Mortal Love (21 page)

She was beside him again. Her fingertips trailed across his cheek; for an instant she rested her head upon his shoulder.

“Let's go,” he murmured,

Daniel took her arm. In the doorway Balthazar Warnick stood and watched them pass. “Daniel—it was a pleasure meeting you. We should have lunch sometime, when you get back to D.C.”

Warnick's gaze lit upon Larkin. He looked at her, then said, “You let this gentleman drive, will you?”

She nodded. Balthazar watched them depart, then went inside Learmont's study, closing the door behind him.

They left the
house quickly, passing a few groups of partygoers lingering in the road outside, who gazed at Larkin with bemused curiosity.

“G'night, Duchess!” someone shouted. Larkin seemed not to hear. Daniel himself was afraid to say anything at all, lest the spell be broken and Larkin turn and see him as he really was: a gangling, middle-aged man so obviously out of his depth he was surprised no one shouted at
him.

Still, he'd been in this kind of situation before, most memorably a night with the notorious lead singer of an alt country band, a woman who had her ex-husband's name branded on her ass. He knew the kinds of looks he
should
have been getting—that combination of envy, anger, lust, and sheer disbelief that spelled out
Her? Him?

And yet no one seemed to notice him. As they approached the Mini, Daniel turned to stare back at a young man wearing a kilt and a John Travolta T-shirt. He met the boy's eyes, but instead of looking away, the boy squinted, as though trying to see through a smudged glass. His gaze was unbroken. He didn't see Daniel at all.

Larkin touched his hand. “Can you drive?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine.”

Larkin handed him the keys, and they got in.

“Go back by Camden Town,” she said. “Up past Nick's flat, there's parking there above the Crescent.”

He nodded and drove off. He felt neither tired nor hung over; rather, as though he were driving in a dream. Beyond the Mini's wedge of windscreen, the city remained wrapped in April twilight, a tremulous haze of gold and violet clinging to sidewalks, monuments, council flats. Young men and women crowded at every street corner, arms wrapped around each other, their faces wan as rainwater. Daniel rolled the window down, but still the world seemed hushed, save for the odd bit of song or words snatched from the street—
evaginate, survey, willing, dance.
Beside him Larkin sat with the antique red jacket pulled close, the wilted sunflower cupped beneath her chin. Her eyes were only half open. He glanced at her, wanting to part the jacket and take the sunflower in his hands, let its brown-edged petals trace the curve of her breasts and—

“Turn here,” she said, and pointed.

For an instant the world went black as they passed beneath a railway bridge.

“And here.”

Daniel forced himself to concentrate on negotiating a roundabout. After a minute he asked, “What was the name of Rossetti's wife?”

“Siddal. Elizabeth Siddal.”

“Right. Lizzie Siddal. Do you know if she knew Swinburne?”

“Swinburne? Yes, she did—they were extremely close. Why?”

“Well, we were at Cheyne Walk. Just curious, that's all. Were they ever involved—Swinburne and Lizzie?”

“Not that I ever heard. He was a bit of a soft candle with girls, I think. Except for
le vice anglais,
of course.” She laughed. “Are you going to research that for your book?”

“You never know.” They were in the Crescent directly above Camden Town. He angled the car into a narrow cul-de-sac, looking for a parking space. “She killed herself, didn't she?”

“Yes. Laudanum. ‘Death by misadventure.' That's what they called it then, if you were a woman.”

“They had a lot of misadventures, didn't they? All those painters.”

“There!” Larkin touched his arm, pointing to a space. “Don't all painters have problems? And writers—don't poets have the highest suicide rates in the world?”

“Maybe. Journalists get the highest interest rates, I know that.”

They got out. It was very warm now, going on ten o'clock, moist air rising from the nearby canal and crowded High Street below them, the streetlights casting a sepia glow over the tree-lined street.

Larkin stood on the curb and looked down to where the last barrows were being removed from Inverness Street, leaving trails of crushed figs and spoiled blossoms. “Would you mind if we stopped at Nick's first? It's closer than my place, and I have to pee.”

