Dance While You Can (17 page)

I have no clear recollection of what happened after that. All I knew was a blur of colours, crashing around me, blinding my sight, blinding my reason. Sounds of manic laughter, and then screams, deafening me, piercing my brain. And blood. Blood on my hands, blood on the walls. And all around me pain and chaos and destruction.

I looked around at the paintings on the wall. I’d never noticed them before. They were very like the paintings that adorned the walls of Belmayne House in Suffolk. I shifted my eyes restlessly from one to another, until yet again I was confronted by Monet’s ‘Roche-Blond at Sunset’. Normally I enjoyed looking at Impressionist paintings, but now, different though they were from Jessica’s doom-laden canvases, they somehow reminded me of her, and heightened my guilt.

I stirred in my chair and turned back to the newspaper. A report on page two outlined the background of the forth-coming Haley Weinberg fraud case, and again I felt guilt. Jeremy Corbyn had been handed the brief two months ago, and I’d been devilling for him. I should ring chambers and at least let him know where I was. But I didn’t.

I’d been with Rachel for four days – four days during which I had alternately slaked my fury on her body and gambled like a lunatic at the Clermont, where I was now in debt to the tune of eighty-five thousand pounds. I blamed Jessica. Thinking about her, I could feel my fingers digging into the palms of my hands, the unholy images crowding into my mind as I remembered the early hours of that morning. If only she hadn’t laughed.

The door opened and Rachel came in. She was wearing the sable coat she had purchased with her roulette winnings the week before, and just the sight of it made me want to lash out at her.

‘You still here?’ she said, dropping her bag on to a chair.

‘As you can see.’

She went to hang up her coat. Coming back into the room, she said, ‘That’s a Morant,’ and nodded towards the table that was propping up my feet. I removed them. ‘And now you can do the same with those cartons,’ she said, indicating the remains of the Chinese take-away I had had sent round earlier. I scooped them up and stuffed them into the waste-paper basket next to my chair. Rachel sighed and went to get herself a drink.

‘Scotch for me,’ I said, and went back to the newspaper.

‘Get it yourself.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I’m only asking you to get me a drink.’

She spun round to face me. ‘Alexander, I’m getting a little tired of you lately. Isn’t it about time – ’

‘Forget it! Just forget it!’ I yelled. ‘I’ll get my own.’

We smouldered through the silence that followed; turning pages, and ice clinking against glasses, made the only sound.

It was Rachel who spoke first. ‘You didn’t tell me you destroyed her paintings.’

I shot a glance at her, but she was still flicking through the magazine. When she realised I was going to say nothing, she looked up. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Why did I do it? You can sit there and ask me why I did it?’

‘She went to bed with another man. She was unfaithful. Is the whole of your life built on double standards, Alexander?’

‘We were supposed to be trying for a baby, for God’s sake! What if I hadn’t come in when I did and then found out in two months’ time she was pregnant? The child might not have been mine – and I wouldn’t even have known! And let’s not forget, she wasn’t the only one in the bed with Robert Lyttleton that night. Her sister was there too, her own fucking sister! And in
my
house! She’s – ’

‘Oh shut up, Alexander. I’m tired of your tantrums. And I still say no matter what happened you shouldn’t have destroyed her paintings.’

‘Have you seen them? They gave me the spooks. I couldn’t stand them any longer. Anyway, she was asking for it.’

‘It’s you who are asking for it, Alexander. You think you can do whatever takes your fancy, don’t you, and be damned to how anyone else feels about it. Well, it’s time you woke up to the fact that the world wasn’t created for the sole purpose of satisfying the bottomless appetite of Alexander Belmayne’s ego. Your life is a mess, and you’ve only yourself to blame. Look at you! What you’ve done to yourself God only knows, but what you’ve done to your wife is unforgivable. And who are you, anyway, to sit in judgement on her art? Just who the hell do you think you are?’

I opened my mouth to speak, but she stopped me. ‘You’re nobody, that’s who you are. You’re not fit to sit in the same room as decent people. You think those good looks of yours give you the right to behave just as you please. You don’t care who you hurt or what you might be doing to those who love you, like your wife. Do you know why she did what she did? Because she knew you were coming round here. She knew that all the time you were telling her you loved her, you were lying to her, cheating on her — and what she’s done is to show you that two people can play at that game, and you don’t like it. They’re none of my business the dangerous games the two of you play with each other, but I’m telling you, Alexander, your pretty face means nothing. It’s what’s underneath that’s important, and you’ve got nothing underneath. You’re shallow and empty, and a waste of space.’

