A Severed Head (25 page)

‘
He was terribly depressed and disappointed,
’
I said,
‘
but as you can imagine, very clear-headed. He told me to say you
’
re not to worry about him and that he
’
ll recover in time. He said how grateful he was to you, how he hoped he hadn
’
t hurt you, how he wished it had all been possible. He was brave though. He said he had to accept your decision and that it wouldn
’
t really have worked. But he said it was a marvellous attempt and he wouldn
’
t wish it undone.
’

We had been over this a number of times.
‘
I wonder how I know that you
’
re lying?
’
said Antonia.

It was breakfast-time, a late breakfast-time, on the next day. Antonia and I, still in dressing-gowns, were sitting on over the cold toast and coffee. It seemed that neither of us could move. She was pale, listless, and irritable. I was exhausted.

‘
I
’
m not lying,
’
I said.
‘
If you won
’
t believe what I say, why do you keep asking me?
’

Now that the taboo had been broken Antonia could talk of nothing but Palmer, endlessly remaking her relationship with him retrospectively.

‘
Whatever he said he didn
’
t say that,
’
said Antonia.

I had not the heart to tell her that she had scarcely been mentioned.
‘
Alexander
’
s right,
’
I said.
‘
He
’
s not quite human.
’

‘
When did he say that?
’
said Antonia.

‘
When he heard about you and Palmer.
’

Antonia frowned down at the cold cloudy liquid in her cup. She pushed back on to her shoulder the half-undone bundle of her weighty hair. She said
‘
Ach -
’
, and then
‘
Nor is she.
’

‘
Nor is she,
’
I agreed, and sighed. We both sighed.

‘
I hope they go to America or Japan and stay there,
’
said Antonia.
‘
I don
’
t want to hear of them again, I don
’
t want to know that they exist.
’

‘
That
’
s what will happen, my darling,
’
I said.
‘
Falling out of love is a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. You
’
ll be surprised how soon you forget.
’
We sighed again.

‘
Forget! Forget!
’
said Antonia.
‘
We both seem to be half dead.
’
She lifted her eyes to mine, sombre, restless, cross.

I wondered whether I did indeed want to leave her. Yes, I suppose I did. Not that it mattered. I wondered what, at that moment, she was thinking about me. With curiosity and hostility we examined each other.

‘
You do love me, don
’
t you, Martin?
’
said Antonia. She asked it, not tenderly, but with a sort of brisk anxiety.

I said,
‘
Of course I do, of course.
’

It sounded flimsy enough, and we went on looking at each other morosely, our eyes dark with private grief. It would have needed a great effort to take her hand and I did not make the effort. And as I stared and stared at last Antonia became invisible and all I could see was Honor, her dark assassin
’
s head bowed a little towards me, the curtain falling upon the light of her eyes.

‘
There
’
s a parcel for you, by the way.
’

I returned with a start. I broke up some cold rubbery toast in my hand. I wondered if I had the energy to make us some more hot coffee.
‘
Oh, where?
’

‘
In the hall,
’
said Antonia.
‘
Don
’
t move, I
’
ll get it. And I
’
ll put on the kettle for more coffee.
’

She came back in a moment carrying a long narrow box covered in brown paper which she put down beside me with the words
‘
Orchids from some admirer!
’
and then went away into the kitchen.

I looked at the box and picked at my lower lip. My lips were dry and cracked with too much smoking. I lit another cigarette and wondered distantly how I would get through the day. It was a problem demanding some ingenuity. I glanced at the window and saw that it was still raining. I cut the string of the parcel with the bread knife.

I had no fight in me, that was the truth. I did not want to receive any more lashes. Palmer had too much confused me. If he had deliberately intended to place a barrier across the path of my desires he could not have done better; and this made me half believe that, after all, he knew. But with this, and with far more authority, there came the image of Honor shaking her head: Honor utterly secret but lost. I began to pull t he paper off the box.

Palmer did not know, but it didn
’
t matter now whether he knew or not. They would go, the infernal pair, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Tokyo, and Antonia and I would forget; and I would do, and she would do, what defeated desire, together with a bored and dim conscience, suggested as remaining for us to do. I opened the box.

There was a lot of dark stuff inside. I stared at it with a sort of puzzled revulsion, wondering what it was. I stood up and moved the box to the light to see it better. I felt I did not want to touch it. At last I did very gingerly touch it, and as I did so I realized that it was human hair. It took me another moment to recognize the long thick tress which filled the box as Georgie
’
s hair, Georgie
’
s whole beautiful dark chestnut-tinted head of hair. I cannoned violently into Antonia in the doorway.

‘
Georgie,
’
I called,
‘
Georgie,
’
and banged again upon the locked door of her room. There was silence within.

As I got the car out I exclaimed to Antonia that of course Georgie must be all right since she would be with Alexander, and Antonia had told me that Alexander had rung up from Rembers last night when I was out and had mentioned that Georgie was still in London. All the same, Antonia thought my anxiety was completely irrational. I knocked again.

