by Flora Dain
Moonlight streams through a gap in the drapes, etching the scene before me in silver. I stare round in panic but all I see is a single figure sprawled on the couch in the middle of the room. Darnley is stretched out like a fallen statue, beautiful, naked, still rampant. One arm rests on the seat beside him, his fist loosely balled. The other lies on the arm of the couch as he covers his eyes with his hand.
A shaft of silver gleams along his beautiful body and his sprawling legs, stretched out before him across the rug. The only thing that moves is his shaft, still erect and quivering. It stirs on his taut, silvered belly like a living thing as the voice starts again, the dreadful mantra repeating over and over, each segment ending in a blood-curdling scream that’s cut off mid-screech.
He makes no attempt to touch himself. Something about his helpless arousal tugs my heart even more than the dreadful meaning of the words I’m hearing.
The man’s voice fills the room. Every so often there’s a pause and then I hear a click and it starts again. I stand very still, trying to link what I’m seeing to what I’m hearing and work out where it’s coming from. At last a tiny movement on the seat tells me his fist clenches each time it starts again.
He’s playing a tape.
The voice is a long-forgotten echo from childhood. It sounds like Fletcher Kraik, the Popkorn King. Before my time he was known as ‘Korn’ Kraik. He did the voiceovers for his own commercials for years before he vanished from the schedules. His picture still appears on his company’s popcorn candy products and his voice still sings the catchy jingle on the ads. It sounds like him … but how can he be saying this? Unless …
Darnley shows no sign that he’s heard me. He might be asleep or drunk for all I know. I dart across the room, prise the tape player out of his hand, find a tiny switch on the side and jab my thumb on it. Mercifully the voice stops and I toss the small recorder down on the floor and then turn my attention to the hollow wreck of the beautiful man stretched out before me.
And now I realise something else, so awful it scares me. Moonlight glints on his face. It’s wet with real tears.
Under his hand he’s silently weeping.
And in a flash I make the connection – this must be about him – or someone very close to him.
I’m no shrink. I’m just a teacher. I know very little about childhood trauma. Now and then I handle troubled students but never in a state like this. All my training screams at me that he needs professional help and fast.
But right here and right now I’m all he’s got.
Softly I touch his arm. ‘Darnley?’
He says nothing. He shows no sign he’s even heard me.
I straddle his legs and edge myself onto his lap, getting my knees into position at either side of him on the couch. My robe gapes open but I ignore it. This is no time for modesty. Taking care to avoid touching his erection – tempting though it is, I don’t want to complicate things – I lean forward and slide my arms around his neck and pull him gently towards me.
I hold my breath and at last, after what seems an age, he responds. To my infinite joy he slowly winds his arms around me and buries his face in my breasts. I crush him to me, stroking his hair with one hand and pressing his head close to me with the other.
His chest heaves like an earthquake in my arms. ‘My wrists were too small. He had to clamp them both into one.’ His voice is husky and low, barely a murmur. It comes from a long way away – a lifetime of hurt away. But at least he’s speaking. And he knows I’m here. That has to be a good thing.
But what he’s saying chills my blood.
Now more tears are flowing but they’re all mine. I try to suppress them. ‘You don’t have to talk,’ I whisper. ‘Only if it helps.’
We sit in silence for a few moments, and then he murmurs again, his voice even lower. I can feel his lips moving against my skin. I strain to catch the words.
‘It was a birthday present. The tape recorder.’ His voice is muffled against my breasts. I stroke his hair as my tears join his.
If the tape’s saying what I think it’s saying I’m not sure I want to hear any more …
‘I was always fond of gadgets. It was in my pocket the day I went out into the garage and he caught me. It was still switched on. Korn Kraik, who’d have thought? He was always round our house. He was a neighbour. He and his wife played tennis with my parents. My stepmother asked him round often. She liked him. She thought we liked him. He was always funning around. Practical jokes.’
He breaks off and I feel his body heave again. A sob? Nausea?
I hold him tight and after a few seconds the spasm passes. ‘It’s OK,’ I whisper. ‘I’m here now.’
‘I didn’t know it then, but he’d known her before she met my dad. Turned out he had some kind of hold over them …’ He breaks off and licks his lips, like he’s said too much. ‘All I knew back then was he was a friend of the family. But he’d fix on me …’
He shudders in my arms like a colossus in an earthquake. I pull him closer, trying to squeeze out the pain, trying to stave off his demons, knowing it’s futile. I do all I can, covering his face with kisses and laying my cheek on his hair. For a while we sit clinging to each other in the moonlit darkness of his room.
When he speaks again it’s like he’s talking from a long way away. ‘He’d chase me round a dark room with a torch under his chin, or cuff me to his car and we’d play superheroes. That was the worst. He’d play sound effects of fairground screams while we did it. For the first few minutes it was exciting. After five my arms hurt and I was starting to panic. After a while I was scared shitless. Literally. Afterwards I’d hide in the bushes and bury my clothes.