She got up to refill her glass. Her voice was calmer as she turned round, but her eyes were still cool and hard. ‘I want you to leave, Alexander. Now. Go back to your wife, if she’ll have you. Go anywhere. I don’t want you here any more.’

I leapt up from my chair then, and bunching my fist, I thrust it between her legs. ‘How about here, Rachel? Don’t you want me here any more either?’

She glared at me and I laughed. ‘You can’t live without it, Rachel. You’ll be begging me for it within a week. Well, here’s one last one to be going on with.’ I started to fumble with my fly.

‘You touch me, and so help me, Alexander, I’ll kill you.’

I laughed again. ‘You want me to rape you, is that it? You want me to rough you up again. What’ll it be this time, Rachel? Shall I tie you up? Or shall I just beat you?’ My hand was still between her legs and she made no move to back away.

Suddenly she slumped forward, pushing her glass on to the table. ‘Alexander, stop it,’ she pleaded. ‘Just stop. This anger, this violence, it’s destroying you. Look at yourself – what’s happening to you?’

Slowly she removed my hand. She held it between her own two hands, and uncurled my fingers, looking down at them as she did so. ‘Oh, Alexander,’ she sighed, ‘I’m so sorry for you, though God knows why. Her paintings, Alexander, how could you have done it?’

I turned away, feeling small and loathsome in the suffocating well of my guilt. ‘How did you find out?’ I asked.

‘Robert told me.’

I felt myself beginning to tense. ‘Robert Lyttleton? That must mean Jessica’s seen him again.’

‘No. It means Henry is looking for you.’

‘Does Robert know I’m here?’

She nodded. ‘He does now. I saw him this afternoon.’

‘In his bed?’

She smiled. ‘No, Alexander, not in his bed. Incest never did hold any appeal for me.’

My head snapped up. ‘Incest?’

‘Robert’s my son. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’

I wrenched my hand away from hers. Her face was soft and smiling, but all I could see were the lines that fanned at the corners of her eyes, the broken smoothness of her neck – and for a brief moment my eyes glazed and I thought I was looking into the face of my own mother. My stomach churned. Rachel was Robert Lyttleton’s mother. And while I fucked his mother, he fucked my wife. He fucked my wife’s sister. And my wife and her sister . . .

‘Jesus Christ,’ I choked. ‘Jesus Christ.’

She turned away and went to pick up her drink. I watched her, hating her, and as she looked back at me my hatred turned to disgust, all-consuming disgust that sucked at my insides, making me want to rip out my guts, tear at my skin, anything to exorcise myself of this obscenity. For it was I who had dragged them all into this sordid gutter. Jessica, Rachel, Lizzie, and countless others I had abused along the way – they had all been nothing more than pawns in my own sick game of mysoginistic power. All I’d ever wanted to do was hurt them, humiliate them, and then walk away, leaving my contempt entrenched in their souls.

My head dropped as my shoulders began to heave. Dear God in heaven, when would it all end? How much longer could I go on living with this pain? Where was she? Dear God, where was she?

– Elizabeth –

– 14 –

Everyone was laughing. Bright lights flashed, children screamed; ‘Sugar, Sugar’ blared out of the speakers, and somewhere in the distance a siren brought the dodgems to a standstill. People wandered about with their goldfish and coloured balloons, hugging themselves into scarves and hats to keep out the bitter wind that cut across the common. I tucked the scrap of newspaper back in my pocket and waited while a little boy rummaged in my basket for a ticket. His cheeks flushed with excitement as he pulled one out and tore it open. No prize. The child’s face fell and his father, who had earlier returned my smile, now gave me a look I knew only too well.

I turned away, withdrawing into myself, needing to escape, if only for a moment, this prison of festivity.

My uncle was watching me as he handed out darts, shouting to the crowds to come and try their skill. He didn’t trust me, I knew that, but he had taken me back because they had been short-handed that summer, and I’d had nowhere else to go. That was five years ago now. I leaned against the side of my stall and closed my eyes. Oh, when would it stop hurting?

