“I’ve flown over them.”
“They’re so big and quiet. I like that.” She looked across the valley, as he sat down beside her. “Mrs. Nesbitt was my worst enemy,” she said. “She owned the house you’re living in now.”
“You can talk to me, can’t you?” he asked after a while.
She nodded. “I can to-day.” She looked at him calmly. “Why did you come here?” What she was really thinking was that open collars flattered him. She could see the corded muscle in his throat twitch and rise.
“I don’t know. I had to come somewhere, and I guess the mountains fascinated me.”
She sighed. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to live here,” she said. “Living up there would be different. But down in the valley, no.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I’ve told you that once. You thought I was silly.”
“Tell me again.”
“I’d like to be somebody.”
He played with some pine needles. “Perhaps you are.”
She looked at him with serious eyes. “I used to play another game when I was a child,” she said. “I used to play a game of point, and when I pointed a thing was or it wasn’t. I pointed people away, like Mrs. Nesbitt.”
He was not listening to her. He scarcely seemed to know that she was there at all. And yet he was not ignoring her. He was just thinking. “I was born poor,” he said. “It can be done. You can do anything, if you know how. And you don’t even have to know how. You just have to make people believe that you do.”
“But how is it done?” she wailed. “How is it done?”
“You’re too honest. You have to learn to lie. Even to yourself.”
“Aren’t you honest?”
He laughed. “Of course I’m not. Do you know anybody who is?”
She looked up at him, standing slightly apart from her on the edge of the ledge. “I shall hate it when you go,” she said.
He looked uncomfortable. “I’m going to live there, you know.”
“Oh, yes, up there. But you won’t bother with anybody then. You won’t even have anybody in your house.”
He seemed touched. “I’ll take you up to-morrow, if you like. But it isn’t a woman’s sort of house.” He stood up straighter and stretched to the winds. “Let’s go back.”
She was disappointed. “I hate to go back. I hate to go down,” she said. He nodded, seeming to know what she meant. She was sober and sad and said nothing for a while, concentrating on leading the way back. Looking at the view one last time, he followed her. At the bottom she halted. “Will you really let me see your house?”
He hesitated. “Yes, if you wish.”
“You don’t want me to, do you?”
This upset him. “To-morrow I’ll do it,” he told her. “At ten.”
She turned and walked rapidly across the fields and into the farmhouse. But that evening, after dinner, she went out and stood for a long time, looking up at the cliff, even though from below she could not see his house on top of it.
When she got up the next morning she was alone, for her father had gone, and she was grateful for that. She dressed with care, in her best dress, the white one with blue stripes. It felt delicious against her skin. Then she waited.
He was late. It was ten-fifteen. She heard the phone ring twice, a call for the Nesbitt Place, and carefully picked up the receiver to listen. But it was only two Italians arguing.
It was not until one of them said, “Okay, damn you, but I know it’s one of her tricks, and this is the last time”, that she realized that she was listening to Christopher. “I’ll fly down,” he said, “I’ll be there this afternoon.” He slammed the receiver at his end, and all along the line Sally heard other small clicks, as other eavesdroppers put up their receivers. Shamefacedly she did the same. Bewildered, she felt the silk of her dress and slowly sat down on a chair. Through the kitchen window she saw the blank surface of the cliff, two hundred yards away through the trees. Then she went upstairs to change her dress, for she had forgotten that he lived in other worlds she could not touch.
Perhaps he had forgotten it himself.
PART TWO
VII
There are so many worlds we cannot touch, and one of them was his mother’s. To that degree he had not gotten away from Santa Barbara at all. He sometimes felt he never would until she died. Perhaps she felt the same thing, for she refused to die.
*
She was seeing FatherMacCrone. FatherMacCrone was Irish and he was a priest. He was a man of sixty, with a hooked nose from which the central cartilage stuck up like a razor. He had known Antoinette Barocco in the old days, before all this sullen magnificence, and he paused on the terrace of her house before going inside. He thought her garden as horrible as those flowers she had planted in it, with their leather petals and great phallic spikes. It was a very fashionable garden.
He had known her for forty years, and yet there had always been something about her that disgusted him. There had always been that smell of death in the garden. Now it had also invaded the house.
He went down a corridor, deeper into the shadows, and opened a door. The room he entered was filled with green light from the garden, and after the darkness of the corridor, the effect was startlingly bright.
She was sitting on a chaise-longue, propped against the pillows. He could see one hand, a yellow skeleton covered with mottled skin, gripping the arm of the chaise. She was looking out the window, and he wondered what she saw. The shadows of the bushes outside cast shadows in the room, so that he seemed to have stepped into a place alive with restless movement, reflections that ran towards him and then, angrily, because they could not reach him, hesitated and were pulled back.
For a moment he thought she was dead. He walked over to her, around the chaise-longue, afraid to look down at her. She looked up out of dying and recognized him.
“I sent away Dr. Harben,” she snapped. “That leaves you.” Her voice had that sharp edge of a desire to bargain for something. She cocked her head to one side, looking closely at him with her slightly insane eyes, and drew her mouth down over teeth still her own.
