Bohemian Girl, The (16 page)

‘I feel sympathy for you.’

‘You don’t want me to be cruel.’

They were silent. He could feel the pulse of his own thumb where it rested against her hand, under it the heat of her skin. She said, ‘Why do you live in England?’

He was silent for many seconds. ‘I suppose I prefer to be an outsider.’ He turned his head a little towards her. ‘Like you.’

‘I’m not one by choice. Or I wasn’t to begin with, anyway.’ She put her left hand on his and traced the big veins with her fingers. ‘Did you really kill four men?’ she said.

‘Yes. Plus the one you saw last year.’

‘Do you think about them?’

‘I killed them because I wanted to. Or I chose to - I chose to be marshal in that little town. I chose to be there when he tried to hurt you. I don’t have regrets, if that’s what you mean. My regrets are that somebody has to make such choices.’

‘Why do you mind Albert Cosgrove so much?’

‘Because I hate being spied on! I hate - somebody pushing into my life. It isn’t that I have something to hide - everybody has something to hide. It’s that - it’s like having a room where nobody is supposed to come, a place to retreat to. And that’s where
I
am. Nobody else is supposed to go in there.’

‘Then why can’t you understand when I say the same thing to you?’

‘I’m trying, Janet. It’s as hard for me as I suppose it is for Albert Cosgrove.’

She let her hand rest on his for several seconds. She said, ‘Would you like me to spend the night?’

He spun in the chair. ‘You know I would.’

‘Well—’ She was pulling out the long pins that held her awful hat. ‘You’d better pay off the cab, then.’

Waking, his dream stayed and could be captured: it was the house he had built in Iowa again, the environment of the bad dreams, but this was different, somehow radiant. He woke with a great feeling of contentment, almost triumph, perhaps triumph over the bad dreams of the past. He had been in that house, looking out of the window where he always saw her walking to her death, but this time she wasn’t there. It was his pasture, but it was full of horses; he’d owned only one horse back then, and it had never been in the dream, but here was a field of horses that ran, a kind of joy in their trailing manes and kicked-up tails. He went out - always in these dreams he went out, down to the pasture gate, over the slight rise, and there she would be with the lye jug beside her. But he felt no dread this morning. He walked over the rise and the herd of horses pounded by him, and where she had lain there was only the bleached, clean skeleton of a horse. And he was so grateful.

‘Janet?’ he whispered.

She was there, her bare hip an astonishing presence under his hand. She moved but stayed asleep. Denton lay next to her, revelling in the dream. The surprise of it. Then he heard Atkins coming up from the basement level with the morning tray; he scrambled out of bed, pushed his feet into slippers, realized he was naked - usually, there’d have been a nightshirt - and grabbed a shirt and trousers. Closing the bedroom door behind him, he heard her stir.

He met Atkins halfway up the stairs. He said, ‘Mrs Striker has spent the night.’

Atkins looked at him. He showed no expression. Handing Denton the tray, he said, ‘You’ll need another cup, then,’ and turned and went down the stairs. When Denton went back to the bedroom, she was gone, sounds coming from the bath next door. He put the tray down, ran his furry tongue over his teeth, made a face. Pouring himself a cup of tea, he went down the hall to the extra room and hid there until she came out, then went into the bath and made himself more or less presentable. When he went back into the bedroom, she was standing at the window with a cup of tea, wearing an almost floor-length dressing gown of his over her long body. She said, ‘This is the first time I’ve done this with a man I like. It’s very nice.’

‘“Very nice” doesn’t catch it.’

‘No.’

He stood behind her, pulled her lightly against him, aware that any of the usual behaviours - joking, talking about it, trying for more - were unwise. She said, ‘I don’t know what we do now.’

‘We could marry.’

‘Never. I’ve told you. Not even you.’ The tone was light. ‘I won’t be put in bondage again.’

‘Live together?’

‘It wouldn’t work, Denton. You can’t keep it a secret, and people won’t tolerate what they’d call a scandal. I don’t know why it’s a scandal, two people our ages who like to be together, but it is. People you like would drop you, wouldn’t speak to you.’

‘Do you think I care?’

‘I would, and then you would.’

‘We could go somewhere else.’

‘Yes, Florence is favoured for that sort of thing. Or Deauville. A little expatriate colony of the unchaste. We’d disgust ourselves and each other. Who’s that in your garden? Oh, good heavens, it’s Cohan. I thought for a moment—’

He craned his neck and looked past her. ‘You see how it is when you have an Albert Cosgrove? Always looking behind you.’

She folded her arms over the one of his that was around her waist, then shuddered.

‘What is it?’

‘You and me.’ She broke away. ‘Now I must dress and find a way to face your servant. Can he be trusted?’

‘He’s made his living being trusted.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ She kissed him lightly. ‘Go away while I dress.’

He almost said something about the dress, about all of her clothes - something about his buying her new ones - and wisely stopped himself. His grandmother had often told him to mind his own beeswax. The way Janet looked, dressed, acted, talked, was her own beeswax. The beeswax was in fact, he thought, her poverty, but she would let him into that room only when she was ready.

Anyway, he wanted to think over what she had said about insanity and Albert Cosgrove.

Atkins, of course, was perfect with her. They breakfasted; Denton kissed her; she left.

Two more letters came from Albert Cosgrove that day. The first apologized for the one of two days before; he’d been ‘nervously agitated’ and not himself. Denton wondered what it meant to Albert Cosgrove to be ‘himself’.

The second letter was quite the opposite - angry; it returned to the earlier tone.

