He sat down on a bench and surveyed the scene around him. A family group were picnicking under a tree; the children feeding the pigeons, trying to coax the shy birds nearer with scraps of chocolate cake. The elder girl reminded him of Pippa – long coltish legs, curly hair and freckles – but there was one overwhelming difference: this child was happy. He watched her animated face as she giggled with her sister, then rushed back to her parents to wheedle a further supply of cake. Her father cut her off a slice and she hugged him as a reward – only a fleeting hug, but evidence of their mutual trust, her spontaneous affection.
He shut his eyes, turned his world to black. Was Pippa glad he’d left, relaxed and even chatty now that he was no longer any threat to her?
He dragged himself up to his feet again. No wonder he felt morose when he’d done nothing more constructive all week than restore the house and garden to rights, then moon around feeling sorry for himself. He hadn’t been to a single play or concert, nor out for a single meal. Why spend another evening cloistered at home on his own, his restless mind racing back to Wales again while his body slumped inertly on the sofa? He could go up to the West End now, drive to Leicester Square and see the new Van Gogh film, as Penny had suggested; maybe pop into the National Portrait Gallery, if there was time before it began, then treat himself to Peking duck at Young Chen’s.
He already felt more cheerful with a definite plan of action and his Saturday night no longer just an empty stretch of time. He was whistling as he reached the house, and ran straight upstairs to change; relishing the luxuries of an electric razor, a full-length mirror, and clothes which were neither wet nor creased nor stained. The car, too, was transformed – its mud-coating hosed away, its smeary windows polished, and the inside so immaculate Penny might well ask him if he had ambitions in the chauffeuring line.
He drove to an accompaniment of Mahler’s Song of the Earth – somewhat ironic in the circumstances, but exhilarating none the less. The journey was painless altogether; no hold-ups or diversions, and the traffic relatively light. He even found a parking space a stone’s throw from the cinema. The next programme didn’t start till six, so he had almost an hour to kill. Perhaps he’d have a stroll, instead of going to the gallery; look at living faces rather than the dead and painted kind.
He set off down the street, although it was difficult to make much progress with crowds of tourists sauntering along, continually stopping to take photographs and generally obstructing the pavement. How could he have been so naïve as to imagine he was the only person left in London? While his friends had departed for foreign shores, the rest of the world converged on Merry England, or so it seemed from the babel of disparate languages and the different shades of skin. Of course he was used to cosmopolitan London and its flock of summer migrants, but they struck him much more forcibly today. His spell in Wales had made him see everything anew, and he still felt slightly alien, even in the city he knew best. It was almost as if he‘d gone abroad himself; arrived from the wilds of the country in some huge metropolis, where everyone was on holiday and dressed to fit the part. He kept passing people in Bermuda shorts or garish patterned shirts and a whole variety of headgear, from plastic pork-pie hats printed with Union Jacks to romantic boaters wreathed with flowers and ribbons. There was even a girl in a bikini top, displaying her deep tan (and deeper cleavage) and dripping ice-cream down her front from a fast-melting Mr Whippy.
Practically everyone was eating: licking ice-lollies or choc-bars, or pouring toffee-coated popcorn down their throats from huge waxed cartons embellished with pink dinosaurs, or biting into slices of hot pizza – strands of melted cheese crisscrossing their chins. At each street-corner, rival take-away stalls were all doing a brisk trade: squirting mustard on frankfurters, or syrup on waffles; handing out burgers and kebabs. The reek of grease and onions collided with the sickly-sweet smell of candyfloss, and as he passed a tandoori restaurant, a belch of curry blasted through the open door right into his face.
He wondered what the healer would say to all this contraband; could almost see him rushing into the square, clad in his long robe, overthrowing kiosks like Jesus in the Temple and driving out the vendors. And he’d doubtless also disapprove of the raucous music pumping from a record store, amplified to deafening volume, and outshrilled only by a car alarm (whose persistent yowling was generally ignored, even by the pigeons). Daniel was more aware than he’d ever been of the contrast between this rackety West End and the staid grey weekday ambience of the Albert Embankment (where he worked in an drab office-block five hundred yards from Vauxhall), which boasted neither buskers nor video arcades, attracted no tourists, and had only a handful of restaurants where people ate decorously indoors.
