The Missing World

by Margot Livesey

  “Omen,” he repeated, and suddenly he was back on the sidewalk outside Plantworks with Maud and Mrs. Craig. One minute they were talking, more or less cordially. The next, Littleton showed up, eyes flashing. And a few hours later, he’d glimpsed Hazel, forlorn at the window. She can’t marry him, he thought. Whatever it takes. For an instant he wished Felicity were sitting beside him. How she would rant and rave at Littleton, blow his arguments out of the water. “Excuse me,” he said. Leaning forward to wipe the windshield, he managed to dislodge Charlotte.

  Hazel returned from Mrs. Craig’s, trailing the fragrance of lavender. “Where’s Maud?” she asked and barely seemed to register his reply that she’d had to leave.

  “Oh well.” She blinked slowly and gave a small yawn. “I’m going straight to bed after supper.”

  In the half hour since Maud pedalled away, Jonathan had been rehearsing his counterattack: she’d finally gone off the rails, shown herself so vicious and untrustworthy that he’d told her not to come again. But there seemed no immediate need to deliver it. Perhaps Hazel had already forgotten her indiscretion. He noticed that her back was straighter and, mysteriously, her breasts fuller: could massage accomplish all that? The crescent of desire Maud had etched on the evening waxed. “I picked up some haddock,” he said, “and new potatoes.”

  “Probably from Cyprus.” She raised her arms over her head. “Can I do anything?”

  “Keep me company,” he ventured, and to his delight she pulled out a chair and sat down.

  She fingered the edge of the table. “You know, I do feel much better. Maybe we needn’t worry so much about my being alone. Mrs. Craig was saying she’s home a lot, if you’re out and I need something.”

  “That’s very kind of her.” He rinsed the potatoes under the tap. Beneath the dirt their skins glowed with pearly light. She was talking as if everything was all right, as if, finally, she accepted their relationship. What a fool he’d been, trying to keep the flat secret. Did he think this was some spy film? No wonder Hazel had been furious. But fury, he knew, could pass.

  He put the potatoes on to boil and set Hazel to slicing tomatoes. “I checked the bees while you were with Mrs. Craig. They’re already foraging in two of the hives.”

  “Isn’t that earlier than last year?”

  “Ten days. We had that cold snap last May, just when they ought to get started.” He held out the fish. “I thought I’d fry it in lemon and butter. How does that sound?”

  “Delicious. Shall we open some wine?”

  “But you’re not drinking.”

  “I wasn’t planning to go mad, but a glass would be nice.”

  So there was wine and food and the narcissi Maud had brought—pheasant’s eye, Hazel called them—and Hazel smelling of lavender. How could he help himself? Over supper they reminisced about the summer Steve and Diane had rented a house in Lewes and they’d gone down to celebrate the solstice. The fish made Hazel think of it. Steve had cooked mackerel for supper, she said, clearly pleased with her recall, baked with lemon and peppers. Afterwards, under a burly sky, they had climbed onto the Downs and walked across the short thistly grass past the Roman temple until, from a windswept ledge, they were gazing down on the roofs of Glyndebourne. Later, at the station, the platform had been swarming with people in evening dress carrying ugly plastic picnic coolers. Jonathan had been proud of Hazel in her flowery dress and trainers.

  “Would you like something else?” he asked. “I got a nice piece of Camembert.”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid the wine has done me in.”

  “Did you take your pills?”

  “Earlier.” She carried her plate to the sink. In the doorway, looking down the hall, she paused. “We did love each other, didn’t we?”

  Before he could correct her tenses, she was gone.

  He washed the dishes, then forced himself to remain at the table, leafing through a biography of Brother Adam, the famous Dorset beekeeper. Last time, he admitted, had been premature—she had been far from well—but tonight was perfect. She no longer needed help with the stairs, and what else was her parting remark but an invitation? He raised his glass to Hazel, and emptied it.

