The Affirmation

"I want to go to Winho," she said.

"Let's stay one more night."

She seized my arm and there was the force of determination in her eyes.

"We must go somewhere else."

It was the eighth day, and already I could hardly distinguish the islands we had visited. "I'm tired of moving on. Let's not travel for a while."

"But we hardly know each other. Each island reflects us."

"I can't tell the diffenence."

"Because you don't know how to see. You have to surrender to the islands, become enraptured by them."

"We don't get a chance. As soon as we land in one place we set off for another."

Seri gestuned impatiently. The boat was approaching the quay, the hot smell of diesel fumes drifting around it.

"I told you," she said. "In the islands you can live forever. But you won't know how until you find the right place."

"At the moment I wouldn't know the right place if we found it."

We sailed to Winho, and from there to more islands. A few days later we were on Semell, and I noticed that from there ships sailed regularly to Jethra. I was frustrated with the journey, and disappointed with what I had learned about Seri. She transmitted her restlessness to me, and I began to think of Gracia and to wonder how she was. I had been away too long, and should not have abandoned her. Guilt grew in me.

I told Seri my feelings. "If I go back to Jethra, will you come with me?"

"Don't leave me."

"I want you to come with me."

"I'm scared you'll go back to Gracia and forget about me. There are more islands to visit."

"What happens when we reach the last one?" I said.

"There is no last one. They go on forever."

"That's what I thought."

We were in the central square of Semell Town, and it was noon. Old men sat in the shade, the shops were shuttered, in the olive trees growing on the rocky hills behind the town we could hear goat bells, and a donkey braying. We were drinking iced tea, and the timetable from the shipping line lay on the table between us. Seri called the waiter and ordered a spiced pastry.

"Peter, you're not ready to return yet. Don't you see that?"

"I'm worried about Gracia. I shouldn't have left her."

"You had no choice." A motorboat started up in the harbour; in the slumbering heat it seemed as if it were the only mechanical sound in all the islands. "Don't you remember what I told you? You must surrender to the islands, submerge yourself in them. Through them you can escape to find yourself. You've given yourself no chance. It's too soon to return."

"You're just distracting me," I said. "I shouldn't be here. It feels wrong. . . it's not for me. I must go home."

"And you'll go on destroying Gracia."

"I don't know."

In the morning a ship called in Semell, and we boarded her. It was a short voyage--two and a half days, with two ports of call on the way--but as soon as we were on board it was almost as if we were in Jethra itself. The ship was registered there, and the food in the dining saloon had the dull familiarity of home. Most of the other passengers were Jethrans. Seri and I barely spoke to each other. It had been a mistake to go with her to the islands; they were not what I expected.

We docked in Jethra in the late afternoon, and disembarked quickly. We rode the escalator to street level, jostled by the crowds of rush-hour commuters. On the street, traffic rushed past and I glanced at newspaper placards: ambulance drivers were threatening to strike, and the OPEC countries had announced another oil-price increase.

I said: "Are you going to come with me?"

"Yes, but only as far as Gracia's flat. You don't want me anymore."

But suddenly I did, and I took her hand and held it tightly. I sensed that she was about to recede from me again, as Jethra had receded even before I had walked in its streets.

"What am I going to do, Seri? I know you're right, but somehow I can't go through with it."

"I'm not going to try to influence you anymore. You know how to find the islands, and I'll always be there."

"Does that mean you're going to wait for me?"

"It means you'll always be able to find me."

We were standing in the centre of the pavement while the crowds pushed by. Now that I was back in London the urgency of my return had left me.

"Let's go to our café," I said.

"Do you know how to find it?"

We walked along Praed Street, but it was all too emphatic. At the corner with Edgware Road I began to despair.

Then Seri said: "I'll show you."

She took my hand, and after we had gone a short distance I heard a tram bell. I sensed that an almost subliminal change had come over the city's appearance. We turned into one of the broad boulevards that ran through the fashiomiable residential areas, and before long came to the intersection where the pavement café was situated. We sat there for a long time, until after sunset, but then I felt the restlessness growing in me again.

Seri said: "There's a sailing this evening. We could still catch it."

I shook my head. "There's no question of it."

Without waiting to see what she would do, I left some coins on the table-top and started to walk northwands. It was a warm evening, by London standards, and there were many people about. Many of the pubs had ovenspilled into the streets, and the restaurants were doing good business.

I was aware that Seri was following me, but she said nothing and I did not look back at her. I had tired of her, had used her up. She offered only escape . . . but escape from, not to, so there was nothing to replace what I left behind.

But in one sense she had been right: I had needed to see the islands to find myself. Something had been purged from me now.

In the emptiness that remained, I recognized my mistake. I had sought to understand Gnacia through Seri, whereas in reality she was my own complement.

She fulfilled what I lacked, became the embodiment of that. I thought she explained Gracia, but in reality she only defined me to myself.

Walking in these streets, which had become ondinary, I saw a new face of reality.

Seri soothed, where Gracia abraded. Seri aroused, where Gracia discouraged. Seri was calm, where Gracia was neurotic. Seri was bland and pale, and Gracia was turbulent, effervescent, moody, eccentric, loving and alive. Seri was bland, above all.

A creation of my manuscript, she was intended to explain Gracia to me.

But the events and the places described in the manuscript were imaginative extensions of myself, and so were the characters. I had thought they stood for other people, but now I realized they were all different manifestations of myself.

It was dark when we reached the road where Gracia had her flat. I walked more quickly until I could see the house. I saw a light in the front room of the basement. As usual, the curtains had not been drawn, and I turned away, not wanting to see inside.

"You're going to go in and see her, aren't you?" Seri said.

"Yes, of course."

"What about me?"

"I don't know, Seri. The islands weren't what I wanted. I can't hide anymore."

"Do you love Gracia?"

"Yes."

"You know you're going to destroy her again?"

"I don't think so."

What I had done to hurt Gracia most of all was to take refuge in my fantasies. I had to reject them.

Seri said: "You think I don't exist, because you think you created me.

But I've got a life of my own, Peter, and if you found me in that you'd know it isn't true. So far you've only seen a part of me."

