‘So what can I do?’
Elizabeth looked at her wristwatch. ‘I want to see my mother this afternoon. I need to know if the Peggy-girl has been visiting her recently. Maybe you could drive us out to Gaylordsville.’
‘Sure. Maybe we could tell her that you and me are engaged, too.’
Elizabeth kissed him. ‘You’re no fool, are you, Lenny Miller? You know that’s the main reason I want to go. It’s not every day a girl gets proposed to.’
‘It’s not every day she accepts.’
Laura went through to the kitchen, to make sure that the range was well stoked up. It was an old-fashioned blue-nickel Wehrle, which had probably been installed before the First World War, but it burned everything – coal, softwood, even corn-cobs – and it gave out tremendous waves of heat. As she came in through the kitchen door, however, she felt intense cold, rather than heat. The stove was still alight, the fire was still burning, but it was giving out no warmth whatsoever.
‘Lizzie!’ she called. ‘Lizzie, come here!’
She approached the range very cautiously, her heart beating so loudly that she could almost hear it. She had laid the fire early this morning, and by now the whole kitchen should have been uncomfortably hot. The range itself should have been impossible to touch, except with oven-gloves. But it was cold as a cast-iron coffin. In fact, it seemed to emanate cold. Laura stood close to it, and she could see her breath vaporizing, little clouds of panic.
Elizabeth came into the kitchen, closely followed by Lenny.
‘The range,’ said Laura. ‘Look at it, it’s burning at full blast, but it’s cold:
Elizabeth went up to the range and stood beside it. It was icy-cold. The warming closet at the top, the nickel-plated rail, the hotplates themselves, all icy cold.
‘This isn’t possible,’ she said.
‘Maybe it isn’t,’ said Laura. Her fear made her irritable. ‘Maybe it isn’t, but it’s happening.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Lenny. ‘The fire’s burned itself down, that’s all. My grandma used to have one of these old ranges, and – ’ Lenny laid his hand flat on one of the hotplates. Instantly, there was a sharp sizzling noise, and Lenny shouted out in pain. He tried to tug his hand away, but his skin was stuck to the metal, and he lifted the whole hotplate out of the oven-top. He shouted, and twisted around, and shook his wrist again and again, and at last the hotplate clanged onto the floor, and rolled away, with the skin from the palm of his hand still stuck to it, like shrivelled grey tissue-paper.
‘Christ it hurts! Jesus Christ, it hurts!’
Elizabeth pulled him over to the sink, and turned on the cold tap. She held his wrist tight and the palm of his hand wide open, so that the freezing-cold water could gush all over his burn. He stood next to her, alternately letting out gasps of pain and short bursts of shocked laughter, until at last the water numbed his hand, and he began to relax.
She wrapped his hand in a dry clean tea-towel, reached up and touched his cheek. She felt so frightened for him that she didn’t know what to say. You love me, you want to marry me, so you’re probably going to die, by one of the most agonizing deaths ever known? Together, she and Bronco had exorcized Billy; but she wasn’t at all sure that she could get rid of Peggy quite so easily. Everything had been different in Arizona; hot and strange and slightly magical, with Eusebio to guide her. She was beginning to doubt that peyote magic would work in straight-laced New England, in freezing winds, in territory where no Piman or Papago Indian had ever walked. The land that Eusebio worked may have been the land of the dead; but Litchfield was the land of a different kind of dead – trappers and Puritans, witches and Redcoats in powdered wigs and men who rode furiously by night, on all kinds of arcane and hair-raising errands.
Lenny said, ‘Look . . . it’s a little raw, but it’s nothing.’
‘Maybe it is nothing, But you should see a doctor. We should take you to the hospital.’
‘What? It’s only one layer of skin. It’s sore, but it’ll heal. And what will the hospital do? Give me a tube of hydrocortisone, a cheery pat on the back, and charge me $50 for the pleasure?’
‘I’d better call the clinic and tell mother we won’t be visiting today,’ said Laura.
‘No, no,’ Lenny protested. ‘I can wrap my hand up in some surgical gauze, and put a glove on over it. I’ll be all right. It doesn’t even hurt that much. Let’s go see your mother. We need to, don’t we? I want to.’
