SYLVIE'S RIDDLE (16 page)

She sat down at the desk and wrote this:

Sylvie's Little Litany

Therianthrope

Minotaur

Picasso

(Henry?)

Persistent Vision

(Abolished in amnesia?)

Owen

Dogs after the inundation - a world
without signs

Deva

A water-n
ymph turned slimy and riverlike

Alex Gregory

(who should have drowned, surely)

Time's widow

Owen

Owen

Blood
y fucking Owen. Do it now then.

She picked up the phone and dialled. Owen answered.

'I was wondering if you might make arrangements to go and stay somewhere else for a while?' He seemed remarkably composed when he spoke.

'You want a divorce, don't you?' She hesitated.

'Yes, I think I do. Stay with a friend, Owen. Just for a while.

Would Johnny let you stay with him? I don't want to have to worry about you. Think I might have done enough of that for one lifetime, to be fair.'

Then she phoned Henry.

'I'll come over tonight. Yes, love to. We'll need to have a bit of a chat, I think .... Well, quite a serious one, yes.'

As she sat and stared at the picture of the Beatles standing on the dock in Liverpool waiting for the future to arrive, the phone rang again. It was Tom Helsey.

'How about that drink?'

'All right. When?'

'Tomorrow night?'

'Where?'

'The Phil at eight o'clock.'

'See you there.'

*

'So aren't you actually selling any of this stuff then, Henry?'

'Not unless I absolutely have to, no, not the stuff in here. I suppose the day might come.'

'No contradiction between you being a gallery owner, and sitting on all these works you won't let anybody else near?'

'I let you near. You're anybody else. You're here in the Picasso Room. Is that pizza all right?'

'Tastes exactly like the other one.'

'I've noticed that too. They all taste exactly the same. I am, to all intents and purposes, a vegetarian. Technicolour straw seems to be produced to a modular design. The different titles are only meant to distract you.'

'Do many dealers buy work they never mean to sell?'

'Well, one of Picasso's most important early dealers, Uhde, always made a distinction between his collection and his stock. The stock was for sale, the collection wasn't. Having a German name, come
19I
4 everything he owned was taken by the French state. Amongst the possessions sequestered that day were fifteen Picassos, some of them masterpieces. He'd never tried to sell a single one. I think I'm with Uhde on this. If you love them so much why pass them on? Keep them; give your eyes and soul a treat. Why should I have those astonishing images translated back into rows of figures in a bank? Does that make for civilisation, as you understand it?'

'No. I'm not entirely sure this pizza does either.'

'In Italy, there'd be riots on the street. The rivers would break their banks.'

Henry, as usual, kept offering her more wine, and for once she took it. Her gaze softened and she remembered how much she liked Henry; how gentle he had always been, even in his importunity. She smiled; he smiled back, and poured more chianti into her glass. She was sitting underneath the
Satyr and Sleeping Woman.
There was little enough difference between this satyr and the minotaur, except that his face was a little less bullish. He had uncovered the woman and looked at her with a look of delight and anticipation. He would have her, she thought. He deserved her. And he obviously adored her. This moment, given the tranquillity of their mood, seemed a good one to broach the matter.

'Henry, we need to talk about things.'

'Whichever way you wanted to do it,' he said. 'I don't mind.' She was a little confused by this; it also struck her that she was a little drunk.

'Do what?'

'You know how I feel about you. You've already told me that you want the relationship with Owen to end, and that would mean you couldn't keep the house in Chester. I'd be happy to come to any arrangement you like. You are welcome to come and stay here on any terms, at any time.'

'I don't love you, Henry.'

'But you like me. I married love twice and found grief both times. Then the last time I married grief, and found love. But she died. She was already dying. Eleanor once said to me that she'd always been dying. I think she was born dying.'

'I can't, Henry.' Something had suddenly brought her close to tears again, but she really couldn't cry at his place twice in a row. She had not anticipated this. Henry had always seemed so stoical and humorous. She didn't want him humiliating himself. She wished she hadn't drunk so much wine. The words forming on her tongue felt recalcitrant.

'Owen and I are . . . getting divorced. I'll have to sell the house in Chester because I won't have enough money coming in to keep it going by myself. But ... I don't love you enough to live with you, Henry. I'm not sure I can live with anyone else just now. Shall we go to bed?'

Henry was staring at another of the etchings. The minotaur had the woman on his lap, while others looked on, glass in hand. It seemed to take a very long time before he finally answered.

'I think it might be better if we didn't,' he said and smiled.

What a sorry smile. 'It would just make matters worse. I'm not keen on valedictory sex. I can't get you out of my mind, Sylvie.'

