'No, thank you.'
'As you like.'
Ignoring her, he crossed and poured himself a tumbler of whisky and water, then he stationed himself in front of the fire—deliberately so, she thought; now she was forced to look up at him.
She swallowed nervously; since he clearly was not going to help her, she had better begin, she thought. She leaned forward.
'This morning…' She hesitated. 'Why didn't you tell me who you were?'
'Because I didn't choose to.'
'It would have saved time. And a lot of misunderstanding.'
'Possibly.'
'I should have recognised you, of course.' She looked at him, forcing herself to remain calm. 'It's… a long time since we met. But you're nothing like Kit.'
'No.' He looked at her coldly. 'You chose to go to him, however.' He paused. 'But then you were always fond of Kit, weren't you, Luisa? Even as a girl…'
She felt the blood rush up her neck, crimsoning her cheeks. She looked away, ignoring his remark.
'I went to Kit… as I thought,' she said slowly, carefully, 'because Claudia had already spoken to him. Because she thought he would help us.'
'And when—as you thought—he wouldn't, then you came running to me. What were you proposing to do, tell tales of my brother?'
'If necessary.' She met his gaze levelly. 'I don't care what I do. My only concern is to help Claudia, and wipe out what she's done.'
'That's not true, for a start. As we established this morning, you do care what you do. Your concern—your laudable concern—for your sister has its limitations, does it not?'
The grey eyes met hers unwaveringly, and Luisa felt the panic start up again inside her. Surely, now, he was not going to resurrect that!
She clasped her hands nervously together in front of her, forcing herself not to flinch, not to look away.
'It has one limitation, if you want to call it that. Yes.'
He smiled, and very deliberately raised his hand, running it down his cheek where she had hit him that morning.
'How prim!' He put down his glass. 'You imagine I'm taken in by all that? By that dress… by your behaviour this morning? Oh no. As acts go, it was quite a good one. But it doesn't convince me.'
'That is irrelevant.' Luisa stood up, confusedly fighting the anger she could feel beginning inside her, fighting off the faint but perceptible sense of fear he awoke in her. 'Julius, please.' She saw him flinch at her use of his name, an expression of distaste crossing his mouth. Impulsively, she stepped towards him.
'Please,' she said earnestly. 'I know that you dislike us. I know there's no reason why you should help us. Claudia has done something wrong…'
'It's called embezzlement,' he cut in. 'It also involves forgery. I did some checking after you'd gone. After you'd so conveniently brought the matter to my attention.'
'I know that! I know she should be punished. But don't you see? She's already being punished, she's ill with worry and guilt…'
'Because she might be found out.' He laughed contemptuously. 'Don't be naïve, Luisa. If I hadn't turned up on the scene, do you imagine for one moment that this would have happened? No. Claudia would have happily gone on milking that poor woman's money for as long as she safely could. Claudia's not sorry—she's scared.'
'That's not true!' She stared at him wide-eyed, fighting the doubts his words raised in her own mind. 'She wouldn't have done that. It was done on an impulse, she already regretted it, long before you ordered the audit…'
'On an impulse! Cashing cheques for two thousand pounds, over a period of three months, at carefully calculated intervals? You call that impulse!'
'She… she needed the money…'
'What for?' The grey eyes blazed at her angrily. 'She was starving, was she? She had some child to support, couldn't pay the rent to the council, couldn't afford food? Don't give me that! I've seen women in just that position sent down for three months for shoplifting, and you try and get Claudia off scot free? Why the hell should she? You call that justice?'
'No.' She dropped her gaze. 'I don't.'
'Then what do you call it?'
'I don't know!' she cried desperately. 'Forgiveness, mercy, call it what you want…'
'You know what I call it?' He glared down at her. 'I call it buying your way out. Claudia happens to have a sister with enough money, who's a soft touch, who she thinks can get her off the hook, wipe out everything she's done, make the slate clean. One system for the rich, another for the poor. God damn it, it's sick-making!'
