An Evil Streak

by An Evil Streak (retail) (epub)

  She said calmly, ‘I expect he felt as if she was dead when she rejected him. It’s the same thing.’

  I gave up. Now I was reminded of Madam Butterfly finding excuses for Pinkerton.

  ‘I’ve got to see him,’ she said, with almost religious fervour. ‘I can make everything all right again. I know I can.’

  Perhaps she too was clinging to a belief in the magic powers of sight and touch. For myself, I felt as the newspapers say in times of disaster at sea or down a mine or on a mountain: hopes were fading. There would be no survivors. I smiled at Gemma and poured her a large drink. It was all I could do at present. Too soon for talk of getting over it, of meeting someone else, of forgetting. The only real cure, but she did not yet want to be cured.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t finish the typing. But it’s such a sad story. I can’t face it.’

  David wrote:

  ‘Dear Professor,

  Sorry I won’t be coming back but I’m going to be up here for six months at least and I’ve really had cleaning people’s flats anyway.

  Could you tell her I won’t be back. I got her letter. Cathy sent it on with the rest of my mail. I won’t have Cathy hounded like this, it really is intolerable, you’ve got to stop her going round there and making a nuisance of herself. Tell her she’s better off without me or something – you’re supposed to be clever, you should know what to say. I could never feel the same about her anyway after what she did so there’d be no point in meeting. Tell her that if you like. Just get her to stop annoying Cathy.

  I’ll send your keys back as soon as I can. I put them in a safe place when I packed and now I can’t find them.

  Yours,

  David

  P.S. I’ve never worked so hard in my life before. The series goes out three times a week. It’s like being back in rep.’

  A sombre piece of work, I thought: as heartless as Catherine had predicted. How well she knew him. So that was what marriage did for people: made them experts on each other. Two details interested me: his use of the word ‘intolerable’ in defence of Catherine, and his avoidance of Gemma’s name. Neither gave me hope for the future.

  * * *

  It’s easy to be wise after the event; we all know that. I can feel you preparing to condemn me because I made the wrong decision. But at the time I gave it careful thought and I could not see what else to do. I wanted Gemma to have her heart’s desire and I wanted Catherine to stop ringing me at eight am. All right, I could take the telephone off the hook, a detail, but I did not want to be rejected by Catherine, and I needed Gemma and David to meet again. Life was in danger of becoming both empty and unpleasant. Even Christopher had taken to ringing up to ask if it was really necessary for Gemma to come up to town every day to do my typing, it meant the au pair didn’t get enough free time, and would the poem be finished soon?

  What would you have done? Not now, with hindsight, but then? What would you have done in my position? Having got this far, I felt I had to see the matter through.

  I telephoned David. He was always out or busy. I left messages. He didn’t ring back. Finally I telephoned and said I was his agent. He came on the line instantly.

  ‘I want you to see Gemma,’ I said. No point in preamble: he might hang up.

  ‘Oh, Christ, it’s you.’ He sounded furious but also, to my surprise, exhausted. ‘They said it was my agent. Look, I’m rehearsing, for God’s sake.’

  I sensed I did not have much time.

  ‘I’ll give you fifty pounds to see her,’ I said swiftly. Bribery always seemed to me a better bet than threats, particularly when time is limited. Appeal to his baser nature as quickly as possible.

  ‘You must be joking,’ he said, exactly like Catherine.

  I had had qualms about fixing Gemma’s price: it seemed a little crude. But haggling would be cruder still and now was not a time to waver.

  ‘All right, a hundred.’

  ‘Christ.’ There was an exhalation of breath and a long silence. ‘You do realise I don’t want to see her at all.’

  ‘Why else do you think I’m offering you money?’

  Another long silence. ‘Look, it won’t do any good. It’s over.’

  ‘She wants to see you,’ I said. ‘It’s up to you what you say. At least it will stop her bothering your wife and bothering me and bothering you – she won’t believe it’s over unless you tell her yourself.’

