‘I was…’ she paused, actress-like for effect. ‘One of the attendants downstairs in the laundry. The short one with the wig, I think. I was very tired and had flat feet, but I was in love with Flo. You know Flo, the one who always says hello. I don’t think I really knew it, but Flo made my life worth living. We just talked, folding towels and sheets. The soap on them brought our hands out in a rash. Flo’s family live in the outreaches, did you know that? I didn’t quite hear the name of the place. Oxbridge? Boxbridge?’
‘Uxbridge,’ whispered Mike. ‘It’s in the west.’
‘Never been that far out,’ replied Milena.
‘What about when you went up in the Bulge?’
‘That,’ said Milena ‘was moored at Biggin Hill.’
‘That’s far out of town.’
‘It’s south.’
Oh, said Mike in silence.
‘Then,’ said Milena. ‘I came down with an attack of barge girl. I was a nine year old girl helping my mother on a barge. I ran back and forth along the wood in bare feet, but I knew the varnish would stop me getting splinters. I had lines trailing in the water and I was checking them all for trout or salmon. I had never caught a salmon. I was in love with the idea of catching a salmon. Isn’t that strange? Love is the only word for it. I ached to catch a salmon. Meanwhile, I helped with the sails, and checked the tiller. I whistled for my dog. My dog never slipped or fell into the water. And my mother sang.’
Milena paused, living another life.
‘She’ll make a nice thread,’ Milena said. Milena and Al were making a tapestry of what she empathised. They called it ‘A London Symphony’. The pattern had music woven into it, the music of Vaughan Williams.
‘The tapestry sure is pretty,’ said Mike Stone.
The tapestry hung in the air, for those who were Snide to see it. Mike Stone was not Snide.
‘Was Heather helping you? Was Heather there?’ Mike asked.
Milena settled back. ‘Heather’s always there.’ From time to time Heather would emerge, to help drive down the visions that came with Terminal empathy. Milena let her emerge sometimes, to talk to Al. Heather would the too, when Milena did.
‘She’s a big help,’ said Mike. Something in the way he said it was as if he understood.
Milena had grown imperious, on her cushions, under blankets. ‘How would you know?’ She drew the blankets about her, nestling down so that she was looking straight up at the sky. She was cold. ‘I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what to do about all of this.’ She let a bird-like hand drop towards the things on the floor. ‘Most of that is Rolfa’s. I want the papers to go in trust for her to her sister, Zoe. But not to anyone else in her family, just Zoe. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ murmured Mike Stone, leaning against the balcony doorway. He preferred to stand rather than sit. He preferred to spend most of the day in another room, away from Milena. He knew he annoyed her.
‘The paper with the music written on it — not the score, you stupid man, the notes, there, those! That should go to Cilia and no one else. It was Jacob who remembered the music, and Cilia who gave me the paper, and it was very precious. This cross was Jacob’s and I want you to have that.’
‘Thank you,’ whispered Mike Stone.
‘Don’t get morbid,’ said Milena. ‘I’d like a drink. A whisky. Neat. Hard.’ It seemed to Milena that she had spent her life doing things for other people. Now she wanted to be served.
Shuffling his feet, Mike Stone worked his swollen buttocks around and waddled into the kitchen. The sound of his feet enraged Milena. Couldn’t he pick them up? The burgeoning growth in her stomach was hot and as noticeable now as a late pregnancy. She had dreams in which she gave birth to monsters. ‘Quick!’ said Milena, suddenly fierce. She wanted that drink.
Then there was a voice, like a virus, hot in her inner ear. God, it whispered, must be a distiller.
‘Did you say something?’ Milena demanded.
‘No,’ came Mike’s voice, and the sound of waddling.
‘It’s going to start any minute!’ Milena was impatient. Canto Thirty Three. Dante and his goddamned numbers and star charts. You couldn’t change a thing without making a mistake.
Shuffle, shuffle, waddle, waddle. Where was he with that drink?
‘You sound like a duck,’ she said, bitterly. Her face was stringy, sour; she could feel it, pulling in on itself like shoe leather that had been salted by wet pavements in winter. She wanted to say and think beautiful things, but there wasn’t time. She wanted to step back and view her life as a whole but a thousand tiny things, blankets and pain and boredom, nibbled at her like Mice. It was as if Mice were swallowing up the last crumbs of her life.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the drink, pursing her lips, and sniffing. The whisky was harsh on her tongue.
‘Are you comfortable, darling?’ Mike asked. He moved so slowly these days, like a boulder rumbling, rolling.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, sit down before you hurt yourself.’
What did it add up to, a life? An accumulation of memories, scattered, discordant, buried so deeply most of them never surfaced again. We don’t leave much of a dent behind, she thought. A few things to be given away and some ash scattered on a favourite place. Milena’s ash was going to be thrown to the River. She belted down two more mouthfuls of the drink, and immediately felt queasy. She put the glass down.
And you only used to drink tea, said the voice.
‘I’ll drink what I like,’ insisted Milena, aloud.
‘Something else, darling?’ Mike Stone asked.
‘No,’ she replied exasperated. ‘I’ve got my drink haven’t I? What else would I need? It tastes like shit. Was it the good whisky?’ Mike rocked in his chair trying to get up. ‘No.’ said Milena, suddenly savage, angered by her own unfairness to Mike. ‘Just sit there!’
I shouldn’t have had that drink, she thought and felt a kind of weight descend. It was as if something were pushing her deeper into the chair. It was as if the chair were spinning. There really was something terribly wrong. She knew it as soon as she felt it, and then denied it.
She pursed her lips and sat up again, as far as she could.
‘Why doesn’t it start!’ she exclaimed.
Below, the Bees began to stir. It was most strange. They were not talking in unison.
Mike Stone remembered something. He leaned forward and picked up the dirty lump of felt. He put Piglet in Milena’s lap. Milena stroked his ears. Milena and Piglet watched the Comedy together every evening, as if part of Rolfa were still there.
A trumpet sounded in the sky. Every other night since June it had announced a Canto of the Comedy.
Light, like aurora borealis, played on the horizon.
Then the Comedy arose, like a new planet. Each night the end of the previous Canto was played again.
Dante himself seemed to climb up over the edge of the world. In the last Canto he had passed through the uppermost level of Purgatory through the fire that purified those whose only sin had been to love. The homosexuals walked the circle in the opposite direction from the others. The sin of Caesar, Dante called it. The sin of love was the highest sin, the last that needed expiation. Love was burned away, and men came elevation to the Earthly Paradise, Eden.
There, in Eden, Dante had drunk the waters of Lethe and his memory had been cleansed of sin. The destruction of memory set him free.
‘I really shouldn’t have had that whisky,’ said Milena. The Bees were talking more loudly. They were disagreeing. ‘She wants to see it!’ one of them, a woman, was saying quite plainly in the darkness.
Dante climbed, bringing Eden with him. The sky overhead was full of trees. Eden was Archbishop’s Park, by Lambeth Bridge.