The Book of Evidence (10 page)

A n n a w o r e shorts, and her hair w a s loose. T h e sight of her there suddenly in the d o o r w a y , ash-blonde, at ease, her l o n g legs bare, caused an ache at the root of my t o n g u e .

T h e house w a s d i m inside. A f e w b o o k s , prints on the wall, a straw hat on a h o o k . T h e w i d o w ' s cats had left a trace of themselves on the carpets and the chairs, a sharp, citrus stink, not w h o l l y unpleasant.

D a p h n e w a s sitting cross-legged in a canvas chair, shelling peas into a nickel b o w l . S h e w o r e a bathrobe, and her hair w a s w r a p p e d in a towel. A n o t h e r coincidence, y o u see. "What did we talk about that day, the three of us? "What did I d o ? Sat d o w n , I suppose, drank a beer, stretched out my legs and leaned back, p l a y i n g at b e i n g relaxed. I cannot see myself. I am a sort of floating eye, w a t c h i n g , noting, s c h e m i n g . A n n a c a m e arid w e n t b e t w e e n the l i v i n g - r o o m and the kitchen, b r i n g i n g cheese and oranges and sliced a v o c a d o s . It w a s S u n d a y . T h e place w a s quiet. I w a t c h e d t h r o u g h the w i n d o w the mist m o v i n g a m o n g the trees.

T h e telephone r a n g and A n n a a n s w e r e d it, turning a w a y and m u r m u r i n g into the receiver. D a p h n e smiled at m e .

H e r g l a n c e w a s u n f o c u s e d , a kind o f soft g r o p i n g a m o n g the objects a r o u n d her. S h e rose and handed me the b o w l a n d the r e m a i n i n g unshelled peas, and went a w a y upstairs.

W h e n she c a m e back in a while she w a s dressed, her hair w a s dried and she w a s w e a r i n g her spectacles, and at first I did n o t recognise her, and t h o u g h t she w a s yet another tenant of the house. It w a s o n l y then that I realised it w a s she I h a d seen on the l a w n that d a y at Professor 64

S o m e t h i n g ' s party. 1 started to tell her about it, about having seen her, but I changed my m i n d , for the same, u n k n o w n reason that I had turned a w a y that first time without speaking to her. She took the b o w l of peas f r o m me and sat d o w n again. A n n a answered another phonecall, m u r m u r i n g , quietly laughing. It occurred to me that my presence was hardly i m p i n g i n g on their day, that they w o u l d have d o n e just these s a m e things if I were not there.

It was a soothing thought. I had not been invited to dinner, but it seemed accepted that I w o u l d stay. After we had eaten we sat on at the table for a long time. T h e f o g thickened, pressing against the w i n d o w s . I see the t w o of them opposite me there in that m i l k y twilight, the dark one and the fair: they have an air of complicity, of secret amusement, as if they'are sharing a mild, not very unkind j o k e at my expense. H o w distant it all seems, an a g e a w a y , when we w e r e still innocent, if that is the w o r d , which 1

doubt.

I was, I confess it, captivated by them, their looks, their c o m p o s u r e , their casual selfishness. T h e y e m b o d i e d an ideal that I had not k n o w n I harboured until n o w . I was still w o r k i n g at my science in those days, I was g o i n g to be one of those great, cold technicians, the secret masters of the world. N o w suddenly another future had opened up, as if these t w o had caused a w h o l e rockface before me to fall a w a y and reveal b e y o n d the swirling dust a vast, radiant distance. T h e y w e r e splendid, at once languorous and dashing. T h e y reminded me of a pair of adventuresses out of the last century. T h e y had arrived in N e w Y o r k the previous winter, and drifted by stages across the country to this tawny, sunlit shore, w h e r e they w e r e poised n o w , as if on tiptoe, hands j o i n e d and arms extended, with the Pacific all before them. T h o u g h they had been in this house nearly half a year their impress w a s so light, so fleeting, that the 65

