GBH (27 page)

“Does it really make you feel that bad?” she says.

I don’t say anything.

“You really are a mess, aren’t you? I mean, how do you manage to stand looking at the movies if what happened just now made you feel physically sick?” she says. “Still, maybe when it’s on the screen, celluloid, not reality …”

I look at her legs. She is wearing her jeans again. She clocks me looking at her.

“I figured I could put them back on,” she says. “No point in not, so to speak.”

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I’m Lesley,” she says. “Remember? I’m the one who’s supposed to know who you are.”

I pick up my glass and take it over to the drinks and almost fill it to the top and drink and then fill it up again.

I turn to face her.

“What do you want?” I ask her.

“I just came round to help you pass the time,” she says. “To be pleasant I even took my jeans off for you. Now what could be nicer than that? And all you keep asking is, what do I want, who am I, and if I know who you are and pointing guns at me.
I mean, I came round for a drink. It’s Sunday night. What else am I going to do on a Sunday night in Mablethorpe?”

I stare at her.

“I mean, I’ll go if you want.”

“No,” I tell her. “No, don’t do that.”

“Looking at me like that, I’m not so sure I oughtn’t. Can’t you put that fucking gun down?”

I’ve forgotten I’m still carrying it. I put it down on the piano lid, where Jean’s photograph used to stand.

“Why do you keep it?” she says. “Frightened of intruders?”

“You weren’t frightened of it.”

Faint amusement.

“Does that make me a guest then? And not an intruder?”

I nod.

“Yes. Yes, it does,” I say. “It does make you a guest.”

“In that case, am I entitled to another drink?”

I nod.

She stands up and picks up her glass and goes over to the drinks.

I shake my head, and my whole body seems to shake, too, like an enormous shiver.

I must have been mad; I’d made it all up. I’d had all the pieces as I’ve seen them and I’d had the time to make them fit, as I’ve seen fit, to conform to my preconceived pattern, the pattern caused by my present state of mind. And as they say in the play, that way lies madness.

I nearly blew it, because of a pattern I’d woven myself.

Jesus.

Nearly blew it with her, and with Eddie.

She’s just what she appears to be.

A talented girl who knows a good thing when she sees it. That’s why she hasn’t let my antics send her off. She knows the kind of score I can add up to. She’s not going to be frightened out of that kind of count.

As far as Eddie’s concerned, I can square him properly tomorrow. Give him more than he expects, explain again.

As for Lesley, for the moment, I can smooth her by just behaving normally. For the moment.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “For behaving like that.”

She shrugs.

“Nobody can help the way they are,” she says. “Although I could have done without the gun, even though you were only pissing about.”

“Yes. Look—”

“I mean,” she says, “that was a figure of speech, wasn’t it? About me leaving here alive?”

“Of course. I mean—”

She stands in front of me and puts a hand on my shoulder. Faint amusement.

“I’m joking,” she says. “You’ve got to understand. I’m joking.”

I manage to smile.

“I bet you even believed me when I told you I was frigid,” she says.

“Well, I—”

She sits down and looks up at me.

“Although, the way you are at the moment, I don’t suppose it makes any difference whether I’ve even got one, or not, does it?”

“I—”

“What happens? Is it different if you’ve watched a movie? Does that help? Or do you just watch the movies and that’s that?”

“No. It’s nothing like that. It’s—”

“I’m interested. If I put a movie on, could you make it with me?”

“I could make it with you regardless.”

She gives me a long look from behind the glasses.

“I don’t believe you,” she says.

“Honestly—”

“Look,” she says, “you don’t have to prove anything to me. I understand.”

“It’s not that. Since my wife—since my wife left, I haven’t made love. Not with anyone else. I haven’t been interested.”

“Oh, it’s the old mental impotence bit, is it? Erection rejection.”

“It’s not that. It’s—”

“I’ve told you. I don’t mind. Things like that I understand.”

