by Roger Curtis
‘With sexual favours courtesy of his children?’
‘A little harmless fun, Sarah. No harm done to anybody. Except to your sis when she stopped co-operating.’ Tom glanced nervously at Edwin, seeing his error.
‘You killed my sister?’
‘The bitch would have told.’
Sarah, until now standing, slipped uninvited into a chair.
‘Enough, Tom.’ Edwin said. ‘All this detail is in the past and is irrelevant. We have decisions to make and time is short.’
Tom took no notice. He had risen to his feet and was pointing at Brian. ‘And what about his dealings, then?’
‘You’re right about that, Tom,’ Edwin said. ‘Sarah should know about it now there are no secrets between us, apparently. Tell her, Brian.’
‘I’d rather tell her alone.’
‘Very well, then I will. Or better, illustrate it for her.’ He looked at Sarah over his glasses. ‘Turn your head, my dear, and look at that screen.’ Edwin might have been at a case conference with his medical colleagues. ‘You see, Sarah, we like to keep a record of all our projects. That way our library is a source of interest for years to come.’
The credits meant nothing, except to confirm the professional touch of the film-maker. There was a dinner, a lavish, refined, all-male affair, like up-market Masons or Rotary. Faces were flushed, voices animated, polarised across a table seen end-on. Khasoni was on his feet. ‘This man,’ he said, pointing across the table, ‘taxes my credulity. I propose to call his bluff. I propose to make him eat his words. Verba vorare!’ Conversation died as abruptly as when knights once lowered their lances to charge. ‘I wager the building of one new research centre to five million pounds against his achieving what he claims.’ The camera panned to Brian, who rose shakily to his feet. He was boxed in, humiliated; he had no choice. ‘I stand by what I said. I accept the wager.’ Hands shook limply across the table. Conversation resumed like a kick-started engine.
A voice-over explained the terms: a face, as perfect as possible, to be disfigured and then restored within a year. It was followed by a monologue in legalese, formalising the proposed obscenity.
‘Turn it off now,’ Brian pleaded.
‘Certainly not, Brian,’ Tom said. ‘She has a right to know.’
‘Do you want to see more, Sarah?’ Edwin asked.
‘Yes,’ Sarah said, ‘you can’t hurt me anymore.’
Suddenly she was looking at her own face coming rapidly towards the camera, then falling down and sideways as the blade bit. For a moment everything was still. There was no blood, just a black pencil line subtly changing in thickness. Then it filled red.
‘You’ll appreciate this bit,’ Tom said.
They were at her gateway at Shirley Hills. A black shape, just identifiable as a car, entered from the right. The rear door opened and the scene faded. Then the sequence was repeated, but from the car’s perspective, with Sarah getting in. She could even see her dress hitched up under her coat.
‘Nice detail that, Tom,’ Edwin said.
Now they were in the Massingham Tower, immersed in the dark extravagance of a companions’ evening. Sarah dressing, her hands caressing her body under the satin-white gown, the mask of the faun in bizarre sexual contexts, the prostration before the figure in the bull mask; it was all there. And then, in what seemed to be a hotel room, the impregnation itself and Brian’s flushed, triumphant face.
Brian jumped to his feet. ‘You had no authority to film that!’
‘But we did, didn’t we,’ Tom said.
Edwin was waving an admonishing finger. ‘It was the sweetener you wanted, Brian. Not to renege on the face deal, remember?’
For a moment the screen divided: on the left figures milling on the terrace of Brian’s Putney home, Sarah, with her ravaged face, in their midst beside Nicole; on the right virtually the same scene, again with both of them, but this time with Sarah restored and happy.
‘That was the test, you see, Sarah,’ Edwin explained. ‘Whether the adjudicators – who were quite independent, I assure you – could tell which of you had undergone the surgery. In the event they couldn’t and Brian won. Khasoni was livid.’
‘I’ve seen enough,’ Sarah said. ‘Switch it off, please.’ No-one moved. The film continued to run: more cars, people moving in darkness. They seemed of no interest, but then something caught her attention: the name Hightower on the entrance pillar of her house. The troubled darkness of the screen exploded into a fiery orange glow.
‘So my stables were your handiwork too?’
‘We needed a diversion, Sarah, to get you back indoors. Surely you can appreciate that?’ The malice of Tom’s stare was concentrated into two rigid black pupils. ‘Anything else we can help you with?’
‘If you would be so kind.’
‘Feel free to ask.’
‘Why did you have to kill Mark and Alice?’
Brian, who had kept his face buried in his hands, rose in his seat, glaring at them furiously. ‘Don’t answer. Let me tell her.’
‘Shut up!’ Tom pushed him roughly back into his seat.
Edwin was rotating the palms of his hands and contemplating the tips of his fingers. It seemed to say that the proceedings were drawing to a close. ‘They too were sweeteners, of a kind. You see, to put it crudely, Brian still fancied you, Sarah. As, indeed, we’ve all done at one time or another. We simply wanted to ease the way. Isn’t that so, Brian?’
‘I love her. I adore her. Now I can give her the world if she asks.’
