Closed Circle (20 page)

"We know what we believe, surely." She turned slowly to look at me, waiting for me to state my credo, waiting to judge whether it coincided with hers. "The pleasures are always worth the risks. Without them, what is life?"

She did not reply, but stared at me for a moment in solemn contemplation, then turned and walked away. With a last glance at Lotto's questing youth, I followed.

We lunched at a trattoria on the Zattere, smiling often but saying little as we sipped champagne and let the sunlight thrown up by the Giudecca Canal warm us to the marrow. Afterwards, we strolled towards Customs House Point, Diana often moving ahead, as if determined to give me every opportunity to watch the breeze moulding her lilac dress to her body. A silence had fallen between us, turning the warmth of the afternoon to a burning pitch of expectancy. It was not yet too late to turn back, but we both knew we would not.

We reached the Point and gazed across the mouth of the Grand Canal at the campanile and the Doge's Palace. Crowds were bustling back and forth along the Molo, but, on our side, solitude seemed all about us.

"Shall we go back to the villa?" I asked, noticing Diana glance in the direction of the Lido.

"Yes," she replied, not looking at me as she spoke. "I think it's time we did."

"We could find a bar and phone for the speed-boat."

"No use. I gave Giacomo the rest of the day off. Bianca and Carlotta too." Then she did look at me. "There's nobody there."

We summoned a water taxi and were at the Lido in what seemed like minutes, walking up from the villa's private landing-stage through the soundless greenery of the garden. Diana turned a key in a lock and admitted us to the empty arena she had prepared, the half-shuttered windows casting angled columns of light across the peacock-patterned rugs, the varnished wood of the balustrade, the burnished brass of the stair-rods.

We reached her bedroom, where she threw the French windows open and stood for a moment on the balcony, gazing down into the garden. Then she turned and walked back to where I was waiting. I took her in my arms and we kissed for the first time since the night of the opera.

"Stop me mourning, Guy," she whispered. "I can't be cold any more."

Suddenly, all was scrambling eagerness: silk sliding across pale skin, fingers touching and exploring, lips brushing and urging. We were naked on the bed, cool linen against soft flesh, as the curtains billowed in the breeze and the sunlight splashed across us in a golden flood. For a single moment, we stared into each other's eyes, confronting the needs and weaknesses the act we were about to commit would expose.

"Don't stop, Guy. Please don't stop."

"I couldn't. Not now."

"I'm yours." She pressed my hand to her breast and I felt the nipple stiffen against my fingers. "All yours."

And so she was, her beauty magnified now every curve and crease of it was mine to caress. What I had done countless times before with prostitutes in Salonika, with wide-eyes factory girls in Letchworth, with whimpering starlets in Los Angeles hotels was transcended and forgotten that afternoon at the Villa Primavera. Possession and triumph fused in the pleasure we took from each other. And heightening our pleasure was the unspoken admission that what we were doing was wrong, beyond the bounds, deliriously unforgivable.

"Yes, yes," she murmured as I thrust into her and felt her legs join behind my back. "It's so good."

"Better," I panted in reply. "Better than good."

It was better, indeed, than either of us deserved or should have permitted, the bed creaking beneath us unnoticed, the sweat streaking our hair, the linen crumpling as we rocked and moaned. Her words in my ear and her tongue in my mouth drove me on past the point where dreams become flesh, and betrayal of self and others, of secret wishes and blatant desires joins in the frenzied climax.

"Yes," proclaimed as in victory.

"For you," declared in the teeth of the truth.

And then the slow fall back to earth, the spasm over, the flesh cooling, the bodies parting, the eyes staring in disbelief at what we had just allowed to happen.

"I never.. never thought.. ."

"Nor me. But now... I see..."

"It had to be."

Her head fell against my shoulder, I wrapped my arm around her, the smoothness of her skin seeping into my thoughts as something conquered, something joyously stolen and never to be given up. Her knee nestled between my legs, the sunlight falling in dust-mo ted splendour across the hummock of her hip and thigh. I pulled the sheet up to cover us, kissed her lightly on the brow and closed my eyes, savouring in my memory every sensation I

had experienced since entering the room, every fragment and facet of the prize I had won.

I stirred, as from a brief slumber, puzzled by a darkness across the bed, a shadow where there should not have been one. I glanced towards the window, wondering how long I had slept. And then I saw him: a motionless figure clad in black, watching us from the centre of the room. I blinked, but he did not vanish. I had seen him often enough in my dreams, but now I was not dreaming.

