I fell silent, staring dow-n at the paving stones beneath the tables. A sparrow hopped between the customers' feet, looking for crumbs. I wanted to stay there forever.
"I can't leave Gracia," I said at last. "Not yet."
Seri said, receding-- "Then I'll go without you."
"Do you mean that?"
Seri said--I'm not sure, Peter. I'm jealous of Gracia because as long as you're with her you're just using me as conscience. I'm forced to watch you destroy her, and damage yourself. In the end you would destroy me too.
She looked so young and attractive in the sun, her fair hair glowing, her skin mellow from the south, her youthful, unsupported body glimpsed through thin clothes. She sat close beside me, exciting me, and I longed for the day when I could be with her alone.
I paid my bill and caught a tram heading north. As the streets closed in and the rain began, I felt a familiar depression growing in me. Seri, sitting beside me, said nothing. I got off the bus in Kentish Town Road and walked through the mean side streets to Gracia's flat. Her can was parked outside, crammed between a builder's skip and a Dormobile with an Australian flag in the window.
It was getting dank, but no lights showed at the window.
Seri said--There's something wrong, Peter. Hurry!
I left her there and went down the steps to the door. I was going to put the key in, but the door had been left ajar.
"Gracia!" I switched on the lights in the hall, hurried into the kitchen. Her shoulder bag was in the middle of the floor, its contents spilling out over the worn linoleum: cigarettes, a crumpled tissue, a mirror, a packet of Polos, a comb. I scooped them up and put the bag on the table.
"Where are you, Gracia?"
The sitting room was empty and cool, but the door to the bedroom was closed. I tried the handle, and pushed, but something had been jammed against it.
"Gracia! Are you in there?" I shoved at the door with my shoulder; it moved slightly, but something heavy grated on the floor beyond. "Gracia! Let me in!"
I was trembling, and I felt the cartilage of my knees shaking uncontrollably. With a dread certainty I knew what Gnacia had done. I put my weight against the door and pushed as hard as I could. The door moved an inch on two, and I was able to reach inside and switch on the light. Peering round towards the bed I saw one of Gracia's legs dangling down towards the floor. I shoved the door a third time, and then whatever had been pushed against it toppled over with a crash. I forced my way in.
Gracia lay in blood. She was supine, half on the bed. Hen skirt had ridden up as she had thrashed on the bed, revealing the unhealthy pallor of her stockingless legs. One of lien boots was pulled uncomfortably over her foot, stuck halfway; the other lay on the floor. There was a metallic glint from a blade, lying on the carpet. Blood pulsed from her wrist.
Gasping with the shock I lifted her head and slapped her face. She was unconscious, and barely breathing. I groped for her heart, but I could feel nothing. I glanced helplessly around the room in terrified anguish. I was certain she was dying. Stupidly, I moved to make her comfortable, resting her head on a cushion.
Then scything through the shock, sense sliced my immobility away. I lifted her savaged arm and tied my handkerchief as tightly as I could above the wound. Again, I felt for her heart, and this time I found its beat.
I dashed back into the hall, picked up the pay phone and rang for an ambulance. Soon as possible. Three minutes.
I returned to the bedroom. Gracia had rolled from the position I had left her in, and was in danger of sliding to the floor. I lowered her, trying not to bruise her, so that she was propped up by the bed. I paced the room, mentally urging the ambulance to arrive. I cleared the chest of drawers from where Gracia had moved it against the door, I propped the front door open, and stood in the street.
Three minutes. At last the distant city sound: the two repeated siren notes, approaching. A blue light flashing; neighbours at windows, someone holding back the traffic.
The ambulance driver was a woman. Two men hurried into the flat: an aluminium trolley left by the vehicle, a stretcher carried in, two bright red blankets.
Curt questions: her name, did she live here, how long before I had discovered her? My own: is she going to live, where are you taking her, please hurry. Then the departure: turning in the street with agonizing slowness, accelerating away, the blue lamp electric, the siren receding.
Inside the flat I used the phone again to call a taxi. While I was waiting I went to the bedroom to tidy up.
I pushed the chest of drawers back to its place, straightened the bed coven, stood stupidly and numbly in the centre of the room. There was blood on the carpet; splashes on the wall. I found a mop and some cloths, cleaned the worst of it away. It was awful to do.
The cab still did not arrive.
Back in the bedroom I at last confronted what I had so fan avoided. On the bed where Gracia had been lying were the scattered pages of my manuscript, the typewritten sides facing upwards.
Was it to this my writing had led?
Blood spattered many of the pages. I knew what was written on them, even without reading the words. They were the passages about Seri; her name came out of the pages as if underlined by red.
Gracia must have read the manuscript, she must have understood.
The taxi arrived. I picked up Gracia's shoulder bag, and went out to the cab. We drove through the evening rush hour to the Royal Free in Hampstead.
Inside, I found my way to the Casualty Wand.
After a long wait a social worker came to see me. Gracia was still unconscious, but she would survive. If I wished I could visit her in the morning, but first there were a few questions.
"Has she ever done this before?"
"I told the ambulance crew. No. It must have been an accident." I looked away to divert the lie. Wouldn't they have records? Wouldn't they have contacted her G.P.?
"And you say you live with her?"
"Yes. I've known her for three or four years."
"Has she ever shown any suicidal tendency before?"
"No, of course not."
The social worker had other cases to go to; he said the doctor had been talking about making out a Section on her, but if I would vouch for her...
"It won't possibly happen again," I said. "I'm sure it wasn't deliberate."
Felicity had told me that after Gracia's last attempt she had been sent for a month's compulsory psychiatric treatment, but she had been released at the end of it. That was in another hospital, another part of London. Given time, the people here would find that out, but hospital casualty wards and the social services were constantly overworked.
I gave the address to the social worker, and asked him to let Gracia have lien shoulder bag when she came round. I said I would visit her in the morning. I wanted to leave; I was finding the modern building oppressively neutral and disinterested. What I perversely wanted was some kind of authoritative recrimination, a change from this social worker that I was somehow to blame. But he was preoccupied and harassed: he wanted Gracia's case to be a straightforward one.
I went outside, into the drizzling rain.
I needed Seri as never before I had needed her, but I no longer knew how to find her. Gracia's act had jolted me; Seri, Jethra, the islands. . . these were the luxuries of idle inwardness.
Yet by the same token, I was less able than ever to cope with the complex real world. Gracia's terrible attempt on her life, my complicity in it, the destruction Seri had warned of. I shied away from them, appalled at the thought of what I might find in myself.
I walked down Rosslyn Hill for a few minutes, then a bus came along and I caught it, getting off at Baker Street Station. I stood for a while outside the entrance to the Underground, staring across Marylebone Road at the corner where Gracia and I had once before reached an ending. On an impulse I walked through the pedestrian subway, and stood in the place. There was an employment agency on the conner, offering positions for filing clerks, legal secretaries and P.A.s; the high advertised salaries surprised me. It had been a night like this the last time: Gracia and I at an impasse, Seri waiting somewhere around.