He turned into a side street and elbowed his way to the crossroads at the end. Waiting for the lights to change, he winced again at the din, not just from the motorbikes roaring past at full throttle, but from a half-demolished building being attacked by two machines. They were biting into the masonry like greedy yellow monsters; gobbling bricks and mortar, crunching metal struts, then vomiting out great clouds of snot and dust. Their lethal claws tore voraciously at the structure; smashed through gaping windows and unresisting doors, leaving a trail of devastation. As he stood and watched, a familiar phrase flashed into his mind: ‘breaking and entering’. And with the words came Sayers – the Sayers he’d thought drowned – leering at him once again, pursuing him even here.
He blundered across the road against the lights, dodging the stream of cars and plunging blindly ahead. A dozen Japanese youths were clustered around a camera shop, forcing him to slow down. He cursed them under his breath, then pounded on again, oblivious to his surroundings; seeing only Sayers’s fleshy face, his grossly swollen penis.
He dived across another road, then stopped dead in his tracks. Somebody was speaking to him, a soft but compelling voice: ‘You can never run away, Daniel – not from your own pain.’
He swung round towards the voice. No one was there save a rather frowsty woman totally absorbed in reading the menu tacked up outside a café. Yet the words had been spoken aloud and enunciated clearly – soft, maybe, but absolutely distinct. He pinched himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming; registered the twinge, as tangible, unmistakable, as the words themselves had been. Yet JB was in Wales, so how could he have heard his voice? And it was his voice, beyond any shadow of doubt: the same timbre and inflexion; the exact same phrase as had been addressed to him when he’d woken in terror, clinging to his ‘mother’ that first night on the dark and lonely hillside.
He stared at his reflection in a window – yes, he still looked perfectly normal. Then he did some mental arithmetic, working out a few square roots and reciting Pythagoras’s theorem. Yes, his brain appeared to be functioning with no obvious loss of power. How then could he account for so unnerving an experience?
He walked back the way he’d come, considerably shaken, but determined to regain his self-control. He must keep to his plan for the evening, not give way to panic. He could still go to the cinema, but choose a different film. Van Gogh’s vision of the world would be too disturbing for his present state. He was beginning to feel menaced by his surroundings: the buildings slightly distorted, as if they were closing in on him; the cars tiny metal boxes hurtling to destruction. And there were far too many people – scores of faces looming up, then vanishing into the crowd again; hostile eyes, chewing mouths, flashes of white teeth, snatches of conversation which sounded foreign even in English, surreal non-sequiturs.
He found himself back in Leicester Square, surrounded by giant film posters for horror movies and spine-chillers. He couldn’t escape the images: dismembered corpses, smoking guns, teeth sunk into virgin necks, robots on the rampage. He shuddered at the thought of two hours of blood-soaked violence, but the sex-films looked no better: a woman’s spiked stiletto heel being rammed into her lover’s face; a man threatening a half-naked girl with his gleaming phallic pistol. Surely there must be something less hor
rific. He liked the idea of an erotic film, but a gentle and alluring one without the blood and gore. It would be far easier to immerse himself in some saga of seduction than to watch a crazed artist hack off his own ear.
He leaned against a shop-front, wiped his face on his sleeve. The stifling heat seemed to have sapped his powers of decision. Sweaty bodies were milling all around him; countless restaurant kitchens pouring out their steamy breath; exhaust fumes polluting the air, and the sun beating down relentlessly. If the cinema wasn’t air-conditioned, he might well expire from heat-stroke.
He still couldn’t make up his mind; stood envying his fellow humans who appeared to have an aim in life, even if it was nothing more momentous than window-shopping, or camera-clicking, or sitting at a pavement café with an espresso or a beer. Should he go and have a drink himself, or take the tube to St James’s Park and walk among the trees, or head straight home and slam the door? No, he needed a diversion; something to quash the healer’s voice, help him forget he had ever heard it.
