“Helen, I should go. They said I wasn’t to upset you.”
“You’re not. Tell me something.”
“What?”
“How do I look?”
He lifted his head and blinked at her. “How do you look?”
“Yes. Tell me.”
“Um.” He began a kind of frown. “Just now?”
“Just now.”
She heard him pull up a breath to speak with and then stop. Then he breathed again. “Do I have to get this right? Helen? I mean help me, I don’t know what you’re asking. I love you. Can I say I love you? I love you.”
She felt that. It washed along, snug under her skin, slow and heavy and more than enough to stir up the pain in her bones. She held him by the wrist with as much strength as she had. “Mr. Brindle never told me how I looked. So I want to know. And I love you.”
“You . . . ?”
“Love you. How do I look?”
“Well, you’re—really?”
“Yes, how do I look?”
“Um, you look lovely. That bastard—he didn’t stop you being lovely. Your nose is a bit . . . He broke it.” His hand smoothed light on her forehead, catching a hair back into place. “I would have killed him. Murder has no possible justification, I believe that absolutely, but I would have killed him if he hadn’t killed himself—I would have. Sorry.”
She felt his face grazing above her, breathing her in.
“Helen? That thing they’ve given you to wear, I wouldn’t—I don’t think it’s very nice.”
“I’m a mess.”
“You’re a lovely mess.” He surprised himself with a laugh that ended dangerously close to something else.
“Oh, well, I’ve never been a lovely mess before.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“I’ve been a mess . . .”
“No. You’re still doing better than me. Listen, you may not be able to see this, but I am in no way at what we might laughingly call my best. Shaving this morning, I don’t know, I can’t have been thinking—I look as though I’ve tried to cut my head off. Blood everywhere.”
“Don’t let the nurses see, they’ll keep you in.”
“I wouldn’t mind staying.” He paused to let her think about that. “Helen, could I bring you a different nightdress tomorrow? If I came tomorrow . . . I could come tomorrow. I live here. I have a flat, I’m renting a flat, that seemed to be the thing . . . I mean, would that be useful? Something more comfortable for you to wear?”
“That would be good of you. Thank you. I’m a si—”
“I know what size you are, Helen. I know exactly what size you are.”
A porter wheelchaired her out of the hospital because her walking was strong, but her balance much weaker, and she represented a risk of accident to herself. Edward loped, or occasionally had to trot beside her. She was being discharged to his flat and his care which made this feel like a fixed prescription, as well as a choice on her part. There was a good solidity about the plans for her immediate future. Edward had admitted his qualifications in matters of the brain and friendship and the proper authorities had accepted him as a person who was fit to have charge of her. In spite of, or perhaps because of his doctorates, the ward sister had given him a checklist of contra-indications for cases of head injury.
GROWING DROWSINESS OR CONFUSION
WEAKNESS OF AN ARM OR LEG
VOMITING
LEAKAGE FROM THE EAR OR NOSE
SEVERE HEADACHE
“I’ve had a headache for a week.” Sitting in a rented flat and drinking badly-made tea and thinking she is more fond of her city now than she has ever been and that the autumn sky through the window is of the very best colour in a blue eye and good enough to break your heart.
“For a week.”
Edward is busy being pleased. Helen’s sister bought clothes and cried and looked at him as if he might very well be a monster and he was still pleased. Whatever he does or does not do, he cannot help being pleased. At the moment he is smiling at Helen in a way that means he will be slightly deaf, because he is not listening a bit.
“Headache. Me.”
Now he is concerned, but also pleased. “Not a severe one.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“You’re a professor.”
“I had to be a doctor first. Does your head seriously hurt?”
“No, doctor. I just wish it didn’t spin.”
“I know, that’ll wear off, though. Your balance is out of whack.”
“You don’t say.”
“Oh, but I do, I heard me.” And he takes her temperature the way he is meant to at regular intervals, especially at night.
Helen thinks of him at regular intervals, especially at night, and she grows more well. She walks without help, she can bear to read print, they take her stitches out. For the very last time, she talks to the police and all they discuss is no more of her concern. There will be an inquest and she will get through it because Edward will be there.
Chapter 10
One evening she sits in the best of their flat’s remarkably purple armchairs and eats a hot meal with Edward. The people that Edward telephoned have cooked it, but he puts it on the plate.
“So it’s edible, at least.”
He starts their washing-up and Helen follows him in to make a pot of tea. They both enjoy their tea. When she fits herself behind him as he works at the sink, they both sway slightly under the impact of what they are because they haven’t touched this way since Kensington. She slips her hands in round his waist until they meet above the buckle of his belt. He leans in to her, only lightly and she can feel all of him live, “Are you sure?” and each of his syllables rubbing and snuggling in. “We don’t need to hurry.”
“What have I got here?”
“Me.”
“Mm?”
“Edward E. Gluck. The E is for Eric. I don’t want to rush you.”
“I know.”
“But I will have to in a minute, if you don’t stop. I’m only flesh and blood, after all.”
“I know. That’s what I want.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. It is.”
Which takes them to her room and to the drawing of her curtains and to a kiss which is so interesting they are unable to move on for quite a while.
A person should not undress another person while that person is undressing them.
