The Eye in the Door (21 page)

She giggled, and he felt her laughter in his bones. ‘Not
too
tired.’

They did have a bath, eventually. Afterwards, lying on
the bed, she traced his ribs with the tips of her fingers, propped up on one elbow, her hair screening them both. ‘You know the part of men I like best?’ she said, moving her finger down.

‘
Men?
’ Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called into the passage, ‘George? Albert? Are you there?’

She smiled, but persisted. ‘This part.’ Her finger slid into the hollow beneath his ribs and down across his belly.

‘
There?
’

‘Yes.’

‘Uh? Uh?’ he said, thrusting his hips upward.

‘Oh,
that
.’

‘“
That
”!’ He struggled to sit up, only to subside as she slid down the bed and took his flaccid penis into her mouth.

She looked up and smiled. ‘He’s nice too.’

‘He’s a bloody disgrace at the moment. Look at him.’

‘You can’t expect miracles.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Go on doing that you might just get one.’

Hanging over her, watching the stretched mouth, the slit eyes, the head thrown back until it seemed her spine must crack, he remembered other faces. The dying looked like that.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Not really.’

‘We could go to Oxford Street. Look round the shops.’

‘Don’t sound so enthusiastic.’

‘Or Kew.’

‘What do
you
want to do?’

‘Kew, I think. The weather can’t last and we can do indoor things tomorrow.’

‘More? You’ll wear me out.’

‘
Other
things.’

‘Oh.’

Once in the gardens they wandered aimlessly, more interested in each other than in the plants. As the afternoon wore on, the heat thickened until there was a brassy glare in the sky, as if a furnace door had opened. Still they walked, each adjusting to the other’s stride, hardly aware when their linked shadow faded from the grass.

Drops of rain striking their faces startled them out of their absorption. They looked around, dazed. The rain began to beat down, lashing their heads and shoulders. In less time than seemed possible, Sarah’s hair was hanging in dark, reddish-brown strands and the sleeves of her blouse had become transparent. Prior looked for shelter, but could see only some trees. They made for those and stood under them, but there was little protection. Rain streaked the trunks and splashed through the leaves on to the backs of their necks.

Sarah was beginning to shiver with cold. Prior didn’t know where they were. He could see a little mock Grecian temple on a grassy mound, but that was open to the wind. From his previous visits he remembered the Palm House, which was certainly warm. That would be the best place if he could manage to locate it. He worked out where the main gate was, and thought he could remember that you turned left. ‘I think we should make a run for it,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to go over.’

They ran, heads bent, Prior with his arm round Sarah, splashing through puddles. Rivulets of mud, washed out of flowerbeds, ran down the paths. Sarah refused the offer of his tunic and strode through it all, drenched, skirt caught between her legs, blouse transparent, hair
stringy, skin glowing, with a stride that would have covered mountains. She had decided to
enjoy
it, she said.

The lake was a confusion of exploding circles and bubbles, too turbulent to reflect the inky sky. They ran the last few yards and entered the Palm House. Prior felt a rippling effect on his face and neck and then, immediately, an uncomfortable wave of damp heat. He began to cough. Sarah turned to him. ‘Isn’t this bad for your chest?’

‘No,’ he said, straightening up. ‘In fact it’s ideal.’

The aisles were crowded, so much so it was difficult to move. Thick green foliage surrounded them, and towered to the dazzling glass roof above their heads. Smells of wet earth, of leaves dripping moisture, a constant trickle of water, and somewhere a trapped blackbird singing. But as they moved deeper into the crush, it was the smell of people that took over: damp cloth, wet hair, steamy skin.

Prior took Sarah’s arm and pointed to the gangway above. ‘Come on, it’ll be less crowded.’

He had a dim feeling there might also be more air up there, for in spite of what he’d said to Sarah he was finding the atmosphere oppressive. Sarah followed slowly, wanting to look at the plants. She tugged at his arm and pointed to a flower that had the most incredibly pink penile-looking stamens. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

‘I thought you were a rib-cage girl?’

‘Not ribs. The –’

He laughed and pulled her to him. They were standing at the bottom of the spiral staircase. She slid her hand between his legs and rubbed. ‘I could be converted.’

