Free Sugar and Other Stories by A. S. Byatt Page A

eyes again, asking, before he went out into the house.
    “What is it? What is it? Have you seen him again? Why are you …?”
    “He came in here. He went — out through the door.”
    “I didn’t see him.”
    “No.”
    “Did he — oh, this is so
silly
— did he see me?”
    He could not remember. He told the only truth he knew.
    “He brought me in here.”
    “Oh, what can I do, what am I going to
do
? If I killed myself — I have thought of that — but the idea that I should be with him is an illusion I … this silly situation is the nearest I shall ever get. Tohim. He was
in here with me
?”
    “Yes.”
    And she was crying again. Out in the garden he could see the boy, swinging agile on the apple branch.
    He was not quite sure, looking back, when he had thought he had realized what the boy had wanted him to do. This was also, at the party, his worst piece of what he called bowdlerization, though in some sense it was clearly the opposite of bowdlerization. He told the American girl that he had come to the conclusion that it was the woman herself who had wanted it, though there was in fact, throughout, no sign of her wanting anything except to see the boy, as she said. The boy, bolder and more frequent, had appeared several nights running on the landing, wandering in and out of bathrooms and bedrooms, restlessly, a little agitated, questing almost, until it had “come to” the man that what he required was to be re-engendered, for him, the man, to give to his mother another child, into which he could peacefully vanish. The idea was so clear that it was like another imperative, though he did not have the courage to ask the child to confirm it. Possibly this was out of delicacy — the child was too young to be talked to about sex. Possibly there were other reasons. Possibly he was mistaken: the situation was making him hysterical, he felt action of some kind was required and must be possible. He could not spend the rest of the summer, the rest of his life, describing nonexistent tee shirts and blond smiles.
    He could think of no sensible way of embarking on his venture, so in the end simply walked into her bedroom one night. She was lying there, reading; when she saw him her instinctive gesture was to hide, not her bare arms and throat, but her book. She seemed, in fact, quite unsurprised to see his pyjamaed figure, and, after she had recovered her coolness, brought out the book definitely and laid it on the bedspread.
    “My new taste in illegitimate literature. I keep them in a boxunder the bed.”
    Ena Twigg, Medium. The Infinite Hive. The Spirit World. Is There Life After Death?
    “Pathetic,” she proffered.
    He sat down delicately on the bed.
    “Please, don’t grieve so. Please, let yourself be comforted. Please …”
    He put an arm round her. She shuddered. He pulled her closer. He asked why she had had only the one son, and she seemed to understand the purport of his question, for she tried, angular and chilly, to lean on him a little, she became apparently compliant. “No real reason,” she assured him, no material reason. Just her husband’s profession and lack of inclination: that covered it.
    “Perhaps,” he suggested, “if she would be comforted a little, perhaps she could hope, perhaps …”
    For comfort then, she said, dolefully, and lay back, pushing Ena Twigg off the bed with one fierce gesture, then lying placidly. He got in beside her, put his arms round her, kissed her cold cheek, thought of Anne, of what was never to be again. Come on, he said to the woman, you must live, you must try to live, let us hold each other for comfort.
    She hissed at him “Don’t
talk
” between clenched teeth, so he stroked her lightly, over her nightdress, breasts and buttocks and long stiff legs, composed like an effigy on an Elizabethan tomb. She allowed this, trembling slightly, and then trembling violently: he took this to be a sign of some mixture of pleasure and pain, of the return of life