Justine

by Alice Thompson

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You. You didn’t really fall for my little girl routine, did you? All that nervousness, those tears and tantrums. From the moment I first met you I have just been testing the ground to see where you stood. To find out what kind of a man you were.’

  ‘Are you telling me that you arranged to bump into me at the gallery?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. How on earth would I know that you would be there? No, that was total coincidence.’ She smiled. ‘But when I realized that you knew Justine, and even better seemed obsessed by her, it all seemed just too good to be true. I simply seized the opportunity, as any other sensible girl would have done.’

  This was all getting too complicated for me. I watched her take another sip of her tea, and desperately tried to keep up with her.

  ‘What strikes me is the symmetry,’ she said, ‘You and me. Justine and Jack. Me and Jack. You and Justine. Our desires are very specific. Like those little plastic puzzles made up of letters that can only fit together in one way to form the right word. We are each one of the letters and there is only one way we can be put together to make up the word. You may have thought you were seducing me to get Justine. But I was also seducing you to get Jack.’

  I looked at her, speechless. After all, she was sitting opposite me in the bright yellow light of the tiny plastic café, complacently rewriting my history. Telling me the story that I had been in was not mine, but hers all along. The story I was now finding myself in was one of obsession, jealousy and revenge but it was Juliette’s.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked. ‘I want you to seduce Justine.’

  ‘Want me to?’

  ‘You’re being very slow.’

  ‘You want me to seduce Justine, in order that you can get Jack back?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What makes you so sure that it will split them up?’

  ‘Because Jack is a literalist. He believes in the truth.’

  ‘What makes you so sure that Jack will go back to you?’

  She laughed, ‘Because, after Justine, I am always the next best thing.’

  ‘Where does all your faith in me come from? I might not succeed in seducing Justine?’

  ‘You may think you are clinging on to some vestiges of self-control. But they have, in reality, long since gone. You are way past the point of no return. You’ll get her. Whatever it takes you. It’s in your eyes.’

  I remained silent. I didn’t tell her the extent to which my self-control was inviolable, whatever passion scratched its surface. My sense of distance from the world was profound.

  However, the contradictions were proving impossible to resist.

  ‘But why did you go through the scenario of warning me against Justine? Telling me about her coldness. Why did you try and put me off her, if this is what you wanted all along?’

  She looked at me almost contemptuously.

  ‘When have you ever known a man to be put off a beautiful woman whom he desires, when you tell him that she is also cold and dangerous?’

  An old woman, a crone like one of the witches from Macbeth, bent down to collect our plates – her fingernails were filthy and she smelt of bacon.

  ‘You don’t have to trust me,’ Juliette said. ‘That’s not necessary. Just do everything I say and everything will be all right. Justine will be yours. Look upon her as a gift. From me to you.’

  Juliette had ceased completely to play the forlorn neurotic. She was now playing the part, in spite of her incongruous dress, of my business partner. With steady and appraising eyes she had just offered me a bribe. But her eyes still glittered dangerously.

  Juliette’s character now had been lain down by Jack. He was responsible for the way she was, the lack of coherence to her personality, the way she was playing games with her identity. Juliette had guessed the truth about me so easily because she had become accustomed to betrayal. I was simply doing what Jack had already done to her – abandon her for Justine. Except this time I was to do it with her help. I felt as if I were following in Jack’s footsteps. That whatever happened to Jack would happen to me. So my feelings about him were complex. Surprisingly, I felt no jealousy of him. He had kissed Justine in places I could only dream about. But if he were my precursor, I would be doing the same soon, too.

  twenty–seven

  It was now almost one and the old woman brought us another two cups of tea which was the colour of rust and too hot.

  ‘I’ll arrange a meeting between you and Justine. But it will have to appear accidental. Justine, of course, must have no idea what is going on. After that it is up to you. I am not going to give you background material on her to help you. That isn’t the way. It will sound false. She’s too clever for that.’

  I wondered how long Juliette had waited for someone like me to come along.

  ‘What I said about Justine being secretive was true. She doesn’t like anyone, including me, to know where she is at any given time. But she does go to one place regularly. In order to write. It is a private library in St. James’s Square called the London Library. You might have heard of it. People are always putting it into their novels.’

  It was early morning before I got back home to Kensington Gardens. I was relieved to return to the aesthetic sanity of my rooms. Deeds that took place in elegant surroundings somehow seemed less morally accountable. The atmosphere of Juliette’s flat and the café had given a shabby air to the enterprise. After taking a bath, I lighted candles and reverently placed them on the mantelpiece below the portrait of Justine.

  I felt violated by the act of sex that had taken place in Juliette’s flat. That Juliette had been using her body as a means to an end made the whole encounter seem even more obscene. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep in front of the painting.

