Sheer Blue Bliss

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘He was often with other women,’ Connie says, ‘well, I’m sure you know that. He was famous for it.’

  ‘And you minded?’

  ‘Of course I minded, wouldn’t you? But … all under the bridge now. What’s the use of minding now? Oh Patrick. People laughed, you know, he was a laughing stock … I thought … for some of the time I didn’t adore him. I loved him, yes, I loved him sometimes like a mother loves a child. Wanting to protect, wanting to hide his eyes and stop his ears against the … you know.’ It’s like frail sheets of ice cracking as she talks, she almost forgets Lisa, just a pale shape across the table. ‘I started to see him like that myself, as a sham, a fake, an idiot eccentric. Well, he was eccentric but … but listen, he was not a sham.’ She lowers her voice which had risen almost to a shout. Shakes her head at her own foolishness. ‘He believed in what he believed in and judging by …’ She looks over at the big pink conch shell. ‘He was right.’

  Lisa follows her eyes. ‘Judging by?’

  The sun has gone behind the thickening clouds. In a moment Connie will switch on the light. She’ll prise the conch shell off the wall and remove the little bottle from it. And she and Lisa will each take a drip, surely safe, to take a drip, the merest smear of the stuff each to give them the lift they need to walk to the village.

  Connie focuses again on Lisa. Yes, she’ll suggest that because they have to do something. They can’t just sit here and wait for it to get dark. ‘What were you going to ask?’ she says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I can’t. It just seems such a cheek.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I just wondered if … if I could, if you would give me permission to write your life.’

  ‘Ah.’ Connie moves to the draining board and picks up a knife. She goes to the conch shell, sticks the point under it and twists.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You’ll see. A biography, eh?’

  ‘Yes. It would be … I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’

  From outside comes the sudden harsh and gloomy cry of a bird. They both start. ‘Only a crow,’ Connie says. She switches on the light and brings the big shell to the table. ‘We could talk about a book,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to let me think.’

  FIFTEEN

  Tony crouches, back against the wall, to get his breath back. To get up his nerve. Scrubby place, weeds, crap everywhere, carcass of a sea-bird, red ribs exposed. So this is your chance, Tony. Get in there and wipe the slate clean, two weak women, wipe it clean with whatever, knife or axe or the stretchy nylon leg of a pair of tights. With your own hands alone. Almost anything can be used to kill with. Slate could be wet and shiny clean in a few moments if you only have the balls. Then leg it back to London and start again. Start. Afresh. What though, oh what?

  A sudden harsh cry. Christ. Crow, black wings heavy, black wings, curtains, hair. Fuck. Cool it, only a bird.

  He stands, a fierce fizz running down his legs as blood returns to cramped muscles. Everything edged with white, a kind of light like sun but everywhere. Dazzle like salt. All that is needed is the walk round, the step through the door, surprise on his side, acts of violence that are necessary. Then off. Could torch the place. His mind flicks contents, take Patrick, yes. Patrick’s portrait and Patrick’s stuff, but torch the rest. The women’s bodies and the wreck of a place. But Patrick let him down, torch fucking Patrick, too then. No. Take the portrait? How? Too big to run with, conspicuous. He almost grins imagining himself on the bus, the train with the painting. Conspicuous or what? But canvas can be cut and folded.

  He leaves his stuff on the ground and walks silently up the side of the house, every foot placed with care. No sound from within. Passes the toilet door with its foul smell, passes the spare gas canisters, the old bicycle with cobwebs in its basket. The crow follows, hopping heavily, making more sound with its claws than Tony with his feet.

  It’s cold. Sun gone now so why the white fuzz, like haloes everywhere? A sharp slant of rain stings his face. He stands back against the wall looking sideways into the kitchen window. Sees nothing, moves round, face pressed against the salt- and sand-powdered glass. As he peers through the light is switched on. Dull swing of bulb. Benson sits down. Lisa has something wrapped round her, some old rag of a blanket. Blonde hair against it, looks for a moment like white hair, old hair, someday she’d be old like Benson anyway. Old wrinkled bitch. They all go that way if they live.

