Fog Heart (19 page)

His eyes were wet. He wanted to cry for the sheer relief he knew it would bring. Silly. Oliver rubbed his eyes and breathed deeply, then he brushed the moisture from his finger onto the downy skin between Becky's breasts. He turned his cheek, and he blinked until his eyelashes tickled her. Becky moved and gave a sleepy murmur of happiness.

Later, he told her a few things.

‘It's very important that you don't mention me to anyone. Not my name, not what I do. Nothing.'

‘I know. Don't worry, I won't.'

‘It's just that a lot of people in London know me, and if it got back to Carrie – well, there could be problems.'

‘Yeah. Your wife might be upset.'

‘It's more than that,' he explained patiently. ‘It involves money and business. Everything. If I gave her an excuse and she decided to use it, I could lose a lot. American laws can be very tough on the husband.'

‘Are you thinking it might come to that?'

Divorce. No doubt a giddy thought – for Becky. Oliver had to suppress a laugh. Divorce? In your dreams, girl.

‘Who knows? The point is not to give her anything she might be able to use against me. London's a big village.'

‘I understand. Mum's the word.'

‘Exactly.'

‘You're safe with me. Always,' she added, with a meaningful romance-novel gaze, her fingers stroking his chest.

‘Good.' Oliver smiled at her.

*   *   *

Carrie had dinner on Friday evening with Jeffrey and Mark at their place. Nothing fancy, just good chilli, a light green salad and plenty of icy Mexican beer. They were very sweet to her and insisted on escorting her home, checking out the apartment to make sure that every room was okay.

‘Safe and secure upstairs,' Jeffrey announced, as he returned to the living room.

‘Same down here,' Mark confirmed.

‘Do you want us to stay and protect you?'

‘No, don't be silly. Thank you both very much for a lovely evening. I'm really grateful. It was just what I needed. And I want your chilli recipe. It's
primo.
'

She had a nice buzz from the beer and she was too tired to do anything except take off her clothes and crawl between the sheets. She fell asleep almost immediately.

Some time later she was awakened by the sound of the moving men. Such a nuisance. No consideration. Grunting and heaving, their heavy shoes clomping on the parquet. Still mostly asleep, Carrie got out of bed to tell them to be quieter. The apartment was dark and silent, and there were no removal men.

Of course not. It was the middle of the night and, besides, they weren't moving anywhere. Ever. What had she been thinking? Nothing. She was in a daze, still asleep on her feet. Must have been a dream. Carrie returned to bed.

Much later, or so it seemed, the noise was back. She became aware of it as a distant thumping at first, but then it seemed closer. Within the apartment. Moving – for the life of her it sounded like men moving things. Carrie didn't move. Her eyes opened. It was still dark and the bedside clock showed that only a few minutes had passed.

She tried to think. Her head ached faintly. Perhaps it was Oliver. He had changed his plans and come home a few days early, but he didn't want to wake her. He was bringing in his suitcases and some gift packages. That would be nice. Carrie waited, her mind drifting in and out of sleep. She waited for Oliver to slip into bed and wrap himself around her. She thought of his body, and how she missed it beside her.

But he didn't come to bed. The noises continued, clumsy and disturbing. The people downstairs would be annoyed. Then Carrie remembered that flights from Europe usually landed in New York in the late morning or afternoon. Not at night.

She sat up again and looked at a spot in the darkness where she knew the bedroom door stood ajar. There was no light coming from out there, the rest of the apartment. But the noise had not stopped. Carrie was more awake now and she still heard it. She was sure it came from the living room.

She swung her legs around, out of bed. The noise continued. She was wearing only bikini briefs so she fumbled around in the dark, found the T-shirt she'd worn the previous afternoon and pulled it on. Her eyes were slowly adjusting. She went to the door and found it with her hand. The lumbering sounds still came from below.

Carrie touched the railing at the top of the staircase. The living room was dark, though some light filtered in from outside. Within a few moments she was able to make out certain large and familiar shapes – the Roche-Bobois, the home entertainment unit. No one there. Nothing happening. Just those sounds, louder now, as if she were closer to the source.

