Bones of the Buried (31 page)

In the morning, Fenton found a pile of clothes on the bathroom floor and noted, with a smile, lipstick on the collar of the starched shirt and on the white bow-tie. He judged the evening to have
been a success but, of course, he was not in full possession of the facts.

Verity slipped out of bed and wrapped a towel round her. She took a cigarette out of a packet on the table and then draped herself over the chair, leaving one leg hanging
– she hoped provocatively – over the arm. She looked back at the bed where Belasco lay sprawled. It was odd, she thought, that she who cavorted shamelessly naked during their
love-making was shy enough, the moment the blood cooled, to have to cover her body. Belasco, on the other hand, gloried in his nakedness despite being in many respects repulsive to look at. As he
stretched himself and reached for one of the horrible little cheroots he liked to smoke after sex, she once again wondered at his hairiness. The thick pelt, which covered his chest and ringed his
neck like a choker, continued down to his groin. His back, too, was felted and bear-like. In retreat, she noticed, his penis was entirely hidden in a great ball of fur sprouting like coarse brown
grass.

Verity had had little experience of men. Her only previous lover had been David Griffiths-Jones, efficient enough but, she now realised, uninventive. Belasco, whom she had at first considered
repellent, was by comparison . . . extraordinary. She blushed inwardly at what he had taught her to do to his body and the excitement he had generated in hers by his playful nuzzling and . . . She
stopped herself.

She had never intended to take Belasco as her lover, but he had given her no say in the matter. He had invited her back to his apartment ‘to look at some drawings by a guy named Pablo
Picasso; ever heard of him, kid?’ Verity hadn’t – and he had taken her with a suddenness some might have considered perilously close to rape. One moment she had been looking at a
charcoal drawing of a bull on its knees before a matador and asking him about the wine stain which disfigured it, the next she had been thrown on the unmade bed and was having her skirt torn off
her. She had slapped him hard on the face and he had stopped. With as much dignity as she could manage, she had told him there was no need to tear her clothes. He had climbed off her and watched
with an amused smile as she had removed first her shirt and skirt and then her undergarments. ‘You’re just a kid,’ he had said with some surprise, eyeing her small breasts with
displeasure. Verity was indignant: ‘And you are just a pig – a hairy pig.’

That was when he had laughed at her and she had impulsively laughed back.

After that first coupling, he told her he had been provoked by her prim, virginal Englishness. He said he had wanted to ‘kick her neat little butt’ – by which she gathered he
meant shatter her self-esteem, disturb her equilibrium and liberate her from her class and culture. As an enemy of convention and with an almost obsessive fear of being thought ordinary, she could
only approve his aims. He was not, it turned out, normally a violent or even an energetic lover. He was a prankster, teasing her, arousing her and then letting her hang suspended in a state of
sublime anticipation, before satisfying her with the passionate casualness of a beast. And all the time – or at least when he was in a position which allowed him to do so – he would
watch her with his small, porcine eyes as though he was playing with her, as a lion plays with its food before devouring it. And always there was his fur, which stroked her flesh and set her blood
screaming.

It was strange, she thought, how much she could enjoy sex without love. It went straight across everything she had been told, which might be summed up as the only sex worth having was sex within
marriage. Verity could not imagine herself loving anyone to whom she was not sexually attracted, so it was peculiar the opposite was not true and she could be exhilarated by sex with someone who .
. . disgusted her. Perhaps it was because Ben was so strange, so foreign to her. Maybe that was the source of his interest in her. She wondered if she would turn up in one of his novels as a prissy
English girl, inhibited about sex and naive about everything else.

She found herself idly imagining what Edward Corinth might be like as a lover. She suspected that beneath his hauteur – the coolness of an English gentleman who had been taught since the
nursery that it was not good form to show his feelings – there might lie a passionate nature. Might he not be tender? Her whole body ached for tenderness, to be stroked and . . . pampered.
Edward Corinth was everything she had been taught to admire in a man – smooth, strong-featured, muscular, athletic, always perfectly dressed even when he considered himself to be in rags,
courteous, patronising, intelligent, considerate . . . inconsiderate . . . Verity’s mind wandered. But for the moment what she wanted was the man now noisily peeing in the basin because he
was too idle to go down the passage to the lavatory. He frightened her and he thrilled her to the core . . . and he knew it.

