by Peter James
Shit. Did she really bring all this stuff? For one night? She untied the straps and sifted through the layers of flattened clothing. Thick sweater. Had she really packed that? And another? Three different outfits? Nuts, nuts, nuts. It was hot and stuffy in the room. She went over to the window, pulled back the curtain and saw a balcony. She unlocked the door and stepped out onto it.
She felt the cool air, refreshing, could hear the rain falling through the darkness, and see the motorway stretching away into the distance like a never-ending neon sign. She looked down and saw the roof of the swimming pool directly beneath her, a huge octagonal-shaped glass dome over a pool set in a brightly lit indoor tropical garden. There was a thin haze of condensation on the glass making everything slightly fuzzy. She watched a fair-haired woman with a fine figure slowly stretch out on a deck chair under a sun lamp, and toss her hair back. To the side of the pool was a wooden bar with a coconut matting roof, where several people sat wearing nothing but swimming costumes. She wondered what the temperature was in there.
She leaned against the balcony rail trying to get a better view and it seemed to move a fraction under her weight. She stepped back nervously, stretched out her hand and tested it. It was fine, rigid. Standing at arm’s length, she pushed harder against it. It was still fine. Had she imagined it? Come on, Sam, pull yourself together. Nervous of everything. Relax. She went back to the rail and put her full weight on it, defiantly. She even gave it a shove with her bum, just to see.
25
‘Island In The Sun’ came round for the third time on the Paradise Island Restaurant muzak. It was suffocatingly hot, as if the hotel was determined to spare no detail in maintaining the illusion of the Indian Ocean on this damp green strip of countryside sandwiched between the motorways.
The walls were uneven and painted white, with bits of fishermen’s netting hanging from them. A model wooden schooner sat on a high shelf. Sam’s mouth was feeling hot and blasted from a Creole fish curry, and she sipped some mineral water. Ken lit a cigarette. There were blotches of sweat on his denim shirt, around his chest and on his brow.
‘You’re looking a bit more cheerful,’ he said, picking up his glass. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘I must remember to keep on smiling. I keep forgetting.’
‘Yeah, well – it’s not a bad thing. It’s very dangerous to be too cheerful.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I think sometimes we ought to put people in hospital for feeling cheerful. We’d have a far safer world if everyone was miserable, depressed; cheerful people are dangerous – blinkered optimists all bloody bashing on regardless. Don’t worry, old boy, it’s all going to be fine, eh what?’
She grinned. ‘You’re probably right.’
‘Want any pud?’ he asked, looking around for a waiter.
‘No, thanks.’
‘In a year or two’s time, they won’t have to bother with menus in restaurants – they’ll just be serving everyone Castaway bars. How would you like it served, Madam? In its wrapper? On a plate? Would you like us to cut it for you? To eat it for you?’ He dabbed his forehead with his napkin. ‘I’m sweltering. They ought to warn you to bring tropical clothes when you come here. Fancy a quick walk? Get some air?’
They went out of a side entrance. The lightning and the rain had stopped and there was a mild breeze which felt good. They walked down a path towards the golf course, and it got increasingly dark as the lights from the hotel windows faded behind them. Then the path stopped and they walked on the soft wet grass of the golf course itself, treading carefully, in now almost pitch darkness.
Ken took her hand and held it firmly, comfortably, protectively. Safe. She felt safe with him. He squeezed her hand, and she felt a good warm feeling inside.
Two silhouettes came out of the darkness towards them. Sam saw the glow of a cigarette, heard a whisper and a giggle, then they passed.
‘Do you believe in the supernatural, Ken?’
He was silent for a long time. ‘I’d never rule anything out, Sam,’ he said finally. ‘Half the scientists who’ve ever lived have ended up being proved wrong. Scientists, doctors, they can be arrogant buggers. Who knows? Who knows anything? When electricity was invented, scientists ran around screaming that it was impossible, that it did not exist, that it was all an illusion, the work of the devil – whilst businessmen went out and made lamps.’
She smiled.
