The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  ‘But I never earned the dough that I donated. I’ve failed so far in most of my ambitions and, frankly, I’m worried about our book. I can’t help wondering if I at least am up to it.’ Max paused before blurting out what he’d been working up to admitting for some time. ‘There’s something else I should’ve told you a long time back.’

  This is it, Clare thought. Whatever it might be.

  ‘I feel bad I’ve never told you,’ Max said. ‘It contributes to my feelings of inadequacy.’ He ran his hands through his hair, which was thick and dishevelled. Clare felt her impatience with him soften.

  ‘So at last you’re going to tell me, darling.’

  ‘I would have done so before but I feared to lose you.’

  ‘Lose me?’

  ‘I’ve never stopped loving you. That’s what makes this difficult.’ Max paused a second. ‘I feel so guilty.’

  ‘Makes what difficult?’ Clare asked, feeling slightly breathless. Max looked acutely unhappy now as well as tongue-tied. ‘Makes what difficult?’ she repeated, wondering if she really wished to know after all. Did she really want him to clarify her doubts and possibly intensify her pain? But she was no coward.

  ‘Are you in love with someone else?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Narayan.’

  For a moment Clare stared at Max without comprehending what he had just said.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ she exclaimed. ‘Not Narayan.’

  ‘Surely you suspected it?’ he asked.

  ‘Dammit, Max. I only knew you were intrigued by him… as a good friend.’

  Clare pictured Narayan now; she forced herself to concentrate on him. There was a vivid memory of a barbecue party. She recalled how he’d jokingly raised his hands in horror at the sputtering, charred steak upon the grill. They’d been sitting together under the patchy moon shadows of a eucalyptus tree, the pungent scent of which she’d associated with him ever since. Narayan had suddenly gone solemn, looking at her almost with contrition, which she’d found confusing at the time. She’d imagined he was regretting his attraction to her, the tenderness she thought was directed at her and which conflicted with his friendship with her husband.

  How blind I was, she thought now. How presumptuous.

  ‘I knew you were fascinated,’ she said at last, returning fully to the present. ‘I thought it was his being so different. His Indian culture, his way with words, maybe. His wit. I didn’t think of you as ever being in love with him. Does he love you back?’

  ‘He’s said so, yes. But sometimes it all seems so hopeless.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Clare snapped. ‘And yet you love me still. How complicated for you!’

  She regretted the sarcasm instantly. She was sounding bitter when what she was really feeling was sheer despair.

  ‘I love our life together,’ Max protested. ‘Everything we’ve built. I love you. I could never live without you.’

  He spoke earnestly. Although Clare believed what he was saying, it seemed so meagre in the context of the admission he’d now made.

  ‘But physically,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘you’re more in love with him?’

  Max didn’t answer this and so Clare turned away. She felt a fierce anger as she went into their bedroom. He followed her, but she rejected his attempt to touch her. She thought about the despair in his eyes and in his voice before he told her this shattering news. It was one of those crises of confidence that often happened when he was feeling guilty over something. She listened as he spoke about how he was equally attracted to both of them but felt empty.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore,’ she said quietly. ‘Not right now.’

  Max seemed highly distressed and tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away. How dare he assume she’d accept his embrace, imagining her pain so easily alleviated.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she told him, barely containing her fury. ‘Alone.’

  Once Clare was away from Max, her anger started to subside. A curious numbness dulled her hurt, and slowly her mind began to drift. She thought of the home she shared with Max in Los Angeles, of their garden there, the mango and pawpaw trees loaded with green and yellow fruit, the frail hibiscus flowers, the bougainvillea in thorny red clusters trailing along the sandy-coloured garden walls, the palm trees shooting up so high with their untidy, clustered fronds. She envisaged the house itself, full of light and colour and the beautiful objects Max had given her. There was the Mayan head, the Toltec figurine (an early present) and the Hokusai woodblock print to welcome her return.

