Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  She smiled gently. ‘In chivalric love, the knight may at times share a bed with his lady, but she would still be forbidden to him. If their love were to be consummated, his passion would wither. I know. That’s what happened with him.’

  Him. Justin Temple. Her voice sometimes sad when she spoke about him, sometimes angry and shrill. He darkened their lives. If it hadn’t been for that man’s shadow, he and Alette could have been happy. They were soul mates, the two of them. They had so much in common.

  They shared a passion for roses. Alette with her straw hat and her rebellious red hair thrust underneath it. Alette with the scissors in her hands cutting back the tough, prickly stalks. ‘You shouldn’t cut them back so hard,’ he told her. ‘You have to be cruel to be kind,’ she replied in return. She had accompanied him to his mother’s house; tackling the soulless, formal garden with its straight garden paths and hemmed-in squares of grass and turning it into a riot of jubilant colour and heady scent. His mother had not been grateful. She had stared at the flowers, her mouth stiff. She had found the wildness, the wanton lushness of it all, overwhelming.

  They shared a love for poetry, although Alette loved poems that sang of dappled light and full-throated nightingales. Wordsworth. Keats. The poets his mother had dismissed. Their wistful melancholy did not appeal to one who preferred the work of men who wrote of death with unsentimental wit.

  Roses, poetry. And they had shared another passion: a fascination for what lies beyond this life; the mystery and fire of what cannot be seen and hardly comprehended. So many times they had talked about the tenuous, shimmering link that yokes together the quick and the dead. So many times had they sat shoulder to shoulder, paging through books that smelled of must and disuse, whispering together, sharing notes.

  He was in awe of her gift. When Isa first told him of Alette’s calls, his first emotion had been exhilaration. After his initial reaction of delight, he had felt apprehension. What would Alette tell Isa? Why was she calling?

  Temple did not like roses. He was scornful of Alette’s gift. He did not understand her: did not deserve her. But he was the one Alette loved, even though she continued to take into her life a string of lovers who could never satisfy her. ‘I hate him, Michael.’ Her face flushed and her eyes tearful. ‘I love him so.’

  He had tried to cure her of her obsession, had begged her not to throw herself at the man. But her fixation with Temple was out of control. She was losing her dignity: stalking Temple, intercepting his mail. When a gossip columnist reported that Temple was seriously dating another woman, Alette had sent the woman a package in the post. Before sending it off, Alette had shown him the contents: pale, strawberry-coloured strands of pubic hair. Coarse to the touch. Unmistakable in its message.

  Towards the end she had become almost a recluse. Sitting in her chair, wrapped in her throw, watching the phone constantly; hoping for a call. It was painful to watch, but he could also feel the anger building up inside of him. That very last day he had begged her not to follow Temple to the country. Did she have no shame? She was humiliating herself. Her life was becoming irrelevant. She was turning into a ghost. A malevolent ghost. She talked about revenge constantly. It was simply the other side of obsession: the midnight side.

  He had never believed in revenge. Revenge was not self-empowering, it was self-defeating: a cold fire, a necrosis of the soul. Alette seemed incapable of grasping this truth.

  That was when he had started plotting her death. Only death could cure her of the sickness. His love for her was that strong. He would willingly deprive himself of her presence to save her soul from the spreading rot. It was up to him to help her.

  Obsession is an open wound. Revenge keeps it festering. Uncompromising action was what was called for. Soft hands make stinking wounds, as his mother was fond of saying, and she was right. A break has to be clean and final. Absolute.

  With no possibility of a comeback.

  But he should have known. He could sense her leaning over his shoulder. Her hand rested lightly on his arm. He smelled her perfume. Against his cheek he felt her breath.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Until sweet Isabella’s untouch’d cheek

  Fell sick within the rose’s just domain.

  Isabella, or The pot of Basil

  John Keats (1795–1821)

  THE ROOM SMELLED FRESH. Despite the rain, Isa had kept the windows open; only closing them a half-hour before she knew Justin was due to arrive. She had dusted, had bought fresh flowers. The fire was burning in the hearth. Alette’s jewel box of a room has been restored to its original comfortable luxury.

  As though any of this would make a difference.

  He was looking at her as though he had never seen her before. She tried to speak, but her voice made no sound. At the third attempt, she managed to utter the words she had been practising all afternoon.

  ‘I love you. Please forgive me.’

  The words sounded inane.

  Justin’s eyes seemed puzzled, as though he was trying to recall something, but something that was too unimportant, too trivial for his memory to retain. A chance encounter; a vaguely familiar face.

  She had told him everything; starting with the telephone call from Mr Darling. She hadn’t tried to excuse herself. After all, what could she say? Alette made me do it? She had asked him to sit down in Alette’s living room and had given him the letters, watching as he read the blueprint that outlined Temple Sullivan’s destruction. His expression had not changed. But now he was looking so tired: small and shrunken within himself. Suddenly old.

  ‘Justin …’

  He stood up; his hands hung nervelessly by his sides. ‘Do you know what you’ve cost me?’ The expression in his eyes made her look away. ‘Twelve years. Twelve years of risk and back-breaking work. Twelve years of dreaming and wanting success so badly I could not sleep at night. When I found out about the professor, I thought it was over. But I didn’t steal from him, and the man was dead. I had perfected something that I knew was worthwhile; a drug which could make a difference.’

