Breaking and Entering (56 page)

‘Daniel, darling, please don't cry. Don't you realize, you've just made everything all right? I mean, that was the whole problem – I thought I meant nothing to you. But now …' She broke off, as if embarrassed herself; the pale satin of her housecoat spotted with his tears.

He pummelled his eyes with his fists. God! She assumed he was crying over
her
, had even called him darling. Whatever could he say? It would be impossible to tell her about Sayers, and if he alluded vaguely to some recent shock he'd had, she'd only insist on knowing all the details. ‘Look, Juliet, I …'

‘It's all right – you don't have to explain. I was horrid – I admit it. I said some really vicious things. But you must understand, it upset me too, your appearing like a bolt from the blue, when I assumed I'd never see you again.' She retied her sash, smoothed its tasselled ends, then took his hand in hers. ‘Forgive me, darling, for putting it so bluntly, but it's the best thing which could have happened – your breaking down like this, I mean. I can see now that you value the relationship, and that our time apart has been a frightful strain for you. In fact, I noticed when you first came in how ill and tired you looked, but I put it down to that damn-fool camp.' She forced a smile, squeezed his hand affectionately. ‘If you really want to know, you couldn't have said sorry in a more effective way. When you apologized before, it sounded sort of brusque and insincere, and I suspected you'd come round here just to …'

‘Juliet, it's
not
that.' He couldn't get the words out. Even now, the tears refused to stop. He felt utterly humiliated, totally confused; no longer even knew why he was crying.

‘I'd better get you a hankie.' Juliet stood up, ran barefoot to the bedroom.

He blundered after her, grabbed the proffered box of paper tissues and tossed it on the dressing-table without bothering to take one. He pressed himself against her, burying his wet face in her shoulder. He felt her tense and feared she'd pull away. Desperately, he clung to her, holding her so tightly he could feel every curve and contour of her body. He had never had an erection while he was crying – hadn't even realized it was possible. But then never before had he experienced such a turmoil of emotions: explosive reckless anger, bewildered rutting shame. Nor had he ever kissed her quite so fiercely; biting her lips, searching out her tongue with his, as if determined to devour her. He clawed her sash undone and wrested off the housecoat, drawing in his breath as his eyes moved from her breasts to the dark blur of her thatch. Then, somehow, he was on his knees, kissing the coarse hair, mumbling his lips against it, flicking his tongue between her legs. He realized she was still tense – dry and unresponsive. Had his crying turned her off? Was she feeling only pity for him, and no desire at all? He tugged at his belt and clumsily unzipped his jeans while continuing to tongue her. He dared not break the contact, or try to undress fully, fearing he'd lose the urgency of the moment and his passionate resolve. Nothing mattered any longer except manoeuvring her to the bed.

He all but dragged her, arranging her body as he wanted: on her knees, face down – then pinioning her beneath him and entering her more roughly than he'd meant. She was still dry and still reluctant, but he had to have her; had to thrust away this terrifying anger. He was building up a rhythm, heaving himself against the crouched and passive form, lunging wildly back and forth; the defenceless bed shuddering on its springs. She was trying to speak – protest perhaps, or stop him – but he put his hand across her mouth. He mustn't hear her voice or see her face; must block out his surroundings: the pretty-pretty bedroom with its flower-sprigged walls and virginal white coverlet. He was somewhere else entirely – in a dingy study with a stained and faded carpet, heavy velour curtains shrouding all the windows; a deep male voice crooning in his ear.

‘
You mustn't be ashamed, my boy. These things are only natural
.'

He
was
ashamed – horrified by his own brute violence – but he suppressed his feelings by thrusting harder still, in time to Sayers's bland disarming words. ‘
These things are only natural
.' The phrase throbbed through his head, drowning any scruples, inciting him to even greater ferocity. It was only natural to avenge himself, to prove he wasn't a poofter, or some cowering brat to be used as a receptacle, then tossed back in the shit. His hands were gripping the pale flesh; his rucked-up clothes uncomfortable; the soft purr of the gas fire goading and enraging him.

‘
You've done nothing wrong at all, Daniel. We all need relief from time to time. God made us that way, didn't He, so it's perfectly all right
.'

