Notorious (44 page)

‘Where is Mr Devlin?’ says Rosza.

Mitch dips his head sorrowfully. ‘He had to take personal time.’ He looks at me. ‘He won’t be back.’

Couples, mostly smokers, go past us to the back terrace. I see emeralds and rubies winking in the light, the oiled dead hairs of fox furs on over-tanned shoulders.

‘The Iraqi Foreign Minister. And the Algerian Trade Secretary,’ says Mitch. ‘I’m impressed. That must facilitate trade routes.’ He says to me, ‘Your fiancé – oh, beg pardon – your husband is a very astute businessman.’

Pietr nods at a portly man standing by the wall. ‘The Mayor seems lost.’ He says to Mitch, ‘I’m sure you would like to meet him.’

‘I have met him,’ says Mitch. ‘But I’ll join you. There’s a little matter of deportation I need to discuss.’ Pietr raises an eyebrow at me. I nod. He steers Rosza away.

Mitch extends his hand. ‘Business before pleasure, I’m afraid.’

I reluctantly put my hand in his. It is dry and hot. Before I realise what he is doing, he reaches around me, picks up my other hand and examines the rings. I pull away almost immediately but he has seen the gold wedding band next to the diamond. ‘Devlin will be pleased.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Not very poetic.’ He steps back. ‘Well, clever you, buying insurance. Everyone knows your husband has a dirt file in the event of his death. And clever Pietr, eliminating a potential witness. They don’t believe drug-addicted wives in Italy.’

‘Fuck you. That’s repetition, parallelism. Poetry.’

‘I hope you’ll be happy,’ says Mitch, ‘knowing you ruined Devlin.’

He turns but I am already leaving. I blunder through the sitting room into the hall. A blonde woman in a black dress is carrying a tray into the dining room where couples are eating supper at the candlelit tables. The woman stops. It is Julietta.

‘We need more champagne,’ she says. ‘Stefano says for you to get it. The door’s open.’ She gives me a little push. ‘Now.’

As I go down the steps, the distances swell and disappear, the walls shimmer. I feel as though I am wading through strobed water; I put a hand against the wall to steady myself.

This is the bit I have to get exactly right. This is the end of the truth. Or is it the beginning? I know my recollections of that night are bad. I was sick, too sick to know how sick I was. I thought I was heart-sick but it was much worse than that.

I go down the last few steps, the concrete moving like sand beneath me. The door to the wine cellar is ajar. I am overcome with a terrible longing. I prop myself against the wall. There is a hole inside that needs to be filled. I try to remember some lines of poetry. But nothing comes to me.

Faint smoke in the cellar. I touch my inner elbow, feel the small pinpricks in my flesh. The miniature wells descend into darkness; I feel the pulse of my thumb, like that other pulse at my waist. I imagine the glint on the needle-tip, the way the light catches rainbows in the tilted liquid inside the glass vial. I try to hurl away the image, the taste, the smell. I know if I use again I will be killing myself – myself and my other self.

A thread of that now-familiar nausea curls through me. I lace my hands across my stomach.

On the perimeter of the pool of light near the door something moves. But there is no sound except for my own breathing. Whatever is there is holding its breath. I dread to think it is Mitch.

I begin edging along the wall to the door. Air whispers by me, another movement, the silhouette of a man. The door slams shut.

I put my hands up and meet a body coming towards me, driving me against the hard concrete.

‘You’re not getting away that easily,’ says Devlin, and kisses me on the neck.

For a moment, I revel in the luxury of the full length of his body pressed against mine. I put my arms around his neck, I cling to him, I try to push myself into him, under his skin. His hands slide slowly up and down the heavy satin of my dress. He is luxuriating too, I can tell by the way his hands grip my flesh through the slippery material.

He says, ‘Your surface is water,’ his mouth at the base of my throat. He pulls me hard against him, kissing me so I can’t move. My anger ebbs away. Stupid woman. He is running his hands up and down my arms, running up and down to my wrist, up, down. Up. Any moment now, I think. His breath is ragged, he is kissing me so I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe, don’t want him to stop.

He says, ‘I’ve been ravenous.’ He kisses me again and again, takes my hands in his, raising them to his mouth as he says, ‘I came to tell you – ’

He feels the rings. His fingers go slack with shock. I push him away, slide from beneath him. Too late he grabs for me, his fingers slipping on my dress. I pull free, fumble for the switch on the wall.

