by Stella Duffy
Chris sat slumped in his chair, tears trickling down his face. Max was about to start in again when John interrupted him.
“OK Max. You made your point. As it happens Chris, I think what Max says is true. I also knew Michael was in love with Max, but I didn’t know he’d told him. I knew something was wrong but I wasn’t sure what it was. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’d have spoken up if I’d known it would end like this.”
Anita looked up at John. “It’s probably for the best. I shouldn’t have let the girls keep thinking I didn’t know what was going on. And it’s good that Chris knows how Michael felt. It’s good we all do. I mean the truth … well, you know how it is … the truth will set us free. At least that’s what it’s supposed to do.” She looked up at Max who was sitting beside her. “Isn’t it?”
Max smiled at Anita and then around the table at the whole group.
“Let’s hope so. Now, shall we go on?”
The meeting continued for over three more hours. Secrets told and dissected, torn apart and digested. Until finally it was two in the morning and there was a room of ten tired people. Ten people of whom three were very relieved because there were still two secrets left and they’d managed to manipulate the meeting so successfully that neither of them was touched upon.
There is more to it than you know. It isn’t clear from outside.
You see it once you’re in there. Too late.
It is hidden, in code, in the hieroglyphics of his magic.
But I have seen it, touched it.
I know the truth.
The code is close to breaking now, the sea lapping at its edge.
Soon there will be a washing away, sweeping all the lies before it.
I want it now, but even I cannot command the tides, they come when they are ready.
I have laid a channel.
It is coming sooner than he thinks.
CHAPTER 13
Anita had been relieved to unload the burden of her Christmases past following her Process but she certainly hadn’t told Max any of the details of the Christmases present she’d been spending with John.
John and Anita had met within the first week she was in the States. Both of them being new to New York and new to big cities, they’d met at a club and played babes in toyland together for a while, before settling down to some serious drug-taking and countrywide roaming. They were able to take in most of the midwest, half of Canada and even some of Alaska before Anita’s money ran out. After a year of travelling – physically and psychically – John had gone back to his wife to give it “one more chance” and Anita went on to feed her wanderlust alone. She attended lectures, seminars, arts events, camps and concerts, all funded by her clever knack of turning pleasing young men into even more tender currency. By the end of ’69 she knew all about the underground movement and the antiwar movement, but as with so many other “free” young women of her generation, the woman’s movement remained another world.
Then she met Max. She gave him a window on to a whole new way of life and he gave her cash. Cash, cheques and two charge cards. Anita thought it was a simple transaction, Max thought it was love. Eventually, she decided to persuade herself it was love too, after all, it would be easier to take his money that way. And for a while it had been love, persuasion becoming reality, but then the House, Anita’s dream creation, had taken over. With the House came Max’s new strength, leaving Anita much less able to be free and run her own life as she had been used to. Running her own life had, until Max, usually meant running away whenever things got a bit too involved. But with the House as a base and Max’s growing confidence, it all got bigger and bigger until one day she woke to find herself living with the exhausting trappings of marriage – children in the shape of the House members requiring constant attention, personally subject to the authoritarian demands of her partner, often denied access to the “patriarch” by his lackeys – all without a hint of the security of a real marriage. Which was when she answered John’s letter from Virginia, telling him that as his wife had decided she didn’t want to try any more, he was welcome to come join them in the House and resume their relationship where it had been left off – in secrecy of course, but that would no doubt give it the extra frisson her relationship with Max was sadly lacking.
John duly arrived, was welcomed into the community, joined in the running of the House and joined Anita whenever he could. Which, given Max’s paternalistic preoccupations, was more often than not. And when Anita became pregnant with Jasmine, she just let Max assume the baby was his. John lived in the House and, as the whole community was present at the birth anyway, he missed out on none of the upbringing of the child who may well have been his daughter.
Anita didn’t know whose child Jasmine was. John, with three children of his own back in Virginia, didn’t care and Max didn’t even know there was any question of paternity. It didn’t occur to Anita that it might one day matter to the child. Once she had John to play with it was all working out rather well for Anita, Max’s burgeoning power complex notwithstanding. Or it had been until Michael used her winter quilt to mop up what remained of his life.
Max’s secret was a different matter. He told Anita that the night Michael crawled into their room and curled up on the chair at the foot of their bed he had heard something. In the foggy aftermath of sex and on the edge of falling into deep sleep, he had seen a figure at the bottom of his bed and had heard Michael’s gentle sobbing gradually die away. He told her he had been too close to sleep to react. Too close to that part of sleep where the brain is still just conscious but the limbs and exterior senses are not capable of functioning. But Max did know that he had chosen to ignore Michael, chosen to let him cry, he knew that he had chosen to sleep with the iron scent of blood heavy in his nostrils.
Max knew and then made another choice – to actively block the memories. Not to remember how during the Process he had told Michael he would be better dead than in so much pain. Had told Michael that he was creating his own suffering and could also provide his own succour. Had told Michael he didn’t love him. Told Michael he would never love him.
