Mme Leduc took hold of her hand. “Mr Jeffries here wanted to take you away with him, Catherine. I had to explain why he couldn’t.”
“And of course I believed every word,” said Vincent. “That must have been some picnic, out at Lac du Sang. Don’t tell me you didn’t run short of sandwiches – you know, in twenty-four years?”
Mme Leduc said, “Why don’t you take Vincent to your room, Catherine? I expect that he’d like to talk to you alone.”
Without a word, Catherine took his hand and led him along the corridor. She opened the door of her room and let him in. “I just came to talk,” he told her.
“You mean you don’t like me any more?”
“I came to ask you to leave this place. I came to persuade you to do the best for your baby.”
Catherine took a few steps away from him, and then pirouetted, and lifted her nightgown over her head, so that she was standing in front of him completely naked. “Now tell me that you don’t like me any more.”
“Catherine, you can’t go on doing this. I’ve found an apartment for you. It’s pretty small but the landlady can take good care of you, and there’s a clinic only four blocks away.”
Catherine stood up close to him, smiling her dreamy smile. Her nipples were knurled and stiff, and she pressed the hard globe of her stomach up against his reluctantly rising erection. “There,” she said, “you do still like me, after all.”
“I don’t just like you, Catherine.”
“Then prove it,” she challenged him. She tugged down his zipper and pried his cock out of his shorts. He said, “No, not that,” but she gave him two or three irresistible rubs with her hand and he didn’t say anything else after that.
He watched her as she knelt in front of him, her eyes closed, her pouting lips encircling his reddened erection. Her cheek bulged as she took him in deeper, and her tongue swam around his glans like a warm seal. He ran his hands through her hair and fondled her ears and he felt so weak, but so transported with pleasure, that he knew he had to have her for ever, for himself. He would raise her and he would raise her baby, both. He would guard her and protect her and make love to her all night.
His sperm flew into her hair and crowned her with pearls. She looked up and smiled at him, and outside the house the thunder rumbled and rattled the windows.
“Would you like to live with me?” he asked her.
She squeezed his softening penis with her hand. “Of course … if only it were possible.”
“Then let me take you away from here. Tomorrow night, I’ll come for you, yes?”
She held out her hand and he helped her on to her feet. “If only it were possible,” she repeated, and kissed him, very frankly, on the lips.
“You’re nuts,” said Baubay. “You know what the penalty is for kidnap?”
“She wants me,” Vincent told him. “She said she’d come to live with me, if I got her out of there.”
“Those girls say anything you want to hear. It’s what you pay them for.”
“Catherine’s different.”
“The only thing different about Catherine is that she’s got a bun in the oven.”
“François, if you don’t help me with this then I’ll do it on my own.”
“I still say you’re nuts.”
They drew up outside the house. Vincent had persuaded Baubay to bring him up here for another evening with Mme Leduc and her girls, with the promise that he would pay, but as they approached St Michel-des-Monts he had explained his plan to take Catherine away with him.
“Supposing Violette was telling you the truth about Lac du Sang?”
“Oh, come on, François. Get real. A bordello full of immortal schoolgirls?”
“I guess, when you say it like that.”
They knocked at the door and Mme Leduc answered, dressed in scarlet silk. “Well, well,” she said, as she took them inside. “Like a bee to the honeypot, Vincent? Can’t keep away?”
Vincent gave a self-deprecating shrug.
The girls were all in the living-room, and Minette was playing Brahms on the piano. They stood up when Baubay and Vincent came in, and twittered around them, giving them little kisses of welcome and touching their hair. Only Catherine remained seated, and Vincent deliberately didn’t catch her eye.
“Who takes your fancy tonight, François?” asked Mme Leduc.
Baubay looked around the room. He glanced at Vincent, and then he said, “You, Violette. It’s you that I want tonight.”
Later, after champagne, Baubay and Violette climbed the stairs together while the girls clapped and giggled and whistled their encouragement. As soon as they had gone, Vincent went over to Catherine and took hold of her hand. “Our turn?” he suggested.