"I know," I said, but she was only a part of myself. She was my embodiment of the urge to run, to hide from others. She represented the idea that my misfortunes came from outside, whereas I was learning that they came from within. I wanted to be strong, but Seri weakened me.

Seri said, and I heard bitterness--"Then do whatever you want."

I sensed she was receding from me, and I stretched out to take her hand.

She moved it adroitly away.

"Please don't go," I said.

Seri said--I know you're going to forget me, Peter, and perhaps it's as well. I'll be wherever you find me.

She walked away, her white shirt luminous in the city lights. I watched her, thinking of the islands, thinking of the falsehoods in me she represented. Her slim figure, erect and lithe, the short hair that swung slightly as she walked. She left me, and before she had reached the corner of the street I could see her no more.

Alone with the parked cars I felt a sudden and exhilarating sense of relief. However Seri had intended it, she had released me from my own self-fulfilling escapes. I was free of the definition I had made for myself, and at last I felt able to be strong.

22

Beyond the parked Australian minibus, Gracia's window shone orange-hued behind palings. I walked forward, determined to reconcile our difficulties.

When I reached the edge of the pavement I could see down into the room, and I saw Gracia for the first time.

She was sitting on the bed in full view of the road. She was upright, with her legs crossed beneath her. She held a cigarette in one hand and was gesticulating with the other as she spoke. It was a pose I had seen her in many times; she was active in conversation, was talking about something that interested her. Surprised, because I had assumed she would be alone, I backed away before she noticed me. I moved to a place from where I could see the rest of the room.

A young woman was there with her, curled up in the only chair in the room. I had no idea who she was. She was about Gracia's age, dressed conventionally, weaning spectacles. She was listening to what Gracia was saying, nodding from time to time, speaking infrequently.

When I was sure neither of them had seen me I moved in a little closer.

An ashtray full of cigarette ends was on the floor by the bed. Two empty coffee mugs were beside it. The room looked as if it had been recently tidied: the books on the shelves were upright and in neat rows, there were no clothes in the usual corner and the drawers of the chest were closed. Any remaining signs of Gracia's attempted suicide had long since vanished: the furniture had been repositioned, the damage to the door repaired.

Then I noticed there was a small sticking plaster on the underside of Gracia's wrist. She seemed totally unaware of it, using that arm as freely as she used the other.

She was talking a lot, but more important she seemed happy. I saw her smile several times, and once she laughed aloud with that sideways tilt to the head that I had seen so often, in the old days.

I wanted to hurry in and see her, but the presence of the other woman held me back. I was gladdened by Gracia's appearance. She was as thin as ever, but that aside she radiated good health and mental animation: she reminded me of Greece and sunbathing and retsina, where we began. She looked five years younger than she had the last time I saw her, her clothes seemed clean and freshly pressed, and her hair had been cut and restyled.

I watched the two women for a few minutes, then, to my relief, the stranger stood up. Gracia smiled, said something, and they both laughed. The woman went to the door.

Not wishing to be seen lurking around, I walked a short distance down the road and stood on the other side. After a minute on two, the woman came up to the road and let herself into one of the parked cars. As soon as she had driven away I walked quickly across the road and slipped my key into the lock.

The lights were on in the hall, and the air smelled of furniture polish.

"Gracia? Where are you?" The bedroom door was open, but she was not there. I heard the lavatory being flushed, and the door was opened.

"Gracia, I'm back!"

I heard her say: "Jean, is that you?" Then she appeared, and saw me.

"Hello, Gracia," I said.

"I thought--Oh my God, it's you! Where have you been?"

"I had to go away for a few--"

"What have you been doing? You look like a tramp!"

"I've been. . . sleeping rough," I said. "I had to get away."

We were standing a few paces apart, not smiling, not moving to embrace each other. I had an inexplicable thought, that this was Gracia, the real Gracia, and I could hardly believe it. She had assumed an unearthly, _ideal_

quality in my mind, something lost and unattainable. And yet she stood there, real and substantial, the very best Gracia, untroubled and beautiful without that haunting terror behind her eyes.

"Where were you? The hospital was trying to trace you, they contacted the police--Where did you go?"

"I left London for a while, because of you." I wanted to hug her, feel her body against me, but there was something in her that kept me at a distance. "What about you? You look so much better!"

"I'm all right now, Peter. No thanks to you." She looked away. "I shouldn't say that. They told me you saved my life."

I went to her and tried to kiss her, but she tunned her face so that all I could do was touch her cheek. When I put up my arms to hold her, she stepped back. I followed her, and we went into the cool dark sitting room, where the television and hi-fi were, the room we had rarely used.

"What's the matter, Gracia? Why won't you kiss me?"

"Not now. I wasn't expecting you, that's all."

"Who's Jean?" I said. "Is that the girl who was here?"

"Oh, she's one of my social workers. She calls every day to make sure I'm not going to do myself in. They look after me, you see. After they discharged me they found out I had tried it before, and now they keep an eye on me. They think it's dangerous for me to live alone."

"You're looking terrific," I said.

"I'm all right now. I won't do it again. I've come through all that."

There was an edge to her voice, an inner hardness, and it repelled me.

It felt as if it was intended to repel.

"I'm sorry if I seemed to abandon you," I said. "They told me you were being looked after. I thought I knew why you had done it, and I had to get away."

"You don't have to explain. It doesn't matter anymore."

"What do you mean? Of course it still matters!"

"To you.. . on to me?"

I stared at her in a futile way, but she gave no hint by her expression that might help me.

"Are you angry with me?" I said.

"Why should I be?"

"Because I ran out on you."

"No . . . not angry."

"What then?"

"I don't know." She moved about the room, but not in the restless way I used to know. Now she was being evasive. This room, like the bedroom, had been tidied and polished. I hardly recognized it. "Let's go in the front. I want a cigarette."

I followed her into the bedroom, and while she sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette, I drew the curtains. She watched me, said nothing. I sat down in the chair the social worker had been in.

"Gracia, tell me what happened to you . . . in the hospital."

"They patched me up and sent me home. That's all, really. Then the social services found a file on me, and they've been hassling me a bit. Jean's O.K., though. She'll be glad you've come back. I'll ring her in the morning and tell her."

