On the floor lay a futon, and it was prepared the way she liked to prepare our bed when we were going to make love: sideways to the fire, lots of pillows, a white duvet. Across the duvet, the severe little Marks & Spencer nightdress she had brought with her when she came to live with me, its long sleeves stretched out for the embrace. I saw her naked on her stomach with her chin in her hands, turning to look at me over her shoulder as she hears me enter. And the light of the log fire drawing finger shadows on her flanks. And her unpinned hair falling like black flames over her shoulders.
Two books, one his side, one hers. For Larry, a red-cloth nineteen-twentyish volume by one W. E. D. Allen, with the unlikely title Beled-es-Siba. I opened it at random and came on a memorial tribute to the poet Aubrey Herbert and, underlined, the words: he lacked the caddishness of genius. I had a vague memory that Herbert had fought to save Albania from the self-styled Liberators of the Balkans, and that he was one of Larry's heroes. For Emma, Fitzroy Maclean's To Caucasus, subtitled The End of All the Earth.
A sepia poster. Not of Josef Stalin this time, not of anyone I recognised. But a bearded, strong-jawed, dark-eyed modem prophet in what I took to be the traditional garb of a Caucasian hillsman: fur hat, skin waistcoat with loops for ammunition. Looking closer, I made out the name Bashir Haji in sharp Cyrillic script across the lower corner and, with difficulty, the words "to my friend Misha the great warrior." It seemed a strange sort of trophy to hang in a love nest. Tugging it from its fastenings, I laid it on the bed next to Emma's nightdress. Clothes, I thought: I need more clothes. Nobody who leaves in a hurry takes all his clothes. A curtain hung across a recess beside the chimney breast, reminding me of Uncle Bob's blackout curtain across the alcove in my priesthole. I pulled it aside and took a sharp step backward.
I am on Priddy, grappling with him. I have seized him by the lapels of his green Austrian raincoat that he calls his moleskin. It is a flowing, long-skirted, olive-coloured affair, silky to the touch. Its softness is offensive to me. As I haul him towards me, I hear a rent and I laugh. As we fight, I have an image of it turning to shreds. As I drag him feetfirst and mud-caked towards the pool, I see its tatters in the moonlight, trailing after him like a beggar's shroud.
And I saw it now, dry-cleaned and none the worse for wear, hanging from a wire coat hanger with the cleaner's tag still stapled to the inside lining. I checked the buttons. All there. Did I pull the buttons off? I had no memory of doing so. The rip, where was the rip? I had distinctly heard cloth ripping. I could find not one tear, not a mend, whether in the lining, the hem, or round the buttonholes. Nor round the lapels where I had seized him.
I examined the belt. He had worn it knotted. It had a perfectly good buckle, if you have to wear a belt with your raincoat, but the buckle wasn't good enough for Larry. He had to knot his belt like a gigolo, which is why I had taken such pleasure in seeing my gloved fists clutching it as I dragged him along the ground, with his head going bumpety-bump and his grin switching on and off in the moonlight.
It's a different coat, I thought. Then I thought: When did Larry ever have two of anything except women?
* * *
Beneath the kitchen sink I had found a roll of black plastic bin bags. Tearing one free, I stuffed the mail into it, making no distinction between printed and personal letters, As I did so I saw the bayonetted children again, and remembered Diana and his perfect note. What was perfect, I wondered, about the screams of dying children? On my knees before the fireplace, I scraped together the charred paper in the grate and with huge care laid it in a second bag. I filled a third and fourth with files and papers strewn around the desk. I tossed in an Esso diary, and a singed account book that somebody had attempted to burn but failed, and a forties pop-up Bakelite address book I associated with neither Larry nor Emma which seemed to be some foundling in their lives, until I realised it was Russian. I extracted the tape from the typewriter, pulled the plug out of the socket, and set the typewriter on the kitchen table on its way to the side door. And that was for the seeming, because I had told Phoebe I needed to collect Sally's typewriter. I put the tape in the third bin bag.
I returned to the drawing room and made to unplug the answering machine, but on second thoughts picked it up, base and receiver both, and by the glow of the street lamp identified the redial button on the telephone, lifted the receiver, and pressed redial. A number rang out. I heard a man's voice, soft, foreign, and well-spoken like Mr. Dass: "Thank you for calling the offices of Hardwear Carpets International. If you wish to leave a message or place an order, kindly speak after the tone...." I listened to the message twice, unplugged the machine, and set it on the kitchen table beside the typewriter. My eye caught sight of a set of car keys hanging from a nail. The Toyota. I put them in my pocket, grateful that I wasn't going to have to jump the wires in a dark side street late on a Saturday night. I rushed upstairs. There was no hard reason for this excessive haste, but perhaps if I hadn't run I wouldn't have found the courage to walk.
I stood at the bedroom window. Cambridge Street was deserted. Waiting for my head to clear, I stared out over the grass platform at the rivers of railway line. The night was darker. Bristol was putting itself to sleep. This is where Emma stood when she was waiting for him to arrive, I thought. Naked, as she used to wait for me when she had decided we would make love. I stood at the futon. The pillows were stacked to one side, for a single head. What was she thinking as she lay here alone? He went first, she followed him, Phoebe had said. And this was where she lay, all on her own, before she went. I bent down, intending to pick up the signed poster of the hillsman. Imagined or real, the scent of her body rose at me from the bedclothes. I folded the poster until it would fit my pocket. I removed Larry's green raincoat from its hanger and slung it over my arm. I returned slowly downstairs and walked to the kitchen. Slowly. I slid back the bolts of the side door, cocked the latch, and poked the pin in place to hold it open. Slowly. It was very important to me that I should do nothing hasty.
Leaving the door ajar, I walked down the pavement to the car, pulled off the cover, and saw Larry's buckskin boots lying on the back seat. I determined to make nothing dramatic of the boots. They were Larry's boots. and Larry was alive. What was so remarkable about his damned boots, made to measure by Lobb of St. James's and paid for to screams of pain from the Top Floor, all because Larry had decided that it was time he put our love for him to the test?
I noted the caked mud on them, as one notes mud on anything: take a wire brush to them, do it later. The hatred in me was aflame again. I wished I could call a rematch, go back to Priddy and finish him off.
I walked to the kitchen, collected the typewriter and answering machine, and walked back to the car with them, agonising about whether it was intending to start. I made some fanciful calculations about how long it would take to push the car to the top of the hill so that I could roll it down to the station and, if it still didn't start, transfer my new possessions to a cab.
My courage almost exhausted, I returned to the house for the remainder of my load: Larry's moleskin raincoat, which I seemed to need as proof positive of his survival, and my four bin bags, which I carried by their necks and packed around the typewriter, all but the bag containing the burned paper, which out of respect for its delicacy I laid on the passenger seat. And now all I wanted in the world was to get into the car and drive myself and my treasures to a safe place. But I was worried about Phoebe and Wilf. During the break-in they had become major characters in my imagination. I had been grateful for their acceptance of me, but I needed to know that I had done everything possible to preserve their good opinion, particularly Phoebe's, because she doubted me. I didn't want them phoning the police. I wanted them easy in their minds.