by Ellis Peters
As soon as he decently could, and on the plea that they were all tired—to which Lesley frankly assented, eliding a yawn into an apology—he excused himself and withdrew to make his way home. He was glad to be alone, and made the most of the ten-minute walk to his bed, taking it at leisure.
It was a restless, luminous night, the kind that late April sometimes casts up between frosts, mild, starry, with a laggard and minor moon. The shape of Aurae Phiala came into being gradually as he walked, looming largely on his right hand, a series of levels marked out by a series of verticals, standing bones of masonry rearing from long planes of turf.
She came silently out of the unregarded spaces on his left, and stood in his path, a small, compact figure quite still and composed; not making any demands upon him, except by being there. He knew which one she was, though the two of them were very much of a build.
‘Lesley…’
‘It’s all right,’ she said serenely, still neatly enfolded into her own shadowy silhouette. ‘Nobody’s going to miss me. Believe it or not, I was so tired I went up to bed the moment you left. You surely don’t think I share a room with him, do you? Or with anyone!’
‘You shouldn’t have come out after me,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t suppose I should. What makes you think it was after you?’
‘You do,’ he said brutally, and stood fronting her, for want of any way by. ‘Who else did you think would be making off this way? Don’t pretend you just happened to choose this way for your evening constitutional.’
‘I never pretend anything,’ she said, in the soft, mild voice that seemed to belong so aptly to the dark. ‘And I never just happen to do anything. In any case, it must be quite plain to you that I ran most of the way from the back gate, or I couldn’t have got here before you. I simply felt I wanted to talk to you again. But it wasn’t much use my finding out how much I liked you, if all I’ve done is to make you dislike me.’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’ he said.
‘That’s the way it looks from where I’m standing.’
‘Maybe you can’t see very well from there.’
‘I could come closer,’ she offered.
It was a highly dangerous gift she had, this one of writing both halves of the dialogue. There never seemed to be any possible answer except the one she wanted. Not that he was trying very hard to deviate from the script.
She took two long, slow steps towards him, her arms at her sides, her head tilted back to look up at him. One more step, and the points of her small, high breasts almost touched him. In the darkness her face was serene and pale, and her dilated eyes huge and fixed. He had the impression that she was smiling.
‘Do I look any more friendly from there?’ he asked, keeping very still.
She said: ‘Gus…’ experimentally, as if she were memorising and tasting his name; and she laughed, very softly, at its ridiculous brevity and inappropriateness. ‘Are you waiting for me to explode when touched? Not this time! Something happened to me this morning that never happened before. Try it. Touch me!’
Her face was very close, turned up to him like a white, wide-open flower; and in obedience to the rules of this game he very nearly did take her at her word. But then he changed his mind, and deliberately held still, even when her warmth leaned and touched him. In a voice he had never heard from her before, whispering, almost fawning, and yet still laughing, she said: ‘Gus…’ again, two or three times over, changing the note as though plucking descending strings. ‘It’s you,’ she said, ‘you, you, you’re the one… It was never like that for me—never—not even with him…’
She put out her hands, and flattened them gently against his chest; and then suddenly her arms were round him, and her body was pressed hard against his, clinging from shoulder to knee. He returned her embrace partly out of pure astonishment, but kept his close hold of her after that out of heady delight. Her intensity was electrifying. Her body moved against him, tensing and turning fluid again, finding every vulnerable nerve. She freed a hand to tug at the buttons of his jacket, and wound her arms about him within it, manipulating the muscles of his back with fierce, hard fingertips. Her mouth reached up to him hungrily, and fastened on his as he leaned to her, in a kiss that left them both gasping for breath. Her lips, progressing by little, biting caresses along his cheek, whispered dizzily: ‘Love me, love me, love…’ until he found her mouth again with his and silenced her.
They were so wildly engrossed in each other at that moment that they heard nothing outside themselves, only the pounding of their hearts and the gusty breaths they drew. Paviour was within six feet of them before they were aware of him. Gus lifted his head and looked over Lesley’s shoulder, and there motionless before him, a lean, angular shape in the darkness, the jealous husband stood waiting with bleak courtesy to be let into their world.
Lesley felt the stiffening jolt that passed through Gus’s body, and stirred and turned protestingly to look for its reason. There was one strange moment while they both stared at Paviour, and he at them, rather as though they had no shared language between them, and speech could not help them. Very slowly the two tangled bodies drew apart and stood clear; the most important thing just then seemed to be to accomplish this necessary manoeuvre with a little grace and dignity, not in a humiliating scramble. Even when they were separate, their linked hands parted only gradually and gently.
‘I’m sorry!’ said Paviour with cold civility. ‘I regret forcing this intrusion upon you, but you’ll agree it’s inevitable.’ He looked at Lesley, without any perceptible signs of anger; all that Gus could detect in his voice and his stillness was discouragement and grief. ‘Go back to the house, my dear,’ he said, ‘and go to bed. Leave me to talk to Mr Hambro.’
