The Deadly Space Between

by Patricia Duncker

  Then she sat silent, biting her lip.

  ‘Oh, shut it, Toby. I’m going to bed.’

  She banged the car door shut, leaving the keys swinging in the ignition. I sat still for a moment, astonished. Iso was rarely so irrational. The wind plucked at my sleeve as I leaned on the window, shivering slightly. I locked up the car and went straight up to my room. She had slammed the front door with all her force. Some of the beading on the architrave had come adrift. I snapped it off.

  Hours later I awoke to hear her steps in the dark, mounting the staircase, pushing the door open, crossing the boards. She trod on one of my trainers, kicked it aside, and muttered ‘Shit’ to herself as she did so.

  ‘Toby? You awake?’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know. Doesn’t matter. Come to bed.’

  ‘No. I’d fall asleep. I can’t.’

  But she stood there, her shadow increasing the volume of dark in the room.

  ‘Goodnight, then.’ I turned over.

  Did she feel dismissed, pushed away? I listened carefully to every creak and echo on the descending stairs.

  * * *

  We sat waiting for the show to begin. It was as if we were sitting in a theatre expectantly watching the footlights, spots and chandeliers. The Arches had once been a railway shunting shed for old stock under the nineteenth-century vaults near King’s Cross. The venue was long and thin. All the audience were equally close to the stage and the back wall was covered with obscure graffiti, huge coloured block letters, the sort you always see on trains and bridges, but which you can never quite read. We were perched on the rim of a dais, just a little higher than the first two rows. The programmes were covered in glittering silver spangles, tiny shiny triangles, which the girls in my school stuck to their cheeks when they wanted to make an impact at the disco. I had loitered outside the disco on several occasions. I wanted to watch the girls. I watched them going in through the dark doorway. I watched their skirts stretched tight across their opulent backsides. But I had never bought a ticket and I had never been inside. The spangles came off in my hands.

  The seasonal fashion shows appeared to exist in a vacuum, suspended outside time. It was the beginning of November and we were to see the spring collection, a mass of light, bright colours and short, swirling skirts, while the external world faced a descending curtain of wet leaves and the increasing dark.

  ‘I rather like that,’ said Iso, ‘it gives you hope.’

  There was free white wine and cheese squares laid out in the foyer. The sausages topped with real cubes of pineapple vanished at once. Iso and I wolfed the last lot as if we hadn’t eaten for months, grinning at each other. There was peace once more between us. She had not seen Roehm for over a week. She was never late home and the panzer did not appear in our street. I checked the answerphone several times a day. In his absence the old intimacy reasserted itself. We were friends again. We never mentioned Roehm. She tucked her arm through mine as we sat close together and peered at the disintegrating programme. The music was thudding techno. I thought about the Chinese dragon festival. But I said nothing to my mother.

  ‘Luce is on last. Bet she’s backstage, fussing.’

  ‘Do you know anyone here?’

  ‘I invited everyone in the department and at the gallery. I should’ve told them there’d be free wine. Then they’d have shown up.’

  People were still trying to fit their bums onto benches when the music changed gear and the spots glowed red, orange, white. The peculiar distance which was opening up between my vision and the ordinary things that I had taken for granted suddenly became huge. The spectacle was a mystery. A parade of women, thin as the coathangers which they represented, sauntered past. They had bony shoulders and legs like giraffes. They all held their chins high in the air, haughty and poised, daring us to laugh. Their gestures and expressions were bizarre. They scowled and preened, challenging the audience. The costumes were still more mysterious. The theme was the millennium. What will we all be wearing in the twenty-first century? Orange flares and black boleros, bum-freezer jackets decorated with silver and gilt, epaulettes shimmering like the uniform of a toreador, swirling silver shirts and huge Elizabethan collars, layers of ruffles, waterfalls of silk, heels blocked up like the steps of Mayan palaces, Cinderella’s slippers, great black shining beads, bracelets of amber, tiny evening bags on chains, biting tight trousers which ended at the knee, SM leather studs on braces and leather micro-skirts, nipples almost visible beneath the spiked straps.

