Rose Leopard (19 page)

‘There is.' Her answer is immediate. ‘Vince, we share a child. You and I, our creation. It's not common knowledge but she shapes us, no matter what we think. And as much as that, we share a … a death. Given all this sharing I think there's work to be done, don't you? For both of us.'

Now the sun drops behind the mountain's tree-line and she stands in shadow, a sculpture of juts and angles, city girl shrouded by the sudden country dusk.

‘Is that why you're here?' I ask. ‘Because there's work to be done?'

Preceded by the familiar stench of citrus, Francesca walks towards me.

‘Partly,' she admits, locking and unlocking her fingers. ‘Actually … well, to be honest, I miss her. So I'm here for that as well.'

‘Amelia?'

‘Yes — but Katherine too.' She stands before me, sighs then continues. ‘You know, even when she was alive, I felt like Katherine and I had lost something. Something big, bigger than I realised at the time. As sisters I mean. When we were kids, there was none of this. We used to play together, talk, invent stuff — she was so good at inventing. God, I remember being down behind the tomato plants, smoking and giggling like idiots. It was good, really good. It's a dumb cliché I know but we really were best friends. And we were best friends in the way that only sisters can be. There's this thing you're born with that means you don't need to communicate. More than genetic; it's just there somehow, like a private part squeezed into your heart.'

‘A shared pulse?' I suggest.

‘Yeah.' She smiles self-consciously, runs her fingers up and down her arms. ‘We were really good friends — then we got older, got jealous and competitive, got hormonal and catty and just plain bloody-minded … and we lost it.'

I am silent.

Francesca sighs again then says: ‘But you know, I always thought — one day. One day we'll get it back. One day we'll sit down, together again, and we'll laugh about the way we were and enjoy our children and make jokes about our men. One day … but it's never going to be like that, is it? It's never going to be like that —'

And so her mask breaks. Yet there is more than tears; a carefully maintained lifestyle cracks like old china before me. All the half-truths and putrid self-deceptions seep from her. Two decades of precise orchestrations crumble at her feet.

‘Fuck it,' she mumbles as I take her awkwardly in my arms. ‘It's so bloody unfair. I mean, how come … how come I didn't realise how much I wanted the chance — just to do that, just to get it back.'

‘Frannie … Frannie, she'd understand,' I say, realising too late how pathetic and platitudinous it must sound. ‘Kaz never held a grudge against anyone, never. She'd understand.'

She sniffs and half-nods then we stand like that for a long, languid moment, swaying as gently as wheat-stalks and sharing our grief but also — it's distasteful yet I must admit it — reminding ourselves of those times long ago;
Peer Gynt,
the delicious frenzy of illicit love-making, our private, locked-away visuals of skin slotting into skin.

‘I have something else to tell you.' Francesca lifts her eyes, dabs at them with her wrist, steps back a little.

I drop my hands and wait. Inside the barn, I notice, the walls are shaded grey and brown. Around us are distorted figures, elongations and unfamiliar shadows. Night has begun to throw its spangled coverlet.

‘She knew,' says Francesca. Then, without pause: ‘She knew, because I told her.'

It is simple and direct, a stiletto to the heart.

Five

I
t was our first afternoon in southern England, mid-May but unseasonably cold with long needles of rain spearing from the slate-grey skies. The traffic from the airport was resigned to centipede-like inertia and the olives and steels of the outer-London countryside lay flat and drenched, but none of this mattered because we had a room at the Inn.

