Mortal Love (5 page)

“Look,” said Nick to a pigeon on the railing. “I bet he's humming ‘Waterloo Sunset.'”

Daniel grinned sheepishly. “Actually, ‘Shangri-la.'”

It was the truth. He'd been coming to London for over twenty years, and he still saw it through the scrim of songs he'd grown up with: Terry and Julie crossing Waterloo Bridge, feckless women moving from St. John's Wood to Knightsbridge and Stepney and Berkeley Mews, Muswell Hillbillies and London Boys. This city was a place his senses recalled more keenly than his conscious mind; with each return it seeped back into him, its ashy smell and dreamy crepuscular light, rain-swept curbs and crowds pouring from the Underground, Cockney back-chatter and the sibilant greeting of the grocer across the street.

“ 'Sa fine day, Mester Roolands, 'sa fine day. . . .”

“Well, cheers,” said Nick, handing him a wineglass. Daniel raised it to the leafy canopy, smiling, as Sira stepped back onto the deck with a platter of olives and bread and pale cheese wrapped in what looked like goldenrod.

“Daniel—eat, please. I'm so sorry, dinner won't be ready for a bit.”

Daniel gulped his wine and stood. “Umm, I need to find the loo first—”

“Use the guest toilet, Daniel,” said Sira as Nick speared a haunch of bread with his pocketknife. “All the way up, on the fourth floor—the other one's not working right.”

“Gotcha.”

He'd never been on the fourth floor. He didn't even know the place
had
a fourth floor, but he dutifully followed the narrow twisting stairs from the cheery first-floor landing to the second (half-open bedroom door, suggestive scatterings of torn lace and leaves and candle-wax on the Baluchi carpets) and the third, until finally he came to a landing that Nick and Sira, slight as they were, would have had difficulty occupying at the same time. Daniel pressed one palm against the wall. The space was so small he couldn't extend his arms outright: where the hell would you put a bathroom?

But there
was
a room, behind a heavy brocaded curtain. He pulled the curtain aside, expecting to find one of those tiny head-knocking lavatories the English liked to torture themselves with.

“Wow,” he breathed.

Before him a tiny bedroom had been fitted into the eaves. The slanted ceiling held etched-glass windows of amber, emerald, scarlet. The sills were carved with honeybees and octagons, the Turkish carpet patterned with stylized wasps and ants. A carved cupboard bed had been built into one wall; opposite it was a matching wardrobe. Beside the wardrobe hung another length of brocade. This was pushed to one side, so that he could glimpse an ancient water closet, its porcelain reservoir suspended from the ceiling and a length of silver chain hanging above the wooden commode.

“Holy cow,” said Daniel. “George Meredith pissed here.”

He could stand upright only in the very center of the room, where the roof peaked; inside the loo he had to stoop uncomfortably in front of the toilet. Still, this gave him a good view of the porcelain tank, which depicted the crystal domes and spires of Alexandria Palace in full Dying Empire mode. When he pulled the chain, the explosive roar of water rushing through the exposed pipes deafened him, and he backed out quickly, tripping on something.

“What the hell?”

It was a shoe. A woman's shoe. A very expensive woman's shoe, to judge by the minimalist curve of black leather affixed to a deceptively fragile-seeming spindle of polished chromium. He picked it up and studied it—where exactly did the foot go?—then turned to find someplace to put it.

The wardrobe? Its wooden door was slightly ajar, a fragment of velvet wedged in a corner. He tugged at the handle, and with a faint thump the door opened. Daniel whistled softly.

It was like Aladdin's cave. Or Madonna's. On one side hung floor-length dresses of burned velvet and satin and pale gray eelskin, black lace sheaths fringed with feathers or sewn with scales, shimmering peignoirs so fine they looked as though they would melt on the tongue. There was a gown made entirely of orange cock-of-the-rock plumage and another of hummingbird feathers woven into what looked like a spiderweb dewed with seed pearls. The other side of the wardrobe held shelves overflowing with knickers, brassieres, tap pants, merry widows, corsets and corselets, camisoles and stockings of gold mesh, sleek leather gloves and lacy fingertip sleeves liberated from ball gowns. At the very bottom, nestled among fluid coils of apricot satin and a marten stole, lay a single shoe: the mate of the one he held.

