Still Waters

Seventeen

“How many words d’you know for vagina, Charlie?”

Resnick spluttered with surprise and set the cold penne arrabiata he was snacking on aside.

Hannah was sitting in her customary position, feet drawn up beneath her on the settee, lamp angled down behind her head, reading. For a change, no music was playing. The house was quiet, sealed in by the dark outside.

“I suppose,” Resnick said, “you’ve a good reason for asking?”

“Prudish, Charlie?”

“Probably.”

After several months of sleeping together, they both knew that to be true.

“This book I’m reading.” Hannah held up a slender hardback, the head and bare shoulders of a young woman filtered through blue on the cover, and across her skin, in red and lower case, the title, in the cut. “The woman in it, the one telling the story, she teaches English …”

“Like you.”

“Not at all like me. At least, not a lot. For one thing, she’s working in New York. Anyway, she’s writing this book, academic, about slang, different dialects. Every time she hears a new word, a different usage, she notes it down.”

“Like a word for vagina?”

“Exactly.”

“And there are a lot of those?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I mean in this book.”

“A lot.”

“Doesn’t sound like your usual kind of thing.”

“I’m reading it for this day school of Jane’s, Healing the Cut.”

“That’s what it’s called?”

“I thought you knew.”

“If I did, I forgot. But that’s where the name comes from, that book?”

“Yes.”

Resnick nodded. “And that’s one of those words, cut, the ones you were asking about?”

“Yes.”

With a sigh, Resnick turned back to his supper, broke off a piece of bread, and dipped it into the sauce. “What’s it like?” he asked a few minutes later. “I mean, is it any good?”

“Yes. I mean, she can clearly write …”

“But?”

“There’s so much violence. Not up front, but the threat of it, always there in the background. Women being violated, awful things happening to them. And she seems-the woman in the story-she seems attracted to it, almost. Excited.”

“You don’t like that?”

Hannah was thoughtful. “I don’t trust myself for liking it.”

“No one says you have to finish it.”

Hannah smiled. “I want to find out what happens.”

“Your friend, Jane,” Resnick asked later as they were on their way up to bed, “that business with her husband, you haven’t heard anything else?”

“No, not a thing.”

Jane was sitting in the dining room, one of those awful bloody paintings Alex had insisted upon buying staring down at her from the opposite wall. Her watch, which she had taken off and laid on the table, told her it was not so many minutes short of twelve o’clock. Folders and papers and books were scattered in ragged piles across polished oak. Of course, she would be tired in the morning, but at least now, with Alex in bed, she had peace and quiet. And the work had to be done.

She was just thinking about going into the kitchen, making another cup of coffee to keep her going, when she heard the faint creak of the stair.

Holding her breath, she tensed for the opening of the door, but after a pause, the footsteps continued on along the passageway. The sudden jet of water onto metal, the opening of a cupboard door, dull and low, the closing of the fridge. Jane allowed herself a smile: two minds, for a change, with a similar thought.

Alex would do this when he couldn’t sleep, fix himself a warm drink and sit up in bed, pillows propped around him, reading some research article on dentistry with the World Service faintly churning in the background: our correspondent in Delhi, our correspondent in Dakar.

Alex surprised her by coming in.

“Still at it?”

“What does it look like?”

“Here, I thought you might like this.” On a small tray, he had set out a cup and saucer, coffee, milk, an arc of biscuits. “I made decaf. I thought it best.”

“Thank you.”

“The least I could do.”

He moved away-but only a pace-and stood behind her, Jane aware of his closeness, his breathing; on the page beneath her eyes words jumped and danced, suddenly unintelligible.

“Go on, then. Don’t let it get cold.”

“In a minute.”

“It won’t be the same.”

With almost exaggerated care, Jane poured the coffee from its china jug and added milk.

“No sugar?”

“You know I don’t …”

“This late at night, I thought for the energy maybe.”

“No.”

“No, of course. Sweet enough.” She drank without tasting. “Alex …”

“Mmm?”

“Please don’t stand there.”

“What? I’m in your light?”

“No, it’s just …”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. It doesn’t matter, really.”

“Good.”

Blinking her way into focus, Jane fought to concentrate. At her back, Alex started humming a tune, something vaguely classical and then, as if realizing what he was doing, abruptly stopped. Reaching forward, he grazed the knuckles of his right hand gently across her cheek.

Stifling a shout, Jane froze.

Slowly, Alex’s fingers moved down inside her top, turning beneath her arm until they were touching her breast.

“Alex, what are you doing?”

“I should have thought you’d have known.”

“Why are you doing this now?”

“You shouldn’t have to ask.”

With a sigh, Jane closed her eyes and leaned forward, trapping his hand between the edge of the table and her breast. Angling his head, Alex kissed the nape of her neck, ran the tip of his tongue around the curling edges of her ear.

“Come to bed,” he said.

“Alex, I can’t …”

“Come to bed.”

Shaking her head, she straightened her back and shook him free. Black silk robe, bare feet, Alex stood looking at her, arms folded now across his chest.

“Alex, I’m sorry …”

“Yes.”

“I have to finish this.”

“Yes.”

“Really, I …”

“Jane, I understand.”

Slowly, she began to turn away. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“That’s okay.”

When she heard him move toward the door and ease it open, one of the knots in her stomach slipped free.

“Jane …”

“Mmm?”

“When you come up, I’ll be waiting …”

“Charlie!”

At the sound of Hannah’s voice, Resnick broke from sleep, pushing himself up on one arm, Hannah already sitting up, bent forward, her body ploughed in sweat.

“Oh, Charlie!”

“What? What is it?”

Her hair was lank and damp and dark against her face.

“What happened?”

She grasped one of his hands between hers and squeezed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“It was just a dream. A stupid dream.” Lowering herself back down, she kissed him on the cheek. “Just hold me a little, I’ll be all right.” And hold her he did, arms warm around her, drawing out the clammy coldness of her skin.

“Charlie,” she said again a while later, speaking out into the darkness; but by then he was lost in sleep.