Personal Darkness (23 page)

She ran along the corridor, and up the other flight of stairs, into Camillo's apartment. She wanted to shake Lou awake and tell her.
He swore at me. He said something really filthy
.

But it was not the words, it was the rejection.

She bit her broken nails, but only those, down to the quick.

Sitting up in the chair, she fell asleep.

When she woke, Lou was still snoring and Cami had not come up. The window, which was opaque white glass, was blazing with summer morning. The golden clock said it was nine-thirty.

Tray got up and went to the mirror. She looked at herself. She was the same. She turned about to admire her slender, incredible body, its seventeen-inch corset waist, her necklet of bones and silver wheels.

Lou had a thing about Althene. Lou had dug out her gas mask earrings and put them on because of Althene's gas mask with the poppies.

Lou was useless.

Tray went out again and downstairs.

She was afraid he might be in the hall still, but of course he was gone by now.

She had taken some money from the bag where

Cami left it for them. She would go to the shops and have her hair done. She would have it done black, like Rach's.

The cake shop was open, and Tray bought a doughnut. It had thick jam. Her dad had brought her doughnuts, and a plate of sugar, and let her roll them in the sugar until they were white. Her mom would say, "You'll get fat." But naturally Tray did not get fat, for she seldom ate anything at all.

In Lucrece, where—unknown to Tray—presumably they made you so beautiful you would
be
raped by a Roman, the manager came and led her to a chair. He said it did not matter there was no appointment, he would always make a place for her, she had such excellent hair it was a treat to style it. But he liked Cami's money, she knew that too. And anyway, they were empty.

Tray sat through the hairdresser's torture, which she did not mind, for two hours. And then she sat under the dryer.

She drank the Fanta they brought her.

When she looked up into the mirror, she saw with surprise what they had missed. Crystal tears fell from her eyes. They did not ruin her face, for her eye makeup did not run, and her blusher was waterproof, and she was like a doll that wept.

In the phone box, Tray inserted Cami's phonecard. She had taken it out with her, so she must have known she would need it, but not consciously.

The phone rang, and she hoped her father would answer.

If her mother answered, she would put down the receiver.

It rang a long time.

While she waited, an ice-cream van entered the street. It played its tune loudly, and Tray was afraid she would not hear properly who was on the line if the phone was answered.

Then there was her father's voice.

"Hi, Dad. It's me."

"Tray!"

"Hi, Dad."

"For Christ's sake where are you? I've been worried."

"I'm okay, Dad."

"I've been worried, Tray. You go off and get yourself in bloody bother. Where are you?"

"Just London, Dad."

"What's happened? Where in London?"

"It don't matter. I'm fine. I just… wanted to talk to you."

"You're daft, Tray, you are. You can always bloody talk to me. Why don't you come home and talk to me?"

She heard, more than his questions and sentences, the light that came on in his voice when he spoke to her. She could recall how he would grin when he came in at the door and she ran toward him, holding up some toy.

"Don't nag, Dad." The ice-cream van was closer.

"All right, all right. So long as you're okay. What you been doing?"

"Just the usual stuff."

"Bloody bikes and bloody bad rock groups."

"Bands, Dad."

"
Bands
. Ought to be banned."

His joke always irritated her. Suddenly she was far away from him again. She was twenty-two and he was old.

"Got to go now, Dad."

"What? Just wait a bloody minute, Tracy. Tell me where you are?"

"I said. London."

"Is it some bloke again?"

She thought of Cami, older than her dad, but Cami was different.

"He's famous."

"What?"

"Famous."

"Who is he then?"

"Can't say. Got to go now."

"Tray—"

"Got to go. Love you, Dad. Bye."

She put down the phone.

She felt relief, she felt bereft.

The ice-cream van, which had played its tune all through the conversation, had now left off.

She went out of the phone booth and bought herself a cornet with strawberry sauce and nuts and two sticks of chocolate.

HE HAD GONE TO THE HOUSE WITH HER, when she had told him about the man. That was the first thing she remembered, as she opened her eyes. He had said, the woman was all right, let the woman go. He had said he would kill the man. And he had killed the man. And the house burned. And then they came away.

They traveled on a late bus.

A man threw up at the back, and his vomit smelled, quite purely, of spirits. Upstairs the air was thick and blue, but they traveled below. He said he was too tall to go up there. She believed this.

There was a kebab place, and he bought her a slab of spicy lamb in pita bread with pale red chili sauce, and salad. Then, when they arrived at their destination, he led her into a room, and there he gave her a glass of wine. When she had had the wine, she found her head had dropped with a jolt, almost as if decapitated. Next she slept.

She came to on the bed. It was comfortable, and he had pulled the coverlet up over her. The pillows had feathers and, when she put on the lamp by the bed, she saw they were of sky blue. The sheets were also blue, and the blankets and cover in tones of deep green.

There was one window, and it was round. It seemed to have a pattern not a picture. But it was of stained glass.

Everything in the room was green and blue, except the lamps, which were a dusty rosy pink. There was no fireplace, only a radiator.

There was a dressing table with two lights and a mirror that had frosted leaves coiling around it.