‘I don’t know about seeing the future. The way you’re seeing things . . . it’s weird. I don’t know if it’s supernatural, or whether you’re seeing through some time warp. Or is it just odd coincidences? Know what the Indonesians used to do?’
‘No.’
‘They used to read the future in the entrails of chickens. I saw it on TV. It looked disgusting.’
She giggled, suddenly feeling light-headed. ‘Did it work?’
‘It seemed to work for them. How would Richard feel if you started doing that?’
‘He’d—’ She shivered, suddenly feeling cold. ‘Let’s turn back.’
‘Actually, my father – he didn’t exactly have premonitions, but he used to get . . . feelings about things. The Blacks, he used to call them. ‘I’ve got the Blacks coming, boy. A big Black.’
‘What did he do when he had them?’
‘He got quite nervous. He was a superstitious man, and he used to be doubly careful. Sometimes something bad happened and sometimes it didn’t.’
They walked around towards the front of the hotel, past the outside of the swimming pool, and Sam glanced up at the towering hulk of the building, up towards her room, then around again at the darkness. It felt almost as if someone else was out there in the darkness with them, someone who they could not see but who was listening to them, watching them.
‘What did your father do for a living?’
‘Spent his life out on strike, mostly. Silly bugger. Print worker on a newspaper in Nottingham. Red Harry, they called him. He was going to lead the revolution. He was going to be the Russians’ number one in England. “Won’t be long now, boy!”’ he used to shout at me across the breakfast table. “They’ll be ’ere any day now, boy!”’
‘What happened to him?’ Sam asked.
‘Eventually got kicked out of his job. The lads supported him for a few weeks, then they drifted back to work. He got very bitter about it. He got bitter that the Russians never came, as well. He died bitter as hell. I remember my aunt coming up to me at the funeral. “’Ee was a luvly man, your Dah. A luvly man. ’Ee never did anyone any ’aarrm.”’ He squeezed her hand again. ‘What a bloody epitaph, eh? She hadn’t the guts to say he was a stupid fart who pissed his life away.’
‘Is that how you remember him?’
‘No. I’d left home before he got the boot. When I knew him, he still had his fire and his enthusiasm. Used to read me bedtime stories about the Russian Revolution. He couldn’t understand it when I went into advertising. Wouldn’t speak to me for years.’
‘Sad.’
‘Still, I don’t expect my epitaph’ll be much better.’
‘Why not?’
‘I used to be a bit like my dad. I thought I could change the world. I wasn’t an agitator, but I thought I could change it through being creative, through movies. Instead, all I do is feed the system. Feed it with ads for chocolate bars and Japanese cars and wholemeal bread. That’s what’s going to be on my epitaph. “Here lies Ken Shepperd. He made more wholemeal bread commercials than anyone else. Tough and gritty with nowt taken out. The man who gave the world wholemeal dreams.”’
She laughed, and they reached the hotel door.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ Ken said and they went through to the Paradise Bar and Disco and sat in a dark corner table. A group of salesmen were at a nearby table. One was telling a joke and the others were tittering, and a woman, too old for her long blonde hair and the mini skirt she was wearing, sat on her own at the bar. Ken glanced at her, caught Sam’s eye and winked. ‘Shall we buy
Jake a present? Have her waiting in his room?’ He signalled the waiter over and ordered a bottle of Krug. ‘Courtesy of Grand Spey,’ he said. ‘Want to dance?’
She looked at him, surprised. ‘Sure.’
He took both her wrists and led her onto the dance floor, pulling her gently towards him. She felt a tingle of excitement in her throat, and it ran down her neck into her stomach.
‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ was playing, and he stared at her, quizzically, and moved a fraction closer.
No, Sam.
Big danger.
Her arms were throbbing, and she felt a trickle of perspiration run down the back of her neck. He tilted his head forward and their lips touched gently dusting each other. She jerked back as if she had had an electric shock, then gave him a brief peck and put her cheek firmly against his. She felt the roughness of his stubble, smelled his cologne and his hair shampoo and the clean earthy smell of his sweat through his denim shirt.
