And, stupidly, opened out his arms, as if to remind her what a dance was, as if without her he’d simply manage on his own in dumb show.
She looked him up and down. Judging him, blatantly judging him. Not a smile upon her face. He waited for the refusal.
“Very well,” she said then, though without any enthusiasm.
He offered her his hand, and she took it by the fingertips, and rose to her feet. She was an inch or two taller than he was. He smelled her perfume, and didn’t like it.
He put one hand on her waist, the other was left gently brushing against her glove. They danced. She stared at his face, still quite incuriously, but it was enough to make him blush.
“You dance well,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I don’t enjoy dancing.”
“Then let us, by all means, stop.”
He led her back to her chair. He nodded at her stiffly, and prepared to leave. But she gestured towards the chair beside her, and he found himself bending down to sit in it.
“Are you enjoying the ball?” he asked her.
“I don’t enjoy talking either.”
“I see.” And they sat in silence for a few minutes. At one point he felt he should get up and walk away, and he shuffled in his chair to do so - and at that she turned to look at him, and managed a smile, and for that alone he decided to stay a little while longer.
“Can I at least get you a drink?”
She agreed. So he went to fetch her a glass of fizz. Across the room he watched as another man approached and asked her to dance, and he suddenly felt a stab of jealousy that astonished him. She waved the man away, in irritation, and Julian pretended it was for his sake.
He brought her back the fizz.
“There you are,” he said.
She sipped at it. He sipped at his the same way.
“If you don’t like dancing,” he said to her, “and you don’t like-talking, why do you come?” He already knew the answer, of course, it was the same reason he came, and she didn’t bother dignifying the question with a reply. He laughed, and hated how girlish it sounded.
At length she said, “Thank you for coming,” as if this were her ball, as if he were her guest, and he realized he was being dismissed. He got to his feet.
“Do you have a card?” she asked.
Julian did. She took it, put it away without reading it. And Julian waited beside her for any further farewell, and when nothing came, he nodded at her once more, and left her.
~ * ~
The very next day Julian received a telephone call from a Mr Davison, who invited him to have dinner with his daughter at their house that evening. Julian accepted. And because the girl had never bothered to give him her name, it took him a fair while to work out who this Davison fellow might be.
Julian wondered whether the evening would be formal, and so he overdressed, just for safety’s sake. He took some flowers. He rang the bell, and some hatchet-faced old woman opened the front door. She showed him in. She told him that Mr Davison had been called away on business, and would be unable to dine with him that evening. Mistress Karen would receive him in the drawing room. She disappeared with his flowers, and Julian never saw them again, and had no evidence indeed that Mistress Karen would ever see them either.
At the top of the staircase Julian saw there were two portraits. One was of a giantess, a bejewelled matriarch sneering down at him, and Julian could recognize in her features the girl he had danced with the night before, and he was terrified of her, and he fervently hoped that Karen would never grow up to be like her mother. The other portrait, much smaller, was of a boy in army uniform.
Karen was waiting for him. She was wearing the same dress she had worn the previous night. “I’m so glad you could come,” she intoned.
“I’m glad you invited me.”
“Let us eat.”
So they went into the dining room, and sat either end of a long table. Hatchet-face served them soup. “Thank you, Nanny,” Karen said. Julian tasted the soup. The soup was good.
“It’s a very grand house,” said Julian.
“Please, there’s no need to make conversation.”
“All right.”
The soup bowls were cleared away. Chicken was served. And, after that, a trifle.
“I like trifle,” said Karen, and Julian didn’t know whether he was supposed to respond to that, and so he smiled at her, and she smiled back, and that all seemed to work well enough.
Afterwards Julian asked whether he could smoke. Karen said he might. He offered Karen a cigarette, and she hesitated, and then said she would like that. So Julian got up, and went around the table, and lit one for her. Julian tried very hard to smoke in the correct way, but it still kept coming out girlishly. But Karen didn’t seem to mind; indeed, she positively imitated him, she puffed smoke from the corner of her mouth and made it all look very pretty.
And even now they didn’t talk, and Julian realized he didn’t mind. There was no awkwardness to it. It was companionable. It was a shared understanding.
~ * ~
Julian was invited to three more dinners. After the fourth, Mr Davison called Mr Morris, and told him that a proposal of marriage from Julian to his daughter would not be unacceptable. Mr Morris was very pleased, and Mrs Morris took Julian to her bedroom and had him go through her jewellery box to pick out a ring he could give his fiancée, and Julian marvelled, he had never seen such beautiful things.
