The Book of You: A Novel
Read The Book of You: A Novel Online
Authors: Claire Kendal
For my father, who gave me my first book of fairy tales.
And for my mother, who taught me to read.
As for this little key, it is that of the closet at the end of the long gallery, on the ground floor. Open everything, and go everywhere except that little closet, which I forbid you to enter, and I forbid you so strictly, that if you should venture to open the door, there is nothing that you may not have to dread from my anger.
—C
HARLES
P
ERRAULT
, “B
LUE
B
EARD
”
Contents
Week Three —
The Steadfast Lover
Week Four —
The Potion of Forgetfulness
Eighteen Weeks Later —
The Maiden Without Hands
Monday, February 2, 7:45 a.m.
It is you. Of course it is you. Always it is you. Someone is catching up to me, and I turn and see you. I’d known it would be you, but still I lose my footing on the frozen snow. I stagger up. There are patches of wet on the knees of my stockings. My mittens are soaked through.
Any sensible person would be at home on such an icy morning if he had a choice in the matter, but not you. You are out, taking a little stroll. You are reaching to steady me, asking if I’m okay, but I step away, managing not to unbalance myself again.
I know you must have been watching me since I left my house. I can’t stop myself from asking you what you’re doing here, though I know your answer won’t be the true one.
Your eyelids are doing that flickering thing again. It happens when you’re nervous. “I was just walking, Clarissa.” Never mind that you live in a village five miles away. Your lips blanch. You bite them, as if you guess they’ve lost what little color they normally have and you’re trying to force blood back into them. “You behaved strangely at work on Friday, Clarissa, walking out of that talk. Everyone said so.”
It makes me want to scream, the way you say my name all the time. Yours has become ugly to me. I try to keep it out of my head, as if to do so will somehow keep you out of my life. But still it creeps in. Barges in. Just like you. Again and again.
Second person present. That’s what you are. In every way.
My silence doesn’t deter you. “You haven’t answered your phone all weekend. You only replied to one of my texts, and it wasn’t friendly. Why are you out on a morning like this, Clarissa?”
The short term is all I can see. I have to get rid of you. I have to stop you trailing me to the station and figuring out where I’m going. Ignoring you won’t get me the outcome I need now; the advice in the leaflets doesn’t work in real life. I doubt anything will work with you.
“I’m ill.” This is a lie. “That’s why I left on Friday. I’ve got to be at the doctor’s by eight.”
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever seen who looks beautiful even when she’s ill.”
I really am beginning to feel sick. “I have a fever. I was vomiting all night.”
You lift a hand toward my cheek, as if to check my temperature, and I flinch away.
“I’ll come with you.” Your hand is still in the air, an awkward reminder of your wrong move. “You shouldn’t be alone.” You punctuate this by letting your hand drop heavily to your side.
“I don’t want to give it to you.” Despite my words, I don’t think I sound concerned.
“Let me take care of you, Clarissa. It’s below zero—you shouldn’t be out in this, and your hair’s wet—that can’t be good for you.” You’re taking out your phone. “I’m calling us a taxi.”
Again, you’ve cornered me. The black iron railings are behind me, so I can’t back away from you any farther; I don’t want to slip and fall through the gap—there’s a three-foot drop to the road below. I step sideways, repositioning myself, but this doesn’t stop you towering over me. You look so huge in your puffy gray jacket.
The hem of your jeans is sopping, from dragging in the snow—you aren’t caring for yourself, either. Your ears and nose are red and raw from the bitter cold. Mine must be, too. Your brown hair is lank, though it’s probably freshly washed. Your closed, frowning mouth never relaxes.
Pity for you steals upon me, however much I guard against it and recoil from you. You must be losing sleep, too. To speak meanly, even to you, goes against the kindness my parents taught me. Rudeness won’t make you vanish now, anyway. I know all too well you’ll only follow me, pretending not to hear, and that’s the last thing I want.
You’re punching numbers into your mobile.
“Don’t. Don’t call.” Your fingers pause at the sharpness in my voice. I push the point further. “The doctor’s not far from here.” I make myself more explicit. “I won’t get in a taxi with you.”
You press the red button and pocket your phone. “Write down your landline for me, Clarissa. I seem to have lost it.”
We both know I’ve never given it to you. “I had it disconnected. I just use my mobile now.” More lies. I give a silent prayer of thanks that you didn’t somehow find the number and note it down when you were in my flat. I’m amazed you overlooked such a chance. You’re probably kicking yourself for that. But you were busy then.
