The Sea by John Banville Page B

being voluptuously overborne by her, of sinking to the ground under all her warm weight, of being rolled, of being ridden, between her thighs, my arms pinned against my breast and my face on fire, at once her demon lover and her child.
    At times the image of her would spring up in me unbidden, an interior succubus, and a surge of yearning would engorge the very root of my being. One greenish twilight after rain, with a wedge of wet sunlight in the window and an impossibly unseasonal thrush piping outside in the dripping lupins, I lay face down on my bed in such an intense suffusion of unassuageable desire—it hovered, this desire, like a nimbus about the image of my beloved, enfolding her everywhere and nowhere focused—that I broke into sobs, lavish, loud and thrillingly beyond all control. My mother heard me and came into the room, but said nothing, uncharacteristically—I might have expected a brusque interrogation, followed by a smack— only picked up a pillow that the thrashings of my grief had pushed off the bed and, after the briefest of hesitations, went out again, shutting the door soundlessly behind her. What did she imagine I was weeping for, I wondered, and wonder again now. Had she somehow recognised my rapturously lovesick grief for what it was? I could not believe it. How would she, who was merely my mother, know anything of this storm of passion in which I was helplessly suspended, the frail wings of my emotions burned and blasted by love's relentless flame? Oh, Ma, how little I understood you, thinking how little you understood.
    So there I am, in that Edenic moment at what was suddenly the centre of the world, with that shaft of sunlight and those vestigial flowers—sweet pea? all at once I seem to see sweet pea—and blonde Mrs. Grace offering me an apple that was however nowhere in evidence, and everything about to be interrupted with a grinding of cogwheels and a horrible, stomach-turning lurch. All sorts of things began to happen at once. Through an open doorway a small black woolly dog came skittering in from outside—somehow now the action has shifted from the living room to the kitchen—its nails making frantic skittling noises on the pitchpine floor. It had a tennis ball in its mouth. Immediately Myles appeared in pursuit, with Rose in turn pursuing him. He tripped or pretended to trip over a rucked rug and pitched forward only to tumble nimbly head over heel and leap to his feet again, almost knocking into his mother, who gave a cry in which were mingled startlement and weary annoyance—"For heaven's sake, Myles!"—while the dog, its pendent ears flapping, changed tack and shot underneath the table, still grinningly gripping the ball. Rose made a feint at the animal but it dodged aside. Now through another doorway, like Old Father Time himself, came Carlo Grace, wearing shorts and sandals and with a big beach towel draped over his shoulders, his hairy paunch on show. At sight of Myles and the dog he gave a roar of sham rage and stamped his foot threateningly, and the dog let go of the ball, and dog and boy disappeared through the door as precipitately as they had entered. Rose laughed, a high whinny, and looked quickly at Mrs. Grace and bit her lip. The door banged and in rapid echo another door banged upstairs, where a lavatory, flushed a moment previously, had set up its after-gulps and gurglings. The ball that the dog had dropped rolled slowly, shiny with spit, into the middle of the floor. Mr. Grace, seeing me, a stranger—he must have forgotten that day of the wink— mugged a double-take, throwing back his head and screwing up his face at one side and sighting quizzically at me along the side of his nose. I heard Chloe coming downstairs, her sandals slapping on the steps. By the time she entered the room Mrs. Grace had introduced me to her husband—I think it was the first time in my life I had been formally introduced to anyone, although I had to say my name since Mrs. Grace had