Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers: Magical Tales of Love and Seduction

Private Words Mark W. Tiedemann

“CONNY, HE’S ASKING FOR YOU.” She blinked in the bright wash of morning light and looked up at Geoffrey. His face was pale, making the scar across his cheek look like a slight fold of skin. Conny sat forward in the overstuffed chair. It had seemed the most comfortable chair in the house the night before, but now her back ached. She rubbed sleepers from her eyes. “What time is it?”

“A little past seven.” He stepped back, hands in pockets. “He’s been awake less than half an hour. The nurse is with him.”

“How is he?”

“Not good.”

Conny stood and her head swam. She remembered dreaming, and a half-real tingle in her abdomen. It startled her and she almost asked if William had been writing. But the images fled as soon as she tried to capture them, like ghosts.

She went to the window, stretching, and gazed out at the slope of land that ended at the river a hundred yards below. No dream. They had returned to the House. Her house now. She had smelled the traces of her uncle’s cherry tobacco when they arrived last night, surprisingly clear after all this time.

“I called Dr. Ludi,” Geoffrey said. “I still think we should have taken him to the hospital.”

“That’s not what he wanted. Is there coffee?”

“In his room.”

Conny used the bathroom. Feeling more awake, the dull pain in her back almost gone afterward, she walked down the hall.

William looked like a miniature in the mass of pillows and blankets on the huge canopied bed. Small and bleached. The last few months of illness had etched out his features, robbed him of expression, as if sifting him away. His hair lay matted against his skull and his beard needed trimming and combing.

The room smelled of sweat and soup, the weak breeze from the open window doing little more than stirring the air and mixing the odors. A pallet with pages of marked-up manuscript lay next to him.

Conny gestured toward the door and the nurse left.

“I’m sorry,” William said. “Were you sleeping?”

“No. I can’t sleep in the sunshine for long.”

“Of course not.” He coughed thinly and lifted a blood-stained rag to his mouth. “My letters. You still have them?”

Conny sat on the edge of the bed and took his free hand. “You mean ‘our’ letters, don’t you? Of course I have them.”

“Of course. They’re yours. Yours and Geoffrey’s. No one else.”

“You were working?” She nodded toward the pallet.

“Last words. Notes to you. Something … a closure.”

“Dr. Ludi’s been called. Geoffrey wants you to go to the hospital.”

“Shh. Doesn’t matter. The letters. Do you have them?”

“Yes, I said—”

“Get them. The first one, anyway. I want to remember.”

Conny peered out the door. Geoffrey stood in the hallway, leaning on a windowsill. “The trunk,” she said. “Would you bring it?” He nodded and hurried off. Conny glanced at William. He seemed to be sleeping now. Only sleeping, she thought, I’d know the difference.

Then Geoffrey was back, carrying the heavy oak boxed edged in tarnished brass. He placed it in her arms and went back to the window. He spent as little time as possible with William now; he could not bear the smell and taste and waiting of death. Conny tried not to be angry with him — everyone had weaknesses and flaws — but it would not have hurt him just now to have brought the trunk all the way into the room. She wrestled it to the bed and set it at the foot of the mattress.

When she looked up, William’s eyes stared at her, brightly feverish. She unlocked the box and pushed up the lid.

Within lay neat bundles of papers, each stack tied with a ribbon. Seventeen of them, one for each year until this last. A few loose sheets lay on top. A rich, musky odor escaped, displacing the sickroom stench for a few moments. Conny licked her lips and dug to the bottom of the box. She took out the oldest bundle, bound in a brittle blue band. The pages showed faint yellowing.

“D’you remember the first one?” William asked. “The first time, really. Here. In this house.”

She undid the bow and sorted through the handwritten sheets. “Here. Yes.” She read the date. “I’d forgotten it was in March.”

“Read it to me.”

They laughed about it later, the way she kept saying no and giggling even as she unbuttoned his vest, his shirt, his pants. Not here, she meant, not in her uncle’s study, in sight of his enormous desk and his books; no, while she helped him undo her girdle and roll down her stockings; no, in a kind of disbelief, while his hands trembled as they brushed her breasts; no again, until he kissed her and their mouths became busy with other sounds in a different language. She liked the feel of his beard on her skin, the exhilaration of his belly against hers. Not here, she wanted to say, they could sneak up to her room and lock the door, down the hall from where her uncle slept upstairs, morphically coddled by one glass of claret too many. But there was no question of yes, not for weeks now.

She had come from New York to stay with her British relatives, to see Oxford, London, perhaps tour the continent. He had been helping her uncle with a translation of some Latin texts she had been forbidden to see. The tension between them had not been immediate, but Conny could barely remember that first week when he had been little more than part of the furniture.

The learner divan had not been intended for sex — the lumpy, squeaking surface seemed to grab at them, refused to let them slide or find comfort fully stretched out, and her head jammed against the arm, bending her neck awkwardly. Before she could find a different position, he was inside her. She closed her eyes and concentrated on each sensation, drawing her legs up and around him, determined to mine as much compensation as she could for the guilt she knew she would feel later.

Too many sensations. The smooth texture of his skin, the pressure of his hands, one on her shoulder, the other on her right breast; the rush of his breathing in her ear; the tension building in her stomach, as if someone were holding her inside, a safe, warm embrace. Far too many sensations. She realized that she would have to do this again just to count them all.

His breathing became ragged and he moved faster. Sweat slicked their flesh. Suddenly all the stress in his body released, along with five or six sharp breaths. He shuddered, then lay still, panting and damp. Finished. He raised himself up on his arms and smiled.

“We must do that again.”

Conny laughed anxiously. “Of course.” She felt vaguely disappointed and wanted to ignore it.

He gestured across the study. “We’ve made a bit of a mess.”

Their clothes were everywhere. Conny felt herself blush when she spotted her chemise draped over the green-shelled lamp on the desk. She caught his eye and they burst out laughing, Conny tapping a finger to her lips and made shushing sounds. “Someone will hear,” she said.

“Would you mind so much?”

