So long, and thanks for all the fish [29]
"Come on up yourself," she called down.
Arthur picked up his bag of goodies and went in through the stable doors, tingling.
The bottom room, which he had seen briefly before, was pretty rough and full of junk. A large old cast-iron mangle stood there, a surprising number of kitchen sinks were piled in a corner. There was also, Arthur was momentarily alarmed to see, a pram, but it was very old and uncomplicatedly full of books.
The floor was old stained concrete, excitingly cracked. And this was the measure of Arthur's mood as he stared up the rickety wooden steps in the far corner. Even a cracked concrete floor seemed to him an almost unbearably sensual thing.
"An architect friend of mine keeps on telling me how he can do wonderful things with this place," said Fenchurch chattily as Arthur emerged through the floor. "He keeps on coming round, standing in stunned amazement muttering about space and objects and events and marvellous qualities of light, then says he needs a pencil and disappears for weeks. Wonderful things have, therefore, so far failed to happen to it."
In fact, thought Arthur as he looked about, the upper room was at least reasonably wonderful anyway. It was simply decorated, furnished with things made out of cushions and also a stereo set with speakers which would have impressed the guys who put up Stonehenge.
There were flowers which were pale and pictures which were interesting.
There was a sort of gallery structure in the roof space which held a bed and also a bathroom which, Fenchurch explained, you could actually swing a cat in. "But," she added, "only if it was a reasonably patient cat and didn't mind a few nasty cracks about the head. So. here you are."
"Yes."
They looked at each other for a moment.
The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.
For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone for long enough with a Swiss Cheese plant, the moment was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a cramped and zoo-born animal who awakes one morning to find the door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savannah stretching grey and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new sounds are waking.
He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.
He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones till it now said something it had never said to him before, which was "Yes".
Fenchurch dropped her eyes away at last, with a tiny shake of her head.
"I know," she said. "I shall have to remember," she added, "that you are the sort of person who cannot hold on to a simple piece of paper for two minutes without winning a raffle with it."
She turned away.
"Let's go for a walk," she said quickly. "Hyde Park. I'll change into something less suitable."
She was dressed in a rather severe dark dress, not a particularly shapely one, and it didn't really suit her.
"I wear it specially for my 'cello teacher," she said. "He's a nice boy, but I sometimes think all that bowing gets him a bit excited. I'll be down in a moment."
She ran lightly up the steps to the gallery above, and called down, "Put the bottle in the fridge for later."
He noticed as he slipped the champagne bottle into the door that it had an identical twin to sit next to.
He walked over to the window and looked out. He turned and started to look at her records. From above he heard the rustle of her dress fall to the ground. He talked to himself about the sort of person he was. He told himself very firmly that for this moment at least he would keep his eyes very firmly and steadfastly locked on to the spines of her records, read the titles, nod appreciatively, count the blasted things if he had to. He would keep his head down.
This he completely, utterly and abjectly