LISA TUTTLE

MEETING THE MUSE

It began, she fell in love, with the image of a man.

As a child she had seen his face for the first time in black and white, hardly
bigger than a postage stamp: young poet said a line below the grainy dots of
newsprint. So this was a poet, she thought, gazing at the shadowy representation
of dreamy eyes and shaggy hair, tinglingly aware that something had entered and
lodged in her heart, like the Snow Queen's love for little Kay.

Seven years later, in the poetry section of the college bookstore, she picked up
a book with the title The Memory of Trees. The author's name, Graham Storey,
seemed familiar; she glanced at the back cover for a clue, and saw his face
again.

Something turned over inside her as she stared at the picture of a poet no
longer so young.

Gone was the Beatles hairstyle; his hair was cropped now. The eyes that stared
out at something far beyond her had a dreaminess contradicted by the fierceness
of the rest of his face, the thin, tight-lipped mouth, the jut of nose and chin.
There was a ferocity in him, but she sensed it would be directed more at himself
than anyone else. She sensed enduring sadness, a pain held tightly within.

She bought the book, of course, although her budget did not allow it; she could
do without a few meals if she had to. She read it straight through for the first
time that night, alone in bed, with an intensity of concentration she seldom
brought to her studies. She read each poem many times, until it was part of her.

Previously a lazy, erratic student, although bright, now, driven by her heart,
she became a scholar. The university library had a copy of his first collection
of poetry, but she also discovered poems, letters, even essays and reviews he
had written by combing through every poetry-related publication of the past
decade that she could find in the stacks. She followed cross-references and
hunches until she had compiled an impressive dossier on him, not only his work
and influences, but his life, the man himself. She learned from a chance
reference in one book that he had been in correspondence with W.H. Auden -- and
that his letters, Graham Storey's actual letters, were in a collection in the
Humanities Research Center on the University of Texas campus -- and she, as a
student, had access to them.

She sat by herself in a small, cool, well-lighted room with a box-file open on
the table and picked up the typewritten pages in her hands, raised them to her
face, inhaling with eyes closed. What might be left, besides the words,
indentations and ink on paper, after so many years? Cell fragments from the skin
of his hands, a hair, a trace of cigarette smoke. . . .? She stared and stared
at the signature in blue ink, the small, cramped hand. At first, the formality
of his full name, but the last two letters were signed simply G.

How that initial reverberated, how personal it became, how it haunted her! The
fact that it was one of her own initials did not detract but seemed to suggest a
connection between them, proof they had something in common.

Her handwriting altered under the impress of his. At first it was evident only
in the way she wrote the letter G, but soon she began to change the way she
signed her name, aspiring to make her signature more like his, and then,
unconsciously (for she had too small a sample of his to be able, consciously, to
copy it) the rest of her handwriting shifted in accord with her signature,
becoming smaller, neater, more precise.

She could not have said, later, when the plan began, but it was only natural,
loving him as she did, to want to meet him, and to try to think of ways. She
entertained fantasies of meeting him by chance: she would be walking along the
Drag one day, and there he'd be, walking toward her. The English Department did
sponsor a series of readings by established poets, it was not impossible that
they might invite Graham Storey. Or maybe he would read one of her poems,
several of which had been published in various little magazines, and be so
impressed that he'd write her a letter.

But she knew these were childish fantasies. Sometimes when she had spent too
long alone the vast, sad truth would nearly overwhelm her. No matter how much
she knew about him or how much more she learned, it would bring her no closer to
him while he continued unaware of her existence.

Time passed, and she went on loving him while she got her degree and got a job.
She went on living in Austin, in the same rather run-down apartment building
near the University, and continued to socialize with the same sort of people,
even sleeping with one or two of them, while still dreaming of the faraway
English poet and the very different life they might have together.

More than once she started a letter to him, but she always drew back from
mailing them, always in the end deciding to wait until she could meet him face
to face. Then, she felt sure, although she was certainly old enough to know
better, she would find a way to make him love her. So she dreamed, and wrote,
and worked hard, lived frugally, and saved every penny she could toward the
journey of a lifetime.

Standing in Victoria Station, alone amid the alien crowd, unreal-feeling from
jet-lag and lack of sleep, she stood and turned the tissue-thin pages of a
telephone book. The sight of his name thrilled her, as always, like a familiar
touch. Storey, G. All at once she felt more at home, able to deal with the
problem of finding herself somewhere to stay in this huge, foreign city.

