And what answer could there possibly be to this? It is unforgivable.
‘It’s . . . Art, please, I—’
‘It’s a kind place. All prepared and if it’s comfortable for me and we’re alike – and we are alike . . . It’s a kind place.’
And Beth can’t accept this and she can’t refuse, so she tries, ‘You really live there?’
‘Yes!’ It hurts her when he yells, seems to hurt him too, and they stand apart again and he refastens his buttons while, ‘Jesus, Beth. Yes. I really live there. I don’t lie about everything. I hardly lie at all. The bare minimum. And not with you.’
‘Because lies don’t work.’
‘That’s not why.’
‘On your island – do they know who you are?’
‘What?’ And for a naked second he is baffled, simply a man she ought to help because he is overwrought. ‘No. Not really . . .’ And then he is Art again, defended, describing a way in which he lies. ‘As far as they’re concerned I’m some eccentric with money – a lot of that about on the island – and I have vague health trouble, pay a servant who gathers supplies, oversees repairs and gardening, is sworn to secrecy and who therefore lays down inaccurate gossip which is, in turn, not believed. But, no, they don’t know who I am.’
‘And they don’t know what you do.’
‘Fuck, Beth – nobody knows that. The only one who might is you.’
‘Because when you tell me 361 people have been photographed . . . Look, we have to get out of this cold or we’re going to get hypothermic.’
‘If we go in then we can be seen, so we can’t . . .’ He’s shuddering, they both are – perishing. ‘Yeah, we’ll have to go in. Yeah . . .’ And he hunches his shoulders and returns very mildly to the halting twitching man he’d decided to be in the queue.
Elizabeth follows him round to the nearest door, shouts into the wind before he opens it, ‘Three six one. I remember.’
‘On the Right Hand List.’
‘three six one.’
And then they are tumbled through to an aching quiet, a preposterous warmth. Ahead of them is the internal door and then the expanses of carpet, the efficient lighting, the possibilities of – although it is late – inquisitive observation. Elizabeth’s cheeks and ears are stinging, being hurt with comfort.
Arthur looks raw and diminished. He is frowning down towards her and bending a touch forward, crossing and uncrossing his arms. ‘361 on the Left Hand List would be—’
‘Loss. Betrayal. Please listen. But that’s not what you meant. On the Right Hand List three is Touch me. And six is . . .’ Swallowing and this airless drop that seems to take her as if she’s seventeen and nothing has ever happened to her and she has been academic and a late starter. ‘Six is Fuck me.’ Can’t say it without saying it.
They stand between the doors and Beth wishes she could feel like crying, because that would be something to do and not a trick – not meant as a trick – just something for her to be with.
Arthur rubs his hand over his face in a long, anxious swipe. ‘And one is Look at me.’ He lowers his eyes and says very softly, ‘And you did touch me when I asked, you touched my arm and I have a suite – I have a Grand Suite – and it’s comfortable and warm and we could be comfortable and warm in it together and we could undress and we could be in my bed and you could fuck me, because I asked and you haven’t done that yet and you can’t start a number and not finish, you have to do the whole number and you could fuck me and then I would be with you and I would be naked and you could look at me.’
His head swinging away from her while he speaks, as if he expects to be found offensive, and he doesn’t look at her, is only turning for the final door, pushing it open into the dry, anxious scent of the ship.
Arthur simply walking himself away: ‘You could look at me.’
Which means he isn’t being simple.
He isn’t being fair.
He shouldn’t say things like that.
Any word can work a spell if you know how to use it.
Prepared.
The man sits in a bland hotel suite, curtains drawn for the third day running. Resting in the other room is a woman nobody can mend, but he will try to.
The man is hot with the idea of saving her and has already entirely committed himself to the first of his offerings: the undermining of his own fabric, the imposition of stresses, minor pains. For the woman – she’s called Agathe – he has made himself unnatural. For Agathe there is nothing natural that’s left.
He offers as much to every one of them, to each enquirer.
