Dark Dance (34 page)

Driver number three was quite confident. ‘Pitchley. I know Pitchley. Where the new estate is. It’ll cost a bit.’

.‘Yes.’

‘That’s OK then. Jump in.’

Seeing the line of taxis at the station in Porlea she had not been optimistic, but time had narrowed the spaces of the countryside. The territory of the Scarabae had been breached.

She recollected the way, even backwards and in the early summer greenness. She recognized the broad motorway, churches and pubs.

Only the normality was unnerving.

She did not recognize the village.

A small supermarket had been built, there was a post office and a greengrocer, a new bold pub with a rainbow sign The Carpenters. Up on the hill the new estate, chocolate brown, with gabled roofs, satellite dishes, wheels of washing and model cherry trees in gardens. Somewhere in the middle lay the depression of grey stone houses. The derelict fields had gone to lawns.

‘Here you are,’ said the driver. ‘Where do you want me to drop you?’

‘At the top of the hill.’

‘The estate.’

He drove her almost on to the drive of the last brown doll’s house.

She paid him and got out. She watched him drive away.

The crows had gone. Where did crows go to?

It was all so different. But it was still the place. The starting point for the long walk over the heath to the house.

Her bag was light now, only packed with the bare essentials.

She had better be careful of the road. There might be more traffic.

Rachaela was correct in this assumption. Three cars went by her in her first half-hour on the road.

The sun westered as she passed the gutted farm that had now been pulled down. She saw where the crows had gone. There was a delegation here. She remembered the rook or crow sitting in the hedge the night she had come away for ever. For ever, after all, had not been so long.

The heath, when she came up on it, was alive with colours. Brown and gold among the green, purple flowers, the gorse in sunny clumps. Birds flew and circled, calling.

It was right it should look different, coming back. In her memory it was too bleak, too desolate, and that had given it an added power.

She was moving now towards the sea. She felt it, like a void before her.

After she had walked for another half hour she was tired to the bone. She sat down on a rock. The sky was thickening. Would the daylight last? She must not rest too long.

Such parts as these Ruth had drawn, and peopled them with dragons.

A gull cried spitefully in the sky.

Presently she got up and went on. She did not have the stamina of years ago, but she would have to make it. She did not want to be marooned on the heath when darkness came. Not now.

The sound was like her tiredness at first, a long thrumming in the ear. Then she knew it for what it was. The rock jutted through the thin pelt of flowers and grass, and all at once the horizon concertinaed. She was looking out into the vault of air above the sea.

She came to it and stood and looked down into the dragon’s mouth. The waves clashed along the bastions of the cliffs. She might have been here yesterday.

Darkness seeped up from the earth.

The sun was setting as she walked by the brink of the ocean.

Like a mirage she saw the blackness of the pines, and all at once, the house, small in the distance like a toy. Flawless. Its banks and slopes. One blazing emerald window.

She stopped in wonder. In wonder at herself. For she had come back.

After sunset the doors would be opened. It was the right time as she came around to the front of the house. She paused again to see its silhouette against the dimming sky. The stars were there, slightly altered, for it was a different season and a later year. She saw the tower. She felt a strange sinking in her stomach. No, she must remember, the peculiarity of the house had also to do with her perception. She must, this time, be rational.

The doors gave, just as before. As before she entered into the huge open hall or lobby, with its chessboard floor of russet-and-black marble. It was as wide as she recalled, rationality did not make it smaller, And there the shadows massed, the crouching bears that might be anything, and through the high windows dropped the occluded violet-yellow dregs of light.

The red lamp was burning on the mahogany table, catching above the chandelier with its drops of blood.

The smell of the house was the same. A church of damp and incense, old woods and musty closets, polish, oil, and sweet decay.

This time she did not turn to shut the door.

She glanced at the tower in the shadow, and dismissed it.

No one to greet her, now.

That was proper. She was superfluous and perhaps not welcome.

Could she find her way in the dark?

She walked to the stairs. The nymph guarded the newel post, holding up her blind light. A new spider had woven from her shoulder to her upraised arm, a film-set touch that was too apposite. Rachaela put her foot on the red Persian carpet and started up, out of the scarlet ambience of the lamp.