"What about you? Are you glad I'm back?"

Gracia smiled as she reached down to flick ash off her cigarette. I sensed that I had said something ironic.

"What are you smiling at?" I said.

"I needed you when I came home, Peter, but I didn't _want_ you. If you had been here you'd only have screwed me up again, but the social people would have left me alone. I was relieved you weren't here. It gave me a chance."

"Why would I have screwed you up?"

"Because you always did! It's what you've been doing ever since we met."

Gracia was trembling, picking at her fingernails while the cigarette burned upside down in her hand. "When I came home all I wanted was to be alone, to think for myself and work things out, and you weren't here and it was just what I wanted."

I said: "Then I shouldn't have come back at all."

"I didn't want you here then. There's a difference."

"So you want me now?"

"No. I mean, I don't know. I needed to be alone and I got that. What happens next is something else."

We both went silent, probably sensing the same dilemma. We both knew we were dangerous to each other while desperately needing each other. There was no national way of talking about that: either we acted it out by living together again, on we talked about it in highly changed emotional terms.

Gracia was struggling to be calm; I wanted to use my new inner strength.

We were still alike, and perhaps that was what doomed us. I had left her to try to understand myself better, she had needed a space alone. I felt intimidated by the changes around her: the cleaned and tidied flat, the changed hair, the outward rehabilitation. She made me aware of my unkempt, unshaven appearance, my unwashed clothes, my smelly body.

But I too had been through a process of recovery, and because it did not show I needed to tell her about it.

I said eventually: "I'm stronger too, Gracia. I know you'll think I'm only saying that, but I really mean it. It's why I had to go away."

Gracia looked up from her silent regard of the freshly vacuumed carpet.

"Go on. I'm listening."

"I thought you had done it because you hated me."

"No, I was _scared_ of you."

"All right. But you did it because of me, because of what we had become to each other. I understand that now . . . but there was something else. You had been reading my manuscript."

"Your what?"

"My manuscript. I wrote my autobiography, and it was here. On the bed, the day I found you. You had obviously been reading it, and I knew you were upset by it."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Gracia said.

"You must remember!" I looked around the room, realizing that since returning I had not seen the manuscript anywhere. I felt a _frisson_ of alarm: had Gracia destnoyed it or thrown it away? "It was a heap of paper, which I kept bundled up. Where is it now?"

"I put all your stuff in the other room. I've been cleaning the place."

I left her and hurried through to the sitting room. Beside the stereo record player, by the records--mine neatly segregated from hers--was a small pile of my books. Underneath, held together with two crossing elastic bands, was my manuscript. I snapped the bands away and turned a few pages: it was all there. A few sheets were out of order, but it was intact. I returned to the bedroom, where Gracia had lit another cigarette.

"This is what I meant," I said, holding it up for her to see. I was immeasurably relieved that it was safe. "You were reading this, weren't you?

That day."

Gracia narrowed her eyes, though I sensed it was not to see more cleanly. "I want to ask you about that--"

"Let me explain," I said. "It's important. I wrote this while I was in Herefordshire, before I went to Felicity's. I'm sure it's what was causing the trouble between us. You thought I was seeing someone else, but really I was just thinking about what I had written. It was my way of finding myself. But I never really finished it. When you were in hospital, and I knew you were being looked after, I went away to try to finish it."

Gracia said nothing, but continued to stare at me.

"Please say something," I said.

"What does the manuscript say?"

"But you read it! Or you read some of it."

"I looked at it, Peter, but I didn't read any of it."

I put the pages down, automatically reshaping them into a neat pile before letting go. I had not even thought about my writing while I was in the islands. Why was the truth so difficult to tell?

"I want you to read it," I said. "You've got to understand."

Gracia again went silent, staring down at her ashtray.

"Are you hungry?" she said at last.

"Don't change the subject."

"Let's talk about this later. I'm hungry, and you look as if you haven't had a meal in days."

"Can't we finish this now?" I said. "It's very important."

"No, I'm going to cook something. Why don't you have a bath? Your clothes are still here."

"All right," I said.

The bathroom was also fastidiously clean. It was free of the customary heaps of dirty clothes, empty toothpaste tubes and used toilet-roll wrappers.

When I flushed the lavatory the bowl filled with fizzy blue water. I bathed quickly, while in the next room I could hear Gracia moving about as she cooked. Afterwards, I shaved and put on clean clothes. I weighed myself on her scales, and found I had lost weight while I was away.

We ate at the table in the back room. It was a simple meal of rice and vegetables, but it was the best food I had eaten in a long time. I was wondering how I had survived while I was away, where I had slept, what I had eaten. Where had I been?

Gracia was eating at a moderate pace, but unlike her old self she finished the meal. She had become like someone I barely knew, yet in the same transformation she had become recognizable. She was the Gracia I had often willed her to be: free of her neuroses, or apparently so, free of the inner tension and unhappiness, free of the turbulence that brought the quicksilver moods. I sensed a new determination in her. She was making an immense effort to straighten herself out, and it made me admire her and feel warm towards her.

As we finished I felt content. The physical novelty of clean body and clothes, of a full stomach, of the belief that I had emerged from a long tunnel of uncertainty, made me feel we could start again.

Not after Castleton; that had been premature for both of us.

Gracia made some coffee, and we took the earthenware mugs through to the bedroom. We both felt more at ease there. Outside, can doors occasionally slammed, and from time to time we heard people passing the window. I sat with Gracia on the bed: she was facing me, her legs crossed beneath her. Our coffee mugs were on the floor beside us, the ashtray was between us.

She was quiet, so I said: "What are you thinking?"

"About us. You're confusing me."

"Why?"

"I didn't expect you back. Not yet, anyway."

"Why does that confuse you?"

"Because you've changed and I'm not sure how. You say you're better, that everything will be all right now. But we've both said that before, we've both heard it."

"Don't you believe me?"

"I believe you mean it . . . of course I do. But I'm still scared of you, what you could do to me."

I was lightly stroking the back of her hand; it was the first real intimacy between us, and she had not backed away.

I said: "Gracia, I love you. Can't you trust me?"

"I'll try." But she was not looking at me.

