She took the last step on to the top of the ladder. Her head was only about six inches from the ceiling, but the rope was utterly taut. Frank Mordant knelt down, lifted the black cover on the couch, and tied the other end of the rope around it. He did it so deftly that Julia could tell he had done it before.
For a long moment they all stood in a strange tableau: Julia on top of the stepladder and the four men watching her. The noose was so tight around her neck that she could hardly swallow, and her breath came in thin, distinct whines. She reached up with both hands and clung tightly to the rope, terrified that Frank Mordant would take the stepladder away.
“They’ll see this all over the world, Julia. Germany, the Germans love this kind of thing, although they won’t admit it. Holland, very broad-minded, we always get excellent sales figures in Holland. Japan … well, you know what the Japs are like. They’d pay to see a slug being stepped on. And America, of course. Huge market in America. Perhaps someone will recognize you, you never know.”
“Please” Julia begged him. Then she couldn’t hold it together any longer, and she wet herself. Frank Mordant stepped back a little way and said nothing.
Julia tried to think about her mother and father. She tried to picture their faces, if only to say goodbye to them. She tried to think about her brother Josh. She tried to see the house, and the verandah, and the dogs running out to meet her. But all she could see was the ceiling of Frank Mordant’s flat, and all she could think about was choking.
“Please, don’t do this. Please.”
Frank Mordant approached her and tugged away the step-ladder. Her toes curled, reaching for it – and then, when she realized that it had gone, her legs frantically pedaled in mid-air.
“Acchhh” was all she could manage to say. She held on to the rope but her arms were aching already and she was so close to hysteria that it seemed as if her last remaining strength were ebbing out of her, as if her fingers couldn’t grip anything any more.
Her hands slipped down the rope an inch. She managed to cling on a few seconds more and then they slipped another inch. The noose was now so tight around her neck that she couldn’t even manage a choking sound. If she could only lift herself up a few more inches. If she could only reach the hook. But she knew it was hopeless. She knew that she was slowly suffocating and there was nothing she could do to save herself.
Frank Mordant and his companions remained quite still, although their eyes were wide and their faces were transfigured by an undisguised hunger, so that they looked more like gargoyles than men. The dark-skinned man repeatedly licked his lips, no longer bored. The Malay had his hand in his pants pocket and his fly was moving rhythmically up and down. The heavily built man had broken out into a glittering sweat.
Only Frank Mordant seemed unmoved, watching Julia spin slowly around on her rope, her legs swimming through the air.
Julia’s right hand slipped from the rope above her head. She tried to raise it again, but she didn’t have the strength. Almost immediately afterward, her left hand slid another inch down the rope, burning her fingers. Then another inch. She couldn’t hold on any longer, and somehow she didn’t even want to try. She said God forgive me inside of her head, and then she let go.
The last thing she thought of was a daisy that she had once tried to pick, when she was only two years old. She could see it quite clearly, right in front of her. She reached out for it, but before she could touch it the petals flew away, and disappeared for ever into the darkness.
Three
Josh was having an unexpectedly busy morning. After he had cured Mrs Delorme’s pedigree Pekinese of its bouts of hysteria last month, word of his healing abilities seemed to have spread from Mill Valley to Corte Madera and Sausalito and even into San Francisco.
Waiting on the verandah outside his kitchen were five assorted people with five assorted dogs and cats, a woman with a cloth-covered birdcage, and a small boy with something in a cardboard box. It was a hot, airless day, and one of his clients was fanning her Siamese cat with a rolled-up copy of the National Enquirer.
At the moment Josh was dealing with a mournful black Labrador called Valentino, whose sight was failing. Valentino was sitting on Josh’s breakfast table while his mistress stroked him and petted him and chain-fed him with Reese’s Pieces. His mistress was a short round woman with greasy iron-gray hair fixed in a bun. She wore dangly hooped earrings, enormous red and yellow shorts and Birkenstocks.
Josh remarked, “You really shouldn’t keep on feeding him candy. Dogs get dehydrated by chocolate. Apart from that, you’re totally screwing up his reward system. If he gets continuous candy, just for sitting around, how’s he going to know when he’s done something good?”
“He’s like me. He’s so much like me. We both need constant reassurance.”
“I see,” Josh nodded. He didn’t argue. So far as he was concerned, dogs were exactly the same as humans. In fact, he thought that all animals were exactly the same as humans, and that was part of the secret of his success. Unlike most veterinarians, he understood that all animals wanted out of life was fun, sleep and food, with an occasional flurry of irresponsible sexual activity.
He peered into Valentino’s eyes with an ophthalmoscope. There was no sign of cataracts or any eye disease. Valentino was simply suffering from the effects of old age. “What sort of problems has he had?” asked Josh.
“Bumping into things, mainly. You know, chairs, doors. And he doesn’t get the same pleasure out of TV any more.”
“Well, him and me both. But there’s nothing wrong with his eyes apart from long-sightedness, which happens to most of us when we grow old.”
“He’s going to need glasses!”
“Technically speaking, yes. But, as yet, they don’t make prescription glasses for dogs.”
“They should. I mean, don’t you think they should?”
Josh gave Valentino a reassuring pat. “You’re right. They should. But there’s the little difficulty of getting them to read a sight-chart. All the same, you can still help Valentino to improve his sight. You could try some Bates Method exercises, and see if they sharpen him up.”
“How do I do that?”
“Well, Dr Bates was a New York ophthalmologist who invented all kinds of exercises for giving you better sight without glasses. Like splashing your eyes twenty times in warm and cold water every morning; and covering your eyes with your hands for ten minutes twice a day, so that they get a little rest; and blinking as much as possible. You could help Valentino to do all of those things. Oh, yes – and don’t let him watch television with the lights off.”
He made a quick note of seven Bates Method exercises on a big yellow legal pad. “There … if he doesn’t improve in a couple of weeks, bring him back to see me.”
Valentino’s mistress hefted him off the table and on to the floor. Valentino immediately saw himself in an old gilt-framed mirror propped up against the wall and jumped back in fright.
“Try to take him out more, too,” Josh suggested. “It helps your eyes if you keep on varying the distance of the things you’re focusing on. Lamp-post one second, street the next. See what I mean? Street, lamp-post. Lamp-post, street. It gets the eyes working.” He didn’t add that both Valentino and his mistress looked as if they could urgently use some exercise.
He opened the kitchen door and let them out into the garden. Immediately, a tall wiry-haired man in khaki shorts stood up and started to drag a snarling muzzled bull terrier across the verandah, leaving claw marks in the redwood boards.