“This room isn’t good for you,” he said.
That seemed to please her. “I wouldn’t leave my plants,” she told him. No doubt she had some kind of affinity with them. “I’m not going to die, and I can’t be killed.”
He believed her. She refused to let go. But it was not because she wanted to live: it was for some other reason, that even though he did not know what it was, made him uneasy. While he watched her Angelica came into the room.
Angelica was the most subservient of her daughters.
“What was that?” The old woman had sharp ears.
Angelica looked confused. She came to the chaise-longue and whispered in the old woman’s ear. Whatever she said, it changed Antoinette. She became alert and vigilant. She waved Angelica impatiently aside.
“I’m expecting my son,” she said to MacCrone. “Apparently he’s here.”
She had four sons, but when she said “my son” she always meant Christopher. He was the only one she really enjoyed hating. With a sigh, Father MacCrone tried to move out of the room, but before he could do so, the door opened, and in came Christopher. He seemed surprised to see the priest.
Antoinette was more tense. Her small eyes were suddenly alive, her hands, like wicked claws, folding and unfolding along the arms of the chaise-longue. The resemblance between the old woman and Christopher had always shocked MacCrone. He pretended not to notice it. Nor had he ever been able to make Christopher out. He wanted to leave, but the old woman motioned him to stay.
“I suppose they said I was dying,” she said to Christopher.
“Yes.” Christopher moved slightly closer to his mother. “What do you want?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” she said bitterly. “Nothing.” MacCrone began to edge his way to the door, and Christopher glanced at his mother.
“I’ll show
you the way out,” he said.
“He knows the way,” called Antoinette, but Christopher paid no attention to her. He led MacCrone out of the room and closed the door firmly behind them.
“She can’t live much longer,” said MacCrone.
“Is that why you’re here?” asked Christopher contemptuously.
“I’m here because she wants me.”
Christopher just grunted. “She wants something. She won’t die until she gets it. But she won’t get it, whatever it is,” he said.
“That’s no way to speak of the dying.”
“I’ll be glad when she’s dead,” said Christopher, and leaving MacCrone at the front door, he went back to the garden room. Antoinette had not stirred, but Angelica was fluttering about like a singed moth. When she saw Christopher she scuttled out of the room. Antoinette sat waiting in the shadows, her head twisting about, as she peered around her.
“Well,” said Christopher, “what do you want?”
“Why should I want anything?” She was smiling.
“What was MacCrone doing here?”
“He thinks I’m dying and he knows we’re rich. I’ve known him a long time.” Antoinette seemed pleased with herself. “You’ll never get away,” she said. “I might even outlive you.”
“You want to make me like the rest of them.”
She shrugged. “You might have told me you were building a house,” she said. “I want to see it.”
This made him really angry. “You shan’t,” he said.
“You’re afraid of me,” she said. The statement seemed to give her pleasure. Instead of answering, he rushed out of the room. She knew he would, and she knew he would be back. She sat alone, pleased with herself, until the garden lights were turned on, as they always were at dusk. Suddenly the garden outside was bathed in a fierce white light that turned the foliage ashen grey-green, the lawn almost white. Antoinette sat still, propped up on pillows, watching out of the depths of her aquarium.
She sat up half the night that way, waiting for those few minutes of sleep which were all, at seventy-eight, that she ever did manage to get, and which were more than she wanted. In the glaring light of the floods in the garden, the shrubs cast fantastic beckoning patterns on the walls, mottled, leprous patterns that swept across her face. Beside her, on a table, stood the mash she had had to eat for dinner, a gruel, a helpless pudding, a thin runny concoction of milk. Seated there in the shadows she was a predacious bird. She watched everything: the crack of a door, the rustle of a leaf, all made her turn suspiciously, her sunken eyes, that were all that remained of her strength, searching the darkness for an enemy. She was old. She was older than she had any right to be. But she also knew that she wanted to live to smash Christopher. He was the one who had tried to get away.
At midnight Angelica came in with a damp towel to bathe her face and hands and rub warm olive oil on that flesh the texture of burnt cloth. Then she arranged Antoinette’s thinning hair and slipped from the room.
At last Antoinette heard unwilling steps in the corridor. She listened to Christopher hesitate and then come more firmly along the hall. In that hesitation was her power over him.
“Come in,” she called. “Come in.”
He stepped inside and closed the door. She could feel him behind her. He was looking out at the floodlit garden. She did not stir. She did not speak. She forced him to come forward to her. He was the largest of her sons, the only one worth hating. And how he liked to dress up in the clothes of other people, in rich, expensive clothes that were not really his. It was his mouth that really gave him away. It was large, sensual and blind, like the mouth of his father. She stirred uneasily.
“You’ve been to see the doctor, haven’t you?” she asked. “In that case you know I’m not lying.”
“I thought you would be asleep.”
“I never sleep. I sit and watch.”
He looked at the garden. “I’d think it would be horrible.”
