Bliss (26 page)

For the rest of his life he would remember the night when Honey Barbara drove out his devil. Then he thought it was gone for good and she was the rain on the roof, the trees he had never seen, the river he had never tasted.

Later, washed by candle light, she said, 'Now we can drink wine.'

They sat on the mattress. She put on the white silk gown she had bought in the Op Shop. It was embroidered with two large golden flowers and one small bee. She had bought it because of the bee, which was executed in the most faithful detail.

They sniffed their Cheval Blanc and entwined their legs together.

'Will you really come home with me when we get out?'

'Of course,' he said.

'Why?'

'I love you. I've missed you. I've got nowhere else to go.'

'When do you get the money?'

'Tomorrow.'

'On your credit card?'

'She won't take credit cards. She wants cash.'

'Have you got that much cash?'

'My wife's bringing it.'

He felt her stiffen.

'Does that upset you?'

'No,' she said, 'that's fine.'

But when he looked at her she was frowning.

'It's alright,' he said, 'really.'

'What does she want?'

'Nothing.'

'Did you tell her about me?'

'Yes.'

'What did she say?'

'Nothing. She's bringing the money.'

'And she knows about me?'

'Yes,' he kissed her ear. 'Yes, yes, yes.'

He was shocked to see Bettina: her face was puffy, her cheeks collapsed, her eyes rimmed, her skin a bad colour. When they kissed, her lips were tight and hard. A peck, quite literally. She smelt of stale tobacco.

'Christ,' she said, 'you look terrible.'

And it was true that he had a scab above his eyes and pimples on his nose and that there was, in his eyes, a quiet glow of anger that had not been properly extinguished by Honey Barbara's magic, and was lying there, waiting for the first little touch of wind to set it sparking again.

Yet he felt wonderful. All night long he had stayed awake, tossing and turning with the sheer excitement of his life, re-living his fight with Nurse, the rain on Honey Barbara's roof, the future on Bog Onion Road. He was a child on the day before school holidays begin.

They sat in the small sunless room in the building called 'The Foyer,' although it was a detached building and used for nothing but admissions.

'Well,' she said.

'Well,' he said.

She wore black: a jacket, skirt. She had always distrusted pretty colours although they suited her very well. In black she could look at once severe and beautiful, but today she merely looked severe and unattractive and if you'd seen her in the street you might have thought her newly widowed.

She sat on an ugly red chair and fidgeted with her hands. He sat opposite on a couch upholstered so tightly it had no inclination to receive his body.

I don't apologize for what I did,' she said, 'so don't try and punish me.'

He hadn't expected this tone. On the telephone she had been different.

'I wasn't trying to punish you.'

She pointed a finger. 'Not silently, not in words, not with distance, not any way. I won't be punished. Do you understand me?'

'Yes,' he said nastily. 'I understand you, Bettina. I won't punish you.' He imagined, vividly, slapping her hard across the face.

'And not that either.'

'Not what?'

'Not that nasty shit you got in your voice then. I don't know where you learnt it, but I won't pay money unless you stop it.'

On the telephone she had been tearful and full of remorse. Now she sounded as if she'd consulted a lawyer. She was hostile, wary.

'Bettina, Bettina,' the Good Bloke said and held out his hand. Her hand was damp. 'Bettina, it's O.K.'

Her chin wobbled uncertainly and then firmed. She took her hand back.

'I am going to do a deal.'

'Sure,' he said, but now it was his turn to be wary. She had said nothing about any deal on the phone.

'I want to do ads,' she said. He held her chin up.

He rolled his eyes.

'I'm not joking.'

'O.K.,' he said, 'do ads.'

Advertising seemed to him completely alien. He had seen advertisements while he was in hospital and he had found it astonishing that he had once thought they were important. Now all he could think of was the rain on the roof, Bog Onion Road, Honey Barbara, wholemeal bread. He wanted to be safe. He did not care about his house, his business, his car.

'O.K.,' he said again, 'I agree. I accept. You do ads.' He was impatient. Honey Barbara was waiting behind the kitchen with her bundle.