"Max?"

He was on us like a creature pouncing, grabbing at the sheet and pulling it off us in one movement. Diana woke instantly and rolled clear of me, a scream choking in her throat as she saw him looming above us, mouth twisted in fury, eyes blazing in hatred.

"Max, for God's He hit me as I made to rise, a swinging blow to the chin that jolted my head back against the brass rail behind me.

"No!" shrieked Diana.

"Bitch? Max roared at her, hauling me from the bed and pushing me against the wall. "I'll finish with you after I've dealt with my so-called friend." His eyes were bulging, his face twitching, sweat wriggling down his temple. "You bastard!" he bellowed. Then his knee slammed violently into my groin. Agony jolted through me with sickening intensity. He caught me as I fell forward and levered me back upright again. "I'll make you pay for your pleasure, old man."

"Max," I said, the sound distorted by his grip on my jaw. "Listen to me, please. Just '

"You listen! Did you think you could deceive me? Did you really think I wouldn't realize what you'd done? That I wouldn't follow you every step of the way until I had the final proof? The proof of why you helped brand me a murderer."

He kneed me again and the pain seared into me with blinding force. I could frame no answer to his accusations, summon no resistance to his rage. "It was for this, wasn't it, you treacherous bastard?"

"Leave him alone," cried Diana. She had rounded the bed and was tugging in vain at Max's shoulders. "In God's name, Max, stop!"

"I'll stop, all right." He let go of me for as long as it took to fling Diana back across the bed. "I'll stop when he's had what he deserves." His hands closed round my throat. "How much do you know, Guy? How much has she told you?" His grasp was tightening, squeezing the breath out of me as he clearly meant to squeeze out the life. "Not that it matters. Ignorance is no excuse for what you've done to me." I tried to speak, but no words came. I tried to pull his hands away, but could not loosen his hold. "I don't care about the rest. It's this I'm going to kill you for. It's this I'm going to finish before I deal with '

A sudden splintering crash cut through his voice. His grip slackened. His mouth sagged, his gaze slipped out of focus. Diana had hit him above the left ear with the ewer from the wash-stand. I saw the china spout clasped in her hands, the shards of its smashed body falling at her feet. Then Max toppled slowly sideways onto the bed and rolled with a thud onto the floor. My momentary relief was swamped by fear. He had been told often enough and so had I that any blow to the left side of his head could be fatal. The bullet-wound he had suffered in Macedonia had left a patch of skull wafer-thin and permanently vulnerable. If it were ever struck

"Max?" I knelt down beside him, one thought driving out all others. I did not want him to die like this. I did not want his last words to be ones of loathing for me his best, oldest and least faithful friend. "Are you all right? Max, speak to me." But only the whites of his eyes were visible. The lids did not flicker. Nor did his lips stir. I slapped his cheek, but there was no response. "Max?" I pressed two fingers into the soft flesh beneath his jaw-bone, searching for the pulse but finding none.

"What's the matter?" Diana asked, crouching beside me.

"I think .. . I'm afraid .. ." I tore at his shirt, scattering buttons in all directions, and lowered my head to his chest. There was no sound in my ear, no rise and fall beneath me. "Oh my God, he's dead."

"He can't be. I didn't.. . couldn't have .. ."

"You hit him just about where the bullet struck." Our eyes met, all passion drained away, with only horror to take its place. Everything we had done in that room every breathless writhing was corrupted and denounced by the lifeless figure beside us. "He was warned to protect that side of his head, to be careful at all times. Like an egg-shell, the doctors told him. Easy ... to crack."

"Dead?" There was incredulity in her voice, a wish nearly equal to my own not to believe it was true.

I nodded and looked down at Max, his face calm now, almost peaceful. Into my mind flashed a cumulative recollection of him smiling, glass in hand, as we celebrated lucrative bets and successful swindles down the years. There were tears flowing down my cheeks. It was all I could do not to sob. Why could he not sit up and grin and offer me a cigarette? "Good joke, eh, old man? No hard feelings." Why could I not retrieve and alter the last mad moments of our friendship?