  That night I dreamt again that I am driving along the avenue of trees. I am experiencing exactly the same sensations as I have had in the previous dream, feeling the same breeze and the same sunshine on my face. But this time my sense of exhilaration begins to be replaced by a feeling of menace as I approach the house. The maze is still to the right of the house. The dream doesn’t stop where it did before. I switch off the engine of the car and begin walking towards the steps of the main entrance. Then a window high up in the house catches my eye as suddenly the rays of the sun hit the glass. I cannot tell if the window is barred or whether the shafts of reflected light shine the illusion of bars across it. Someone is watching me from behind the glass. Immediately a cloud goes across the sun and the window is plunged into darkness. And I know, in the sudden realization that often takes place in dreams, that the person who is watching me from behind the window is the reason why I have come here.

  I woke up the next morning, still on the sofa, my limbs aching, looking straight into the painted eyes of Justine. I leapt up from the sofa with an energy I had not felt since childhood and drew a long hot bath. This was the morning I had decided to visit the London Library.

  twenty–eight

  It was London, mid-July, and the morning was hot. Heading south-east in the taxi towards the centre of town and the London Library, we had to drive through hectic and irascible traffic. A moment of doubt, a hesitation as to which direction to take, was immediately punished by horns, shaken fists and faces about to spontaneously combust. London had been heated up into a boiling mass of primeval anger. My driver was as impassive as the ferryman of Hades.

  Even the pigeons were pecking each other for crumbs. Waiting in the traffic jam that encircled Trafalgar Square I watched the luminously dressed tourists splash each other in the fountains. I wondered what they made of this grotesque, enticing city. From the perspective of Nelson who was watching us all implacably from the top of his column, I was just a part of this seething mass of frantic humanity.

  Inside the taxi I was suffocating, and I unwound the window for air. Trafalgar Square’s sick swee
t fumes of exhaust pipes swept in almost choking me. My face was wet with the heat.

  ‘Hot, ain’t it?’ the taxi driver said, ‘Hottest day so far. Up in the nineties, I’d say. Too hot, don’t you think?’

  I couldn’t be bothered to reply. I watched a woman cross the road a few cars ahead of the taxi, weaving expertly between the jam of the stationary vehicles. She was now walking down the shadowed north side of Trafalgar Square, past the National Gallery. She moved with such grace. She could have been meandering down a silent country lane in the shadows of the trees. London was only a mirage. It was when she moved into the direct sunlight and the sun caught the colour of her hair, that I saw it was Justine.

  Without hesitating, I leapt out of the taxi into the cauldron of London. The voice of the taxi driver calling for his fare disappeared into the distance. I ran between the packed cars to the other side of the road, keeping my eyes at all times on her retreating back. I heard a noise, the sound of an angry engine, before I turned to my right to see the motorbike almost upon me. A dispatch rider in black leather looked straight into my eyes like the Angel of Death. We both swerved at the same time. He swerved to my right. I swerved to the left. The decision that saved my life took a split second. I watched him drive off into the distance between the gaps in the traffic jam. I turned to look for Justine but she had disappeared from sight.

  I walked on to the library, in the same direction that Justine had been heading. I mused on the irrationality of my response to seeing Justine. I had acted as if I were completely out of control. This was out of character from my usual state of equilibrium and had nearly resulted in my death. I admitted that my thoughts may have become slightly over-preoccupied with Justine, but I had taken it for granted that I was still in control of my behaviour. I wanted to win her, but on my terms.

  The London Library was a tall but inconspicuous building, tucked away in the corner of the square. I would not have realized it was a library but for the small brass plaque on the wall next to the wooden doors of the front entrance. On it was written the london library and its opening times.

  I walked up some steps into a large lobby. A few elderly men stood just inside the lobby discussing the painter Moreau. I walked through to the back of the main hall and climbed red carpeted stairs. Black and white photographs of distinguished male faces of famous writers peered down at me from where they hung along the staircase wall.

  I opened glass doors to the reading room. A couple of members looked up from where they were sitting, as if they had just been disturbed, like birds on their nests, in the act of laying their eggs. An octogenarian was asleep under the round clock, in a large leather armchair, snoring loudly. Otherwise, apart from the hum of distant traffic, the room was silent.

  I felt at home here, in a place where the intellectual prowess of a man was obviously of more value than his physical strength. Hunchbacked scholars worked here, on ancient manuscripts and first editions, as if the heat and the fevered excitement of London outside was a dream that they had just woken up from.

  Justine was nowhere to be seen. I looked around the room again, but saw only the same men, sitting in the same positions, saw only the same absence. She had to be here somewhere. I had been given an omen ten minutes ago. The sighting of her wouldn’t have made sense otherwise.

  I became conscious of the sweat pouring down my face and I followed the staircase up to a wooden door marked gentlemen. Inside I splashed my face with cold water. My face in the mirror looked like the reflection of an angel. I decided to follow the staircase up to the top floor where I found the section of the library where the books were stored. Opening another glass door, I found myself in a room where shelf upon shelf of books were running up and down the room in rows. The shelves reached almost to the ceiling. The floor was a metal grid of patterned triangles, through which I could see the floors beneath. When I looked down, I felt vertigo.

