‘I hope you rot.’
‘I shall, some day. Look, you have one chance. Come with me.’
He led me swiftly through corridors, down the stairs, and to a room at the back of the house, where a door was open on the garden. At the far side of the lawn, Helena stood, with her back toward us, pruning a little tree with a pair of gleaming secateurs. We stopped in the doorway.
‘The fact is‚’ said Julian, ‘I no longer have the thing. I gave it to Helena, as a present on the anniversary of the day we met you, our benefactor. Yes, it’s a year ago, today, don’t you remember? We’re not without gratitude, Benjamin, and we shall always celebrate that day.’
He paused, and looked at me, with the tip of his tongue wedged into the corner of his mouth.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I asked. ‘Haven’t you done enough?’
‘Benjamin, where we live, you pay for everything. There now, I have said something of import, just for you.’
‘Damn you.’
He gave a great laugh.
‘Ah, my boy, original as ever, even in your curses. Off you go now, and whisper a word in her ear. You may not have the chance again for a long time, for we’re leaving today on a little holiday.’
I could not move. My feet would not move. He patted my arm, and began to turn away, stopped, and looked at me, and, not without a certain fondness, he said,
‘You weren’t wicked enough to cope with us, were you? Good luck.’
I nodded dumbly, and stepped down to the garden. And a sprinkler, squatting like a toad at the corner of the lawn, turned round its vicious snout and spat on me.
The rest is hardly worth recounting. Well, an effort, and then on to the last horrors.
She glanced at me calmly over her shoulder, as though she had been expecting me. Calmly, why not? Of course she had expected me. I avoided her eye, and fingered the leaves of the tree. They were thick and dry, and coated with a malodorous green dust. Snap, said the secateurs, snap snap.She stepped back from the tree, and pulled a strand of hair away from her forehead. The old days back again.
‘It is very difficult to make things grow here,’ she murmured. ‘The heat, even in spring, and no rain.’
‘It rained last night.’
‘Did it?’
The old days indeed; or almost, for she had hardly heard what I said. That did not matter. I tried to think of the days we had spent together, and of the nights, when she would drive with me in the great car out to Glyfadha, where we would sit enmeshed in our passion and watch the sky, which seemed to echo that passion, in the cold savagery of its stars and clouds, its black winds; but I could think only of dust, and broken glass, of dead matter, and of the island. I cannot explain.
‘You have something which belongs to me,’ I said.
She frowned.
‘What?’
‘A little thing,’ I said, trying sarcasm, to see if that would raise a spark. It did not. She shrugged, and turned away, as one turns away when accosted by a maniac in the street, shut up, I know how they turn away.
‘Wait.’
She waited, asking,
‘Well?’
‘I want it.’
‘Don’t be foolish.’
‘You’ve got it. Is that foolish?’
‘Yes.’
‘He told me you’ve got it.’
‘You should know better than to believe him.’
‘Should I?’
The cut and thrust of this conversation is really something, even in an abridged form. She bent to pick up from the grass a severed shoot, and, as I looked into the roots of her hair, I realized that it was dyed. Why had I not noticed it before? Perhaps I had, perhaps I had known all along, as I knew everything else, without admitting it. Now I was shocked. How strange.
‘You should recognize his jokes when you see them,’ she said, with the tone of a nasty little girl saying ya, you got hit an I didn’, sucks to you. Sucks, verily, to me. I turned to the tree and gave it a kick. A leaf fell on my head.
‘I can play jokes too, you know,’ I muttered.
‘You’re a fool.’
She always pronounced ‘a’ as ‘ae’. It was very irritating. I was ‘ae’ fool. She picked up some more of those shoots, and held them in the crook of her arm.
‘Helena,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
‘What?’
I turned away from her, and looked toward the mountains. Thunder raged afar among the far high peaks.
‘About all this, what do you think? Ever since I knew you, you’ve been inventing things to be dramatic about. But there’s your strange life here, and all both he and I have done to it, and yet you —’
She stamped her foot.
‘I could bear anything from you except your insufferable sentimentality,’ she cried. A little white droplet of her spit landed on my eyebrow. I was not daunted.
‘But I’m just asking you what you think, how you feel about all …’
But the bloody stupid woman was not even listening to me. She stared past my shoulder, with her mouth open. I turned. Julian had emerged through the doorway, and now he tottered toward us across the lawn, carrying one of those huge leather trunks. I took a step toward Helena, for protection, but she took a step away from me. Julian veered, matching his course to our new positions. His big round head appeared at the side of the trunk; his face was purple with effort, but he was grinning, grinning in spite of all. He came at me. His knees began to wobble, three paces, a grunt, two paces, one, halt, and he cried,
‘Whup.’
He gave the trunk a heave with his shoulder, and it toppled slowly forward. There was nothing I could do, absolutely nothing, I insist. I caught the great awkward thing in my arms, was pushed backward, my foot caught in something, and I sat down on the grass. The trunk jarred my knees, and then keeled over and lay on its side beside me. Julian brushed his hands together, and glanced at Helena with a proud little smile, stepped forward, and offered to help me up. I looked at Helena. She was laughing. With her hands over her mouth, her knees knocking, one foot resting on top of the other, Helena laughed, at last, laughed, and laughed. And in the doorway, a small figure appeared, pale face and shining curls. Was he also laughing?
Chronology again, all out of whack. Makes not a bit of damn difference now.
I went home. It must have been morning still. Yes, it was morning. I am not sure. Andreas sat in my armchair, by the window, completely motionless but for his eyes, which flickered restlessly from my head to my feet. There were three long parallel red weals down his jaw, from tip of ear to chin, as though some animal had clawed him. I felt light-headed suddenly. The floor swayed, and it seemed that I might faint. I put my hands over my eyes. He is not there, I told myself, he is not there. I stepped across the floor to the sink, filled a saucepan with water, and put it on the little gas stove. There was no coffee. I swore. Half a bottle of yesterday’s milk remained. I took it from the cupboard (mouseshit on the shelves) and sniffed it. Only slightly sour. I emptied the water from the saucepan, poured in the milk, and set it on the flame. While it was heating, I broke bread into a cup, and doused it liberally with sugar. It was a comforting sound, the sound of sugar, soon to be melted, rattling on dry bread, soon to be sodden. There was a hiss. The milk had begun to boil over the edge of the saucepan. I snatched it from the stove, holding the hot handle in my fingertips, and saying ah, ah. The bread subsided, and the sugar, with a sigh, under the scalding white stuff. I mashed the mixture with a fork, stuck a spoon into it, then took the warm cup in my cupped hands and carried it to the bed, where I sat curled against the wall, and shovelled the glop into my face. It was nice. There is nothing so cheering as the preparation of pap. I think I might even have smiled. Andreas said,