‘He joked that he’d play the CD over the loudspeakers and say it was me screaming and everyone in the neighbourhood would know I was a sissy. I believed him. I started having nightmares. When my parents heard I was acting strangely they must have known what he was doing but I was too ashamed to tell. I was terrified people would find out.’
To think someone could torment a little boy like this beggars belief. To think that he’s become someone so successful – that he grew up at all – is a miracle.
Now he murmurs again, his voice even lower. I strain to catch the words. ‘No one knows. I kept it to myself. I started to get into trouble. He even chose my schools. Some summers he made them pack me off to boot camp. Said it would toughen me up.’ He shuddered. ‘Run by a bunch of sadists, friends of his, as it turned out. Ex-army? Ex-cons? Christ knows. I didn’t care. It took my mind off him.’
And the handcuffs … This is how I like to fuck.
Something else for the professionals. This is way beyond me.
He’s still wound tightly around me – that’s one blessing. And as far as I can tell he’s no longer weeping – that’s another. Maybe it’s done him good to talk even this much. Maybe he’s already said enough.
‘Talk to me.’
Instantly I panic. What can I say? How can I comfort him, Miss Normal-from-a-happy-home-with-church-and-apple-pie-on-Sundays?
When I’m in trouble, real trouble, I turn to poetry. Some people turn to music, others to drink. I like poems.
My mind still reeling, I try it now. If it fails it can only make him laugh, like it does my students.
‘“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree …”’ I talk on, my voice rising and falling in cadence with the familiar rhymes. When I come to the end I pause.
His face is still buried, his grip as fierce as ever. ‘Go on.’
I think for a second and start again. ‘“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree …”’ My voice falls softly around us, light as a quilt as we sit locked together. Whenever I stop he makes me start again. After a while I recite without pause, partly for myself. I keep my voice low, my tone measured. To me the rhythms of the old poets are as soothing as music. It starts to numb the horror I’ve just imagined. Heaven knows whether it’s any help to him. Maybe he’s past help.
&
nbsp; As the night wears on we float on high o’er vales and hills, we walk in beauty like the night, we tread softly as we tread on our dreams. We meet a traveller from an antique land, a man who stoppeth one in three, an ailing knight-at-arms alone and palely loitering.
At last I run out of poems I can call quickly to mind but still he wants more. At least he seems calmer now. I must be having an effect. At last, unwilling to break the spell, I call up my own poem, the one I’m going to read aloud to the poets and the worthies of North Carolina, the event I’m quietly dreading.
It’s a long ballad, but it’s etched in my mind and close to the surface. Every word of it meant something when I wrote it. Praying he’ll forgive me if he ever finds out it’s mine I take a deep breath and begin.
‘“If you should think this darkening sky
Is all my skill and all my wealth
Then walk with me and you and I
Shall test it to our final breath …”’
After the riches I’ve spread out before him my own effort sounds plain and thin, the person who wrote it as dusty and remote as the poets I’ve just brought back to life.
But as I draw to a close he’s finally asleep, his head still buried in my breasts, his arms tight around my waist. I detach myself carefully, ease his head back onto the couch and slip off his lap. Then I pull the bedcover off the mattress, tuck it gently around him and tiptoe out of the room.
After the fevered embrace of his troubled arms my sheets are cold and flat. I slip into them too tired to care and fall asleep almost at once.
* * *
‘Wake up.’
My eyes snap open. It’s bright daylight. Last night hovers at the back of my mind like a vivid nightmare but the bright sunshine flooding the room fends it off and sends it back to the shadows.
But one look at Darnley’s face warns me I’ve had it easy. The awful thing on the tape didn’t happen to me. For him it was real, the nightmare ever present.
I blink, bleary from weeping. If I’d wept as much as he did last night I’d puff up like a melon. The only sign that he’s had a harder night than usual is a new stiffness in his jaw, an extra hollow etched in his cheeks and a hard, determined glint in his eyes.
He hides this well. I guess he’s had a lifetime to practise. Now he’s standing over me, his hair damp from the shower, his jaw freshly shaved and faintly fragrant. He looks immaculate. I feel a mess.
‘Get up. I have to go to work but we’ve got business first.’ His tone chills me. I scramble to sit up and pull my thin robe around me. I’d gone to bed just as I was. My flimsy nightgown is still on the pillow. ‘Are you OK? After last night –’
‘Please.’ His tone cuts me off like a knife but it’s the look of real pain that flashes across his face as he says it that seals my lips.
I frown. There are things that have to be said. ‘You really should get help,’ I prompt, gently.
The pain was brief. Now his face is stone. ‘Not now. We’ve got to discuss one or two things and there’s some paperwork for you to sign.’
He’s brisk and businesslike. How does he do it? I feel like I’ve been under a steamroller. I take my place at the small, tempting breakfast table in his sitting room and sip some orange juice while he sits opposite.
‘First off, we’ve lost all trace of Mitchell. Somehow he’s slipped under the radar and we can’t get a fix on his whereabouts. He asked you to meet him and now he knows I want to meet him too. He’s had plenty of time to come forward. If he had nothing to hide he’d have shown up by now. So I think he’ll try to get you again.’