‘Could have, Brian, could have. We’re not talking the same language as yesterday. Things have changed. You took from her. Now, stupidly, you’ve let her take from you.’
Edwin looked up above her head and nodded towards the door.
Pride prevented Sarah from turning around. She was aware only of someone approaching and the prick in her arm, and Edwin and Tom filing past.
‘She’s all yours, Brian,’ Tom called from the door. I’d say you’ve got about three minutes of coherence. Make the most of it.’
Sarah had begun toying with the ashtray on the desk. Suddenly it slipped from her grasp. She tried to pick it up but her hands drifted uncontrollably above it and she gave up. ‘Brian, what was it?’
‘What they gave you? Somonaril – a potent sedative.’
‘Why? What will happen to me?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sure they’ll salvage something from the situation.’
‘To what purpose?’
‘To entertain. For profit. Those fireworks over the lagoon this evening, that may offer opportunities.’
Her pity was not for herself and she wanted to reach out to him. ‘I might have given in to you, you know, if you’d let me have half the chance. I think at last I’d come to terms with the downside.’
‘It’s unkind to tell me that now. Why not when it might have meant something?’
‘Unkind? I’ve never been unkind. I was always the target for any unkindness around. Something in my nature seemed to invite it. I wanted to be loved, just that, without strings. I see now how my whole life has been… manipulated.’
‘The hook of Massingham.’
Sarah’s head would have jerked towards him if the muscles had worked. Instead it rotated with robotic smoothness. ‘Not at first, Brian. Surely it was only Tom then.’
‘You’re certain about that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Those photographs of Tom’s. You didn’t see?’
Sarah’s brow puckered in frustration. ‘Tell me.’
‘Edwin was one of your sister’s first – how shall we say – admirers. He’d assumed you’d seen the photographs of himself, you see. You must have been a very small child when Tom started procuring for Edwin.’
‘Then wh
y was I spared? Why only Elizabeth?’ The patterns on the ceiling began to undulate. Something vital was still missing. A kaleidoscope of images circled in her head: black velvet, Irina in Irmkutz, torchlight, taps on windows. ‘Why do I know these things?’
‘Elizabeth must have…’
‘But she never did! We never spoke about it, ever. Me, her close sister!’
‘Sarah, I beg you, put it from your mind.’
‘And why was that building familiar, if I’d never been there? But I had been there, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I?’
‘I… was told it stopped before you were old enough to remember. Obviously that was not quite true.’
‘So why didn’t it continue?’ Her weakened voice became a sarcastic snarl. ‘Wasn’t I desirable enough?’
‘It’s… it’s because your sister would have told. You were left alone because she allowed herself to be… That was the deal: her submission in return for your safety.’
‘Then why did she have to die?’
‘Because you’d reached an age to question, to seek out the truth. And then, in a strange way, you began to take her place. How else do you think you got a place at Catherine’s, and joined the surgical team?’ The words left his mouth twisted in derision: ‘For Edwin’s gratification.’
‘Brian, I can’t keep my head straight anymore.’
‘Lean against me.’ He was on his knees now, tears running down his cheeks.
‘Brian,’ she whispered, ‘there’s only one more thing: my face. Who did it to me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must know! It was Tom, wasn’t it?’
‘It was… Massingham. Keeping me in ignorance was part of the wager.’
‘And you were never interested enough to find out? You must know something.’
His response was defensive, he resentful of being asked. ‘I was told he left the country, so I don’t think it was Tom.
She heard the sound of the door opening as Brian crumpled to the floor and sensed hands roughly grasping her shoulders. Her eyelids were already closed.
Was this the stuff of dreams? To be pulled across the surface of the dark lagoon, the light reflected from the vast dome touching with silver the ripples made by her dragging hand. Those left behind on the shore, so attentive to her progress: how concerned they’d looked, those two gentle girls in white, more beautiful even than Maia, who had helped her onto the raft. The tender kisses on her cheek: surely a promise, not a parting.
But why should she fear? Here was another craft coming out, weaving its way through the water. Would it not people her raft, to while away the evening. She rocked backwards in her seat, a light contented jelly under an indigo sky.
An expanding point of light was tracing its slow, paraboloid course towards her. A dull thud, then a crackle of combustion near her hand. Then heat: sudden, aggressive and focused, like a dozen suns emerging together from behind black clouds. Yet surely this was night?
Light was all around now, the shore and the sky just blurs through the spitting orange palisade. If only her head would clear and she could rise, to separate the dazzling beauty from the awful reality.
Through the concentrating colours something distant was changing: black shapes seemed to be engaging in some primeval ballet. She heard her name twice over in different pitches, and other voices in conflict with the plunging and splashing of water. Then a movement of the raft so abrupt that suddenly here was the wooden floor against her cheek. Above, the canopy turned orange.
With skin insensate, there were no such constraints on her nostrils. The singeing of hair – like at cremations at Hatomi – could only be of her own. Her mind at last began to wake to the proximity of death, panic countering the depth of her sedation.
A jolt of still greater violence, wood against wood, and desperate footfalls crunching the ash on the deck around her face. Hands pulled and arms hooked under her back and knees, releasing stabs of pain from the smouldering clothes. A greater splash and water closed momentarily over her head, but the hands did not let go. And out again, her body scraping over rough edges and shingle.
