Thrawn began to lick her face as if it were a lollipop.
I’m not sure about this, thought Milena, pressing her lips and eyes shut. Thrawn smelt of sweat and boiled onions.
‘Oh, tooch, bubi, tooch.’
What, thought Milena, is that supposed to mean? Does she really think it will drive me wild with passion? Thrawn leaned back to pull off her leotard, and Milena felt desire retreat. It left her beached and dry and slightly sick in the stomach.
The flesh around Thrawn’s eyes was coiled like a rope; her face was a knot. As she descended again, Thrawn’s face was turned away from Milena, denying what was happening. Is she enjoying this? Milena wondered.
She tried to make the best of a bad job. She tried to shift to a more comfortable position but the rug kept rucking up and sliding away underneath her. She lay still for a few moments under the oblivious Thrawn. Finally, Milena tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Thrawn,’ said Milena, as if reminding her of something she already knew. ‘Thrawn. Stop.’
Thrawn went still. Then very quickly, she rolled away.
Milena sat up. Her elbow had been badly knocked in the struggle. She looked at Thrawn. Thrawn lay on her side, back to Milena, picking at the rucked-up rug. Milena’s trousers swaddled her thighs and made it difficult to stand. She managed it by pushing her knees together at an awkward angle.
‘It’s because I’m old and fat, isn’t it?’ said Thrawn, from the floor. She was staring at the strands of the rug.
‘You aren’t fat,’ said Milena, out of kindness, and because it was so far from the truth.
Thrawn sat up and her eyes were poison. ‘I am. Don’t tell me I’m not fat.’ She shook a dried pouch of loose skin on her belly. She stood up, and began to pull on her leotard, carefully running the elastic back into place along the same lines of indentation in the skin.
‘Our relationship should be strictly professional,’ said Thrawn, with a kind of snarl.
‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’ said Milena, beginning to smile.
‘Not,’ said Thrawn, and pulled back her hair. ‘Where
‘Good. Fine. Glad to hear it,’ said Milena, rubbing her elbow.
‘I’m quite ruthless in my standards,’ said Thrawn coolly. She pulled on a pair of trousers over her leotard. ‘I am a perfectionist. It is something of a curse always to want the very best.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Milena and thought: there’s something wrong with this woman. Her elbow was black from bruising.
‘You’ll hate me,’ said Thrawn with a sigh, looking up. It was a statement of fact. It had the ring of truth. It also sounded like a promise. Milena looked up at the sad, devouring face.
‘No I won’t,’ said Milena, lightly. A process of mollification had begun.
Later that same day, walking back from the Strand, Milena suddenly thought: it’s my birthday soon.
It was one year since Rolfa had gone. The thought rooted Milena to the pavement where she stood. She was standing on Waterloo Bridge, where she and Rolfa had walked back together from the Spread-Eagle. This year, September had been hot, wet, monsoonish. But on this one evening, the sky had cleared. It was the same plum colour it had been on the evening when Rolfa had led her back from meeting Lucy.
St Paul’s Cathedral looked the same, with its dome of white stone and sheets of lead. But electric lights hung in chains now all along both banks of the river. There were puddles of light, pools of it on the pavements. It will be like this, Rolfa, thought Milena. I will get further and further away from you. And you’ll get dimmer and dimmer, like one of those little lights on the end of the chain.
Milena couldn’t dawdle. It was her turn tonight to take care of little Berry. She walked on slowly, her head down.
A year since Rolfa; a month since Berowne had died giving birth. It was so unfair. He had made it all the way through. The child was born. It was wailing. He had time to shout at it, ‘Hello! Oh hello!’. Then the afterbirth came free. The blood had hit the ceiling. And there was another orphan. Of sorts. The baby’s mother, the Princess, could not face him.
Milena walked down the steps of the Zoo, and into the Child Garden.
She walked down into a room full of wood panels with colourful paintings. The place smelled of infants: milk and nappies and sodden padding. It was too warm. It made Milena giddy. A Nurse took her to Berry’s cot. He was three weeks old. He looked up at Milena with solemn blue eyes. Who are you this time? he seemed to ask. Milena lifted him up onto her shoulders and he started to wail.
‘I know. I know,’ she said, and patted him.
Out of the corners of the room, on the mattress-covered floor, the other infants came. They came crawling and whispering to each other.
‘All these people coming to see him.’
‘Yes, but they’re not his parents are they?’
The voices were high and wispy and wheedling with jealousy.
‘His father is dead.’
‘His mother never comes to see him.’
Their minds were full of virus. They could speak, they could read, they could add and subtract. They ringed Milena round like a hostile tribe. The sound of someone else crying made them angry. They wanted to cry themselves. They wanted to howl their lungs raw. The viruses made them speak.
‘Why can’t he talk?’ one of the infants demanded. He supported himself on all fours. His flesh was plump and creased.
‘Why haven’t you given him the viruses?’
‘It’s time he was given the virus.’
Milena didn’t answer them. She stepped over them. The room was hot and she was feeling ill. She simply wanted to escape.
‘He hasn’t had the virus!’ the infants called after her, in rage, as she fled.
She couldn’t think why it had so upset her. She felt she was protecting Berry from them. She had to stop to gather breath, cool breath, and found she was trembling. Her hands shook as she wrapped Little Berry up in his blankets. She held him to her, and walked under one of the brick bridges along the elevated walkways, and then looked up, and saw the Shell.
The windows were full of fire, reflected sunlight. Here it was again, September fire. Milena remembered Jacob. She remembered him walking back, into the Shell, to run his messages.
Rolfa was gone, and Berowne was gone. Jacob was gone too. All in one year? Milena had found Jacob one day in spring, crumpled on the staircase like an old suit of clothes, a costume in the Graveyard. The fire in the windows had once seemed like the fire of people’s lives. Now it was the fire of ghosts.
Milena stood where she had once stood before, unable to move. How did I get here? she wondered. How did I get here, holding someone else’s baby, with the smell of Thrawn McCartney still on me? In a world with holograms and electric lights. Milena felt the giddiness of time. It was a kind of vertigo. It was as if time had hauled her up at high speed a dizzying distance away from herself, away from her life. It was as if she were on a train, and the train was going faster and faster, and it never stopped. The stations of her life were rattling past. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. She was never given the chance to get off.
It was dark by the time Milena had climbed the stairs to her room. It looked much the same as it had when Rolfa lived there; a little tidier perhaps; a little emptier. The baby needed changing. Milena was surprised by how brave she had become about nappies and feeding times. When the baby was clean, she put him into his hammock and began to rock him.
Berry started to sing. His voice was high and pure and piping and he sang particular songs. Was it normal for a child to sing before it could talk? She thought. Berry seemed to hear her. He smiled at her. Is he Snide? Milena wondered. The songs he sang were the songs he had heard Milena humming. He sang the songs of the Comedy.
Milena lit a candle on her windowsill and opened the great, grey book. Here she could find herself. She took a
