‘What’s the matter? You’re crying, aren’t you?’
He doesn’t touch me, but he picks up the tin of polish instead as if this is the closest connection he dares to make. He screws the lid in place and I study his notched and grimy hands and the rinds of dirt clinging to the cuticles.
The polishing slows down, my reach diminishing, until it gradually stops altogether.
‘No. I was just thinking sombre thoughts.’
He does touch me now, the fingers of his right hand just coming lightly to rest on the point of my shoulder. We look into each other’s eyes.
‘About the other night…’ he begins.
‘It’s all right. Don’t. No need to. You were a bit drunk. Me too. Two glasses of wine, nowadays, and I’m…’
He stops me.
‘I wasn’t drunk, and I don’t believe you were either. I meant it. You are so beautiful, and necessary to me. I’m numb these days, I’m like a log of dead bloody wood, totally inert except for the termites of anxiety gnawing away, but when I look at you it’s like the log’s being doused in petrol and set alight. I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it, because it’s being alive.’
‘Don’t say these things, Selwyn. You shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t listen.’
‘I’m bursting into flames, look.’
His index finger moves to my bare neck, slides down to the hollow of my collarbone.
I step backwards, out of his reach, skirting the corner of the dresser.
‘Polly,’ I manage to say. ‘Polly, Polly, Polly, Polly . Partner. Mother of three children. Your partner. Your children.’
‘You are not telling me anything I don’t already know,’ Selwyn says reasonably.
It was Miranda who had very nearly become Selwyn’s wife.
After they left the university they had drifted to London where Miranda found herself an agent and spent her days going to auditions, hitching up her skirt in front of a series of directors and chain-smoking afterwards while she waited for the phone to ring.
Selwyn was in the first year of his clinical training, and finding that he hated the sadistic rituals of medical memory tests and group diagnostic humiliations. At the time Miranda had a room in a shared flat in Tufnell Park and more often than not Selwyn stayed there with her, huddling in her single bed or crouching in the armchair amongst discarded clothes, a textbook on his lap and the apparatus for fixing another joint spread on the arm.
He claimed later, with reason, that this was the lowest period of his life. He knew that he wasn’t going to qualify as a doctor, but had no idea what else he might do with himself. Startlingly, he was also discovering that he was no longer the centre of attention. Amos and Polly and Colin and all their other friends had set off in different directions. It seemed that Miranda, with her jittery determination to be an actress, was the only thing he had left to hold on to.
He held on hard.
One night, lying ribcage to ribcage in her bed and listening to the cats squalling in the dank garden backed by a railway line, he said, ‘Let’s get married.’
They could at least then get a flat on their own together. There would be regular cooking, laundry would somehow get done, life would be legitimized.
Miranda said, ‘Yes.’
They went to Portobello Road the next Saturday afternoon and chose a ring, a Victorian garnet band that Selwyn couldn’t afford. Plans were made for a registry office ceremony at Camden Town Hall, to be followed by a restaurant lunch for Miranda’s mother and Selwyn’s parents and brother. In the evening there was to be a catered party in a room over a pub, at which a revived Blue Peony would be the disco. Weddings in those days were deliberately stripped of all tradition. Miranda hooted with laughter at the idea of a church, or a bridal gown, and a honeymoon involving anything more than a few days in a borrowed cottage in Somerset was out of the question in any case.
One weekend Miranda’s mother came down from Wolverhampton.
He doesn’t touch me, but he picks up the tin of polish instead as if this is the closest connection he dares to make. He screws the lid in place and I study his notched and grimy hands and the rinds of dirt clinging to the cuticles.
The polishing slows down, my reach diminishing, until it gradually stops altogether.
‘No. I was just thinking sombre thoughts.’
He does touch me now, the fingers of his right hand just coming lightly to rest on the point of my shoulder. We look into each other’s eyes.
‘About the other night…’ he begins.
‘It’s all right. Don’t. No need to. You were a bit drunk. Me too. Two glasses of wine, nowadays, and I’m…’
He stops me.
‘I wasn’t drunk, and I don’t believe you were either. I meant it. You are so beautiful, and necessary to me. I’m numb these days, I’m like a log of dead bloody wood, totally inert except for the termites of anxiety gnawing away, but when I look at you it’s like the log’s being doused in petrol and set alight. I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it, because it’s being alive.’
‘Don’t say these things, Selwyn. You shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t listen.’
‘I’m bursting into flames, look.’
His index finger moves to my bare neck, slides down to the hollow of my collarbone.
I step backwards, out of his reach, skirting the corner of the dresser.
‘Polly,’ I manage to say. ‘Polly, Polly, Polly, Polly . Partner. Mother of three children. Your partner. Your children.’
‘You are not telling me anything I don’t already know,’ Selwyn says reasonably.
It was Miranda who had very nearly become Selwyn’s wife.
After they left the university they had drifted to London where Miranda found herself an agent and spent her days going to auditions, hitching up her skirt in front of a series of directors and chain-smoking afterwards while she waited for the phone to ring.
Selwyn was in the first year of his clinical training, and finding that he hated the sadistic rituals of medical memory tests and group diagnostic humiliations. At the time Miranda had a room in a shared flat in Tufnell Park and more often than not Selwyn stayed there with her, huddling in her single bed or crouching in the armchair amongst discarded clothes, a textbook on his lap and the apparatus for fixing another joint spread on the arm.
He claimed later, with reason, that this was the lowest period of his life. He knew that he wasn’t going to qualify as a doctor, but had no idea what else he might do with himself. Startlingly, he was also discovering that he was no longer the centre of attention. Amos and Polly and Colin and all their other friends had set off in different directions. It seemed that Miranda, with her jittery determination to be an actress, was the only thing he had left to hold on to.
He held on hard.
One night, lying ribcage to ribcage in her bed and listening to the cats squalling in the dank garden backed by a railway line, he said, ‘Let’s get married.’
They could at least then get a flat on their own together. There would be regular cooking, laundry would somehow get done, life would be legitimized.
Miranda said, ‘Yes.’
They went to Portobello Road the next Saturday afternoon and chose a ring, a Victorian garnet band that Selwyn couldn’t afford. Plans were made for a registry office ceremony at Camden Town Hall, to be followed by a restaurant lunch for Miranda’s mother and Selwyn’s parents and brother. In the evening there was to be a catered party in a room over a pub, at which a revived Blue Peony would be the disco. Weddings in those days were deliberately stripped of all tradition. Miranda hooted with laughter at the idea of a church, or a bridal gown, and a honeymoon involving anything more than a few days in a borrowed cottage in Somerset was out of the question in any case.
One weekend Miranda’s mother came down from Wolverhampton.
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