‘Drink?’ said Roswell. He seemed calmer now.
‘Please.’ There was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on a workbench and I pointed to it. ‘That’ll do nicely.’
He poured large ones for both of us and we clinked glasses. ‘He dies for our sins,’ he said, and just for a moment I wondered if he was crazy. I was feeling a little crazy myself. The thing was so in-your-face, so asking for trouble, that I half expected the police to arrive at any moment. ‘Is this one of your private commissions?’ I said.
‘No, this is off my own bat. It just sort of came to me.’
We drank in silence for a while, then I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘No idea. I had no plans beyond carving the figure.’
‘Can you get it through the door?’
‘It comes apart, the arms are pegged into the body and so on. Getting it out of here is no problem but where would I take it?’
Another silence, then I heard myself say, ‘Have you thought of exhibiting it?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘This thing that I did, I don’t understand it. It’s as if my hands had something in mind that they wanted to show me but I haven’t figured out what it is. Showing it publicly would seem like betraying a confidence.’
‘On the other hand, maybe seeing it on public view would make clear to you what it’s about.’
‘I suppose that’s a possibility.’
‘Nikolai Chevorski used to say that it’s the viewer who completes a work of art. I think he was right about that.’
‘Well, you’ve viewed it, so now it’s complete.’
‘You know what I mean — it wants to get out into the world.’
‘I don’t know, Sarah.’
‘You’ve heard about the new art museum?’
‘You mean the American one?’
‘Yes, the R. Albert Streeter Museum of Art. There’s a competition and a fifty-thousand-pound prize.’
‘What, you think I should enter this?’
‘Yes.’ I was beginning to see prospects opening before him and I was feeling good. ‘Yes,’ I repeated, ‘enter it.’
‘You really think I should?’
‘Yes. If it’s accepted for the show it’s bound to get a lot of attention and even if it doesn’t win it’s likely to make things happen for you.’ As I said this I was well aware that he was well aware that I’d given him no response to the piece other than my initial shock and this practical suggestion.
‘You want things to happen for me?’ he said. My glass was empty and he refilled it, his own as well.
‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’
‘Yes. You haven’t answered my question.’
‘What was the question?’
‘Do you want things to happen for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Should I be honest with you?’
‘Are you sure you want to go that far on the first date?’
‘Is that what this is?’
‘I think so,’ and he kissed me. It was a serious kiss and I felt like a twenty-year-old. With forty-four years of experience.
‘Maybe I won’t be honest with you just yet,’ I said.
‘Good thinking.’ He took me by the hand, switched off the studio lights, and we went down to the bedroom where I saw the little china nutcracker standing at attention on the bedside table, shouldering his sword and grinning with all his teeth.
‘Take the evening off,’ I said, and turned him to face the wall.
Afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms feeling rather pleased with ourselves, I hummed a bit of the song from West Side Story. ‘I feel pretty,’ I said.
He kissed me in various places. ‘You’re better than pretty — there’s a lot of you and all of it’s beautiful.’ He went back to his kissing.
‘I admire your attention to detail,’ I said. ‘You make me enjoy being a big woman.’
‘Pretty knickers!’ he said, picking them up from where they’d fallen.
‘They’re new. I wore them in case I got knocked down by a bus on the way here.’
‘I admire your foresight. Now they’re historic.’ He climbed over me so he could rub the bat on his left shoulder against the bat on my left shoulder.
‘A historic meeting,’ I said.
‘Destiny, you think?’
‘Destiny expands to fill the knickers available for it; that’s Varley’s Law.’
‘I’ve always been law-abiding, Mrs Varley.’
‘Good. Now that we’re over the hump, so to speak, can I be honest with you even though it’s still the first date?’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘I’m not sure, but I need to do it.’
‘All right, do it.’ He wrapped me around him and held me close. ‘But first tell me that this isn’t all there is.’
‘This isn’t all there is,’ I said with my mouth close to his ear.
‘And tell me that you’re not going away after you’re done being honest.’ He was kissing my neck.
‘I’m not going away,’ I murmured, and kissed him here and there.
‘OK, I’m ready.’
‘Part of what attracted me to you,’ I said, ‘was that I could see you needed work.’
‘Work as in employment?’
‘No, work as in a house that needs work. I’m a man-improver, I can’t help it. Will you throw me out now?’
He clasped my bottom firmly with both hands. ‘I don’t think I can let go of you. Feel free to improve me — I always need work.’
So I worked on him a little and he declared himself much improved. By then we were both hungry but didn’t feel like going out so we went down to the kitchen in knickers and T-shirts (he gave me one of his) and Roswell made salami and eggs with oven chips and there was champagne to go with it, three bottles waiting in the fridge.
‘You expected to have something to celebrate?’ I asked.
‘I always keep some chilled in case I get seduced by an ardent woman in silk knickers.’
‘Yes, it’s good to be prepared for these things.’ He had put on a Thelonious Monk CD, and ‘Round Midnight’ traced its shadowy yesterdays while we ate and drank. The kitchen was a bit ramshackle, with a fluorescent light flickering under the bottom shelf of a unit that had been united in a marriage of convenience with a pine dresser; there were brightly coloured cabinets stuck here and there on the walls, a DIY exhaust fan over the cooker, and a bachelor-not-coping-all-that-well look about the place that warmed my heart. A tidy little spice rack on the wall, however, hinted at a woman’s presence. ‘You’re not married, are you?’ I said.
He gave me a startled look. ‘Was,’ he said. ‘She died seven years ago.’
‘My husband died in 1993.’ Then there was silence as we both looked into the middle distance.
‘This table,’ said Roswell, caressing that scarred and variously scorched item, ‘is a plain deal table.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘Back in the States I used to read a lot of English authors and the stories often featured plain deal tables. I always wanted one.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘A plain deal table is a plain deaclass="underline" what you see is what you get. You might even say it’s a quinsettentially English kind of thing.’
‘Quinsettentialism is good,’ he said, pouring more Moët & Chandon. I was feeling cosy and uneasy at the same time: cosy because of the Jack Daniel’s, the lovemaking, the salami and eggs, and the Moët & Chandon; uneasy because I didn’t know where each of us stood in relation to the crash-dummy crucifixion. If it was accepted for the exhibition it would certainly get him noticed and it would likely end up in the collection of some cutting-edge aesthete for whom last week’s shocker was, well, last week. What was I going to say if he asked me what I actually thought of it? After the champagne came Marillenschnaps, so although my brain felt beautifully crystalline by then I did more nodding and smiling than talking while my critical faculty, like some dreadful hopping creature, pursued me through the dark forest of my thoughts.