He removed the risotto from the oven, and was amused by how appropriate its unfathomable horror now seemed. It looked uglier than ever, aged by its long, dry stint in the heat, and Ralph considered sacrificing it to save the evening in its death throes, dropping it on the floor and taking Francine out to a place where the noise of life would perhaps provide them with a clue as to their part in it, and where by imitating the people around them they could improvise their own little drama. Fatigued suddenly with drink, he decided against it. It would be unwise to animate the strange creature they made together and watch what he knew would be its ghastly, fleeting dance. He just wanted to get through it, tunnel through the hardest, shortest route which would deliver him to solitude.
He loaded everything on to a large tray and bore it down the hall and into the sitting-room. Francine was on the sofa and Ralph felt a sudden impulse of pity for her, for he had given her nothing to do while she sat and waited, and his relentless tidying had deprived the surfaces of the room of interest. She had the neat, apprehensive appearance of someone awaiting an appointment, and his pity was overcome by a fresh surge of bewilderment at her presence there.
‘Here we are,’ he said brightly, desperate to rouse her. ‘Do you want to come and sit down?’
She got up from the sofa and walked carefully towards him, and he suddenly saw that her mystery was an effect of her silence, a knowing vacancy in which people were invited to construe their own versions of her. He wondered why he had not perceived this before, and supposed it was because he too had construed, had projected a manic, bumbling effusion of self before an inscrutable object.
‘Where did you learn to cook?’ said Francine as he put the dish in the centre of the table.
‘What? Oh, nowhere. As you can probably tell,’ he added, gesturing deprecatingly at the risotto. ‘How hungry are you?’
She looked about her.
‘Have you got any candles?’ she said.
‘Um — yes, yes, I should think so.’ He found the request disconcerting, a demand for romance which made him appear churlish; yet it wasn’t really a demand, it wasn’t, Haven’t you got any candles?; it was more of a plea. ‘I’ll just find some.’
There were two candlesticks on the mantelpiece with the matches he had sought earlier beside them. He thought of his ridiculous performance at the hob, where he had singed his eyelashes and eyebrows, and, had he not had it cut, would probably have set his hair alight too. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself by rushing to a mirror, although Francine hadn’t seemed to have noticed what had happened. He glanced at his reflection now in the mirror over the mantelpiece. There was an unfamiliar expression on his face, a sort of garrulous stupidity, and he barely recognized himself. His eyebrows seemed unharmed, though, and he picked up the candlesticks and went back to the table.
Once the candles had been lit and the lights turned off, Ralph had to admit that things looked better. The risotto had receded into a vague landscape of earth-brown hillocks, the glasses shone palely like translucent moons, and he found it easier to focus in the softer illumination on Francine’s face. The candlelight was a levelling element, a warm and buoyant pool in which their separateness seemed less brutal. Francine, too, seemed to respond to its gentleness, and as he watched her, only half listening to her reply to a question he had asked, he felt the gradual melting of his reserve send trickles of feeling through him. The lurching disorientation of his drunkenness settled into a more benign and fertile detachment, and he noticed that Francine was more attractive when she was animated and that her dark eyes were wonderfully eloquent in the dim light.
‘Are we ever going to eat this?’ he said almost gaily.
‘Why not?’
She laughed and looked at the risotto with mock-suspicion. He picked up the serving spoon and brandished it comically, warmed by the flicker of friendliness.
‘Many reasons,’ he said sternly. ‘But we haven’t time to go into them.’
‘Right.’
She laughed again as he plunged the spoon into the centre of the resistant crust and tried to pry some of it loose.
‘Need to get some muscle behind it,’ said Ralph, standing up and leaning forcefully on the handle of the spoon. A large clod sprang from the dish and was catapulted into the air. ‘Oh God — where’s it gone?’
Francine collapsed into giggles as Ralph searched the area around the table. His mind was humming with humour and he played the fool, crouching down and looking under a rug to fresh shrieks of laughter. He felt drunk again, a light and ebullient sensation which lifted him above his inhibitions and made a success of the smallest things.
‘It’s escaped,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ll have to send out a search party.’
‘Never mind,’ said Francine.
‘Shall I try again?’
She nodded, her face alive with responses to him. She leaned forward encouragingly and Ralph was all at once dizzied by her acquiescence. She was offering herself to him — she wanted him to accept her; it was all he had to do! — and he suddenly saw where it might end. He met her gaze for a moment and felt a clear current pass between them. If he understood it correctly, he was being given an opportunity; there would be no further tests, nothing for him to do but accept it. Excitement leapt up in his throat, unchained. The tangible presence of a fantasy unalloyed by a complex object was so altogether new that it struck him with the force of a revelation. He wondered shamefully what Francine’s requirements were, and searched his memory of the silly evening for the mysterious point at which he must have met them; but then he realized, in another bright shaft of comprehension, that she was merely different from other girls he had known. There was no baffling maze through which he was expected to fumble his way, trying to make a good case for himself according to the tortuous laws of confluence. She perceived herself — and this thought caused the spoon to tremble in his hand as he fearfully met her eyes once more and clearly saw its confirmation there — as an object of pleasure. Her profit, her share, was simply that he should do so too.
‘You’d better duck,’ he said, digging his spoon in a second time.
She put her hands amusingly over her face and bent over the table. He forked the risotto out of the dish and howled with laughter as it splintered into grainy fragments around them. Francine’s face was wide with comic astonishment and her eyes brightened with approval of his performance.
‘I did say I wasn’t that hungry,’ she said.
‘Did any of it get on you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
She sat back slightly in her chair and smoothed her hands slowly over her blouse and skirt. Ralph felt a fresh lurch of disbelief as he watched her. She met his eyes and giggled.
‘That’s good,’ he said.
A pause shimmered, filling the room, and Ralph knew his moment had come. For a second he drew back, hovering on the edge of action. His body seemed to swell and bloom around him, its machinery unfolding, and he suddenly felt the heaviness of his own flesh, the million pumping intricacies beneath it. He walked stiffly round to the other side of the table and felt the air thicken around him as he forced his way through it. Francine was watching his approach and as he drew near he saw something in her eyes which he couldn’t identify. It occurred to him dimly that his touch would be her triumph, and when he did it, clasping her cool hand in his, he experienced a sudden flash of loss at the unfamiliar feel of her skin. He put his other hand on her shoulder, anchoring himself, and his hands felt all at once so implicated there, so guilty with greed, that it seemed as if a strange glue had trapped his fingers and was preventing him from removing them. Francine raised her head and looked at him, a faint smile on her lips. He knew then the impossibility of escape, felt doors slam around him, and his struggle stiffened and died.