Max knew it all and then, like any good Processee, chose not to know. To look at his own reality and then put it away. He never expected to have to look at his memories of Michael again.
CHAPTER 14
For Saz, making contact, or at least being in the same room with Maxwell North had been the easy part. Trying to talk to his wife was proving almost impossible. Saz had chosen to pose as a journalist and unfortunately, Caron North was not only unwilling to talk to the press, she had positively rejected the idea even as a possibility. As her agent explained, not especially patiently, to Saz when she called.
“For a start Miss … what did you say your name was?”
“Hannon, Ms Hannon.”
“Well, Ms Harmon, I assume you mean Caron McKenna?”
“Oh, she uses her own name for work?”
“Most artists do, Ms Hannon,” he continued, stressing the Ms as if it might choke him, “I’m sure you will understand that Miss McKenna is a very busy woman. She has two new commissions and an exhibition opening within a couple of weeks.”
“That’s why I’d like to talk to her.”
“And that’s why she wouldn’t like to talk to you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll be plain Ms Hannon. Caron McKenna has, to be frank, absolutely no need of publicity. Her work sells for phenomenal sums, a fact which, quite naturally, delights me. She is clearly one of the most gifted artists of her generation.”
“I know how good she is, that’s why I want to talk to her.”
“Yes. Of course you do. And so do the ten or eleven other journalists who have called me this morning. Now, I appreciate your interest, but I can assure you that even if Miss McKenna needed the publicity, she would not have the time to take up your kind offer of an interview. She gives one interview a year only and I’m afraid the Arts Review took up that opportunity last month
, having arranged the meeting six months in advance. Try someone else Ms Hannon, I’m sure there are thousands of eager young artists just dying to achieve the kind of exposure you’re offering. Caron McKenna is not one of those artists. I’m afraid you’re wasting your time. Good morning.”
And he hung up on her. Which didn’t put Saz in an especially good mood as she was still deeply in the throes of packing and had to wade across the room through two half-filled suitcases and eight boxes of papers in order to find her diary and obtain the next number she had earmarked as a possible introduction to Caron McKenna-North.
“Bloody elusive artists, bloody aggressive old misogynist agents, bloody damn bloody fucking horrible packing!”
“Did I hear you expressing a less than generous attitude to our Caron’s agent, and do you really want to keep this?”
Molly came out of Saz’s kitchen with a very old, very time-worn frying pan.
“Of course I do. That is my mother’s cast iron frying pan and was her mother’s before her.”
“But you never use it. You don’t fry anything.”
“It’s a sentimental attachment. Like the one I have for you. And it makes great pikelets. Put it in the big plastic bag over there, I do want it. But even more than that, I want to talk to Maxwell North’s bloody elusive wife. It’s ludicrous, I mean I know she’s good but she’s hardly Greta bloody Garbo.”
“You tried her agent?”
“Doesn’t need the publicity, doesn’t give interviews.”
“The gallery?”
“They told me to call the agent.”
“Any charity work?”
“None. Well, she goes to the events with him, drug rehabs and stuff like that, but doesn’t have any all of her own. For a society wife she doesn’t seem to have much to do with society.”
“Maybe she isn’t really a society wife?”
Saz looked up from the fourth box where she was trying to decide just how much she would need to have sixteen small boxes of childhood photos with her at Molly’s flat.
“Huh?”
“Well, she does seem to have a life of her own. All that press stuff you’ve got on her is almost all about her work. No specific charities, only a few balls with her husband. Except for the odd event with him she seems to devote herself to her work. So maybe you should stop thinking along the society lines and try career woman instead. She sounds a lot more like you or me than like one of those ladies who lunch and get their hair done all the time.”
“Good point. So what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know, you’re the detective, do you always get your lovers to help you?”
Saz finally dumped all the photos in the box and earmarked it to remain in the cupboard full of things she was planning to store at her sister’s house.
“Only the ones who look so stunning in a T-shirt, old socks with holes in the toes and nothing else.”
“Don’t forget the frying pan!”
“How could I? It’s what makes you so damn sexy.”
“Your mother’s cast iron frying pan makes me look sexy? Very Freudian!”
Saz launched herself over the boxes to Molly and pulled her down on to a pile of old clothes destined for Oxfam.
“Shut up, lie back and think of Dunoon.”
“Hold on, we can’t do this here, these are going to the charity shop this afternoon, I’ve just folded them all nicely, they’re for recycling, not shagging – oi! Leave my socks on, I don’t want to get my nicely pedicured feet all messed up wading through your rubbish!”
Saz had removed Molly’s T-shirt and the frying pan and was attempting to take her socks off but left them at her complaint, and proceeded to warm Molly’s body with her mouth instead. Warm breath replacing the goose bumps of sudden naked chill with those of desire, cold skin turning to warmth with gentle sweat breaking out, as Saz’s hot and fully clothed body alternately writhed and rested on Molly’s naked skin. With the rough scratch of a still unfolded winter coat beneath her and Saz’s fingers playing her, Molly came quickly. Saz looked up from where she lay, her mouth at Molly’s breast.
“Was that it?”
