Cosmo Cosmolino (16 page)

She hung there.

In tremendous slow motion, Maxine saw the bat-wings of darkness unfurl between Janet's arms and her torso: she felt herself, in the same yawning slowness, grow wide, and huge, and become omnipotent. Maxine opened her vast mouth. She tubed her lips. She blew. The breath bellowed under the bridge of her palate and across the causeway of her tongue. The candle flames flowed along it like two feeble flags, and went out.

She heard Janet lay the half-loaves down. She heard the rain continue unperturbed to fall. She heard the struggle of the unfed fire to burn.

Invisible, Maxine got to her feet.

‘Goodnight, Janet,' she said, with dignity, and strode towards the kitchen. At the door she paused, and said over her shoulder, ‘By the way—do you realise that this is the longest night of the year?'

Janet stood in the dark, and made no reply.

The house was quiet when Ray got home, an hour later,
carrying a souvlaki in a paper bag. He slid out of his boots on the back verandah and entered on cold feet. There was no one in the kitchen. In the living room the white table had been cleared and wiped. Relieved, he clicked on the lamp and sat at the table to rip open his food, but before the first bite, despite the painful urgency of onions, he clasped his hands and lowered his head; then he sank into the job of it, holding the rolled bread in both fists, tearing at it sideways, gulping the cubes of meat down ragged. His chewing was loud, slow and deliberate.

Like the workings of his mind, thought Janet, lying on the couch that stood with its high back to the room, by the fireplace where only pinkish ashes lay. Before she spoke she let him devour his muck to the end, screw up the bag, and expel a deep, sighing belch; then she pitched the question low, without inflection, so it would roll at him along the floor.

‘Where have you been.'

She heard him jump and gather himself, but she did not move. Let him come to her.

He appeared over the couch-back. His hair lay in a tangle of lank tails over his forehead and ears.

‘I went to see a film after work,' he said. ‘At the Kye-no.'

Janet gave an unpleasant laugh. ‘I suppose you mean the Keeno,' she said. ‘
Kino
's
German, you know. For cinema.'

Ray's smile faded. ‘I see,' he said. ‘Now we have to know German before we can go to the movies.'

‘Oh, don't be stupid,' snapped Janet. ‘It won't hurt you to learn something, will it?'

‘What's biting you?' said Ray. Drops slid off his hair and down his cheeks; he let them run.

‘I,' said Janet, ‘have been sitting here for hours, waiting. Like an idiot. Like some bloody
servant
.'

‘Waiting for what?'

‘I cooked,' she said. ‘As requested by you. And you didn't see fit to turn up.'

‘Well,' said Ray. With ponderous care he unzipped his jacket and extricated his arms from it. ‘You didn't tell me. I couldn't have known. So it's not my fault. But I'm sorry.'

Janet lay watching him, with her hands clasped under her head, not speaking. How lonely he looks, she thought spitefully. He looks as lonely as some old pensioner, in his cheap, shoddy, puffy, ugly clothes.

‘Did you go to the movie by yourself,' she said.

‘Yes,' said Ray.

‘Where are your friends,' she said.

Standing behind the couch with the dripping parka hanging from his hand, he turned back to her.

‘Alby's coming for me,' he said. ‘He promised.'

‘Alby promised a lot of things, in his time,' said Janet.

‘He'll be here pretty soon, I fancy,' said Ray. ‘He's
my brother. He won't let me down.'

‘Family doesn't count,' said Janet. ‘I said friends.'

‘Where are
yours
.'

‘I asked first,' she said.

This would be work. He tried to keep his gaze steady. ‘I lost them,' he said.

‘What—all of them,' said Janet.

‘I lost my whole . . . peer group,' he said. ‘When I was saved.'

‘So,' she said with distaste. ‘You had “a peer group”.'

‘I knew some people,' he said. ‘Not many. A few.'

He dropped his jacket and rested his hands on the couch-back. Very slightly she drew away; but he left them there.

‘Where
are
yours,' he said. ‘No one ever comes round.'

Janet laughed through her nose without moving her face.