They danced, their cheeks together, and she glanced around warily for a moment in case Charlie Edmunds or either of the others or anyone else she knew might be in the room, but there was no one other than the group of salesmen roaring at another joke and the hooker at the bar smoking a cigarette.
She felt Ken’s hands stroking her back, firmly, suggestively, and she remembered suddenly another time that she thought she had forgotten for ever. The cold, sharp night. The rich smell of leather from the car’s seats. The light sensuous touch of the boy’s hand just above her stocking on her goosepimpled thigh, and the car’s radio playing hot steamy midnight passion music, ‘Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime’. The windows were steamed up, and she remembered thinking that there might be a Peeping Tom lurking out there in the dark. She remembered vividly the sound of tearing paper, the oily rubbery smell of the Durex, the rustling of clothes and the awkward grunts. Then lying back, moments later, with a deadweight on top of her, saying to her ‘How was it? Was it good? God it was great!’ It was? She wasn’t even sure whether anything had happened, whether he had come, or whether he’d had whatever it was called – premature something or other?
Sandy. She could remember his name, but his face was gone. Fair hair, that was all. The rest was a blur.
The music stopped and she pulled her face away. Their eyes met. ‘I find you very attractive, Ken. Don’t tempt me.’
‘Me? I’m just dancing,’ he said, but his eyes stayed locked on hers. ‘I’d like to sleep with you.’
She shook her head. ‘We’ve got a great relationship, Ken. Let’s not—’ She shrugged. ‘I have to be strong right now, I have to be strong and keep my head clear – somehow.’ She hugged him tight, ‘I’m sure that making love with you would be the most wonderful thing in the world, but I can’t, OK?’ She nipped the tip of his ear gently with her teeth, then pulled away. ‘Let’s sit down and have a drink.’
The champagne was on the table, and he poured some out. They clinked glasses and drank, and Ken lit another cigarette.
‘I thought that things between you and Richard—’ he began.
‘They’re not that great,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with him. He’s changed so much in the past few months.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s a different person. I don’t know whether it’s—’ She stared down into the bubbles. ‘There’s a rather weird man he’s become terribly pally with. I don’t know if this chap’s got some hold over him . . . like a Svengali.’
Ken frowned sceptically.
‘I mean it, Ken. He’s always on the phone to him. He used to back his own judgement – always seemed to do all right – then this guy, Andreas Berensen, gave him some advice or tips last year which came good and Richard made a lot of dough, and now he virtually won’t go to the loo without asking his permission.’
‘Who is this Andreas Berensen?’
‘He’s a director of one of those Swiss banks.’ She shrugged and drank some more. ‘Maybe I’m just being neurotic about him. Maybe it’s not him at all – maybe it’s me. Maybe Richard just doesn’t find me attractive any more. He’s drinking a hell of a lot. I sometimes wonder if he’s having a nervous breakdown.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I – I feel it’s important that I’ve just got to be around. I’ve got to be strong.’
‘Richard’s a lucky guy.’
‘Having a loony for a wife?’
‘You’re not a loony, Sam. You’re a great, terrific, wonderful girl. OK?’
‘Yes, boss.’
Ken grinned and Sam glanced around the room again.
‘You look nervous about something, Sam.’
‘No. Just seeing if the others—’
‘Seeing if teacher’s arrived to send us all to bed? Nothing really changes in life, does it?’
‘Don’t you think so?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think we—’ She tilted her head back to look at him from further away – ‘we get harder?’
‘“She thought love was nothing more than the contact between two skins – but she still cried when I left.”’
‘Françoise Sagan?’
‘You read her too?’
‘I used to be into glib philosophy.’
‘And what are you into now? Reality?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to think I’ve had enough reality. I’ve had reality all my life. I think I deserve a bit of fantasy.’
Ken grinned again. ‘I’m sorry. I should have worn my Superman costume.’
She touched his shoulder lightly. ‘How did the ad go? “You only had to look at the label”?’