‘Like Joseph and bloody Mary,' I commented wryly. I was seriously jet-lagged and hoping for two suitably lengthy doses of the twin panaceas: beer and sleep. But Kaz — who had been virtually silent throughout the thirty-hour journey — was disrobing too quickly, leaving a shirt and jeans and day-old knickers strewn haphazardly beside the dressing table. I remember thinking how out of character that was, but then even more disturbing was that our subsequent coupling, usually so pacific and — I'd always thought anyway — guided by a spirit of mutual obligation, was ferocious. Kaz held me down with her fists, hurt me with the ruthless grind of her hips, spun around and took me into her mouth, bit me, twisted and bucked, pushed herself hard onto my surprised face, concentrated all of her energy into an overwhelming physical power. It scared me because during her attack she made no sound and gave no explanation. Neither was there any obvious culmination, none of the normal release. It was as if she had been caught in this frenzied rote of unthinking athleticism, like an ultra-marathon runner for whom the biomechanics of the movement, not the end goal or prospect of victory, assumes greatest importance.

‘Do you still love me?' she asked afterwards as we lay apart and gasped like landed fish, pretended to stare at the obscenely ornate architraves.

‘Of course I do. Don't be ridiculous.'

‘Good, I suppose. So, did you like that? Was that what you would call good sex?'

I raised myself on my elbow and tried to find her eyes but they were turned to elsewhere.

‘Kaz, are you all right?'

‘I'm fine. So tell me — was that good enough for you?' Her voice was bitter; the words spat out and scattered like shotgun pellets. ‘Come on, I want to know! Was I horny enough? A bitch in the sack? Or a good fuck — Vince, am I a good fuck? Is that what I am?'

‘Day one of the dream trip and you're worrying me, you know that?'

‘So answer my question, you arsehole!' she screamed and then she was on top of me, flailing at my face and chest with her fists, jabbing her knees into the cushion of my stomach.

‘Jesus, Kaz —'

‘Answer my question! It's simple enough! Come on, I want to know — am I a good fuck? Am I? Am I a good fuck, you bastard — you useless cunt — you bastard — bastard of a man …'

She wept and snuffled for the remainder of the afternoon, her poor hot head nestled between my shoulder and neck. Later I went downstairs for a drink and to stare at the pristine, lapping waters of a nearby lake. The leaden skies had cleared to a gentle wash of claret. I stood with whisky in my hand and shivered in that bald, aching chill then I historied the lake: I saw the eyeless brainless cadavers of drowned monks, blankfaced children with soft tendrils of floating hair, spongy boats rotting in the murky depths, a dead grinning witch, the translucent spines of fish, two rebellious bishops trapped by plaits of weed. I stayed and drank steadily as the lake corrugated beneath a gathering breeze and my new wife lay crumpled and alone in our room, her blank eyes turned to the ancient mirror on the wall.

‘Kaz? I'm bored. Talk to me.' I remembered slurring this from seat 26C as we crossed over Pakistan. Maddened and constricted, sick of the self-gratifying in-flight mags, sick of straining my neck to watch inept Hollywood movies that had gone straight to video, sick of being enclosed within that thick stink of humanity.

‘Come on, talk to me'

Nothing in return. She'd lain motionless behind the company-supplied Batman mask but her fingers, hands, wrists and arms, everything had tensed like fine wire. I'd shrugged and ordered another drink; it wasn't until we were outside London, fifteen hours on, that I saw fit to blush at my own insensitivity as I sniffed my way towards a chill and gazed at the dark gooey swill of lake.

When I returned to our room at the Inn, the sky had gone and she was asleep beneath the quiet glow of a new moon. I sat and dozed on a
chaise-longue
, imagined huge golden-rippled king tides, felt my dreaming swing from light to vivid; the ceaseless rhythms of gravity. In the morning I awoke with a stiff shoulder. We dressed quietly, consumed a ‘hearty English' breakfast — rubber eggs, bacon that shattered between your teeth, soft thick toast — then left the Inn to catch a train to Dover because Kaz wanted to see the White Cliffs. There, buffeted by the whipping winds, we took photographs of each other in front of new and ancient landmarks, wandered hand-in-hand around the docks, fed fat chips to skinny seagulls and somehow, as if by tacit consent, agreed never to speak about that afternoon again.

‘It makes sense.' On the veranda, I can't see much of Frannie beyond the glowing tip of her cigarette and two neat cones of smoke.

