Tom switched off the lamp and went to Nelly.
Thursday
They had gone to bed late and not slept until later still. But Nelly roused him early, while it was still dark. The bedside candle she had lit lay in a shallow cup of red glass. It was the ruby and gold illumination of Tom’s solitary performances. What he desired, on the instant, was her direction. His hand passed across his hip, glided over hers, and drew her fingers towards him.
‘Hang on.’ She said, ‘Something I want to tell you.’
She had twisted up her hair, secured it with the comb he had taken from it some hours earlier. Now she retrieved his bedspread from the floor and arranged it about her shoulders. Its loose blue folds, in which tiny mirrors glittered, lay open at her breasts. The soft indigo cotton flowed like a kimono. This brazen orientalism achieved, she was ready to begin.
‘What you said yesterday about Felix taking my dress.’
Propped on one elbow, Tom waited.
Nelly said it was what she herself had suspected when she heard Jimmy Morgan’s story.
‘So I was right about Denise. Why didn’t you say?’
‘I don’t think he took it for Denise.’
Nelly was silent for so long that Tom slid his free hand into blue shadows. At which she said, ‘I think Felix took it for himself.’
I didn’t want to see her face. Jimmy Morgan’s unease slid into Tom’s mind as female flesh parted unambiguously at his touch.
Nelly murmured, ‘Like you said about Denise. If someone saw my dress, they might think they’d seen me. And also-’
‘What?’
‘Felix knew I would know.’ A little later: ‘It was his message to me. The note he didn’t leave.’
Scented molecules were being released into the air; a flower was opening, thick-petalled, sweetly reeking. The man’s fl esh fluttered and thrilled in response. Silently fly the birds / all through us, he thought.
But Nelly went on talking. ‘It’s like he turned himself into a letter only I could read.’
Tom tried to concentrate. ‘Wouldn’t he have looked weird? People would have noticed for sure.’
‘It was mostly dark. And just to get to the beach and away.’
She spoke hurriedly; Tom realised she was impatient for him to continue. He rearranged blue pleats, the better to observe her.
‘Jimmy Morgan thought the woman he saw was carrying a bag.’ Nelly said, ‘Felix could’ve had other stuff in there, clothes that fi tted him.’
‘It sounds-I don’t know, incredible. Not to mention risky.’
‘He didn’t have a lot of time to plan it. And he was good at risks.’
While she was speaking the flame in the red glass dipped and died, and a great wing of shadow reared against the wall.
In the blind dark Nelly said, ‘It would explain why he’s never been found.’
She said, ‘He might have gone on doing it. Cross-dressing, I mean.’
Tom was conscious of her body’s heat, of her quick blood under his fingers. At the same time, she seemed mechanical in a way he hadn’t noticed the previous night; a pulse jumping at a stroked wrist suggested not so much life as animation. He had created this staccato but it was not susceptible to rule.
Afterwards, it would occur to him that her narrative too might have soared beyond control. Replaying the scene, listening yet again to the increasing urgency of Nelly’s whisper, he would ask himself whether her tale was only a by-product of bodily imperative, a device for ensuring his interest and her consummation.
Even at the time, as his sight adjusted itself to the dark, he was aware of her possession by an antique demon. He watched her gaze turn glassy and inward, and thought, She’ll say anything now.
When she spoke, it was Tom who shivered. ‘A child would be more frightened of a man.’
It was his mobile that woke him the second time. He traced it to
the kitchen table; answered it standing naked in radiant light.
‘It’s joy.’
It chimed, for a moment, like magic; like a message from the universe. ‘Yes!’ he cried. Thinking, Such joy!
‘I gave out your flyers to our drivers.’
‘Oh-Joy.’
She said, ‘Sorry I haven’t got any news’; and Tom recalled, vividly, her grave, well-mannered air. ‘I was just hoping he might’ve turned up? So I thought I’d give you a call.’
He was still smiling when he carried the dish of oats into the laundry. The dog’s tail beat in his basket. He lifted his head to quiver his nostrils about the man’s hand.
Tom said, ‘What went on out there, eh? What a story you could tell.’ The animal’s coat was dry under his fi ngers, leached of its natural oils.
Having bolted his food, the dog scratched at the back door. Tom left it open. Sunlight and the scent of mock orange blossom from the bush by the gulley trap poured into the laundry. It was a perfect day.
In the shower, there was the bliss of massaging shampoo into his scalp. The sun slipped under a cloud and the frosted shower screen turned into a miniature alpine landscape under a dull sky. Then the sun came out again and touched the small glass peaks with gold.
He was thinking about what Nelly had said; picturing Felix Atwood assuming femininity with a dress. It was possible, of course. But above all it was fantastic. In the bright light of day, it was the extravagance of Nelly’s conjecture that prevailed. Tom, turning his face up to steamy water, thought, She can’t really believe that stuff! And following the path that was opening before him, he found he had arrived at the theatrical.
The recent cabaret in his bedroom, with its drapery and candle
light, now struck him as supremely contrived.
But why?
It took shape all at once, as infused with design as a fl ower. From the press of motives that might have inspired Nelly, one sprang vigorously forth. Tom made himself consider it, the better to thrust it from him; but that only strengthened its hold. It carried the conviction of a thing half known and dreaded, and seen for the fi rst time.
He stepped out onto the bath mat and into a cube of vaporous light: a man strung with breaking beads of water. Posner’s visit came back to him in a new guise, his hints masking a confession Tom had not allowed himself to unveil. He remembered the dealer’s eyes, levelled at him like a gun. Posner knew what had happened to Atwood; Tom was sure of it. There had been something else in the room when Posner had called on him that night, something invisible and potent. Something Tom hadn’t wished to hear and so willed Posner to leave unsaid. A tiny noise burst from him-if only he hadn’t missed it!
At once the whole edifice collapsed like a pricked bubble. It was air and absurdity. It was contested at every turn by his sense of the woman in his bed; by all that was intangible in her makeup, and yet resisted, as if densely material, being modelled into a repulsive form.
And still doubt twisted in Tom’s mind; flashed like a fi sh. Almost, almost he let it go. But the world chose that moment to break in on his hesitations. A laboured breathing close at hand had been growing steadily louder. Now the exhaust fan screamed, shuddered a long moment, and died. Tom fl icked the switch but failed to bring about a resurrection.
The death rattle of that fan: it would turn up in dreams for the rest of his life.
The air in the bathroom was dense with misty wreaths. Tom went to the window and tilted it open. When he turned around, it was to the likeness of an incurably benign face. The next instant the haze thinned and Arthur was gone-if he had ever been present; dispersed like steam, before his son had confronted him, a sweetly ineffectual ghost.
Afterwards, Tom would ask himself if it had not in fact been a form of counseclass="underline" the silent advocacy of kindness that asked nothing in return. But at the time, in that scented room, he was seized by a live impatience. What he required was resolution, not the ambiguity of visions.