Mortal Love (22 page)

They crossed the little footbridge and made their way through the vast outdoor market surrounding Dingwalls. Daniel ducked beneath an awning by a shop selling masks and Caribbean incense. “This place is a nightmare.”

More a labyrinth, or millennial souk. In all the years he'd been coming to stay with Nick, he had never learned to navigate this warren of shops and stalls, alleys and clubs and tunnels. Larkin said nothing. Indeed, she hardly appeared to lift her head; instead gently pressed his arm or silently pointed to indicate which way he should go.

At last they came back out onto the towpath, emerging from a long arched tunnel that smelled of piss and gardenias, the cobblestones beneath their feet scattered with waxy white blossoms that glowed softly in the near darkness.

“This way.” A stray petal, the misty green of a luna moth's wings, drifted onto the bodice of Larkin's dress as she turned to him. “It's just down here, ten minutes or so. Maybe fifteen. Not long.”

“The walk'll do me good. Sober me up.”

They passed a few couples heading back toward Camden Town, an old woman walking a brace of standard poodles, a man on a bicycle who sounded his bell as he sped by. To their right was the canal, its surface black enamel beneath a sky so deep a blue it seemed that Larkin's dress had been clipped from it. Now and then a carp rose to kiss hopefully at the air before descending once more. Beside the towpath mulberries grew in profusion, their sweetly rank scent overpowering the smell of ragged white dog roses and diesel drifting down from the street above the embankment. On the far side of the canal were rowhouses, their tiny backyard plots separated by brick walls or neatly trimmed hedges, crumbling stone walls or huge terra-cotta pots filled with geraniums.

“I never knew this was here,” Daniel said. “Hey, look at that—”

A woman in a long white dress came running to the edge of the far bank, hair wild about her face. Behind her on a patio a man stood in front of a café table set with candles and wineglasses and a vase full of yellow flowers. The woman shouted after them, words Daniel could not quite make out. Larkin huddled against him.

“Don't stop,” she said. When Daniel glanced back, the man had joined the woman and was trying vainly to coax her back to the candlelight. Somewhere a window was flung open and music poured out.

“Where exactly are we?” said Daniel. Every few hundred yards they passed beneath another bridge, its railings broidered with razor wire. Northern Line trains thundered overhead, late weekend traffic crawling toward the M26. Ahead of them the canal curved in and out beneath brick arches. Blackthorn hedges extended toward the water, their white petals falling onto Daniel's upturned face. “It's like the country!”

“It
is
a country,” said Larkin, and smiled. Her hand encircled his. “It's just around this last turn here.”

Hand in hand they followed the winding path and approached a small footbridge edged with willow trees. As they passed beneath it, Daniel saw a steep stairway leading up to the street. He hesitated and looked expectantly at Larkin. She shook her head and smiled.

“There,” she said, pointing. He turned.

“You live on a
narrow boat
?”

“Home sweet home.”

“I don't believe it—I've never known anyone who actually lived on one of these!”

“Well, now you do.”

And there it was: thirty feet long and seven wide, an old wooden canal boat, low enough that Daniel could have leaned out and rested his elbows atop its roof. It had a long, pointed prow and a tiny crescent step-out aft, where pots of ivy sat, green tendrils trailing into the water. The boat was painted like a Gypsy caravan, blue and green and red, with carved arabesques picked out in flaking gilt, and a row of small round windows, yellow-trimmed. Worn lines moored it to iron bollards at the very edge of the towpath. On the prow gilt letters spelled out her name:
Cooksferry Queen.

“Larkin, this is amazing!
You're
amazing—” Daniel laughed and flung his arms open. “A narrow boat! Can we both fit in it?”

Larkin smiled. “Come see.”

She stepped onto the tiny aft deck, bent to find a key hidden beneath a flowerpot, and opened the door. Daniel waited until she stepped inside before following her.

“Wow,” he said. “I feel like Alice when she was big.”

The space before him was dark and narrow as a closet. Something soft and odorous draped across his cheek, and all unbidden the memory of Sira's garret room flooded him, silk running through his fingers and that sense of infinite impossible darkness, but also the sudden oily taste of burned salmon skin upon his tongue, a pulse of rainbow light. Before he could stammer Larkin's name, the light flickered, then grew steady, and she was revealed standing beneath a kerosene lantern that dangled from the ceiling.

