But how could the violent machinery of Luke's mind have accommodated peace for more than a second? It shattered there like spun glass and his head jerked round to the window again.
Had there been someone in the garden a moment before? He walked over and put his face close enough to the windowpane to feel the coolness coming off the glass. The spiny tree tapped against it and starded him and, as if he had now woken by another vital degree, he unlocked the french windows and walked out across the lawn.
He could see from a distance that the annexe door was ajar. His immediate fear—horrible as it seemed to him straight afterwards—was that Goran and Mila had stolen everything and left. He knew then and there that, no matter what he had told himself when he longed for companions in his suffering, Goran and Mila's desperation was essentially foreign. They had nothing—and he could not even imagine what that would be like. He thought: I have let desperate strangers on to my family property. For a moment, he was appalled and tried to reassure himself that there was nothing of value in the annexe.
From the gap in the doorway he saw that Mila was sitting on the table by the window. Her back was to him and her heels banged the table leg with that brisk, military rhythm she sometimes clicked out with her tongue or tapped with her fingers. He studied her for a moment and then said her name quietly: 'Mila?'
She turned round a little way and smiled.
He pushed the door open and glanced round the room. Nothing had been stolen; everything was as he had last seen it. And yet he was aware that something was wrong, that something had taken place.
'Mila? Where is Goran?' he said.
She did not answer him and, after a second or two, he walked over to the table. The light from the window illuminated her face and as he saw it, front on, he gasped. The right cheek and eye were deep red and swelling. He said, 'Your face!' Then he realized he was standing on something strange and sticky. When he looked down at the floor he saw that he was treading on the remains of the Serbian cake. The plate was broken beneath it. He looked up at her and again he said, 'Your face!'
Mila shrugged. 'Is nothing pain for me. I tell to him this but is hit only one time.'
'Who? Who hit you?' Luke said, in increasing panic. 'Mila, he didn't do this to you. Not Goran. I don't believe he did this to you.'
She shrugged. 'Is the cake.'
Luke saw no meaning in this ominous riddle.' What?' he said.
As if she was recounting a funny anecdote, Mila laughed and said, 'He say to me, "Mila! You do not eat half cake!"' She held up her hands in conclusive surrender.
'What? I don't understand,' Luke said, understanding only too well.
'He is look and look at this cake,' Mila said, 'and he is say to me,"I know you!" And it is right, Luke, because Goran he know me from I am thirteen. Always I eat only little.' She repeated her impression, deepening her voice and wagging her finger like a schoolmaster. '"Mila! You do not eat half cake!"'
She thought for a moment and touched her face. Then she glanced up at Luke and smiled shyly. 'You know it is go this red? It is go and then I am nice again?"'
He stared back at her in amazement.
'Is ugly today but I am nice again,' she insisted.Then she screwed her eyes shut and clenched her fists and said, 'You believe I am think hard maybe is go quick?'
Luke's voice was almost a whisper: 'Mila, where is Goran?'
Beside her was a Kwik-Kabs card. A few seconds passed until she opened her eyes and noticed him staring at it. She said, 'Yes. Is give to me this for maybe I need some money. Goran is not work Kwik-Kabs now.'
'Why? What happened?' Immediately Luke thought of the gun. Of course: Goran had been sacked, arrested even, in connection with the gun. The police would now come for him.
'Is nothing what is bad. Is only for work in kitchen of hotel now because is shift of day time so is like me.' She shook her head at the foolishness of this. 'Is present for me. But now is not. Now he do not want I know where he is live. He says he go like is dead it is better. He tell to me he is put money with friend in Kwik-Kabs. Is Kurd man also drive cab. He say it is "Mila bank".' She laughed sarcastically. 'Dead man is put money in there for I can buy passport.'
She narrowed her eyes. 'But I tell to him I do not want money of dead man!
