Disclaimer: Borrowing Diana Wynne Jones' characters (Millie & Christopher) and pushing one to a certain extreme...
Christopher
Who is he when he walks down the stairs each morning? Who says he's the same man who woke up, mumbled a few sleepy words, and stumbled into his overcoloured dressing gown?
I'm married to him and sometimes even I wonder the answer to that question.
I know, for one, that he is the closest that we have to a celebrity in this series. His looks, movie-star handsome, that Millie in the books would die for. Not literally. Millie never does anything tragic. Those eyes, those cheekbones, that slick, shellacked hair. Mostly his eyes, though, glimmering, bright, like two round beads on a silver chain. Precious. Priceless. They are so full of life, full of life-interest, that they frighten me sometimes. A person's eyes need to be a little bit empty. Otherwise what do they need the rest of us for? His are so startlingly brown. I prefer it when he blinks. I prefer it when he's asleep, on my bad days.
I could talk for years about the way he moves, the way he walks with that self-confident, arrogant swagger – but never verging on obnoxious. So careful, always poised on the point between parody and sincerity. Scathingly smooth. Insults and blows slip off him. Slippery. There's a word to describe him. Sums up all that I can't say about him.
Sometimes, in the evenings, after a long day of seeing him, I wonder what life would be like if I had never seen him. I should, in all honesty, share a similar intensity with him. I am a sorceress, after all. But I've shrouded myself in dowdy housewifery, preferring the loose garments of my motherhood and mistress-of-the-house roles. Even the way I look is nothing like him. Were he one whit less healthy, he would be gaunt, for there is merely enough flesh on his bones to sustain him. Anything more and there wouldn't be enough translucency for his character to shine through. I am soft and lumpy, a bread-dough woman as opposed to his stick thin gingerbread man.
And yet he loves me. Why? Is there a reason for this? Do we need each other that much? Has he married me so that he no longer has to rescue me? Did he marry me because he knew that I was the only person near him who would have even the remotest chance of coming to understand his predicament?
We both know the perils of being used, being cat's paws. Of fighting for control of our lives, battling off greater, stronger powers. We are used to people being interested in us.
Sometimes I wish I had known him when he was a boy. Before, before all this. Before the castle and the cars and the servants and even before the dressing gowns. I mean, I did know him as a boy, but never until he was in the castle. What was he like with his parents, with his mother and father? How much has he learned from them? He has his mother's smoothness; I met her once, at the wedding, but where she uses her skills to deliver insults that seem pale until one goes away and reflects on what was just said, he uses her skills to slither his way between Parliamentarians and politicians and councils and magicians and other Important Persons. His father. The same coolness. Never coldness, but a distance. He has that on occasion. So distracted, even with his children. They don't know whether to love him or be afraid of him when he is like that.
Is it the mark of genius? Preoccupation with something that makes all else trivial? I could never live that way. I never did. I was never so delighted with being a goddess that I forgot what would happen to me afterwards. Yet I would not hesitate to say that he has often forgotten all else but his role as enchanter, as mediator, as advisor. As leader.
Beneath the flamingo bright layers, behind the feathers and paint and silk, buried deep within the granite, diamond hardness, there must be something soft. I have seen it, once or twice. That is not enough.
I want it all the time, every day, every night, every word he speaks to me and every smile he smiles at me. This is when I wish that boy would grow up faster and leave me my husband to myself.
Dissonance. Am I not this way, also? Surrounded by my comfortable things and my comfortable life and my lack of concern, what happened to the bright young thing? The clever bird, the darling girl, the life, the life. Perhaps this is growing old. Perhaps you never grow apart – no, I would guess that you long for the other even more – but you grow inwards. Together, but building unseen, unconscious separations. Defence. Shielding yourself.
I love him. I love him. And I don't know what to do to elicit that love in return. Is it there? Yes. But I cannot touch it, cannot see it, cannot know it until he lets me. And will he ever…?