Dark Dance (19 page)

‘If you come after me I’ll do something to prevent you.’

‘That might be entertaining. It’s all right. I won’t come after you. I’ll sit here and let you get away. I’ll stay an hour, you look as if you can only move at a crawl.’

‘Another game. Hide your eyes, and then try to find me. You won’t.’

‘I won’t try. After all, I need only find out the day of the proper train and waylay you again on the platform.’

‘Do it. See what happens.’

‘Nothing would happen. I’d kiss your cheek and you’d wave me goodbye through the window.
Brief Encounter.’

Rachaela tried to slow her breathing. She was desperately excited. She wanted to strike at him.

‘You’re saying then that when I walk out of the church I’m on my own.’

‘Completely.’

‘Free of the Scarabae.’

‘No, you’ll never be free of the Scarabae. You’re one of us. That goes with you. And that will bring you back.’

‘Live in that hope.’

‘I know from my own self. I got away. I came back. You’re already tainted. It’s too late.’

‘So you think I’d prefer to be walled up in that mausoleum—that
grave
of a house.’

‘What is so preferable to it?’

Before she could circumnavigate, the whole of her future jolted before her. The trains, the city, her search for some grubbing, nasty ill-paid job, a room somewhere, the noise of neighbours, the teeming streets, the overt viciousness of the capital. She saw too the length of days, the black-bullet chambers of the nights. She saw her aloneness, now loneliness, and she saw the vista of age, which she had never contemplated before. She was shiftless, had made no provision. She had lived as if awaiting rescue, her mother’s money, the arrival of the Scarabae.

‘It will be my life.’

‘It’s yours, wherever you are.’

This was fundamentally a fact.

She would have to get up and leave the church. The longer she stayed here the more power he had over her. It wove like a web.

But she was so tired and her heart beat so quickly. She did not want to go. She was glad he was here, his strength beside her on the bench, keeping her safe with his darkness from the blue sanctity of the Virgin.

The red window was a dark rose. The sun had gone in again.

‘How did you come to the town?’ she asked, to prevaricate.

‘I hired a car. How else? Do you think I’d walk all the way, like poor Carlo?’

‘How did you call the car?’

‘That was Carlo. Or Cheta. Someone in the village I imagine gave them use of a phone.’

‘The car didn’t come to the house.’

‘As you know, the road doesn’t go so far.’

‘Why did you come and not the others?’

‘I’m the young one, remember. And I’m the nearest to you in blood.’

‘In blood,’ she said. ‘The blood of the tribe.’

‘Your blood and mine are different.’

‘How?’ she said again.

There was a long interval. She felt him gather himself like a beast on the powerful springs of its limbs. He said at last, ‘Come back and see.’

She said, ‘You want to sleep with me. That’s what it is. You say I’m your daughter, you
believe
it, but you want to fuck me.’

From the corner of her eye she saw his face turning towards her. As if moved by a key, her own head turned until she confronted him. His face was like a blow. She could hardly breathe.

‘Yes, I want to fuck you. Come back and be fucked by me.’

‘Now you’re speaking the truth, you bastard.’

‘Now I’m speaking the truth. What’s the problem? The family will be thrilled. They’ll revel in it. It’s happened over and over, mother with son, father with daughter. Brother and sister. Two thirds of them are inbreedings of one kind or another, several twice over. A charming little intimate orgy has been going on for centuries. Secret pleasures of the house. And what other values hold you back? The criterion of the church, of morality and the world? It’s nothing to you. Come to me and let me give you what you want.’

‘I don’t want that.’

He put out one hand, long-fingered, bone-pale, feathered lightly with dark hair. The hand moved in slow motion. So slow there was all the time on earth to avoid it, and she was not quick enough, and the hand caught her, behind her neck, the fingers in her hair. A liquid electricity ran down her spine. Her stomach turned to ice and her skull to fire. She could do nothing. ‘Let,’ she said, ‘let me—’

The shadow flung forward and fell upon her with a slow, deep violence.

The eyes had become a jet-black bar that flamed. She tasted his skin, his mouth, cool and unknown. Her eyes shut. She was blind, whirled down and under, turning. Only the pressure of his hand behind her head anchored her in the rushing of the storm.

