of the bed buttoning her dress. Her lip curled. “You’re a bastard,” she said. The doorbell rang and she smiled. “Now that’s good timing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, he went down very quietly,” Lucy was saying as she showed Pauline into the bedroom. Pauline said nothing. She avoided looking at either O’Byrne or Lucy. And O’Byrne’s eyes were fixed on the object she carried in her arms. It was large and silver, like an outsized electric toaster. “It can plug in just here,” said Lucy. Pauline set it down on the bedside table. Lucy sat down at her dressing table and began to comb her hair. “I’ll get some water for it in a minute,” she said.
Pauline went and stood by the window. There was silence. Then O’Byrne said hoarsely, “What’s that thing?” Lucy turned in her seat. “It’s a sterilizer,” she said breezily. “Sterilizer?” “You know, for sterilizing surgical instruments.” The next question O’Byrne did not dare ask. He felt sick and dizzy. Lucy left the room. Pauline continued to stare out the window into the dark. O’Byrne felt the need to whisper. “Hey, Pauline, what’s going on?” She turned to face him, and said nothing. O’Byrne discovered that the strap around his right wrist was slackening a little, the leather was stretching. His hand was concealed by pillows. He worked it backwards and forwards, and spoke urgently. “Look, let’s get out of here. Undo these things.”
For a moment she hesitated, then she walked around the side of the bed and stared down at him. She shook her head. “We’re going to get you.” The repetition terrified him. He thrashed from side to side. “It’s not my idea of a fucking joke!” he shouted. Pauline turned away. “I hate you,” he heard her say. The right-hand strap gave a little more. “I hate you. I hate you.” He pulled till he thought his arm would break. His hand was too large still for the noose around his wrist. He gave up.
Now Lucy was at the bedside pouring water into the sterilizer. “This is a sick joke,” said O’Byrne. Lucy lifted a flat black case onto the table. She snapped it open and began to take out long-handled scissors, scalpels and other bright, tapering silver objects. She lowered them carefully into the water. O’Byrne started to work his right hand again. Lucy removed the black case and set on the table two white kidney bowls with blue rims. In one lay two hypodermic needles, one large, one small. In the other was cotton wool. O’Byrne’s voice shook. “What is all this?” Lucy rested her cool hand on his forehead. She enunciated with precision. “This is what they should have done for you at the clinic.” “The clinic…?” he echoed. He could see now that Pauline was leaning against the wall drinking from a bottle of scotch. “Yes,” said Lucy, reaching down to take his pulse. “Stop you spreading round your secret little diseases.” “And telling lies,” said Pauline, her voice strained with indignation.
O’Byrne laughed uncontrollably. “Telling lies… telling lies,” he spluttered. Lucy took the scotch from Pauline and raised it to her lips. O’Byrne recovered. His legs were shaking. “You’re both out of your minds.” Lucy tapped the sterilizer and said to Pauline, “This will take a few minutes yet. We’ll scrub down in the kitchen.” O’Byrne tried to raise his head. “Where are you going?” he called after them. “Pauline… Pauline.”
But Pauline had nothing more to say. Lucy stopped in the bedroom doorway and smiled at him. “We’ll leave you a pretty little stump to remember us by,” she said, and she closed the door.
On the bedside table the sterilizer began to hiss. Shortly after, it gave out the low rumble of boiling water, and inside the instruments clinked together gently. In terror he pumped his hand. The leather was flaying the skin off his wrist. The noose was riding now around the base of his thumb. Timeless minutes passed. He whimpered and pulled, and the edge of the leather cut deep into his hand. He was almost free.
The door opened, and Lucy and Pauline carried in a small, low table. Through his fear O’Byrne felt excitement once more, horrified excitement. They arranged the table close to the bed. Lucy bent low over his erection. “Oh dear… oh dear,” she murmured. With tongs Pauline lifted instruments from the boiling water and laid them out in neat silver rows on the starched white tablecloth she had spread across the table. The leather noose slipped forwards fractionally. Lucy sat on the edge of the bed and took the large hypodermic from the bowl. “This will make you a little sleepy,” she promised. She held it upright and expelled a small jet of liquid. And as she reached for the cotton wool O’Byrne’s arm pulled clear. Lucy smiled. She set aside the hypodermic. She leaned forwards once more… warm, scented… she was fixing him with wild red eyes… her fingers played over his tip… she held him still between her fingers. “Lie back, Michael, my sweet.” She nodded briskly at Pauline. “If you’ll secure that strap, Nurse Shepherd, then I think we can begin.”
Reflections of a Kept Ape
Eaters of asparagus know the scent it lends the urine. It has been described as reptilian, or as a repulsive inorganic stench, or again, as a sharp, womanly odor… exciting. Certainly it suggests sexual activity of some kind between exotic creatures, perhaps from a distant land, another planet. This unworldly smell is a matter for poets and I challenge them to face their responsibilities. All this… a preamble that you may discover me as the curtain rises, standing, urinating, reflecting in a small overheated closet which adjoins the kitchen. The three walls which fill my vision are painted a bright and cloying red, decorated by Sally Klee when she cared for such things, a time of remote and singular optimism. The meal, which passed in total silence and from which I have just risen, consisted of a variety of tinned foods, compressed meat, potatoes, asparagus, served at room temperature. It was Sally Klee who opened the tins and set their contents on paper plates. Now I linger at my toilet washing my hands, climbing on to the sink to regard my face in the mirror, yawning. Do I deserve to be ignored?
I find Sally Klee as I left her. She is in her dining room playing with used matches in a musty pool of light. We were lovers once, living almost as man and wife, happier than most wives and men. Then, she wearying of my ways and I daily exacerbating her displeasure with my persistence, we now inhabit different rooms. Sally Klee does not look up as I enter the room, and I hover between her chair and mine, the plates and tins arranged before me. Perhaps I am a little too squat to be taken seriously, my arms a little too long. With them I reach out and stroke gently Sally Klee’s gleaming black hair. I feel the warmth of her skull beneath her hair and it touches me, so alive, so sad.
Perhaps you will have heard of Sally Klee. Two and a half years ago she published a short novel and it was an instant success. The novel describes the attempts and bitter failures of a young woman to have a baby. Medically there appears to be nothing wrong with her, nor with her husband, nor his brother. In the words of
Sally Klee places her hand on mine as it moves across her head, either to forestall or to acknowledge tenderness—her head is still bowed and I cannot see her face. Knowing nothing, I compromise and hold her hand and seconds later our hands drop limply to our sides. I say nothing and, like the perfect friend, begin to clear away the plates and cutlery, tins and tin opener. In order to assure Sally Klee that I am not at all piqued by or sulking at her silence I whistle “Lillibullero” cheerfully through my teeth, rather in the manner of Sterne’s Uncle Toby in times of stress.
Exactly so. I am stacking the plates in the kitchen and sulking, almost to the point of forgetting to whistle. Despite my negative sentiments I set about preparing the coffee. Sally Klee will have a blend of no less than four different kinds of bean in emulation of Balzac, whose life she read in a lavishly illustrated volume while attending to the proofs of her first novel. We always call it her
