Gravelight (12 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Gravelight
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“Okay, you're as ready as you'll ever be. Think you can make it to the car?”
She felt the swirl of his thoughts as he assessed the possibility. He thought he could.
“No,” Wycherly said.
Sinah gritted her teeth. “March or die, my friend,” she said with a wholly spurious cheerfulness. “C'mon, now. You can lean on me.”
With no resistance—but no particular help, either—Sinah got Wycherly to his feet. She pulled his arm around her neck, and slowly they made their hobbling progress toward the car.
His body pressed against hers filled Sinah's mind with Wycherly's sensations, emotions, and scattered thoughts, until she was living his life and could not be certain which of them was running away. She had never wanted a drink so badly in her life.
Sinah had never been even a social drinker. She didn't like the taste, and feared the loss of control—and the premature aging it brought to skin and face was something no actress could afford. But now she found herself longing for the scouring bite of straight whiskey, the burn and the half-nauseated exhilaration of slugging it back as if it were water, the insulation it would put between her and daily life. All her problems would vanish, any new ones that appeared she could outrun with enough liquor … .
Only long practice—a distrust of every feeling that seemed to be hers—enabled her to deny the craving.
You
are
truly messed
up, my friend,
Sinah thought, and was not sure which of them she meant.
Axe-murderer or saint, though, there was very little Wycherly could do hampered by a bad ankle—and Sinah knew exactly how much pain he was in. She thought she could trust him.
Conditionally.
The ride was bumpy, but Wycherly braced himself in his corner of the front seat and endured it silently. The sun was angling westward, and automatically he glanced at his watch. Two o'clock. A hell of a way to spend an afternoon.
The Jeep stopped.
“We're here,” Sinah said unnecessarily. “Now, do you want to come inside, or do you want me to drive you on down to Pharaoh?”
She reminded him of his sister, Wycherly thought to himself: his bossy, arrogant, take-charge sister Winter, who
had to be perfect at everything she did, even being imperfect—like all the people who had perfectly planned lives with all the accessories. And this slumming silver-spoon bimbo seemed to be struck from the same die.
His head hurt. His foot hurt. He wanted desperately to be unconscious. There was a bottle in his cabin that would be enough for tonight at the very least, and if he was lucky, tomorrow would never come.
“Never mind. Thanks for all your help. I'm going home,” he said, as civilly as he could manage.
“I don't think I want to drive you all the way to Long Island,” Sinah answered.
Wycherly's head snapped up. She did know him! He knew he'd seen her before—she must be one of Mother's candidates, paraded before him like mares in heat in the hope he'd take the plunge into suitable matrimony. Which would, so his father said, make a man out of him, though it didn't seem to have done as much for Kenny Jr.
She seemed to recoil under the impact of his baleful glare.
“It's … I mean, it's in your voice. The Island accent,” she faltered. “It's in your voice. I know about regional accents. I have to be able to mimic them. I'm an actress.”
“An actress,” Wycherly echoed derisively.
Maybe not one of Mother's candidates. Mother only approved of older male actors, possibly with a Tony or Oscar to their credit. But the woman was so familiar … .
“Come inside,” she said pleadingly. “We can discuss it there, okay?”
“No. Take me home. I'll show you the way,” Wycherly said brusquely. He felt awful, and knew he looked worse—sweaty, shaking, and greenish. More than anything, he wanted to be alone—the beast had its claws into him now, and things were only going to get worse. He thought longingly of oblivion—he wanted oblivion, and the liquor kindly gave it to him: Things got fuzzy, then disappeared entirely, long before he passed out.
He recanted his decision to dry out. Fervently. Only now
the blackouts were invading what he thought of as his non-drinking life. It had to stop. Wycherly rubbed his jaw—the skin felt stiff and tender—and thought of the bottle in his cabin.
“Are you sure?” Sinah said.
My God, woman, do you want me throwing up on your rug?
“Yes. Please. If you would be so kind,” Wycherly said.
Old Miss Rahab's cottage stood amidst its guardian trees in the afternoon sun. No smoke came from the chimney, and Wycherly hoped that Luned had already gone home. The presence of the woman beside him was growing intolerable, and Luned's proprietary sunniness would be the final straw.
The Jeep Cherokee was parked as close as Sinah could get it to Wycherly's ramshackle rented cottage, but the young saplings made it impossible to get very close. Had he left here only this morning on his ill-considered ramble? That had been one of his worst ideas in a lifetime that contained no good ones.
“Are you sure? I could—”
“I don't need—”
“—a woman's help?” Sinah finished for him angrily. She turned to look at him. Wycherly thought she looked like safety, sanity, and hope. None of which were for him; not for Wycherly Musgrave.
“
A person's
help. Any person,” Wycherly said. He shoved open the passenger-side door. It banged into a tree, but he didn't care; it opened far enough for him to swing his right leg out, and gingerly lift the left one after it. He stood, hanging onto the door.
“You are the stubbornest man I ever met,” Sinah exclaimed, glaring at him in half-amused exasperation.
“You should get out more,” Wycherly told her with a death's-head grin. Clinging to the door for support, he groped for one of the tree trunks and clung to it in a death grip. “I'm fine. Go away.”
“I'll check on you tomorrow,” Sinah said. She reached across the passenger seat of the Jeep Cherokee and pulled the door shut.
“Go to the devil,” Wycherly invited her. He made the mistake of testing his bad ankle to see if it would support him.
