by Angela Huth
‘Not exactly. Suggestions are made from time to time, but I’m very fussy. I’m not one to say yes in haste. Old-fashioned, like that, I am.’
William shifted in his chair to try to ease the general combustion within him, more lively than ever now Bonnie was responding to the mood of the conversation.
‘Glad to hear it.’ He spoke in his most fatherly voice. ‘As for suggestions, it would be a damn odd thing if a girl like you wasn’t besieged by offers–’
‘William: don’t be silly’ She was pleased.
‘If you can take a compliment from a man somewhat older than yourself, I’d say you’re an exceptionally …’ Here, words failed him. ‘I mean, take this evening, surprising us all with your piano playing. You made a mighty pretty picture. And sometimes I glance at you when we’re playing, and I think
‘What do you think?’ She was teasing him, eager to hear how William would explain the feelings these glances gave him. William held her eyes, aware that his own almost intolerable desire was, for a second or two, perhaps mutual. There was no question, of course, of telling her the truth.
‘I think … how can one so young, and with comparatively little experience, know intuitively about the … oneness of a quartet, and yet urge her instrument sing out with its own particular voice … ?’ He trailed off.
‘Oh, you mean musical things.’ Was there disappointment in her slight shrug? William had known he would go wrong at some point and cursed himself. He should have taken the risk and told her the truth. Bonnie glanced at her watch.
‘It’s very late,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to be full of energy for tomorrow morning’s expedition, we’d better go to bed.’
She was up and fleeing through the mauve haze of the bar before William could struggle from his chair. She waited for him impatiently. The doors of the lift shut behind them. The closed air was hung with vile old cigar smoke. William placed himself two feet from Bonnie, eyes averted from her. He looked instead at the reflections of the two of them in the mirrors on two walls of the lift. Repeated and repeated, their images were: there they were, smaller and smaller. The last reflection of all, no bigger than a couple of small figurines, illustrated, perhaps, the size of their friendship, relationship, in real life. The tug and pull from Bonnie’s eyes, that William had felt so acutely for a single moment while they talked, had disappeared completely. Arms crossed under her breasts, stroking the velvet, she was elsewhere now: dull, flat, oblivious of William.
They reached their floor and stepped into the less obnoxious stale air of the passage.
‘What is the nature of this expedition to be?’ William scratched his head. God, he did not want her to go.
‘We’re going to a church full of bones. I told you. Thousands of skeletons. Not for the squeamish.’ She giggled.
‘How awful. I remember it. I might not come.’
‘You’ve got to come.’ She kissed him briefly on the cheek, a noncommittal polite kiss which William had no time to return. She put the key into the door of her room. ‘Sleep well.’ The door closed.
William knew that Bonnie’s room was between his own and Grant’s. But this did not trouble him, William was relieved to find. Bonnie had said there were currently no visitors in her life, and Grant was not one to upset the applecart by pressing his case, if indeed, he had designs on Bonnie. And judging from his aloof behaviour on this trip, William, whose opinion on this matter was inclined to shift, had begun to think that seemed unlikely to be the case.
By the mauve plastic shutters of his window he stood pulling at his white tie, unbuttoning his stiff piqué shirt like one in a trance. In his state of acute frustration he knew the night ahead would be a long one. The knowledge that through the thin wall Bonnie slept alone was of some comfort, but not enough to induce sleep. He began humming the slow movement of a Bach violin sonata. It took him an unusually long time to undress, and rather than break off his rendering of the gentle Bach, such was his anguish that he broke a rule of a lifetime and did not brush his teeth.
At three in the morning Grace, who had slept restlessly, woke completely. In her dream she had heard a whistling sound, an eerie moaning. An almost full moon, sharp as glass, stared at her through the open window. She imagined frost outside. She sensed the silence of frost, was glad of the heavy warmth of her bed.
She looked round at the darkness of the familiar shapes of the room for a while, then shut her eyes again. The noise that had been part of her dream started up again. But now it was not a whistle, or a moan, but the howling of a large dog. The howling, in truth, of a wolf.
