Weekend (11 page)

A woman he had never seen before was walking into the bar, as if it were open and full of people. He thought perhaps he was hallucinating. She was certainly dressed for an occasion which wasn’t now. Was she the ghost of the hotel? If she was, he was pleased to meet her. But surely no ghost ever had flesh that was so sweetly solid against the light. In the completely unimagined suddenness of the moment, he felt something he had trained himself for years not to feel. He felt desire for a woman. It happened in him before he had time to reason with it. By the time the woman went to the end of the bar and turned, and he realised that he had seen her before, it was too late. It was no longer his sense of himself that was meeting her. It was a part of him that sense had for so long denied. Something in him, so patiently domesticated, had snapped its chain. When he spoke, his words sounded, even to himself, more growl than speech.

‘Vikki,’ he said. ‘You look amazing.’

It wasn’t the kind of thing he said. The strangeness of the words was like an alternative self speaking. But that self was out now and in control.

‘Dr Lawson,’ she said.

‘Andrew,’ he said, as if naming himself for the first time.

There was a pause.

‘Andrew,’ she said, almost submissively.

‘I was looking for a drink,’ he said, and was pleased to hear he had made no attempt to conceal what he was doing. ‘Whisky.’

‘I don’t have that,’ she said. ‘Wine, though. I have some wine.’

‘You do? Where?’

‘In the room.’

‘I can adapt,’ he said.

She hesitated.

‘Lead on, Vikki.’

She turned and began to walk out of the bar. He followed her. As they came out and turned towards the foyer and the staircase, he noticed that the light in the lounge was out. Mickey Deans and Kate Foster must have gone to bed. Together or separately? he wondered. But he felt no envy at the moment.

As they went up the staircase, he put his hand on her arm. He hoped it looked as if he was helping her in a gentlemanly way but he knew it was an act of possession and he enjoyed that it was. She didn’t object. Outside her room she stopped. She seemed to be having doubts.

‘Marion’s asleep,’ she said. ‘Marion Gibson. I’m sharing with her.’

‘You want
me
to get the wine?’

He hoped she wouldn’t say yes.

‘No, no. You don’t even know where it is.’

But she seemed uncertain. She looked at him. He made a drinking gesture with his cupped hand.

‘I’ll try to pass it out to you quietly,’ she whispered, as if her voice was practising the stealth her body would need.

‘Pass it out? Vikki. The idea’s to have a dorm feast. I’ve got some biscuits. You wouldn’t ask a man to drink a bottle of wine alone? You’ll be back before she wakes up, all right.’

Vikki giggled and tentatively opened the door, grimacing. As he waited for her, he relished how a dead night had turned into a small adventure. She passed a bottle of wine out to him and disappeared. He was dismayed until he noted that the door was still open. Presumably she was coming back. He glanced at the label. It was an anonymous Chardonnay but the company might improve the vintage. She emerged with two more bottles of wine and her handbag. He took another bottle from her to prevent the clinking of glass. She closed the door.

‘I don’t have a corkscrew,’ he said conspiratorially.

She held up her handbag and widened her eyes.

It had been as simple as that. Watching her lying asleep in his bed, he couldn’t believe how easily it had happened. They had slept together two nights now. But who had been sleeping with her? It wasn’t anybody he recognised. Was he the same man who had sat in his house yesterday, thinking of his wife?

The name Jekyll itself further disperses the reader’s ability to locate any fixed moral centre in the text. If these narrow, cackling syllables connote anything, it must be jackal. And the jackal is not only an animal but a scavenger. Something that haunts the edges of the kill. Feeding off the savagery of other creatures. Long before the advent of Hyde, Henry Jekyll (‘He was wild when he was young’) has come to acknowledge the
animal impulses in himself, to accept that ‘man is not truly one, but truly two’.

Andrew Lawson’s voice made Marion think of herself. What she had done at the Free-for-all tonight had been like another person suddenly emerging from some hidden place in her to declare that this, as well, was Marion Gibson.

