Neither of them spoke of this in the morning. Gordon carried a half-asleep Lolita downstairs and stood over her outside the kitchen door until she had peed. Omar ignored her. He’d found a small turd in the corner of the bedroom. ‘We need to talk about this,’ he’d said, and Gordon had nodded but inwardly shrugged. After breakfast, Omar decided to dig over part of the garden, while Gordon continued to assemble furniture from the flat-packs they’d unloaded from the van and stacked in the hall. They had left almost everything they owned – books, clothes, paintings, DVDs – in permanent storage with Ciccio, with no address for it all to be forwarded to, and it struck Gordon this morning how little he cared. Perhaps they would never have the trappings of that life around them again, he thought, relieved beyond measure. He put his new desk together, following the instructions step by step, humming along to the radio. He had found a French music station, a whole new world. He found himself dancing as he worked, Lolita nipping at his heels, then quietly singing scraps of lyric in his rapidly improving French. He had started to recognise the names of bands, of singers. Already he had his favourites. He glanced through the window at times, to see Omar digging at the far end of the garden, beside the well. He spoke to Lolita, who was sitting on a cushion in the corner from which she followed his every move, then picked her up and held her, nose against the glass. ‘Look at Omar,’ he said. ‘He’s digging for Britain.’
They planned to plant asparagus: Omar had read about it while they were still in the hotel, fascinated by what he insisted was the ritual aspect of it, then found a nursery that sold the crowns in the nearby town. There were twenty-five of them, wrapped in sphagnum moss and lined up in pots along the side of the house, along with two sacks of organic manure. Lolita had sniffed her way along the line of sagging plant pots until Omar shooed her off. ‘I don’t want her weeing on them,’ he’d said. He hadn’t forgiven her yet. But he would, thought Gordon. He would have to, sooner or later.
When Gordon had set up their laptop in the room they’d decided was the study, he went back into the kitchen to make them lunch. He caught sight of his face in a mirror they’d hung in the hall, saw himself smiling, which only made him smile the more. As soon as the eggs were beaten and the butter melted in the pan, he opened the door and called to Omar. ‘Œufs brouillés all right?’ he shouted.
‘And what the fuck is that?’ said Omar, straightening up. A shadow fell across his face. He had taken off his shirt; his cheeks and chest were streaked with dirt where he must have rubbed his hands. He was sweating, hair stuck to his forehead, grinning as he pushed the spade deep into the soil. He looked younger than he had in years. Gordon thought his heart would burst with love. He’d read, or Omar had told him, that asparagus was an aphrodisiac. ‘Thank you, Angela,’ he said, just loud enough for the words to be heard by himself and no one else, except Lolita. Who else, after all, would understand? Perhaps not even Omar.
‘Scrambled eggs,’ he called back. ‘The way you like them. With too much butter.’
‘French butter is so much better than Italian,’ said Omar a few moments later, washing his hands and face in cold water from the kitchen tap, wiping them on the tea towel. He stood at the sink, looking down towards where he had been working, at the dark turned earth.
‘Everything’s better here,’ said Gordon. He stepped up behind Omar and put his arms round the other man’s waist. Lolita made a sound, half-growl, half-yap. Omar twisted round to kiss him.
‘You are,’ he said. ‘You’re much better.’
Later, when Omar was in the garden again and Gordon had put the lunch stuff away, he remembered what Omar had said. Better than what? Better than he had been in Italy? It was obvious what he had meant. That he had been ill and was now cured. Well, that was true enough, Gordon said to himself. More than restored to health, he felt reborn. New house, new life, new language. Lolita. So why did he feel that Omar had also meant something else?
He turned on the laptop. He’d set up a different email account as soon as they’d arrived in France, but realised immediately that he couldn’t use it to contact his friends. Whom could he trust not to give them away? This should have made him sad but, incongruously, he saw it as a glimpse of freedom, as though everything that had been wrong with his life had been sponged away and left him clean. He looked at the inbox. IKEA, news updates, anonymity. Then, like a dog turning back to examine its vomit, he opened his old account. More than a hundred emails had arrived in the past few days. Nothing from Angela, he noticed with relief. Nothing from Flea. But then he saw that Jenny had written. It was only a few lines, but they didn’t make for pleasant reading.
I thought you might like to know that Cees was cremated in Rotterdam last week. I wasn’t there. His parents invited me and I went to Holland but then I decided not to go. They were so upset. They told me they’ve decided to pull down the house, but they can’t find anyone in the area prepared to do it. They blame the house for Cees dying. They said they’d had a mad email from him, about it being a trap. I don’t know. It’s crazy of me, I know, but I can’t stop myself blaming you.
