The Blue Book (33 page)

There's no particular change in how he's resting, how he speaks, only this knowledge that he is, somewhere, fracturing and no longer minds. He will be undone with her and expects her to be kind.

‘And the ravens are complaining at me – there's a pair that nest round there and they're up and shouting, grumbling – and the sun silvering their backs and I don't want them worried, because they're my favourite – not 'cause they're underworld birds, the Other Dimensions thing – because they're clever and like small, flying people – and they worry the way that people do and so I sit – and when they settle down and stop talking – they do almost talk – I can hear them flying. It's so quiet that I can hear the air pulling through those fingers at the tips of their wings. I'm up on my best rock and sitting and then they've settled too – they've landed and mewed a bit longer to each other, but now they're satisfied and the only noise that's left is in my head. It's this impossibly wonderful morning. And you're not there. You're not beside me and not saying how hot the stones are, or looking at the glitter in the quartz, or . . . and why should you be . . . There was no reason for you to be there.'

And she has never seen him cry, not in more than twenty years – all the times stolen out of more than twenty years.

But today he does. ‘And it's about you, but then it's her and . . . she was so sad . . . My mum, she was sad the whole time. And . . .'

And she kisses this other salt of him and, ‘Ssssshhh.' And this makes him worse and his hands are wrong, lost, needy and he's labouring and broken back to the noises of a boy, back to the heart, and they hold each other and she can read, can feel the cold and deep and wrong shifting in his chest. It stings her where she touches him.

‘I'm sorry, Art. I'm sorry.' And he shouldn't have to be this way, not for anything, should always be defended against it. ‘I'm sorry.' Anyone who loves him would take care of that.

He's better once they've slept again and gathered themselves. And it seems to Beth that he's made a decision, some large undertaking around which he is building, a man at work.

Arthur leans just inside the bathroom. ‘You don't mind, do you – if we don't do the two-in-a-bath thing . . . ? It's quite a small bath.'

‘And it would be too much like how we were.' Beth not wearing Arthur's shirt for the same reasons – nakedness seeming more straightforward.

‘There's that – yeah . . . There's that.' Arthur wearing the not-that-luxury robe provided with the toiletries and towels. Its sleeves are short enough on him to be comical, which he notices her noticing. ‘It's one size fits all and the one size is not my size. They don't make allowance for the more elongated gentleman.' And because this could be rude he is smiling, but only a little, because they can also ignore the doubled meaning and because he is comfortable with himself.

Eventually, they dress – Beth in yesterday's clothes, which remind her of yesterday and complications – and then they eat an extensive breakfast, served by Narciso with an exemplary lack of surprise. He is purely benevolent, attentive. The suggestion that he should call at another cabin, perhaps with a steward or two to help him, and repossess the lady's belongings, rescue her baggage and bring it back is something he treats as if it were commonplace.

Beth's stomach doesn't like the idea. ‘We shouldn't really ask him to do that and Derek could be . . .'

‘Derek won't be anything if they go in mob-handed. It'll give him something else to resent, which will help him.' His mouth dainty round this unpleasantness. ‘I'm not absolutely callous to say so. I'm being practical. It won't be fun for Narciso and I'm sorry for that.' Arthur considers some porridge and a fruit plate with brutally ornate garnish. ‘You do need your things. You need clothes. Unfortunately. And if we buy a new wardrobe onboard you'll disembark looking like a colour blind dowager or a ladyboy with troubled self-esteem – those are the only options they provide. It goes without saying – although I am saying it – that I would still love you whatever you were wearing, but I feel both those options would be undignified.' He perches a celery baton behind his ear like a pencil, perhaps to make up for having little appetite.

‘You're cheery.'

‘'Course I'm cheery. Entirely.' He grins at the fruit. ‘I've got what I want.' And he closes his eyes, the grin becoming private – as if Beth is his secret, as if he keeps her even from herself.

They pour each other coffee, exchange dishes, Art picking at bread, but clearly enjoying their domesticity. ‘You'd think we'd been doing this for years.'

