by Peter James
To her relief he gave a single nod to the waiter and the ordeal was over.
‘Chambertin ’71,’ said David, proudly, as if he had made it himself.
‘Ah,’ she said, trying to look enthusiastic, trying to pretend for his sake that she really could appreciate a good burgundy, that she could tell a burgundy from a claret, which she never could and doubted she ever would. ‘Thank you, that’s a treat.’
‘You sound very formal tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s like taking a maiden aunt out to tea.’
‘I’m sorry, I’ll try and be less formal.’ She stared at his hands which had become so coarse, his stubby fingers red, almost raw, with the black grime under the nails, and at the battered tweed suit and the frayed woollen shirt; was it part of his new image, or did he genuinely not care any more? She stared at his face, tanned, relaxed, even turned a little leathery from the outdoor life, his hair ragged, almost bushy now, like the thick tangle of his beard. He raised his glass and pointed it at her.
‘Cheers.’
She raised hers and the glasses clinked.
‘Know why people touch glasses?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘You can see wine, smell it, touch it, taste it. But you can’t hear it! So we touch glasses; it completes the five senses.’
‘Ever the advertising man. It’s still in your blood.’ She smiled, and pulled out a cigarette. ‘What about telepathy? Can you communicate with wine?’
‘I communicate with it all the time. I even talk to my vines.’
‘Do they talk back?’
‘They’re not great conversationalists. I thought you’d given up smoking.’
‘I have.’
‘That’s what London does for you. Eats you up; screws you up. You do things you’ve given up, and you don’t do the things you’ve promised yourself.’
‘I do.’
He nodded, with a reluctant grin. ‘Yes. Perhaps you do.’
Alex smiled and raised her eyebrows.
‘You’re looking very pretty.’
She blushed. She had never been very good at taking compliments. ‘Thank you,’ she said, stiffly.
‘There you go. The maiden aunt again.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
He shrugged and sniffed his wine. ‘Have you heard from Fabian?’
‘Not for a few days. He’ll be back tomorrow evening.’
‘When does he go back to Cambridge?’
‘At the weekend.’ Alex saw her husband’s face drop. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I was hoping he might come down this weekend. We’re doing some planting.’
Alex brushed some long strands of blonde hair off her face. David noticed the petulance in the motion. Fabian was a touchy subject. ‘You know, darling,’ he said, ‘it’s silly, this separation – surely we could …?’
He felt the wall, even before she replied.
Alex fumbled with her cigarette, rolled it around, then tapped it several times in the ashtray.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about things, David.’ The cigarette fell on to the pink tablecloth and she picked it up again, quickly, and rubbed the mark on the cloth with her finger. ‘I want a divorce.’
David swirled the wine in his glass, carelessly this time, so that some spilled over and ran down his hand. ‘Do you have somebody?’
‘No.’
She swept away a rew more hairs, too quickly, he thought, trying to read the truth in the blush of her face and the blue eyes that were staring down at the tablecloth. God, she looked lovely. The confidence of her success and the toughness that had come with it had changed her, but nicely; changed her into a fine midway stage between prettiness and handsomeness.
‘Would it bother you if I stayed up here tonight?’
She shook her head. ‘No, David, I don’t want you to stay up here.’
‘It is my house.’
‘Our house.’
He drank some wine, then sniffed it again, testily, disappointed. ‘I’ll go down to Sussex.’
He dropped her off in the King’s Road, at the top of the cul-de-sac. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.
She nodded, and bit her lip, fighting back the sadness. ‘That would be nice.’
She slammed the door of the grimy Land Rover and turned away, hurrying down the terrace, past the smart doors of the Regency town-houses, squeezing her eyes against the rain and her tears. She threw her coat on to the stand, then walked into the drawing room and paced around, restlessly. She looked at her watch. Eleven-thirty. She felt too churned up to sleep.
