‘Women’, the doctor said, ‘were born on the knees, that’s why I’ve never been able to do anything about them, I’m on my own so much of the time.’
‘Suddenly, I knew what all my life had been, Matthew, what I hoped Robin was—the secure torment. We can hope for nothing greater, except hope. If I asked her, crying, not to go out, she would go just the same, richer in her heart because I had touched it, as she was going down the stairs.’
‘Lions grow their manes and foxes their teeth on that bread,’ interpolated the doctor.
‘In the beginning, when I tried to stop her from drinking and staying out all night, and from being defiled, she would say—"Ah, I feel so pure and gay!” as if the ceasing of that abuse was her only happiness and peace of mind; and so I struggled with her as with the coils of my own most obvious heart, holding her by the hair, striking her against my knees, as some people in trouble strike their hands too softly; and as if it were a game, she raised and dropped her head against my lap, as a child bounces in a crib to enter excitement, even if it were someone gutted on a dagger. I thought I loved her for her sake, and I found it was for my own.’
‘I know,’ said the doctor, ‘there you were sitting up high and fine, with a rose-bush up your arse.’
She looked at him, then she smiled. ‘How should you know?’
‘I’m a lady in no need of insults,’ said the doctor. ‘I know.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You know what none of us know until we have died. You were dead in the beginning,’
The twilight was falling. About the street lamps there was a heavy mist. ‘Why don’t you rest now?’ asked the doctor. ‘Your body is coming to it, you are forty and the body has a politic too, and a life of its own that you like to think is yours. I heard a spirit mew once, but I knew it was a mystery eternally moving outward and on, and not my own.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘now.’ Suddenly, she began to cry, holding her hands. ‘Matthew,’ she said, ‘have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?’