  After putting the chain on the front door, he tiptoed upstairs. Her room was reassuringly quiet. He undressed in the spare room and on impulse—why not give her a little longer?—decided to take a bath. As he ran the sandalwood soap over his arms and legs, he thought, this time I’ll tell her that I love her. I won’t let the words go unspoken, not even for a few more hours. Bathed, he approached the basin. When he and Hazel were first together, he had shaved nightly; now, swishing the razor in the water, watching his reflected face lose its shadow, he remembered the passion and ingenuity of those early, hopeful days.

  He came to her naked and found her asleep in pyjamas.

  “Hazel,” he whispered, slipping beneath the duvet. She stirred and he kissed her neck. He removed her pyjama bottoms and she shifted helpfully from side to side; perhaps being in hospital had habitualised her to such activities. He sighed at the touch of her. Feeling her flesh against his own, he thought, this is enough, I’ll sleep with my arms round her, breathe in her breath. And for a few minutes, it was. Then desire flared again.

  He reached between her legs, his fingers moving over the coarse hair. At first, when he felt the cord, he thought it was some part of the pyjamas left behind. Of course. So her breasts really had been fuller. Perfect. Hazel, the old Hazel, had always been particularly receptive at her time of the month. How indignant she had been when he told her that menstruating women were believed to have a bad effect on the bees. Carefully he looped his finger round and tugged. Nothing. He felt a twinge of panic. What if it got stuck, or disintegrated? He pulled again, steadily increasing the pressure. All at once the pressure was gone but Hazel was waking. Quickly he dropped the tampon over the side of the bed and reached for the lubricant.

  “Hazel, I love you. We’re making love. This is what you want, now that you’re well.”

  He was over her and, proud of his skill, inside. She was looking up at him. He could see her eyes in the gloom. “Jonathan,” she murmured.

  “Hazel.” He bent to kiss her, moved into her, drew back. “Darling.”

  Suddenly, as if she had been dreaming with her eyes open and only now was fully awake to what was happening, she was screaming. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”—words a child might say.

  He was in the foothills, close to that final ascent but still in control. God, how sweet.

  “No.” Her hands pushing at his chest. “Stop!”

  Her voice beat on. He forgot the meaning and thought of the sound, the screaming urgency, so like that of sex. Closing his eyes, he moved with the rhythm of her cries, adjusting to the rise and fall. Briefly another noise caught his ear, a vague scraping sound, neighbours in the street outside. He bore down, entering a space where neither time nor history existed.

  Hazel’s hands kept pushing against him as he pressed deeper and deeper, further and further, into that region of bliss. He was there, almost there. “I love you,” he said.

  chapter 21

  Jonathan felt cold air on his back, a touch on his shoulder. Then, incomprehensibly, hands were gripping him. He was out of Hazel, lifted off her, and pulled upright onto his knees. Someone—he caught a whiff of orange—was holding his arms. But I chained the door, he thought. We’re about to die. He imagined the press of metal against his spine, a knife skimming his throat. The light came on and he glimpsed that the hands holding him were black.

  “He’s hurt her,” said a man’s voice. “She’s bleeding.”

  For a moment, in a daze of fear and fucking, Jonathan thought so too; his cock was crimson and the sheet bloomed. Hazel herself, pyjama jacket open, pale bare legs drawn close, was crouched against the pillows, her eyes fixed on him. “Stop it,” she whispered.

  “No,” said another voice. “It’s the other kind of blood.”

  Incredulous, he recognised the a
ctress and then, from the black hands and American accent, the roofer. His heart, so recently hammering out the rhythm of love, ricocheted between terror and anger. He had been on the very edge, at last, of fusing with Hazel; minute by minute, movement by movement, she had been growing closer. Now she was further away than ever. “Let me go,” he said, trying to pull free.

  The roofer’s grip neither tightened nor loosened. Jonathan wondered if he had indeed struggled or spoken. This is not a dream. A drop of bloody liquid fell from the tip of his cock onto the sheet below.

  “Hazel,” said the actress, “it’s all right. We’re here, Charlotte and Freddie.”

  Jonathan stared at her. She was wearing her usual coat and black leggings, but in some mysterious way she looked entirely different. As she dragged the duvet from the foot of the bed, he registered the change. From the word go, Charlotte had made it clear she fancied him, all those fluttering eyelashes and flirtatious smiles as they haggled about money. Now she stepped past him as if he were a twelve-stone parcel, and bent to wrap the duvet around Hazel. Then the bitch passed him again. From his back came a grating noise. Of course, that sound a few minutes or centuries ago had been the window opening.