Grace had eaten several slices of cheese for supper. Cheese at night … Plainly her imagination was playing tricks. She opened her eyes again and as a louder howl tore through the night silence, the discs of her spine seemed to shunt together and freeze.
She got out of bed, went to the window, pulled part of the curtain against her chest. The air was icy, damp. Grace began to shiver. Suddenly the silence was broken by a distant wail of a fire engine, or ambulance: a small-toy sound. It set off a further howl, longer, deeper, sadder. It came, Grace realised, now locked in terror, from somewhere in their own driveway. There was a wolf at large, escaped from some far-off zoo, or perhaps from a private keeper. Even as Grace wondered how it could have negotiated a motorway, found their road, their house, without being seen … she knew her solution was ridiculous. Should she ring the police, the RSPCA, William?
Grace forced herself to lean out of the window a little to see if … there was a movement in the rhododendron bush opposite the front door. Then she heard pounding footsteps, saw the brief sight of a hunched-up figure running through the gate. When it had disappeared from view there was a final howl, louder than the others: a cruel, triumphant, terrifying noise.
Grace quickly shut the window, ran back to the bed, put on the light. She grabbed the telephone and the piece of paper with William’s Prague number. Her hands trembled so much that she had to make several attempts to dial correctly. She had no idea what she was going to say. She did not like to trouble William, ever, when he was on tour–he did not like his concentration to be disturbed. But here was the kind of emergency he would surely understand. A few words from William, sometimes, so sensible in a crisis, would calm her.
The number began to ring. It rang for a long time. Grace still shook violently, the man-made wolf howl persisting in her ears.
In Prague, first light was beginning to press through the window of William’s room. He had not even tried to sleep, but had read through the long hours, humming through several violin sonatas. The unexpected ring of the telephone charged him with hope so fiercely irrational (Bonnie, sleepless too, was she calling him with an invitation?) that there was no room to suspect any more likely solution to someone calling at this hour.
His hand, picking up the receiver, shook as strongly as did his wife’s at home.
‘Hello?’ Naturally, he’d be next door in a trice. Where was his ruddy dressing-gown?
‘It’s me. Sorry to call you at such an odd time.’ ‘Grace! - Grace.’
‘I suppose I’ve woken you. So sorry.’
‘You haven’t actually. I couldn’t sleep. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing much.’ She gave a small uneasy laugh, the laugh Grace used when she was concealing something like the hiding place of his birthday present or a surprise pudding. ‘I just woke from rather a bad nightmare. You know what it’s like, a nightmare when you’re alone in the house. I felt absurdly scared, put on the light…’
‘You silly old thing. You haven’t had one of your nightmares for ages.’ William could imagine Bonnie’s face sideways on the pillow, thick lashes resting on her cheeks.
‘No. It’s so stupid.’
‘You keep the light on. Definitely don’t turn it off.’ He made a great effort to sound sympathetic. ‘Nightmares can’t live for long in electric light. They thrash about for a while, like a trout out of water, gasping for air to continue, but they c
an’t–they quickly die.’ He was rather pleased with himself, able to produce such fluent guff while the warmth of Bonnie under the sheets next door pervaded his whole being.
The shadow of a laugh came down the telephone.
‘I knew you’d say something silly and make it all right. I’m fine now, really. So sorry to have bothered you. I’ll ring later. Don’t worry.’
The wicked thing was, he wasn’t worrying very much.
‘You go back to sleep, my Ace …’ William put down the telephone. He wondered if, should Bonnie smile in her sleep, it was a smile happy enough to power her dimples. He felt guilt at his lack of concern about Grace’s nightmare, but her strange, rather touching anxiety had been very useful in deflecting the strength of his own imaginings. Rather to his surprise, as dawn began to light the room, he felt sleep approach at last.
