‘It’s for your own good.’
But it was not her own good that she was thinking of. That was the whole point.
‘Open the door, Théo.’
‘I had to do something. You were hysterical. You wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘Just open the door.’
‘Not until you’ve calmed down. I told you, it’s dangerous outside. You could get killed.’
He did not even have the courage to talk to her face to face. He had to keep a door between them. He was weak.
As she stood in the room that morning, no longer speaking, she had remembered the day that she had spent on the water with Wilson Pharaoh and the fisherman. With the village of San Bruno on the port bow, Wilson had told her about a tribe of female warriors who were said to have inhabited the peninsula long ago. They had lived according to one simple, brutal philosophy: the power of life belonged to women alone. Men had not been given the power, and were envious. They coveted it, assaulted it, corrupted it. They were a force for destruction, and should be treated as such. The women would capture men, but for one purpose only: to breed from them. Afterwards the men would be put to death. In legend the women were believed to be giants, a tribe of Amazons, though there was no evidence to support this. In fact, Wilson had said, laughing, there was no proof that they had ever existed at all. They might simply have been a nightmare in the minds of men.
‘Suzanne?’
Her silence must have disconcerted Théo, but she would not speak to him. A door between them, closed by him, the key in the keyhole turned by him. He was a jailer and a coward. Something else that Wilson had said came back to her. It was about the Indians who now inhabited the peninsula, whose existence could not be disputed. Apparently they had no understanding of the concept of marriage. They did not have a word for ‘to marry’ — or even a word for ‘jealousy’, for that matter. They had the word ‘husband’, he told her, but it referred to any man who was known to have abused a woman. She heard Théo sigh, then turn and walk away. She heard the stairs creak. She saw the key, one shining object at the bottom of his pocket, as if she had a jackdaw’s eye. A jailer and a coward. He would never touch her again. The decision was like a bright weight dropping through her brain.
She must have fought the door for an hour. She wrestled with the handle; she shoved and pummelled at the panels. The wood resisted her. She cut her thumb on an uneven hinge and it was so hot in the bedroom that her blood dropped all over the floor. It would not stop. She crossed to the dressing-table and bound the wound in a clean handkerchief, then she pulled the carpet over the blood that led like a trail through the room. And, bending down, straightening a corner, heard footsteps in the corridor. Not Théo’s, though. Softer than Théo’s. More tentative.
‘Imelda? Is that you?’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Could you open the door?’
‘I can’t, Madame. I have no key.’
‘There’s only one key?’
‘Yes.’
She turned away from the door. It had lost its function; it might just as well have been a wall. The window was her only hope. She removed the screen. Outside, it was another identical morning. A view of rocks — some brown, some ochre. A view of sea, all tight and pale. She could smell engine-oil, fish-blood, anchor-chains. Her marriage was over. The love that had bound them had dissolved. Their house no longer had a soul.
Hands on the windowsill, she peered down. Below her was a slanting roof of tin. If she could drop down and somehow keep from slipping, she would be halfway to the ground. She sat side-saddle on the sill, and then let go.
Her heels skidded; she lost her balance. She landed on her hip, began to roll. But the pitch of the roof was shallow. She dug her fingers between two sheets of corrugated tin and held on. In the silence that followed she could hear the roof adjusting to her presence.
She sat still, trying to rehearse her next move. There were three wooden stanchions supporting the veranda on this side of the house, she remembered, each stanchion shaped like a Y. She would have to crawl or slide backwards and then feel for the place where the stanchion joined the roof. If she could just win a foothold in the crook of a Y, then she would be able to ease herself over the edge and climb down the stanchion to the wooden rail where the carpets were hung out to air.
In a few moments it was accomplished. She had not been seen, nor had she done herself any further damage. She stood on the pale-green boards of the veranda, jasmine twisting up the wall behind her. Her mind emptied suddenly and she glanced down. The front of her dress was smeared with rust; the white satin had an odd, scorched look, as if it had been held too close to a fire. She realised she could not risk the street; if anybody saw her like this, she would be locked up again — and probably in the hospital this time. And the path that led along the backs of the houses would be no safer: Florestine Bardou spent part of every morning on her back porch, creating yet another waistcoat for her husband. There was only one direction open to her, and that was down the slope, towards the company offices and workshops.
She left the veranda by the kitchen stairs and, lifting her skirts an inch, began to pick her way down the barren hillside. The sun leaned on her bare head. At one point she heard voices, and had to hide behind a rock. Four Indians passed within a few feet of her. One of them wore a beret. She had seen him the day before, leading the march up Avenida Cobre. They seemed to be pointing at the doctor’s house. They did not notice her.
At the bottom of the slope she slipped through a wire fence and into the alleyway between two buildings. The sudden shade was like a benediction. She stood against a wall and looked around. Pools of oil shimmered. Broken cement-blocks lay in heaps. She had to try not to think about her hands. How much they hurt her. How she was carrying bits of the house in her skin. The wall trembled at her back. She found a window and, peering into the building, watched fire arc downwards through the gloom. The molten copper flowed from a ladle near the roof into a huge cylindrical drum. She saw Pierre Morlaix standing below. His silver hair marked him out. It was then that she realised the extent of her own visibility, dressed in white silk, soiled though it was. She hurried down the alleyway. Behind her, she heard the drum begin to turn.
She crossed a factory yard and hid in the gap between a warehouse and a stack of railway sleepers. All in all the circumstances favoured her. With the Indians on strike, there would be fewer people about. Less chance of being seen. She edged past a padlocked door and, rounding the corner, found herself in a passage that led between two high walls of blackened brick. And there, at the far end of the passage, bleached by the sunlight, was the piece of luck she needed. Bleached to the colour of a ghost, but real enough. A horse.
She moved towards the horse — slowly, so as not to startle it. Its head swung in her direction, curious. She recognised it now. All black, with two white fetlocks and a white blaze on its forehead. It belonged to Monsieur de Romblay. She even knew its name.
‘Normandy,’ she whispered.
She pushed one hand against the sleek muscles in its neck.
‘There, Normandy, there,’ she whispered as she untied the loosely knotted reins. Still whispering the horse’s name, she fitted one foot into the stirrups and eased up into the saddle.
She rode through the gates and out on to the cinder track that ran between the office buildings and the sea. Nobody called after her. Nobody had noticed. She had not liked taking the Director’s horse, but it could not be helped. And he would thank her later.