She had rarely been kissed. Never kissed on the mouth. Never invaded and possessed.

His mouth moved in hers. Her head sank backwards. She let him drown her in the deep water, too weak even to raise her hands to cling to him. Falling and falling through measureless ocean.

When he lifted his mouth, he held her still with his hand.

At first she could not open her eyes.

When she did so the church was a blur of colours and streakings of light. The white faces of saints had grown insane and bloated, their purity profaned.

His face was calm still, only the mouth gave evidence of change, the lips parted.

She turned towards him on the pew and put her hands up and caught his collar. ‘Kiss me again.’

‘Again?’ And he laughed at her like a boy.

He was laughing as he possessed her once more, and the laugh died on the point of a knife.

Her whole body now flowed and spun. She gripped his clothing to hold her up, and plunged fathoms deep, mindless, soaring. She pressed herself to him, dissolving into his flesh, the hardness of him, lost, she was lost. ‘Don’t stop.’

‘Not here,’ he said.

‘Where then?’

‘Where do you think Rachaela.’

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I’ll go with you.’

The car was waiting in a side street.

They went to it and got in.

The driver, oblivious to them, started the engine.

Adamus had not put on sunglasses. He sat with his arm about her. The arm, its pressure, dislodged her reason. She wanted the car to stop. She wanted, as the strands of trees drew out, to be beneath him in the bare and leafless brown of a wood. She had never felt such things, only the vaguest intimations. Daydreams.

She longed to laugh at the stupidity of the driver, not knowing. Excluded.

It did not matter that they were going back to the house of the Scarabae. What could it matter? Nothing was important but to give in again to the onrush of his mouth.

The landscape ribboned past.

The journey was so long.

But they reached the house, or rather the road below, and when Adamus had paid the driver—no account was mentioned—they walked up the crumbling slope in the shadowed midday light, and came out among the wet green oaks, and the house appeared. And Rachaela sobered.

There were the roofs, the ranks of windows, the cone of the tower.

‘I’m here again,’ she said.

‘You agreed to it,’ he said. He did not attempt now to touch her.

‘Yes, I agreed.’

Her body was forgetting his. The warmth, the freezing and the vertigo of sudden want had drawn away. She observed them, anxious.

They reached the porch and the double door. Adamus used a key, something so ordinary.

They went into the chequered hall. It was silent and deserted. She seemed to see it too from far away.

‘Don’t go,’ she said.

‘You must be patient,’ he said, ‘and so must I. The one rule. Night-time.’

‘There are no rules. You told me.’

‘Yes.’

Ridiculous as a bride on her clichéd honeymoon, she must wait until the accepted hour. She did not credit this. This was some cruelty or other test of his.

‘I may change my mind.’

He stood looking at her, and she was drawn towards him, pulled by chains. She kept still by an effort.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘I find this silly and insulting.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I hate this house,’ she said.

‘No. Go up to the bolt hole of your pretty green-and-blue room. Go up and wait for me.’

‘You’re a tease,’ she said acidly.

He grinned at her. A boy’s grin, like the laughter. Did an elderly man grin and laugh like that still? Perhaps normally it was only hidden and distorted by the combered flesh, the yellowed eyes and teeth.

‘You want me so much now,’ he said. ‘I’m glad.’

‘It will pass,’ she said.

‘I hope not. Trust me. Tonight.’

She turned and walked away up the stairs, bemused. Here she was, back again.

Her room was just the same. The bed made, the surfaces dusted. In her wardrobe were her clothes, on the dressing-table her radio. She looked at them with pacific surprise. She was dazed. What had happened to her in the church—and in a
church
—and with him.

Camillo had told her she would run away, and come back. But she should have got as far as London. This was absurd.

She sat down in a chair by the hearth. The fire at least had not been lit. They had not been positive.

She lay back in the chair and he went out of her like alcohol. It was like the brief tipsiness from the glass of vinegary wine. It had lasted longer, but then she had still been touching him.

She had truly made a fool of herself. She had been
seduced
back into the house, and now everything was to do again.