'And you sell them for me.'

She was smiling. He stared at her with his mouth open.

'If you don't come back to the business I won't give you the money.'

'You didn't say anything about this on the phone.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I can't. I've made a promise. It's not on.'

'I'm sorry Harry. But that's the deal.'

'Fuck you,' he snarled. He clenched his fist and curled his lip. 'Fuck you.'

'You want me to leave?' She stood up.

'No, no, sit down. Bettina,' the Good Bloke said, 'what's got into you?'

'It was always
in
me,' she said. 'Always, from the beginning. I was never a sweet little wifey. I was a hard ambitious bitch.'

'It's because of the girl. You're pissed off at that.'

'No.'

'Well what the fuck is it?' he shouted and she looked with amazement at his twisted face.

'You're good at selling ads,' she said, 'and I'm good at making them.'

'You've never done an ad in your life.'

'You don't know what I've done,' she said. 'Now that's the deal. It's the only deal. And if you start going crazy again I'll get you locked up for a long time.'

'Christ Almighty,' he said to his wife.

'Come on, Harry.' Now it was her turn to hold out a hand to him. There was a glitter of excitement in her poker player's eyes. 'We'll kill them, Harry. We'll clean up.'

She felt she was back at the place when their hands had first touched, ready to be washed with vodka. She was going to be a hot-shot.

She took the bundle from Honey Barbara. It was wrapped in yellow crushed velvet and tied up with a burgundy-coloured strap. She threw it on to the front passenger seat of the Jag and thus, in one casual move, eliminated any indecision about who was to sit where.

She was not unkind to the girl. She had smiled at her and shaken her hand. She had found out everything she needed to know on the phone.

'Do you love her?' she had asked.

'Yes,' he had said. He did not even pause. Just: 'Yes.'

Something happened then, something she had been almost planning, and by now everything was O.K. and she had it all worked out, she did not think it unreasonable that Harry should have fallen in love. But there was a deal about that one, too. The deal was that it was not unreasonable for Harry to do what he had done as long as it was not unreasonable for her to have Harry (Good Bloke) committed. She was not unreason-able. She was not bad. She had thought a lot about whether she was bad or not and most of the time, sober, early in the morning, she knew she wasn't bad.

So the girl was all right. She had, at least, some style: a funny, not particularly acceptable, sort of style, but it was style (California, 1968) at least and even if she
reeked
of drugs, she had
something
.

Bettina gave her eight out of ten.

Honey Barbara had never been in a Jaguar before and she was not ready for it. She didn't understand what was going on. She tried to ask Harry questions with her eyes. They sat together in the back seat and held hands. There was something strange going on. There was something she could only describe as 'off'.

'I've hijacked you,' Bettina said to Harry and laughed into the rear-view mirror. 'After all these years, I've shanghaied you.'

A game was being played. Honey Barbara didn't understand it. She was simply shocked at how old and unhealthy Harry's wife was. She was laughing. Honey Barbara couldn't imagine why. She should go on a fast.

'Barbara,' Bettina said, 'I have finally shanghaied my hus-band so that I can work with him. I had to buy him back to work with me.' She turned her head to smile and Barbara wondered if her thyroid might be slightly overdeveloped.

'Oh,' she said. 'What work?'

'To do ads.'

Honey Barbara looked blankly at Harry who was chewing his moustache.

'Advertisements,' he said. Everything felt horrible. There was shit in the air.

'He never let me do ads,' Bettina explained. 'But while he's been in hospital I've been doing them, and now he's going to sell them for me.'

'I'm sorry,' Honey Barbara said, and leaned forward in her seat, 'but you've lost me.'

She smiled, to show she meant no harm.

'I did a deal with his highness. I do the ads. He sells them.'

'That was the deal,' Harry said and squeezed her hand. She could feel how guilty he was. 'I'm sorry but it was the only way we could get the money.'

'What was what deal?' Honey Barbara's voice was rising. She looked from one to the other. 'I don't know what you're talking about. I can't even understand your language. I don't even know what your words mean.'

