The Missing World (35 page)

Two women talking across the counter turned to include him. “Someone got caught in the rain,” said the customer.

“Darling, have you got far to go?” chimed in the shopkeeper.

“Just round the corner.” He remembered asking Felicity why, in the land of the stiff upper lip, shopkeepers were so effusive, all “love” this and “darling” that. Sales talk, she’d said. They think you’ll buy more.

Outside the rain was picking up. The phone would be ringing tomorrow, people complaining about their gutters and bays. And a good thing, too, he thought, with all these mouths to feed.

“You can have the money,” he’d told her, “but he isn’t ready to be weaned.”

“You never gave things between us a chance,” Felicity
hissed back, and he realised this would be their final encounter. Why else was she spouting clichés?

“You’re great,” he had said, joining in. “I didn’t deserve you.” Which made even Felicity wince. She rushed inside and reappeared with Arkansas. “Every penny,” she had said, slamming the door again.

He dodged a pothole, already filling with water, and glanced across the street; the door was shut, the living-room curtains closed, the house, each vivid brick of it, sealed against him. His legs slowed as he contemplated all he’d lost. For the last year, Felicity’s vigorous opinions, energy, and ambitions had shaped his days and nights, and now there wasn’t even a chance of friendship. Like Mrs. Craig, she’d seen right through him. And what the heck was he doing with Charlotte, anyway?

When he reached the van, she opened the door. “Lucozade,” she said. “Great.”

“How’s Arkansas?”

“You’re wet. So far, so good. He’s got sharp teeth.”

“Let’s put him on the floor.”

He spread the
Standard
at her feet and set the puppy down. Arkansas whimpered, scratched the paper, and started to chew Charlotte’s laces. Freddie closed the door, feeling the rain on his face. He saw himself at the playground in Cincinnati, sitting at the top of the long, glittering slide, heading inexorably to—where else?—the couch. He saw Roy Harper flying through the air. I’m sliding, he thought, can’t help it. Only Hazel, with her luminous gaze, could save him. Then—he had no notion how—he was in the driver’s seat, the engine knocking slightly from the cheap gas. Sometimes it seemed almost blasphemous, the way machines became one with you.

“Freddie, are you all right?”

Charlotte’s shadowy face was indecipherable, but not her hand on his arm, the affection in her voice. The dread, the dread
had made him do it—and her too, so now what? The answer hovered over the lighted dashboard. They must find Hazel. Charlotte had appeared at his door as an ally.

“Felicity wasn’t at all like what I expected,” she said.

“Tell me.” He leaned over to fasten her seat belt. “Once we’re out of here.” At the first intersection he turned, without consultation, towards Hazel’s. “What about her?”

Charlotte hesitated. “For some reason I thought she was black.”

“She is, at the other end of the spectrum from me. In America it would be weird, her passing without meaning to. Here it’s pretty much a non-issue.”

“And all those operatic gestures—flinging her arms, tossing her head. Once, I couldn’t quite see, but I think she even stamped her foot, like someone in a fairy tale.” They passed a fish-and-chip shop with a line outside. “Was she okay about the dog?”

“I guess.” He felt her watching. “Not really. Even though I promised her the money, she was still mad.”

“Amazing,” Charlotte exclaimed. “On the steps of that church three women were wearing kimonos and carrying umbrellas. Arkansas was a connection between you. Now it’s gone.”

“Were they Japanese? She doesn’t want any connection. As far as she’s concerned, I’m lower than a dog turd.”

Something landed on his shoulder: Charlotte’s head. “Freddie, you’re so myopic. No, they were dumpy white women. I’m sure they’re a good omen.”

“Omen,” he repeated, and suddenly he was back on the sidewalk outside Plantworks with Maud and Mrs. Craig. One minute they were talking, more or less cordially. The next, Littleton showed up, eyes flashing. And a few hours later, he’d
glimpsed Hazel, forlorn at the window. She can’t marry him, he thought. Whatever it takes. For an instant he wished Felicity were sitting beside him. How she would rant and rave at Littleton, blow his arguments out of the water. “Excuse me,” he said. Leaning forward to wipe the windshield, he managed to dislodge Charlotte.

Hazel returned from Mrs. Craig’s, trailing the fragrance of lavender. “Where’s Maud?” she asked and barely seemed to register his reply that she’d had to leave.

