The Silver Swan

fucked her-the word made the blood rush to her cheeks-and then picked up the other photographs and splayed them under her nose like a hand of cards and grinned in that cold-eyed way that he did sometimes when he wanted to hurt her and said, 'Fucked them all, didn't I.' She did not know whether to believe him or not, but it did not matter, she did not care if he was telling the truth or lying just to tease her. No, she did not care; she was not jealous. Where she was now, the old rules did not apply. It was all right if Leslie had slept with Foxy-that was the nickname she had invented for Mrs. T., since Leslie still refused to tell her the woman's real name-and even if he had slept with every one of those women in the photos, that was all right, too. Somehow, they did not matter, they were like the people in the fantasies she wrote out for him, not real at all. Leslie, for his part, said he did not mind if she went with other men. In fact, he wanted her to find people to sleep with, men, women, anyone, so long as she would tell him about it afterwards. On that one thing she was adamant, though: she would never go with anyone but him.

'Oh, yes,' he said, 'and what about old Billy Boy?'

That, she had discovered, was Leslie's one big weakness: she might not be jealous of his women, but he was certainly jealous of Billy. The thought of her husband so much as touching her made him furious. She had to pretend to him, had to swear to him, that she would not let Billy near her, ever again. It was hard to convince him. When he had first demanded that she promise it she had asked, offhandedly, almost laughing, just how she was supposed to fend Billy off, for he was a strapping fellow and insisted on his conjugal rights. Leslie had given her a frightening look then, his head at an angle and his eyes seeming to draw even closer together, and had said nothing; only when, a little later, they were in bed together, he had twisted her arm up behind her back until she thought it might break, and had breathed into her ear the one word, 'Remember.'

Yet he could be gentle, too, and even kind sometimes. She hated her hands, they had never been anything but square and blunt, but now they were all sinewy, the veins in the backs of them almost like ropes, a masseuse's hands, yet Leslie always said they were lovely, and twined his slender, pale fingers in her sausagey ones and lifted them to his lips and kissed the tips of them, one by one, smiling at her with his eyes.

He brought things for her to take when they were in bed together, pills, and drops of odd-tasting oily stuff out of little glass bottles. There was a powder that he mixed into sugar and coaxed her to eat, which just gave her an itch and made her feel bilious, and which only afterwards he told her was Spanish fly. Then one afternoon he produced a velvet-lined box with a hypodermic syringe in it, and a handful of ampoules of liquid clear as water, and offered her a 'toot,' as he called it. She drew the line at that. 'It's good for you,' he said, in that crooning way that he had when he was trying to get round her. 'It's made from poppies. It's like a health food.' Oh, no, she said, oh, no you don't. She had not worked in a chemist's shop all those years without being able to recognize dope when she saw it. He said she did not know what she was missing. All the same, when he had rolled up his sleeve to give himself the injection she noticed that he turned away from her and held his arm pressed in close against his side-how naked it was, suddenly, that arm, how naked and white-and she was reminded of a cat doing its business and trying not to be seen. Yet how beautiful he looked there, too, sitting half turned away from her on the bed with his leg bent in front of him and one foot on the floor, the overcast day's pale, dry light from the window falling across the side of his face, with its long, sharp jaw and sharply pointed chin. When the stuff had taken its effect he lay down on his side on the bed, and she lay down too and put her arms around him, and so they remained for a long time, so peaceful, he with a hand under his cheek, gazing up at the window, and she looking into his face, which seemed, with the window light still on it, to be made of silver, a different silver to his hair, and so like the face of a saint, a martyred saint, in an old painting. He slept for a while, breathing like a baby, and when he woke up they made love, and he was so dreamily tender that she almost cried in his arms. 'Next time,' he murmured into her hair, in a slowed-down, underwater voice, shivering a little, 'next time you'll have to try a toot of joy juice.'