On a dark table were some books and other things which Ruth did not inspect.

The room had an aura of the Scarabae, and on the vanilla-green wall was fixed a black and white clock, which had stopped.

A bathroom adjoined the bedroom. It was green, with blue towels and a dark blue carpet. There was an extractor fan, but no window. The taps were gold dolphins.

This must be a Scarabae house.

The other one had burned, but as it did so, some portion of her had known there were other houses. Other Scarabae.

Malach was Scarabae.

He had trapped her.

She tried the door, which was locked, and then she waited for him to come back, for she sensed that he had gone away.

The day was in the window when he returned.

The window was not like the room. It was scarlet, amber, the blue of fire, the carnivorous rose of lions' mouths, hot and blind. Through it, dimly, she could see the lines of bars.

He opened the door and found her sitting on the bed, gazing at the window.

"Am I a prisoner?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Malach, I don't want to be a prisoner."

"Ruth, you have no choice."

"Why?" she said.

"You are a murderess."

"You killed that man."

"You killed Scarabae."

"I didn't mean to," she said slowly.

"You meant to."

"I was angry."

"You must learn," he said, "to use proper words. You do not kill your own from anger. It's
fury
, Ruth. It's pain."

"Then, from fury. From pain."

"Very well. Now you are punished."

"What will you do to me?" she said.

"We shall see."

"My dad," she said. She thought. She said, "My father, Adam. He hanged himself. Was it because—was it because I did those things?"

"What things?"

"You know."

"You must articulate. You must say what is true."

"Because I stabbed Anna and—the others."

"We can't ask him. He's dead."

"I killed ordinary people. I drank their blood," said Ruth. She yawned. "I burned their houses. That was Emma."

"You're a stupid little bitch," said Malach.

"No," said Ruth. "I'm evil."

Malach looked at her, and she at him.

"You're Scarabae," he said. "That is your name. Forget the rest. Forget epithets from horror films. Now, you shall meet my companions."

Ruth stirred. She looked frightened and then cold.

Malach called back beyond the door: "Enki. Oskar."

And they came, the two huge dogs with their coats of brindled snow, wolfhounds with the blood of mastiffs and perhaps even of wolves, stepping like princes, with amber eyes.

Ruth got up at once. She held out her hands and went toward them without hurry or hesitation. And they received her, sniffed at her fingers.

Their heads came to her breasts. She stroked the silky hair upon their hard stony skulls. She met their eyes and kissed their muzzles.

Lethargic scythes, the great tails wagged.

She stood between them, holding them against the two sides of her body.

"Oskar, Enki," he said, "enough."

And they slipped from her. Like sunlit smolders they were through the door and Ruth stood alone.

"What shall I do now?" Ruth said.

"You will be alone now."

"For how long?"

"Ah vous dis-je."

"I don't understand."

"You'll come to."

He went out and shut the door. The key turned.

After a moment Ruth ran to the door and banged on it violently.

One of the dogs barked, and then was silent.

Ruth retreated to the bed. She got up on it and sat by the pillows.

Gradually the sun moved, and left the window.

She was hungry.

NORMAN OLIVER BAILEY IVES WATCHED the patio through the closed glass of the sliding doors. Out there Marilyn, his wife, was pedaling slowly and laboriously on her exercise bike.

She was five foot six, and weighed a little over eleven and a half stone. Her tanned body bulged from the small zebra-striped bikini. Her blond hair was tied up by a shocking-pink scarf. Despite the careful hairdressing attentions of Jason, there was a brassy tinge to Marilyn's hair that infinitesimally hardened between each weekly visit.

Marilyn stopped pedaling.

She reached out to the green ironwork table and took three or four chocolates from a dish. She crammed them quickly in her mouth.

Marilyn was always cutting out potatoes, but she could never go without chocolate. It gave her energy, she said. Besides, she said, a bit of extra flesh was all right, providing your muscles were firm. Anyway, chocolate was not fattening, it just burned off. Poor old Marilyn.

Tracy liked sweet things too. But she never put on any weight. She had been a slim, doelike child, and so she grew, in perfect proportion, into her glove-fitted golden skin.

It amazed him, that he and Marilyn could have produced between them something so lovely.

Marilyn was still quite attractive, of course, and when they went out she dolled herself up, made the best of herself. But he—well, he could never win any prizes. Stop a procession, he would. Ugly git.

He grinned, seeing a vague reflection of this ugliness in the glass. Short and squat, with big muscled arms from his days as a plasterer before he took to running the show —and he would still take a stint, liked to, if someone was off sick. His belly was large too, bulging out his white vest. He was brown, a tan that never faded, from his years of outdoor work, and his brown bullet head sat on his shoulders without the intermediary of a neck.

None of this had ever stopped him. His mother, the Old Girl (and that was how she had always been for him, an old
girl)
, she had said, "You ain't pretty, but you're a good boy, Nobbi." It was she who had given him the nickname first, after his father, the rotten old sod, had landed him with that Norman Oliver mouthful.

Nobbi had liked his mother. He liked all women, and they tended to like him. When he first went with Marilyn, she had really been a stunner. The heads had turned.