Someone called my name. It was Edwina, the old hag whose husband ran the big wheel. I could never look at the big wheel without thinking about my parents. It had been theirs, before the storms blew it over, killing them both. If things had been different, and they’d lived, then maybe I’d never have left in the first place.

‘You’re right to be getting on with things, girl,’ my uncle had said the day I told him I was going to leave the fair. Violet May, the fortune teller, had been looking after me until then, but I was a constant reminder to my uncle that he was shirking his duty by not taking me in himself. ‘You’ve got your education, your mother saw to that, so off you go.’ As he opened the door of the London train for me, I wanted to tell him I’d changed my mind, but by the time I’d turned round he was already walking away.

I’d been fourteen then but sometimes it seemed like yesterday . . . .

Edwina yelled at me again, indicating the little queue of children waiting to buy tickets from me. I gritted my teeth and looked away from her. Edwina had always hated my mother, and after she’d died, had turned her resentment on me. And as soon as I’d walked back into the fair, only hours after I’d watched Alexander walk out of my life, Edwina had been there screaming at me, telling me she knew what I’d done, she’d read the newspapers – I was a trollop, and they didn’t want my sort here. My uncle, along with the others, had stood by and watched. In the end I’d picked up my bag and started to walk away, but Violet May came after me. She would hear none of my going to Janice; the fair was my home, she said, it was where I belonged, never mind Edwina. And I’d stayed because I couldn’t face Janice trying to find me another man, another job, or anything that might end the way things had ended at Foxton’s . . . .

‘I’ve won! Miss! Miss! I’ve won!’

I looked down into a pale excited little face and smiled as the girl beamed up at me . . . . That was all a long time ago now. Everything was a long time ago now.

I took one of the cheap biros down from the shelf, and checking that no one was watching, I slipped it into the little girl’s pocket. Then I handed her a teddy. I put my finger over my lips to show her that the two prizes were our secret.

‘Edward’s here, Mummy!’

I looked up as Charlotte ran over to the stall. She gave the girl with the teddy a shy smile, and watched her walk away. ‘Edward’s in the caravan,’ she said, turning back to me and trying to sweep the thick black curls from her eyes.

‘Is he?’ I said, smiling as I lifted her up over the counter. ‘And don’t tell me – he bought you a candy floss.’

Her grey eyes rounded with amazement. ‘It’s all over your face,’ I laughed, and as she hugged me I felt my heart swell.

‘Ouch, you’re hurting me,’ she complained, struggling to get away, and putting her down again, I watched her skip off through the fair. ‘Come on,’ she called, peeping back round the lucky dip, ‘he’s waiting.’

My hand tightened around the scrap of newspaper in my pocket, and taking it out, I read it one last time. A year. He’d been married for a whole year and I hadn’t even known.

There was no point in fooling myself any longer. I’d waited, I’d never stopped loving him, but now, just like when my parents had died, I knew that it was time for me to move on.

It was Violet May who had introduced me to Edward Walters, the tycoon art dealer. They’d first met more than twenty years before, when Edward’s wife started to visit the fair to have her fortune told. And after Edward’s wife died, Violet May had carried on visiting him.

That was until Charlotte was born. Since then it was Edward who came to visit us, travelling the country as often as his business would allow – all because he was besotted with a baby girl. I knew he was lonely, it was what had drawn us together, even though he had a brother and sister who lived with him at their country estate in Kent. He tried to persuade me to take Charlotte down there, but I wouldn’t go. His elegant city suits and expensive tweeds, his easy composure and the distinction of his greying hair and wise blue eyes, all reminded me that I had already proved I didn’t belong to his world.

But I was always pleased when he came to the fair – though no one could be quite as pleased as Charlotte. It was odd, watching this distinguished-looking man take such time and trouble with my daughter. He radiated warmth and kindness. It was rare that I spoke about Alexander, but Edward sensed that I still loved him, and even though he knew it might mean that he would have to say good-bye to Charlotte and me, he had offered to find him for me. I suppose it was because I was afraid that I wouldn’t let him. Alexander had been little more than a boy when we’d been in love; by now he would have changed, probably forgotten all about me. No, I didn’t want to find him, I told Edward, I just wanted to stop loving him.