by Clive Barker
"Fully grown? Nine. Five males, four females. This is Saul," she said, speaking of the dog she was still stroking. "He's the oldest, and the biggest. The male over in the corner is Job. He's one of Saul's sons. He's not too well at the moment."
Job had half-lain down in the corner of the enclosure and was licking his testicles with some enthusiasm. He seemed to know he had become the center of conversation, because he looked up from his toilet for a moment. In the look he gave them there was everything Marty hated about the species: the threat, the shiftiness, the barely subdued resentment of its masters.
"The bitches are over there-"
There were two dogs trotting up and down the length of the enclosure.
"-the lighter one's Dido, and the darker's Zoe."
It was odd to hear these brutes called by such names; it seemed wholly inappropriate. And surely they resented the woman's christenings; mocked her, probably, behind her back.
"Come over here," Lillian said, summoning Marty as she might one of her pack. Like them, he came.
"Said," she said to the animal behind the wire, "this is a friend. Come closer," she told Marty, "he can't smell you from over there."
The dog had dropped down onto all fours. Marty approached the wire cautiously.
"Don't be afraid. Go right up to him. Let him get a good sniff of you."
"They don't like fear," said Whitehead. "Isn't that right, Lillian?"
"That's right. If they smell it on you, they know they've got you. Then they're merciless. You have to stand up to them."
Marty approached the dog. It looked up at him testily: he stared back.
"Don't try and outstare him," Lillian advised. "It makes the dog aggressive. Just let him get your scent, so he knows you."
Saul sniffed at Marty's legs and crotch through the mesh, much to Marty's discomfort. Then, apparently satisfied, he wandered away.
"Good enough," said Lillian. "Next time, no wire. And in a while, you'll be handling him." She was taking some pleasure in Marty's unease, he was sure of it. But he said nothing; just let her lead the way into the largest of the sheds.
"Now you must meet Bella," she said.
Inside the kennels the smell of disinfectant, stale urine and dogs was overpowering. Lillian's entrance was greeted with another sustained round of barking and wire-pawing. The shed had a walkway down the center, with cages off to the right and left. Two of these held a single dog, both bitches, one considerably smaller than the other. Lillian rolled off the details as they passed each cage-the dogs' names, and their place on the incestuous family tree. Marty attended to all she was saying, and immediately forgot it again. His mind was otherwise occupied. It wasn't just the intimate presence of the dogs that unnerved him, but the suffocating familiarity of this interior. The walkway; the cells with their concrete floors, their blankets, their bare bulbs: it was like home from home. And now he began to see the dogs in a new light; saw another meaning in Job's baleful glance as he looked up from his ablutions; understood, better than Lillian or Whitehead ever could, how these prisoners must view him and his species.
He stopped to look into one of the cages: not out of any particular interest, but to focus on something other than the anxiety he felt in this claustrophobic hut.
"What's this one called?" he asked.
The, dog in the cage was at the door; another sizable male, though not on the scale of Saul.
"That's Laurousse," Lillian replied.
The dog looked friendlier than the others, and Marty overcame his nerves and went down on his haunches in the narrow corridor, extending a tentative hand toward the cage.
"He'll be fine with you," she said.
Marty put his fingers to the mesh. Laurousse sniffed them inquisitively; his nose was damp and cold.
"Good dog," Marty said. "Laurousse."
The dog began to wag its tail, happy to be named by this sweating stranger.
"Good dog."
Down here, closer to the blankets and the straw, the smell of excrement and fur was even stronger. But the dog was delighted that Marty had come down to its level, and was attempting to lick his fingers through the wire. Marty felt the fear in him dispelled by the dog's enthusiasm: far from meaning him harm, it showed unalloyed pleasure.
Only now did he become aware of Whitehead's scrutiny. The old man was standing a few feet off to his left, his bulk entirely blocking the narrow passage between the cages, watching intently. Marty stood up self-consciously, leaving the dog to whine and wag below him, and followed Lillian further down the line of cages. The dog-keeper was singing the praises of another member of the tribe. Marty tuned in to her conversation:
"-and this is Bella," she announced. Her voice had softened; there was a dreamy quality in it that he hadn't caught before. When Marty reached the cage into which she was pointing, he saw why.
