An ashtray full of cigarette ends was on the floor by the bed. Two empty coffee mugs were beside it. The room looked as if it had been recently tidied: the books on the shelves were upright and in neat rows, there were no clothes in the usual corner and the drawers of the chest were closed. Any remaining signs of Gracia's attempted suicide had long since vanished: the furniture had been repositioned, the damage to the door repaired.
Then I noticed there was a small sticking plaster on the underside of Gracia's wrist. She seemed totally unaware of it, using that arm as freely as she used the other.
She was talking a lot, but more important she seemed happy. I saw her smile several times, and once she laughed aloud with that sideways tilt to the head that I had seen so often, in the old days.
I wanted to hurry in and see her, but the presence of the other woman held me back. I was gladdened by Gracia's appearance. She was as thin as ever, but that aside she radiated good health and mental animation: she reminded me of Greece and sunbathing and retsina, where we began. She looked five years younger than she had the last time I saw her, her clothes seemed clean and freshly pressed, and her hair had been cut and restyled.
I watched the two women for a few minutes, then, to my relief, the stranger stood up. Gracia smiled, said something, and they both laughed. The woman went to the door.
Not wishing to be seen lurking around, I walked a short distance down the road and stood on the other side. After a minute on two, the woman came up to the road and let herself into one of the parked cars. As soon as she had driven away I walked quickly across the road and slipped my key into the lock.
The lights were on in the hall, and the air smelled of furniture polish.
"Gracia? Where are you?" The bedroom door was open, but she was not there. I heard the lavatory being flushed, and the door was opened.
"Gracia, I'm back!"
I heard her say: "Jean, is that you?" Then she appeared, and saw me.
"Hello, Gracia," I said.
"I thought--Oh my God, it's you! Where have you been?"
"I had to go away for a few--"
"What have you been doing? You look like a tramp!"
"I've been. . . sleeping rough," I said. "I had to get away."
We were standing a few paces apart, not smiling, not moving to embrace each other. I had an inexplicable thought, that this was Gracia, the real Gracia, and I could hardly believe it. She had assumed an unearthly, _ideal_
quality in my mind, something lost and unattainable. And yet she stood there, real and substantial, the very best Gracia, untroubled and beautiful without that haunting terror behind her eyes.
"Where were you? The hospital was trying to trace you, they contacted the police--Where did you go?"
"I left London for a while, because of you." I wanted to hug her, feel her body against me, but there was something in her that kept me at a distance. "What about you? You look so much better!"
"I'm all right now, Peter. No thanks to you." She looked away. "I shouldn't say that. They told me you saved my life."
I went to her and tried to kiss her, but she tunned her face so that all I could do was touch her cheek. When I put up my arms to hold her, she stepped back. I followed her, and we went into the cool dark sitting room, where the television and hi-fi were, the room we had rarely used.
"What's the matter, Gracia? Why won't you kiss me?"
"Not now. I wasn't expecting you, that's all."
"Who's Jean?" I said. "Is that the girl who was here?"
"Oh, she's one of my social workers. She calls every day to make sure I'm not going to do myself in. They look after me, you see. After they discharged me they found out I had tried it before, and now they keep an eye on me. They think it's dangerous for me to live alone."
"You're looking terrific," I said.
"I'm all right now. I won't do it again. I've come through all that."
There was an edge to her voice, an inner hardness, and it repelled me.
It felt as if it was intended to repel.
"I'm sorry if I seemed to abandon you," I said. "They told me you were being looked after. I thought I knew why you had done it, and I had to get away."
"You don't have to explain. It doesn't matter anymore."
"What do you mean? Of course it still matters!"
"To you.. . on to me?"
I stared at her in a futile way, but she gave no hint by her expression that might help me.
"Are you angry with me?" I said.
"Why should I be?"
"Because I ran out on you."
"No . . . not angry."
"What then?"
"I don't know." She moved about the room, but not in the restless way I used to know. Now she was being evasive. This room, like the bedroom, had been tidied and polished. I hardly recognized it. "Let's go in the front. I want a cigarette."
I followed her into the bedroom, and while she sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette, I drew the curtains. She watched me, said nothing. I sat down in the chair the social worker had been in.
"Gracia, tell me what happened to you . . . in the hospital."
"They patched me up and sent me home. That's all, really. Then the social services found a file on me, and they've been hassling me a bit. Jean's O.K., though. She'll be glad you've come back. I'll ring her in the morning and tell her."
"What about you? Are you glad I'm back?"
Gracia smiled as she reached down to flick ash off her cigarette. I sensed that I had said something ironic.
"What are you smiling at?" I said.
"I needed you when I came home, Peter, but I didn't _want_ you. If you had been here you'd only have screwed me up again, but the social people would have left me alone. I was relieved you weren't here. It gave me a chance."
"Why would I have screwed you up?"
"Because you always did! It's what you've been doing ever since we met."
Gracia was trembling, picking at her fingernails while the cigarette burned upside down in her hand. "When I came home all I wanted was to be alone, to think for myself and work things out, and you weren't here and it was just what I wanted."
I said: "Then I shouldn't have come back at all."
"I didn't want you here then. There's a difference."
"So you want me now?"
"No. I mean, I don't know. I needed to be alone and I got that. What happens next is something else."
We both went silent, probably sensing the same dilemma. We both knew we were dangerous to each other while desperately needing each other. There was no national way of talking about that: either we acted it out by living together again, on we talked about it in highly changed emotional terms.
Gracia was struggling to be calm; I wanted to use my new inner strength.
We were still alike, and perhaps that was what doomed us. I had left her to try to understand myself better, she had needed a space alone. I felt intimidated by the changes around her: the cleaned and tidied flat, the changed hair, the outward rehabilitation. She made me aware of my unkempt, unshaven appearance, my unwashed clothes, my smelly body.
But I too had been through a process of recovery, and because it did not show I needed to tell her about it.
I said eventually: "I'm stronger too, Gracia. I know you'll think I'm only saying that, but I really mean it. It's why I had to go away."
Gracia looked up from her silent regard of the freshly vacuumed carpet.
"Go on. I'm listening."
"I thought you had done it because you hated me."
"No, I was _scared_ of you."
"All right. But you did it because of me, because of what we had become to each other. I understand that now . . . but there was something else. You had been reading my manuscript."
"Your what?"
"My manuscript. I wrote my autobiography, and it was here. On the bed, the day I found you. You had obviously been reading it, and I knew you were upset by it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Gracia said.
"You must remember!" I looked around the room, realizing that since returning I had not seen the manuscript anywhere. I felt a _frisson_ of alarm: had Gracia destnoyed it or thrown it away? "It was a heap of paper, which I kept bundled up. Where is it now?"