Of course it was all right, and of course he needed relief – relief from days and days of fury and frustration; long nights deprived of sleep, or entangled in dark nightmare. The rage surged up inside him – exhilarating, horrible – until he was on the point of coming. He shut his eyes to concentrate; his breath hurting in his chest. The darkness turned to red beneath his eyelids: the red of Sayers's blood. He wasn't simply buggering him – he was murdering the bastard, and his crimson blood was flowing over the cold black leather sofa, seeping into the shabby balding carpet, oozing under the still-locked double doors, until the whole of Greystone Court had seen it, and he'd been expelled as a criminal.

Yes, he thought, as he slumped appalled across the unresisting body. They're right this time. No punishment could be severe enough for a rapist and a murderer.

Daniel was in danger of rolling off the bed. He edged in a few inches, afraid of waking Juliet, who had only just subsided into sleep. He couldn't endure another session of soul-searching. The last hour had been gruelling enough – her tears and his apologies, the storm of lies he'd been forced to produce to excuse his unspeakable behaviour, when there
was
no conceivable excuse. Yet Juliet had arrived at the conclusion that his violence was a sort of ardour, and though at first repelled by it, she was also somehow impressed; seeing him as a wild Byronic figure driven to excesses by the sheer strength of his passion for her.

He stared into the darkness; the only glimmer of light stealing through a crack in the curtains from one of the mock-Victorian lamps outside. While she lauded him as Byron, he'd been damning himself as a bully and a thug – in fact, little better than Sayers. He had kept offering to go home (longing to escape, if only to sort out the confusion raging in his head), but she had insisted that he stay, claiming he was still too upset to be on his own, let alone to drive. Despite his wretched state, he hadn't missed the irony of the situation: throughout their affair he would have given anything to stay the night with her, but now, when it was possible, he felt only dread and despair. The problem was that their whole relationship had become mired in misunderstanding, and although lying physically close, their bodies all but touching, he had never felt more distanced from her emotionally.

It was also oppressively hot. He was wearing nothing but his skin, but that skin was damp and sweaty, and he couldn't seem to get comfortable in the narrow too-soft bed. He tried to lie as still as possible, but Juliet herself was a surprisingly restless sleeper, turning over in her sleep and giving sudden violent shudders, which made him jump as well. He felt an overwhelming urge to have Penny there instead, but thoughts of Penny induced even fiercer guilt. Not only had he betrayed her yet again, he had proved himself a monster in the process. In fact, in whichever direction his mind strayed, some prosecutor would loom before him with accusations of baseness and neglect.

His stomach rumbled vulgarly, reminding him that all he had eaten since yesterday's breakfast was a packet of Maltesers and one bite of a hot dog. He tried ignoring his hunger, which seemed another dangerous appetite, best left unappeased. But a second, louder gurgle persuaded him to change his mind. A hot milky drink might help him to unwind, and if he made himself a sandwich, too, it would at least kill half an hour, bring dawn a little closer.

He crept out of bed and tiptoed to the door, opening it as softly as he could. It was a relief to reach the kitchen and be able to stretch his limbs, which felt stiff and cramped from the strain of lying still. He switched on the light, its neon glare hurting his eyes after the murky gloom of the bedroom. He never felt at ease in Juliet's flat. Its smugly decorous ambience seemed to hold him in disdain, especially now, when he was naked and unwashed. His clothes were in the bedroom, so he wrapped himself in a king-sized towel, borrowed from the bathroom. Some king, he reflected wryly as he caught sight of himself in the mirror, his shell-pink swaddlings topped by stubbly chin and unkempt hair. Clutching the slipping towel, he stole back to the kitchen to see what he could find to eat. Making a humble sandwich was clearly going to tax his ingenuity. There appeared to be no bread, not even Juliet's usual diet brand, and certainly no butter. Fat was evidently enemy number one, since everything he lighted on was labelled low in fat: milk, yogurt, salad-dressing, even Ovaltine. Well, at least he could make a hot drink: no-fat milk with low-fat Ovaltine, and sweetened with sugarless sugar. There were no biscuits to accompany it, but perhaps Juliet wouldn't begrudge him a bowl of Special K – the only permitted cereal (for slimmers, naturally). He ate some from the packet, dry, unwilling to make further inroads on the morning's milk supply.