“No.” Surprised at her own boldness, she reached for him.

“Wait,” he said, catching her hand and kissing her fingers. He climbed off her and went to the desk.

Crossing the study, Conny saw all at once how thin he was. Frail. His shoulder blades protruded and she could count each vertebrae. His skin gleamed like molten wax.

“I want to give you something,” he said, sitting down in her uncle’s high-backed chair. He searched the drawers till he found paper, then took Professor Carlisle’s ivory pen. He ran his fingers through his hair, closed his eyes for a moment, then began writing. “Something more than my exhaustion, anyway.”

Conny pushed herself up a bit and watched him. William Heath had written a novel, which he had sent off to a publisher, and he had shown her some of his poetry, published in The English Review. He was self-conscious about it, though, as if writing was the wrong thing for him, or that he was inadequate to the challenge.

It amazed her, after a time, how natural became the sight of him naked behind the huge oaken desk, intently scribbling away. Absurd and comic, yes, scandalous, and a little frightening. But while he wrote Conny imagined herself like this every night, watching him write, afterplay of their lovemaking.

“I love you, William.”

He hesitated just before he looked up. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

He seemed to think about it. “Good,” he nodded. “Good.” And continued writing.

Conny slid a hand between her thighs, toyed with her hair, then pressed her fingers into the moistness. The pressure began rising again. It was like the fear of a child doing something forbidden and expecting to be caught, a nagging fascination, like a warning impossible to heed. She moved on the divan, leather tugging at her, the air cool across her skin. The sound of the pen scritching across the paper, his breathing, the sensation of her own lungs filling and emptying, all seemed enveloped in the stillness outside the room, as if they had separated from existence and were drifting in a non-place, without time. If I open the door, she thought, there will be nothing …

The experience came like panic. Conny closed her eyes and held her breath against an almost intolerable urge to escape. Her muscles tightened in preparation, ready to send her running. She did not move, held in place by an intense curiosity to know what came next. And next. And next — she shivered at next, her body wanting to fold in on itself and stretch out at the same time.

When she opened her eyes he was squatting before her, a few sheets of paper in his hand. Everything is changed, she thought, and touched his knee. He offered the pages.

“I love you,” he said.

He jerked his finger away and Conny laughed, grabbing for it. “Come on, ninny! It won’t hurt!”

“It’s macabre,” he objected, waving at the bottle of ink and candle on the floor of her room, and the needle in her hand. “Your uncle is already furious about this.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Uncle Francis would be furious with anyone taking his favorite niece from him.”

“And you want to compound it with this superstitious nonsense.”

“I don’t intend to tell him, William.” She snatched at his hand again and caught his wrist. He tugged but she held it firmly. “What am I going to say? ‘Oh, Uncle, I know you’re displeased that I’m marrying a writer, but it’s all right, we’re signing the certificate with our blood, so everything will work out.’”

“I think it’s silly.”

“As silly as the wedding itself?”

“Well …”

“Come on, open your fist. This will only take a second. Didn’t you ever do this with your friends when you were a boy? Blood brothers and all?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t have any friends.”

She squeezed his wrist. “Open.”

His hand unfolded and she shifted her grip to hold his index finger stiffly. She waved the needle through the candle flame again, then jabbed the fingertip in the center of the faint sworls. He almost pulled free, but Conny held on. Blood beaded and she brought the finger over the open bottle of ink. She pressed both sides of the wound to bring more blood and let it drip into the ink.

“Not so much!” he complained.

Conny dabbed his finger with a ball of cotton soaked in gin and released him. “Ninny,” she said playfully, then stabbed her own finger and added her blood to the bottle. She sucked at the tiny puncture while she took a piece of straw she had plucked from a broom and stirred the mixture.

“I don’t see what this is supposed to accomplish,” William said.

Conny capped the bottle. “What do you mean you didn’t have any friends?”

He looked at her with the sour expression he gave to unpleasant topics, a reproachful look that embarrassed her that she had even asked the question.

“I was never strong,” he said. “And people mistook my asthma for tuberculosis. I seldom got to play with others.”

Conny thought, I could have figured that out for myself. She said, “So who is this Geoffrey you’ve asked to be your best man?”

His expression relaxed. “College. We roomed together for one term.” His voice sounded instantly lighter.

“What’s he like?”

“Different than me. You’ll see. I think you’ll like him.”

Conny entered the small chapel on her uncle’s arm. A few of her friends smiled at her over the backs of the dark pews. They, and a couple of Uncle Francis’s colleagues, comprised the entire guest list. William had no family, and, evidently, no friends. Conny’s cousin Janet waited, diminutive bouquet in hand, opposite William and the man beside him. Geoffrey.

He had arrived this morning and this was Conny’s first look at him. As she drew nearer, she stared, shocked. A deep reddish-purple scar trailed across the left side of his face from the bridge of his obviously broken nose to the hinge of his heavy jaw. William was taller, but Geoffrey possessed a robustness that more than compensated.

She jerked her attention back to William just before she reached her place.

The parson cleared his throat and proceeded through the ceremony. He ended by having them sign their certificate. The parson held out his pen. William hesitated, then pulled the pen from his pocket — the ivory one Conny had talked her uncle out of — and signed. He handed the pen to Conny. She anxiously scrawled her signature and returned the pen to William, who tucked it in his jacket pocket. Conny’s cousin took the parson’s pen and signed in one of the spaces for witness. Geoffrey bent over the parchment.

“Ah!” he shook the pen, tried again, then dropped it, empty. “Pardon me,” he said and snatched the ivory pen from William’s pocket. Deftly, he uncapped it and signed on the second line for witness.

Conny felt a brief, giddy vertigo. She blinked at Geoffrey, who frowned for a moment, then gave the pen to William. William looked around as if startled, then laughed.

“That’s it, then,” he said.

The parson’s housekeeper set out scones and punch in the parlor.

“I’m sorry for arriving so late,” Geoffrey said. “No excuse. I just lost track of time.”

