by Chris Else
‘I can’t say I noticed,’ Sylvia said, thinking about Tom Marino’s eyes. She turned to Larry. ‘Did you notice?’
‘Leave me out of this, I pray you.’ He lifted his hands, pushing off the subject.
The gesture annoyed her. ‘Do you believe they were having an affair?’ she insisted.
‘I …’ He looked at her, a warning look, a look that meant he was not going to say what she wanted to hear. ‘I think it’s not beyond reasonable doubt.’
The bloody case! Colin’s defence! Even now, even here, he couldn’t bring himself to think in any other terms.
‘God,’ she said. ‘Can’t you stop being a lawyer, just for a moment?’
All he could do to that was shrug.
Believe, believe. You had to believe, if you possibly could. If you believed, there was a much better chance of winning. So believe in it, even if you can’t. The thought made her feel sick, as if twenty years of marriage had all been a lie.
‘Whatever went on between Tom and Heidi, I’m sure Lisa knows about it,’ she said. Because, she thought, at least there, in that relationship, there is some honesty and candour.
‘But she doesn’t know about the rest of it, though.’ Maddy was indignant still. ‘I had coffee with Catherine Lynyard this morning. We were talking about Colin and Heidi and she asked me about Tom. Was there something going on? No, I said, I didn’t think so. Well, she said, you might be wrong about that. It seems that she and Paul own this property on River Road and the tenant is a woman called Astra Bridge. She’s a solo mother, who gets by on the benefit and bits of handicraft. Pokerwork, stuff like that. Catherine found out that for the past few months this Astra has been having an affair with a man who drives a truck with Greenwise on the door, a short man with black hair and beard. Now you tell me who that might be.’
Silence. Sylvia couldn’t take it in. It didn’t make sense and then, of course, it did, and she thought, Oh, Lisa, my poor, poor Lisa.
‘That,’ Maddy said, ‘is what I call lies and hypocrisy.’
50.
SO WHAT CAN TOM do but confess? The game is up. He heard what Maddy said, even if Lisa didn’t. He knows that she knows. Won’t it be worse if Lisa hears from someone other than himself?
He begins with the words they always begin with, the sinners.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Now? I’m tired.’ And angry, too. She was furious, still furious. And some of her anger was on his behalf. That would not make things easier.
‘There’s talk going around that I was having an affair with Heidi.’
‘I know there is.’
How? How did she know?
‘It isn’t true.’
‘I know it’s not.’
‘I’ve been round there a couple of times lately. We were discussing how I might take more of her stuff. You know, other than dahlias. Last week … It may have been Tuesday we were in her greenhouse and she was upset. I gave her a hug. For comfort.’
‘I don’t need to know this. Not now. It’s not important.’
‘There’s something else.’
A pause.
Go on. You have to go on. But this is the last point for turning back. Once the first words are spoken they will lead to the rest. It will all be said.
‘I’ve been having an affair with someone else. Someone different. Not Heidi.’
51.
POLICE SEEK YELLOW CAR IN ACCIDENT PROBE
Bold headlines on the front page, along with the picture. The same picture. Won’t the readers be getting sick of this picture? The white cross by the roadside, the garland of flowers. The case of Carla Marino.
— You remember. That young girl who got killed by a hit-and-run driver; sixteen she was. Nice kid.
— Yes. My sister’s girl, Karen, was in the same class as her.
— Hope they catch the bastard.
Will they catch the bastard? Maybe not. Not now. Too long ago. Too hard to remember. Someone must have seen it, of course. Back then. Last year. Someone must have noticed it, a yellow sports car with a broken headlight, maybe more, maybe badly damaged. It’s surprising how much damage you can do to a car if you hit a human being. Someone must have seen it, driving towards town. If it came on into town, into High Street or Victory Road, it would have been obvious, so obvious. So it turned off somewhere. Into Ridge Road, heading for the motorway. Could it hide there? Ridge Road or Pigskill. Where could it hide on Pigskill Road?
