Dark Palace (15 page)

‘And I skipped the last two pages of my speech.'

‘I thought that there was a gap in the advancement of the argument,' said Victoria. ‘But that isn't a criticism.'

‘I don't think anyone missed it,' Ambrose said, bringing her a chicken leg and a piece of baguette. ‘And at least there were no ants. Unless you count Miss Royden.'

‘What sort of picnic is it that has no ants?' She looked out through the one-way window and saw that many were now leaving the picnic for the afternoon sessions.

Her gang, including even Chef Tony, sat around there in the Librarian's office and nibbled at some of the leftover picnic food, tired, obviously feeling for her, but probably thinking that it was all a great folly to begin with.

‘They're all leaving. Perhaps we should say goodbye,' said Victoria, after looking out the door.

‘To hell with them. I've done my bit,' Edith said, and laughed deeply. The picnic was over.

The
mutilés
were the last to leave, some taking the leftover bottles of wine. They were welcome to them.

Finally the Library was empty. The caterers and Bernard's staff went about cleaning up.

Soon the little party in the office was giggling. There was mimicry of Miss Royden.

‘The
mutilés
will love you forever,' Bernard said.

‘Maybe they could put on a show at the club,' Ambrose said. ‘Get together in some sort of
cabaret macabre
.'

Jeanne and Victoria shouted in unison. ‘Ambrose!!!'

She wondered if they had the faintest idea of what went on at the Molly Club. They had, of course, heard of it, although they had refused her one invitaion to accompany her there. But even she thought Ambrose's joke was perhaps going a little too far.

Edith felt a light, giddy guilt about bringing Ambrose to the apartment.

But as they entered, the apartment felt airy—spacious.

Robert's going had created a spaciousness she could almost breathe. Maybe it was what was known as a breathing-space.

A second, surprise relief also came to her as she stood in the apartment with Ambrose: while Robert's absence had caused a deep disturbance, it had not left any sense of
void
in her life.

In fact, the ghost had left the castle.

As she saw the apartment through Ambrose's eyes she could see that Robert had left reminders of himself, and it occurred to her that if he'd wanted to really
go
, he would be all gone. He was not
all gone
.

‘I feel rather mischievous,' she said, taking his hand, ‘bringing you here. The corpse not yet cold.'
Marriage treason
was the expression perhaps, rather than mischievous. She found that this treason, if that was what it was, did not worry her. If she had a marriage.

‘As long as it's the good kind of mischief,' Ambrose said.

‘Not—not quite yet,' she replied, ‘it is not of the good
kind, yet.' She smiled nervously. ‘It will be of the good kind soon.'

She went to the sideboard and picked up a splendidly wrapped gift box.

‘A gift,' she said, presenting it to Ambrose. ‘
Pour toi, ma chérie
.'

He showed genuine pleasure, as if it were some time since anyone had given him a gift. ‘What's the occasion?' he asked, taking it from her, weighing it in his hand, shaking it lightly, playing the gift-guessing game.

What sort of gift was this? ‘I am unsure what the occasion is. I've never given a gift for this sort of occasion. If it is an
occasion
.' She put on her thinking face. ‘It
is
an occasion. But the occasion doesn't have a name.'

It was, in part, a gift to mark the miraculous resurrection of their liaison. She couldn't quite say
that
. It would sound too solemn.

‘Perhaps we can find a name for it—for this occasion,' he said, holding the box, as yet still unopened.

She moved around the apartment. ‘Perhaps we could.'

How hard some gift-giving was. To choose the gift to show a communing of spirits was hard, especially when, as in this case, the gift could either be the most remarkably appropriate gift or the most devastatingly wrong gift—that is, when the gift was audacious.

Though, if you were sure of the correctness of the gift, it was not audacity.

The gift could be a test, to see if the receiver was the person the giver wanted that person to be. Or to say that the person
was
the sort of person the giver wanted them to be. Affirmation.

The audaciously intimate gift was probably though the most effective—or at least the
fastest
—way to see if the receiver was the Right Person. If the gift were badly wrong the receiver, at least, would know they were not the Right Person for the gift.
Ultimately, a truth would have been hatched from the gift which would redirect the nature of the friendship. Despite all the dishonesty surrounding the reception of a gift.

Ambrose began to unwrap the box.

She watched with her fingers crossed.

