Anthony’s heartbeat shot up and his breathing came in short gasps. His palms were instantly damp with sweat inside his gloves. He only became aware that he must have emitted a strange sound when the porter stationed outside inquired, “Everything all right?” Anthony tried to reply but his mouth was so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He furiously worked his jaw to generate saliva and managed a weak “Yes.” He took out a handkerchief and shakily wiped his brow.
Returning to the wardrobe, he feverishly rummaged in the clothes, finding a jacket that bore a nametag that read Philomena Bligh. He explored the bundle of papers on the bedside table. Flicking through them he found his own letter of condolence that he’d addressed to Philomena Bligh, November last. As the night porter fidgeted outside and began to whistle tunelessly under his breath Anthony scanned several of the other papers in the bundle. Extracts from letters Daniel Case had written to his fiancée leaped out at him. Anthony speedread, his eyes racing to take in as much as possible. He glimpsed the name Jonathan Priest and “my new best friend.” Also, toward the end of the same missive, “My darling, my darling, my darling.”
Philomena and Jonathan’s taxicab pulled up a little to the west of Marble Arch, at an apartment block of several floors. Very London; she’d never seen a building like it before arriving in the capital. It had large rectangular windows—more like a department store—and a glass entrance. There was something maritime about it. Only five or six stories, yet it had a lift. Jonathan pressed the button to call it. They kept well apart as they waited for the lift to descend to the ground floor and maintained their distance once they were inside. The floor they alighted on—the fifth—had the same wooden parquet floors as the foyer. It absorbed sound, unlike the bare boards at her hotel. Jonathan stopped at a door and inserted a key in the lock, opened the door and stepped back to allow her to enter first. She hesitated on the threshold then entered.
First impressions were that it was clean and spacious, and spare, and modern. No heavy wallpaper, no aspidistras, and no tables on which to stand any. Jonathan led her down the hallway indicating rooms as they passed them: the lounge, the bathroom, master bedroom, guest bedroom, dining room, and the kitchen. They entered the last, which was large enough to accommodate a small dining table. A gas cooker! Fancy. Jonathan pulled out a chair for her. She sat. He opened a cupboard and pulled out bottles: whisky, rum, vodka. He asked what she wanted and poured what she told him. He didn’t sit.
“I want to discourage you,” he said, “from taking any further action against Anthony Dore.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because there isn’t any more that you can do.”
“Neither of us knows that.”
“I’m not arguing that there shouldn’t be justice, or revenge—”
She interrupted: “What are you arguing?”
“You’ve tricked him, yes, you’ve got inside his guard, but you’re going home tomorrow so all this is academic anyhow.” He flapped his arms dramatically.
Philomena narrowed her eyes. What lay behind his objections? “It looks bad to you, doesn’t it? Me dressed up with Anthony.”
“Not my place to say.”
No, but you are saying it, aren’t you, beneath your words. She wasn’t having him thinking that about her. Did he really believe that? “You don’t know what passed between us.”
Jonathan tried to ignore the rising taunt in her voice. “Where did you meet him the first time?”
“In that same club.”
“It’s full of bachelor girls, notorious for its goings-on. There was a scandal: a girl who frequented the place died from taking dope she probably got there.” There, he was saying, that was why I thought what I did. And, you don’t know what you’ve been doing. You don’t know the true nature of the place you were in, what context you are being judged in, therefore what signals you are giving off, what other people would reasonably be concluding about you. But Philomena was keeping pace with Jonathan’s thoughts. If she was reckless being in The Gates of Heaven in that way, then so was he.
“In that case you in particular are taking a big risk going there.”
“Yes, I am,” said Jonathan. His defiant, slightly sulky tone and his jutting chin made Philomena pause.
“Are you saying that you want to be caught there?”
Jonathan’s head inclined down; his voice lost its brittle edge.
“I acknowledge that it’s potentially rash. Perhaps part of me does want to be caught. Perhaps part of Anthony Dore wants to be caught—hence his letter to you.”
“Or he thinks he’s very clever,” suggested Philomena.
“Not so clever. You’ve tricked him.”
“Yes, I have.” Now she was emphatic; her means justified the end. “He doesn’t know who I am and he doesn’t know what I want so I have a huge advantage—”
“Until he realizes that you’re not going to give him what he wants,” said Jonathan, challenging her. “He will be assuming certain things about a single girl he meets in that club.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve already said that,” said Philomena, impatiently.
“And what have you got from tricking him? What have you actually got? You were about to stick a bloody great pin in the man—”
“He wouldn’t do something,” she snapped.
“You two looked quite cozy.”
Philomena opened her mouth to continue the spat, then closed it. She frowned. Was there a little bit of jealousy behind those sarcastic words? A new thought struck her about Jonathan.
“How long did you watch us?”
“I wasn’t watching you, I saw you.”
Philomena could smell a little mendacity; a whiff.
“How long?”
“Only briefly.”
“How briefly?”
“I glimpsed you just before the lights went.”
A guess: “Were those lights anything to do with you?”