“It interests me. I’ve lived a long time with death. I’m not afraid of it. But you are. You’ll always be afraid of me, even when I’m dead.”
“I’ll not be afraid to see you dead.”
She opened her eyes wider. “When I die, you’ll begin to die,” she said. “I shall enjoy that. You can’t get away. So let me have my way. Let me see the house.”
“You’re much too ill to travel.”
She laughed. “You’re afraid to let me go there. I wonder if you know why?”
“This time you won’t get your own way.”
“I can wait,” she said. And her eyes frightened him, as always. They were determined, malicious, alien eyes. They gave the impression of power trapped in a body too old and weak for it. He wondered if one day he would look like that and shivered.
Then her tone altered, and she seemed to shrivel up. “Just this one thing,” she said.
“The trip would kill you.”
“Do you think I care? I want to see it.” She watched him run his fingers through his hair, irresolute. “You can’t refuse me. I’m dying.”
“No,” he shouted. His voice was shrill.
She laughed again, but sadly. “Cancer isn’t contagious,” she said acidly, looking out at the black sky. She felt unconsciousness swirl beneath her, empty and vast. “And a woman shouldn’t die alone. Don’t shut me out.” It was not a plea. It was a warning.
“No.”
She sat bolt upright in her chair. “Then get out,” she screamed. “Get out.” And her voice rumbled with contempt.
He was afraid of her. She knew that, but she didn’t particularly like it. He rushed out of the room, slamming the door behind him angrily. She began to ring her bell, but nobody came. She rang it again and again, and it echoed through the silent house. A car roared down the drive and crashed through the iron gates. The old woman sat there, cursing under her breath, staring out at the garden, which to her eyes was a white blur, full of sounds that she did not understand. She began to scream for Angelica, and taking the bell, she raised herself up and flung it with what strength she had at the plate-glass window. The bell shattered the glass, sending a glassy spider-web through it. And through the hole poured the sticky night tule fog, turned ghostly by the floodlights of the garden. Then she sank back in her chair, while Christopher drove towards the airport, with glass in his lap and a trickle of blood down one ear; while the gates half-wrenched from their sockets creaked in the wind. They had hated each other since his father had died, and she had hated her children even before they were born. Which was another reason why they lived that way.
VIII
Christopher’s house stood out on its cliff like stages of lunar madness. It was the night of the first storm, not of winter, but of that week before winter which is the last warning to all creatures to dig themselves in. The storm moved down from the high passes, electric with fury, and it left a heavy magnificence of snow on the bent evergreens as it passed, a beautiful surface of terror on the ground.
Curt stood at the window of the Nesbitt place and watched the storm, as the house appeared and disappeared in the mists, riding it out. Only the outer works of the house remained to be finished. His work was almost done.
He did not like the valley any more. It eluded him. There was something wrong with it. At night he seemed to suffocate, and things were happening he did not understand. Most of the workers had gone away now. But Christopher was back, and he was worse than ever. There had been more scenes at the house.
When Curt got up to the site he found Christopher already there, looking at the departing snow clouds. He did not look as though he had slept for days, and his face was bruised. He seemed almost frightened. Curt tried to square up to whatever he might have to say.
“We’ve got to get it finished,” said Christopher, and his fingers twitched nervously.
“I fail to see the hurry.”
“You’re not hired to see anything. Either get it finished or get out. And get this muck cleared up,” he said,
waving at the debris along the causeway. Then he walked away.
Three days later he was back. Curt was supervising the finishers, heard voices, and glanced out his window. He saw Christopher and Sally.
Christopher’s face was drawn into a deliberate mask and he moved as though he were not sure what he was doing. Sally also looked worn out and somehow scared. In the cold air she shivered, hugging her arms over her breasts, and her laughter was thin, nervous and abruptly choked off. The two of them came inside.
“Well,” said Christopher, “now you’re in Barocco’s house.” He didn’t say it very kindly. “That should please you. You were dying to see it.”
“You don’t have to talk that way,” she said.
“I talk the way I please,” said Christopher. Sally looked at him speculatively and went on into another room. Christopher hurried after her, as though afraid to leave her alone. In the living-room they slid the glass panels apart and stepped out on to the balcony.
The living-room was on the west side of the house, and the floor had been cantilevered out from the pylons, forming a suspended terrace about six feet wide, sloping slightly to the edge. The effect was of sliding out into space itself. Christopher went to the railing and looked down. The nature of the rock fault had made it advisable to set the house back from the edge of the cliff, so that from the balcony a spiral concrete stair led down to the rock, which was supposed to be terraced.
Christopher stood silhouetted against the mountains, his coat flapping, his hair hissing round his head, and glared across the valley at the steep blue sides of the mountains. Forcing himself to do so, for heights made him dizzy, Curt came to the rail and looked down. Fifteen feet below him he saw Sam Carson sitting on a rock, eating a sandwich. Christopher saw him, too, and a curious expression, half-malice, half-anger, came into his eyes.
“Hey,” he called. “Carson. What the hell are you doing?”
The Self-Enchanted Page 6