Enter Edward Hyde. Like part of some unnatural compact between the jackal and the lion, personal purveyor of ferocities off which Henry Jekyll may feed. For Hyde is the animal almost, if not quite, pure. The truth is, just as Henry Jekyll is part social man, part bundle of asocial impulses, so Edward Hyde is hybrid too. The aftermath of the early incident of the trampling of the child shows that he can act with great social circumspection when necessary. The animality of his nature is diluted by social pressures. The loose entity that is Jekyll—Hyde is neither quite one thing nor the other – neither sheerly social man nor sheerly animal.

It was a dead calm in the middle of a storm of words. He sensed her sitting behind him, watching. He told himself he must not get angry again.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, as he unscrewed the bottle-top.

She said nothing. He filled his glass. He turned and walked towards her with what he hoped was that expression of boyish shamefacedness women had innocently taught him they liked. He filled her glass. She watched him go back to the desk and put the top back on the bottle. He took his glass and went and sat on the bed again. He took a sip of wine. She studied him. He looked nice sitting there. She had enjoyed his anger, too. The flaring eyes. Those eyes.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think maybe I could get used to being with you.’ (For a few months anyway.)

He smiled at the floor.

‘Same here,’ he said. ‘With you.’ (But a fakir gets used to a bed of nails.)

He sighed.

‘The thing about it is,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to come, you know.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Sandra. She didn’t want to come here. A place was arranged for her and everything. She was supposed to be coming. Then she reneged at the last minute.’

His voice faded away but she recognised the bait it had left trailing behind it. She decided not to take it. Suddenly he wanted to talk about Sandra. That was dangerous. It was all right to demystify her sacred name but to make her a significant presence in the room with them would leave no space for herself. Digression time.

‘I can’t say I blame her.’

‘What?’

‘No, no. I can see how anybody would want to be with you. I just mean this place. Willowvale. It’s a crap place. A pile of
old rubble passing as a building. Why not bulldoze it and build a modern hotel?’

‘That’s a bit extreme.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He was suddenly animated and looking at her directly. It was interesting how a neutral issue had reconnected them. With the image of Sandra out of the way, they could see each other clearly.

‘I heard so much about it,’ she said. Kate’s few references were hardly a history of the place but how was he to know? She decided to go for it. The more she talked, the quieter Sandra might be in his head. It was supposed to be an amazing place. I wasn’t at the lecture when Andrew Lawson told them about it. But now that I see the place, I’m glad. Kate Foster was full of it. Ghosts and crap. It’s just a place where the past keeps getting in the way. The plumbing sounds medieval. You know the male students don’t even have an en-suite? I don’t know why they put up with it. It’s a cranky place made by a crank. And gargoyles, for God’s sake. Have you seen them? What are they supposed to be? References from past guests? Photos from old summer holidays? This is us at Willowvale. You can see how much we enjoyed ourselves.’

He was smiling.

‘The lectures have been all right. Especially yours. I enjoyed yours the most.’

He seemed to understand her feeling.

‘But what a place. And I haven’t even seen the ghost.’

He was nodding.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve always liked coming here.’ He noticed her raised eyebrows. ‘Come on. Behave yourself. I mean because of the place.’ Banter already. ‘Oddly enough,
basically for the same reasons that you hate it. I know what Andrew’s on about. But he’s a terrible old romantic. I see what you mean. But.’ He was going into lecture mode. She could sense him almost reaching out for a lectern to hold on to. ‘It’s the absurdity of this place that makes it worth visiting. It’s a lesson in living. Muldoon, the man who built it, is a parable. The parable … of the foolish non-virgin.’ He seemed to like that. ‘This is such a pretentious crock of shit that it tells us to go forth and do otherwise. It’s Victorian egotism cast in stone. Every time I come I’m confirmed in the way I live my own life. Nothing cast in stone. Everything’s relative.’ Like fidelity, perhaps. ‘Don’t look out for certainties. Look out for yourself.’

She would.

‘God, yes,’ she said. ‘I can see what you mean.’ (And so much for Sandra.)

But it wasn’t quite.

‘But Sandra likes this place. I don’t know why she didn’t come. I tried to persuade her. I wanted her to come.’ (You see how close we are?) ‘And then she appears tonight. I don’t understand it. Why?’

Maybe it was cheaper than hiring a private detective.

‘You see where I am, Jacqui?’ (If you do, I’m doing something wrong.) ‘I mean, she was weird on Thursday night. Nothing I said could persuade her. She’s never been like that before.’