He traipsed back to the Odeon, which had half a dozen screens in all – one showing a French movie with amour in the title, and a less salacious poster than the rest. Now that his thoughts had strayed to sex, he couldn’t get the subject out of his mind. The celluloid variety would be better than nothing and at least he could cool off. There was a large notice propped outside the door, saying, ‘THIS CINEMA IS AIR-CONDITIONED – COME IN AND ESCAPE THE HEAT!’
He followed their suggestion, queuing at the kiosk for a ticket. He was directed to Screen 3, and stepped into the dark; the cold air like a jolt against his skin. Blinded for a moment, he paused to get his bearings in the aisle. A young voluptuous Thai girl was ogling at him from the screen, her sultry scarlet lips parted in a smile, her eyes passionate, provocative, promising untold delights. He returned her gaze, but saw a different face – a woman with less blatant eyes, cooler lips, pale English skin.
Impulsively, he ran back the way he’d come, down the flight of stairs into the foyer. He emerged into the heat once more, striding across the square towards the car. It was suddenly so clear. He’d been starved of sex these last three weeks and needed a real woman – a flesh and blood woman, who also had a mind and heart – and he knew where he could find her; knew at last where he was going.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Daniel stood outside the French-blue door. A tasteful colour – naturally – to match the tasteful window-boxes, planted with variegated evergreens and edged with trailing ivies. No strident reds or yellows here, no litter on the path, no screaming children or scruffy dogs to detract from the atmosphere of elegant restraint. He gazed along the tree-lined road which led to Hampstead Heath, and was only a few streets away from the so-called village, with its pretentious restaurants and designer boutiques. He always felt a stranger in north London, especially in this exclusive little enclave, where there were no corner shops, no hoardings, no sign of common humanity – nothing to lower the tone. Though he was doing that himself, of course: a dishevelled individual in his shirtsleeves, who had been loitering on the doorstep for the last ten or fifteen minutes, trying to summon up the courage to ring the bell.
He smoothed his hair, wiped his clammy palms on his trousers, then pressed a timid finger to the buzzer. At first he thought she wasn’t in, and felt a rush of disappointment and relief (in more or less equal proportions), but suddenly the familiar voice crackled down the entry-phone.
‘Yes, who is it?’
‘Daniel,’ he said softly.
The silence seemed to scream.
‘Daniel,’ he repeated, but he was speaking to empty air. The intercom had been shut off; the door slammed in his face, at least metaphorically.
He pressed the buzzer again; this time keeping his finger on it, amazed at his own audacity. But he refused now to be thwarted, when coming here had cost him so much anguish – fear and guilt and scruples on the way. (Several times he had actually stopped the car, on the point of turning back.) She would soon tire of that tenacious bell reverberating through her flat.
‘Daniel, will you kindly go away and leave me alone.’
Her tone was sharp, almost out of control. He made his own voice milk and honey. ‘I need to see you, Juliet. Only for five minutes. I won’t stay any longer, not if you don’t want me to.’
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve nothing to say.’
‘Yes, but I have.’
A blue-rinsed matron was peering at him crossly from the open window of the spacious ground-floor flat. He was disturbing the peace, the general air of decorum and tranquillity expected of Woodleigh Chase. (Specious name, he’d always thought, for an apartment block in London.)
He gave another determined jab at the buzzer. ‘Look, I think you’d be wise to let me in, if only as the lesser of two evils. We appear to be upsetting all your neighbours. I’ve gathered quite a little audience down here.’
Another lie, but he knew it would gain him admittance. Juliet loathed ‘scenes’, or breaking the proprieties. The door shuddered in submission as she snorted an abrupt ‘Come in.’
He walked slowly up the stairs, his steps faltering as he reached the second landing. He wished she had come to meet him, instead of forcing him to ring a second bell. Though she answered this one promptly, wresting open the door and flinging him a look of such resentment, he felt himself shrinking beneath her scrutiny.