  A chink like a spoon stirring brings moisture to his mouth. A sensation, weird, like a hooked finger creeping between his ribs. Some good woman somewhere in another life than this, hot tea and a sugar biscuit. Banish, it cannot be. The fucking crow, fluttering its filthy feathers about him, bouncing round his feet. Fuck off. He aims a kick and catches it as it lifts, a feather falls, it cries out like some old gears grinding. Lisa raises her head from whatever it is she’s looking at and looks straight at the window. Tony falls to his knees. Did she see? Guts sudden hot liquid like he’ll shit himself. But no. You don’t, hear me? You don’t do that. Don’t lose it now. Hold it, hold it. OK. Waits. Waits. Slowly rises, looks through window and they’re still there, same attitudes. Didn’t see. Pretty hair in the light. That soft flop of her limp neck. But it is OK, just look at her. Those open eyes that let you in. She’s OK.

  Lisa lifts a cup to her lips. Dark on her hair where the blood is. Christ. Things on the table. A shell? Benson lifting something, talking, Lisa head on one side, listening, a little frown. What’s stopping you, Tony? Clean slate, clean shiny wet slate. And begin again. Haven’t got the balls to get in there, is that it? See yourself banged up again? See that and you’re lost. Stomach growls, thinks of that cassoulet, warm and brown and rich. Thinks of queuing for grey scoops of mash, orange beans, tomatoes leaking their watery juice. The belching, farting, stinking racket, assault on the ears, the guts, the … heart. Can’t hack it? Not that – it’s the light and heat and two women drinking tea. Can’t smash that. Just go. Let them be.

  You disappoint me, Tony.

  He starts to turn away – but – what are they looking at? Leaning forward. Lisa taking something from Benson, holding it between her finger and thumb, squinting. It’s not. Can’t be. Cannot be unless she’s a fucking liar, Benson, well, why not? Lisa holding what his life had been heading for, between her white finger and thumb. Can that be?

  No.

  But what else. What?

  Tony bursts into the room. There. Two gasps, slow motion. Smell of dead flowers, food, Calor gas. He doesn’t look at the pale-blue eyes.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Nothing. Benson seems to be about to speak but nothing comes. Lisa crosses her hands across her chest. One hand grasping the little bottle.

  ‘What’s that?’ Still nothing. Tony crunches to the table over the flowers. ‘It’s the elixirs, isn’t it, isn’t it? Where was it?’

  But they don’t need to say. His eyes fall on the big shell, its pink shiny lips curled back like a sneer. He grasps Benson’s thin shoulder. Christ, she’s got bones like a fucking bird. Red all round her mouth where the tape was. Grabs Lisa’s wrist, bitch won’t let go, prises the fingers back, snap then, snap, he doesn’t care.

  ‘Let him have it.’ Benson’s voice.

  ‘I’ll let you have it.’ He cringes at that, pathetic, he could kill not to have said that, for no one to know he said that with such … pathetic menace. But they are menaced. Not so pathetic then. No. Benson is actually shuddering. ‘This is the elixirs. You fucking lied.’

  ‘Yes. I fucking lied.’

  ‘Don’t take the piss.’ But he backs away. It’s dawning like a big soft sunrise that this is it. This is what he came for. He has what he wants. Patrick didn’t fail him after all. He has the elixirs, or one anyway. He has it. He fucking has it.

  ‘I’ll take this,’ he says. ‘Is this all? Where’s the rest?’

  ‘It’s all that he left. Believe it or don’t believe it, t
hat’s the truth.’

  ‘So I’ll have it.’

  ‘It’s the Seventh Step,’ she says.

  The bottle feels faintly warm in his hand. Dares to look at Lisa, her light eyes flaring dark. The Seventh Step.

  ‘Nothing we can do to stop you, a big strong man like you.’ Benson getting it back now, Christ she’s got guts. Looking at him with those bright dare-you eyes. Well, sod her, sod the pair of them. Can’t wait for this, won’t wait. Take this and know what next. That question answered. This is for you, Tony, from Patrick. You made it, you made it. Got here, found it. Christ, it’s true, it’s real, it’s here. Can hardly believe the feel of the real bottle in his hand as he goes up that ladder. Rain lashing now, won’t go out in that. Rain against the skylight streaming, but so fucking what.