Luke remembered Goran's plan to buy a National Insurance number and passport and—fake phone bills, was it? He was going to open a bank account in his newly adopted name, using the documents as proof. He would be in possession of some or possibly all of them by now and the job in the kitchen was probably 'legal'. He and Mila had been planning to get her documents after his, because this was the way his mind had organized their future: with him as the provider. Luke had the impression that the whole plan to come to England had been Goran's. Where on earth would Mila go now? In spite of all she had seen in Kosovo, she was innocent of the ways of a large city like London. She had been amazed by a car slowing down as she came home from work, an electric window lowering, a male voice: How much? She had wanted Goran and Luke to explain: what had he thought she was selling?
But she could not stay in the annexe any longer. That would be impossible after what had happened. Surely Goran had not just gone - as if, in Mila's words, he was 'dead'? Luke told himself he must be jumping to conclusions. They had argued, certainly, but surely Mila would have explained the half-eaten cake in some innocent way. Surely this would have been her instinct.
'I don't understand. What did you say to him, Mila?'
She looked away. 'I tell to him all, Luke.'
He stared at her, feeling fear and rage. 'What all?' he said.
'I tell to him what is happen in late night is so beautiful for us.' She lowered her eyes. 'I know is wrong for God but is beautiful for us. And I tell to him I love you now.'
When she returned her eyes to him, it was as if having said these precious words had only increased their truth. She loved him. In a mist of happiness, she listened to Luke telling her he must go out for a bit and sighed tenderly at the thought of his gracious life. 'Yes, Luke. You must go again in your house.'
He nodded at her and said yes.
Mila shivered and drew her knees up to her chest. 'Luke, I ask question? You say I am bad this? I think I do not clean in Tessa Campbell-Sutcliffe apartment today. I tell to you is million and million clothes for iron and all time she shout to me.' Mila did a high-pitched, rasping voice:' "Be careful. Is cou-ture. You know what this mean?" I think is better Hugo Johnson but is tomorrow. Today is tired for Tessa Campbell-Sutcliffe. You think I am bad this?'
'No,' Luke told her. 'No.'
Dear, good Luke, she thought. Ljubavi —my love. He wouldn't hear of her working!
He watched her getting into the little camp bed and she watched him, taking in the light gold hair and the most beautiful grey eyes she had ever seen. Her love for him mingled with her slight concussion. After a while she became aware that his whole face had gone pale, even his mouth. He was plainly terrified with concern for her. She couldn't bear to see it—he ought not to feel a moment's worry! Her face was painful, but she forced a huge smile across it. 'Ah, Luke,' she sighed, 'you know I am happy and I lie in this bed and it is beautiful. Is not pain. You know this? You know this, Luke?'
'Yes,' he said, hurrying towards the door.
'I am sleep and is not pain,' she called after him.
'No,' he said. He shut the door behind him.
Is it possible to desire physical punishment as much as physical pleasure? As fervently as he had ever longed to make love to Arianne, Luke now wanted Goran to punch him, to break his nose and his ribs. Could he go and see Goran and tell him it had all been his fault, that he had seduced Mila and that she was so upset she was gibbering? Would this matter? Surely his being brave enough to own up, his being sorry, would count for something?
He remembered Goran laughing at him for saying he would forgive Arianne and take her back so long as she was 'really sorry'. Luke pictured the sardonic face, the cheeks contorted by
the chewing of a hunk of cheese. Then, with a wince, he remembered how Goran had raised Mila's hand and pointed the fingers at him, as if they were the barrel of a gun. 'I kill you,' he said, 'and now I am "really sorry"?'
Goran's mind did not make an ideal out of justice, or out of anything, really. He just had his tight-lipped nod of respect for survival against the odds, for adaptation. Luke had wondered what it would be like to see things in this way—as if human beings didn't mean any more than cows or bats or other things that ate and reproduced. He had been stunned by the vehemence with which Goran held his stark principles: expecting no heaven, no long-awaited explanation, no acknowledgement, just that the dark would come at the end of the day.
And yet, on the afternoon they met, on their drive from Dover to London together, Goran had countered the vast embarrassment of all Luke's riches, with the words, 'I am lucky, too. I have Mila.'
