He shut the door, looking through it as it closed at Grieve's pretty face smiling after him.
It was the second time he had gone to her father's chambers. He knew the way very well, and was soon on the stairs, and then before the door.
No one was there. He had expected to see Torquin.
He knocked. No answer. He tried the knob. The door was locked.
What could this mean? he asked himself. He knocked again, louder. Then he noticed a piece of paper taped to the wall beside the door.
james,
please do not knock or make any noise. i am considering certain matters, and can't afford to be disturbed. i'll be ready for your visit at nine. until then, please breakfast, or amuse yourself as you like.
my apologies
stark
James wished that he had seen the note before knocking. But there was nothing to be done about it. He hurried back down the stairs.
Where to go? How to pass these two hours? He did not want to go back to his bedroom. Grieve would be sleeping, and he did not feel like sleeping, or like disturbing her. The poor girl had been confused enough by her sister's return.
He turned down a hall that he hadn't been down before. After a while he emerged into an atrium garden, similar to the one in which he had first seen Stark. Two patients were sitting quietly on a bench while an orderly looked on. They did not start at his arrival.
He continued past. There was an archway and beneath it a passage to the outdoors. He followed it and, going through a set of doors, found himself behind the main house and hospital at the foot of a wooded hill.
I'll go to the top of the hill, he thought, and sit there awhile. That'll clear my head. I have to be clear when I speak to Stark. I have to find out what I can.
He reached the top of the hill in very little time. The woods were mostly pine, and had about them the silence of pines, the flat bed of needles prohibiting undergrowth, and the thick boughs shielding the ground from the sun. He found a place beneath one massive tree, and lay down.
When James woke, an hour had passed. He got to his feet, brushed the needles from his back and legs, and proceeded on down the hill. The day was glorious, and from the hilltop he could see the many houses and enclosures stretching away towards the city.
He wended his way through branches and trees, and came at last to the bottom, and then to the door through which he had come.
How I hate, he thought, to return the same way I came.
He walked around the outside of the house. As he did, he passed window after window, and was afforded many glimpses through, as the light pouring in from behind him suffused the rooms and their inhabitants. A small half porch had begun, and the ground-floor rooms all had French windows. Most were closed, but a pair ahead were open. As he approached he could hear moaning sounds and a sort of thrashing and thumping. He walked quietly closer.
As he passed the open French window, the noise increased.
— Oh, oh, OOOOH.
He could not help but look.
To his horror, there was Grieve, his Grieve, his Lily Violet, naked, her arms and legs wrapped around a man whose face he could not see.
— Grieve! he shouted.
She jumped up. The man stood up, naked, and came towards him. He was quite large and muscular. I'll kill him, thought James. I don't care.
But the man only gave him a reproving look and shut the French windows. James could hear a lock click into place. The man went back over to the bed and climbed on top of Grieve. The moaning began again.
James leaped onto the porch and started banging on the window, but it had no effect. The window wasn't even glass, he realized. It was some sort of plastic. He couldn't even break it. He could see Grieve's head laid back on the bed, her mouth open, her hands on the man's shoulders. They were ignoring him!
Ah, it was too much! In a blind rage, he ran around the back of the house to the back entrance and through. He would find the door. He would find the door and then he would kick it down.
As he rounded the atrium, he heard a voice calling out to him.
— James, James.
He turned.
It was Carlyle.
— James, what's wrong?
James's face was red. He was breathing hard.
— Grieve, he said. I left her this morning asleep in my room, and now I just saw her in bed with some man. I tried to get into the room, but they locked the windows.
Carlyle was smiling.
— That wasn't Grieve, you know.
— What are you talking about? asked James.
— No, it wasn't, said Carlyle. She's crazy about you. She wouldn't sleep with anyone else. It was her sister. Her twin sister.
There was a sinking feeling in James's stomach. Her twin sister. He hadn't been able to see her face in the darkness, but she had seemed like Grieve the night before. Hadn't he spoken to her as if she were? Oh, he had made a fool out of himself.
— I've been a fool, he said to Carlyle.
Carlyle put his arm around James and walked him over to the bench. They both sat.
— Don't worry about it, said Carlyle. Your feelings do you credit. In fact, Grieve will think it is all quite funny, although I doubt Grieve's sister will share in that. What did the man look like?
James described the man.
— Oh, him, said Carlyle. Very bad. He's one of the orderlies. Lara knows she's not supposed to be doing that. Well.
He had a quiet laugh that James liked very much. All in the air about the atrium there was a grand relief. It had not been Grieve; it had not been Grieve at all. But she had looked so much like Grieve. Exactly. It was a bit hard to believe. But he had met her, after all. He knew she existed.
— What time is it? asked James.
— Half past nine.
— Good lord, I'm late, I have to go. I've got to see Stark.
— I thought that was at seven.
Carlyle's face looked a little worried. Apparently it was not acceptable to miss one's appointments with Stark.
— No, it changed to nine. God damn it. I've got to go.
— I'll see you a bit later on, said Carlyle.
James rushed off down the hall.
— It's quite all right, Stark was saying. I was busy anyway. It's better that you came now.
— That's kind of you, said James, walking past him into the room.
He wondered if he should tell him about what had just happened. He decided it was better not to. What father wants to hear about a man having sex with his daughter?