The Immaculate

by Mark Morris

“Yeah.”

  “Was it another childhood dream?”

  This time he simply nodded.

  She drew closer to him, began to stroke his hair with one hand and then gently to knead the bunched muscles in his neck and shoulders. “You’re so tense,” she said. She sat up, dragging herself from beneath the duvet, and then moved behind him and hugged him, her arms going over his shoulders and encircling his neck, her breasts pushing into his back, her legs straddling him from behind. She kissed his ear and cheek. His sweat was like the sediment of his dream, clinging and coppery. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Everything’s okay now. It’s all over.”

  He was silent for a long, long moment. At last he said, “Why is this happening now?”

  “What do you mean?” Gail said.

  Jack shrugged, and again didn’t reply immediately. He took one of her hands, meshed his fingers with hers.

  Finally he said, “When I left Beckford I was pretty screwed up. I did not have a happy childhood.” He snorted without humour. “That’s an understatement. But . . . well . . . I’m over that now. I’ve been over it a long time. So why am I suddenly having these dreams? Why now, when everything’s going so well?”

  Gail kissed his ear gently, hugged him tighter. “Maybe you’re not fully over it. Maybe it’s been lying dormant inside you all these years and it’s finally working its way out.”

  Jack thought of a friend of his who had had a car accident. It had taken two years for a shard of metal the size of a fingernail to work its way out of his leg.

  “I don’t know,” he said, unconvinced.

  “But you still don’t like to talk about your childhood, do you?”

  “No, but . . . I don’t know. That’s different.”

  “Why is it different? If you were over it you’d be able to talk about it. Whenever I ask you anything you just clam up, give me that dangerous look of yours. If I push it, you get angry.”

  Jack scowled, felt himself tensing. “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re doing it now.”

  He was. He knew he was and he couldn’t help it.

  “Okay,” he conceded grumpily, “but I still don’t see why all this should choose now to emerge. I’m not unhappy. In fact I’m the happiest I’ve been for a long time. I’ve got you, and I’ve finally hit the bestseller lists. Everything’s going really well.”

  “Well, maybe that’s got something to do with it. Maybe, for the first time in your life, you’ve got something you’re terrified of losing. Perhaps, subconsciously, you think the only threat to your happiness are the monsters of your childhood, the bad memories which are locked in here.” She tapped his head.

  Jack thought about it. At last he said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, you’re impossible,” Gail said in exasperation. “Tell me about your childhood then, get it all out in the open.”

  Jack felt his temper rising a little and tried to stifle it. “I will,” he said.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know . . . sometime.”

  “Why not now?”

  Jack waved a hand at the clock. “Don’t be stupid, it’s . . . ,” he squinted at the luminous hands “ten past three in the morning.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s bedtime.”

  “We’re in bed.”

  “Okay then, sleep time.”

  Gail snorted. “Excuses.”

  Jack’s breathing became quicker as his anger rose. “Don’t hassle me, Gail,” he snapped. “I’ll tell you in my own time, okay?”

  She hugged him hard, almost roughly. “I love you,” she said. “I don’t want us to have secrets from each other.”

  “We won’t,” Jack said.

  “But we do.”

  “We won’t,” he repeated more firmly. “I’ll tell you sometime, I promise.”

  “Soon?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes,” he snapped. “Now let’s go to sleep.”

  She sighed, disentangled herself from him. They lay back, Jack grimacing at the clammy sheets.

  There was silence for a time. Then Gail said, “Jack?”

  “Mm?”

  “Was your childhood really bad?”

  He paused. “Yes,” he said quietly, “it was.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “No, I know.”

  Silence enfolded them again. Jack closed his eyes and slept uneasily till dawn.