"Everything I've done in the last few months has been because of you. It took me away from you, but I've seen I was wrong."

"What are you talking about?"

"What I wrote in my manuscript, and what it has made me do."

"I don't want to talk about that, Peter." She was looking at me now, and again I saw that strange narrowing of her eyes.

"You said you would."

I swung my legs off the bed, crossed the room and picked up the thick wad of pages from where I had left them. I sat down again opposite her, but she had pulled her hand back.

"I want to read you some of it," I said. "Explain what it means."

While I spoke I was turning the pages, looking for those that had got out of order. They were mostly near the beginning. I noticed that many of the sheets had specks of dried blood on them, and the edges of the pages had a broad smudge of brown down them. Glancing through, I saw Seri's name prominently written, again and again. I would come to that eventually, explain who Seri was, what she had become to me, what I now understood of her. All that, and the state of mind the manuscript represented, the islands, the escapes, the difficult relationship with Felicity. And the higher truths the story contained, the definition of myself, the way it had made me static and inward-looking, emotionally petrified.

Gracia had to be brought into it, so that I could at last be brought out of it.

"Peter, you scare me when you get like this." She had lit a cigarette, her commonplace action, but this time there was an old tension in her. The match, flung down in the ashtray, continued to burn.

"Get like what?" I said.

"You'll upset me again. Don't go on."

"What's wrong, Gracia?"

"Put those papers away. I can't stand this!"

"I've got to explain to you."

She ran her hand acnoss her temple, her fingers wildly combing the hair.

The demure new hair style became tangled. Her nervousness was infectious; I reacted to it like I reacted to her sexuality. I could not resist it, yet it rarely satisfied either of us. I saw then what had been missing between us since I returned, because as she moved her arm her blouse lightly compressed her breast, and I wanted her body. It took the madness in us both to bring out the sex.

"What are you explaining, Peter? What's left to say?"

"I've got to read you this."

"Don't torment me! I'm not mad . . . you've written _nothing!_"

"It's how I defined myself. Last year, when I was away."

"Peter, are you crazy? Those pages are blank!"

I spread the battered pages across the bed, like a conjuror fans a pack of cards. The words, the story of my life, the definition of my identity, lay before me. It was all there: the lines of typewritten text, the frequent corrections, the pencillings and notes and deletions. Black type, blue ballpoint, grey pencil, and brown whale-shaped droplets of dried blood. It was all of me.

"There's nothing there, Peter! For God's sake, it's blank paper!"

"Yes, but--"

I stared down at the pages, remembering my white room in Edwin's cottage. That room had achieved a state of higher reality, of deeper truth, one that transcended literal existence. So too was my manuscript. The words were there, inscribed indelibly on the paper, exactly as I had written them.

Yet for Gracia, unseeing of the mind that had made them, they were non-existent. I had written and I had not written.

The story was there, but the words were not.

"What are you looking at?" Gracia cried, her voice rising as if frantic.

She was twisting one of the rings on her night hand.

"I'm reading."

I had found the page I wanted to show her: it was in Chapter Seven, where Seri and I first met in Muriseay Town. It paralleled our own first meeting, on the island of Kos, in the Aegean. Seri was said to be working on the staff of the Lotterie-Collago, whereas Gnacia had been on holiday; Muriseay Town was a clamorous city, and Kos had just a tiny port. The events differed, but they had the higher truth of feeling. Gracia would recognize it all.

I separated the page from the others and offered it to her. She put it on the bed between us. She had it the wrong way up.

"Why won't you look at it?" I said.

"What are you trying to do to me?"

"I just want you to understand. Please read it."

She snatched up the page, crumpled it in her hand and threw it across the room. "I can't read blank paper!"

Her eyes were moist, and she had pulled the ring until it had come off.

Realizing at last that she could not make the necessary imaginative leap, I said, as gently as possible: "Can I explain?"

"No, don't say anything. I've had enough. Are you living in total fantasy? What else do you imagine? Do you know who I am, who I _really_ am? Do you know where you are or what you're doing?"

"You can't read the words," I said.

"There's nothing there. Nothing."

I got up from the bed and retrieved the screwed-up page. 1 flattened it out with the palm of my hand, and returned it to its connect position. I began to collect the sheets, pushing them into their reassuringly familiar bulk.

"You've got to understand this," I said.

Gracia lowered her head, pressing a hand oven her eyes. I heard her say, indistinctly: "It's happening all oven again."

"What is?"

"We can't go on, you must see that. Nothing's changed." She wiped her eyes with a tissue. Leaving her cigarette to smoulder in the ashtray, she walked quickly from the room. I heard her in the hallway. She picked up the phone, and she dialled. After a moment she pushed in a coin, with that mechanical, money-box sound.

Although she spoke softly, as if her back were turned against me, I heard her say: "Steve . . . ? Yes, it's me. Can you put me up tonight? . . .

I'm all right, really. Just for tonight. . . . Yes, he's back. I don't know what happened. Everything's fine. . . . No, I'll come on the Tube. I'm all night, really. . . . In about an hour? Thanks."

I was standing when she came back into the noom. She stubbed out her cigarette, and turned to face me. She seemed composed.

"Did you hear any of that?" she said.

"Yes. You're going to Steve's."

"I'll come back in the morning. Steve will drop me off on his way to work. Will you still be here?"

"Gracia, please don't go. I won't talk about my manuscript."

"Look, I've just got to calm down a little, talk to Steve. You've upset me. I wasn't expecting you back yet."

She was moving about the room, collecting her cigarettes and matches, her bag, a book. She took a bottle of wine from the cupboard, then went to the bathroom. A few moments later she was standing in the hall by the bedroom door, checking her purse for her keys, a supermarket carrier bag swinging from her wrist with her overnight toilet things, and her wine bottle.

I went out and stood with her.

"I can't believe this," I said. "Why are you running away from me?"

"Why did _you_ nun away?"

"That's what I was trying to explain."

She wore a non-committal expression, avoiding my eyes. I knew she was making an effort to stay in control of herself; in the old days we would have talked ourselves into exhaustion, gone to bed, made love, continued in the morning. Now she had terminated the whole thing: the phone call, the abrupt departure, the bottle of wine.

