happened, he says.
I get the picture, she says.
She is nodding. She is very beautiful, a little rough-looking, like a beautiful used girl off an internet site. She is all lit up against the wipe-clean wallpaper.
Do you need some help? she is saying. When you’re ready I can knock myself against you here so you lose your balance.
She has him by the leg; she is holding very tightly round it with both her arms. Her arms are bare. The leg she is holding is shaking against her chest, her face.
Just say when, she says into his jeans.
He swallows. He is crying. His face is all snot or sweat. Sweat or snot is all up the cuff of the shirt by his nose.
Come on then, she says. Ready when you are. You want to?
He nods. He tries to say the word yes. He can’t. Sweat or crying, he doesn’t know which, falls from somewhere, hits his chest.
Are you sure now? the angel who’s holding him says
the beginning again! Extraordinary. Life never stopped being glorious, a glorious surprise, a glorious renewal all over again. Like new. No, not just like new but really new, actually new. Metaphor not simile. No
like
between him and the word new. Who’d have believed it? That woman, Amber, had just pushed her plate away, pushed her chair back, long-limbed and insouciant and insolent as a girl, and had stood up and left the table, left the room, and Michael, now that all that was opposite him was her empty chair, could stop, breathe out, wonder whether Eve, who was scraping at breadcrumbs with her napkin, if she looked up, say she looked up and looked him straight in the face, would see the surprise of it written all over him. His face would have that astonished look more usually found on the face of a soprano hitting a high perfected oh.
Eve was looking up at him now. He straightened his mouth in case. The perfect pitch of her, in his ears and his head and jangling all through his blood, so that he leaned forward at the table then sat back again then couldn’t think how to sit. What Apollinaire called ‘that most modern source of energy–surprise!’, words he wrote on the whiteboard at the start of every academic year, modernist literature being full of the energy of surprise, as Dr Michael Smart told the new third-years every first term. But Dr Michael Smart God bless him and all who sail in him had never before hit a note quite like this one for this startling a quality, this piercing a newness, this jolt of an oh.
He sat forward, leaned on his hands on the table. He sat back again. His arms and legs were acting new to their sockets, his hands had never before been at this loss as to what to do with or where to put themselves. But he felt so exceptionally good. He felt remarkable. He drummed at his legs; they felt good. He stretched out in his chair. Every muscle felt strange, new, good. Eve was still speaking, oblivious, good. She was clearing plates, telling Astrid something. They were saying something about spoons. Spoons! There was a world, with spoons in it, plates, cups, glasses. He held his wine glass out in front of him, swirled the end of the wine in it, watched it settle. It was good. It was Gavi, from Waitrose.
If he were this wine glass there would be hairline cracks holding him together, running their live little electrical connections all over him. Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness. Michael smiled. Eve thought he was smiling at her. She smiled back. He smiled at Astrid too. She gave him a murderous look and scraped a plate. Good for her! Obnoxious little creep. He laughed out loud. Astrid glared at him and left the room. Both Eve’s children needed therapy. Magnus was a case in point. To refuse to eat with them was one thing. To refuse, though, to acknowledge a guest in the room, to act as though she weren’t there, to refuse to say a simple hello, as he’d just done, was quite another kind of rudeness, deeply reprehensible no
I get the picture, she says.
She is nodding. She is very beautiful, a little rough-looking, like a beautiful used girl off an internet site. She is all lit up against the wipe-clean wallpaper.
Do you need some help? she is saying. When you’re ready I can knock myself against you here so you lose your balance.
She has him by the leg; she is holding very tightly round it with both her arms. Her arms are bare. The leg she is holding is shaking against her chest, her face.
Just say when, she says into his jeans.
He swallows. He is crying. His face is all snot or sweat. Sweat or snot is all up the cuff of the shirt by his nose.
Come on then, she says. Ready when you are. You want to?
He nods. He tries to say the word yes. He can’t. Sweat or crying, he doesn’t know which, falls from somewhere, hits his chest.
Are you sure now? the angel who’s holding him says
the beginning again! Extraordinary. Life never stopped being glorious, a glorious surprise, a glorious renewal all over again. Like new. No, not just like new but really new, actually new. Metaphor not simile. No
like
between him and the word new. Who’d have believed it? That woman, Amber, had just pushed her plate away, pushed her chair back, long-limbed and insouciant and insolent as a girl, and had stood up and left the table, left the room, and Michael, now that all that was opposite him was her empty chair, could stop, breathe out, wonder whether Eve, who was scraping at breadcrumbs with her napkin, if she looked up, say she looked up and looked him straight in the face, would see the surprise of it written all over him. His face would have that astonished look more usually found on the face of a soprano hitting a high perfected oh.
Eve was looking up at him now. He straightened his mouth in case. The perfect pitch of her, in his ears and his head and jangling all through his blood, so that he leaned forward at the table then sat back again then couldn’t think how to sit. What Apollinaire called ‘that most modern source of energy–surprise!’, words he wrote on the whiteboard at the start of every academic year, modernist literature being full of the energy of surprise, as Dr Michael Smart told the new third-years every first term. But Dr Michael Smart God bless him and all who sail in him had never before hit a note quite like this one for this startling a quality, this piercing a newness, this jolt of an oh.
He sat forward, leaned on his hands on the table. He sat back again. His arms and legs were acting new to their sockets, his hands had never before been at this loss as to what to do with or where to put themselves. But he felt so exceptionally good. He felt remarkable. He drummed at his legs; they felt good. He stretched out in his chair. Every muscle felt strange, new, good. Eve was still speaking, oblivious, good. She was clearing plates, telling Astrid something. They were saying something about spoons. Spoons! There was a world, with spoons in it, plates, cups, glasses. He held his wine glass out in front of him, swirled the end of the wine in it, watched it settle. It was good. It was Gavi, from Waitrose.
If he were this wine glass there would be hairline cracks holding him together, running their live little electrical connections all over him. Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness. Michael smiled. Eve thought he was smiling at her. She smiled back. He smiled at Astrid too. She gave him a murderous look and scraped a plate. Good for her! Obnoxious little creep. He laughed out loud. Astrid glared at him and left the room. Both Eve’s children needed therapy. Magnus was a case in point. To refuse to eat with them was one thing. To refuse, though, to acknowledge a guest in the room, to act as though she weren’t there, to refuse to say a simple hello, as he’d just done, was quite another kind of rudeness, deeply reprehensible no
Similar Books