I point up the hill. “You should try along the top edge for your walk.” I play on your desire to please me, a callous move, but I’m desperate. “It’s one of my favorites, Rafe.” There’s too long a pause before I manage to get out your name, but I do use it and that’s all you notice; it doesn’t occur to you that I’ve only thrown you this treat in the hope that it will lure you into going away.
“I’d like that if it’s special to you, Clarissa. All I want is to make you happy, you know. If you’d just let me.” You attempt a smile.
“Good-bye, Rafe.” I force myself to use your name again, and when your smile becomes deeper and more real, I’m amazed and a little guilty that such a crude trick can work.
Hardly daring to believe I’ve got away, I step carefully down the hill, checking periodically that the distance between us is increasing. Each time, you are looking back and raising your hand, so I have to make myself wave halfheartedly in response.
From now on, I’ll take taxis to the station in the mornings and check through the windows to make sure you aren’t following. Next time I’m faced with you, I’ll consider the long term and obey the leaflets. I’ll refuse to speak, or I’ll tell you for the zillionth time—in no uncertain terms—to leave me alone. Even my mother would think such circumstances warranted bad manners. Not that I would dream of worrying my parents by telling them about you.
My teeth chatter as I stand on the platform, anxious that you will materialize while I listen to the apologetic announcements about cancellations and delays due to the extreme weather.
I lean against the wall and scribble as quickly as I can in my new notebook. It’s my first entry. The notebook is tiny so that I can always carry it with me, as the leaflets advise. The pages are lined and wire-bound. The cover is matte black. The people on the helplines say I need a complete record. They say I mustn’t miss out anything and I should try to write as soon as I can after each incident, no matter how small. But your incidents are never small.
I am shivering so violently I regret not drying my hair. I rushed out the door to avoid being late after oversleeping because of bad dreams—about you, always about you. There would have been time to dry it, though I couldn’t have predicted that as perfectly as I can predict you. My hair feels like a wand of ice, channeling the cold through my skin and into my veins, a spell freezing flesh into stone.
T
HERE HAD TO
be a world where he wasn’t, and she thought perhaps she’d entered it at last. Portraits of stern-looking judges hung on the wall opposite the marble staircase. Climbing to the first floor, Clarissa felt as if they were watching her, but she couldn’t give up the hope that this could be a place where she wasn’t spied on, a place she could keep him from.
She let the jury officer inspect her passport and pink summons, then sat down on one of the padded blue chairs. The room was wonderfully warm. Her toes thawed. Her hair dried. It seemed a magic place, away from his eyes. Only jurors were allowed in, and they needed to tap a code into a keypad before they could even get through the door.
She jumped at the crackle of the jury officer’s microphone. “Will the following people please come and stand by the desk for a two-week trial that is about to begin in Court 6?”
Two whole weeks in the safe haven of a courtroom. Two whole weeks away from work and away from him. Her heart was beating fast in the hope that she’d hear her name. She sank back in her chair in disappointment when it never came.
A
T LUNCHTIME, SHE
made herself leave the sanctuary of the court building; she knew she needed fresh air. She hesitated just outside the revolving doors, scanning up and down the street. She worried he might be hiding between two custodial services vans, parked a few meters up the road. She plunged past them quickly, holding her breath. When she saw that he wasn’t crouched by one of the bumpers, she exhaled in relief.
She wandered through the outside market, watching local workers buying quick whole-food or ethnic lunches from stalls, glimpsing barristers sitting around a large table in an expensive Italian restaurant.
Checking over her shoulder, she disappeared into the familiar comfort of a sewing shop. As always, she was drawn to the children’s fabrics. Mermaids floated absently as little girls swam after them, under enchantment; she imagined a toddler’s peasant dress, its tiers alternating between plum and fuchsia seas.
Henry would have hated it. Twee, he would have said. Sentimental, he would have said. Too pretty, he would have said. Unoriginal, he would have said. Plain colors are best, he would have said. Perhaps it was just as well that the failure to make a baby had driven them apart.
She aimed herself firmly at the thread display, then searched her bag for the scrap of mossy-green quilter’s cotton traced with crimson blossoms. She found it, chose the best match for the background color, and headed for the till with two spools.
“What will you be sewing?” the girl asked.