She opened the door under the stairs, and walked down the steep narrow staircase into the basement, through the light trap and into the familiar smells of developer and fixer of her darkroom. She closed the door behind her with a click that sounded like a pistol shot. She felt acutely aware, suddenly, of the silence in the room and wondered, for a moment, was noise carried in light? Did you cut out noise when you cut out light? She listened to her own sounds, her breathing, the rustle of her blouse, and for an instant she felt like an intruder in her own room.
She snapped on the light-box, unpegged a roll of negatives from the drying line and laid it on the box. She looked closely at one of the frames; a fat black tubular object with two heads stared back.
Alex cut the roll into four strips, and laid them in the contact printer. She switched on the red safety light, took a sheet of bromide paper out of the box and fed it into the printer. ‘One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three.’ She counted to fifteen, then snapped the light off and dropped the sheet into the shallow plastic developer tray. She up-ended the tray and rocked it sharply, sending the sheet down to the far end with a loud clack.
She watched the image on one frame, white on white, then a smudge of silvery grey appeared. Next came the perforated holes, then the outlines of the two ovals, one lower than the other. What was it? Something long, suspended between the ovals began to take shape, and then she realized. ‘Bastard!’ she said, grinning. Some of the hairs began to appear, then the phallus itself, fat, limp, the skin at the head saggy, the small slit in the front, like an ugly grinning reptile. What did it belong to, she wondered. An elephant? It wasn’t human. Couldn’t have been.
She shook her head, smiling, pulled the sheet out of the developer and dropped it into the fixing bath. She rocked the bath gently for a few seconds, then looked at her watch and waited another forty seconds. She pulled the sheet out and dropped it in the wash, checking her watch again. She tidied up, then looked at her watch again, impatiently. When the five minutes were up, she lifted the sheet out and pegged it on the drying line. Thirty-six phalluses stared at her, all the same, taken each time from a slightly different angle.
She grinned again as she went upstairs, feeling better, as if she had scored a secret personal triumph over David.
She woke with a start in the large bed and wondered if she’d overslept. She reached over and picked up her watch. Six-fifteen. Relieved, she sank back on to the pillow and closed her eyes. In the distance she heard a lorry thunder down the King’s Road. Then she heard the click of a door; it sounded like her front door. She listened intently, but realized she must have imagined it, and closed her eyes. Another hour of sleep. She needed it. Her lungs felt sore and there was a sharp throbbing pain in her head. She always smoked too much and drank too much when she saw David. Separating wasn’t easy; sometimes it seemed harder than staying together.
A shadow passed in front of her eyes in the dark room and she felt cold suddenly. She opened her eyes and saw Fabian standing over her bed, could see him clearly in spite of the dark.
‘Darling!’ she said.
‘Hi, Mum.’
She stared up at him; he looked worried, agitated.
‘I wasn’t expecting you back until tonight, darling.’
‘I’ll get some rest now, I’m very tired.’
‘You must have driven through the night.’
Fabian smile
d. ‘Go back to sleep, Mum.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, and closed her eyes, waiting for the click of her door closing. But she heard no click. ‘Fabian, darling, close the door,’ she called out. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the door and saw it was closed. She smiled, confused, and lapsed back into a doze.
It seemed only seconds later she heard the shrill cry of an insect in trouble, urgent, insistent, growing louder. She fumbled for her clock, wanting to stop it before it woke Fabian. Her hand groped about on the bedside table, found keys, a book, a glass of water, the hard scaly cover of her Filofax. The shrill insistent beep continued; she lay back for a moment and waited for it to stop, then remembered it would not; the wonderful solar clock that would never switch off by itself, programmed to beep, if necessary, until the end of time. It became, instantly, yet another reason to dislike David. What a damned stupid Christmas present to give; cruel, masochistic. He had bought it because it amused him; wines and gadgets. For a man who had turned his back on urban civilization, he was too damned fond of gadgets.