  But is this Luce’s collection of embroidered fiery striped red, orange, black beads stitched into tresses trailing from the shoulders and the hems, huge sleeves hanging loose like the costumes of mandarins? And the women her designers had chosen were suddenly quite different from the other models. They were full-breasted, wide-hipped, tall as Rider Haggard’s Black Sorcerers of Africa, their long arms rattled with great circles of gold. There was no bride’s dress as the denouement, as there always is in conventional collections. Instead the tallest and most formidable of the women rustled down the stage towards us, turning first to the right and then to the left in a pyramid of rustling ivory silk. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the audience. Her black, black skin was purple dark against the embroidered slick silks. She was not a bride, but a queen. She could not be bought, she ruled. The applause was as much for the majesty and power of the woman as for the intricate robes that cascaded from her shoulders.

  ‘That’s it, Luce, think big,’ cried Iso in my ear.

  And then Luce herself appeared, hand in hand with her designers, prancing forward among their models, the reds and lilacs of her own clothes metamorphosing into green and purple underneath the lights. Luce was transfigured by glory. We bellowed out our roar of praise.

  Suddenly I had the prickling sensation that I was being watched. Again I saw the single eye of the iguana which had turned sideways, and begun his natural process of cryptic coloration, the blue retreating on his shingled skin as he began to vanish into the green. But his gaze had settled upon me. I twisted round and looked up. Quite a few people were standing at the back, but I’m sure that he was there. It was Roehm, his huge form dimly looming against the raw brick wall of the theatre. I jumped up and muttered my departure to Iso. She was fixed upon Luce’s triumph. I rushed up the aisle towards the door and hunted him down the back row. There was no sign of Roehm. Some of the audience were already leaving, but the foyer wasn’t full. I dropped the programme and ran to the front doors. There was an inanimate row of black taxis waiting in the damp night. The street was deserted. I bolted back into the theatre. I even checked the Gents. I was convinced that I had seen him, his giant shadow, his white face, clear against the back wall.

  How had he vanished so swiftly, leaving no trace? Puzzled, I pushed against the mass of people leaving the theatre. The techno beat began again. There was no chance of regaining my seat. I waited for a while in the foyer, then saw Liberty pushing her way towards me.

  ‘Hi, babe! They’re backstage, drinking champagne. I’m off to get the car. It’ll take ages. Keep a glass for me. Climb up stage left and ask for the green room. Wasn’t it wonderful? Luce is jubilant.’

  I wandered back into the emptying theatre, wondering if I had hallucinated his presence. But he was too solid, too massive to imagine. No, Roehm had been there. He must have been there. But he had deliberately disappeared. He had decided not to speak to us. Luce. It’s because of Luce. She’s not allowed to know. When Luce is there, we’re off limits. I asked where the green room was. But I could hear them, long before I reached the green room.

  What struck me as odd was that they were shouting at each other and still drinking champagne. I could hear Luce’s dreadful shriek, a roar above the cheerful bubbles.

  ‘He’s twenty-five years older than you! What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Isobel? Shagging Grandad?’

  ‘Luce. Control yourself. And watch what you’re say
ing. How can that possibly matter?’

  ‘And I suppose you still go in for all that risky sex where you could easily end up dead.’

  Luce never lowered her voice. I heard her. I saw her hands and chin wobbling with indignation. My mother’s voice was deadly. I had never seen her so angry and so calm.

  ‘Luce, how dare you. May I remind you that Liberty is even younger than I am? And if anyone ought to speak up in defence of perverted sex then it should be you.’

  She swallowed a whole half-glass of champagne in one gulp, got up and stalked out, shaking. She never looked at me. I don’t think she even noticed that I was there. I sat down next to Luce. She didn’t say anything for a minute or two. She was paralysed by distress and rage. I waited, looking at the abandoned costumes hanging round the walls. They sagged, shapeless and foolish, as if the women’s bodies that had filled them had suddenly dematerialized. Then, halfway down her second cigarette, Luce burst into tears.