‘I told her the morning you flew out.'

‘At the airport?'

‘Yes. I suppose that must sound even more horrible. Of course, I was jealous. She was flying off to a fantastic European holiday with the man she loved whereas I was stuck at home with a child that was only half-mine, a lifelong secret and a future that amounted to nil. I'm not normally impulsive, as you know, but I got angry, and so I told her.'

‘You went for a farewell drink. I remember that.'

‘That's when it happened. Or rather, when I made it happen.'

I can see the scene: two long thin women perched at a bar, a bowl of nuts placed symbolically between them, two glasses of over-priced wine at their elbows. There is a sharpness, the tang of muted disclosure then their backs stiffen and their faces invert. Around them people laugh too loudly and make corny jokes to hide their displeasures. The monotony of arrivals and departures is preceded by a bell-like doh-ray-me. The perpetual shuffle of excited migration and wistful return continues but the two women are silent, erect like pinnacles of stone on a hot bare plain. Their stillness continues; then, as if they are joined marionettes, they both arise, swallow the remainder of the wine, pick up their valises and move fiercely into the concourse.

‘What did she say?'

Francesca swirls her drink so that the ice clinks.

‘Nothing at first, which was really infuriating. I wanted more than that, much more — some yelling and screaming, a good old-fashioned cat-fight. But she didn't even react, just sat there and said nothing.'

‘Nothing at all?'

‘Not until the end. Your flight was called so we had to leave the bar. As we did, she just turned to me and said: “It won't work.” And that was all.'

From the direction of the mountains, I can hear an owl calling its partner in perfect tenor.

‘She never told me.' I lean forward, perplexed. ‘Why didn't she just come out with it, confront me?'

‘I don't know. Because it was my fault, I suppose —'

‘We were both there, Frannie.'

‘I know, I know.' Francesca's accompanying cough is hoarse, tired-sounding. ‘But I'm sure she felt that I was principally to blame. Hence —
It won't work.
She must've thought I was trying to win you back.'

We are silent for a moment then she says, ‘We never mentioned it again. In fact, whenever we met we shut up, stopped being sisters and became like everyone else — restricted to safe, mutually agreed topics of conversation so we didn't have to admit how we really felt. Stupid. The whole thing was too damned stupid for words.'

Francesca doesn't say too much more but she does stay, drinks most of a cask of cheap moselle, weaves into Amelia's room around midnight. At the front of the house I try to sleep but I cannot: it is the writer's curse, to lie in bed and let other lives unravel within you. My characters seldom lie dormant. I rarely see them with any distinction but I hear them constantly. Their voices ring clearly as they gather in the half-light, engaging, jostling, competing for space and authority.

Another Saturday morning. Banks of cloud shifting daylight to shadow, no school, no commitments beyond the spectre of a shaggy, weed-infested lawn.

A slow comfortable drift of coffee, newspapers and cartoons.

‘Let's go,' I tell them after we have feasted on slabs of ham and hot bread rolls. ‘The rose leopard awaits us.'

Francesca says nothing but she and her long woollen dress are both with us as we stride through the wet grass and shovel the old doors back. She looks around then makes her choice, perches rather awkwardly on an upturned crate.

‘Frannie,' I grin, ‘you'd be the first person to ever wear Carla Zampatti into a disused barn.'

She rubs at the pain behind her eyes.

‘I'd like to hear the end of this story, please,' she tells me quietly.

In the spirit of no-more-bad-blood, I am happy to oblige.

The rose leopard had finally reached the Mother Star. It was smaller than she expected, more compact and its light was different — not just bright but warming, as if you could lie down and sleep inside its pink and orange rays.

The rose leopard approached tentatively. She knew that she had to stop the Swicks but she did not know how. Her only clue was that fresh, strong beams of light — any new brightness that was extraordinary and dazzling — would hurt their darkness-loving brains and send them scurrying back to gloom and misery. But there was no time to lose; she could sense that the Mother Star had lost some of its power. There were probably already Swicks here, quietly connecting to the Mother Star and beginning to blanket her life-giving brightness.