Bella half-lay and half-sat in the mesh shadows at the end of her cage, arranged like a black-snouted Madonna on a bed of blankets and straw, with blind pups suckling at her teats. Setting eyes on her, Marty's reservations about the dogs evaporated.
"Six pups," Lillian announced as proudly as if they were her own, "all strong and healthy."
More than strong and healthy, they were beautiful; fat balls of contentment nestling against each other in the luxury of their mother's lap. It seemed inconceivable that creatures so vulnerable could grow into iron-gray lords like Saul, or suspicious rebels like Job.
Bella, sensing a newcomer among her congregation, pricked up her ears. Her head was superbly proportioned, tones of sable and gold mingling in her coat to glamorous effect, her brown eyes vigilant but soft in the half-light. She was so finished; so completely herself. The only response to her presence-and one that Marty willingly granted-was awe.
Lillian peered though the wire, introducing Marty to this mother of mothers.
"This is Mr. Strauss, Bella," she said. "You'll see him now and again; he's a friend."
There was no baby-talk condescension in Lillian's voice. She spoke to the dog as to an equal, and despite Marty's initial uncertainty about the woman, he found himself warming to her. Love wasn't an easy thing to come by, he knew that to his cost. Whatever shape it came in, it made sense to respect it. Lillian loved this dog-her grace, her dignity. It was a love he could approve of, if not entirely understand.
Bella sniffed the air, and seemed satisfied that she had the measure of Marty. Lillian reluctantly turned from the cage to Strauss.
"She might even take to you, given time. She's a great seductress, you know. A great seductress."
Behind them, Whitehead grunted at this sentimental nonsense.
"Shall we look over the grounds?" he suggested impatiently. "I think we're done here."
"Come back when you've settled in," Lillian said; her manner had defrosted noticeably since Marty had shown some appreciation of her charges, "and I'll put them through their paces for you."
"Thanks. I will."
"I wanted you to see the dogs," Whitehead said as they left the enclosures behind, and started at a brisk pace across the lawn to the perimeter fence. That was only part of the reason for the visit, though; Marty knew that damn well. Whitehead had intended the experience as a salutary reminder of what Marty had left behind him. There, but for the grace of Joseph Whitehead, he would go again. Well, the lesson was learned. He'd jump through hoops of fire for the old man rather than go back into the custody of corridors and cells. There wasn't even a Bella there; no sublime and secret mother locked away in the heart of Wandsworth. Just lost men like himself.
The day was warming: the sun was up, a pale lemon balloon drifting above the rookery, and the frost was melting from the lawns. For the first time Marty began to get some sense of the scale of the estate. Distances opened up to either side of them: he could see water, a lake, or river perhaps, shining beyond a bank of trees. On the west side of the house there were rows of cypresses, suggesting walkways, fountains perhaps; to the other side, a banked garden surrounde
d by a low stone wall. It would take him weeks to get the layout of the place.
They had reached the double fence that ran right around the estate. A good ten feet high, both fences were topped by sharpened steel struts that curved out toward the would-be intruder. These were in turn crowned with spirals of barbed wire. The whole construction hummed, almost imperceptibly, with an electric charge. Whitehead regarded it with evident satisfaction.
"Impressive, eh?"
Marty nodded. Again, the sight woke echoes.
"It offers a measure of security," Whitehead said.
He turned left at the fence, and began to walk its length, the conversation-if that it could be called-coming from him in the form of a series of non sequiturs, as if he were too impatient with the elliptical structure of normal exchanges to bear with it. He simply threw statements, or clusters of remarks, down, and expected Marty to make whatever sense he could of them.
"It's not a perfect system: fences, dogs, cameras. You saw the screens in the kitchen?"
"Yes.
"I've got the same upstairs. The cameras offer total surveillance day and night." He jerked a thumb up at one of the camera's floodlights mounted beside them. There was one set on every tenth upright. They swiveled back and forth slowly, like the heads of mechanical birds.