  ‘Shall I go after Iso?’ I asked, alarmed.

  Luce mopped up the streams and mumbled, ‘I just don’t want her hurt. I don’t want you hurt.’

  I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know what they were quarrelling about, and things couldn’t get any worse, so I decided to enter the fray.

  ‘But you don’t know Roehm. He doesn’t seem old, though I suppose he is. Anyway, he’s rich. You should meet him. Then you’d understand why she loves him.’

  Luce looked at me in horror, as if I’d suddenly given her certain evidence that I had been deposited on the planet by visiting aliens.

  ‘Then you’ve already met this monster. Let me tell you, child, that I have no desire whatsoever to meet him.’

  ‘Well, you should.’

  Luce and I glared at each other. Liberty suddenly thumped across the threshold, waving her programme.

  ‘Drink up, chaps. I’ve got the car out the front. And I’m on double yellow. Did you save me some? Where’s Isobel?’

  Suddenly she noticed that something was horribly wrong. Luce’s cheeks were black with running paint.

  ‘Heavens, Luce, what’s up?’

  I poured myself the last glass of champagne and began to drink it down at speed. I offered Liberty the dregs with a provocative smirk.

  ‘Luce and Iso have been fighting over a man.’

  * * *

  We lived in a smokeless zone. I sat in front of an illegal wood fire. An implausible thriller set in Cornwall was running its course on BBC2. There were two possible murderers. One was an ideological vagrant given to meditation sessions on the top of a tor, and the other was a retired lifeguard, who had dedicated his last days to alcohol and embittered disillusionment. He was bristling with possible motives. So it was more likely to be the unemployed vagrant. The porch lights were on. Isobel had not come home.

  I heard someone’s step on the gravel and the highpitched ring of the bell as the key turned simultaneously in the lock. Luce. No one else had the keys. I sat waiting in the sitting room, but turned off the sound. A small blue loudhailer with a line through it appeared in the left-hand corner of the screen. My mind went blank.

  Luce strode in, rustling with heavy bracelets and chains. She was dressed to kill in reds, blues, greens. Her mouth was a thin line of violet.

  ‘All right, then,’ she sat down and stubbed out her cigarette amongst the others festering in a shell left on the bookcase, ‘who is he?’

  ‘I told you. He’s a scientist. He works in London and somewhere else abroad. He’s also got a research institute in the Alps.’

  ‘And how old is he exactly?’

  I had no idea. But I had done some calculations.

  ‘He must be over fifty. He said that he remembered his father coming back from the war.’

  Luce snorted. She lit another cigarette. I hugged a cushion and noticed that the police were swarming up the tor in search of the philosophical vagrant. Luce stared at the soundless screen, her face impassive.

  ‘He smokes. Like you.’

  She stubbed it out at once, in a rage.

  ‘I don’t see why you’re so angry. Roehm makes her happy.’

  I had no idea why I was saying this. I didn’t believe that anyone could be happy with a man like Roehm. He was too ambiguous, too large and too terrifying. But I pushed out the patter of clichés into the gap between us.

  ‘Don’t you want her to be happy?’

  ‘Not with him!’

  Luce snorted with indignation and righteousness. I sat silent for a while. The vagrant was flying across the moor, pursued by dogs. Cut to the rotting boat which the lifeguard kept on the beach.

  ‘He must have another name. He can’t just be Roehm, like Heathcliff.’

  ‘She’s never called him anything else. I thought it might be his first name.’

  ‘It’s not a name at all. Do you know where he’s from?’

  I volunteered the minimum of hard information. I had no tangible motive to keep the little I knew secret from Luce, but I refused to give up this strange huge man. It was as if Roehm now belonged to me, to us.

  ‘His car is registered in the Haute-Savoie. It’s got left-hand drive. It’s French.’

  Luce gave an irritated shrug.

  ‘Well, that’s a start, I suppose. But won’t tell us much about him. It could be a company car. And where was this laboratory you said you visited? Inside one of the university hospitals? Off Gower Street? Much use that is, Toby. There are dozens of hospitals off Gower Street and you were born in one of them.’