“Geoffrey almost ended up expelled for tardiness.” William said with a wry grin. “Never could keep an eye on the clock.”

“Don’t like them much,” Geoffrey admitted.

“Still, you made it,” Conny said. “I’m glad you did. I haven’t met any of William’s friends.”

“He doesn’t have any but me.” Geoffrey frowned in the silence. “Now he’s got you,” he added quietly. He ducked his head. “Excuse me.”

Conny watched him move away. He managed with a kind of artless grace to pass by people at the exact moment they were turned away from him.

“What does he do?” she asked.

“Lately? I don’t know. He’s been a miner. Worked on the docks in Liverpool. Bargehand on the Thames.”

“I meant his profession.”

“He doesn’t have one, really. He could never decide.”

“How did he get his injury?”

“Um … a misunderstanding.”

William said no more. Geoffrey had disappeared. She did not see him again until she climbed into the taxi her uncle had rented them. Then he was there, leaning in the window.

“Luck,” he said, clasping William’s hand. He looked at Conny. “I’m pleased he found you.”

Conny moved quickly and kissed Geoffrey, first on the scar, then on the mouth. He looked startled. Then his face relaxed into a grin.

Conny watched morning sunlight dapple the walls and furniture, filtered through the thin curtains that shifted across the windows, and thought how it even seemed to get into her dreams, the same color, lucidity. She sat up.

The other half if the bed was neat, unslept in. Conny stared around her and wondered who had waked her. Who was touching me? Her nerves rippled pleasantly. She bent over herself, hands between her thighs, and tried to remember what she had dreamed. Men and women with no faces, standing around her, hands outstretched, moving …

Gone. She pushed the damp sheets back.

She found William in the next room, the dining room-turned-study. Books piled everywhere. William sat at the long table, still dressed from the night before, jacket draped over the back of his chair. He rubbed his forehead absently, staring at the pages spread in front of him, the ivory pen in his hand. Conny hesitated. Since his last bout of illness he wrote seldom, little besides reviews of other peoples’ books and the letters he drafted for her almost every night. Judging from the pages stacked by him elbow and the sensations she woke from, he must have been writing those letters all night.

He looked up. “Oh. Good morning.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

He shook his head.

“What are you writing?”

“Dreck, by the look of it. I thought I’d solved a problem with the new novel, but …” He tossed the pen atop the sheets.

Novel? “Then maybe I should let you work. I thought I’d go out. Do you want me to bring you anything back?”

“No.” He smiled briefly, then picked up the pen.

Conny dressed quickly, grabbed her bag, and hurried out of the apartment.

The streets of Newport, this near the waterfront, were relatively empty in the mornings. Everyone was either down at the docks or further in. This thin slice of shops and cafes remained quiet till nearly noon. Conny was grateful for the solitude. She strode along the narrow avenues that twisted through the district until the sensations pulling at her ebbed. When they seemed at a safe distance, she stopped in a small café and ordered coffee.

It’s never happened with anything but the letters before …

They joked about the letters, pretending that their influence was purely suggestive — what was that delicious word from the psychoanalysts? — psychosomatic. That Conny’s reactions came from her own imagination while he wrote. He did them after lovemaking — or had, until illness stole his energy and all he could do was write about making love. He had missed several days during the worst of it. Afterward, when he wrote, scribbling earnestly to her with the ivory pen, she responded. Perhaps it was imagination, as he said. Perhaps he even believed it. She no longer did. Especially not now. She was disinclined to question it too closely — sometimes it seemed like the only thing they had together.

She looked down the cobbled street, glimpsing something familiar. A few people walked along — workmen, heads bowed, caps pulled low on their foreheads. Conny watched them go by across the street. As they reached the next street, one of them looked her way. A heavy line staggered over half his face.

Conny stood abruptly. Coffee sloshed onto the table. She fished tuppence out of her bag, dropped it, and hurried after the workmen. When she got to the corner they were gone. She continued down the canyon-like avenue, but she saw no one.

Most of the shops were still closed. Conny framed her eyes to peer through the dusty windows. In one, among the assorted bric-a-brac, stood an attractive oak chest with brass trim. When she looked up she saw the shopkeeper, smiling at her. She pointed to the box and he nodded, motioning her to the door.

A musty, decayed odor escaped the box when she opened it. Shreds of felt still clung to the inside. “How much?”

“Oh … two pounds.”

She surprised him by not haggling. Instead she counted out the notes and laid the sheaf in his hand. She lifted the chest. It was only a little larger than what comfortably fit in her arms.

When she stepped from the shop, Geoffrey was standing in the street, hands tucked in his pockets.

“I thought I saw you,” she said.

He touched two fingers to the bill of his cap, then came forward and took the chest from her. He tucked it under one arm.

“I’ll carry this home for you,” he said.

They stopped in another café, not far from the apartment.

“After he recovered he wanted to leave London,” she said. “I suppose he blamed it for making him sick.”

“Hm. Well, that’s as good a reason as any, I suppose.”

“It hasn’t helped much.”

“He still isn’t selling? How are you getting by?”

“He writes reviews. My uncle sends money. We have friends—I have friends. One or two seem to find it romantic to help an aspiring writer. William almost never goes out.”

“He never was one for socializing.” He nodded at the chest. “What are you going to use that for?”

“Oh … memories.”

Geoffrey smiled. It eased the severity of his scar.

“William said you got that because of a misunderstanding.”

“Did he now? Interesting way of putting it.”

“Was he wrong?”

“To tell you? No, I suppose not.”

“No, I mean—”

“Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.”

Conny drank her coffee to cover her disappointment. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a job working dockside.” He lifted his cup to his mouth. His hands were wide, heavy. Conny imagined them holding and lifting, easily, as though born to it. She imagined them then palms out, calloused, flat against her face, her breasts, her thighs—

“I really ought to get back,” she said, looking away.

Without a word he picked up the chest and followed her.

“Would you like to come up?” she asked. “I’m sure Will—”

“No. I have to get to work.” He handed the chest to her, touched his cap again, and walked off.