"Luther'll show you how to run through them in sequence. Cost a small fortune to install, and I'm not sure it's more than cosmetic. These people aren't fools."
"You've had break-ins?"
"Not here. At the London house it used to happen all the time. Of course, that was when I was more visible. The unrepentant tycoon. Evangeline and me in every scandal sheet. The open sewer of Fleet Street; it never fails to appall me."
"I thought you owned a newspaper?"
"Been reading up on me?"
"Not exactly; I-"
"Don't believe the biographies, or the gossip columns, or even Who's Who. They lie. I lie"-he finished the declension, entertained by his own cynicism-"he, she, or it lies. Scribblers. Dirt peddlers. Contemptible, the lot of them."
Was that what he was keeping out with these lethal fences: dirt peddlers? A fortress against a tide of scandal and shit? If so, it was an elaborate lay to go about it. Marty wondered if this wasn't simply monstrous egotism. Was the hemisphere that interested in the private life of Joseph Whitehead?
"What are you thinking, Mr. Strauss?"
"About the fences," Marty lied, proving Whitehead's earlier point.
"No, Strauss," Whitehead corrected him. "You're thinking: what have I got myself into, locked up with a lunatic?"
Marty sensed any further denial would sound like guilt. He said nothing.
"Isn't that the conventional wisdom where I'm concerned? The failing plutocrat, festering in solitude. Don't they say that about me?"
"Something like that," Marty finally replied.
"And still you came."
"Yes."
"Of course you came. You thought that however offbeat I am, nothing could be as bad as another stretch behind locked doors, isn't that right? And you wanted out. At any cost. You were desperate."
"Of course I wanted out. Anybody would."
"I'm glad you admit to that. Because your wanting gives me considerable power over you, don't you think? You daren't cheat me. You must cleave to me the way the dogs cleave to Lillian, not because she represents their next meal but because she's their world. You must make me your world, Mr. Strauss; my preservation, my sanity, my smallest comfort must be uppermost in your mind every waking moment. If it is, I promise you freedoms you never dreamed of experiencing. The kind of freedoms that are only in the gift of very wealthy men. If not, I will put you back in prison with your record book irredeemably spoiled. Understand me?"
"I understand."
Whitehead nodded.
"Come then," he said. "Walk beside me."
He turned and walked on. The fence swung around behind the back of the woods at this point, and rather than plunging into the undergrowth Whitehead suggested they truncate their journey by heading toward the pool. "One tree looks much like the next to me," he commented. "You can come here and trudge around to your heart's content later on." They skirted the edge of the woods long enough for Marty to get an impression of their density, however. The trees hadn't been systematically planted; this was no regimented Forestry Commission reserve. They stood close to each other, their limbs intertwined, a mixture of deciduous varieties and pines all fighting for growing space. Only occasionally, where an oak or a lime stood bare-branched this early in the year, did light bless the undergrowth. He promised himself a return here before spring prettified it.
Whitehead summoned Marty's thoughts back into focus.
"From now on I expect you to be within summoning distance most of the time. I don't want you with me every moment of the day... just need you in the vicinity. On occasion, and only with my permission, you'll be permitted to leave on your own. You can drive?"
"Yes."
"Well, there's no shortage of cars, so we'll sort something out for you. This isn't strictly within the guidelines set out by the parole board. Their recommendation was that you remain, as it were, in custody here for six probationary months. But I frankly see no reason to prevent you visiting your loved ones-at least when there are other people around to look after my welfare."
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
"I'm afraid I can't allow you any time just at the moment. Your presence here is vital."
"Problems?"
"My life is constantly threatened, Strauss. I, or rather my offices, receive hate mail all the time. The difficulty is in separating the crank who spends his time writing filth to public figures from the genuine assassin."
"Why should anyone want to assassinate you?"
"I'm one of the wealthiest men outside America. I own companies that employ tens of thousands of people; I own tracts of land so large I could not walk them in the years remaining to me if I began now; I own ships, art, horseflesh. It's easy to make an icon of me. To think that if I and my life were brought down there'd be peace on earth and goodwill to men."
"I see."