‘We sort of have.'

‘No we haven't.'

‘No. We haven't.'

‘It agrees with us, though. Pass the milk, could you?' He's playing – maybe the doting husband on holiday, the familiar man, the permanent fixture. And it does agree with him: deft with his cutlery, sitting up straight in a fresh fawn shirt, immaculate brown suit – enjoying a little formality – bare feet to say he's at the seaside.

Beth reads him the ship's newsletter for their day – the last before New York – and they agree to be unconcerned that they have not attended the Detox and Weight Loss Seminar, or the Improvers' Bridge Class, or the Singles Coffee Morning.

‘Won't be needing that.' A tiny sharpness when he says it.

‘We could go and be smug.'

‘It's a while since I was smug . . .' Arthur pours himself more tea – they have a choice of three beverages – and looks up when he's done and is shy for her. ‘I think I might like it for a bit.'

And he should stay like this: contented and happily sleepy, sleepily happy – all won, all well. Beth watches him, can't stop watching him, until he asks her, ‘What?'

She dodges on, ‘We're exactly too late for the Afternoon Champagne Art Auction.'

‘Have you seen the art?' This because he wants to make her laugh. ‘I'd rather be keelhauled . . . Which they can do – it is a ship and they have a keel and everything.' Waiting for her to react and then dipping up from his seat, leaning to kiss her cheek. ‘Not all the generic champagne in the world could make me gaze on it again. A stoned monkey with a brush up its arse could do better.' He winces minutely because this isn't quite as stylish as he'd like.

So she teases him very slightly because he will like that, ‘A stoned monkey . . .'

‘I'm tired . . . I'll do better next time . . . Need practice
. . .' He does like it, is helplessly comfortable as he points out, ‘And we'll need to get back into bed – as soon as your clothes have arrived. Can't come to the door in our dressing gowns – Narciso will think badly of us.'

‘We've only just got dressed . . .'

Quietly: ‘Love you dressed. Love you undressed.' And he divests himself of the celery and becomes serious. ‘Plenty of time for both . . .' Predicting their future – gentle and authoritative. ‘And we need a lot of sleep because . . . of the not sleeping. And tomorrow we'll be up on deck for . . . oh . . . Narciso suggests around
4
.
30
in the morning, maybe five. With which I concur.'

‘What the hell for?'

‘To see the sunrise.' He ghosts a smile, but almost hides that he is contented, because he is being pushed, teased, having to explain himself – because of these different touches of being with somebody else, nicely interfered with. ‘It's an occasion, a tradition. End of the voyage . . . Stuff to look at. That big woman on the island with her arm in the air – she's good value. She's all lit up at night . . . Like you . . .' Almost swallowing this last. ‘That is romantic, though isn't it? That is quite romantic. It will be. I promise. I'll be putting the effort in.'

‘Art . . .'
Ssssshhh.
‘Art, I read this story.'
Ssssshhh.
‘There was this woman, young woman – youngish – and respectable, but she started to be a medium.'

‘Do we have to talk about this?' Too hard a touch, he doesn't want it.

‘It was – I can't remember – the
1890
s or so, round about then, and she was a medium for her lover, this man who'd been . . . and she would talk in his voice and write things and . . . he would inhabit her.'

‘Yes, I read about it.' He's only being brisk, not harmed, wants a return to the good of their day.

‘And it was all sort of the usual – except that he wasn't dead. He just wasn't with her. He'd left. And . . . she still needed him. So she made him up.'

‘It's a sad story, Beth.'

‘It's romantic.'

‘It's about someone going mad.'

‘There were . . . There have been times . . . It's not that I didn't miss you.'

‘Ssssshhh. Too sad, Beth.' But he isn't sad, he's relieved, he's complimented. ‘And I can't do sad today.'

He'd thought he might not like what I would tell him
.

