‘What did you say?’ he shouted from the kitchen.
‘It didn’t say Kerran on your door.’
He came back into the living room.
‘Oh, that. . I had a lodger last spring. A student. He insisted on having his name on the door, so that visitors could find his pad. I forgot to take it away. Would you like something to drink?’
She shook her head.
‘Can we do the talking now, and get it over with?’
She sat down on one of the sofas, and he flopped down beside her after a moment’s hesitation.
‘I hadn’t thought of restricting ourselves to talking.’
Before she had time to respond he stood up again and disappeared into the kitchen. Came back carrying a single candle in a holder. He turned off the ceiling light using the switch in the doorway, lit the candle with a cigarette lighter and put it on the table. Sat down next to her again. She began to catch on to what was going to happen next.
I don’t want to, she thought. Not again.
‘So it wouldn’t be very good if your mother found out about us?’ he said.
‘No. .’
‘If you can be nice to me just one more time, I promise I won’t breathe a word.’
She wouldn’t have thought it was possible to combine an emotional entreaty and an ice-cold threat in such an ingenious way, but it evidently was. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry that it was no more than a facial twitch. He put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her closer to him.
‘I don’t want to,’ she said.
For a few seconds the only sound to be heard was his calm, regular breathing and the pattering of rain on the windows. When he started speaking again, she thought for a confused moment that it was somebody else. That it wasn’t him.
‘I couldn’t give a damn if you want to or not, you diabolical little whore,’ he said. ‘You will kindly allow me to fuck you, otherwise I shall make sure that your bloody mother ends up in a loony bin for the rest of her life.’
He said it in an almost normal conversational tone of voice, and at first she thought she had misheard him. Then she realized that he meant exactly what he had said. He held her tightly with one arm round her back and shoulders, and started pawing at her lap with his other hand. For the first time it dawned on her how strong he was, and how incapable she would be of resisting if he were to force himself on her.
‘Is that clear, you silly little bitch? Take your clothes off!’
Everything went black before her eyes; she had always thought that this kind of thing only happened in tenth-rate books or in old girls’ magazines — but it was happening to her, here and now. It became black in reality. The candle’s little flickering flame suddenly vanished as if someone had blown it out, and it was several seconds before it was lit again.
Help, she thought. God. Mum. .
He pulled her closer and started kissing her. Forced her jaws apart and thrust his tongue so far into her mouth that she could scarcely breathe.
Then he let go of her.
‘Or perhaps you would prefer it a bit more gently?’
She was gasping and tried to think a sensible thought. Just one would do.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes please.’
The thought came. Slowly, like a thief in the night. I must kill him, it said.
Somehow or other. Kill him.
‘Take off your tunic,’ he said.
She did as she was told.
‘And your bra.’
She leaned forward on the sofa and unhooked the straps with her hands behind her back. But he didn’t bother about her breasts. He stood up instead and placed himself behind her. Moved her hair out of the way and put his hands on her bare shoulders. She felt herself going stiff.
‘You are tense,’ he said, stroking his fingers along the sharp edges of her collarbones, moving them inwards towards her neck. ‘My fingertips are like small seismographs. I can almost feel your thoughts. . My sick rose. My sick, sick rose. .’
‘I need a pee,’ she said. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’
‘Pee?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
She stood up. He walked behind her into the hall, keeping his fingers on her shoulders, as if it were some silly kind of follow-my-leader game.
I must kill him, sang a voice inside her. Must find a way. .
‘Like seismographs,’ he said again.
LONDON
AUGUST 1998
7
At first there were two of them.
Both in their thirties. Both of them jolly and a bit merry after visits to the cinema followed by a restaurant meal together. They lived in Camden Town: this pub was more or less halfway between home and Oxford Street, and this wasn’t the first time they had dropped in after a night out.
He had been to see a play at the old Garrick Theatre — one of those incredibly thin and pointless West End hits that ran before packed houses for tourist season after tourist season. Thank the Lord there had been an interval, and he was able to sneak out and call in at three pubs on the way back to his hotel near Regent’s Park. This was his fourth.
The Green Stallion. It was turned eleven, but this was evidently one of the establishments that no longer observed the old opening hours. He had just collected another Lauder’s and another pint when they came in and asked if the empty chairs at his table were taken. The pub was full and noisy both around the long bar and at the tables. There didn’t seem to be any other empty chairs anywhere, as far as he could see. So why not? He beckoned with his hand, and smiled.
The women smiled back, and sat down. Each of them lit a cigarette, and introduced herself. Beth and Svetlana. Obviously keen to talk.
Svetlana was Russian, but born in Luton. By hook or by crook her parents had managed to wriggle out of the Soviet Union during the thaw in the early sixties, and of course it was anybody’s guess why they had given their first-born child, born in the West, the same name as Stalin’s daughter. ‘A fucking mystery!’ said Beth, laughing and displaying her forty-eight perfect teeth.
‘Beth is just another London bitch who knows nothing about anything,’ explained Svetlana. ‘Who are you, please?’
He didn’t tell them who he was. For some mysterious intuitive reason he gave them a different name and a different nationality.
But he did tell them his profession. He could see that both of them were quite impressed, and he knew immediately that he wanted them.
Or one of them. It didn’t matter which, certainly not: but for the first time for ages and ages he felt that he really must have sex with a woman.
It wasn’t clear why this was. Perhaps it was his being in a foreign but even so very familiar city. A sort of reunion — he had been there a dozen times before, but when he worked it out he realized that it must be six years since the last time. Six years. .
Perhaps it was the warm summer’s evening, perhaps it was the booze. He was agreeably drunk, and when he drank a toast with the two women, he made sure he looked them both in the eye. He couldn’t detect any trace of reluctance. On the contrary. In vino veritas, he thought, and drank deeply.
Or perhaps it was just the passage of time. He had needed three years, and now they were over. It didn’t need to be any more remarkable than that. You must learn how to wait, his mother used to say. If you are able to be patient, you will be able to achieve anything you want, my boy. No woman will ever refuse you anything, never ever — remember that.
Not even your mother.
He realized that he was sitting there and thinking about those very words while Beth and Svetlana had briefly taken their leave to powder their noses.
No woman will ever. .
It was Beth.
Presumably they reached an agreement during the aforementioned visit to the toilets, because shortly after they returned to the table Svetlana announced that she really ought to be thinking about making her way home. A few minutes after midnight she took her leave and hoped they would continue to have a pleasant evening. With unambiguous looks and routine cheek kisses.