He might have lashed out at Mila for hurting him, swiping at her like one of the struggling animals in his vision of the world, but what of the tenderly named 'Mila Bank'? The contradiction was heartbreaking.
Slowly, Luke forced himself to accept that there was no point in going over these thoughts because they only added to the desire for punishment and it might take months to seek out Goran. After all, who knew where he was? He had told Mila he did not want to be found. Undoubtedly the Kurdish friend at Kwik-Kabs would have been told to say he knew nothing. Goran had disappeared without a trace, without a single record of his presence in the country. His new job might be in any one of hundreds of hotels in London and he might have left the city. He even had a new name! Perhaps a message could be sent to him one way or another, through the friend, but it would all take time.
For now, when it was so urgently needed, there would be no conclusive punch. Instead there was a pale blue sky and a breeze and birds twittering in the chestnut tree. It was a beautiful, English autumn morning with the scent of bonfires in the air. Luke gazed up at the elegant white house and suddenly he wanted to smash it down.
Had meeting Arianne taught him the tremendous importance of his heart? But it was not important above all else!
He put his hand over his face as he thought of his ex-girlfriend, Lucy, and of the ten-line email he had written to her as a note of dismissal. He recalled the countless messages she had left on his voicemail, like little fistfuls of flowers on a grave. He and Lucy had been boyfriend and girlfriend for two whole years! How many hundreds of times they had made love! They had learnt to sleep peacefully together, she had looked after him when he had a hangover, she had massaged his neck when he was tired; she had kept note of allergies, passions, loathings. She had always remembered to wish him luck or to congratulate him. She had done things to please him in bed that he knew she had found embarrassing.
And the awful thing was that she had done all this while enduring his constant uncertainty about whether she was the right girl for him. And, in the end, he had abandoned her in the course of just one evening for the sake of someone with a more beautiful face, longer arms and legs, a more vibrant personality. And in turn, just as Jessica had implied, the same had been done to him.
All this talk of the 'right' girl or the 'right' man, with its romantic astrological implications. It sounded much more practical when you told the truth: people went for clear eyes, thick hair, height, IQ. And yet love did come out of all the bartering. He had truly loved Arianne. But it was as if love was the design fault in an otherwise effective genetic machine.
Whatever the truth of this idea, it was certain that the question had not been whether Lucy was the 'right girl' for him but whether he was simply the 'wrong man'—for anyone.
And it was also certain that as much as his guilt over Lucy was genuine, he was dwelling on it because what he had done to Mila was worse. What he had done to Mila was unthinkable. When the memory of it threatened to overwhelm the horizon, he could think of nothing to do but run. First he ran up the steps, slamming and locking the door behind him. Then he snatched up his wallet and keys from the hall table and ran out on to the street.
With infinite gentleness, Alistair carried Rosalind's bag across the check-in hall. He had insisted on doing this - even though she was plainly far fitter than he, what with his ridiculous limp. He nodded to her—' Yes, yes, of course, you go on' —and she rushed off ahead in search of the right desk. When she found it, she waved and smiled at him and he lurched off in her direction, feeling ungainly. He was in more pain than he would have admitted.
'You all right? Leg OK?' she said as he arrived, but she was fiddling with her bag and not really waiting for his reply. He saw that she had asked after him out of habit—and, just then, he could only find this beautiful.
'Fine, thanks,' he said, knowing she would not hear. She was so excited—it was rather amazing to see. There was a thrilling breathlessness in her voice.
There were two couples and a man ahead of them. They shuffled along as the man went up to the desk with his bag and ticket.
'Shouldn't be long,' Rosalind said.
'No,' he agreed, 'no time at all.'
As he watched her make sure, for the umpteenth time, that she had her passport and reference number, he remembered an odd thing about the circumstances in which they had got engaged. They had re-met after a long gap. He had resigned ninety-nine per cent of himself to the fact that she was beyond his expectations and had allowed himself to drift out of touch. But Rosalind had appeared unexpectedly at the Christmas party of an old St Hilda's friend of his. This friend, whose name he had now forgotten, had known Suzannah, who had brought her little sister along.