He looks at the tablecloth, coddles his joy for a moment, keeps it inward. ‘Not when we're saying goodbye to the ship and the suite and the bed. Nothing bad has happened here . . . I'm very fond of them suddenly. I'm very fond of everything . . .'

‘I know.'

‘I know. I know you do.'

Your book is an honest thing. It wants to be true for you, always has, and it can't hide that it's almost finished now, it wouldn't want to if it could.

Everything stops.

You've realised this.

You can remember the taste of Sunday evenings as they dwindled down to sleep and then school in the morning: that change. Or a favourite teacher left and was replaced by someone dull, or frightening. You've stumbled through the vague melancholy of childhood holidays in their last hours and the usual forked desires: wanting to eat up those places you've found and learned and cared about, those new kinds of fun, hoping to roll in them, hold them so hard they'll be for ever, incorporated, will speak in you beyond their limitations – either that or you'll sulk and wait with not enough time left to be as you were and more than enough to feel injured and robbed. You've adopted both positions, sometimes simultaneously.

Over time you slightly, slightly, slightly began to resent those glimmers, shivers, little tunnels into your affection, reaching out from temporary joys: other people's pets, toys, gardens, loaned clothes, loaned rooms and houses, the passing friends of friends, the other people's parents, the here and then gone – you were fond of them, but
also blamed them for being transient and therefore hurtful.

And you dislike the knowledge that, once you have stepped away, events will heal behind you and continue. Your presence is never entirely indispensable.

Since you've got older, have been independently in motion, there have been landscapes that were generous and striking, special hobbies, kind hotels, gala occasions, different pets, toys, gardens, clothes, rooms, houses and you have, as usual, agreed to be fond of them – but the more you love them, the more you cannot keep.

You're aware of this, too.

So you let go – which is healthy and adult – and occasionally wonderful. You have sometimes adored those fast days and small plunges into moments you wholly inhabit, because they are all that they ever will be and so there's no sense in having to ration your commitment. You can be breakneck, full tilt. You've tried pastimes and excitements, dangers, precisely because you were certain they wouldn't last – as if you were testing alternative versions of yourself.

And short-term exposure to people, that can be a remarkable mercy: having no cause to consider others' failings and no reasons to make you exercise your own – appearing just as you'd wish, taking part just as you'd wish and then being done, performance over. No loose ends, just experience, pure existence – this can have its place.

There have been days when you'd like to explain how perfectly fine it is to close a door and be outside it, to head off alone and have peace. Peace for a while, space and liberty to come back in refreshed.

The hardest of your losses at least always give you this consolation – a too-large freedom. That big, deep, unworkable love: that absence that still punishes, catches you in anniversaries, old photographs, silly stories; those chances you can't have – they throw you into open air. And perhaps you fly. You can be who you want now, maybe – but with nobody there to see you try.

Everything starts.

You know this.

Beth and Arthur – Arthur and Beth.

I'm not sure of our billing, or how strangers might refer to us if we were presented as a pair, the names and terms we would suggest.

Not sure.

They are together, certainly that, arm-in-arm and up on the ship's highest deck with the early crowds, the handrail-leaners, camera-carriers, the knots and straggles of murmuring shapes. Everyone seems a little stunned and delicate with lack of sleep and the large cold around them which is relatively still, but has a suggestion of merciless places in it nonetheless: Hudson Bay and the farther north, the solemnity of fatal wastes. The dark, though, is familiar against the ship, close to affectionate as they begin to abandon it: a clouded starless sky overhead, but the curiously intrusive signs of life beyond themselves now peering through to either side: low strings of shore lights and the shadows of Staten Island to port, Brooklyn to starboard.

‘We're in the Narrows.' Arthur being manly for her and giving unsolicited information of a technical nature. Right across the deck, husbands and lovers and partners are doing the same: instructing. And wives and lovers and partners are consenting to be instructed, enjoying the game of it.

We should have our picture taken – it'll last.