  4

  CROSS MY HEART

  On Saturday, May 8th, Jack woke up feeling edgy, tense and irritable. Normally when he awoke, even without the aid of an alarm, Gail awoke too, as if their body clocks were perfectly attuned. Today, however, she slept on, perhaps because Jack’s muscles had been so taut that his body had remained still even as his brain clicked on and his eyes fluttered open. He was glad that she had stayed asleep. He didn’t know why he should be feeling this way and he wanted some time to ponder it. He stared up at the ceiling, aware of the rigidity in his back and shoulders and limbs, the nervous curling in his innards that Gail always referred to as a “twizzly tummy.” He tried to smile at that, but it was a tight smile, hard to maintain. He felt as if his anxious thoughts were clenching their teeth and their fists, locking themselves into his head.

  But why? He had no reason to be worried or uptight, had he? His new book was coming along nicely, his relationship with Gail was as close and loving as ever, his health, as far as he knew, was good, and his money worries minimal. His last nightmare, the one about the ogre, had been five days ago, and since then Gail had left the subject of his childhood alone. So why did he feel as if something bad was about to happen? Trying to create as little noise and disturbance as possible he slid out of bed.

  He stood for a moment, naked, and listened to Gail’s breathing; it remained unchanged. The sound of the heating, its soft, comforting shhhh, was like breathing, too. Jack could feel its benefit, its warmth permeating the flat, which meant it was sometime after 7 A.M. He crossed to the armchair, the seat on which he had tossed his clothes last night, and fished around in the folds for his watch. He unearthed it and looked at the time—7:15. Pale grey shadows, soft as felt, were laid over the room, muting its colours, though sunlight was pressing against the curtains in a butter-yellow block. Gail’s clothes were neatly folded and draped over the back of the chair. Jack picked up her lilac sweatshirt and held it to his face. It was warmly imbued with the scent she wore, Magie Noire, and her own wonderful Gail-smell that to Jack was comforting and luxurious and arousing. Though he had just got out of bed he was not cold, and because of this, and because he didn’t want to wake Gail by tugging out drawers to search for clean underwear, he padded naked out of the room.

  He sat on the toilet, browsing through a book called Magical Britain that he had taken from the small alcove behind him. The pages of the book were corrugated from the steam of countless baths. Jack, however, was not really reading the book; he was merely giving his hands something to do whilst his mind chewed over some possible cause for his anxiety. He couldn’t think of anything at all. To call the feeling presentiment or foreboding made it sound more mystical than it felt.

  He went to the kitchen to make breakfast. The linoleum was cold on his bare feet. Sunshine streamed through the skylight and reflected in harsh spasms on the room’s myriad gleaming surfaces. He poured muesli into two bowls, chopped half a banana into each, and then topped them with milk. He placed the bowls on a tray, to which he added a plate containing four crumpets with butter and jam, a pot of tea, a mug and a cup. Gail always only drank half a cup of weak tea in the morning; Jack drank at least two mugfuls, the stronger the better. He carried the tray into the bedroom and set it down on the floor next to Gail’s side of the bed, having to first clear a pile of books that had been allowed to accumulate over the last couple of weeks.

  Now was the time to wake Gail, now that he had brooded over the cau
se of his concern, without result. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, which was flushed and hot because she had been lying on it. Her short dark hair was tousled, her brows slightly beetled as if she were concentrating hard on the dream she was having. When Jack kissed her she murmured unintelligibly, allowing him the minutest glimpse of her white teeth and pink tongue.

  Seeing her like this, curled up and defenceless as she slept, made Jack ache with love for her. Sometimes he loved her so much that there were no words or actions to express the depth of his emotion. “I love you,” or even “I love you so much,” seemed woefully inadequate—to try and express through language what seemed limitless in his head and heart only served to diminish it. Hugs, too, kisses, even eye contact was not enough. Once, in Hyde Park, Jack had said, “How can I prove that I truly love you? What could I do that would make you realise just how much?”

  It had been a cold day, a foreshadow of winter. Gail’s nose and cheeks had been red, her eyes clear and sharp as the air. Lifting her chin from the fleecy swathes of her scarf she had asked, “Would you kill yourself for me?”

  “If you like,” said Jack. “Got a knife?”

  “No, I’m serious. If you really had to . . . would you do it?”