Even as she stood there, waiting for me to let her go, she was already absent, halfway to the Tube station.

I held her arm. This made her look at me, but then away again.

"Are you still in love with me?" I said.

"How can you ask that?" she said. I waited, deliberately manipulating with silence. "Nothing's changed, Peter. I tried to kill myself because I loved you, because you didn't take any notice of me, because it was impossible being with you. I don't want to die, but when I get upset I can't control myself. I'm scared of what you might do to me." She took a deep breath, but it was uneven, and I knew she was suppressing tears. "There's something deep inside you I can't touch. I feel it most when you retreat, when you were talking about your bloody manuscript. You're going to make me insane!"

"I came home because I have come out of myself," I said.

"No . . . no, it's not true. You're deceiving yourself, and you're trying to deceive me as well. Don't ever do that, not again. I can't cope!"

She broke down then, and I released her arm. I tried to pull her against me, to hold her and be comforting, but she dragged herself away, weeping. She rushed through the front door, slamming it behind her.

I stood in the hall, listening to the imagined echoes of the slam.

I returned to the bedroom and sat for a long while on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet, the wall, the curtains. After midnight I bestirred myself and tidied up the flat. I emptied the ashtrays and washed them up with the supper dishes and the coffee mugs, leaving them all to drain on the side.

Then I found my old leather holdall, and packed it with as many of my clothes as I could get in. I packed the manuscript last, cramming it down on top. I checked that all the electricity switches were off, that no taps were dripping. As I left, I turned off all the lights.

I walked down to Kentish Town Road, where late traffic went past. I was too tired to want to sleep rough again, and thought I would find a cheap hotel for the night. I remembered a street near Paddington where there were several, but I wanted to get out of London. I stood undecided.

I was numbed by Gracia's rejection of me. I had returned to her with no idea of what I intemided to say, on of what might happen, but had felt my new internal strength would solve all that was wrong. Instead, she was stronger than me.

The zip fastener of my holdall was open, and I could see the manuscript inside. I took it out and turned the pages in the light of a street lamp. The story lay there for me to see, but the words had gone. Some of the pages had typewriting on them, but it was always scribbled over. I saw names flip past: Kalia, Muriseay, Seri, Ia, Mulligayn. Gracia's blood splashes remained. The only coherent words, undeleted, were on the last page. These were the words of the sentence I had never completed.

I stuffed the pages back in the bag, and squatted down in the recessed doorway of a shop. If the pages had become unworded, if the story was now untold, then it meant I could start again.

It was now more than a year since I had been in Edwin's cottage, and much had happemied in my life that was not described in the manuscript. My stay at the cottage itself, my weeks at Felicity's house, my return to London, my discovery of the islands.

Above all, the manuscript did not contain a description of its own writing, and the discoveries I had made.

Sitting there in the draughty shop doorway, my holdall clutched between my knees, I knew that I had returned prematurely to Gracia. My definition of myself was incomplete. Seri had been right: I needed to immerse myself totally in the islands of the mind.

Excitement coursed through me as I thought of the challenge ahead. I left the shop doorway and walked quickly in the direction of central London.

Tomonnow I should make plans, find somewhere to live, perhaps take a job. I would write when I could, construct my inner world and descend into it. There I could find myself, there I could live, there I could find rapture. Gracia would not reject me again.

I felt as if I were alone in the city, with the vacant illuminated shop windows, the darkened homes, the deserted pavements, the glowing advertisements. I felt a ripple of my awareness spreading outwards, encompassing the whole of London, centred on myself. I strode past the rows of parked cars, the uncollected refuse bags, the discarded plastic cartons and drink cans. I hurried through intersections where traffic lights changed for absent cars, past walls defaced with spray-can graffiti, past shuttered offices and gated Underground stations. The buildings stood high and dim around me.

Ahead was the prospect of islands.

23

I was imagining Seri was on the ship with me. After leaving Hetta, my temporary refuge from the clinic, we had called first at Collago, and I knew it was possible she had boarded there. I stood amidships while we were in the harbour, covertly watching the passengers embark, and I had not seen her among them; even so, I could have missed seeing her.

For the whole of the voyage, from Hetta to Jethra, via Muriseay, I was glimpsing her. Sometimes it was a sight of her at the other end of the ship: a blonde head held in a certain way, a combination of clothes' colours, a distinctive walk. Once it was a particular scent I associated with her, detected almost subliminally in the crowded saloon. A name kept coming distractingly to mind: Mathilde, whom once I had mistaken for Seri. I searched my manuscript for some reference to her.

I prowled the ship obsessively at such times, looking for Seri, although not necessarily wanting to find her. I needed to resolve the uncentainty, because in a contradictory way I both willed her to be on board the ship with me, and not. I was lonely and confused, and she had created me after the treatment; at the same time, I had to reject her worldview to he able to find myself.

This delusion of Seri was part of a larger duality.

I was perceiving with two minds. I was what Seri and Lareen had made me, and I was what I had discovered of myself in the unaltered manuscript.

I accepted the uncomfortable reality of the overcrowded ship, the circuitous passage across the Midway Sea, the islands we called at, the confusion of cultures and dialects, the strange food, the heat and the stunning scenery. All this was solid and tangible around me, yet internally I knew none of it could be real.

It scared me to know there was this dichotomy in the perceived world, as if to stop believing it could cause the ship to vanish from beneath me.

I felt prominent on the ship because I was central to its continued existence. This was my dilemma. I knew I did not belong in the islands. Inside me I recognized a deep and consistemit truth about my identity: I had discovered myself through the metaphors of my manuscript. But the outer world, perceived anecdotally, had a plausible solidity and confusion. It was random, it was out of control, it lacked story.

I best understood this when I considered the islands.

It had seemed to me, as I recovered from the operation, that as I learned about the Dream Archipelago I was actually creating it in my mind. I had felt my awareness of it spreading outwards.