‘What’s bugging you, V?’ he asked, coming over to her still stark naked, drops of urine dropping from his penis. ‘Come back to bed, baby. I’m still
hungry.’

‘You’re always hungry,’ she said with nervous petulance. ‘I suppose I’m just a snack . . .’

‘Hey, kiddo,’ he said, lazily pulling away her towel and drawing her to him. ‘What’s up? Maybe you’d like it better with that lord of yours,’ he added as
though he had been reading her mind.

‘What can you mean?’ she said, trying to pull herself free of him.

‘That Lord Corinth or whatever he calls himself. I’ve seen him looking at you.’ He laughed happily. ‘When you came to sit by me that time you brought him to
Chicote’s, the guy almost had apoplexy. That man – if he is a man and not just a stick – wants to get into your drawers, V.’

‘Oh really, Ben, you’re absurd. Anyway, as you might have noticed, I don’t wear drawers.’

‘Knickers, then . . .’

‘And if you don’t let me go, I will push this cigarette into you and you’ll probably go up in flames.’ His flesh smelled of dried sweat, sex and pure maleness . . .
something she had never smelled before but recognised instinctively.

‘Hey! V, don’t be so violent. You don’t have to stab me with a cigarette to send me up in flames.’

‘I expect that’s what you say to all your women.’

‘Women, what women?’ he said, throwing up his arms so she could duck out of his embrace. Naked, she ran back to lie on the bed but, to show how liberated she was, did not cover
herself this time. ‘I don’t have any women . . . besides you.’

‘You have a wife, don’t you?’ she said sharply.

‘Oh, sure.’ He was quite unmoved. ‘But Gloria knows the score. I love her . . . sure I do . . . but she knows I need other women. It gets so lonely in these foreign
places.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t have other women. But it’s good to know I can keep you from feeling lonely for an hour or two.’

‘What’s eating you, V? Haven’t we just been having a great time? Why spoil it? You’re not really mad at me, are you?’

‘No, but . . . you are the limit . . .’

‘I’m the limit, am I?’ he mimicked her prissily. ‘I’ve heard about you English girls. You don’t have sex till you’re married and then you have babies
and stop. Christ! England must be a dull place.’

‘It probably is,’ Verity agreed. It was true that after Madrid and the life she had been living – ‘rackety’ her father had called it – she did not think she
could ever go back to running around London making banners and getting indignant about ‘the proletariat’ and the ‘class struggle’.

‘Maybe I am English and dull, but isn’t that just what you like about me?’

Belasco laughed again, his easy throaty chuckle. ‘Gee! I never said you were dull. You ain’t dull – no way.’ He looked admiringly at her eyes which sparkled with
indignation as she momentarily forgot her nakedness. ‘You’re a firecracker. I guess I’ve gotten bored of American women. Look at Hetty . . .’

‘Was she your lover . . .’

‘I tell no stories – ask her yourself,’ he said annoyingly.

‘When you were in Africa?’

‘I guess I rescued her . . . You’d never believe that Swedish Baron . . . what a cocksucker.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Ben. You know I hate that sort of language.’

‘Sorry.’ He raised his hand in mock contrition and she once again marvelled that anyone could be so hairy under the arms, on the shoulders . . . everywhere.

‘Who was he?’

‘The Baron? God knows. I guess his title was real enough. He had a castle to prove it and Hetty . . . why she was just an innocent Jewish kid from Denver . . . of all places. There
aren’t many Jews in Denver, I can tell you. She was lonely, came to Europe, met the Baron in Paris, I think . . . and they were married a few months later.’

‘And then . . .?’

‘Hetty knew she had made a bad bargain the moment she saw the castle.’

‘You mean they hadn’t even been back to his home before they got married?’

‘I know. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, but she was so desperate to stop being a boring American and lose her virginity, I guess she just sort of went off with the first European who made
eyes at her.’

‘And what happened when she saw the castle?’

‘It was just a ruin and Lengstrum, he just wanted her money to rebuild it. But Hetty had regained her senses by then and she just walked away . . . taking the title of Baroness with
her.’

