through. Just so I know I’m not getting something for nothing. Forget it. I didn’t come here to cry on your shoulder.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you. Not so soon anyway.’
‘Well, I’m here.’
He put the empty glass down on the kitchen bench. He felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him.
‘I don’t know why I’m bothering you, Grace. I’m a dead man.’
‘Do you want to stay? Dead or alive?’
‘If you want me to.’
‘Do you want to go to bed in that case? It’s getting late and I’m pretty wiped out myself.’
She pulled back the covers on the bed and then gave him a clothes hanger for his suit while she disappeared into the bathroom. He hoped she would not come out to see him half-dressed in shirt and socks as he slipped jacket and trousers into the wardrobe between her spangled, shiny dresses and workday outfits. He got into bed and waited. She reappeared and undressed, tossing her clothes into the laundry basket. He watched her.
‘You’re lovely,’ he said.
‘Am I?’
She shook back her hair and lay down beside him.
‘You don’t have to say it. It doesn’t matter if I am or I’m not,’ she said.
It mattered to him although he did not say this. He stroked her face and wondered why she did not take more pleasure from the way she looked. It might have occurred to both of them that they had not so much as kissed each other yet. He would have done so but his fatigue was overpowering. He lay beside her and slept. He did not even remember her turning out the light.
When he woke later, he saw by the illuminated clock that it was just after four in the morning. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom, staring at his face in the cabinet mirror as he flushed the toilet. He thought that he looked better than he should have expected to and perhaps there was life after death. If you had not been asked (or chosen) to leave straightaway, this was the time in the morning when you did it. Dressing quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed to do up your shoelaces, saying goodbye as the other person stirs, arriving home at five in the morning with enough time for a shower and a shave, a clean shirt and possibly even some breakfast before going to work.
As he came back into the main room, he saw Grace sit up quickly in bed.
‘Did I wake you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head and lying down again, breathing a little fast. ‘Bad dreams, that’s all.’
He got back into bed and touched her forehead lightly.
‘You don’t let them in there, Grace. That’s your revenge on them.
They can’t touch you.’
‘She’s not in my head. I’m keeping her out. I am.’
They kissed each other for the first time and made love without speaking in the partial darkness. Paul, having arrived at a place where he had wanted to be for some time now, encountered the firmness of her body under the softness of her skin. He liked this. He thought that this was the first but not the last time he intended to be here. Grace was pleased just to take him into her body and for that contact to be their only complexity before there might be other layers of emotion and memory for them to contend with. It was a slow lovemaking, shaded by their mutual tiredness. When they were finished, neither of them spoke. She lay with her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, while he placed his hand on her hair, stroking it. They slept again.
The next thing that broke into Paul’s consciousness was Grace’s hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him awake.
‘What time do you have to be at your desk this morning?’ she asked.
Suddenly, his eyes were open. Through the windows, he saw that the sky was a clear winter blue.
‘Nine o’clock,’ he said.
‘It’s ten to eight.’
He closed his eyes again and lay there.
‘I don’t have a clean shirt,’ he said, and contemplated turning up to his new job, on a day which included media visits, unshaven and wearing a dirty shirt together with used underwear.
‘You can have one of mine if you like.’
Her voice had a slightly sardonic edge. He sat up to see her smiling at him, her nakedness disappearing into a voluminous red kimono.
‘Will it fit me?’
‘You never know. I buy them to lounge around in so they’re all too big for me. What colour would you like? I know. Grunge yellow. That would suit you.’
He lay down again.
‘White if you’ve got it.’
A white shirt landed under his chin.
‘There you go,’ she said with a grin. ‘You can iron it while I make some coffee.’
In a shorter time than he would have liked, he was standing in her kitchen showered and dressed and swallowing mouthfuls of coffee.
The shirt she had given him was dangerously tight across his shoulders and uncomfortable around his neck. He had rejected her offer of a lady-shaver, thinking he would rather turn up unshaven than with cuts to his chin. The day-old underwear would have to be lived with.
‘There’s a barber I can get to, I should just have time for that,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘I might get him to brush my suit down as well.
I’m sorry, Grace, I didn’t want to have to rush off like this. Do you want to see me tonight?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘we can go out to dinner.’
‘I’ll call you, okay? We didn’t even talk about what job you wanted.’
‘Don’t worry about that now, I’ll talk to you this afternoon. You are going to be there?’
‘Yeah, I’ll be there. Even if everyone does hate me now.’
He kissed her once and was gone, like a disappearing act.
Grace sat at the table in a room which had become quiet and still.
She fought the urge to light an early morning cigarette while she drank her cooling coffee. She reached into her bag and took out a letter offering her a placement in the intelligence task force attached to the Attorney- General’s Department, hand-delivered to her at the front desk in the chaotic aftermath of Paul’s announcement yesterday. It was a position she had applied for months ago and she had long since given up any hope that they would hire her. Suck it and see, who knew what it would lead to. At least it would take her out of the reach of the Tooth. In the meantime, there was Paul. Are we always going to be like this, Harrigan? You wanting to run in and out of my life when the job lets you? She stopped herself from arriving at any expectations. The same, strange lightness she had felt yesterday after the siege took hold of her. I am still here, I am still alive. She would take everything just for what it was. The present time, and the quality of the light outside, had never seemed more bright, more intense to her than now.
38
Grace’s shirt tore across Harrigan’s shoulders as soon as he reached forward to put his keys in the ignition and he had to spend most of the morning wearing his jacket. His new administrative assistant proved her worth by going out and buying him a wearable replacement at the first opportunity with no questions asked, only a sideways glance as she delivered it to him.
He had need of it. Just before lunch, he was asked to attend a meeting with the Assistant Commissioner and a range of other notables, including two crew-cut Americans wearing plain dark suits and thin ties who looked like nothing so much as religious proselytisers.
They were accompanied by a plainly dressed woman from a national security agency and introduced themselves as ‘the American cousins from the Embassy’. Harrigan reflected that his entree to this meeting had