A sudden pause, her back propped against knees, as a vast billow of flame seared upwards from the point she had just left. There were two of them, a man and a woman, helping her, bearing her away.
She recognised the terrace where there had once been a table and chairs, and geraniums. ‘Stop, please, just for a moment!’ ‘Next time, sweetheart!’ The rock stairs hurt her arms and legs. Then, oh, the relief of open corridors and an elevator that still worked. Why did it have to be so rushed, when all was now quiet? If only her legs would support her weight.
‘Look up, Sarah. Can you see who we are?’
‘Jack? Nicole?’
‘Good girl!’
‘I’m going to break the glass.’
The glittering shower crashed onto the pavement. They dragged her over to the waiting car.
‘Hospital, I think,’ Jack said.
‘No, I’ll be okay.’
‘Where then?’
‘I’m trying to remember.’
‘Just drive, Jack,’ Nicole said.
‘Greenwich.’
‘Greenwich?’
‘You’re confused. But do it Jack and think about it afterwards. She’s not hurt physically, apart from a few grazes.’
‘Are we being followed?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Go up to the observatory.’ Sarah said. ‘As close as you can get.’
They nestled under the stone wall where, to an observer with only cursory knowledge, the story might just have begun. Already, in the direction of the city, there was a match-flame of light more intense than anything around or beyond it.
‘Look how it’s growing, Sarah, Nicole! To think we were in that. I’ve got binoculars in the car. I’ll get them.’
‘No telescope?’ Sarah asked.
‘Afraid not,’ Jack replied, puzzled by the question.
The explosion came about eight, that is to say about thirty minutes after their escape. In spite of the flames it was quite unexpected, and even after weeks of investigation by the police and a miscellany of other agencies, the cause, like the fire itself, was never properly explained in the absence of witnesses.
‘The answer’s in the psychology,’ Nicole told them, the day the house at Shirley Hills went up for sale and they were sitting on the terrace waiting for the first of the summer flush of potential buyers. ‘It’s natural that if you create something evil and are capable of recognising it, then it would be second nature to build in a means of its destruction if it were ever needed. That’s my theory, anyway.’
‘What does Khasoni say?’ Jack asked.
‘Khasoni, sensibly, is keeping silent,’ Nicole explained. Then she brought her hand involuntarily to her mouth. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. He asked me to give you something, Sarah. I’ll get it from the car.’
The pink silk ribbon that encompassed the small black box slid silently to the floor.
‘It can only be a Fabergé egg!’
Nicole was already peering inside. With a little foreknowledge she said, ‘I think you’ll find it’s more exquisite even than that.’
Sarah withdrew a butterfly in pure gold encrusted with jewels. It bore a simple inscription on its base:
ESMERALDA PULCHERRIMA
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
PEVERELL HESSETT
June 1993
24
No-one could remember quite so many cars fighting to enter the church car park and spilling out in indignation onto the road. That was because the village had seldom produced a son or daughter worthy of the public eye.
Emerging into the sunlight, Sarah’s first impression was of a flock of birds twittering in approbation. They might ha
ve been disappointed by her modest white two-piece suit; but, as they told her over and over afterwards, she herself more than made up for it. The showers of confetti seemed as much tokens of affection as of tradition.
A wheelchair carrying Betty Potter trundled out of the church behind her.
‘It’s good of you to do this, Dr Hislop.’
‘Not at all, Sarah. Your mother and I are as inseparable as Paulo and Francesca. Isn’t that so, Betty?’
‘He’s a good man, Sarah.’
Andrew had wanted a low-key reception in the village hall but Jack and Nicole had advised Laurel Cottage and won the day, although strictly it was none of their business. Given the sunshine it was the right decision. The grand marquee dominated a manicured lawn patched with life and colour.
Sarah and Andrew placed themselves inside the garden gate, just in time to see Carruthers and Bentley wheel into sight. ‘Look at your watch, in case they charge us for their time,’ Sarah whispered, intending to be overheard.
Marguerite followed with a little boy who was torn between clutching her leg and dragging a toy rabbit on a lead. Her wide smile was fixed and wouldn’t break because of the pent-up emotion after five years of separation.
‘At least I got rid of the horses,’ Sarah whispered in her ear, and the ice was broken.
‘Oh, Miss.’ Her arms were around Sarah’s neck in an instant.
The boy removed a thumb from his mouth in quiet contemplation of a new phenomenon, then replaced it when he realised there was nothing on offer. Seeing him begin to wander away Nicole tried to pick him up and was rewarded with a plaintive wail.
Jack was getting impatient. ‘Put that child down, Nicole, and help me get them all inside.’
Volunteers from Sarah’s contingent of medics and researchers from the Davison Institute and Andrew’s cohort of Red Cross workers helped push Betty Potter’s chair up the slope to the marquee.
Eventually the lawn was quiet again. Inside the marquee they made resolutions for the future, to spirited applause. Outside the sun still shone. But not everything was harmonious in this seemingly idyllic garden.