7
Grace was unable to sleep for the rest of the night. In the long hours till a concrete dawn began to fill the window, she worked out a rational answer to the disturbance of the night: youths. Recently there had been trouble in the neighbourhood, burglaries and vandalism carried out by a gang of teenage boys who came from an estate some miles away. There certainly hadn’t been a gang, exactly, in the front drive–just a single boy with some talent at imitating animal noises. Perhaps that had been their fun for the night–each one of them would target a house and make weird noises to alarm the owner. They probably would not return, but think of some further cruel trick with which to excite their pathetic lives.
Despite assuring herself of all this, Grace was shaky when she got up at seven. She bumped into things in the bathroom. She found herself creeping downstairs as if not wanting to disturb someone. She switched on all the lights against the gloom of the winter morning, put on the radio to furnish the silence. Then she found her usual appetite for breakfast was gone. She ate only half a piece of toast, scarcely touched her tea. Why had she not told William? she wondered. He would have provided some comfort, encouraged her to ring the police, which at the time she had thought pointless. She longed for his return tomorrow, dreaded the thought of another night alone. She rested her hands on the table and wiggled her fingers as if it were an invisible keyboard. Quite suddenly, surprising herself, she burst into tears.
Grace covered her face with her hands and sobbed noisily, swaying back and forth in her chair. She had not cried for many years. It was a strange, disagreeable sensation: tears pouring down her cheeks and making the backs of her hand, with which she tried hopelessly to rub them away, glisten as if they had been crossed by the trails of several snails. She sniffed and coughed and bent low over the table, trying to ease the pain in her chest. People said to cry was a relief. She could feel no relief. Only the urge to sob more loudly. Perhaps the relief came if you knew what you were crying about. And of this Grace had no idea. ‘What’s the matter with me?’ she gasped out loud.
Even as she sniffed and swayed Grace knew this was no way to comport herself. The question she asked out loud marshalled her senses. She could see what a pathetic figure she made, roaring away, red-eyed, for no more reason than she had been frightened by truants in the night. Her training of a lifetime came into play. She pulled herself together quickly, in the manner her mother would have expected and approved. Blowing her nose, she got up and went to the sink. There, she dampened a dishcloth under the tap and bunched it over her sore eyes. When she took it away she saw she was face to face with Lucien. He was at the other side of the window, grinning.
Grace’s unease, beginning to drift away, returned at once. She could not imagine what he was doing here so early in the morning. His normal time nowadays was nine o’clock. Profoundly she wanted him to go away. She had not the heart to deal with him, his problems and his aggressive energy this morning. But Lucien was waving at her, signalling to let him in. Cocky he was–behaving as if breakfast in the house was his right. Wearily, Grace unlocked the back door. He barged in, a fretwork of cobwebs on his lank hair, wet mud on his boots.
‘William here?’
‘No.’ Immediately Grace cursed herself. She had not wanted Lucien to know William was away for the night. She had managed to keep the fact from him. Now, in her unnerved state, she had given it away.
‘That means there’s no rush, then. Where is he?’
‘Prague. He’s coming back tomorrow morning–or tonight,’ she added, thinking that piece of information might grant her some safety.
Lucien sat at the table, long legs spread like bony wings from the seat of the chair. He must have noticed the state of her face, Grace thought, but he made no comment.
‘So: William’s gone to Prague, has he? Busy schedule there?’
‘There’s always a full programme on a foreign tour.’
‘What: two concerts a day? Morning and evening?’
‘I’m not exactly sure.’ She was puzzled by this unusual interest in William’s work. ‘But I know the last performance is tonight, seven o’clock–some church. Can’t remember its name.’
‘Ah! Evening concert. Hardly likely then, is it, they’d take a late flight after that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said they might be coming home tonight.’ He was enjoying himself. Tapping the table with an egg spoon, smiling with one side of his mouth. ‘In other words, Grace, you lied to me.’
There was no time for Grace to calculate an answer. She folded her arms beneath her bosom, tilted up her tear-marked face, mustering all the dignity she could.
‘At some point it was planned for them to come home tonight … Travel plans sometimes change at the last minute. It’s not my business to be absolutely sure of their movements at all times.’
‘Quite. But don’t pretend. You thought if I knew William was coming home tonight you’d be–well, safer.’
