“Hello Daddy,” said Miranda. “This is Charmian, my friend.” The light was in his eyes and at first he thought they held hands, like mother and child side by side before him, illuminated from behind by the orange dying sun, waiting to be greeted. Their recent laughter seemed concealed in their silence. Stephen stood up and embraced his daughter. She felt different to the touch, stronger perhaps. She smelled unfamiliar, she had a private life at last, accountable to no one. Her bare arms were very warm.
“Happy birthday,” Stephen said, closing his eyes as he squeezed her and preparing to greet the minute figure at her side. He stepped back smiling and virtually knelt before her on the carpet to shake hands, this doll-like figurine who stood no more than 3 foot 6 at his daughter’s side, whose wooden, oversized face smiled steadily back at him.
“I’ve read one of your books” was her calm first remark. Stephen sat back in his chair. The two girls still stood before him as though they wished to be described and compared. Miranda’s T-shirt did not reach her waist by several inches and her growing breasts lifted the edge of the shirt clear of her belly. Her hand rested on her friend’s shoulder protectively.
“Really?” said Stephen after some pause. “Which one?”
“The one about evolution.”
“Ah…” Stephen took from his pocket the envelope containing the record gift certificate and gave it to Miranda. “It’s not much,” he said, remembering the bag full of gifts. Miranda retired to a chair to open her envelope. The dwarf however remained standing in front of him, regarding him fixedly. She fingered the hem of her child’s dress.
“Miranda told me a lot about you,” she said politely.
Miranda looked up and giggled. “No, I didn’t,” she protested.
Charmian went on. “She’s very proud of you.” Miranda blushed. Stephen wondered at Charmian’s age.
“I haven’t given her much reason to be,” he found himself saying, and gestured at the room to indicate the nature of his domestic situation. The tiny girl gazed patiently into his eyes and he felt for a moment poised on the edge of total confession. I never satisfied my wife in marriage, you see. Her orgasms terrified me.
Miranda had discovered her present. With a little cry she left her chair, cradled his head between her hands and stooping down kissed his ear.
“Thank you,” she murmured hotly and loudly, “thank you, thank you.” Charmian took a couple of paces nearer till she was almost standing between his open knees. Miranda settled on the arm of his chair. It grew darker.
He felt the warmth of Miranda’s body on his neck. She slipped down a little farther and rested her head on his shoulder. Charmian stirred. Miranda said, “I’m glad you came,” and drew her knees up to make herself smaller. From outside Stephen heard his wife moving from one room to another. He lifted his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, careful not to touch her breasts, and hugged her to him.
“Are you coming to stay with me when the holidays begin?”
“Charmian too…” She spoke childishly, but her words were delicately pitched between inquiry and stipulation.
“Charmian too,” Stephen agreed. “If she wants to.” Charmian let her gaze drop and said demurely, “Thank you.”
During the following week Stephen made preparations. He swept the floor of his only spare room, he cleaned the windows there and hung new curtains. He rented a television. In the mornings he worked with customary numbness and entered his achievements in the ledger book. He brought himself at last to set out what he could remember of his dream. The details seemed to be accumulating satisfactorily. His wife was in the café. It was for her that he was buying coffee. A young girl took a cup and held it to the machine. But now he was the machine, now he filled the cup. This sequence, laid out neatly, cryptically in his journal, worried him less now. It had, as far as he was concerned, a certain literary potential. It needed fleshing out, and since he could remember no more he would have to invent the rest. He thought of Charmian, of how small she was, and he examined carefully the chairs ranged around the dining-room table. She was small enough for a baby’s high chair. In a department store he carefully chose two cushions. The impulse to buy the girls presents he distrusted and resisted. But still he wanted to do things for them. What could he do? He raked out gobs of ancient filth from under the kitchen sink, poured dead flies and spiders from the lamp fixtures, boiled fetid dishcloths; he bought a toilet brush and scrubbed the crusty bowl. Things they would never notice. Had he really become such an old fool? He spoke to his wife on the phone.
“You never mentioned Charmian before.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s a fairly recent thing.”
“Well…” he struggled, “how do you feel about it?”
“It’s fine by me,” she said, very relaxed. “They’re good friends.” She was trying him out, he thought. She hated him for his fearfulness, his passivity and for all the wasted hours between the sheets. It had taken her many years of marriage to say so. The experimentation in his writing, the lack of it in his life. She hated him. And now she had a lover, a vigorous lover. And still he wanted to say, Is it right, our lovely daughter with a friend who belongs by rights in a circus or a silk-hung brothel serving tea? Our flaxen-haired, perfectly formed daughter, our tender bud, is it not perverse?
“Expect them Thursday evening,” said his wife by way of goodbye.
When Stephen answered the door he saw only Charmian at first, and then he made out Miranda outside the tight circle of light from the hall, struggling with both sets of luggage. Charmian stood with her hands on her hips, her heavy head tipped slightly to one side. Without greeting she said, “We had to take a taxi and he’s downstairs waiting.”
Stephen kissed his daughter, helped her in with the cases and went downstairs to pay the taxi. When he returned, a little out of breath from the two flights of stairs, the front door of his flat was closed. He knocked and had to wait. It was Charmian who opened the door and stood in his path.
“You can’t come in,” she said solemnly. “You’ll have to come back later,” and she made as if to close the door. Laughing in his nasal, unconvincing way, Stephen lunged forwards, caught her under her arms and scooped her into the air. At the same time he stepped into the flat and closed the door behind him with his foot. He meant to lift her high in the air like a child, but she was heavy, heavy like an adult, and her feet trailed a few inches above the ground, it was all he could manage. She thumped his hand with her fists and shouted.
“Put me…” Her last word was cut off by the crash of the door. Stephen released her instantly. “… down,” she said softly.
They stood in the bright hallway, both a little out of breath. For the first time he saw Charmian’s face clearly. Her head was bullet shaped and ponderous, her lower lip curled permanently outwards and she had the beginnings of a double chin. Her nose was squat and she had the faint downy grayness of a moustache. Her neck was thick and bullish. Her eyes were large and calm, set far apart, brown like a dog’s. She was not ugly, not with those eyes. Miranda was at the far end of the long hall. She wore ready-faded jeans and a yellow shirt. Her hair was in plaits and tied at the ends with scraps of blue denim. She came and stood by her friend’s side.
“Charmian doesn’t like being lifted about,” she explained. Stephen guided them towards his sitting room.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Charmian and laid his hand on her shoulder for an instant. “I didn’t know that.”
“I was only joking when I came to the door,” she said evenly.
“Yes of course,” Stephen said hurriedly. “I didn’t think anything else.”