suspended, was regarding my reflection in her mirror with a sardonic eye, knowing full well I was awake. I never was able to fool her; others might be taken in by my subterfuging ways, but never Lydia. I sat up, and she smiled. I did not like that smile, complicit, feline, expressive of that primitive conspiracy of the flesh we had entered upon again in the night. I repeat, how could she so lightly set at naught the appalling things we had shouted at each other—she said I had broken her spirit, as if she were a horse, to which I replied that if she had been a horse I would have had her shot, that kind of thing—before we both fell drunkenly into bed and, later, into each other?
“You look terrible,” she said, husky and indulgent.
I did not answer. It is a curious thing about Lydia, that her body has hardly changed with the years. She has thickened somewhat, of course, and gravity is working its gradual, sad effects, yet in essentials she is still the silver-pale, slightly slouchy, excitingly top-heavy spoilt princess that I used to stalk along the quays by the Hotel Halcyon that summer all those years ago. Her flesh has a flaccid, slightly doughy quality that appeals to the pasha in me, suggestive as it is of the seraglio and the veil. She does not take the sun, after a month in the hottest of southern climes her skin will show no more than a faint, honeyed sheen that will fade within a week of her return to the grey north. On the warmest days there will be parts of her—her flanks, her inner arms, the soft flesh of her throat—that will retain a porcelain chill; I used to love to hold her in the clammy afterglow of passion, feeling her against me, the length of her, from brow to instep, that cool dense surface stippled with gooseflesh. Now I looked at her there in the morning light at the window, big and naked, one leg crossed on the other, the freckled shoulders and blue-veined breasts, those three deep folds of flesh at either side of her waist that I used to pinch until she shivered in languorous pain, and the old dog stirred in me and lifted its twitching snout—yes, yes, I am a fine one to talk of standing on principle. I was not so besotted, though, as to fail to note the small but remarkably well-stocked suitcase she had been foresighted enough to bring with her. I fear she is planning a long stay.
No ghosts today, not a single sighting; has Lydia’s coming put them to flight for good? I feel uneasy without them. Something worse might take their place.
When Lydia and I came down, Lily was already in the kitchen, sitting at the table head on hand, glued to a comic and spooning up cereal with automated precision. Lydia was startled to see her there, but not so much as she was a moment later when Quirke himself appeared, coming in from the hall in braces and shirtsleeves, with a loaf and a bottle of milk in a string bag. Seeing Lydia he paused, and his eyes skittered sideways. For a tense moment all was still, and even Lily looked up from her comic. I had an urge to laugh. “This,” I said, “this is Mr. Quirke, my dear.” Quirke hastily rubbed a hand on his thigh and came forward, offering it, with a queasy grin. A fuzz of reddish hair spilled thickly from the vee of his open shirt collar, which, it struck me, made it seem as if his stuffing were coming out, and I almost did laugh. Lydia allowed her hand to be shaken and immediately withdrew it. “Breakfast?” Quirke said encouragingly, showing the meagre bag of provisions. Lydia shot at me a darkly questioning glance which I pretended not to notice. She is a practical person, however, and saying nothing she took the milk and bread from him and carried them to the sideboard, and filled a kettle at the sink and put it on the range, while behind her back Quirke looked at me with eyebrows lifted and mouth turned down, as if we were a pair of urchins caught out by a grown-up in some prank.
I could not help but be amused by all this—the social predicament was wonderfully laughable. My enjoyment was short-lived, however. Quirke, no doubt seeing his living arrangements in peril, set himself at once, nauseatingly, to the task of charming Lydia. It worked; she always was a pushover for plausible rogues, as I can attest. While she went about preparing our breakfast he followed her around the kitchen, hastening to lend a helping hand when it seemed required, all the while keeping up a stream of fatuous talk. He spoke of the splendid weather she had brought, said he had wondered, coming in, who owned the lovely motor car parked outside—he must have spotted it last night, and prudently stayed away until after lights-out—told her stories from the town, and even launched into a potted history of the house. This was the last straw for me. Feeling an obscure disgust I went to the door, muttering an exit line about taking a stroll, as if I ever strolled anywhere. At once Lily scrambled up, wiping her mouth on her forearm, and said she would come with me. Outside, the early sun had an intense, lemony cast, and the morning was all glitter and glassy splinterings, which did not help my headache, or my mood. Lily stopped and spoke to one of the circus hands, an Italianate type with oiled curls and a gold stud in his nostril, clasping her hands at the small of her back and swaying her meagre hips, the little slut, and came back to me with the eager news that the first performance will be put on this afternoon; I have the grim suspicion that she hopes I will take her to it. Well, why not; we could make a family outing of it, Lydia, and Quirke and the girl, and me, old paterfamilias.
When we returned to the house Lydia had cooked bacon and eggs and fried bread and tomatoes and black pudding; I had not thought there was so much food in the house—perhaps she brought it with her, all parcelled up in that bottomless suitcase of hers—and my stomach heaved at the sight, which was almost as bad as the smells; lately I have pretty well got out of the way of eating. Quirke, with a large and not quite clean handkerchief knotted round his neck for a napkin, was already tucking in, while Lydia, wearing one of my mother’s old aprons, was at the range cheerfully dishing up another round of eggs. I took her by the wrist and drew her into the hallway, and demanded to know, in a furious whisper, through gritted teeth, what she thought she was about, setting up this grotesque parody of domestic life. She only smiled benignly, however—she does not realise how close she comes at times to getting a black eye—and touched a hand to my cheek and said with horrible roguishness that she had thought I would surely be hungry this morning and in need of something hot to restore my strength. I feel I am losing control here; I feel that some large thing I have been holding in my hands for so long that I have ceased to notice it has suddenly shifted and become slippery, and may at any moment go tumbling out
“You brought them into the house,” she said, nodding toward the kitchen and the Quirkes.
“No, I didn’t. They were here when I came.”
“But you let them stay.” So Quirke had confessed all. She put on a big triumphant smile, into the soft centre of which I pictured myself sinking a fist. “You are the one who seems in need of a family.”
Of course, I could think of no reply to that, and came up here to my cubbyhole in a sulk, nursing an irrational and infantile satisfaction at having refused to eat a crumb of breakfast, the foul aromas of which followed me like a taunt up the three steps and through the green door, and which linger faintly even yet. I flung myself down at my bamboo table, ignoring its squeal and crackle of apprehensive protest, and snatched up my pen and scrawled an extended passage of invective against my wife, which when I had finished it I immediately struck out. Terrible things I wrote, unrepeatable, they made me blush even as I set them down. I do not know what it is that comes over me at such moments, this frightening red rage that might make me do anything. What is there for me to be so angry about? I know what Lydia is up to, it is not so reprehensible. She has a great capacity to make the best of the worst predicaments. Finding how things are here, or how she takes them to be, me a landlocked Crusoe, bearded and wild of eye, with not only Quirke as Friday but a surrogate daughter as well—is that what Lily is? the words were written before I had time to think them—she at once set about creating an environment that would simulate, however grisly the likeness, our own dear hearth, which she supposes I am pining for. Ever the home-maker, my Lydia. Well, it will take more than crisped bacon and black pudding to turn this house into a home.
Although I know that nothing can ever be pinpointed so definitively, I date the inauguration of a significant shift in my attitude toward Lydia from the moment, some years back, when I realised that she is mortal. Let me explain, if I can, or let me describe, at least, how the realisation came to me. It was a very odd experience, or perhaps sensation would be a better word. One day, set as usual on the dogged but indisciplined task of self- improvement, I was reading an intricate passage in the work
