He gasped for air and suddenly he was floating again with clean fresh air filling his lungs and pure cold water soothing his tongue, washing away the filth. His eyes could make out fireflies. Dancing in the darkness that wrapped itself around him as cold as a shroud. He could see them, pinpricks of fire. Moving and swaying. And he could smell the burning.
Scorched meat. Burnt flesh. Just as when he’d cooked the bullfrog on the fire for Lydia. Except this time it was his flesh. He remembered how her hair hung down as she reached for the skewered creature. Hair brighter than the flames.
He could feel her fox-spirit with him now, blunting the fine edge of pain that sliced into his bones and into his sinews with each breath. He could see her tongue, soft and pink, and feel her fingers moist on his raw skin. At times he heard screams and his brain didn’t know if they were his or hers. But she was with him. So bright she filled his mind.
29
There were more cars on the streets. Or maybe it was just that Lydia was noticing more. In more colours too, it seemed. So Alfred said anyway. He often talked cars, about motors with names like Lanchester and Bean, and it irritated her the way her mother always looked impressed. Once Valentina had even asked what a torque tube was, which had left Lydia open-mouthed. She stood on the pavement outside Tuson’s Tearoom, shuffling from foot to foot in an effort to keep from freezing and started counting the maroon ones that drove past.
‘Hello, young lady. Punctual, I see. Good show.’
‘Hello, Mr Parker.’
They hadn’t yet worked out a way of greeting each other. A kiss was too intimate – far too intimate – and a handshake too formal. Usually he gave her a little pat on the arm and she nodded a lot. It sort of got them through the awkward moment.
‘Let’s go in then,’ he said, bustling up to the teashop door. ‘It’s devilishly nippy out here.’
He was swathed in a woollen muffler and a heavy tweed overcoat, and as he held open the door for her she saw him glance at her own coat and she felt acutely conscious of the thinness and smallness of it and of her lack of gloves. But she liked the way the coconut mat went ding when she stepped on it, announcing her arrival.
‘Now, Lydia, what is this about?’
She was biting into her tarte au citron. Its sourness rasped her tongue. Parker’s toffee-brown eyes were looking at her closely from behind his round metal spectacles and there was a sharpness to them, an appraising awareness that wasn’t there when he was around Valentina. Lydia’s stomach gave a little lurch and she put down the tart. This could be harder than she thought.
‘Mr Parker,’ she said with careful courtesy, ‘I asked if we could meet today because,’ she took a deep breath, ‘I would like to borrow some money from you.’
‘My dear girl,’ he laughed lightly, dabbing the crumbs of his éclair from his lips with a napkin, ‘I am delighted you feel you can come to me with such a request, just like a…’ He stopped there, cleared his throat, and buffed his spectacles on his spotless handkerchief.
Like a what? A daughter. That’s what. He’d wanted to say the word but backed off at the last second. She smiled across the table at him and already he was pulling out his wallet, the one she’d stolen. Without his spectacles he looked almost attractive, though nowhere near as handsome as Antoine, and he drove a lumpy sedan, an Armstrong Siddeley, not a skittish little sports-car, but she pushed all that out of her mind. The money. Concentrate on the money.
He was leaning toward her in a confidential manner, chuck-ling. ‘What is it for? A little something for yourself? Or maybe your mother? You can tell me.’
‘It’s for a friend.’
‘Ah, a birthday gift perhaps.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Perfectly understandable. So how much would you like? Twenty dollars enough?’
‘Two hundred dollars.’
‘What!’
‘Two hundred dollars.’
He said nothing, but his bushy eyebrows drew together and his mouth tightened into a negative line. He looked as if she had insulted him.
‘Please, Mr Parker. Please. I need it for my friend.’
He picked up his cup, sipped his tea, and shifted his gaze away from her to the window, to the crowds bustling past with bags from Churston Department Store or Llewellyn’s Haberdashery, fur collars pulled up around their ears. She had a feeling he wished he were out there with them. When he turned back to her, she knew his answer before he spoke.
‘I am sorry, Lydia. But the answer to your request is no. I can’t give you that kind of money. Not unless I know who it is going to and why.’
‘Please say yes.’ Her voice was soft and her hand crept halfway toward him, leaving a track on the white tablecloth.
He shook his head.
‘It’s important to me,’ she urged.
‘Look, Lydia, why can’t you just tell me who this friend is and what the money is needed for?’
‘Because it’s…’ She was going to say dangerous, but knew that would send him and his wallet skidding out the door. ‘It’s a secret,’ she said instead.
‘Then I can’t help you.’
‘I could lie to you, tell you some story.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘I’m being honest. I’ve come openly to you, the man who is soon to marry my mother, asking for your help.’ She swallowed every remaining scrap of her pride and added, ‘As your daughter. ’
For a split second she thought she had him. Something like delight flickered in his brown eyes, but then he was gone again.
‘No, absolutely not. You must understand, Lydia, that it would be my duty to refuse to hand out that kind of money to any daughter of mine unless I knew the reason for it. Money has to be earned, you know, and I work hard as a journalist to do so, therefore I…’
‘Then I’ll earn it.’
He sighed and glanced out the window again as if seeking escape. At the next table two women in feathered hats laughed shrilly when a waitress brought them buttered crumpets, and Parker began polishing his spectacles yet again. Lydia realised it was a sign of stress.
‘How,’ he asked unhappily, ‘could you possibly earn it?’
‘I could help out at the newspaper. I can fetch and carry and make tea and…’
‘No.’
‘But…’
‘No. We have plenty of people to do all those things already and anyway, your mother would be furious with me if I distracted you from your educational studies.’
‘I’ll talk to her. I can get her to…’
‘No. That’s final.’
They stared at each other. Neither willing to look away.
‘There’s another way,’ Lydia said. ‘For me to earn two hundred dollars.’
Something in the way she said it made him instantly wary. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, so that his jacket sleeves puckered and crumpled.
‘Let’s leave it there. Why don’t we just finish our cakes and talk about…,’ he searched for a subject, ‘… Christmas or the wedding.’ He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Agreed?’
She returned his smile and withdrew her hand. ‘Certainly. The wedding is set for January, isn’t it?’
He nodded and his eyes grew bright at the thought. ‘Yes, and I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as your mother and I are.’
She picked up a sugar cube from the bowl and started to suck one corner of it. Parker didn’t look pleased, but he passed no comment.
‘It seems to me,’ she said gently, ‘that the start of a marriage is an important time. You have to learn about each other, don’t you, and get used to living together. Accept the other person’s little habits and, well, foibles.’