Dark Dance (15 page)

Without a sound or cry, they knew and gathered.

Carlo went to Sylvian and picked him up at once.

It would be useless to warn them of care. They spumed medicine, doctors, any reasonable treatment. Sylvian was dead, according to them. And probably they were correct. Rachaela remembered his neat wire hands in the library, ruling through the books. Had the books of the north wall then been spared?

Carlo mounted the stairs. The Scarabae went unhurriedly after him in a procession.

Rachaela followed, daunted.

Down a right-hand corridor, Carlo negotiated a door, presumably that of Sylvian’s bedroom. Sylvian was borne in, the rest trooped after. They made no noise apart from a faint shuffling of their garments, slippers and shoes.

Sylvian was placed on a bed. The window reared above it, some sort of battle, horses and plumes on a cochineal sky. The room was winey from the light, and there Sylvian lay on the big, grey four-poster bed, his shoes on the coverlet and carven head on the pillows. Carlo arranged his hands in relaxation at his sides.

‘No, no, Carlo,’ said Miriam, ‘put the hands over his body. It will be easier later.’

Carlo obeyed this odd, sinister injunction.

Only Anna and Stephan, and Camillo, had not come.

The crowd gathered round the bed.

They looked hard at Sylvian, as if to be sure after all.

It was certainly a dead face, the whites of the eyes just showing, and the mouth agape. Almost like an old man asleep, but not breathing. Perhaps they had tested for the beat of the heart, or not needed to. Was this how they all anticipated their ancient ends? After so many hundred years, between one step and another, a clotting of the breath, great silence and utter darkness, this undignified dignity left behind.

‘I’ll close Sylvian’s eyes,’ said Alice.

She went forward and did so briskly. She tried to shut his mouth too, but obstinately it dropped open again.

‘Better leave it,’ said Jack.

Alice left it, stepped away.

One by one, two by two, the Scarabae began to retreat, to go out of the room.

Rachaela watched this egress, puzzled and at a loss.

They were all gone before she could think of what to say to them.

She was alone with dead Sylvian, and outside the corridor was empty.

She caught up with Cheta on the landing.

‘Cheta, what will happen now?’

‘Happen, Miss Rachaela?’

‘About Sylvian, obviously.’

‘Miss Anna and Mr Stephan will see to it.’

Cheta moved off and went down the stairs.

There was so much to be done. A death certificate, a burial to be arranged—Rachaela recalled the several duties of the living at a death.

The remote house would be breached, disturbed. She visualized them all in some rustic graveyard, twenty-one black crows about the grave. It did not seem conceivable.

Rachaela went to her room, and switched on her radio. The music pushed out of it to fill the space, but the music did not help and the window intruded.

Their lack of fear was uncanny. This symbol of cessation: They did not seem to care. She was offended at seeing her own reaction to her mother’s death—her disinterest, perhaps even her relief—acted out by the Scarabae, who should have wailed and trembled.

‘Are you there, Camillo?’

The attic window was blue with dusk, a blind of stained air. The rocking-horse rose like a double hill against the dying light. The bottles winked.

The rocking-chair was empty.

She saw the form of Camillo seated on a cushion on the floor, working upon something.

‘Come to tell me, have you?’ he said. ‘I know.’

One of the others had climbed up and given him the news.

‘Sylvian,’ she said.

‘Despoiler of books.’

There was no sign of compassion or fright, either, in Camillo. She had not expected them. She had expected something.

‘None of you feel anything,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing special. I thought you were all part of a whole.’

‘Yes,’ said Camillo. ‘A flower head. One petal drops.’

She defined in the half-light that he had Sylvian’s ruler in front of him. White on black, he scratched something on the ebony.

‘And the burial,’ Rachaela said.

‘You’ll look forward to that.’ Camillo tapped the rocking-horse. It tipped into a rolling static gallop. ‘Hope you enjoy it.’

‘Am I likely to?’

‘Horsey, go like the wind.’

She found she wanted to speak to him of Adamus, but what could she say?

‘Why are the Scarabae the way they are, Camillo?’

‘Are they? What way is that?’

‘Not even a doctor when a man dies.’

