The House That Jack Built (45 page)

    Thunder shook Valhalla and made the window frames rattle. But the window where Jack Belias had been standing was empty, with the net curtains dragged out into the rain like shrouds.

    

    

    Pepper looked up.

    'What was that?' Effie asked her.

    'Lightning-strike.' She paused, her silver eyes darting from side to side. 'But there's something else, too.' She turned to Effie and she looked suddenly bloodless. 'Something's wrong,' she said. 'I felt like - I don't know - I felt like I suddenly lost something.'

    'Come on,' said Effie, 'it's just this creepy atmosphere.'

    'No,' Pepper told her. She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. 'It's like- something disappeared. I can't explain it.'

    'Maybe we should go look for Norman and Brewster, and call it a night.'

    'What about Craig? Effie, if you lose Craig tonight, you've lost him for ever.'

    Effie said, 'You've done enough already. This is my battle. Mine and Craig's. You've seen that for yourself.'

    'I can't leave you here alone.'

    'You said yourself that it was me that was causing all this psychic disturbance - me and Craig, anyway. What can you do?'

    'I guess I could give you some moral support.'

    Effie shook her head. 'There's only one thing that needs to be done, Pepper, and you know it. Jack Belias has to be shown that no matter how many times he tries to break Gina Broughton down, he's never going to do it. He may take over Craig, and he may use me to re-create Gina. But no matter what he did to Gina, she wouldn't give in to him. He whipped her, Pepper, and he abused her, and he tied her up, and he blinded her. She still wouldn't give in to him. And I won't give in to him, either.'

    'Well, well,' said Pepper, with a tight, puckered-up smile. 'The daughters of Lilith say thus far and no further.'

    'If you like.'

    Pepper reached into her kaftan, took out her ouanga, and handed it to Effie. 'I don't know whether it'll do you any good. None of my other spells seem to work around here. But maybe it'll help just a little bit to keep you safe.' Effie took the ouanga and kissed Pepper on the cheek. 'Faith, hope and a home-made ouanga. I can't go wrong.' just be extra careful,' Pepper warned her. 'Time has gone haywire here tonight. It's like all the pages of the book have got stuck together. I mean, anything could happen.'

    'I know,' said Effie.

    'But I'm just going to have to risk it. I think I was drawn here almost as strongly as Craig was. There's so much unfinished business to take care of.' Pepper said, 'I'm going to go find Norman. I still have this real bad feeling about him.'

    Effie watched Pepper leave the ballroom. Now that she understood exactly what she had to do, she felt stronger and more determined than she had ever felt in her life. She had fallen for Craig when he was younger, with his mystical, romantic quotes from Mallarme. She had devoted her life to helping him at work. She had soothed him and flattered him and flattered his clients, too. She had given him too much to let Jack Belias take him now; or to let Jack Belias take her.

    She heard laughter in the library. She could smell the cigar smoke even though the doors were closed. She took hold of the handles in both hands, and opened them up.

    The library was fully furnished and lined with books; although it was so dense with smoke that she could hardly see anything except the baccarat table, lit with a green-shaded lamp, and the men who were sitting all around it. They turned to look at Effie and their faces were universally despondent - all except for Jack Belias, who was leaning back in his chair and laughing and lighting another cigar.

    'Well, well,' he said. 'It looks like the first of my winnings has turned up in person.'

    Douglas Broughton turned around in his chair and his expression was desperate. 'Gina,' he said. 'Gina, I really believed that I was going to win.'

    Effie walked up to the table and the men turned away in embarrassment. All except for Douglas Broughton, who kept on looking up at her, his forehead crowned in perspiration, begging for forgiveness. And all except for Jack Belias, with that strange square face of his, and those eyes like burn-holes, who smiled, and sipped at his cigar, and smiled some more.

    'Forgive me,' wept Douglas Broughton. He dropped onto his knees on the carpet and took hold of her hand. 'Gina, please forgive me.'

