Spirit (48 page)

‘You really believe that hooey?' Lenny demanded.

‘Yes, I do,' said Elizabeth passionately. ‘I really believe it. It's true. People leave their bodies when they die and they can sometimes turn into characters out of their own imagination.
Yes
, I believe it.'

‘And so do I,' said Laura.

Lenny turned his face away. ‘The trouble is, so do I.'

Elizabeth said, ‘We'll do it as soon as we can – maybe tomorrow. I just have to think what character I can be, so that I can deal with the Snow Queen. Gerda is the strongest character in the story, the little girl who refused to give up, but Peggy's already chosen her. There's a little robber-girl in the story, and she's quite influential. She holds a sharp knife
against her reindeer's throat just for the fun of seeing it panic. But she's not as strong as Gerda.'

‘Does it have to be a character from the same story?' asked Lenny. ‘I mean, supposing you turned yourself into some witch or something . . . a witch who had more magic than the Snow Queen?'

‘Yes!' said Laura. Or what about the Angel in
The Red Shoes
, do you remember, in his long white robes, and with wings that reached from his shoulders to the earth.'

Laura and Elizabeth quoted the Angel together: “Dance thou shalt,” said he: “dance on, in thy red shoes, till thou art pale and cold, and thy skin shrinks and crumples up like a skeleton's!” '

But Elizabeth shook her head. ‘I couldn't become the Angel of God, I just couldn't – quite apart from the fact that he's a he, and not a she. I think you're right, Lenny – I
could
be somebody from another book, but it would have to be somebody stronger than Gerda, and somebody who had the means of driving away the Snow Queen, too.'

Lenny said, ‘I should come with you. I should eat the mescal too. You can't do this alone.'

‘No, you can't. Peggy would never do anything to hurt
me –
but she wouldn't hesitate to hurt you. She really wouldn't, Lenny. Think of the Reverend Bracewaite; think of Miles. And if you had seen for yourself what happened to Dan – he broke into
lumps
, Lenny. He literally broke into lumps.'

‘So what can I do?'

Elizabeth looked at her wristwatch. ‘I want to see my mother this afternoon. I need to know if the Peggy-girl has been visiting her recently. Maybe you could drive us out to Gaylordsville.'

‘Sure. Maybe we could tell her that you and me are engaged, too.'

Elizabeth kissed him. ‘You're no fool, are you, Lenny
Miller? You know that's the main reason I want to go. It's not every day a girl gets proposed to.'

‘It's not every day she accepts.'

Laura went through to the kitchen, to make sure that the range was well stoked up. It was an old-fashioned blue-nickel Wehrle, which had probably been installed before the First World War, but it burned everything – coal, softwood, even corn-cobs – and it gave out tremendous waves of heat. As she came in through the kitchen door, however, she felt intense cold, rather than heat. The stove was still alight, the fire was still burning, but it was giving out no warmth whatsoever.

‘Lizzie!' she called. ‘Lizzie, come here!'

She approached the range very cautiously, her heart beating so loudly that she could almost hear it. She had laid the fire early this morning, and by now the whole kitchen should have been uncomfortably hot. The range itself should have been impossible to touch, except with oven-gloves. But it was cold as a cast-iron coffin. In fact, it seemed to emanate cold. Laura stood close to it, and she could see her breath vaporizing, little clouds of panic.

Elizabeth came into the kitchen, closely followed by Lenny.

‘The range,' said Laura. ‘Look at it, it's burning at full blast, but it's
cold:

Elizabeth went up to the range and stood beside it. It was icy-cold. The warming closet at the top, the nickel-plated rail, the hotplates themselves, all icy cold.

‘This isn't possible,' she said.

‘Maybe it isn't,' said Laura. Her fear made her irritable. ‘Maybe it isn't, but it's happening.'

‘Oh, come on,' said Lenny. ‘The fire's burned itself down, that's all. My grandma used to have one of these old ranges, and – ' Lenny laid his hand flat on one of the hotplates. Instantly, there was a sharp sizzling noise, and Lenny shouted out in pain. He tried to tug his hand away, but his skin was
stuck to the metal, and he lifted the whole hotplate out of the oven-top. He shouted, and twisted around, and shook his wrist again and again, and at last the hotplate clanged onto the floor, and rolled away, with the skin from the palm of his hand still stuck to it, like shrivelled grey tissue-paper.