“I’m sorry, it’s because of the dark—if you could do that button.” Edward does have extremely large hands, which are not always un-clumsy.
Helen is finding it difficult to co-ordinate speaking with the everything else that is happening everywhere. “Different, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Clothes. Going from the outside in. Someone else.”
“Mm hm. Different and much better. Oh, God. No, I’ll do that, because it’s . . . Okay, you do it, then. But—”
“Ow.”
“Sorry, I did say . . .”
They stand and clasp each other woodenly and Helen thinks they are afraid of breaking or of the roaring of their skin or of the fact that they have exactly what they want, that they are holding it.
She walks him to the bed and they cover each other up, carefully and entirely, and begin the gentle, strenuous fight to cling and be still and kiss and move and touch every place when there are acres of places, all moving and turning and wanting to be touched. Edward’s skin, she could never have fully imagined how completely satisfactory Edward’s skin would be. And he has a good weight, the right weight, something she can move to take.
“Can I?”
“I wish you would, yes.”
A stutter of hands and there he is, the lovely man. In.
“Jesus that’s—” The other stutter, the big stutter. “Oh, Helen. Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, stay there.”
“But I’ve—”
“I know.” She can feel the twitch of him, the slight wit
hdrawal. “Stay there, though, I like you there. And we have ages, we have all night, we have years. I’m taking it as a compliment.”
“I was hoping it would be.” He coughs, relaxes, sinks on to her. “Not exactly the demon lover when it comes to flesh and blood.”
“From what I’ve read, I shouldn’t worry, we’ll be fine.”
“From what you’ve read?”
“Self-help books, they cover everything. I’ve gone through most of them.”
“And you’ve read about this.”
“About all kinds of things.”
“You’re as bad as me.” She feels him twitch again.
“I came across sexual information in the course of my general reading.”
“Really.” Twitch. He is smiling in both possible places.
“Yes, really, and sometimes I wanted to read about men. I wanted to like them, because often they seemed such a good idea and not the way I’d been told, or the way that I’d found them to be. I mean, they go wrong; any kind of person could go wrong, I understood that, but then I’d see a man walking or tying his laces, or something, queuing in a shop and he’d be so lovely and clear . . . He’d be the way a woman couldn’t. I’m a woman and men are made to be particularly not like me. That is such a good thing. Like men swallowing . . .”
“Swallowing.”
“Yes. Have you ever watched a man swallow— absolutely nothing but that? It’s incredible. You’ve all got that high adam’s apple and it moves so fantastically well—like it’s happy and buoyant and vulnerable and working just the way that it should be—and the jaw’s got a proper edge and there’s that bit of friction. With men you get friction. They can really be a quality design.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
She rests her mouth near his throat and he swallows for her. “Mm hm, that’s it.”
“Well, I’m a man.”
“I know that.”
“I swallow like a man.”
“But you swallow like you, too. And you have your kind of man’s chest. When you stand up, it’s at that right kind of an angle, that clear line—no breasts.”
“What about my angle now?”
Helen licks his neck and closes her eyes while his body gives a gentle jump and hers answers it. “It’s a good angle.”
“Anything else, while you’re making a list?”
Her hand makes a slow reach down to where it wants and he shivers up for a moment to let it through so it can hold him.
“These would be on the list. These are the best. Very nearly the best.”
“You be careful with them, then.”
“They’re gorgeous, they feel gorgeous.”
She explores while Edward stretches full awake. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“You didn’t read that in a self-improvement book. Unless it was a very good one. Oh, dear.”
“If you don’t like it, I can stop.”
“Don’t you dare. You have no idea of how many nights, of how long I’ve been thinking of your hand doing that, and of me being here and inside you and doing this with you, and this.”
They begin doing this, and this, Edward talking them through.
“Oh, God . . .
“That’s nice . . .
“I think . . .
“If we . . .
“Make it slow . . .
“This will . . .
“Turn out . . .
“Fine.
“Oh, yes.
“We’re Fine.
“Love you.”
“I love you,” and so she does.
Her thinking is beginning to steam over, but Helen knows precisely who she loves and precisely Who has let her love him.
“That’s it.”
“No, that’s it.”
“Oh, yes, so it is.”
They’re almost away now, almost one and the same thing and not a thought between them except for, “Edward?”
“Hm?”
“You have really large feet.”
“Feet?”
“Mm.”
“Now she tells me.”
“You do.”
“I’m very tall.” Bright at her ear, breath and sound and Edward being pleased to sound mildly offended. “Didn’t have big feet—I’d fall over. We wouldn’t want that.”
“No, we wouldn’t want that.”
And, having nothing more to say, Helen lets herself be. She is here and with Edward as he folds in around her and she around him and they are one completed motion under God the Patient, Jealous Lover: the Jealous, Patient Love.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. L. Kennedy was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1965. She is the author of two award-winning collections of stories and two award-winning novels. She lives in Glasgow.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright © 1997 by A. L. Kennedy
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.randomhouse.com
Originally published (with ten short stories) in Great Britain in 1997 by Jonathan Cape, London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kennedy, A. L.
Original bliss / A. L. Kennedy. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PR6061.E5952075 1999
823’.914—dc21 98-15887
CIP
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42715-1
v3.0
Original Bliss Page 15