Dark Dance (42 page)

‘I’ll stay,’ Rachaela said, firmly.

Michael left her in possession.

Half an hour passed in the golden syrup of the room.

She examined books in a bookcase, there was nothing she recognized. No music stood on the piano. There were no ornaments in the room. On the mantelpiece the clock whirled backwards. Overhead the beams were like old toffee, sticky with webs, and with hooks in them for vanished lamps.

Rachaela left the upper room and walked down the stairs to the two closed doors beneath. She knocked and tried one, and found a white bathroom with a seahorse window. Hesitating, she knocked and tried the other door. It opened on a small bedroom, very dark, for the window showed a tower in a storm, like something from the tarot pack. The bed was ordinary, without posts. Adamus lay on it, looking at her.

‘You know why I’m here,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Of course you do. Because of Ruth.’

‘Why because of Ruth.’ It was too flat to be a question.

‘Adamus, I have to take her to London, to some hospital.’

‘Why?’

‘She’s deranged. I must get her help.’

‘Again, why? They’ll care for her and keep her locked away. What more do you think your doctors will do for her?’

‘There’s a chance she can be—cured—’

‘No chance at all.’

Rachaela said, ‘I treated her like a sort of monster, so maybe it’s my fault if she is one.’

‘Don’t you think,’ he said, ‘that we’re all monsters.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘If I say that the Scarabae drove Ruth to do what she did, I suppose you’ll disagree.’

‘I don’t care why she did it,’ he said.

‘I’m surprised you take it so hard. You spend no time with them.’

‘Rachaela,’ he said, ‘she took a steel knitting needle and hammered it through Anna’s breast. After she had practised on Alice, Dorian and Peter.’

‘Yes, I know. Which is why I say she needs help. They’ve locked her in the attic as if this were some old ‘B’ horror movie.’

‘Instead of a nice hygienic padded cell. Do you think,’ he said, ‘that Ruth would let you put her into some institution?’

‘Ruth’s frightened by what she’s done. She knows she needs—’

‘Ruth knows nothing. Ruth is a collection of instincts and primal talents. You let her grow like a weed. Plenty of callousness to make her strong, and no guidance, to make her a law to herself.’

‘Then it
is
my fault.’

‘Probably.’

‘Let me shoulder it. Give Ruth to me.’

He sat up. In the storm light of the window he was white and hard as marble.

‘If it had been left to me, I’d have broken her neck.’

‘She’s your child, too.’

‘I know.’

‘How long will they keep her in a cage? What will happen when they release her? The Scarabae aren’t able to deal with this.’

‘They’ve dealt with plenty of things like this, and worse.’

‘That story about Camillo—’

‘The story is true. He was married in the family tradition to a girl, and he savaged her on the wedding night. She bled to death.’

‘It isn’t relevant.’

‘No. Probably what Camillo did was an accident.’

‘Ruth didn’t know what she was doing.’

He stood up. He came towards Rachaela and stood over her. She did not let herself draw aside.

‘Please help me, Adamus. Help me get her out. I’ll take her away. You can forget her.’

‘It’s unforgettable,’ he said.

‘Then you can’t want her to remain.’

‘I don’t care,’ he said, ‘any more.’

‘All the more reason—’

‘About Ruth, or the house, about them. What does any of it mean? Nothing.’

She took after all an involuntary step backward, and he reached out in an instant and gripped her arms.

‘And you,’ he said, ‘the brave mother battling for her child. You would have had her cut out of you like a cancer.’

‘And
you
,’ she said, ‘you served me like a bull does a cow. And then you were done with it. You would have done the same for Ruth.’

He held her so she could not move away, and he grinned at her with dead black eyes.

‘Nothing means anything,’ he said again, ‘but I know why you’re here. All right, then.’

He swung her round before she could struggle and thrust her on to the bed.

She tried to writhe away but he dropped on top of her. His weight crushed her. Every forward surface of her body was covered by his. What she had feared was happening.

Rachaela freed her right hand and struck the side of his head as hard as she was able. He caught her hand and pinned it down. She attempted to bring up her knees but he was too heavy on her.

His face was a blank but he frowned slightly with concentration. His eyes were flat as jets—Ruth’s eyes.

