9

Irene’s new computer had arrived, and Davis dropped by in the evening to see it. Her flat was in the bottom of the building next to his, and it was a single very large room with a very small kitchen. They sat, drinking tea, and from time to time a person walked by above on the sidewalk, a flash of pant legs or the glitter of a dog chain.

“I have already set up my computer, Davis. I did not need your help.”

“I didn’t assume you needed help. I was curious. I like working with computers.”

“Now I will be able to write my articles. I am contributing editor to two journals, Davis. I am very busy, you see, and do not often entertain a gentleman like this. In fact, I am very slightly embarrassed and I shall close the curtain—help me, please—lest people look down at us and think what people might well think.” She laughed when the curtain snagged and would not close at once.

“You are so continually happy that at times I resent you,” said Davis.

“It is because of your troubles, and your grief. You see me happy and you think I am detestable.”

“Not detestable. In fact, I don’t know very much about you.”

“My résumé is all entirely accurate. If you read that carefully, then you know everything important about me.”

“Even now, I think you are joking. You are incorrigibly flippant.”

“I am sorry I trouble you.”

“You aren’t sorry at all.”

“No, indeed, although I am sorry that you have such deep sorrows, Davis, and that is the truth.”

“If I could see you spend an hour without laughing at something.”

“No, you mean if I could spend an hour without laughing at you.”

To his surprise Davis found himself unable to take his eyes off hers.

“You think I am mocking you every time I laugh. Perhaps the source of my pleasure is quite unimaginable to you.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps I find joy in your presence, Davis, and that this is something you have not considered.”

Her lips, when he brushed them with his, tasted of cloves. He had not intended to kiss her, and in fact as soon as his lips touched hers, he backed away, and then found himself not backing away at all.

She was a person who never wasted a movement, or a moment. She put her fingers to his lips, although Davis was not about to speak, and had nothing to say. She smiled up at him, as though challenging him, but there was nothing mocking about her now.

She was slender. Her clothes lay on the floor, but she had cast them down so gracefully, for all the quickness of her movements, that they looked like dancing, abstract figures.

He had not held a woman, or really desired one, ever since that terrible day. He had, he realized, surrendered to the possibility of never feeling this way again.

“So, you see,” she said at last, when they lay drowsily in the semidarkness, “you are able to feel happiness, and to give it, after all.”

He was silent for a while. “I wonder if you can read my mind,” he whispered, not wanting to break a mood that amazed him. He would have been unable to name his feeling. It was a happiness that he had, without knowing it, believed he would never experience after Margaret’s death.

“I can read your feelings, Davis,” she said. “It is very easy to do.”

“Then,” he whispered, “you must know how happy I am.”

She laughed, a low, loving laugh. “You will have much happiness in your life, Davis. You should not be afraid.”

Much later, when they woke, he asked her, “Aren’t you ever sad?”

“You know that I must be sad sometimes, Davis. I have seen good people die.”

Davis felt a twinge of shame. Of course she must have mourned at times in her life, as everyone did. It was a part of the self-centered aspect of his grief. He had assumed that he was the only person who ever mourned.

“I come from a place where people die easily. There is always death.”

“It must be terrible.”

“I miss the egrets,” said Irene. “Everywhere I have lived, there have been cattle egrets. They wait around the buffalo as they feed, watching for millipedes to scurry. Even in Hawaii, there have been those white birds. But here in England, there are no such birds.”

“They have rooks,” said Davis. He wondered what time it was, and sat up. “And crows.”

“You must hate those birds,” said Irene.

He sensed a return of her mockery. “Why should I hate them?”

“The rooks are always laughing,” she said. “When you see a stand of trees, the great black birds are high in the branches, laughing and laughing, entertaining each other by their endless laughing. Davis, you would hate to be a rook. Do you think that nature is always sad? You must realize that sometimes it does nothing but laugh.”

Davis fumbled.

“What are you looking for, Davis?”

“My watch.”

She laughed. “Do you have an appointment in the middle of the night?”

He did not answer.

“And, furthermore, do you ordinarily remove your watch when you make love to a woman?”

“At least I amuse you,” said Davis ruefully. “I’ve never known a woman who found me so endlessly entertaining.”

“You are not only entertaining, Davis,” she said, in a different timbre. “You are a delight to me.”

He found her hand on his shoulder, and he found her pulling him down to her, and wanting him, opening herself, and he found himself forgetting everything that had ever happened to him, except this one room, and this bed.