She pulled on her track suit and padded out into the corridor, quietly, not wanting to wake Fabian, pleased he was back, making a mental note to cancel a meeting that evening so they could do something together, maybe go out and see a film and have a Chinese afterwards. He was at a nice age now, in his second year at Cambridge, beginning to see clearly how the world worked, yet still filled with the enthusiasm of youth; he was a good companion, a mate.
She pounded her two mile route up to the Fulham Road and round the Brompton Cemetery, then scooped the papers and the milk from the doorstep and went back indoors. It struck her as mildly odd that Fabian had not left his usual trail of clobber all over the hallway. She hadn’t noticed his car outside either, but maybe he’d had to park in another street. She went back upstairs, quietly, to shower and dress.
She wondered whether to wake him up before she left, but went to the kitchen instead and scribbled a note. ‘Back at seven, darling. If you’re free we could go to the cinema. Love, Mum.’ Then she looked at her watch and flew.
By the time she reached the Poland Street car park her mood had changed to a sense of gloom. She nodded mechanically at the attendant as she drove up the ramp. Something wasn’t right, and she couldn’t place it; she felt depressed, flat, and blamed David. Something in Fabian’s expression had unsettled her, as if he had a secret he was keeping from her, as if there was a conspiracy and she was the only one not to know.
CHAPTER THREE
Alex stared in disbelief as her secretary laid a third stack of Jiffy bags on her desk.
‘All this is today’s, Julie?’ She picked up one of the packages and looked dubiously at the label. ‘Ms Alex Hightower, Hightower Literary Agency’ was spelt out in huge jittery letters. ‘Hope he hasn’t handwritten the manuscript.’
‘Philip Main called a few minutes ago. Asked whether you had deciphered the message. He may have been joking, but I wasn’t quite sure.’
Alex thought of the negatives she had developed and grinned. ‘I’ll call him back after I’ve opened the post.’
‘In about two weeks.’
Alex picked up her paper-knife and searched, bewildered, for a gap in the Sellotape.
‘A Walter Fletcher rang – wanted to know if you’ve read his manuscript yet.’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘He was complaining bitterly that you’d had it for almost a week.’
Alex stared at the shelves beside her desk, piled high with manuscripts of novels, plays, film scripts. ‘Walter Fletcher? What was the title?’
‘The Development of Tribal Dances in the Middle Ages.’
‘You’re joking!’ Alex sipped her coffee. ‘Did you tell him we don’t handle that sort of thing?’
‘I tried to. He seems fairly convinced it’s going to be big.’
Alex ripped open the bag and pulled out a shapeless wodge of dog-eared papers, several inches thick, and loosely bound with elastic bands. ‘This one’s yours,’ she said, passing it straight to her secretary, who flinched under the weight.
Julie put it down on the desk and stared at the first page, a barely decipherable code of misspellings, crossings out and red underlining. ‘He appears to have typed this without a ribbon.’
‘Look on the bright side,’ said Alex. ‘At least it’s typed.’
The intercom buzzed and she picked up her phone.
‘Philip Main for you.’
Alex hesitated for a moment. ‘O.K.’ She pushed the button. ‘You’re mad,’ she said. ‘Completely mad.’
She listened to the usual sniff, followed by the clearing of the throat that always sounded like a grunt, followed by the long hiss as he drew deeply on the inevitable Capstan Full Strength that he poked in and out of his moustache with his nicotine-stained forefinger and thumb. ‘Did you understand it?’ His deep, quiet voice was tinged with a boyish excitement.
‘Understand it? What was I meant to understand?’
Sniff; grunt; hiss. ‘It’s a whole new form of communication; a new language. We’re evolving from dialogue; it’s a random communication mutated into celluloid. Nobody bothers talking any more, that’s too trite; we make films, shoot pictures, pass them round. Dialogue is too dominating – you don’t get a chance to develop your thoughts if you’re listening to dialogue – but you develop someone’s pictures and they talk to you – part of your soul goes into them.’
Alex looked up at her secretary and tapped her head.
‘So, thirty-six photographs of an animal’s genitals were meant to communicate something to me.’