The next day she set off for Harrow-on-the-Hill, which sounded to her as if it
should be inhabited by hobbits, but was apparently no more than one of the
farflung tendrils of London's contemporary sprawl, easily accessible by the
Metropolitan Line. His street she had located in her newly purchased London A to
Z and she felt confident of finding her way there from the station.

She had no plans for what she would say or do after she had made her way to his
door. She was praying that magic would strike, that he would look at her and
feel what she had felt when she'd first set eyes on his face.

It was a sunny day, but breezy and not very warm, even though it was June. She
felt glad for her cotton jacket as she walked up the hill into the wind. Even
before she saw the number and was sure, she had recognized his little white
cottage with the honeysuckle twining around the green door. She knocked, and
both her breath and her heart seemed to stop while she waited for the reply.

A woman opened the door. She was about thirty, attractive in a strong-featured,
rather exotic way, with kohl-rimmed eyes and long dark hair. "Yes?"

"Does Graham Storey live here?"

"Why?"

"I wanted to see him." From the way the woman looked at her, she had the sudden,
despairing conviction that she would not be allowed in. To this woman, whatever
her connection to the poet, she was just some person from Porlock. "I'd like to
meet him. Please, won't you tell him, won't you ask him -- not if he's working
of course. Don't interrupt him. But if I could come back later, I wouldn't take
up too much of his time. . ."

"You're American, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Here on a visit?"

She nodded. "It's my first time."

"How do you know Graham?"

"I don't. Not personally. Just his work. I've admired it for so long..."

The woman smiled suddenly. "Oh, you're one of his readers! Well, he's not here
right now, but-- would you like to come in? I can show you round."

This was not at all as she had hoped it would be. "Maybe I'd better come back
when he's in."

"Oh, he won't mind me showing you round. I'm sure he'd want me to. After you've
come so far, I couldn't just send you away again with nothing. Come in, come
in."

"Really, I'd like to meet him."

"Then you can come back again in a few days, when he's here. Better ring first
to make sure he's in. But as long as you're beret come in for a cup of tea.
Wouldn't you like to see where his wonderful poems get written?"

It would have been too awkward to refuse. Following her inside, she wondered
about the woman who played at being keeper of the shrine. In her hippy, gypsyish
clothes -- cheesecloth blouse and long madras skirt, silver bangles on her arms
and a ring on every finger -- she was unlikely as either a housekeeper or a
secretary. She knew he wasn't married, but asked with false naivete," Are you
Mrs. Storey?"

The woman smiled. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm his
girlfriend, Amy Carrick."

There was something in the woman's proud smile and the little toss of her head
that made her suspect she wouldn't have made such a claim in the poet's
presence.

"Where is he now? Will he be back soon?"

"He's gone away for a few days, walking in Scotland. He does that sometimes,
when he needs to be alone for inspiration. That's how poets are. Wouldn't you
like to see his study, where the magic happens? Just through here. This is his
desk, this is his chair. He always writes long-hand, on this sort of pad. There
are his pencils, and a rubber, and a couple of biros, but he's taken his
favorite pen away with him."

It was like being shown around a museum by a too-officious curator, facts forced
upon her and never allowed a moment for thought Or a meaningful private
discovery. Although she knew she was being silly, she found herself disbelieving
everything the woman said. No, this was not the room where he created his poems.
Perhaps he wrote letters here, on that old manual typewriter shoved to the back
of the desk, or typed out the final versions, but the poems had not been written
at that desk, with Graham Storey in that chair.

"Go on, I can see you're dying to try it. Go ahead, I won't tell him, sit down,
see what it feels like to sit in the poet's chair!"

She backed away. "Could I use your bathroom, please?"

Amy led her to the other end of the small house, where the bathroom was beside
the kitchen. "I'll make us a pot of tea while you're freshening up."

She ran the water to mask any sound, and had a look around the bathroom. There
were no signs of a woman's occupancy, no makeup, moisturizer, or tampons, not
even a toothbrush in the mug beside the sink. Only one person lived here, and he
was away.

"Why don't you take a seat in the lounge, make yourself at home. I'll be in with
the tea in a couple of minutes," called Amy as she passed.

There was one armchair and a sofa in the room called the lounge, and by the
evidence, a crumpled tissue and a paperback lying open on the seat, it was
obvious that the other woman had been sitting in the armchair earlier.
Perversely { "make yourself at home!"), she chose to sit on the chair, lifting
the book (A Bouquet of Barbed Wire by Andrea Newman) and tissue and setting them
on the nearest surface, then settling herself, wriggling her bottom deeper into
the already flattened cushion. As she did so she felt something small and hard
under her. Probably a button or a coin, she thought as she raised a buttock and
slipped one hand beneath the cushion.