The Sundrift Motel was on Ridge Road, a hundred metres or so from the service station. The proprietor knew him, had bought rhododendrons off him only last year. Tom said nothing, no explanation. Took the keys to unit 9 and the little carton of milk. The room had a queen-size bed and a TV; a brown Formica table with two chairs, black wrought iron, mustard-coloured fabric on the seats and the padded backs to match the mustard- coloured carpet. On the wall was a picture, an old poster for a bullfight. He picked up the phone, called Greenwise, told Billy sorry but he couldn’t make it today. No, he was all right. Tomorrow maybe. Or Saturday, at the latest. No, truly, he was all right. Thought of Billy’s house, a little brick place tucked under the hill, with the garden blooming. Billy worked hard for his life, all the way from Hull. Wouldn’t go back for a million pounds. Well, a million, maybe.
He sat on the bed and thought, or tried to. Wondered if he should call Hannah Creswell and apologise for standing her up. Sorry, just forgot completely. Got distracted. Could he say that? The problem was not the apology but what happened next. She would expect him to make another appointment. Did he want one? Did it matter? It was ridiculous to think that anything could make a difference now. Nowhere to run to, no help for it.
He thought of Vincent, his lost son. Someone should call him. Someone should tell him what was going on. And Annabelle. He should talk to Annabelle. But why would that matter? Except that somewhere, back there, the days when they first met, was the reason. Our cells combined and it was Carla. How could that be? How could a chemical reaction become those years of loving? A chain of cause and effect. Or a string of random events. There was nothing in it any more. No purpose. Just a meaningless concatenation of pain and impulse.
Made another call then.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi there. It’s Tom.’
‘Hi there, honey. I’m glad you called.’ An edge to her tone, anxiety. It pierced his weariness, the buzzing lack of sleep.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, well … Something happened, though. Somebody knows. About us. I had a visit from the welfare people.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Nothing. They don’t say anything specific, just remind you of the law.’
‘What law?’
‘About cohabiting.’
‘You’re not cohabiting.’
‘No, I know. It’s just the hassle. If they stop the benefit, it takes weeks to get it put back on. It’s happened before.’
A pause. Wondering what to say.
‘We might have to cool it for a while,’ she told him. ‘Is that all right?’
‘Yes, of course. How long?’
‘I don’t know. A few weeks.’ More, she meant more.
Tell her, he thought. Tell her Lisa’s found out and given you the boot. Tell her you can come and move in with her, look after her, care for her little boys, offer her your hassles, your emotions, all your messy, shitty, rag-bag, rotting life. Yeah, right.
‘That’s okay,’ he said.
‘Are you mad at me?’
‘No. No, of course not.’
‘We could have coffee in town or something. Lunch. I don’t know, maybe we can work something out.’ A pleading tone.
‘I’ve got some things to do. I have to go out to Cox’s Line and check on a job.’
‘Please, don’t be mad at me. It’s just …’
Get out of her life, you idiot!
‘It’s okay. I’ll call you later maybe.’
‘Yes, please. Do that.’
Hung up.
Stared at the wall. The matador with twirling cape on tippy-toes, his back-arched, tight-buttocked lift. Bull with tasselled lances in its hump, red streaks of blood. Poor bull. Poor blind, dumb, bleeding bull.
52.
THE FIRST MOUND HAD grown. It was over a metre high, a flat convexity, like the surface of an eyeball. Beyond it a big brown scar, a long gouge in the green paddock. There were two trucks now as well as the loader, one waiting while it was filled, the other carting dirt to the mound. Three days’ work and, he figured, the job was about a third done. Kenny’s estimate was pretty close.
As long as it didn’t rain. The sky, if he cared about it, was not reassuring. A grey band above the hills to the north-west. The wind from there was soft and cold. The smell of damp in it. If it rained, if it rained hard, the whole site would be a swamp. The gouge, where the loader was currently working, would become a lake a metre deep. Well, then, he thought. She can have goldfish and water lilies.
