Older myself now, I’ve begun to see things differently, as I feared I would, but not for the reasons I feared. Because the young do not yet know how it feels to be wrong about things. Not just mistaken. Life pounds the young often enough with their mistakes. I mean wrong profoundly, about a religion, about your abilities or shortcomings, about someone you once loved, or didn’t. As you age you gather these memories of yourself being wrong in ways that at the time you could not understand. This is how people grow, not just upwards but like trees, by accumulating skins. Each you contains and conceals all the preceding, and none can know the next. After a while you’ve been so often corrected that you go about in a kind of flinch.
I think humanity is old now. Writing gave us memory, and memory gave us age. The store of what we know goes only upwards. Soon our last beliefs will be blurred away.
*
Frances.
A bright light and something fussing with your face. Something on your stomach and a hissing sound, a hushing sound. Something hard is on your face, pressing.
Frances.
A man’s voice. My voice. I am sitting on you, my knees on either side. My hand is tight on your mouth, burying your head in the pillow. My other hand holds your right wrist. You struggle momentarily and groan but I’m heavy. You stop to reflect.
Listen, Frances. I know you’re scared but you’re safe. OK? You’re safe. I can’t let you go because you need to listen to me. Will you listen to me?
At this point you remember the navy wool and my original hair and you nod. You nod and nod. All the fear goes into nodding. I am bright in the light of your lamp.
Thank you. This is frightening. I understand that, but I have something I want to give you and this is the only way.
I smell fragrant. I let go of your wrists but I keep my hand on your mouth. Slowly and smoothly you cross your arms over your chest.
I’m sure you have many questions, but I want you to wait. I’m sorry about this. It’s necessary.
You expected something but did not expect something like this.
Do you understand?
You lie still, staring.
Just nod your head if you understand.
You nod your head.
You can sit up if you like, I say. But you need to promise not to speak or scream. I’m going to take my hand away, and I’m going to need to trust you. Can I do that?
You nod.
If you scream, I don’t know. I don’t really have a plan. That’s why this has to work on trust.
You nod again, so I climb off the bed. At first you don’t move at all, then you put your palms on the mattress and raise yourself, revealing blue pyjamas. You shuffle back against the headboard, smuggling in a glance around the room. Your phone is missing, and your clock has been turned to face the wall. A cup of tea steams next to it. I have my own on the floor, and a bag.
I’m sorry, Frances.
You see fear in my eyes too.
I sit beside you on the bed with the bag on my lap and sip my tea. You look at the bag.
That’s for you, I say with a gesture at your cup.
You aren’t sure. You stare.
It’s OK. It’s just a cup of tea.
You lift it to your mouth and take some sips. I get mine and do the same. Our eyes meet over the brims, your eyes and mine. It’s like there’s something that you’re meant to understand. You think about dousing me with tea. You don’t know if it’s still hot enough to burn, or if you need me to be burned. You need to escape. You’d fling off the covers and run. Then I’d be after you, and you might be caught, and the struggle might become something. Besides, I must have thought of this. I’ve surely locked the doors or brought a weapon or something, if I have any sense. Do I have any sense? You look at me. I look so kind. I look almost normal. I was kind and normal in the cafe. Rare ways of being, though they seem so little to ask. You want to believe that I’m about to give you an innocent explanation for what I’m doing, and I look like I am, but then it scares you that invading your bedroom at night seems so innocent to me. That I can sit by your legs and drink tea. Am I pretending to be normal, or pretending to be scary? Maybe I don’t make those decisions any more. Maybe that’s what it means to be mad. Maybe this is just going to be a weird night that you’ll always remember, and in the morning I’ll go back with the orderlies. Maybe burning me with tea, smashing the window, screaming, maybe they would change the kind of night that this will be. You can’t presume to know what the mad intend. Right now you’re unharmed, you’re free to move. Maybe these things happen all the time and are seldom reported. Maybe it’s only selection bias that’s making you think there’s rape and murder in my bag. You try to stop looking at it. You don’t want to remind me.
You remember a story you heard not long ago from a friend, the story of a young woman who woke in her hotel room to find a man standing over her. He made flustered claims, then fled. She called reception who promised to send someone instantly, but when someone arrived it was the same man in different clothes. She’d been sleepy the first time, there’d been less light, but she knew him despite his denials. She found another hotel and the story petered out, but she still wonders what he wanted. He probably just wanted her underwear. Or maybe underwear’s how they start. You could offer me some underwear. I might be offended, and you were warned not to talk. You wonder if the man in the hotel had a bag.
You drink tea and try a smile to appease me.
I am sorry, I say. We can still have that drink on Friday. I did want to wait until then, but I’ve thought about it since, and we have to do this first.
I raise a hand. You were about to speak.
