The Evil Seed (6 page)

She looked at me
silently for a while, then turned slantways against the sunshine, so that I
caught the flutter from her hooded eyes. Her hair was so bright that it threw
coppery reflections on to a cheekbone, the curve of her neck.

‘To be alive,’ she said
quietly, turning to me again, her voice hoarse and sweet, like scratched silver.
‘What little difference between being alive and not. Don’t you think?’ I think
I just stared at her, not knowing what to say, not thinking.

‘To be alive,’ she
repeated, ‘such a brief mystery, too short to understand. The thing to have is
power. Power is everything and lasts for ever.’

There I had it; the
creed of Rosemary Ashley, but, like a fool, I just gaped, offered pity where
none was needed, impulsively stretched out my hand towards her (the sunlight
bled it white), and said: ‘Don’t talk. Try to eat something. You’re among
friends now.’

Her strange gaze fixed
me for an instant.

‘Friends,’ she said,
almost blankly.

‘I pulled you out of the
river,’ I said, trying not to sound too pleased with myself. ‘Believe me, miss.
I’m your friend now, if you’ll have me — if you’ll trust me. The river isn’t
any answer … Whatever it is … not that.’

I think that somewhere
in my mind there might have been a suspicion of something tawdry; some slinking
tale of seduction and abandonment, but whatever it was, was banished as soon as
I looked into her eyes. She was innocent. I could have sworn she was; staked my
life on it, as, in a way, I suppose I did.

It shone through her
like a searchlight. Innocence. Or so I thought.

Later I learned to know
her better. It was not innocence which streamed from every part of her,
piercing her transparent skin and shining from her lilac eyes.

I think it was power.

Three

HE CLOSED HIS BOOK AND WENT TO THE WINDOW
AGAIN. IT was raining now; the light from the street fell in great corrugated
sheets against the thick glass of the window and bounced from the windowsill
with a sound like shrapnel. It was half past two in the morning, and still she
did not come.

He went to the drinks
cabinet and poured himself a whisky. He didn’t really like the stuff, though he
would never have admitted it to anyone, but it was what
she
drank,
whisky, no ice; and he was still too much in love and wanted to drink it for
her sake, as if the taste could somehow bring her closer to him. He swallowed,
made an involuntary face, then downed the whole glassful, slamming the glass
back on to the table in front of him in a way he imagined might have impressed
her,
if she had been there to see him.

But she did not come.
Where was she? A movement from outside caught his eye, and he squinted through
the window again; was that a figure in the courtyard below, the gleam of a
plastic mackintosh in the lamplight? He fumbled with the catch of the window,
pushed it open, regardless of the rain pouring in.

‘Over here!’ he shouted
through the crashing of the overflow pipe, and the figure halted, looked up. He
caught a brief glimpse of her face above the shiny black collar, saw her nod,
and the familiar thrill always occasioned by her presence overcame him again, a
starburst of adrenalin which began somewhere in the region of his stomach and
expanded in thin, prickly lines towards the palms of his hands and the soles of
his feet; a delight which was partly compounded of lust and wonder and a kind
of fearful
insignificance.
Making love to her never changed her. She
renewed her chastity like the moon, every time; only he was defiled.

Her footsteps sounded on
the stairs. He poured himself another glass of whisky and drank half of it at
once, afraid she might see his trembling hands. She was not kind, his lady; she
knew his weaknesses and laughed at them. Sometimes, in his moments of lucidity,
he wondered why he needed her so, knowing as he did that all she had ever
offered him were the joys of fear and humiliation and the dark exhilaration of
the fairground, rank with the scent of sweat and the beast which was himself.
She had no love for him. They had nothing in common, never talked like friends.
And yet, her step on the landing, quick and light as a cat’s, set his pulses
racing, his head spinning, and he ran to open the door as eager as a schoolboy.