And if the audaciously intimate gift was the best test, then this would be it.

Ambrose opened the ribbons from the box and took out from the tissue the yellow silk, lace-edged, full length, feminine nightdress.

He looked at her with a small smile, she might call it a
pert
smile.

She smiled back with a warm, special smile which said, ‘
That you
is welcomed back too.'

She knew instantly, from his face, that she'd chosen just the right gift for this occasion, whatever this occasion may be called.

‘You like it?'

‘Oh yes. Oh yes, dear Edith.'

He came over and they kissed.

‘Your scandalous, depraved self is welcomed back, too,' she said. ‘That is what I meant.'

Despite all they'd been through in the old days and all that they knew about each other, it'd still taken a lot of boldness to buy the feminine nightdress for him, to hand it to him now.

And it welcomed back something of herself as well.
That Edith
was coming back again, as well.

He held it full length before him, covering his dark blue lounge suit, looking down at it.

‘Try it on!' she said, softly, urgingly. ‘Go on.' She got the words out sounding just right, just saucy enough, just cheeky enough, just poised enough.

The words did not show any of the small remaining qualms.

It occurred to her as she watched him that perhaps he was so adept at the false response to an inappropriate gift that she was misreading him. If she'd indiscreetly misjudged him, their relationship may be forever, irrevocably
embarrassed
.

If he did not wish to try it on now, it would be a sign that the gift was wrong.

But Ambrose left the living room and made his way to her dressing room. By leaning back from where she sat, she could see him. He removed his jacket, tie, shirt, and then his shoes. He took off his trousers, looking around for a place to hang them, then folding them over the back of the chair. He stood there then for a moment in his socks and garters, and in his silk men's underpants and vest.

Perusing Ambrose, as he stood momentarily there in his undergarments, she thought how starkly this sartorial underpinning rendered the male animal.

When growing up, she'd sneaked glimpses of her father and her brother dressed such as this—in this framework of Man. Somehow, it did more starkly render Man than did the naked man. The man in his undergarments was man caught between the state of animal nakedness and the presentation of that animal nakedness as the public man, before the full sartorial facade was in place. This intermediate state reminded her of drawings of man's evolution from the ape.

This drawing of man in his undergarments should come after the drawing of man in the loincloth, holding the club. How so farcical and unready Man looked in this underpinning of garments. Probably because it was not ever meant to be seen. Yet how severe and unknowable the fully dressed Man of the next stage looked, in his silk top hat and awards and medals.

Yet it was from this underpinning, these undergarments, she mused, that a man must sense himself throughout the day, the underpants and vest and garter and socks were next to the skin, and that must be how the man felt to himself as he moved about his public life. Certainly reminded him at
the beginning of every day as he put these garments on. How those fabrics and the pressures of those garments on those parts of his body must subconsciously inform the man of his primitive manness and all that went with it.

Her gift today was then an
invitation
, too—an invitation to Ambrose to leave that state of being man, and to go to his other self.

Ambrose turned his head and caught her watching him. He looked down at himself still in the men's undergarments and pulled a face of displeasure.

She smiled and waved her hand which said,
Get rid of it—away with it all
.

She kept her fingers crossed behind her back.

He smiled at her and removed the socks and garters, the underpants and vest, and stood there, animal naked, naturally hairless.

He quickly slipped into the nightdress. Its silk fell well on his slim body, down to his ankles. The round silk straps graced his smooth shoulders. He turned in the nightdress, looking behind to see it on his body from the back, he wrapped it to his body, looking to the full-length mirror, absorbed for the moment with pleasure at the sight of himself.

And as she saw him admiring himself in the mirror she thought, oh yes, she had not misjudged.

He was still as she remembered him.

And for all its deviance, he was the way she would wish him to be with her.

She clapped. ‘Perfect—exquisite.'

He came back to her from the dressing room, parading his slim, silk-clad body with seductive grace, twirling in front of her, and then holding up the nightdress from his knees, he sat beside her, tucking the nightdress and his legs under him.

He put his arms around her neck and kissed her, a kiss of lips, a kiss of passion. She felt his tears on her cheek. ‘Thank you, Edith, for the mercy.'

‘Mercy?' The word did not belong in their old jaunty ways.

They weren't yet finely tuned to their old jaunty ways.