"Sweet dreams," he said bitterly.
The pace of their march had begun to slow. The great man's breath was rather shorter now than it had been half an hour before. Listening to him talk it was easy to forget his advanced years. His opinions had all the absolutism of youth. No room here for the mellowness of advancing years; for ambiguity or doubt.
"I think it's time we headed back," he said.
The monologue had finally lapsed, and Marty had no taste for further talk. No energy either. Whitehead's style-with its unsignaled swerves and bends-had exhausted him. He'd have to get used to the pose of the attentive listener: find a face to use when these lectures began, and put it on. Learn to nod knowingly in the right places, to murmur platitudes at the appropriate breaks in the flow. It would take a while, but he'd get the trick of handling Whitehead in time.
"This is my fortress, Mr. Strauss," the old man announced as they approached the house. It didn't look particularly garrisoned: the brick was too warm to be stern. "Its sole function is to keep me from harm."
"Like me."
"Like you, Mr. Strauss."
Behind the house, one of the dogs had started barking. The solo rapidly became a chorus.
"Feeding time," Whitehead said.
15
It took several weeks' living on the estate for Marty to understand fully the rhythm of the Whitehead household. Like the benign dictatorship it was, the shape of each day was defined absolutely by Whitehead's plans and whims. As the old man had told Marty that first day, the house was a shrine to him; his worshipers came daily to touch the hem of his opinion. Some of their faces he recognized: captains of industry; two or three government ministers (one of whom had recently left office in disgrace; was he coming here, Marty wondered, asking for forgiveness or retribution?); pundits, guardians of public morality-many people Marty knew by sigh
t but couldn't name, even more he didn't know at all. He was introduced to none of them.
Once or twice a week he might be asked to remain in the room while the meetings were held, but more often than not he was required only to be within hailing distance. Wherever he was, he was invisible as far as most of the guests were concerned: ignored, treated at best as part of the furniture. At first it was irritating; everyone in the house had a name but him, it seemed. As time passed, however, he grew to be glad of his anonymity. He wasn't required to give an opinion on everything, so he could let his mind drift with no danger of being called into the conversation. It was good too to be dislocated from the concerns of these almighty people: their lies seemed, he thought, fraught and artificial. He saw in many of their faces looks he recognized from his years in Wandsworth: the constant fretting over minor gibes, over their place in the hierarchy. The rules might be more civil in this circle than in Wandsworth; but the struggles, he began to understand, were fundamentally the same. All power games of one kind or another. He was pleased to have no part in them.
Besides, his mind had more important issues to mull over. For one thing, there was Charmaine. More out of curiosity than passion, perhaps, he had begun to think about her a good deal. He found himself wondering how her body looked seven years on. Did she still shave the thin line of hair that ran down from her navel to her pubes; did her fresh sweat still smell so pungent? He wondered too if she still loved love the way she had. She had shown more unreserved appetite for the physical act than any woman he'd known; it was one of the reasons he'd married her. Was it still so? And if it was, with whom did she slake her thirst? He turned these and a dozen other questions about her over and over in his head, and promised himself that at the first opportunity he'd go and see her.
The weeks saw his physique improve. The strict regime of exercise he'd set for himself that first night began as a torment, but after a few days of punished and complaining muscles the exertion began to bear fruit. He got up at five-thirty each morning and took an hour-long run around the grounds. After a week of following the same circuit he altered the route, which allowed him to explore the estate at the same time as exercising. There was a great deal to see. Spring hadn't arrived in force yet, but there were stirrings. Crocuses were beginning to show themselves, as were the spears of daffodils. On the trees, fat buds were starting to split; leaves were unfurling. It had taken him almost a week to cover the estate fully, and to work out the relation of one part of it to another; now he more or less had a grasp of the arrangement. He knew the lake, the dovecote, the swimming pool, the tennis courts, the kennels, the woods and the gardens. One morning, when the sky was exceptionally clear, he had circuited the entire grounds, hugging the fence all the way around the estate even when it threaded its way along the back of the woods. He now reckoned he had as thorough a knowledge of the place as anyone, including its owner.