She asked Harry to pull a shoe box from under the bed. Out of this she extracted the letters, of which there were about fifty. She opened two of them, and let him see the date and the ‘Darling Marion’ and ‘all my love, Mamoon’, in his familiar minuscule writing.
She said, ‘During this period he kept saying I bored him, and he didn’t feel alive any more. If I didn’t think of new things for us to do, he’d go mad. He was fascinated by styles of love-making, by how different women respond, move, kiss, and how he was new each time. It was almost forensic for him.
‘I suggested we could ask men to join us, and he could watch, if he wanted to. He did watch; he wanted to take part. He seemed to join forces with the other men. There were too many of them. He started to make me do things I couldn’t bear to do to please him. Scenes so depraved it makes me sick to think of them. Tiger burning. . burning. .
‘He wanted an accelerated ecstasy, as he nominated it, what Poe calls an “infinity of mental excitement. .” He claimed, oddly for him, that this extremity, this repeated transgression and sacrilege, was the closest thing to a religious experience he’d had. Here, he said, he could fruitfully lose himself entirely, and betray his father over and over again. He understood the point of the crowd, and how it could pull you away from yourself. And this from no keener follower of individualism.
‘I made love to people I wouldn’t otherwise have touched. This was dangerous at that time, but I would have done anything to keep him. Anything.’
‘Did he hurt you?’
‘Now, looking back, I feel abused. I was used. I was a fool to think he would love me always, that he would marry me.’ She said, ‘He was strong then. He grabbed my face and forced it into a man’s crotch and I remember thinking “You’ve hurt me for your pleasure. It matters more to you than I do.” There’s a lot of degradation in sex, isn’t there?’
‘When it’s done right. Are you saying he was a pervert?’
‘Are you a serious writer, or are you working for the National Enquirer?’
‘The Enquirer.’
‘I learned that real sex is mad, mad, mad,’ she said, ‘It can overrun everything else, particularly sense and intelligence. And you must remember, he loved me so much, even as he hated me. I had captivated him, sexually, and he was mine. Fortunately, he was travelling a lot at the same time and wrote to me with various “requests” I should fulfil when he came home.’
‘He did?’
‘In the end, Peggy, who was not well in mind or body, requested him to return. He hesitated for days. Suppose he just walked out now. What would he lose, what would he gain? What about her? Duty or love? I’d never seen him so anguished. I was foolish: I said I’d stand by him whichever way he went. He kissed me goodbye. I believed he would marry me. I didn’t think for a moment I’d never see him again.’ She went on, ‘I suspect he went back to see another woman — not Liana. It wasn’t her turn yet.’
‘Another woman? Do you know which woman?’
She shrugged. ‘Do you? Yes, obviously. You do know.’ When he said nothing she continued. ‘I learned later, from reading him, that the experiences we’d had together had traumatised him. He could only process all that raw experience by sitting in a room for months. I even think he still believed he could turn his back on his sexuality and sublimate it entirely.
‘Peggy kept going for eighteen months. She created the environment he needed, where he wrote that horrible text, one of the ugliest books I’ve read, with a sadism which I believe is quite unconscious, since he actually loves women. He was the most conscious of artists, but he knew there were some things you had to leave alone when they occurred to you, which were the essence of something true.’
Harry said, ‘I need to ask you something. Are you sure I can’t see his letters to you? Could I copy them? I could photograph them with my phone. I could help you arrange for them to be purchased by an American university. It goes without saying that you could do well out of them.’
She laughed. ‘I’m aware of that and I need the money badly for health care. I’m not so stupid, Harry. This material will make a chapter in your account. I’m hanging onto it for now because for me it will be an entire book. Mine will be far more spicy, passionate and vulgar than yours. I know the other women involved and they will back me up with their recollections, while remaining anonymous. And I have started my book. Are you and I racing?’
He said, ‘Coming from me, this will sound a bit rich, but why would you want to expose this private material?’
‘Suppose Flaubert’s lover had written a book about him? Or Kafka’s fiancée? What would it be like to be a writer’s companion? After my story of my life with him, he and I will be side by side forever.’ She added, ‘He loved and exploited me. Now I can do the same to him!’
‘Very tabloid.’
‘Isn’t it usually the women’s voices which are suppressed? You envy him, and will never know what it is like to love him. I will give the view from the bedroom, the intimate picture. If you want to know a man, see how he is in love. Isn’t that where the truth lies?’
‘Yes, the truth always lies. It might be in the complexity of the work.’
‘That’s the cover story.’
He said, ‘And if he wanted you back?’
‘I’d be there like a shot, even now. Will you say that to him? He was cruel, handsome and brilliant, everything a man should be. Harry, will you say my name in front of him and watch his face? He knows very well that he is still mine, that he will not escape me.’
At the door she put her face up to his. He kissed her cheek, and saw she wanted to give him her mouth. Perhaps it would be her last kiss. For a short time he gave her his mouth. Why not? She tried to pull him towards her, but he removed her hands from his body.
‘I still have physical feeling,’ she said. ‘If you help me, I’ll show you the letters.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m tired. Come back tomorrow? Would you — for one more day? I will have something important.’
The next day he learned that he could read some of the letters on her bed, where she would lie next to him. He would wear a T-shirt and trousers, and she would be permitted to touch his upper body only: chest, shoulders, head and hair. He didn’t object to her caresses; he believed he was glad to be of use, and he was, anyway, tense for a number of good reasons.
As her hands worked on him, Harry took in the materiaclass="underline" they were love letters, with requests for assignations disguised as wishes for others to accompany them ‘on walks’. Despite her promises, and sentences about how much ‘the other evening’ had meant to him at his time of life, and how ‘revived’ and ‘interested’ he was, once more, in what he referred to as ‘the human scene’, there was nothing substantial to count as confirmation.
All Harry could do was thank Marion, kiss her, and say goodbye. He would write to her if he needed anything else.
‘Please come back again — whenever you like,’ she said, taking his hands. He wondered if she’d ever let him go. ‘Please, I’ll try to find other pictures and notes. Tell me, do you pity me, an old woman alone, with nothing except a few memories of a writer?’
‘I admire you, Marion.’
‘For what?’
‘For being a fundamentalist, for giving up everything for one idea — love. And you still live it.’
‘Would you have sacrificed so much?’
‘For me the world’s full of women. Many of them — too many — are nice.’
‘The serial loves keep you safe, and that’s the most dangerous thing of all. You never miss anyone, and if there’s no sacrifice, there’s no love.’