  ‘I could write her a letter,’ he said craftily. ‘Aren’t you wasting your money?’

  ‘No, because I don’t believe you’d write. And anyway, she doesn’t want a letter, she wants to see you.’

  ‘God, women are crazy.’ More silence. ‘A hundred, you said.’

  ‘Yes.’ I paused, then added quickly, ‘And don’t try to push me up, that’s all I can afford.’

  I heard him lighting a cigarette. ‘Oh, the hell with it. Tell her I’ll see her on Friday. About lunchtime. And remember it was your idea. Cash, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  * * *

  Well, it may not seem very romantic to you, and indeed it wasn’t, but it cheered Gemma up; she became positively radiant, in fact, and said there, now did I see, it was going to be all right, he had only needed time. Time is money, I might have said, nastily, but of course I didn’t.

  Catherine too cheered up; she was so relieved not to see Gemma’s car like a sentry outside her front door every morning. I was the hero of the hour and allowed to sleep late, as befits a hero: the sleep of the just.

  Friday of course loomed large in my calculations now. It might be the beginning of a Brave New World; it might on the other hand be Custer’s Last Stand. There was a lot at stake and I ought to be prepared, whether for victory or defeat. I got a hundred pounds out of the bank, in twenties, so as not to make a bulky envelope, addressed it to David and left it prominently on the hall table. I gave Gemma keys and told her I was going away for the weekend. Then I settled down to wait.

  * * *

  The week dragged its feet; then Friday was upon me suddenly, nastily, at an early hour. Even I could not sleep through its implications. I scuttled through my bath and breakfast routine for, who could tell, Gemma might arrive early. I was back in my room, locked in, shored up with coffee, the papers, biscuits, fruit, cheese, wine, the tape recorder, the camera, all that was necessary for a fateful meeting, by eleven o’clock. And just as well: at eleven thirty she arrived.

  The compromises that life forces upon us. I would have given… well, not anything, but a great deal to be with her in those moments, to share her anticipation, to comfort and encourage her. But I could not do that and be in my bedroom, away for the weekend, at the same time. No wonder the theme of the doppelgänger is so popular. Obviously we all long for a dual personality. To be in two places at once: the summit of human ambition.

  Looking back now, with your censure at my shoulder, however well you disguise it, I cannot easily describe that day. A lot of it was plainly boring, though it seems insensitive to say so. Gemma arrived and I could only guess at what she was doing. She made coffee. She played records. She certainly spent a great deal of time in the kitchen and the living-room. This is the disadvantage of conspiracy on the grand scale: it does not permit you to engage in trivia simultaneously. I should have liked to be with Gemma, drinking coffee and choosing records, reassuring her. I think I sensed the chance might not come again. Life is not rich with such opportunities.

  I am not sure when I began to worry. Let alone when she began to worry. One o’clock, a reasonable hour for lunch, came and went. I had no way of knowing if she had brought food to prepare or ready cooked; equally I could not tell what David considered to be ‘about lunchtime’. She was in and out of the spare room, turning back the bedspread, brushing her hair, spraying herself with scent; she looked lovely but anxious. Extremely anxious, now that I think about it. I nibbled at my refreshments and got my equipment ready. The time dragged.

  About two I began to think in terms
of delayed trains and broken-down cars. Of accidents and sudden death. Gemma must have thought so too, for she made two telephone calls. I did not dare pick up the extension but I assumed she was ringing the studio to check and ringing her home to say she would be late. The time crawled by. I longed to go out and comfort her but I had imprisoned myself as surely as if I were chained to the bed. I read a little. I longed for a cigar to calm my nerves but of course dared not risk the smell of smoke. She came back into the spare room and sat on a corner of the bed, rocking to and fro. She did not cry. She picked up a corner of the bedspread, put it between her teeth and bit on it. I wanted to hug her. Then she lay down on the bed, her face turned away from me. After about ten minutes she got up again, smoothed the place she had lain in, and went out of the room.

