Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(83)

Appalled by their directness, astonished to find myself so passive, I would struggle awake from dreams like this thinking: “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” It was always early. It was always cold. Grey light silhouetted a vase of dried flowers on the dresser in front of the uncurtained window, but the room itself was still dark. I would look at my watch, turn over, and go back to sleep. One morning, in the week before Christmas, I got up and packed a bag instead. I made myself some coffee and drank it by the kitchen window, listening to the inbound city traffic build up half a mile away. When I switched the radio on it was playing Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman.” I turned it off quickly, and at 8:00 woke Isobel. She smiled up at me.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m sorry about last night.”

I said: “I’m sick of it all. I can’t do it. I thought I could but I can’t.”

“China, what is this?”

I said: “You were so fucking sure he’d have you. Three months later it was you crying, not me.”

“China—”

“It’s time you helped,” I said.

I said: “I helped you. And when you bought me things out of gratitude I never once said ‘What use would I have for that?’”

She rubbed her hands over her eyes. “China, what are you talking about?”

I shouted: “What a fool you made of yourself!” Then I said: “I only want to be something to you again.”

“I won’t stand for this,” Isobel whispered. “I can’t stand this.”

I said: “Neither can I. That’s why I’m going.”

“I still love him, China.”

I was on my way to the door. I said: “You can have him then.”

“China, I don’t want you to go.”

“Make up your mind.”

“I won’t say what you want me to.”

“Fuck off, then.”

“It’s you who’s fucking off, China.”

It’s easy to see now that when we stood on the Erzsebet Bridge the dream had already failed her. But at the time—and for some time afterward—I was still too close to her to see anything. It was still one long arc of delight for me, Stratford through Budapest, all the way to Stepney. So I could only watch puzzledly as she began to do pointless, increasingly spoiled things to herself. She caught the tube to Camden Lock and had her hair cut into the shape of a pigeon’s wing. She had her ankles tattooed with feathers. She starved herself, as if her own body were holding her down. She was going to revenge herself on it. She lost twenty pounds in a month. Out went everything she owned, to be replaced by size 9 jeans, little black spandex skirts, expensively tailored jackets which hung from their own ludicrous shoulder pads like washing.

“You don’t look like you anymore,” I said.

“Good. I always hated myself anyway.”

“I loved your bottom the way it was,” I said. She laughed. “You’ll look haggard if you lose anymore,” I said.

“Piss off, China. I won’t be a cow just so you can fuck a fat bottom.”

I was hurt by that, so I said: “You’ll look old. Anyway, I didn’t think we fucked. I thought we made love.” Something caused me to add, “I’m losing you.” And then, even less reasonably: “Or you’re losing me.”

“China, don’t be such a baby.”

Then one afternoon in August she walked into the lounge and said, “China, I want to talk to you.” The second I heard this, I knew exactly what she was going to say. I looked away from her quickly and down into the book I was pretending to read, but it was too late. There was a kind of soft thud inside me. It was something broken. It was something not there anymore. I felt it. It was a door closing, and I wanted to be safely on the other side of it before she spoke.

“What?” I said.

She looked at me uncertainly. “China, I—”

“What?”

“China, I haven’t been happy. Not for some time. You must have realised. I’ve got a chance at an affair with someone and I want to take it.”

I stared at her. “Christ,” I said. “Who?”

“Just someone I know.”

“Who?” I said. And then, bitterly, “Who do you know, Isobel?” I meant: “Who do you know that isn’t me?”

“It’s only an affair,” she said. And: “You must have realised I wasn’t happy.”

I said dully: “Who is this fucker?”

“It’s David Alexander.”

“Who?”

“David Alexander. For God’s sake, China, you make everything so hard! At the clinic. David Alexander.”

I had no idea who she was talking about. Then I remembered.

“Christ,” I said. “He’s just some fucking customer.”

She went out. I heard the bedroom door slam. I stared at the books on the bookshelves, the pictures on the walls, the carpet dusty gold in the pale afternoon light. I couldn’t understand why it was all still there. I couldn’t understand anything. Twenty minutes later, when Isobel came back in again carrying a soft leather overnight bag, I was standing in the same place, in the middle of the floor. She said: “Do you know what your trouble is, China?”