In the distance they could see the pink dome of the Hotel Negresco. He had respectfully changed into a pinstriped suit and even opened the new bottle of perfume sent to him from Zurich. His parfumier, the last alchemist living in the twentieth century, insisted the top notes were irrelevant and the deepest notes would present when he was perspiring. Kitty slipped her bare arm through his pinstriped arm, a vertical red stripe that was not unlike the centipede he had caught in the river. She did not tell him what had happened with Madeleine Sheridan (she and Jurgen had already discussed it for hours) and he did not tell her how he had found himself on his knees lighting one and then two candles at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The tension of waiting to meet each other again had made them do things they did not understand.
By the time they arrived at the marble entrance, the porter in his crimson jacket and white gloves respectfully swung open the door for them, NEGRESCO printed across the arch of glass in gold letters. Her feather cape flew behind her like the wings of the swan they were plucked off. She did not so much stroll as glide into the low-lit bar with its faded red velvet armchairs and tapestries on the walls.
‘See those oil paintings of noblemen in their palace?’
He looked up at the portraits of what appeared to be solemn pale aristocrats posing on chairs covered in tapestry in chilly marble rooms.
‘Yeah, well, my mother cleans their silver and washes their underpants.’
‘Is she a cleaner?’
‘Yeah. She used to clean the villa for Rita Dwighter. That’s how I get to stay free sometimes.’
This confession made her blush but he had something to say in reply.
‘My mother was a cleaner too. I used to steal hen’s eggs for her and bring them home in my pockets.’
They sat side by side on two antique chairs. The white feathers of her cape trembled when he whispered, ‘There’s a note to us on the table. I think it must be from Marie Antoinette.’
Kitty reached over and picked up thewhite card propped against a vase of flowers.
‘It says the cocktail of the month is champagne with something called Crème de Fraise des Bois.’
Joe nodded as if this information was of vital importance.
‘After the revolution everyone shall have the cocktail of the month. Shall we have one now anyway?’
Kitty nodded enthusiastically.
The waiter was already at his side, taking his order as if it were a great privilege to do so. A bored musician in a stained white dinner jacket sat at the piano playing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ in the corner of the bar. She crossed her legs and waited for him to talk about her poem. Last night she saw something that scared her and she wanted to tell him about it. The boy was standing by her bed again. He was waving frantically like he was asking her to help him and he had two hen’s eggs in his pocket. He had broken into her mind. She had started to cover mirrors in case he appeared again. She slipped her hands under the bag on her lap so he wouldn’t see they were shaking.
‘Tell me more about your mother. Does she look like you?’
‘No, she’s obese. You could make the whole of me from one of her arms.’
‘You said she knows the owner of the villa?’
‘Yeah. Rita Dwighter.’
‘Say more about Rita and her portfolio of property and pain.’
She did not want to talk about her mother’s boss. It was shrapnel in her arm, his indifference to the envelope she had pushed through his bedroom door. He kept changing the subject. She took a deep breath and smelt the clover in his perfume.
‘Rita owns so much property she has become a tax exile in Spain, but that means she can only be in the UK for a certain number of days a year. My mother told her she’ll be like someone on the run and Rita took offence and said her own shrink told her she must accept her greed.’
He laughed and sank his fingers into the small bowl of nuts on the table. They clinked glasses and took their first sip of the cocktail of the month.
‘What is your favourite poem, Kitty?’
‘Do you mean a poem I’ve written or someone else’s?’ He must know by now that he was her favourite poet. That was why she was here. His words were inside her. She understood them before she read them. But he wouldn’t own up. He was always cheerful. So fucking cheerful, she thought he might be in terrible danger.
‘I mean do you like Walt Whitman or Byron or Keats or Sylvia Plath?’
‘Oh, right.’ She took another sip of her cocktail. ‘Well, there’s no competition. My favourite poem is by Apollinaire.’
‘What’s that?’
She tipped her chair forward and grabbed the fountain pen he always clipped on to his shirt like a microphone.
‘Give me your hand.’
When he placed his hand on her knee, his palm making a sweaty mark on her green silk dress, she jabbed the nib into his skin so hard he jumped. She was stronger than she looked, because she held his hand down and he couldn’t or didn’t want to tear it away. She was hurting him with his own pen as she inked a black tattoo of letters on his skin.
I
T
S
R
A
I
N
I
N
G
He stared at his smarting hand. ‘Why do you like it so much?’
She lifted the champagne flute up to her lips and stuck her tongue inside it, licking the last dregs of strawberry pulp.
‘Because it’s always raining.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah. You know it is.’
‘Do I?’
‘It’s always raining if you’re feeling sad.’
The image of Kitty Finch in perpetual rain, walking in rain, sleeping in rain, shopping and swimming and collecting plants in rain, intrigued him. His hand was still on her knee. She had not put the lid back on his pen. He wanted to demand she return it to him but instead found himself offering her another cocktail. She was lost in thought. Sitting up very straight on the velvet armchair with his pen in her hand. The gold nib pointing to the ceiling. Small diamonds of sweat dripped down her long neck. He walked to the bar and leaned his elbows against the counter. Perhaps he should beg the staff to drive him home? It was impossible. It was an impossible flirtation with catastrophe, but it had already happened, it was happening. It had happened and it was happening again, but he must fight it to the end. He stared at the black rain she had inked on his hand and told himself it was there to soften his resolve to fight. She was clever. She knew what rain does. It softens hard things. He could see her searching her bag for something. She had a book in her hand, one of his own books, and she was underlining something on the page with his pen. Perhaps she was an extraordinary writer? It hadn’t occurred to him. Perhaps that is what she was?
Joe ordered two more cocktails of the month. The barman told Monsieur he’d bring them over when they were ready but he did not want to walk back to his antique armchair yet. She was really quite knowledgeable about poetry. For a botanist. Why had he not told her he had read her poem? What was stopping him? Should he trust his instinct not to reveal he had read the threat she had slipped into the envelope? He carried the iced flutes over to her. This time Joe glugged back his strawberry champagne as if it was a pint of pale ale. He bent towards her lips, which were wet from the strawberry champagne, and kissed her. When she let him, he kissed her again, his black silver hair tangling with the curls of her red hair. Her pale eyelashes sooty with mascara fluttered against his cheek while he held her long neck in the palm of his hand and felt her painted green fingernails press into his knee.