'So.' Luisa looked at him calmly, feeling the tears start to her eyes, and fear and concern for Claudia swelling up inside her painfully. 'What would you like to see happen?'
'I'd like Claudia to have to face the consequences of her actions, just like anyone else.'
'And ruin her life. She's only twenty! Please, Julius, can't you see?' She stepped closer to him, all fear of him wiped out now, and raised her hands to him pleadingly. 'Claudia has done wrong, but she does see that now. She'll never do it again. She's… she's got the chance now, with someone, to try and make something of her life. To make up for… for all the mess in the past.' She hesitated. 'It's partly my fault all this has happened. If Claudia had had a normal childhood…'
He laughed sarcastically.
'Don't laugh!' she cried sharply. 'You talk to me about deprivation. About people who… who have no means, who are desperate. Well, there are other kinds of deprivation too! Claudia hardly knew our mother, hardly saw our father. She never had any love as a child… if she's stupid and irresponsible sometimes, there are reasons for it. Can't you see that?'
'No, I can't,' he said roughly. 'Don't give me sob-stories about Claudia. She never wanted for anything!'
'She wanted for love!'
She cried the words, and there was a sudden silence. Julius made no answer, and her words rang oddly in the air between them, echoing and re-echoing in Luisa's head. Their gaze was locked together so strongly that it was as if an invisible thread held them, and the rest of the room, the world outside stopped, quite suddenly, just for a second. She saw his expression change, fleetingly, and briefly thought she saw something different, something reachable, a kind of compassion in those cold grey eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it came. His mouth twisted, and he stepped towards her.
'She wanted for love.' He repeated her words mockingly, throwing them back in her face. 'The eternal cry in our indulgent age. The eternal all-purpose, built-in, ever-useful excuse. The eternal cry of your whole goddamned family!' He reached across and gripped her arm hard, wrenching her towards him. 'I'll tell you something, Luisa.' He forced her face up to him, his voice low, his eyes blazing with hatred. 'You know who you remind me of, just at this moment? Who you reminded me of this morning, when you leaned across my desk with precisely that same expression of hope and pleading you've got on it now? You remind me of your mother, that's who.'
'Of my mother?' She stared at him in bewilderment, taken aback by the sudden vehemence, the passion in his voice. 'But I don't…'
'Oh, I know you don't look like her.' He spat the words at her contemptuously. 'But you are like her, aren't you, Luisa? Inside, where it doesn't show except in your eyes. God, I hate your eyes! I can't bear to look at them.'
He pushed her violently away.
'I've seen your mother look just like that, just the way you do now. When she came crawling to my mother with her excuses and her prevarications and her barefaced goddamned lies. God!' He covered his face with his hands. 'I'll never forget that look as long as I live. "Forgive me, forgive me. I'm sorry I broke up your marriage, I'm so sorry for your sons, for your husband, for what I've done to your life," ' he mimicked her mother's voice, the odd lilting Italian accent, with extraordinary vividness, so that Luisa recoiled; it was as if her mother were in the room with them. He stepped closer towards her, suddenly reaching out and gripping her wrist, wrenching it up painfully between them.
'That was her plea too. She wanted to use
it, just the way you do, because it suited her purposes. God, we had it all— the childhood in the slums, the lovers who had never understood her, and then the one man who had come along and finally helped her, given her the love she'd been craving all this while in her poor forsaken life. The man who just happened to be my father. Whom she walked out on six months later, when she'd finally achieved all the mess and destruction she'd set her heart on…'
'Stop!' Luisa tried painfully to free her hand. 'That's not true! It wasn't like that, you're twisting everything…'
'What do you know?' With a sharp gesture he released her. 'You were just a child!'
'And Claudia was a baby!' she countered, her eyes blazing at him angrily. 'She had nothing to do with all that. She's not responsible for it! All you're doing is… is revenging yourself on Claudia. And you talk to me about justice. That's not justice, that's hate!'
There was a silence, and for a moment she thought she had reached him, that her words had got through the shell of memories, the store of anger. Certainly he appeared, for the first time, discomfited. This time it was he who turned away.
