Guillaume smiled. “Now you know what pain is. Not so much fun, hunh?”
“I swear to God that all those drawings were fantasy. I swear it. I swear it. I never even—”
Guillaume said nothing, but his face was filled with contempt. He slowly drew the knife upward, through George’s intestines, and up through his liver. George could hear the soft slicing sound it made, actually hear it, and then the soft bubbling exhalation of a punctured lung. He continued to stare at Guillaume, because he knew what had happened and he didn’t dare to look down.
“I swear,” he said. “I swear to you.”
Guillaume took out the knife and it was then that George’s intestines spilled out of his gaping stomach and dropped down to his knees like a thick, glistening apron.
Guillaume’s companion lowered George to the ground, almost tenderly. Guillaume bent over and wiped his knife-blade on his coat.
“Now you don’t have to worry about Anaïs any more, whether she misbehaves or not. No more problems, hunh?”
George looked up at him. “Anaïs …” he whispered, and tried to raise his hand. But then the dark square darkened even more, and his head dropped against the bricks. The three men walked briskly away leaving him lying amongst the eleven trees and the eleven black lamps.
Inspector Fauve leafed through George’s sketches and then turned away from the drawing-board. He was short, stocky man with short bristly hair. “You think these are true?” he asked Sergeant Piquot.
Sergeant Piquot pulled a lugubrious face. “They’re very graphic, aren’t they? Very true-to-life.”
“I know they’re true-to-life. What I want to know is, are they true? Did the events in these drawings really happen, or is this all just fantasy?”
“He’s written dates and times.”
“Well, yes. But there’s no crime family called the Royers anyplace in Canada, and we can’t trace any Guillaume Royer, or any Anaïs Royer. What’s more, none of the staff here ever saw Mr Rain take anybody up to his room, boy or girl or anything in between.”
Inspector Fauve picked up the sketch that George had first made of her, the day he had seen her in the square. “You know something?” he said. “I never saw a girl as beautiful as this. If I had have done, I would have married her.”
“You’re married already.”
“So what? With a girl like this, you don’t worry about details like that.”
In the Pointe-à-Callière, the following day, the girl sat on a different bench, and this time she wasn’t feeding the birds, although a tortoiseshell cat sat on the other end of the bench, watching her. She was wearing her black raincoat and her eyes were concealed behind large black sunglasses, although the later-afternoon sun was very weak.
The man came across the square and immediately she stood up. He took her in his arms and kissed her. “I’m sorry I’m so late. I couldn’t get away from my meeting, and then Phoebe called up and gave me a huge long shopping-list.”
She kissed him again and brushed back his hair with her hand. “It’s just my luck, isn’t it, that I meet a man I really adore, and he’s already married?”
The man said, “It won’t be like this much longer, I promise you.”
Together they walked to the Carré Louis until they reached the narrow entrance to a block of apartments. The girl opened the door and led the way into a gloomy hall that smelled of floorwax and cooking. They went up four flights of stairs without saying a word. At the top, the girl opened another, white-painted door and entered her light, bright studio apartment. There were wide dormer windows all along one side, with a view of the jumbled rooftops of old Montreal. Under the windows there was a large bed covered with a white bedspread and heaped with cushions. On the walls, big splashy abstract paintings in intense blues and eye-burning reds. On the far side of the room, a drawing-board and a table cluttered with inks and paints and pots of tinted water.
The man and the girl undressed in silence. The girl was smooth-skinned and lithe, and her hair shone in the pale blueish light of the dying day. They made love slowly and romantically, completely lost in the dreamworld of their infatuation, as new lovers do.
Much later, when it was dark, the man sat on the high stool in front of the drawing-board, while the girl lay back on the bed, smoking.
The man casually leafed through some of the drawings. “These are new. I haven’t seen these before.”
“It’s a story I’m working on for Fantaisie magazine. It’s almost finished.”
The man picked up one of the sheets and studied it. “Hey … this guy looks just like me.”
The girl smiled and sat up. “I modeled him on you, that’s why. And the girl I modeled on me. It’s a story about an architect who falls in love with a strange girl and then draws erotic pictures of her. In his drawings he treats her like dirt but she always comes back for more.”
