Innocents (26 page)

‘How've you been?’

Your question seemed forced, formal; a matter of protocol.

Knowing in my heart that I'd lost you, I threw caution to the wind, and spoke with unguarded honesty.

‘Terrible,’ I told you, my eyes on yours, my eyelids drawn like open curtains, so that, for once, you could truly see right into the room beyond. ‘Miserable. I've been crying and crying.’

Framed in the doorway, you remained silent. Your head moved imperceptibly from side to side. This might have been an expression of disgust for my non-existent innocence; but then again, it may merely have reflected your own perplexity.

‘What about you?’

That familiar laugh through the nose, at the superfluity of the question. ‘About the same,’ you said. ‘Pretty miserable.’

Everything hung silent around us for a moment. Then you broke through the static air, moving towards me. Closer you came and closer. I couldn't move.

You put your arms around me.

I thought I'd disintegrate. I thought I'd open up, that every cut or scratch I'd ever suffered would unheal itself and flow again. I thought I'd bleed all away before your eyes, and soak into the carpet.

All my nerves were dead. I couldn't feel a thing, except a vague animal trembling deep within. Leaning back, you put your hands on my shoulders.

‘It's okay,’ you said, like the Risen Christ.

I found a tongue to speak, and the words came old and withered, dry and ancient, as clipped as the Sibyl's. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Don't be stupid!’

As you used to do, you smoothed back strands of hair behind my ear, smiling gently all the while.

It was infuriating, intolerable.

‘Didn't you read my letter?’

‘Course I did.’

‘It's all true,’ I told you bluntly.

‘I know.’

I stood before you, five foot two inches of stiff and bristling pride. I wanted to shout: ‘You
see
what I am? You
see
this? This creeping beast, which I with words and voice and gestures have contained?’ I bit down with my molars on the inside of my mouth. I thought I might cry from frustration.

‘You must hate me,’ I said.

Your mouth twisted awkwardly, with that familiar easy pity. Gently, you asked, ‘Why should I hate you?’

Now that my secret was out, I spoke without pseudo-emotion: one adult to another. ‘I'm a pervert,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders.

‘No, you aren't!’ you told me severely. ‘You're just a … a little
girl
!’

‘But I—’ I tried to insist.

Schoolmasterly, you asserted, ‘Perverts are people who
act
on their perversions.’

‘I did!’ I protested. There was some blockage in my throat which choked my voice. You kept on as though you hadn't heard.

‘They're everywhere,’ you told me earnestly. ‘There are brothels and bookshops full of them. They're all over the Internet, swapping pictures and e-mailing each other filthy messages. They steal children from parks. They leave their menace hanging around us like …’ You struggled for a metaphor. ‘
Smoke!
My sister had to check for madmen under the bed and killers behind the curtain
every night
before she could sleep! For all I know, she still does it. Oh, Angel …’ You shook your head. You swallowed. You rubbed your mouth with one hand. There were, I noticed with a shock of exquisite guilt, tears in your eyes.

Surely, surely, you couldn't be so badly mistaken as still to love me?

I wanted to ask, You don't still love me, do you? But I didn't.

My hand fluttered against your thigh. I winced against my familiar inability to make fine or gentle movements without trembling. ‘I'm shaking,’ I said. ‘I
always
shake.’

Pulling away, drawing back, looking at me squarely, you said, ‘Can't you understand? I love you
because
you shake.’

‘I can't say,
I love you
!’ I whined, in my petulant-little-girl voice. There were tears in my eyes. Real ones. ‘I can't even
smile
…’ I grimaced appealingly, through my tears. It was hopeless.

I pressed a finger to the corner of your eye, and then drew a snail-trail of tears down your cheek.

‘They look real,’ you told me.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But so do the fake ones!’

I needed you to understand. I widened my eyes in sincerity.

Hysteria welled in my gut. All the treasures of the world twinkled before me, in your green irises, and I was powerless to grasp them. I would have to watch as the world's substance and mine ripped them from my sight.

‘Even this—’ I pointed at my distraught face—‘it's fake!’

‘It doesn't matter,’ you said, running a finger down my cheek, just as you used to. ‘I'll believe you.’

My heart sank for my wickedness. ‘I'm terrible,’ I said.

‘You're a very good person.’ You sweated with the effort of trying to make me understand. ‘You've just been given a terrible
shape
. You've been very good, inside it.’

You looked straight at me, and in your face there was no trace of disgust, but only the most profound and loving pity.

You said, ‘You were only doing what comes naturally.’

And then something made itself clear to me. I learnt a truth.

It was a truth more harsh and holy than any that are simply to do with the way things are. It was higher and more profound than any of those interpersonal recipes I've discovered.

I understood that there is another path to innocence; that it can be attained, like wisdom. I knew that I am a kind of Holy Innocent, after all. One of God's special cases. Blundering around inside my own instincts, handicapped.

I'm like a Holy Idiot; a retarded child who is closer to Heaven because of his disability. A kind of holy pervert, who struggles every day to be good.

‘I just want …’ you said. ‘I just want to put all that away. All those dark things. I just want—’

You kissed me on the cheek, with your lips closed. It was infinitely soft and chaste. I nearly fainted.

‘You're such a
baby
!’ you whispered.

You're still my darling. You're just the same.

You're living as though faith has been restored to you.

You're so careful of me. You iron the sheets before you make the bed. You spend hours cooking. You make me swallow vitamin pills and drink extra milk.

You've been working on the house. You finished the walls upstairs. Now everything in the study is wrapped in splattered white sheets. You whistle endlessly while you paint. You whistle tunes from beginning to end, perfectly, without missing a note.

You laugh so intensely, when you catch my eye. You're sharing an understanding with me. I smile back, so you'll know I've understood.

I've found the perfect expression for those moments. It's like emergency joy. I smile suddenly, forcefully. It's as if I'm so happy that I've been left with no option but a huge, wordless grin.

You talk to me about your plans: to finish renovating the house; for the two of us to go overseas at the end of the year. I nod, lips parted, and seem enthusiastic. My eyes never glaze. I'm too careful for that. But when I'm sitting on your lap, and you're doing nothing but talk, sometimes I can't control the thoughts that come to me. They just slide into my mind.

More and more often, I find myself thinking about Mr Harrison.

Almost accidentally, I've wondered what he would think if he were made to understand about you and me. He could perhaps be shown the love bites on my neck when I raise my hand to ask a question. I could perhaps act caught out, and cover them with one hand, bristling with pride.

I could seem pitiable, manipulated, virtuous. I could seem as though I'd been taken advantage of, confused, made old. I could defend you, with tears in my eyes. He might touch my shoulder and say, ‘This should never have happened to you.’

One day, he might find himself so overwhelmed with pity that he kisses me.

I'm repairing the fort, shoring up the moat, massing the men, drilling the army, building tunnels deep below the earth. If I am stormed, routed, I shall at least have a retreat.