‘Christ it hurts! Jesus Christ, it hurts!'

Elizabeth pulled him over to the sink, and turned on the cold tap. She held his wrist tight and the palm of his hand wide open, so that the freezing-cold water could gush all over his burn. He stood next to her, alternately letting out gasps of pain and short bursts of shocked laughter, until at last the water numbed his hand, and he began to relax.

She wrapped his hand in a dry clean tea-towel, reached up and touched his cheek. She felt so frightened for him that she didn't know what to say. You love me, you want to marry me, so you're probably going to die, by one of the most agonizing deaths ever known? Together, she and Bronco had exorcized Billy; but she wasn't at all sure that she could get rid of Peggy quite so easily. Everything had been different in Arizona; hot and strange and slightly magical, with Eusebio to guide her. She was beginning to doubt that peyote magic would work in straight-laced New England, in freezing winds, in territory where no Piman or Papago Indian had ever walked. The land that Eusebio worked may have been the land of the dead; but Litchfield was the land of a different kind of dead – trappers and Puritans, witches and Redcoats in powdered wigs and men who rode furiously by night, on all kinds of arcane and hair-raising errands.

Lenny said, ‘Look . . . it's a little raw, but it's nothing.'

‘Maybe it
is
nothing, But you should see a doctor. We should take you to the hospital.'

‘What? It's only one layer of skin. It's sore, but it'll heal. And what will the hospital do? Give me a tube of hydrocortisone, a cheery pat on the back, and charge me $50 for the pleasure?'

‘I'd better call the clinic and tell mother we won't be visiting today,' said Laura.

‘No, no,' Lenny protested. ‘I can wrap my hand up in some surgical gauze, and put a glove on over it. I'll be all right. It doesn't even hurt that much. Let's go see your mother. We need to, don't we? I
want
to.'

‘Okay,' said Elizabeth. ‘If you say so. But if we were married – '

‘We're not,' said Lenny. ‘And, until we are, please let me have
some
freedom.'

Elizabeth kissed him. ‘I'm sorry,' she told him. ‘I guess I'm just being over-protective, like Peggy.'

They stood in the chilly kitchen with the draught shrieking high-pitched through every crevice and every window frame, and roaring soft-throated in the chimney, and Elizabeth felt that her life was at a crossroads, where one sign pointed to purgatory, and another to peace. But there was another sign, too, which was blank, waiting for her to paint her own destination on it, if only she knew what that destination could possibly be.

Her mother was in bed now. She was so thin and frail that she could have been eighty-five years old. Dr Buckelmeyer said that she wasn't eating properly, that she seemed to have lost all will to live. She talked constantly of show business, and El Morocco, and the Stork Club. Her body was collapsing in a clinic bed in Gaylordsville, Connecticut, but her mind was still whirling around Manhattan, in the glittering days of Cafe Society.

Elizabeth and Laura sat on each side of the bed. Lenny stood by the door, with his hat in his hand. The view from the window was plain and bleak. Leafless bushes, leafless trees, and a long dull slope of snow. The room smelled of lavender toilet-water and minced beef.

‘Mother, how are you?' asked Elizabeth.

Her mother turned her head to look at her with rheumy eyes. ‘Happy,' she said.

‘You've given up smoking?'

‘Dr Shitmeyer won't let me.'

‘Are they treating you well?'

‘I think so. I don't notice them much. They come and they go. I've decided to go back, you see, and live it out all over again . . . the
good
parts, the happy parts. I'm going to Jack and Charlie's tonight and there's nothing they can do to stop me.'

‘Mother . . . you remember Lenny?'

‘Lenny, Lenny, Lenny . . . yes. I think I remember Lenny. The one who went to the war?'

‘He's here. He has something he wants to ask you.'

Margaret Buchanan blinked furiously. Lenny approached her bedside from the back of the room, and stood close beside her, too close for Margaret's comfort, looking down at her.

‘Mrs Buchanan, I've asked Lizzie to be my bride, and I'd like your approval.'

Margaret lay slowly back on her pillow. Her eyes, first moist and uncontrolled, suddenly became shifty. ‘You want to marry my Elizabeth?'

‘That's the idea, yes.'

‘And Elizabeth wants to marry you?'