She had found a small gold key attached to a thin gold ring. The key seemed too
small and delicate to be of any practical use, so perhaps it was the sort of
charm that more usually would be worn as part of a bracelet or necklace. Without
thinking, she slipped it onto her ring finger and it was a perfect fit. She
turned it so that the key lay in the palm of her hand, and she closed her hand
around it just as Amy came in with a tea-tray.

"Here we are! Milk or lemon?"

"Lemon, please."

"I thought so. I've noticed Americans don't often take milk in their tea. Graham
never takes tea at all. He's a coffee drinker, but it has to be strong."

She craved all such details of his life out of habit, but resented this woman
for being the source. Anyway, she might be lying. She certainly didn't live here
with Graham as she had implied. "Have you been to America?"

"Me? Oh, no. I used to work in a care where we had a lot of American tourists
coming in, that's where I noticed. Graham says noticing little details like that
is really important in a poet."

"Are you a poet?"

"I try," she said, casting her eyes down, more coy than modest. Then a thought
alarmed her, and her eyes came up quick and fierce. "Are you?"

"Oh, goodness no. I'm just a reader, I can't write." The lie soothed whatever
dark suspicion had briefly disturbed Amy's complacency. She knew she'd been
right in her reflexive, almost instinctive, lie. She didn't want this woman
knowing too much about her.

When she left -- as soon as she had finished her tea -- she was still wearing
the key-ring. Distrusting the other woman as she did she couldn't bring herself
to hand it over to her. She justified this with the thought that all the other
rings on Amy's hands were silver, so this was unlikely to be hers. This might
belong to Graham's real girlfriend, in which case it would be much better to
give it to him when she came back another day. After all, it was his house she
had found it in.

But as soon as she was outside on the street she was gripped by panic, realizing
that however she justified it, she had just stolen a piece of jewelry. She
should have shoved it back under the cushion again before she left -- what had
possessed her to put it on in the first place? The panic died away as she
accepted the fact that it was too late now, and she'd just have to try to
explain herself when she met the poet. Her hand made a fist around the fragile
key as she walked away.

She fell asleep early and woke, disoriented but wide awake, just before dawn. It
was too early to have breakfast or go anywhere, nothing would be open, and
although she would have enjoyed just walking through the streets of London she
was afraid it wouldn't be safe. With a sigh she reached for the book she had
been reading the night before, but soon cast it aside. Her dreams had been more
interesting, unusually vivid and strange. There had been one scene in particular
. . .

Thinking about it, she remembered something She'd seen walking back from the
poet's house in Harrow, and made a connection. Words hung in her mind,
glittering slightly, suggesting new connections, conjunctions, interesting
clashes. She scrabbled in her bag for her notebook and a pen.

By the time the maid knocked on her door several hours later she had completed a
poem, and she had the thrilling feeling that it was the best she'd ever written.

During the next few days she saw the sights of London and she wrote. She wrote
in the early mornings in her room, she wrote in cafes, tea-shops, and
restaurants in the afternoons, and in pubs or her narrow little hotel room in
the evenings. She had never known anything like this overpowering burst of
creativity, and she'd seldom been so happy. Writing poetry had always been a
struggle for her, and the results of that struggle usually mediocre. Now
everything was changed, as if a rusty old lock had been oiled, the key turned
smoothly and the door was finally, fully open. The poems were not easy to write,
they didn't spring into her head full-blown, she had to work at them, shaping
and re-shaping the initial idea, but it was like working in clear daylight after
bumbling around in the dark for so long. She had something to say now, and the
words to say it. The skill had come, perhaps, from all the years of practice, of
looking and listening reading and trying to write, but why here, why now?

She developed a superstition about the key-ring, which had not been off her
finger since she found it, but it was not something she was able to put into
words -- it would have sounded too silly. Yet she had not gone back to
Harrow-on-the-Hill, or even thought about it, during her week of writing, and
now, as she began to think about Graham Storey again, feeling that old familiar
tug of longing, the thought of having to give the ring up, to give it back to
him, was almost painful enough to make her abandon her original plan to meet
him.

Finally she shut herself into a telephone box and dialed the number she knew by
heart although she'd never used it. A man's voice answered, repeating the last
four digits she had dialed. Unable to think of any response, she hung up.

