Quilt

by Nicholas Royle

  Irresolvably

  Irrationally

  Intolerably

  Insuperably

  Inextricably

  Integrally

  Involuntary

  Illustrate

  Inspirationally

  Imaginary

  J

  Jay-walker

  Jaybird

  Jubilatory

  Judiciary

  Juratory

  Jeopardy

  Jellygraph

  Jar-fly

  Jaspery

  Janglery

  Jaculatory

  Jaw-breaker

  K

  Kleptocracy

  Klydonograph

  Karmadharaya

  Kirn-baby

  Kirkyard

  Knavery

  Karstology

  Kir royale

  Kindheartedly

  Knick-knackery

  Kraken

  L

  Lairy

  Lexicography

  Laboratory

  Law-breaker

  Lavatory

  Laundry

  Layer

  Lay-priest

  Lawyer

  Larynx

  Lycra

  Leathery

  Largely

  Lapidary

  Literary

  Library

  Labyrinth

  M

  Marry

  Metaphoricity

  Maternity

  Moderately

  Meanderingly

  Military

  Maturity

  Mortuary

  Mortality

  Morality

  Migraine

  Miraculously

  Minatory

  Momentary

  Membrane

  Mammary

  Materiality

  Myriad

  Monarchy

  Metaphorically

  Marshy

  Marvellously

  Matrimony

  Matronym

  Matriarchy

  Masturbatory

  Moustache-twirly

  Migrate

  Mastery

  Martyr

  Martyrdom

  N

  Narrate

  Narrator

  Nearly

  Narcolepsy

  Nocturnally

  Nocturnality

  Narrowly

  Naturally

  Nary

  Narky

  Normality

  Necessary

  No-brainer

  Nearby

  O

  Obituary

  Osprey

  Outrageous

  Orally

  Olfactory

  Observatory

  Ossuary

  Orthography

  Ordinary

  Ordinarily

  Oligarchy

  Oragious

  Oration

  Originary

  Originally

  Overarchingly

  Obliterate

  P

  Penetrate

  Probability

  Pray

  Praise

  Prate

  Portray

  Portrait

  Probably

  Purgatory

  Psaltery

  Phrase

  Palaeography

  Paternity

  Parry

  Prostrate

  Prey

  Pastry

  Pregnancy

  Preparation

  Parade

  Perpetually

  Particularly

  Proprietorially

  Presumably

  Parley

  Patronym

  Perpetrate

  Photography

  Parody

  Parity

  Pornography

  Puncturation

  Paralyse

  Paralysis

  Pterodactyl

  Privacy

  Pearly

  Pleasantry

  Primary

  Pyramid

  Phantasmagory

  Pignorate

  Prodromally

  Paratactically

  Perseveration

  Q

  Quarry

  Quandary

  R

  Ranarian

  Rabies

  Restrain

  Race

  Racy

  Rabbity

  Radiate

  Radiator

  Radiant

  Raise

  Raven

  Rayon

  Radically

  Ratio

  Rationally

  Rationality

  Relay

  Replay

  Rarity

  Rarely

  Rain

  Rainy

  Raincoat

  Raspy

  Raspberry

  Refrain

  Reign

  Res

  Raid

  Raider

  Ratty

  Royal

  Rake

  Rape

  Raze

  Rave

  Raving

  Rally

  Ready

  Respiration

  Range

  Rate

  Rail

  Railing

  Ravenously

  Rabidly

  Rage

  Really

  Retrait

  Remonstration

  Registration

  Reify

  Radar

  Raisin

  Rapier

  Raison d’être

  Rein

  Refractively

  Relatively

  Rivalry

  Revealingly

  Regrettably

  Randy

  Raunchy

  Rascally

  Realty

  Rotary

  Reliquary

  Regenerate

  Refrigerator

  Rampantly

  Ramifying

  Rainbow

  Rhapsody

  Reality

  S

  Secretary

  Strange

  Stranger

  Strangeways

  Sharky

  Starry

  Stray

  Spray

  Soothsayer

  Synastry

  Starkly

  Strawberry

  Spectrality

  Straight

  Separate

  Separately

  Spectacularly

  Spirogyra

  Scrape

  Sunray

  Saturday

  Scarcity

  Singularly

  Singularity

  Strategy

  Strategically

  Saturate

  Serrate

  Scary

  Swarthy

  Syrah

  Stationary

  Stationery

  Staggeringly

  Swaggeringly

  Scarry

  Scarificatory

  Similarly

  Satisfactory

  Sharply

  Sedentary

  Substrate

  Scrawny

  Savagery

  Stratify

  Sanctuary

  Skyward

  T

  Terrain

  Trace

  Temporary

  Tardy

  Tarry

  Tertiary

  Testamentary

  Testificatory

  Terrestrially

  Temporality

  Tolerate

  Transparency

  Trait

  Traitor

  Train

  Training

  Trainers

  Tirade

  Teary

  Trade

  Tawdry

  Tranquillity

  Tranquilly

  Thermostatically

  Taciturnity

  Tray

  Trail

  Tragically

  T
rimethylamine

  Thursday

  Tyranny

  Tyrant

  Translatably

  Tyrannosaurus

  Timeframe

  Topography

  Typography

  Treaty

  Traipse

  Teratology

  U

  Unitary

  Upbraid

  Unpleasurably

  Uranus

  Unforeseeably

  Unphotographably

  Untranslatably

  Urbanity

  V

  Vary

  Venerate

  Voluntary

  Verticality

  Variety

  Veterinary

  Vampyre

  Vagary

  Veracious

  Vestiary

  Veracity

  Vibration

  W

  Weary

  Wary

  Watery

  Wayward

  Wraith

  X

  X-ray

  Y

  Yesterday

  Yarn

  Yard

  Yare

  Year

  Yearn

  Z

  Zoography