Molly sighed sleepily, “I’m afraid so darling. You’re just too good. I never met anyone who could make me come as easily as you do.”
“But I’d only just begun!”
“You, me and Karen Carpenter – speaking of which, shouldn’t you get back to Caron North?”
“McKenna.”
“Whatever. Her. The artist.”
“I guess so, I’d rather lie here with you though. Shall we do it again?”
“No. Look dollybird, you’re only half-packed, you’ve got Caroline moving in here tomorrow and you still haven’t even exchanged pleasantries with Caron North-McKenna-Thingie. Slaying me yet again with your undisputed sexual prowess is going to have to wait. Unfortunately. Besides, I’m due at the hospital in an hour.”
“You’re so damn responsible!”
Molly smiled and stood up, rubbing her shoulder which held an inverted imprint of Saz’s winter coat.
“I’m a doctor Saz, surely you’ve seen all the movies? My work is my life!”
“So’s mine. Doesn’t stop me knowing a good shag when I see one.”
“Thank you. Actually, the truth is, I can’t afford to be late yet again this week. Get a move on, I’m unhappy enough about your ex-lover moving in here as it is, I don’t want her moving in and finding we’ve made a love nest of all your old clothes.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. If, like Carrie, you are wont to suddenly decide that New York isn’t where you want to live after all, quit your course, pack your bags, book a flight back to London the same day and still expect to have somewhere to live when you get here because you could never live with your own mother for more than two days, then you have to take things as you find them.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t especially relish the idea of her taking me where she finds me.”
“Neither do I, you’re all mine.”
“Right. So get on with it!”
“Yes ma’am!”
Four hours later most of Saz’s life was piled in twenty boxes and three suitcases in the hallway of her flat, she was hurriedly dressing and, with her mother’s frying pan in her hand, racing over to Caron North’s house.
Caroline had rung to arrange picking up the keys and when Saz told her about the problems she was having getting in touch with Caron North she burst out laughing.
“All this fuss just to get to talk to her?”
“It’s not funny, it’s proving bloody impossible!”
“Do you not read the papers at all Saz?”
“What?”
“Yesterday’s Guardian, media section. An article about Caron McKenna, artist and cook.”
“I was told she wasn’t giving any interviews.”
“This wasn’t an interview, it was an article. Apparently she’s an artist who loves to cook.”
“So?”
“So she’s incorporating cooking utensils and food things into her new exhibition.”
“I knew that, all the papers have said that. That’s hardly news Carrie.”
“Did they all also say that she was planning to use ‘found’ objects?”
Saz picked up two unmatching socks from the carpet and threw them into a black plastic bag full of items even Oxfam couldn’t possibly want.
“What’s a ‘found object’ when it’s at home?”
“Well, my little philistine, usually it’s just that. Something you find, at home, in the street, wherever. But in this case, McKenna is accepting items from anyone who wants to give them to her. At least until she’s got enough.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course. It’s one of those ‘involve the general public in the arts’ things. Makes the Arts Council feel better about the massive grants they keep giving her. Not that it ever works of course, because the general public don’t read the Guardian media section all that much. Now, in N
ew York…”
“Hold it! Where is she going to collect these items?”
“Don’t know. It didn’t say. I suppose you could just take your egg timer to her house and hand it over.”
“Carrie, I love you. I love your eclectic head that remembers all kinds of rubbish, I love your inability to stay in any one city longer than eighteen months, but most of all I love how you always seem to know just exactly what I want you to know.”
“Yeah yeah, I know.”
CHAPTER 15
Two hours later Saz was still waiting to see Caron North. Having left her place in such a hurry she’d panicked halfway there when she realized that Max might be around and may even recognize her from the workshop. Two tube stops later she’d calmed down with the thought that even if he did happen to be home and not at his office in the middle of the day, she’d just lie and say she’d seen Caron’s article in the paper and felt the need to bring along her pan. It was at least as likely as any other lie she could come up with in the next eight tube stops to South Kensington.
She’d been shown in to the big white house by the Australian cleaner and directed to the drawing room next to the entrance. And left there. She’d had plenty of time to examine the coffee table, loaded down with neatly piled glossy magazines. She’d looked out the back window to the garden – standard landscaping and pond, though with one or two interesting sculptures breaking the South Kensington mould – and she’d looked out the front window to the almost identical tall white house opposite. She’d accepted a pot of coffee from the cleaner who came back to explain.
“I’m Kirsty, I’m the cleaner. Caron’s busy working, but she likes your frying pan and needs to know the story behind it, so if you don’t mind waiting, she’d really like to talk to you.”
Saz didn’t mind at all, in fact she was perfectly happy to spend the next hour or so drinking coffee and sneaking through the attractively “distressed” cupboards – artfully, if somewhat pretentiously, hiding the TV, stereo, fax and answerphone. And when the telephone rang unanswered for the fourth time and she heard the answerphone click on, she checked the hallway for any signs of the cleaner and very sensibly turned the answerphone monitor up. Which is how she got to hear Maxwell North talking lovingly to his dear wife.