Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

He snatched her hand and held it, running his thumb up and down her palm.

“Good morning,” she said.

“How long has it been?” he asked.

She tried to find a way to misunderstand him—she wanted to keep the golden feelings—but she knew what he meant. “Since Cambridge. A little before, maybe.”

“For both of us, then.” He lowered his arm and looked at her. “I ran away after Reading. I blamed you. I thought we shouldn’t be doing this and it was you kept finding me and insisting. But that wasn’t it. I wanted to see if I could live on my own.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “Sure. If you can call it living. Tasteless food, stale air, meaningless routine. No reason to get up in the morning except that it’s too bright to sleep. You?”

“I’ve been too busy taking care of him to notice.”

He gave her a skeptical look. Then, abruptly, he frowned and sat up. William stood at the bottom of the stairs, a long nightshirt covering him to his shins, staring at them. He held a thin sheaf of paper in his hand.

JANUARY, 1933

Conny’s lungs emptied in quick stages as her thighs relaxed. The coils in her stomach released across her ribs, over her back, along her arms, and ebbed away. She folded against Geoffrey. Where their skin touched sweat oiled the contact, let them slide minutely with each inhalation and exhalation; at the exact line along which their skins parted, evaporation cooled. Moisture ran from her shoulders, into the runnel of her spine. In the sudden stillness she heard the faint scratch of pen nib on paper.

“My god,” Geoffrey breathed, “the man’s prodigious.”

Conny nodded, face sliding on damp hair. She opened her eyes. Across the room, by the window, William hunched over the small table, working.

“What do we do if he dies?” Geoffrey asked quietly.

Conny raised herself on one arm. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. It’s a serious question. We ought to think about it.”

She kissed his neck, licked the salt from the hollow of his throat. “Not now.” She lay back against him and he ran his fingertips lightly along her sides and over her hips and buttocks. It still surprised her sometimes how gently he could touch her.

Conny closed her eyes but could not sleep. Geoffrey’s question nagged at her. In the nearly two years since Norwich, William had never really recovered. His coughing peppered the nights and he adamantly refused to see a doctor. Geoffrey regularly threatened to pick him up and carry him to one, but it never happened. Still, William seemed no worse. Conny imagined him like a stone balanced on an edge, waiting for a sufficient tremor to send it tumbling. He needed to be in a sanitorium, but neither Geoffrey or she could bear to do it. At times their inertia almost let her believe Geoffrey’s occasional delusions that they had no reality of their own away from William, that they existed only in the benevolence of his incessant scribbling.

“We go on,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“If he dies. We go on.”

“Can we?”

“Shh.” She listened to William working for a time. She imagined herself as a pyre sometimes. The fire ate everything down to charred debris. Then he stuck his pen in and stirred the ashes and, phoenix-like, found something more to burn.

JUNE, 1935

Conny trudged up the steep path. The late afternoon light angled through the trees in shafts. Devon was peaceful, she liked this place more than any other. She tried to imagine living the rest of her life here. Possible, she decided. The three of them had achieved a kind of equilibrium. The last year had been the best.

It was nearly dark by the time she got back to the cottage. Geoffrey sat at the foot of the steps. He looked up at her grimly. From the house she could hear William shouting. Something shattered.

“What happened?” she asked.

Geoffrey shrugged. “He threw me out.”

She dropped her bag by him and ran up the stairs.

Furniture had been moved around, a table turned over. Ceramic shards littered the floor. William squatted before the fireplace. As Conny came up behind him she saw him shove a handful of pages into the flames. They curled up and blackened almost at once and he threw more in.

“William!”

She grabbed the next stack from him and he fell. He stared at her for a few seconds as if he did not know her. Then he jumped to his feet and took the pages back, pushing her away. He flung them into the hearth.

“Damn them! Damn you!”

Conny tried to get the rest of the manuscript from him. He whirled around and caught her with an elbow. She staggered onto the couch, breathless, and watched as he tossed the rest of the pages to the fire.

“Damn! Damn! Damn it all!”

His face seemed to compress, caught for an instant between rage and hurt. Then the tears came and he howled. Conny held him. His thin body convulsed. He screamed and shook, made motions to push her away, but without any force.

“I’m tired,” he said.

Conny led him to his bedroom and helped him undress. She could almost pick him up now. She drew the sheets and eased him onto the mattress.

He reached up and touched her face. “Don’t go.”