'I'm going to work again, selling Bettina's ads to clients,' Harry said mournfully.

'You said you were coming home with me.'

'I can't. Not yet.'

'I've kidnapped him,' Bettina said. 'But you can come home too. I don't want him for anything but work.'

Honey Barbara could smell evil in the air. She had been around witches before, people who practised magic, black and white. She had felt wills like this before, wills you could not resist. She had lived amongst them. She had gone riding in the mornings and found the heads of pigs writhing with maggots. The poisons from the freeway flooded into the car. She felt the lead take up its place, the carbon monoxide do its work.

'You mean,' she said to Harry, 'you're going to stay in the city.'

He would not look at her.

'That's right, isn't it? You're not coming with me. You're staying here.'

'You can... '

'Well fuck you.'

She dragged the bundle from the front seat and jammed it tight on her knees. For a moment Harry thought she only wanted the bundle to cuddle. She held it tight and rested her weeping eyes in it. He knew she was crying. He could see the wet spots on the crushed velvet when she moved her head. She held out her hand to him without looking up. She squeezed his hand. She squeezed it hard.

When the car stopped at the next light she opened the door and got out. She walked back the way they had come, against the traffic.

When the lights changed, Bettina hesitated. The cars behind tooted, first one, then all of them. She was watching Harry, to see what he wanted. But he sat there stunned, not moving, and finally she applied her foot to the accelerator, very slowly, and when she moved off he did not protest. Thank Christ, she thought, one less complication.

But after a while he said: 'She was right. I broke my promise.'

There was nothing to say to that. All Bettina could ask was the question that had been in her mind since she met the girl. She knew it was the wrong question even when she was half-way through it.

'Was that smell,' she asked, 'was it marihuana?'

'It was Sandalwood Oil,' he said at last.

'I always thought that smell was marihuana.'

'Well it's fucking well
not
marihuana.'

She was surprised by his tone. She looked into the rear-view mirror.

'You think I'm a creep, don't you?'

'No,' he said tiredly, 'I don't.'

'You think I'm a conniving bitch?'

'No.' He wasn't even interested in the conversation any more. He wasn't interested in Bettina's projections.

Projections!

Even the way he thought belonged to Honey Barbara. He had never known the word before he met her. He had broken his promise. She had walked out the door. He was full of shit. He should have just run away, run away with her.

'Harry, I'm not a bad person.'

'Bettina, I don't give a fuck if you are.'

'But I'm not.'

'Alright, you're not.'

'We
had
to lock you up.'

'Thank you.' He had decided how to find Honey Barbara. She would go to the house where Damian lived. He had memorized the address. Not the street number, but the name of the street.

'Harry, will you look at my ads?'

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I will look at your ads.'

'Harry, we're going to kill them.'

'Good.'

He wondered how bad the ads would be.

'Do you want me to go back and find... Barbara?'

'Thank you,' he said, sitting forward, 'thank you.'

As she turned the car Bettina knew that no one would understand her, turning around to look for the woman her husband liked fucking. But no one ever did understand that Bettina would sacrifice everything for this deal. They had never understood her ambition, not her bug-eyed father, not her languid husband, not even Joel had understood what it meant to her. No one later on would understand either. They would never know what weight she had put on it. They never saw an advertisement the way she did, nor did they have her glittering visions of capitalism which she merely called by the pet name of New York.

She would rather not have the complication of Harry's girl, but it was only a detail so she did not mind looking for her either. She had decided not to be jealous and when she had decided something like that she always had the strength to stick to it. She could isolate whole areas of the brain and mentally amputate whole organs if that was what was needed to achieve what she wanted.

She had decided she did not want to fuck Harry or Joel. She had decided that she had no need to fuck anybody. She did not fuck Harry because it was now impossible, and Joel because he was too mediocre to consider, and no one else because life would become too complicated and it would only get in the way. So she had disconnected herself, and it was detectable already in the way she kissed Harry and even in the way she walked: the signs of celibacy, subtle, delicate, would show themselves to people who shook her hand or passed her in the street.