For quite a while now he’s only worked with individual enquirers – the platform gigs didn’t feel right to him, they lacked control. By himself in a roomful of strangers and their lacks, that never was what he’d intended.
This is better.
This is the last of three days.
The man gives enquirers three perfected days, tailored to their needs.
Bespoke service.
Three days and then no more for ever, a definitive end.
Three days prepared by a man who is prepared.
Before the start of every session, he’s careful to think – I am a man who is prepared. Then he fits his hands one into the other and imagines the smell of caramel and sunshine on his face and reflecting on water and the sound of an easy tidal swell – that kind of breathing, the breath of a calm sea. He revisits a number of comforting places and sensations.
Nothing too pleasant, but enough.
Because I need to be defended.
I need to be prepared.
For this morning he has drunk too much coffee and taken one over-the-counter decongestant. This, combined with his anaemia, will re-pace his heart, make it gallop in his chest. And he will shake.
Which is sometimes an unavoidable requirement.
Appearances matter.
He’s in an excellent suit. He can afford it.
Bespoke service.
He’s been wearing it for two days straight, though, letting it wrinkle – his shirt’s fresh, but wrinkled too – because he’s working, shut in with Agathe and the hours racking round, accumulating. And he won’t be shaving until he stops.
Here am I, gone to pieces, lost and harried in my single-minded care for you.
Symbolic devotion to their cause.
Normally he’s immaculate, keeps cleaner than clean. Shaves twice a day. Manicure once a week.
But if he’s got a gig then he has to be more subtle – dishevelled but not distasteful – so no iron, and unscented soap, unscented antiperspirant. Unwanted scents can be confusing.
Additional antiperspirant for his hands.
Because he is devoted to their cause and his care is single-mindedly for each enquirer.
And, most of all, because they’ll hold his hands.
They will touch him.
They will become familiar with the small knock of his pulse, its eloquent suggestions. But always formality with them, restraint.
Jacket stays on, no matter what, and have to be careful, maintain the proper distances. Be a gentleman. Be especially a gentleman for the ladies.
The work is easier with women. Their orientation doesn’t matter, it’s just simpler for him and smoother with the gender he should love, should be allowed to love – all those echoes of experience, the terrible paths of tenderness that still lead into him, he can use them – they insist on his attention, focus him – and they mean he doesn’t have to fake affection. It’s a pre-existing inclination.
Plus, women live longer, survive – he gets more practice with them.
Ladies’ man.
Which would be funny at another time and in another place.
And if I were another man.
But here I am, myself and working.
And here’s Agath
e.
Her last name is undoubtedly a cautious invention, but Agathe – that’s honest. That rings in her when he says it and he can watch her hollow with the wish to hear it as it once was, familiar and spoken by lost mouths. She aches. When he sits beside her the man aches, too.
At first she was excessively wary with him, furious with a desire to be gone, numb, other than she is.
The man can understand this.
And safety: Agathe still wants safety beyond speaking.
But she doesn’t believe in it, of course. She has no faith in sanctuaries.
She has seen what will happen to people who do.
A challenge then, Agathe.
Not that she was beyond him.
Very few people have managed to stay beyond him.
And, when he came down to it, with Agathe there was only one real barrier to cross. This made his process simple – either break her, which he would not ever do, or find her line and then respect it, spend their first two days showing it humility and restraint: don’t cross it, not until invited.
Kindness.
All done with kindness.
We are all of us done with kindness.
Right now, she will be lying on her bed, but not asleep. Agathe rarely sleeps. She will have heard him showering in his bathroom and the mild din of his feet, his ungainly knock – tired – against a chair that sent it over and on to the carpet. Every noise will have meanings for her, sensible explanations, but each will be a horror, too. Each will be the inescapable, finally here to claim her. Even a cough can jolt her, or the clatter of restless pigeons, outside on the window ledges.
He had guessed this before he met her.
No.
He had been certain.
Because he began by letting her story overwhelm him – the outrage of her experience and a sense of being stunned, robbed, splintered, hauled down towards weeping and giddiness: his, hers, his. He saved the flavours of this and its unfathomable size, its slipping into fury and an attentively waiting nothingness. In her absence, the patterns of what happened to her began to coalesce.
