It was almost midnight but Juliette knew of a café under the arches which would still be open. It was still raining and to me the black stone of the bridges seemed like the entrance to the end of the world.
We sat opposite each other at a formica table eating disgustingly cooked food but I was too hungry and tired to be affronted by the squalor of the place.
‘Let’s get this straight,’ Juliette said, her dress falling off her shoulders to reveal her scratched skin beneath. ‘I hate Justine. I want my revenge. This is where you come in.’
‘Me?’
‘You. You didn’t really fall for my little girl routine, did you? All that nervousness, those tears and tantrums. From the moment I first met you I have just been testing the ground to see where you stood. To find out what kind of a man you were.’
‘Are you telling me that you arranged to bump into me at the gallery?’
‘Don’t be stupid. How on earth would I know that you would be there? No, that was total coincidence.’ She smiled. ‘But when I realized that you knew Justine, and even better seemed obsessed by her, it all seemed just too good to be true. I simply seized the opportunity, as any other sensible girl would have done.’
This was all getting too complicated for me. I watched her take another sip of her tea, and desperately tried to keep up with her.
‘What strikes me is the symmetry,’ she said, ‘You and me. Justine and Jack. Me and Jack. You and Justine. Our desires are very specific. Like those little plastic puzzles made up of letters that can only fit together in one way to form the right word. We are each one of the letters and there is only one way we can be put together to make up the word. You may have thought you were seducing me to get Justine. But I was also seducing you to get Jack.’
I looked at her, speechless. After all, she was sitting opposite me in the bright yellow light of the tiny plastic café, complacently rewriting my history. Telling me the story that I had been in was not mine, but hers all along. The story I was now finding myself in was one of obsession, jealousy and revenge but it was Juliette’s.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked. ‘I want you to seduce Justine.’
‘Want me to?’
‘You’re being very slow.’
‘You want me to seduce Justine, in order that you can get Jack back?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What makes you so sure that it will split them up?’
‘Because Jack is a literalist. He believes in the truth.’
‘What makes you so sure that Jack will go back to you?’
She laughed, ‘Because, after Justine, I am always the next best thing.’
‘Where does all your faith in me come from? I might not succeed in seducing Justine?’
‘You may think you are clinging on to some vestiges of self-control. But they have, in reality, long since gone. You are way past the point of no return. You’ll get her. Whatever it takes you. It’s in your eyes.’
I remained silent. I didn’t tell her the extent to which my self-control was inviolable, whatever passion scratched its surface. My sense of distance from the world was profound.
However, the contradictions were proving impossible to resist.
‘But why did you go through the scenario of warning me against Justine? Telling me about her coldness. Why did you try and put me off her, if this is what you wanted all along?’
She looked at me almost contemptuously.
‘When have you ever known a man to be put off a beautiful woman whom he desires, when you tell him that she is also cold and dangerous?’
An old woman, a crone like one of the witches from Macbeth, bent down to collect our plates – her fingernails were filthy and she smelt of bacon.
‘You don’t have to trust me,’ Juliette said. ‘That’s not necessary. Just do everything I say and everything will be all right. Justine will be yours. Look upon her as a gift. From me to you.’
Juliette had ceased completely to play the forlorn neurotic. She was now playing the part, in spite of her incongruous dress, of my business partner. With steady and appraising eyes she had just offered me a bribe. But her eyes still glittered dangerously.
Juliette’s character now had been lain down by Jack. He was responsible for the way she was, the lack of coherence to her personality, the way she was playing games with her identity. Juliette had guessed the truth about me so easily because she had become accustomed to betrayal. I was simply doing what Jack had already done to her – abandon her for Justine. Except this time I was to do it with her help. I felt as if I were following in Jack’s footsteps. That whatever happened to Jack would happen to me. So my feelings about him were complex. Surprisingly, I felt no jealousy of him. He had kissed Justine in places I could only dream about. But if he were my precursor, I would be doing the same soon, too.
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was now almost one and the old woman brought us another two cups of tea which was the colour of rust and too hot.
‘I’ll arrange a meeting between you and Justine. But it will have to appear accidental. Justine, of course, must have no idea what is going on. After that it is up to you. I am not going to give you background material on her to help you. That isn’t the way. It will sound false. She’s too clever for that.’
I wondered how long Juliette had waited for someone like me to come along.
‘What I said about Justine being secretive was true. She doesn’t like anyone, including me, to know where she is at any given time. But she does go to one place regularly. In order to write. It is a private library in St. James’s Square called the London Library. You might have heard of it. People are always putting it into their novels.’
It was early morning before I got back home to Kensington Gardens. I was relieved to return to the aesthetic sanity of my rooms. Deeds that took place in elegant surroundings somehow seemed less morally accountable. The atmosphere of Juliette’s flat and the café had given a shabby air to the enterprise. After taking a bath, I lighted candles and reverently placed them on the mantelpiece below the portrait of Justine.
I felt violated by the act of sex that had taken place in Juliette’s flat. That Juliette had been using her body as a means to an end made the whole encounter seem even more obscene. I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep in front of the painting.
That night I dreamt again that I am driving along the avenue of trees. I am experiencing exactly the same sensations as I have had in the previous dream, feeling the same breeze and the same sunshine on my face. But this time my sense of exhilaration begins to be replaced by a feeling of menace as I approach the house. The maze is still to the right of the house. The dream doesn’t stop where it did before. I switch off the engine of the car and begin walking towards the steps of the main entrance. Then a window high up in the house catches my eye as suddenly the rays of the sun hit the glass. I cannot tell if the window is barred or whether the shafts of reflected light shine the illusion of bars across it. Someone is watching me from behind the glass. Immediately a cloud goes across the sun and the window is plunged into darkness. And I know, in the sudden realization that often takes place in dreams, that the person who is watching me from behind the window is the reason why I have come here.
I woke up the next morning, still on the sofa, my limbs aching, looking straight into the painted eyes of Justine. I leapt up from the sofa with an energy I had not felt since childhood and drew a long hot bath. This was the morning I had decided to visit the London Library.
TWENTY-EIGHT