‘Okay,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If you say so. But if we were married – ’
‘We’re not,’ said Lenny. ‘And, until we are, please let me have some freedom.’
Elizabeth kissed him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him. ‘I guess I’m just being over-protective, like Peggy.’
They stood in the chilly kitchen with the draught shrieking high-pitched through every crevice and every window frame, and roaring soft-throated in the chimney, and Elizabeth felt that her life was at a crossroads, where one sign pointed to purgatory, and another to peace. But there was another sign, too, which was blank, waiting for her to paint her own destination on it, if only she knew what that destination could possibly be.
Her mother was in bed now. She was so thin and frail that she could have been eighty-five years old. Dr Buckelmeyer said that she wasn’t eating properly, that she seemed to have lost all will to live. She talked constantly of show business, and El Morocco, and the Stork Club. Her body was collapsing in a clinic bed in Gaylordsville, Connecticut, but her mind was still whirling around Manhattan, in the glittering days of Cafe Society.
Elizabeth and Laura sat on each side of the bed. Lenny stood by the door, with his hat in his hand. The view from the window was plain and bleak. Leafless bushes, leafless trees, and a long dull slope of snow. The room smelled of lavender toilet-water and minced beef.
‘Mother, how are you?’ asked Elizabeth.
Her mother turned her head to look at her with rheumy eyes. ‘Happy,’ she said.
‘You’ve given up smoking?’
‘Dr Shitmeyer won’t let me.’
‘Are they treating you well?’
‘I think so. I don’t notice them much. They come and they go. I’ve decided to go back, you see, and live it out all over again . . . the good parts, the happy parts. I’m going to Jack and Charlie’s tonight and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.’
‘Mother . . . you remember Lenny?’
‘Lenny, Lenny, Lenny . . . yes. I think I remember Lenny. The one who went to the war?’
‘He’s here. He has something he wants to ask you.’
Margaret Buchanan blinked furiously. Lenny approached her bedside from the back of the room, and stood close beside her, too close for Margaret’s comfort, looking down at her.
‘Mrs Buchanan, I’ve asked Lizzie to be my bride, and I’d like your approval.’
Margaret lay slowly back on her pillow. Her eyes, first moist and uncontrolled, suddenly became shifty. ‘You want to marry my Elizabeth?’
‘That’s the idea, yes.’
‘And Elizabeth wants to marry you?’
‘She’s agreed, ma’am, yes, and she’s accepted my ring.’
‘But what will Peggy say? Peggy will be furious!’
Laura took hold of her mother’s hand. ‘Mommy . . . you have to accept it. Peggy’s long dead.’
‘How can she be dead when she came to see me this morning?’ Margaret shrieked at her. ‘How dare you say such a thing!’
‘Mommy, she drowned in the pool and she’s dead.’
‘You’re a liar! You’re such a liar! She visits me nearly every day! She came today! She’s coming tomorrow! Dead? How can you say that she’s dead?’
‘Do you want me to show you her grave?’ Laura shouted back at her. ‘Do you want me to have her dug up, so that you can look at her body?’
‘How dare you!’ Margaret screamed. ‘She came today – and I’ll tell you what’s more – she knows about this engagement – she knows – and she’ll kill you a
ll – she’ll kill you – rather than see you married to him?
Elizabeth stood up. She didn’t know what to say. Her mother was seriously ill; and rambling; and no matter what she said to her, it wouldn’t really matter. You can’t inflict pain on those who live their whole lives revelling in pain, as her mother had. You can’t disappoint those who expect nothing but disappointment. All they ever do is drag you into their pain, and blame you for their disappointment, and never feel better whatever you do, because they simply don’t want to. The only pleasure they ever get out of their lives is in making you feel worse, and that isn’t much of a pleasure for them, either.
Laura said, ‘We can’t leave yet.’
‘Oh, yes we can,’ Elizabeth retorted. ‘This woman isn’t my mother. This woman isn’t even my friend.’
Lenny put his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders and drew her close. ‘Come on, Lizzie. You’re right. It’s time to put the past behind us.’
