A Kiss

When Miranda was eight years old, she made her father disappear. He just folded up flat like a piece of paper and slipped through the air into nothingness. She didn't knew how she did it, and certainly not why. Nor, to her frustration, could she manage to repeat the trick. Many times, when a teacher put her in detention for missing homework or when other children teased her in the playground, she would struggle to recapture that moment of magic, to fold them up and put them away; but the more she struggled, the further it slipped from her grasp, for the trick took no effort at all, that alone she remembered clearly.

Retrospectively, it seemed that the rest of her family accepted her father's disappearance with remarkable ease. It was never a subject of discussion among them and no-one seemed to wonder where he had gone.

They would sit down to dinner as always, Mother, Miranda, her elder brothers James and Daniel, her grandmother; say grace and eat in silence. The first night after the disappearance there was a place set for her father, but his failure to make use of it passed without comment and thereafter it wasn't laid again. After dinner they talked idly of their days at work and school, listening to each other's reports with polite disinterest. They would watch television, do homework, knit.

As the years slowly passed, it dawned on Miranda that none of the members of her family really knew each other at all. Although they lived together and ate together each night, talked and played cards and listened to music with one another, they were no more than barest acquaintances, temporary fellow travellers en route to quite separate destinations.

She would sit at the dinner table, then, and dream of letting loose the mential slip-knots to cast her disappearing spell over them all, not all at once but one at a time, just to see if anyone noticed the dwindling numbers. But the knots wouldn't slip, they had somehow become impenetrably tangled, and each night by bedtime she would be in a rage of frustration, knowing the magic was there, knowing she might never be able to use it.

But perhaps it manifested itself in other ways.

At sixteen, Miranda ran away from home and joined the ranks of invisible homeless on the streets of London; but not for long.

On her second afternoon of freedom, as she saw it, she was seated on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral in the sunshine. In her mind she was constantly tugging and twisting at the insoluble knot of her vanishing trick, making it only more insoluble, and it was some while before she noticed there was a man sitting next to her.

"Hello, young lady," said the man, who was dressed in a uniform Miranda did not recognize.
   "What do you want?" she demanded.
   "Only to savour your delightful company."
   "Oh." Miranda wondered what to make of the man. He didn't seem dangerous, but appearances could be, often were, deceptive. "Vanish!" she said to herself, but he didn't, of course.

"What's your name?" he asked, after awhile.
   "Miranda." She saw no reason to lie.
   "Pleased to meet you, Miranda," said the man, smiling. "My name is Forbes, and I've been sent to take you to your new home." Miranda suddenly felt alarmed. Was this man with the police or social services? Was she to be put into care or locked away in a home?
   "Who are you? What do you want?" she demanded, preparing to make a run for it.
   "My name is Forbes, as I said. I'm to be your chauffeur." Chauffeur? "I am entirely at your disposal, but we must be back at the house by six."

She was taken to a big house in Bloomsbury and shown to her room, luxuriously appointed with everything a sixteen year old girl could want -- or at least, everything that a forty year old man could imagine a sixteen year old girl wanting. In the walk-in wardrobe were dozens of dresses, trousers, shirts, skirts, jackets, hats and shoes. In a large and beautifully-inlaid chest of drawers she found enough socks and stockings and underwear of all kinds to clothe her for weeks without repetition or laundry. Every garment was a perfect tailored fit.

If she had had the money to do so she wouldn't have bought a single one of the items there, but her approval was not, it seemed, required. She felt as if she had no will at all, as if she were just another objet d'art that had been purchased to be installed in the room; and she found she didn't mind at all. It was suddenly easy to accept passively everything around her, to become a part of the furniture.

Forbes would not say a word about what was going on or who was behind this appropriation of her self. She was told to wash and dress for dinner, prompt at seven, and she obeyed. Of course.

Over a dinner of exotic delicacies, each more unpleasant than the last, her benefactor/abductor introduced himself and told her what was expected of her.