“What’s this, therapy for a guilty conscience? It’s not your fault that my marriage is breaking up.”
“Therapy? Maybe. A little. But in the end the man’s fantasy goes too far, and then he has to be punished, too. That’s only justice.”
The man looked at the next sheet. A man who looked just like him, sitting alone in the Pointe-à-Calliére. Eleven trees, eleven black lamps. Three men approaching and surrounding him. One of them laying his arm around his shoulders. Then, a close-up of a knife penetrating his stomach. His face, shocked and desperate. His intestines wallowing out, on to the bricks.
“Yuck,” said the man.
The girl came over and kissed him. “Here’s the last picture … the grieving wife weeping over his casket. But I don’t know … do you think a man like that deserves any tears?”
“Do you think that I deserve any tears?”
The girl thought for a moment, and then she said, “No. Neither of you do.”
She picked up her eraser and rubbed out the droplets that were coursing down the woman’s cheeks; and at that very instant, in the Cypress Funeral Home in Van Nuys, California, Helen Rain lifted her hand to her eyes and found that they were suddenly and inexplicably dry.
Cold Turkey
“… and, as usual, Tarquin wishes all of you a very merry Christmas,” said Uncle Philip, stroking the pedigree British Blue cat that sat in his lap. It was obvious, however, that Tarquin was wishing for only one thing. His coppery eyes were fixed on the huge, well-bronzed turkey that had just arrived in the middle of the dining-table. His tension was almost palpable. Mandy felt that if the turkey had been capable of twitching just an inch, Tarquin would have launched himself at it, and nothing could have stopped him.
“A very merry Christmas to Tarquin,” Kenneth replied, raising his glass. “Long may he live in the lap of luxury.” Kenneth was floridly drunk; and two of his shirt-buttons were missing but he was not too drunk to be less-than-subtly sarcastic.
Nicholas raised his glass, too, although he had remained supremely, remotely sober. A new partner in a firm of Essex Street solicitors couldn’t afford to be caught for drink-driving, and besides, he never liked to lose control. His wife Libby, however, was beginning to look distinctly disarranged. She had already pulled one of her crackers and she had awkwardly tugged a purple paper hat over her frizzy ginger hair.
“To Tarquin,” said Nicholas, and gave Uncle Philip a waxy, colorless smile. “May all his dreams come true.”
“Cats don’t have dreams, do they?” frowned Libby.
“Oh, yes,” Nicholas assured her, as if he had never met her before. “They have the same kind of dreams as any other creature. Lust, greed, and lost opportunities. Most of all, though, they dream of revenge.”
“I don’t think Tarquin dreams of revenge, do you, sweetie?” said Mandy, reaching over and tickling his chin. “I think Tarquin has nice dreams, about mice, and turkey.”
Caitlin, arty and vague, threw back her tawny mane and jangled her silver bangles. “I don’t think he dreams about mice, either. Cats are too cerebral to dream of mice.”
“Cerebral?”
laughed Kenneth. “They’re not cerebral. They’re parasites. They’re not much better than tapeworms with fur.”
“Kenneth!” Mary scolded him. “We’re just about to eat lunch!”
Mary was Mandy’s mother. Mandy’s father had died in April in a road accident in Newbury, bloody and white in his BMW, with a local doctor holding his hand. His life insurance had scarcely covered the mortgage, and ever since then Mary and Mandy had been living on a smaller and smaller budget. Mandy couldn’t remember when she had last bought herself a new skirt.
She thought that Christmas at Box Hill was dull beyond endurance. For three days every year the Chesterton family sat in the gloomy drawing-room or the musty-smelling conservatory, picking at soft-centered chocolates and cracking stale Brazil nuts, or bickering about politics or who had cheated at Monopoly two Christmases ago and who had ripped the board in half in a rage.
For Mandy, Tarquin was the only consolation. At least he didn’t argue and he didn’t get drunk. He was so haughty. Apart from Uncle Philip, Mandy was the only member of the family by whom Tarquin would deign to be stroked.
This year there were only eleven of them, including Mandy herself. Ned and Alice had won a safari to Kenya in a competition on the side of a jar of Kenco instant coffee. Poor Uncle David’s prostate cancer had spread and he wasn’t expected to see the Spring. Mind you, he was only a curate, so he didn’t really count. Jilly and Michael were having a trial separation after that business with Jilly and the muscular plumber, and so Michael had come on his own, and was tetchy and gloomy and tearful by turns. Kenneth called him “the Surrey Waterworks.”