  I listened without the slightest expostulation or intervention. What struck me most of all was the tempo and tone in which he read. It remained so steady throughout. And the rendition of each and every one of these words was faultless. It was as if he had been rehearsing it for a very long time. I kept expecting him to change tone, to make a joke, to pause to comment on a particular word, to stumble, to laugh, to groan, to give up. But he carried on in this deadpan manner, as if each word were a world of its own, with its own raison d’être. The cumulative effect was like a tide coming in too quickly. He sounded, as he read the thing out, so ‘entirely normal’, to recall his phrase. Yet something irrevocably strange took place in his relaying of this lexicon, and I know my involuntary intake of breath, in the ensuing blankness, was audible enough for him to pick up:

  – What’s the matter?

  – You were reading so strangely!

  – I wasn’t reading.

  – What do you mean?

  – I don’t have anything written down yet: I was making it up as I went along.

  Something in me gave way. Our separation was no longer to be tolerated. The strange framing of rationality, this new English dictionary on hysterical principles, this division of voices and hearts of hundreds of miles of cold deep sea made me realise that he couldn’t be left alone any longer. I told him I was coming, I’d take unpaid leave or something. I got the next flight I reasonably could, just two days later. I spoke to him only on one further occasion, when I called to let him know my arrival time at Heathrow, and he said he would meet me. It wasn’t the best line. I remember saying it’s not the best line and he thought I said best man. And at another moment he talked of a ‘real surprise’, so I thought, but actually it was, as he had to clarify, ‘getting ray supplies’. Then he said, if I heard correctly, that he was ‘after life’ or ‘after my life’ or ‘more life’: the reception was very poor. The line went dead, or possibly he hung up. I called back but got no answer.

  Bizarrely, he wasn’t there. I spent two increasingly anxious hours at Heathrow waiting for his expectant face to show in that great mélange of human bodies crossing and crisscrossing the arrivals hall, calling him repeatedly on my phone, and even having his name paged over the PA system. I was sick with worry by this point. I took trains across country as far as I could. It was a beautiful early autumn day. At last I got out and dragged myself and suitcase up the main street to the Tea Party, having taken it into my head that he might just be there. I don’t know what I was thinking – that he was writing me? that he was hiding? I was shattered from the journey and felt an unwelcome but immense desire to lie down and sleep. I took a taxi up to the house. I knew where the spare key was, but didn’t need it. Still I rang the bell and stood there a while, as the cab reversed away back up the driveway. I walked inside to what seemed at first like complete normality and put down my luggage.

  Charmingly lit and clear, as if waiting to be remembered in every finicky detail, was the great ray pool. I looked into the silvery water and soon enough made out Hilary, Taylor and Mallarmé. Melted clocks, but with a military air, they propelled to the surface, breaking it one two three in a splishing so suggestive of comic applause I couldn’t not smile. And Audrey? As if on cue, prodromally precise, a modest but giveaway ruffle in the substrate just nearby where I was crouched: pancaking in reverse, gliding, jetting up, she joined the others. I realised I was already seeing them as he had supposed, a truly radical gymnastics, the pyrotechnic forecasting, irrepressibly pulsing upwardly, from imperceptible in the substrate to shooting up, happy-slapping ghosts, dreamily clowning the surface, unclear who would have been watching who or when, questions ramifying only after the winging off and away, in conversational shadowings. Jetlag was getting the better of me. For a brief interval, which might have been ten seconds or ten minutes, I stared, eyes adrift in the immeasurably engaging turns, breaks and suspensions enacted by the rays as they nuzzled, untroubled in the substrate, plooping up an occasional pebble on a spout of water, then raised themselves up, thrusting, sweeping, surging in exhortatory mime, before surfacing so soft and inhuman, full of gratulatory curiosity.