  A switch turned in his brain and Jonathan grasped the full indignity of his position: naked, still partly erect, in a room full of strangers. The man, the roofer, was motionless; why didn’t he speak? Once again fear flickered at the edges of Jonathan’s consciousness. Was it possible his first apprehension had been correct, that this was a life-threatening situation? The newspapers were always reporting that most violent crimes occurred between people who knew one another.

  “Let go of me,” he cried again. “I’ll report you for breaking and entering with aggravated assault.”

  A swift jerk was the only response, and he was lifted off the bed until he was standing. The roofer yanked his arms back even more tightly, like a prisoner’s. Meanwhile, Charlotte bent to pick something off the floor. The pyjama bottoms.

  “Here.” She handed them to Hazel and, the final violation, climbed onto the bed beside her.

  My place, thought Jonathan. “For god’s sake, this is an outrage.” He didn’t even bother to try to wrest free. “Let me get a dressing gown and we’ll sort this out.”

  Again he had that eerie sense of not having actually spoken; his words seemed to reach no one. For a distracted second he stared, uncomprehendingly, at a tattered red object on the floor. The tampon. All that blood, the blood that was meant to bring them together, squandered. “Hazel, I don’t know what’s going on here, but tell your friends they’re making a mistake.”

  “You’re the one making the mistake,” the roofer said over his shoulder.

  “How did you get in?” Jonathan couldn’t help asking.

  “Ladder.”

  “You raped me,” said Hazel. Under cover of the duvet she’d pulled on her pyjama bottoms. At the head of the bed she and Charlotte sat side by side, facing him, like judges.

  “Hazel, we were making love. The pills make you paranoid—I told you, Hogarth told you, they might—and you started to panic, but you wanted me, you’ve always wanted me.”

  “No.” She was clutching the duvet. “You want me. Maud is the one who wants you.” Charlotte nodded, as if somehow privy to the whole story.

  “You know, at the hospital,” Hazel continued, “when I didn’t recognise my parents? I could still tell they were important in my life, that I loved them. I can’t remember what went wrong between us, but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

  She fell silent. For a few, hopeful seconds he thought she might be having a seizure. He watched her eyes, the muscles in her neck. Please, god, let it come.

  Then her hands stopped thrashing, and when she spoke again her voice was steady. “For weeks I’ve had this stranger wandering through my brain. He’s pale, with colourless eyes and lank hair. He wears a dark suit and a white shirt, like a student or a waiter. Every time I pick up a book, or eat an apple, or try to sleep or look out of the window, he shows up. I’ve done my best not to recognise him, to send him away—why should I want to smash up my whole life?—but he won’t leave. The truth is, I don’t love you. That’s all that matters. And you know it, too. Why else would you keep me here against my will?”

  Before he could answer, she turned away. “Get him out of here,” she said. “Please, Freddie.”

  If I live to be a hundred, he thought, I will never forget this moment. Over Littleton’s head he watched Hazel and saw her blue eyes, their white haloes, staring at this man, this creature, he had in his grasp. And Charlotte beside her, mirroring, underlining, her expressions like a chorus.

  This had to be one of the strangest nights of his life. First the scene with Felicity, then coming to leave a note for Hazel and hearing her screams through the mailbox. He’d run for the ladder, set it up at her bedroom window, which was ajar, thanks to the British obsession with fresh air. All he had to do was slide it open and scramble inside. Luckily, Charlotte had followed. Without her, the whole situation might’ve gone ballistic.

  He tightened his grip on Littleton and started to frogmarch him towards the door. He resisted for a couple of steps, then seemed almost eager to get out of the room.

  Charlotte led them into the spare room and closed the door. The men were alone. Freddie faltered. What could he do with a naked white guy? Tie him to the bed? Littleton also seemed confused. This time when he asked to be released, he even said “please.” Freddie let him go and stepped back.