  He’d been so obviously delighted and relieved to have her home again.

  Home.

  She recalled coming back from London in her double grief after both her mother and then Violet had died. The garden had been heavy with the scent of citrus. Max had thrown a barbecue party, inviting a group of friends, to cheer her up.

  She remembered the noise of vigorous splashing in the pool.

  It was the first time she saw Narayan. He was moving in a strangely seal-like, twisting way, the floodlight flashing over his supple body, the lucent water swirling as he broke the surface.

  ‘Who on earth is that?’ she had asked Max, who seemed surprised. His answer, she realised now, was a touch dismissive.

  ‘Oh, a guy I met at the gym. His name is Narayan. He’s an Indian university academic… a physicist. He’s only just come out here. I invited him because he knows no one and he’s lonely. A bit of a mad joker.’

  He laughed at the incident and led her away from the poolside, past a number of guests who looked on, bewildered yet amused.

  ‘Let’s be by ourselves, darling,’ he said. ‘Narayan can look after himself all right. He’s got loads of confidence. Let’s leave them to enjoy themselves and go.’

  Max drove them to their beach house in Malibu. The moon above the highway was veined and icy, the ocean to the left brokenly reflecting it.

  ‘I wanted to be alone with you,’ he said, his hands firm on the wheel.

  ‘Even if it means walking out on our guests?’ Clare asked.

  ‘They know about your grief,’ he replied. ‘Besides, I got a friend to host the party. We don’t need to be there to keep it going. Talk to me. Tell me about Violet.’

  Clare took a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Yes, I suppose I should. She was at home. She began struggling to breathe and I tried to give her the kiss of life. I’d called an ambulance and we got her to hospital, where they placed her in intensive care. She was put into an oxygen tent but it was too late. I was with her for several hours before she died.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Max said simply.

  Clare knew he would be remembering his own mother’s death, from emphysema, some years earlier. He had sobbed when he told her. He was able to release tears on rare occasions, and she respected him for this.

  Max parked the car at the side of the beach house, and they walked down to the jetty, where their speedboat was moored. This was their special place, their very own patch of beach. Clare loved the Los Angeles beaches, wide and windswept as they were. She liked to watch the black-billed gulls wheeling in the air above and around the palm trees. She remembered how they’d once walked under the old pier at Santa Monica, the rumbling carousel above them, the tide sweeping in around the wooden piles, scored by the sea and thickly barnacled.

  It had been dark there. Max had kissed her with a quickly mounting passion that had excited and touched her deeply.

  The old beach shack that they’d repaired together five years before – sawing, hammering, creosoting and painting for hours every day – stood in stark contrast to the supercharged, streamlined and very modern speedboat. Clare thought it was a little flashy, but she never said so.

  They’d created this place so they could be alone.

  They climbed into the boat and headed rapidly out into the ocean, the waves thudding below them. Max had taken the wh
eel, and Clare stood with her arm around him.

  Fifteen minutes later, Max stopped the boat and switched off the engine. He picked up his binoculars and peered out at the sea, waiting for something, barely restraining his excitement.

  And then it came.

  At first, it seemed as if a solitary wave was rising from the sea. It sank and then rose again. The water was heaving, rolling and breaking, as if it was about to deliver some dark secret. Then out of the water rose a streaming apparition, the water cascading down its massive flanks. It sank again.

  Moments later, the head of the great mammal, its mouth agape, broke the water’s surface just in front of the boat. The surf boiled within its massive jaws. Its eye was like a flash of phosphorescence in the moonlight. Its powerful flipper hit the water, and its ribbed tail swept the air like some huge, glistening wing. The boat heeled over, flinging Clare against the stern.

  Max threw himself across to grab her. Soaked and giddy, she clung to him. Another wave rose at them and hurled itself down before sweeping on. Clare caught one more sight of the whale as it plunged, its tail thrashing, sending a shivering last cascade of spray into the air.