As far as Alistair could remember, the party had taken place around the time he was taken on by Alan Campbell's chambers. He had been astonished by Rosalind's being in London. With a smile, he remembered proposing they raise their glasses of eggnog to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.
But where had he imagined she would be if not in London? He could clearly recall his own relief that she was there. It had involved the realization that he would not now have to endure a long period of attempting simultaneously to put her out of his mind and also, in the hope of astonishing her one day, of drearily beginning to make something of himself Yes, he remembered the relief clearly, but not where she had been going or why she had not gone.
The check-in queue shuffled forwards and he racked his mind. Suddenly it struck him. Of course: 'The Big Adventure'! She and Lara Siskin had been planning to go off on a tour of Italy and then Lara was injured or ill so the trip was called off. Suzannah had often brought it up bitchily at the beginning of their marriage when she whinged about not going on holiday enough. She would mention the wasted tickets and say what a waste it was that Rozzy hadn't had the guts to go on her own.
He had been furious with Suzannah for being so rude to her sister, who merely shrugged and called herself'a silly sausage'. But also, less flatteringly to himself, he remembered being glad that Rosalind hadn't had 'the guts' to go on her own. He had been glad in a practical sense, because she had been at the party, but also in an emotional sense, because he hadn't really wanted his wife to have 'guts'. He had always relied on her dependence on him more than he cared to admit. Had he ensured it by patronizing her, by dismissing her interests as trivial, by implying that she was only qualified to express an opinion on household matters? He had undervalued her, that was for certain, but it had never dawned on him that this negligence might have been a subtle form of domestic violence.
The ground steward fixed labels on to Rosalind's luggage and shunted it on to the conveyor-belt. 'Well, there it goes,' Rosalind said, plainly stunned that this was really happening.
'Yes. There it goes,' Alistair said, smiling at her. Apparently he could only repeat variations of her words back to her. As if he had none of his own. He knew he must try to stay calm.
They moved off towards the 'departures' sign and arrived a few feet in front of a row of desks and Passport officials. Rosalind stood in front of this view, emba
rrassed by the literalness of the barriers. She thought Alistair looked so sad and left out. 'Well, thank you very much for bringing me,' she said.
'Have a wonderful time, darling. A really wonderful time.'
She faced him. 'You will be all right, won't you, Alistair?'
'Me? I'll be fine. I shall miss you. But I'll be fine. Well,' he said awkwardly, pressing his lips to her cheek, knowing he had no right to kiss her mouth, 'well, you'd better go.'
But as he moved back, he found he could not let go of her and his hands gripped her arms, just as they had in the hallway at home a little while before. His heart leapt with fear that she might change her mind and leave him after all. Space ... independence ... perspective ... She would see how stupid she had always been to love him!
As ever, Rosalind had understood his fears. She said, 'I suppose you'd like me to bring you back some photographs?'
Only she would have thought to say that, he thought. It was the perfect, most moderate kind of reassurance—a cool hand on his brow. She intended to come back with photographs. 'I'd like that so much, darling,' he said.
Alistair wondered how, throughout the course of their marriage, he had ever ceased to be amazed by the depths of Rosalind's generosity towards him. It was as if he had been unable to acknowledge its significance precisely because it was being wasted on him. Suddenly he felt that he might cry but he knew that this would be deeply inappropriate—mere self-indulgence.
She smiled at him and he knew they understood each other. She was not promising that they would be happy immediately—as she had so reasonably put it, there was 'a lot to live through'—but she was at least promising to come back. This was more than good enough, far better than he deserved.
None the less, it was still his instinctive desire to push for more, to cross-examine her until he understood her intentions precisely, until he had forced out of her some kind of legally binding guarantee. His heart jolted again, but he stopped himself. He knew that this was meaningless.
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