‘Scared of me, I suppose,' she said. ‘Scared of my “anger”. Like you. Or maybe they think I need to “lick my wounds in private”.'

‘What wounds,' he said.

‘Oh, you don't need to know,' she said.

‘What happened.'

‘Just another tedious modern tale,' said Janet. ‘Another broken marriage. I can't blame him, unfortunately. When you can't find someone to blame, it's worse.'

He stood patiently, in the violent aura of his food. He saw the large shiny earrings lying flat as plates on the cushion, one on each side of her neat little head; and though the holes had been allowed to grow closed, nothing could hide the row of puncture marks along her lobes where the old hippy studs had pierced her.

Janet shoved her feet hard against the couch-arm. ‘I suppose,' she said, ‘I must seem to you rather pathetic.'

‘No,' said Ray. ‘Not pathetic, I wouldn't say.'

But her mouth and nose were ridged with white, such was her effort at containment.

‘What about the kids,' said Ray. ‘They must help.'

‘What kids.'

‘I thought you said—the ones who used to sleep in the front room,' he said. ‘Upstairs.'

‘Oh, ask for the big room,' she said, jerking her head left, right, left. ‘Argue with me. Don't be so fucking humble. Go on—take the bigger room.'

‘I didn't mean that,' said Ray. ‘Where
are
the kids, is what I meant.'

‘Gone,' said Janet. ‘Years ago. They weren't mine in the first place.' Her face was like plaster.

‘It's not too late, is it,' said Ray. ‘I mean, couldn't you—'

‘Hardly,' she said.

Ray stepped nearer and sat down on the couch-arm. ‘Do you want me,' he said, ‘to . . .'

‘To what,' she said.

‘Rub your feet,' he said. ‘Or something.'

For two beats she regarded him in silence. Her lips twitched and pointed as if in amusement; then she spoke bluntly.

‘No.'

Ray stood up and moved away to the end of the couch.

‘I'd probably start bawling,' she said. ‘Sorry. Thanks. For the offer.'

She hid her feet under the cushions.

‘You're not used to comfort, are you,' he said, about to walk away.

‘What comfort,' she said.

‘There
is
comfort,' he said.

His hand slid across his chest and raised the flap of his shirt pocket.

‘No thanks,' said Janet. ‘I don't need that.'

He raised his shoulders, and dropped them. ‘There's not much else I can offer,' he said.

‘It's all pretty bleak, then,' she said. ‘Isn't it.'

‘I'd like to be useful,' he said.

‘Well,' she said. ‘You could get me a drink.'

He hurried out to the kitchen, filled a glass at the tap, and carried it back to her, brimming. He held it out, and she lay looking up at him, not removing her hands from behind her head. The bottom half of her face was barely under control.

‘What,' she said, with an ugly laugh. ‘No lemon.'

The strain of it hurt him. Dumbly he proffered the cold glass.

‘Actually,' she said, ‘what I had in mind was something a bit stronger.'

‘Oh,' he said, ‘I didn't—'

‘I never drink water,' she said. But she sat up and took the glass from him. ‘I can hardly make it go down. Never mind.'

With her hard mouth she took a couple of pecks.

He could not help himself.

‘There's living water,' he said, ‘to be had. Water that if you drink it you'll never be thirsty again.'

So as not to look at him she forced it down, gulp after gulp; she drained the glass and gripped it in her lap with two hands, staring into it with a kind of ferocious boredom.

‘Why should I listen to you,' she said.

‘No reason,' said Ray. ‘It's your choice.'

‘Don't be a wimp,' she said. ‘Now's your chance. What do you know.'

Outside in the dark street sirens raced past, weaving their songs. The rain fell and fell, swarming down, as if it would never stop.

He leaned against the wall with his hands behind him. ‘I know,' he said, ‘that I'm redeemed. That my redeemer liveth.'

‘Don't quote the book,' she said. ‘You're not the only one who's read it. What do you
know
.
From your
own
life.'

‘Some things,' he said.

‘Don't hedge,' said Janet. ‘Answer.'

‘I know,' he said, ‘that I'm a sinner.'