  Littleton just stood there, arms at his sides, cock limp. How hairy he was, a river of hair from chest to groin and, beneath the hair, the flesh tinged with blue. He’s cold, thought Freddie, and was about to suggest clothes when Littleton had the same idea. He grabbed a robe from the end of the bed, a navy-blue terry-cloth number, pulled it on, and meticulously knotted the belt.

  The garment seemed to restore him to his true asshole self. “I want you out of my house,” he said. “Immediately.”

  For a few minutes, caught up in the strangeness of the events, Freddie had forgotten to be angry. Now rage spurted into his throat. This man had imprisoned Hazel, had hurt her. He stepped forward and punched Littleton in the jaw. Though the blow was inept, his junior-high boxing lessons twenty years past, he felt bone beneath his knuckles. Littleton reeled back onto the bed.

  Freddie was bending over him, arm raised for a second punch, fist tingling, when he heard, through the closed door, the women going into the bathroom. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured, not sure if he was swearing or praying. He’s turning me into him. Since the night Roy Harper hurtled through the air, Freddie had fled confrontation, used his strength to play the peacemaker and done his best to live without harm. Until now.

  He had to get away from this monster. He rushed out into the hall, slamming the door behind him as if to seal off some deadly contagion, and clung to the bannister, shaking. Now what? If only he could see Hazel.

  Suddenly he remembered the ladder. A task, a little fresh air might do the trick. “Littleton,” he called, “I need to go get something. If you try to lock me out, I’ll call the cops from Mrs. Craig’s and smash a window. You got that?”

  Silence.

  Freddie eyed the door. Should he look inside? No, he never wanted to see that man again. Besides, what could he do in two minutes? He called to Charlotte, telling her where he was going. “Okay,” came her muffled reply from the bathroom.

  He blocked the front door open, and felt better as soon as he stepped into the street. Quietly, he unhooked the ladder and carried it round the house. He was strapping it on top of the van when a yelp caught his ear. Opening the door he smelled pee—Arkansas had been making good use of the Standard—and the yelping crescendoed. When Freddie picked him up, the puppy’s whole body was shivering. Why can’t I do one single thing, he thought, without messing up? But as he hurried back across the street he noticed an amazing fact: he was doing something. For better or worse, he had left the couch.
/>   Jonathan sat up to make sure the footsteps really were descending the stairs. Safely alone, he sank back on the bed. An hour ago, half an hour ago, all had been well in his world; Hazel his, the wedding in a matter of days, his mistakes forgiven, his job secure, his hives mostly flourishing. And now … His jaw throbbed. Even the walls seemed whiter and barer by the second. How had his life come to such a pass that a man was fixing his roof one week, bursting into his bedroom the next? When Adams released him, his impulse had been to knee him in the balls, but an instinctive calculation had warned him that he was giving away at least three inches and a couple of stone on the roofer.

  He squeezed his fists against his eyes, conjuring a warm darkness. Steady, lad, steady. Nothing was irrevocably lost, only one evening in a lifetime of evenings. First get dressed, then evict the trespassers, settle Hazel down and make sure she got a good night’s sleep. Wasn’t there some Valium at the back of the bathroom cupboard? His clothes lay at the end of the bed, where he’d neatly folded them an eternity ago. Still he did not move. You’re wrong, whispered the bees. I don’t think it’s going to work, said Maud. Colourless eyes, lank hair … but that was not to be borne.

  The sound of the front door made him jump. Like a character in a farce, he scrambled into his clothes: underwear, trousers, socks, shirt, pullover, shoes. Now to get rid of these scum. If they weren’t gone in five minutes, he would phone the police.

  In the hall, the roofer was talking to Charlotte. “I was worried he’d catch cold,” he was saying. “Maybe you can find a T-shirt or something to wrap him in.”

  “He’ll cheer Hazel up,” Charlotte said. Then she caught sight of him. “Mr. Littleton.”

  “Good evening.” Absurdly, he found himself nodding as if to invited guests. “I must ask you both to leave.”

  “Not a problem,” said Adams. Beneath his accent, Jonathan heard the note of contempt. “We’ll be out of here as soon as Hazel’s ready.”