The Paper Eater

NOT LOVE

We were sitting on chairs, facing each other across the table. On the walls around us, the portraits of Mum, Dad, Uncle Sid, Lola and Cameron looked down on us. Hannah’s face was pale and her eyes were red, as though she’d been crying. Ever since I’d walked in, it had been strained and horrible, both of us aware that what had happened last time had shifted things into a new gear. But that the timing was all to cock, because it was the end of the road.

– Will you miss me? I asked her.

She looked blank.

– I haven’t thought about it.

With any other woman that might have thrown me, but I knew her better now.

– Think about it, I said, and I waited a moment, while she did.

But the silence went on too long; I was impatient.

– Look, Hannah. This matters to me. Do you – feel anything for me?’

– Like what?

– Like, like. Do you like me?

She looked puzzled. Alarmed, even.

– Yes. I think I like you. I don’t know. I don’t have – emotional feelings – I don’t make the same connections –

I interrupted. – When I held you –

But she was shaking her head. From the stiff way she held her little body – it seemed all disjointed and alien, like she wasn’t at home in it – I guessed all sorts of stuff was bubbling away and she was struggling to keep a lid on it.

– I’m different, she said. I always have been. My psychological make-up – you’ll just have to believe me. There are advantages and disadvantages. Mostly, disadvantages. It means I don’t – I can’t –

– Yes you can, I said. I suddenly felt powerful, sort of evangelical about it. – I can make you feel. I whispered it hoarsely, gazing into her face to try to reach something, willing it to smile. – Can’t I?

It must’ve been a moment of madness because I reached out and took her hand, then squeezed it gently, reinforcing the question. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t squeeze back either, although I longed for it. I hardly dared look at her face. Why was I doing this? I must be mad. Too much time spent on my own in silent rooms. Too much time confusing real people with substitutes. Yes you can, I thought. I can make you.

– Well, I just wanted to say I’m going to miss you.

I stopped. Still didn’t look at her face. I’d suddenly made myself vulnerable. The silence that followed was broken by a strange muffled popping noise. Hannah had her hand deep in her cardigan pocket.

– It’s bubble-wrap, she said flatly. I use it.

More popping.

– Hannah, I feel very strongly about you.

I said it quite formally, because it was important. I was glad, then, to have the pictures of my family around me. I wanted them to be part of this. Witnesses. We’d never kept anything from one another before; there was no need to start now. Hannah’s face had gone back to being blank, and she was still popping the bubble-wrap in her pocket.

– Even more strongly (this was a revelation to me as I said it) – even more strongly than I feel about the Hoggs. Including Lola.

The Hoggs’ expression didn’t alter. They just kept staring down at me. I expected Hannah’s face to register something, though; my own felt all distorted and distended with feeling, like a dried fruit in water – but she just nodded blankly, and the popping carried on.

Maybe it was the impossibility of the whole thing – her, an emotional cripple, me due to leave for ever in ten minutes – the absurdity of the situation. But something had suddenly made me even more determined to have a crack at this. I owed it to myself, was the feeling.

– Come here, Hannah, I said. She stopped popping and stood. Then stepped forward. I was still sitting in my chair.

– Come closer, I said.

Still sitting, I put my arms around her. She stood there rigid as a puppet. I pulled her down towards me then. Gentle, but clumsy. Flesh and blood. The feel of her sparrow body crushed against mine, the table-edge in our way. Another awkward embrace.

Then I blurted – I –

There was a long silence, because I couldn’t do the rest, but she must’ve got my drift.

–I–

It was all too much, too hopeless, too miserable, I thought suddenly. Stupid. I didn’t even know if what I’d nearly said was true, about loving her. Not then.

– Never mind, I said, into the folds of her cardigan.

To be holding someone, and to feel so lonely – it was killing me, frankly. I couldn’t do this after all. I was bottling out.