He held her hand quite tightly as they left the living-room and crossed the hallway. Then – as they passed the front door – he suddenly pulled her and said, “This is it! Come on, Catherine, this is our chance!”
Catherine tried to wrench herself away from him. “No!” she cried out. “What are you doing?” But Vincent twisted open the doorhandle, flung the door wide open, and dragged Catherine out on to the porch.
“No!” she screamed. “No, Vincent, I can’t!”
She deliberately sank to her knees, but Vincent bent down, and bodily picked her up. “No!” she shrieked at him. “I can’t! I can’t! No, Vincent, you’ll kill me!”
She pulled his hair and dug her fingernails into his face, but he found the pain almost exciting. He carried along the pathway and out into the street, where his car was parked. He opened the driver’s door and managed to force her inside, pushing her across to the passenger seat. Then he climbed in, started the engine, and sped away from the house with a high-pitched squealing of tires.
“Go back!” she shouted, trying to snatch the steering-wheel. “You have to go back!”
“Listen!” he shouted back at her. “Whatever Violette told you, it’s garbage! She said it to scare you, so that you wouldn’t leave! Now stop worrying about her and start thinking about yourself, and your baby.”
“Go back!” Catherine howled. “Oh God, you can’t do this to me! Oh God please go back! Oh God, Vincent, please take me back!”
“Will you shut up?” Vincent told her. “Shut up and put on your seatbelt. Even if you don’t feel protective toward your baby, I do.”
“Take me back! Take me back! I can’t go with you, Vincent! I can’t!”
She punched him again and tried to tear at his ear, and the car swerved wildly across the highway. But in the end he managed to catch hold of both of her wrists in his right hand, and restrain her. She stopped trying to hit him, and she curled herself up in her seat, and softly sobbed.
She was asleep by the time they reached Montreal. He parked outside the apartment building and switched off the engine. He looked across at her and brushed the hair from her face. She was so beautiful that he could hardly believe she was real. He lifted her out of the passenger seat and carried her in through the entrance hall. It was stark and brightly lit, but it was late now and there was nobody else around. He went up in the elevator and by the time they reached the sixth floor she was beginning to feel heavy.
He opened the door and carried her into the apartment. It wasn’t much – a plain, furnished place with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a small kitchenette. By day it had a narrow view of the Prairies River, partly blocked out by another apartment building. He took her through to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. Over the white vinyl headboard hung an almost laughably incompetent painting of a forest in the fall.
He sat beside her and took hold of her hand. “Catherine?” he coaxed her. “Come on, Catherine. We’re here now, sweetheart. We’ve escaped.”
Her eyes flickered open. She stared at him, first in bewilderment, and then in horror. She sat up and looked around her. “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God, this can’t be true.”
“Come on, it’s not that bad,” said Vincent. “A few flowers, a couple of loose covers.”
But Catherine ignored him. She climbed off the bed and went directly to the mirror over the dressing-table. “Oh God,” she kept repeating.
Vincent stood beside her as she peered frantically at her face. “Catherine, nothing’s going to happen to you. That story that Violette tells … it’s only a way of frightening you.”
“But I was there. I was there at Lac du Sang in 1924.”
“You couldn’t have been. It simply isn’t possible. I don’t know what Violette did. Maybe she brainwashed you or something. But no day ever lasted longer than twenty-four hours and nobody ever stayed young forever.”
“You have to take me back. I’m pleading with you, Vincent. I’m pleading on my child’s life.”
“You want to go back? Back to what? Back to being a whore? Back to sucking men’s cocks and opening your legs to anybody who can pay the price?”
“Is that your problem? Is that why you took me away? Because you wanted me to open my legs but you didn’t want to pay for it?”
“For God’s sake, Catherine, I took you away because I love you.”