“No,” said Jonathan, meeting her inquisitorial gaze. He didn’t blink. She changed tack, sat back.
“We need the truth about Anthony. Felicity might find it,” she said.
“It’s only justice if he is caught, and punished, for the crime of murdering Dan; there’s no point otherwise—it’s not justice otherwise. You can wish the worst on him but you’d feel forever uneasy if you do something before you’re certain that he killed Dan.”
“I agree.” She flared her eyes and pushed forward her head, marking an end to that line of argument.
Jonathan sighed with his mouth closed, impatient with her, and with himself for allowing their exchange to become adversarial. But it was unfinished. He decided to come at it more wisely.
“But what can Felicity find?”
“I don’t know, yet. He likes Felicity.”
“That much is obvious, but your Felicity can’t find any evidence because there isn’t any. She can’t find a witness to the card game because they’re dead. So she’s getting under the guard of the suspect for what, a confession? Something incriminating?”
“You’ve been thinking about this longer than me,” she said, making it sound as if Jonathan’s will was weak.
He sat down opposite her and kneaded his scalp with both hands. He sighed. A twinkle returned to his eye.
“How does Felicity speak?”
“Like this.”
“Say a bit more.”
“I can’t think what to say.”
“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”
As she said it as Felicity, she couldn’t help smiling. Jonathan smiled, too.
“Do you know the story of Hamlet?” he asked.
“We read it at school.”
“The man who knows what he should do but can’t do it. The man who’s been instructed by a ghost,” said Jonathan.
“Does Dan’s ghost instruct you?” she asked.
“No, not literally, not like Hamlet’s father.”
He got up and paced the kitchen.
“This is how I see my life: I became a barrister by accident. When I was born no one would have dreamed of predicting this future for me. I was supposed to work in a mill or something. But I got here. But I’m here under sufferance, I sometimes feel. They tolerate me and others like me so they can say that anybody can progress and improve themselves if only they try hard enough, therefore society is fair. If Dan had had the help I’ve had he might have been in my position. This makes his death even more enraging, because he was killed by a man with no talents, a man who has had everything served up to him. A weak man in a powerful position. Which is what I see about me, every day, and it makes me sick.
“What happened to Dan added to grievances already kindled in me. There’s another incident that drives me. In the war, earlier, there was a young lad, Irish, one of those who the government knew was under age but they turned a blind eye because they needed the numbers. He was sixteen when he enlisted, just seventeen when he got shell shock, still just seventeen when he was court martialled for leaving his post—he wandered about behind our lines, incoherent—not deserting, not what I’d call cowardice. And he was seventeen when we executed him. The firing squad wouldn’t pull their triggers. The officer in charge had to shoot him.”
Philomena twitched as if she’d been slapped.
“That wasn’t me,” added Jonathan. “I defended him. I was his failed defense counsel.”
“It doesn’t sound like there was much you could do.”
“But it was wrong!” He turned away from her, picked up a bottle of Scotch, made to dash it against the wall, thought better of it, poured some into a glass instead, drank it down. Silence.
“Another thing about Hamlet is that he thinks about killing himself,” Philomena said quietly.
Jonathan drained his whisky and poured himself another generous helping.
“Where does the name Pygmalion come from?” she murmured, trying to get him to speak.
“It’s a myth. Pygmalion’s a man. He avoids women. He’s a sculptor. He makes a beautiful sculpture of a female. He falls in love with it. Venus hears his wish that she be real, and makes it so.”
“And they live happily ever after?”
Jonathan shook his head, still facing away from her.
“Do you think about stories all the time?” she asked.
“My clients tend to fit certain recognizable types, with variations. In certain situations human behavior is quite predictable.”
“What’s your type? And don’t say Hamlet; he’s a prince.”
“It’s quite difficult to say what your own type is,” said Jonathan, still facing away.
“Setting aside the prince bit, you’re not all Hamlet, are you?” she said. “Your father wasn’t killed by your mother’s lover, for instance.”
“Actually, now you come to mention it …” said Jonathan, making her fear for a moment that she’d overstepped the mark—his father might have been killed by his mother’s lover for all she knew. But he turned to her and grinned to release her. They both smiled for a few moments.
“What’s Anthony Dore’s type?” she asked.
“You’ve probably seen more of him than I have,” replied Jonathan. He winced and flashed another smile to show that that wasn’t accusing her of anything.
“He’s insecure,” she said, “but I don’t know what he was like before you accused him of murdering Dan.”
“Middle son of three. Fact. Least popular son—speculation, based on anecdote. Elder brother Edward, mentioned three times in dispatches, school rugger hero, in the law, doing well, killed in war—facts. Younger brother Albert, generally loved by all, pianist, medical school; enlisted early, also dead—facts. Anthony, middle son, no particular talent, does something in the City. Killed comrade on battlefield because he’d lost his family’s wealth gambling with a working-class man, couldn’t face the music.”
“Speculation,” said Philomena. “The music made him more fearful than the consequences of murder?”
“Correct,” said Jonathan. “Whatever the actual reality, that is how he saw it, in his mind. Or he was just angry, and Dan didn’t matter.”
