THE INFORMATION

the Movement poets? R. C. Squires was still alive, unbelievably. Richard kept seeing him, in Red Lion Street, in the callbox, staring with terrible and illegible purpose at the crowded entrance of the language school. Or flapping around on his hands and knees in the passage behind the Merry Old Soul.

'For nothing,' said Gina.

'Yeah that's right.'

'No one reads The Little Magazine.'

'Yeah that's right.'

One of Richard's recent 'middles' was about writers' wives-a typology of writers' wives. The pin was a biography of Hemingway, who, Richard argued, had married one of each. (Stoutly or fogeyishly resistant to clever headlines, Richard in this case submitted to the inevitable 'For

Whom the Bells Toll.') How did they go? The Muse, the Rival, the

Soulmate, the Drudge, the Judge .. . Of course there were many, many others, Peer Wives like Mary Shelley, and Victim Wives like Emily Tennyson, and Virgin Saints like Jane Carlyle, and a great multitude ofFat Nurses like Fanny Stevenson . . . What type was Demeter Barry? What type was Gina Tull? Transcendence-Supplier, Great Distractor, Mind-Emptier in the act of love. Anyway it didn't matter. Gina was deciding to absent herself from the company. She wasn't leaving Richard, not yet. But she was ceasing to be a writer's wife.

'You can't give up the Tantalus thing, which is pretty decent as well as regular. You tell me. You could give up smoking and drinking and drugs. And clothes. It's not that you spend. You don't earn.'

'I can't give up novels.'

'Why not?'

Because . . . because then he would be left with experience, with untranslated and unmediated experience. Because then he would be left with life.

'Because then I'd just have this.' The kitchen-the blue plastic tub filled with the boys' white pants and vests, the stiff black handbag on the chair with its upturned mouth open wanting to be fed, the bowls and spoons and mats laid out on the table for the morning and the eight-pack of cereal boxes in its cellophane: all this became the figure for what he meant. 'Days. Life,' he added.

And this was a disastrous word to say to a woman-to women, who bear life, who bring it into the world, screaming, and so will never let it come second to anything.

Her eyes, her breasts, her throat, showing him his mistake, all became infused. 'The possible alternative,' said Gina, 'is I go full time. Except Fridays of course.' She told him what they would pay her: a chastening sum. 'That'd mean you getting the twins up every morning and getting them down every night. The weekends we share. You shop. You clean. And you cook.'

'I can't cook.'

'I can't either … That way,' she said, 'you'll be getting plenty of life. And we'll see what you've got left for the other thing.'

There was a third alternative, Richard reckoned. He could fuck her twice a night forever and take no more shit. And have no money. Oh sure: do it that way. He looked at her face, its flesh lightly glazed in preparation for sleep; and her throat, with its weathered complexities of raisin and rose. She was his sexual obsession. And he had married her.

'I tell you what,' she said. 'How close are you to finishing the one that's on the go now?'

Richard creased his face. One of the many troubles with his novels was that they didn't really get finished. They just stopped. Unfitted was already very long. 'Hard to tell. Say a year.?

Her head went back. This was steep. But she took in breath and said,'Okay. You've got a year's grace. Finish that and we'll see if it makes any money. I think we can hold on. Financially I mean. I'll do what I have to do. I'll manage. You've got a year.'

He nodded. He supposed it was just. He wanted to thank her. His mouth was dry.

'A year. I won't say a word.'

'A year,' Gina now resumed. 'And I haven't said a word. Have I. I've been as good as my word. What about you?'

Nasty repetition that, he thought: word. But it remained true enough. She had kept her promise. And he had forgotten all about it. Or he'd tried. They had held on, financially, though even the most perfunctory calculation told Richard that they were falling short by two or three book reviews a week. Marco was still in his boxroom, and still remonstrating with his nightmares.

'What's your progress been? Is it finished?'

'Virtually,' he said. This wasn't quite true. Untitled wasn't finished exactly, but it was certainly unbelievably long. 'A week or two away.'

'And what are your plans for it?'

'I was thinking,' said Richard. 'There are these minor earnings from my novels that we didn't include. It all adds up, you know.'

'What all adds up?'

'Things like PLR.' He checked. Gina was staring at him with a new order of incredulity. 'Public Lending Right,' he went on. 'Money from libraries. It all adds up.'

'I know PLR. With all the forms. How much did you get that time? The time you spent the whole weekend lying down behind the couch. What was it? Thirty-three pee?'

'Eighty-nine pee,' said Richard sternly.

'…Well, that's a big help!'

There was a silence during which he steadily lowered his gaze to the floor. He thought of the time when his PLR check had burst into the three figures: #163;104.07. That was when he had two novels in print and it was still the case that nobody was sure they were shit.

'I think I've got an agent. Gwyn's agent. Gal Aplanalp.'

Gina took this in. 'Her,' she said. 'Have you signed up?'

'Not yet. Maybe soon.'

'Hey this is really going to happen you know. You don't care about money and that's a nice quality but I do and life is going to change.' 'I know. I know.?

'… What's it called anyway? Your new one.'

'Untitled.'

'When will it be?'

'No it's called Untitled.'

'You mean you can't even think what to call it?'

'No. It's called Untitled.'

'How can it be called Untitled?'

'It just is. Because I say so.'

'Well that's a bloody stupid name for it. You know, you might be a lot happier, without them. It might help with the other thing too. It might be a big relief. Gwyn and everything, that's a whole other story.' Gina sighed, with distaste. She had never liked Gwyn much even in the old days, when he was with Gilda-and they were all poor. 'Demi says it's frightening the way the money comes in. And she's rich! I don't know if you still really believe in it. Your novels. Because you never … Because what you … Ah I'm sorry, Richard. I'm so sorry.'

Because you never found an audience-you never found the universal or anything like it. Because what you come up with in there, in your study, is of no general interest. End of story. Yes: this is the end of your story.