• • •
BY THE TIME she unlocked the front door of Alette’s house, the light was fading: the day turning to dusk. Isa did not switch on any lights, even though it was almost dark on the staircase and she had to guide herself by gripping the balustrade firmly.
The late afternoon gloom had drained all colour from Alette’s bedroom. The sheer white drapes trailing from the posts of the bed; the moon glint on the silver frames on the bedside table; the dark shadows in the folds of the drapes: they had the muted clarity of a black-and-white photograph. Isa kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed.
She made a conscious effort to relax. Her gaze came to rest on one of the photographs on the bedside table. It was a picture of Alette and herself on their confirmation day: demure faces, high-collared suits too grown-up for fifteen-year-olds. The suits were identical: for some reason Aunt Lettie had insisted on it. Next to this photograph stood a dreadful picture of Siena, eyes narrowed into suspicious slits, her mouth doubtful. Siena hated having her photograph taken. She feared the camera: believed it might spirit her very soul away. She had only acquiesced to having this picture taken because Alette had practically begged her. And at the time Siena had already been very ill.
Isa could still recall the last time she had seen Siena alive. It was during one of her weekend visits to the farm after she had started college. She had walked into the house, happy and excited to be home, and had come upon Siena and Alette unexpectedly where they were sitting together on the outside veranda. They hadn’t seen her and something made Isa hesitate, made her hover just inside the doorway out of sight.
Siena was sitting cross-legged on the ground, huddled in a brown blanket. Every so often she would cough. In her hand was a piece of chalk with which she was drawing on the cement floor in front of her.
The chalk scratched noisily against the concrete. Siena was drawing a large triangle.
‘Here.’ Siena tapped a spot at the apex of the triangle. ‘Here is God, the creator. And here,’—she leaned forward and pointed to one leg of the triangle—‘are the ancestral spirits. They are very important. The ones who have died recently are still close to us. If you ask them for help they will give your message to the more important spirits who died long ago. And those very important ancestors will give it to the Godhead.’
‘What happens to the important ancestral spirits?’ Alette’s voice was low.
Siena closed her eyes briefly. ‘After a long, long, long time the spirit can return to its tribe and live again. If it so wishes.’
‘So they never really die,’ Alette said slowly.
Siena did not answer. She gestured at the opposite leg of the triangle. ‘These are the forgotten ones.’ She looked at Alette and her voice sounded remote. ‘They have died violently and far from home.’
‘The forgotten ones?’
‘Their link with their people is broken.’
‘So they are lost?’
From where she stood behind the door, Isa was unable to see the expression in Siena’s eyes, but the weariness in the old woman’s voice cut her to the heart.
‘They become nature spirits,’ said Siena. ‘Like the nature spirits of flowers, and rivers and rocks. But they will not acquire a new life on Earth.’
It was very still. Not even a birdcall disturbed the silence. Siena sighed. ‘Yes. Maybe that is right. Maybe you can say: they are lost.’
• • •
THE PHONE RANG. The memory of Siena and Alette sitting side by side on the sun-baked veranda, the branches of the acacia tree throwing sharp shadows on the wall, faded from Isa’s mind. She stretched out her hand to pick up the receiver.
But suddenly she didn’t feel like talking to anyone right now or having to explain why Alette wasn’t the one who was answering. She looked at the phone, willing it to stop, and after a few long moments the ringing ceased almost abruptly.
On her return to the house it had been dusk, but now the sky outside the window was black. She was cold and stiff from lying on the bed for so long. Maybe she should run herself a bath.
The sound of the front door banging shut made her sit up with a start. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked silently on stockinged feet, out onto the landing outside the room.
For a moment she thought she had been imagining things because the house seemed almost peculiarly silent, but then she clearly heard the rustle of clothes and the sound of a footstep on a stair.
She moved back into the room and grabbed the phone. But as she stood there with the receiver in her hand, the dialling tone finally turning into a long monotonous stuttering noise, she realized that she had no idea whatsoever what the police emergency number was in the U.K.
She could hear the sound of breathing and a male voice swearing under his breath. Quietly she slid behind the bedroom door. Her fingers curled around the base of a charming little statuette: Cupid, the archer, with his full quiver of arrows. She picked it up. There was a satisfying heft to the little figure. She lifted it in the air and readied herself.
The intruder stopped just inside the bedroom door. Through the opening between the door and the jamb, Isa could make out a dark raincoat and the outline of an arm.
He stepped fully into the room. Isa pushed herself away from the wall and rushed at him, the statue already swinging down in a vicious arc. He must have heard her a split second before she moved, though, because he swung around and his uplifted arm deflected her blow.
‘What the hell—’ He swung his arm violently backward against her and the force of his movement drove the air from her body and made her stumble badly. Her knees buckled, and as she fell to the floor, she gasped as her elbow connected painfully with the side of the table.
The pain was so sharp and severe; it stunned her for a moment. From the floor she looked up into the intruder’s face.
He had aged. Five years ago his hair had been black, showing no untidy patches of silver or any thinning at the temples. His jaw, once firm and taut, had slackened, but there was a new tightness at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He was still an attractive man.
