Ellen Datlow - Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

The room smelled of sweat and soup, the weak breeze from the open window doing little more than stirring the air and mixing the odors. A pallet with pages of marked-up manuscript lay next to him.

Conny gestured toward the door and the nurse left.

“I’m sorry,” William said. “Were you sleeping?”

“No. I can’t sleep in the sunshine for long.”

“Of course not.” He coughed thinly and lifted a blood-stained rag to his mouth. “My letters. You still have them?”

Conny sat on the edge of the bed and took his free hand. “You mean ‘our’ letters, don’t you? Of course I have them.”

“Of course. They’re yours. Yours and Geoffrey’s. No one else.”

“You were working?” She nodded toward the pallet.

“Last words. Notes to you. Something… a closure.”

“Dr. Ludi’s been called. Geoffrey wants you to go to the hospital.”

“Shh. Doesn’t matter. The letters. Do you have them?”

“Yes, I said—”

“Get them. The first one, anyway. I want to remember.”

Conny peered out the door. Geoffrey stood in the hallway, leaning on a windowsill. “The trunk,” she said. “Would you bring it?” He nodded and hurried off. Conny glanced at William. He seemed to be sleeping now. Only sleeping, she thought, I’d know the difference.

Then Geoffrey was back, carrying the heavy oak boxed edged in tarnished brass. He placed it in her arms and went back to the window. He spent as little time as possible with William now; he could not bear the smell and taste and waiting of death. Conny tried not to be angry with him—everyone had weaknesses and flaws—but it would not have hurt him just now to have brought the trunk all the way into the room. She wrestled it to the bed and set it at the foot of the mattress.

When she looked up, William’s eyes stared at her, brightly feverish. She unlocked the box and pushed up the lid.

Within lay neat bundles of papers, each stack tied with a ribbon. Seventeen of them, one for each year until this last. A few loose sheets lay on top. A rich, musky odor escaped, displacing the sickroom stench for a few moments. Conny licked her lips and dug to the bottom of the box. She took out the oldest bundle, bound in a brittle blue band. The pages showed faint yellowing.

“D’you remember the first one?” William asked. “The first time, really. Here. In this house.”

She undid the bow and sorted through the handwritten sheets. “Here. Yes.” She read the date. “I’d forgotten it was in March.”

“Read it to me.”

MARCH, 1919

They laughed about it later, the way she kept saying no and giggling even as she unbuttoned his vest, his shirt, his pants. Not here, she meant, not in her uncle’s study, in sight of his enormous desk and his books; no, while she helped him undo her girdle and roll down her stockings; no, in a kind of disbelief, while his hands trembled as they brushed her breasts; no again, until he kissed her and their mouths became busy with other sounds in a different language. She liked the feel of his beard on her skin, the exhilaration of his belly against hers. Not here, she wanted to say, they could sneak up to her room and lock the door, down the hall from where her uncle slept upstairs, morphically coddled by one glass of claret too many. But there was no question of yes, not for weeks now.

She had come from New York to stay with her British relatives, to see Oxford, London, perhaps tour the continent. He had been helping her uncle with a translation of some Latin texts she had been forbidden to see. The tension between them had not been immediate, but Conny could barely remember that first week when he had been little more than part of the furniture.

The learner divan had not been intended for sex—the lumpy, squeaking surface seemed to grab at them, refused to let them slide or find comfort fully stretched out, and her head jammed against the arm, bending her neck awkwardly. Before she could find a different position, he was inside her. She closed her eyes and concentrated on each sensation, drawing her legs up and around him, determined to mine as much compensation as she could for the guilt she knew she would feel later.

Too many sensations. The smooth texture of his skin, the pressure of his hands, one on her shoulder, the other on her right breast; the rush of his breathing in her ear; the tension building in her stomach, as if someone were holding her inside, a safe, warm embrace. Far too many sensations. She realized that she would have to do this again just to count them all.

His breathing became ragged and he moved faster. Sweat slicked their flesh. Suddenly all the stress in his body released, along with five or six sharp breaths. He shuddered, then lay still, panting and damp. Finished. He raised himself up on his arms and smiled.

“We must do that again.”

Conny laughed anxiously. “Of course.” She felt vaguely disappointed and wanted to ignore it.

He gestured across the study. “We’ve made a bit of a mess.”

Their clothes were everywhere. Conny felt herself blush when she spotted her chemise draped over the green-shelled lamp on the desk. She caught his eye and they burst out laughing, Conny tapping a finger to her lips and made shushing sounds. “Someone will hear,” she said.

“Would you mind so much?”

“No.” Surprised at her own boldness, she reached for him.

“Wait,” he said, catching her hand and kissing her fingers. He climbed off her and went to the desk.

Crossing the study, Conny saw all at once how thin he was. Frail. His shoulder blades protruded and she could count each vertebrae. His skin gleamed like molten wax.

“I want to give you something,” he said, sitting down in her uncle’s high-backed chair. He searched the drawers till he found paper, then took Professor Carlisle’s ivory pen. He ran his fingers through his hair, closed his eyes for a moment, then began writing. “Something more than my exhaustion, anyway.”

Conny pushed herself up a bit and watched him. William Heath had written a novel, which he had sent off to a publisher, and he had shown her some of his poetry, published in The English Review. He was self-conscious about it, though, as if writing was the wrong thing for him, or that he was inadequate to the challenge.

It amazed her, after a time, how natural became the sight of him naked behind the huge oaken desk, intently scribbling away. Absurd and comic, yes, scandalous, and a little frightening. But while he wrote Conny imagined herself like this every night, watching him write, afterplay of their lovemaking.

“I love you, William.”

He hesitated just before he looked up. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

He seemed to think about it. “Good,” he nodded. “Good.” And continued writing.

Conny slid a hand between her thighs, toyed with her hair, then pressed her fingers into the moistness. The pressure began rising again. It was like the fear of a child doing something forbidden and expecting to be caught, a nagging fascination, like a warning impossible to heed. She moved on the divan, leather tugging at her, the air cool across her skin. The sound of the pen scritching across the paper, his breathing, the sensation of her own lungs filling and emptying, all seemed enveloped in the stillness outside the room, as if they had separated from existence and were drifting in a non-place, without time. If I open the door, she thought, there will be nothing…

The experience came like panic. Conny closed her eyes and held her breath against an almost intolerable urge to escape. Her muscles tightened in preparation, ready to send her running. She did not move, held in place by an intense curiosity to know what came next. And next. And next—she shivered at next, her body wanting to fold in on itself and stretch out at the same time.