  Listen – but they’re not following, saying nothing. Maybe a murmur. Darkish so he switches on the lamp. Tries to unscrew the top of the bottle, kind of stuck up with something, wax, flakes of it stick under his nail. Fucking mess here, tape and women’s tights and the sketches which he’s hardly even glanced at. And look, Patrick there, smiling, winking, is he? At last. Strange light coming from him, like a kind of glow. Halo. Haloes are common. Let’s see.

  Tony unscrews the lid. He squeezes his hips into Benson’s chair and strains his eyes to read the faded writing on the label. Elixir 7, it says. Bliss. Bliss – and in Patrick’s own handwriting too. Can hardly believe it. He grins, shakes his head, grins again. This is it then. At last, at long long last. The seventh step. Bliss.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ he says, raising the bottle to Patrick, pausing with it by his lips, how much to take? Oh Christ after all this doesn’t give a flying fuck just swig it, just … swallow … all …

  SIXTEEN

  Connie presses her knuckles against her mouth. Still sore from the tape, still a stickiness in the little hairs. But a sort of smile stretches her lips. Lisa widens her eyes. But they say nothing, just listen, hear the click of the lamp being switched on, the creak of the floor. ‘Cheers, mate,’ Tony says and then … a long quiet. Then a moan. Connie nods, remembering. Lisa opens her mouth but Connie holds up a finger. ‘Wait,’ she whispers. ‘It’s all right, just wait.’ They listen to Tony moaning softly and continuously for a few moments, like someone experiencing the utmost pleasure, someone far beyond the restraints of self-consciousness, someone in a private heaven. And then his voice rises. ‘Oh Christ, so beautiful, oh Christ, oh Patrick, so fucking beautiful … fuck … ing … hell … fuck … ing … bliss.’

  And then quiet. Connie’s heart is stuttering in her chest, she’s feeling what? Relief/release? Lisa’s face so quizzical it’s almost funny. Another inappropriate urge to laugh. And a rush of memory taking her breath away because it was just like, just exactly like. Oh the words differed slightly. Patrick not so profane of course, but … and with Patrick she was there to see his face transfigured before her eyes, from old to young, from ravaged to smooth and beautiful.

  They had made love in the hot slick of syrup sun that fell through the skylight on a July afternoon. And then Patrick had said that it was time. Connie had refused to take the elixir first. She had not liked to say that she was frightened, not liked to spoil the mood, the glow of love that still radiated from their skins so that you could almost see it tremble in the air between them. ‘It will be even more extraordinary than that was,’ he had promised, stroking her hip. ‘There is some risk,’ he’d admitted. She said she’d watch him for the effect and then take hers. But, seeing that effect, immediate, overwhelming, blissful, final, she had not. Not ready then to die, not even with her love. Guilty ever since that day for her failure of nerve, not constant guilt but darts and gleams of it, catching her unaware. Though surely, clearly, she did right.

  ‘Last time,’ she says to Lisa, recovering her breath, ‘I couldn’t believe the beauty.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Patrick’s final experiment.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Patrick blended this and …’

  ‘What is happening up there?’

  ‘He will be dead.’ Lisa stares across the table at her. ‘This was the end of the experiment. I was telling you it was dangerous but I thought one smear on our lips might … but now he has gone.’

  ‘Connie.’ The irises of Lisa’s eyes have been eclipsed by the black.

  ‘He looked so beautiful when he died. Patrick. So young. I shaved him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All our time together I wanted him to shave. I wanted him to cut that hair. And when he was sitting there, so beautiful in his chair, I couldn’t resist doing it, just to see how he would look.’

  ‘The portrait,’ Lisa says.

  ‘Yes, I painted the portrait.’

  ‘Why he looked so strange and young … and … and … smooth.’

  ‘That’s it, dear.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Lisa half chokes, half laughs. ‘This is so … this is crazy. I hardly believe …’

  ‘And now, I think, he will be dead.’ They both look up at the trap-door.