He turned towards the house, the long veranda, the blank, dark windows. Where was she? Did she know he was there? Was she watching him? A vanity, to think he was being watched, that he was not invisible. Come and see me. Soon. I want to talk to you.
He walked across the grass and up the steps to the veranda, tried the French doors. Unlocked. He stood there with the door ajar, listening, waiting. For what? For the call of reason and good sense? Don’t make me laugh. He’s waiting only for the next breath, the next click of the chemical cogs, the compulsion. He wants the impossible, and the more he fails the more he needs to risk, to try again. He’s the hero. Or the beaten dog that comes creeping back.
He slipped off his shoes and stepped inside. Closed the door and the noise of the machines was muted suddenly. Silence from the room and the spaces beyond it. But no, there was music somewhere, faintly. Slowly, softly, he crossed the floor to the kitchen. Nothing there except the smell of coffee, but the sound was louder, just a little, coming from the other door. It led out into a long hallway that ran to the front of the house, the big front door with its stained glass panels, blue and gold and yellow and green, Art-Deco flowers, tulips on the point of opening, curling stems and spatulate leaves. He walked towards it, down the length of mushroom-coloured carpet runner, with the polished floorboards on either side. What does he feel? He feels nothing. Body moves because the body leads. He does as he’s told, dragged forward to the point of impact.
The music was upstairs, so he turned, with his hand on the polished newel post, and began to climb. The kauri banister and brass stair-rods. If someone found him here, what would he say? Nothing to say. He had no words, no reason to be here. Just the lust or the craziness, or nothing much at all.
At the top of the stairs was a landing that opened to a corridor at right angles to the one below. It ran the width of the house, its longest dimension. Doorways on either side in both directions, all closed except, perhaps, the one down the end to the right, an angle of light there, an upper-case kappa, and the music. He walked towards it on another mushroom-coloured runner. The pale walls were hung with dark pictures, and here and there, along the length of the corridor, were little tables holding china bowls and vases. Dried arrangements, flowers and leaves and peacock feathers. Offerings, perhaps, along the way.
The door was ajar. He pushed it further open. A room full of light. She was wearing a black leotard and sitting on a mat in the centre of the floor in the lotus position. Her eyes were closed. Around her, polished wooden floorboards, empty space except for an exercycle, a portable stereo and a small rack of hand weights. Three of the walls had big sash windows looking out over trees and fields and, to the south, the distant mass of buildings that was the town. Along the fourth, either side of the door, were big mirrors, floor to ceiling, with barres across them at waist height.
He stood there, looking, his eyes gradually settling to the still figure on the mat. The music swelled and drifted. It was romantic, lush and steeped in sentiment, full of feeling that floated like a sweet, ripe smell in the currents of the room. Having got here, having found her in the empty house, he felt a little jolt, reality confronting him, and an impulse to turn and run, but the sight of her and the sound of the music held him. He could not leave and yet he could not speak either in case he startled her, so he stood there, trapped like a fly in honey, waiting for her eyes to open.
Which they did after a minute or so. They opened slowly, almost sleepily, and then she saw him and they flicked wide with shock. Then they closed again and she smiled.
‘Well,’ she said after several more seconds, ‘it’s Mr Greenwise. Angry Man.’
He didn’t answer, just stood and waited, until the music shifted, sliding into a darker, more sombre tone and, as if in response to the new mood, she began to move, unfolding her legs, standing up with a slow, graceful twist of her body. She walked across the floor to the stereo, bent from the waist and pushed a button with the tip of her finger. Quiet. Walking then on soft, bare feet, pink feet with painted nails, she crossed to one of the mirrors, stood before it with her hands on the barre.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘Stand behind me.’
He did as he was told, like a good dog, looked over her shoulder at their faces in the glass.