Daniel stared at it all in amazement. Who on earth could it belong to? Sira? He felt himself flush, imagining her in that or
that
or . . . well, any of it. He glanced cautiously over his shoulder, then leaned forward, burying his face in the voluptuous mass hanging in the wardrobe. He had a flash of that primal sexual rush he'd experienced as a child, opening his mother's lingerie drawer and sinking his arms up to the elbows in silk stockings and garter belts.

Of course his mother hadn't owned a moleskin brassiere with the fur on the inside. And nothing his mother owned had ever smelled like this—opium and new leather and beeswax, musk and sea wrack. He pushed aside several gowns, curious to see just how much space there was inside.

It seemed immense. The stained-glass windows sent a cathedral glow over everything; he could make out more shelves at the very back, and what looked like a heap of glass globes on the floor. Their curves shone with glints of deep red and purple and blue, and for some reason these fascinated him even more than the confectionery clothing. He glanced back again, then took a step inside.

For a moment he stood, one foot upraised, waiting to see if it would hold his weight. But the wardrobe must have been made of solid oak: he heard nary a creak as he took another step, bending his head as hangers and trailing sleeves grasped at him. He made sure the door behind him stayed open—he'd read the right sort of children's books—and was just reaching for one of the shining glass balls when he heard someone coming up the stairs to the landing outside.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathed. He turned, peach-scented folds of chiffon falling across his face. If it was Sira, she'd think he was some sort of furtive fetishist, which would only puzzle her: why hadn't he ever mentioned it? If it was Nick . . .

He sucked in his breath: if it was Nick, Daniel would have to leave the country. For an instant he stood there, still hidden by scores of gowns, wondering how to explain—

And then it came to him. He wouldn't explain: he'd just pop out of the closet, shouting Boo!, and pretend he'd been hiding there as a joke. Sira would be annoyed, Nick would think he was an idiot, but he could live with that. A shadow flickered along the landing; Daniel let his breath out, steadying himself as best he could as he waited. . . .

But it wasn't Sira or Nick. It was a woman he had never seen before. Tall and powerfully built, her long legs encased in black jeans and a pair of worn magenta cowboy boots with python inlays. She wore a tunic of indigo velvet, embroidered with silver filigree, and heavy silver bracelets set with turquoise and jade and carnelian. Her hair was chestnut-colored, unraveling from a loose French braid, her neck long but not slender: a neck like a pillar; Daniel had never seen a neck like that on a woman. She had a chiseled, big-featured face—square cheekbones, heavy, nearly black eyebrows; wide, red-lipped mouth—a face that should have looked masculine but instead asserted itself as a kind of beauty Daniel knew only from paintings. Not modern paintings, either: he thought of Mischa or Jane Burden or Lizzie Siddal: women who were too big for their world, women who could be captured only by scaling them down to fit inside a wood-and-canvas keep.

She strode into the tiny room, her boots thumping upon the carpet, glanced around quickly before heading for the bed. Daniel felt sick but couldn't avoid angling his head slightly so that he could keep her in his sight. Was she going to get undressed? His hands had gone cold; he knew he should do something, shout or cough or laugh nervously, reveal himself
this instant,
before anything worse could happen, before she pulled the tunic over her head, or lay down to take a nap, or
stepped back over to the wardrobe to change her clothes. . . .

Instead she stooped and sat on—within—the cupboard bed. He could see her profile against its oak panels, and for the first time realized that, like the carpet and windowsills, the bed was carved with insect wings interlocked in a repeating pattern. The woman sat, her long legs tucked beneath her. As he watched, she bent forward, held one hand beneath her mouth, and made a retching sound. Daniel grimaced as she gagged, then spat something into her palm, something small and round and glistening. She drew her hand close to her face, frowning as she examined the tiny object. She dried it on her sleeve, pinched it between two fingers, and held it up, staring at it fixedly. Finally she leaned forward, placed it on the pillow, and climbed out of the bed.

For a moment she stood there, as though she were trying to remember something. Daniel's entire body ached. His hands had gone numb, and his legs: any second now he'd be overcome by a spasm of pain or fear or pure mortification.

