Lace II (29 page)

Tom told me to take care of myself, she thought bitterly, picking up her ebony bedside mirror and looking at her face, which reflected the tension of the past few months.

Judy worked through the night on her deposition and finally finished it at six in the morning. She heard the maid’s key in the lock, and called, “Forget about breakfast, Francetta, and call me at eight o’clock. I’m off to Philadelphia again.” Then she drifted off to sleep.

*   *   *

“What time will you be home, Curtis?” Debra Halifax asked her husband.

He walked to the sideboard and lifted the silver entrée dish for a second helping of scrambled eggs. “Usual time, I expect.” He wondered how it was possible to feel so worn and jaded at the beginning of a new day. “What are you planning to do today, Debra?”

“I’m not planning to do anything.” Debra managed to make the statement sound like an accusation. At least, thought Curtis, she was eating again, although she did not seem to be gaining any weight. Doctor Joseph thought that her infertility had been linked to her anorexia.

“Don’t forget what Doctor Joseph said. If you want to make a full recovery, you must start leading your own life and
you begin by structuring your day. Why don’t you go shopping with Jane?”

“You don’t get over a nervous breakdown by going shopping. That’s all I’ve ever done with my entire life. That’s the trouble!”

“Now, Debra, Dr. Joseph explained that it wasn’t exactly a nervous…”

“Oh, yes it was!”

She’s almost proud of it, Curtis thought wearily; it’s her one achievement in life, the only thing she ever managed to do entirely on her own—have a nervous breakdown.

“Doctor Joseph also said that what I needed was the love and support of my husband.”

“I do love you, Debra, and I try to support you.” Curtis said once again.

“Then why don’t you spend more time with me?” she demanded. “If you’re not at the bank, you’re at the Philadelphia Club or off playing golf or fishing with your friends.”

“Now that’s not so. I spend a lot of time with you, Debra.”

“Not alone.” Her voice was vinegar. “We give parties, and we go to parties; we meet the same people over and over.”

“But they’re our friends,” Curtis protested.

“Would you say we have friends, Curtis? I wouldn’t. We have your business people and your political people and our families, but we don’t have any real friends, do we? And I never have a spare minute, but I lead an empty life.” Again, her accusatory tone flicked at her husband as Debra started her weekly moan. Curtis never knew what to say or what to do or what to suggest. “Look, I’ve got to leave, I’m late. Why not take Jane to a museum?”

“You know very well that museums depress me. A museum wouldn’t solve
my
problem. Not now that I know what my problem is.” Debra’s voice trembled. “There’s someone else, isn’t there? You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you, Curtis? That woman I saw in your office. I know she lunched with you yesterday, I saw it in your appointment book. She’s always coming down to see you. You’re having an affair with the famous Judy Jordan, aren’t you, Curtis?”

“No. I see her on business!” Curtis felt exhausted, as his wife’s persistent questions continued. Debra had started to
stage jealous rages over his imagined infidelity almost immediately after they married. Doctor Joseph had explained Debra’s jealousy was the classic result of paranoid delusions. Curtis had bowed his head under the onslaught of accusation. After all, he had a reason to feel guilty, although he was pretty sure that Debra didn’t know about it.

Gradually, Curtis recognized that Debra said little which was founded on reason, and then, slowly, he had come to realize that his wife was not entirely … well. Doctor Joseph used the phrase “borderline psychotic.” After twenty years of marriage, Curtis Halifax knew that his wife’s grasp on sanity was easily loosened; her family had always known of this and now the Halifax family knew of it. but the subject was never discussed. Debra was nervous, that was all.

Now she said, “If Judy Jordan was only in your office to discuss business, then why was she crying?”

“I don’t recall that she was crying.”

“Yes, she was. Or she had been. I saw her eyes.”

“I simply haven’t got time to rerun this scene today. I promise you, there’s nothing personal between us.” Curtis rose from the damask-covered breakfast table, gave his wife a quick, impersonal kiss on the forehead and left, late for his meeting.

Once her husband had left, Debra Halifax went up to her pink bedroom where, leaning over the hand basin painted with apple blossoms, she stuck two fingers down her throat and vomited up her breakfast. To disguise the telltale odor of her stomach juices on her breath, she swilled eau de cologne around her mouth, then spat it out; the repellent taste was a punishment for having eaten two pieces of toast at breakfast. No wonder Curtis no longer loved her, she thought as she pinched her thigh, I’m fat, I’m self-indulgent, I’ve got no self-control.

