12
WHEN THEY GOT BACK home, Anne was in a good mood. She flopped down on the brown sofa, kicked off her shoes, and lit a cigarette. ‘Everybody knows you’ve got a great mind,’ she said to Victor, ‘but what interests me is your slightly less well-known body.’
Victor laughed a little nervously and walked across the room to pour himself a glass of whisky. ‘Reputation isn’t everything,’ he said.
‘Come over here,’ Anne ordered softly.
‘Drink?’ asked Victor.
Anne shook her head. She watched Victor drop a couple of ice cubes into his glass.
He walked over to the sofa and sat down beside her, smiling benignly.
When she leaned forward to kiss him, he fished one of the ice cubes out of the glass and, with unexpected swiftness, slipped it down the front of her dress.
‘Oh, God,’ gasped Anne, trying to keep her composure, ‘that’s deliciously cool and refreshing. And wet,’ she added, wriggling and pushing the ice cube further down under her black dress.
Victor put his hand under her dress and retrieved the ice cube expertly, putting it in his mouth and sucking it before letting it slip from his mouth back into the glass. ‘I thought you needed cooling off,’ he said, putting his palms firmly on each of her knees.
‘Oh, my,’ Anne purred, in a southern drawl, ‘despite outward appearances, I can see you’re a man of strong appetites.’ She lifted one of her feet onto the sofa and reached out her hand at the same time to run her fingers through the thick waves of Victor’s hair. She pulled his head gently towards the stretched tendon of her raised thigh. Victor kissed the white cotton of her underwear and grazed it like a man catching a grape between his teeth.
* * *
Unable to sleep, Eleanor put on a Japanese dressing gown and retreated to her car. She felt strangely elated in the white leather interior of the Buick, with her packet of Player’s and the bottle of cognac she retrieved from under the driving seat. Her happiness was complete when she turned on Radio Monte Carlo and found that it was playing one of her favourite songs: ‘I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’’ from Porgy and Bess. She mouthed the words silently, ‘And nuttin’s plenty for me,’ dipping her head from side to side, almost in time with the music.
When she saw Bridget hobbling along in the moonlight with a suitcase banging against her knee, Eleanor thought, not for the first time, that she must be hallucinating. What on earth was the girl doing? Well, it was really very obvious. She was leaving. The simplicity of the act horrified Eleanor. After years of dreaming about how to tunnel under the guardroom undetected, she was amazed to see a newcomer walk out through the open gate. Just going down the drive as if she were free.
Bridget swung her suitcase from one hand to another. She wasn’t sure it would fit on the back of Barry’s bike. The whole thing was a total freakout. She had left Nicholas in bed, snoring as usual, like an old pig with terminal flu. The idea was to dump her suitcase at the bottom of the drive and go back to fetch it once she had met up with Barry. She swapped hands again. The lure of the Open Road definitely lost some of its appeal if you took any luggage with you.
Two-thirty by the village church, that’s what Barry had said on the phone before dinner. She dropped her suitcase into a clump of rosemary, letting out a petulant sigh to show herself she was more irritated than frightened. What if the village didn’t have a church? What if her suitcase was stolen? How far was it to the village anyway? God, life was so complicated. She had run away from home once when she was nine, but doubled back because she couldn’t bear to think what her parents might say while she was away.
As she joined the small road that led down to the village, Bridget found herself walled in by pines. The shadows thickened until the moonlight no longer shone on the road. A light wind animated the branches of the tall trees. Full of dread, Bridget suddenly came to a stop. Was Barry really a fun person when it came down to it? After making their appointment he had said, ‘Be there or be square!’ At the time she was so infatuated by the idea of escaping Nicholas and the Melroses that she had forgotten to be annoyed, but now she realized just how annoying it was.
* * *
Eleanor was wondering whether to get another bottle of cognac (cognac was for the car because it was so stimulating), or go back to bed and drink whisky. Either way she had to return to the house. When she was about to open the car door she saw Bridget again. This time she was staggering up the drive, dragging her suitcase. Eleanor felt cool and detached. She decided that nothing could surprise her any longer. Perhaps Bridget did this every evening for the exercise. Or maybe she wanted a lift somewhere. Eleanor preferred to watch her than to get involved, so long as Bridget got back into the house quickly.
Bridget thought she heard the sound of a radio, but she lost it again amid the rustle of leaves. She was shaken and rather embarrassed by her escapade. Plus her arms were about to drop off. Well, never mind, at least she had asserted herself, sort of. She opened the door of the house. It squeaked. Luckily, she could rely on Nicholas to be sleeping like a drugged elephant, so that no sound could possibly reach him. But what if she woke David? Freak-ee. Another squeak and she closed the door behind her. As she crept down the corridor she could hear a sort of moaning and then a yelping shout, like a cry of pain.
David woke up with a shout of fear. Why the hell did people say, ‘It’s only a dream’? His dreams exhausted and dismembered him. They seemed to open onto a deeper layer of insomnia, as if he was only lulled to sleep in order to be shown that he could not rest. Tonight he had dreamed that he was the cripple in Athens airport. He could feel his limbs twisted like vine stumps, his wobbling head burrowing this way and that as he tried to throw himself forward, and his unfriendly hands slapping his own face. In the waiting room at the airport all the passengers were people he knew: the barman from the Central in Lacoste, George, Bridget, people from decades of London parties, all talking and reading books. And there he was, heaving himself across the room one leg dragging behind him, trying to say, ‘Hello, it’s David Melrose, I hope you aren’t deceived by this absurd disguise,’ but he only managed to moan, or as he grew more desperate, to squeal, while he tossed advertisements for roasted nuts at them with upsetting inaccuracy. He could see the embarrassment in some of their faces, and feigned blankness in others. And he heard George say to his neighbour, ‘What a perfectly ghastly man.’
David turned on the light and fumbled for his copy of Jorrocks Rides Again. He wondered whether Patrick would remember. There was always repression, of course, although it didn’t seem to work very well on his own desires. He must try not to do it again, that really would be tempting fate. David could not help smiling at his own audacity.
* * *
Patrick did not wake up from his dream, although he could feel a needle slip under his shoulder blade and push out through his chest. The thick thread was sewing his lungs up like an old sack until he could not breathe. Panic like wasps hovering about his face, ducking and twisting and beating the air.
He saw the Alsatian that had chased him in the woods, and he felt he was running through the rattling yellow leaves again with wider and wider strides. As the dog drew closer and was about to get him, Patrick started adding up numbers out loud, and at the last moment his body lifted off the ground until he was looking down on the tops of the trees, as if at seaweed over the side of a boat. He knew that he must never allow himself to fall asleep. Below him the Alsatian scrambled to a halt in a flurry of dry leaves and picked up a dead branch in its mouth.