He poured them both another drink. They sat in silence, not looking at each other. The kitchen began to feel crowded, airless. It became so that again they couldn’t look at each other, for fear of what might happen. She swallowed hard and often, searched for something distracting to say: “Ever since Dan’s death I’ve been waiting to do something. To act. I should feel surprised by my behavior since I came to London.”
Jonathan nodded to show he understood. “I should stop taking dope,” he said. “I only really use it now when I know that after a recess I’m going to be on my feet, presenting my case. I use it to engender the feeling that nothing can go wrong. Having said that I also use it afterward, too, to celebrate. I’m an addict, let’s face it. I’ll find whatever excuse.” He went to the doorway and beckoned. “Come on. I’ll show you something.”
She worried he was going to disclose something terrible to do with drugs. “Show me what?”
“Something.”
She looked alarmed.
“What are you scared of it being?” he asked.
“Everything. Anything.”
“Fear of the unknown. But if you sat there and guessed for a thousand years you wouldn’t get it. I promise that it won’t harm you.”
“It?”
“Come. Come.”
She stood and let Jonathan lead her back down the hallway to a closed door. It was a room he kept locked.
“This is the third bedroom,” he said, unlocking it.
Bedroom?! She nearly protested, opening her mouth.
“Not in use as a bedroom,” Jonathan reassured.
He opened the door and stepped in and switched on the light. She gasped. Jonathan turned and gestured for her to enter beside him. It had once been an ordinary room. Now, every wall was painted and re-painted with images and fragments and slashes of color, reds and browns and oranges. The splashes on the ceiling testified to the violence of the person responsible. Some of the individual images were of men dying and being brutal, killed and killing in various ways. There was a recurring one of a pair of figures locked in what could only be a fight to the death. The whole wasn’t composed in any ordered way that Philomena could make out; it looked like it had been done at different times, in different moods. There were pots of paint and brushes strewn about the floor. There was one easy chair, ruined by paint. It had also been slashed. A kitchen knife was embedded in it. The room brought tears to her eyes.
“All my own work. I’ll have to do it up and replace the chair before the landlord comes around,” said Jonathan. “You can have a go, if you like.”
He hadn’t known that he was going to suggest that. Philomena looked at him to check that he meant what she thought he did.
“But it’s yours.”
He tried to smile. “You can’t make it any messier than it is.”
She felt sick with tension. Jonathan picked up a paint brush and handed it to her. “There’re some overalls over here.”
But all she could think of was that she really wanted to be naked. “Will this paint wash off skin?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Jonathan, not catching on, prying the lids off various cans.
And without looking at Jonathan Philomena slipped out of Felicity’s dress and shoes and out of her new silk undergarments and she was naked. Jonathan saw her and he grunted. She picked up a tin of paint and took aim and threw the contents so hard at a wall that some of the paint splashed backward, spattering her bare skin. Her eyes shut to save themselves. It was red paint, crimson, so it resembled blood. She felt the paint run down her body, opened her eyes. There was some left in the tin. She tipped it upside down over her head and it poured over her shoulders and down her back, a rivulet, in the groove of her spine, down and down, cold? Hot? Must be cold. She was panting.
Jonathan looked on. White skin, brown hair at armpits and lower
down. Green eyes flashing, red paint dripping. Jesus! His instinct was to strip off as well but fatally he hesitated, felt too awkward, too inhibited. And he had an erection.
Philomena incidentally smeared some of the red drips across her blushing skin as she took better hold of the brush and started to drag the paint spatters across the wall, working fast, spreading this way and that before it dried.
Jonathan felt like he was in the presence of Dan. She was elemental like Dan. She raised her arms and her breasts lifted with them. He was unable to resist imagining what sex with her would be like.
But he knew instinctively that she wasn’t saying to him let’s do it here and now. His experience in law told him that if he did force himself upon her in this circumstance no jury of men would blame him, but that wasn’t the point. He needed to think differently. Her nakedness spoke of her trust in him. She was trusting him, yes? She was saying to him: look, this is how intensely I feel and I have faith that you won’t abuse it. She was telling him that he was special, just as he had told her she was to him by showing her the paint room in the first place.
He started tugging clumsily at his clothes, taking great gulping breaths in an effort to overcome his fear. It’d be a strange thing not to have an erection, wouldn’t it? Philomena wasn’t looking at him anyway. When he was naked he took up a pot of orange paint and splashed it on another wall and began to fashion it into garish shapes. Philomena looked across and saw that he was also naked and his erection and she let out a guffaw. She came to his wall and joined in with his vigorous shaping of the orange paint. She felt savage with desire.
She could’ve just taken him inside her, just had him, fucked some of her unbearable feelings away. Rutted and fucked until she felt normal again. They accidentally touched, just the lightest brush of upper arms. Perhaps not even their skins met but just the hairs standing proud. An electric shock went through them as they worked the paint hard. His body was ready, her body was ready, but the rest of them was not. He had his terrible secret, and she feared, she feared that if she took him inside her now, she feared for her mind.
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