'Maybe,' he said shortly, his back to her now, so she could not see his face. 'Maybe.'
She hesitated, letting the silence lengthen, listening with half a mind to the shifting of the coals in the fire, the subdued ticking of the clock. Then, timidly, she plucked at his sleeve.
'Julius.' He did not turn. 'Please!'
Her voice sounded odd to her ears, slightly choked, and she spoke with difficulty.
'I… I can only speak for what I feel. For what I remember.' She let her hand rest gently on his arm, and he stiffened at her touch. 'I… I never hated you, and I'm sorry, truly sorry, that you should feel as you do. But now, please, can't you put that aside, just this once, and help us?' She sighed. 'If you don't… I have nowhere else to turn. Please. I can only ask… beg…'
He turned.
'You asked this morning,' he said coldly.
'I'm asking you again.' She looked up at him, feeling the tears well into her eyes, not just for Claudia, she realised, but for him too, for the pain and anger in his face, for the past. He brushed her hand from his arm.
'And I told you this morning. There's a price.'
'What?' She stared at him, recoiling instinctively. 'You can't have meant that! I… I thought it must be some kind of… of game.'
'It's not a game. I told you.' His mouth had set in a hard line, and his eyes glittered at her strangely. 'Either your sister pays the price, or you do. It's time someone in your family paid off their debts.'
'But… I told you. I can pay back the money…'
'I'm not talking about money!'
'You can't mean it!'
'Oh, but I do.' He moved towards her again, and she saw his lips lift in a mocking smile. 'Call it rough justice, call it what you will. I think it ties up a long equation very neatly, don't you?'
'A long equation?' Something in his voice, in his eyes, held her.
There was a silence, and they stared at each other. Luisa felt something lift and stir in her heart, something so old, so powerful, it frightened her.
'I don't know what you mean…'
'You know exactly what I mean. Don't you, Luisa?'
She tried to back away from him, but before she could move his strong arms came round her, holding her effortlessly, drawing her towards him. He didn't force her, but just held her so she could not move, and then with a gentleness that took her by surprise, tilted her face up to him, so he could look down into her wide scared eyes.
'Is there some man in your life now, Luisa? Does this involve you in some betrayal?'
'No… I…'
'Don't lie.'
'No, it doesn't!'
'Well then.'
Her lips parted to answer him, and as they did so he bent his head and kissed her. His lips were warm, firm, and the first touch of them sent a violent wave of shock through her whole body, so sudden, so unexpected that she had no time to resist. His arms locked behind her, drawing her to him, pressing her soft body against the hardness of his own. She felt her hands, trapped between them against his chest, flinch, and then relax. Julius sighed, oddly, harshly, in a way she had never heard before, and she could sense a man's urgency growing in him, pulsing in him, communicating itself to her like an electrical current, its force seeping irresistibly into her, demanding a response. She heard herself give a little moan, and he deepened his kiss, running his hands up her back until they were laced in her long thick hair, and cradled her face up to him like a flower while he sought the honey of her mouth.
Pleasure, edged with fear, sharpened by it, welled up inside her unbidden; it flowed through her veins irresistibly, and undeniably. She felt her body begin its betrayal of her mind, going limp, pliant, in his arms. She should have compressed her lips, wrenched her head away, but somehow she could not. Something had awoken in her, something she had buried so long she had believed it dead—a compulsion of terrifying force surged up inside her, coming from deep within the womb of her body, like a message at one moment in her blood, her heart, the next in her arms, her lips, her tongue.
She heard him, as if from far away, give a low groan, as his lips moved down to her throat, sending a piercing pleasure right through her, and his hands, moving with a new urgency, as if they had no enemy but time and all delay, moved down to her breasts, full under the black dress, cupping their weight in his palms.
'Luisa… don't you remember?' She felt rather than heard his voice; his skin was rough against her cheek, and she knew she arched her throat back instinctively, arched it for his kisses, in a way she had seen once somewhere, sometime. The portrait. Even as he touched her, it came back, the memory, the image, and with it her heart seemed to stop. As instantly the pleasure was gone; her whole body stiffened, flooded with shame. She heard herself give a low strangled cry, her hands clenched, knocking his away, pushing him aside with all her force.