‘Old as crumbs,’ Camillo said, ‘tucked down the side of the armchair of life. Mouldy. But not so old as me. Like to know my age?’

‘You can’t remember.’

‘Sometimes I can.’

‘But not today,’ she said.

He cackled. ‘Not today.’

‘What will they do about Sylvian?’

‘Something.’

She faltered. She said, ‘Will Adamus come out of hiding to see to it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Camillo. ‘When Adamus was a child, Sylvian started crossing out the books. Adamus tried to stop him. There was a scene in the library. A child shouting and an old man. Anna intervened. She was sometimes about in the daytime then.’

‘Adamus cared about the books.’

‘Then.’

‘What does he care for now?’ She shuddered.

But Camillo only said, ‘Ask him.’

‘I intend to avoid him.’

‘Avoid him then.’

He was scratching a skeleton on the ruler.

‘You won’t tell me anything useful.’

‘Go, horse, go.’

‘Is that Sylvian you’re drawing?’

‘Anyone,’ said Camillo. ‘Touch your face and feel the skull beneath the skin.’

‘I know,’ she said.

‘You’re all right then.’

‘No, Camillo. Camillo...’

‘Horsey, gee up.’

Rachaela left him, and went back to her green and blue chamber.

She looked at the temptation of Eve. What was so alluring in an apple?

When Anna and Stephan came into the room Rachaela tensed, to see if all the others would come after them, as they had gathered for the weird lunch. But no one else appeared. It was a night like any other.

Michael served the drinks and went away.

‘Anna,’ said Rachaela, ‘what are you going to do? Will Cheta go to the village, find a phone?’

‘You mustn’t worry about this,’ Anna said.

‘It will be taken care of,’ Stephan added.

‘But you’ll need a doctor for the certificate of death. When will Cheta go? Tomorrow?’

‘Cheta will go tomorrow to the cottages. The van will be there.’

‘And she’ll phone for a doctor?’

‘Rachaela,’ said Anna, ‘don’t concern yourself. Everything will be seen to. You must understand. This has happened before and will happen again. We are old. We die.’

Anna’s face was serene, her voice coaxing. Winsome and persuasive, Adamus had said. She smiled, consoling a peevish infant.

‘No,’ Rachaela said, ‘I don’t follow you. This utter indifference—’

‘He’s gone,’ said Anna.

‘He’s gone,’ said Stephan.

‘He’s upstairs,’ said Rachaela, ‘in the grey bedroom with the violent window. Something has to be done about him.’

‘Of course, of course. Why such vehemence? We’re used to seeing to such things.’ Anna sighed. ‘Can you even imagine how many we’ve lost? And young ones too.’

‘The young are the worst. A waste,’ said Stephan, drinking his black drink. He looked into the fire.

‘But Sylvian had lived a long, full life,’ said Anna.

‘And so you don’t grieve,’ said Rachaela, stung by their equanimity, wanting to see them show her something which made sense, and was not like herself.

‘Grief is superfluous,’ said Anna. ‘It is over.’

She got up and she and Stephan walked into the dining room.

Rachaela saw. No extra places were laid, only the habitual three.

Anna and Stephan took their seats.

Rachaela too sat down.

And Cheta and Maria came with a tureen of cabbage soup.

They ate in silence. Some emotion inside Rachaela scratched and gurned, the anguish and alarm she had felt since yesterday, when she had fled him, given a focus now.

‘And the funeral,’ she said, ‘where will the Scarabae bury Sylvian?’

Anna looked at her. The eyes of these people were no longer predominantly hungry. The famishment had settled to something else. It was credible to see the likeness between his eyes and the eyes of Anna. Pools of deep black liquid. Tams of eyes.

‘Don’t let what’s happened distress you, Rachaela. Nothing need trouble you. We have our own ways, older than the house. You must let us deal with our dead.’

‘How?’

Anna said, ‘As we see fit.’

Winsome, persuasive, hard as cold flint. There was no method of getting past her. She spoke for them all.

The soup was cleared.

Michael brought a fish-pie.

Anna and Stephan began to talk of the excellence of the winter vegetables, the cleverness of Carlo and Michael in growing things out of season.

