voice coming softly from it, timorously, pianissimo.
She is, how to call it, artistic. She wears the clothes of an ordinary person, of a great number of quite different ordinary persons, but she arranges them in the manner of those who are called artistic. Small pieces of things are tacked together with a confidence that contradicts her manner and amazes me. Pieces of tiny artificial flowers, a part of a butcher’s apron, old Portuguese boots, a silver pendant, medal ribbons, a hand-painted stole, and a hundred milk bottle tops made unrecognizable. She is like a magpie with a movable nest.
Her name, which I had earlier decided not to reveal, is Nile. It is too private a name to reveal. But it is so much a part of her that I feel loath to change it for fear I will leave something important out. Not to mention it would be like forgetting to mention the white dolls.
The washing-up is finished and it is too early yet to prepare a meal. It is a pleasant time, a time of expectation. It needs, like all things, the greatest control. But I am an expert in these matters, a man who can make a lump of barley sugar last all day.
We sit side by side on the bed and read the papers. I take the employment section and she, as usual, the deaths, births, and marriages. As usual she reads them all, her pale nail-bitten finger moving slowly over the columns of type, her lips moving silently as she reads the names.
She says, half to herself, they never put them in.
I am at once eager and reluctant to pick up this thread. I am not sure if it is a loose thread or one that might, so to speak, unravel the whole sweater. I wait, no longer seeing the words I am looking at. My ear drums are so finely stretched that I fear they may burst.
She says, don’t you think they should put them in?
My stomach rumbles loudly. I say, what? And find my voice, normally so light, husky and cracked.
She says, babies… abortion babies… they’re unlisted.
As I feared it is not a loose thread, but the other kind. Before she says more I can sense that she is about to reveal more than she should at this stage. I am disappointed in her. I thought she knew the rules.
I would like, for the sake of politeness, to answer her, but I am anxious and unable to say any more. I do not, definitely not, wish to know, at this stage, why she should have this interest in abortion babies. I find her behaviour promiscuous.
She says, do you think they have souls?
I turn to look at her, surprised by the unusual pleading tone in her voice, a voice which is normally so inexpressive. Looking at her eyes I feel I am being drowned in milk.
She pins back a stray wisp of hair with a metal pin. I say, I have never thought of the matter.
She says, don’t be huffy.
I say, I am not huffy.
But that is not entirely correct. Let us say, I am put out. If I had any barley sugar left I would give her a piece, then I would instruct her in the art of sucking barley sugar, the patience that is needed to make it last, the discipline that is required to forget the teeth, to use only the tongue. But I have no barley sugar.
I say, I am old, but it will be a little while before I die.
She says (surprisingly), you are so morbid.
We sit for a little while quite silently, both looking at our pieces of newspaper. I am not reading mine, because I know that she is not reading hers. She is going to bring up the subject again.
Instead she says, I have never told you what I do.
Another thread, but this one seems a little less drastic. It suits me nicely. I would prefer to know these things, the outside layers, before we come to the centre of things.
I say, no, what do you do?
She says, I help do abortions.
She may as well have kicked me in the stomach, I would have preferred it. She has come back to the abortions again. I did not wish to discuss anything so… deep?
I say, we all have our jobs to do, should we be so lucky as to have a job, which as you know…
She says, the abortionist is not a doctor, there are a number of rooms around London, sometimes at Shepherd’s Bush, Notting Hill, there is one at Wimbledon, a large house.
I have not heard of this sort of thing before. I examine her hands. They are small and pale with closely bitten nails and one or two faintly pink patches around the knuckles. I ask her if she wears rubber gloves. She says yes.
I am quite happy to discuss the mechanics of the job, for the moment.
She says, I have always thought that they must have souls. When she… the woman I work for… when she does it there is a noise like cutting a pear… but a lot louder. I have helped kill more people than live in this street… I counted the houses in the street one night… I worked it out.
I say, it is not such a large street… a court, not very large.
She says, twice as many as in this street.
I say, but still it is not so many, and we have a problem with population. It is like contraception, if you’ll excuse the term, applied a little later.
My voice, I hope, is very calm. It has a certain “professional” touch to it. But my voice gives no indication of what is happening to me. Every single organ in my body is quivering. It is bad. I had wished to take things slowly. There is a slow pleasure to be had from superficial things, then there are more personal things like jobs, the people she likes, where she was born. Only later, much later, should be discussed her fears about the souls of aborted babies. But it is all coming too fast, all becoming too much. I long to touch her clothing. To remove now, so early, an item of clothing, perhaps the shawl, perhaps it would do me no harm to simply remove the shawl.
I stretch my hand, move it along the bed until it is behind her. Just by moving it… a fraction… just a fraction… I can grasp the shawl and pull it slowly away. It falls to the bed, covering my hand.
That was a mistake. A terrible mistake. My hand, already, is searching for the small catch at the back of her pendant. It is difficult. My other hand joins in. The two hands work on the pendant, independent of my will. I am doing what I had planned not to do: rush.
I say, I am old. Soon I will die. It would be nice to make things last.
She says, you are morbid.
She says this as if it were a compliment.
My hands have removed the pendant. I place it on the bed. Now she raises her hands, her two hands, to my face. She says, smell…
I sniff. I smell nothing in particular, but then my sense of smell has never been good. While I sniff like some cagey old dog, my hands are busy with the campaign ribbons and plastic flowers which I remove one by one, dropping them to the floor.
She says, what do you smell?
I say, washing up.
She says, it is an antiseptic. I feel I have become soaked in antiseptic, to the marrow of my bones. It has come to upset me.
I say, it would be better if we ceased this discussion for a while, and had some food. We could talk about the food, I have fish fingers again.
She says, I have never told you this but the fish fingers always taste of antiseptic. Everything…
I say, you could have told me later, as we progressed. It is not important. It is good that you didn’t say, you should not have said, even now, you should have kept it for later.
She says, I’m not hungry, I would rather tell you the truth.
I say, I would rather you didn’t.
She says, you know George?
I say, you have mentioned him.
My hands are all of an itch. They have moved to her outermost garment, a peculiar coat, like the coat of a man’s suit. I help her out of it and fold it gently.
She says, George and my son… you remember.
I say, yes, I remember vaguely, only vaguely… if you could refresh my memory.
She says, you are teasing me.
I deny it.