William was asleep on the sofa. Conny carried the chest into the bedroom. She took the letters from the suitcase where she kept them and transferred the pages into the box. Two stacks fit side by side as if the container had been made for them.

She locked the chest and slid it under the bed. Listening to William’s labored breathing from the next room, Conny sat by the window, absently chewing on a thumbnail, and thought about Geoffrey’s hands.

“Don’t you want to come?”

William looked up from the desk and shook his head. “I need to work.”

In the two hours since he had sat down he had done nothing but stare at an empty sheet of paper, one finger absently rubbing along the hairline at his temple. Conny felt the stir of unease. She had not told William about the invitation from Brian, the man who owned this house and the car they — she — had been using for weeks now. William only knew they were invited to a party.

“Then I’ll stay,” she said, half hoping he would say yes, please stay, half afraid that he would.

“Don’t. You want to go. There’s no point in both of us suffering through this.”

Despite his open shirt and the cool breeze coming off the Channel, his skin glowed with a fine sheen of sweat. He slouched in his chair. A typewriter — a gift from Brian’s wife, who was in Paris this month — sat before him like a model of some improbable temple, but beside it lay sheets of handwritten manuscript, the ivory pen on top of them.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“It could be a late evening.”

He shrugged and picked up the pen.

She kissed him quickly on the head and hurried downstairs. She started the car and anxiously pulled away. She had not thought too directly about tonight’s party. Brian had given her directions to a house down the coast road east of Brighton and had somehow made it clear that, while certainly William was invited, he would prefer her to come by herself.

Her body told her the moment William touched nib to paper. The villa was two miles away. Halfway there she considered pulling over, but she kept driving.

A mass of cars filled the grounds in front of the house. She could hear the jazz band even before she turned off the engine. She sat in the car for several minutes, pressed against the door, waiting for the rush to pass, imagining the sound of his pen, the faint susurrus of his breath. Tonight’s work, she decided, would be very good and as unsalable as the rest. It was all for her anyway — he said so, but he did not mean it the way it really was — it was all he ever wrote anymore. Conny leaned her head back and closed her eyes, letting the tension between navel and anus twist into completion. If anyone walked by they would hear her small sounds, and politely veer off to leave the lovers alone. But, she wondered, if they did not go away, if instead they indulged a voyeuristic impulse and came to see, they would find her alone, legs drawn up, face bright with pleasure. Just me and his work …

She never asked if he received anything from the connection. They never talked about it anymore; he seemed antagonistic toward the subject. That and his illness. He refused to see a doctor, adamantly declared that his lungs were fine, the trouble was his bronchials, and then worked himself to exhaustion and coughed violently half the night through. They coupled so seldom that it always surprised her when he pressed against her and explored her. She made it as convenient as possible for him, opened herself, shifted at the slightest hint of where he wanted to touch her. She had learned all his wordless signals and more often than not paid no attention to her own pleasure. Afterward, every time, he went to his desk, naked, and wrote another letter for her. Some of them covered less than half a sheet, others went on for three or four. She woke in the mornings to find them beside her on the bed, William asleep in the next room. They went directly into the chest.

Her breath shuddered out in a last wave and she felt control return. She smelled pungent and dug out her bottle of perfume. A few minutes later she walked over the grass to the gravel driveway to the marble entrance, the music growing louder, now mingled with laughter. She thought as she walked into the storm of revelers, I’ve made a mistake.

Then she took a glass of champagne from someone and entered the beast. Hands, hips, elbows, and knees all touched her, seeming to caress her as she passed along, deeper into the antic folds of expensive clothes and cigarette smoke bluing the air. Everyone seemed on display, but crammed together so no one could get a clear look. Conny drank her champagne and made greeting noises, searching idly for a familiar face, one with a name that she could talk to. The faces all looked so earnest about being casual that they lost all legitimacy and their smiles seemed overburdened with meaning. She recognized no one. It was pleasant, though, to be stroked and petted through the careless gauntlet. She missed it, touching and being touched by flesh. It would, she thought, be pleasant not to miss it. She finished her drink and found another before she made it to the far side of the room.

A bar had been set up, tended by three men in short white jackets. She caught herself on the edge and watched them busily mixing drinks for a space. She stared at their hands, at the quick efficiency of them working with bottles and ice and glasses. She finished her second glass and set it down with a solid click.

“I’d like a Manhattan, please,” she said. “Something from home.” She laughed.

“Conny! Glad you made it! Where’s William?”

Brian stood at her side, grinning, his face a bit red.

“Home,” she said. “Working.”

“Ah. Dedication. Admirable.” He glanced to the side. “I’ll have a gin tonic.” He smiled at her again. “Any trouble finding the place?”

Conny lifted the glass to her lips and shook her head. Brian picked up his own drink as people jostled against him. Fluid sloshed over his hand and he glared around.

“Crowded here.” He gestured with his head that she should follow him, then took her hand and led her through the labyrinth of people. His touch was moist and too warm, but she was reluctant to let go.

She lost her bearings quickly. It was as if the room had suddenly grown larger now that she was nearing its center. All she saw were people pressed close to her or the ceiling beyond the brilliant chandelier. There was a second floor and more people standing along the railing looking down. She imagined that they watched her, making quiet bets on whether she would reach the exit of the maze before being eaten …

A clarinet screamed against the steady, frantic rhythms, but she could not see the band. Conny saw people bobbing in place, unconsciously following the beat, their bodies drawn into the pulse. She knew that feeling and for a moment it seemed right that she was here.

She bumped against Brian. He had stopped to talk to someone. She heard him introduce her briefly — something about “his writer’s wife”—and saw a bright face smile at her. She made herself smile back. She could not hear their conversation, not as words. Except for the surreal sharpness of the music, sounds seemed muffled, blended into a steady drone, like water. She liked the effect. The anonymity of the noise made everyone appear smarter, more sophisticated. They all had something to say to each other and they all appreciated what was being said.

She could hide within it, say nothing, and pretend along with the rest of them …

She felt warm. She raised her glass and noticed a faint tremor in her hand. He’s working again … She licked her lips and filled her mouth with cold liquid.