She put all her recent poems into a big brown envelope and set off for Harrow.
She didn't know what she would say, but she would let him see that she wore the
ring, let him read her poems--and then he would decide her fate. Standing before
his green door, her hand poised to knock, something else seemed to take over and
decide for her. Instead of knocking she bent down and leaned a little forward
and pushed the envelope containing her poems through the letter-slot. Feeling as
free, happy and satisfied as when she read through a poem she had just written
and found it good, she walked away from his door.

Haft-way down the hill on her way to the station she remembered her name was
nowhere on any of the poems or the envelope. He would have no idea who had
written them, and of course none at all of how to get in touch with her. But
that didn't matter. She understood now that she had written them for him, and
now he had them. She would get in touch with him after he'd had time to digest
what she had written, and then they would meet, two poets together at last.

She had grown tired of city life and the turmoil of London, so the next morning
she took the train down to Cornwall, dreaming of high white cliffs above the
slate-blue sea, of quaint fishing villages, of ancient stone circles and wild
moorland ponies.

The weather was kind. She sat and wrote in the sun in the ruined castle of
Tintagel, and in quayside cafes in half a dozen Cornish fishing villages. She
lived each day -- walking, looking, eating and writing --without thinking beyond
the moment, and she was happy. When the weather turned and rain swept in from
the sea, she got back on the train. She visited Exeter, Bristol, Bath and
Brighton. And then one night, sitting in a pub in Brighton with a halfpint of
bitter and her notebook and pen, she saw two lovers, a few feet away from her,
holding hands and kissing. She felt a pang of loneliness as she remembered how
she had loved Graham Storey, yet never met him. She was scheduled to fly back to
Texas in just over a week.

The next day saw her back in Harrow. She pushed her latest poems through his
letter-slot, but then, instead of retreating to a hotel in London, she hauled
her duffle bag further up the hill where a pub called The King's Head had rooms
for rent. She spent the rest of the day wandering around the hill, browsing in
antique shops, gazing at the picturesque old buildings of Harrow School, and
reading inscriptions on tombstones in the churchyard. She had dinner in the
hotel restaurant, and afterwards settled herself in a quiet comer of the lounge
bar, having decided to spend the rest of the evening writing.

She hadn't been there long enough to set pen to paper when Graham Storey walked
in. He wore jeans, an opennecked white shirt, and a scruffy old tweed jacket
going at the elbows. He looked around with a gaze as wide-open and innocently
curious as a baby's and intercepted her stare. She was unable to look away.
After a moment his eyes left hers and he turned to the bar. She shoved notebook
and pen away in her bag. She was trembling. A few minutes later, as she had
known he would, he carried his drink away from the bar, across the room, and
joined her at her table.

It was an ordinary sort of pick-up, with nothing poetic about it. Probably, if
she hadn't known who he was, she would have brushed him off -- she had no liking
for the sort of casual encounters that began in bars -- but if she hadn't known
who he was, she would never have stared at him in that way which encouraged,
practically demanded, his attention.

When they got around to exchanging names, she did not reveal that she knew who
he was. He touched her left hand very lightly. "Married?"

Her heart pounding very hard, she turned the ring on her hand so that the key
was visible. "No. You?"

If he recognized the ring he gave no sign. "Never. Women never stay with me for
very long. I can't blame them. I'm a selfish bastard, and my work comes before a
relationship. No woman likes to feel she's second-best, not even those who seem
the most sympathetic, even those originally drawn to me by the work." He
hesitated, as if expecting her question, and then explained, "I'm a poet, you
see, and one with a rather old-fashioned attitude toward the Muse. Oh, don't
feel embarrassed because you haven't heard of me! I'm quite successful as a
poet, but I know how little that means in this country today!"

When closing time was called, he gave her a look shifty and shy and invited her
home with him.

This was the invitation she had longed for, the answer to her dreams, yet she
hesitated at the intrusion of an unwelcome memory. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

He gazed at her with unbelievably guileless eyes. "Not yet. But I'd like to." He
put out his hand and caught her fingers. "What do you say?"

She said yes. They were up most of the night talking and making love. In the
morning they went back to the King's Head to get her things, and she moved in
with him.

It was only supposed to be for a week. But when the time came to fly home, she
forfeited her ticket and let the plane go without her. Graham was overjoyed, but
as soon as they had celebrated, he told her she would have to find a place of
her own.

"I love you, but I can't live with you-- how can I work when I'm always aware of
you in the next room, and wanting to make love to you? I can't live with anyone.
Poets shouldn't."

