The War of the Roses (29 page)

Once, he had heard sounds and had followed them, hearing screams of pain, and he had arrived in the sun-room to see a vaguely familiar form running in the garden. Ann. He had not set these traps for Ann, and he was thankful that she had escaped. It was not her war. The traps were for Barbara.

It was that idea, he remembered, that had brought him back to his room, where he had let time disappear. He was certain that she was somewhere in the house. Probably living like a rat, burrowing in every nook and cranny. What he had to do was to flush her out. Cautiously. Cleverly. Nothing must be safe.

He lay down, letting his mind grope for a plan. It started to grow dark again. On the night table beside him he found a half-spent candle and lit it with a match. The flickering yellow light calmed him. He felt safe again and his mind became fully alert.

He ate some stale bread and washed it down with wine. Carrying his crowbar and the candle, he carefully opened the door. His foot hit some object and he heard a crunching sound. Bending, he saw a broken Staffordshire figure, one of the most valuable, Garibaldi. Eschewing mourning, he lifted the candle. In its glow he saw her familiar scrawl in lipstick. She no longer used pape
r or cardboard, but wrote directl
y on the door.

‘
’
’I’ll
break
some every day,' he read.

He did not allow himself the slightest emotion, concentrating only on what he had to do. Gathering his tools, first he removed all the bolts from the hinges of every door but his own - closets, room doors, everywhere there was a hinge. No door but his own and those leading to the outside world could be opened without barking out a signal. He set each door carefully so that the slightest motion would make it fall. Then he went to work on the furniture, loosening bolts, removing legs and supports, tipping every piece so that it would fall on touch.

He avoided the dining room, which was a shambles, although he could not resist looking at what he had carved into the tabletop:
bitch
. He loosened every screw and bolt in the kitchen he could find, especially those that held up still-intact overhead pots, leaving them just at the point of weakest tension. He did the same with shelves and cabinet doors. Working methodically, concentrating only on his actions, he was able to shut out extraneous thoughts.

The candle went out. By then it had started to grow light again. Thankful for the natural light, he moved the heaviest cast-iron pots and put them at the top of the first-floor landing. Others he wedged into the corners of the risers.

Working now with accelerating speed, he loosened the winding brass banister, then partially removed the tacks that held the stair carpet to the risers. Just brushing against the banister would sent the carpet flipping over into the chandelier well.

The clock offered another challenge. He fiddled with the pendulum to make a longer stroke so that it would hit the wooden sides. Working with the mechanism, he changed the calibration so that the chimes would be noisier and make more of a clanging sound. Then he loosened all the fasteners that held the pictures on the walls of the library and the parlor.

He reveled in his creativity, rejoicing in the imaginative scenario of destruction that would be set off by the slightest vibration. Everything would go off at once, like an explosion in a fireworks factory. The thought made him giddy. With extreme caution, he made his way up the stairs to his room and quiedy locked the door.

Searching among the existing bot
tl
es, he found two, both 1969 Dom Perignon. Despite its warmth, he opened one. The cork made a noisy popping sound and the champagne foamed out. Drinking some, he poured the rest over his head, as athletes do when they win a championship game.

But he hadn't won yet, he admonished himself.

Not yet. He'd save the other bottle for that victory.

29

From her makeshift bed, composed of insulation pads piled one on top of the other in a corner of the attic, she heard him puttering around beneath her. The attic air was stagnant, blazing hot, and she had removed everything but her panties. Beside her was the canvas shopping bag, containing all her movable possessions.

For the past days and nights she had shifted from place to place, moving stealthily, using all her senses.

The movement below was something new. For some time he had been snoring, with froglike regularity, and she had slipped out of her hiding place to make a sortie into other parts of the house. She had gone into the library and put some Staffordshire figures in her shopping bag, crushing the Garibaldi and sprinkling its contents outside his locked door. Then she had calmly written her warning on his door in lipstick.

She let herself into her old room, looking for some change of clothing, but the room stank from the rotting food and she had to hold her nose. Every object in the room, including her clothes, was permeated with the stench.

Because her inner antenna was so alert, she sensed that someone was watching the house. Peeking through a crack in the drapes, she saw Ann dozing against a tree across the street. It took a while to identify the figure, since she had closed the door on the past. Who was Ann?

She remembered Ann as an enemy, hostile, and she
quickly removed the girl from reality by closing the shutters, sealing off the room.

She made her way upstairs, defying his trap by sitting on one step at a time and bracing herself against the wall. It pleased her to have conquered this obstacle. She had already withstood all his assaults. Indeed, she had come up with a few of her own. Her weapon, she decided, would be tenacity. She would outlast him.

He was making no effort to be quiet, and she was able to slip from the attic through the square hole in the ceiling of a storage closet at-the rear of the house. Crawling toward the edge of the stairs, she listened to the sounds he was making, trying to recognize them to identify his actions. He was fiddling with doors and furniture. She heard him go into the kitchen, come out to the foyer, then move up the stairs.

Her instincts were sharp, and by the sounds he made she was able to map his progress. Finally, she came back to the storage closet and hoisted herself back into
the attic, pleased with her catl
ike agility. Lying horizontally across the square opening, she continued to listen. He was setting traps, constructing obstacles, creating new dangers. The idea amused her. Didn't he know that the house was her ally? Nothing he devised could really hurt her. How foolish of him not to realize that.