At different times I had imagined it differently, as comprehension changed. Because I was limited in my imaginative vocabulary, I had built up my creation slowly. At first the islands were mere shapes. Then colour was added--bold, clashing primaries--then they were bedecked with flowers and swarmed by binds and insects, and encrusted with buildings, impovenished by deserts, crowded with people, choked with jungle, lashed by tropical storms and swept by surging tides. These imagined islands at first bore no nelation to Collago, the place of my spiritual birth, then one day Seri had passed the apparently innocuous information that Collago itself was a pant of the Archipelago. Instantly, my mental construct of the islands changed: the sea was filled with Collagos. Later, still learning, I continued to modify. As I developed what I called taste, I imagined the islands from aesthetic or moral principles, endowing them with romantic, cultural and historical qualities.

Even so, endlessly modified, there had been a neatness to my concept of the islands.

Their reality, as seen from the ship, was therefore changed with surprise, the true relish of travel.

I was entranced by the ever-changing scenery. The islands changed, one from another, with latitude, with subsea geology, with vegetation, with commercial or industrial or agricultural exploitation. One group of islands, marked on my charts as the Olldus Group, was disfigured by centuries of vulcanism: here the beaches were black, the rising cliffs loose with old basalt and lava, and the mountain peaks jagged and barren. Within the same day we were sailing through a cluster of unnamed islands, low and tangled with mangrove swamps. Here the ship was visited by innumerable flying insects that stayed, biting and stinging, until nightfall. Tamer islands greeted us with harbours, a sight of towns and farmland, and food that could he bought to vary the ship's limited menu.

I spent most of the daylight hours at the rail of the ship, watching this endless passing show, gorging my senses on the gourmanderie of the view.

Nor was I alone; many of the other passengers, whom I presumed were native islanders, showed the same fascination. The islands defied interpretation; they could only he experienced.

I knew that I could never have created these islands as a part of my mental imaginings. The very diversity of the visual richness was beyond the making of anything except nature. I discovered the islands and absorbed them, they came to me from outside, they confirmed their real existence to me.

Even so, the duality remained. I knew that the typewritten definition of myself was real, that my life was lived elsewhere. The more I appreciated the scale, variety and sheer beauty of the Dream Archipelago, the less I was able to believe in it.

If Seri was a part of this perception, she too could not exist.

To affirm my knowledge of my inner reality, I read through my manuscript every day. Every time it made more sense, enabling me to see beyond the words, to learn and remember things that were not written.

This ship was a means to an end, taking me on an inner voyage. Once I left it and stepped ashore, and walked in the city I knew as "Jethra", I would be home.

My grasp on metaphoric reality increased, and my inner confidence grew.

For example, I solved the problem of language.

After the treatment I had been brought to awareness through language. I now spoke the same language as Seri and Lareen. I had never given it a thought. Because I had come to it as to a mother tongue I used it instinctively. That I had also written my manuscript in it was something I took for granted. I knew that it was spoken, as first language, by people like Seri and Lareen, and by the doctors and staff at the clinic, and that one could make oneself understood with it throughout the Archipelago. On the ship, announcements were made in it, and newspapers and signs were printed in it.

(It was not, however, the only language in the islands. There was a confusing number of dialects, and different groups of islands had their own languages. In addition, there was a sort of island patois, spoken throughout the Archipelago, but which had no written fonm.) The day after the ship left Muriseay I suddenly realized that my language was called English. That same day, while I was sheltering from the sun on the boat deck, I noticed an ancient sign riveted to the metal wall behind me. It had been painted over a dozen times, but it was still possible to make out the slightly raised lettering. It said: _Defense de cracher_. Not for a moment did I mistake this for an island language; I knew immediately that the ship was, or at some time had been, French.

Yet where were France and England? I searched my charts of the Anchipelago, looking for the coastlines, but in vain. Even so, I knew I was English, that somewhere in my perplexing mind I had a few words of French, sufficient to order drinks, ask the way, or refrain from spitting.

How could English spread through the Anchipelago as the language of authority, of the professions, of newspapers, of shopkeepers?

Like everything now, it heightened my trust of the inner life, deepened my distrust of external reality.

The further north we sailed, the fewer were the passengers on board. The nights were cool, and I spent more time inside my cabin. On the last day I woke with a feeling that I was now ready to land. I spent the morning in reading through my manuscript for the last time, feeling that at last I could read it with total understanding.

It seemed to me that it could be read on three levels.

The first was contained in the words I had actually written, the typewritten text, describing those anecdotes and experiences which had so confused Seri.

Then there were the pencilled substitutions and deletions made by Seri and Lareen.

Finally there was what I had _not_ written: the spaces between the lines, the allusions, the deliberate omissions and the confident assumptions.

I who had been written about. I who had been assumed to have written. I of whom I remembered, for whom I could anticipate.

In my words was the life I had lived before the treatment on Collago. In Seri's amendments was the life I had assumed, existing imi quotes and faint pencil markings. In my omissions was the life I would return to.

Where the manuscript was blank, I had defined my future.

24

There was one last island before Jethra: a high, grim place called Seevl, approached at evening. All I knew of Seevl was that Seri told me she had been born there, that it was the closest island to Jethra. Our call in Seevl seemed unusually long: a lot of people disembarked and a considerable quantity of cargo was loaded. I paced the deck impatiently, wanting to finish my long journey.

Night fell while we were in Seevl Town, but once we had left the confined harbour and rounded a dark, humping headland, I could see the lights of an immense city on the low coastline ahead. The wind was cold and there was a considerable ground swell.

The ship was quiet; I was one of the few passengers aboard.

Then someone came and stood behind me, and without turning I knew who it was.

Seri said: "Why did you run away from me?"

"I wanted to go home."

She slipped lien hand around my arm and pressed herself against me. She was shivering.

"Are you angry with me for following you?"

"No, of course not." I put my arm around her, kissed her on the side of her cold face. She was wearing a thin blouson over her shirt. "How did you find me?"

"I got to Seevl. All the ships for Jethra stop there. It was just a question of waiting for the right one to come."

"But why did you follow?"

"I want to be with you. I don't want you to be in Jethra."

"It's not Jethra I'm going to."

"Yes it is. Don't delude yourself."

The city lights were nearer now, sharply visible over the blackly heaving swell. The clouds above were a dark and smudgy orange, reflecting the glow. Behind us, the few islands still in sight were indistinct, neutral shapes. I felt them slipping away from me, a release from the psyche.