'No!'
She broke from him, and they stood, like two combatants, each breathing fast, their eyes locked in a look that cut off the rest of the world. His were now pleading, demanding, hers suddenly cold, furiously, uncontrollably, cold. She was shaking.
'I will not!'
'Luisa…' He reached for her, and she hit at his hand, feeling her heart grow small and tight and vengeful inside her.
'Get away from me. Never touch me again!'
He drew back, and she saw his face harden, the guardedness come back.
'Next time…' she forced her voice out, 'next time you stand at the bar in court, Julius—God, I hope you remember this, I hope you never forget it as long as you live! You have no right to be there. You hear me? No right!' She heard her voice rise, saw him flinch from her accusation. 'There's no one you could be prosecuting much worse than you. A blackmailer, a liar, taking advantage of someone's weakness… you're despicable. Loathesome. You repel me, do you understand that? You…'
To her fury, she saw his mouth twist in a half smile.
'Do I?' His voice was low, tight, and she could see he was restraining his temper with difficulty. 'I shouldn't have said that, and I've a good deal of experience in these matters.'
'That's a lie!'
'No, it isn't.' He reached for her arm and held it. 'Whatever I wanted then, Luisa, you wanted it too. So what does that make you? Where's your sanctimonious purity now?'
'Damn you, Julius, let me go!' She tried to wrench herself free, but his grip tightened, and suddenly fear flooded through her, an old blind unreasoning fear, and she lost all control. On a pure animal instinct, she bent quickly, so her mouth was against his skin… she tasted blood warm against her lips, and heard him give a cry of pain. He let go of her instantly, and she stepped back, shuddering, appalled at what she had just done. As she did so, he laughed.
'What a little vixen!' He rubbed his wrist ruefully. 'What are you going to do next, go for my eyes with your nails?'
Luisa backed away from him jerkily, quickly, unco
nscious of her movements, colliding painfully and clumsily with the small delicate table behind her. With a cry she turned, but it was too late. It tipped; the Chinese bowl, the hyacinth, crashed to the floor and shattered. After the crash there was a terrible silence, that seemed to ring in her ears. In numb dismay she stared down at the floor, at the shards of crimson and gold and white, the dry mould scattered, the white flowers crushed.
'Oh no!' Quickly she turned to pick them up, to do something, but he forestalled her.
'Leave them. It doesn't matter. Things get broken.'
'I'm so sorry…' The words faded on her lips; to apologise now was clearly ridiculous.
He turned away curtly, and pressed a bell by the fireplace.
'Myers will clear it up. And he can fetch your coat.'
'Julius…' Instinctively she reached out her hand to him, but he turned away. The door opened.
'Miss Valway is leaving, Myers.'
'Very good, sir.'
'Oh, and Luisa…' His tone was light, perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened, Luisa thought bitterly. 'Consider my proposal, will you? I'd like a definite decision. Shall we say in the next three days? Then I shall know what to do.' He gave her a brilliant icy smile. 'One way or the other.'
She didn't answer but went quickly into the hall. Impassively, formally Myers helped her on with her coat. If he saw she was shaking, he made no sign.
'Good evening, Miss Valway.'
'Good evening.'
The door shut.
Luisa walked home. It was over a mile, and the air was now bitterly cold, but she knew she could not bear to face the bright lights of buses or tubes, the company even of strangers. The sky above her was quite clear, the moon not quite full and white, the stars each distinct. The windscreens of the parked cars she passed were just beginning to film with a pale frost, and the pavements glittered. Behind her the sound of her own footsteps echoed along the empty streets. She walked fast; then, just before she reached Haverstock Hill, she suddenly stopped, staring ahead of herself, seeing nothing. She let herself think the thought that reverberated in her mind. She said to herself, enunciating the words silently: I loved him once. So much. So much.
The Devil's Advocate Page 5