Grunt. Hiss. ‘Yes.’
‘All it communicated to me was that it was far too small.’ She heard a giggle from Julie.
‘Organs of the Species.’
‘Organs of the Species?’
‘It’s the title; I’ve got the title.’
‘Of what?’
‘A new book; we’re going to write it together.’ Grunt. Hiss. ‘Your passion for photography. My obsession with the sex organs.’
‘Philip, I have a lot of work to do. Friday’s my worst day.’
‘Let me buy you lunch next week.’
‘I have a very busy week.’
‘How about dinner?’
‘I think lunch would be better.’
‘You don’t trust me.’ He sounded offended.
‘Tuesday. I could do a short lunch on Tuesday.’
‘I’ll pick you up at one. All right?’
‘Fine. Bye.’
Alex shook her head and put the phone down.
‘Philip Main?’ said Julie.
Alex nodded, and smiled. ‘Mad. Completely mad, but the book he’s writing could be brilliant – the bizz – if he ever finishes it.’
‘Will anyone be able to understand it?’
‘No, so it should win a few awards.’
The intercom buzzed again.
‘Yes?’ said Alex.
‘There’s a policeman down here, Mrs Hightower.’
‘A policeman?’ Her instinctive reaction was guilt, and she raked through her mind, trying to remember if she had any parking tickets outstanding? Or had she been reported for reckless driving? Surely not? ‘What does he want?’
‘He’d like to have a word with you.’ There seemed to be an insistency in her receptionist’s voice; perhaps she too was intimidated by policemen?
‘Maybe he’s written a book?’ said Julie.
Alex shrugged. ‘Ask him to come up.’
He came through the door with his cap in his hand, looked down at the ground, at his immaculately polished shoes, then up, aiming his eyes at a level just below the top of Alex’s desk. He was young, she realized with a shock; she had expected someone old, but he was as young as her son. He had a flat boxer’s nose, but soft, kindly blue eyes, shy eyes. ‘Mrs Hightower?’ he said, expectantly, to both women.
‘Yes,’ said Alex.
He looked nervously at Julie, then at A
lex, put his hands behind his back and swayed slightly from side to side. ‘Do you think I could have a word with you alone?’
‘It’s all right, officer – my secretary works with me all the time.’
He looked at Julie then at Alex. ‘I think it would be better if I could speak to you on your own.’
Alex nodded at Julie. She went out of the room and closed the door behind her.
‘Mrs Hightower – I’m Constable Harper, from the Metropolitan Police.’ He blinked furiously.
Alex watched him quizzically; he was making her feel uncomfortable.
‘You have a son, I believe – Fabian?’
‘Yes?’ She felt cold, stared past him, out through the horizontal venetian slats at the grey rooftops beyond, saw the rain sliding down the window leaving trails like snails. Her mind started racing.
The policeman unbuttoned the top button of his tunic, then did it up again; he dropped his hat on the floor, and knelt down to pick it up, then composed himself. ‘He owns a red Volkswagen Golf G Ti?’
Alex nodded. What the hell has he done this time? The police had been before, eighteen months ago, when someone had reported him for reckless driving. She nodded blankly as the policeman read out the registration number.
‘He’s been travelling in France?’
‘Yes. Been skiing with some friends – and then he went to Burgundy to a party – a twenty-first – the daughter of a friend of my husband’s.’
The policeman’s eyes were wide, staring, and his mouth was twitching as if an electric current were running through it. Alex looked away from him again, and stared at her face in the word-processor screen at the side of her desk. She looked old, suddenly, she thought, incongruously, old.
‘We’ve had a phone call from the police – gendarmerie – er – police, in Mâcon. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.’ The words began to float around her, as if each was contained in a watery bubble; she saw them, heard them, again, repeatedly, in different sequences. Taken. Hospital. Arrival. To. On. Found. Was. But. Be. To. Arrival. Dead. She felt one of her knees hit something hard, then again. She stared at the policeman’s face, saw two faces, then four.
