Janice looked away from me when I said those words, mumbled about the papers and went to get them.
Idiot, I told myself. I stood in the living room; it was full of heavy old furniture that looked as though it belonged somewhere else, and some limited edition modern prints. On a sideboard, there was a photograph of Janice Rae’s dead mother, and another of her daughter Marion and her husband. Marion was a police-woman in Aberdeen. I shook my head, grinning and feeling very old and very young at once.
‘Here,’ Aunt Janice said. She handed me a cardboard folder stuffed with loose papers. On the spine it said CR in black felt-tip. The folder was burgundy but the spine was faded to grey.
‘CR?’ I said.
‘Crow Road,’ Janice said quietly, looking down at the folder in my hands.
I wasn’t sure what to say. While I was still thinking, she looked up, bright-eyed, glanced around at the walls of the flat and shrugged. ‘Yeah; I know. Sentimental of me, eh?’ She smiled.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s ... it’s -’ The words sweet and nice suggested themselves, but didn’t seem right. ‘- fitting. I guess.’ I stuck the folder under my arm, cleared my throat. ‘Well ...’ I said.
She had taken off her jacket; she wore a blouse and cords. She shrugged. ‘Would you like some coffee? Something stronger?’
‘Umm ...’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘Well ... aren’t you tired?’
‘No,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘I usually read way past this time of night. Stay; have some whisky.’
She took my jacket, poured me a whisky.
I sat down on a huge, surprisingly firm old couch. It looked like brown leather, but any smell it had had was gone. I held the whisky glass up. ‘Won’t you?’ I said. This is like playing chess, I thought.
‘Well, not if I have to drive you home, Prentice.’
‘Oh ... I could ... walk,’ I smiled bravely. ‘Can’t be more than three or four miles. Less than an hour. You’d lend me a brolly, wouldn’t you? Or there might be a night bus. Please; have a whisky; sit down, make yourself at home.’
She laughed. ‘Okay, okay.’ She went to the table where the bottles were, poured herself a whisky. Somewhere in the distance, that sound of the city: a siren warbling.
‘Stay here, if you like,’ she said, slowly putting the top back on the bottle. She turned, leaning back against the table, drinking from her glass, looking down at me. ‘That’s if you want to ... I don’t want you to think I’m seducing you or anything.’
‘Shit,’ I said, putting my glass down on a rather over-designed coffee table. I put my hands on my hips (which is rather an unnatural thing to do when you’re sitting down, but what the hell). ‘I was kinda hoping you were, actually.’
She looked at me, then gave a single convulsive laugh, and right until then I think it might still have gone either way, but she stood there, her back to the table, set her glass down upon its polished surface, put her hands behind her back, and looked down, her head forward and a little to the left. Her weight was on her left leg; her right leg was relaxed, knee bent in slightly towards the left. I could see she was smiling.
I knew I’d seen that stance before, and even as I was getting up from the couch to go over to her I realised she was standing just the way Garbo does in Queen Christina, during the Inn sequence, when she’s sharing the best room with John Gilbert, playing the Spanish ambassador who doesn’t realise until that point the disguised Garbo is a woman, not a man. She starts to take her clothes off eventually, and gets down to her shirt; then Gilbert looks round, does a double take and looks back; and she’s standing just like that, and he knows.
It had - I recalled, even as I went over to her - been one of Uncle Rory’s favourite old films.
It was one of those wonderful first nights when you never really do more than drowse between bouts of love-making, and even when you do think no more; that’s it, finito ... you still have to say good-night, which itself means a kiss, and a hug; and each touch begets another touch more sweet, and the kiss on the cheek or neck moves to the lips, the lips open, the tongues meet ... so