The Immaculate by Mark Morris Page B

were laid over the room, muting its colours, though sunlight was pressing against the curtains in a butter-yellow block. Gail’s clothes were neatly folded and draped over the back of the chair. Jack picked up her lilac sweatshirt and held it to his face. It was warmly imbued with the scent she wore, Magie Noire, and her own wonderful Gail-smell that to Jack was comforting and luxurious and arousing. Though he had just got out of bed he was not cold, and because of this, and because he didn’t want to wake Gail by tugging out drawers to search for clean underwear, he padded naked out of the room.
    He sat on the toilet, browsing through a book called
Magical Britain
that he had taken from the small alcove behind him. The pages of the book were corrugated from the steam of countless baths. Jack, however, was not really reading the book; he was merely giving his hands something to do whilst his mind chewed over some possible cause for his anxiety. He couldn’t think of anything at all. To call the feeling presentiment or foreboding made it sound more mystical than it felt.
    He went to the kitchen to make breakfast. The linoleum was cold on his bare feet. Sunshine streamed through the skylight and reflected in harsh spasms on the room’s myriad gleaming surfaces. He poured muesli into two bowls, chopped half a banana into each, and then topped them with milk. He placed the bowls on a tray, to which he added a plate containing four crumpets with butter and jam, a pot of tea, a mug and a cup. Gail always only drank half a cup of weak tea in the morning; Jack drank at least two mugfuls, the stronger the better. He carried the tray into the bedroom and set it down on the floor next to Gail’s side of the bed, having to first clear a pile of books that had been allowed to accumulate over the last couple of weeks.
    Now was the time to wake Gail, now that he had brooded over the cause of his concern, without result. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, which was flushed and hot because she had been lying on it. Her short dark hair was tousled, her brows slightly beetled as if she were concentrating hard on the dream she was having. When Jack kissed her she murmured unintelligibly, allowing him the minutest glimpse of her white teeth and pink tongue.
    Seeing her like this, curled up and defenceless as she slept, made Jack ache with love for her. Sometimes he loved her so much that there were no words or actions to express the depth of his emotion. “I love you,” or even “I love you so much,” seemed woefully inadequate—to try and express through language what seemed limitless in his head and heart only served to diminish it. Hugs, too, kisses, even eye contact was not enough. Once, in Hyde Park, Jack had said, “How can I prove that I truly love you? What could I do that would make you realise just how much?”
    It had been a cold day, a foreshadow of winter. Gail’s nose and cheeks had been red, her eyes clear and sharp as the air. Lifting her chin from the fleecy swathes of her scarf she had asked, “Would you kill yourself for me?”
    â€œIf you like,” said Jack. “Got a knife?”
    â€œNo, I’m serious. If you really had to . . . would you do it?”
    Jack looked at her, and there was an earnestness in her face, an appeal, that both unsettled him and roused in him a love so acute it was like pain. He took her cold face in his gloved hands and pulled her gently to him so that their foreheads and noses touched. “Yes, I would,” he said and kissed her warm lips. “I’d do anything for you.”
    She drew back from him. “Promise?”
    Jack laughed. “Yes,” he said, and drew two swift intersecting lines across his breastbone. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
    He sat down on her side of the bed, making the springs creak and Gail murmur a little more. He reached out and touched her hair, tenderly running a finger