Ellen Datlow - Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

Conny dressed quickly, grabbed her bag, and hurried out of the apartment.

The streets of Newport, this near the waterfront, were relatively empty in the mornings. Everyone was either down at the docks or further in. This thin slice of shops and cafes remained quiet till nearly noon. Conny was grateful for the solitude. She strode along the narrow avenues that twisted through the district until the sensations pulling at her ebbed. When they seemed at a safe distance, she stopped in a small café and ordered coffee.

It’s never happened with anything but the letters before…

They joked about the letters, pretending that their influence was purely suggestive—what was that delicious word from the psychoanalysts?—psychosomatic. That Conny’s reactions came from her own imagination while he wrote. He did them after lovemaking—or had, until illness stole his energy and all he could do was write about making love. He had missed several days during the worst of it. Afterward, when he wrote, scribbling earnestly to her with the ivory pen, she responded. Perhaps it was imagination, as he said. Perhaps he even believed it. She no longer did. Especially not now. She was disinclined to question it too closely—sometimes it seemed like the only thing they had together.

She looked down the cobbled street, glimpsing something familiar. A few people walked along—workmen, heads bowed, caps pulled low on their foreheads. Conny watched them go by across the street. As they reached the next street, one of them looked her way. A heavy line staggered over half his face.

Conny stood abruptly. Coffee sloshed onto the table. She fished tuppence out of her bag, dropped it, and hurried after the workmen. When she got to the corner they were gone. She continued down the canyon-like avenue, but she saw no one.

Most of the shops were still closed. Conny framed her eyes to peer through the dusty windows. In one, among the assorted bric-a-brac, stood an attractive oak chest with brass trim. When she looked up she saw the shopkeeper, smiling at her. She pointed to the box and he nodded, motioning her to the door.

A musty, decayed odor escaped the box when she opened it. Shreds of felt still clung to the inside. “How much?”

“Oh… two pounds.”

She surprised him by not haggling. Instead she counted out the notes and laid the sheaf in his hand. She lifted the chest. It was only a little larger than what comfortably fit in her arms.

When she stepped from the shop, Geoffrey was standing in the street, hands tucked in his pockets.

“I thought I saw you,” she said.

He touched two fingers to the bill of his cap, then came forward and took the chest from her. He tucked it under one arm.

“I’ll carry this home for you,” he said.

They stopped in another café, not far from the apartment.

“After he recovered he wanted to leave London,” she said. “I suppose he blamed it for making him sick.”

“Hm. Well, that’s as good a reason as any, I suppose.”

“It hasn’t helped much.”

“He still isn’t selling? How are you getting by?”

“He writes reviews. My uncle sends money. We have friends— I have friends. One or two seem to find it romantic to help an aspiring writer. William almost never goes out.”

“He never was one for socializing.” He nodded at the chest. “What are you going to use that for?”

“Oh… memories.”

Geoffrey smiled. It eased the severity of his scar.

“William said you got that because of a misunderstanding.”

“Did he now? Interesting way of putting it.”

“Was he wrong?”

“To tell you? No, I suppose not.”

“No, I mean—”

“Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it.”

Conny drank her coffee to cover her disappointment. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a job working dockside.” He lifted his cup to his mouth. His hands were wide, heavy. Conny imagined them holding and lifting, easily, as though born to it. She imagined them then palms out, calloused, flat against her face, her breasts, her thighs—

“I really ought to get back,” she said, looking away.

Without a word he picked up the chest and followed her.

“Would you like to come up?” she asked. “I’m sure Will—”

“No. I have to get to work.” He handed the chest to her, touched his cap again, and walked off.

William was asleep on the sofa. Conny carried the chest into the bedroom. She took the letters from the suitcase where she kept them and transferred the pages into the box. Two stacks fit side by side as if the container had been made for them.

She locked the chest and slid it under the bed. Listening to William’s labored breathing from the next room, Conny sat by the window, absently chewing on a thumbnail, and thought about Geoffrey’s hands.

JULY, 1926

“Don’t you want to come?”

William looked up from the desk and shook his head. “I need to work.”

In the two hours since he had sat down he had done nothing but stare at an empty sheet of paper, one finger absently rubbing along the hairline at his temple. Conny felt the stir of unease. She had not told William about the invitation from Brian, the man who owned this house and the car they—she—had been using for weeks now. William only knew they were invited to a party.

“Then I’ll stay,” she said, half hoping he would say yes, please stay, half afraid that he would.

“Don’t. You want to go. There’s no point in both of us suffering through this.”

Despite his open shirt and the cool breeze coming off the Channel, his skin glowed with a fine sheen of sweat. He slouched in his chair. A typewriter—a gift from Brian’s wife, who was in Paris this month—sat before him like a model of some improbable temple, but beside it lay sheets of handwritten manuscript, the ivory pen on top of them.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“It could be a late evening.”

He shrugged and picked up the pen.

She kissed him quickly on the head and hurried downstairs. She started the car and anxiously pulled away. She had not thought too directly about tonight’s party. Brian had given her directions to a house down the coast road east of Brighton and had somehow made it clear that, while certainly William was invited, he would prefer her to come by herself.

Her body told her the moment William touched nib to paper. The villa was two miles away. Halfway there she considered pulling over, but she kept driving.

A mass of cars filled the grounds in front of the house. She could hear the jazz band even before she turned off the engine. She sat in the car for several minutes, pressed against the door, waiting for the rush to pass, imagining the sound of his pen, the faint susurrus of his breath. Tonight’s work, she decided, would be very good and as unsalable as the rest. It was all for her anyway—he said so, but he did not mean it the way it really was—it was all he ever wrote anymore. Conny leaned her head back and closed her eyes, letting the tension between navel and anus twist into completion. If anyone walked by they would hear her small sounds, and politely veer off to leave the lovers alone. But, she wondered, if they did not go away, if instead they indulged a voyeuristic impulse and came to see, they would find her alone, legs drawn up, face bright with pleasure. Just me and his work…

She never asked if he received anything from the connection. They never talked about it anymore; he seemed antagonistic toward the subject. That and his illness. He refused to see a doctor, adamantly declared that his lungs were fine, the trouble was his bronchials, and then worked himself to exhaustion and coughed violently half the night through. They coupled so seldom that it always surprised her when he pressed against her and explored her. She made it as convenient as possible for him, opened herself, shifted at the slightest hint of where he wanted to touch her. She had learned all his wordless signals and more often than not paid no attention to her own pleasure. Afterward, every time, he went to his desk, naked, and wrote another letter for her. Some of them covered less than half a sheet, others went on for three or four. She woke in the mornings to find them beside her on the bed, William asleep in the next room. They went directly into the chest.