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Tara

She came home from work to find him rooting through her past.

"Hoy! Get out of there," she shouted.

Later, they went for an Indian. The waiters sailed in and out on rafts of sitar-paper, a hint of hatred in their eyes.

Graham, his personality distorted by lager and lime-pickle, began to fawn upon her.

"Oh, don't start that again," moaned Tara.

So he stomped off in a sulk and left her with a predicament: as she'd brought neither cash nor card she was compelled to sit there ordering liqueur after sickly liqueur.

At closing-time the bill, now swollen to monstrous proportions, grimaced aggressively at her.

"Can I use the phone?"

One of them stood beside her while she dialled and waited, but both of the friends she tried were out. Utilising, not for the first time, a technique learned at Self-Defence classes, she kneed the waiter in the groin and ran. She was pursued down the street by the rest of the staff, who soon overtook and overpowered her. She was only saved from an imponderable fate by the arrival of Graham. He laid into them with a Nordic frenzy, fuelled by months of sexual frustration, motivated by years of repressed racism.

"That's enough! Are you crazy?" she bellowed, when all four lay inert.

He seemed to come to his senses. He began to sob.

"Oh my God."

He knelt down over them, stroking their shiny black hair as though it were the most beautiful texture in the world.

"I don't know what came over me."

Tara couldn't stand excessive violence, no matter how quickly it was superseded by remorse. She became cold and indisputable:

"First you'll give me the money to pay the bill. Then you'll call an ambulance. Then you'll go home and pack. I want you out first thing in the morning."

She returned to the restaurant. An old man answered the door. She handed him the cash, told him what had happened to his countrymen. He nodded and smiled.

"They are good boys. Only trying to protect themselves."

His voice was soft and gracious.

"They'll be alright. Probably home by now."

She was feeling sick. She reeled and fell against the doorjamb. He stepped forward to support her.

"I'm more worried about you. Won't you come in?"

She wept as she followed him through to a cubby-hole off the kitchen, containing a mattress and a few towers of books. She lay down. He turned off the overhead light, leaving only a red-bulbed lamp, and invited her to relax. He squatted in silence beside her.

When she'd recovered a little she began to talk disparagingly about her life. Having listened without interruption while she stumbled from woe to woe, he said:

"This Graham - you don't love him?"

"God, no. I just live with him. If it weren't for the rent..."

She noticed she wasn't only feeling better, she was feeling good. Yet she had no wish to get up, or even sit up. She just wanted to lie there in his gaze. She couldn't remember so much peace, so little anxiety. He began to caress her neck. She vaguely imagined herself protesting; then shuddered at the ugliness that would follow. His long fingers reached into her like tendrils. He spoke soothingly in his own tongue. If she didn't try she felt she could understand what he was saying. She closed her eyes. All her years as an oyster had finally caught up with her.

***

She walked home upon soft lotus legs to find his bags obediently packed and himself in bed but unable to sleep. She was so glad and grateful he was leaving that she allowed him what held longed for ever since he'd been staying. Already immunised by ecstasy, she hardly felt a thing. As soon as he'd drifted off she tiptoed out to her own bed. In the morning of course he was all over her, his intention of travelling to Poland abandoned, but she was as distant as ever.

"We've said goodbye."

Later, in response to his beseechings, she relented a little:

"You've got to. You've been talking about it for so long. I'm not promising anything if you do go but I'll certainly never believe in you if you don't."

Two questions remained silent:

"Haven't you got a life of your own to get on with, instead of always leeching on mine?"

"Haven't you got any self-respect at all?"

Even if uttered, these questions probably wouldn't have hurt him. He wouldn't have been able to see their point. A 'life of his own' was a contradiction in terms; 'self-respect', a commodity he had no interest in collecting; 'Poland', a convenient limbo from where he was already waiting to return. She feared the accuracy of these perceptions.

Nevertheless, after he'd been gone a while, and if she didn't read between his lines, she could believe he was beginning to live. He'd found: one or two torn relatives; some work teaching his father-tongue; a church-bound image to reflect his emotions.

In a few weeks the postcards petered out and she was able at last to concentrate exclusively upon her own universe, which Graham had never got anywhere near apprehending. He'd derived his projection from a few points upon her surface and then filled it with his own empty darkness. He hadn't seen her shooting-stars or her fireflies, her sapphires or her embers. He hadn't loved her liver or her spleen, her kidneys or her bowels. He hadn't noticed her thoughts or her visions, her pains or her wishes. In short, he'd constrained her by his idolisation. But no sooner had she regained her original dynamic equilibrium than she discovered, from a visit to the chemist followed by a visit to the doctor, that she was entering a new state altogether.

She was neither happy nor unhappy at the prospect of parturition. It wasn't something she'd have chosen but as she hadn't had any choice she felt exonerated from both panic and responsibility. Looking back upon that night, she decided that she wanted to know whether her will had merely been swept away by the tide of her ovulation, or whether her memory of something unbiological also taking place was correct. She arrived at six o'clock, before any diners. She didn't recognise the young waiter to whom she addressed her enquiry. He frowned:

"Nobody lives here... There's no accommodation."