He stopped, staring intensely ahead. He looked so genuinely stunned that she didn’t want to break in on him. She didn’t know how to play it, so she waited. He
was
genuinely stunned. His performance had stumbled into a truth. Sandra had never been like that before. The reason the truth of this hadn’t struck him until now was that he had been so pleased
she wasn’t coming. He hadn’t bothered to wonder about her motives too much. She said she had work to do, and that was fine. He couldn’t believe his luck, so he didn’t question it in case it changed. At that time Veronica was supposed to be coming. And what had happened to her? He began to wonder if there was anyone he could trust. Sandra had been really weird on Thursday night. She was too casual about not coming. She put him off too glibly. ‘You go and enjoy yourself.’ She had been hiding something. He couldn’t believe she would do that to him. But what had she been hiding? One thing he knew: it wasn’t another man. How could it be? And why come on Saturday? Could she really have been setting him up? Well, if that was the game she wanted to play, she had her result. He hoped she enjoyed it. She should have left well enough alone. He thought he knew what the problem must be with Veronica. Of course. She had thought Sandra was coming. He hadn’t phoned to tell her she would have him to herself. She probably couldn’t bear to be around to watch him and Sandra playing at happy families. He should have been more considerate. But he could sort that out. He would.

‘Anybody in?’ she said.

He looked at her as if he was surprised to find her still there.

The surprise was real. He saw her as isolated as a painting:
Woman Sitting in a Chair
. It was some painting. It was her apparent unawareness of the effect she was having that made her compelling. She was wearing the short black satin dress he had noticed earlier this evening. He imagined everybody must have noticed it. When she walked, it had made a series of lewd suggestions, hinted at the delicious curve of her arse, the sweet weight of her breasts. The dress had not been lying, as he had found when she pulled it off in one sweeping revelation.
Welcome to the pleasure garden. Now she sat with her right leg carelessly extended, her left arm over the back of her chair, her wine-glass in her right hand. The thick black hair was a careless tangle, evidence that she hadn’t bothered to erase of what they had been doing earlier. (No wonder Sandra’s rage had been instantaneous.) She hadn’t put her bra back on. The neckline of the dress was distorted by her posture so that one firm breast was visible almost to the nipple. Her face, bold with makeup, looked arrogantly lovely. Her left leg, bent naturally in sitting, had pulled the ruffled material of the dress up her stretched right thigh. The tautness of the cloth made a darkness between her legs. He knew she was naked up there where the dark hair was, the only burning bush he believed in.

‘Anyway,’ he said, trying to distract himself. ‘You can see why I’m preoccupied. There’s things here I have to work out.’ (Like, why the hell did Sandra come anyway?)

‘Oops,’ the woman had said.

The word kept surfacing in her mind, as if her memory were burping. Oops. It suggested nothing more than a trivial accident, like the breaking of a cup rather than the disruption of a life, and maybe that’s what the whole thing was – a series of small mishaps.

She had been so late in deciding to come that she was sure she would miss the ferry, but she felt compelled to try to make it. Fortunately – as she had thought then – the ferry was delayed. The delay turned into hours. The rumours that circulated among the prospective passengers hinted nervously at some kind of technical failure, which they were trying to
rectify. Some people went away, perhaps thinking the delay was a bad omen. Others remained vociferously present, expressing their need to travel that night and apparently believing that the louder they talked the more seaworthy the ferry was likely to become. Crisis made for comradeship among them and, by the time they sailed into the darkness, a man with his car on the ferry had offered to drive her to Willowvale.

When she arrived there, everything was quiet. Gordon Mitchell, the owner of the hotel, was looking for something behind the desk in the foyer. They recognised each other from the visit she had made two years ago with the students, when they had talked together quite a lot. She liked him and she was surprised that he seemed less than effusive towards her. She had assumed that it was because he was preoccupied in looking for something. Now she wondered if he couldn’t meet her directly because he had been hiding something. When he told her the number of David’s room, he made a point of adding that a group had gone out for a late stroll along the shore, and it was possible that David was with them. He wasn’t sure but it was possible. If David’s room was locked, he could give her another key.