Make Death Love Me (18 page)

He shouted, ‘Christ, you bitch!' and punched the gun out of her hand and it went skidding across the floor. Then he fell on his knees, scrabbling for it. Retreating from him, Joyce backed against the wall, holding her arms crossed over her body. Nigel pointed the gun at her and flicked his head to indicate she was to go into the living room. She went in. She sat down heavily on the mattress, her letter in her hand.

Presently she said in a hoarse throaty voice, ‘May as well tear this up.'

‘You shouldn't have done that.'

‘Wouldn't you have, in my place?'

Nigel didn't answer her. He was thinking fast. It needn't spoil his plan. She had been willing enough to kiss him, she had been dying for it, he could tell that by the soppy look on her face when he'd held her shoulders. It was only natural that getting hold of the gun came first with her, self-preservation came before sex. But there could be a situation where self-preservation didn't come into it, where the last thing either of them would think of was the gun. Attempting that kiss had brought him a surge of real desire. Having her at his mercy and submitting to him and grateful to him had made him desire her.

‘I won't let it make any difference,' he said. ‘Your letter still goes.'

Joyce was surprised, but she wasn't going to thank him. That soft slack look was again replacing savagery in his face.

‘The thing is,' he said, the polite public school boy, ‘I thought you really liked me. You see, I've felt like that about you from the first.'

She knew what she had to do now, or not
now
but tomorrow when the dark one next went out. It sickened her to think of it, and how she'd feel when she'd done it she couldn't imagine. Dirty, revolting, like a prostitute. Suppose she had a baby? She had been off the Pill necessarily for a week now. But she'd do it and get the gun and think of consequences later when she was home with her mother and father and Stephen. It had never crossed her mind that in all her life she'd make love with anyone but Stephen. She and Stephen would go on making love every night the way they had been doing until they got to be about forty and were too old for it. But needs must when the devil drives, like her father said. She looked up at the devil with the gun.

‘What you wanted to do out there in the kitchen just now,' she said, ‘I don't mind. Only not now. I feel funny, it was a shock.'

He said, ‘Joyce,' and started to come towards her.

‘No. I said not now. Not when he might come back.'

‘I'll get rid of him for the whole evening tomorrow.'

‘Not tomorrow,' said Joyce, putting off the evil day. ‘Monday.'

At the theatre Alan had chosen was a much-praised production of one of Shaw's comedies. He had picked it because there wouldn't be any bedroom scenes or sexy dialogue or four-letter words which would have embarrassed him in Rose's company. But when he was at the box office he found that they only had upper circle seats left, and he couldn't take a girl like Rose in the upper circle. All the other theatres round about seemed to be showing the kind of plays he had avoided in choosing
You Never Can Tell,
or Shakespeare which was too heavy or musicals which she might not like.

And then, suddenly, he knew he couldn't face it at all. His cold feet were turning to ice. He couldn't be alone with her in a restaurant, not knowing what to order or how to order or what wine to choose. He couldn't bring her home in the dark, be alone with her in the back of a taxi, after they had seen a play in which people were naked or talked about, or even acted, sex. In the midst of his doubts, a happy thought came to him. When he had gone upstairs to ask Una Engstrand about the water-heater, he had considered inviting her and Caesar Locksley in for drinks on Saturday night. Why not do that? Why not ask her and Caesar and this Annie of his for drinks in his room and ask Rose too? It was a much better idea. Rose would see the home her kindness had secured for him, he wouldn't have to be alone with her until he took her home – perhaps she had a car – and he would have the pleasure of creating an evening so different from those encounters with the Kitsons and the Heyshams, what a party should be with real conversation between people who liked each other and wanted to be together. And it would break the ice between him and Rose, it would make their next meeting easier for him.