Julian didn’t meet Mr Davison until the wedding day, whereupon the man clapped him on the back as if they were old friends, and told him he was proud to call him his son. Mr Morris clapped Julian on the back too; even Julian’s brothers were at it. And Julian marvelled at how he had been transformed into a man by dint of a simple service and a signed certificate. Neither of his brothers had married yet, he had beaten them to the punch, and was there jealousy in that back clapping? They called Julian a lucky dog, said that his bride was quite the catch. And so, Julian felt, she was; on her day of glory Karen did nothing but beam with smiles, and there was no trace of her customary truculence. She was charming, even witty, and Julian wondered why she had chosen to hide these qualities from him - had she recognized that they would have made him scared of her? Had she been shy and hard just to win his heart? Julian thought this might be so, and in that belief discovered that he did love her, he loved her after all - and maybe, in spite of everything, the marriage might just work out.
For a wedding present the families had bought them a house in Chelsea. It was small, but perfectly situated, and they could always upgrade when they had children. As an extra present, Mr Davison had bought his daughter a doll - a bit of a monstrosity, really, about the size of a fat infant, with blonde curly hair and thick red lips, and wearing its own imitation wedding dress. Karen seemed pleased with it. Julian thought litttle about it at the time.
They honeymooned in Venice for two weeks, in a comfortable hotel near the Rialto.
Karen didn’t show much interest in Venice. No, that wasn’t true; she said she was fascinated by Venice. But she preferred to read about it in her guidebook. Outside there was noise, and people, and stink; she could better experience the city indoors. Julian offered to stay with her, but she told him he was free to do as he liked. So in the daytime he’d leave her, and he’d go and visit St Mark’s Square, climb the basilica, take a gondola ride. In the evening he’d return, and over dinner he’d try to tell her all about it. She’d frown, and say there was no need to explain, she’d already read it all in her Baedeker. Then they would eat in silence.
On the first night he’d been tired from travel. On the second, from sightseeing. On the third night Karen told her husband that there were certain manly duties he was expected to perform. Her father was wanting a grandson; for her part, she wanted lots of daughters. Julian said he would do his very best, and drank half a bottle of claret to give him courage. She stripped off, and he found her body in
teresting, and even attractive, but not in the least arousing. He stripped off too.
“Oh!” she said. “But you have hardly any hair! I’ve got more hair than you!” And it was true, there was a faint buzz of fur over her skin, and over his next to nothing - just the odd clump where Nature had started work, rethought the matter, given up. Karen laughed, but it was not unkind. She ran her fingers over his body. “It’s so smooth, how did you get it so smooth?
“Wait a moment,” she then said, and hurried to the bathroom. She was excited. Julian had never seen his wife excited. She returned with a razor. “Let’s make you perfect,” she said.
She soaped him down, and shaved his body bald. She only cut him twice, and that wasn’t her fault, that was because he’d moved. She left him only the hairs on his head. And even there, she plucked the eyebrows, and trimmed his fine wavy hair into a neat bob.
“There,” she said, and looked over her handiwork proudly, and ran her hands all over him, and this time there was nothing that got in their way.
And at that he tried to kiss her, and she laughed again, and pushed him away.
“No, no,” she said. “Your duties can wait until we’re in England. We’re on holiday.”
So he started going out at night as well, with her blessing. He saw how romantic Venice could be by moonlight. He didn’t know Italian well, and so could barely understand what the ragazzi said to him, but it didn’t matter, they were very accommodating. And by the time he returned to his wife’s side she was always asleep.
~ * ~
The house in Chelsea had been done up for them, ready for their return. He asked her whether she’d like him to carry her over the threshold. She looked surprised at that, and said he could try. She lay back in his arms, and he was expecting her to be quite heavy, but it went all right really, and he got her through the doorway without doing anything to disgrace himself.
As far as he’d been aware, Karen had never been to the house before. But she knew exactly where to go, walking straight to the study, and to the wooden desk inside, and to the third drawer down. “I have a present for you,” she said, and from the drawer she took a gun.
“It was my brother’s,” she said.
“Oh. Really?”
“It may not have been his. But it’s what they gave us anyway.”
She handed it to Julian. He weighed it in his hands. Like his wife, it was lighter than he’d expected.
“You’re the man of the house now,” Karen said.
There was no Nanny to fetch them dinner. Julian said he didn’t mind cooking. He made them some eggs. He liked eggs.
After they’d eaten, and Julian had rinsed the plates and left them to dry, Karen said that they should inspect the bedroom. And Julian agreed. They’d inspected the rest of the house; that room, quite deliberately, both had left as yet unexplored.
The first impression that Julian got as he pushed open the door was pink, that everything was pink; the bedroom was unapologetically feminine. That blazed out from the soft pink carpet and the wallpaper of pink roses on a pink background. And there was a perfume to it too, the perfume of Karen herself, and he still didn’t much care for it.
That was before he saw the bed.
