Fascinated

  Conrad stops laughing and wipes his nose. ‘You think it’s too crude?’

  ‘A trifle elaborate,’ says Frank diplomatically. He doesn’t deserve anything so grand. He’s really not that important.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘Why don’t we leave it alone?’

  ‘No! Why don’t we burn down his house, wreck his car and shoot the dog?’

  ‘I don’t like it!’ complains Frank. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t turn soft on me, Frank!’ Conrad bellows down at him. ‘Where’s your killer instinct?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone hurt!’ Frank shouts back, picking at the leaves in his hair.

  ‘He hurt you, Frank.’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s not worth the risk.’

  ‘Come and sit beside me,’ says Conrad, reaching down and clutching him by the wrists. Frank finds himself yanked from his feet and hauled into the tree where he scrambles onto the branch beside the old man.

  ‘I’m here to maintain law and order,’ Conrad tells him gently as he holds him fast with a mighty arm. ‘I’ve a reputation to protect.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘You can’t steal another man’s wife, Frank, and expect to get away with it. What would happen if everyone tried it? Think of the pain and suffering. The broken homes. The abandoned children. The wasted years. The empty dreams. Terrible. Terrible consequences.’ The shadows flitter across his face, staining the folds and creases, filling his eyes with darkness.

  ‘Everything has its price,’ says Frank quietly, thinking at once of his intrigue with Valentine.

  ‘That’s right!’ exclaims Conrad, in great delight. ‘Everything has its price. And I’m the bugger who sets the prices!’ He smirks, he splutters, he laughs until he suffocates, cock-throppled and struggling, gasping for breath and fanning his face with his skirt.

  Frank falls from the tree and makes his way back to the breakfast room, his shoes splashed with mud and cobwebs hanging from his sleeves. Webster is still at the table, bent to a plate of fried eggs, bacon, sausage and mushrooms, a slice of bread and butter folded into his fist.

  ‘Where’s Valentine?’

  ‘She went swimming,’ says Webster, smiling up from his plate. ‘Want some more coffee?’ He points at the coffeepot with his bread-and-butter truncheon.

  Frank shakes his head and retreats, picking his way through the puzzle of silent corridors towards the Turkish pavilion. The water dazzles him, making him screw up his face to protect his eyes against the glare. The walls are glittering cliffs of blue-and-white Moorish tiles. The glass ceiling, filled with sunlight, is draped in fantastic clouds of muslin. At the far end of the pavilion, beneath the canvas parasol, fresh towels have been heaped on a deck-chair.

  He enters in silence, careful on the marble flagstones, squats at the edge of the pool to watch Valentine kick through the sparkling water. She’s wearing an old-fashioned swimsuit, speckled with green and red rosebuds and trimmed with a little skirt at the waist. When she catches sight of him she turns and glides to the side of the pool.

  ‘What did he want?’ she demands, treading water and wiping a hand across her mouth. Her face streams with sunlight. Her eyelashes are jewelled spikes. He shrugs forward, leaning over the precipice, and tells her of Conrad’s plan for revenge, the breaking up of the company and the burning down of the house, a string of comic disasters designed to destroy the victim by pulling his life apart at the seams.

  ‘Isn’t there anything we can do to stop him?’ he says at last, hoping for a promise of miracles.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Valentine, pulling herself from the pool. She stands beside him on the marble ledge, water spilling from the skirt of the swimsuit, spreading puddles around her feet. ‘He enjoys making mischief. Don’t worry. He’ll have forgotten it tomorrow.’

  ‘But someone could get hurt.’

  ‘You mean your wife could get hurt. That’s what you’re thinking about it, isn’t it?’ she says with irritation, squeezing the water from her hair by twisting it into coils that snake against her neck. The wet swimsuit sucks at her breasts, pulling greedily on her nipples. The skirt hangs heavy, dribbles against her thighs. ‘If someone cheated on me I’d make his life a misery. I wouldn’t rest until he was down on his hands and knees pleading to be left alone. I’d teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. Will you fetch me a towel?’