The most remarkable thing was that she did as she was told, not in a manner that suggested any fear of him, or any great desire to justify herself or placate him. Her shoulders lifted in a small, resigned shrug. She cast a glance at Gus, hesitated no more than a second, and then turned and walked away into the darkness, towards the distant shape of the house within its girdle of trees.
‘I have no wish to embarrass you,’ said Paviour, when the last faint rustle of her steps in the grass had died away. ‘That was not my intention.’ There was no dislike in his voice, he stood detached and withdrawn into the night, and the lack of precise vision made this encounter easier than Gus would have believed possible. ‘But you see, of course, that I had to intervene.’
‘You’re being absurdly generous, in fact,’ Gus said honestly. ‘I’m not going to attempt to justify myself. But I can at least assure you, for what it’s worth, that things have gone no further than what you’ve seen.’
‘I’m well aware of that,’ said Paviour drily; and though it seemed incredible, there was the suggestion of a sour smile in his voice this time. ‘And it won’t be necessary to defend yourself. I understand the situation perfectly. I should, I’ve lived with it for some years now. You mustn’t think, my dear Hambro, that you’re the first. And I can’t hope that you’ll be the last.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Gus, stiffening.
‘You will. Do you mind if I walk with you down to the lodge? It’s a little cold for standing around, and we can talk as we go.’
Bemused, Gus fell into step beside him on the path. They walked with a yard or so of the dark between them. And after a moment Paviour resumed gently; ‘I take it you’ll have heard from Lesley about her earlier love affair, and the way it ended. The way, in fact, that we came to get married. I needn’t go into that again. And I needn’t tell you what’s obvious, that Lesley is a beautiful and charming girl, and highly intelligent. But she has an affliction. Not surprising, in the circumstances. That early shock in love damaged her permanently. She was ill-—not physically, but you’ll understand me—for some time. On that one subject she will never again be entirely well. What has just happened to you is routine,’ he said tiredly. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll have to get used to
the thought. No doubt she’ll have told you that I’m pathologically jealous of every man who so much as comes near her—hasn’t she? Well, have I behaved like that? Do you really think I didn’t see you with her this morning?’
‘I know you did,’ said Gus. ‘I knew it then. That was not quite what it seemed. It happened almost by accident.’
‘You think so?’ said Paviour, and the bitter smile in his voice was clearer than before. ‘My dear boy, Lesley has a temperamental disposition to repeat her ruinous love affair with every unwary male who enters her life. Every presentable one, that is. She behaves with every one of them just as she has been behaving with you today. But heaven help any poor fellow who takes her seriously. The game goes only so far. You may even have detected a rather violent reaction on her part, if you ever got so far as taking the initiative?’
Gus walked dourly beside him, and said nothing.
‘Yes—I thought so. The signals turn red very abruptly. You’d get no further, I assure you. She would kill you or herself rather than actually surrender. I have good reason to know. She’s emotionally crippled for life, and it’s my life-work to protect and conceal her disability, and prevent her from doing harm to herself and others. I married her to take care of her. As I have done already through several affairs, all as fictional as this one with you.’
He felt, and misunderstood, or understood only in part, the obstinate silence walking beside him.
‘Yes,’ he said challengingly, almost as if defending his manhood against some implied accusation, ‘I love her as much as that. It was a little late, in any case, for me to marry for any other kind of passion. This does well enough. It’s more than anyone else will ever have of her.’
Gus came out of his own private chaos of speculation and enlightenment just in time to capture the implication, and too late to absorb the shock in silence.
‘You mean to say that even you…’ He swallowed the rest of the indiscretion with a gulp, and was thankful for the darkness. His mind had been careering along in quite a different direction, it was too much to ask him to assimilate this all in a moment.
‘The inference you’re drawing,’ said Paviour, in a voice thinner and more didactic than Gus had ever yet heard it, ‘is a correct one. I knew all about her panic abhorrence before I married her, Sexually, I’ve never touched her. She is a virgin. She always will be.’
Dignified, pathetic and decent, the man stood there quite obviously telling the simple truth as he saw it, and who was likely to see it more clearly? And it all made sense, or would have done if Gus’s blood hadn’t still been racing with the remembered persuasion of her body against him, and the ravenous expertise of her mouth, and the ferocity of her nails scoring into his back. That memory confounded the argument considerably. And yet it was true, the initiative had still been hers. All he’d had time to do was go along with her wishes; and if he’d just been reaching the point of having wishes and intentions of his own, he’d been saved by the bell, and she hadn’t had to react. Try it! she’d said. Touch me! But deliberately he’d left the next move to her. And now maybe he’d never know which of them was crazy, himself or this elderly masochist—or hero, or whatever he was—who got his satisfaction in cherishing and protecting his wife like a delinquent daughter.
‘So you see why it’s essential,’ said Paviour, gently and firmly, ‘that my wife should not see you again. You’re not in any illusion that her heart is involved, I hope?’
‘No,’ said Gus, ‘I’m not in any illusion. She won’t have any trouble getting over my loss.’