  I waited. It was all I could do. But I did it fearfully. I ate and drank a little, but without enjoyment. Fear began to drip into my soul like water from a faulty tap, slowly at first, and then with gathering momentum. I could not formulate the fear for some time, or rather I could but I dared not, in case I made it come to pass. There was a very precise comer in my mind which I avoided turning for a long time and yet when I finally rounded it, I seemed to have got there abruptly.

  David was not coming. It was after three o’clock. He had found something more amusing to do – he had got drunk and passed out – he had been drugged or killed or arrested – was lying dead or injured in a ditch – he was out of reach of the telephone. Or he had simply never intended to come at all, in the first place. Perhaps a hundred pounds was not enough. I had sealed Gemma’s fate by being thrifty. Or else he felt that this was the simplest, cruellest and most absolute way of expressing rejection that he could devise, involving no effort on his part and ensuring maximum impact on Gemma.

  Now more than ever I longed to break from my prison of a room to share her agony, but there was no way I could do so without exposing the entire deception. What happened next still shames me a little, though I maintain it was human and understandable. Fear is very tiring. Waiting and hoping and finally giving in to despair consumes a lot of energy. I fell asleep.

  * * *

  It was dark when I woke. Darkness in August meant it was quite late. I lay on the bed straining my ears for sounds. But Gemma must have gone home; she could not explain such a protracted absence. I was in a dreadful dilemma. If she should still be there, by some mischance, all would, as they say, be revealed. But she could not be. Surely it was impossible. I longed to believe she had gone, her ordeal over; even more I longed to urinate, and I really preferred to do so in the bathroom: chamber pots are so sordid. This pressing need helped to convince me that Gemma had gone, but trying still to be cautious, I eased my way out of the room with the minimum of sound and crept to the front door. After all, she too might have slept, though her state of anxiety made it unlikely. The entire flat was in darkness; I peered at my watch, but it had stopped. In the hall I scooped up David’s envelope (it was an ill wind, etc.) and put it in my pocket, then I opened and slammed the door as if, abandoning my weekend plans, I had just come home. Filled with anticipatory delight at the prospect of relieving myself, I advanced to the bathroom and switched on the light. There was blood everywhere.

  * * *

  Afterwards, when I had time to calm down and think, I did allow myself some small congratulation on not losing my head. The temptation to panic, as I took in the shock of all that sticky red like spilt paint on the white bathroom fittings, was very great. It was so extremely vivid and so copiously distributed: my bathroom looked like a slaughterhouse. Tracing the flow, after I had absorbed the initial shock and realised what it meant, and finding Gemma in the sitting-room nearly made me keel over. But I am proud to say I did not waste time examining or trying to revive her; I picked up the phone instantly and demanded an ambulance. Even while I was doing that, I found myself thinking that this was a nightmare that could not possibly be happening to me.

  Waiting for the ambulance was the next worst part. It did not take long but it seemed forever. I did not want to stay in the room with her – and yet I could not leave her alone. It seemed so discourteous. Similarly, I did not want to look at her but I could not look away.

  She looked very dead. I felt myself beginning to cry as I watched her; I felt I was keeping vigil beside a corpse. I told myself there was a chance, she was young and strong and healthy. But she felt so cold when I touched her cheek. And there was no question of investigating her wrists: I was not prepared to probe for a pulse amongst all that wet redness.

  After being alone with her for a few minutes it occurred to me I would have to ring Christopher. It seemed an intrusion, reminding me that her life belonged to him. Till then I had been alone with my love.

  * * *

  On the way to the hospital, beside her in the ambulance while the experts did what they had been trained to do, I reflected soberly that I had killed her, as surely as if I had aimed a gun at her head or her heart. And yet – and yet who could have expected her to take it all so seriously? Criseyde had not committed suicide, as far as we knew. I had only been trying to let her live more fully – all right, as well as exploiting my own desires, all right. Have it your own way. Whatever I say, you will no doubt malign me. But I had truly intended to expand her life as well as enrich my own. She had no right to opt out of the scheme: it was well-intentioned. I had never imagined she could be so dramatic.