‘She's agreed, ma'am, yes, and she's accepted my ring.'

‘But what will Peggy say? Peggy will be furious!'

Laura took hold of her mother's hand. ‘Mommy . . . you have to accept it. Peggy's long dead.'

‘How can she be dead when she came to see me this morning?' Margaret shrieked at her. ‘How dare you say such a thing!'

‘Mommy, she drowned in the pool and she's dead.'

‘You're a liar! You're such a liar! She visits me nearly every day! She came today! She's coming tomorrow! Dead? How can you say that she's dead?'

‘Do you want me to show you her grave?' Laura shouted back at her. ‘Do you want me to have her dug up, so that you can look at her body?'

‘How dare you!' Margaret screamed. ‘She came today – and I'll tell you what's more – she knows about this engagement – she knows – and she'll kill you all – she'll kill you – rather than see you married to
him?

Elizabeth stood up. She didn't know what to say. Her mother was seriously ill; and rambling; and no matter what she said to her, it wouldn't really matter. You can't inflict pain on those who live their whole lives revelling in pain, as her mother had. You can't disappoint those who expect nothing but disappointment. All they ever do is drag you into their pain, and blame you for their disappointment, and never feel better whatever you do, because they simply don't want to. The only pleasure they ever get out of their lives is in making you feel worse, and that isn't much of a pleasure for them, either.

Laura said, ‘We can't leave yet.'

‘Oh, yes we can,' Elizabeth retorted. ‘This woman isn't my mother. This woman isn't even my friend.'

Lenny put his arm around Elizabeth's shoulders and drew her close. ‘Come on, Lizzie. You're right. It's time to put the past behind us.'

As they walked out of the clinic, a man in a maroon-striped robe stepped out of a side corridor – the same man that Elizabeth had met before, with his slicked-back hair and his six-o'-clock shadow. ‘You're leaving in a hurry,' he said, with a smirk on his face.

‘What's that got to do with you?' Lenny asked, aggressively.

‘Nothing at all,' the man replied. ‘I just wanted to wish you good luck. Tomorrow we'll run faster, won't we, Lenny? Stretch out our arms further? And one fine day . . . well one fine day . . .'

‘Come on, Lizzie,' Lenny urged her, and tugged her arm.

But Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, and said to the man, very softly, ‘Are you
really
who I think you are?'

‘It depends on who you think I am.'

‘I think – I think you could be Jay Gatsby.'

The man said nothing at first, but smiled very broadly. Eventually, he said, ‘Remember what I said to you about dead people, that's all.'

‘You said, “It takes one to know one.” '

The man lifted his hand in a mock-salute. ‘Truest word you ever spoke.'

 

 

Elizabeth spent all evening in the library, rummaging through books. By midnight, however, she still hadn't decided who she could be to outwit Gerda and destroy the Snow Queen. If she had been a child again, perhaps she might have been able to think of some fairy story, in which there was somebody, more powerful, somebody colder, somebody with arteries flowing as cold and as white and as thick as glaciers. But she had forgotten most of her fairy princesses, and most of her hobgoblins, and even her club-carrying ogres stood unremembered in the background of her mind, like knobby rows of pollarded plane trees.

The range was still cold, so they went to Endicott's for hamburgers, and sat under unflattering fluorescent lights watching the youth of the town combing its greasy quiffs and propping its feet on the table and talking loudly about ‘cats' and ‘chicks' and how Jackie Brenston's record ‘Rocket 88' was really the most.

Outside Endicott's the north-westerly gale screamed along Oak Street, and soon the snow started too, thin at first, and whirling in the wind, but quickly thickening up, until the street was almost blinded with white.

‘Time to get back,' said Lenny. ‘It looks like a bad one.'

They struggled out to the car. Already the lights along Oak Street were being switched off, one by one, as shopkeepers closed up to go home. The snow pelted in their faces like the Snow Queen's warriors, and stung their cheeks. Lenny's car was already humped with it, and when they opened the doors to climb in, they dropped heaps of snow onto the seats. They
drove in silence back to the house. Although it was midwinter, and blizzards weren't at all unusual, they had a bad feeling about this one. The wind was so strong that it rocked the car, and the wipers could barely cope with the furiously-falling flakes. Elizabeth felt a deep sense of relief when they finally drove down the slope towards the house, and pulled up outside the front steps.