  ‘I guess that was quite scary,’ said Max, as he secured the wheel.

  ‘Scary, yes,’ Clare agreed. ‘But it was so beautiful.’

  She felt the tension leave her body. As it did so, she began to shiver. Noticing this, Max put his hands on her arms and began to rub them to warm her. Then he touched her face, moved his hands to her breasts and began kissing her, his mouth urgent as he loosened her clothes. Reaching down, he began to caress her, to enter her with his fingers. He yearned to arouse her, something always so essential to his own pleasure. Clare kissed him back. The memory of Violet as a child sprang involuntarily to mind, making her think of having a child herself, something they’d put off for too long.

  They made love in the stern. She heard his breath quicken as he whispered her name and then the huge gasp as he came, his body stiff and shuddering, her own cries mingling with his. She thought of the whale plunging onwards. She listened to the wind, the rippling of the sea. She looked up at the stars, at their unimaginable distances away. They usually made her feel so small and negligible but now strangely enhanced the idea of their being so close together, so intimate; the indifferent, cold infinitudes of space and time seemed purposeless and meaningless by contrast.

  For a while afterwards, they lay on the deck, Max on top. She loved his weight on her, the reassurance she got from his body, his mouth on hers again, his quiet breathing. He rolled off her and she reached over to fondle his now-soft cock, the feel of it in her hand only intensifying her sense of his vulnerability and the beauty of the release they’d given each other. She held his head to her breasts, feeling a dissolving tenderness within, as if he were that child she might conceive through him. She thought of the whale swimming in the distance, having heaved up to the surface like a sudden dream before plunging down into its fathomless dark world, moving slowly, inexorably away.

  So much in life was receding from her, she now thought. She lay alone in bed in this ancient town in Southern India. Max was sleeping in another room, and she recalled with acute nostalgia that night only eight months ago, remembering the intensity of her happiness with him.

  She thought back to a similar time: that night in the castle when they had made love for the first time, A nightingale was singing in the valley below, giving off its extraordinary varied notes, very clear and fast, as if it hastened towards the climax of its song in hope the ecstatic moment might endure forever. The next morning she and Max had gazed out through the mullioned windows, watching the swallows swinging off with a flutter and flash of pointed wings in long downward loops and quivering ascents. The birds threaded the valley with their exultant flight, swooping down to the bright river before hurtling up above the wooded hills. As Max and Clare kissed deeply, she thought what marvellous chance had brought them here together to fall so dazzlingly in love.

  She heard a noise in next room. It was a thud. Someone falling?

  The cripple came to mind, falling down while trying to reach her on his crutches. She felt haunted by two very different and conflicting memories of him: his evil manipulation of a dependent and naive young man who he’d urged to commit an act of bloody murder, and the tenderness he’d shown towards his fragile little daughter. Clare also recalled his forgiving words to his anguished wife. The woman had a sensitive but worn face, as if she’d suffered much. Clare had been touched by her motherly and wifely love, and hoped the cripple was always as kind to her as he’d appeared.

  There were sounds of more awkward movements from next door, and then Clare heard someone call her name; it was Tammy. She threw on her dressing gown and opened the door to see him rising to his feet, a shamed expression on his face. She came out and closed the door behind her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tammy said. His voice was slurred. ‘I’m very drunk, I’m afraid. I’ve been feeling terrible because of what I told you about Max. Don’t think I did it out of malice. I know you can’t love me back but I can’t bear it that you don’t accept my love.’

  ‘Quiet, Tammy!’ Clare urged, her voice low but sharp. ‘Max is next door, asleep. Accept your love? Don’t be mad.’ She felt a throb of exasperation. ‘It’s a bit arrogant to suppose I would. Don’t you think it’s a touch insulting too?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I wish I’d been told nothing.’

  ‘Narayan told you, I suppose?’

  Tammy nodded in acute discomfort, and this slightly softened her. Just when her marriage to Max was under threat, here was Tammy making these amorous declarations. Clare found him pathetic in this intoxicated state. She hated his loss of dignity, in spite of his attempts to recover it.