  Jack looked at her, and there was an earnestness in her face, an appeal, that both unsettled him and roused in him a love so acute it was like pain. He took her cold face in his gloved hands and pulled her gently to him so that their foreheads and noses touched. “Yes, I would,” he said and kissed her warm lips. “I’d do anything for you.”

  She drew back from him. “Promise?”

  Jack laughed. “Yes,” he said, and drew two swift intersecting lines across his breastbone. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  He sat down on her side of the bed, making the springs creak and Gail murmur a little more. He reached out and touched her hair, tenderly running a finger along the points of her spiky fringe. “Come on, cutey pie, wake up,” he said. “Brekky’s ready.”

  Gail made a sound that seemed to suggest she was not impressed. Then she said very clearly, “Please don’t disturb the herbs in my hair. I haven’t got any more.”

  Jack laughed. Some of the stuff she came out with when she was half-asleep was priceless. “Don’t worry,” he said, “the herbs are safe. Will you wake up now.”

  “Mnn,” she said, which could have meant either yes or no. Eyes still closed, she said, “Please, doctor, there must be something you can do. Alice can’t die.”

  The anxiety inside Jack, vague and smouldering until now, suddenly flared, making his whole body jerk on the bed as if shocked from a dream. The movement woke Gail. Her eyes crinkled open into slits. She rolled onto her back and regarded him. “What are you doing?” she grumbled thickly.

  “What were you dreaming about?” Jack said, aware that his voice sounded harsh, snappish.

  At this moment, barely awake, the question was too taxing. “What?” she grunted.

  “Just now. A minute ago. You were dreaming about something. What was it?”

  Gail’s eyes reluctantly opened a millimetre further. She looked at Jack as if he were a stranger accosting her in some language she did not understand. Then she yawned and said, “I can’t remember. What time is it? Is there any grapefruit juice?”

  He scowled at the irrelevancy. “No,” he snapped. “Please, Gail, try and remember what it was you were dreaming about.”

  Even as he harried her, Jack knew this was quite definitely not the way to go about it. At the best of times Gail needed careful handling first thing in the morning. She was one of those people who woke up snarling and scowling, who would make even a bear with a sore head cower. Jack normally tried to ease her passage with loving words, soft kisses, a cuddle within the warmth of which she could groan slowly awake, allow her grumpiness to evaporate. At the moment, however, he was so wound up that whatever he said would come out sounding querulous, accusatory.

  “I don’t know what it was,” she growled. “What does it matter, anyway?”

  Jack reached out to stroke her face. She looked as if she were going to flinch away, then she capitulated, grudgingly consenting to his touch. Trying to modify his urgency, Jack said, “Please, Gail, just try and remember. It’s important to me. Just try to remember and then I’ll explain why.”

  “Muesli,” she said sulkily.

  “What?”

  “Give me my muesli first.”

  Frustration twisting inside him, Jack reached down to the breakfast tray for Gail’s bowl of muesli.

  She chewed concentratedly and stared at him, a bead of milk quivering on her bottom lip before she flicked out her tongue to lick it off. Jack looked back at her; it reminded him of one of those staring games you played as a child—first one to blink is the loser. At last, in as calm a voice as possible, he said, “Well?”

  “I’m trying to remember,” she snapped. “Can’t you see?”

  “Grumpy pants.”

  “Grumpy pants yourself.”

  “Can you remember anything? Anything at all? Usually with dreams you either can or you can’t.”

  Gail was simmering down a little now, finding her place in the waking world again. She yawned out more of her sleep and then said, “All I remember is . . . a kind of . . . impression. There was lots of green: woods, trees, plants and fields and stuff. It was quite wet and dismal. There was a smell of . . . I don’t know . . . mulchy vegetation, earth, stagnant water.” She frowned, fell silent, spooned more cereal into her mouth.

  “Were there people in the dream?” Jack asked. There was a pulsing in his ears, his skin felt tight and cold. More than ever a feeling of dread was screwing itself tightly into the centre of his chest, making it hurt to breathe.

  “Yes,” Gail said, “but I can’t remember who they were or what they were doing?”