Twenty-two steps.

On the landing a soft light shone into the dark from the corridor, as in memory. The second lamp was lit, as it had been then. She recollected it falling on the face and sightless seeing eyes of Michael, the first of the Scarabae household she had ever beheld.

She entered the lit passage and there was the window in the elbow of it, dark now as then, a crowd of pictures on the walls, paintings beneath paintings.

And there the door.

How familiar it was. As known to her as the door of the flat.

Would this room be locked?

The doorknob turned easily, and the door opened on the blue-and-green room.

It shocked her, for it was just the same, as if memory had now been lifted from her head and unfolded in front of her. The green fireplace, with the black clock with angels, the dressing-table and figured mirror, the four-poster bed. The covers of the bed had been drawn back a little, the action of an hotel, to show the clean pillowcases and the white sheet.

There was no fire on the summer hearth. A fire screen of embroidered blue roses stood there. Mrs Mantini would have had an eye for that.

Rachaela tossed her bag on to the bed.

Her radio stood where she had left it, on the table.

She lifted it up and saw that long ago the batteries had leaked and burnt the wood.

She crossed to the wardrobe and opened it and saw her abandoned clothes hanging in a neat row. A faintly powdery smell hung with them, but they were not moth-eaten, would still fit her despite twelve years and the bearing of a child.

The night window loomed at the room’s back. Its picture was quite evident to her, even in blackness, the leaded tree and standing figures, the apples and the unicorn.

Rachaela left the room and walked into the bathroom. Mrs Mantini would have been busy here, too. Indeed the whole house would have been a paradise to Mrs Mantini.

There were fresh soaps and clean towels.

Rachaela had been expected.

Why? They would think her maternal instinct outraged at the extraction of her child? Burning hot with zeal, the anguished mother rushing after. For what did they know of her half-hearted attempts at abortion, the years’ endurance. Had Ruth described anything of Rachaela’s brand of motherhood?

Rachaela took the oatmeal-coloured dress out of the wardrobe and hung it up. There was no doubt it would fit her.

She went back into the bathroom and ran a bath.

As she lay in the water, she heard the soft brisk heels of a female Scarabae pass along the corridor outside. Unice? Miriam?

The sound was so usual to her. Perhaps she had missed it in the flat, these passagings. Only the loud bad music below and the arguments on the landing.

She thought:
I am a few walls’, stairways’, rooms’ distance from him.

Until now she had hardly thought of Adamus. He had formed her life, as for the last twelve years she had lived it, formed her every day by the acts of one extraordinary night. Through the years she had sometimes half dreamed of it. She had never permitted herself to conjure it up. And over it had meshed a concrete slab, which now the lever of the house was painfully and irresistibly easing up, She had known she must face Adamus, or the idea of Adamus, if she came back.

He was her reason, after all; Adamus with Ruth.

She got out of the bath and towelled herself dry. Going into the bedroom again she put on the oatmeal dress which might have been bought yesterday for fit. Its faded quality did not displease her, or the soft odour of destruction. She must camouflage and arm herself.

She powdered her face in her mirror and reaffirmed the dark pencil around her eyes.

Would Camillo leave her another gift-wrapped mouse?

But when she opened the door, nothing and no one was outside. Only the burning lamp conveyed the half-life of the house.

Did the Scarabae still dine, or had customs changed?

She would have to see.

Rachaela walked into the corridor and along to the landing, and descending the stairs she saw the lamps were lit in the drawing room as on that first night years before.

In the drawing room Michael and Maria stood like cut-out figures in their dark servile clothes.

‘Michael, Maria,’ she said.

They gave her stiff little bows, what she would have expected.

Michael said, ‘Miss Rachaela, please go straight through into the dining room.’

‘I’d like a drink first, Michael.’

‘Miss Anna told me to ask you to go straight in.’

Rachaela shrugged. Something twisted in her belly, a phantom Ruth-baby.

She went towards the second door, and Michael hurried ahead to open it for her.