Carrie started slowly down the stairs. There was nothing to see when she reached the living room, but those sounds continued all around her – as if she'd now stepped into the middle of some invisible activity. Heavy lifting. Deep grunting. More of that leaden pacing back and forth, nowhere. Wordless voices, somehow distorted – a low rumble of simmering agitation.

Carrie hit the wall switch and the table lamp went on. The living room was suddenly cast in the warm, familiar glow of muted light. No one there, of course, nothing happening. But the same noise persisted. Incredible. Carrie was still struggling out of her beer-hazed sleep, but she was at last beginning to understand that she was in the middle of another event.

She took a few steps into the room, and felt something passing by just inches from her. She turned and looked around, but saw nothing. It happened again, a blurry movement in the air that she glimpsed briefly and dimly out of the corner of her eye. It made her think of leathery wings rustling and unseen birds sweeping past her.

The noise was constant. Carrie hadn't heard anything on the three previous occasions so this was a new turn. And already it had lasted longer than the other incidents. Someone was running. Carrie picked out the sound of running footsteps from the jumble of noise. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen. Carrie went to the hallway and looked in that direction. Suddenly the noise was a tremendous clatter and the grotesque sepia creature flew out of the darkened kitchen. He ran right past her, and Carrie felt the rush of air in his wake. She rocked back a step. She caught her balance and edged into the hallway.

The door at the far end was wide open. She knew that it had been closed: it always was, when that room wasn't in use. It was the second bedroom, Oliver's office. The lights were off but the room was faintly illuminated. Carrie approached the door.

It didn't look anything like Oliver's office. A chipped and faded linoleum floor. Walls made of cheap wood, painted a garish blue. Tinny, alien-sounding music floated like smoke in the air. Carrie noticed the heat. Sweat broke out across her forehead and face. There was a metal bed with a thin mattress on it. A woman flat on her back. The man knelt over her body. She was between his legs, and he was sitting on her belly. Strangling her. The woman's legs kicked and jumped uselessly. Carrie gasped.

He turned and stared at her. When she saw him run by on the way from the kitchen, she hadn't been quite sure. But now Carrie knew that it was the same figure, the one she had encountered at Monsieur Chauvet's apartment. Those warped and smeared features.

His whole face was twisted, and his eyes were out of kilter. But he seemed to focus on Carrie now, and immediately those eyes struck her as undeniably human. This was no demon or fiend from any hellish otherworld. It was – or had been – a man. And the recognition of that was somehow far worse than anything else she might have imagined. Carrie stumbled back a step or two and reached for the door to steady herself. Instead, she knocked it loudly against the wall.

He leapt off the bed and was on her in an instant, his hands at her throat. Carrie sagged dizzily. The stifling stench of an unbearable odour. The force of his eyes, which seemed to push her own eyeballs back into her brain. His grip like a metallic cable winding around her neck, cutting off her breath.

The sense that she was dying.

Carrie pressed her hands against his face and tried to shove him away. His skin felt like rippled glass coated with a thin layer of slime. The tinny music was louder, a shrill pain in her ears. She realized that she was in the room, on that bed, and he was sitting on her belly as he choked her. Carrie was the other woman. Her hands slid off him, and it was impossible to resist or push him away. Futile. She was dying. But then there was a mangled shout from the doorway, a sudden flurry of activity nearby, and a few moments later she was alone.

Carrie saw nothing now but knew he was gone. She was on her knees, one hand gripping the corner of the desk for support. She followed the light and made it into the living room. I am still alive, she told herself, though she hardly believed it.

She sat down on the sofa, fell onto her side, curled her legs up close to her, and began to shiver. She was cold, and reached up to pull the afghan over her body. Her face felt damp, and she touched it. Blood, from her nose or mouth. She tried to wipe it away, and her face felt sticky with it. She remained on the sofa until daylight filled the room. Then she got up and tottered into the kitchen. She knew the number.

‘Hello?' Sleepy.

‘Oona.'

‘This is Roz.'

‘Roz, this is Carrie Spence.'

‘What's the matter?' Suddenly alert, anxious.