  The embittered lifeguard was salvaging something from the rotting boat. Obviously the murder weapon. I hastily revised the plot in my head. The enlightened vagrant must be innocent.

  ‘Is he English? Toby, are you listening?’

  ‘He doesn’t have an accent exactly. He speaks perfect English. But he sounds foreign.’

  I wished that she would go away.

  ‘Roehm’s not an English name.’

  ‘He mentioned Switzerland,’ I suggested unhelpfully. Luce looked gloomily into the fire. She tried another cigarette.

  ‘I’ve blown it with your mother. She won’t even speak to me.’

  ‘She’ll get over it.’

  ‘No, she won’t.’

  We sat silent. I stood up and poked the logs. Immediately the flames ebbed as if someone had hushed them to be quiet.

  ‘Well, you say he’s rich. Even if he is old enough to be her father. Has he bought any more of her paintings? And I suppose he might be Swiss. What does he work on?’

  ‘Genetics. It’s either plants or animals. He had both in his lab.’

  ‘Oh, great. He probably modifies crops so that when we all think we’re eating beetroots we’re actually eating bananas.’

  ‘No. It’s nothing like that. It’s about breeding strains that resist drought, heat and ice.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. It’s interfering with Nature.’

  ‘But so are insecticides and vaccinations. Luce, be rational.’

  She glared at me. Neither of us spoke. The vagrant was brought down by the dogs. I decided that if I were an actor required to perform scenes with slavering Dobermanns I’d demand more money. Then Luce changed tack and spoke with peculiar urgency.

  ‘Look, Toby, Liberty and I are off to New York tomorrow. Your mother won’t even say goodbye. She doesn’t return my calls. She’d better not find me here. So listen. Here’s the deal. This is the hotel where we’re staying. That’s the number. You put 001 before it. You can leave messages at reception if we’re not there. Then here’s the number of my friends in Brooklyn Heights. That’s for emergencies. If anything goes wrong or if you notice anything odd you must call me at once.’

  The entire cast of the thriller began revealing things to one another. Faces contorted in rage, relief, surprise. I stared at the silent denouement, frustrated and mystified.

  ‘What could go wrong?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this man, Toby. We know nothing about him. S
he’s not saying anything. She didn’t introduce me. Why didn’t she?’

  ‘Well, look what happened when she did tell you about him. You went nuclear in seconds.’

  For the first time Luce stops, thinks.

  ‘You’re right. I did.’

  ‘Maybe you should ask yourself why.’

  She stares at me. Hard. There is a long pause. The credits are coming up.

  ‘OK. I’ll think about that in America. In the meantime, my dear, you hang on to those numbers and for God’s sake ring if you suspect anything. I’m counting on you.’

  I looked regretfully at the silent screen and the marchpast of unknown names.

  ‘Luce. You’ll just have to tell me straight out what it is that you’re afraid of.’

  ‘Don’t you see? Can’t you smell it?’ Luce’s voice rose. ‘I’m afraid he’ll kill her.’

  * * *

  We had no bonfire for Guy Fawkes that year. The leaves gathered, blown into huge piles on the paths and across the damp lawns. I decided to burn them. It was a windy afternoon and I moved steadily across the garden, raking them into recalcitrant piles, which blew over, away, out of the wheelbarrow, damp handfuls of the dead year. I collected them together with sober concentration. My hands and face were very cold, but it was satisfying work. The dark lawn reappeared, like a fresh green plain, a gambler’s table with all the chips cleared. The space became wider, more generous, open. I took some old boxes from the kitchen and built the bonfire among the yew trees by the wall at the end of the garden.

  The newspaper was damp. I fumbled with the matches, but the wind took up the enterprise and sent the whole thing exploding into flames with a satisfying rush. I watched the fire rustle and dance, sweeping the waste into the base. I was absorbed and entertained. I did not notice the enclosing dark. The last embers glowed and shimmered beneath me. I was still standing there, leaning on the rake in the twilight, when the lights went on in her studio. I could see perfectly clearly across the dark garden. Roehm was with her.