“Conny?”

She looked up and saw Brian staring at her, a faint crease of worry between his eyebrows.

“Warm,” she said. She finished her drink. How many did that make? “I think … is there somewhere I could lie down?”

His smile widened almost imperceptibly and the crease vanished.

“Of course,” he said.

He pulled her through the crowd until they reached a curved stair that went up to the second floor. She sensed people staring at her — or maybe they stared at Brian and only wondered who she was — and imagined what they might think. She realized that they would be right, too. He took her elbow and helped her up the stairs.

When she reached the top she looked down into the mosaic of people, still unable to locate the band, and tried to picture herself as part of them, one frantically bland face out of hundreds.

Brian tugged her away and suddenly they were in a long hallway and the music seemed abruptly tamer, more distant. Brian knocked on doors and listened. At the fourth he grinned and they entered a room.

She found the shape of the bed by the light from the hallway. Her legs felt uncertain as she stumbled toward it. She reached it just as he closed the door. She sprawled across the soft surface in the darkness and drew her legs up against her breasts.

“I’m sorry …” she said. “Just need a little time …”

“Of course. I quite understand.”

Through the insistent sensations growing inside her, along her thighs, through her stomach, she felt the bed shift. Then someone stroked her shoulder, touched her face. She flinched away and rolled onto her stomach.

“Here now,” a voice said, “let me help.”

She felt her skirt lifted, a hand against the back of her calf, up to her knee. She began to laugh. He pushed at her shoulder, trying to roll her over again.

Then lips brushed the side of her face, her neck, her ear. She laughed louder, and turned her face away.

“Here … now …”

His hands took hold of her hips and began rocking her. She let herself be moved, over onto her back, still laughing. She buried her hands between her legs.

He kissed her. His tongue prodded at her lips. She thought, I should be polite and let him, this is why I came, but she could not stop laughing.

“Damnit,” he hissed. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry …” She tugged at her skirt, pulling it up, and spread her legs.

After a few moments, she felt his hand against her, fingers tangling her hair, thumb searching for entrance. It tickled and she jerked. He rubbed at her, but did not quite manage to find the right places, the right pressure. Finally she sat up and grabbed his wrist.

“No, like this,” she said, moving his hand away. She ran her index finger through her hair. Then she laughed, realizing that it was too dark for him to see. She fell back against the pillows.

“Thank you,” she breathed. “I appreciate the gesture … just let me rest.”

She sensed him, sitting nearby in the darkness, rigid and frustrated. She could almost feel him weighing his options. He tried to kiss her again, one hand on her breast, squeezing. But she rolled away. She did not know when he left. She remembered the light from the door again, the sound of the door closing. Then she was alone. She pulled up her skirt, jammed her fingers in deep, and rolled over onto her side, coiling around the orgasm, again … again …

“Would you like me to drive you home?”

Conny opened her eyes to the yellowed light of the bedside lamp across a pillow. She blinked and rolled onto her back. Geoffrey’s face hovered above her; the glow spilled across his scar, leaving half his face in shadow.

Her head pounded and her right arm had fallen asleep. She tried to sit up. Geoffrey helped her. She bent forward and gazed down at her bare thighs. She tried to tug her skirt down, then gave up and fell back onto the bed.

“Conny?”

“Mmm?”

“You should go home. I’ll take you.”

“Sure.” Her arm tingled painfully. She used her left arm to push herself back up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

A strong hand took her elbow. She got to her feet, then across the room to a door. Geoffrey switched on the light and gently propelled her into the small porcelain chamber.

She did not throw up. Her stomach churned, but nothing happened. She washed her face, relieved herself, and emerged feeling more awake. Her arm felt almost normal.

Geoffrey waited on the edge of the bed, a white bartender’s jacket beside him, smoking a cigarette. He let the ashes fall to the floor.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes … you were downstairs?”

He nodded. “Saw you come in, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything to you.”

Geoffrey held her arm descending the staircase, a pleasant pressure she missed immediately when he released her at the bottom. A few people still lingered in the main ballroom. The floor was covered with debris — streamers, paper napkins, broken glass. One bartender slept in a chair behind his station. Conny did not see Brian.

Geoffrey drove her back to their borrowed house. Not for long now, she thought muzzily, we’ll have to move again. He pulled up by the front door and shut the motor off. A single lantern shined by the door.

Conny stared at him. “You were in Newport. We took a cottage in Swansea near the end of the war and I thought I saw you there, working in a dry goods shop. Then we went to London for a month, after the Armistice, and you were driving a hansom. We moved back to Newport, then to Bristol, now here to Brighton. I always felt you were somewhere nearby and now you turn up. Are you following us, Geoffrey?”

“You should get to bed. It’s nearly dawn.”

“William doesn’t expect me.”

“Maybe not.”

His arm lay across the back of the seat. Conny looked at his hand, inches from her shoulder, a dark mass of contours, faintly outlined along the knuckles from the lantern light. Between that and his nearly invisible face his white shirt looked like a mass of evening fog.

“I think he’s asleep,” she said.

She traced the shape of his thumb, the raised tendons, the blunt shafts of fingers. The texture fascinated her. She lifted it and turned it over and touched the callouses that ridged the top of his palm, just below the base of his fingers. The skin was very warm and dry.

Conny undid his cuff and pushed the sleeve back, pressing her own palm against his forearm. She could feel his pulse in the thick vein that ran from tendon to elbow.

“Conny—”

“Shh. Don’t.”

She slid her lips over his thumb and teased it with her tongue. He did not pull away. She licked his callouses, the center of his hand, his lifeline, the tendons that tented the skin of his wrist.

Conny twisted around in the seat to face him, kneeling, and fumbled for the buttons of his shirt. He grabbed her hand. She tugged once, twice, pulled loose, and continued unbuttoning until her hand came against his belt. She leaned forward. He smelled warm and sharp, as if he had been working out in the sun all day. She pushed aside the open shirt and laid her hands against his chest, surprised at the feel of hair. William’s body was nearly bald and the contours of his torso were the shapes of ribs and collarbone and sternum.

