‘Maybe because I’m a man.’
‘She didn’t mind before. You’ve made her self-conscious about it. And then the fox.’
‘I told you about the fox. The vixen. It was nothing. I just hugged her too hard.’
Xan was in the shed, stowing the garden hose, when Billie joined him. They heard the scrape on the skylight — and there above them was the weight of the fox, its underside, its crusty rump, its coat with its spines and quills. Billie cried out (‘Look!’), and Xan snatched her into his arms as the animal tensely swivelled and stared. He had expected a moment of feral severity — a snarl, a show of teeth — and not the entreating frown with its depths of anxiety. An anxiety that no human could have borne for an instant. Then it fled, its nails scratching the glass, and Billie was struggling and cuffing his hands.
‘I just hugged her too hard. I hurt my knee too.’
‘Yes, she said. “Daddy hurt his knee too.”’
He swayed backwards a couple of inches and said, ‘With the girls, I don’t know, I’m just generally het up about them. As though they’ve just come in from being lost. After dark. It’s part of it. I’m trying. I’m trying.’
‘This last week. It’s gone okay.’
‘Has it? I’m glad you think that. I know I’ve got a long way to go. My guidance systems … Anyway. Goodnight.’
Her eyes had flicked back to the television screen. His eyes followed. He was subliminally prepared for some footage of the modern world: the scorched chassis of a bus or truck, a bandaged shape being wheeled at speed down a hospital corridor, a woman wailing, with subtitles … What he saw seemed simpler: a phalanx of American soldiers — grunts, jarheads — crunching across a sandswept airstrip, each of them fantastically overequipped, like a one-man band. He thought: the jihads of the jarheads. He said, sounding surprised,
‘Semper ft. Yes. Semper fidelis.’
‘You know,’ she began, staring full ahead, ‘you’re a lot more uh, gamesome than you used to be. In your speech. You used to be much more step-by-step. I liked it.’ She looked up at him. ‘I miss it. Still, yes: semper fidelis. At all times faithful.’
‘Epithalamium.’
‘… Epithalamium.’
But it was when he was alone in the flat at night that he really did his work with the little girls. He lay there twisting, arching, squirming, seeing them hurt, harmed, taken, their flesh pierced, their bones snapped, the shells of their skulls meeting concrete or steel. What he saw when he closed his eyes had the power to lift him off the sheet and flip him over, to double him up, to flip him back again. He thought: something’s coming for them and I can’t protect them, I can’t protect them. And there were their faces showing fear, then terror, then horror, forcing more convulsions on him, causing him to writhe and thrash and seethe … He had read about a woman who said she felt ‘a profound calm’ as her daughter was attacked and knifed before her eyes. Similarly, sleep appeared only when the thing had already happened in his mind, and their ruined bodies lay before him; he was afloat on a glazed lake of detachment, drenched with the chemicals that come at such a time — that come to take you to the other side. I can’t protect them. They’re mine, and I can’t protect them. So why not rend them? Why not rape them?
You can live as an animal lives, and he thought he knew, now, why an animal would eat its young. To protect them — to put them back inside.
That little girl I see, walking past the window. Is that her, or is it just the ghost of my child?
2. Weird sister
It was on the eighth day that she called.
‘So when would be good for you?’
‘And you are?’
‘And I am? I’m Karla. Idiot.’
‘Do I know you?’
‘Oh come on,’ said Cora Susan. ‘Wait. There’s someone at the door. It’s open! … Just put it there, please … Thank you. Thank you … Champagne. To celebrate my arrival. There’s a half-bottle in the fridge but I don’t like the brand and it’s never quite enough, don’t you find? Now look. I was under the impression that we had an understanding.’
‘I’m sorry. “Karla”?’
‘Yes, Karla. Christ. With a k.’
‘Uh, wait. The thing is I had an accident about a month ago. And I—’
‘An accident? What kind of accident?’
‘A head injury. My memory’s not what it was.’
‘You have no memory of a woman called Karla? This is a grave disappointment. You seemed perfect for me. Poor you and all that, but you’re probably no longer suitable.’
‘Suitable for what?’
She sighed and said, ‘I’ll start at the beginning then. I’m a wonderfully rich, young, sane and pretty businesswoman who adores loveless sex. All right, I’m petite, but I have a superb body and I’m marvellously fit and brown. I pass through London twice a year. You were supposed to come to my hotel one afternoon and do whatever you liked to me. Then I get on a plane and put five thousand miles between us. Till next time. Now I suppose I’ll have to keep an eye out for someone else. I’ve just seen the bill for the champagne. I love spending money but this is madness.’
‘I uh, I really don’t think I was ever on for that.’
‘Oh? You seemed awfully pleased with the idea at the time.’
‘When was that time?’
‘In the summer at Pearl’s … Well you can come and say hello at least. And Xan: hadn’t you better defuse a very awkward situation? What if I get hysterical and call the house?’
‘Where are you?’
She told him. He said,
‘I think we’d better meet on neutral ground.’
‘All right. We can meet in the lobby if you like. I’m busy till Friday so you’ll have time to mull it over.’
‘Friday’s … Yes. Tomorrow I’m taking my boys away for the night.’
‘Fascinating. Do you really not remember? Don’t you remember what you said about my breasts? … Don’t you remember them? That is alarming. You know, Xan, this may do you a lot of good. I’m sure that the moment you set eyes on me it’ll all come flooding back.’
* * *
Cora wore black, tights, skirt, blouse, but she had not yet put on the black shoes, the black suit-top, the black hat with its pendant black veil. Now she faced the irksome task of achieving a French twist: the hair swept up and over to the side, secured by an armoury of pins. She began work in the bathroom but soon moved the whole operation next door. The hectic profusion of mirrors, at odd angles and elevations, made her feel watched — that mirror especially, with its inner eye.
She knew the literature. Victims of incest grow up thinking they have magical powers. For they do. All infants, all babies, believe they wield magic: one-year-olds, if you have particularly displeased them, can look up from their cots in astonishment that you have physically survived their anathemas, their callingsdown. They grow out of it. But victims of incest, these girls, these weird sisters, never lose that faith. Because power is theirs: they can say a sentence, and make a family disappear.
Women whom Cora had earlier come across in support-groups and recovery programmes persisted with another notion: that they could seduce any male. And it was true, in their case, so long as the male was violent or inadequate; so long as the male was a rapist or an addict or a pimp or a bum … Cora believed she could seduce any male too, and she had not yet been proved wrong. But she had more in mind for Xan Meo than mere seduction — and the graphic disabusing of his wife. She didn’t yet know what. It would come to her.