“Be very careful. You're even taller than I am, and—”

“
Ouch!”

Too late: Daniel cracked his head on a beam, and sent the lantern swinging. His arm shot out, seeking something to grab on to, and she was there, grasping his hands and drawing them down to his sides.

“Here,” she murmured, and pulled him to her. “Daniel ...”

She kissed him, her mouth sweetly sour; he put his hand upon her cheek, and for an instant it was as though his fingers slipped through air, the warmth of her flesh enveloping his, and there was nothing between, nothing but that sweet taste against his tongue and an orchard scent. He whispered her name, dizzy; she stared at him, her green eyes lambent.

“Don't watch.” It was as though she spoke to someone else. She turned her head slightly, as though tracking something he could not hear, and he blinked.

Her eyes held no pupil: they were all iris, two fractured stars like exploded bottle glass. Within them coruscating rays seemed to break apart, then cohere in shifting bands, the color of the sea beneath heavy cloud, the translucence of new leaves in the sun, black-green, blood-green, virent. Minute coils of red like wriggling larvae swam through the green, bursting when they reached the perimeter of each iris, then dissolving into milky white. He stared, afraid to release his breath, terrified her gaze would return to him.

But she did not seem aware of him at all.

“First fruit, best blossom: nine branches broke to bear me,” she said. A child's voice, clear and very low, as though singing to comfort herself when left alone in the dark. “Nine branches, best blossom, first fruit: flesh.”

She raised her hand. It momentarily blotted out the lamplight as she gazed into the shadowy space.

“Be kind and courteous to this gentleman,” she said. “He has come in good faith and of his will.”

Daniel tried to speak, but his throat burned. Through his mind raced every warning word that he had heard about this woman:
She's on medication, and Nick knows it. She has a history of getting mixed up with the wrong kind of men. She has boundary issues. . . .

But before he could move away, she turned back to him and her green eyes fixed upon his; and they were not terrible at all, but welcoming.

“Stay with me,” she whispered. Her cheeks were flushed, her voice a soft command. “Stay.”

“I will,” he said, all fear fled. “God, yes, I will.”

She drew him to her, her hair a fragrant net across his face, then led him through the tiny passage, the interior of the boat absurdly small, yet somehow it contained all of this, round windows screened with ivy and honeysuckle, drifts of spent apple blossom, lit candles giving off a smell of honey and sun-warmed clover. They came to an alcove, framed with oak planks carved with acorns, oak leaves, rowan berries, within it a bed, wide enough for two. He let her pull him onto the rumpled woven coverlet, dull green, snagged here and there with briars budding white and pink. Her hands around his wrists were strong, insistent, though her touch did not hurt him. As he moved to kneel beside her, his foot bore down upon something small and round upon that broke with a hushed noise.

She did not speak; her lips grazed his throat, his chest. He fumbled at his shirt, but she had already unbuttoned it, his exposed skin cool, then moist, warm where she touched it. Her hands covered his nipples; he would have groaned, but he could not, could make no sound. The sweetness on his lips was honey. It filled his mouth, his nostrils, seeped into his flesh. He thought he would choke, but it was fine as April rain, laving him from throat to chest, then pooling about him on the bed, soaking into the coverlet, dissolving. Everything smelled of it, of her, honey and salt and blossom.

“
Come inside,”
she said.

He tugged his shoes off, socks, trousers. When he dropped them, there was a sound as of dozens of marbles rolling across the floor. Beside the bed a white candle sat on a narrow ledge. Beneath it runnels of melted beeswax streamed down the oak cabinetry. Moths hovered about the flame, their wings blade-shaped, rust red, corn yellow, dusted with gold scales that powdered the air as they flew. They exuded a smell like nail varnish; when they lit upon the wood, their soft-furred legs left minute tracks in their own golden pollen.

“
Come inside.”

He turned. Larkin reclined upon the bed, her hair a russet stream across the pillows. She was naked: what he took for her shadow was the discarded dress: she had no shadow. She still wore the necklace of jet beads and figured gold dragonflies. The candlelight made their wings seem to shiver as in flight.