Diana rose and stumbled to the door. It was standing half-open, as Max had left it. He must have followed us into the villa through the garden, I dimly supposed. He must have crept up the stairs and heard us, may even have tip-toed into the room and watched. She took a bath-robe from a hook behind the door and wrapped it round herself, shuddering as she did so. "Phone the police," I heard myself say.

"Oh Guy .. ."

"Just go and 'phone them!" My vehemence shocked her. I saw the reaction in her wide-eyed stare. "I'm sorry. Please do it. Now. Before ..." I could not finish the sentence any more than I could bear to envisage what lay ahead.

Diana was gone. With shaking fingers, I closed Max's eyes and stood slowly up, struggling to order my thoughts and control my emotions. The tears had stopped, but the trembling was worse. I stepped carefully past Max and leant heavily against the brass bedstead as a wave of nausea came and went. Then I gathered up my discarded clothes and scrambled into them. From below, I heard Diana's voice on the telephone. "La polizia? Per favore, venite subito alia Villa Primavera, Via Pasqua, Venezia Lido." I felt suddenly sorry for her, sorry for the guilt she must feel that was properly mine. stato un incidente." An accident, she called it. But was it? A pure and unadulterated accident? "Qualcuno e mono."I Somebody was dead. Yes, somebody was. And part of me with him.

I lowered myself on to the edge of the bed and stared down at Max's body, wondering what I would say when the police arrived, how I would explain what had happened. It would all have been so different if we had never boarded the Empress of Britain, if I had never rushed to Vita's rescue, if Max and I had never made that foolish bargain. Then I remembered the contracts we had exchanged, the undertakings we had put our names to. They would find Max's copy when they searched him, with my signature on it.

The one secret I had managed to preserve would be uncovered. Diana would know me for the scoundrel I was. And Max's memory would be blackened still further.

He was wearing no jacket, only a shirt and trousers. Pushing my hand under his right hip, I felt the bulge of a wallet in the pocket. I tugged the button free, dragged the wallet out and opened it. There, at the back of a crumpled wad of lira notes, was the sheet of thick vellum paper I instantly recognized, folded into four. I pulled it out and clumsily transferred it to my own wallet, then forced Max's back into his hip-pocket, trying and failing to re-fasten the button. Abandoning the effort, I stood up, aware for the first time how rapidly my heart was beating, how fast and frantically I was breathing. Slowly, the panic began to subside.

I looked down at Max again, marvelling at how strangely unmarked death had left him, especially by comparison with -Then I remembered his loud denials. "Did you think I wouldn't realize why you helped brand me a murderer?" But he had branded himself. Surely, he could not have thought .. . could not have meant.. . But he had. He had been wrong, but he had not lied. I was not guilty, but nor was he.

"Guy?" Diana was standing in the doorway, staring anxiously at me. "The police will be here soon."

"Good. I .. ."

"What is it?"

"He didn't murder your father."

"What do you mean?"

"Max. You heard him say it. He wasn't the murderer."

"He must have been."

"No. There was a ... righteousness in his anger. Didn't you sense it?"

"He just felt betrayed ... by us ... by what you and I had done ... that he and I had never ..."

She was the one crying now. I put my arm around her and cradled her head protectively against my shoulder, listening to her sobs. "There was more to it than that," I murmured, as much to myself as to her. "He was an innocent man. And he loved us both. And, between us, we've destroyed him."

CHAPTER

EIGHT

The shock of Max's death left me at one remove from reality. I remember draping a sheet over his body and smoking a cigarette on the balcony with my hand shaking so badly that the ash from it sprinkled down my sleeve. I remember staring into the garden while Diana hurriedly dressed and realizing how like the hissing approach of a snake the sound of silk was as it slithered across her skin. I remember her standing beside me, her knuckles white where she clutched the rail, and saying in what was scarcely more than a whisper: "What shall we tell them, Guy?" and I remember replying, even as the door-bell clanged below us: "The truth. All of it."

But such memories are more akin to historical events in which I played no part than things personally experienced. My soul had retreated to other times and places: to our first Morning Hills at Winchester, Max and I watching the mist rise from the Itchen while the Prefect of Hall called out our names and the dew on the grass soaked slowly through to our socks; to a requisitioned house in Salonika where we and four other malaria cases swapped ambitious plans for our post-war careers; to the Statue of Liberty as we gazed across at it from the slow-moving deck of the Aquitania and Max remarked of the New World we were about to assault, "They don't stand a chance against a pair like us."