He pressed her more closely against him, his mouth buried in her wet hair, looking over her head, focusing on nothing. Suddenly his eye registered a familiar shape. The green blur cleared, and he found himself gazing,
through the branches of some tall plant with holes in its leaves, into the face of Lionel Spragge. There could be no mistake. They stared at each other through the foliage, no more than four or five feet apart. Then Spragge turned and pushed into the crowd, which swallowed him.

Sarah looked up. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Let’s go upstairs.’

He took her hand and pulled her towards the staircase. At every turn he looked down through the green leaves of the canopy at the heads and shoulders below, until eventually they ceased to look like individual people. As they climbed higher, the sound of rain on the glass roof grew louder. The windows were misted up, and a steamy, diffuse, white light spread over everything. He looked down on to the gleaming canopy of leaves. And then at the aisles, searching for Spragge’s broad shoulders and square head. He thought he saw him several times as he and Sarah walked round the gangway, but could never be sure. At first Sarah exclaimed over the different shapes and patterns of the leaves, which were indeed beautiful, as he acknowledged after a cursory glance. Then, gradually, sensing his withdrawal, she fell silent.

I should have spoken to him, Prior thought, though he couldn’t imagine what he would have said. But somehow the not speaking seemed in retrospect to give the encounter a hallucinatory quality. He looked down again, and now he would have been relieved to see Spragge’s square head moving below.

He felt Sarah watching him and made an effort to behave more normally, rubbing condensation from the glass, trying to see out. ‘You know, I think we might just as well make a dash for it.’

He had begun to feel exposed, here above the leaves, with the white light flooding over everything. Down
there in the crowd, Spragge had only to look up through a gap in the foliage and there he was, floodlit under the white light of the dome.

‘Yes, all right,’ Sarah said.

She sounded puzzled, but ready to go along with whatever he suggested. But she was no fool, his Sarah. He was going to have to tell her something.

Others had also decided to make a dash for it. A group of women with heavy drenched skirts were running stiff-legged towards the main gate.

‘Can you run?’ he asked.

A glint of amusement. ‘Can
you?
’

Good question. By the time they reached the underground station, he was more out of breath than her. He remembered, as he pressed his hand to his side, Spragge saying, ‘I was behind you on the platform.’ Suddenly he didn’t want the underground. He didn’t want to be shut in. ‘Look, I’ve got a better idea,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go on the river? If we get off at Westminster Bridge we could see the Abbey.’

The boat was already moored when they reached the landing stage, and beginning to be crowded. At the last moment, as the engine began to throb, a crowd of people swept on board, including what looked like a girls’ school party. Prior stood up and gave one of the teachers his seat. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea,’ he whispered to Sarah and went to the bar.

As he stood waiting his turn, the roar increased, the river churned, and they began moving out into midstream. He got the tea, took it back to Sarah, and tried to drink his own, but found it too difficult to keep his feet on the tilting deck, so he moved away from her and went to stand in the doorway that connected the covered deck with the open benches in the stern. Even these were full, and in fact the rain had almost stopped. A
white sun could be glimpsed now and then through a hazy veil of cloud.

On the front bench a group of elderly cockney men were making the best of a bad job, laughing and joking at everything. A little way behind, on the end of the third bench, sat a man with unusually broad shoulders. He looked like Spragge, but it was difficult to tell because he was wearing a hat and facing away from Prior. Prior craned to see the side of his face. It
was
Spragge. Had to be. And yet he wasn’t sure. There was something odd about the way the man didn’t turn, didn’t move. Edging along the railing towards him, Prior became aware of a slowness in his movements, as if he were wading through glue. He saw himself, in his mind’s eye, go up to the man, tap him on the shoulder, wait for him to turn, and the face that turned towards him… was his own. He sat down, his eyes level with the railings from which a row of glittering raindrops hung. He reached out his hand and, with the tip of his forefinger, destroyed them one by one. The wet, running uncomfortably under his shirt cuff, brought him back to himself. He looked again. It might or might not be Spragge, but it certainly looked nothing like
him
. The whole powerful, brutal bulk of the head and shoulders was as different from his own slight build as any two physiques could be, and yet again, as he got up and began to move forward, he felt he was looking at the back of his own head. He breathed deeply, gazing through the rails at the brown, swollen, sinuous river, making himself follow individual twigs and leaves as they were borne along, noticing how the different currents of water, as they met and parted, rippled like muscles under skin. They were approaching another bridge. He steadied himself, walked up to the man and tapped him on the shoulder.

