Dark Dance (33 page)

In the morning Rachaela left Ruth to get her own breakfast. Ruth poured cornflakes and milk, and ate them sitting at the table where Rachaela drank her coffee.

Ruth did not attempt to speak to Rachaela.

She took up her satchel and went without a word.

Getting to her feet, Rachaela saw her from the window, dawdling off along the road towards school.

At twenty past nine the telephone rang. Usually there were no calls save the occasional wrong number.

This was not a wrong number.

‘I’m Mrs Keating, Lucile’s mother.’

‘Yes?’

‘I suppose you know why I’m phoning.’ Rachaela did not reply. She heard Mrs Keating bridle at the other end of the line. ‘Your child attacked Lucile yesterday. I wondered what you had to say about it.’

‘Nothing, really. Lucile wasn’t hurt.’

‘If you call that awful black bruise on her neck not being hurt—what is your child, some sort of monster?’

Yes, how clever of you,
Rachaela thought.

She said nothing.

Frustrated Mrs Keating resumed: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s hard to believe another child could do such a thing. I think you should take her to see a doctor. A psychiatrist probably.’ Still Rachaela did not respond to Mrs Keating’s red rag. Mrs Keating shouted, ‘I think you’d better know, I intend to write to the school about this.’

‘If you like.’

‘Like?
You’ve got a funny way of going on, I must say. Just you get your horrible child seen to, Mrs Day, that’s the only advice I can give you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rachaela.

Mrs Keating swore at her and hung up.

Rachaela switched on the radio. She did not want to think any more about Ruth. She would not need to see her until tonight.

A Rachmaninov piano concerto swept through the flat, making the problem of Ruth trivial and vague.

At one o’clock Rachaela ate lunch, and at five past two, half an hour too late, she got up and left for the antiques shop.

Mrs Mantini did not upbraid her, but she pursed her tangerine lips and made a great thing of getting ready to go out in a hurry.

The afternoon was not eventful. A girl came in and tried to haggle over a nineteenth-century vase, but Rachaela told her Mrs Mantini fixed the prices fairly and never reduced items. A handsome young man and a rather glamorous middle-aged woman, perhaps his mother, looked round the shop and finally bought a small brass rocking horse.

At a quarter to five Mrs Mantini came back.

‘Oh Rachaela. I hoped you’d have unloaded that crate.’

The crate was full of heavy objects that really needed the attention of a strong man. Rachaela had ignored it.

‘We’ll do it now,’ said Mrs Mantini with much irritation.

They began to unload the crate, Mrs Mantini puffing and blowing. At five-thirty they were still engaged on the crate. Mrs Mantini shut the shop. She said to Rachaela, ‘You can stay and help with this. It will make up for the thirty-five minutes you were late.’

Rachaela did not argue, and they went on unpacking the crate until a quarter past six.

Mrs Mantini straightened up and puffed out a last breath of her garlic-and-onion lunch. ‘Actually, Rachaela, I want a word with you about this lateness.’ Rachaela was putting on her coat. Mrs Mantini stood hard-yellow amid brazen fire irons and fire screens. ‘I spoke to you yesterday about it, but you don’t seem to have heard me. I don’t pay you to be late, I pay you to be on time.’

‘But you don’t pay very much, do you?’ said Rachaela.

‘If you don’t like the wages, miss, you can go elsewhere.’

‘Very well,’ said Rachaela. She buttoned her coat. ‘Give me what you owe me up until today.’

Mrs Mantini glowered, her eyes roasting.

‘I certainly won’t. You can come in on Saturday and I’ll give it you then.’

‘No,’ said Rachaela. ‘I’d like it now.’

She stood and looked at Mrs Mantini, and gradually Mrs Mantini broke down like an overheated fire. Cursing Rachaela as Mrs Keating had done, but in more vivid words, Mrs Mantini opened the till and counted out the abbreviated wage. She flung it on the counter before Rachaela. ‘Now get out, you little bitch.’