"This is where I live," I said. "I don't belong in the islands."

"But you've become a part of them. You can't just put them behind you."

"That's all I _can_ do."

"Then you'll leave me too."

"I had already made that decision. I didn't want you to follow." She released my arm and moved away. I went after her and held her again. I tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away. "Seri, don't make it more difficult. I've got to go back to where I came from."

"It won't be what you expect. You'll find yourself in Jethra, and that's not what you're looking for."

"I know what I'm doing." I thought of the emphatic nature of the manuscript: the inarguable blankness of what was to come.

The ship had hove to a long way from the entrance to the harbour. A pilot cutter was coming out, black against the city-bright sea.

"Peter, please don't go on with this."

"There's someone I'm trying to find."

"Who is it?"

"You've read the manuscript," I said. "Her name is Gracia."

"Please stop. You're going to hurt yourself. You mustn't believe anything written in that manuscript. You said at the clinic that you understood, that everything it said was a kind of fiction. Gracia doesn't exist, London doesn't exist. You imagined it all."

"You were with me in London once," I said. "You were jealous of Gracia then, you said she upset you."

"I've never been out of the islands!" She glanced at the glowing city, and the hair flattened across her eyes. "I've never even been there, to Jethra."

"I was living with Gracia, and you were there too."

"Peter, we met in Muriseay, when I was working for the Lotterie."

"No . . . I can remember everything now," I said.

She faced me, and I sensed something new. "If that was so, you wouldn't be looking for Gracia. You know the truth is that Gracia's dead! She killed herself two years ago, when you had a row, before you went away to write your manuscript. When she died you couldn't admit it was your fault. You felt guilty, you were unhappy ... all right. But you mustn't believe that she's still alive, just because your manuscript says so."

Her words shocked me; I could feel the earnestness in her.

"How do you know this?" I said.

"Because you told me in Muriseay. Before we left for Collago."

"But that's the period I can't remember. It's not in the manuscript."

"Then you can't remember everything!" Seri said. "We had to wait a few days for the next ship to Collago. We were staying imi Muriseay Town. I had a flat there, and you moved in with me. Because I knew what would happen when you took the treatment, I was getting you to tell me everything about your past. You told me then . . . about Gracia. She committed suicide, and you borrowed a house from a friend and you went there to write everything out of your system."

"I don't remember," I said. Behind us the pilot cutter had come alongside, and two men in uniform were boarding the ship. "Is Gracia her real name?"

"It's the only name you told me . . . the same as in the manuscript."

"Did I tell you where I went to write the manuscript?"

"In the Murinan Hills. Outside Jethra."

"The friend who lent me the house . . . was his name Cohan?"

"That's right."

One of Seri's insertions: pencil above typewritten line. Underneath Colan's name, scored through lightly, Edwin Miller, friend of the family.

Between the two names a space, a blankness, a room painted white, a sense of landscape spreading out through the white walls, a sea filled with islands.

"I know Gracia's alive," I said. "I know because every page of my story is imbued with her. I wrote it for her, because I wanted to find her again."

"You wrote it because you blamed yourself for her death."

"You took me to the islands, Seri, but they were wrong and I had to reject you. You said I had to surrender to the islands to find myself. I did that, and I'm free of them. I've done what you wanted." Seri seemed not to be listening. She was staring away from me, across the heaving water to the headlands and moors black behind the city. "Gracia's alive now because you're alive. As long as I can feel you and see you, Gracia's alive."

"Peter, you're lying to yourself. You know it isn't true."

"I understand the tnuth, because I found it once."

"There's no such thing as truth. You are living by your manuscript, and everything in it is false."

We stared together towards Jethra, divided by a definition.

Thene was a delay on the ship, a hoisting of a new flag, then at last we moved forward at half speed, steering a course, avoiding hidden underwater obstacles. I was impatient to land, to discover the city.

Seri went to sit away from me, on one of the slatted deck benches facing to the side. I stayed in the prow of the ship, watching our approach.

We passed a long concrete wall near the mouth of the river and came to smooth water. I heard the ringing of bells and the engines cut back even further. We glided in near silence between the distant banks. I was looking eagerly at the wharves and buildings on either side, seeking familiarity.

Cities look different from water.

I heard Seri say: "It will always be Jethra."

We were passing through a huge area of dockland, a major port, quite unlike the simple harhours of the island towns. Cranes and warehouses loomed dark on the bank, and large ships were tied up and deserted. Once, through a gap, I saw traffic on a road, moving silently and quickly; lights and speed and unexplained purpose, glimpsed through buildings. Further along we passed a wildly floodlit complex of hotels and apartment buildings standing about a huge marina, where hundreds of small yachts and cruisers were moored, and dazzling lights of all colours seemed directed straight at us. People stood on concrete quays, watching our ship as we slid by with muted engines.

We came to a broader stretch of river, where on one bank was parkland.

Coloured lights and festoons hung in the trees, smoke rose multicoloured through the branches, people clustered around open fines. There was a raised platform made of scaffolding, surrounded by lights, and here people danced.

All was silent, eerily hushed against the rhythm of the river.

The ship turned and we moved towards the bank. Ahead of us now was an illuminated sign belonging to the steamship cornpany, and floodlights spread white radiance across a wide, deserted apron. There were a few cars parked on the far side, but they showed no lights and there was no one there to greet us.

I heard the telegraphy bell ringing on the bridge, and a moment later the remaining vibrations of the engines died away. The pilot's judgement was uncanny: now without power or steerage, the ship glided slowly towards the berth. By the time the great steel side pressed against the old tyres and rope buffers it was virtually impossible to detect movement.

The ship was still; the silence of the city spread over us. Beyond the wharf, the lights of the city were too bright to be properly seen, shedding radiance without illumination.

"Peter, wait here with me. The ship will sail in the morning."

"You know I'm going ashore." I turned back to look at her. She was slumped on the seat, huddling against the river winds.

"If you find Gracia she'll only reject you, as you reject me."

"So you admit she's alive?"

"It was you who first told me she wasn't. Now you remember differently."

"I'm going to find her," I said.

