Love by Angela Carter Page A

skin appeared to simulate the leather; he stroked her knee and, meeting with no response either in the negative or the affirmative, he explored the outer thigh and then the inner thigh until at last his fingers sank into the hot, wet, hairy cleft itself. At the moment of intimate contact, he experienced a sudden, violent explosion inside his head and instantly re-lived the night of the catastrophe in its entirety.
    When the debris cleared, he found himself sprawling on the floor at the other side of the room. He did not know whether the psychiatrist had kicked him away; if he had jackknifed backwards of his own accord; or whether the wholeencounter had taken place only inside his head. He raised himself to his feet and sidled back towards the desk. She sat exactly as she had done before, with her hands laid flat down before her on top of the desk and her face inscrutable.
    ‘Why do you hide your eyes?’
    ‘Photophobia,’ she replied. ‘Please sit down, Mr Collins.’
    Lee did so. He shook his head to try and clear it.
    ‘Here . . . did I touch you up just now?’
    The woman laughed and laughed. ‘What can you have been using?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘What drug? What drug have you been using?’
    ‘Ethyl alcohol.’
    ‘Besides that.’
    ‘He forces a fistful down me in the morning and another fistful at night. They’re very colourful.’
    ‘What are?’
    ‘The pills.’
    ‘He?’ enquired the woman.
    ‘My brother.’
    ‘Your brother’s visits cause some distraction in the ward. A schizophrenic immediately identified him with St John the Baptist.’
    ‘Our mum thought he was the Anti-Christ. She’s mad, too.’
    ‘Is that so?’ said the woman with a glimmer of interest.
    ‘Yes, but she went mad on purpose.’ Arbitrarily he decided to give her his dazzling smile.
    ‘Do that again!’ she said instantly. Lee put up his hands to his face, startled and ashamed.
    ‘How would you describe your relations with your wife? Are they good or bad?’
    ‘Neither good nor bad. They exist. She’s been ill before.’
    ‘Ill?’
    ‘Mad, then,’ said Lee. Tears fell down his cheeks.
    ‘Such mercurial changes of mood!’ observed the woman. ‘Why are you crying?’
    ‘Photophobia.’
    She switched the light off so that shadows of approaching dusk filled the room.
    ‘She had a breakdown before I met her. I don’t know much about it. I think she tried to kill herself then, too.’
    ‘Do you think you know much about your wife?’
    ‘She’s a silly cow.’
    ‘Do you think you understand her?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why do you think she refuses to see you?’
    ‘She’s mad.’
    ‘Apart from that.’
    ‘She believes in keeping herself to herself.’
    ‘Try again.’
    ‘Didn’t she tell you why?’
    ‘She doesn’t say much. She only plays with the ring on her finger and sometimes she smiles.’
    ‘Her wedding ring, is it?’
    ‘No, not her wedding ring. She ate her wedding ring.’
    ‘Ate it?’ repeated Lee incredulously.
    ‘When nobody was looking, yes.’
    ‘Then how do you know she really ate it, if nobody was looking.’
    ‘She told me she ate it with a good deal of conviction. And it was nowhere to be seen. And she smiled; rather a smug smile, I thought.’
    ‘She must have seen me at it, then.’
    ‘At what?’
    ‘I was on the balcony, knocking off this chick, wasn’t I.’
    ‘The night of the suicide attempt?’
    Lee nodded.
    ‘Apart from that, was it a normal evening?’
    ‘There was a party.’
    ‘During which you copulated upon a balcony.’
    There followed a silence. After a while, she asked him: ‘Do you love your wife?’
    ‘Is there a kind of litmus paper you could dip into my heart and test such a thing objectively?’
    ‘So you feel no affection for your wife.’
    ‘Don’t be facile,’ said Lee, irritated.
    ‘Why were you having intercourse with this young woman on this balcony?’
    ‘I was drunk.’
    ‘I would have assumed you were drunk,’ she said with some asperity. ‘But