As they walked out of the clinic, a man in a maroon-striped robe stepped out of a side corridor – the same man that Elizabeth had met before, with his slicked-back hair and his six-o’-clock shadow. ‘You’re leaving in a hurry,’ he said, with a smirk on his face.
‘What’s that got to do with you?’ Lenny asked, aggressively.
‘Nothing at all,’ the man replied. ‘I just wanted to wish you good luck. Tomorrow we’ll run faster, won’t we, Lenny? Stretch out our arms further? And one fine day . . . well one fine day . . .’
‘Come on, Lizzie,’ Lenny urged her, and tugged her arm.
But Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, and said to the man, very softly, ‘Are you really who I think you are?’
‘It depends on who you think I am.’
‘I think – I think you could be Jay Gatsby.’
The man said nothing at first, but smiled very broadly. Eventually, he said, ‘Remember what I said to you about dead people, that’s all.’
‘You said, “It takes one to know one.” ’
The man lifted his hand in a mock-salute. ‘Truest word you ever spoke.’
Twenty-Three
Elizabeth spent all evening in the library, rummaging through books. By midnight, however, she still hadn’t decided who she could be to outwit Gerda and destroy the Snow Queen. If she had been a child again, perhaps she might have been able to think of some fairy story, in which there was somebody, more powerful, somebody colder, somebody with arteries flowing as cold and as white and as thick as glaciers. But she had forgotten most of her fairy princesses, and most of her hobgoblins, and even her club-carrying ogres stood unremembered in the background of her mind, like knobby rows of pollarded plane trees.
The range was still cold, so they went to Endicott’s for hamburgers, and sat under unflattering fluorescent lights watching the youth of the town combing its greasy quiffs and propping its feet on the table and talking loudly about ‘cats’ and ‘chicks’ and how Jackie Brenston’s record ‘Rocket 88’ was really the most.
Outside Endicott’s the north-westerly gale screamed along Oak Street, and soon the snow started too, thin at first, and whirling in the wind, but quickly thickening up, until the street was almost blinded with white.
‘Time to get back,’ said Lenny. ‘It looks like a bad one.’
They struggled out to the car. Already the lights along Oak Street were being switched off, one by one, as shopkeepers closed up to go home. The snow pelted in their faces like the Snow Queen’s warriors, and stung their cheeks. Lenny’s car was already humped with it, and when they opened the doors to climb in, they dropped heaps of snow onto the seats. They drove in silence back to the house. Although it was midwinter, and blizzards weren’t at all unusual, they had a bad feeling about this one. The wind was so strong that it rocked the car, and the wipers could barely cope with the furiously-falling flakes. Elizabeth felt a deep sense of relief when they finally drove down the slope towards the house, and pulled up outside the front steps.
‘Come in for a drink before you go,’ she asked Lenny, as they opened up the door, and stepped into the hallway.
‘I should get back, really, before it gets any worse.’
Laura was dancing a mazurka on the doormat to knock the snow off her boots. ‘You could always stay. We have plenty of spare beds.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Elizabeth coaxed him. ‘We do have something to celebrate, after all.’
Lenny said, ‘Okay . . . but just one, and only one. Otherwise mom will start worrying.’
‘We do have a telephone, you know,’ said Laura.
‘So did Alexander Graham Bell,’ Lenny retorted.
‘Oh, sure . . . but you’re handsomer.’
Elizabeth went around the sitting-room, drawing the curtains. When she reached the last window, she paused, to watch the snow. A wan light was falling across the garden, so that she could just make out fir trees, and the handrails around the swimming-pool steps. So many years had passed since she had first moved here, and since Peggy had drowned. But even after all these years, she was tied here still by what had happened, by memory and by superstition. She longed so much to be free of this house, to be free of fairy stories. The time had come to grow up, and to face the world with maturity and understanding and wit. Icicles and swords and magic spells were no longer enough. Imagination was no longer enough. This was a time for real responsibility.
Touching Lenny was real. Caring about Lenny was real. It was time that the spindly dreams were swept away. It was time that the Peggy-girl was swept away, and the Snow Queen with her.
