Fortnight of Fear (5 page)

He wondered what it would be like to have a man actually inside him; a man on top of him, thrusting into him.

He stopped himself from thinking that thought.
For God's sake, you're not a queer
.

He showered and washed his hair. He found the length of his hair difficult to manage, especially when it was wet,
and it took four attempts before he was able to wind a towel around it in a satisfactory turban. Yet Margaret always did it without even looking in the mirror. He decided that at the first opportunity he got, he would have it cut short.

He went to the closet and inspected Anna's wardrobe. He had liked her in her navy-blue skirt and white loose-knit sweater. He found the sweater folded neatly in one of the drawers. He struggled awkwardly into it, but realized when he looked at himself in the mirror that he was going to need a bra. He didn't want to attract
that
much attention, not to begin with, anyway. He located a drawerful of bras, lacy and mysterious, and tried one on. His breasts kept dropping out of the cups before he could fasten it up at the back, but in the end he knelt down beside the bed and propped his breasts on the quilt. He stepped into one of Anna's lacey little G-strings. He found it irritating, the way the elastic went right up between the cheeks of his bottom, but he supposed he would get used to it.

Get used to it
. The words stopped him like a cold bullet in the brain. He stared at himself in the mirror, that beautiful face, those eyes that were still his. He began to weep with rage.
You've started to accept it already. You've started to cope. You're fussing around in your bra and your panties and you're worrying which skirt to wear and you've already forgotten that you're not Anna, you're Gil. You're a husband. You're a father. You're a man, damn it!

He began to hyperventilate, his anger rising up unstoppably like the scarlet line of alcohol rising up a thermometer. He picked up the dressing-stool, and heaved it at the mirror. The glass shattered explosively, all over the carpet. A thousand tiny Annas stared up at him in uncontrollable fury and frustration.

He stormed blindly through the house, yanking open drawers, strewing papers everywhere, clearing ornaments
off table-tops with a sweep of his arm. He wrenched open the doors of the cocktail cabinet, and hurled the bottles of liquor one by one across the room, so that they smashed against the wall. Whiskey, gin, Campari, broken glass.

Eventually, exhausted, he sat down on the floor and sobbed. Then he was too tired even to cry.

In front of him, lying on the rug, were Anna's identity card, her social security papers, her passport, her credit cards.
Anna Huysmans
. The name which was now his.

On the far side of the room, halfway under the leather sofa, Gil saw a large diary bound in brown Morocco leather. He crept across the floor on his hands and knees and picked it up. This must be the diary that David Chilton had been talking about. He opened it up to the last page.

He read, through eyes blurry with tears, “
Gil has been marvelous … he has an enthusiastic, uncluttered personality … It won't be difficult to adapt to being him … I just hope that I like his wife Margaret … she sounds a little immature, from what Gil says … and he complains that she needs a lot of persuading when it comes to sex … Still, that's probably Gil's fault … you couldn't call him the world's greatest lover
.”

Gil flicked back through the diary's pages until he came to the very first entry. To his astonishment it was dated July 16, 1942. It was written in German, by a Reichswehr officer who appeared to have met Anna while driving out to Edam on military business. “Her bicycle tire was punctured … she was so pretty that I told my driver to stop and to help her …”

There was no way of telling, however, whether this German Samaritan had been the first of Anna's victims, or simply the first to keep a diary. The entries went on page after page, year after year. There must have been more than seven hundred of them; and each one told a different story of temptation and tragedy. Some of the
men had even essayed explanations of what Anna was, and why she took men's bodies.

“She has been sent to punish us by God Himself for thinking lustful thoughts about women and betraying the Holy Sacrament of marriage …”

“She does not actually exist. There is no ‘Anna', because she is always one of us. The only ‘Anna' that exists is in the mind of the man who is seducing her, and that perhaps is the greatest condemnation of them all. We fall in love with our own illusions, rather than a real woman.”

“To me, Anna is a collector of weak souls. She gathers us up and hangs us on her charm-bracelet, little dangling victims of our own vicissitudes.”