Every time Debra looked up at her reflection in the mirror she really believed that she saw a lumpish, frowsy, fat woman, instead of a small skeletal figure. She panted through her morning session on the exercise bicycle, dragging her body through the Rocky Mountain program twice, then worked out with weights to punish what she believed were her too-plump thighs and well-cushioned stomach.

Afterward, aimlessly, Debra wandered through the quiet house. A lot of her day was passed in an uncoordinated mental state, in which she was never fully aware of the time, of where she was, or what she was doing. She flicked through magazines, read a few sentences and left them. She picked up a piece of petit point which had lain on her worktable uncompleted for several months, sewed a few stitches and abandoned it. She watered a handsome Clivia plant, which the gardener watered each week in any case. Debra’s luxuriant house plants often died because of their owner’s erratic attentions.

For the fourth time that morning, she picked up the telephone to call Jane, but the effort of talking was too much for her. Besides, Jane only liked being with her because Jane had no money. Perhaps Jane had her eye on Curtis. That would make sense from Jane’s point of view. But Jane was a Catholic and she was married with two children. Always running through Debra’s head, like the sound of a distant river, was the idea that Curtis was unfaithful to her with some woman. By midday, when the maid brought her lunch on a tray, Debra had formed the image of a faceless seductress who was stealing her husband away from her. By the middle of the afternoon, when the shadow of the magnolia tree was lengthening across the lawn outside, she hated this anonymous woman with murderous ferocity.

It was too hot in the garden. Debra drifted into the library and sat in her husband’s chair behind the green leathertopped partner’s desk. She imagined Curtis on the telephone to his faceless mistress, while she, Debra, slept innocently upstairs. She imagined her husband whispering hot words of love and saw his features soften with affection and sensuality, as she remembered them during the first few weeks of their marriage. By the end of the afternoon, the vision of her husband’s infidelity was far more real to Debra than any real experience she had encountered that day.

One by one, she opened the drawers of the desk and rifled through the papers she found in them. There must be love letters, but where were they? Sure enough, the small top drawer was locked. Debra scattered the pens from the pen tray, found the silver paperknife and forced the little lock.

Inside the drawer were some black and white photographs of a small girl, a pile of press clippings, and a curl of dark hair tied with a white ribbon. Debra’s claw-thin hand pulled out a few recent clippings and turned them over. “Lili to star as Mistinguett,” she read. So Curtis was fooling around with an actress. Debra shivered with rage. You may be young, beautiful, and famous, Lili, but let’s see if money can hurt you.

*   *   *

The Spear flashed by, unmistakably black among the white, green, and orange bodywork of the other competitors at Brand’s Hatch. Inside the hot cockpit, Gregg sat in a pool of sweat; a driver could lose over five pounds in a long race. Ahead of Gregg, a white BMW went into Stirling’s Bend too fast, lost adhesion, ploughed straight on to hit the bend hard and, as Gregg passed it, burst into flames.

Gregg suppressed the vision of his own body enveloped in flame, as the Spear streaked past the grandstand for the fifth time. He listened to the high-pitched whine of the engine as he dropped two gears to set the car up for Druid’s, the hairpin bend. Coming out of the bend, he saw the Dinetti-Mazda not far ahead. He’s in trouble, I’ll pass him on the Cooper Straight, Gregg thought.

By the end of the first hour of the thousand-kilometer race, Gregg was lying seventh, but the gaps were small and that meant nothing at this stage; a bit of bad luck could knock you right out of the race in a second.

He rounded Stirling’s bend, and accelerated away down to Clearways. He projected his mind ahead to Clark Curve, which always looked deceptively gentle, but which demanded extra concentration for a car with the power of the Spear. Gregg was now close enough to take the Aston Martin Nimrod on the top straight. He blinked sweat from his eyes as, three cars ahead of him, the green-and-white Jaguar shed a rear wheel with no warning, swerved into the barrier, then shot backwards onto the track amid a shower of sparks.