‘Did he follow her?’

‘I guess the poor sap didn’t have the money.’

‘When did you meet her?’

‘I met up with Hetty in the States.’

‘And you took her to Africa?’

‘Yeah. Can we skip the rest of the interrogation?’

‘Were you married by then?’ Verity persisted.

‘Sure, I was married to Gloria practically in high school. I just adored her and she wouldn’t let me sleep with her unless we were married . . . so I guess I went through with
it.’

‘Just like an English girl . . . Why don’t you divorce? It’s easy in the States, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t want a divorce. I don’t intend to marry again and I still love Gloria . . . and I guess she loves me. Anyway there’s Star.’

‘What is Star?’

‘Star is my daughter and she needs a father.’

Verity was fascinated by all this autobiography. She had never heard him say so much about himself. Before he became maudlin about Star, she wanted to ask him one more question. ‘While you
were in Africa, did you and Hetty hear about that Englishman, Hoden . . . Makepeace Hoden, who was eaten by a lion?’

‘Yeah, we did, I guess. I used it in a story I was writing. Look, honey, let’s stop talking and start f . . .’ Verity put a hand over his mouth and he removed it, gently but
firmly. ‘I tell you, kid, I only do three things – fucking, writing and fighting – and I only do one of them well.’

‘One last thing, Ben. Was anyone else we know in Kenya when Hoden was killed?’

‘Sure, Tom Sutton. He was the British consul there or whatever they call it . . .’

‘Was Maurice Tate there?’

‘Maurice? No! What makes you think Maurice might have been in Kenya?’

‘Oh, nothing. I must have got muddled.’

Verity had more questions she wanted to ask but it was too late, at least this time. She had got much more out of Ben than she had ever expected. It looked as though Edward might be right. It
was certainly a coincidence that so many of her friends in Madrid had also been in Nairobi just when Makepeace Hoden was killed.

She felt the now familiar excitement rise in her as Belasco spread her legs with his hands, as though he was opening the doors to her soul. It was strange but, as Belasco buried himself inside
her, the last thing which crossed her mind before she became incapable of thinking at all was the image of Edward Corinth at his most disapproving.

The boat train, the Gare de Lyon, the border – surly, unshaven French, smartly uniformed, polite Germans – and at last Frankfurt – the Hauptbahnhof. The
upright figure of the Englishman, closely shaved, head up, aquiline nose twitching a little as if it were some sensitive radio transmitter – Fenton had good reason to be proud of himself. The
bedraggled young man of the night before, befuddled by drink and the scent of a woman, had been transformed into one of the most immediately identifiable figures in Europe: the English milord. The
navy-blue, double-breasted suit, trousers creased to a knife edge, discreet silk tie, heavy overcoat and trilby set him apart from his fellow travellers. Edward stood out like a lighthouse: the
product of an English public school and a pedigree which never doubted its superiority to all others. Quite unconsciously, his demeanour and deportment proclaimed it was enough to be English, but
to be an English aristocrat was – despite world war, democracy and an economic slump – to be only a little lower than the gods. Policemen saluted him and railway officials touched their
caps and hastened to ease his passage. Other passengers looked curiously at him, wondering, perhaps, why he travelled without half a dozen trunks and a manservant to organise his food and toilet.
Was he a diplomat? Not quite – the hat perhaps a trifle too rakish. A businessman? Certainly not. He was simply an Englishman abroad.

Comically unaware of the impression he was making, and unconcerned that the French thought him arrogant and the Germans, half-resentfully and half-admiringly, strove to impress on him their own
commitment to order and degree, Edward stared out of the window watching the steam cloud the landscape, concealing and revealing features which seemed for a moment significant and then were lost
for ever.

It was the same with this investigation. He kept on feeling he was on the point of making a major discovery, of seeing exactly what had been going on, and then something else would come along
and confuse his vision. Damn this journey. How he hated feeling dirty and sitting still for so long. It seemed absurd to go so far for one meeting. Chief Inspector Pride would never bother to
travel across Europe to question Thayer’s business partner. He was content to rely on the local police, even though they were hardly likely to be interested in inconveniencing a rich
businessman with close links to their political masters. No, however tiresome it was, it had to be done.