Again... Kiss me again. She had said
that.

A burning blush poured up from the pit of her loins into her breast, throat and face.

She was abashed at herself, her triteness.

But also so tired. She had slept so badly in the small hotel.

She got up and switched on her radio. An easement of music rose into the room. How she had missed it. She lay on the bed and pulled the coverlet up over herself and the golden Satan shone behind her closed eyes. She was comfortable, and warm. She fell asleep.

That evening she bathed, put on her skirt and the new jumper, and went down to the dining room.

She did not know what she expected, but only Anna and Stephan were there.

‘Welcome,’ said Anna. ‘We’re so glad to see you are here again.’

‘You missed me,’ said Rachaela.

‘Yes, of course. Everyone missed you.’

‘Apart from Sylvian.’

‘Ah yes. Apart from him.’

‘I ran away,’ said Rachaela. ‘To buy this jumper.’

‘You should have told us you were so eager to go to the town.’

‘I was eager to go to London.’

‘Such a long way. Can’t your business be done by post—Cheta will take a letter to the village.’

‘It was an escape,’ said Rachaela. ‘As you realize.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I ran off like Adamus, and Adamus brought me back. Persuaded me with a fatherly kiss.’

Anna smiled and lowered her eyes.

Stephan hummed a little tune and stirred his soup.

It was sure: they knew.

‘I don’t,’ said Rachaela, ‘understand you all.’

‘So long as you’re becoming comfortable among us.’

The town had been horrible. Its throng of people, the misdirections and falsehoods. Like a nightmare. The house was safe. It made its own crazy sense.

No. The house was a madness. Only the outside world was real.

After the soup there was a vegetable casserole with toasted cheese. A gooseberry cream to follow.

Rachaela ate hungrily. The food was tasty and good. She was indoctrinated.

She sat by the drawing-room fire with them.

Alice and Unice came in and gave her little nods, and sat down and knitted.

Eric wandered through, he of the seagull, with a book.

Jack and Dorian appeared and disappeared.

There were other slight to-ings and fro-ings, flutters on the edge of the eye that were doubtless Miriam and Sasha, Anita, Teresa, Miranda and Livia, George, Peter.

Carlo came in once with logs.

Maria, Cheta and Michael had served the meal.

‘Oh, Michael, a fire must be laid in Miss Rachaela’s room.’

‘It’s already seen to, Miss Anna.’

A fire. The luxury, the cosiness.

She did not want him now. She wanted to be a little girl in the safe balmy house, with the dear old grannies and grandfathers, and the big pussy-cat, and the doll’s house beds and all the lovely windows.

Keep away
, she thought.

Nothing must smash this cloud-cuckoo world. Nothing so absolute as sex.

It was strange, she thought, as Unice knitted and Anna sewed and Alice consulted her pattern, and the good old granddaddy Stephan watched the fire, strange she had never properly felt sex before. It was as if she had been cordoned off from it. It had not been for her.

She would not think of kissing and being kissed before the white eyes of the Virgin.

‘Michael,’ she said, ‘I’d like another glass of wine.’

All the old grandparents in the room beamed on her. A favourite child.

She was to uphold the family tradition. She was to lie with her own father.

She stripped her body naked and got under the covers. It was almost one by the tower clock, about ten-thirty. Early to bed.

The coy bride on the bridal night.

She had locked the door. It was a token. A needful token. He had, after all, a key to all the doors.

Perhaps he would make her wait until midnight.

She tried not to think what would happen. She guessed at it, alternately disconcerted, aroused, angry. Even amused.

She had seen his face when he made love to the piano.

The radio had a play. She had switched it off. Other dramas could not engage her.

An hour passed. The single lamp burned on the mantel.

She heard the breathing of the sea. No one had gone by in the corridor. The house muttered and shifted its joists, the windows crisped in their leading.

Of course. He would not arrive at the door. The night would come and go without him.

Rachaela made a sound, her throat, her body, a protest that her mind had not ordered or allowed. And the handle of the door turned. The door opened. Outside was darkness, and as usual the dark came in with him on hair and clothes. He shut the door, locked it again. He stood looking at her.