  ‘You’d better go,’ she said.

  Tammy moved his arms in a gesture of frustration.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come on this trip. I only came because of what he told me,’ he said. ‘Maybe he exaggerated something out of proportion. And now look at the stupid mess I’m in. It’s my fault, I know. Yes, it has been arrogant of me. I didn’t mean it to be insulting, though.’

  He stopped, but obviously wanted to say more.

  ‘What?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Don’t worry about what’s happened. Veerapan’s a real alarmist. They won’t be pursuing us. I promise you’ll be safe.’

  He left then, and Clare went back to bed. She wondered if Max, sleeping alone, was dreaming of her – or of Narayan.

  Max woke alone and immediately missed Clare’s presence in the bed next to him. He would often wake in the night and loved to feel her back up close against him. They often slept with his arms around her, the muscles of his stomach against her buttocks, his hands upon her breasts. He loved the way their bodies fitted together, his hardness and her softness, the beating of her heart and the motion of her breathing.

  He thought of her vulnerability now that he was alone, and she was on her own in another room. He knew that he’d caused her enormous pain, and this knowledge cut deep into his conscience. He couldn’t stop tracing in his memory the outline of events, the interrupted process of the development of his love for Narayan.

  Memories flooded back. He’d contacted Narayan in Los Angeles a week after his return from London.

  ‘I hate the idea of Clare staying behind,’ Max told him as soon as they met. ‘I want to introduce you as soon as she gets back. I’d like you to be friends.’

  ‘I’d like that too,’ Narayan replied. ‘She sounds real cool.’

  ‘Real cool? You’re picking up our lingo quite impressively.’

  Narayan smiled at this. Max was nervous of sounding too keen to meet him again, afraid of scaring him away.

  ‘Would you like to go surfing one of these days?’ he found himself asking. ‘It’d be a real Los Angeles experience.’ He was banking on Narayan’s adventurous spirit. ‘It’s be a challenge,’ he added.

  Narayan hesitated. Max wondered
if he’d pushed his luck too far, but then Narayan agreed, suggesting they meet at Venice Beach. He’d seen people surfing there when he’d met José.

  When Narayan arrived, he was in a mildly combative, jokey mood; he claimed Max was leading him far astray with his American obsession over sport. But he took to surfing and learned quickly. They rode in several times together, but soon Narayan fell quite badly, gashing his shin against the board. He was stoic about it as he limped up the beach.

  ‘I’ve only myself to blame for trying to keep up with your really terrible showing off. It’s all this American competitiveness,’ he went on, mock plaintively. ‘I’m allowing it to corrupt my pristine Indian soul. You look disgustingly impressive, shooting around like that. I’ve become so envious. I want to look as good. Appearances, Max! Deceptive, vain, physical appearances! And to think my religion calls them mere illusion, while your civilisation’s built upon them.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ Max retorted. ‘What about all those ostentatious Indian palaces and monumental tombs? Are you sure your leg isn’t hurting badly? Or is your pristine Indian soul above mere pain?’

  ‘Total yoga may deliver one from pain,’ Narayan said. ‘I’m a long way from that, though. My flesh can hurt like bloody hell.’

  ‘Then perhaps you might stoop to taking some painkillers. There’s a drug store round the corner, full of those potions and pills we swallow endlessly. This shameful American obsession with the body, with the material world in general, by which you soulful Indians are, of course, quite uncorrupted.’

  ‘Mocking me again, Max,’ Narayan chided. ‘I hate airs of spiritual superiority; they always sound suspiciously like material sour grapes. There’s some terrible corruption in India, where the new middle classes are as avaricious as the middle classes anywhere in the world. Even I am not exactly a paragon of self-denial. My problem is I’m greedy, as I’ve said before. Greedy for a few base material advantages but more, I confess, for some love and admiration.’