‘I thought no such thing,’ said Grace with all the suppressed anger of one whose thoughts have been accurately read.
‘I’ll take your word for it. All the same, it’s funny you didn’t tell me William had gone to Prague in the first place.’
‘I don’t see what business it is of yours what my husband does.’ Her unusual sternness made Lucien smile.
‘Look: I’m not here to quarrel with you. Everyone’s entitled to lie if they feel like it. Put the kettle on, sit yourself down, tell me why you’ve been crying.’ Outraged by his audacity at telling her what to do in her own house, Grace felt herself being won over by his persuasive voice–the voice he used when he chose to be his most gentle. Silently she did as he bade, then sat down opposite him with a pot of tea.
‘Your eyes,’ he said. ‘You must have cried buckets.’ Without warning he leapt up so fast the tablecloth erupted into a mass of ridges, and snatched the drying-up cloth from the sink. He came towards her. It was bunched in his hands, still damp. For a second Grace thought he was going to hit her. He squatted down, patted at her cheeks and eyes for several moments. Then he leant over and kissed her on the forehead. A blade of foul-smelling breath cut across her.
‘So what’s all this about? Who’s done what to you to cause the tears?’
‘No one’s done anything.’ She sniffed, then smiled. She wanted the drama to peter out now, normality to return. ‘I just had a rotten night, headache, felt tired, missed William … burst into tears. I don’t do that very often. About once a decade.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Lucien. ‘Everyone’s entitled to cry, too, if they want to.’
Grace, eyes on his sympathetic expression, marvelled at his capacity to endow statements of the utmost banality with a convincing sense of profundity. She began to make toast, prepare the breakfast Lucien liked. He returned to his seat, eyes following her every movement. The dour winter morning had lightened a little: a hint of light behind putty cloud showed Lucien to be paler than usual. Deep shadows under his eyes. He scratched at his unshaven jowls.
‘Work, this morning?’ Grace asked. She sat down, longing for him to leave as soon as possible. She longed for the h
ouse, the kitchen, to herself. She knew it was going to be one of her lost days–impossible to get down to work or domestic administration–and was impatient to start whatever occurred to her she might like to do instead. A walk in the country, perhaps. Reading her book. Even sleeping for an hour in the afternoon.–Lost days struck her rarely and caused her no guilt.
‘Nah. Not today’ Lucien shrugged. ‘Matter of fact, and this is what I came to tell you, see how it’d grab you, I’ve given in my notice.’
The slight rise of Grace’s eyebrows indicated nothing more than further enquiry.
‘Well, you know how it is. I didn’t think in the first place it would be my sort of job, did I?’ Grace refrained from contradicting him, gave a slight nod as she remembered his initial enthusiasm. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Well it was rubbish. All these rules, they’d drive a man mad. I couldn’t be, like, my own person there, could I?’ Grace felt herself stiffen as she always did when Lucien produced his trendy phrases. But she did not move. ‘I had to be one of a team, all consistent, they said. Everyone spouting out the same ideas, rules and regulations. That’s not what I’m about. Besides, far as I could see, the wretched homeless we were dealing with weren’t benefiting much from what the Centre provides. Far as I could see, what they wanted was more money and a regular decent meal. All that psychobabble was just doing in their heads.’ He paused, looked for Grace’s reaction. She kept her face closed. ‘I did try, though, honest. I put up some ideas. In fact’ - he gave a small smile - ‘I flooded them with ideas I thought’d be helpful. They didn’t tell me in so many words, but I could see they thought I was rubbish, interfering. So I thought: no point in wasting my time here, is there? I’m off.’
‘I see.’ None of this news surprised Grace. ‘So you’ll be … looking for something else?’
‘I might. There again I might not. See what turns up. ‘On the whole not much turns up unless you–’
‘Don’t you go lecturing me just like Lobelia, thanks very much.’ Lucien said this with such an endearing grin Grace felt no affront. ‘And don’t you worry about me. I’ll get myself sorted.’
