Page 59 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“Why do you assume I was bullied?”

She snorted. “Please, Joseph. You project wounded puppy to a distance of a hundred metres.” She dunked a strawberry in her cup, sucked the gin out of it, then ate it. “So,” she continued, lickingjuice off her fingers. “You were bullied. Which completely torpedoed your self-esteem. Then—let me guess. A teacher took an interest in your poetry, encouraged you? And you achieved some big external milestone, something that finally made you feel like you existed?”

He remembered: the envelope, the foiled certificate, the giddy, disconnected joy, like he had discovered a door leading out of himself into a bright golden world beyond. “I won a national poetry contest,” he said miserably.

“QED,” she said, and took a sip of gin. “The rest is history. Or it will be, someday.”

He should have been focusing on the breeze dancing in her hair, the rosy undertones of her porcelain skin, the way her eyes picked up the hint of green in the water. But he was annoyed, not so much by what she was saying as by her obvious delight in finding what she thought was the key to him. He didn’t like the feeling of being made into a puzzle box for her amusement. “But that can’t be all there is to it. I was already writing poetry before any of that. It’s been part of who I am since forever.”

“But you probably didn’t feel the need to impress anyone with it until life put a hole in your heart.” She shivered, turning towards the golden cloisters of the Wren Library. Inside, Byron lounged on his shattered temple, the human being he once was perfected into marble. “There’s no help for it, Joseph. Artists aren’t people. We look like people, and we can sometimes pretend to be people, but any chance of actually being people was burned out of us long ago.”

He was almost sure he disagreed. But her words had a terrible pull. She made not being a person sound so wonderful: a tragic,glamorous calling, inevitable for both of them from the moment they were born. And wasn’t that what he had always wanted: to be more than he was, to escape the daily mess and awkwardness and humiliation of being himself?

The immaculate grass of St. John’s Meadow spread out to their left, the eagle on the gate staring fiercely in their direction. Diana stood up, setting the boat rocking. “My turn,” she announced.

He adjusted his stance to steady himself. “I thought you were too busy and important to learn punting.”

“That remains the case. But, much as I was enjoying the view—I’m getting cold.” She lurched elegantly down the boat. He offered his hand, and she took it, stepping up until they were sharing the narrow platform. She clutched at him to steady herself, and before he knew what was happening, they were twined together, her leg sliding between his, her hand cold on the back of his neck. With a strange hunger, she said, “You’ve known it, haven’t you? Love. Or something like it.”

His heart thundered with a peculiar mixture of excitement and apprehension.This was it. The moment—No. No narrator. If this was happening, he was making it happen. He leaned in, close, closer—

Diana drew back, a smile in her sharp green eyes. “Who is she?”

The question sent him into a panic he didn’t understand. His mind screamed with obscuring static. “Who?”

“The girl you wrote ‘A Taste of Stars’ about. The girl you were kissing.” She looked at him under her eyelashes. “More than kissing. We all know what you were doing puttingcomeat the end of a line, after all that buildup.”

He felt himself blush. He had read the poem a hundred times, but he had never really understood it until he had heard herperform it: the line breaks breathless, the rhythm urgent in a way that had invaded his dreams.

She was enjoying his discomfort. “So?” She pressed herself into him, gimlet eyes and warm juniper breath, and he was undone by the nearness of her.You, he thought.She’s going to be you.

But he could never tell her that. The realisation broke the moment. “That’s between me and her.” He handed her the pole and sat down.

She was watching him with a strange, thoughtful expression. He laughed, pouring gin into a cup to cover his self-consciousness. “What?”

“Remember what I said about you not being my type?” She hauled the pole out of the water at an angle that would have made Rob weep. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

It was hardly a declaration of love. But it still made him feel like she had given him something precious, foiled and inked and marking him out as chosen. He settled back against the cushions with a smile he found it difficult to hide.

As he did, a figure on the riverbank caught his eye. Vera. She was alone, watching them from the grass, a look of alarm on her face.

“Right. Here goes.” Diana dug in the pole, setting the boat spinning. Vera lurched out of sight. By the time they were pointing in the right direction again, she was gone.

The sight of her had shaken him. He would have found it hard to forget. But Diana’s punting was so terrible that he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. He sipped neat gin for courage as she steered them unerringly in circles, crashed into the bank, then another boat, then narrowly avoided braining herself on theBridge of Sighs. He was consumed with secondhand embarrassment, but it was clear she didn’t care. She rode each misadventure with blithe unconcern, tossing her hair with a smile, pivoting into a flawless impression of a punt guide that made him laugh so hard he got gin up his nose. By the time they were zigzagging towards Magdalene Bridge, he was both mildly drunk and also, impossibly, enjoying himself.

Diana launched the punt diagonally across the river, prompting one of the professional guides to swear under his breath and change course. Joe felt something pulling their boat back. “What’s happening?”

“The pole’s stuck. As the actress said to the bishop,” she said with a dirty chuckle.

He laughed, less at the joke than at her exaggerated amusement. She winked cheekily and half turned, making an ineffectual effort to tug the pole free. The boat was still moving forward, and she was leaning farther and farther back. Rob’s third rule of punting pushed its way into Joe’s tipsy brain.

“Diana,” he said, sitting up. “Let go of the pole. Let go—”

She didn’t let go. He watched, helpless, as the boat went one way and the pole went another, and Diana followed the latter into the cold grey water.

She surfaced with a shriek, arms flailing. “Fuck! Fuckingfuckthat’s cold. Oh Jesus fucking Christ.” A tour boat drifted past, a little girl watching in fascination as her dad clapped his hands over her ears.

“Hold on,” said Joe. “I’m coming.” He tried to use the paddle to row the boat towards her, but it was like trying to steer a bus by blowing on it. He leaned out, grabbing the floating pole andswinging it out towards her. She clutched the end and he pulled her in, reaching into the freezing water to help her clamber into the punt. She crouched, dripping, on the wooden slats, hair plastered across her forehead, as far from the polished, perfect actress on the cover ofMeant to Beas he had ever seen her.

---