Grace had arrived late, with far too many bags. She had a loud voice and a big face. Mandy had always assumed that she was a lesbian, but her mother said that she was engaged to be married once, to a Hungarian violinist. One night, drunk, he had thrown himself off Putney Bridge, and that was that.
None of the family liked each other much; and none of them felt any affection for Polesden View: this great elaborate red-brick Edwardian pile, with its ugly mansard roof and its gardens full of gelatinous moss and dripping laurels. Mandy thought it was the most depressing house she had ever visited. She was seventeen now – still petite, with dark short-cropped hair and a pixie-like face. But she no longer knelt on the window-seats, the way she did when she was younger, and peered through the stained-glass windows in the hall, amber and crimson and bottle-green. In those days she used to imagine that she could see ladies with capes and umbrellas wandering sadly along the rainswept garden paths. But there were never any ladies; there were only ghosts, and memories, and echoes, and Uncle Philip was the last of them.
They wouldn’t have come within fifty miles of Box Hill if it hadn’t have been for Uncle Philip. He was the oldest member of the Chesterton family. He was mean, arrogant and so unremittingly condescending to all of them that Mandy wondered that he didn’t grow tired of it. But he had inherited most of the family fortune, which was immense, and none of them were going to displease him until he had gargled his last breath.
Three generations ago, the Chestertons had struck it rich in Rhodesia, and upstairs on the second landing there was still a faded photograph of uncle Philip’s grandfather shaking hands with the diamond magnate Barney Barnato on the terrace of the Natalia Hotel in Durban. In the background, a cheeky black boy was sticking his tongue out.
Apart from Polesden View, Uncle Philip owned a 230-acre farm in Oxfordshire, a seaside house in Southwold, on the east coast, and a three-bedroomed flat in Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea. There were safes stuffed with stocks and bonds, and private deposit boxes crammed with family jewelry.
The family may have hated their Christmases here on Box Hill, but none of them were going to risk their inheritance.
Christmas lunch was even more oppressive than ever. It was one of those dark, airless days when the cloud hangs low over the Surrey Downs and the dining-room windows were all steamed up, which made it seem even darker. Uncle Philip sat at the head of the table with Tarquin in his lap, a gaunt silhouette with thin silver hair and gleaming cheekbones, where his skin was stretched tightly over his skull. He reminded Mandy of a Hallowe’en mask. He stroked Tarquin with his right hand and twisted his turkey into small pieces with the edge of his fork. Tarquin stared at the half-carved turkey carcass and didn’t even blink.
“He looks so hungry, poor thing,” said Mandy.
Uncle Philip gave her a wide, emaciated smile. “He has to learn to wait for what he wants, like everybody else. We mustn’t spoil him, must we?”
“I suppose not,” said Mandy, and stroked Tarquin under his chin until his throat rattled with harsh, catarrhal purring.
Grace said, “Philip … I hear you’ve been ill.”
“A bout of the ’flu, that’s all,” said Philip. “The Grim Reaper isn’t going to get me yet.”
“You should think of selling this house. It’s so big. It’s so damp. It’s so impractical.”
“It’s my home,” said Philip. “More than that, it’s Tarquin’s home. Tarquin would be lost, anywhere else.”
“Even if you don’t move, you should at least think of re-assessing your holdings,” said Kenneth, after a while. “Some of your older portfolios, well …”
Philip didn’t even raise his voice. “When I need advice from a bankrupted stockbroker, Kenneth, I’ll ask for it. I promise.”
“Now come on, Uncle Philip, that’s not fair,” protested Joy. In the days when Kenneth had been handsome, the blond-haired captain of the village cricket team, Joy had been deliciously pretty, in a scrubbed, country kind of way. Now her face had been disassembled by Kenneth’s alcoholism and their children’s delinquency. Her young and golden life had vanished and she didn’t know where to look for it.