Would drinks be enough or ought he to get food? He couldn't cook. He thought of lettuce and sardines and madeira cake, of liver and bacon and sausages. It was hopeless. Drinks alone it would have to be, with some peanuts. Next to the wineshop where he bought Bristol Cream and some vermouth was a newsagent's. The evening paper told him – it preceded Nigel's by twenty-four hours – that the Sabena jet had come down in Cairo, the pay claim negotiations had reached deadlock, and Joyce Culver's mother had been rushed to hospital in a coma. A cloud seemed to pass across him, dulling his happiness and the pale wintry sun. If Mrs Culver died, could anyone say it was his fault? No. If he had given the alarm and the police had chased Joyce's kidnappers, who could tell what would have happened to her? They would have crashed the car or shot her. Everything went to prove that it was better to take no violent action with people like that. You had only to read what was being done in this aircraft hi-jack business. No threats or armed onslaughts like in that Entebbe affair where a woman had died, but submission to the hi-jackers to be followed by peaceful negotiation.

He met Una in the hall. He and Caesar had to use the front door because, long ago, Ambrose had had the basement door blocked up for fear of burglars. Even he, apparently, had some reservations when it came to reality. Una, an indefatigable housewife, was polishing a brass lamp. She had blackened her fingers with metal polish.

‘I'd love to come,' she said when he told her of his party. ‘How sweet of you to ask me. Caesar's gone to Annie's for the weekend. He mostly does. But I'm sure he'll bring her.'

‘Does she live in London then?' He had only once been away for the weekend, and that had been to a cousin of Pam's in Skegness, a visit involving days of feverish preparation.

‘Harrow or somewhere like that,' said Una. ‘Not very far. I'll ask him when he phones tonight, shall I?' She added in her strange vague complex way, ‘He's going to phone to find out if he's had a call from someone who knows his number and he wants to talk to but he doesn't know theirs. I'll ask him but I know he'd
love
to.'

She was one of those people whose faces are transformed when they smile. She smiled now, and he thought with a little twinge of real pain for her that she was full of gaiety really, of life and fun and zest, only those qualities had been suppressed and nullified by the loathsome Stewart and the death of her child and perhaps too by the Neo-Empiricist.

‘As a matter of fact,' she said, ‘it will be very nice to drink some alcohol again. Ambrose doesn't believe in it, you know, because it distorts the consciousness. Oh dear, I don't suppose there's a wineglass in the house.'

‘I'll buy some glasses,' said Alan. He went down to his room and put on his radio. There was nothing on the news about Mrs Culver. Some Sabena spokesman and some government minister had said they would do nothing to endanger the lives of the hi-jacked hostages.

That night he dreamed about Joyce. Caesar Locksley asked him if he found her attractive, and the implications of that question frightened him, so he hid from her in a cupboard where there was an immersion heater and lots of bottles of sherry and piles of books by Ambrose Engstrand. It was warm in there and safe, and even when he heard Joyce screaming he didn't come out. Then he saw that the cupboard was really, or had grown into, a large room with many flights of stairs leading up and down and to the left and the right. He climbed one of these staircases and at the top found himself in a great chamber as in a medieval castle, and there fourteen armed knights awaited him with drawn swords.

The dream woke him up and kept him awake for a long time, so that in the morning he overslept. What awakened him then was a woman's voice calling to someone named Paul. ‘Paul, Paul!' It was a few minutes before he remembered that Paul was his own name, and understood that it must have been Una Engstrand calling him from outside his room. He thought a tapping had preceded the uttering of that unfamiliar name, but when he opened the door she was no longer there.

It was after half-past nine. While he was dressing he heard from above him the sound of the front door closing. She had gone out. Would she mind if he used her phone? Apparently, Caesar used it. He made himself tea and ate a piece of bread and butter and went upstairs to phone Rose at the Pembroke Market.

It was she who answered. ‘Why, hallo!' The last syllable lingered seductively, a parabola of sound sinking to a sigh. He told her of his alternative plan.

‘I thought you were taking me out to dinner.'

He found himself stammering because the voice was no longer enticing. ‘I've asked these – these people. You'll like them. There's the man in the next room to me and my – my landlady. You'll be able to see what a nice place this is.'