  He walks across to the parasol, dipping into its shadow to pull a towel from the deck-chair. He thinks of Jessica trapped alone in a blazing bedroom, black smoke spurting through crackling floorboards. The walls blistering with heat. Flames streaking through shattered windows. ‘He’s crazy! I can’t stay here!’ he blurts out angrily, returning with the towel held like a cloak, draping the cloak around her shoulders. ‘It’s time to quit!’

  ‘You can’t quit,’ she says bluntly. ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ She hangs her head to scoop the hair from her neck as he works the towel along her spine like a butler polishing silver. ‘Do you think he’ll let you just walk away from here? You know too much about his business. You’re family. You can’t walk out on the family.’

  ‘And you?’ He slides the towel to her waist and carefully places a kiss against the chill of her shoulder, looking down the front of her swimsuit. The blazing bedroom is soon extinguished.

  ‘I don’t want to lose you,’ she whispers.

  Encouraged by this confession, he kisses her again and slips his hands around her waist to draw her tighter against him. But she pulls quickly from the embrace.

  ‘Be careful, Frank,’ she says, shivering, stepping aside and pulling the towel from his hands. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  He retreats as far as the parasol and throws himself into the deck-chair, knocking its cargo of towels to the floor. ‘Where do you want to go today?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs, looking at the sunlight in the muslin clouds. ‘I’m tired of shopping. Let’s go to the zoo.’

  Later, standing in the sweet stink of the elephant pavilion, Valentine reaches for Frank’s hand, lacing her fingers and leaning softly against him. She looks so happy to be here on this empty winter afternoon as they shuffle from building to building, searching for signs of life in the heaped nests of dung and straw. Frank smiles, dips his face in her hair, brushing her neck with his mouth. She says nothing. They stand together in silence, watching the lonely elephants rocking and treading their chains.

  In the twilight of the aquarium, before a brilliant window of water filled with a shoal of milky fish with eyes as bright as blue glass, she lets Frank turn her face to be kissed, sighing as she yields beneath him, pulling him down to her mouth. An octopus floats from a flowerpot and hangs suspended above their heads.

  Returned to the daylight, walking a cold, deserted terrace in search of bison or mountain bear, they link arms, their footsteps measured and falling together, and he feels elated, drunk with desire for this beautiful and elegant woman.

  But then, on the way to the giraffe house, with ice on the water of the moat and a chill wind chewing his nose and ears, he dares to suggest that they sneak away to the warmth of the graveyard cottage and she becomes angry, pulling away from his arms, and in a moment the spell is broken.

  ‘I’m not that cheap, Frank!’ she says, turning her back and sulking into her overcoat collar.

  Her anger startles him. ‘Who said you were cheap?’

  ‘That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’ she demands, turning around to challenge him. ‘You think I’m just like my mother. Easy pickings. The tart with the heart of gold.’

  He scowls at her in confusion. What is she trying to tell him? He shuffles from foot to foot, apologetic and wretched. ‘I don’t remember having to kick down your door to get at you last night,’ he says, hoping to hurt her.

  She hesitates, sensing his bewilderment, already regretting her outburst. She feels vulnerable. She wants him to understand. ‘Look, last night was a mistake,’ she says gently, reaching out
for his arm again. ‘I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘Are you telling me to forget it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘No. I’m just asking if we can start again.’

  ‘Where do we begin?’

  ‘Christ, I dunno. I’ll think of something,’ she says, pulling on his arm to lead him back through the west tunnel.

  A troop of children trudges past, led by a woman in a tartan cape. The children are wrapped in scarves and mittens, clutching crayon drawings of rabbits.

  ‘What went wrong?’ asks Frank, prompting her to talk again, wanting everything explained.

  ‘It wasn’t wrong, exactly, Frank. It was just too fast. When it happens I want it to mean something …’

  ‘So last night was nothing special for you?’ he demands, afraid of the truth and yet vain enough to hope that she’ll contradict him.

  ‘That’s not what …’ But she stops short and stares along the path.

  ‘What is it?’ He follows her gaze as far as the reptile house where the figure of an elderly man is creeping slowly into the sunlight. He’s tall and thin with a face as sharp as a steel blade. He’s wearing an overcoat with an astrakhan collar and a pair of yellow kid gloves. His shoes are crepe-soled suede the colour of crystallised ginger. There’s a young girl dragging on his arm, pulling him down, making him walk with a heel to starboard.

