“But – even if your clients – if they’re –”
“Nasty, you mean? No, I avoid nasty ones, or unhygienic ones. But anyone else is fine. I don’t mind how he looks. Or if he’s old. Or what he wants. Or if he’s too fast. I can come –” she said, airy as her rooms, neither boasting nor apologising, “like that.” Her turn of phrase, still somehow old-fashioned. Charming. Unfazed
Susan also helplessly admired Crissie. For her work not the least. Though it must also be unwise and risky – and every day the media carried more horror stories of HIV and AIDS. But Crissie had even spoken about that. “The agency, G.D. – is very good. They try to screen everyone. We use protection. And I have a check every couple of months. Oh, it’s not foolproof. I could get it, I know that.”
“You’re only nineteen –” That was another astonishing fact that had been established early.
“Well, I am nineteen. But even children die, Susie-Woo.”
“You mean, if it happened, you would be dead-pan and philosophical about dying.”
“No, not dead-pan. But, well, we all die sometime. I mean, you can die at seven or seventy, nine or a hundred and nine.”
“You’re not afraid of dying.”
“Maybe. It would depend how, perhaps.”
“No, I mean, you’re not afraid of being dead.”
“No such thing,” said Crissie. In the lamplight, like a creature of clear glass; easy to believe she meant what she said.
“I see. You know.”
“Oh, we all know.”
“I don’t, Crissie.”
“You do. You’ve just forgotten. Look, Susie,” (Susan never minded it when Crissie did things with her name) “think of it this way. You’re born and you’re alive. What’s your earliest memory?”
“I’m not sure…”
“Well, but how old were you when you started to be aware of things that you still remember now?”
“About three, I think. I know my mother said her first memory was when she was four.”
“There you are.”
“Where?”
“You were alive and in the world, from nought upwards, but you don’t remember it. Nothing for three or four years. So it’s just possible there was something even before nought that you don’t remember.”
Later Susan had said, “Under hypnosis people can sometimes be regressed to earliest childhood. To birth even. Then they seem to remember everything.”
“They sometimes remember other things, too.”
Susan’s first visit to Crissie’s flat, soon after the New Year, had been for a meal. As in all else, Crissie was open and pulled no punches.
“I like female company, too. I don’t mean I’m gay. I enjoy sex with men. But women – they’re fun. And here you are. I was alone at Christmas. I don’t see my parents now. And I love cooking things for people. I’m greedy and very clever. Come on, I dare you not to like my risotto with baked lamb.”
Susan, drawn in during the cooking by Crissie for a glass of buttery claret, sat on a stool in the identical fitted kitchen to her own, but looking-glass effect, everything the opposite way round. She watched Crissie moving about in a huge black apron, effortlessly cutting and chopping and mixing, speaking of a hundred different things, while the wonderful scent of the food intensified.
“Taste this.”
“Oh – it’s –”
“You like it. Guess the vegetables? Well, guess the herbs.”
“I can’t – it’s like everything in the world –”
“It is everything in the world.”
They drank all the large bottle of wine with the meal, and afterwards Crissie brought brandy, and Algerian coffee in little blue cups. They had moved to the main room by then, having eaten in the kitchen at a table with an apricot cloth, with one tall church candle.
Presently Crissie put on a single short piece of music to be listened to. It was winding and serpentine. Then they talked again, then grew sleepy. It was only ten but, “Time for bed,” said Crissie softly, rising without subterfuge or excuse. “See you tomorrow.” They had been all evening in perfect agreement, or rather, perfect counterpoise. And it was the first time since R.J. Susan had slept really well. Afterwards, she could never remember the name of the music, or its composer, or remember to ask Crissie what they had been. Like the life before life?
They were divided by thirteen years, but like the hallway and the two front doors, this partition seemed to mean nothing. If anything, Crissie was far more mature, Susan thought, than she herself. Perhaps her extraordinary job had contributed to this, but there were other things.
Contrary to the first evening, when they had parted after only three and three-quarter hours, there came to be nights when they sat, in one or other of the flats, talking until two or three in the morning. Or later. Once they had even both fallen asleep over a late night TV horror film, running on Susan’s larger TV, and woken up at eight in the morning. Then they had breakfast, (Crissie insisting on making porridge, with oatmeal brought from 6C) like lovers.
But they were not lovers. They were – what were they? Friends? More than that.
There was a closeness, a knowing between them, almost from the first. No, from the first. Though they liked many different things, were separated by an age gap, their backgrounds, and by how they earned a living, they somehow tied up with each other, as Crissie one day, unembarrassedly said, like two gloves.
“Which is right and which is left?” Susan asked.
“Oh, I’m the sinister one.”
But Crissie was not sinister. She was mild and transparent as the muslin of her sitting-room curtains, which by night showed every glowing lamp and movement in the room beyond: nothing to hide.
Susan thought, I do love her. And briefly felt uncomfortable, wondering if this were somehow wrong, to love a woman if one weren’t gay. But why would it be? And Crissie seemed to like, to be fond of – to love Susan.
It was not that they were always exchanging touches, or hugging, though now and then, as