Gordon deleted this. He began to tick the delete box for all the other emails, unopened, unwanted, never to be read, until he saw the name Jack Squat among the rest in the sender column. There was no subject. Trembling with shock, he clicked and found this:
It took him a moment to work out what it said. If he’d understood at once, he would probably have deleted it along with all the rest, but the time and effort of deciphering had stifled the initial impulse. It had been copied to Cees as well, he saw, although it would have arrived too late for him to read, and to Omar. How had the letters been reversed like that? he wondered, because any other question he might have asked was too disquieting to be contemplated. What do I most love? he thought to himself as he closed the laptop. Lolita was asleep between his feet, her nose against his toe. Omar. Oh, Omar.
When he next looked down the garden he saw Omar standing beside the well. He had both hands on the rim and appeared to be staring down, although the top of the well had been closed by a shallow dome of bricks. He was rocking slowly backwards and forwards, like someone on the point of diving. Gordon walked across to the open door. ‘Everything all right?’ he said.
Omar didn’t seem to hear. Gordon called again. ‘Omar?’
Omar raised and turned his head towards the house, then shook it slowly as though in disagreement. Fighting his instinct to break into a run, Gordon hurried down the path, Lolita trailing behind him. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. Silence. He grabbed Omar’s forearm; the skin was slick with sweat, but cold.
‘I thought I could hear something,’ Omar said finally. ‘Coming from down there.’ He shook his head a second time. ‘I must be going mad.’
‘Hear what?’
‘I don’t know. Someone talking.’ Turning towards Gordon, he gave an anxious grin. ‘I thought I heard someone saying my name. And then there was something else I couldn’t catch. Something about being thirsty? I don’t know.’ He turned back to the cowl of brick on the well. ‘We need to open this up,’ he said. He tapped it firmly with his knuckles. It made a hollow sound. ‘It can’t be that thick. We could use it to water the garden. That’s what it’s for, after all. It’s wrong to have something like this closed off. It’s wicked.’
‘We don’t know what’s in there,’ said Gordon. He bent down to pick up Lolita, who pushed her muzzle into his neck. He let her bite the edge of his collar, watching Omar’s eyes glance over her before settling back on the cowl. Omar tapped the bricks a second time, producing the same muffled echo. When Gordon spoke again, his voice was quiet, almost inaudible. ‘Sometimes, it’s weird, I know, but I think it’s as if they’re all connected.’ He shivered. ‘As if there were one great lake beneath our feet somewhere and all the wells in the world were being fed by it.’
Omar shook his head again, apparently amused by this, then looked down at his chest. ‘I’m filthy,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have a shower.�
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‘You haven’t planted the asparagus yet,’ said Gordon. He held Lolita at arm’s length and shook her gently, the way you would a child, to make her laugh.
Omar stared at him. ‘I’m sorry? I haven’t what?’
‘I thought you said you wanted to finish planting the asparagus.’ Gordon put Lolita down on the ground between his feet. ‘You told me you wanted to get it done today.’
Omar looked at Gordon, puzzled at first, then furious. ‘You can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do,’ he said, his voice all at once unrecognisable. ‘Who the fucking hell do you think you are? Jack Squat?’ With unexpected force, he pushed past Gordon, who caught his arm.
‘What did you say?’ He pulled Omar round to face him. Lolita had begun to worry the hem of Omar’s jeans. Omar kicked her away. ‘What did you say?’
‘Just leave me alone, will you? And will you keep that fucking dog off me?’
Gordon didn’t understand. And then he did. ‘You’ve seen it too, haven’t you? You’ve read the email.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What email?’
‘Omar,’ he said, his tone pleading. ‘Omar, we need to talk.’ This needn’t happen, he thought. We can be so good together. But Omar had freed himself from Gordon’s grasp and was already inside the house. By the time Gordon had reached the kitchen, Omar had left by the front door and was backing the hired van down the drive. ‘For God’s sake, Omar,’ he cried out as the van headed onto the road.
Omar came back three hours later. He walked into the house, still shirtless, soiled, with a bunch of tulips. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’ Gordon took the tulips from him, laid them on the table and held Omar close.
‘I’ve been worried sick,’ he said. ‘I kept seeing Cees’s car smashed up against that tree and imagining you were in it.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘I’m here now,’ said Omar, stroking the back of Gordon’s head.
‘I don’t care if you’ve planted the asparagus or not,’ said Gordon. He had thought about nothing else during Omar’s absence. That stupid comment.
‘I know that, you idiot.’
‘We’re going to be all right, aren’t we?’ said Gordon.
‘Of course we are,’ said Omar. ‘It’s just that, I don’t know, I keep getting this sort of flashback.’
‘What sort of flashback?’ Gordon moved a little away from Omar, to see him better, his hands on the other man’s waist. He tried not to sound, or look, concerned. ‘What do you see?’