“Oh well.” She blinked slowly and gave a small yawn. “I’m going straight to bed after supper.”

In the half hour since Maud pedalled away, Jonathan had been rehearsing his counterattack: she’d finally gone off the rails, shown herself so vicious and untrustworthy that he’d told her not to come again. But there seemed no immediate need to deliver it. Perhaps Hazel had already forgotten her indiscretion. He noticed that her back was straighter and, mysteriously, her breasts fuller: could massage accomplish all that? The crescent of desire Maud had etched on the evening waxed. “I picked up some haddock,” he said, “and new potatoes.”

“Probably from Cyprus.” She raised her arms over her head. “Can I do anything?”

“Keep me company,” he ventured, and to his delight she pulled out a chair and sat down.

She fingered the edge of the table. “You know, I do feel much better. Maybe we needn’t worry so much about my being alone. Mrs. Craig was saying she’s home a lot, if you’re out and I need something.”

“That’s very kind of her.” He rinsed the potatoes under the tap. Beneath the dirt their skins glowed with pearly light. She was talking as if everything was all right, as if, finally, she
accepted their relationship. What a fool he’d been, trying to keep the flat secret. Did he think this was some spy film? No wonder Hazel had been furious. But fury, he knew, could pass.

He put the potatoes on to boil and set Hazel to slicing tomatoes. “I checked the bees while you were with Mrs. Craig. They’re already foraging in two of the hives.”

“Isn’t that earlier than last year?”

“Ten days. We had that cold snap last May, just when they ought to get started.” He held out the fish. “I thought I’d fry it in lemon and butter. How does that sound?”

“Delicious. Shall we open some wine?”

“But you’re not drinking.”

“I wasn’t planning to go mad, but a glass would be nice.”

So there was wine and food and the narcissi Maud had brought—pheasant’s eye, Hazel called them—and Hazel smelling of lavender. How could he help himself? Over supper they reminisced about the summer Steve and Diane had rented a house in Lewes and they’d gone down to celebrate the solstice. The fish made Hazel think of it. Steve had cooked mackerel for supper, she said, clearly pleased with her recall, baked with lemon and peppers. Afterwards, under a burly sky, they had climbed onto the Downs and walked across the short thistly grass past the Roman temple until, from a windswept ledge, they were gazing down on the roofs of Glyndebourne. Later, at the station, the platform had been swarming with people in evening dress carrying ugly plastic picnic coolers. Jonathan had been proud of Hazel in her flowery dress and trainers.

“Would you like something else?” he asked. “I got a nice piece of Camembert.”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid the wine has done me in.”

“Did you take your pills?”

“Earlier.” She carried her plate to the sink. In the doorway,
looking down the hall, she paused. “We did love each other, didn’t we?”

Before he could correct her tenses, she was gone.

He washed the dishes, then forced himself to remain at the table, leafing through a biography of Brother Adam, the famous Dorset beekeeper. Last time, he admitted, had been premature—she had been far from well—but tonight was perfect. She no longer needed help with the stairs, and what else was her parting remark but an invitation? He raised his glass to Hazel, and emptied it.

After putting the chain on the front door, he tiptoed upstairs. Her room was reassuringly quiet. He undressed in the spare room and on impulse—why not give her a little longer?—decided to take a bath. As he ran the sandalwood soap over his arms and legs, he thought, this time I’ll tell her that I love her. I won’t let the words go unspoken, not even for a few more hours. Bathed, he approached the basin. When he and Hazel were first together, he had shaved nightly; now, swishing the razor in the water, watching his reflected face lose its shadow, he remembered the passion and ingenuity of those early, hopeful days.

He came to her naked and found her asleep in pyjamas.

“Hazel,” he whispered, slipping beneath the duvet. She stirred and he kissed her neck. He removed her pyjama bottoms and she shifted helpfully from side to side; perhaps being in hospital had habitualised her to such activities. He sighed at the touch of her. Feeling her flesh against his own, he thought, this is enough, I’ll sleep with my arms round her, breathe in her breath. And for a few minutes, it was. Then desire flared again.