  “Was it a good dream or a bad dream?”

  “It wasn’t a good dream,” she said at once. She paused, biting down gently on her lower lip as she tried to remember. “But I don’t think it was a nightmare either. I think there was a sense of . . . urgency, maybe even panic, about it. I think I felt uptight, worried, scared for somebody, not for myself.”

  “Was there someone called Alice in the dream?”

  She frowned at him, puzzled. “Alice? I don’t know. Why?”

  “That name doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Should it?”

  Jack shrugged. “Just before you woke up you said something like, ‘Please do something, doctor. Alice can’t die.’ ”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, you did. So none of that means anything? It doesn’t jog any memories?”

  Gail handed Jack her empty bowl and drew her knees up under the covers. She wrapped her arms around them and leaned forward, a thoughtful look on her face. Eventually she said, “Nope. Sorry. Jack, just what is this all about?”

  He sighed, rubbing a hand slowly across his forehead as if to massage his thoughts, relax them. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “This morning I woke up feeling . . . incredibly uptight, anxious, scared that something bad was going to happen. I still feel it now as a matter of fact. And then, just before you woke up you said that thing about Alice, and . . . oh, I’m probably being stupid, but it seemed . . . linked somehow, as if you were confirming that there was something to worry about.” He snorted a half-laugh through his nose, lips curling stiffly into a smile.

  “But who’s Alice?” Gail asked. “I don’t understand what that’s got to do with anything.”

  “She’s . . . she was my mother.”

  “Oh,” said Gail, “I see.” A small silence fell between them. Sunlight was seeping around the edges of the curtains, staining the walls like luminous paint. Gail reached out and touched Jack’s bare shoulder. He shivered, though her hand was not cold.

  “Don’t you think you’re probably reading too much into all this?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  �
�Well, Alice isn’t an uncommon name, is it? Maybe I was dreaming about something I’ve seen on telly, or Alice in Wonderland, or even someone I know.”

  “Do you know someone called Alice?”

  “Well . . . no,” she admitted.

  Jack pulled a face as if to say: I don’t like it but that proves my point, don’t you think?

  “Maybe you told me your mother’s name sometime and I kind of stored it in my subconscious.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever told you my mother’s name.”

  “Yes, but you can’t be sure, can you?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “But not one hundred percent sure?”

  Jack looked unhappy. “Well . . . I suppose not,” he said grudgingly.

  “There, you see? Problem solved. You’re just getting uptight about nothing.”

  “Am I?”

  “Of course you are. Sometimes I wake up feeling anxious without knowing why. Everyone does. It’s probably some minor physical thing. A surge of some chemical to the brain or something.”

  Jack looked unconvinced for a moment, then he shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Probably just a touch of PMT.”

  She giggled. “What’s that? Pathetic male tendencies?”

  He grinned. “Putrid maggoty tentacles.”

  “Yuk, gross,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “How about pink monkey tusks.”

  “Peripatetic metamorphic thespians,” he responded immediately.

  “Clever sod. Just ’cos you’re a writer.” She frowned hard, trying to come up with a suitable riposte, then her face brightened. “No,” she said, “I know what it stands for.”

  “What?”

  “It stands for Please May-I-have-my Toast?”

  Jack laughed loudly, felt the tension easing inside him. “You’re brilliant,” he told her.

  “True.”

  “Except that I haven’t made toast today, I’ve made crumpets.”

  “Spoilsport,” she said. Then she unexpectedly lunged for him, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind, her head darting forward, her small but very wet tongue invading his ear. Jack bellowed in mock-disgust and for twenty seconds or so the two of them wrestled on the bed, feet sliding on the duvet. Pillows plumped to the floor, one of them only just missing the breakfast tray. Gail was strong and sinewy; she wriggled out of Jack’s grip like a snake, using her long fingers to dig into his waist and tickle, undermining his strength. At last she got on top of him, pinioning his arms to the mattress above his head with her hands. Jack lunged forward and licked her left breast as wetly as he could. Gail squealed, “You beast! You’ll suffer for that.”