"He's got a little room off the kitchen."

The boy laughed:

"Are you sure you sure you ain't mixing this up with some other place?"

His accent was faultless sub-London.

"Of course not. I've been here loads of times. I only live round the corner."

He called over an older colleague and spoke to him in their own language.

There was much laughter. She blushed. She felt she could understand what they were saying: they were diagnosing her loopy.

"Look," she interrupted. "Has the place changed hands recently?"

"Yeah - a couple of months ago."

"That explains it then. Does anyone work here now who worked here before?"

"You must be joking. We're not all related, you know. We got no more in common with those people than you have with a-, with a-"

"Turkey?" suggested the older waiter.

"A Turk," said the boy.

"I see... Did they leave a forwarding address?"

"I don't know, do I?"

She was about to go when the boss arrived for the evening. Once he'd established that she wasn't any kind of health inspector he happily informed her that the previous people had done well enough out of the sale to return to their native state for good.

***

One warm afternoon, towards the end of August, Tara was dozing in her smock, in her armchair, in her living-room, when a trio of tentative knocks arrived. They didn't seem to know whether they wanted answering. They weren't even sure they existed. So she went back to dream, only to be distinctly awoken some immeasurable time later by the sound of her own name flying in through the open sash.

"What are you doing here?" she exclaimed in shock.

"I've just got back," said Graham, jumping down from the window-sill.

He knelt before her, clasped one of her hands in both of his, gazed ardently into her eyes. A little black cat vacated her lap and left the room.

"It's so good to see you," he said.

"And you," she replied, surprised to find that she meant it.

There was no doubt he'd changed: his face from grey to brown; his hands from clinging to enfolding; his voice from protestant to resonant; his climate from inclement to warm.

"You been in Poland all this time?"

"No, I've been all over. But what about you? How have you been? Have you stopped working? Or are you on holiday?"

"I'm taking it easy as much as I can."

She patted her belly. He obviously hadn't noticed because for a moment he looked bewildered, and then his face ignited into an even brighter grin than before.

"What do I say? Congratulations?"

"Thank you."

"When's it due?"

"Should be next week."

"So who's the lucky man?"

"There isn't one."

"That's unusual."

"I mean I'm not sure."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I don't know. It's alright so far, but what it'll be like later on...."

"I think if I were your baby I wouldn't need a father."

As there seemed to be no undertone of yearning in this remark she laughingly accepted it as a compliment. Her fear of seeing him again had been unfounded. She felt that even if the paternity turned out to be his he'd stake no unwanted claim.

"You're different," she declared.

"Yeah... One of the reasons I came back was to apologise for the pain in the neck I used to be."

"It's forgotten."

As the afternoon gave way to the evening so the tessellation between them increased. It was pleasant to be cared for, to be cooked for, to be listened to. Although she'd been quite prepared to go through the immediate future unaccompanied the prospect was suddenly far less daunting. By nine o'clock she heard herself asking him to stay. He agreed only on condition she believed his intent had been otherwise, had been to carry on travelling indefinitely. He didn't want to bore her, but he ought to explain his position. In bald terms the change in him had been induced by the sight of a Black Madonna in a Catholic Church. In the terms he employed, this encounter had amounted to nothing less than a shower of meteorites upon his inner world, causing all previous forms of darkness to flee.

Perhaps it was because he'd had no expectations of Her that She was able to get through to him. He hadn't been blinded by piety. Anyway, he'd gradually discovered the extent of Her disquiet. Two thousand years of compassion had exhausted Her. She needed to leave that grimy image of Herself and see the world, the moon, the sun. No-one had ever thought of giving comfort to Her, only of the comfort She could give to them. And now no-one would ever know She no longer resided in the church. Just as the paint had been opaque enough to conceal Her presence, ditto Her absence. Through him, She could breathe and sleep. She could at last begin to excrete the suffering with which She'd been jammed. Through him She could laugh. She could billow up on the euphoria in his chest which came from laughing and reassume Her original mirth...

"So what are you saying? She's with you now?"

"Yeah, right. We've been all over Europe together. We were on our way to Africa, but now she's really looking forward to seeing your daughter being born... Remember she only ever had a son, never a girl to take after her."

Tara's face went on falling long after they'd ostensibly changed the subject. She went to bed foreboding. His kindness had been faultless, and yet kindness motivated by such a powerful delusion might easily warp into something monstrous.

***

In the morning her anxiety seemed more manageable. He brought her breakfast in bed and took no offence when she admitted that she'd found his revelation disturbing. She forbade further mention of the internal Madonna, an edict with which he strictly complied over the next few days. In every other respect his behaviour was that of an exemplary husband. The labour began at dusk. Her protest when he wished to accompany her to the hospital was only half-hearted. They were left alone for most of the night. He floated with her in the sleepy lulls between contractions and she was comforted by his touch. The birth began at dawn. When her daughter finally appeared he counted the darkness of her skin no more than a natural miracle.

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