It’s no use arguing with her so I pour myself another drink. She slips out of her seat and on to the floor and picks a few boxes out of the stack in the cardboard box, sifts through a few of them, reading the titles, looking at those with pictures on the boxes.

She looks up at me.

“Do you want to put one on and see what happens?” she says.

She’s so keen to keep me sweet for whatever she wants she’s even prepared to go along with what she thinks I want her to go along with.

Which is the greatest irony of all. Because, since Jean, I’ve never had the faintest desire for another woman. And here’s Lesley, thinking that I’m suffering from impotence, offering to run one of the Blues I brought here for mine and Jean’s entertainment. And after my previous behaviour, I suppose I ought to go along with her.

I can always plead impotence. And the way I feel at the moment, maybe it won’t be merely a plea.

“Yes, all right,” I say.

“Any particular one?” she says.

“It’s up to you.”

She looks through the boxes.

“I thought you might have a particular favourite,” she says, looking up briefly, exhibiting her faint amusement again.

I do, I think. And, Christ, how I need her.

I watch her as she keeps sifting through.

I drain my glass and go back to the drinks.

All right, I think. Let’s play Russian Roulette. If she comes up with it, I’ll run it.

I need her.

How it would affect me, I don’t know.

In any case, it would be a forty-to-one chance, if she came up with Jean.

I fill my glass and drink, fill it again, with my back to her.

“All right,” she says. “Let’s go blind. How about this one?”

THE SMOKE

J
AMES LOOKED SURPRISED WHEN
he let me into the Penthouse. I wasn’t surprised he looked surprised.

He got me a drink and himself a drink and sat me down and sat down opposite me.

I told him what had happened.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, when I’d finished. “Jesus Christ.”

He got up and took our glasses over to the drinks. While he was pouring, he said, “What a mess. What a ber-loody mess.”

He brought the drinks back and handed me mine and sat down opposite me again. He drank some of his and said, “An way, at least they’re all cleared out. There’ll be no more trouble from that quarter.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Look,” James said, “about Jean. It doesn’t necessarily follow that—”

“It follows, James,” I said. “It follows.”

“Not necessarily. Look—”

I held up the spool of film.

“Why do you think they went to all this trouble?” I said. “Just what do you think is on here?”

“Well, it could be—”

“It could be. It could be anything. But it isn’t. They wanted me to see this. They didn’t expect the girl would panic. They shot her, to be sure I’d see it.”

James concentrated on his brandy, frowning.

I stood up.

“Wait here, will you,” I said. “I’m going to run this.”

“I’ll come with you.”

He began to get up.

“No,” I said, stopping him. “Wait for me in here.”

I went through into the projection booth and loaded the spool on to the eight-mill projector and when I’d done that I went and sat in the theatre, in the chair with the control panel on the arm.

The lights dimmed, and up on the screen grainy black-and-white leader began to scratch its way across the screen.

THE SEA

I
TURN ROUND TO
face her.

Still kneeling on the floor, she’s holding out one of the boxes in my direction.

It’s the one with the film of Jean inside.

I don’t move.

“What’s wrong?” Lesley says. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.” If she only knew.

I still don’t move. I’d gambled. While I’d been getting my drinks I’d said to myself, if she comes up with Jean, I’d run it. I’d made a bet against myself. A forty-to-one shot. And now it had come up.

I’d promised myself.

I take the plain box from her and look at the title. It’s one of the early ones. Jean and two other girls. The first one she ever did, just with other women.

“All right,” I say. “Why not?”

I walk over to the projector and slip the spool out of the box and fit it on to the projector’s arm.

How am I going to feel?

I thread the leader on to the sprockets and press the automatic and the film glides through and takes up on the pick-up spool. White light blurts out onto the screen.

I switch off the projector. Lesley looks round, mild surprise.

“The lights,” I tell her, going over to the panel. “There’s no definition with the lights on.”

I switch off the lights. The room is illuminated only by the flames flickering in the fireplace.