Denton turned the letters over to Atkins. ‘Send them to Sergeant Markson at the Met. I can’t be bothered now.’ Albert Cosgrove was more right than he knew, Denton thought - having tried to rewrite his novel too fast, he did feel worn out, rusty and slow.

Atkins was reading the letters. ‘How does he suppose you’d return his slop, even if you had it? He never gives an address.’

‘Maybe it never occurs to him. He wants the book; it should be made to appear.’

‘Like a kiddie with the tit - bawling until it gets stuck in his maw. Bloody loony!’

Denton waved a hand at him to get him out of the room. When Atkins was gone, he sat on, his head leaned on his left hand, staring down at the manuscript -
portrait of the author at his desk, by our artist,
he thought. The morning’s contentment was of course gone. The novel had reached the worst of the marriage, deeply personal scenes that came in good part from his own life and were preserved in the ambers of guilt and humiliation. The morning’s dream, its sense of release, made the writing harder, even the memory of contentment a distraction. And Janet Striker was a distraction, too. Instead of working, he sat and wondered why he was so drawn to her: she wasn’t pretty; she was sometimes distant; she went out of her way not to be compliant. Yet he wanted her - more than any woman in a long time, perhaps ever. She didn’t intend that it would be easy, he knew - although she had asked to stay, had said she wanted to, and had proved so during the night.

When he finally stopped in late afternoon his knees cracked when he stood. He felt dimly light-headed, as if he’d drawn in lungfuls of tobacco smoke. He expected to totter when he walked. It was almost five o’clock.

‘I’m thinking of going out later,’ he said to Atkins. The soldier-servant had picked up the photographic copies of the drawing that they’d found in Mary Thomason’s trunk; despite his telling Munro that the Mary Thomason business was over, he wanted to find somebody to identify the drawing. Ever hopeful, or stupidly persistent? Or obsessed? Or cracked?

‘Best do, unless you want supper from the Lamb.’

‘You could do eggs.’

‘Now, Colonel, we’ve been through this. I don’t mind the odd rasher and eggs at breakfast or a light lunch, but we agreed I don’t cook in the evening.’

‘We did, yes. I thought you might take pity on me.’

‘Got to draw the line somewhere. Give an employer an inch, he’ll take a you-know-what.’

Denton stretched, then bent to touch his toes. He poured himself sherry, sat, said to Atkins, ‘Have some yourself, if you like.’

Atkins shook his head. ‘I’m thinking. Might have stumbled on a new business interest.’ He had been standing there since Denton had come downstairs; pretty clearly, he had something on his mind. Denton hoped it was not about Mrs Striker; he didn’t have time for morals just then. He needn’t have worried, however, because Atkins surprised him by saying, ‘What d’you know about the kinema?’

‘Nothing. What’s there to know? And isn’t it cinema?’

‘We say kinema.’

‘We?’

Atkins cleared his throat and looked at the ceiling. This was a learned behaviour, the source East End melodrama - Making a Reluctant Suggestion. ‘Pal of mine has bought himself a kinema machine.’

Denton made a face at the sherry. He could guess what Atkins was leading up to. Atkins had a weakness for new technologies, what he called ‘business opportunities for a chap with vision’, into which he’d put small amounts of money, hoping for a big return that never materialized. ‘What happened to the vacuum cleaner?’

Before they had gone off to Transylvania, Atkins had got involved in a hand-pumped machine that looked like an oversized clyster and had been supposed to replace the broom. Now, Atkins said, ‘The enterprise died while we was away and I wasn’t here to manage it. Boon to women, but they complained they was getting muscles like a barrel-lapper from using it. Two housemaids developed elbows and had to have medical attention. Under threat of lawsuit, the firm dissolved.’

‘So now it’s cinema.’

‘Yes, well, yes - chap has a first-class Polish picture-taking machine, needed a bit of cash to grease the skids, as it were. Him and me are thinking of making what’s called a kinema picture.’

‘You’re going to make a moving picture?’

‘Something up to date and educational, yes.’

Denton put his chin in his hands. ‘What?’

‘The war. The Boer War, that is.’

‘It isn’t over yet.’

‘As good as. Anyway, it don’t have to be over. Point is to show it. Thrilling.’

‘The war’s been on for more than three years. How long will your picture last?’

‘I say five minutes, but my pal says we can’t get that much film in the machine, so maybe it’ll be two.
I
think five would be a sensation. ’

‘Makes the war a little compressed.’

‘Well, the high points. You know.’ Atkins cleared his throat again.

‘We thought we’d borrow some uniforms here and there, pick up some rifles at the markets. Can’t tell a Martini from a Baker at any distance, after all. Blank charges. Dozen men, maybe, let them run about, shoot off the rifles, they can be British troops one day, Boers the next - put the Boers in old clothes and Oom Paul beards and soft hats, can’t beat that for convincingness.’ When Denton said nothing, he added, ‘We’re looking for a cannon. Put a quarter pound of black powder in the snout, let the Boers run about, huge explosion - that’s the siege of Mafeking. Well?’

‘There’s a reason you’re telling me this.’

‘I, mm, thought you might allow us to, ah, make use of the front door.’

‘As what? Pretoria?’

Atkins chuckled the way adults chuckle at small children. ‘As the scene of the housemaid and the soldier. Idea of my own. Stunned my pal. I said, let’s put in something that the people watching will understand is like themselves. Well - The Soldier’s Farewell, eh? Our front door - pretty housemaid - there’s one up the street who’d be a marvel for it - soldier in his uniform - she waves - off he goes - eh? Then all the scenes of the war. Then - The Soldier’s Return! Our front door - the maid, looking out - he appears! - has a stick - limps - embrace! I call it a frame - around the picture. What d’you think?’