For the first time she took her eyes away from her reflection in the mirror. There was an expression on her face that he had never seen on any girl’s face before. It laid him open right to the bone, as if she had cut him with a ten-inch butcher’s knife.
It was after eleven o’clock. He asked her if she wanted anything to eat or drink but she said no. He switched on the television in the living-room but there was nothing on but lacrosse and an old Errol Flynn movie. Catherine stayed in the bedroom, staring at the wall. In the end he came in and sat next to her again. “Listen,” he said. “Maybe I made a mistake.”
She glanced up at him, and she looked very pale and very tired.
“If you want to go back, I’ll take you back. I just thought I was doing the right thing, that’s all.
“Why don’t you get some sleep and we’ll make an early start in the morning.”
She said nothing, but closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for being in love with you. I’m sorry for being human. What else was I supposed to do?”
He watched television until just after midnight, and then he undressed and climbed into bed with her. She was breathing softly against the pillow. He reached out and touched her arm, and then her breast. Then he ran his hand over the swelling of her stomach. He could feel the baby stir and kick, like somebody kneading dough.
He slept uneasily until four minutes past three. He kept having fragmentary dreams about people laughing and talking in other rooms. He woke with a strong hard-on and he reached out for Catherine again. She was still quietly breathing. He caressed her breasts through her nightgown and then he drew her legs apart and climbed on top of her. Maybe it was wrong of him to fuck her while she was asleep, but he needed her so urgently. She felt dry, in the darkness, but he spat on his fingers to moisten the end of his cock. Then he pushed himself into her, and started a deep, plunging rhythm.
She woke up. He sensed her wake up. But he was too close to his climax to stop, and he kept on thrusting himself into her, harder and harder. He heard her panting, quick and harsh, and he thought, great, she’s getting into it too. He said, “Come on, baby, you’re wonderful. Come on, sweetheart, you’re fantastic.”
It was then that she screamed. It was a piercing, gargling scream, and he could feel spit fly all over his face. He jerked upright, his skin freezing in fright, and then she screamed again. He scrabbled to find the bedside lamp, and managed to switch it on, but then it dropped on to the floor, so that what he saw was illuminated by an angled, upward light that made it look even more terrifying than it was.
He was kneeling between the legs of a shriveled old woman. Her sparse white hair was coming out in clumps. Her eyes were sunk into their sockets and her lips were drawn tightly back over orange, toothless gums. All that identified her as Catherine was her huge, swollen belly.
“Oh Jesus,” Vincent whispered. “Oh Jesus, tell me this is a nightmare.”
The old woman tried to scream again, but all she managed this time was a thick gargle. She lifted one of her bony arms, and clawed feebly at Vincent’s shoulder, but Vincent pushed her away. She was collapsing in front of his eyes. Her face was tightening over her cheekbones and her breasts were shriveling. Her collarbone broke through her skin, and her chin dropped on to her chest.
“Catherine!” Vincent quivered. “Catherine!”
He lifted her head, but it dropped sideways on to the pillow and it was obvious that she was dead. Vincent climbed off the bed, wiping his hands on the sheet. He was trembling so much that he had to hold on to the wall for support.
It was then that he thought: the baby – what about the baby? Even if Catherine’s dead, maybe I can save the baby!
He thought for one moment of calling for an ambulance – but how the hell was he going to explain an old, dead woman in his bed – an old, dead pregnant woman? He approached Catherine cautiously, and laid his hand on her stomach, and, yes, he could still feel the baby kicking inside her. But how long could it survive if he didn’t get it out?
He went to the kitchen, opened the drawer, and took out a carving-knife. He returned to the bedroom and stood beside Catherine gray-faced. He nearly decided to do nothing, to let the baby die, but then he saw Catherine’s stomach shift again, and he knew that he had to give it a chance.