The fire crackled in the bedroom hearth. The shadows leaped around the room like Isadora Duncan’s dance troupe. Elizabeth lay in bed watching Lenny undress, half-silhouetted by the flames. He was so lean and tall. He wasn’t a muscle-man, but there wasn’t a spare ounce anywhere. His chest was flat and his stomach was flat and his thighs were two hard curves. His bottom was high and rounded and small. He wasn’t hairy, apart from a small crucifix of soft black hair in the middle of his chest. His right shoulder-blade was marked with a crude white scar, like a teacher’s tick of approval. A mortar had exploded ten feet away from him, on an island whose name he couldn’t remember, or wouldn’t.
He turned towards her, and she glimpsed his penis, rearing high and thick and very hard. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and touched her cheek, and she kissed his hand.
‘Can you manage?’ she said.
‘I think so . . . these bandages don’t help.’
She heard the tearing of the sachet, followed by the snapping and stretching of the rubber. Then he was climbing into bed, and lying next to her, almost on top of her, his skin chilly, his penis hard.
‘Don’t rush,’ she whispered, kissing his ear, kissing his hair. ‘Don’t rush, my darling . . .’
His hand cupped and massaged her breast, and she felt her nipple harden. He kissed her, and his fingers coursed down her naked side, right down to her hip, so that she shuddered. They were clumsy and unfamiliar with each other at first, as lovers always are. But at last he lifted himself on top of her, and she guided his rubber-sheathed penis into her wet vagina, and he thrust and thrust until he shuddered at last, breathed a long, luxuriating, ‘Oh,’ and climbed off her.
But she held him close, and slipped off his rubber, and massaged his soft spermy penis with her fingers, because she had adored every moment of it. His lovemaking would become more assured, and she would get to know him better, and in any case she loved him, his flat ironing-board body and his scar and his big tight balls. She licked him in his ear, and licked his stubbly cheek, and his lips, too, and climbed on top of him.
‘I think I died and went somewhere better than heaven,’ he said.
She ran her fingers through his hair. ‘I love you.’ She whispered. ‘I love you so much.’
She was just about to kiss him again when the wind whined and screamed in a sudden gust, and the windows rattled and a door just across the corridor slammed shut with a deafening bang.
Lenny
screamed, ‘Mortar!’ and twisted out from underneath her like a muscly anaconda.
‘Down!’ he yelled at her. ‘Down! ’
‘What?’ he said. ‘Lenny, what are you – ’
Lenny shouted, ‘Down!’ again, and smacked her head so hard that she tumbled sideways across the bed and almost fell off the other side. Her left ear was singing and she felt as if her cheek were ballooning out. She sat up, dragging the blankets around her, and stared at him in bewilderment.
‘Lenny?’ she said. ‘Lenny, can you hear me?’
His back was turned. His head was dropped between his shoulders.
‘Lenny . . .’ she repeated. She shuffled her way towards him, and laid her hand on his back.
‘I can’t do it, can I?’ he said, and he was sobbing. ‘I can’t get over it.’
He smeared the tears away from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘So young . . . They gave us training, but they never trained us for Guadalcanal . . . they never trained anyone to have their legs blown off or their faces on fire or the guts falling out all over the beach.’
He stared at his bare feet on the bedside mat. ‘We’ve been talking about spirits. But the spirits of those guys are going to haunt me for ever; until I die; and I’m afraid to meet them when I do.’
Elizabeth held him close. She didn’t know what to say. All she could hear was the wind rising, and the snow pattering urgently against her window.
She fell asleep shortly after she heard the hallway clock chime two. The wind was still whining, and a distant shutter was banging – pause – banging.
She dreamed that she was walking through a frigid palace, in a time long after she was dead. The palace was silent and dark, and there was nobody there. They had all left years ago, so that only she remained, walking hopelessly from room to room. She knew that she would never find her way out; and that even if she did, the palace was set in the middle of a vast and snowy waste, thousands of miles from anywhere warm, thousands of miles from summer gardens where children played and every flower told its own story.
Spirit Page 37