  She could not speak. She kept her eyes on the clock on the mantelpiece. It had stopped: the hands stuck at ten past two.

  ‘And now it’s gone.’

  He sounded disbelieving. ‘Gone,’ he said again, but this time there was something in his voice that made her look at him swiftly.

  His hands tightened into fists. ‘You bitch.’

  She got up quickly and stood behind the chair, keeping it as a barrier between them.

  ‘Did you enjoy fucking me, Isa? Lying in my arms knowing what you’d done? Did it give you a buzz? A sense of power?’

  She watched in shock as a vein swelled blue above his eyebrow. Before she could react, he had crossed the room and kicked the chair in front of her to one side.

  He grabbed her by the arm and shook her so hard that her head flopped back and forth, back and forth. He lifted his hand and she thought he would hit her.

  But he was weeping, his face glistening and his mouth distressingly slack. He turned away and stretched his arm out wide and brushed it across the mantelpiece. The clock and the large framed photograph of Alette crashed to the floor.

  ‘I will never forgive you.’

  He spoke with his eyes fixed on the floor; fixed on the image of that beautiful face with the flawless smile. She didn’t know if he was speaking to Alette or to her.

  It hardly mattered.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Darkling I listen; and for many a time

  I have been half in love with easeful Death,

  Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

  To take into the air my quiet breath;

  Now more than ever seems it rich to die.

  Ode to a Nightingale

  John Keats (1795–1821)

  HE HAD BEEN WAITING PATIENTLY: midnight had come and gone and then the first, early-morning hours. And still there was light in the room on the top floor of the house on the opposite side of the street, forcing h
im to wait at his darkened window. But patience was his one particular virtue. He was always willing to wait for the good things that come to those who have the strength to bide their time.

  For the past few hours he had merely sat quietly: watching the house on the other side of the road. The last time he had been inside, he had also had to wait a long time for her to go to sleep. He smiled when he thought of his last visit. She had been totally spooked by the wind chimes and by the photograph. Initially he had removed the picture of Alette to keep for himself. But as he watched Isa from behind the lacquered screen in the living room, the opportunity to create mischief had proved irresistible. He had hoped to scare her away from the house, and he would have been successful, too, if it hadn’t been for that man.

  Finally. She had switched off the light. The buttery glow peeping through the closed curtain was out.

  He glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. The streets were still, the air hushed. This was the dreaming hour when people cried out in their sleep; the crisis hour when a fever might break or hope finally disappear. The hour when death’s angel was walking, as his mother would say.

  He picked up the gloves and pulled them over his fingers. He took the nylon stocking and pushed it into his coat pocket. He felt slightly ridiculous as he did so: the image of the stocking-faced intruder—his face squishily shapeless as though it had been pickled in brine—was such a readily identifiable menace from a hundred B-movies that he cringed. But there was no other way. He did not wish her to know who was at her side when she entered those last desperate moments of her life. Call it superstition, but the sight of his face should not be the last image she carried with her into her dream-death-sleep.

  Earlier he had caught a glimpse of her as she had pulled the curtains shut. With pain in his heart he had recognized the nightdress she was wearing. It was not hers to wear. Just as it was not her life to live. She was usurping Alette’s place: seeking to take her stead. It was obscene; it must not be allowed.

  He gave a last look around him and walked to the door.

  • • •

  SHE HAD KEPT the light burning for as long as she could, like a child scared of the dark. But weariness had overtaken her and now she was lying on her back, staring into darkness, her feet and hands twitching involuntarily. The phone was connected. Soon her dreams would be wide open. She wanted Alette to contact her: there were questions she needed answered. But she was also afraid, so very afraid of what she might find if she walked into the nightmare Alette had planted in her brain.

  Whatever had happened to the dreams she and Alette had shared as children? Dreams so rich, so dazzling, they could make you weep with joy. It came so easy then. It was an act as natural and sane as drawing breath. She never questioned the validity of it all: was completely uncritical about what was happening to them. All she cared about every night as she waited drowsily for the moment of transition was that her dreams might lead her to experience feelings so magical and exhilarating they could never be replicated in real life. That, and the knowledge that they would be side by side: Alette, the dream maker and she, Isa, the chronicler of their adventures. In those days she had kept a dream journal filled with sketches and descriptions as rich and complex as any found in Jung’s Red Book. Of course, only a few years later she had destroyed that journal with her very own hands. Eric hadn’t actually asked her to do so, but he had told her the journal ‘creeped’ him out.

  What was it Justin had said? Tests: Alette would set him tests to prove his devotion. Well, Eric didn’t even have to. She had been quite capable of playing such a self-destructive little game all by herself.

  Her eyelids were closing. She was so tired and this time the effort to keep her eyes open was too great.

  Take my hand.

  And without thinking twice about it, she did.

  • • •

  HIS THICK GLOVES were hampering his efforts to pry away the loose brick from the wall. As he took them off, he winced as a thorn on one of Alette’s rose bushes scratched savagely at his wrist.