‘Oh, everyone's “
a sinner
”,'
she said roughly. ‘Surprise me, can't you.'

‘I'm saved,' said Ray. ‘I've got everlasting life. I'm forgiven.'

‘Forgiven for
what
,'
said Janet. ‘What have
you
ever done.'

She was after his credentials. His gorge rolled. Again he reached to his pocket for the book, but she sensed the direction of the movement and looked up sharply.

‘No,' she said. ‘
Not
that. I'm asking
you
.'

He dropped his hand and shifted, to get his back to the wall.

‘I know,' he said, ‘about loss.'

‘Join the club,' said Janet.

‘About weakness,' he said. ‘And failure.'

‘Nothing special about that,' said Janet. ‘What else.'

His thigh muscles began to quiver, as if he were focusing strength in them to lift something heavy.

‘You won't want me in the house,' he said, ‘if I tell you.'

‘I suppose you stole something,' said Janet. ‘Is that what it was.'

‘Worse,' said Ray.

‘Come on,' said Janet.

‘I . . . betrayed someone,' he said.

‘I have found,' said Janet, ‘in fact it is my experience, that people will do anything.'

‘There was this girl,' he said.

‘There is nothing at all,' said Janet, ‘that people will not do.'

‘I slept with her,' he said.

‘Oh, for God's sake,' said Janet.

‘I used her,' said Ray. ‘I admired the look of her, you might say, but—'

‘But you didn't love her,' said Janet. ‘And you think this would shock
me
.'

‘I am not trying to shock you.'

‘What, then.'

‘She died,' said Ray. ‘She died, because of me.'

The white table with the lamp on it was an island, a long way away. Neither of them was strong enough to swim that far.

‘Do you mean,' said Janet presently, ‘that you killed her.'

‘She died,' he said. ‘She died of loneliness. I didn't try to stop her from dying. If that means I killed her, I killed her.'

He let his knees bend, and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the carpet. His questioner, a bleached mask, floated in the depths of the distant couch.

‘I've known people,' she said, ‘and I've read about them in books. People who want so much to die that you can't stop them. Their whole life is a long, slow process of self-destruction. Of trying to die. And when they manage to, when at last they do, I imagine it might be almost a relief.'

‘No,' shouted Ray. ‘You don't know what you're saying. Not a relief.'

‘That their suffering is over.'

‘Never. Never. Not a relief.'

‘Why.
Why
.
If that was what she wanted.'

He knew the wall was still behind him, but it seemed that the room had become vast and hollow, that its boundaries were terribly remote from him and its edges no support to him at all.

‘Because,' he said, ‘she took part of me with her when she died. Part of me that I didn't even know was there till it'd gone. And I had to try and find a way of getting it back.'

Janet sat bolt upright.

‘How,' she said. ‘How did you get it back.
Did
you get it back. What did you
do
,
to get it back.'

‘It's taken me years,' said Ray. ‘Years. And still sometimes I feel it slipping away.'

‘But
how
,'
she said. ‘How to even get a
grip
on it. How is this
done
.'

The room contracted round Ray again, fitting itself tightly to the shape of him, squeezing: when Janet
leaned down and placed the empty water glass on the floor his eyes were whetted so by pressure that the damp, creased smudge her mouth had left on its rim detached itself from the glass and floated above it. He got to his feet and stood between the arm of the couch and the wall.

‘I'm redeemed,' he said. ‘That's what it means. The word's got a
meaning
.
All my debts are paid. But that's what you don't want to be told. That's the thing that you don't need. Or so you say.'

The light from the table lamp picked up the bone-form of his head, its ridges, dips and dusky hollows. Janet took one of the cushions off her feet and lay down again, holding it in her arms like a shield, pressing it hard against her chest while her eyes ranged over his face.

‘That'll do for now,' she said. ‘Thank you. That'll do.'

But Ray leaned forward to her over the end of the couch, and she took a breath, for just as his face entered shadow and blurred, she noticed for the first time how the shape of his mouth resembled Alby's: there was something passionate in its raised peaks and deeply indented corners.