She heard Geoffrey’s breath deepen. He had not moved to touch her and she realized that she preferred it that way. To touch and not be touched — the idea fascinated her.

His nipples went hard and round under her fingers. She licked his stomach, from navel to solar plexus. Geoffrey’s head rolled back.

“Damn …” he whispered.

She was afraid he might stop her, that she might stop herself. He tasted salty, skin slippery with sweat. She mouthed his neck and worked at his belt, his button, his zipper. Then she laid one hand on the arm still stretched along the top of the car seat and pushed her fingers beneath the waistband of his shorts. His penis bent down, thick and awkward, and she hooked two fingers beneath it to bring it carefully up, afraid of hurting him. The fabric held it until it sprang loose.

Then she looked down, certain now that he would not prevent her from doing anything she wanted. Her body blocked what little light came from the lantern by the door; she could not see his face. What she saw were fragments — a shirted arm, a yellowish glint off the car mirror, part of the door against which Geoffrey lay — but her mind supplied the missing detail from the hundreds of dreams prompted by William’s letters. She pulled back a little and grasped his penis. Touching and not being touched … a new experience. She laughed at the idea. Married all these years and so few times — when William wanted her, gathered the energy and the will to fuck her, that was all he did, and she accommodated him. He seemed not to like to be touched, as if embarrassed with his own body, as though he did not deserve it, and over time she had become adept at a kind of encouraging passivity and a congenial access. She squeezed Geoffrey, ran her thumb along the underside of the shaft, and wondered why she had allowed it for so long.

He shifted beneath her and her heart slammed, certain that he was about to say enough and push her away. She let him go and yanked at his pants. He grunted and raised his hips. The trousers slid down to his thighs and she had no more room to back up and get them the rest of the way. She reached behind her and groped for the handle. The door opened and she kicked it wide. Standing on the gravel of the driveway, she drew his pants down to his ankles, then untied his shoes and flipped them off.

Now the wan light fell across him and she saw his legs, the hair around his penis, the geography of his belly and chest, and, for the briefest moment, the broken quarters of his face.

Conny grabbed him behind the knees and yanked until he came across the seat, out of the car, and sat down on the runner. She gathered her skirt up around her waist and lowered herself onto his lap. He seemed to flow up into her and she gasped. She found his face, his mouth. He sucked at her fingers. Her knees banged the edge of the running board. She wanted to move elsewhere, but she did not want to give him a chance to end the contact. She wrapped her hands tightly around his neck and brought first one foot, then the other, up onto the board. Geoffrey’s arms joined across her lower back and held her while she see-sawed against him. For a moment she was aware of the harsh sounds they made, counterpointing their thrusting, and then she forgot everything but the exquisite contractions, the taste of flesh, and the panic filling her.

Conny wiped William’s mouth and shivered at the thin smear of blood on the rag. Huddled beneath a quilt and two blankets, he trembled, his skin dry and papery. Outside the rain continued, as it had for the past three days, and Conny silently cursed their coming to Norwich. She had not wanted to leave Cambridge. Before that she had wanted to stay in Bedford and before that Reading and before that … the place names stacked in her memory, a succession of borrowed houses, lent rooms, trains, and taxis.

They always seemed to find a place, someone who thought it was sophisticated or chic to help support an aspiring writer, even one who could not seem to publish anything — perhaps especially one like that. The charity rarely lasted, especially when they realized William would not attend their parties to be shown off. She still missed the house in Brighton, but, as she had expected, Brian had tossed them out.

William coughed weakly. He had been sick since Cambridge, but in the last six days he had grown worse. Conny touched her fingertips to his forehead. Hot. She glanced at the bottle of laudanum on the bedside table. William hated it, but it did help him sleep during the worst of his fevers and coughing fits.

She left the bedroom door slightly ajar and went down to the kitchen. A puddle covered the tiles by the door and threatened to become a stream. She took the mop and listlessly dabbed at the water.

When she looked up Geoffrey stood framed in the door window, rain sheeting off his wide-brimmed hat like a veil. She opened the door.

“I asked at the post office where you were,” he said. “They asked me to bring your mail. Said you hadn’t been down in a week.”

“Five days. Come in, then.”

She hung his coat off the back of a chair in the corner and set his hat on the seat. She ran the mop over the new puddle he made and closed the door.

He dropped a bundle of envelopes on the table, then stood back, hands in his pockets. Conny thought he looked just like a boy expecting a scolding.

“We haven’t seen you since Reading,” she said.

“I’m working at the foundry.”

Conny waited. She expected a reaction, a recognition, a response — from herself. But nothing happened. She pulled a chair from the table and sat down.

“In Birmingham,” she said, “you worked in a warehouse. Ipswich it was a street cleaner and in Bath a stable. I’d gotten so used to you being wherever we were that … it took three more moves to realize that you’d abandoned us. Five years since you and I started. Eight before that. A lot of time and effort to just walk away from.”

“I didn’t—”

She waited for him to finish. When he said nothing, she continued. “He got very sick in Cambridge. I thought he’d die. The thing is, I forgot all about you then. I didn’t think about you at all till just now. Isn’t that odd?”

Geoffrey’s face twisted in a painful scowl. Conny thought his scar would open. “I wondered …” He looked toward the ceiling. “Is he—?”

“Upstairs. Still sick.”

Geoffrey sighed. “He hasn’t written anything since Cambridge, then.”

Conny stared at him, a chill settling in her bowels. He gave her a quick, wry smile, then sat down across from her.

“Did you ever ask him if there’d been anyone before you?” he asked.

“No.”

Geoffrey gestured at his face. “William wrote a story in university about two boys who became best friends. He didn’t know a lot about friendship. The university journal wouldn’t print it but the word got around that he’d written it and that it was about me and him. Some lads took it on themselves one night to exact moral realignment. I don’t remember much besides William holding me in his arms, screaming, him with a bloody nose and me with a map of the Suez Canal across my face.”

