John Harvey: Still Waters

It didn’t seem that Grabianski stayed in Lisbon long. One morning, making her way a trifle gingerly into the drawing room, Miriam Johnson stopped in her slow tracks and stared: the two Dalzeils which had been stolen were back in place on the wall.

It would only be after her death, thankfully some little time into the future, that the question of whether these were forgeries came to be discussed. Meanwhile, once the delighted Miriam Johnson had informed Resnick of their miraculous return and Resnick had passed on the news to Sister Teresa, Teresa was left thinking, not for the first time, that the Lord did indeed move in mysterious ways.

Resnick and Hannah talked about the cats. As a result, he began to stay over at her place rather less in the week, rather more at weekends and when he did, paid the thirteen-year-old son of a near neighbor to go in and administer to the animals’ needs. “Pick them up,” Resnick told him. “Stroke them, make a bit of a fuss. Not the big black one, though. He’ll have your fingers if you don’t watch out.”

Over Hannah’s half term, they took the Eurostar train to Paris and Resnick realized, from looking at a poster outside Gare du Nord, he’d missed Milt Jackson by two days. They went to see the singer Dee Dee Bridgwater instead, joyously swinging through her versions of Horace Silver tunes.

More than six months now; if they weren’t careful, it would be a year. Hannah occasionally thought of her former Irish lover, mused from time to time about other lovers she had never had, but most of the time seemed content.

And Resnick …?

One night, more than a little drunk after dinner with some friends, aroused, he and Hannah started making love upon the stairs, continued on the sanded floor and then half on, half off the bed. Hannah with her head thrown back, eyes wide, fingers clutching tight into his back, breaking skin. “Hold me, Charlie! Hold me down!”

He didn’t hear, at least not the final word; not till, his face sweating next to hers, she screamed it in his ear.

He was sitting down below, shirt unbuttoned, boxer shorts, feet bare. Hannah came and sat opposite him, feet pulled up beneath her on the chair.

“Charlie …”

“Every day,” he said, “most days, so much of what I have to deal with, it comes from that.”

“That?”

“People having power over one another, using them. Submission. Hurt.” He looked at her, the beauty in her eyes. “It’s not a game.”

She moved across to him, sat on the floor with her arms around his legs, resting her head against his thigh. “Charlie,” she said after a while, “the fact that I can say that to you, that I can ask you … That fantasy-that’s all it is, a fantasy-I could never show that, expose myself in that way if I didn’t trust you. Absolutely. It shows how safe I feel with you, how close we are, don’t you see?”

Resnick reached down and stroked her hair and touched his fingers to the fine line of her back, but still, no, he didn’t see.

“I’m going back up,” Hannah said, getting to her feet. “You’ll be up in a little while, yes?”

Resnick nodded but he didn’t move; he didn’t move until much later, when, stiff-legged, he went to the window to pull back the curtains and by then the first light of day was stretching out across the park.