“Larkin,” he whispered.

“Come . . .”

She had small, full breasts, the aureoles dark brown, pansy-shaped, her nipples so deep a red they were almost violet. He cupped them in his palms, and it was as though he held handfuls of apple blossom; when he bent to kiss her, his cock grazed the soft mound between her legs. Her thighs parted; he could feel damp and warmth, his hand moving down the smooth curve of her belly to the inside of one leg. Something stuck to his fingers. He glanced down and saw white petals clinging to his palm, their curled edges already turning brown.

Then her hand cupped his chin and turned his face back to hers; her legs opened wider as she raised her head to kiss him, her teeth bruising his lip; she gently pushed him down until his head was poised between her thighs. She tasted of honeysuckle, sweet bittergreen, and salt. Milky warmth spread beneath his fingers and tongue; when she came, warm liquid seeped not just from her labia and cunt but from the inside of her thighs, like sap sweating from split bark.

As he drew away from her, she cried out very softly; he could not understand what she said, but it was not his name, or any name that he could recognize. He kissed her breasts, her mouth, could feel himself starting to come just as his cock slid inside her. He thrust moaning and came almost immediately, white liquid pearling the dark hair of her pubis and glistening upon the crease of one thigh.

“Larkin . . .”

He laid his head upon her leg. Phantom starbursts from the candle flames pulsed behind his closed eyelids. He stroked her leg, felt the strong band of muscle of her calf, the fine hairs raised by gooseflesh. Something caught between his fingers: he opened his eyes, expecting to see another brown-edged petal or fallen leaf.

It was neither. For an instant he thought he had trapped a moth, then saw pinched between thumb and forefinger a downy feather, fan-shaped, white-tipped and striated with lines of russet, dull orange, umber. He tried to flick it away, but it adhered to his damp skin.

“Look at this,” he said, and sat up too fast, his head swimming. He looked over to see Larkin already asleep on her side. He smiled wistfully, then drew the coverlet over her, yawned and scraped the feather onto the wooden ledge where the candle had melted down to a crescent of white and sputtering gold. A moth had been trapped in the cooling wax; as he stared, its fern-shaped antennae twitched frantically, then grew still.

“Sorry, pal.” He blew out the flame, lay back beside Larkin, and slept.

And roused, to her pulling him back toward her. He had never known a night so long, hours dropping like water into a well, his fingers and mouth inside her, around her, everywhere, endless. When finally he fell back, exhausted, he could still see her beside him, staring with wide wakeful eyes at the ceiling.

He woke twice more, or thought he did. The first time he lay for some minutes in the darkness, his hand upon Larkin's back. It took him a moment to recall where he was; even then he listened carefully for some outside sound that would lend clarity to this improbable bed, shifting ever so slightly as the current drifted beneath them.

But the night was utterly silent—more silent than he had ever known London to be. No drunks singing, no hum of street-cleaning machinery, no rumbling traffic. Nothing. A pale light filled the room, like moonlight tinged more green than blue. It made the outlines of unknown objects seem even more strange—the high, raised curve of a seat built into the wall; the narrow, tunneled darkness that ran from stern to bow; the splayed fingers of the geraniums on the aft deck, silhouetted against the sky. He sat up and looked out the porthole window directly opposite the bed.

The world outside was green—milky green, a gliding opalescent shimmer, as though he gazed not through air but water. Flickers of emerald appeared, then faded; in the distance a pinpoint of deepest indigo flared and was extinguished, as though someone cupped a giant hand around a sputtering blue flame. Daniel stared, too amazed to feel terror or even to wonder if he were truly awake. Beside him Larkin slept, a strand of hair by her mouth stirring with each breath.

He never knew how long he sat and watched the green world shift and gleam; waves of air, or heat, or some unnameable element erasing, then reshaping it each moment, as the ceaseless passage of waves or the molten explosion of livid matter from the earth's soft heart re-formed a sunless world miles and miles beneath the sea. At one point he heard voices, crackling as with static, then burbling, then growing silent once again. Once something moved directly outside the window, a blurred thing like a great wing or a tree limb thick with leaves.