“So had there been?”

“What?”

“Anyone before me.”

“Just me.”

From upstairs came the sound of coughing. Conny listened, willing it to stop. When it worsened, she stood.

“Stay,” she said. He nodded and she went up to William.

His fever broke. Conny cleaned him up and changed his sheets, then cleaned the rest of the sickroom. At one point she looked around to see him watching her, eyes half-lidded. His face moved as if to smile. Perspiration broke across his cheeks.

Toward evening the rain stopped and she opened his window to let out some of the smell. She finished mopping the floor and went into the next room.

Boxes of books stacked against one wall. A plain table served as a desk. Conny picked items up and put them down, not really straightening anything. He had yet to do any work here. Paper waited on one end, the ivory pen and ink bottle by the lamp, and the bulky typewriter he almost never used on the other end. She picked up the bottle; the same one, all this time. The traces of their blood must have long since disappeared. Perhaps some few molecules had worked into the glass wall. He always refilled it when the ink ran out, the bottle and the pen constant, lifelong companions.

She ran the mop lightly over this floor and took the bucket down to the kitchen. She was hungry but too tired to bother cooking anything. She tore off a piece of bread and poured a glass of wine and went up to her own room, just across the hall from William’s. She lay down, wondering what it would be like to stay in one place forever.

She opened her eyes to a wash of brilliant moonlight silvering the walls of her room. The silence around her seemed like the night holding its breath. She was absolutely awake, her pulse fast, as if something had frightened her from sleep.

No light in the empty hall except a dim glow that picked out the stairwell from below. She descended the steps cautiously.

The main room held a bluish light — moon reflected off water — that leached color and detail from the furniture, yet gave the impression of perfect illumination. She paused on the last step, letting the feel of the old wood against her feet register as solid, as real. A faint breeze shifted her hair, tickling her face.

Movement caught her eye. She stared across the room, against the wall, by the long divan. Another movement — an arm shifted, swimming through the unreliable light. Conny stepped to the floor and threaded her way between chairs and tables, and stopped before the couch.

The arm moved again and a face came up out of shadow.

“He’s writing again,” Geoffrey said.

Morning light turned the room to dusky gold. That’s how I feel, Conny thought.

Gradually, she became aware that she was lying belly down on the floor. She pushed herself up, triggering a series of small aches and twinges, and rolled onto her buttocks. Geoffrey lay stretched out on the divan, one arm over his face. Conny crawled over to him and perched on the sofa edge, her hip against his side, and walked her fingers across his stomach.

He snatched her hand and held it, running his thumb up and down her palm.

“Good morning,” she said.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

She tried to find a way to misunderstand him — she wanted to keep the golden feelings — but she knew what he meant. “Since Cambridge. A little before, maybe.”

“For both of us, then.” He lowered his arm and looked at her. “I ran away after Reading. I blamed you. I thought we shouldn’t be doing this and it was you kept finding me and insisting. But that wasn’t it. I wanted to see if I could live on my own.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “Sure. If you can call it living. Tasteless food, stale air, meaningless routine. No reason to get up in the morning except that it’s too bright to sleep. You?”

“I’ve been too busy taking care of him to notice.”

He gave her a skeptical look. Then, abruptly, he frowned and sat up. William stood at the bottom of the stairs, a long nightshirt covering him to his shins, staring at them. He held a thin sheaf of paper in his hand.

Conny’s lungs emptied in quick stages as her thighs relaxed. The coils in her stomach released across her ribs, over her back, along her arms, and ebbed away. She folded against Geoffrey. Where their skin touched sweat oiled the contact, let them slide minutely with each inhalation and exhalation; at the exact line along which their skins parted, evaporation cooled. Moisture ran from her shoulders, into the runnel of her spine. In the sudden stillness she heard the faint scratch of pen nib on paper.

“My god,” Geoffrey breathed, “the man’s prodigious.”

Conny nodded, face sliding on damp hair. She opened her eyes. Across the room, by the window, William hunched over the small table, working.

“What do we do if he dies?” Geoffrey asked quietly.

Conny raised herself on one arm. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. It’s a serious question. We ought to think about it.”

She kissed his neck, licked the salt from the hollow of his throat. “Not now.” She lay back against him and he ran his fingertips lightly along her sides and over her hips and buttocks. It still surprised her sometimes how gently he could touch her.

Conny closed her eyes but could not sleep. Geoffrey’s question nagged at her. In the nearly two years since Norwich, William had never really recovered. His coughing peppered the nights and he adamantly refused to see a doctor. Geoffrey regularly threatened to pick him up and carry him to one, but it never happened. Still, William seemed no worse. Conny imagined him like a stone balanced on an edge, waiting for a sufficient tremor to send it tumbling. He needed to be in a sanitorium, but neither Geoffrey or she could bear to do it. At times their inertia almost let her believe Geoffrey’s occasional delusions that they had no reality of their own away from William, that they existed only in the benevolence of his incessant scribbling.

“We go on,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“If he dies. We go on.”

“Can we?”

“Shh.” She listened to William working for a time. She imagined herself as a pyre sometimes. The fire ate everything down to charred debris. Then he stuck his pen in and stirred the ashes and, phoenix-like, found something more to burn.

Conny trudged up the steep path. The late afternoon light angled through the trees in shafts. Devon was peaceful, she liked this place more than any other. She tried to imagine living the rest of her life here. Possible, she decided. The three of them had achieved a kind of equilibrium. The last year had been the best.

It was nearly dark by the time she got back to the cottage. Geoffrey sat at the foot of the steps. He looked up at her grimly. From the house she could hear William shouting. Something shattered.

“What happened?” she asked.

Geoffrey shrugged. “He threw me out.”

She dropped her bag by him and ran up the stairs.

Furniture had been moved around, a table turned over. Ceramic shards littered the floor. William squatted before the fireplace. As Conny came up behind him she saw him shove a handful of pages into the flames. They curled up and blackened almost at once and he threw more in.

