Later, when Gracia had driven to Dave and Shirley's flat in Fulham, I walked down to the Underground station in Kentish Town, and caught a train to the West End. The exchange of tickets was simply done; seats were available for the following night's performance, and tonight people were waiting for cancellations. Sure that I had at last done the right thing, I caught a second train to Fulham.
Dave and Shirley were teachers, and they were into wholefood. Shirley thought she might be pregnant, and Gracia got drunk and flirted with Dave. We left before midnight.
That night, while Gracia was asleep, I thought about Seri.
I had once believed that she and Gracia were complementary to each other, but now the differences between them were hecoming obvious. That day in Castleton I had used my knowledge of Seri to try to understand Gracia. But the fallacy in this was the assumption that I had consciously created Seri.
Remembering the way I had written my manuscript, blending conscious invention with unconscious discovery, I knew that Seri must be more than a fictional analogue of Gracia. She was too real, too complete, too motivated by her own personality. She lived in her own right. Every time I saw her, or spoke to her, I felt this growing in her.
But so long as Gracia was there, Seri was in the background.
Sometimes, I would wake in the night to find Seri in bed with me. She would pretend to be asleep, but my first touch would rouse her. Then she would become, sexually, everything Gracia was not. Lovemaking with Seri was exciting and spontaneous, never predictable. Gracia knew I found her sexually irresistible, and became lazy; Seri took nothing for granted, but found new ways to excite me. Gracia was sexually adept, an expert lover; Seri had innocence and originality. Yet after making love with Seri, when we were fully awake and had the light on, Gracia would sit up to smoke a cigarette, or get out of bed to go to the loo, and I would have to adjust to Seri's withdrawal.
During the days, while Gracia was at work, Seri was an occasional companion. She was often in the next room, where I would be aware of her, or she would wait for me in the street outside. When I could get her near me I would talk to her and explain myself. Our excursions were the times when we came closest to each other. Then she would talk to me of the islands: of Ia and Quy, Muriseay, Seevl and Paneron. She had been born on Seevl, had married once, and since then had travelled widely in the islands. Sometimes, we walked together through the boulevards of Jethra, on took a tram ride to the coast, and I would show her the Seignior's Palace, and the Guards in their exotic, medieval costumes.
But Seri only came to me when she wanted to, and sometimes I needed more of her.
Suddenly, Gracia said: "You're still awake."
I waited several seconds before answering. "Yes."
"What are you thinking about?"
"All sorts of thing's."
"I can't sleep. I'm too hot." She sat up and switched on the light.
Blinking in the sudden brightness, I waited for her to light a cigarette, which she did. "Peter, it's not working, is it?"
"You mean my living here?"
"Yes, you hate it. Can't you be honest about it?"
"I don't hate it."
"Then it's me. There's something wrong. Don't you remember what we agneed in Castleton? If it went wrong again we'd he straight with each other about it?"
"I am being straight." I noticed that Seri had unexpectedly appeared, sitting on the end of our bed with her back turned and her head tilted slightly to one side, listening. "I've got to adjust to what happened last year. Do you know what I mean?"
"I think so." She turned her face away, then played with the end of the cigarette in the ashtray, twisting it to niake the ash shape into a cone. "Do you ever know what _I_ mean?"
"Sometimes."
"Thanks a lot. The rest of the time I just waste my breath?"
"Don't start another row, Gracia. Please."
"I'm not starting a row. I'm just trying to get through to you. Do you ever listen to what I say? You forget things, you contradict yourself, you look through me as if I'm a pane of glass. You were never like this before."
"Yes, all right."
It was easier to concur. I wanted to explain, but feared her anger.
I thought of the times Gracia was at her most difficult, when she was tired after work or something had happened to upset her. When it first happened I had tried to meet her halfway, and offer her something of myself. I wanted her to expend her frustrations so that they became something that united us, rather than divided us, but she put up emotional barriers that I found impassable. She would dismiss me with a petulant gesture, on flare with anger, or retreat from me in some other way. She was extremely neurotic, and although I tried to accept this sometimes it was very difficult.
When I had first started sleeping with her in London, a few months after Greece, I noticed that she kept a little pot of liquid detergent by the bedside. She told me it was in case she needed to remove her finger rings in the night. (I asked her why she did not take them off before getting into bed, but she said that was supposed to he unlucky.) When I knew her better she explained, half embarrassed, that she sometimes suffered claustrophobia of the extremities. I thought it was a joke, but it was not. When tensions mounted in her she could not wear shoes, rings, gloves. One evening, shortly after Castleton, I came in from the pub and discovered Gracia lying on the bed sobbing. The seam of her blouse, beneath the armpit, was torn apart, and my first thought was that someone must have attacked her in the street. I tried to console her, but she was hysterical. The zip fastener on her boot had jammed, the blouse had torn as she writhed on the bed, the boot was stuck fast on her foot. She had broken her fingernails, smashed a glass. It took me just a few seconds to free the fastener and remove the boot, but by then she had withdrawn completely into herself. For the rest of that evening she walked around the flat barefoot, the torn blouse flapping by her breast. A terror, blank and unapproachable, put silence in her swollen eyes.
Now Gracia stubbed out her cigarette and pressed herself to me.
"Peter, I don't want it like this. We both need it to work."
"Then what's wrong? I've tried everything."
"I want you to care for me. You're so distant. Sometimes it's as if I don't exist. You act . . . no, it doesn't matter."
"It does. Go on."
Gracia said nothing for several seconds, and the silence spread mistily around us. Then: "Are you seeing someone else?"
"No, of course not."
"Is that true?"
"Gracia, there's no one. I love _you_
why should I need someone
else?"
"You act as if you do. You always seem to be dreaming, and when I talk to you what you say comes out as if you've rehearsed it with someone else. Do you realize you're doing that?"
"Give me an example."
"How can I? I don't take notes. But there's no spontaneity in you.
Everything has been made ready for me. It's as if you've worked me out in your mind, how you think I should be. As long as I do what you expect, I'm reading the script you wrote for me. And then I don't, because I'm upset or tired, or because I'm me . . and you can't cope with it. It's not fair, Peter. I can't just become what you imagine I am."
"I'm sorry," I said, and slipped my arm around her back and pulled her closer against me. "I didn't know. I don't mean to do that. You're the only person I know, the only one I want to know. I went away last year because of you. There were other reasons, but it was mostly because we'd split up and I was upset. Now I've got you back, and everything I do and think is about you.