He inserted the point of the knife into her wrinkled skin, just above her pubic bone. Then, slowly, he pushed it in through the muscle, until he felt something more yielding. He was terrified of cutting the baby as well, but he kept on slicing her stomach open, and she was so decayed and dry and papery that it was more like cutting open a rotten old hessian sack. At last he had her stomach wide open, and he drew aside the two flaps of flesh to reveal her womb.
Shaking and dripping with sweat, he cut the baby out of her. One foot emerged, and then a hand. Miraculously, it was still alive. It was purple and slithery and it smelled strongly of amniotic fluid. He turned it over so that he could cut the umbilical cord, and then he lifted it up in both hands. It was so tiny, so frail. A baby girl. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she clasped and unclasped its fingers. She snuffled, and then she let out two or three pathetic little cries.
Vincent was overwhelmed. He started to sob out loud. Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. He couldn’t understand what had happened to Catherine, but he knew that he had saved the baby’s life. He carried her through to the living-room, laid her on the couch, and then went to the bathroom to find some towels.
He sped to St Michel-des-Monts through driving, sunlit rain. At times his speedometer needle wavered over 110kph. He managed to reach the house just after eleven o’clock. He ran to the front porch, vaulted up the steps and banged furiously on the knocker.
Mme Leduc appeared, with Baubay close behind her. “You came back,” she said. “I’m amazed that you had the nerve.”
“Well … I don’t think I had any choice.”
“Catherine?”
He lowered his head. “You were telling me the truth. Catherine’s gone. But I managed to save her child. I wanted to bring her back here before it was too late.”
He went back to the car, and opened the door. Very hesitantly, like somebody who has never felt rain on their skin before, or had sunlight shining in their eyes, a young girl climbed out, barefoot, but wrapped up in green bath towels. Vincent took her hand and led her toward the house. Violette and Baubay watched in silence as she came up the steps. She looked at least seventeen or eighteen years old, with long brunette hair, like Catherine’s, and she was almost as pretty, although her features were a little sharper.
“There,” said Vincent, as he led her into the house. “You’ll be safe here.”
There were tears in Mme Leduc’s eyes. “I wish that I had never wished,” she told Vincent.
“Well,” Vincent told her. “Sometimes we all think that.”
They drove
away from the house just as the rain was beginning to clear. Baubay said, “Where are you going? Montreal’s back that way.”
Vincent handed him a folded route map. “Lac du Sang,” he said. “There’s one more thing I have to do.”
In the woods, he dug a shallow grave and buried Catherine’s dessicated body. He filled her face with earth and leaves. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think of to say. Afterward he stood by the edge of the water under a clear blue sky.
“They came here and they wished,” he told Baubay. “God, they couldn’t have known what they were wishing for, could they?”
“All I wish for is a new Mercedes,” said Baubay.
“I just wish that I could have woken up every night and found Catherine lying next to me.”
“You can go back to Violette’s and try out her daughter.”
“Forget it. I feel like her father. I brought her into the world, didn’t I? I watched her grow up.”
“In three hours? That’s not fatherhood.”
“All the same, it was incredible. She just grew bigger and bigger, like one of those speeded-up movies.”
“Sure she did.”
“She did, I swear it.”
“Sure.”
They climbed back into the car and drove away, leaving the waters of Lac du Sang as still as ever.
Six weeks later, Baubay phoned to tell him that he had been promoted and given a metallic gold 500SL as a company car. After that, Vincent awoke two or three times every night, and fearfully reached out to make sure that there was nobody lying on the other side of the bed.
The Ballyhooly Boy
Rain came dredging down the street in misty gray curtains as we drew up outside the narrow terraced house in the middle of Ballyhooly. All of the houses in the row were painted different colors: sunflower yellows, crimsons, pinks and greens. In sullen contrast, Number 15 was painted as brown as peat.
Mr Fearon switched off the engine of his eight-year-old Rover and peered at the house through his circular James Joyce glasses. “I’ll admit it doesn’t look much. But prices have been very buoyant lately. You could get eighty-five thousand for it easy, if you put it on the market today.”
Feelings of Fear Page 18