    She lightly touched his white fraying hair, the prawn-pink scalp beneath. 'Why do you want me to forgive you? For staking your wife at a game of baccarat, or for losing?'

    'Oh God, Gina, forgive me for everything.'

    'There's nothing to forgive. I agreed because you wanted me to. Isn't that what wives are for, to do what their husbands want them to do?'

    Jack Belias made a little beckoning gesture with his finger, and a servant with white gloves came up and poured him another bourbon. 'You're mine now,' he told her, in a tone of voice that was surprisingly matter-of-fact. He scooped up the last of the cards, shuffled them, squared them, and tucked them back in the shoe. 'Your husband can send over your clothes, and anything else you want for your creature comforts. Otherwise, you can go upstairs with Lettie and find yourself a bedroom. I'll be up later, when I've finished stripping my friends here of a few more assets.'

    'I'm out,' said Remy Morse, looking at his watch. 'As usual, mon cher Jack, it has been very dangerous, very exciting, and not very much of a pleasure. I wish some day that a black cat would cross your path and trip you up, so that you break your callous neck.'

    'I'm not going anywhere,' said Effie. 'The fact is that I'm not Gina and that you can't win human beings in a game of cards.'

    

    

    Thunder rumbled outside the house, but already it was beginning to move away. Pepper meanwhile was crossing the patio in her wind-whipped kaftan, her bare feet crunching in ashes. She found a triangular trowel that wasn't a stone-age artefact, but a human scapula, a shoulder-bone. Then she discovered more bones, and a whole burned-out ribcage, and a spine. She found a scorched pack of orange Tic-Tacs and a half-melted pack oflime Tic-Tacs. Two small items from Norman's balanced diet.

    It was then that she understood the empty sensation that she had experienced in the ballroom, and it was then that she thought of all the days of her life she had spent in bringing up Norman, from a fat white baby who never slept, to a lanky grunting teenager who could tile, and plaster, and cut immaculate dovetail joints, and who never talked about anything but Nirvana, karmic diets, and bringing old houses back to their former glory.

    Norman had never been old enough to realise that glory is only the golden shine of arrogance; and that the great houses of the Hudson Valley were monuments built in their own honour by men for whom nobody else would ever pay a penny to build a monument.

    Pepper bent down in his rainsoaked ashes and wept and wept, while the last lightning-flickers disappeared eastward, towards Connecticut, and the wind began to die down.

    At last, however, she raised her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She turned towards Valhalla, with its spires and its chimneys and its dark, asymmetric windows, and she knew what she had to do. She stood up, and walked back to the front door. She climbed the steps and touched the wolfish door-knocker with one hand, as if she thought it would give her strength. It was there to protect the house against evil spirits. Perhaps this evening it would fulfil its task.

    She walked across the hallway, along the corridor, and into the ballroom. Without hesitation, she went across to the five-gallon cans of cleaning fluid stacked for the house restorers. She hefted one of them up, and carried it across to the middle of the floor. Then she went to fetch another. She unscrewed the caps, and began to empty them all across the room. The cans noisily gulped in air as the fluid poured across the shining Canadian maple. Fumes rippled up like heatwaves from a summer highway.

    

    

    In the library, Jack Belias stood up and tugged down his waistcoat. 'You're wrong, Mrs. Broughton,' he told her. 'You were staked by your husband; and he lost. Therefore, you're mine, and completely mine, for three long days and three long nights, to do what I will with. You agreed to it, Mrs. Broughton, don't forget that. You gave your word. And in gambling, your word is your bond.'

    'I think you've forgotten something,' said Effie. 'This isn't the first time you've played this game. This isn't the first time you've won this prize. You may not have changed, but times change; and society changes. You've discovered the secret of Balam, Mr. Belias. You've skipped from time to time, from life to life. But you're a man of the age you were naturally born in, and you always will be.' Jack Belias' face was rigid with anger. Without taking his eyes off Effie, he said, 'Are you welshing on a bet, Douglas? Is that it?'