Spragge’s face was a relief. So much so that it took several seconds for the anger to surface. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Going back to London. What are
you
doing?’

He sounded genuinely surprised, but Prior had caught the hiccup of laughter in his voice. Spragge had spoken more loudly than he needed, playing to the small audience of cockneys, and to the larger audience on the benches behind.

Prior lowered his voice. ‘Are you following me?’

‘
Following
you?’ Again very loud. ‘Now why should I do that?’

He sounded like a bottom-of-the-bill music-hall actor conveying injured innocence. The impression was not of somebody who’d decided to act as one possible response to a situation, but of somebody who couldn’t
not
act. You had the feeling he would act in front of the bathroom mirror. That if ever you succeeded in ripping the mask off there would be no face behind it. Prior felt a wave of revulsion. ‘If you’re following me,’ he said, ‘I’ll–’

‘Yes, what will you do?’ Spragge waited, as if the question genuinely interested him. ‘Call the police? Have me arrested? It’s not against the law to go to Kew.’ He smiled. ‘Nice girl,’ he said, nodding towards the prow. And then he cupped his hands against his chest.

‘If you go anywhere near her, I’ll break your fucking neck.’

Spragge laughed, jowls shaking. He put his hand on Prior’s chest and slapped it, genially. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. Then he sat down again and looked out over the river, with no more than a sideways glance at the cockneys, and a faint smile.

In something not moving, something too steady for a
boat. Hands, mottled purple and green, moved along polished wood. Then he was back, staring up at a window made of chips of purple and green light. He looked for Sarah and couldn’t see her. In a panic he leapt up and began searching the Abbey, thrusting tourists aside, trailing hostile stares.

He found her at last, standing by the effigy of an eighteenth-century bishop, running her hand over the smooth marble. A shaft of sunlight had found the auburn lights in her hair.

She looked up as he arrived, breathless. ‘You back now?’

The question was so apposite it silenced him. For a moment he thought,
she knows
. And immediately rejected the idea. Of course she didn’t know.

They went home by taxi. Prior thought about Spragge, because he was afraid of thinking about anything else. What angered him was the thought that Spragge might have seen that little act of intimacy in the Palm House when Sarah had moved closer and rubbed his cock through the hard cloth of his breeches. A
good
moment. In all that press of wet, sweating, steamy-skinned people, they’d been alone, and then Spragge’s face peering through the leaves.
Had
he seen? He must have. Prior was aware of feeling an almost excessive sense of exposure, of violation even, as if he’d been seen, arse upwards, in the act itself.

The taxi jolted and swayed. A memory started to surface that seemed to have nothing to do with the afternoon’s events. He was ill with asthma, walking with his father’s hand. Where could they have been going? His father had never taken him anywhere, he’d been too ashamed of the little runt that had mysteriously sprung from his loins. Perhaps his mother had been ill. Yes, that was it.

They’d sat on a bench somewhere, and a woman brought him lemonade.
Real
lemonade, his father had said proudly – but why proudly? – not that gassy bottled stuff. There had been lime jelly too, with jelly babies suspended in it. While he was picking at it, his father and the woman went upstairs. He could hear voices from the open window above his head.
The boy, Harry
. Then his father’s voice, thick and hurried.
He’s all right. Wraps himself round that lot he won’t have much to grumble about
.

‘Wrapping himself round that lot’ had not been easy. He loved jelly, but hated jelly babies, mainly because of the way people ate them, nibbling at their feet, then at their faces, then boldly biting off the head and turning the headless body round to display the shiny open wound. He contemplated eating his way round them, freeing them from their quivering prison, but he knew he couldn’t do that. The jelly had been specially made – it wasn’t grownup food – and his father would be angry. So, one by one, he had forced them down, swallowing them whole, his eyes fixed on the trees so he wouldn’t have to think about what he was doing. Even so, he’d gagged once or twice, his eyes had watered, while upstairs the thick whispers came and went and the bed springs creaked.