Uncle Philip raised his eyes from his plate, where he had been tirelessly pursuing a Brussels sprout. “Fair, Joy? Fair? You all inherited a hundred thousand each when Father died; and what you did with it afterward was up to you. If you decided to spend it on cars and holidays and ridiculous business ventures, that isn’t any concern of mine; and there’s nothing about it that isn’t fair.”
He turned to Mandy and laid his hand on top of hers. “What game shall we play after lunch, Mandy? Scrabble? Or shall we play charades?”
Tarquin had cautiously lifted one paw on to the tablecloth. His eyes were locked on to the turkey as if by laser. Uncle Philip rapped his paw with the flat of his knife, and said, “Tarquin! You can’t always have what you want, just when you want it!”
Mandy smiled at her mother, and then she said, “Let’s play charades. This family seems to be good at it.”
After the turkey came the blue-flaming Christmas pudding, and mince pies with thick Cornish cream. They pulled their crackers and put on paper hats and read out all the jokes. “Father: Your hair needs cutting badly. Son: No it doesn’t … it needs cutting well!”
Mandy was too full to eat any more so she helped to clear away the dishes. In the large, pine-paneled kitchen she found Avril, the cook, scraping heaps of sprouts and roast potatoes into the bin. “I don’t know why he always orders me to cook so much. Nobody ever eats it. They’re all to busy arguing and scoring points off each other. They’re all too busy worrying about their inheritance; that’s it. That’s what Mr Chesterton says, anyway.”
“Doesn’t he ever believe that we come here because we want to?” said Mandy.
The cook shook her head. “He knows you don’t want to. But that’s all part of the fun.”
“You don’t think it’s fun, do you?” asked Mandy.
“Yes, Miss, I do, in a way. My father used to say that there was nothing that made him laugh more than monkeys dancing for nuts. I didn’t really know what he meant until I came here, and saw you lot visiting Mr Chesterton once every Christmas. No more, because you really can’t stand him, can you, the horrible old shriveled-up creature? And no less, because he might decide to cut you out of his will.”
Nicholas came in, carryin
g the remains of the turkey. The cook loosely covered it with a tea-towel and put it into the larder to cool. “Turkey,” she complained. “I can’t stand the stuff. But your Uncle Philip always wants his cold turkey salad on Boxing Day.”
Not surprisingly, Tarquin appeared, on a foraging expedition away from the base camp of Uncle Philip’s lap. He went up to the cook and rubbed her legs with the flat of his head, and mewed.
“No, Tarquin, you’re not having any turkey tonight. He’s a terror, you know, when it comes to any kind of birds. Pheasants, quail, chickens. He hangs around the larder until I chase him away with the sponge-mop.”
Mandy hunkered down and stroked Tarquin’s soft and fluffy fur. “Surely we could give him just one slice of turkey?”
“Sorry,” the cook told her. “Tarquin doesn’t get any left-overs until your Uncle Philip’s had all of his. Your Uncle Philip will eat a gammon until you can see his teethmarks on the bone, I promise you. Doesn’t believe in waste. How do you think he stayed so rich? You’ve seen his car, haven’t you? He bought that in 1962 and he won’t change it for anything. Waste of money, that’s what he calls it. And you should see the meat he expects me to cook with. Neck-end and scrag-end and skirt.
“He’s mean and he’s grumpy and if I were you I wouldn’t come for Christmas ever again. You’re just making fools of yourselves.”
Mandy gave Tarquin one last tickle and then she stood up. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we shouldn’t come here, ever again.”
The next morning, Mandy woke up early and went down to the kitchen in her slippers to make herself a cup of coffee. The gloom of the previous day had lifted, and the sun was shining weakly through the trees. In the distance, through a gilded mist, she could see the Surrey Weald and the spire of Dorking church. While she waited for the kettle to boil she switched on the old transistor radio on the window-sill.
“Boxing Day promises to be bright and clear over most of the area, although there is a threat of wintry showers across Essex and Kent …”
When she was young, Mandy had always imagined that people held boxing matches on Boxing Day; and she still didn’t quite believe her mother’s laborious explanation that it was a day when the rich used to give boxes of Christmas leftovers to the poor – any more than she could quite forget her father’s joke that the box trees which had given Box Hill its name had real ready-made wooden boxes growing on them, instead of fruit.
Feelings of Fear Page 14