“Cosy,” she says.

I go back over to the projector. What she doesn’t know is that I’ve turned the lights out to veil any reaction I might not want her to see.

I switch on the projector and the white light glares out again, briefly, then is diluted by the grey monochrome of the exposed film.

The moment that happens, I close my eyes. For a while, I can’t look. I’m like a man with a ghost at the foot of his bed, hiding under the blankets.

You’ve got to, I tell myself. It had to happen. You have to look. You’ve got to face it, some time.

I force open my eyes.

I stare at the screen. I don’t understand.

I squeeze my eyes tight shut, to help me understand.

I open them again.

It’s not imagination.

I haven’t gone mad.

It isn’t one of the early films.

It’s a print of the final film that was made of Jean.

But not made by me.

And I’d destroyed the only print I’d had of that, the final one.

THE SMOKE

T
HE FIRST IMAGE WAS
a close-up of Jean.

She was looking straight into the camera, frightened.

Her mouth was taped shut.

The camera zoomed back, shakily, to reveal Jean in the centre of a grubby basement. There was a chair and a table. On the table there was some rubber tubing and an axe and some other things.

Jean was sitting on the chair, naked, except for her jewellery. Her hands were behind her back.

Three men stood around the chair, hooded, but I could tell who they were. Jimmy must have been the one operating the camera.

One of the men, Charlie, reached out and grabbed Jean by the hair and struck her. Then all three of them lifted her out of the chair and pushed her over to and on to the table.

And then they started.

I watched, because there was nothing else I could do.

For almost twenty minutes I watched.

Watched what they did to her.

Then, twenty minutes later, the camera angle changed. Changed to a close-up of her feet, looking down, as they protruded over the edge of the table.

Her feet were very still.

The camera panned up her legs, up her bruised and lacerated
torso, arrived at her neck, hesitated slightly, then completed its movement, to reveal that now her neck didn’t end with her head, just a bleeding stump that gushed black blood on to the table top.

CUT.

To the chair, a long shot.

The Shepherdsons, naked except for their hoods, stood round the chair, looking at the camera. On the chair seat, at a slight angle, was Jean’s head.

THE SEA

I
SCREAM
.

At the point where the Shepherdsons manhandle Jean on to the table, I scream.

And, screaming, I realise the only way the film could have got to me, into this house.

But at my screaming, she is on her feet, already darting away into the darkness, and my dive at her through the projector’s monochrome channel is already futile. I hit the piano stool and draw myself to my feet via the keyboard, giving silent-movie accompaniment to the events up on the screen. My hand finds the gun on the piano top and as Lesley flies down the steps into the room’s lower depths I fire three shots after her, but in the room’s semi-darkness she still appears to be moving towards the door. The dark rectangle at the room’s lower corner opens and I fire three more shots.

The rectangle slams to and I run down the steps and pull open the door just as at the other end of the hall the front door crashes closed behind her. I fire two more shots at her rippling shape beyond the frosted panels, shattering one of them completely, and then she is gone.

I stand there for a moment.

Then I scream again. While I’m standing there, up on the screen, in the lounge, they’re doing those things to Jean.

I’ve got to stop them.

Still screaming, I rush back into the lounge and up the steps, firing at the screen as I go. One of the Shepherdsons is beating her with a hose while the other two hold her down.

I reach the screen and tear it from the ceiling but the images keep on screaming from the projector, flowing all over me, sticking to me, like old blood.

I aim at the white-heat centre of the projector’s lens and fire.

Everything stops. Only the echoes of the gunshots remain.

I sink to my knees and crawl to where the telephone is and pick up the receiver and dial and listen to the ringing tone.

You’ve got to be there. You have to be.

I clutch the receiver against my face.

You’ve got to be there. Answer.

At the other end of the line the receiver is lifted.

“Hello,” James says, “James Morville speaking.”

“James,” I say. “You’ve got to help me.”

James’s tone changes.