As he bowed his head towards her she sank her teeth into his neck. She bit hard and thought she tasted his blood.

A terrible thrill uncoiled in her like a serpent.

He jerked back from her and she hit him across the face with her left hand.

She seized his body and as he let go of her right wrist she grasped the fall of black hair. She struck him and pulled on him, filling her fingers with his spare hard body, as if she climbed a mountain. She wrapped him with her legs, splitting her skirt along the seam.

She screamed his name again and again.

At the last moment she buried her face in his neck, her open mouth against his skin. Erupting shudders ran the length of her, she was molten, clinging, tossed and flung backward. The delirium deserted her and she fell down into the bed.

When she opened her eyes he had left her. He stood against the occult window.

‘So much for that,’ he said.

A sort of shame ran over her. She got up, shaking and dizzy, her kkirt absurdly flapping open.

On his neck was the mark of her teeth. She had not drawn blood.

What had happened had robbed her of speech, but she said, ‘I’ll never bother you again.’

‘I believe that.’

‘There was never anything between us,’ she said, ‘Ruth was a mistake.’

He watched her, waiting for her to go.

A hundred sentences filled her head, none able to be spoken.

She went out of the room and going to the outer door, moved on into the passageway.

A fearful light was in it, red and dying like the sunset of some diseased planet.

I got what I went for.

It was as if she had made love with a corpse.

❖

Rachaela stood watching the sea. It drove in long green breakers to the cliffs, and broke and was sucked away.

The repetition of the sea was like life. The endless, fruitless attempts, the failures and fallings back. Even when the sea claimed the beach, the tide turned and the water was thrust away again.

Their bones were in the waves.

She could not think what else to do. A deep apathy was settling on her. But if she wanted to take Ruth away from them, she must fight.

She walked along the shore. The heat of the day was merciless, and she thought of the attic up under the roof with its locked window. Chastisement as well as confinement. And in winter, how could one keep warm? Perhaps they would let her freeze, for what she had done.

She pictured Adamus, and sent the picture from her mind.

Rachaela turned and went back towards the house. And as she approached it, she thought how curious it looked, so grey and untended, its lines leaning, and the ranks of windows with their glims of red and emerald.

Camillo was sitting on the floor outside Rachaela’s door.

‘Here I am,’ he said.

‘There you are.’

‘No horse,’ he said, ‘I am without the horse.’

‘Yes.’

‘But I’ve brought you something.’

Rachaela stayed still. Camillo blocked off the door from her, sitting cross-legged like a tailor. Under the black cross on the window.

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Yes. The boy wouldn’t help you, would he? Adamus. You and he, the same. Dark horses.’ Camillo got up. ‘It should have been you, not that child.’

‘Should it?’

‘I tried to pretend once I was like Adamus is. I slit her neck with a table knife. But the gene didn’t come out in me.’

‘I’m not a vampire,’ Rachaela said. ‘None of you is. Not even Adamus. It’s something he does. A sickness. And Ruth caught the sickness.’

‘Nasty,’ Camillo said. ‘Take her away. She’ll cause trouble, up in the attic. The attic was mine. But she hasn’t got the rocking-horse.’

‘I want to take her away,’ said Rachaela.

‘Good. Then here’s the key.’

He held out something to her that shone dully in the window glare bisected by the black-paint cross.

‘The key,’ she said, ‘the key to the attic?’

‘One of them. It works.’

Rachaela reached out slowly and took the key.

‘Thank you, Camillo.’

Take her away,’ he said.

Twill.’

Camillo went down the passage. He said, ‘Don’t suppose it will do any good.’

Rachaela’s hand clasped convulsively on the key.

Steady now. It would take all her care.

❖

Rachaela entered the dining room and no one was there, no one had come to dine but herself.

All afternoon she had seen no Scarabae. They had slipped into compartments of the house, perhaps hiding themselves.

Cheta served Rachaela. It was lamb cutlets, from the supermarket, carrots, peas and new potatoes.

Rachaela ate hungrily. She would need the food. Michael had not appeared and she had asked Cheta for a glass of wine.

After the lamb there was an apricot jelly, perhaps the remains of yesterday’s meal.