Clarissa saw eyelids vibrating beneath pale-brown lashes, a gaze she couldn’t escape, lips dripping cuckoo spit: flashes of Rafe’s one night in her bed.
She would exorcise him. “New bedding,” she said.
It would feel lovely against her skin. And she was surprised by a funny spark of curiosity about who might someday sleep beneath the tiny crimson blossoms with her.
Monday, February 2, 2:15 p.m.
I am trying to piece it all together. I am trying to fill in the gaps. I am trying to recollect the things you did before this morning, when I started to record it all. I don’t want to miss out a single bit of evidence—I can’t afford to. But doing this forces me to relive it. Doing this keeps you with me, which is exactly where I don’t want you to be.
Monday, November 10, 8:00 p.m. (three months ago)
It is the night that I make the very big mistake of sleeping with you, and I am in the bookshop. The shop is open just to your invited guests, to celebrate the publication of your new book about fairy tales. Only a couple of your English department colleagues have turned up. Encouraged by my presence, they are whispering venomously about Henry. I am pretending not to notice by picking up books and acting as though I’m intensely interested in them, though the words are jumbled and about as comprehensible to me as Greek.
I’m still not sure why I’ve come, or what possesses me to mix the red and white wines you press upon me. Probably loneliness and loss: Henry has just moved from Bath to take up the professorship at Cambridge he’s been plotting all his life to get. Compassion also plays a part; you sent me three invitations.
I can’t leave until after your reading. At last, I am seated in the back row, listening to you recite from your chapter on “The Test of the True Bride.” You finish, and your handful of colleagues asks polite questions. I am not an academic; I say nothing. As soon as the smattering of applause dies out, I weave my way toward the door to escape, only to be stopped by your plea that I not leave yet. I sneak up to the art section and sit on the grubby beige carpet with a book about Munch. I turn to
The Kiss,
the early version where the lovers are naked.
I visibly startle when your shadow falls on the page and your voice cuts through the first floor’s deserted silence. “If I hadn’t found you, you might have been locked in all night.” You are standing above me, peering down from what seems to be a very great height and smiling.
I quickly close the Munch and set it aside. “I’m not sure that would have been such a terrible fate, sleeping with the artists.” I wave your heavy book like an actress overdoing her use of props. It makes my wrist ache. “This is wonderful. It was so kind of you to give me a copy. And you read brilliantly. I loved the passage you chose.”
“I loved the painting you chose, Clarissa.” You set down the overstuffed briefcase you’re carrying in one hand and the two glasses of wine you’re balancing in the other.
I laugh. “Have you got a body in that briefcase?”
Your eyes flick to the briefcase’s lockable catch, as if to check it’s properly closed, and it occurs to me that you have secrets you don’t want exposed. But you laugh, too. “Just books and papers.” You stretch out an arm. “Come out of hiding. Let me walk you home. It’s a dark night for you to be out on your own.”
I reach up, letting you help me to my feet. You don’t release my hand. Gently, I pull it away. “I’ll be fine. Don’t you have a dinner to go to, Professor?”
“I’m not a professor.” There is a quiver in your eyelid. It vibrates several times, quickly, in succession, as if a tiny insect is hiding inside. “Henry got it, the year I applied. Not much chance against a prizewinning poet. Being head of department didn’t hurt him, either.”
Henry had more than deserved the professorship, but of course I don’t say this. What I say is “I’m sorry.” After a few embarrassing seconds of silence, I say, “I need to get home.” You look so crushed I want to comfort you. “It’s a really interesting book, Rafe.” I try to soften my impending exit. “You should be proud.”
You retrieve the wine and offer me a glass. “A toast, Clarissa. Before you go.”
“To your beautiful book.” I clink my white to your red and take a sip. You look so pleased by this small thing; it touches and saddens me. I will replay this moment too many times over the next few months, much as I would like to shut it out.
“Drink up.” You gulp down your own, as if to demonstrate.
And I follow your example, though it tastes like salty sweet medicine. But I don’t want to dim your already lackluster celebration.
“Let me walk with you, Clarissa. I’d rather walk with you than go to some stuffy dinner.”
A minute later we are out in the chill late-autumn air. Even in my wine-fueled light-headedness I hesitate before what I say next. “Do you ever think about Bluebeard’s first wife? She isn’t specifically mentioned, but she must be one of the dead women hanging in the forbidden chamber.”