Very slowly, almost disbelievingly, she said, ‘You must be crazy. Or mean. I'm expected to come round and have drinks with your landlady? Thank you, but I've better things to do with my Saturday nights.'

The phone cut and the dialling tone began. He looked at the receiver and, bewildered, was putting it back when the front door opened and Una Engstrand came in.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘I shouldn't have made a call without asking you. I'll pay for it.'

‘Was it to Australia?'

‘No, why should it be? It was a local call.'

‘Then please don't bother about paying. I said Australia because you couldn't be phoning America, they'd all be asleep.' He looked at her despairingly, understanding her no more than he had understood Rose, yet wishing Rose could have had this warmth, this zany openness. ‘Caesar didn't phone till this morning,' she said. ‘I knocked on your door and called you but you were asleep. He can't come to your party, he's going to another one with Annie. But I expect you've got lots of other people coming, haven't you?'

‘Only you,' he said, ‘now.'

‘You won't want me on my own.'

He didn't. He thought of phoning Rose back and renewing the invitation to dinner, but he was afraid of her scorn. He had lost her, he would never see her again. What a mess he had made of his first attempt at a social life! Because he had no experience and no idea of how these people organized their lives or of what they expected, he had let himself in for an evening alone with this funny little woman whose tragic life set her apart. His dreams of freedom and fantasies of love had come to this – hours and hours to be spent in the company of someone no more exciting and no better looking than Wendy Heysham.

Una Engstrand was looking at him wistfully, meekly awaiting rejection. He answered her, knowing there was no help for it.

‘Of course I will,' he said.

The day ahead loomed tediously. He went out and walked around the park, now seeing clearly the cause of Rose's resentment and wondering why he was such a fool as not to have foreseen it. He had contemplated a love affair with her, yet he lacked the courage to make even the first moves. Retribution had come to him for even thinking of a love affair while he was married to Pam. The evening paper cheered him, for it told him that Mrs Culver was recovering and that submitting to the hijackers' demands had secured the release of all the hostages unharmed, except one man who alleged his neck had been burned with lighted cigarettes. Alan had lunch and went to a matinée of a comedy about people on a desert island. His freedom, so long-desired, had come to solitary walks in the rain and sitting in theatres among coach parties of old women.

Una Engstrand came down at eight-thirty just when he had decided she wasn't going to bother to come after all, that she was no more enticed by this dreary tête-à-tête than he was. She had put on a skirt and tied her hair back with a bit of ribbon, but had otherwise made no concessions to her appearance.

‘I would like some vodka, please,' she said, sitting down primly in the middle of his sofa.

‘I forgot to buy the glasses!'

‘Never mind, we can use tumblers.'

He poured out the vodka, put some tonic in, racked his brains for a topic of conversation. Cars, jobs, the cost of living – instinctively he knew that was all nonsense. No free, real person would ever talk of such things. He said abruptly, ‘I saw some of your father-in-law's books in a bookshop.' That wouldn't be news to her. ‘What's he doing in Java?'

‘I suppose Caesar told you he was in Java. He's very sweet is Caesar, but a
dreadful
gossip. I expect he told you a lot of other things too.' She smiled at him enquiringly. He noticed she had beautiful teeth, very white and even.

She shrugged, raised her glass, said quaintly, ‘Here's to you. I hope you'll be happy here.' Suddenly she giggled. ‘He's heard there's a tribe or something in Indonesia that doesn't have any folklore or any legends or mythology and doesn't read books. I expect they
can't
read. He wants to meet them and find out if they've got beautiful free minds and understand the meaning of reality. When he comes back he's going to write a book about them. He's got the title already,
The Naked Mind
, and I'm to type it for him.'

He sat down opposite her. The vodka or something was making him feel better. ‘You're a typist then?'

‘No, I'm not. Oh dear, I'm supposed to be learning while he's away, I'm supposed to be doing a course. And I did start, but they made me have a cover over the keys and it gave me claustrophobia. Caesar says that's crazy. Can you understand it?'