“No problem. Where is your place?”

“You'll see.”

“Big secret, huh?”

“Shh.”

She took his arm, lifting her face to his. The lamplight turned her dark hair to copper-gold. Daniel dipped his head, his mouth grazing her brow. Her skin tasted of salt, and apples; when she touched his chest, he fell back, dizzied.

“Right,” he said, and, drawing her to him, began to hurry toward Nick's flat.

Once inside, he
was relieved to see there were no messages on the answering machine or ominous bits of paper with Nick's arcane directives concerning unexpected visitors and trash removal. Larkin draped her jacket over a chair; it immediately fell to the floor with a soft thump. She beelined to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of fizzy water, drank half in one long pull and handed the rest to Daniel.

“I'll be right back,” she said, and headed down the hall.

“Sure thing.” He watched her go, holding the bottle to his forehead. “Shit.” He was too old for this by about twenty years, at his most generous reckoning.

Still: “‘Faint heart never won fair lady,'” he said, and began to sing off-key.

He ran a hand across his unshaven chin and grimaced, finished the water, tossed the plastic bottle into the sink, and turned to the kitchen table. Beneath it lay Larkin's jacket, a pool of crimson and black. He stooped to pick it up, was just turning to drape it back over the chair when he noticed something.

The jacket was heavier than it had been. He held it out and saw a bulge weighing down one side, where the wide pocket hung open. He slipped his hand inside and touched a flat squarish object, thick and with the texture of linen. He pulled it out and let the jacket fall to his feet.

“Oh, no.”

It was a sketchbook. Bound in blue-gray boards with a rectangular white label in the center, its edges starting to peel back. Entwined initials were embossed upon the label in gold, with a strong, confident handwriting beneath.

“Shit, shit,
shit.”
Daniel looked quickly down the hall where Larkin had gone, then ducked into the guest bedroom.

“I'm just getting changed!” he yelled. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “Oh, man . . .”

He recalled the painting in a closet at Paynim House—
A gift of the artist
—and opened the notebook.

The heavy paper stock had grown yellow with age. There was no name on the inside boards. He turned to the first page, a pen-and-ink drawing so microscopically detailed it was a moment before he recognized what it was—a woman's cunt, the black hairs writhing into thorns and tendrils of ivy; tree trunks and tall, straight-stemmed flowers like no plants he had ever seen; tiny, fluttering wrenlike birds and owls, thickets of owls and owl eyes, eyes, eyes everywhere. They were the only things in color: eyes indigo as magpies, green as birch leaves, yellow as primroses. All were focused on what was between the fimbriated tracery at the center of the whorl of flesh and flowers. He drew the book to his face, angling beneath the lamp to get a better look.

But while he could discern faint lines—the suggestion of a horizon, an eyed sun that was an adumbration of the clitoris above it—the images were impossible to keep in focus.

He turned to the next page. It was filled with neat block letters, as though someone were trying to reproduce the precise look of a printed page.

Within her is the world and

“Daniel? You in there?”

He jumped as Larkin rapped softly at the door.

“Right out!” He clapped the book shut, then swiftly and without a sound moved to the cannonball bed where he slept, pulled back the duvet, and slipped the sketchbook under his pillow. He replaced the duvet, grabbed the books on his nightstand—
Passion and Society, London A–Z,
his own notebook—and tossed them onto the bed.

“Sorry!” He swiped his hair back and bounded to open the door. “Just wanted to, to—”

“I thought you were getting changed?”

He looked down at his cambric shirt, damp with sweat. “Right. I'll just—”

“That's okay.” She parted his shirt, her fingertips grazing his chest, then leaned forward until he could feel her breath cool against his skin. He groaned softly as her mouth opened and she pressed it against him. Her tongue touched the smooth ridge of his collarbone; he could feel the slightest pressure of her teeth upon his throat. He grasped her waist and pulled her tight against him, but as he did, she withdrew, and his fingers slid across the folds of her dress as though he dipped his hand into a stream.