‘Whatever can I do?' The rose leopard stopped in the heat and thought hard.

‘Why don't you just give up?' suggested Dragmir.

‘Told you!' Milo is triumphant. ‘I knew he was evil'

‘The rose leopard will still win,' says Otis in her most emphatic don't-you-understand-anything voice. ‘Don't you understand anything?'

The rose leopard was stunned. Why was Dragmir, a powerful young Eternal, out here in Cosmosia? She searched her mind for an explanation but there was only one possibility.

‘Of course!' scoffed Dragmir. He'd been sitting back contentedly, reading her thoughts. ‘I've long been on the side of the Swicks. We've been planning our takeover of the Bright Universe for eons now.'

‘But why?' The rose leopard watched as Dragmir hovered before her, blocked her path to the Mother Star.

‘You and your precious Enlightenment,' he hissed. ‘You think that's everything?'

‘Yes, yes it must be …'

‘Ha!' he cackled cynically. ‘You think I'm happy with being one of so many useless Eternals, stuck in this never-ending cycle of maintaining the peace and tranquillity of a pathetic, miserable place like the Bright Universe?'

‘But it's … it's our lives.' The rose leopard edged slightly away from Dragmir, loosened the ties on her magic cloak. ‘It's everything: the gardens, the rivers and mountains, the stars, the air, our place, our children, our entire history! You'd throw that away?'

Dragmir lifted his head and laughed — and as his eyes momentarily left her, the rose leopard loosened her cloak even further.

‘Oh yes,' snarled the Eternal. ‘Very soon the Bright Universe will be plunged into eternal blackness. With the death of the Mother Star; all other light will cease. Plants will wilt and then rot, the seas will thicken with algae and carry disease, the air that you breathe will become rancid. Your precious Garden will stop replenishing and your children will be no more! Life will be no more!'

‘No!' I look up, see Otis's pale, worried face. Francesca holds out her arms and my daughter goes to her, snuggles in.

They nod for me to continue.

Dragmir strutted around the rose leopard.

‘Best of all,' he said proudly, ‘is the fate that awaits the Eternals. Because they will be rendered powerless, all shall go into the Void. Except me, of course.'

The rose leopard gathered the ends of the cloak into her long, slim hands.

‘But why?' she asked again.

Dragmir shot her a look of total disdain.

‘Because I want control of the Spectrum,' he said coldly. ‘Total control. I want to be the Absolute, the one whom all will obey and none shall defy. And with the Swicks on my side — and your Enlightenment out of the way — that is exactly what I will be!'

He cackled and lunged towards her then but the rose leopard was too quick. She swivelled and ducked; instantly she was wrapped inside her magic cloak, untouchable. As Dragmir roared with anger and ripped at the cloak, she flicked her powerful tail and spun hard towards the Mother Star. But Dragmir hung onto her and together they twisted and turned, closer and closer to the heat and brightness. Outside the protection of the cloak she could hear him screaming at her. She knew that if she went too close to the Mother Star then they would both vaporise. But she hoped desperately that the magic cloak, for so long a part of her life, would save her one more time.

The voice, when it came, was faint, but she knew that it belonged to Charyb.

‘Rose Leopard.' Charyb sounded weak and old. ‘The Mother Star is fading. You must go to her.'

The rose leopard kept moving. Inside the cloak, the heat was becoming unbearable; she couldn't imagine what Dragmir was feeling. Despite the immense pain he was still yelling at her, still hanging on.

‘I am here, Charyb.' The rose leopard tried to transmit her thoughts. ‘But what now? What can I do?'

This time Charyb's message came through more powerfully.

‘Donate your Enlightenment,' she pleaded. ‘It is the only way. Donate your Enlightenment.'

And finally the rose leopard understood her mission.