  ‘And you were going to let us take that?’

  ‘I was saving it till I wanted to go. A fine way to go. But I thought after your … ordeal … and mine that just a smear on our lips might buck us up. I didn’t want to kill us.’

  Lisa sits and stares at Connie, taking it in, her teeth gnawing at her lip until Connie’s scared she’ll make it bleed.

  ‘So that’s what happened to Patrick. He poisoned himself?’

  Connie considers. ‘That seems a crude way of putting it.’

  ‘But he took something and it made him die.’

  ‘He knew the risk. Thought it worth taking.’

  Lisa frowns, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. ‘But why, Connie, why doesn’t anybody know what happened to him? Why did you say he’d disappeared?’

  Connie pauses. Her hand scrunches the little cushion on her lap, the one she made from Patrick’s shirt and stuffed with Patrick’s beard and hair. ‘He would have been a laughing stock. He already was, but … can you imagine … his, his vision gone so wrong.’

  Lisa frowns. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘The joke is, the joke of it really is that that stuff is … the elixirs were … amazing, transforming … they were what he said they were, they did what he said they did, but who, who, would believe? If even I had doubted …’

  ‘But it wasn’t meant to kill.’

  ‘No, of course not. He just got the dosage wrong. Needed more experiments.’

  ‘Couldn’t someone else have carried it on? Worked it out properly?’

  Connie shakes her head. ‘No, dear, no. He was a one off. Believe me when I say that no one else could ever have followed his logic. Besides he hardly wrote anything down. Kept it all up here.’ She taps her temple. ‘I took the bits left over, in the days after his death, to help me, you know, to pull me through it … that loss … and it was, was what he said it was … Joy, Peace, Euphoria, all the seven except Bliss. I didn’t take the Bliss, for obvious reasons.’ She looks at the ceiling.

  Another long pause. Connie is suddenly desperate for another cup of tea. She could drink gallons of tea. It is safe, all right, all safe. The madman has died a blissful death. No need for the police now. She gets up to put on the kettle.

  ‘You could wash,’ she says.

  Lisa shakes herself as if from a trance. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, we don’t need the police, do we?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we …’

  ‘What?’ The gas lights with a cheerful whoosh.

  ‘Well, report the … the death … to them. If he is dead. Shouldn’t we check?’

  ‘He’s dead all right. Don’t see the point of involving the police.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘People disappear all the time.’ Connie puts tea-bags in the pot. ‘Are you hungry, there’s a bit of nice stew left.’ She turns to catch Lisa staring at her in a most peculiar way. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Con
stance, what did you do with Patrick?’

  ‘I’ll put the stew on to warm anyway.’

  ‘After you’d shaved him and painted his portrait. What did you do?’

  Connie brings the teapot to the table and fills her pipe.

  ‘What?’

  Connie pours two cups of tea and lights her pipe. ‘Sugar?’ she asks and stirs three spoonfuls into each cup. They need it, blood sugar, what with all the stress and shock.

  ‘There are things you’d put in a biography and things you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Absolutely. Now what?’

  ‘Is that a promise, dear?’

  Lisa sighs. ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I’m dead, you can say what you like but I’m far from dead.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Well. I put him under the floorboards.’

  ‘What?’ Lisa half rises from her chair.

  ‘Not here. In there.’ Connie nods at the bedroom door.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Buried, you understand, under the sand under the floorboards, oh several feet down.’ Connie sucks on her pipe, a lovely deep gurgling sound, sweet pungent smoke in her mouth. There are still these small pleasures. Lisa sits and gawps.

  ‘Drink your tea.’

  Lisa takes an absent-minded sip. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘so you’ve lived, practically on top of him, for all these years?’

  ‘I haven’t slept in there, except once.’ She shudders, remembering the dreadful night, lying on the damp and mouldering bed like a prisoner with that poor lunatic out here.

  Lisa cups her palms round her tea and sips. Her white forehead is furrowed as she thinks. ‘So … assuming he, Tony, is … well, dead, what do we do with him? If we’re not informing the police I mean.’

  Connie looks at the bedroom door.

  ‘No! We can’t.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Constance, this is mad.’