But before he could move, the woman was gone, striding out the door as quickly as she'd arrived. Daniel listened until her footsteps died into silence, and then he stumbled from the wardrobe. His heart pounded; he could feel the blood pumping hot back into his hands as he turned and shoved the wardrobe door shut, pushing at the coils of silk and velvet trying to escape. Two long strides brought him to the door, poised to race silently downstairs. But then he stopped.

What had been in her mouth?

He listened for sounds from downstairs. Silence. Before he could think better of it, he turned, hurried to the cupboard bed, and bent over the pillow.

He'd thought it might hold a tooth, even had the mad thought that the woman was a smuggler, one of Nick's old wild friends, coughing up nuggets of heroin in the spare room, uncut emeralds, teardrops of Baltic amber. But it was none of these.

Nestled within the pale green pillowcase was an acorn. Daniel stared at it, frowning.

An
acorn?
He hesitated, then picked it up: smaller than the bole of his thumb, its smooth curves burnished to a soft fawn color, with a ring of pale furze covering the crown. It had no cap. He touched its point, which was surprisingly sharp, and a pinprick of blood appeared on his finger. He rolled the acorn between thumb and forefinger, sniffed it, but could smell nothing.

Just an acorn, then; nothing remarkable about it at all. He stood for another moment holding it before his face. Almost without thinking he touched his tongue to it, a cool satin bead without taste, and rubbed it against his lower lip. He held it out once more, gazing at it perplexedly, then shoved it into his pocket and made his way back downstairs.

Nick was on the deck, leaning against the rail and talking in a low voice, his hands moving suggestively. Beside him stood the woman. She was laughing; her hair had come undone to fall around her shoulders, and a yellow leaf was caught in the loose curls. Sira stood alone on the other side of the deck, watching them as she absently folded and unfolded a linen napkin. When she saw Daniel, she gave him a tight little smile.

“Ah. You're back,” she said. She smoothed the napkin and set it on the table. “I've got to see to dinner. You can keep an eye on them.”

“What?” said Daniel, but Sira was already gone.

“Here he is!” cried Nick. “I thought you'd fallen in.”

“Sorry,” said Daniel. He crossed to the table and picked up his wineglass, trying not to stare at the woman. In the honeyed sunset light, she looked less imposing than she had upstairs, the harsh lines of her face softened and her hair a warmer color, chestnut tinged with auburn and glints of gold. But all Daniel could really fix on were her eyes. An astonishing deep pure green, like a marble held up to the sun, they seemed oddly unfocused, her gaze abstracted, like that of a nocturnal creature unaccustomed to the sun, or some marine animal dragged onto dry ground.

“Hello,” she said, smiling. “Nick was telling me you're a famous American writer.”

“He says that about everyone. Nick refuses to know anyone who's not famous. It's one of the perks of being a musical legend.”

Her dark eyebrows rose. “Are you?”

“A legend? No. I'm not even mildly famous.”

“Totally unknown,” agreed Nick.

“My name is Daniel Rowlands,” said Daniel.

“Larkin Meade.” Her hand closed around his: he had the sudden dreadful thought that he still held the acorn, she would know. . . .

“I've just been hearing about you—from Sira,” she added, “not bad old Nick. You're doing a sabbatical here? That must be brilliant.”

Daniel smiled glumly. “I'm not really a writer. I'm a journalist. I'm supposed to be writing a book, but I've never written a book before.”

“Just these little bits of paper that get published—you know, like fortunes,” said Nick. “Or horoscopes.”

Larkin looked at Daniel. “Really? You're an astrologer?”

“No. But it's a concept.” Daniel finished his wine, let Nick take the glass and refill it. He was starting to feel drunk, flushed and slightly giddy—
happy
drunk, which he hadn't been in . . . well, ages. “Let's see, a Rowlands horoscope—‘You will be sexually unfulfilled, and your children will despise you. Yet long life will be yours.'”

“Miserable long life,” Larkin corrected him.

“You're a writer, too?” asked Daniel. “Or musician?”

She laughed. “Me? No. I wish I were. I've always wanted to do something like that. Paint or write. Compose music. Something creative. I play at it a bit, but . . .”

Her voice trailed off. She lifted her head to stare at him, her expression distant, almost pained. Daniel waited for her to continue. Instead Nick broke in, his voice brash and annoying as a boy's.