All the way down here from the hotel, and then standing outside in the dark, trying to attract his attention, she had not stopped to consider what she would say to him, what reason she would offer for appearing under his window at dead of night like this.
“I…,” she said, “I- I wanted to talk to you.”
He wrinkled his brow, still smiling. “Oh, yes? It must be very urgent.”
“No, not urgent. I just-” She stopped, and stood helplessly, looking at him.
“Well, now that you are here, will you join me in some tea?”
He took her coat and again put it on the bed, the bed that she again tried not to see. When they came in he had switched off the overhead light, but she remembered everything in detail from the last time, the armchair draped with the red blanket, the green typewriter on the card table by the window, the photograph of the smiling couple in native costume, the jumbled stacks of books. Her eye fell on the little wooden milking stool, and she smiled.
He poured her a cup of tea. “Chamomile,” he said, “I hope you like it.”
The tea was pale and had the fragrance of warm straw. “It’s lovely,” she said. “It’s perfect.”
He led her to the armchair, bringing the milking stool for himself. “You’re cold,” he said.
“Yes, it’s icy outside.”
“Would you like to put the blanket over your knees?”
“No no, thank you. The tea will warm me.”
He nodded. She looked about the room again. There was a green paraffin heater by the window; the air felt rubbery with its fumes. She must not let the silence draw out, or she would lose her nerve altogether, would put down the cup and jump up and run from the place, back out into the night. “Were you working?” she asked.
He gestured towards the table and the stacked books. “Studying a little, yes.”
“And now I’m interrupting.”
“No, not at all, I was about to stop and go to- I was about to stop.”
He was dressed in an old pair of corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted woolen jumper. He wore no shirt, and his neck was bare, and she could see the top part of his broad, smooth, gleaming chest. His feet were bare, too. “Aren’t you cold?” she said. “Without socks, even!”
“I like to be cool, a little.” He smiled, showing her his shining teeth. “For me it’s a luxury, you know.”
“Is it very hot, where you come from, in Nigeria?”
“Yes, very hot, very humid.” He was watching her, nodding faintly as if to a slow, steady rhythm in his head. That awful silence began to stretch again between them, and it was as if the air were expanding. “Is the tea all right?” he asked. “I think you do not like it. I could make some coffee.”
Kiss me- please, kiss me. The words had leapt into her mind with such sudden force that for a moment she was not sure she had not spoken them out loud. She looked at his hands where he held them clasped between his knees. He is so beautiful, she thought, so beautiful.
“I had dinner with my father,” she said, sitting upright in the chair and squaring her shoulders. “At the Russell. Do you know it- the Russell Hotel?”
“I have been there, yes.” He laughed softly. “It’s a little expensive, for me.”
“I’m afraid he got a bit… a bit tipsy, my father. He has a problem with drink.”
“Yes, you told me he was in St. John’s.”
“Did I? I forgot. I put him in a taxi and sent him home. I hope he’ll be all right.” He took the cup and saucer from her and set them on the floor. “I feel guilty. I shouldn’t have let him drink so much. I-”
He took her hands in his, and when he spoke her name it was somehow as if she had never heard it before, or had never taken notice of it, at least, this strange, soft sound. She began to say something about this, she did not know what, but he drew her to her feet and released her hands and held her by the shoulders instead, and kissed her. After a moment she turned her face aside; she fancied she could hear her heart, it was pounding so. “Is Patrick really your name?” she said, still looking away. “Haven’t you a- a tribal name?”
He was smiling and moved his head so that he could see into her eyes. “I was educated by the Holy Ghost Fathers,” he said. “My mother called me Patrick in honor of them.”
“Oh. I see.”
They were whispering. He laid his hands now on her shoulder blades. The silk of her dress crackled a little under his fingers. He put his face to her hair at the side. “Is this why you came here?” he murmured.
“I don’t know.” It was true. “I wanted to talk to you about-”
He touched the tips of his fingers to her lips. “Ssh,” he said again, softly. “Ssh.”
The only light in the room was from the little reading lamp on the desk, and now he reached past her and switched it off. At first all was blackness, then a faint, ghostly, ice-blue radiance began to spread slowly from the window. Her coat slid from the bed onto the floor, and neither bent to pick it up. She caught a fingernail on her stocking. As she leaned down to take it off he cupped the side of her face in one of his great, square hands, and again spoke her name. She stood up, and he embraced her again. She felt the ribbed pattern of his jumper and wondered who had knitted it for him; when he crossed his arms and grasped it at both sides and drew it quickly over his head she smelled his sweat, a sharp, oniony odor. The sheets were cold against her back, and she shivered, and he pressed her more closely to him, giving her his warmth. His skin had a curiously stippled texture, like soft sandpaper; it felt exactly as she had known it would. The bedsprings set up a faint tinkling, like the sounds of a distant orchestra beginning to tune up. She put her face into the hollow of his shoulder and laughed a stifled laugh. “Oh, Lord,” she whispered, “Mrs. Gilligan will hear us!”
SHE WOKE WITH A CRY. SOMETHING ABOUT- ABOUT WHAT?- about an animal, some kind of animal, was it? She kept her eyes shut tight, grasping at the dream as it poured out of her mind like water. An animal, and…? No, it was gone. She turned onto her side. The lamp was burning again, and Patrick was sitting at the card table, bent over a book, his back a broad, strong curve. She put a hand flat under her cheek on the pillow and watched him, smiling to herself. The paraffin heater was still on- she could taste the fumes, an oily film on her lips- and the warmth in the room made her think of an underground lair, a place of safety and calm.
“I was dreaming about a lion,” she said. Yes, a lion, that was what it was.
Patrick looked at her over his shoulder. “What kind of a lion?”
“What kinds are there?”
He stood up from the table and came to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. He was wearing his jumper again and the baggy corduroys; it was, she thought, as if some wonderfully fashioned thing, a piece in ebony or gleaming bronze by one of the masters of Benin, had been put into an old sack to protect it. She brought out her hand from under her cheek and gave it to him to hold between both of his brick-pink palms.
“I’ve never seen a lion,” he said.
“Aren’t there any in Nigeria?”
“There may be some left, in the bush. It’s not the jungle, you know.” He smiled. “We live in towns and cities, just like you.”
She sat up. “My hair must be a haystack, is it?”
“It is very beautiful,” he said.