Free You by Joanna Briscoe

‘Robin and Hugh Dahl . . .’
    The Dahl family. James, Elisabeth, Robin, Hugh. Had there been cousins, cats, grandparents, friends? A family history, thrillingly mundane? Cecilia longed to discover his birth date and his middle name, the initial letter of which was ‘C’. She listed possibilities in a notebook containing observations, character studies, quotes both by and about James Dahl, and the scant biographical details attainable about a man who revealed so little. She could only glean information from her mother with the greatest of care, her friends plying her with questions impossible to ask but entertaining to discuss. The fact that this repository of knowledge was resident in her house was a source of painful pleasure, Dora’s friendship with Elisabeth Dahl adding further frustration. How much did Dora talk to the man himself? What was the nature of their staffroom conversation, if it occurred at all? She seemed loath to mention him. When she did, Cecilia feared her own stiff expression was transparent.
    Mr Dahl was a complex and large-scale project. The more information Cecilia could absorb about him, the more she would symbolically possess him. Her book contained floorplans of his flat in Neill House based on sightings from the Mound and covert explorations of the utility rooms and showers on the floor beneath, which were movingly scented with baking and other people’s clean washing. In a moment of triumph, Zeno had ascertained his age through an overheard phone call at Neill House in which he had stated the year of his birth. But if no new facts were procurable, Cecilia and her cohorts burnished existing ones, their dialogue weighted with codenames and meaningful intonation. A glimpse of James Dahl was possibly more stimulating for the collectors’ victory it represented than for the experience of the sighting itself, the hasty dissemination of news either by note or hint through the group – descriptions of setting, gestures and clothing repeated and repeated – suffusing the next few hours with satisfaction, or with a poignant feeling of loss because he was at large yet unavailable.
    After discussing Mr Dahl all day, the girls rang each other in the evening to discuss Mr Dahl. Cecilia curled up in the cold on the prickly seagrass of her parents’ room and watched her breath above her as if it made shapes of her words. Giggles ran down the stretched curls of the cord. She stifled laughter or exhilarating sessions of analysis as Dora called upstairs and her supper cooled in the kitchen.
    At odd moments, Cecilia saw him and was stunned by the knowledge that beneath the commotion of her trio’s worship, she loved him. She studied tennis reports and, because he played the game, effortlessly absorbed the sport’s history. She read Villette ; The Professor ; To Sir, With Love . She tackled Casino Royale to immerse herself in the name ‘James’ and glanced at her younger brother’s Roald Dahl novels for the electric tingle that swarmed along the letters of their shared surname when glimpsed sufficiently obliquely.
    She saw him walking on occasion with his wife over Cantaur’s Fields beside Neill House as she sat by the river, and she watched him bound in conversation, his gait subtly looser outside. Inexpertly, she imagined them having sexual intercourse. Elisabeth with her well-cut hair, her tailored shirts and skirts and strings of pearls, her authoritative manner that could subside into warmth, reduced Cecilia to a state of deference, yet in her near acceptance of her hopeless position she felt the stirring of determination. He, with his downcast gaze, hands deep in pockets revealing tennis-playing arms, his voice with its pleasing pitch, his diffident yet privileged manner; he was the finest thing she had ever encountered. She almost cried. She vowed. The others may be giggling schoolgirls, but she was a future wife. The world, which seemed charged with his name, swarmed with synchronicity that