‘You can touch me,’ she said.
He reached out and his hands, in the mirror, slid over her belly. Feel of the tightly woven cloth like a false skin, dry and smooth, under his fingers. Only his hands were alive. He pressed himself against her, felt the push of her backside against his pelvis. His right hand slid up to her left breast, squeezed it, as his left slid down to the space between her bare thighs, smoothness, heat beneath the fabric. Eyes on hers reflected as he felt for her there. He didn’t see her, though. What he saw was the subject of his lust, his dream queen, hair like gold.
She laughed.
‘Do you like to watch? Do you like to see what you’re doing? I do. I’ve always wanted a mirror on the bedroom ceiling.’ She rocked her hips, pressing back against him harder. ‘Except that it would look so tacky most of the time. And then I’d have to wake up and see myself first thing in the morning. And Monty. Lying there.’ Her little gulp. ‘Oh, God! I couldn’t stand that.’
He bent his head, mouth to her neck, pushing the hair aside so he could kiss her and bite her, breathe her smell that was perfume mingled with her sweat. Watching from a distance, his dog-self sniff.
‘Did I invite you?’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Maybe.’ He pulled at the strap of the leotard, trying to get it to slide down her shoulder, but she made it impossible. Kept her hands on the barre, her shoulders squared.
‘Maybe not. But I might have done. It was when you talked about the murder, when you said you wanted to kill him. You sounded as if you meant it. Did you mean it?’
Did he? Of course, but it was hard to think now, hard to find that emotion. The anger was fused into the rest of it, a sickness, a certainty. He reached out, winding his arms inside hers and up so that he held her wrists. He pulled. She resisted but he pulled harder and broke her grip on the left side. Immediately she let go with the right. He held her hands in front of her at the level of her crotch. Her eyes reflected, fixed on his, were amused, teasing, scared. No, not scared. Not scared at all. She was in control, and it was a kind of control he understood, the sense of power that comes from not caring what happens, from giving yourself up to what’s going to happen. It can’t touch me, can it? It can’t really touch me.
‘Could you kill someone?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What would you say if I told you I’d killed someone?’
‘Who?’
‘I couldn’t tell you that, could I?’
‘When, then?’
‘Oh, a while ago. It might be a long time ago. It seems like another life. And I’ve killed animals. Big animals. Dogs, horses.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ she sai
d.
‘A gun?’
‘No. I don’t have a gun.’
‘A blunt instrument?’
‘I’m not strong enough.’
‘Poison?’
‘I’m not going to tell you. I want you to go on wondering if it’s true or not.’
‘I know it’s not true.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’ She pulled with her arms, trying to break his grip. ‘Let me go.’
He might have refused, might have dominated her, but there was no winning in such a contest. He couldn’t hold her for ever.
He released her. Immediately she reached up, pulled at the left shoulder of the leotard, slipping it off her shoulder, wriggling and pulling at the other strap. The garment fell loose from the upper half of her body and she pushed it down over her hips, stepped out of it. He reached for her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You too.’
So he undressed himself. Jacket, shirt, singlet, jeans, underpants, socks. While he did it, she stood there, naked, looking at herself, at him, in the mirror, left hand on her hip, head tilted to the right. He moved behind her again, reached around her, slid his hands over the smoothness of her electric skin, watched in the mirror as they moved as before, the right one up to her breast, the left one down. She pushed back against him again: the hardness of her coccyx hurt.
‘Angry Man,’ she said. ‘How can I make you angry?’
He pressed his teeth against the side of her neck.
‘Like this?’ She reached behind her with her right hand and dragged the nails, hard and painful, up the back of his thigh. He bit the muscle at the top of her shoulder.
She laughed and then twisted in his arms, pushed away from him.
‘Not here.’ Walking away towards the door.
He bent down and took his wallet, with the condoms in it, from the back pocket of his jeans. Followed her.