There was, however, a sign of poor breeding and it, quite deliberately, came from Cale: as the servants began double-spooning meat and beans and petit pois onto his plate, Cale thanked each one of them knowing full well, because IdrisPukke had told him repeatedly, that it was not done at all to acknowledge the appearance of food upon the plate but to carry on talking to the left or right as if the larks’ tongues or peacock cutlets had appeared magically by their own suicidal will. ‘Thank you. Thank you,’ he said, with each expression of utterly false gratitude intended as a blow to the heart of the beauty sitting opposite him and a kick to the shins of her glaring husband.
We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy. But even though Conn had dismissed certain suspicions exiled to the very back of his mind and even though he must dislike the man who’d saved him from a hideous death at Silbury Hill – yet he could in the oubliettes of his unlikeable soul still remember the horrors of the purple death crushing him and which he still relived in terrible dreams: he could not, however hard he tried, shake off a clinging gratitude.
The trouble with Cale was that he had opened his opera of revenge brilliantly but now was lost for a song. Señor Eddie Gray’s mockery had been like throwing buns to a bear. He knew how to deal with aggression, verbal or physical. Arbell simply looked down at her soup bowl as if she hoped the contents would part like the Reed Sea and swallow her whole. Conn just glared at him. For all her misery she looked utterly and heartbreakingly beautiful. Her lips usually somewhat pale brown were a deep red and the white teeth just showing beneath them made him lyrical in his hatred and he thought of roses with snow between the scarlet petals. He had spent so much time thinking about her over the last hideous months that now she stood only a few feet away, it seemed incomprehensible for all the hatred that she would not laugh with delight, as she used to when he closed the door of her rooms behind him, and squeeze him tightly in her arms and smother his face with kisses as if she could never get enough of the touch and taste of him. How was it possible that she had tired of him? How was it possible that she could prefer the creature sitting next to her, have let him ... ? But that thought was too near madness and he was already too close. It had not even for a moment – you must excuse his utter ignorance in these things – occurred to him that he might be the father of the leaping bastard folded in its mother’s womb. Nor had it occurred to him that in the eyes of any objective person the obviousness of Arbell Materazzi preferring a tall and beautiful youth of her own kind and breeding, the great hope for the future of all the Materazzi, over a dark-haired, shortish, harsh-souled murderer with a grudge against the world was a matter anyone would have even thought of questioning. It was true that she owed her life to him, and in an extraordinary way the life of her younger brother, but gratitude is an awkward emotion at the best of times, even or especially towards those you once adored. It is particularly difficult for beautiful princesses because they are, in a manner of speaking, born to be given things and even a normal capacity for gratitude would weigh more heavily on them than human nature is generally able to bear.
‘Are you well?’ said Cale at last. At no time in all the history of the world has such a question been asked as if it were a threat.
She briefly looked up, her natural boldness getting the better of her confusion.
‘Very well.’
‘I am glad to hear it. For myself times have been hard since we last met.’
‘We’ve all suffered.’
‘Speaking personally I’ve caused more suffering than I’ve endured.’
‘Isn’t that always your way?’
‘You have a short memory – and worse since you were so many times in my debt.’
‘Mind your manners,’ said Conn, who would have stood and thrown his chair back with a dramatic flourish were it not for the fact that Vipond had gripped his thigh and squeezed with a strength surprising in a man of his age and profession.
‘How’s your leg?’ replied Cale. He was, after all, in many ways still young.
‘For God’s sake,’ whispered IdrisPukke. By now the wave of attentive silence had spread down one half of the hall. But having come with the intention of tormenting Arbell at length Cale realized that the control that would have made this at least plausible had deserted him – a reservoir of loss and anger had opened up far deeper than he had realized he felt – and he had certainly known that it was deep. ‘You’re not wanted here,’ said Conn, ‘why don’t you stop embarrassing yourself and leave.’ Either of these would have done. Like some hypocaust bellows – fed by a frenetic bedlamite – Cale was fired up beyond control. He stood up and was reaching for his belt when a weak hand curled around his wrist.
‘Hello, Tom,’ said Vague Henri gently. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’ Like cool water his voice poured over the expectant silence of the lookers-on. Cale stared for a moment at the white skin and the still striking mark along his face and then the two standing next to him: Simon Materazzi and the always reluctant Koolhaus.
‘Simon Materazzi says hello, Cale,’ said Koolhaus. Then the deaf and dumb young man folded him in his arms and would not let him go until they were out of the hall and having a smoke in the damp cold air of Spanish Leeds.
It was two hours later before IdrisPukke tracked them down by the simple expedient of waiting in Cale’s room until he returned.
‘Take Henri and Simon back to bed before they fall down,’ he told Koolhaus, who very gladly did as he was told. Cale sat down on his bed not looking at IdrisPukke.
‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself. Your reputation is no longer that of being God’s wrath, more his village idiot.’
This stung enough at least to get Cale to look at him, although he still said nothing, miserable as a limp drum.
‘Do you think you can bully the world?’
‘I’ve done all right so far.’
‘So far I suppose you have. But that isn’t all that far considering you’re so very young and there’s such a lot of the world to go.’
Neither of them said anything for a full minute.
‘I want her to suffer. She deserves it.’ He spoke so softly and with such sadness IdrisPukke hardly knew what to say.
‘I know how hard it is to give up a great love.’
‘I saved her life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘No.’
‘Why then?’
‘Nobody knows the answer to that. You can’t say to someone love this woman or love that man.’
‘But she used to.’
‘What lovers say to one another is written in the wind and the water. Some poet or other said that but it’s true all the same.’
‘She gave me away to Bosco. It’s not right to let that go.’
IdrisPukke might, in the interests of balance and fairness, have pointed out that Arbell had been in something of a difficult position at the time. But it had been years since he was foolish enough to have said so.
‘Unfortunately we live in interesting times. You can have a great say in them, perhaps the greatest – so, young as you are and however much this is a pain to you, in matters of love and politics and war small things in life must give way to greater.’
Cale looked at him.