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CURSIVE Emily-Mary in pajamas of dove-grey silk sits spraddled in a flummox of pillows, a mirror propped against her feet, toenails enameled with fragments of lapis lazuli. With an eye-pencil stub she picks out a blue tattoo, a devious snail-track from under one eye out around her velvet cheekbone, and for the moment is reasonably pleased. Now she will rise, turning her eyes towards her walking-partner, offering her arm, the gloved hand limp for the taking, and together they will saunter along the polished parquet of the long gallery. The coffered ceiling is an Italian extravaganza of gilded stalactites, the brightness of a rain-patched afternoon patterning the damasks of the brand- new Chippendale settees and her husband's full-length portrait, still reeking of linseed oil. Later, they will canter the length of the wide avenue between the plumes of elms, hooves kicking a glitter of splinters out of the grass, and then, in the woods, they will dismount and he will take her, panting, wet on the ferny floor beneath the beech trees, and they will stare, as the hour sidles by, at the white shards of the sky. And then she will ride home to soak in the marble tub, will wash from her hair the strong sexual smell of mushrooms, moss, and leaf-mulch, and with careful cold-cream will erase the magical arabesques that mark her face. Now she is pulling the quilt up over her head, but, later, the house will awake in flame, its roof cascading chutes of silk-grey molten lead.
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