And that was how Sylvie ended up staying in the other room, being too drunk by that stage to drive back to Chester, or anywhere else. In the morning she crept out to her car, and never spoke to Henry.

She arrived in Chester feeling awful, and wanted only to change and drive over to Liverpool, where she was teaching in two hours. She dreaded the prospect of seeing Owen. She didn't have to worry. He had already packed some things and gone.
Staying
with Johnny
,
the note said. Because Sylvie seldom drank too much, she was seldom hung-over. That made the experience all the worse. All she wanted to do was get through her lectures and return home. A house to herself for once. She was gathering up her things before clearing off when the phone rang. Owen? Henry? She thought she'd better answer.

'Hi, it's Tom. Just making sure we're still on for tonight.' She sat back on her chair.

'Well Tom, I'm a bit out
of it
, actually.'

'So am
I
. We'll make a great couple. You can tell me your problems; I'll tell you mine.' And before she could think of another thing to say, he'd hung up.

As she walked from the house to the car she saw Jack Jameson, or Gizmo Gus, as she and Owen always called him. He was, as usual, plugged in. A mobile phone was pressed to his ear, as he walked along.
He
was now the British represent
ative for an American company called Anderton Supplies.

What it appeared to supply was whatever the US Army needed after its latest intervention
/
invasion
/
liberation
/
occupation.
Satellite phones, paper cups, dried food, medical pro- vision, combat clothing, shades, cigarettes, booze, fuel. The great advantage of all this, from Anderton's point of view, as Jack had pointed out to them one evening, was that it had to manufacture nothing. Who on earth wanted to get involved in manufacturing in this day and age? So, no deleterious design or technology to fret about. All the company needed to do was cherry-pick market winners (or sometimes market-losers, if they were cheap and disposable enough) and then supply them at a premium vast enough to keep its shareholders and directors sweet. The share-price had risen from $
I
.99 in
19
97 to $30.55 by the end of 2003. Periods of belligerence were good for Anderton's profile. The Iraqi War undoubtedly helped. For every US soldier who fell in combat, Anderton's index register jumped another few cents. Even the dead need body bags, and someone has to supply them, along with all the pharmaceuticals for the wounded. And commanding officers, needing to communicate with the families of the deceased, needed stationery. So whoever else could lose, Anderton couldn't. Sylvie made sure she didn't catch his eye.

That evening Sylvie's student Lionel went to the Phil. Prior to this he had spent several hours trying to make himself attractive to women. After showering and rubbing and squirting and taking, he had then applied a copious amount of Brilliant Gel to his dark curly hair. Brilliant Gel advertised a 'wet look' that could last for twelve hours. This was good, not because Lionel's hair would otherwise dry out;
au contraire,
as he had recently learnt to say, and very much liked saying. The problem was that Lionel's scalp sweated. Only on social occasions. He could happily toil away at a manual task for hours, and not a drip. But the minute he was in a pub, or on a dance-floor, surrounded by pheromones and perfumes, the scalp would begin to itch and then, as though to engulf the itch with balm, the sweat glands started pumping. Within seconds, Lionel's black curly hair, not without a certain sheen at its best, was the waterlogged thatch of a man hoisted out of the Mersey.

Then he had noticed on the street one day men in business suits, with glistening hair. He had enquired. 'Wet look,' he'd been told. 'You should try Brilliant Gel.' So he had. And now, after massaging a quarter of a jar into his locks, he was free for the night. Already wet, he could get no wetter. Should he feel a dampness up above, he knew it could be ascribed to fashion instead of sexual panic. He walked in to the bar.

'Raining again, is it?' the barman asked, looking at Lionel's doused tonsure.

'Au contraire,'
Jason said brightly. Some people simply didn't keep up with the trends.

*

At that moment Sylvie lay on her little sofabed in the corner of her room at the Signum, sound asleep. When she woke it was to the sound
of John
Lennon's voice, issuing from the throat of a bull. A man with a bull's head. Slowly this sound transmuted to the horn of a ship making its way down the Mersey. It took her a second to remember who and where she was. Then she looked at her watch. Ten-past eight. Tom.

She renovated her face with a little powder, kohl and blusher.

Her green eyes, normally so sharp, had a vague look about them. Five minutes later she was there. Tom was already sitting at a table, book in hand, with a glass of white wine before him. They traded hellos.

'Wine?'

'Don't think I could face a
ny to be honest. The bouquet's
still hanging around from last night.'

'Feeling a bit foggy, are you? I have the perfect cure.'

'Do you?'

'Yes, as long as you don't ask any questions and just trust me.' Sylvie couldn't be bothered thinking about anything any more. Done enough thinking for one week. 'All right then.' The drink he put before her was entirely colourless and entirely still. 'What is it?'