Please, I say. You’ll get an explanation. First let’s just enjoy our tea.
My calm has gone. I need this pause to recover. Patrick was easy, I now realise. I didn’t care what he thought. I feel bad about that sometimes, how little he meant to me, how much I resented the mess he left behind. You might say I feel bad because I don’t feel worse. I’d listen to anything you say. This is why I don’t want you to speak. And of course you don’t know me yet. That was once the way I wanted it. Now I want us together, which means the old human difficulty again, the yearning for love and the whether or not we get it. Ask most people, ask society, and they say the way to be loved is to act loveable, which if you ask me is as dumb as it gets. I’ve seen them time and again, these loveable fictions. I don’t want somebody to love my act.
You finish your tea and I finish mine. I place my hands in my lap, imitating your body language, you notice, which you consider a good sign.
I sit silently until I realise that you’re waiting for me. I had quite a tight script, and you’re doing your part beautifully, but I’m constantly forgetting my lines and having to improvise.
Look, I say, unzipping the bag. You’ve waited a long time, and I want you to know what that means to me. You could have got bored in the cafe, or decided I wasn’t coming. I don’t know. Most people just wouldn’t keep it up. They’d worry about being thought strange. You didn’t worry. Or maybe you did, but you carried on. Whatever happens, I want you to know now that that means everything. That can’t be faked.
You did worry. You worried a lot at first, but the fear of being unoccupied was stronger. Then waiting was a habit. By the end I was like a myth to you, and a prophecy. The return of the writer who was kind. You didn’t want to tell Dawn but you’d begun to wonder if I was real. If maybe you’d imagined me to meet an emotional need at a stressful time. No one else you know has met me, besides Patrick, who has since become a ghost himself. Now you wonder what I’ve been doing all the while.
So look, I say.
You watch me going through my things. You see a length of rope. Is that the shaft of a hammer? You pray. You never pray. At last I produce a tablet computer.
I want you to read this.
You look confused.
I wrote it for you, I say. It’s not finished and I don’t know how to end it, but it’s somethi
ng I’ve been working on for a while.
You see that I look desperate, but I want you to focus on the book, not on me. I am not who I am.
If you want to understand what’s going on, this book will help. I want you to read it.
You are scared but you are curious. Consent, says the title page. You flick through the others and see something about a Laura. You see your own name, and the email mentioned. It appears to be an account of my behaviour.
Just start from the beginning. It’s not perfect, but I’ve tried to be honest. I’ve told you everything I can. Read it through and then we’ll talk.
You raise your knees to make a desk for the book, then hesitate.
It’s short. I might write more, but just read what there is for now. Maybe you could help me finish it? As you’ll see I’m in a muddle about how it ends.
You wonder if you could email the authorities, but you can’t see an internet connection and you don’t dare alert me with your finger strokes. I wait by the door, watching. I look on edge.
Are you cold?
You shrug, so I get your dressing gown from the back of the door and help you into it.
Tired? I have some modafinil. It will help.
You shake your head and look back at the page, meaning to start, but it isn’t easy. Your mind is vigilant and won’t submit. Whole paragraphs slip by with not a word absorbed. You draw little spirals with your index finger on your cheek. You probably don’t realise.
I step forwards and reach into my bag. You are ready to spring for the door, but I only pull out my copy of Montaigne. I hope to put you at your ease by appearing lost in it. When I look over, your eyes are wide and dark, with a bright pip of the screen.
*
I know you’re reading this and I want to talk to you, but I don’t know what to say.
You’re scared. I know. I get scared as well. It’s OK but it’s a distraction. Maybe if you’re scared constantly you stop noticing? Maybe always being afraid is the path to calm times.
Whenever I hear about someone dying I always think how strange it is that we are here to talk about it, that our world continues while theirs has been annihilated. Can that be right? Even with practice I don’t think I’ve got any better at believing it, let alone believing it will happen to me. I suppose death lives further from us these days.
People often talk about the wondrous size of the universe, about the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies and the billions of years that they’ve been around. They say that it makes their life feel meaningless, and maybe it does, but that isn’t the effect on me. When I contemplate all the other worlds out there it threatens to be more meaningful than I can cope with. This is what it’s like to be me. Like this, and lonely. Being alone, how else should I feel?
How about being you? What is that like? I want to know, and I’ve tried to imagine. I’ve really thought about the details, but I fear I’ve made mistakes. Tell me the truth. Did I get it right?
About the Author
Leo Benedictus is a freelance feature writer for the Guardian, and other publications. His first novel, The Afterparty, was published in 2011 by Jonathan Cape.
www.leobenedictus.co.uk
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2018
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2018
All rights reserved
© Leo Benedictus, 2018
Cover photograph © Faber
Design by Luke Bird
The right of Leo Benedictus to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–33591–6
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