"Then I'll lose you. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

In the dazzle from the city I saw her grief. "Whatever happens, you'll always be with me."

"You're just saying that. What about all the things we were planning to do together?"

I stared at her, unable to say anything. Seri had created me on Collago, but before then, in my white room, I had created her. She had no life independent of mine. But her desolate unhappiness was real enough, a truth of a poignant sort was there.

"You think I'm not really here," she said. "You think I live only for you. An adjunct, a complement . . . I read that in your manuscript. You made me with a life, and now you try to deny it. You think you know what I am, but you can't know _anything_ more than what I made you into. I loved you when you were helpless, when you depended on me like a child. I told you about us, that we were lovers, but you read your manuscript and believed something else.

Every day I saw you and remembered what you had been, and I just thought of what I had lost. Peter, believe me now . . . you _can't_ live in a fiction!

Everything we talked about, before you ran away--"

She wept then, and I waited, staring down at the top of her head, rolling my arms around her thin shoulders. In the night her hair was darker, the wind had tousled it, the salt spray had curled it. When she looked up her eyes were wide, and there was a deep, familiar pain behind them.

For that moment I knew who she really was, who she replaced. I held her tight, repenting of all the pain I had caused. But when I kissed her neck she twisted in the seat and faced me.

"Do you love me, Peter?"

She was hurting because of the tenderness I was taking from her. I kmiew she was an extension of my wishes, an embodiment of how I had failed Gracia.

To love her was to love myself; to deny her was to inflict needless pain. I hesitated, bracing myself for untruth.

"Yes," I said, and we kissed. Her mouth on mine, her lithe body pressing against me. She was real, just as the islands were really there, as the ship was solid beneath us, as the shining city waited.

"Then stay with me," she said.

But we walked aft and found my holdall, then went down through the metal-echoing passages to the place where a gangplank had been slung across from the shore. We walked down, stepping over the raised wooden slats, ducking under one of the hawsers that held the ship to the quay.

We crossed the apron, passed through the line of parked cars, found an alley that led to steps, and these to a road. A tram went past in silence.

I said: "Have you any idea where we are?"

"No, but that tram was going to the centre."

I knew it was Jethra, but knew it would change. We set off in the same direction as the tram. This street that served the docks was draughty and ugly, giving an impression that daylight would only underline its dilapidation. We followed it for a long way, then came to a wide intersection where a white marble building, with a pillared edifice, stood back on lawns.

"That's the Seigniory," Seri said.

"I know."

I recognized it from before. In the old days it had been the seat of government, then when the Seignior had moved into the country it had become a tourist attraction, then when the war came it was nothing. For all my life in Jethra it had been nothing, just a pillared edifice, its significance gone.

Beside the Palace was a public park, and a pathway bisected it, lit by lamps. Recognizing a short cut, I led the way. The path climbed the hill in the centre of the park, and soon we were looking down across much of the city.

I said: "This is where I bought my lottery ticket."

The memory was too vivid to be lost. That day, the wooden franchise stall, the young soldier with the neck brace and the dress uniform. Now there was no one about, and I stared across rooftops to the mouth of the river and the sea beyond. Somewhere out there was the Dream Archipelago: neutral territory, a place to wander, an escape, a divisor of past and present. I felt the dying of island rapture, and sensed that Seri was staring too. She was forever identified with the islands; if the rapture died, would she become ordinary?

I glanced at her, with her drawn face and her wind-blown hair, the thin body, the dilated eyes.

We went on after a few minutes, now descending the hill, joining one of the main boulevards that ran through the heart of Jethra. Here there was more traffic; horse-drawn and automobile, following lanes marked away from the tramlines. The silence was dying. I heard a tram bell, then metal-rimmed wheels grating on the surface of the street. A door to a bar flew open, and light and sound spilled out. I heard glasses and bottles, a cash register, a woman laughing, aniplified pop music.

In the street a tram swished past, clattering over an intersection.

"Do you want anything to eat?" I said as we passed a pavement café. The smell of food was irresistible.

"It's up to you," she said, so we walked on. I had no idea where we were going.

We came to another junction, one I dimly recognized without understanding why, and by unspoken accord we came to a halt. I was tired, and the holdall was weighing on my shoulder. Traffic roared past in both directions, making us raise our voices.

"I don't know why I'm following you," Seri said. "You're going to leave me, aren't you?"

I said nothing until I had to: Seri looked exhausted and miserable.

"I've got to find Gracia," I said at last.

"There is no Gracia."

"I've got to be sure." Somewhere here was London, somewhere in London was Gracia. I knew I would find her in a white room, one where blank paper lay scattered across the floor, like islands of plain truth, auguring what was to come. She would be there, and she would see how I had emerged from my fantasy.

Now I was complete.

"Don't go on believing, Peter. Come back to the islands with me."

"No, I can't. I've got to find her."

Seri waited, staring at the litter-strewn pavement.

"You're an athanasian," she said, and it seemed to me that she said it in desperation, a last attempt. "Do you know what that means?"

"I'm afraid it means nothing to me now. I don't believe it ever happened."

Seri reached up to me, touched me high on my neck, behind my ear. There was still a sensitive place there, and I winced away.

"In the islands you will live forever," she said. "If you leave the islands you become ordinary. The islands are eternal, you will he timeless."

I shook my head emphatically. "I don't believe any more, Seri. I don't belong."

"Then you disbelieve in me."

"No, I don't."

I tried to embrace her but she pushed me away.

Seri said--"I don't want you to touch me. Go and find Gracia."

She was crying. I stood there indecisively. I was scared that London was not there, that Gracia would have gone.

"Will I find you again?" I said.

Seri said--When you have learnt where to look.

Too late I realized she had receded from me. I stumbled away from her and stood by the side of the road, waiting for a gap in the traffic. Carts and trams rushed past. Then I saw there was a pedestrian underpass, so I went through, losing sight of Seri. I began to run, clambering up to the surface on the other side. For a moment I thought I knew where I was, but when I looked back

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Priest is the author fo five previous novels, including _The Perfect Lover_, and most recently of _An Infinite Summer_, a colledtion of stories published in 1979 to wide acclaim.