“Larkin,” he whispered, then blinked. The room had grown darker, or no, something had happened to the light. He could still see, could even make out the glimmering halo at the base of his desk lamp, but it had darkened from bright white to a tenebrous brown smear. He turned and saw something moving in the shadows, a firefly shimmer of yellow and green, began to step toward it when abruptly the lamp flared, dazzlingly, and he raised his hands to his eyes. “Larkin?”

“I'm here.” She stood by the door, smiling, and raised her hands to him, her face so welcoming and open he thought he might weep with joy. “We should go,” she said, and beckoned him to her side. “We should go now, to my place.”

Afterward he could not recall leaving the flat, or if he had locked the door behind him. All he knew was that he was outside in the High Street, wearing his own bomber jacket and with his arm around a very tall woman with dark hair unbound, the two of them laughing—at what?

He had no idea. The street was crowded as though it were a holiday. People snaked between buses and cabs and thronged the sidewalks, staring into shop windows, queueing for the cash machines at NatWest and Barclays, shouting at each other in front of the World's End pub. All Camden Town reeked of drink: spilled beer in the streets, beautiful young girls sitting on the curb swilling champagne from the bottle, young men in football jerseys clutching pint cans as they staggered through the outdoor market. Daniel had always felt slightly repelled by this urban bacchanal with its exposed strata of despair—homeless men passed out on the sidewalk with their dogs sprawled beside them, a white-haired woman with yellow-rimmed eyes, teenagers pissing in the alleys, and women with their ubiquitous mobiles, angling for reception on the street corner.

But tonight it all looked different. People smiled at him as he passed. One of the champagne girls leaped to her feet and, laughing, threw her arms around his neck.

“I'm
sooo happy!”
she cried as he grinned and tried gently to disengage himself. “
So
happy.”

She stepped away and looked at Larkin, extending a hand helplessly toward her, as though she were on a ship leaving shore.

“Good-bye!” the girl called. “Don't forget us . . .”

“Do you know them?” Daniel asked. They had reached the arched bridge above Regents Canal. Beneath the bridge a tourist narrow boat was moored in Camden Lock, the dark water around it flocked with paper, spent roses, cigarette butts, condoms. People wandered along the canal path with faces shining in the lamplight.

“No.” She took his hand and leaned against the bridge. “It just happens. At night, usually, places like this. They think they recognize me.”

Daniel touched her hair. “Maybe they do.”

“They can't.” Her expression grew so sorrowful he thought she might cry, and he moved to put his arms about her. She smiled at him wistfully, for a moment let him cradle her against his chest. “It's always the same.”

She turned to look down to where a boy was trying to climb over the guardrail above the lock. “They're always drunk or stoned, coming off a night at the clubs. They see me, and it's always the same. One girl near The Angel, she had a sort of fit—a seizure, it was horrible. Someone called 999, and they took her off in an ambulance. But I didn't know her. I never know any of them.”

“Who would think you did?” Daniel shook his head. “I mean, you can't take personal responsibility for some kid OD'ing on Ecstasy or—”

“AW, FUCKIN CUNT!”

They turned to see the boy being yanked back from the guardrail by a policeman. “Or
that,”
said Daniel, and put his arm around her. “Come on, let's go. Which way's your flat?”

“Along the towpath.”

“Whither thou goest, I follow.”

They walked down the winding sidewalk toward the lock, angling between a bunch of skinheads whose
HELLO MY NAME IS
badges identified them as part of a tour group from Norwich, and three Japanese girls in translucent pink plastic dresses videotaping each other as they passed around a black cheroot. Larkin nestled against Daniel, her face turned toward his shoulder.

“Which way?”

Larkin said nothing. So he automatically started heading west, toward the zoo. In the near distance loomed the Pirate Club, a small casde built of grimy black brick and concrete; in its shadow, brightly colored narrow boats were moored, giving the canal a sad carnival air.

Larkin stopped him.

“No. That side.” She pointed across the canal. “Toward Islington.”