I did not ever return to the flat in Battersea.
I saw Becky every couple of years, in passing, on the tube, or in the City, never comfortably. She seemed brittle and awkward around me, as I was, I am sure, around her. We would say hello, and she would congratulate me on whatever my latest achievements were, for I had taken my energies and channeled them into my work, building something that was, if it was not (as it was often called) an entertainment empire, at least a small principality of music and drama and interactive adventure.
Sometimes I would meet girls, smart, beautiful, wonderful girls and, as time went on, women for whom I could have fallen; people I could have loved. But I did not love them. I did not love anybody.
Heads and hearts: and in my head I tried not to think about Becky, assured myself I did not love her, did not need her, did not think about her. But when I did think of her, memories of her smile, or of her eyes, then I felt pain. A sharp hurt inside my rib-cage, a perceptible, actual pain inside me, as if something were squeezing sharp fingers into my heart.
And it was at these times that I imagined that I could feel the little gargoyle in my chest. It would wrap itself, stone-cold, about my heart, protecting me, until I felt nothing at all; and I would return to my work.
Years passed: the twins grew up, and eventually they left home to go to college (one in the North of England, one in the South, my not-so-identical twins), and I left home too, leaving it with Caroline, and I moved into a large flat in Chelsea and lived on my own, and was, if not happy, then, at least content.
And then it was yesterday afternoon. Becky saw me first, in Hyde Park, where I was sitting on a bench, reading a paperback book in the springtime sun, and she ran over to me and touched my hand.
“Don’t you remember your old friends?” she asked.
I looked up. “Hello, Becky.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“Neither have you,” I told her. I had silver-gray in my thick beard, and had lost most of my hair on the top, and she was a trim woman in her mid-thirties. I was not lying, though, and neither was she.
“You are doing very well,” she said. “I read about you in the papers all the time.”
“Just means that my publicity people are earning their keep. What are you doing these days?”
She was running the press office of an independent television network. She wished, she said, that she had stuck with acting, certain that she would, by now, have been on the West End stage. She ran her hand through her long, dark hair and smiled like Emma Peel, and I would have followed her anywhere. I closed my book and put it into the pocket of my jacket.
We walked through the park, hand in hand. The spring flowers nodded their heads at us, yellow and orange and white, as we passed.
“Like Wordsworth,” I told her. “Daffodils.”
“Those are narcissi,” she said. “Daffodils are a kind of narcissus.”
It was spring in Hyde Park, and we were almost able to forget the city surrounding us. We stopped at an ice cream stand and bought two violently colored frozen ice cream confections.
“Was there someone else?” I asked her, eventually, as casually as I could, licking my ice cream. “Someone you left me for?”
She shook her head. “You were getting too serious,” she said. “That was all. And I wasn’t a homewrecker.”
Later that night, much later, she repeated it. “I wasn’t a homewrecker,” she said, and she stretched, languorously, and added, “—then. Now, I don’t care.”
I had not actually told her that I was divorced. We had eaten sushi and sashimi in a restaurant in Greek Street, drunk enough sake to warm us and to cast a rice-wine glow over the evening. We took a golden-painted taxi back to my flat in Chelsea.
The wine was warm in my chest. In my bedroom we kissed and hugged and giggled. Becky examined my CD collection carefully, and then she put on the Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Sessions, singing along in a quiet voice. This was only a few hours ago, but I cannot remember the point at which she removed her clothes. I remember her breasts, however, still beautiful, although they had lost the firmness and shape they had when she was little more than a girclass="underline" her nipples were deep red and pronounced.
I had put on some weight. She had not.
“Will you go down on me?” she whispered, when we reached my bed, and I did. Her labia were engorged, purple, full and long, and they opened like a flower to my mouth when I began to lick her. Her clitoris swelled beneath my tongue and the salty taste of her filled my world, and I licked and teased and sucked and nibbled at her sex for what felt like hours.
She came, once, spasmodically, under my tongue, and then she pulled my head up to hers, and we kissed some more, and then, finally, she guided me inside her.
“Was your cock that big fifteen years ago?” she asked.
“I think so,” I told her.
“Mmm.”
After a while she said, “I want you to come in my mouth.” And, soon after, I did.
We lay in silence, side by side, and she said, “Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said, sleepily. “I used to. I hated you for years. And I loved you, too.”
“And now?”
“No, I don’t hate you anymore. It’s gone away. Floated off into the night, like a balloon.” I realized as I said it that I was speaking the truth.
She snuggled closer to me, pressed her warm skin against my skin. “I can’t believe I ever let you go. I won’t make that mistake twice. I do love you.”
“Thank you.”
“Not, thank you, idiot. Try I love you too.”
“I love you too,” I echoed, and, sleepily, I kissed her still sticky lips.
And then I slept.
In my dream, I felt something uncurling inside me, something moving and changing. The cold of stone, a lifetime of darkness. A rending, and a ripping, as if my heart were breaking; a moment of utter pain. Blackness and strangeness and blood.
I must have dreamed the gray dawn as well. I opened my eyes, moving away from one dream but not entirely coming awake. My chest was open, a dark split that ran from my navel to my neck, and a huge, misshapen hand, Plasticine-gray, was pulling back into my chest. There was long dark hair caught between the stone fingers. The hand retreated into my chest as I watched, as an insect will vanish into a crack when the lights are turned on. And, as I squinted sleepily down at it, my acceptance of the strangeness of it all my only clue that this was truly another dream, the crack in my chest healed, knit and mended, and the cold hand vanished for good. I felt my eyes closing once more. I was tired, and I swam back into the comforting, sake-flavored dark.
I slept once more, but the rest of the dreams are now lost to me.
I awoke, completely, a few moments ago, the morning sun full on my face. There was nothing beside me in the bed but a purple flower on the pillow. I am holding it now. It reminds me of an orchid, although I know little enough of flowers, and its scent is strange, salty and female.
Becky must have placed it here for me to find when she left, while I slept.
Pretty soon now I shall have to get up. I shall get out of this bed and resume my life.
I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine.
I feel nothing at all.
MY LIFE
“My life? Hell, you don’t want to hear about my life. Jesus, my throat is dry….
A drink? Well, since you’re buying, and it’s a hot day, sure. Why not. Just a little one.