‘It happened again, only worse. Much worse.'

‘Are you all right?'

‘No.'

15

‘What's the point?' Charley asked. ‘If you know what Fiona wants with us, why do we have to do this again?'

‘Because it's part of it,' Jan replied.

It's part of it. As if that made any sense. But they were on their way to see Oona again and there was no way out. Charley was perplexed, and a little worried. Jan was increasingly silent around their apartment. She sat and stared a lot.

She still went to work, and presumably she still functioned adequately there since she hadn't been fired. But at home she showed signs of being in retreat. She had started leaving her clothes draped over chairs or lying in a heap on the floor beside the bed, and she'd never been sloppy like that. Or she would do a pile of laundry but then leave the wet clothes in the washer. By the time Charley found them, they had more wrinkles than the late Mr Auden's face.

Charley felt as if he were caught in a zone of futility. He had a powerful desire to do something, to act in a way that would be useful and decisive and would protect Jan. But Jan believed in Oona, and that Fiona's ghost had come for them.

Charley was convinced that, before too long, this terribly sad delusion would crumble. Oona's ambiguous and suggestive arias couldn't work indefinitely. They would lose their power to hold Jan. Fiona had to appear. Fiona had to speak, and say something important. But she wouldn't. Fiona was dead, and the dead stay dead. No matter how hard Oona tried, she would never be able to conjure up Fiona's spirit or voice. Sooner or later Jan was sure to accept this unavoidable fact.

It hurt, it really hurt to disbelieve. Half of the battle, Charley realized, was with himself. Even he wanted to think that his daughter survived in some way, and was trying to get in touch with them. It was such an attractive, seductive idea. The ghost of a life that had barely begun. Speaking to her parents across the great divide. Oh, yes, it was appealing. It seemed so right. It had a sense of fairness and justice to it.

‘You know, Jan…'

‘What?'

‘I'm not trying to start an argument or anything. And I do think Oona is remarkable in some ways. But I can't help thinking that she must be … disturbed. Somehow.'

‘You mean, mentally ill?'

‘Well … disturbed,' Charley said. This seemed a safer line to take than claiming Oona was an outright fraud. ‘I mean, it's not natural, is it? People aren't born that way. She must have been through something in her life to make her like that.'

‘Does it matter?'

‘Of course it does. She—'

‘Did Yeats have a special talent? Cézanne? Mahler?'

‘All great artists have talent and vision,' Charley replied. ‘But please don't try to tell me your woman is in the same league with the likes of—'

‘Your woman,' Jan repeated, with a laugh of contempt.

‘Pardon?'

‘Your woman this, your man that. It's the way you insist on talking, Charley. Those Irish phrases and idioms, as if you were born on the banks of the Liffey instead of a crossroads farm town in Wisconsin. As if you were a hard-drinking native Dubliner. I used to find it charming. Years ago.'

‘I'm Irish through and through,' Charley muttered.

‘And you can tell who's disturbed.'

Jan laughed to herself. Charley held his tongue. He would not let it degenerate into another slanging match. The cow. He concentrated on the traffic. The usual bottleneck inching along into Westville, otherwise not too bad.

The fact that Jan could needle him that way was in itself an encouraging sign. It showed that she had some fight left in her. That business with the bread knife had bothered him for a couple of days, but he'd watched her carefully and seen no repetition of it. Jan wouldn't hurt herself or him – not if she expected some act of ghostly retribution from Fiona.

What he feared much more was that Jan might suffer a mental breakdown. Driven over the edge by a poisonous mixture of Oona's antics and lingering guilt. Then what? Treatment and care. Was his own future role to be that of a nurse? Charley found it an appalling prospect. But he couldn't leave her just as things got really bad. He might have a peculiar notion of marital fidelity, but he had remained with Jan all this time and he'd never desert her merely for the sake of convenience.

That was faithfulness, the genuine item, and it made Charley feel a little better to affirm it once again.

*   *   *

‘Is it all right to speak?' Charley asked. ‘I mean when you're in the middle of your – thing. I wouldn't want to interrupt anything important.'