Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

And me, he thought grimly, back where I started.

Oh for God’s sake, come to your senses, Theo. You never had a fortune like her before. Never will again. He thought of himself scrabbling about the continent looking for the next thing. Wouldn’t be as good as her whatever it was. Should’ve saved more. Oh come on, what are you thinking? She’s got no one. Neither have I. She’s only a woman when all’s said and done. It wasn’t the hair. That was the least of it. It was the lips. The whole of the mouth. Not like a woman’s mouth, more like an animal’s. Not that he’d looked too closely, but her teeth were appalling. There were too many, almost, it seemed when she smiled, a whole rampart of them crowding in behind the front ones, though it was hard to tell. Who could kiss that mouth. It looked as if it would smell but it didn’t. She was always very fastidious.

The night in Leipzig, when she was so upset — he’d felt something. He reddened. God knows what. He couldn’t remember well. At the time it was just a fleeting thing he’d pushed down, horrified, as it raised its head. Till now, he’d hardly acknowledged it. But he thought that for a second he’d nearly kissed her. He’d felt sorry for her. A moment, you just want to give something a squeeze. People kiss their dogs. You see that. The moment came back to him with nervous stirrings in his loins, and then he thought of her mouth, the bulbous upper lip, the other receding, closed firmly but with a gentleness that gave her a certain serenity in repose. He pushed his mind. Suppose I’d done it? Suppose I did, suppose I kissed her. What are you thinking? No. And even if I did… No. She wouldn’t expect it. What would she expect? Not that it would make much difference in practical terms. They were almost living together anyway.

He shook himself out of it and finished his drink.

Walking back, steeling himself for any encounter (whatever it was it would not be easy), he followed trails in his mind, all of them running out in fog. A pair of young girls, arms linked, scuttled past him, each casting a glance. He could get a woman anywhere; it was just a matter of paying. That didn’t bother him. There’d been girls when he was in his twenties, a couple in particular, but nothing apart from passing encounters for the past eight years. It didn’t matter. Women always wanted to make him do things he didn’t want to do, like stay in one place or stop drinking or get up early in the morning. Julia didn’t. She was a sweet girl. They’d be like, I don’t know, he thought, like, not brother and sister exactly, not that, not… oh I don’t know. Couldn’t leave him then, could she? Don’t care how much you offer, you don’t take the wife from a man.

But then –

May I introduce my wife?

My wife.

They’d say he did, even if he didn’t. He could hear them. Christ, he does it with that. What is he?

When he returned he knocked on her door. She was playing her guitar. ‘Come in,’ she called. My God, he must have been drunker than he’d thought. Stupid stupid drinking so early. Now all he wanted was to go back to bed and lie down. But he went in and sat down.

‘That’s a pretty tune,’ he said.

‘It’s an old one.’

She looked nice, with her long hair uncurled, hanging straight to her shoulders. A wave of sympathy swept him.

‘Julia,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid.’

He didn’t know where that came from. His head spun, steadily, stupidly.

She stopped playing. He’s showing me his weakness, she thought, relief and euphoria dancing inside. It’s going to be all right. ‘Why, Theo?’ she asked calmly.

‘I don’t know.’ He slouched down, scowling.

‘Are you all right, Theo?’

‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said.

‘What was all that?’

‘I kissed her. I’m so sorry.’

She looked blank. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ ‘

Last night brought me to my senses,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you want to come over here, Julia?’

She didn’t move.

‘I think we should get married,’ he said.

She laughed but looked horrified. ‘Why are you saying that?’

‘Why?’ he said ‘Why does anyone say it?’

‘All sorts of reasons.’

‘Oh God,’ he said, strode across and sat down next to her, but she pulled back and her eyes were scared. ‘You fascinate me,’ he said. ‘You fascinate me more than any other person I’ve ever met. And I’ve never had a friend like you.’ She got up at once and stood with her back to him looking out of the window at the farrier’s wall. From the back with her long black hair hanging, she was just a girl.

What have I done, he thought.

‘It’s not love though, is it?’ she said. ‘Not like it is with other people. Real humans.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, turning. ‘It’s not like loving a human, is it? You’d be lying if you said it was.’

‘Don’t put me through the mincer,’ he said, ‘you know I’m bad with words.’

‘You’re not,’ she said.

‘Of course I love you, Julia,’ he said, desperately awkward, standing up and going close to her. She turned her head. Her black eyes were unreadable. ‘Why now? Why suddenly?’ she said finally.

‘Why?’ he sighed. ‘Because you’re going to run away and leave me. And I don’t want to lose you.’

She stared at him for a while, then said, ‘That’s not enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You have to ask? I want what other people want when they get married.’

‘Julia,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t know who I was if you went away.’

Still she just looked at him. Oh hell, he thought, and kissed her on the side of the mouth, amazed, aroused and horrified.

Rose, bare, small-breasted, sat smoking on the red sofa while Adam sketched her. He was having trouble with her feet. Feet were harder than hands. He was tempted to leave them off. She was telling this story about the dolls’ island as if it was interesting. Not that it wasn’t but not in the way she meant, numinous and full of corny significance. To him it was interesting as a piece of accidental art, but for her it was a ghost story. A long time ago a hermit, once a farmer with a wife and family, lived on an island in the canals near Mexico City. A little girl had once drowned off the island. One day a doll came floating down the canal and he fished it out. Then came another, and another, then more, till he thought it was a sign that the little girl wanted dolls. He hung the dolls in the trees for her. But still more came washing up on the island, as if they wanted to be there. When word got around, people started bringing him their old dolls too, and in the end he had hundreds, then thousands.

He lived alone with the dolls for fifty years. They talked to him and sang him to sleep, he said. And after fifty years he was planting pumpkins with his nephew, and when they’d finished they went fishing off the island. He started singing. His nephew went to fetch something and when he returned the old man was floating face-down, dead. Drowned in the exact same place where the little girl died.

‘Please try and keep still, love,’ Adam said.

‘Can you imagine that sound?’ Rose closed her eyes. ‘Hundreds of old broken dolls singing in the middle of the night on an island. And you the only one there to hear them!’

‘Yes,’ said Adam, as if he was talking about an ingrown toenail, ‘I can see that it might drive you mad.’

‘We should go,’ she said.

‘To the island?’

‘Yes. Just go.’