‘You … you’ve cut your hair,’ he stammered, appalled to see the long, swinging glossy curtain replaced by a short bob.
‘Hm – a pity about yours.’ The cold grey eyes appraised him. ‘What on earth have you done to yourself?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, you’re much thinner to start with. And you’ve got dark rings under your eyes. And just look at all those scratches on your hands!’
He glanced down at his hands, surprised to see the network of red lines, sealed with tiny blackish scabs. ‘Oh, those are just from brambles, and from collecting wood and chopping it. Most of the trees were thorny ones, so it was easy to get scratched. And I’m sure I can’t have lost weight. I’ve been eating like a horse, and stodgy food for the most part.’
He was still standing outside the door. It struck him as bizarre that they should be discussing the paltry details of his camping trip before she had invited him over the threshold or asked him why he had come.
He took a step towards her. She immediately shrank back as if he were infectious, but he continued through the doorway; half-triumphant and half-panicky that he was actually inside. As he pushed the door shut, a new rush of apprehension flooded over him. This flat was full of memories – full of him, for heaven’s sake. He had sat so many times on that elegant chaise-longue, or eaten at that bijou table, which always seemed too cramped. He had made coffee in her kitchen; showered in her dauntingly feminine bathroom (everything shell-pink, even her toothbrush and the weighing-scales); rumpled her neat bed. Yet all she could do now was turn on him with venom.
‘You’ve got a bloody cheek, you know, showing up like this when you told me loud and clear that things were over between us – finished, dead, kaput.’ She gave each word a clipped sarcastic emphasis. ‘And you might at least have phoned first. I could have had a visitor.’
Another lover, you mean, he thought. The notion made him irrationally jealous. Was that why she was wearing a new scent? It was so heady and oppressive, he could almost taste it on his lips; its musky flagrance provoking the whole flat. He couldn’t take his eyes off her; completely unprepared for the maelstrom of emotions the mere sight of her aroused: guilt, fury, lust, desire. He glanced at her breasts, their curve only just discernible beneath the ivory silk blouse; then down at her long legs, made longer still by flimsy gold-strapped sandals with impossibly high heels. He felt attracted and repelled at once, seeing her not only through his own lascivious eyes, but also as Claire would view her: affected, superficial, and absurdly overdressed. The immaculate red talons (and matching scarlet toenails), the elaborate
make-up, even the perfection of the flat itself, all riled him in a way he could barely understand. How dare she criticize his own unkempt appearance when she would never have lasted five minutes at the camp?
‘I thought you had something important to say? I’m still waiting, Daniel.’ She subsided into a chair, giving the impression that she was infinitely wearied, and crossing one leg over the other with an alluring flash of black-stockinged thigh.
He cursed himself for looking, started pacing restlessly around. All the speeches he’d prepared seemed utterly inadequate. Yet he was uneasy at the silence, the sense of things unspoken on both sides. He stopped in front of the sideboard, suddenly catching sight of himself in the gold-framed antique mirror on the wall. Yes, she was right, he did look a mess: gaunt and almost haggard, with purplish circles under his eyes and a deep scratch on his chin which hadn’t healed. He could imagine what she was thinking: he had spent three weeks with a healer and returned sickly and exhausted.
‘Look,’ he said, at last, ‘I … I owe you an apology. I came to say I’m sorry.’ That wasn’t true at all. He had come because he craved her naked body; longed to feel her magnificent hair swathing his stiff cock. But she had cut her hair, castrated him. He could hardly bear to look at it; felt it was a desecration, almost an act of spite. It changed her face, emphasizing her cheek-bones and making her look older, yet also somehow vulnerable; her neck too pale and slender, an exposed and fragile stalk.
‘Sit down,’ she urged, less harshly, gesturing to the chaise-longue.
He perched on its velvet edge, feeling, however inanely, that he was defiling it in some way. His swarthy skin with its bumps and bites and bruises (all a further legacy from Wales) seemed as inappropriate here as Juliet’s own stylishness would have been in Rainbow Lodge. He cleared his throat, tried to hide his navvy’s hands. ‘I should have said sorry before.’
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