The Affirmation

  “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 rational way of talking about that: either we acted it out by living together again, or we talked about it in highly charged 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 destroyed it or thrown it away? “It was a heap of paper, which I kept bundled up. Where is it now?”

  “I put all your stuff in the other room. I’ve been cleaning the place.”

  I left her and hurried through to the sitting room. Beside the stereo record player, by the records—mine neatly segregated from hers—was a small pile of my books. Underneath, held together with two crossing elastic bands, was my manuscript. I snapped the bands away and turned a few pages: it was all there. A few sheets were out of order, but it was intact. I returned to the bedroom, where Gracia had lit another cigarette.

  “This is what I meant,” I said, holding it up for her to see. I was immeasurably relieved that it was safe. “You were reading this, weren’t you? That day.”

  Gracia narrowed her eyes, though I sensed it was not to see more clearly. “I want to ask you about that—”

  “Let me explain,” I said. “It’s important. I wrote this while I was in Herefordshire, before I went to Felicity’s. I’m sure it’s what was causing the trouble between us. You thought I was seeing someone else, but really I was just thinking about what I had written. It was my way of finding myself. But I never really finished it. When you were in hospital, and I knew you were being looked after, I went away to try to finish it.”

  Gracia said nothing, but continued to stare at me.

  “Please say something,” I said.

  “What does the manuscript say?”

  “But you read it! Or you read some of it.”

  “I looked at it, Peter, but I didn’t read any of it.”

  I put the pages down, automatically reshaping them into a neat pile before letting go. I had not even thought about my writing while I was in the islands. Why was the truth so difficult to tell?

  “I want you to read it,” I said. “You’ve got to understand.”

  Gracia again went silent, staring down at her ashtray.

  “Are you hungry?” she said at last.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Let’s talk about this later. I’m hungry, and you look as if you haven’t had a meal in days.”

  “Can’t we finish this now?” I said. “It’s very important.”

  “No, I’m going to cook something. Why don’t you have a bath? Your clothes are still here.”

  “All right,” I said.

  The bathroom was also fastidiously clean. It was free of the customary heaps of dirty clothes, empty toothpaste tubes and used toilet-roll wrappers. When I flushed the lavatory the bowl filled with fizzy blue water. I bathed quickly, while in the next room I could hear Gracia moving about as she cooked. Afterwards, I shaved and put on clean clothes. I weighed myself on her scales, and found I had lost weight while I was away.

  We ate at the table in the back room. It was a simple meal of rice and vegetables, but it was the best food I had eaten in a long time. I was wondering how I had survived while I was away, where I had slept, what I had eaten. Where had I been?

  Gracia was eating at a moderate pace, but unlike her old self she finished the meal. She had become like someone I barely knew, yet in the same transformation she had become recognizable. She was the Gracia I had often willed her to be: free of her neuroses, or apparently so, free of the inner tension and unhappiness, free of the turbulence that brought the quicksilver moods. I sensed a new determination in her. She was making an immense effort to straighten herself out, and it made me admire her and feel warm towards her.

  As we finished I felt content. The physical novelty of clean body and clothes, of a full stomach, of the belief that I had emerged from a long tunnel of uncertainty, made me feel we could start again.

  Not after Castleton; that had been premature for both of us.

  Gracia made some coffee, and we took the earthenware mugs through to the bedroom. We both felt more at ease there. Outside, car doors occasionally slammed, and from time to time we heard people passing the window. I sat with Gracia on the bed: she was facing me, her legs crossed beneath her. Our coffee mugs were on the floor beside us, the ashtray was between us.

  She was quiet, so I said: “What are you thinking?”

  “About us. You’re confusing me.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t expect you back. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Why does that confuse you?”

  “Because you’ve changed and I’m not sure how. You say you’re better, that everything will be all right now. But we’ve both said that before, we’ve both heard it.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you mean it…of course I do. But I’m still scared of you, what you could do to me.”

  I was lightly stroking the back of her hand; it was the first real intimacy between us, and she had not backed away.

  I said: “Gracia, I love you. Can’t you trust me?”

  “I’ll try.” But she was not looking at me.

  “Everything I’ve done in the last few months has been because of you. It took me away from you, but I’ve seen I was wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What I wrote in my manuscript, and what it has made me do.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, Peter.” She was looking at me now, and again I saw that strange narrowing of her eyes.

  “You said you would.”

  I swung my legs off the bed, crossed the room and picked up the thick wad of pages from where I had left them. I sat down again opposite her, but she had pulled her hand back.

  “I want to read you some of it,” I said. “Explain what it means.”