“Anna is a ghost …”

“Anna is a vampire …”

“If I killed myself, would it break the chain? Would Anna die if I died? Supposing I tried to seduce the man who was Anna before me … could I reverse the changing process?”

Gil sat on the floor and read the diary from cover to cover. It was an extraordinary chorus of voices – real men who had been seduced into taking on the body of a beautiful woman, one after the other – and in their turn had desperately tried to escape. Business executives, policemen, soldiers, scientists, philosophers – even priests. Some had stayed as Anna for fewer than two days; others had managed to endure it for months. But to every single one of them, the body even of the plainest man had been preferable to Anna's body, regardless of how desirable she was.

By two o' clock, Gil was feeling hungry. The icebox was almost empty, so he drove into Amsterdam for lunch. The day was bright but chilly, and so he wore Anna's black belted raincoat, and a black beret to cover his head. He tried her high-heels, but he twisted his ankle in the
hallway, and sat against the wall with tears in his eyes saying, “Shit, shit,” over and over, as if he
ought
to have been able to walk in them quite naturally. He limped back to the bedroom and changed into black court shoes.

He managed to find a parking-space for Anna's BMW on the edge of the Singel canal, close to the Muntplein, where the old mint-building stood, with its clock and its onion-dome. There was an Indonesian restaurant on the first floor of the building on the corner: one of the executives of the Gemeentevervoerbedrijf had pointed it out to him. He went upstairs and a smiling Indonesian waiter showed him to a table for one, overlooking the square. He ordered rijstafel for one, and a beer. The waiter stared at him, and so he changed his order to a vodka and tonic.

The large restaurant was empty, except for a party of American businessmen over on the far side. As he ate his meal, Gil gradually became aware that one of the businessmen was watching him. Not only watching him, but every time he glanced up,
winking
at him.

Oh shit
, he thought.
Just let me eat my lunch in peace
.

He ignored the winks and the unrelenting stares; but after the business lunch broke up, the man came across the restaurant, buttoning up his coat, and smiling. He was big and red-faced and sweaty, with wavy blond hair and three heavy gold rings on each hand.

“You'll pardon my boldness,” he said. “My name's Fred Oscay. I'm in aluminum tubing, Pennsylvania Tubes. I just couldn't take my eyes off you all during lunch.”

Gil looked up at him challengingly. “So?” he replied.

“Well,” grinned Fred Oscay, “maybe you could take that as a compliment. You're some looker, I've got to tell you. I was wondering if you had any plans for dinner tonight. You know – maybe a show, maybe a meal.”

Gil was trembling. Why the hell was he trembling? He was both angry and frightened. Angry at being stared at
and winked at and chatted up by this crimson-faced idiot; frightened because social convention prevented him from being as rude as he really wanted to be – that, and his weaker physique.

It was a new insight – and to Gil it was hair-raising – that men used the threat of their greater physical strength against women not just in times of argument and stress – but
all the time
.

“Mr Oscay,” he said, and he was still trembling. “I'd really prefer it if you went back to your party and left me alone.”

“Aw, come along now,” Fred Oscay grinned. “You can't mean that.”

Gil's mouth felt dry. “Will you please just leave me alone?”

Fred Oscay leaned over Gil's table. “There's a fine concert at the Kleine Zaal, if it's culture you're after.”

Gil hesitated for a moment, and then picked up a small metal dish of Indonesian curried chicken and turned it upside-down over Fred Oscay's left sleeve. Fred Oscay stared down at it for a very long time without saying anything, then stared at Gil with a hostility in his eyes that Gil had never seen from anybody before. Fred Oscay looked quite capable of killing him, then and there.

“You tramp,” he said. “You stupid bitch.”

“Go away,” Gil told him. “All I'm asking you to do is go away.”

Now Fred Oscay's voice became booming and theatrical, intended for all his business colleagues to hear. “You were coming on, lady. You were coming on. All through lunch you were giving me the glad-eye. So don't you start getting all tight-assed now. What is it, you want money? Is that it? You're a professional? Well, I'm sorry. I'm really truly sorry. But old Fred Oscay never paid for a woman in his life, and he aint about to start just for some sorry old hooker like you.”