We stayed there like that for a while, and then something both small and enormous happened. She let out a little raucous noise. An animal noise, almost. I don’t think she even registered that it had come from her, but it jolted something to life inside me, and a thought broke into words.

– There’s nothing wrong with you, Hannah, I said slowly. I think you believed what your mother told you, because it suited you. Because you wanted to believe it. And now –

I stopped. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She’d gone very pale, like cheese.

– Whatever it is, I said, I think you’re hanging on to it, this – thing you’ve got.

– It’s called Crabbe’s Block.

– Well, I’ve never heard of it. I was pulling her in closer to me.

– It’s very rare.

– How rare?

Her eyes slid away.

– Very rare, she mumbled. I may be the only one on the island.

– So you’re pretty special, right? Is that what your mother told you? I was still holding her tight. Not letting her escape.

– Leave her out of this! said Hannah sharply.

Weird, we were almost having a proper conversation, I thought, a proper row!

– Well, I said. D’you know what I think?

She didn’t say anything, but her eyes slowly edged back, and she blinked.

– I think you’re hanging on to this Crabbe’s Block out of choice.

She twisted her face away again and stared at the wall – but I kept holding her. I wasn’t letting go. I wasn’t.

We stood there like that for a while, in stalemate. Leave her alone, this voice was saying inside me – the voice of reason, I guess. Let her be. She’s an island. You can’t reach her, no one can.

But then I felt a soft touch on my hair. Well, more on my bald patch, actually. I thought I was imagining it at first, and then I slowly realised it must be her hand. It was like I was an animal and she was stroking me. I hardly dared breathe, the moment was so fragile. Hannah was stroking my head. I looked up, and saw tears on her face. Her glasses were all steamy, and she’d gone red.

– I can’t do it, she said. I want to be a normal person but I don’t know how. I’ve been here so long I –

She was too choked to say anything else, so I just held her to me. We were sitting half on and half off the chair, the table-edge poking into my side. It wasn’t comfortable, but I held her and held her, and it felt right, as though a thing had fallen into place that was meant to. I think she felt it too, she must’ve, because she didn’t try to pull away or anything, she even pressed herself in towards me, and I thought if I could swallow her right up and carry her away inside me she wouldn’t mind, and nor would I.

And that was how we stayed for a long while, and all I wanted was for it to go on for ever.

And then –

Well, this is difficult, this bit. It’s sort of embarrassing but I’m sort of proud of it too and it was one of the high points of my whole life, I guess. Because what happened was that, slowly and then suddenly very urgently and very fast, things started to shift a notch and – well, to firm up.

You could sense it was happening to her too, this thing. Wriggling-body stuff that was sort of beyond anyone’s control, really. It was like a dream. In fact, sometimes I still think it was. Before either of us knew what was going on, we were kind of wrestling against the desk, trying to get bits of our clothes off.

And then there was no stopping it. I was grappling at my belt and my trousers slid with a silent whoosh round my ankles, and I’d hitched her skirt up clumsily, and I was rubbing at her with one hand and also trying to pull her tights down and her knickers to one side and clutching the desk with the other hand to keep steady and then I’d somehow sat her buttocks on the edge of the desk and – well, before we knew it, we were –

We stared into each other’s eyes while we were doing it, in a sort of unbelieving way. Her glasses had fallen off by now, well, they were hanging off one ear actually. I’d never made love like that before, but it seemed the way to do it, with Hannah. Like we were – don’t laugh – communicating with our heads too. There we were, doing it, and I was saying things, maybe shouting them or whispering, I don’t know, and she was too and then –

The next thing I knew I was crying, and so was she.

– Will you visit me in prison? I whispered at last.

– See? says John, beaming. It was a love story!

– It wasn’t. I told you before.

– So what happened?

– That was the end. I never –

I break off. The tears are welling up now and I can’t stop them. Through the blur of water, the Alpine calendar seems to shudder on the wall.

John’s crossing off the days. Just two to go.