Beth is deep in the pullover and waterproof she'd packed for just such an occasion. She has most of her things, more than she'd expected, courtesy of Narciso and a pair of largish stewards. She didn't ask them how Derek was or what he said and they didn't mention. Arthur kissed her once the bags had been set down and the men had gone, as if some momentous barrier had been crossed.

Art is in his long overcoat. When she remembers him, she will only have to picture him in this and so the image will stay precise. Which is a good thing and mentally economical.

It's not a very substantial coat, though, and she doesn't want him catching cold, or being uncomfortable.

Enough to make you weep.

She squeezes his arm.

‘What?'

She asks him the second thing that comes to mind, ‘Are you warm enough?'

‘Yeah. In parts. We might have to stroll shortly or I'll seize up. Why? Or – if it isn't annoying – might I suggest
that you have decided to be responsible for my temperature
and well-being . . . I am, of course, happy that you should.'

She doesn't answer but hugs him while the tamed breeze ruffles them, smells of land and later today and another country.

He kisses her neck, ‘Hello, Beth,' and reminds her of bed, of earlier, of yesterday and lets her feel where he hasn't shaved. ‘Who's here with me.' It isn't like him not to shave, not to be polished. ‘And mine.'

He subsides and they begin to move forward on boards which are hardly in motion, have faded.

I think he would like it if we took a picture. But we don't have a camera.

If we see Francis, I'll ask him and he'll help.

I'd like to see Francis. He would make me believe that I know what to do.

And she slips her hand to the small of Arthur's back, steals the fall of the cloth, how it will still fall if she's not with him and the long beat of his walk and the way he is liking the touch of her, the attention.

Monologues about tonnages and draughts continue around them and Arthur halts, turns gently, rests his chin on the top of her head and sways with her, although the boat is still.

She will be able to recall this exactly, perhaps for ever. She would prefer it to be for ever.

‘What's wrong, Beth?' But he doesn't sound concerned; it is only that he has the right to take an interest.

‘I'd like to play a game.'

WOMAN WHO FINDS HERSELF A COWARD
COMMITS HER CRIME THE ONLY WAY SHE CAN
.

Absolutely inexcusable.

‘I don't really want to play anything, though, Beth. I thought we'd just . . . see sights. Wouldn't that be
OK
?' He strokes at her shoulders, enquiring. ‘If that would be all right . . .'

Her mouth unwilling, full of the cold, ‘One game. Please.' A merciless place.

‘Well, if you're saying please . . .' And he is almost beginning to be cautious. ‘What's the game?'

‘There's a list.'

Art stands apart from her. ‘I don't like lists.' His feet braced on the wood. ‘Not any more.' He folds his arms, but waits, angles his head to hear her properly. ‘And if there's a list, then it isn't a game – it's a trick.'

‘There's a list.'

And this makes him step to the side and then close again and then away – the anxious walk of a man back on ice – one shoe splaying out. His shoulders are rising, tensing, penning him in, so that he can be the hurt man she doesn't ever want him to be.

Which means she should shut the fuck up so they can be themselves again, come home to be as they were.

Except we would be broken and pretending and a lie and I can't give him another lie – not my love.

He clears his throat and then sounds like a stranger she might meet in a hotel. ‘Is this something you prepared earlier – your list?' Each word harder than the last. ‘Is this something you have memorised?' The sentence nailing in.

‘Because we used to.' Her hands are stinging. ‘It's a list of eleven words.'

He walks to the rail – the faltered, breaking walk – and leans, looking out to where there is a tiny, greenish blur that will soon be larger and the Statue of Liberty and that will make people excited and possibly inspired. He doesn't speak.

And this is the back of his hair, the line of him, how his weight rests to the left, the dare in his hips, the thoughtful, hurtful, lonely whole of him. He is the sweetest place.

And she has to explain, be very clear – without clear instructions nobody can be with you inside your trick. ‘So, there's the list.'
Very small words to bring on the end of them, what they are and what they could be, ‘And the list – it's what I'll give you now.'

‘Can I assume I should number the words from one to eleven?'

