33 A Problem with Hands

33 A Problem with Hands

It was a Stygian night. Outside the rain drifted in drapes and an east wind was gusting, causing unknown objects to clatter past in the road and leaving the doctor anxious for the health of the roof, whose pantiles could be heard scraping against each other as they lifted and settled and moved. The three of them were sitting in the kitchen, Pelagia unravelling her ever-diminishing blanket, the doctor reading a book of poems, and the captain composing a sonata in the style of Scarlatti. Pelagia was fascinated by the way in which he seemed to be able to hear the music in his head, and now and then she went to inspect the progress of the incomprehensible squiggles on the page. At one moment she stood with her hand on his shoulder because it seemed the most natural and inevitable pose, and it was only after a couple of minutes that she realised what she was doing.

She looked at her hand in surprise where it rested on the man's body, as though remonstrating with it for behaving so wilfully in the absence of proper adult supervision. She wondered what to do. If she plucked it away, it would seem rude, perhaps. Perhaps it would betray the fact that she had put it there unconsciously, and he would surmise that it bespoke feelings on her part that she would not like to have avowed either to him or to herself. Perhaps if she just left it there as though it belonged to someone else she would be able to disown responsibility for its actions. But what if he suddenly noticed where it was? If she moved it, he would instantly realise by virtue of where it had been that it had in fact been upon his shoulder; and if she did not move it, then he might realise that it was there, and make something of the fact that it had not been moved. She scowled at her hand, and felt anxiety obstructing her understanding of his explanatory monologue about phrasing and harmony. She decided on balance that the best thing to do was to leave her hand where it was and pretend that it belonged to someone else. She leaned forward and adorned her face with an expression intended to convey the most extreme intellectual seriousness that had in it not a trace of natural affection or physical attraction. 'Mmm, how interesting,' she said.

Psipsina scratched at the door, squeaking plaintively, and with relief Pelagia ran to let her in, at which point the captain became aware that a hand had been lightly resting for some minutes upon his shoulder. The absence of its weight was quite palpable, and its former presence most retrospectively pleasant and consoling. He smiled with discreet pleasure, and a note of triumph would have entered his voice if he had had occasion to speak.

His pleasant musings were most horribly interrupted by Psipsina, whose soggy

weight in his lap entirely displaced any pleasure or triumph that he might have been entertaining. Psipsina's policy in rainstorms was always to get as wet as was feasible and then leap into the nearest and warmest lap so as to dry herself as efficiently as possible, and this time the captain had fallen victim, since the doctor had very wisely and presciently stood up to prevent it from happening to him. Corelli looked down in horror at the sodden bundle of fur, and felt the water soaking into his groin. 'Aaah,' he cried, throwing his hands into the air.

Pelagia laughed in malicious glee, and swept the bedraggled animal from his lap. He felt the swift brush of her fingers on his thighs, and knew a momentary thrill of surprise, which was augmented almost to infinity when she started to sweep at his breeches with tier hands, saying, `O what a mess, you poor thing, look at all this grit and muck . . . ' He looked down in astonishment as the hands worked, and then realised that she had noticed his expression. She stood up quickly, shot him a withering and accusing look, and returned haughtily to her unravelling, whereupon the persistent Psipsina leapt once more into his lap. As the water in his groin warmed up beneath the weight of the pine marten, he felt that odd glow of satisfaction that he had once experienced as a little boy when he had urinated by mistake in his sleep, imagining that he was doing it against a wall. It was the same comforting warmth that one had before waking up in horror and shame. He forgot Scarlatti and thought about Pelagia's hands. Such slender fingers, such pink nails. He imagined them engaged upon amorous and nocturnal things, and realised that he was disturbing Psipsina. He tried to suppress his lubricious imagination by thinking about Vivaldi.

This was a mistake, because he immediately recalled that Vivaldi had taught young girls in a convent. His wayward brain conjured up images of a whole class full of winsome little Pelagias, all of them licking the tips of their pencils suggestively and luring him with their glowing dark eyes. It was a lovely image. He imagined all of them standing at his desk, bending over him as he explained something, with his finger moving along the lines of a text whilst their black hair tickled his cheeks and filled his nostrils with the scent of rosemary.

One of them put her hand inside his shirt, and another one began to stroke his hair and the nape of his neck. Very soon there were dozens of identical slender hands, and in a flash his mind pictured himself stark naked on a vast table, with every one of the miraculously unclothed Pelagias crawling all over him, engaged upon a delicious assault of breasts, hands, and hot, wet, nuzzling lips. He began to breathe heavily and perspire.

Psipsina decided that she could stand no more of this pressing disturbance from below, and jumped off his lap. His beautiful reverie turned to panic. If Pelagia happened to look up, she would see only too clearly that he had a pyramidal protuberance at a particular spot in his breeches, for which only one explanation could have been adequate or convincing.

He tried desperately to think of something deeply unpleasant, and meanwhile he swivelled in his chair to face away from her a little more. He put his papers in his lap and pretended to study them in that position. In safety now, his thoughts returned to all the Pelagias on the table, their many hands running up and down his body, their many ripe breasts pressing to his mouth like cool and succulent fruit.

The real Pelagia sighed, realising that she was tired of crochet. At her feet lay a tangled heap of unravelled wool that had kinked and interwound upon itself in an attempt to resume the knotted configurations of its former state. Pelagia did not understand why wool should be nostalgic in this way, but it was certainly irritating. She began to gather it up, and became confounded by its intransigence. 'Captain,' she said, `could you spare me a moment? I need a pair of hands to wind this wool on.'

It was a supreme moment of crisis; the captain had been so far lost in fairyland that he was at that precise moment making love to each of his naked Pelagias in turn. Her voice cut through his dream of Elysium like a knife through a melon. He almost physically heard the susurration of the knife as it sliced, and the hollow knock as it struck the chopping board below and the melon fell in two.

It was a desperate situation; he could not possibly stand up now without

betraying his tumescent state. He disciplined himself to think about his grandmother, a freezing swim in the sea, a fly-blown horse dead at the side of the road after a battle. The erection dipped its head a little, but not enough.

There was nothing for it; it was very lucky that she was so used to him behaving idiotically from time to time. He dropped to his knees and went over to her on all fours. He wagged his backside like a dog, lolled his tongue, and looked up at her with an expression of extreme canine loyalty. With any luck he would be able to gain some time with this charade, until he was ready to straighten up. She looked down at him and pulled a wry expression. 'You are a very silly man,' she said.

The captain lolled his tongue with even greater exaggeration, and gazed up into her face with such doggy adoration that she stopped her winding and said, `Look, how am I supposed to do this properly if you keep making me laugh? Lunatic.'

`Stupid dog,' said Pelagia, smacking him gently on the nose.

The captain threw back his head and howled to the tune of 'Sola, Perduta, Abandonnata'. The doctor winced and shook his head, and Psipsina went to the door and scratched at it, preferring to be let out into the drifting rain than to remain in the room and endure that frightful lament; real dogs were bad enough. Pelagia got up, took ,a peach from the table, returned to her seat, and just when the captain had thrown his head back for a most plaintive howl, she jammed the peach into his mouth. His expression of astonishment, popeyed and disproportionate, was a pleasure to behold.

Pelagia was distracted, understandably, and when she had finished winding the skein, it transpired that she had been doing so with a steadily increasing pressure. The captain stood up, and realised that his nose was becoming blocked just because he could not breathe through his mouth. He bit into the peach and let the remainder of it drop upon the floor, where Psipsina investigated it with some interest before running off with it. He struggled to extract his hands, and failed. 'A plot,' he cried, 'a treacherous Greek plot against their Italian liberators.'