So slim, so frail; even
now she never ceased to amaze him, that so much perversity could be contained
in such a thin white vessel. She stood before him in the semi-darkness, sensing
his feelings, mocking him. She was wearing the black plastic raincoat, tightly
belted at the waist, the collar turned up to frame her face. She had pushed
back her hood, and the thick curls of her pale red hair spilled out on to her
shoulders. Her mouth was very red; he felt dizzy with his proximity to her,
felt as if he were falling towards that mouth, saw the lips part very slightly
to allow him to fall … She untied the belt of her raincoat, shrugged it open;
dropped the coat on to the floor of the landing where it lay in a pool of rain,
smiled. She was naked under the raincoat, her body opalescent in the reflected
light from the street-lamps, her hair a wild cascade, her eyes, her lips, the
tips of her breasts, the dark delta of her pubic hair like holes in that pallid
body, holes from which cables of mystic night winched him closer and closer to
her, powerless in the face of her irresistible attraction.

‘Not here …’ he
mumbled. ‘Never know
…
the porter …
the others…’

He stooped to pick up
her raincoat; caught the scent of chypre and rain from her body, caught a
dizzying glimpse of waterdrops on a slim thigh, and stumbled in his eagerness.
She gave a low laugh of contempt.

‘My little gentleman,’
she murmured. ‘So much concern …

She stepped lightly into
the room, shedding her low shoes at the door, as graceful and as unconcerned of
her nakedness as if she had been fully clothed. He shut the door hastily; not
even lust could blind him to the possible consequences if she were seen; he did
have his position to maintain after all; he had to be discreet. He hung up her
raincoat by the sink, where the water could drip without harming the carpet,
turned, almost afraid now that everything was ready.

She was sitting in his
armchair, legs crossed, hands clenched wantonly in her hair, and smiling.
Despite himself, he began to tremble, and he turned away to hide the movement.

‘Drink?’ His mouth was
dry as he topped up his own glass.

‘Whisky, no ice,’ she
said, and as he poured, he was suddenly certain that she was laughing at him,
knowing that hers were the strings which set him dancing, that with her,
he
was always the whore.

‘There,’ he said,
handing her the glass, thankful that his hands had stopped trembling.

She drank the filthy,
oily stuff as if it were water, in quick little gulps, the thin reed of her
throat moving up and down like a swan’s. Another of her tricks, he thought.
Didn’t he know them all by now?

She was only a woman,
almost a child; he had picked her up out of the gutter; she had been half-dead
with starvation, half-poisoned with cheap gin and forbidden drugs. He had
settled her in a nice little apartment where nobody would ask any questions …
he had spent more than half his generous study grant on her, on her
clothes, her lodging, her pills and powders, her doctors and therapists …
had
asked nothing more of her than this, this little comfort. Damn it, he thought: he
loved
her. She should have belonged to him body and soul.

‘Are you brave enough
yet?’ Her voice roused him out of his reverie. ‘You stink of whisky. Have you
managed to drown your bourgeois scruples?’

He cringed.

‘There’s no harm in a
little drink,’ he said, hating the weak note of defensiveness in his voice. ‘You’re
partial enough to it yourself.’

She laughed.

‘You don’t think I could
bear you to touch me otherwise?’

‘Damn you, you’ve a
wicked tongue.’

‘That’s why you want me,’
she said, stretching out on the chair like a cat. ‘You like to be punished. I
know you intellectuals. I’ve had enough of them in my time, you know.’

‘Your time!’

‘Don’t raise your voice,’
she said. ‘Remember the porter, the others.’

‘Damn them!’ he snapped.
‘How old are you anyway? Seventeen?’ He tried to laugh.

‘Older than I look,’ she
replied. ‘Old enough to know all about your kind. You’re such victims, all of
you. There was venom behind the mockery.

‘Be quiet.’

‘Certainly. That’s what
you pay me for, isn’t it? Do you want me to scream when I come?’

‘Be quiet!’ He grabbed
her by the wrist, pulled her from the chair. Her small bones moved under her
skin, and he knew he was hurting her, but still she seemed to be smiling.
Whatever he did, she was still always in control. He held her wrists high above
her head, pushed her towards the bed, flung her down with a brutality which
both satisfied him and wrenched at his heart. Despite that, she landed
gracefully, like a cat; in fact, if he thought about it, he had never seen her
do anything without that natural grace; it was one of her obscure ways of
taunting him.