    'I don't know,' said Douglas Broughton, miserably, if she really doesn't want to do it-'

    'She doesn't have a choice,' Jack Belias snapped back at him. 'You staked her. She agreed. Now she's mine. Just like the chateau is mine and the racehorse is mine and just like the goddamned yacht is mine, too.'

    'No,' said Effie. 'I'm nobody's. I'm me.'

    She had never believed in the whole of her life that she would be capable not only of saying those words, but believing them, too. If Douglas Broughton wanted her, he would have to stand up for her, and repudiate his stake. If Jack Belias wanted her, he would have to treat her well.

    If Craig wanted her, he would have to overcome the brutal personality that had taken his soul.

    She was nobody's. She was her own woman. And the full realisation suddenly made the tears pour down her cheeks, because she was free. God only knew what she had lost. Her marriage, maybe; all of her money. Twenty wasted years. But she was free.

    Jack Belias tossed down the last pack of cards so that they scattered. He walked around the table and stood in front of Effie with his fists propped on his hips. He was very tall, and she could feel his magnetism like a high-powered electrical generator. He almost hummed with personal power. Slowly, she raised her head so that she was looking up into his face. She could see nothing but irritation, nothing but contempt.

    'You're mine,' he said, mouthing the words with infinite softness. 'Your husband owes me ninety-seven thousand dollars, and you are the only person who can clear that debt. You have nothing at all. No money; no equity; nothing. Your husband owes me everything. And so you're mine.'

    Effie looked up at Jack Belias for a very long time. She knew what she was looking for: she was looking for any trace of Craig. A look in the eye; a twitch of the mouth. She thought she detected something of Craig in the way he tilted his head slightly to one side; but anybody could have done that, Jack Belias included.

    She slapped him. She didn't even know where her hand came from. Her arm just popped up of its own accord and slapped him.

    'You conniving bastard!'

    'Who's a bastard? Come on, bitch! Who's a bastard? Bitch!'

    'You, you bastard!'

    He slapped her back, hard. Her head was jerked violently to the left, wrenching her neck, and she felt her cheek flare up.

    She slapped him again; and he slapped her. She was about to retaliate when he slapped her once more - so forcefully this time that she fell back against the bookshelves, and dozens of leather-bound books came tumbling out.

    'Bitch! Look what you're doing to my library!'

    She picked up a book and flung it at him, and then another. The pages made a satisfying flaring noise as they flew past his head, followed by a chaotic thump. The first one missed him altogether, but the second one hit him on the arm.

    Now he was angry. He threw aside an occasional table with a white porcelain vase on it, kicked away all of the books that had fallen on the floor, and picked Effie up by her lapels. Flowers and water and broken pottery were spread out everywhere. Jack Belias was quaking and sweating, and his eyes unfocused like a man who can't see, or a man who doesn't want to see.

    'You're mine,' he repeated. 'You're my concubine, if that's what I choose for you to be. You're my squaw.'

    Effie said, 'Craig, you're overstimulated. You're overloaded. This whole house is full of things you don't understand. You don't even know why it's here, or what it's for, or what it can do.'

    'You're mine, sweetheart,' Jack Belias repeated, and slowly raised a warning finger to show that she should never disagree.

    There was a long pause. Jack Belias took hold of her hands, both of them, and even though she knew it was Jack Belias, at least he still felt like Craig. Nobody's hands felt like Craig's hands… except if his prints were different.

    'Craig,' she said, 'I'm begging you. Be strong. Be yourself. Don't let another man take your whole personality away. You're you, and that's all that matters.'

    Jack Belias was silent for a moment. He lifted his head, and nodded.

    Then he punched her so hard in the cheek that she flew backwards and hit her back against the door frame.

    She was half knocked-out. She tried to get up but her ears were singing and she didn't know where she was.

    Douglas Broughton got up and said, 'Damn it, Jack, you can't do that! She's my wife!'

    Jack Belias pushed him back into his chair. 'She's mine, Douglas. Fair and square. I won her and I can do what I like with her.'

    Jack…' begged Michael Arlen. 'Jack... this really isn't on.'