She thinks that she would be afraid to see his face and that she also misses him. ‘Please if you could. I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. Please.'

It is impossible to take his hand, because it's too late.

‘The words that I have for you are

‘
PALM

‘
BOY

‘
BLUE

‘
SWEET

‘
BOOK

‘
DROP

‘
BURN

‘
FIND

‘
SPEAK

‘
RIGHT

‘
BLOOD
.'

So no one is touching him or looking after him and he is by himself when he says, ‘I don't understand your list.'

‘Please, Arthur . . . just . . .'

‘I will.' He doesn't shout, but is near to it.

‘Pick a number between one and ten.'

Winding quickly, quickly round from the rail and his hands high and, ‘Christ, Beth . . . just . . . what do you want to . . . you can tell me . . .
Christ
. You let me . . .
Beth, you let me
.' Before he shakes his head and is soft, ‘I'd pick seven. I would always pick seven. Seven.'

‘So I count from
BLOOD
,
RIGHT
,
SPEAK
,
FIND
,
BURN
,
DROP
and
BOOK
is the seventh word and that means I give you
BOOK
.'

He addresses the bulkhead behind her, ‘But seven wouldn't be right, not for today. I ought to pick six.' Testing the trick, extending it, because he knows that when it's over something bad will have followed it in and because this will make it tell him more and he's always the man who wants to know.

‘Then I count off
BLOOD, RIGHT, SPEAK, FIND, BURN, DROP
and that makes six and you are left with
BOOK
.'

She watches anxieties hit him in flickers: skull, muscle, breath.

‘Or three's the magician's number. I could take that.'

‘And then I'd count
PALM, BOY, BLUE
.' She sounds angry, she shouldn't be angry, isn't angry. ‘And the third word is
BLUE
. I give you
BLUE
.' He's the one who should be angry – she wishes he'd be furious.

‘Two was for me, was for man. What I used to be.' Flat statement.

‘Please, Arthur . . .'

‘Two.'

‘Then.' She's shaking – her hands, throat, breathing. ‘Then I take away
PALM
and
BOY
and I give you
BLUE
.' All untrustworthy now.

He cradles his forehead with one hand, rubs his hair with the other. ‘But in the beginning, I didn't lie.' And then he looks at her and seems tired, tired, tired. ‘I'll always pick seven. I have no choice. Seven.'

Arthur smiles the way a human being does when they understand tricks –
there never really is a choice.

‘I know.' And Beth looks at him and keeps looking because this is a kind of holding and because she understands tricks, too and because she wants more than tricks this morning. Just this morning, just once, she wants the miracle and she has asked before and didn't get one, so she's owed.

There ought to be magic, just this once.

And in her pocket there's the prop.

There has to be a prop. Self-working.

And she reaches to find it, fingers blind with the cold. ‘I have something for you. I made it.'

‘Beth, please—'

And he stops when she brings out the book – it's in her hand, a kind weight in her hand, less than a pigeon, or a plimsoll, or a wholemeal loaf. ‘It's yours, Art. I made it for you.'

And, ‘I can't.'

Because it might hurt him like fuck.

‘Beth.' But he takes it from her anyway and both of them are unsteady and the camera flashes keep firing, saving the moments as they die, and the shining statue is overblown on its island and falling behind and Beth only has one instruction still to give.

Too fast. The end always catches you too fast.

Then she has to leave him.

But I'll go where he can find me, where it would be possible to find me, where it would be possible.

And Beth tells him, ‘Read the end first. Please.' Wishing the night would press the words back and into the quiet of her mouth. ‘You always read the ends first.' Wishing.

‘If you want me to read it then, please, I do have to know what it is, Beth. Please. Because I can't . . .'

Every moment racing down and disappearing.

‘It's your book, Art. That's what it is – it's your book. Because I know you and I learned you and it's your
story. It's the story that I wrote for you and it's your story
and all the parts of it that matter, they're all true.'

Read the end first.

And I promise, everything that matters here is true.

This is for you.