Rachaela walked out on to the street. Her legs were trembling. She felt a wave of uncertainty and relief.

This did not matter. It was Ruth’s fault anyway.

And at the flat, there would be Ruth to see. To go on with the utter silence or to break the silence, pretending nothing had happened. What did silence count for, in any case? When did they speak? Only when there was trouble.

The sky was soft and muddy, losing the light. Stars faded against the waking red eyes of the streetlamps.

Rachaela felt footloose, nearly rattling. No job. She would have to look around. That would take up her time, make her forget Ruth.

When she reached her front door, inside the house, she felt Ruth’s absence, and going in, the flat was empty.

Rachaela took off her coat. She made herself coffee and switched on the lamps. She washed up the lunch things and looked into the fridge. Ruth was due to have chicken tonight. She might as well have it. Rachaela put the portions into a dish and upended a can of Heinz tomato soup over them to make a casserole. She set the chicken in the oven.

The radio offered opera or politics. She turned it off and put on a tape of Stravinsky.

The sky changed to the orange-black of city night. People came and went along the street.

At eight-thirty Ruth had not come back.

Rachaela turned the chicken on to a very low light.

At nine-thirty the soup had all evaporated. Rachaela turned the chicken out.

She sat in the flat in the silence that was not Ruth’s silence.

Ruth had never been as late as this. Where could she be? Some burger bar, the Pizza Eater?

At ten thirty-five, Rachaela switched on the main light and walked behind the screen into Ruth’s area.

Everything looked at first glance the same.

Rachaela examined the area carefully.

The bed was made, Ruth’s way, lumpy under the dark-blue coverlet. The old bear Emma had given her sat in his corner, accorded dignity, but no longer attention. The books piled up in cranky stairways. On the wall, the painted mirror and the pictures.

The green paperweight and the blue glass cat were missing from the chest-top.

Rachaela walked into the area and squeezed up to the chest. She opened drawers. Comb and brush were not there. The vampire make-up was gone. The blue jumper and the scarlet blouse were gone. Some pants and socks, tights, the second bra, the new packet of sanitary pads.

In the bathroom Ruth’s toothbrush and her little stick of deodorant were missing.

Rachaela came out and sat down.

What did she feel? As once before, nothing.

She was not astounded. Of course she had known what Ruth would do. Just as the man, the Scarabae agent, had known what she would do eventually. He had only to offer himself and wait.

Rachaela had turned on Ruth, not just the habitual cold shoulder, but with a firework of dislike and alienation. And Ruth had packed her satchel quietly in the night, gone out and gone to him. And he would have taken her, or directed her. To the Scarabae.

What should
she
do?

Nothing. There was nothing to do.

Ruth was no more. The twelve years of idiocy were over.

After four days, Rachaela cleaned the flat.

She dusted behind the books, dusted the books, scoured the cooker and did out the kitchen cupboards. She emptied the Lucozade, Pepsi and Sprite down the drain. When she reached Ruth’s area, she moved the screen out into the room and took off the shawls, flowers and bells. She stripped the bed and put Ruth’s treasures, carefully wrapping the glass, her books and the bear into two cardboard boxes from the supermarket, and stowed them in the bottom of the wardrobe. Ruth might send for her things. Ruth’s clothes, which she would soon have grown out of, she put into bags for Oxfam. The Scarabae would have to clothe Ruth from now on.

Rachaela did not like the screen, but as with Ruth’s bed it was too large to dispose of easily. She folded it and stood it in the corner behind the music centre. The bed itself she redraped in its midnight cover, and added a couple of red-and-blue cushions.

The denuded chest she pushed against a wall.

The room looked much bigger, airier. It was possible to see into all its parts freely.

She did not look for the man. He would be gone by now.

On the sixth day, she walked up to Lyle and Robbins and inquired after work, but they had no vacancies. The Pizza Eater looked over-staffed, and the girls and boys seemed extremely young and noisy. There were no advertisements for staff. She would have to look at the local papers.