He stands blinking at the sudden fall of light.

I back away, fast, so that the first of the wine racks is between us. They are shoulder height and heavy, the old wood knotted and black, but they will not be enough to stop him if this is the moment when he loses control.

He steps forward. Maybe the neon light overhead is flickering infinitesimally because he seems to shimmer as though he is a long way off.

He looks at my hand and aimlessly, as though they have only caught his eye because they are between us, at the bottles glinting sullenly in the light. He pulls out the nearest one. Brown paper is wrapped around the lower base, the wolf’s head logo stamped inside a red circle. He turns the bottle over and over in his hands and grips it by the neck. The liquid, black through the dark brown glass, rocks back and forth, unsettled, unstable. I wait, wondering if he is going to use it as a weapon. Against me, against himself.

The silence lengthens, grows heavier. He can’t ask the question.

I say, ‘I’m married.’

His hands tighten on the glass. He holds the bottle, trying to keep the wine level, stop it from moving.

‘Did you hear me?’

He puts the bottle carefully on the top corner of the nearest wine rack, on the very edge, so that half of its base is stepping out into white air.

‘Engaged,’ he says. ‘We know Pietr bought a ring.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘We were married. This morning.’

His eyes are completely black. There is no light there.

‘It’s not legal,’ he says.

I shrug. ‘It is to me.’

He makes a sharp wrenching movement with his hands as though he is tearing something in the air. The bottle sways in the current – he puts his forefinger against the base, holding it steady.

‘I gave up drinking for you,’ he says.

A jolt of rage goes through me. It burns any softness. All that is left is the asp of nausea twisting across dried earth and dead stones.

‘I gave up poetry for you,’ I shout. ‘I gave you everything. And you totally betrayed me.’

‘I never – ’ He steps forward, letting go of the bottle, which crashes to the ground. A red river spreads across the flagstones, soaking up the brown paper wrapping so that the fibres collapse into a sodden dark pink mass. The stamped wolf’s head nods at me as the liquid seeps across the floor, eddying around the jagged shards winking in the light and a small, shiny package.

As he crouches and carefully picks up the plastic bag, I come out slowly from behind the rack.

He lifts the bag to the light. I see the stones inside, the sparks of colour through the dull pebbly surfaces.

He isn’t looking at the stones. ‘I could leap up right now,’ he says. ‘I’m faster than you, bigger. I’ll come through the racks. I’ll jam the door. I can catch you and rip your throat out.’

‘Do it then.’

He stands, shoves the bag of stones into his pocket and, very slowly, steps over the broken glass. He is little more than an arm’s length away. This close, I am weakening already, my pulse climbing into my throat. I cling to the edge of the wine rack. I can’t look at him but I know he is moving forward, warily. Soon he will be close enough to touch.

‘You’ve got something to show Mitch now,’ I say.

‘I don’t give a fuck about Mitch.’ He is inches away.

‘He said you’d left.’

He puts his hand next to mine on the wine rack. The skin is broken across his knuckles, there are bruises already turning purple-green around his wrists.

He says, ‘They wanted me to alter my report.’

I imagine reaching out and resting my little finger between his first two knuckles. Some small gesture that he would remember later.

‘I care as much about your report,’ I say, ‘as you care if another man asks the woman you’re sleeping with to marry him.’

‘I didn’t expect you to goddamn marry him,’ he shouts. ‘What did you want me to do?’

‘I wanted you to goddamn stop it,’ I shout back. ‘I wanted you to tell them all to go to hell, tell them I’m not the woman they thought I was. To take me away from this.’

He looks at me. I can tell he still doesn’t understand. He reaches out and runs a hand over my hip, lingering. I slap him. I care enough not to hit hard but I forget about the rings. I cut him on the cheek. Blood wells up. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t try to staunch it.

‘Now we’re even.’ He still thinks that we haven’t gone past the point of no return.

I see the words coming, they are forming in the black air which is swirling around me. I can barely breathe but I know I have to say the words. Make him go away.

‘Let’s go then,’ he says. ‘I’ve got enough money, some friends. We might be okay – a good lawyer – ’

‘I’m not leaving Pietr.’