The Porsche behind it pulled out fast; the two cars touched but the Porsche managed to straighten up and hurtle on. The Nimrod driver miscalculated the Jaguar’s continuing path across the track, and crashed into the spinning Jaguar. The
two cars twisted together with a sickening crunch of metal, then the force of the impact hurled them both off the track, two seconds before Gregg would have hit them.

Now bathed in cold sweat, Gregg’s legs involuntarily shook, and it took a fierce effort to turn his mind to the road ahead and away from the burning destruction behind him—of which he had so nearly been a part. Suddenly Gregg felt a thread of pain shoot up his left leg and his foot jumped on to the clutch. Must be that ankle. Thank God he got off the throttle in time. He’d hand over at the next pit stop.

*   *   *

Four hours later, Gregg was lying close behind the leading Porsche, a position that, for the previous twenty-seven laps, he had grimly clung to, but had been unable to improve. Then the gap between the Spear and the car ahead began slowly to close, as Gregg, sandwiched between two Porsches, crept closer to the lead car, and they braked for Paddock Bend.

Just ahead, Gregg calculated, a group of slower cars were bunched together. Gregg decided to make an immediate bid for the lead on the inside of Druid’s, beyond which they would catch two of the slower cars. On Hailwood Hill, he pulled out and left his braking to the last moment. The Spear shot past the Porsche as they entered the corner.

Gregg held the tight inside line, but slid out wide on the exit. The Porsche stayed behind, this was no place to retake. Then Gregg was weaving between the back markers in front of the South Bank stands, aware of a crescendo of spectator cheering as he roared past with sixteen laps to go.

His ankle ached but the pain was easily bearable. It was really just a bloody nuisance. Inside the noisy cockpit, Gregg could not hear the mounting excitement of the PA commentator. “…and with three laps to go, it looks as if Gregg Eagleton in the Eagle Spear is increasing the lead over the Porsche.…”

As he hurtled into Dingle Dell Corner for the hundred and fiftieth time that day, Gregg struggled to keep his eyes on the track. The pain in his left leg was increasing. Suddenly, his sight became misty and he thought, dear God, stop me blacking out before the race is over.

The turbo-charged engine belched flames as Gregg missed
a gear before the grandstands. Suddenly, each movement of his injured foot produced an excruciating wrench of agony. He heard the voice from the Eagle pit over the radio link that was built into his helmet. “Stick with it, Gregg, you’re well in the lead now.”

“How much lead have I got?” Gregg’s stomach was beginning to churn with pain.

“Fourteen seconds.”

No chance of pulling into the pit and handing over to his co-driver for the last few laps. Nothing for it, he was in this race to the end.

The next time he left Paddock Bend, Gregg again fumbled the gear change. His injured foot was now so swollen that he could barely move it.

“Porsche is creeping up, Gregg,” the voice warned in his ear.

The Spear flew on.

As he pushed the Spear out of Hawthorn Bend, his left foot had only just enough pressure for the clutch pedal, and Gregg felt vomit in his mouth. For a moment, he lost his concentration.

Passing the Aston Martin Nimrod, the Spear swerved frighteningly close to the other car, and got off line.

The Porsche slipped through at Dingle Dell.

Through a rising mist of pain, Gregg registered the delighted howl of the crowd, then the Eagle flag, to signify the last lap, was flourished at the side of the track.

Another mouthful of bile and Gregg lost concentration for another fatal second. The radio voice registered no emotion. “Stephenson in the BMW is creeping up as well. Will the foot hold out?”

“Yes.” Gregg’s voice cracked with the effort of controlling the pain in his body. For the last time, and in a maze of pain, he took the car around the tree-lined circuit; he could feel an internal grating pain in his ankle at every movement. He barely noticed the BMW pass him.

“Yes, the Spear is definitely in trouble. This is going to be a great disappointment to the Eagle team,” gabbled the commentator as they turned into the Brabham Straight. “And, as the flag drops, it’s first place to Werner Hentzen in the
Porsche, announced the PA, “followed by Stephenson in the BMW and Eagleton just manages to scrape third place in the Spear from Dinetti with … and something is happening to the Spear!…”

From the viewing area above the pits, Lili saw Gregg flash past in third place, then the Spear lost speed dangerously fast and began to weave toward the side of the track. The drivers crossing the line swerved to avoid the black Spear. One did not.