It happened thus that Saturday, the day of the blood.
She had been watching Rory at work on the kitchen door, chiseling several layers of paint from around the hinges, when she seemed to hear the room call. Satisfied that he was thoroughly engrossed in his chores, she went upstairs.
It was cooler than usual, and she was glad of it. She put her hand to the wall, and then transferred her chilled palm to her forehead.
"No use," she murmured to herself, picturing the man at work downstairs. She didn't love him; no more than he, beneath his infatuation with her face, loved her. He chiseled in a world of his own; she suffered here, far removed from him.
A gust of wind caught the back door below. She heard it slam.
Downstairs, the sound made Rory lose his concentration. The chisel jumped its groove and sliced deeply into the thumb of his left hand. He shouted, as a gush of color came. The chisel hit the floor.
"Hell and damnation!"
She heard, but did nothing. Too late, she surfaced through a stupor of melancholy to realize that he was coming upstairs. Fumbling for the key, and an excuse to justify her presence in the room, she stood up, but he was already at the door, crossing the threshold, rushing toward her, his right hand clamped ineptly around his left. Blood was coming in abundance. It welled up between his fingers and dribbled down his arm, dripping from his elbow, adding stain to stain on the bare boards.
"What have you done?" she asked him.
"What does it look like?" he said through gritted teeth. "Cut myself."
His face and neck had gone the color of window putty. She'd seen him like this before; he had on occasion passed out at the sight of his own blood.
"Do something," he said queasily.
"Is it deep?"
"I don't know!" he yelled at her. "I don't want to look."
He was ridiculous, she thought, but this wasn't the time to give vent to the contempt she felt. Instead she took his bloody hand in hers and, while he looked away, prized the palm from the cut. It was sizable, and still bleeding profusely. Deep blood, dark blood.
"I think we'd better take you off to the hospital," she told him.
"Can you cover it up?" he asked, his voice devoid of anger now.
"Sure. I'll get a clean binding. Come on-"
"No," he said, shaking his ashen face. "If I take a step, I think I'll pass out."
"Stay here then," she soothed him. "You'll be fine."
Finding no bandages in the bathroom cabinet the equal of the staunching, she fetched a few clean handkerchiefs from his drawer and went back into the room. He was leaning against the wall now, his skin glossy with sweat. He had padded in the blood he'd shed; she could taste the tang of it in the air.
Still quietly reassuring him that he wouldn't die of a two-inch cut, she wound a handkerchief around his hand, bound it on with a second, then escorted him, trembling like a leaf, down the stairs (one by one, child) and out to the car.
At the hospital they waited an hour in a queue of the walking wounded before he was finally seen, and stitched up. It was difficult for her to know in retrospect what was more comical about the episode: his weakness, or the extravagance of his subsequent gratitude. She told him, when he became fulsome, that she didn't want thanks from him, and it was true.
She wanted nothing that he could offer her, except perhaps his absence.
4
"Did you clean up the floor in the damp room?" she asked him the following day. They'd called it the damp room since that first Sunday, though there was not a sign of rot from ceiling to skirting board.
Rory looked up from his magazine. Gray moons hung beneath his eyes. He hadn't slept well, so he'd said. A cut finger, and he had nightmares of mortality. She, on the other hand, had slept like a babe.
"What did you say?" he asked her.
"The floor-"she said again. "There was blood on the floor. You cleaned it up."
He shook his head. "No," he said simply and returned to the magazine.
"Well I didn't," she said.
He offered her an indulgent smile. "You're such a perfect hausfrau," he said. "You don't even know when you're doing it."
The subject was closed there. He was content, apparently, to believe that she was quietly losing her sanity.
She, on the other hand, had the strangest sense that she was about to find it again.
FOUR
1
Kirsty hated parties. The smiles to be pasted on over the panic, the glances to be interpreted, and worst, the conversation. She had nothing to say of the least interest to the world, of this she had long been convinced. She'd watched too many eyes glaze over to believe otherwise, seen every device known to man for wheedling oneself out of the company of the dull, from "Will you excuse me, I believe I see my accountant," to passing out dead drunk at her feet.
But Rory had insisted she come to the housewarming. Just a few close friends, he'd promised. She'd said yes, knowing all too well what scenario would ensue from refusal. Moping at home in a stew of self-recrimination, cursing her cowardice, and thinking of Rory's sweet face.
The gathering wasn't such a torment as it turned out. There were only nine guests in toto, all of whom she knew vaguely, which made it easier. They didn't expect her to illuminate the room, only to nod and laugh where appropriate. And Rory-his hand still bound up-was at his most winning, full of guileless bonhomie. She even wondered if Neville-one of Rory's work colleagues-wasn't making eyes at her behind his spectacles, a suspicion that was confirmed in the middle of the evening when he maneuvered himself to her side and inquired whether she had any interest in cat breeding. She told him she hadn't, but was always interested in new experiences. He seemed delighted, and on this fragile pretext proceeded to ply her with liqueurs for the rest of the night. By eleven-thirty she was a whoozy but happy wreck, prompted by the most casual remark to ever more painful fits of giggling.
A little after midnight, Julia declared that she was tired, and wanted to go to bed. The statement was taken as a general cue for dispersal, but Rory would have none of it. He was up and refilling glasses before anyone had a chance to protest. Kirsty was certain she caught a look of displeasure cross Julia's face, then it passed, and the brow was unsullied once again. She said her good-nights, was complimented profusely on her skill with calf's liver, and went to bed.
The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessly happy, weren't they? To Kirsty this had always seemed
self-evident. Tonight, however, the alcohol made her wonder if envy hadn't blinded her. Perhaps to be flawless was another kind of sadness.
But her spinning head had an inept hold on such ruminations, and the next minute Rory was up, and telling a joke about a gorilla and a Jesuit that had her choking on her drink before he'd even got to the votive candles.
Upstairs, Julia heard a fresh bout of laughter. She was indeed tired, as she'd claimed, but it wasn't the cooking that had exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for the damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She'd called them friends once, these half-wits, with their poor jokes and their poorer pretensions. She had played along with them for several hours; it was enough. Now she needed some cool place, some darkness.
As soon as she opened the door of the damp room she knew things were not quite as they had been. The light from the shadeless bulb on the landing illuminated the boards where Rory's blood had fallen, now so clean they might have been scrubbed. Beyond the reach of the light, the room bowed to darkness. She stepped in, and closed the door. The lock clicked into place at her back.