The black air is swirling around him now. ‘But you can’t stay married to him.’

‘He stood up for me.’

‘But that’s – ’

‘You’ve known all along what my father did to my brother.’

‘How could I tell you?’ he shouts. ‘Without you thinking I was trying to use you?’

I put my hands over my stomach. There are sharp jabs of pain as though I am being pierced inside. I hurt and I want to hurt him.

‘He gave me a book,’ I say. ‘A book of poetry. A book beyond price. You and Mitch would never understand it.’

He puts his teeth together. ‘Don’t ever,
ever
equate me with Mitch.’

I nod, trying to breathe through the pain. I wonder if I am miscarrying but there is no sensation of liquid leaving me. I want someone to ask. I want Anna. For the first time in years, in my life, I want my mother.

Devlin says, ‘Why didn’t you?’

I breathe out, slowly. ‘What?’

‘Marry me.’

‘You never asked me, Ash.’

‘But you must have known.’

‘How? I needed words.’

He is shocked. ‘But I gave away so much.’

‘All I got from you were absences. You knew about my father. You never told me. I could never rely on you.’

‘Listen to me.’ He holds my shoulders, turns me to face him. There is a moment when I sway towards him, when his hands move on my skin. Despite everything, in the middle of everything, I want him.

He takes a deep breath. ‘If you sleep with him, I’ll – ’

‘It’s not like that. He says he just wants to protect me.’

‘Oh fucking bullshit,’ shouts Devlin. He looks around, grabs the nearest bottle by the neck and pulls it out onto the floor. He pulls out bottle after bottle from the rack, hurling them to the floor, the glass breaking and flying upwards, in wave after glittering wave. The smell of escaping spirits rises as sour as smoke. He grips the rack, shakes it so that it rocks back and forth, bottles chiming like bells. ‘I think he bribed Mitch to show you my file.’ He forces his voice down. ‘Mitch would never usually show classified information to an outsider.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Pietr will do anything to get you.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I would.’

‘But you didn’t.’

His eyes are growing darker if that is possible. He is beginning to see now. ‘So you’re going to punish me. Out of spite.’

‘I’m going to punish myself,’ I say, ‘out of guilt. How do you think I feel sleeping with the man who never told me who killed my brother?’

‘How do you think,’ he says, ‘I could ever tell you it was your father?’

There is a sharp pain in my eyes. I don’t even know what it is. I feel water leaving me. I start backing away from Devlin. ‘I don’t cry,’ I say loudly. The snake twists in my stomach. I put my hand over my belly. I think about telling him. I think about his right to know. Then I remember what he has done. I feel my way around the wine rack. When I realise he isn’t following me I stop, lean into the cold wood, the bottles pressing against my hip.

‘You’re sick,’ he says. ‘You’ve been using.’

I remember why I can’t tell him. I can never trust him not to leave.

‘The whole time,’ I say. ‘It was the only way I could get through sleeping with you.’

‘That’s a lie.’ But there is a white line around his mouth, old insecurities being etched in. Bad memories from the bottle. Failures, humiliations.

‘I pretended the whole time,’ I say. ‘I knew you’d sell me out. I had your file, remember? I knew – ’ I am about to say the words that will make the final severing – ‘I knew what you did to your father.’

‘You – ’ There is no word to describe the chasm I have opened up.

‘Now you know how it feels,’ I say.

He steps back. ‘Go ahead and fuck him then. I’ll leave you to the wolves. You deserve it.’

He walks away without looking back. I hear his footsteps, crunching the glass. A great coolness settles over me. I straighten, the wood rough and reassuring beneath my fingers. But before I can move, the lines of wood shiver. They dissolve in the thin white air. For the first time since my brother disappeared, I cry.

SUNDAY

I
wake. It is raining: a clatter of gravel on the roof, hard chips against the window, the sense of the house swaying in the wind. The sound of voices receding, car doors slamming.

I am very drowsy but as I sink again, I see lightning flashes veining the horizon in silver, putting roots from the world in the sky down into the world of the earth. I see tornadoes spinning across the plain to Santa Margherita, giant whirlpools revolving around a black heart, churning up trees and dust and stones and bricks and wolf bones, passing across the black lake so that water flies upwards, the drops hanging in the air like blood. Threaded through it all is a sour smell, like sulfur, like burning gold.