Medusa Frequency

20 The Visit

Melanie came to visit me with a bunch of grapes. ‘What brought on the angina?’ she said.

‘The head of Orpheus turned up as half a grapefruit and in an absent-minded moment I ate it.’

‘Perhaps that was your way of recognizing that you don’t need it any more.’

‘It’s the other way round: it doesn’t need me any more now that we’ve finished the story.’

‘Well, there you are then; you took it on yourself to finish the story and now you’ve done it and it’s off you. That’s more of a reason for not getting angina.’

‘Yes, but it’ll take some getting used to.’

‘Do you remember in The Tempest,’ she said, ‘Prospero says, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘That’s what I think you’ve been doing; and now that you’ve acknowledged it you can move on to something else.’

‘This thing of darkness is where my writing comes from.’

‘You mean your comics?’

‘No, I don’t mean my comics. Slope of Hell and World of Shadows weren’t comics, were they.’

‘No, but they were quite a few years back, weren’t they. What’s this thing of darkness done for you lately?’

‘Today is William Blake’s birthday,’ I said.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Nothing. He just came into my mind, that’s all. He said that what men and women require of each other are the lineaments of Gratified Desire.’

‘There’s more than one kind of desire that wants gratification,’ she said.

‘What kind were you thinking of?’

‘The desire to stop mucking about and get on with it. Have you started work on the film?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Right. I can see what’s coming: after a while you’ll leave the phone off the hook and stop answering the door and keep the blinds pulled down and newspapers and letters and bills will pile up in the hall and finally one day they’ll break down the door and there won’t be anybody there but the thing of darkness.’

‘Maybe that’s who’s been there all along. Gom Yawncher’s gone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was here in this ward and now he’s gone, handed in his dinner pail, picked up his cards, hopped the twig, slung his hook, pissed off out of this world.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and began to cry.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to burden you with it.’

‘Yes, you did.’

After a while the grapes were still there but she was gone. Pale wintry Sunday-afternoon sunlight on the grapes.