"My name is Albert Barnsden, but I hope you'll call me Georgie. For some time now I have felt the need for a companion, a young lady such as yourself, with whom to experience life's little joys. I must be clear that it is solely company that I crave -- I have no wish to assault your maidenhood. Far from it. My intentions are entirely honourable, I assure you. But being as I am of, ah, plentiful means, it seemed not unworthy that I should place a portion of those means in the hands of someone needy, in return for the companionship I crave. The remuneration would be very generous were you to accept my proposal, and I hope you would consider yourself my equal in all things, rather than a mere... employee."

Miranda accepted. Of course.

Georgie's demands were, on the whole, few and untaxing. Miranda would accompany him to dinners and parties -- on the rare occasions he was invited -- share his box at the opera, go for drives and picnics at the weekend if it was fine. He didn't appear to mind her less-than-scintillating performance as an escort, and at all other times let her do as she pleased. Forbes was at her service, and everything she wanted was provided.

She barely noticed. As time passed, she began to forget that she existed as an autonomous being, became a mannequin, a decorative object. Sometimes she forgot her own name, and never once did she remember James, Daniel, her mother or her grandmother. In her head remained the image of a knot, impossibly tangled, and a man she couldn't identify folding up flat like a piece of paper, but her obsession had become vague and shapeless. No longer did she imagine she could untie the knot, no longer did she go to bed in a rage of frustration. She was calm and at peace.

Later, she took lovers; not, at first, because she especially wanted to, but because she felt somehow that Georgie wanted her to. The idea was not one that he would ever have been able to express, but something in the very way he withdrew from any suggestion of a sexual relationship with her hinted at this desire.

Forbes colluded with her unquestioningly, ferrying her partners to and from their liaisons without a batted eyelid. She half suspected that he kept notes or recorded videotapes of her having sex with them for Georgie's perusal; or perhaps Georgie watched her at the time, through a peephole behind the eyes of a Gainsborough or something similarly Gothic. Not that she cared.

Once, she picked up a male prostitute and had sex with him in the back of the Mercedes while Forbes, unperturbed, drove around the quieter streets of Hampstead pointing out sites of historic or architectural interest. She imagined him relating the incident to the eager Georgie later that night, describing every intimate detail with unseemly relish. She found the idea faintly entertaining, but emotionally neutral.

Alexander was Miranda's seventh lover, young, dark and almost absurdly handsome, a catwalk model from a fashion show she attended. He was, she decided, even more vacuous than she felt herself to be. They slept together three or four times before she began to notice to her dismay that she felt happier when she saw him and more miserable when they parted.

The intrusion of emotion -- and before long even passion -- into her life was far from welcome. In her neutrality she had found peace; now, hostilities began.

Suddenly she began to resent Georgie's demands on her time, demands which separated her from Alexander. She resented Forbes' knowledge of their meetings and loathed the thought of Georgie listening in or watching their tenderest, most private moments. She hated where she lived, but she knew Alexander too well to imagine he would tolerate her without Georgie's money -- not that she was intolerable, indeed Alexander liked her quite a lot -- but he moved in wealthy circles, spent money fast and freely well beyond his means, and was an impossible snob. Poverty, even in a woman he loved, was unforgivable.

Desperation returned her to her Gordian knot. If Georgie were to simply disappear, she might live happily ever after. But the trick was as elusive as ever, and only added to her anger and frustration. She wondered, for the first time, why she'd made her father vanish all those years before, as if by replicating the circumstances the trick would take care of itself.

Lying in bed with Alexander one night, she told him the whole story. And, to her surprise, he believed her.
   "What did he do," she asked, "to make me magic him away?"
   "Obviously it must be something no-one else has ever done," said Alexander, looking slightly bemused by this rare moment of insight, quickly gone. And then he planted a kiss on the end of her nose, as she thought suddenly of the indifference of her grandmother and mother and James and Daniel, and the empty masquerade she played with Georgie, and the passionless pleasures she'd shared with six lovers; and Alexander murmured "I love you" as she thought of calm and confusion, peace and war; and the knot slipped free forever.
Posted by matt at November 12, 2003 01:16 AM