‘It’s not anything I can see. It’s too dark for that. It’s a smell,’ said Omar. ‘It’s the smell from that cave. I told you, remember, when we were there?’ He grimaced. ‘It’s like when you walk past something that really stinks, you know? And you can’t work out what it is, or where it’s coming from. And then it passes.’ He paused, then glanced at Lolita, asleep beside the table. ‘I thought I could smell it this morning in the bedroom.’
Gordon ignored this. ‘Is that what made you go and stand by the well like that?’
‘The well?’ Omar shrugged, as if he didn’t want to consider this. With a shake of his shoulders, he sighed and nodded. ‘It could have been. I don’t know what it was. I thought it was voices, didn’t I? And now it’s smells. I’ll be seeing one of those bloody snakes next. Or Angela.’ He stepped back, freeing himself too quickly from Gordon’s embrace. ‘It was probably just a combination of hard work and too much sun.’ He shivered. ‘I’m fucking freezing now.’
‘You’re filthy as well.’
‘You should have seen the woman’s face when I bought the flowers,’ he said, with a sudden grin. Gordon’s heart leapt. He looked at the table. Tulips were his favourite flowers. Had Omar remembered this, or had it just been luck?
‘I’m sure she thought you’d make some lucky girl very happy.’
Omar’s grin grew broader. ‘I’ll do the next best thing,’ he said. He took Gordon’s hand. ‘Come on, you look as though you need a shower as well.’
‘Just let me put these in water,’ said Gordon, stretching out with his free hand, half gathering the tulips up. But Omar was already pulling him towards the stairs as the cut flowers tumbled to the floor.
Gordon woke again that night, fuzzy from wine and sex, this time to find himself alone in bed. He could tell without moving that Omar wasn’t beside him, but still he felt for the body, sliding his hand into the emptiness. A fly was buzzing in the room. Was that what had woken him, he wondered as he sat up. The absence of his lover, the presence of a fly, battering against the glass? He listened for some other noise, and then, as if dreamt, he heard Omar’s voice in the other bedroom. He got up and walked through, his heart beating, his mouth dry. He hadn’t thought once about Lolita.
Omar was standing with his hands pressed against the wall opposite the door. The window had been opened, and so had the external shutters; the room was luminous with moonlight. He was naked, beautiful, shivering in the cold air from outside. He didn’t react when Gordon asked him what he was doing; he carried on talking, some kind of incantation, the same few words repeated, it seemed to Gordon, although he couldn’t make out what they were, nor even what language. Perhaps they meant nothing at all, he thought. Perhaps they meant jack squat. He crossed the room until he was within reach of Omar, but he didn’t touch him; it was as if he didn’t dare. Omar’s face was strained. The muscles of his arms and shoulders were taut with effort, livid; he had caught the sun that day, but the skin on his sides, beneath his arms, was white as milk. He was pushing against the wall with all his strength. And then Gordon heard the words. Let me out, Omar was saying. There are four ways in but no way out. Let me out. There are four ways in but no way out. Let me out. The sun-reddened skin on his shoulders was gleaming with sweat in the pale light, his lips were drawn back, his teeth bared. He was an animal loose in the house.
‘Come here,’ said Gordon, trying to fold his own arms around Omar, to pull him close, to warm him somehow. To silence him. But Omar resisted. He struggled to free himself, fretful, the words tumbling out of him. His eyes were open, but he seemed to be asleep, dreaming perhaps, staring hard at something that wasn’t there, or that couldn’t be seen by Gordon. He pulled an arm free and started to scratch at the wall until he broke a nail and left a smear of blood on the freshly painted plaster. Gordon had begun to whimper with desperation. He didn’t recognise the noise he was making as something that belonged to him, as being made by him. He had never known Omar so strong, so impervious to his pleading. ‘For God’s sake, Omar,’ he said. ‘You’ve made yourself bleed.’ He dragged him away from the wall, finally, when Omar’s strength seemed to leave him. They stood together, holding each other, at the heart of the still-unfurnished room.
‘I am me,’ said Omar, in his own voice. ‘The house is me.’
The next morning Gordon found Lolita in the garden. Omar must have let her out, he thought. He would have asked him what the hell he’d thought he was doing if Omar had remembered anything at all about the night. When Gordon told him what he had said, Omar laughed. When Gordon insisted, he looked bemused, and then concerned, but less for himself, it seemed, than for Gordon. ‘Yes, right,’ he said, half ironic, appeasing. Gordon began to wonder if he had dreamt it all until he looked at Omar’s broken fingernail. Omar followed his eyes and seemed to see the damage he had done for the first time. He said he must have hurt himself the day before, digging in the garden. Gordon led him upstairs by his unwounded hand, Omar laughing and protesting, and showed him the streak of blood on the wall.
‘You must be mad,’ said Omar, but for the first time he looked genuinely anxious, as though the blood had reminded him.
Two Dark Tales Page 7