  ‘Holy shit!’ whistles Valentine. ‘You see the old guy with the blonde midget? That’s Hamilton Talbot!’

  ‘Your father’s old business partner?’ whispers Frank. The acid attack in the supermarket. The bacon slicer filled with fingers.

  ‘Yeah. The one who set the Cocker brothers on Webster. The one you’ve been hired to protect me against.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s go home,’ says Frank the man of action, twisting away towards the main gate.

  ‘No. Wait. I want you to meet him.’

  ‘I’m supposed to keep you out of mischief.’

  ‘Whaddya think is going to happen? He’s not going to eat you,’ says Valentine scornfully.

  ‘Why go looking for trouble?’

  ‘It’s important to know your enemy, stupid!’

  Frank turns a circle and tries to pull her away by the sleeve but it’s too late. The enemy is standing before them. A corpse in an overcoat.

  So this is Talbot the Torturer. The prowler in the attic. The bogeyman beneath the stairs. The smiling stranger at the school gates. The man who, thirty years ago, spread himself like a plague across London. Conrad’s peculiar partner in crime.

  ‘Ah, Valentine!’ he croons with a deeply cadaverous smile. ‘It’s been a long time …’

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ says Valentine, nodding at the hellion dangling from his arm.

  ‘I’m far too old to break bad habits,’ he says with a creaking sigh. He looks down at his diminutive courtesan and ruffles her bleached-blonde curls with his hand.

  She’s no more than twelve years old, a painted child, a rented poppet, wobbling in a pair of scuffed white high heels and wrapped in a fake fur coat. She wipes her nose on her sleeve and looks suspiciously at Valentine who smiles sweetly in her direction like a matron admiring a friend’s toy poodle.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’ The cherub snuffles and scowls.

  ‘What a charming little creature!’ Valentine exclaims. ‘Have you taught her any tricks?’

  ‘How’s Conrad?’ says Talbot, ignoring her question. His emaciated smile reveals a set of expensive crowns. His skin, stretched tightly against his skull, is a mask of finely crazed porcelain. His lips and nostrils are purple. ‘I trust there’s still hope he’ll recover his wits. It must be such a trial for you to have a vegetable for a father.’

  ‘He’s fine. I’ll tell him you asked,’ says Valentine. ‘He’ll be so amused to hear that I saw you in the zoo.’

  ‘Have you heard?’ says Talbot in a stage whisper. ‘They’re threatening to close it down and turn the contents into meat pies!’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘It’s terrible how everything changes,’ he complains. ‘London! These days I barely recognise it.’

  Valentine smiles. ‘How is the Old Kent Road?’

  ‘It used to have a certain charm that I always found rather amusing. But the neighbourhood has lately become disgusting. I miss the old days. Do you suppose it’s my age? The streets seem to be swarming with ghastly juvenile delinquents. Child criminals. Schoolboy racketeers. Sandpit junkies.’

  ‘Is that where you found your little friend?’

  ‘I see you have a new companion,’ says Talbot, blinking his pale grey eyes at Frank with a mocking flirtatious intensity. ‘Tell me, whatever happened to the old one? What was his name? It was something queer. I never could remember it. I heard he’s grown rather accident-prone. I hope I haven’t missed his funeral. I should like to pay my respects.’

  ‘Oh, Webster is still alive and kicking. He’s here somewhere …’ says Valentine absently, glancing across her shoulder as if she expected to see him come lumbering up through the tunnel towards them.

  Talbot stops smiling. His eyes flicker. His fingers pull at the astrakhan collar, drawing it tighter against his throat.

  ‘Shall I send Frank to look for him?’ suggests Valentine helpfully. ‘I know you both have a lot to talk about.’

  This invitation to meet his old adversary has a most remarkable effect upon Talbot. He becomes, all at once, flighty and nervous, shuffling in his ginger shoes and blowing steam through his nose. He’s ill-equipped to deal with trouble without the benefit of his bruisers.

