Mountains of the Moon (27 page)

I int going to get on with it. The Oak is in the corridor, I has to get over his roots.

“I want to be a tree,” he says.

It don’t surprise me. I has to swing under one of his branches, put my hand flat on his chest. I look up at him slight in the eye.

“Can feel the sap rising,” I says.

Gwen comes and shoves me.

“Move along now,” she says. “Peter Eden is most definitely, most assuredly out of your league. Heath Crow is just what you need.”

And here he is, the Joker, waiting for me, wants the last dance. Gwen virtually pours my drinks down my throat, slaps me on the back like a go-get-him-kiddo.

The music stops and Gwen comes yelling that a taxi is outside waiting.

“Am I coming with you?” Heath says.

He arsts me gain, in a what-do-you-say kind of way. I int got the heart to say no. As we leave I keep my head down, case people think I’m a desperate measure. Gwen tries really hard to get Quentin in the taxi but he’s so drunk laid out on the pavement we have to leave him there. Gwen sits in the front. We pass the casino still open for another two hours. Heath reckons he knows how to card count.

“Is it a plus-minus system?” I says.

It is. He chirps on big-eyed about the beauty of the card-counting system. About the man who invented it and how it cost Las Vegas casinos a couple of million. The card counters he trained even wore disguises.

“Obviously, the faster the game is dealt, the harder it is to count.”

“So the dealer will see sudden heavy betting when the count is favorable?”

“Yep,” Heath says, “usually in the last few hands before a new shoe.”

“I’ve got some cards indoors,” I says. “Can you teach me how it works?”

Gwen makes a bored sound, makes a change cos normal it’s me.

At Park Lane I has to pay for the taxi. I magines the three of us will go upstairs in the lounge but Heath leans on my ear in the hall.

“Where’s your room? Show me.”

It’s like he wants to tell me something and he don’t want Gwen to hear, sides my room is the nicest place for sitting and learning how to card count, I’ve got the fireplace open now and a few bits of chair to burn. He shuts the door behind him and brings me straight down.

“Don’t bother now with the cards,” he says. “It’s you I want.”

Makes me laugh. I roll around like Norman Wisdom.

“Int true,” I says.

“No?” He wants to take my coat off me.

“Keep it on,” I says.

He int joking. Takes my flip-flops off. His sneakers stink.

“Hup,” he says. My jeans is off.

Makes me laugh. And him. Makes me laugh. I’m just a girl who caint say no.

“Just relax.” He reranges my everything. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Funny thing to say. We rolls around laughing.

“Ow!” I yells. Laughs loud, half nelson int necessary. “Ah!” I yells. He’s kneeling on my hair; I looks up at his balls swinging over my face. Makes me laugh, don’t know what I’m sposed to do with them so I put my hands in my coat pockets.

“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”

“No, course not,” I says.

“Relax. Just relax, relax.”

“I is relaxed.”

“Something feels nice and furry,” he says.

“Zebra skin.”

Makes him laugh, we roll around. I spects we both is drunk. He wants to undo my shirt, I won’t let him, has to keep my body covered.

“OK,” he says. “Fair enough. Just relax, here comes a Heath Special.”

I’m so surprised it’s for real, I lays still like the wooden cunt I is. He’s
naked-white and see-through with twanging veins and sinews and big smashed and swollen knuckles. I clenches everything up, case my cunt is like an allotment.

“Relax. You aren’t relaxed. Just relax, just drop into my hands.”

He slaps my thigh, digs my ribs, tickles my feet, I laughs, he pulls me closer, gripping the severed nerves in my leg, makes me scream out the pain.

“That’s it,” he says, “make some noise.”

But now he’s in his stride like someone allowed and deadly and direct and I got a fast feeling of Rosemary’s Baby growing inside me. That’s how come I starts crying.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, most women cry when I’ve finished with them.” He pulls his jeans back on. Laughs. “Sounds arrogant but it is a fact. They get overwhelmed with my technique and sexual expertise.”

Makes me cry more, so underwhelmed.

“What you have to understand is this: I’ve got five black belts, in five different martial arts disciplines. I’m a master of the mind and body. Seriously, physiology is my specialist subject; I’ve dedicated my life to it. Back in a minute,” he says. Sticks his tongue out, tips his head.

Wonder if he has gone to make me a cup of tea. Through the French doors can see that the kitchen light int on. I stand up on fucked legs. Heath’s sperm gobs into my pants. Rosemary’s Baby. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I shiver and shake and wrap my coat around tighter. I open my door and listen.

…NO MORE TALK OF DARKNESS

FORGET THESE WIDE EYED FEARS…

Can hear Heath upstairs, larking about in the lounge with Gwen. Went up for the toilet and got collared. No one is in the bathroom. I go up and lock the door, hang me and then my coat on the back of it. The light bulb has gone, moon through the winder sees me shiver naked into the dry
bath. My hands are too weak to press the safety lid on the bottle of toilet bleach, it click and clicks and clicks and clicks. It clicks and opens. I lie back in the bath and twist sideways, my feet slide up the wall, my legs follow, my hands help lift my pelvis to follow. The bleach is thick and gobs into me. It burns. It burns. I’m raw. It gobs and gobs, it burns and burns and I bite and bite and bite on the corner of a towel. The bleach burns and gobs into my womb, I bite, it burns, it gobs, and fills, and gobs in my pubic hair, I gag and it gobs and pours, over my bars of body scars, tears run down my face and burn, burns me clean, back to bone, back to the backbone.

