Her Fearful Symmetry

She heard the front door open; Julia was home. “Mouse? Where are you?” Don’t tell Julia, thought Elspeth. She was ashamed of having killed the Kitten, even though it had been only temporary.

“Kitchen,” Valentina called out.

Julia came in bearing Sainsbury’s bags, which she slung onto the counter and began to unpack. “Wassup?” she asked.

“Not much. You?”

Julia launched into a long boring story about a woman in the checkout queue at the supermarket, a tiny old person who apparently subsisted entirely on fairy cakes and Lipton tea.

“Gross,” said Valentina, trying to remember what fairy cakes were.

“Cupcakes,” said Julia.

“Oh. Well, that’s not too terrible.” She got up off the floor and began to help put away the shopping. The twins worked in semi-amiable silence. The Kitten finished her dinner and wandered off. Elspeth stood in a corner, out of the twins’ way, with her arms folded across her chest, thinking. That was extraordinary. That was-a clue-to something…but what? She would have to think about it. Elspeth left the twins in the kitchen and found the Kitten settling down to nap in a pool of sunlight on the sofa. Elspeth curled up next to her and watched her eyelids droop, her breathing slow. It was a charming, ordinary sight, quite incongruous with Elspeth’s turbulent mood. Valentina came into the room and whispered, “Elspeth?” but Elspeth did not reply or make herself known. Valentina wandered off to peer into all the rooms as though they were playing hide-and-seek. Elspeth followed behind her, an invisible shadow.

Spring Fever

ROBERT SAT at his desk on a lovely May afternoon, trying to make himself write. He was working on the section of his thesis devoted to Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood, lady novelist. He found Mrs. Wood incredibly dull. He had ploughed his way through East Lynne, pored over the details of her life, and simply found himself unable to care about her at all.

When he was giving a tour, he always skipped Mrs. Wood. She would have fallen between George Wombwell and Adam Worth, not only alphabetically but geographically, and to Robert she seemed unworthy of their peculiar, almost dashing company. He sat gnawing his pen, trying to decide if he could omit her from the thesis. Perhaps not. He could try to make the most of her death, but that was also dull: she’d died of bronchitis. Damn the woman.

He was relieved when Valentina arrived to interrupt him. “Come outside,” she said. “It’s spring.”

Once they were outdoors their steps turned inevitably towards the cemetery. As they walked down Swains Lane they heard a lone tuba player practising scales in Waterlow Park. The notes had an elegiac quality. Swains Lane, being overshadowed by high walls on both sides, existed in a permanent dusk even as the sky above them was blue and cloudless. Valentina thought, We’re like a little two-person funeral procession. She was glad when they arrived at the cemetery’s gates and stood in the sunshine, waiting to be admitted.

Nigel opened the gate. “We weren’t expecting you today.”

Robert said, “No, but it’s such glorious weather, we thought we might go looking for wild-flowers.”

Jessica came out of the office and said, “If you’re going out, take some rakes. And no lollygagging, please.”

“Certainly not.” Robert equipped himself and Valentina with a walkie-talkie and two rakes as well as a large bag for litter, and they crossed the courtyard and went up into the cemetery. “Well,” said Robert, as they turned onto the Dickens Path, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you to work.”

“That’s okay,” said Valentina. “I’m pretty useless most of the time. I don’t mind raking. Where do all these empty water bottles come from?”

“I think people must throw them over the wall,” said Robert.

They raked in companionable silence for some time, clearing the path and collecting an impressive bag of fast-food wrappers and coffee cups. Valentina liked raking. She had never done it before. She wondered what other kinds of work she might enjoy. Bagging groceries? Telemarketing? Who knows? Maybe I could try lots of different jobs for a week at a time. She was imagining herself checking coats at the British Museum when Robert beckoned her over to him.

“Look,” he whispered. She looked and saw two small foxes sleeping nose-to-tail on a pile of old leaves. Robert stood behind her and put his arm around her. Valentina tensed. He released her. They walked down the path to let the foxes sleep and went back to raking.

After some time Valentina said, “What’s lollygagging?”

“I think that’s an American word. Jessica and James picked up a certain amount of American slang during the war.”

“But what does it mean?”

“Oh. Well, it can mean being lazy, just fooling around. Or it can mean fooling around, in the other sense.”

Valentina blushed. “Did Jessica think-?”

“Ah-I’m sure we didn’t exactly look like two people who intended to spend the afternoon collecting garbage.” He peered into the bag. “I think we can stop now. Let’s have a walk-just leave the rakes here, we’ll come back for them.” He took her hand and led her towards the Meadow, an open, sun-dappled section full of well-tended graves.

Valentina said, “It’s nice to be out in the sun. I think it’s been grey every day since we arrived.”

“Surely not.”

“No-I guess it just feels that way. It’s like the greyness soaks into the buildings, or something.”

“Mmm.” Robert felt a bit depressed. You can’t make her love London. Or yourself, when it comes to that. They kept walking. A number of graves had flowers newly planted on them, each one a small dense garden.

“Valentina?” Robert said. “Tell me. Why is it, whenever I lay a hand on you, you seem to shrink away?”

“What do you mean?” she replied. “I don’t.”

“Not always. But you did, just then, when we saw the foxes.”

“I guess.” They left the Meadow and came back to the path. Valentina said, “It just seemed-weird. Disrespectful.”

“Because we’re in the cemetery?” asked Robert.

“I don’t know…when I’m dead I want people to make love on my grave on a regular basis. It will remind me of happier times.”

“But would you do it on someone else’s grave? Elspeth’s?”

“No-not unless I was with Elspeth. However that would work. Maybe if we were both dead,” he said.

“I wonder if dead people have sex.”

“Perhaps that would depend on whether you ended up in heaven or hell.”

Valentina laughed. “That still doesn’t answer my question.”

Robert pinched her bum and she shrieked. “All the boring Joy of Sex -type sex in hell and all the good naughty sex in heaven,” he offered.

“That seems upside down, somehow.”

“There’s your American Puritanism showing; why shouldn’t heaven consist of all the great pleasures? Eating, drinking, making love: if it’s all so wrong, why do we have to do it to stay alive and propagate the species? No, I think heaven will consist of nonstop bacchanalia. Down in hell they’ll be worrying about STDs and premature ejaculation. Anyway,” Robert continued with a sly sidewise look at Valentina’s cool profile, “if you don’t watch out you’ll have to go to a special, fenced-off area where they keep all the virgins.”

“In heaven or hell?”

He shook his head. “I’m really not sure. You ought not to chance it.”

“I’d better get busy.”

“I wish you would.” He halted in the path. They were near the little turning that led to the Rossettis. Valentina stopped a few feet away when she realised that Robert wasn’t walking with her. She held his gaze for a moment and then looked down in confusion.

“You don’t mean-here?” Valentina’s voice was hardly audible.

“No,” Robert said. “As you said earlier, that would be disrespectful. And I imagine Jessica would have me arrested if she ever found out. Lord, she doesn’t even like it when the visitors wear shorts.”

“I think she’d just fire you.”

“That would be worse. What on earth would I do with myself? I’d have to get a proper job.” He began to walk again, and she fell in beside him. “Valentina, do you like it when I talk to you that way?”

She said nothing.

“You invite it, and then you seem upset. I’m not…no one has dealt with me this way…at least not since I was in the sixth form. I guess the