r o o m s had barely registered their presence. T h e y seemed to have no belongings — even the straw hat hanging on the door had been left behind by a previous tenant. There must have been friends, or acquaintances at least — I'm thinking of those phonecalls ~~ but I never met them. O n c e in a while their landlady would descend on them, a darkly dramatic person with soulful eyes and very black hair twisted tight into a bun and skewered with a carved w o o d e n pin. She dressed like an Indian squaw, festooning herself with beads and brightly coloured scarves. She would surge about the house distractedly, talking over her shoulder and trailing a dense, musky perfume, then fling herself with a balletic leap on to the couch in the living-r o o m and sit for an hour telling of her woes — the result mostly of what with a throb in her voice she referred to as
man trouble —
meanwhile getting steadily, tearfully drunk on calvados, a supply of which she kept in a locked cupboard in the kitchen. A ghastly w o m a n , I could not abide her, that leathery skisi and daubed mouth, all that hysteria, that messy loneliness. T h e girls, however, found her greatly entertaining. They liked to do imitations of her, and m a d e catchphrases of things she said. Sometimes, listening to them mimicking her, I wondered if perhaps, when I -was not there, they treated
me
like this, lobbing remarks at each other in a comically solemn version of my voice and laughing softly, in that jaded w a y they had, as if the j o k e were not really funny, just ridiculous.

They thought the country, too, was a scream, especially California. We had a lot of fun together laughing at the Americans, w h o just then were entering that stage of d o o m e d hedonistic gaiety through which we, the gilded children of poor old raddled Europe, had already passed, or so we believed. H o w
innocent
they seemed to us, with their flowers and their joss-sticks and their muddled 66

religiosity. Of course, I felt a secret twinge of guilt, sneering at them like this. 1 had been captivated by the country when I first came there, now it was as if I had joined in mocking some happy, good-hearted creature, the fat girl at the party against w h o m only a moment ago I had been pressing myself, under cover of the general romp, in wordless, swollen ecstasy.

Perhaps contempt was for us a form of nostalgia-, of homesickness, even? Living there, amid those gentle, paintbox colours, under that d o m e of flawless blue, was like living in another world, a place out of a story-book. (I used to dream of rain — real, daylong, Irish rain — as if it were something I had been told about but had never seen.) Or perhaps laughing at America was a means of defence?

It's true, at times it crossed our minds, or it crossed
my
mind, at least, that we might be just the teeniest bit laughable ourselves. Was there not a touch of the preposterous about us, with our tweeds and our sensible shoes, our extravagant accents, our insolently polite manners? M o r e than once I thought I detected a suppressed smile twitching the lips of some person w h o was supposed to be the unknowing butt of our ridicule. Even a m o n g ourselves there were moments of silence, of awkwardness, when a half-formed admission hovered between us, like a bad, embarrassing smell. A trio of expatriates meeting in this mellow playground — what could be more novelettish?

We were a triangle, for God's sake!

We were a triangle. It happened, the inevitable, one afternoon a month or so after we met. We had been sitting on the porch at the back of the house drinking gin and smoking something with a horrid taste and the oddest effects. T h e day was hot and hazy. A b o v e us a coin-coloured sun was stuck in the middle of a white sky. I was watching a cloud of hummingbirds sipping at a

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honeysuckle bush beside the porch steps. Daphne, in shorts and halter and high-heeled sandals, stood up, a little unsteadily, blinking, and wandered into the house. I followed her. I was not thinking of anything — I was fetching m o r e ice, something like that. After the glare outside I could hardly see indoors, everywhere I turned the air had a h u g e dark hole in it. Idly I looked about for Daphne, following the sound of the ice tinkling in her glass, f r o m the kitchen through the living-room to the b e d r o o m . T h e blind was drawn. She was sitting on the side of the bed, gazing before her in the amber half-light.

My head suddenly began to ache. She drained her drink in one long gulp, and was still holding the glass when we lay d o w n together, and a bead of ice slid out of it and dropped into the hollow of my shoulder. Her lips were chill and wet. She began to say something, and laughed softly into my mouth. O u r clothes seemed tight as bandages, I clawed at them, snorting. Then abruptly we were naked. There was a startled pause. S o m e w h e r e nearby children were playing. Daphne laid her hand on my hip. Her eyes were closed, and she was smiling with her eyebrows raised, as if she were listening to a distant, dreamy, and slightly funny melody. I heard a sound, and looked over my shoulder.

Anna was standing in the d o o r w a y . I had a glimpse of myself as she w o u l d see me, my glimmering flanks and pale backside, my fish-mouth agape. She hesitated a m o m e n t , and then walked to the bed with her eyes on the ground, as if deep in thought, and sat d o w n beside us and began to undress. D a p h n e and I lay quietly in each other's arms and watched her. She pulled her blouse over her head, and surfaced like a s w i m m e r , tossing her hair. A metal clasp left its m a u v e imprint in the centre of her back.