Rachaela listened. She felt the sense of depression and fearfulness which they,
they
should have felt. Above, the dead one lay on his bed. The house reeked as if with smoke.

She was excluded. She had no place in these rites. They would not invite her to the funeral. For death had nothing to do with her; she, like Adamus, was the new life. The sinful incestuous bloom they had nurtured with their smiles and creepings by.

Rachaela began to be angry. But that too was pointless. Not only was she their pawn, she was their adored afterthought. If grief were superfluous here, then so was she.

Stephan and Anna ate portions of the pie. Rachaela picked at the food.

Stewed fruit was served.

Rachaela said nothing else, and when she had finished toying with her plate, she left the two of them, and went upstairs.

What could she do but sit in her room and play her radio for comfort, pretend this was some cosy house at which she lodged, the fire and lamps some lovely old-fashioned niceness, and nothing dark anywhere, no shadows, the window clear and ready to let in the coming day.

A sombre symphony of Mahler’s added to her gloom. She turned, as she rarely did, to a station of speech, to hear a normal human voice.

Men and women talked knowledgeably about politics. Rachaela sat mesmerized. Out there, the world, dangerous and real. She could not believe in it, and clung to the talkers in an effort to credit them. In how many ordinary places did those leading normal lives attend to these words which now to her were like snow swirling past a precipice. She had never learned the strategic points of maps. Tonight other countries were like dreams, the capital city an illusion.

There was only now, and this.

At midnight she heard them moving in the house like water in a pipe.

She patrolled the room back and forth before the hearth. She knew they were seeing to Sylvian, some ceremony of their own, having nothing to do with doctors, ministers, the church.

She opened the wardrobe on instinct and took out her coat.

She went out of her door and stood in the passage, listening. She could barely hear them now, and then a little burst like bats squeaking. They were on the stairs, on the red Persian carpet, going down. And Carlo must be there, strong Carlo the porter, with his load.

Rachaela walked firmly to the landing. She saw them below her in the hall. They were all there except for Camillo. Camillo and Adamus—too old, too young, to be a part of this.

Would they send her back? Entreat or threaten?

As she descended, the iron head of Livia turned; Miriam and Jack lit her with their bright rat eyes. But not a word was said.

She was family. Not included, but not to be shut out. A witness.

They went across the lobby, into the drawing room. The fires were dead. Already the rooms were cold. Into the airlock of the conservatory. Carlo was ahead of them. He carried something Rachaela did not need to see to identify. They brushed by the towering plants. This time petals did fall. Rachaela recalled what Camillo had said to her, the flower head...

Outside the night was frigidly cold, achingly still, but for the rush of the sea.

The tide was out, the moon up. Perhaps they had been waiting for both these phenomena, as much as for the coming of the night.

She watched them file ahead of her along the path where the unseasonal wild flowers grew.

She kept a little distance between herself and the last of them, who now was Miriam.

They sidled round the cliff, went beyond the path, beside the wood, slanting back to the sea. They were going to the slippery steps.
Easy is the descent to Avernus
—

Those ancient brittle bodies on those stairs of slime. She caught her breath for them, but they did not hesitate, they crowded to the edge.

And now Carlo bowed to some task. She saw a length of rope slide out, and something bumped drily on the face of the cliff.

They had tied up the body of Sylvian, and were lowering it ahead of them, it grazed against the rock again and again, and Rachaela heard it with a chill of the blood.

She pictured dragging her mother’s corpse behind her, out to the dustbins, and gall filled her throat.

But they were lowering Sylvian to the beach, to the sea. What would they do with him there? Give him to the ocean like a Viking?

The old men and women began to descend the cliff.

They moved with care, but not with extreme caution. They did not stumble or slip but felt their steady way like worms.

None of them had dressed for a funeral. In the blue-white light of the moon their coats were patchwork, they were draped and tailed with scarves. Alice with velvet violets in her hat and Miriam with a toque of white fur.

Coming behind them, it was Rachaela who knew fear. She took her own unsure paces down the rock, clutching at hand-holds, skinning her palms, tearing a nail, frightened.

They were already spooling out upon the beach when she was half-way down.

She stopped, and stared at them.