Kills all known germs dead. I bite the burn of the bleach, stupidity makes me sober and white. I burn red with shame and shake. My white skin, my black coat, the lambskins slip over my bones. I face the bathroom door. Straighten Gwen’s Mensa certificate. Straighten my coat, my face and backbone.

I’M HERE—NOTHING CAN HARM YOU

MY ARMS WILL WARM AND HOLD YOU.

Hear Heath and Gwen, still talking and mucking about in the lounge. They don’t hear me going down the stairs. In the kitchen I light a cigarette, rattle it to my lips, the nicotine is urgent. I swallow the smoke and hold it. Burning still. While the kettle is boiling I open the back door. The smell of bleach is stuck like a fish bone in my throat. My knickers are fisted in my pocket. I try to burn them with the lighter, on the concrete outside the back door. They won’t burn. I know there is an old can of paint-stripper under the sink, I get it. I gob some of the paint-stripper onto the knickers then set fire to them. The flames rage, red in my face, burning up, I feel sick. I stagger into the dark garden, does a swirl, throws up under the elderberry. Sit burning still, trembling on the upturned bucket waiting for my flooded eyes to drain. I don’t know what I has to do now. Breathe heavy on the lilac smell. It’s no big deal. Make the three of us coffee, take it up. I’m with Heath, he chose me. We were having a
laugh. I was just overwhelmed. Underwhelmed. Drunk. Out of control. Surprised. I’m out of proportion, wired with tiredness. Don’t know what to do with a
boyfriend
. Talk about card counting. Rosemary’s Baby. Stupidity, that’s all. Heath int a monster, well, what did I expect? It’s bigger than that though, the feeling. My guts know something I don’t. The white lilac smells sweet; I hang on to that, snap off a spray of it. Put it in a jam jar on the tray with three mugs of coffee and carry it up. When I get to the top of the stairs a gap comes between the songs.

“In my dreams!” Heath laughs. “Let’s face it, Gwen, I’m only a plasterboard wall away from your bed; it can’t be more than half a day away now.”

“I didn’t expect you to stoop quite so low,” Gwen says, “but I’ll grant you it was well executed.”

“She’s all right actually,” Heath says. “But Quentin, Gwen?” He laughs like a bastard. “Quentin!”

“Quentin is a very, very rich boy as it happens. You obviously don’t know who his father is.”

I take the tray back downstairs and leave it on the side. I put my keys in my coat pocket and my cigarettes and let myself out. Feel like nothing, nothing at all. I look left and right, either way there’s nowhere to go. I walk to the corner of the park. A big white van walks behind me. The grass in the park is cold and heavy with dew, wets my jeans up to the knees. I watch my bare feet whiten and swell. The big white van is waiting for me on the other side of the park. Following me, or someone lost, maybe wants directions, no one else about, so I stop and turn. I look left and right, surprised to find him here.

“You could get in,” the Oak Tree says.

So I does and slam the van door. He int wearing last night’s beautiful clothes, he’s got stubble and look likes a hedge backward.

“I don’t do a market on Monday,” he says. “It’s my day off. I was looking for a friend of mine but I couldn’t remember which street.”

He grinds the van past Temple Meads Station. Words don’t seem necessary. It’s barely light. The city center is empty; he swirls around the statue
of Queen Victoria who int amused and stops the van underneath the awning of the Royal Swallow Hotel.

Brambles and barbed wire. Underneath. I rips through a gap. Down in the ditch. Splashing. My legs is streaming. Streaming down in the stream in the ditch and the dandelion splashes. Something coming. Whooshing. Shushing car coming. Meadowsweet smell. Shush. Stingers. Scratching. I is fine-tuned. Can hear music coming in a car. Humming. Violins. Starts me itching. The car has gone but the music stays, I got it on the tip of my tongue. Climbs up out of the ditch and runs ripping cross the field, up the hill, way, way from the road. Eyes is prickling. Thistles. Purple scratches. Patches. Black and white.

Cows. Trees. Trees on the top of the hill. Run straight in. Weave, weave, weave the trees, fast tween the dark and light, saying the names.

Ash.

Alder.

Birch.

Beech.

Chestnut, sweet.

Bluebells hit me like a wall. Don’t know if it’s all a dream, drops down on my knees, looks at them all looking at me. My breathing comes together with the trees. Something snapping makes me turn and drop down flat in the blue sweet smell.

Tiny snap, gain, lifts my head a little bit.

A deer. She int sure. We stop breathing. Her eyes is kind like understand. My mouth goes twisty and eyes burn, cold trickles down my cheeks and drips on the bluebell leaves. I close my eyes. Open my eyes. The deer int there no more. I has to be like her. I has to disappear.

I don’t look back. I listen for the sound of him starting the van and driving off. But the sound don’t come, he watches me walk, up over the brow of the hill. I don’t look back; I’m blinded by whitebeam trees in the park flashing their mirrored leaves.

3 Park Lane. I put my key in the lock. The opening door spreads a dog shit on the mat. Heath’s leather jacket is still on the stair post. My clean uniform is on a hanger; it rolls and goes in a bag with my shoes and
chestnut hairpiece and makeup bag. The taps in the heels of my shoes strike nail heads as I cross the landing, the stereo speakers spit.

Bookends on the sofa.

Her face is red raw, her dressing gown is gaping open. He’s wearing her towel and his back is screaming with pink clawing. Needle scuffs at the end of a song. The dog growls and then starts yapping, she don’t know me. Gwen slaps it down. I wait for one of them to say something.