‘Saying such a fine hello to what I am.' His voice broke a little. He quickly pulled himself back from this earnestness, back towards flippancy, as he added, ‘Rather, I should say, thank you for your rather sultry taste in silk nightdresses—expensively sultry, silk nightdresses from Milan.'

She placed her hand on his mouth. ‘You shameless hussy.'

‘I am a hussy, I truly am,' he said, lightly, with a saucy laugh.

And his shamelessness, and his being a hussy, and his deep acceptance of the gift,
unshackled
her, there and then.

Unshackled her from ever being abashed by her own life or from ever being embarrassed by their friendship and its irregularities. Something was unshackled which had been missing from her conversation and her thought and her sense of self during those years he'd been gone.

She'd yearned to be
shameless
again.

And now was.

And she was as pleased as punch.

Both of them were now together in each other's arms, perfect and exquisite and comfortable.

‘How did you become so?' he asked her. He was again pensive, but lightly and affectionately so. His voice was close to having the old right ring to it.

‘You made me so,' she said.

‘In there …' He placed the palm of his hand on her breasts, and she shivered, aroused by his touch. ‘There was always a person who could consent to all the strangeness of my life. And more. Could do so with joy. I simply came along and said hello to that person inside you. To the hussy inside you.'

Had such a person existed in her? She rested her head on his silken breast. Or had he groomed her to be such a person, to serve him?

Whatever—of one thing she was sure as she came to rest there, there on his silken breast—this was where her head yearned to be.

Oh, yes.

She could come to rest on a man such as this, whatever it might mean about her womanhood—so be it. It was here with this sort of man that she came to rest. It was a verity. Tears came to her eyes and she looked up at him. ‘My darling, it's here that I come to rest.' She looked up at him. ‘In the arms of a hussy.'

In the saying of the last part, she found their voice, the frolicsome, larky, lusty voice—the voice of their old relationship.

That voice was beginning to be heard now.

She saw now that the gift of the nightdress had also been a query about their quintessence. And her quintessence.

In the old days, she'd made their ambiguity the answer. Back then, she'd hidden inside that ambiguity. That is, she'd always told herself that Ambrose, by being something other than elementary man, had allowed her a halfway staging place, a place where she could appear to have a man in her life, a place from which she would eventually pass.

Not a place towards which she had been headed.

At the time, it had looked genuinely like that. One needed to document selected minutes of one's life so that it would be possible to look back and be reassured that one had not been as dishonest, or had not acted as badly as the memory sometimes unfairly suggested.

Now, it seemed it was not
a stage
at all but was, in fact, the place where she wished to go—if not
wished
exactly, then where she'd again found herself and beyond which she might not ever wish to go.

Or did she want to linger, still, in that ambiguity, to idle a while—a lifetime perhaps?—in an indistinct, borderline way of life, rather than in resolution?

And was
resolution
within the command of her will? Anyone's command?

The nightdress was also a Question. It was not just a Gift of Resurrection, the resurrection, that is, of their bond, it was an Interrogatory Gift—with the interrogation going both ways out from the gift: towards Ambrose and towards herself, and, if the answers to the questions were appropriate and coincided, as it seemed they had, it became then a Gift of Affirmation.

That they were together in each other's arms and that she was tranquil and that he was tranquil, and that she liked the look and the feel of him this way, there in the silk, lace-edged nightdress, that was one answer.

She suspected there were more answers. She was tumbling into the arms of the cosy answers.

‘Don't,' said Ambrose, placing his warm soft palm on her frowning forehead. ‘Cease.'

She smiled a perplexed smile at him. She knew he saw something of what was going through her head. ‘How can I not?'

‘You can entertain some ideas without thrashing yourself with them,' he said. ‘Some ideas are to be royally entertained: some have to be shown the door.'

‘Shouldn't we talk? Shouldn't we have … an understanding?' she said. ‘Isn't that what happens in these modern times?'

He didn't reply.

She said, ‘I do know what we do need—we do need a drink.'

She wasn't quite into the cosy arms of all the answers yet.

Ambrose rose and went over to the butler's table. ‘Scotch?' She nodded.

‘Soda?'

‘A flick.'

He poured them both a drink. His taking charge of the
drinks like that in her apartment was, she noted curiously, also part of an answer.

He said, ‘I see that your taste in Scotch is still as good as your taste in silk nightdresses from Milan.'

‘I learned both from you, darling.'