  I got to my feet feeling as if I’d been drugged. I called out his name, three or four times, but my voice seemed eerie and out of place. Although a part of me was worrying that he’d fitted again and fallen someplace in the house, and another part was fearing even worse, I also felt strangely sure that he wasn’t there. I was making my way towards the stairs when I noticed for the first time that there was light coming from the drawing room. Momentarily remembering, I opened the door onto that extraordinary affair to which he had (quite earnestly, it was now clear) made reference. The room had been transformed into the interior of a maelstrom, emptied and reorganised in such a way that you walked into a kind of calm, gigantic horse-shoe of water. I could see straight away that it was based on the donut from Barcelona, except that here in the centre was a circular couch, surrounded from floor to ceiling by water. On the couch lay a single sheet of paper. It was in his beautiful hand. Impersonally addressed, I could feel his eyes glittering with pleasure over it. Under the heading ‘Eagle rays (Rhinoptera bonasus)’, it simply offered a list of names together with a short description of their diet and where such foodstuffs could be obtained, along with brief guidelines on the upkeep of the tank. There were twelve names inscribed, as follows:

  Larry

  Gary

  Harry

  Andrea

  Lorraine

  Hardy

  Cary

  Marty

  Barry

  Bryan

  Ryan

  Raymond (N.B. not to be abbreviated)

  I was leaning backwards on the couch and losing all sense of my elements, staring round me into the great glass space. I counted all twelve, bleached-bone-white, with their pug-nosed, almost sharky heads, long thin dark spines like antennae, and stretched-out disc fins closely resembling wings. Underwater birds in a phantom aviary. The huge tank was incessantly shifting, a world of braking and accelerating, altering shapes and directions, a busy submarine airport, uncontrollable traffic of miniature chubby Concordes. At one moment they looked like water-filled white paper bags, the next they were dreaming and slow-winged as flamingos, flapping up into the ether. Then each seemed a cloud-white cruise missile, a disembodied flamboyant cuff brandishing a rapier, an upside-down technician with an antenna that turns its body into a walkie-talkie, a trapeze artist gathered at the end of its own tightrope. They appeared to me then more spectral than the motoros, or anything I had ever seen. My eyes were filming over.

  Everyone knows. This is no whodunit.

  My love was written in the starry sky above our heads.

  As intrepid as a somnambulist I made my way to the st
airs and mounted them as if for the first time, holding onto the handrail fashioned from the trunk of a young pine. It was dark, for all the doors were shut. I looked into his father’s study and hardly recognised it: glowing polished wooden floorboards, a new sofa and armchair, family paintings on the walls, and a filing cabinet. By the window, looking out, I realised also how much had been done to the garden. At the other end of the corridor I pushed on the door: his own bedroom was vacant, not even the bed remained. Once more I called out his name, and heard nothing but the absurdity of my own voice.

  As I walked back along the midday twilight of the corridor, I felt, tingling in my eyes, virtually breaking me down at every step, exactly what lay beyond. As I opened the door of his parents’ room the light seemed at once to stream in and hold. Tears were running down my face. It was a translucent cave. It was crazier than anything downstairs, perhaps in part because of its elevated location. It is part of the law of probability, Aristotle said, that many improbable things happen. What used to be the en-suite bathroom was now incorporated with the bedroom into a remarkable belvedere. The floor must have been reinforced, I told myself. And as I did so, I felt again an estranging taciturnity in the sound of my voice, even within the space of my own head. I gazed up into the depths. The sky had disappeared. It was a manta, the biggest ray, the strangest thing I had ever seen in a house. It seemed, indeed, bigger than the house, arching like a rainbow, majestically large, its great wings black and thin, conforming exactly with that cloak concealing nothing that its name implies. It was hanging, yes, in the watery light, but not motionless. The great pectorals like a double parabola, undulating, arching, in curvy pulsions, the sweeping down of a horseless highwayman, black as night, white as forest snow, it moved at once too easily, slowly and quickly to take in. It was in motion, but it barely moved. Hypnotic: yes, suspended. From the eversion of its underside it seemed to gambol like a lamb. And then it was a bizarre lover fetching invisible pastry straight from the bakery, wearing floppy black oven-gloves. Interminably in need, wherever was I to source the plankton and the nanoplankton? As if dissolving once again, gently shrugging off into a new form, chalk verticality, raft into the shadows of the underworld, veracity in black and white, it seemed momentarily to swing towards me with inhuman inquisitiveness, nudging against my vision, proffering its paddle-like cephalic lobes, head-wide mouth and staggering great white belly with five long slashes of gills. I looked around for some kind of note, a letter, the briefest message, but there was no sign of anything anywhere.

  AFTERWORD:

  Reality Literature