She listened to him telling her why he worked for terrorists. She said yes and no, feared to nod her head but stroked the warm hard limbs as she rehearsed the story to Stanley, about how she had coped oh so wonderfully with this lunatic trying to scare her by saying his van of explosives would blow them and the hotel to kingdom come and halfway back again, a dreadful tale with not a grain of truth in it, but so convincing in his mad, intimidating way that she had been half frightened out of her life, it being his kooky idea that she should be, of course.
She would not be able to tell Stanley, and her eyes welled as if tears would fall. Stanley was her husband, and he wouldn’t stay much of a friend either if she told him how she had got into such a fix. For all she knew he would call her a slut for the rest of her life or divorce her on the spot, and that would be that, an outlook worse than hell itself, though if what Daniel was saying was true she wouldn’t be able to tell her adventure even to herself because she and the rest of them would be dead. Stanley had always made a great thing of loyalty, which was why she had never quite trusted him, so it would be better not to confide in him at all.
TWENTY
Eileen lay with legs apart, and he stared at the dark patch and lips: ‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘Is that all you can say? I love you looking at my cunt.’
He passed a cigarette. ‘As long as you’re warm enough.’
‘You won’t have any left soon.’ She blew smoke, which he boxed away.
‘I expect there are plenty more downstairs. Do you think I’m mesmerized by your charms?’ he smiled.
‘I might be if I was where you are, only I couldn’t be, could I, because I’m a woman. Trevor would never look at me when I was starkers like this. It frightened him, unless he was drunk.’
He frowned, ‘I don’t want to hear about him. Ever again. Do you understand?’
‘All right. You’re my boy friend now.’
‘Aren’t I too old?’
‘How old are you?’
He told her.
‘Well, it was lovely being in bed with you. You made me come.’
‘I couldn’t stop you. It’s good when it happens. It means a woman’s in love — though it might not last more than the time it takes. But it’s good, all the same.’
‘I don’t come with a man. Only when I do it myself. I must have been wanting it. And I love you.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘You said that’s why it happens.’
He lay by her side, not wanting to smash the place to pieces any more, getting more kisses from her than ever in the same space of time, which left him feeling he also might be in love.
‘It sounds as if they’re having a barney downstairs.’
‘Shall we go and take a look?’
She came to him. ‘Not yet. Let’s be together again. I don’t want the night to stop. I never knew a day to start so rotten and finish up so good.’
‘Nor me.’ He was truthful for once, needing her smile. After Gwen’s body was found he would have no life for twenty years. Hanging was too good for murderers, he had always said, which was why Gwen had supposed he would never do it. Her intuition ought to have told her that only a man like him would.
‘You know I love you,’ she said, ‘don’t you? I love you very much, in fact, and when I say it, I mean it. I don’t care whether you love me or not. But I think you do a bit, don’t you?’
It didn’t hurt him to say yes, especially since it seemed more than likely to be true, certainly as much as he had ever loved anyone. ‘Of course I love you.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘How can I convince you?’
‘I don’t know. I believe you when you laugh like that, though. What a terrible rumpus is going on down there. It sounds as if they’re breaking up the happy home.’
She had a way with phrases, the ‘happy home’ always to be smashed by those who had moulded one out of impossible circumstances. To build and break was the armature of ambition, to find love and, while you had it, look for another love to avoid the heartbreak of when the present one went rotten in the sun, the worm at the heart of the fruit. Such thinking had led him into a cul-de-sac from which there was no turning back, so all he wanted to do was enjoy the time left. ‘There must be some new arrivals.’
‘A pop group called The Abominable Snowmen,’ she said. ‘Who else could it be in weather like this? Or the police have arrived in a chopper and they’re clearing the bar. Your laugh turns strange, sometimes.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘As if you’re frightened. You don’t look like somebody who could be frightened, though.’
Silence was golden, and if that phrase hadn’t been in use for thousands of years he would surely have invented it in this situation. ‘No, I’m not. I only know that it’s a miracle being here with you. Life’s very simple: you find whatever you need when you won’t be able to enjoy it for long.’
‘We enjoyed it then, didn’t we?’
A straight yes was easy because his body had plainly said so, and she accepted it as spoken without thinking that the lack of a word might be insulting. Nuance and telepathy had over the years been replaced by the venom of belligerence, when his determination to say nothing invariably ended in a spiritual bloodbath. Such anguished battles were not part of his temperament but had become so, whereas Gwen had thrived on the bold stance, the lit eyes, the triumphant mouth at having harried him to become someone he was not, imagining she could always drive him to the brink of violence and then induce him to pull back.
‘Didn’t we?’
He felt benign, in his own world again — for however long it would last. ‘I’d get you some flowers if I could pull them out of the snow. You’ve made me happy.’
‘Talking will do. I love talk. At home they used to tell me to shut up, I talked so much. But it wasn’t all that much. Only they thought so. It wasn’t that they didn’t talk, though they didn’t talk all that much, either. It was just that I wasn’t supposed to.’
He laughed as she stroked him between his shoulders.
‘You can monkey-jabber as long as you care to with me.’ It was more than comforting to have someone you were half in love with talk and yet say little. Only in saying something — the telling, the asking for explanations, the no uncertain demands for an answer — did affection fade. ‘I can’t hear your voice enough.’
‘You’d better be careful, or I’ll never leave you.’
‘You might have to. Things happen.’
‘Well, you lousy sod, if I have to I’ll have to. But not until.’
He kissed her lovely pliant lips. ‘That’s what I hoped you would say.’
‘Every time you open your mouth you make my day. I’ve lived a year with you already.’
He stroked her nipples with his lips. ‘This is how I like to open my mouth.’
She shivered against him. ‘I’m not cold. That’s all I want you to do. That’s right. Just there. You know how to do it. It won’t take long.’
He was roused enough to go into her when she had finished, but work as he might he couldn’t ejaculate, and at last flopped out. ‘We need distraction.’
‘Well, we can’t go to a dance. Buses aren’t running.’ She wiped between her legs on a corner of the sheet. ‘We’ll be in this room for ever.’
‘I wish that were true.’ The walls shuddered, telegraphic thuds resounding, followed by a scream and the breaking of glass. He jackknifed off the bed to reach for pants and trousers. ‘Mayhem’s got loose. Wait while I see what’s happening.’