Yet I might have suggested to her, that day, that if she and I were indeed to have a little one of our own it would be a replacement down here for the embryonic angel impatiently waiting her turn in line at the Limbic gate. By now, however, what with this talk of dead babies, my enthusiasm for precocious fatherhood had cooled considerably—had turned, in fact, to ashes.
It struck me afterwards that what was remarkable about her response when I stated my intention of putting her in the family way was that she did not seem entirely surprised by it; shocked, naturally, outraged, yes, but not surprised. Perhaps women are never surprised by the prospect of being pregnant, perhaps they live in a constant state of preparedness for just that eventuality; I might consult Lydia on this matter, Lydia, my Lydia, my encyclopydia. Mrs Gray that day did not even ask why I should want her to have a child, as if she accepted that it would be the most natural and obvious thing that I should want. If she had asked, I would not have known quite how to answer. Should she get pregnant by me it would hurt her husband, yes, and that would be pleasing, but it would hurt us, too, her and me, and grievously. Did I really know what I was saying, and if I did, did I mean it? I am sure I did not—I was hardly more than a child myself, after all—and had said it I am sure only to shock her and attract all her attention on to myself, exclusively, a task to which I devoted much effort and ingenuity. Yet I find myself contemplating now, with a pang of what feels like genuine regret, the possibility that between us we might have produced a fine, bright boy, say, with her eyes and my limbs, or a glowing girl, a miniature version of her, complete with shapely ankles and slender toes and an unruly curl behind her ear. Absurd, absurd. Think of it, my meeting up with him or her now, a son or daughter nearly as old as I am, the two of us tongue-tied with embarrassment before the grotesque and comic predicament into which an accident of love and a boy’s spitefulness had thrown us, and from which nothing could extricate us except my death, and even that would not wipe the laughable stain from the record. And yet, and yet. My mind turns in confusion, my heart shrinks and swells. Absurd. Look at me, blundering here on the brink of old age and still wistfully dreaming of generation, of a son who might comfort me, of a daughter whom I could love, and on whom I might one day lean an infirm arm and be led down the last road at the end of which awaits what the Psalmist in his solemn fashion calls my long home.
Of course, I would have preferred a daughter. Yes, definitely a daughter.
It is a wonder, in fact, that Mrs Gray did not become pregnant, as frequently and as energetically as we went at the business that would have made her so. How did she avoid it? In this land, in those days, there was no available legal means to prevent conception, other than celibacy, and even if there had been she would not have consented to it, out of devotion to her faith. For she did believe in God, not the God of love, I think, but certainly the God of vengeance.
But wait. Maybe she did get pregnant. Maybe that was why she skedaddled so precipitately when our affair was discovered. Maybe she went off and had a baby, a little girl, ours, without telling me. If so, that little girl is a big woman now, fifty years old, with a husband, and children of her own, perhaps—other, unknown, people, bearing my genes! Dear God. What a thing that is to think of. But no, no. By the time I came along, frisky and cocksure, she must have been barren.
___
The scout from Pentagram Pictures turns out to be Billie, not Billy like my pal, and Stryker, not Striker—yes, it was probably Marcy Meriwether’s idea of a joke not to spell these names out for me—and is a woman and emphatically not, as I had assumed, a man. I was up here in my attic as usual when I heard her preposterous little car come whining and coughing into the square and then the doorbell ringing. I paid no heed, thinking it must be someone to see Lydia. And as it happened Lydia did detain her, took her into the kitchen and sat her down and plied her with cigarettes and tea and a biscuit; my wife has a weakness for misfortunates and oddities of all kinds, especially if they are female. What can they have talked about, those two? Afterwards I did not enquire, out of some form of delicacy, or shyness, or misgiving. It was a good twenty minutes before Lydia came up and knocked on my door to tell me I had a visitor. I rose from my desk, ready to accompany her downstairs, but she moved to one side in the narrow doorway and, with the air of a magician producing a very large rabbit from a very small hat, brought the young woman forwards from the narrow stairway and with a gentle push propelled her into the room, and departed.
As well as being a woman, Billie Stryker is not at all what I had expected. What did I expect? Someone smart and snappy and transatlantic, I suppose. Billie, however, is obviously a native of these parts, a short pudgy person in, I judge, her middle to late thirties. She really is of a remarkable shape, and might have been assembled from a collection of cardboard boxes of varying sizes that were first left out in the rain and then piled soggily any old way one on top of another. The general effect was not improved by the extremely tight jeans she was wearing, and the black polo-necked jumper that made her large head look like a rubber ball set squarely atop all those precariously stacked cartons. She has a tiny sweet face inset amid much surplus flesh, and her wrists are dimpled like a baby’s and look as if they have been tied round with tight loops of thread at the junctures where her hands are attached to, or inserted into, as it might be, the ends of her arms. There was a purple and yellow shadow under her left eye, the remains of what a week or so ago must have been a real shiner—how or where did she come by that, I wonder?
I wished that Lydia had not brought her up here, for besides the fact that it is my bolthole, the sloped room is small and Billie is not, and as I edged my way around her I felt rather like Alice grown huge and trapped in the White Rabbit’s house. I directed her to the old green armchair that is the only piece of furniture there is space enough for in here, along with my desk that I work at—I call it work—and the antique swivel chair that I sit in. When we moved in first Lydia tried to persuade me to make a proper study for myself in one of the downstairs rooms that are empty—the house is large and there are just the two of us—but I am content up here, and do not mind being cramped, except on occasions such as this, which are extremely rare. Billie Stryker sat there, with a decided but inexplicably forlorn air, twiddling her chubby fingers and panting softly and looking at everything except me. She has a special and slovenly way of inhabiting a chair, seeming to sag from it rather than sit in it, perching herself on the front edge of the cushion with her big knees loosely splayed and her runnered feet turned inwards so that the outer sides of her ankles are resting flat on the floor. I sidled to my desk, smiling and nodding, like a lion-tamer making cautiously towards his chair and pistol, and sat down.