He was startled, and gasped, and then laughed at himself for gasping. The bed was covered with dolls. There were at least a dozen of them, all pale plastic skin and curls and lips that were ruby red, and some were wearing pretty little hats, and some carrying pretty little nosegays, all of them in pretty dresses. In the centre of them, in pride of place, was the doll Karen’s father had given her as a wedding present - resplendent in her wedding dress, still fat, her facial features smoothed away beneath that fat, sitting amongst the others like a queen. And all of them were smiling. And all of them were looking at him, expectantly, as if they’d been waiting to see who it was they’d heard climb the stairs, as if they’d been waiting for him all this time.
Julian said, “Well! Well. Well, we won’t be able to get much sleep with that lot crowding about us!” He chuckled. “I mean, I won’t know which is which! Which one is just a doll, and which one my pretty wife!” He chuckled. “Well.”
Karen said, “Gifts from my father. I’ve had some since I was a little girl. Some of them have been hanging about for years.”
Julian nodded.
Karen said, “But I’m yours now.”
Julian nodded again. He wondered whether he should put his arms around her. He didn’t quite like to, not with all the dolls staring.
“I love you,” said Karen. “Or rather, I’m trying. I need you to know, I’m trying very hard.” And for a moment Julian thought she was going to cry, but then he saw her blink back the tears, her face was hard again. “But I can’t love you fully, not whilst I’m loving them. You have to get rid of them for me.”
“Well, yes,” said Julian. “I mean, if you’re sure that’s what you want?”
Karen nodded grimly. “It’s time. And long overdue.”
~ * ~
She put on her woollen coat then, she said it would be cold out there in the dark. And she bundled up the dolls too, each and every one of them, and began putting them into Julian’s arms. “There are too many,” he said, “I’ll drop them.” But Karen didn’t stop, and soon there were arms and legs poking into his chest, he felt the hair of his wife’s daughters scratching under his chin. Karen carried just one doll herself, her new doll. She also carried the gun.
It had been a warm summer’s evening, not yet quite dark. When they stepped outside it was like pitch, only the moonlight providing some small relief, and that grudging. The wind bit. And Chelsea, the city bustle, the pavements, the pedestrians, the traffic - Chelsea had gone, and all that was left was the house. Just the house, and the woods ahead of them.
Julian wanted to run then, but there was nowhere to run to. He tried to drop the dolls. But the dolls refused to let go, they clung on to him, he could feel their little plastic fingers tightening around his coat, his shirt buttons, his skin, his own skin.
“Follow me,” said Karen.
The branches stuck out at weird angles, impossible angles, Julian couldn’t see any way to climb through them. But Karen knew where to tread and where to duck, and she didn’t hesitate, she moved at speed - and Julian followed her every step. He struggled to catch up, he lost sight of her once or twice and thought he was lost for good, but the dolls, the dolls showed him the way.
The clearing was a perfect circle, and the moon shone down upon it like a spotlight on a stage.
“Put them down,” said Karen.
He did so.
She arranged the dolls on the browning grass, set them in one long neat line. Julian tried to help, he put the new doll in her wedding dress beside them, but Karen rescued her. “It’s not her time yet,” she said. “But she needs to see what will one day happen to her.”
“And what is going to happen?”
Her reply came as if the daughters themselves had asked. Her voice rang loud, with a confidence Julian had never heard from her before. “Chloe. Barbara. Mary-Sue. Mary-Jo. Suki. Delilah. Wendy. Prue. Annabelle. Mary-Ann. Natasha. Jill. You have been sentenced to death.”
“But why?” said Julian. He wanted to grab her, shake her by the shoulders. He wanted to. She was his wife, that’s what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t even touch her. He couldn’t even go near. “Why? What have they done?”
“Love,” said Karen. She turned to him. “Oh, yes, they know what they’ve done.”
She saluted them. “And you,” she said to Julian, “you must salute them too. No. Not like that. That’s not a salute. Hand steady. Like me. Yes. Yes.”
She gave him the gun. The dolls all had their backs to him, at least he didn’t have to see their faces.
He thought of his father. He thought of his brothers. Then, he didn’t think of anything.
He fired into the crowd. He’d never fired a gun before, but it was easy, there wa
s nothing to it. He ran out of bullets, so Karen reloaded the gun. He fired into the crowd again. He thought there might be screams. There were no screams. He thought there might be blood ... and the brown of the grass seemed fresher and wetter and to pool out lazily towards him.
And Karen reloaded the gun. And he fired into the crowd, just once more, please, God, just one last time. Let them be still. Let them stop twitching. The twitching stopped.
“It’s over,” said Karen.
“Yes,” he said. He tried to hand her back the gun, but she wouldn’t take it - it’s yours now, you’re the man of the house. “Yes,” he said again.
He began to cry. He didn’t make a sound.
“Don’t,” said Karen. “If you cry, the deaths won’t be clean.”
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 31