She had never told him that she was a poet, too, although she continued to
write, often early in the morning while he still slept, and was producing a
complete poem nearly every day. Each one she left as a love-offering on his
desk. Neither of them ever spoke of this.

She believed that she would be the exception, the one woman he could live with,
but obviously it would take him some time to come around to this realization. In
the meantime, she was not going to be a drag on him in any way. It turned out to
be surprisingly easy to tap into the blackmarket world of low-paying jobs,
despite the soaring unemployment figures currently making headlines, and soon
she was working as a cook-waitress at a care in South Harrow. She found a room
to rent nearby, but spent little time in it. Now that she had a place of her
own, Graham wanted her in his place as much as possible, and they spent every
night together.

Two months passed, then three. She was still happy, although no longer writing.
It might have been lack of time and energy -- it was difficult, between her job
and Graham, to ever get two consecutive hours to herself--but she felt the real
reason lay deeper, that the well of creativity she had magically tapped into had
run dry. Or maybe it was just the need to write which had gone. She didn't
really regret it. Once she had wanted to be a great poet, but now she just
wanted Graham to marry her. She'd be legal then, she could give up the smell of
stale fat frying that always clung to her hair and clothes and get a decent job,
she could give up that poky furnished room in South Harrow and live honestly
with her husband, maybe they would have a baby . . .

One day after work as she let herself in to Graham's house she was aware of a
changed,charged, atmosphere. The skin on her arms and back prickled. She thought
she smelled something in the entrance hall, like a woman's perfume, but when she
sniffed it was gone. She went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and
found the kettle still warm from recent use. Yet Graham never drank tea. The
last of a pot of coffee, well-stewed by now, still simmered away on the
hot-plate of his coffee-maker.

It was at that moment, sensing the recent presence of some possibly threatening
stranger, that she realized the key-ring was gone.

She clutched her left hand in her right, tightly, as if she'd cut it and had to
staunch the flow of blood. She couldn't remember the last time she'd noticed it,
but surely it had been there this morning?

More than three months, almost more than four, now, since she'd first walked
into this house, a stranger, and found the ring and put it on. She had never
taken it off since, she was sure she hadn't taken it off, and it had always been
a perfect fit, so how could she have lost it?

She began to search, frantically, crawling around on the kitchen floor, then
rummaging through the cushions of the sofa and the easy chair in the lounge,
aware even as she did so that she was more likely to have lost the ring at work.
Maybe she had taken it off to wash her hands and left it beside the wash-room
sink.

She didn't find it, not that day and not ever, no matter where she searched.
Graham was no help. He said he hadn't noticed that she wore a ring. When,
indignantly, she described it, he said yes, he remembered something like that,
but he hadn't seen her wearing it for ages. He also denied that he'd had a
visitor that day, gazing at her with his unbelievably guileless blue eyes, and
she was afraid to insist. She had the sudden cold unwelcome thought, as he
kissed her gently and told her not to worry, commented that she looked tired and
perhaps should have an early night tonight, that he had fallen out of love with
her.

She got up early the next morning and tried to write. It was the old, nearly
forgotten struggle in the dark once again, and she knew, in the certainty of
despair, that it would always be like this from now on, since she had lost the
ring.

That evening he took her out to dinner at the Indian restaurant at the bottom of
the hill. Over the nanns and the curry he told her he needed to go away for
awhile, by himself. He thought he'd probably go to the Lake District, or to the
Highlands of Scotland. He needed to do some walking and some thinking. The Muse
hadn't been answering his call lately; he was in a rut. And while on that
subject, he rather thought the two of them were in a rut as well; some of the
magic had gone. A little time apart would be good for them. When he got back,
they'd see how they felt. He'd give her a ring when he got back.

She clung to the fragile hope he offered, struggling to believe that when he got
back all would be well, that all was not yet lost. He made love to her that
night as one who performs a familiar task, his thoughts far away, yet she still
tried to tell herself that it was as good between them as it had ever been.

The next morning she woke before he did, and wondered as she lay there beside
him if there was any point in getting up and trying to write. She had just about
decided there was not when she heard something fall through the letter-box. An
image came into her mind as she heard the sound, of a large, brown envelope
containing a sheaf of unsigned poems. It was hours still before the postman
would come--this had to be a personal delivery, and the person who delivered it,
she knew with absolute certainty, would be wearing a gold key-ring. Her name
didn't matter, only her function as Graham Storey's muse.