I open my mouth to speak but he waves me to silence. ‘Let me finish. After yesterday afternoon we know he’s armed, possibly dangerous. And for him there’s a lot at stake. So from now on you’ll stay under my protection at all times, no arguments. When I’m not with you I’ll assign my driver Bullen as your personal bodyguard. He’ll go with you wherever you go, sweep rooms before you enter. Just for today I want you to stay in the hotel. And eat something. You look terrible.’
‘Thanks, but I’d sooner not –’
‘Eat.’ His sudden glare reminds me that only a few short hours ago he was in the throes of deep personal trauma. His eyes are still wild, his look still haunted.
Kid-glove time. Humour him.
I eat.
The cereal is surprisingly good and I realise I’m hungry. After it I reach for a pastry. His eyes flicker with amusement. His mouth twists at the corner as he pours me a coffee and pointedly passes me the cream jug.
I beam back, overjoyed to see him smile. Maybe his demons are backing off.
‘Second, I want you to sign those.’ He waves to a sheaf of papers on the side.
‘What are they? More inventions?’ It’s meant as a joke but the flicker of irritation in his face warns me it’s too soon for jokes.
‘Non-disclosure agreements. One for me, one for my folks.’
‘Your folks? Would they be Lautner Wolfe, the firm Billy’s now working for?’ I swallow. ‘Is this – because of last night?’
He holds my gaze. ‘Partly. But my family insist on NDAs from all their visitors. And we’ll fly up to see them tomorrow. It’s my stepmother’s birthday.’
I stare at him, shocked. ‘You’re inviting me to meet your family?’
Instantly he frowns. ‘Don’t you want to meet them?’
‘Sure, I’d love to meet them, but … this is so sudden.’ Also, I’m not sure my scanty wardrobe will stretch to a stay with millionaires. Aloud I try to sound casual. ‘Where do they live?’
‘Manhattan. At the moment they’re upstate on vacation at Camp Akela, our summer lodge near Lake Placid.’
A picture of wigwams flits through my mind and then I shake myself. People like this don’t do tents. ‘That’s summer camp as in Camp David? And Akela as in she-wolf?’
He smiles briefly. ‘Family joke. My father gave it to Lydia, my stepmother, on their first anniversary. They used to vacation near Camp David but it got too crowded so they moved.’
He looks so embarrassed I grin.
Instantly he frowns. ‘What?’
‘Your family took vacations near the President?’
All at once he grins back. ‘Somebody had to. Anyway, we were there first.’
For a few precious seconds we share a smile and my heart leaps as I see his crisis is passing. Now all I’ve got to worry about is what to say to them, how to behave and what to wear.
Should be a breeze.
* * *
When I’ve signed his paperwork we continue with the third item on his agenda. It feels like a public meeting. ‘I kicked some ass this morning. We’re bringing forward the launch date for our new product. It’ll come out very soon now. When’s your poetry thing?’
‘It’s at the end of the month, just before the start of the fall semester. I have to be there a day or two before to meet and greet.’
‘OK, we’ll see how it goes. You should be in the clear by then. If you’re still at risk you may have to cut it short. Can you do it by video-link?’
I frown. ‘I’d sooner not. I was looking forward to this. It’s a big deal for me.’ It’s hard not to sound proud. I’m not a global figure like he is; I’m just a teacher and much as I dread it this is probably the closest I’ll ever get to a Big Moment.
His eyes narrow. ‘You want to live to see the fall?’
I swallow. Up until yesterday I’d have laughed all this off but the sight of that gun has changed things. Now I’m scared. They meant business. ‘OK. And –’ I look at him, troubled.
‘What?’ His jaw is firm and set, his eyes hard.
‘Thank you. For everything. You’ll have to tell me how much all this is costing. I’ll pay you back somehow, I promise.’
His expression promptly softens and he covers my hand with his. ‘Hey, it’s on the house. If I got you into this mess the least I can do is get you out.’
Instantly he withdraws his hand and rises to his feet. ‘OK,
I think that’s it. What are you doing today?’
I avoid his eye. ‘Let Billy know I’m OK …’ An awful thought strikes me. ‘Do I need anything for Camp Akela?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s dress down, mainly. You might need something for evenings. Lydia likes dressing up. And don’t leave the hotel. If you want to buy anything, call a personal shopper. Bullen will go with you and he’ll pay. Anything else?’
Below the table I cross my fingers. ‘Maybe a spot of research. I’ve got my laptop.’
‘Fine.’ He glances at his watch, hands over my phone and is gone, leaving me profoundly grateful he forgot to ask anything else.
* * *
Now I call Billy. I’d like to unload myself but I sense even girl-talk just got complicated after signing paperwork and swearing myself to secrecy so I stick to basics.
Luckily she’s flying back to Boston this morning and can’t even meet for coffee. ‘Gotta hand it to Lautner Wolfe, they sure keep me fit. I just heard I’m on a new assignment.’ Her voice lowers dramatically. ‘It’s so big they won’t even say where. Wish me luck.’