  The ambulance man was distressed by my tears; he patted my shoulder. Perhaps he thought we were lovers. I hoped so.

  * * *

  At the hospital, impelled by a sense of urgency and the savage parting from Gemma, in which everyone around me seemed to consider I was superfluous, I gathered up my flimsy courage and telephoned Christopher. I had not done so before partly out of cowardice, partly because I did not know which hospital the ambulance would take us to. Now I had no excuse left. As I walked down the corridor it seemed odd to me that people with less urgent tasks could pass me casually, as if the world had not just ended.

  * * *

  Christopher took it well. He did not question me. I had been dreading what to say, but in the end it was simple; in fact I had no choice. I told him there had been an accident at my flat; I told him which hospital Gemma and I were in. Then I forced myself to say:

  ‘She cut her wrists.’ I had to prepare him. ‘I found her when I came in.’

  I could hear his shock in the silence, but when he spoke he was very much the doctor, all emotion under control.

  ‘How bad is she?’

  I said honestly, ‘I don’t know.’

  He said, ‘I’ll be there right away.’

  * * *

  Now you might think, once we all knew she was going to be all right, that they would be grateful to me. I hope it has not escaped your notice that if I had not been concealed in my room (for my own purposes, all right, I grant you that) Gemma would have bled to death. My being there saved her life. A superbly ironic justification of my behaviour, in my opinion. Well, Christopher could not know all that, of course, but even with the facts as he saw them, that I had come home unexpectedly to find Gemma in the process of bleeding to death… even that should have been enough to evoke a little gratitude. Instead, I found myself banned from the hospital: doctors and nurses ranged against me, Christopher using his professional influence, no doubt; they say these people always stick together. I was not allowed in.

  I simply could not believe it and went time and time again with flowers and gifts but I was turned away. Finally I came face to face with Christopher and Beatrice outside the building, just getting out of a car: at the sight of me Christopher turned white and Beatrice purple. (Well, you know what I mean: they both changed colour dramatically in opposite directions). In clipped tones like the hero of a wartime morale-raising film about the RAF, Christopher at his most pompous informed me that Gemma had told him ‘everything’, that he regarded it all as my fault and he had forgiven her on condition she never saw or spoke to me aga
in. I was too outraged to speak: grief and rage and disbelief all chased round inside me. My silence gave him strength: he went on about my being a pernicious influence (his exact words) on Gemma all her life and that statement (perhaps because of its suggestion of associated blame by implication) set Beatrice off. She started to cry, there in the hospital courtyard, uncontrollable tears, as if they had been welling up for centuries, while Christopher and I stood and watched her in helpless amazement.

  ‘You’re evil,’ she sobbed, pointing at me like a pantomime witch, ‘evil,’ and tears streamed down her ugly face. ‘You’re thoroughly evil.’

  I found her ugliness more offensive than her words but I could not accuse her of that at this late date, so I said, reasonably enough, that she was not only monotonous but inaccurate. There was an element of evil in all of us. Myself, perhaps I had a more developed gift: an evil streak, you might say. But I am a modest man; I would not claim more than that.

  I thought, for a moment, that Christopher was going to hit me. But physical violence was against his code of ethics. Instead he fell back on the respectable violence of words. ‘Stay away from Gemma,’ he said, for all the world like a Western hero now, ‘or I’ll kill you.’

  I began to laugh at the idea, but Beatrice played her master stroke. Still howling, and indescribably ugly, she took a step towards me and shrieked (oh God how I remember these words): ‘Your mind’s as deformed as your body.’

  I felt myself pale and step back from her. No one in the family ever refers to my appearance: it is an unwritten rule. The specialists did their best, it was not enough, and there is an end of the matter. I have had to learn to live with it, and most people I meet pretend not to notice. But Beatrice, with her bitch-instinct, had struck home. I was dumb with shock. I turned away.