Sinah winced empathically at the bright flare of pain. But there was no sound or outcry that she could legitimately use as an excuse to ask if he was all right, and she already knew Wycherly Musgrave well enough to know that he wasn't the sort of man who accepted help gracefully. As she watched helplessly, he dragged himself from tree to tree and finally through the door of the cabin. She saw him hesitate upon the threshold as he searched for another handhold, and then the door swung closed behind him.
Sinah leaned forward, resting her forehead on the Jeep's steering wheel for a moment. Let him go. Selfishness was the first law of self-preservation for something like her—but how much longer could she bear to purchase her own survival at that high a price?
“Oh, Wycherly,” Sinah said softly. “Everybody needs help sometime.”
The question was, where could a person get it whose problems were more than human ones?
Wycherly clung to the back of the chair, listening to the sound of the engine fading in the distance. He'd half expected Luned still to be here, waiting for him just the way Camilla did, but the cabin seemed to be deserted. His ankle ached like a broken tooth. Sinah had suggested that he pack it in ice to ease the pain; he hadn't told her that his cabin had no electricity.
At least there was still daylight.
Dragging the chair with him like a bulky, recalcitrant crutch, Wycherly groped his way over to the sink. He was thirsty; so thirsty that he didn't care whether what he drank
was alcoholic or not. In the background, the sound of the Jeep's engine persisted.
No, that wasn't it.
He glanced at the dirty, chipped door of the refrigerator suspiciously. Unbelievably, it was running; from the sound of it, it might take off or explode at any moment.
Clutching at the sink for support, Wycherly pulled open the refrigerator door. The handle vibrated beneath his fingers, and the air inside was perceptibly cooler than that in the cabin.
The refrigerator was filled with six-packs of beer in half a dozen brands; last night's soup had been removed to make room for them.
Wycherly let out a sob of relief. He dragged the chair around and sat down in front of the open door, yanking the nearest six-pack toward him. Hastily, as though it were life-giving medicine, he popped the tab on the first can and chugged the still-warm foamy liquid down, gulping and dribbling in his haste. A second can followed the first, then another. He felt bloated, and not in the least drunk, but it had taken the edge off … .
His addiction.
He winced. He might have suffered less if he could deny it, but unfortunately, he'd never lied to himself. He'd driven Sinah away because he'd wanted to be alone with a six-pack of cheap beer and a bottle of Scotch. Driven her off so she wouldn't see him—though a part of him knew that he wouldn't have cared, so long as he could feed the beast. Nothing mattered except feeding the beast, so that it would grant him oblivion and keep Camilla away.
An odd, uncomfortable feeling pressed outward on his chest. It was a little like fear, a little like anger. It made him restless, uncomfortable. It grew stronger, and cautiously, disbelievingly, he identified it.
It was shame.
He was ashamed of what he did. He was ashamed of what he was.
Wycherly looked down at the can in his hands and
laughed. Why should his own contempt be harder to bear than the humiliation he'd caused everyone he'd ever known? It would do as little to stop him as the contempt of others.
But I am stopping. I am. I won't open the Scotch. I'll stick to beer.
That wouldn't help. It was possible to be a toxic alcoholic on beer, wine coolers, or even cough syrup. Alcoholism was a thing of the spirit. It was a matter of intention.
Did he intend to stop? Was he using the beer to blunt the jagged edges of detox? Or was he using it to get drunk?
If you go on drinking you will die.
The inner voice was as unequivocal as a judge's sentence. Wycherly didn't even bother to argue with the truth of that; he knew it in a level below rationality. The only trouble was, he wasn't strong enough to stop, and he was damned if he was calling upon some smug sanctimonious Higher Power.
Even to save your life?
the inner voice asked, and some cold ophidian part of Wycherly's mind answered: Yes.
Deliberately—defying even himself—Wycherly opened a fourth can of beer. That made nine today plus the codeine, and he planned on more beer, more codeine, and maybe a sleeping pill later. Not bad for his first day's march toward sobriety, he supposed.
It's the thought that really counts,
Wycherly reflected mockingly. He finished the beer and threw the can on the floor to join its fellows; a petty rebellion against Luned's housekeeping. He stared into the refrigerator broodingly.
It was because of Luned that the refrigerator worked. He could not imagine what fire she'd lit under Tanner to command this kind of service, and this evidence of her devotion angered him. He didn't want Luned—or Sinah, for that matter. He wasn't sure what he wanted, but when he got his hands on it, everyone was going to be sorry, by God. Wycherly took a long pull on the fresh beer, lowering the level to the point where he'd probably be able to carry it without spilling it.
Far from drunk—but filled with that soothing hyper-clarity
that was the seductive reward of his drinking—Wycherly pulled himself to his feet. He gingerly tested his weight on the damaged ankle. It hurt profoundly but didn't give way; if he used the chair for a crutch he thought he could get as far as the bedroom.
And there was whiskey in the bedroom.
But you promised … .
Luned had been busy in here as well, and Wycherly experienced a moment of blind, murderous fury at that fact before locating his shoulder bag neatly placed beside the washbasin. He slung it onto the bed, then flung himself down beside it, scrabbling around until he was lying more or less straight on the bedclothes. He kicked off his remaining shoe and began to loosen the bandage—all he needed on top of everything else was gangrene.
The flesh over the wrenched joint was deeply indented: swollen above and below the bandage, mottled green and violet beneath it. Wycherly shucked off his pants and his torn and muddy shirt; he was grimy and sweaty and his skin burned rawly, and he wished furiously for the comforts of civilization. At least the codeine he'd taken before getting into the Jeep was finally beginning to kick in. Without even thinking about what he was doing, Wycherly pulled his shoulder bag over to him and dug through it until his fingers touched the smooth coolness of the bottle.

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