The morning! He had totally forgotten that in a matter of a few short hours they would be sitting down to breakfast here – together, yet apart; the spectre of last night still overshadowing everything. How could they make conversation, or behave in any normal fashion, as if nothing untoward had happened? He put away the cereal, turned off the gas under the pan of barely warm milk. Only now was he beginning to realize that the memory of what he'd done could never be erased. He would be compelled to live with the knowledge that he – a rational, liberal, decent sort of man (or so he'd thought, naïvely) – could actually use force against a woman; treat her like a punchbag or a scapegoat, to work off his own anger.

He slunk into the sitting-room and stood leaning against the bureau, staring at the neat array of stationery and file-cards. Almost without thinking, he reached for a cigarette. He lit it gratefully, trying to fix his attention only on the minutiae of smoking: his hand, his mouth, the ashtray, the all-absorbing business of inhaling and exhaling. Yet his mind refused to stop its anxious circling, especially when it dawned on him, with a sense of hopeless failure, that he was back to where he'd been two months ago: a smoker, with a mistress. All his efforts to renounce the two transgressions had proved completely fruitless. In fact, he and Juliet were now bonded more inextricably than ever. His very violence had convinced her that this new intense relationship couldn't possibly founder, as their previous one had done. How could he admit to her that what she regarded as his overwhelming passion was really vengeful fury, and directed against a long-dead pederast? That would be another sort of violence, and one she
wouldn't
forgive.

He drifted to the window and stood looking out at the well-tended lawns and flowerbeds. If only he had his own private gardener to hack away the undergrowth which choked him, cut down his rotten branches. Not only had the last two months proved sterile, but the new crises which had arisen had revealed a harrowing past.

‘
But that's your problem, Daniel, isn't it? You can't leave anything behind
–
not the past, not your pain and suffering as a child
.'

The healer's voice was so distinct, he spun round from the window to confront him. No one there. Yet he had no more imagined the voice than the one in Leicester Square; each word unmistakable.

‘Leave me alone!' he implored, not knowing where to direct his own voice – inside, outside, up or down. ‘All you've done is make things worse, so for God's sake go away.'

Daniel squeezed himself into the one free patch of grass between the close-packed bodies lying on the bank. He glanced surreptitiously at his immediate neighbours: a lank-haired student strumming a guitar, and two lovers rubbing sun-tan oil into each other's naked backs. The fragrant scent of the oil mingled agreeably with the smell of fruit from their picnic-basket – some exotic foreign fruit he didn't recognize. He had the feeling once again of being on holiday abroad, this time at a beach resort. The beach itself would have to be imagined, since there was no sand, only grass, but the water and the swimmers, the sunbathers and lifeguard were all here before his eyes.

A group of teenage girls pranced self-consciously along the jetty which led into the water and started pushing each other off, their exaggerated shrieks alarming a pair of moorhens, which had been perching on a buoy. As the birds skittered away, the largest girl, in a striking black bikini, grabbed the buoy herself and tried to do a handstand on it, to the wild cheers of her friends. Daniel watched them larking around in the murky grey-brown water, their hair like seaweed, streaming out in long dark strands. Then his eyes strayed back to the couple on his right. The woman was topless and had now turned over on her back, exposing her voluptuous breasts, which were made still more conspicuous by their glistening sheen of oil. Her partner was immersed in the
Sunday Sport
(its pages splodged with grease from his hands) and seemed more engrossed in its full-frontal photographs than in her flesh-and-blood attractions.

Daniel unfolded his own
Observer
, but reading wasn't easy. The girls were still shouting and splashing, when suddenly a punk lad in his twenties dashed along the jetty completely palely naked, and caused a minor sensation by diving into the pool. The lifeguard and another man struck out in pursuit and, when he ignored their remonstrations, removed him bodily. There were also further distractions from the bank. The guitarist had begun to sing in a soft and rather mournful voice, perhaps trying to evoke some sense of Latin melancholy. Daniel found it quite extraordinary to think that he was less than a dozen miles from home. No one played guitars on Wandsworth Common, or sunbathed topless, or tried to swim stark naked. North Londoners were clearly more uninhibited. In fact, Juliet had told him that she had actually seen a couple making love in public on this very stretch of grass.