‘Oh, God …’ he
breathed her name. ‘I’m sorry … I
…
I love you so much. Please…’

The plea died on his
lips. She could do as she liked, this child, could annihilate or exhilarate him
at a whim; hers was the power of fairy tale, that gypsy sensuality which
transcends reason. Her fathomless eyes were tunnels of rain. The light caught
the curve of her neck, a perfect collar-bone, the white dune of a breast. Her
beauty was more than bone-deep, it was eternal, white as the moon. She opened
her arms, and he fell towards her with a long, soundless cry of joy.

She moved underneath him
like a dancer, unconcerned by his touch, but pushed onwards by some strange
unguessed-at lust of her own. Her lips moved over his face, his shoulder. Her
cool hands found his neck. A rictus seized him, half-pleasure, half-pain, like
biting into an unripe fruit …
He felt her lips on his throat. He felt
her teeth on him, small and sharp, her hands holding him firmly down.

‘Ouch! Stop it!’ His
hands were off her body and his legs thrashed with the violence of his
reaction, but still she did not let him go. Close against his flesh he felt her
breath as she laughed. Then, with a sudden
crunch,
she bit. Blood rushed
out as his head lolled; blood soaked the front of his shirt, blood rushed down
the side of the girl’s face and dripped from the stray damp strands of her
hair. He tried to scream, tried to move, but the pain, the movement, the
sensation of her cool body against his, all these were at the end of a dark
tunnel of feeling, receding to a pinpoint of light and heat in the icy dark. He
tried her name; it burst in a bubble of blood and ran down the side of his
shoulder, but he did not feel it. He was alone in the tunnel falling further
and further away … and not unwilling to fall, either; in fact, very glad to
escape from the memory, mercifully fading already, of that last
crunch
which
tore him open like a peach, and the muffled, wet bubbling sound of the girl’s
laughter against him.

When — some time later — she had sated her
appetite, the girl wiped her face fastidiously on the dead man’s handkerchief.
She always washed after meals.

Two

IT WAS NEARLY DARK BY THE TIME THEY
ARRIVED, AND THE street-lamps were lit on Gwydir Street. Alice, watching
upstairs, saw them coming long before they knocked at her door, and she had
time to cast a final glance at her immaculate living-room, to tweak a cushion
here, to straighten a picture there, before she let them in. She was as nervous
as if she were on her first date, she had dressed with more than usual care.
Maybe something inside her wanted Ginny to know she had a rival.

Surely not. Alice
shrugged. She hoped she was not so primitive. But all the same, as the knock
came she took a moment to straighten her hair in front of the mirror and put up
her chin defiantly.

Friends, she thought
furiously to herself. That was all. It had to be all. It had been she who
decided they would be better off living apart. She had no more hold over him,
could not hope to gain any now. So just enjoy it, she thought, as she went to
open the door. Enjoy it if you can.

Joe stood at the door,
flowers in his hands: white roses wrapped in clear, crinkly cellophane paper.
The scent, and the moment, engulfed her.

‘Hello Joe,’ she said
softly, and smiled.

‘Long time,’ he answered
with a grin, and raised his fist to his shoulder in a kind of salute. Then he
looked over his shoulder, almost furtively, and the moment was lost as a figure
emerged from the shadows, a crescent of fiery hair, an arc of light following
the line of a prominent collar-bone, the rest black with shadow.

‘Hey, Alice …

His voice was slightly
unsteady, like that of a child.

‘Alice
…
this
is Ginny.’

The girl stepped out
into the light.

Alice supposed that she
made all the right noises; thanks for the flowers, invitations to come in, to
sit down; polite commonplaces. But all the time, she was covertly looking at
Ginny, taking in every little detail; every line, every hair etched into her
remembrance in sharp little razor cuts of precision.

Imagination was nothing,
she thought to herself.

She had imagined that
she would not be a prey to jealousy, that she would not be primitive, and yet
she had discovered within herself such depths of jealousy and … yes, almost
hatred
that she even frightened herself. She could feel the hairs on the back of
her neck rising.