  While I spoke I was turning the pages, looking for those that had got out of order. They were mostly near the beginning. I noticed that many of the sheets had specks of dried blood on them, and the edges of the pages had a broad smudge of brown down them. Glancing through, I saw Seri’s name prominently written, again and again. I would come to that eventually, explain who Seri was, what she had become to me, what I now understood of her. All that, and the state of mind the manus
cript represented, the islands, the escapes, the difficult relationship with Felicity. And the higher truths the story contained, the definition of myself, the way it had made me static and inward-looking, emotionally petrified.

  Gracia had to be brought into it, so that I could at last be brought out of it.

  “Peter, you scare me when you get like this.” She had lit a cigarette, her commonplace action, but this time there was an old tension in her. The match, flung down in the ashtray, continued to burn.

  “Get like what?” I said.

  “You’ll upset me again. Don’t go on.”

  “What’s wrong, Gracia?”

  “Put those papers away. I can’t stand this!”

  “I’ve got to explain to you.”

  She ran her hand across her temple, her fingers wildly combing the hair. The demure new hair style became tangled. Her nervousness was infectious; I reacted to it like I reacted to her sexuality. I could not resist it, yet it rarely satisfied either of us. I saw then what had been missing between us since I returned, because as she moved her arm her blouse lightly compressed her breast, and I wanted her body. It took the madness in us both to bring out the sex.

  “What are you explaining, Peter? What’s left to say?”

  “I’ve got to read you this.”

  “Don’t torment me! I’m not mad…you’ve written nothing!”

  “It’s how I defined myself. Last year, when I was away.”

  “Peter, are you crazy? Those pages are blank!”

  I spread the battered pages across the bed, like a conjuror fans a pack of cards. The words, the story of my life, the definition of my identity, lay before me. It was all there: the lines of typewritten text, the frequent corrections, the pencillings and notes and deletions. Black type, blue ballpoint, grey pencil, and brown whale-shaped droplets of dried blood. It was all of me.

  “There’s nothing there, Peter! For God’s sake, it’s blank paper!”

  “Yes, but—”

  I stared down at the pages, remembering my white room in Edwin’s cottage. That room had achieved a state of higher reality, of deeper truth, one that transcended literal existence. So too was my manuscript. The words were there, inscribed indelibly on the paper, exactly as I had written them. Yet for Gracia, unseeing of the mind that had made them, they were non-existent. I had written and I had not written.

  The story was there, but the words were not.

  “What are you looking at?” Gracia cried, her voice rising as if frantic. She was twisting one of the rings on her right hand.

  “I’m reading.”

  I had found the page I wanted to show her: it was in Chapter Seven, where Seri and I first met in Muriseay Town. It paralleled our own first meeting, on the island of Kos, in the Aegean. Seri was said to be working on the staff of the Lotterie-Collago, whereas Gracia had been on holiday; Muriseay Town was a clamorous city, and Kos had just a tiny port. The events differed, but they had the higher truth of feeling. Gracia would recognize it all.

  I separated the page from the others and offered it to her. She put it on the bed between us. She had it the wrong way up.

  “Why won’t you look at it?” I said.

  “What are you trying to do to me?”

  “I just want you to understand. Please read it.”

  She snatched up the page, crumpled it in her hand and threw it across the room. “I can’t read blank paper!”

  Her eyes were moist, and she had pulled the ring until it had come off.

  Realizing at last that she could not make the necessary imaginative leap, I said, as gently as possible; “Can I explain?”

  “No, don’t say anything. I’ve had enough. Are you living in total fantasy? What else do you imagine? Do you know who I am, who I really am? Do you know where you are or what you’re doing?”

  “You can’t read the words,” I said.

  “There’s nothing there. Nothing.”

  I got up from the bed and retrieved the screwed-up page. I flattened it out with the palm of my hand, and returned it to its correct position. I began to collect the sheets, pushing them into their reassuringly familiar bulk.

  “You’ve got to understand this,” I said.

  Gracia lowered her head, pressing a hand over her eyes. I heard her say, indistinctly: “It’s happening all over again.”

  “What is?”

  “We can’t go on, you must see that. Nothing’s changed.” She wiped her eyes with a tissue. Leaving her cigarette to smoulder in the ashtray, she walked quickly from the room. I heard her in the hallway. She picked up the phone, and she dialled. After a moment she pushed in a coin, with that mechanical, money-box sound.

  Although she spoke softly, as if her back were turned against me, I heard her say: “Steve…? Yes, it’s me. Can you put me up tonight?…I’m all right, really. Just for tonight…Yes, he’s back. I don’t know what happened. Everything’s fine…No, I’ll come on the Tube. I’m all right, really…In about an hour? Thanks.”