“William!”

She grabbed the next stack from him and he fell. He stared at her for a few seconds as if he did not know her. Then he jumped to his feet and took the pages back, pushing her away. He flung them into the hearth.

“Damn them! Damn you!”

Conny tried to get the rest of the manuscript from him. He whirled around and caught her with an elbow. She staggered onto the couch, breathless, and watched as he tossed the rest of the pages to the fire.

“Damn! Damn! Damn it all!”

His face seemed to compress, caught for an instant between rage and hurt. Then the tears came and he howled. Conny held him. His thin body convulsed. He screamed and shook, made motions to push her away, but without any force.

“I’m tired,” he said.

Conny led him to his bedroom and helped him undress. She could almost pick him up now. She drew the sheets and eased him onto the mattress.

He reached up and touched her face. “Don’t go.”

Startled, Conny stared at him for a few moments. Then she took off her clothes. He watched her with an expression of gratitude. Naked, she climbed into bed with him. He laid his head on her breast and idly ran his fingers over her stomach, her hip, her other breast. After a time his hand lay still and his breathing deepened.

Conny watched the last light fade and the room pass into night, not wanting to move. She heard Geoffrey come back into the house. She listened to the heavy tread of his boots to the kitchen, then back into the living room. Finally, he came into the bedroom.

“Conny …?”

“He’s sleeping,” she whispered.

“No,” William said. He lifted his head. “Join us, Geoffrey. Please.”

“You told me to get out.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Please.”

Geoffrey drew himself up.

“Conny?”

“Please,” she said.

Geoffrey undressed in the doorway. As he did, William’s fingers began moving again. At first Conny was more surprised than excited. But his fingers slipped between her thighs and she moved her legs apart to give him access. This time she did not simply lie open for him. She reached beneath the thin leg he had thrown across her thigh. He sucked his breath between his teeth.

Then Geoffrey stood by the bed. She could not see his face and she doubted he could see her well by the dim light through the open door. She brought her free leg up and kicked the sheets down.

“Please,” she said.

William scooted to the far side of the bed. Conny rolled toward him and kissed him. The bed shifted as Geoffrey lay down. She felt his hand on her hip. She raised her leg and Geoffrey’s fingers slid inside her. She pushed back toward him and he pressed against her, kissed her shoulders, her neck. Conny caressed William and he bent toward her and traced the shape of her breast with his mouth.

Then William reached across her and grabbed Geoffrey’s arm. They all stopped, for the moment making a tableau, a kind of completion. Conny bit her lip to keep from crying.

“I love you both,” William said. “I’m sorry it hasn’t come out better.”

Above her in the dark the two men hugged each other, briefly. She eased onto her back, opened her arms wide, and embraced them both.

She looked up at the sudden stillness. For a long time she did not want to look at him. She held the handwritten page before her, pretending to herself that she was simply appreciating it, that it still meant so much to her that she could find nothing to say. But the silence stretched and she set the page aside and looked at him.

There was no way to divide the time into infinite sections, no way to prevent herself from coming to the point of knowing that he was gone.

At least his eyes were closed. He had always been afraid of dying with his eyes open. He could never explain it clearly to her, the only thing he had ever failed to put into words, but it had to do with dreams and darkness and being caught in the wrong reality.

Conny closed the chest and went to tell Geoffrey that William was dead.

Geoffrey sat staring out the window. The mourners had all gone, few as they were. Conny knelt beside him and touched his hand. Dry and papery.

“What now?” he asked.

“We go on.”

“With what? I haven’t felt much this last year. A few times.” He looked at her with a puzzled frown. “Will it be like this from now on?”

“I don’t know.” She patted his hand and stood.

The chest was by the fireplace. Conny broke twigs and piled them onto the ashes of the last fire, then set four good-sized logs on top of them. The dried sticks caught fire easily and soon the logs burned, too. She sat on a footstool and watched the flames lick the air.

“Did you ever wonder what it would’ve been like if it’d been me you met first and married?”

“No.”

Geoffrey stood nearby, hands in his pockets, staring into the fire. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

“All right.”

He hesitated. “Conny … do you think when I get back … maybe …”

“We’ll see.”

He nodded and backed away. A few moments later Conny heard the door close.

She sighed and opened the chest. It seemed to have grown larger over the years. The pages were an inch away from filling it completely.

She understood Geoffrey’s frustration, but it was a frustration they shared. Neither of them had felt any desire for nearly a year. Not since that last night, when William had surprised them both. They talked about that night sometimes, as if it marked history for them. Conny supposed that it did.

In the morning William had been feverish and blood flowed from his mouth. They finally got him to see a doctor. Tuberculosis. As if hearing it made it real — more real than it had been — William grew weaker and sicker. Geoffrey and Conny had done their best to take care of him, but there was little they could do. William still refused to go to a sanitarium. He wrote little. Friends sent cards, a few sent money.

Geoffrey was afraid. He did not want to leave her, but without

William — without William’s scratching and scribbling — he thought she might leave, or that he might.

She lifted a sheet from the trunk. The words blurred. “This is all we had,” she said. “All that’s left.”

She fed it into the fire.

Too many sensations. The smooth texture of skin, the pressure of hands, the rush of breathing in her ear, taste of sweat … the tension now building in her stomach, as if someone were holding her inside, a safe, warm, protective embrace — too many sensations. She counted them all now, after so many times, and counted them again. She slid a hand between her thighs, pressed her fingers into the moistness, and the pressure began to build again, like the fear of finding something long lost and wanting never to lose it again. The stillness around her, as if she were enveloped in silence, drifting in a nonplace, without time. It came like panic and an exquisite urge to escape …

She stared into the fire, at the few dark shreds of blackened paper. She was still staring at it when Geoffrey opened the door and came into the room.

“Conny?”

She looked up at him. His scar, she noticed, was not so prominent anymore. Over the years it had grown fainter and fainter, so that now it was only obvious when he became flushed and excited.

“Geoffrey.” She took out another page. “I have something for us. Something William left us.”