In her mind each isolated sound outlined his little ploys, his booby traps. She was certain she knew exactly what he was doing. Well, she had a few tricks of her own up her sleeve.

She groped on hands and knees through the blazing-hot attic, half lit by daylight filtering through slatted vents. Over one shoulder she carried her shopping bag. She had made a sling for the cleaver and carried it stretched across her chest like a bow.

Once before, she had crawled into this attic space. Years ago, when the men had come to attach the chandelier. An engineer had determined that the main beam had to be reinforced if the chandelier was to be safely attached, and additional wooden beams were superimposed over the original one.

She found the exact spot where the chandelier's chain was embedded by spikes in the beams. She remembered that the men who had attached it were proud of their handiwork. And, indeed, they should have
been. The chandelier was perfectl
y balanced and safe, considering that it was hanging from a chain three stories high.

She hacked away at the wooden beam with her cleaver. It was hard work. The cleaver was not as effective as an ax. Sweat poured out of her, and she had to rest periodically. Her objective was to weaken the beam and, therefore, the stability of the chandelier. Just in case she needed an ultimate weapon. He, too, she knew, was sparing no energy, concocting ingenious traps.

After hacking away for nearly an hour, she lay exhausted on the insulation pads until her energy returned.

It was dark when she let herself down from the attic hole. She heard him close the door of his room, as always the signal that she could leave the safety of the attic. Her fingers moved ahead of her, like fluttering antennas. The closet door, she noted, was not quite true and she quickly realized that he had removed the hinges. Opening it slowly, with minuscule movement, she slipped through the crack. Did he really believe that the house would hurt her? Not now. Not ever.

Moving on her hands and knees, she reached out her arms, touching everything in front of her, like a mine detector. The floor was slick, with little friction. He had separated and loosened the carpet on the landing. Stretching herself on her back lengthwise, she slid slowly down the steps, landing gendy. By now her eyes were accustomed to the darkness and she saw at once the odd shapes on the stairs to the first floor. Her mind had created a map of everything in the house and the slightest thing awry was enough to trigger a reaction. The lightest touch of her fingers, for example, showed her the banister was loose.

Proud of both her deductive ability and her stealth, she moved toward the back stairs. He had removed the wedge he had placed at the door to make the missing bolts more hazardous, a problem now easy for her to deal with. Using what she thought of as the sled method, she slid down the stairs on her back. The obstacles he had placed on the flat surfaces were easily avoided and she was able to crawl along the corridor to the library and carefully gather up armfuls of the Staffordshire figures both on the library mantel and in the parlor. She put them in her shopping bag and carefully retraced her steps, avoiding all his crude booby traps.

She got up the back stairs by applying a type of rappeling, using her cleaver periodically to dig into the wall, then hoisting herself up by its handle. For every measure there was a countermeasure, she told herself, proud of her resourcefulness, crowing over how badly he had underestimated her ingenuity.

Squatting in front of his room, she selected two Napoleons from her shopping bag and with her cleaver beheaded them and stood the figures on the floor in front of his door.

With her lipstick she wrote on the door: 'Off with their heads.' Unable to stifle her giggles, she moved away and, again using the rappeling method, shimmied up the stairs and back to her attic hideaway.

She lay on her makeshift bed of insulation, ignoring the heat, the sweat of her body, and whatever physical discomfort she was supposed to feel. Only one emotion seized her. The joy of having bested him. Her body, too, seemed suffused with a sexual response, an exquisite sensation of unspecific ecstasy, a post
-
orgasmic after-thrill. Her nipples were erect, her inner parts moist.

She was Barbara, her identity clear, unmistakable. Mistress of herself. Surviving in the jungle.

30

Ann's fear immobilized her. She lay on the bed in her room, listening to the sporadic rhythm of the faulty air conditioner. It seemed to be running in tandem to the bea
ti
ng of her heart. Did she have, she asked herself, some obligation to report what was occurring in that house? But what could she report? She could not put any order to her explanation. What was really going on in there? She imagined conversations with detectives in urine-smelling rooms.

'I think they're trying to kill each other.'

'How do you know?'

'I was inside. The entire inside is unsafe.'

"What were you doing inside?'

She was not afraid of being charged with anything. Or was she? Perhaps if she had talked to Oliver. Touched him. Was that really Oliver she had seen, that ravaged, zombielike figure? Surely not the man she had loved. Loved? The word repelled her now.

Yet even the mute, worn figure of Oliver conveyed less terror than the house itself. It had become alive, a chilling, bloodless monster. The memory of its brutality recalled her body's punishment. Their mutual hate had breathed life into it. A house? She detested it now. Her revulsion gave her the strength to rise from the bed.

She could not stay another minute in her room. She dressed and went downstairs. At the desk she found a message. It was from Eve. 'Please call me ASAP.'

It was early in the morning, but she call
ed anyway, reaching the disgruntl
ed camp director, who was unco
-
operative until Ann insisted it was a matter of the utmost urgency.

'I haven't heard from either Mom or Dad in three weeks. I'm scared, Ann.' There was an unmistakable note of hysteria in her voice. 'Josh is a nervous wreck. We're worried sick.'

'They're probably still on vacation.'

'I don't believe that. Why was the telephone disconnected? I even sent them a telegram. It came back stamped "undeliverable." But my mail doesn't come back.'