Cheta served her tea in the drawing room.

It was strange, not to see Anna sitting there, or her embroidery. Her death had not sunk in. Once before she had been absent.

Rachaela stayed Cheta as she was leaving the room. ‘Has Ruth been fed?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss Rachaela. Carlo took up Miss Ruth’s tray an hour ago.’

They would not clear the tray until the morning, when breakfast was taken to the voracious incarcerated child.

Rachaela hoped Ruth had been able, with her battered face, to eat her dinner. She too would need it.

Rachaela was leisurely over her tea. She left the room when her watch told her it was almost ten-thirty.

She went up to her bedroom. She waited another half hour, hearing no Scarabae, having seen none beyond Cheta.

At five past eleven she went out, and made her way up to the attic.

The key turned easily in the lock.

She went in slowly, prepared almost for anything. But the room was as she recalled it from her last visit, and brightly lit by candles standing in holders on the chests.

Ruth sat in the rocking-chair, and behind her was the black-night window, reflecting candles.

Ruth had a distorted clown’s face, and one of the brown bottles in her lap.

‘I told you not to drink that,’ said Rachaela, alarmed.

Ruth stared at her.

‘Did they let you come?’

‘No, Ruth. I got a key. How much have you drunk?’

‘Only a little. It tastes foul.’

‘Good.’ Rachaela shut the door. ‘I’m taking you away tonight.’

Ruth nodded. She stood up.

She wore the 1910 dress, but she could walk in it, and everyone wore anything nowadays, particularly the young. The wounded face might draw some comment.

‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to leave your things behind.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Ruth carelessly. ‘I don’t want anything.’

‘I don’t want you to go to your bedroom. If there’s anything light up here, I can carry it.’

‘Nothing,’ said Ruth.

‘We’ll have to walk across the heath. It’s a long walk I know, but it’s the only way.’

Ruth looked sulky for a moment. Then she said, ‘I don’t mind.’

‘It should be easy to get a car from the village now, once the shops open.’ Ruth took another drink out of the brown bottle. ‘No, Ruth.’

‘It’s only wine.’

‘Don’t drink it. I want to take you down now to my room. Be very quiet. If we meet any of them, hide, if there’s time. If not, well, we’ll see. I don’t think it will happen.’

Rachaela remembered her own night of going, and how they had all of them gathered in the hall, but given before her, followed her, without protest, knowing. Would they give up Ruth the criminal so strengthlessly? Yes. Why else the key, the vast silence of the house? They wanted to be rid of Ruth, whatever they might have done or said.

Rachaela moved out of the attic and Ruth came after her. Rachaela locked the door again, when they were on the outside.

They descended the stair, went through the annexe and came out into the corridor. Nothing else moved. The Scarabae had cleared the ways.

They negotiated the corridor, came along the landing, went into the other passage, to Rachaela’s door.

The house might have been vacant.

Ruth looked round at the blue-and-green bedchamber.

‘It’s nice. What’s the window of?’

‘The temptation of Eve.’

On the bed, packed, sat Rachaela’s bag. Her boots stood by the hearth, for walking.

Ruth still wore her shoes from school. That was a blessing.

Ruth said, ‘It will be nice to go home.’

Rachaela saw the flat, Ruth’s area dismantled, and all her things in boxes. At least nothing had been given away, not even the clothes for Oxfam.

She’s trying to keep on my fine side
, Rachaela thought.
She doesn’t think of the flat as home. Perhaps not anywhere.
She thought,
Christ, what will become of her?
And she visualized Ruth borne screaming into a tiled tunnel by men in white coats.

‘Ruth, you must stay here now. Don’t go out of the room. Do you need the bathroom?’

‘No, Mummy.’

How in God’s name had they managed that, in the attic?

‘I’m going to go down and see if anyone’s about on the ground floor. I won’t be more than ten or fifteen minutes. And then, we’re leaving.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth. She sat down in the chair, where once Adamus had sat.

‘Be ready, Ruth.’

Ruth nodded, and swung her legs. They did not quite reach the floor.

Rachaela went out again. She walked along the corridor softly. She felt a peculiar buoyancy.