This is the least he would expect, because he has learned how to nourish facts, how to feed them and let them grow into usefulness. Threads, suggestions, scraps, they make him ready for First Sight.
Which was watching her walk out of the frost and into the milky fug of a coffee shop on the Rue Saint-Denis.
Always like the Montreal gigs – such a crazy town, so full of damage, anxious for release. And there was Agathe – the whole of her – the buried and unburied.
So there I was to be with her.
She was angular, clean-limbed, and there would have been something fluid and dignified in her walk, but it was stiffened now and locked. The upright head was anxious, throat taut. Cheap skirt to her ankles and comforting, protecting boots for warmth – nothing dainty, nothing female, not any more, just a defence against Quebec, the cold. A type of thin anorak, faded, not originally hers; quite likely that nothing was meaningfully hers except the scarf.
Karkade red, hibiscus red – impractical synthetic chiffon – hand touches it often – threat to the neck – a memory of threat to the neck – a knot, a fear, a choke in the throat made of words, impossible to swallow and impossible to scream.
That’s OK, though.
I only deal with the impossible.
It’s what I like.
Red bound around and around her neck. But not blood. To her it’s not blood – more like giving, sharing, passion recalled, types of heat – it’s something gentle near her lips, I can see her almost tasting it, a sort of response – and it isn’t heat, it’s primarily warmth, there’s a difference, a more lasting penetration.
She has clever fingers – we can share that, don’t need to translate it – only her touch has lost assurance – it’s blinded – so think of gloves, keeping gloves on you, muffling constantly – and she’s directionless.
There’s no point to touching when what you want to touch is gone.
Hair cropped to a haze, no longer hides the skull – lovely curve there, but it’s a mortified beauty. She has an impulse towards simplicity, scouring and punishment – not starting again, but freezing at nothing. No longer hiding because there is nowhere to hide. No hat. It’s bitter outside but no hat.
No hiding.
But she did once, didn’t she? Agathe tried to hide and it was bad. She was bad. Time enough for that, though . . .
Her mouth was used to smiling: taken altogether, she has a face that would once have been comfortable, opened, ready to show an intelligence and charm.
Charm is rare and shouldn’t ever be extinguished.
Intelligence is rarer, but also more difficult to like and she’s intelligent – she’s bright, bright, bright.
Silly too, she could be silly, she could play – sexual play and just daftness. I would have enjoyed her. We might have flirted, talked.
She would have laughed a good deal and quite probably clapped her hands together softly when she did. She’ll have covered her lips, shielded her grin for a moment, enjoyed having overstepped some tiny mark.
She hasn’t been able to change her eyes – they have stayed challenging, curious. They look too much – it’s almost a form of self-harm. She is learning to curb them, focus on table legs, pavements, floors, to behave like a refugee. But she has brave eyes, that’s irreversible.
Brave and tired, tired, tired – she can no longer trust what they’ll force her to see. They are beyond her.
But I’m not.
I’m right here – here with the over-priced cookies and the sugar-heavy syrups – symptoms of safe city living, this masochistic urge to spend too much on shit. We have been consistently persuaded to buy what will do us no good.
Agathe bought me.
She asked for me.
So she gets what she asked for, what she wants. People should.
She’d told him on the phone – very quiet but precise – that she wanted to meet him and to try him.
He hadn’t sent for her, she’d asked.
And then he’d lifted his head on that initial afternoon, so that she could find him, and he’d sat calmly, fixed his whole strength into restfulness and tender breathing and hampered glances. He’d reached out and matched the beats and pauses of how Agathe is Agathe.
It’s an animal thing, a wilderness thing – flesh echoing flesh and leading, a sense of large defence – or the child and the parent and the parent and the child, the home they make between them – and it’s a sex thing and a shared will thing and a human thing and a rest thing: it’s come unto me and I will give you rest. It’s a relief.
The Blue Book Page 9