  Here, it was as silent as a tomb. Not even the ubiquitous sound of London traffic could be heard. Just then, the sound of metal jangling softly started up on the floor beneath me, the sound of high heels hitting a steel grid. I looked down between the metal patterns of my floor into the room below. A woman was walking directly beneath me. A parting, straight as a knife, split the golden hair of her head in two. She was walking slowly past the shelves of books, obviously looking for one in particular. She was contained, between the two metal floors like a bird in a cage, in my moment of seeing her.

  twenty–nine

  This time I restrained my immediate impulse, which was to call out to her. The meeting had to appear accidental. I quickly and quietly walked back along the metal floor and down the metal staircase that led down to the stored room of books below. I kept control of my breathing but there was the sound of beating wings in my head. Reaching the lower floor, I looked down the twelve tall rows of shelves but could see her nowhere. It had taken me three minutes at the most to get from one floor to the other. Surely she couldn’t have disappeared in such a short time?

  It was then that I saw her. She was standing at the end of the eleventh row of shelves, intently reading a book she had in her hands, her hair falling across her face. I could not understand how I had just missed seeing her. I was now only a few steps away from smelling the scent of her skin.

  I pretended to be looking for a particular novel in one of the shelves. I slowly walked up the passageway of books towards her, as if in search of an author’s initials that took me by chance to just beside her. Standing next to her, I took out a book at random and opened it up. I pretended to read, concentrating desperately on how I could make my first move. It was only then that I realized that I had picked out the novel Justine by the Marquis de Sade. The pages of the book were so thin they were almost transparent and the print from the other side showed backwards, through. My first meeting with Justine had to seem natural and coincidental.

  I could smell her now. Still with my eyes focused unseeingly on the book, I decided on my plan. I would turn to Justine, nonchalantly, and ask her if she knew whether the library had a Romantic Section, or not. As a strange man asking this of a beautiful woman, the situation would, I conjectured, be ripe with comic irony. But just as I was about to look up, the words forming in my mouth, I felt a tap on my shoulder, a light tap as if a bird had just landed on me.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your reading.’ Justine’s hand fell from my shoulder of recognizing me from the funeral. Her voice was as low and dry as the desert. ‘But I need your help.’

  I had to gauge my response carefully. On the one hand I had to appear surprised that a strange woman was approaching me for help in the London Library. On the other hand I had to conceal my surprise at the part Destiny was playing in making Justine approach me. Her making the first move gave me an advantage beyond my wildest dreams. I deliberately took a step back from her, as if almost resistant to such an out-of-the blue request, while making sure I retained an expression of helpful courtesy on my face.

  Justine was even more physically perfect than I had remembered. Her eyes were as hard as precious stones set in alabaster. Her flawlessness paradoxically helped me to stay in control of the situation. It reminded me how important it was to play the part well. Her statuesque looks symbolized how high the stakes were.

  ‘You must think it odd. Being approached by a complete stranger like this,’ Justine said.

  We were standing by an open window which looked out on to St. James’s Square, but the air was so hot out side that it failed to alleviate the intent stuffiness of the library’s interior.

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s odd at all,’ I lied. ‘Not if you need help.’

  Justine looked around us quickly but not furtively. Justine, no matter how much danger she was in, never looked furtive.

  ‘It’s difficult to speak here,’ she said. She was wearing an ice-green dress of rough silk that clung closely to her body and whispered to me when she mov
ed.

  ‘I think I’m being watched’.

  Yes, I thought, by me.

  My reaction to her was confused, a mixture of elation that I was actually speaking to her for the first time and vague concern for the strange predicament that she seemed to be in. However, I could hardly take what she was telling me seriously – it read like something out of a bad detective novel. Part of me felt as if I were watching her act out a plot that she had taken from one of her hooks.

  ‘I know it sounds ludicrous,’ Justine said. ‘Like some thing out of a bad novel.’

  Just then I caught sight of a man – or was it a shadow? – dodging behind one of the rows of shelves. Justine immediately followed my line of vision but he had vanished.

  ‘It’s easy to get paranoid. The slightest twitch, sound, shadow . . .’ She smiled at me. It was the first time that I had seen her smile. Her smile made a spontaneous connection with me, as if in the way it illuminated her face she had read what the future held in store for me. She then continued, as if unaware of the power her smile had had over me. As if unaware of the permission she had given me to share in her infallibility.

  ‘I’d feel safer outside,’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘But tell me first. Why me? ‘

  ‘Because of your face. It is like Michelangelo’s Adam reaching out to God.’

  I followed Justine out of the library. She walked always slightly ahead of me as if she didn’t want others to think that we were together.

  thirty

  The white heat of noon was scorching as we walked down the outside steps of the London Library. After the dark interior the bright light almost blinded me. However, Justine had the immunity of stone.

  She crossed the road into the inner gardens of St. James’s Square, through the black railings of the gate. The formal gardens were shaped in the form of a cross. A rose garden had been planted at its centre. Pink, gold, cream petals filled the sky, as we sat down on a stone bench within the circle of flowers. Surrounded by thorns, Justine, I imagined, could be my Sleeping Beauty. All I had to do was bend over her and wake her up with a kiss.