He stared back hard at her. ‘What the hell are we going to do with you? There must be some experts in premonitions – there’s experts in bloody everything – there must be people who aren’t cranks and aren’t sceptics. Some organisation, maybe, or at some university. Your shrink friend you went to sounds like a conceited berk. Have you rung him and told him about Hampstead?’
‘No. I still don’t think he’d believe me.’
‘What did you tell the fuzz? Didn’t they come round and interview you?’
‘They just wanted a statement – what time I was down there, who I saw. They told me I was sensible not going on down those stairs.’
‘Did you tell them about your dream?’
‘I didn’t think that—’
‘I can imagine him reading it out in court.’ He put on a thick North London accent. ‘The – er – witness, yer honour, saw it all in a dream, you see. She reckons it were done by this geyser wot wears a black ’ood and died twenty-five years ago.’
She laughed, uneasily. ‘Did your father do anything about his premonitions? Did he ever see anyone about them?’
‘No, never. He just accepted it. His family came from a mining background – they’re a superstitious lot, miners – they just accept things, without questioning them too much.’ He stood up and took her wrist. ‘Let’s have one more dance.’
He held her tightly on the dance floor. ‘Sure you don’t want to change your mind?’
‘I’m an old woman, Ken. An old woman who’s losing her marbles. I thought you only went for young glammy models?’
He kissed her cheek tenderly. ‘Really old, aren’t you, Sam? Can hear your joints creaking and your bones rattling.’
She punched his stomach playfully with her fist.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m the one that’s getting old. Past forty and it’s all downhill.’
‘Does it worry you, age?’
‘I keep noticing things. Tiny physiological changes. My skin getting saggy; hairs sprouting in odd places. My memory going. I talk to people sometimes and forget who it is I’m talking to. They’ll probably find me one day asleep under a railway arch, wrapped up in newspapers. “Silly old bugger, don’t remember who he is, keeps prattlin’ on about wholemeal bread and chocolate bars. Yeah? Well maybe he’s hungry. Don’t look as if he’s eaten in days.”’
She giggled. ‘Come on, it’s bedtime.�
��
‘Alone?’
‘Alone,’ she said firmly.
26
A single sharp rasping sound woke her.
Doorbell.
She opened her eyes and it rang again.
Doorbell.
The room was filled with strange yellowy light. Like sepia.
It rang again.
Coming, I’m coming. Christ, Richard why don’t you answer?
She put out her hand and felt him lying there, on the wrong side. What on earth?
Oh Christ.
The door bell rang again, but it wasn’t the doorbell, it was the rasping snore of the man asleep on the wrong side of the bed.
Ken.
Oh Christ. No, surely not? Surely she hadn’t?
He was still there. It would have been easier if he’d slunk away in the darkness and they could have met at the breakfast table and pretended it hadn’t happened.
Maybe.
He was still there and he was snoring and it was early morning. Daylight. Her mouth tasted foul. Her stomach churned over, rumbled, tensed up. She lay still not daring to make any more movement, not wanting to wake him, not until she had had time to think. It was all there in the morning light, everything that you could hide from and curl up from in the darkness. Darkness. Darkness was a place where you could pretend that nothing was real. She wondered how she was going to face Ken, and she felt a feeling of sadness and stupidity as if everything she had worked so hard for, the past three years, she had thrown away in one night. She stared numbly at the ceiling, wishing she could push the clock back a few hours, to last night.
What was it going to be like? What were they going to say to each other? Was he going to tell her this morning that it would be silly for her to go on working for him? Or would he let it ride, let it come to its own conclusions? Long stony silences in the office. Biting remarks. Casting sessions when she would study his reaction to each model, the pangs of jealousy eating her insides. And finally clearing out her desk. Was that what the future held in store?
Just his head was visible under the rumpled sheet, his hair tousled, the brown stubble on his jaw, mouth slightly open and the rasping snore. She wondered if he was dreaming now; what did other people dream? She listened to the heater clattering, ticking and blowing, and stared at the Gauguin print on the wall, at the woman with the one bared breast, firm, pointed, and she looked down at her own breasts and they seemed small and sagging in comparison.