‘You’re selfish and grasping, Barbara. Loathsome. A loathsome bitch.’
‘I worked for it. I’m going to fight for it.’
He drained the botde and let it fall to the floor. It rolled, unbroken, under the table. He staggered toward the door.
‘Thanks for the pate,’ he croaked.
‘Don’t thank me.’ She paused until she was sure she had his attention. ‘Thank Benny.’
’Benny.’
He staggered against the wall, putting out an arm for support. He sagged but with effort straightened up and looked toward her, his eyes spitting rage. She sensed the reflex even before he moved, his raised hand suddenly materializing, holding the crowbar. Reaching for her shopping bag, she lifted it, clutched it to her chest, and got up, overturning her chair.
She saw the crowbar fall in a long, sweeping motion that pushed the candelabrum from the table. Methodically, he stepped on each candle, putting out the flames.
The darkness was total. She reached for the cleaver handle, then held it above her head, fully prepared to use it in self-defense. She was determined to show him the full extent of her stubbornness and her courage.
She had expected him to come at her and was surprised when he didn’t. He is afraid, she thought.
A deafening sound roared through the room. She heard the nerve-tingling scrape of metal on wood and the sound of his crowbar biting into the Duncan Phyfe table. The pain of the injured wood seemed to transfer itself to her own flesh. Under cover of the darkness, she backed out of the room and moved silently through the hall corridor, up the stairs, and into Josh’s room.
She curled up in Josh’s closet, her shopping bag in her lap, her fist clenching the handle of the cleaver. The beating of her heart partially obscured the sounds of his destructive tantrum.
28
For a long while he lay on the floor of his room trying to reenter time. He was procrastinating, since finding time again meant he would also find pain. Without time he could lie here through eternity. He would be able to avoid existence. Existence was the enemy.
The room had grown dark, then light, then dark again. He was not certain of the chronology. That would mean he had re-entered time. He lay in a pool of his own fetid moisture. Discovering this condition irritated him because it meant that he had also reentered space. When it became apparent that such consciousness was unavoidable, he opened his eyes.
It was daylight, of some day. He was determined to avoid the concept of time as long as possible. The room was strewn with empty wine bottles. The movement of his legs jostled some and they rolled against one another. The sound reminded him of his thirst, and he began to crawl on his hands and knees in search of filled bottles.
Finding one, he lifted himself up to a squat and, unable to find a corkscrew, smashed the neck against the floor and poured the wine into his mouth. It splashed over his chin and onto his bare chest. It did not even occur to him to try to identify the wine. It could have been white or red. His palate was numb, his sense of taste gone.
When he felt vaguely restored, he lifted himself to a standing position by grabbing the bedpost. Dizzy and nauseated, he dry-heaved, then swallowed. Time was crowding in on him now. There was no escaping it.
His ear picked up vague sounds, and he was sure his ally, the house, was trying to communicate with him. Something croaked in the distance, a chopping sound. It was trying to tell him something. He was sure of that. It wanted to communicate its pain, its outrage.
The idea of its helplessness steadied him. It also brought him fully back to time and he realized suddenly that the clock in the hall was not chiming, that he had forgotten to keep it alive by winding it. A renewable life, he assured himself.
Although the present now existed, the immediate past was unclear. History unreeled backward from now. He had searched for her. He had looked in the kitchen, the sun-room, the garden, the garage. He had ripped out the back stairs to prevent her from leaving if she was still in the house. Then he had combed the sides of the house, letting himself in again by the front door. He had got it into his head that she was in the attic, and he had dashed up the stairs, then foolishly tried to ascend the upper flight, forgetting what he had done to make it impassable. He had slipped and fallen before he had gone two steps up. Apparently he, himself, had made the attic invulnerable.
Although the obstacle was of his own making, it had sparked his caution. If she had done that to Benny, she was capable of anything. Anything. And if he were eliminated, who would guard the house?
Once, he had heard sounds and had followed them, hearing screams of pain, and he had arrived in the sun-room to see a vaguely familiar form running in the garden. Ann. He had not set these traps for Ann, and he was thankful that she had escaped. It was not her war. The traps were for Barbara.
It was that idea, he remembered, that had brought him back to his room, where he had let time disappear. He was certain that she was somewhere in the house. Probably living like a rat, burrowing in every nook and cranny. What he had to do was to flush her out. Cautiously. Cleverly. Nothing must be safe.
He lay down, letting his mind grope for a plan. It started to grow dark again. On the night table beside him he found a half-spent candle and lit it with a match. The flickering yellow light calmed him. He felt safe again and his mind became fully alert.
He ate some stale bread and washed it down with wine. Carrying his crowbar and the candle, he carefully opened the door. His foot hit some object and he heard a crunching sound. Bending, he saw a broken Staffordshire figure, one of the most valuable, Garibaldi. Eschewing mourning, he lifted the candle. In its glow he saw her familiar scrawl in lipstick. She no longer used paper or cardboard, but wrote directly on the door.
‘I’ll break some every day,’ he read.
He did not allow himself the slightest emotion, concentrating only on what he had to do. Gathering his tools, first he removed all the bolts from the hinges of every door but his own – closets, room doors, everywhere there was a hinge. No door but his own and those leading to the outside world could be opened without barking out a signal. He set each door carefully so that the slightest motion would make it fall. Then he went to work on the furniture, loosening bolts, removing legs and supports, tipping every piece so that it would fall on touch.
He avoided the dining room, which was a shambles, although he could not resist looking at what he had carved into the tabletop: bitch. He loosened every screw and bolt in the kitchen he could find, especially those that held up still-intact overhead pots, leaving them just at the point of weakest tension. He did the same with shelves and cabinet doors. Working methodically, concentrating only on his actions, he was able to shut out extraneous thoughts.
The candle went out. By then it had started to grow light again. Thankful for the natural light, he moved the heaviest cast-iron pots and put them at the top of the first-floor landing. Others he wedged into the corners of the risers.
Working now with accelerating speed, he loosened the winding brass banister, then partially removed the tacks that held the stair carpet to the risers. Just brushing against the banister would sent the carpet flipping over into the chandelier well.
The clock offered another challenge. He fiddled with the pendulum to make a longer stroke so that it would hit the wooden sides. Working with the mechanism, he changed the calibration so that the chimes would be noisier and make more of a clanging sound. Then he loosened all the fasteners that held the pictures on the walls of the library and the parlor.
He reveled in his creativity, rejoicing in the imaginative scenario of destruction that would be set off by the slightest vibration. Everything would go off at once, like an explosion in a fireworks factory. The thought made him giddy. With extreme caution, he made his way up the stairs to his room and quiedy locked the door.