yes, it's me. Can you put me up tonight? . . .
I'm all right, really. Just for tonight. . . . Yes, he's back. I don't know what happened. Everything's fine. . . . No, I'll come on the Tube. I'm all night, really. . . . In about an hour? Thanks."
I was standing when she came back into the noom. She stubbed out her cigarette, and turned to face me. She seemed composed.
"Did you hear any of that?" she said.
"Yes. You're going to Steve's."
"I'll come back in the morning. Steve will drop me off on his way to work. Will you still be here?"
"Gracia, please don't go. I won't talk about my manuscript."
"Look, I've just got to calm down a little, talk to Steve. You've upset me. I wasn't expecting you back yet."
She was moving about the room, collecting her cigarettes and matches, her bag, a book. She took a bottle of wine from the cupboard, then went to the bathroom. A few moments later she was standing in the hall by the bedroom door, checking her purse for her keys, a supermarket carrier bag swinging from her wrist with her overnight toilet things, and her wine bottle.
I went out and stood with her.
"I can't believe this," I said. "Why are you running away from me?"
"Why did _you_ nun away?"
"That's what I was trying to explain."
She wore a non-committal expression, avoiding my eyes. I knew she was making an effort to stay in control of herself; in the old days we would have talked ourselves into exhaustion, gone to bed, made love, continued in the morning. Now she had terminated the whole thing: the phone call, the abrupt departure, the bottle of wine.
Even as she stood there, waiting for me to let her go, she was already absent, halfway to the Tube station.
I held her arm. This made her look at me, but then away again.
"Are you still in love with me?" I said.
"How can you ask that?" she said. I waited, deliberately manipulating with silence. "Nothing's changed, Peter. I tried to kill myself because I loved you, because you didn't take any notice of me, because it was impossible being with you. I don't want to die, but when I get upset I can't control myself. I'm scared of what you might do to me." She took a deep breath, but it was uneven, and I knew she was suppressing tears. "There's something deep inside you I can't touch. I feel it most when you retreat, when you were talking about your bloody manuscript. You're going to make me insane!"
"I came home because I have come out of myself," I said.
"No . . . no, it's not true. You're deceiving yourself, and you're trying to deceive me as well. Don't ever do that, not again. I can't cope!"
She broke down then, and I released her arm. I tried to pull her against me, to hold her and be comforting, but she dragged herself away, weeping. She rushed through the front door, slamming it behind her.
I stood in the hall, listening to the imagined echoes of the slam.
I returned to the bedroom and sat for a long while on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet, the wall, the curtains. After midnight I bestirred myself and tidied up the flat. I emptied the ashtrays and washed them up with the supper dishes and the coffee mugs, leaving them all to drain on the side.
Then I found my old leather holdall, and packed it with as many of my clothes as I could get in. I packed the manuscript last, cramming it down on top. I checked that all the electricity switches were off, that no taps were dripping. As I left, I turned off all the lights.
I walked down to Kentish Town Road, where late traffic went past. I was too tired to want to sleep rough again, and thought I would find a cheap hotel for the night. I remembered a street near Paddington where there were several, but I wanted to get out of London. I stood undecided.
I was numbed by Gracia's rejection of me. I had returned to her with no idea of what I intemided to say, on of what might happen, but had felt my new internal strength would solve all that was wrong. Instead, she was stronger than me.
The zip fastener of my holdall was open, and I could see the manuscript inside. I took it out and turned the pages in the light of a street lamp. The story lay there for me to see, but the words had gone. Some of the pages had typewriting on them, but it was always scribbled over. I saw names flip past: Kalia, Muriseay, Seri, Ia, Mulligayn. Gracia's blood splashes remained. The only coherent words, undeleted, were on the last page. These were the words of the sentence I had never completed.
I stuffed the pages back in the bag, and squatted down in the recessed doorway of a shop. If the pages had become unworded, if the story was now untold, then it meant I could start again.
It was now more than a year since I had been in Edwin's cottage, and much had happemied in my life that was not described in the manuscript. My stay at the cottage itself, my weeks at Felicity's house, my return to London, my discovery of the islands.
Above all, the manuscript did not contain a description of its own writing, and the discoveries I had made.
Sitting there in the draughty shop doorway, my holdall clutched between my knees, I knew that I had returned prematurely to Gracia. My definition of myself was incomplete. Seri had been right: I needed to immerse myself totally in the islands of the mind.
Excitement coursed through me as I thought of the challenge ahead. I left the shop doorway and walked quickly in the direction of central London.
Tomonnow I should make plans, find somewhere to live, perhaps take a job. I would write when I could, construct my inner world and descend into it. There I could find myself, there I could live, there I could find rapture. Gracia would not reject me again.