She supposed she should not have let him come to the house. She supposed that was the worst thing she could have done to Billy, or would have been if he knew about it, which God forbid. Billy was away in Switzerland, hobnobbing with the swanks, and maybe it was out of resentment-before they were married he had been full of promises about taking her with him to Geneva, but he never had-that she said yes when Leslie asked if he could 'pop out' to Clontarf and see her. He was just itching to get into the house and have a look, of course, that was all; she knew that. She let him in from the laneway at the back, afraid some busybody on the street would spot him. She was determined to get him out again double-quick, for already she was having cold feet, but no sooner was he in the back door than he swept her into his arms and kissed her on the mouth so hard and deep that she forgot about the danger and the hurt she could be causing Billy.

Leslie walked all round the house, with his hands in his pockets and bouncing on his tiptoes-he had a way of walking that reminded her of a tennis player-smiling delightedly and saying how fascinating everything was, the wedding photos on the sideboard, the silver-plated tea service her Ma and Da had given her, Billy's salesmanship diploma in a gilt frame, and the Sacred Heart lamp and the reproduction of the Monarch of the Glen over the fireplace. She trailed behind him in silence. Instead of being pleased that he liked the place-her place, since Billy had no interest in it except as somewhere to eat and sleep and slump in an armchair on a Sunday afternoon listening to the football matches on the wireless-she felt a growing sense of doubt, of misgiving. The things after Leslie had looked at them seemed changed, dimmed, somehow, as if he had breathed on them and left them covered with a fine, gray mist that, unlike real mist, did not fade. But then he made her take him upstairs, into the bedroom, hers and Billy's, and took off her clothes in that slow, dreamy way that nearly drove her mad with desire for him, and they lay down on the bed, and she lost consciousness of everything except his lips, and his hands on her, and his pale, cool, glimmering skin pressing against hers.

Afterwards, of course, he had to have a toot, and she warned him not to forget to take all that stuff away with him, the needle and the empty vial and the cotton wool and the little bottle of alcohol he was so careful to swab his arm with before injecting himself. Those would be nice things for Billy to happen on when he came home.

That was the evening that she told him about the time in Dr. Kreutz's office when she had drunk the herbal tea and passed out. She had said to Leslie, while she was getting dressed, that she supposed he had got that stuff, the Spanish fly and the dope and so on, from the Doctor-nothing anymore would surprise her about the man she used to think so highly of-and then she heard herself blurting out about how she had woken up on the sofa that day feeling as if she had been hit over the head. No sooner had she spoken than she regretted it. Suddenly, for the first time, it was clear to her what had happened, what she had known without knowing had happened, and her heart froze. So that was the reason her clothes had felt as if they were on back to front. Why, the dirty old… Even though he was half doped Leslie had been listening, and had heard even more than she had said, for Leslie had an ear for such things. He was still in the bed, lying on his back with the sheet pulled up to his chin, like a patient after an operation; it gave her a shiver to see his head where she was so accustomed to seeing Billy's. He swiveled his eyes until the big pupils of them were focused on her, and waited, and of course she had to go on then, though she tried to make light of it. 'There must have been something in the tea,' she said, with a little laugh that sounded even to her a bit hysterical. She sat down on the bed to fasten her suspenders, her fingers nervously fumbling with the clips. 'I suppose it was something relaxing that he gives his clients. I must say, I did have a good sleep.' Leslie made no comment, only went on watching her, and then, slowly, he smiled. She knew that smile. It frightened her, though she tried not to show it. 'Right, mister,' she said, smacking her hands on her thighs and rising smartly to her feet, 'you better be off.' He made no move to get up, though, only turned his face away and sighed. His long, thin white feet were sticking out from under the sheet.

Again she had the icy sensation in her chest. If Kreutz had knocked her out to take pictures of her, what was he going to do with them?

She found out soon enough. When the morning post was delivered at the salon a couple of days later and she saw the big brown envelope, with the square handwriting on it that looked so innocent, somehow she knew straightaway what would be in it. She had a client on the table-she was getting to be good, really professional, at massage, even though she had no training and had only read it up in a book-but she had to stop immediately and wipe the oil off her hands and open the envelope, though it was addressed to Leslie. When she saw the photograph the blood seemed to drain straight down out of her brain and she almost fainted. She must have caught her breath out loud, for the client, a crotchety, fat old bitch with asthma, lifted herself up on her