  I was standing when she came back into the room. She stubbed out her cigarette, and turned to face me. She seemed composed.

  “Did you hear any of that?” she said.

  “Yes. You’re going to Steve’s.”

  “I’ll come back in the morning. Steve will drop me off on his way to work. Will you still be here?”

  “Gracia, please don’t go. I won’t talk about my manuscript.”

  “Look, I’ve just got to calm down a little, talk to Steve. You’ve upset me. I wasn’t expecting you back yet.”

  She was moving about the room, collecting her cigarettes and matches, her bag, a book. She took a bottle of wine from the cupboard, then went to the bathroom. A few moments later she was standing in the hall by the bedroom door, checking her purse for her keys, a supermarket carrier bag swinging from her wrist with her overnight toilet things, and her wine bottle.

  I went out and stood with her.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “Why are you running away from me?”

  “Why did you run away?”

  “That’s what I was trying to explain.”

  She wore a non-committal expression, avoiding my eyes. I knew she was making an effort to stay in control of herself; in the old days we would have talked ourselves into exhaustion, gone to bed, made love, continued in the morning. Now she had terminated the whole thing: the phone call, the abrupt departure, the bottle of wine.

  Even as she stood there, waiting for me to let her go, she was already absent, halfway to the Tube station.

  I held her arm. This made her look at me, but then away again.

  “Are you still in love with me?” I said.

  “How can you ask that?” she said. I waited, deliberately manipulating with silence. “Nothing’s changed, Peter. I tried to kill myself because I loved you, because you didn’t take any notice of me, because it was impossible being with you. I don’t want to die, but when I get upset I can’t control myself. I’m scared of what you might do to me.” She took a deep breath, but it was uneven, and I knew she was suppressing tears. “There’s something deep inside you I can’t touch. I feel it most when you retreat, when you were talking about your bloody manuscript. You’re going to make me insane!”

  “I came home because I have come out of myself,” I said.

  “No…no, it’s not true. You’re deceiving yourself, and you’re trying to deceive me as well. Don’t ever do that, not again. I can’t cope!”

  She broke down then, and I released her arm. I tried to pull her against me, to hold her and be comforting, but she dragged herself away, weeping. She rushed through the front door, slamming it behind her.

  I stood in the hall, listening to the imagined echoes of the slam.

  I returned to the bedroom and sat for a long while on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet, the wall, the curtains. After midnight I bestirred myself and tidied up the flat. I emptied the ashtrays and washed them up with the supper dishes and the coffee mugs, leaving them
all to drain on the side. Then I found my old leather holdall, and packed it with as many of my clothes as I could get in. I packed the manuscript last, cramming it down on top. I checked that all the electricity switches were off, that no taps were dripping. As I left, I turned off all the lights.

  I walked down to Kentish Town Road, where late traffic went past. I was too tired to want to sleep rough again, and thought I would find a cheap hotel for the night. I remembered a street near Paddington where there were several, but I wanted to get out of London. I stood undecided.

  I was numbed by Gracia’s rejection of me. I had returned to her with no idea of what I intended to say, or of what might happen, but had felt my new internal strength would solve all that was wrong. Instead, she was stronger than me.

  The zip fastener of my holdall was open, and I could see the manuscript inside. I took it out and turned the pages in the light of a street lamp. The story lay there for me to see, but the words had gone. Some of the pages had typewriting on them, but it was always scribbled over. I saw names flip past: Kalia, Muriseay, Seri, Ia, Mulligayn. Gracia’s blood splashes remained. The only coherent words, undeleted, were on the last page. These were the words of the sentence I had never completed.

  I stuffed the pages back in the bag, and squatted down in the recessed doorway of a shop. If the pages had become unworded, if the story was now untold, then it meant I could start again.

  It was now more than a year since I had been in Edwin’s cottage, and much had happened in my life that was not described in the manuscript. My stay at the cottage itself, my weeks at Felicity’s house, my return to London, my discovery of the islands.

  Above all, the manuscript did not contain a description of its own writing, and the discoveries I had made.

  Sitting there in the draughty shop doorway, my holdall clutched between my knees, I knew that I had returned prematurely to Gracia. My definition of myself was incomplete. Seri had been right: I needed to immerse myself totally in the islands of the mind.

  Excitement coursed through me as I thought of the challenge ahead. I left the shop doorway and walked quickly in the direction of central London. Tomorrow I should make plans, find somewhere to live, perhaps take a job. I would write when I could, construct my inner world and descend into it. There I could find myself, there I could live, there I could find rapture. Gracia would not reject me again.