On the seventeenth day a letter came from the school. Rachaela put it aside, Rachaela sat in her chair, listening to music.

It was going to be a lot cheaper, without Ruth. Maybe she could coast for a little while.

Outside were the familiar roofs and flats, the chimneys and aerials. In the distance the park was transparently, avidly green.

It began to be hot, and the smells of petrol, geraniums and baked pavements filled the flat from the open windows.

After the twenty-seventh day, Rachaela dreamed of Ruth at the house of the Scarabae.

She seemed to be wearing Anna’s evening dress, long and black and trailing on the floor, winking with spangles. Her long hair fluttered behind her as she moved about. The Scarabae clasped their hands, pleased.

Ruth was in the garden. There were red and white roses. Uncle Camillo popped up from behind a bush. He rode the rocking-horse, which moved over the lawn without effort.

He handed Ruth a letter.

Rachaela could only read the words
Come to me.

She walked into the house. It was night, and only the ruby lamp burned in the hall. The door to the tower was ajar.

As she stood there, Adamus came out of the tower.

She had forgotten or erased his face, and so she saw it through a blur, but his body was naked, exactly as she had remembered it, golden-white, muscular and slender, the black mass at the groin and out of it the penis rising dark amber-red. His black hair fell around him. ‘It’s you,’ he said.

‘Yes. You mustn’t,’ she said quickly, wringing her hands in a strange melodramatic gesture.

‘But I must.’

‘Adamus—she’s only a child.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Eleven years old,’ Rachaela pleaded.

‘A woman.’

And out of the dark Ruth stole in, enveloped in her long, black glittering gown.

She wore her make-up, but impeccably, the black eyelids blended and subtle, the red-Upstick lips softened. Her hair was like his.

She was not a child. She had begun to menstruate, she had high full breasts.

She moved towards him as though Rachaela were not there. She put her thin white hand into his.

Adamus stooped and kissed Ruth’s scarlet mouth.

He leaned and picked her up, and carried her across his body, up into the breathing unlit tower.

Rachaela followed them.

They came into the upper room.

A fire glowed on the hearth. By its light Rachaela saw Adamus lie Ruth on her back on top of the piano. Somehow he climbed up after her. He kneeled above Ruth and undid the black dress slowly.

‘I’m afraid,’ said Ruth. She giggled, as she had done when she was a child with Emma.

Adamus bowed to Ruth’s perfect breasts and mouthed and tongued them. Ruth held his head to her body. He parted her thighs and travelled down her, skin and material, and thrust the dress away, and began his second kiss.

Flames leaped in Rachaela. She longed to scream. She was invisible and unbearable, a ghost.

Ruth groaned. She pulled on Adamus. He left her ebony mound, stroking it with his fingers. He put the burning phallus there, and drove it in.

Ruth shrieked.

‘You hurt me,’ said Ruth, ‘hurt me again.’

Unable to move, Rachaela watched them rise and fall together, their bodies mounted on a black wild horse of pleasure, galloping.

Ruth screamed. She screamed and kicked and caged him in her long white legs.

Rachaela spasmed in long aching waves and woke in the bed in the flat, staring into darkness.

It was not possible.

Father and grandfather. He could not.

But why should anything stop him?

Rachaela’s day was over, she had served her purpose. Now Ruth might be the year queen.

Continuance. The mad people treasured it, and Adamus was their instrument.

Don’t be a fool If it must, let it happen
.

She tried to remember his face, but as in the dream it had grown blurred and distant.

Rachaela sat up and switched on the light. Outside some drunks were shouting in the street. She was glad of them.

She got out of bed and went to make tea. That had been Emma’s remedy for everything. Tea or a drop of sherry.

What would Emma have made of this?

‘You can’t let them get hold of her, Rachaela. From what you say, they’re terrible people. Crazy, awful. Your own child. You have to get her back out of their clutches.’

‘Yes, Emma,’ Rachaela said.

The boiling water splashed into the mug, and the drunks sang on the street in rejoicing.