He stared at her. ‘Isa. God, I’m sorry. Here, let me help you.’ He leaned forward and held out his hand.
She hesitated for a second, then placed her hand in his. She felt a tiny shiver of apprehension—revulsion?—running through her body as he pulled her to her feet.
She straightened her back and looked him full in the face. ‘Hello, Justin.’
‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’
She shook her head and moved away from him. ‘What are you doing here?’
He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I did call just now. There was no answer and the house was dark, so I thought I’d take a chance and sneak in here before you came back.’
‘You knew I was here?’
He sighed. ‘To be honest, I saw you the other night. I passed by here and spotted you through the window.’
He turned around in sudden irritation. ‘Why are we standing here whispering at each other in the dark?’ He reached with unerring certainty for the light switch behind the door. ‘There.’
He looked over to where she was standing, warily watching him. ‘I know. This is unforgivable. I should have knocked the other night when I saw you. The truth is, I wasn’t sure whether you’d want to see me. You and Alette were so close. God knows what she told you about me after the divorce.’
‘She didn’t tell me that much.’ Which was, technically speaking, true.
His eyebrows rose incredulously. Before he could respond she said, ‘So what is it you’re looking for?’ In the bright glare of the overhead light, she could see deep creases on his forehead.
‘I’m looking for a ring …’
Isa stared at him in disbelief. ‘Alette’s wedding ring?’
He made an impatient gesture with his hand. ‘No, no. It’s an enamelled gold ring. It belonged to my mother. I gave it to Alette shortly after our engagement. I’ve always wanted it back.�
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Isa gestured to the dressing table. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Thank you,’ he said in a subdued voice. He slid open the drawer and took out the rosewood box in which Alette kept her jewellery. After opening a few of the small chamois pouches, he extracted a thin golden ring. ‘This is it.’
‘May I see it?’ Isa held out her hand.
‘Of course.’
It was a ‘poesy’ ring. She had seen others like it in the Victoria and Albert Museum. These poetry rings were always inscribed with a romantic message. She turned the ring around. This one’s message read, As true to Thee as Death to Me.
‘It’s pretty.’ As she gave the ring back to him, she realized that her hands were trembling.
‘It’s valuable. This ring is not the original ring, which dates from 1662—it’s a copy. But it is over two hundred years old. Alette should have kept it in a safe.’ He frowned. ‘I’ll reimburse you for this, of course.’
‘No. Please take it.’ Before he could speak again, Isa turned and walked out of the room, forcing him to follow her. As she passed by the rear-view window, she looked out. A yellow wedge of light was coming from the corner apartment on the top floor of the building opposite. Michael was at home. For some reason, she found the idea comforting.
She was acutely aware of Justin behind her as they continued down the stairs. In the entrance hall he stooped and picked up his briefcase. It had a zippered top and was open and Isa recognized the salmon-coloured pages of the Financial Times inside. The paper was folded at the page that listed the day’s stock prices.
Her stomach suddenly felt hollow. She opened the door quickly and stood to one side so that he could leave.
He lingered on the door step. ‘Listen. I would like us to see each other again. How long will you be staying?’
‘A while longer. But, Justin … I don’t know about this.’
‘I’m not taking “no” for an answer. I’ll pick you up for dinner Sunday at eight.’
She opened her mouth to protest, but as he shifted his briefcase from his left to his right hand, she caught another glimpse of the newspaper, and the knowledge of what she had done earlier that day suddenly struck her forcibly. Who knows what might be printed in that newspaper tomorrow?
She looked back at him. His eyes were a clear blue.
‘All right. Eight o’clock.’
It was only after he had left that she realized she hadn’t asked him how he had gained access to the house.
SEVEN
Too late hee would the paine asswage,
And to thick shadowes does retire;
About with him hee beares the rage,
And in his tainted blood the fire.
The selfe-banished
Edmund Waller (1606–1687)
LOVE IS VIOLENCE. She said that. Violence and love: linked together as through some diseased organic tissue.
Love is torment. Love is emotional incontinence. We seek desperately to suffer, she said, because love without suffering is love without ecstasy. And for ecstasy we’ll do anything. To experience that extreme friction of the senses, to arrive at that moment when all the faculties are heightened; for that—we’ll willingly seek to be violated, to meet any of love’s rough demands.
Isn’t it telling, she said, that un-neurotic love—the love of the sane and level-headed man—is seldom, if ever, celebrated? Think Lancelot and Guinevere. Think Abelard and Heloise. To prove her point she’d read to him out loud passages from her favourite poems. Tales of forbidden love, fatal love, unrequited love.
He adored it when she did that. It took him back to those early, early years when his mother read poetry to him at bedtime. Not nursery-rhyme books. Not Jack and Jill went up the hill, but real, grown-up books. How important it made him feel: almost as if he was his mother’s confidant. And what a privilege to drift to sleep, teased by intriguing thoughts he did not fully comprehend.