  ‘I fear we must postpone the pleasure,’ he says briskly, gathering his fractious nymphet into the folds of his overcoat and sweeping her urgently to the gates. ‘Make haste, my little scampo, before the windigo catches you.’

  ‘Hey, where are we going?’ she complains, trying to yank herself free of him. ‘I wanna see the rest of the animals. You promised! I wanna go see the monkeys screwing.’

  ‘Shut up!’ snarls Talbot, twisting her arm until she yelps and stops pulling away. ‘I’ve had enough of this flea-pit. I’m freezing my pecker off.’

  ‘Can we go to McDonald’s?’ she whines as he bundles her through the gates. ‘You promised! You promised!’

  Frank watches them retreat. The child molester and the pygmy temptress. ‘Why did you threaten him with Webster?’ he says, turning back to Valentine.

  ‘Well, he didn’t look very scared of you,’ she says disdainfully.

  ‘He doesn’t look scared of anything.’ They begin walking along the east path towards the African aviary. The sun fades into dismal twilight. Strings of gulls float overhead, gathering for a raid on the pelican pool.

  ‘Oh, he’s scared of Webster,’ smiles Valentine. ‘That’s why he hired the Cockers to kill him. Hell, it’s cold!’ she adds, blowing into her hands. ‘I think we should have gone shopping.’

  That night Conrad arrives at the supper table wearing a pastel summer dress, cut very low at the neck, with short puffed sleeves and a skirt ballooning with petticoats. His wrists clatter with Dawn’s best bangles. The bodice sags in memory of her late departed breasts. Conrad sits down slowly, smiling, dreaming, pulling at the petticoats and, when he’s made himself comfortable, rings the little glass bell to summon forth the maids.

  Frank and Valentine sit together, confronting him through a curtain of brilliant candlelight. Webster sits marooned at the end of the table.

  ‘Where did she take you today?’ says Conrad, peering at Frank and waving a silver fork at his daughter. His breath is pickled. His eyes are bleary with afternoon brandy.

  ‘We went to the zoo,’ says Valentine quickly, before Frank has time to open his mouth.

  ‘Let him talk,’ says Conrad, without taking his eyes from Frank.

  Valentine pulls a face and slumps against the back of her chair. She’s wearing a long black slip with scarlet satin evening gloves. Small chains glitter and swi
ng from her ears.

  ‘We went to the zoo,’ agrees Frank.

  ‘That’s very educational,’ grins Conrad showing his teeth. ‘You can learn a lot from the animals.’

  But when Frank tells him of their brief encounter with Hamilton Talbot the old man suddenly looks forlorn, wagging his head and tapping his knuckles against the table.

  ‘That bugger needs a stick of dynamite screwing into his arse,’ he tells Webster.

  ‘He’s harmless enough if you leave him alone,’ says Webster, tucking his napkin under his chin and smiling down at his plate.

  The maids circle the table in silence, prancing on tiptoe, delivering baby quails in nests of ginger and carrot shavings. Webster picks up his nestling and sucks it bravely into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully on the bones.

  ‘He’s a child molester,’ says Valentine, pushing her plate away in disgust.

  ‘It keeps him out of mischief,’ says Webster, neatly disgorging bone from the corner of his mouth. He arranges the bones on the edge of his plate. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor.

  ‘He’s a nasty piece of work!’ complains Conrad, crunching quail as he tries to throttle a bottle of wine. ‘And he won’t be satisfied until he’s seen you buried.’

  ‘What did you do to him?’ demands Frank.

  ‘Oh, he blames me for everything!’ Webster smiles vacantly and returns to shovelling shreds of bird’s nest from his plate.

  ‘Talbot was my partner in the old days.’ Conrad starts to explain. He thrusts an arm through the candle flames and fills Frank’s glass with wine, splashing his hand and puddling the tablecloth. ‘But we had a difference of opinion. When I retired he made certain threats against my person.’

  ‘He threatened to kill you,’ says Valentine.

  ‘That’s right,’ agrees Conrad. ‘So I felt obliged to send Webster along to have a little talk with him.’

  ‘What happened?’ says Frank, turning again to Webster.