He reached between her legs, his fingers moving over the coarse hair. At first, when he felt the cord, he thought it was some part of the pyjamas left behind. Of course. So her breasts
really had been fuller. Perfect. Hazel, the old Hazel, had always been particularly receptive at her time of the month. How indignant she had been when he told her that menstruating women were believed to have a bad effect on the bees. Carefully he looped his finger round and tugged. Nothing. He felt a twinge of panic. What if it got stuck, or disintegrated? He pulled again, steadily increasing the pressure. All at once the pressure was gone but Hazel was waking. Quickly he dropped the tampon over the side of the bed and reached for the lubricant.

“Hazel, I love you. We’re making love. This is what you want, now that you’re well.”

He was over her and, proud of his skill, inside. She was looking up at him. He could see her eyes in the gloom. “Jonathan,” she murmured.

“Hazel.” He bent to kiss her, moved into her, drew back. “Darling.”

Suddenly, as if she had been dreaming with her eyes open and only now was fully awake to what was happening, she was screaming. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”—words a child might say.

He was in the foothills, close to that final ascent but still in control. God, how sweet.

“No.” Her hands pushing at his chest.
“Stop!”

Her voice beat on. He forgot the meaning and thought of the sound, the screaming urgency, so like that of sex. Closing his eyes, he moved with the rhythm of her cries, adjusting to the rise and fall. Briefly another noise caught his ear, a vague scraping sound, neighbours in the street outside. He bore down, entering a space where neither time nor history existed.

Hazel’s hands kept pushing against him as he pressed deeper and deeper, further and further, into that region of bliss. He was there, almost there. “I love you,” he said.

chapter 21

Jonathan felt cold air on his back, a touch on his shoulder. Then, incomprehensibly, hands were gripping him. He was out of Hazel, lifted off her, and pulled upright onto his knees. Someone—he caught a whiff of orange—was holding his arms. But I chained the door, he thought. We’re about to die. He imagined the press of metal against his spine, a knife skimming his throat. The light came on and he glimpsed that the hands holding him were black.

“He’s hurt her,” said a man’s voice. “She’s bleeding.”

For a moment, in a daze of fear and fucking, Jonathan thought so too; his cock was crimson and the sheet bloomed. Hazel herself, pyjama jacket open, pale bare legs drawn close, was crouched against the pillows, her eyes fixed on him. “Stop it,” she whispered.

“No,” said another voice. “It’s the other kind of blood.”

Incredulous, he recognised the actress and then, from the black hands and American accent, the roofer. His heart, so recently hammering out the rhythm of love, ricocheted between terror and anger. He had been on the very edge, at last, of fusing with Hazel; minute by minute, movement by
movement, she had been growing closer. Now she was further away than ever. “Let me go,” he said, trying to pull free.

The roofer’s grip neither tightened nor loosened. Jonathan wondered if he had indeed struggled or spoken. This is not a dream. A drop of bloody liquid fell from the tip of his cock onto the sheet below.

“Hazel,” said the actress, “it’s all right. We’re here, Charlotte and Freddie.”

Jonathan stared at her. She was wearing her usual coat and black leggings, but in some mysterious way she looked entirely different. As she dragged the duvet from the foot of the bed, he registered the change. From the word go, Charlotte had made it clear she fancied him, all those fluttering eyelashes and flirtatious smiles as they haggled about money. Now she stepped past him as if he were a twelve-stone parcel, and bent to wrap the duvet around Hazel. Then the bitch passed him again. From his back came a grating noise. Of course, that sound a few minutes or centuries ago had been the window opening.

A switch turned in his brain and Jonathan grasped the full indignity of his position: naked, still partly erect, in a room full of strangers. The man, the roofer, was motionless; why didn’t he speak? Once again fear flickered at the edges of Jonathan’s consciousness. Was it possible his first apprehension had been correct, that this was a life-threatening situation? The newspapers were always reporting that most violent crimes occurred between people who knew one another.

“Let go of me,” he cried again. “I’ll report you for breaking and entering with aggravated assault.”

A swift jerk was the only response, and he was lifted off the bed until he was standing. The roofer yanked his arms back even more tightly, like a prisoner’s. Meanwhile, Charlotte bent to pick something off the floor. The pyjama bottoms.

“Here.” She handed them to Hazel and, the final violation, climbed onto the bed beside her.

My place
, thought Jonathan. “For god’s sake, this is an outrage.” He didn’t even bother to try to wrest free. “Let me get a dressing gown and we’ll sort this out.”