I listened to the silence. Of course it was ridiculous to be so afraid. The arrival of the hair had had the heavy significance of a token in a dream; but there was no need to apply nightmare logic to it. Georgie
’
s present was doubtless a jest, though a rather bitter and macabre one. She herself was probably at this moment in some nearby library, and I stood outside an empty room. Yet I could not quite convince myself of this and I knew that I could not go away. I wondered if I should make some more telephone calls; but I had already rung all the numbers where she might be found. Almost by now I simply wanted to get into the room as if this in itself would avert disaster. The locked door had become magnetic. Still I waited, until, prompted suddenly by something I thought I heard, I leaned down and put my ear to the keyhole, holding my breath. After a moment I heard a sound and then came the same sound repeated. It seemed to be a low regular sigh of heavy breathing coming from just inside the door. I straightened up and stood for a moment chilled and paralysed. What I had heard terrified me. ,

Georgie
’
s windows were inaccessible. There was no way in but through the door. I threw myself against it once or twice in a futile manner. Then I remembered the decorator
’
s tools which were still lying about downstairs. I rushed down and began to turn them over. The street door was open as usual and outside on the bright rainy pavements people were going to and fro. I selected a heavy flat-ended cementing trowel and a hammer and raced back upstairs. I dug the edge of the trowel as deeply as possible into the crack of the door beside the lock and drove it farther in with blows of the hammer. Then I used the trowel as a lever. Something cracked inside. A moment later the handle of the trowel broke off. I pushed the door but it was still firm. I took the hammer and struck the door with all my strength in the region of the lock. There was more cracking and then I could see a crevice growing wide. I gave it my shoulder and the door came open.

I went in and pushed it to behind me. There was a heavy silence within. The room was dark, as the curtains were still drawn. The place was airless and smelt vilely of alcohol and stale tobacco smoke whose fumes seemed to linger visibly in the air as I pulled the curtains apart. Or perhaps I only imagined that there was a grey haze. Someone was lying on the floor. It took me a moment to be certain that it was Georgie. It was not just that her shorn head made her hard to recognize: her face too, in a deep slumber of unconsciousness, had quite lost the semblance of her usual self, had become as it were anonymous. It seemed as if she had almost, already, gone.

I leaned over her and spoke her name and shook her by the shoulder. She was completely inert and I realized that she had passed beyond any such immediate recall. Her face was puffed and blueish, and she was breathing raucously through her mouth. I did not hesitate for long. I found the telephone book and dialled the number of Charing Cross Hospital and explained that someone had accidentally taken an overdose of sleeping pills. They promised an ambulance at once. In that area it was a daily occurrence.

I knelt down on the floor beside Georgie. I wondered if I ought to go on trying to wake her, but decided not to. I felt obscurely that I might do her harm by touching her; her condition imposed a taboo and the limp half-inhabited body filled me with a sort of revulsion. She looked like a drowned girl. At first I kept looking at her face whose strangeness fascinated me. It was indeed as if she had become a different person, as if an alien being had taken her body. I could have been persuaded that this was merely a rough semblance of Georgie; and as she lay there completely limp with her mouth open, the lifeless air and the deep regular breathing made her seem like a waxwork. She was lying on her side with one hand extended above her head. She was wearing a blue shirt and black trousers. These I recognized. Her feet were bare. I contemplated her feet. These I recognized too. I touched them, They felt cold and waxen and I covered them with a cushion. I looked at her long trousered legs and at the curve of her thigh. The shirt was unbuttoned and I could see the rise of a breast within. I looked at her neck and at one ear now more fully revealed by the shorn hair. I looked at her extended familiar hand, the palm uppermost and open as in a gesture of appeal or release. All these I had possessed. But now it was as if all had disintegrated into pieces, the pieces of Georgie, the person lost.

I was scarcely at that moment capable of memories or speculations. But I seemed again to hear her voice saying,
‘
Martin, you don
’
t know how near the edge I am.
’
Indeed, there was so much I did not know, had not cared to know. Georgie
’
s stoicism had helped to make me a brute. She had so cunningly spared me her sufferings. I had enjoyed but never had to pay. But someone had paid. As I looked down at her slim inert body I recalled the nightmare of her pregnancy which had ended in relieved embraces and champagne. If she died, I had killed her. I thought this, but stupidly and without feeling. There was no whole presence in the flesh before me and I still could not bring myself to touch her. It would have been like fingering parts of a corpse. Yet with a sense of abasement in which there was an element of desire I lay full length on the floor beside her with my face close to hers. I could feel her breath.

Some moments passed. I heard a sound at the door and began to rise. Reclining on one elbow I saw a figure enter. The door closed again. Honor Klein was looking down at me.

I got as far as a sitting position and said,
‘
The ambulance is coming.
’

Honor said,
‘
I was afraid of this. She sent me a very strange letter.
’

I said,
‘
She sent me her hair.
”

Honor stared at me. Her face was closed and stiff. Then she looked at Georgie and said,
‘
I see. That
’
s it. I thought she looked rather odd.
’
She spoke with detachment and precision.

I thought, she is pitiless. Then I thought, so am I.

Honor was wearing a shabby unbelted mackintosh. She was hatless, her black hair a little sleeked by the rain. As she stood there, hands in pockets, surveying the room she had a sharp business-like air. She might have been a detective. I rose to my feet.

She said,
‘
As she let us both know let us hope that she has not made a serious attempt. Have you found the tablets?
’

I had not thought of that. We began to hunt, shifting books and papers, upsetting loaded ash-trays and piles of underclothes, and tipping the contents of drawers on the floor, stepping to and fro over Georgie
’
s inert legs. I undid the dishevelled bed and looked under the pillow. Turning back to see Georgie still lying there amid the disordered sea of her belongings and glimpsing for a second the intent face of Honor as she rifled another cupboard I wondered into what half-ludicrous nightmare I had strayed. At last we found something, an empty bottle which had contained a well-known brand of sleeping drug, and we left off our search.