"It's not my fucking cat!" he almost yelled.
"There's no need to shout."
She took her clothes off but not the way Mix would have preferred, not like a stripper giving a titillating performance. Danila undressed as she would when she was alone, placing her outer garments over the back of a chair, turning her back onhim to take off thong and tights. How he hated tights. And didn't she know wearing a G-string with them was a joke? She, left her bra till last, ashamed of her tiny breasts. He thought, I won't see her again, I'll find some other way of getting to know Nerissa.
She went to the bed but he stopped her. "Wait a minute."He wasn't going to do it on top of his ivory satin quilt; he lifted it off and folded it. "All right," he said.
The look she gave him was subservient but with something in it too of bewilderment. He took off his shoes and trousers but kept his shirt on and his socks. A man didn't have to stripoff, that was the woman's role. A simmering anger against her, a cold rage he couldn't quite account for, stopped him taking any trouble and what happened could have been called rape, only she didn't resist. He rolled away from her to finish his drink.
Five minutes later she was walking round the flat again. He heard her say, "Why d'you have her up there?"
There was no doubt as to what she meant. But "You mean Nerissa Nash?" he said, to make assurance absolutely sure.
"You fancy her or something?"
Mix got up. Somewhere in him was a prudish streak, legacy perhaps of a childhood among the Seventh Day Adventists. Of course his disapproval rather depended on who it was. Somehow it was all right when it was Colette and it would be more than all right-fantastic-if it had been Nerissa, but in Danila it seemed to smack of defiance, of taking things and him for granted, and of asserting herself. A woman like her knew very well you don't walk about nude the way she was doing in a man's flat unless you have a good reason to call him yours and have a proprietary interest in his place. He took his dressing gown out of the wardrobe and put it round her.
She received it with an ill grace. Like his mother, she sulked when you told her off. Standing in front of the portrait, she pointed to it, actually placing one finger on the glass. "She's got practically nothing on. I suppose that's all right."
Careless of the pain his words might cause, he said, "She'sbeautiful."
Danila said nothing but continued to stare and to keep her finger where she had placed it. Never very tall, she seemed to shrink a little and goose bumps came up on her forearms, uncoveredby the dressing-gown sleeves. A great resentment filled him. By her silence and her palpable hurt, she had made him feel awkward.
"D'you want another drink?" he muttered.
"Not just yet."
He opened the wine bottle. If he kept on at the gin he'd not be able to do it again, and the only point in her being here was to manage it two or three times. With Nerissa, he thought, he'd be inexhaustible. He remembered that there was another point to Danila's visit. He had to ask her about the membershiplist. Tell her, he corrected himself, a brimming glass of wine inhis hand.
"Look, getting to be a member of the spa, I thought… "
Slowly, she turned round and he saw the marks on her face.She took no notice of what he had begun to say. "I've seen her," she said.
"Seen who?"
"Her. Nerissa Nash."
This wasn't at all the way he wanted things to go. If he told her what he expected her to do about the list now, at this moment, she'd understand at once he only aimed to join the spa in order to meet Nerissa. His request would have to be postponed again.
He chose his words carefully. "Where did you see her, then? In a photo, you mean."
"No, for real. She goes to Madam Shoshana for a reading of the stones."
"With no idea what she was talking about, he said as if he'd be astonished by the answer yes, "She's not a member of the spa, is she?"
"Nerissa? Oh, no. "With that figure, she must go to a gym some where. Somewhere in the West End, I reckon, Mayfair. I'd been to Madam Shoshana for my reading-I get a discount-and I met her coming up the stairs. A Wednesday it was, sometime in July. Ever so nice she was, said hi and it was a lovely day, made you glad to be alive."
He was stunned. He couldn't speak. He'd wasted weeks going to that place, messed about uselessly with machines that didn't need attention, used up his evenings with this dog of a woman, spent his hard-earned money on her. Her cunningly back-combed and tangled hair had done what it always didduring their scuffles, fallen in lank rats' tails. His rage at the shock of discovering Nerissa's true purpose in visiting the spa building had come to boiling point, and it was directed at this girl, this stupid ignorant ugly girl with her rice-white skin and her bony chest. Nerissa didn't even belong to Shoshana's Spa. She'd gone there to see a fortune-teller and no doubt it was a one-off visit.
Quite unaware of his anger, Danila said, "Mind you, close to, she's not the supermodel she is in your pic. Her skin's a bit coarse-well, it being so dark, it would be. I reckon whoever took that photo got busy airbrushing… "
He didn't hear the end of the sentence. Hatred filled him, joining his anger. That she dared to criticize the most beautiful woman in the world! The insult grated like something scraping at his brain. He reached for some object, anything, to infuse with his rage. His hand closed round the marble Psyche and once more he seemed to hear Javy accusing him of the attackon Shannon, his mother standing by.
Who was it he was about to destroy with this weapon? Javy? His mother? This cringing girl?
"What are you doing?"
She never spoke again, only screamed and made gurgling sounds as he struck her repeatedly about her head with the Psyche. He'd thought blood flowed gently but hers sprayed at him in scarlet fountains. Her eyes remained fixed on his in horror and amazement. He aimed a final blow at her forehead toclose those staring eyes.
She fell to the floor, sliding down the portrait to collapse on her back. He dropped the Psyche onto the polished boards. It seemed to make an enormous noise as it fell so that he expected crowds alerted by it to come rushing into the room. But there was no one, of course there was no one. Instead absolute quiet, the silence of a vast desert or an empty house by the sea, waves breaking softly on the shore. The Psyche rolled a little, this way and that way, and was still. The only movement was the slow trickling of her blood down the glass.
Chapter 10
He went slowly to the window, opened the slats instead of raising the blind, and looked down. Lights in the backs of houses in the street behind lit the gardens. There was no one about. Nothing stirred, no human being, no cat, no bird. A pale crescent moon had risen in a sky streaked with cloud. Behind hisfront door he listened. Out there too all was still and silent.
"No one knows anything about it," he said aloud. "They don't know what's happened, no one knows but me." And then, as if someone had accused him and he was defending himself," I didn't mean to do it, but she asked for it. It just happened."
His instinct was to shut himself in the bedroom, where he couldn't see what he had done, and hide himself. For sometime, though with the door still open, he sat on the bed with his head in his hands. The phone ringing frightened him moret han anything ever had. He gave a galvanic start so violent thathe feared he might have broken a bone. I was wrong and people do know. Police, he thought, someone's phoned them.
They heard her scream and me drop the statue. The ringingstopped but started again after a few seconds. This time he had to answer it and he did so in a hoarse, quavering voice.
"You sound as if you've got the dreaded flu too," said Ed."I'm okay."
"Yeah. Well, good. I'm not. I think I've got a virus, so could you do two of my calls tomorrow? They're the important ones." Ed named the clients and gave their phone numbers. Or Mix supposed that's what he was doing. He couldn't take it in."I realize it's Saturday but they won't take long, it's more theywant reassuring."