  He pushed his hand into the dark hollow, his fingers searching for the keys. Something touched his palm; something soft, moist and cold. He felt the hairs on his arms rise. But it was only a slug. A dead slug.

  And now the keys were in his hand and he was walking up the shallow steps to the front door. This was where she would bid him good night, standing on tiptoe, her hands pressed unsteadily against his chest, kissing him tipsily. The soft pressure of her lips, that low, slow laugh—they left him with no defence. She always blew him a kiss before closing the door. She never invited him in.

  He fitted the key to the lock and the door opened silently under his hand.

  Against the right-hand wall were motionless shadows. Alette’s coat. Her jackets. A grey felt hat.

  He took the stocking from his pocket and pulled it over his face. He placed his foot on the bottom stair and looked up to where the staircase spiralled away into darkness.

  • • •

  TAKE MY HAND. And her dream collapsed in on itself; and the next moment Isa was searching for her keys in her coat pocket, catching sight of her reflection in the car window as she bent down to unlock the door. As she brushed the long coppery hair from her face, her eyes widened with astonishment.

  Isa looked down at her feet and the shoes were not her shoes. She looked down at her hands and they were not square, capable-looking Isa hands, they were small, narrow hands with slim fingers. And Isa understood that Siena’s warning had come true. Her dream had taken possession of her. Alette had taken possession of her. What was dream and what was reality? She didn’t know anymore.

  The car door was open but she hesitated. She stood next to the car slapping her gloves against her palm: back and forth, back and forth. She hesitated because she sensed a rage in the air. Something malevolent was out there—close by—biding its time.

  But it was cold and the light was fading fast. If she were to get to London before dark she should leave now. Of course, she hadn’t bargained on having to drive back to town today. If things had worked out as planned, she would be with Justin now and they would be making love.

  Making love. What an innocuous description of an act that held such danger for a woman: which was such a leap of faith. A lowering of the barriers—reaching out to a man at your most vulnerable—offering the soft part of the throat. It took such courage. Men never understood that.

  This afternoon Justin had told her he never wanted to be with her again. In her mouth was the sad taste of rejection. But no use thinking about it. About the humiliation and the hurt. As long as there was breath in her body—and even when there wasn’t—she’d see to it that he would not be free of her. She’d return again and again; continue her war of attrition. All’s fair in love and war and love is the greatest war of all.

  The seat leather was cold against her thighs. She turned on the car heater and adjusted the rear-view mirror. She pulled the seat belt over her shoulder, but the clip would not slide into the buckle. Something was blocking it. After several useless attempts to get it to work, she let it go and pushed the belt away from her.

  Just as she was about to turn on the engine, her eyes were caught by a thick book lying on the passenger seat. She reached for it, puzzled. She couldn’t recall seeing it there before.

  As soon as she picked up the book, she recognized it. It was Michael’s. A yellow sticky was peeping out from the pages and on it he had written her name. He often did that, leaving volumes of poetry lying around—marking passages he wanted her to read. She used to find it sweet.

  She frowned and opened the book on the page he had marked.

  And here the precious dust is layd;

  Whose purely temper’d Clay was made

  So fine, that it the guest betray’d.

  She sighed. It was one of those stylized poems celebrating idealized love. Woman on a pedestal; abstract object of desire. Her eyes scanned the words impatiently. Actually, the reverential tone was v
aguely sinister. She didn’t recognize the name of the poet: Thomas Carew. But it was written in 1632, which probably made him one of the Metaphysical poets Michael so admired. Why he had such fondness for their work—those intricate, densely woven little puzzles of death and eroticism—was beyond her. She wished for poetry to dream by; he preferred dark, religiously tinted passion. But then his entire outlook on life was tinged with a gloomy, perverse fatalism. At first glance a man of almost aggressive sanity—he was, when you got to know him well, disturbingly fragile.

  She looked back at the book on her lap. He had circled the very last stanza:

  Learn from hence (Reader) what small trust

  We owe this world, where vertue must

  Fraile as our flesh, crumble to dust.

  She tossed the book onto the edge of the passenger seat next to her and turned on the engine. She was going to have to do something about Michael. Things were getting out of hand. So needy, my God, he was so needy. His desperation was a clammy cloth smothering her heart. She couldn’t stand it anymore. He was constantly hovering over her; sometimes she could swear he was following her around. There was a time when she had enjoyed being with him—to be honest, that kind of uncritical admiration was just what she needed after her break-up with Justin. And it had been an interesting flirtation at first. An unconsummated affair, but with enough sexual tension to set a house on fire. Then it became a drag. His excessive gratitude for any attention she showed him irritated the life out of her. And once boredom had set in, amorous play was of no interest to her anymore.

  But she was becoming nervous. Even though his voice when he spoke to her was still loving and calm, she’d look into his eyes and see a stranger moving within. And she sensed his anger, an unstable mix of adoration and disappointment on the boil. She had a bad feeling about him. But these days she had a bad feeling about everything. A sense of impending disaster was shadowing her. She did not know the source of the danger, but the sense of imminent peril impacted on everything she thought, everything she did.