By common consent they had halted well short of the low hedge of the garden at the lodge. The house was in darkness, Bill could not have left the village yet. It would be quite easy, however inconvenient, and there was now no help for it, nothing to be done but what Paviour obviously wanted and expected of him.
‘I’ll remove myself,’ he said, ‘totally and immediately. She needn’t see me again. I’ve got my car here, I can pack and get out before Bill comes back, and leave him a note, and my apologies to deliver tomorrow. I shall have had a telephone call. Family business—illness—I’ll think of the right thing.’
‘I shall be very much obliged,’ said Paviour. ‘I felt sure I could rely on your good feeling.’ And he turned, with no more insistence than that, and no firmer guarantee, and walked away towards his own house, leaving Gus staring after him.
He did exactly what he had promised he would do, and did it in ruthless haste, for fear Bill should come back too soon. True, the same excuse could be offered to him face to face, but there might be some dispute over whether it was strictly necessary to leave before morning, and moreover, in view of Bill’s own remarks on the subject of the Paviour marriage, he was not likely to be deceived. Far simpler to leave a few fresh doodles on the telephone pad, and a note propped on the mantelpiece, and get out clean.
‘Dear Bill, Client called home, and they ran me to earth here. He wants me to drive over to Colchester and look at a piece he’s been offered and has his doubts about. Rush job, because if good it’s very good, and there’s another dealer in the field, so I’m going across overnight. Didn’t want to call the house at this hour, please make my apologies to Mr and Mrs Paviour, and thanks to you and them for generous hospitality. I’ll be in touch later.’
Probably Bill wouldn’t believe any of it, certainly not the last words, but it would do. And Lesley was no doubt used to abrupt diplomatic departures, and would shrug him off and look round for the next entertainment. Perhaps even give a whirl to Bill, whom she hadn’t fancied, but who rather more than fancied her, if everyone told the truth. Better not, that might be a collision she wouldn’t shrug off so easily.
He needn’t go far, of course, but all the same this was a nuisance just at this stage. They might elect to fetch him off the job altogether, and put someone else in in his place. That couldn’t be helped. What mattered now was to get out.
He dumped his case in the car, and drove out from the gate of the lodge, and up the gravelled track that ran within the boundary of Aurae Phiala. Bill would be walking home from the village by the riverside path, and the whole expanse of the enclosure and the bulk of the curator’s house and garden would be between him and the way out on to the main road. With luck he wouldn’t even hear the car. If he did, he would never think of it in connection with a sudden departure until he read his guest’s note. All very tidy.
He had to get out and open the gate when he reached the road. He drove the Aston Martin through, and parked it in the grass verge while he went back to close the gate again and make sure it was fast.
He had the stretch of road to himself, and the late moon, at the beginning of its sluggish climb and rimmed with mist, cast only a faint, sidelong light over the standing walls and pillars of Aurae Phiala. Just enough to prick out before his eyes a single curious spark, that moved steadily along within the broken wall of the frigidarium, appearing and disappearing as the height of the standing fragments varied. It proceeded at a measured walking pace, and at the corner it turned, patrolling downhill towards the tepidarium; and for a moment, where the standing masonry dropped to knee-height, he saw the shadowy figure that walked beneath it, and caught the shape of the glowing crest against the sky. The enlarged head, with its jut of brow, was all one metallic mass, hardly glimpsed before it was lost again in the dark. A helmet, with neck-guard, earpieces, he thought even a visor over the face. Dream or substance, the helmeted sentry of Aurae Phiala was making a methodical circuit of the remaining walls by fitful moonlight.
He left the car standing, and let himself in again through the gate; and even then he took the time to snap the lock closed before he set off at a cautious lope across the grass towards the walls of the baths. Once into the complex, he had to slow to a walk, but he made what speed he dared. The night had grown restless with a rising wind; rapid scuds of cloud alternately masked and uncovered the veiled moon, and drifts of mist moved up from the river in soft, recurrent tides along t
he ground. A night for haunting. He wondered if there was a policeman standing guard overnight, and felt sure there was not; there are never enough men to cover everything that should be covered He and the sentry had the place to themselves.
The glimpses he got now of the helmet which was his quarry were few and brief, but enough to enable him to gain ground. It had reached the shell of standing walls at the corner of the caldarium. Clearly he saw it glimmer between two broken blocks of masonry, beyond the low rim of the laconicum. Then it vanished. He approached cautiously, and stood by the edge of the shaft in braced silence, preferring to keep his bearings in relation to this potential hazard, while he waited with straining ears and roving eyes for a new lead.
Cloud blew away from the moon’s face for a moment, and a spilled pool of light glazed the tops of the broken walls and blackened the shadows; and there suddenly was the helmeted head burning in the brief gleam. As he fixed his eyes upon it, the figure turned, darkness from the shoulders down, bright above, and stood confronting him, and he caught one glimpse of a frozen, splendid, golden face with empty black eye-sockets, under the bronze peak of the helmet.
