The meanest Flood

eventually coming to a halt outside a block of recently erected flats. The magician took the only available parking space and Marilyn sailed by and pulled into a side street where she wedged Ellen’s car between a VW camper and a motorbike and sidecar.
    Pulling her coat around her, she walked briskly back to the corner and was in time to see that Danny had crossed the road and was making his way up the hill, keeping close to the houses. He was carrying a holdall, long but not bulky, and wearing his trilby. At the midpoint, between streetlights, it was as if he became transparent. Marilyn had to blink her eyes to keep him in focus. The magician, transmuting his physical body into spirit and back again to the corporeality of the flesh. There had been men in Marilyn’s life before but they had been more or less equals. The footballer had been better at his sport than she was and Jeremy Paxman was arguably a better journalist. In both cases Marilyn’s personal qualities had more than compensated for whatever talent the man had possessed. Her dress-sense, for example, and her ability to plunge herself into the emotional depths of a problem.
    But Danny Mann was something else. There was a superhuman quality to him which was beyond her experience. Just as he disappeared and reappeared between the streetlights, he was probably behind her as well as in front of her. Marilyn could be sure of nothing about this man, whether she was following him or he was following her. So inextricably was her destiny entwined with his that her intentions lost form and meaning without reference to the will of the magician.
    And Danny’s life force, his ability to sustain a relationship with the world, was likewise compromised without reference to Marilyn’s intuitive nature. Their undying love for each other created a third being which was not Danny and was not Marilyn and was far more than the sum of their parts.
    At the top of the hill he crossed the road in front of the Taps and headed down North Lane.
    After a hundred metres he turned into a narrow alley which took him to the back of the houses. Marilyn hesitated. She stood at the entrance to the alley and dithered for a few seconds. She didn’t know why. If she had been a man she would have plunged into the darkness after him without thinking. But something about her socialization as a woman held her back. This was Leeds, a big and alien city, and it was already well after midnight. As a woman alone she was vulnerable. And since Danny had disappeared into the dark passage she had felt alone. She would go into the alley after him when she had conquered her fear, but he would not be there.
    Marilyn didn’t know who would be in the passage. It was as if she was being tested. In a relationship with a man like Danny there would be many tests. Was she worthy? That was a question that only a god would ask. Marilyn had a woman’s heart and questions of worthiness didn’t enter into the equation. She was a woman in love and there was nothing else to say. She would live for him or she would die for him, whatever was required.
    She felt her way forward. The glow from the street lamps was consumed within a few steps of the entrance. When she glanced behind, before turning the corner into a black soup, it was like looking into the warm but commanding eyes of a lover. Go on, Marilyn, the eyes said. I’m right behind you. There is nothing to fear. Danny again, Danny’s eyes behind her when she had seen him go on before. Danny all around her, Danny inside her.
    There was a high brick wall which she could explore with her fingers. She could feel the groove between each brick where the cement and mortar had eroded. Beneath her feet were damp leaves, the odd twig and stone, and the enclosed space was permeated by an overpowering smell of cats. Up above was the huge bowl of the night sky, the Milky Way and a pale moon obscured by billowing clouds. The city’s hum was low and constant but there were no other sounds, no footfalls from Danny, no humorous chuckle from his throat as he watched her cling to the wall, carefully placing one foot after another.
    Marilyn thought that the passage would be filled with light. She thought that it would be transformed. She’d seen an advert on the television where an old man climbs the steps of a dark tenement, inserts his key into the lock and pushes open a heavy door into the dark interior of his apartment. He sighs, his lungs wheezing with the effort of the