He picked up a napkin and wiped the curry off his sleeve with a flourish, throwing the soiled napkin directly into Gil's plate. The other businessmen laughed and stared. One of them said, “Come on, Fred, we can't trust you for a minute.”

Gil sat where he was and couldn't think what to do; how to retaliate; how to get his revenge. He felt so frustrated that in spite of himself he burst into tears. The Indonesian waiter came over and offered him a glass of water. “Aroo okay?” he kept asking. “Aroo okay?”

“I'm all right,” Gil insisted. “Please – I'm all right.”

He was standing on the corner of the street as patient as a shadow as David Chilton emerged from his front door right on time and began walking his cocker spaniel along the grass verge. It was 10:35 at night. David and Margaret would have been watching
News At Ten
and then
South East News
just as Gil and Margaret had always done. Then David would have taken down Bondy's leash, and whistled, “Come on, boy! Twice round the park!” while Margaret went into the kitchen to tidy up and make them some cocoa.

He was wearing the same black belted raincoat and the same black beret that he had worn in Amsterdam; only now he had mastered Anna's high heels. His hair was curly and well-brushed and he wore make-up now, carefully copied from an article in a Dutch magazine.

Under his raincoat he carried a stainless steel butcher knife with a twelve-inch blade. He was quite calm. He was breathing evenly and his pulse was no faster than it had been when he first met Anna.

Bondy insisted on sniffing at every bush and every garden gatepost, so it took a long time for David to come within earshot. He had his hands in his pockets and he was whistling under his breath, a tune that Gil
had never known. At last, Gil stepped out and said, “David?”

David Chilton stood stock-still. “Anna?” he asked, hoarsely.

Gil took another step forward, into the flat orange illumination of the streetlight. “Yes, David, it's Anna.”

David Chilton took his hands out of his pockets. “I guess you had to come and take a look, didn't you? Well, I was the same.”

Gil glanced toward the house. “Is he happy? Alan, I mean.”

“Alan's fine. He's a fine boy. He looks just like you. I mean me.”

“And Margaret?”

“Oh, Margaret's fine too. Just fine.”

“She doesn't notice any difference?” said Gil, bitterly. “In bed, perhaps? I know I wasn't the world's greatest lover.”

“Margaret's fine, really.”

Gil was silent for a while. Then he said, “The job? How do you like the job?”

“Well, not too bad,” grinned David Chilton. “But I have to admit that I'm looking around for something a little more demanding.”

“But, apart from that, you've settled in well?”

“You could say that, yes. It's not Darien, but it's not Zandvoort, either.”

Bondy had already disappeared into the darkness. David Chilton whistled a couple of times, and called, “Bondy! Bondy!” He turned to Gil and said, “Look – you know, I understand why you came. I really do. I sympathize. But I have to get after Bondy or Moo's going to give me hell.”

For the very first time, Gil felt a sharp pang of genuine jealousy for Margaret. “You call her Moo?”

“Didn't you?” David Chilton asked him.

Gil remained where he was while David Chilton went jogging off after his dog. His eyes were wide with indecision. But David had only managed to run twenty or thirty yards before Gil suddenly drew out the butcher knife and went after him.

“David!” he called out, in his high, feminine voice. “David! Wait!”

David Chilton stopped and turned. Gil had been walking quickly so that he had almost reached him. Gil's arm went up. David Chilton obviously didn't understand what was happening at first, not until Gil stabbed him a second time, close to his neck.

David Chilton dropped, rolled away, then bobbed up on to his feet again. He looked as if he had been trained to fight. Gil came after him, his knife upraised, silent and angry beyond belief.
If I can't have my body, then nobody's going to. And perhaps if the man who took my body – if his spirit dies – perhaps I'll get my body back. There's no other hope, no other way. Not unless Anna goes on for generation after generation, taking one man after another
.