His mother preferred the work of the Metaphysical poets: that clubby, elite group of men who wrote for each other’s intellectual gratification and who lived in a time of plague and war and instability. She taught him to appreciate poetry in which love and carnal desire exist in a world shadowed by death and corruption; by fleabites and maggots; carcasses, dissections, fever, palsy, quicksilver sweat, and bracelets of bright hair about the bone.
Violence is love. Didn’t he, through violence, make the ultimate sacrifice? Wasn’t there something heroic in an act which terminated so abruptly the cancer of obsession?
But he was concerned about his compulsion to return to Alette’s house again and again. It was going to get him into trouble. That night, when he heard the key scrape in the lock, he had had just enough time to slip into the kitchen and close the door. He had been confused by his brief glimpse of a tall, slim, female figure in the doorway, but then he noticed the suitcase and he knew it had to be Isa. Or rather Isabelle, as Alette always insisted. She must have just arrived from the airport. What he would have done if she had decided to explore the kitchen first, he did not know.
In the end it had been quite easy to slip out unseen. And later he had watched her through the window. He had relished her unselfconscious vulnerability: the vulnerability of a woman who was being observed without her knowledge.
He hadn’t expected it to be so thrilling, finally, to talk to her. Face-to-face, he was able to see a lost look in her eyes. She had lovely eyes. She wasn’t a beauty, not like Alette, but there was something at the corner of her mouth—something sad and soft—which touched him.
Still, he was not happy that she was living in Alette’s house. And sooner, rather than later, he would have to find out why she was staying on.
EIGHT
We by this friendship shall survive in death,
Even in divorce united.
La Belle Confidente
Thomas Stanley (1625–1678)
ISA SCROLLED SLOWLY down the menu on the computer screen; past the entries for ‘Market at a Glance’ and ‘What’s Hot/What’s Not,’ until the cursor came to rest at ‘StockFind’. Then, as she had done several times a day for the past week, she typed in the words ‘Temple Sullivan’ in the space left for the company name and double-clicked on the yellow-and-red ‘Go Find It’ icon. The screen turned blue.
There was a fresh item on Temple Sullivan in the news section: a brief discussion of a promising, new-generation anti-inflammatory drug in the company’s pipeline. But not a word about Taumex or any potential sourcing and supply problems. Not that she had really expected to find anything. She had already scoured the pages of the Financial Times and the London Post and they hadn’t carried any stories either.
Since making the phone calls to the brokers and mailing Alette’s letters to the newspapers, she has been monitoring Temple Sullivan’s stock price with the zeal of a lottery-ticket fanatic. But so far there had been no unusual price move.
She had also accessed past news stories on the company and details of financial performance. Until only fourteen months ago, the stock had been volatile in the extreme; at one stage falling a vertiginous twenty per cent before rallying again. In the past fifty-two weeks, however, the stock was headed in one direction only: up. And according to the analysts, its dizzying upward trajectory seemed set.
Isa moved the cursor to the icon that would allow her access to real-time stock quotes and tapped the enter key. The screen blinked and current stock prices and trading details started flowing across the screen. As she watched, a small green arrow appeared next to the trading symbol TMPSUL and the entries for ‘last price’, ‘last change’ clicked over. Temple Sullivan stock was up forty pence on the day.
She leaned back in her chair. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. But one thing was clear.
Alette had it wrong. No one was taking any notice.
• • •
SHE SHOULD HAVE cancelled her dinner date with Justin. Why hadn’t she?
Isa looked in the mirror as though she would find the
answer there. But the sight of her anxious eyes and pinched mouth only made her feel more nervous than she already was. And she was nervous. She was very nervous. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She glanced at her watch. She had exactly thirty minutes to pull herself together before meeting Justin.
She needed some colour in her face: she was too pale. She picked up the blusher and dragged the soft brush in generous strokes across her cheekbones. Now she looked like a clown. Strained eyes and apple cheeks. She’d have to go wash it off.
More than once this week she had thought of cancelling, but managed to refrain. If she was going to continue with Alette’s instructions, it was imperative that she find out more about what had happened between Alette and Justin. She owed it to herself. After all, she had now become an invisible partner in that relationship.
A relationship dictated by the wishes of a dead woman.
Her hands trembled as she stretched the sheer fabric of the tights over her toes. Justin had called earlier to ask if she’d mind meeting him at the restaurant. She preferred it. The idea of again meeting him at the house made her feel short of breath; this house where Alette looked out at her from every photograph, where she could imagine turning around suddenly to find Alette curled up in an easy chair, yawning and stretching, still sleepy after a long nap.
She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t yet made any effort to pack up Alette’s things. She should start making arrangements for storage; consult with an estate agent. Instead she had left everything virtually untouched. Alette’s garden shears, gloves and mud-caked boots were still lying in an untidy heap just inside the kitchen door and every time she entered the kitchen, she had to step over them. The laundry bin was filled with Alette’s lingerie and some of her lace blouses, which required hand washing. In some ways she, Isa, felt like the ghost: a creature of no substance who was haunting a house that was waiting breathlessly for the sound of other, quicker footsteps on the stairs; for another hand to turn on the lights. Even now, as she pulled the front door to and placed the key in the lock, she did it without any sense of ownership. This place would never be home.
Writ in Water Page 46