She walked into the dining room, and stopped, not surprised, perturbed only by what she had suddenly anticipated.

For they were all there, as on the memorable occasions in the past.

Their known, nearly identical faces, slid by in a wave of tawdry dinner jackets, sequined old lace. Could she still name them? Yes. Alice, Peter, Jack, Livia... Not Camillo, never Camillo. She saw and registered all this in parenthesis. For at the table’s head sat the most bizarre Scarabae of all. In an exactly similar perhaps resewn dress of dark green voile and net, a necklace that was a heart of green cut-glass, and jade ear pendants, her black hair flowing from tortoiseshell combs, her face smoothly powdered, lids black, lips crimson: Ruth.

Ruth sat among the Scarabae like a living plant among ancient statues. She had bloomed from their support.

Across the room she smiled at Rachaela her straight white teeth that had never needed a dentist.

‘Hallo, Mummy.’

Almost the first time ever she had volunteered a greeting.

But then, she was at home here, not Rachaela’s unwanted guest.

Rachaela did not answer.

To Ruth’s right, Anna stood up.

‘Come and sit down with us, Rachaela. We’re so very glad that you came. We hoped that you would.’

‘I had to,’ Rachaela said. She said blankly, ‘You stole my child.’

‘Oh, no, Rachaela. Not stealing. Not that.’

Ruth said, piping up like a bright and confident pupil, ‘I asked the man. He knew the way. I came by train on my own. I liked it. They sent a car to the station.’

‘And you walked up the hill through the trees,’ said Rachaela.

‘Michael was there. He showed me the way.’

She was not afraid to speak to Rachaela. Not reluctant. It was as if it had all been planned.

Rachaela looked at the weird miniature woman her daughter had become. She did not look like a child dressing up, more like the daughter of a medieval family, dressed always as a smaller version of the adults, a woman at eleven or twelve.

‘Come and sit down,’ Anna said again. Her dress blinked its myriad eyes and all the dresses, Ruth’s included, did the same.

Rachaela went to the table. A place had been laid at the foot, opposite across the long surface, to Ruth’s place. As if they had known to the minute the time of Rachaela’s arrival. Probably everything had been kept ready for weeks, prepared as soon as Ruth got here.

Rachaela sat down, and Cheta came to serve her.

It was a rabbit casserole.

Rachaela ate cautiously, not sure now she could stomach such food.

Ruth ate neatly and voraciously, like a starling.

There was wine, a deep coal-red. Cheta poured a glass for Rachaela.

Ruth too had wine which she drank in greedy little sips.

None of them had changed. This family did not.

Ruth sparkled in the midst of them like a jewel in cobwebs.

The family was pleased. It had an aura of well-being. They had got what they wanted. All of them basked, the Scarabae, Ruth.

Only Camillo was absent. And Adamus.

Rachaela left her food unfinished.

‘A few days ago,’ said Ruth, ‘we had seagull. Jack found it.’

Rachaela said, ‘The cat used to hunt them.’

‘The cat is very old now,’ said Anna. ‘It sleeps all day and most of the night.’

Something had altered. The cat had altered.

Maria brought a strawberry tart.

Rachaela watched Ruth spoon the tart into her red mouth. She had a second helping, as she had done of the casserole. Real home-cooked fare, such as Emma had provided.

Rachaela got up. ‘Excuse me.’ She took her glass of wine across the room, and watched the table from there. It was obscene to pretend to be part of it.

If she, Rachaela, had been abducted as a child or teenager, would she have responded to the Scarabae as Ruth did? Who could tell, now.

The meal was finally finished with the cheeseboard and a dish of fruit. Ruth ate from these too.

The Scarabae rose and went like some collective creature, some sort of amoeba with Ruth its glowing heart, into the drawing room.

Here the old men and women deposited themselves about the room. They took up knitting and sewing, books and chess games. A mild muttering came from them like settling insects.

Maria and Cheta served tea.

Ruth stood before the screened fireplace in her duchess gown, drinking her tea, the focus for all the eyes which constantly rose and came to her, and the old smiles which lifted up the lips over the discoloured, sharp old teeth.