Geoffrey Leaves A Note...

Found among Geoffrey Clifton's effects - Cairo, Egypt

Ah, Katharine, is it because we are so familiar to each other? So much one flesh since we first ran as children, together on the Cornwall coast? Is that the reason you still think of him?

You tell me you have forgotten Almasy, but I watch your eyes so close to mine on our pillow, and they speak another story. I hear you scream in the night, and know he is somehow the cause. Do you think because I cannot put into words all I feel, that I love you any less than he does?

Sometimes when I am flying far away from you, I see through my camera -- in the desert below -- the curve of your breasts and hips, and the long clean lines of your back - and I cry out to the air with longing for you.

You told your stories from Herodotus, there in El Jof, and his face in the firelight was sharp, his eyes devouring you. I played the clown for your amusement, but I have my stories too, my poetry, though I do not say them aloud. ..

"How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true.
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face....

I too can watch, my darling. I watched him watching you, and you pretending not to see. When he first danced with you, I saw his body stiff with wanting. His hand on your back already exploring the flesh beneath. The bile rose in my throat. I had to look away and pretend he did not exist. Wipe him away with our own memories. I think my heart knew then what my mind would still not accept. But he didn't go away, did he?

The morning I waited for you to come back from him, the silly anniversary bouquet in my hands, knowing everything now, I could smell him upon you, even from the taxi.

And now I sit here in our room, and hear you getting ready for our ride together to him. What are you feeling inside? Are you wild with happiness? With the sort of happiness I could never supply?

I cannot bear it any more. We will ride together over the desert for one last time, my sausage-- you and your husband -- and meet your lover. Then we will all disappear forever.

(Imagined by Murph)