W h y did she seem to me so much older n o w than us, world-weary, a little used, an adult joining tolerantly in a 68

children's not quite permissible game? Daphne hardly breathed, her fingers steadily tightening on my hip. Her lips were parted, and she frowned a little, gazing at Anna's bared flesh, lost in. a sort of vague amazement. I could feel her heartbeat, and my own. We might have been

attending at a ritual disrobing.

A ritual, yes, that's h o w it was. We strove together slowly on the bed, the three of us, as if engaged in an.

archaic ceremonial of toil and worship, miming the fashioning and raising of something, a shrine, say, or a d o m e d temple. H o w grave we were, h o w pensive, with what attentiveness we handled each other's flesh. No one spoke a word. The w o m e n had begun by exchanging a chaste kiss. They smiled, a little bashfully. My hands were trembling. I had felt this choking sense of transgression once before, long ago, when as a child I tussled with two girl cousins in the dark on the stairs one winter evening at Coolgrange — the same dread and. incredulity, the same voluptuous, aching, infantile glee. Dreamily we delved and nuzzled, shivering, sighing. N o w and then one of us would clutch at the other two with a child's impatient, greedy fervour and cry out softly, tinily, as if in pain or helpless sorrow. It seemed to me at times that there were not two w o m e n but one, a strange, remote creature, many-armed, absorbed behind an enamelled mask in something I could not begin to know. At the end, the final spasm gathering itself inside me, I raised myself up on trembling arms, with Daphne's heels pressed
in
the small of my back, and looked d o w n at the two of them gnawing at each other with tender avidity, mouth on open mouth, and for a second, as the blood welled up in my eyes, I saw their heads merge, the fair one and the dark, the tawny and the panther-sleek. At once the shudder started in my groin, and I fell upon them, exultant and afraid.

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B u t afterwards it was Daphne alone w h o lay in my arms, still holding me inside her, while Anna got up and walked to the w i n d o w , and lifted the canvas blind at the side with one finger and stood gazing out into the hazy glare of afternoon. T h e children were still at play. There's a school, Anna m u r m u r e d , up the hill. She laughed quietly and said,
But what do
I
know, I ask you?
It w a s o n e of the m a d w i d o w ' s catchphrases. Suddenly everything was sad and grey and waste. D a p h n e put her face against my shoulder and began to weep silently. I will always remember those children's voices.

It was a strange encounter, never to be repeated. I b r o o d on it n o w , not for the obvious reasons, but because it puzzles me. T h e act itself, the troilism, was not so remarkable: in those days everyone was doing that sort of thing. N o , what struck me then, and strikes me still, is the curious passiveness of my role in that afternoon's doings. I was the man a m o n g the three of us, yet I felt that it was I w h o was being softly, irresistibly penetrated. T h e wise will say that I was only the link along which the t w o of them had negotiated their way, hand over hand, into each other's arms. It m a y be true, but it is not of much significance, and certainly not the central thing. I could not rid myself of the feeling that a rite was being performed, in which Anna Behrens was the priestess and D a p h n e the sacrificial offering, while I was a mere prop. T h e y wielded me like a stone phallus, b o w i n g and writhing about me, with incantatory sighs. T h e y were —

T h e y were saying g o o d b y e . Of course. It's just occurred to me. T h e y were not finding each other, but parting.

Hence the sadness and the sense of waste, hence Daphne's bitter tears. It was nothing to do with me, at all.

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W e l l well. T h a f f s the a d v a n t a g e of jail, one has the time and leisure really to get to the heart of things.

T h e illusion of their melting into each other which I had experienced at the end of o u r b o u t on the b e d that day was to last for a l o n g time. E v e n yet w h e n I think of them together it is a kind of d o u b l e - h e a d e d coin that I see, on which are s t a m p e d their twin profiles, serene, e m b l e m a t i c , l o o k i n g a w a y , a stylised representation of paired virtues —

C a l m and Fortitude, let's say, or, better still, Silence and Sacrifice. I am r e m e m b e r i n g a certain m o m e n t , w h e n A n n a lifted her bruised, glistening m o u t h f r o m between D a p h n e ' s legs and, glancing back at me with a complicitous, w r y little smile, leaned aside so that 1 m i g h t see the sprawled girl's lap lying o p e n there, intricate and innocent as a halved fruit. E v e r y t h i n g w a s present, 1 see n o w , in that brief passage of renunciation and discovery. A w h o l e future b e g a n j u s t there.