Mr. Timothy: A Novel (35 page)

--Philomela? I ask.

He shakes his head, covers his eyes.

--Someone else, Colin?

A long pause, and then the smallest of nods.

--One of the other girls?

--He were...he were right on top, Mr. Timothy. He had his...his arm all crammed, like...in her mouth. So she couldn't...she couldn't...

Colin looks up at me, wonderingly.

--An' there were blood. I could see it. She couldn't move, not a hair, and she were bleedin'. On the sheets.

Of course
, I think.
There
must
be blood. Lord Griffyn's patrons must be assured of the quality--the purity--of their merchandise
.

--I'm sorry, Colin, I should have warned you.

--I wish...

--Yes?

--I wish we could take 'em all with us. I wish there were more on us, and we could take 'em all.

--Yes. Yes, I wish that, too.

It doesn't pass, exactly, this period of mourning, but it dissipates enough that before another minute has passed, Colin is back on his feet and, if anything, more eager than ever to make the next descent. The only difference I note this time round is a slight flinching of his head as it passes into the window frame--a gesture superseded, within half a minute, by a violent upwards jerking of his thumb. By the time I haul him up again, he is bursting with the news.

--It's his dressing room!

--Lord Griffyn's? --The same.

--How do you know?

--I don't. I mean, I
do
. Well, it's got boots all in a row and brushes and what do you call 'em? Po
maids
. All thrown about, ain't it? Shoehorns and bootjacks, them what do you call 'em
snuff
boxes, all tossed in the slop. It's got to be
him
, don't it? A guest wouldn't make such a muck of his kit, he wouldn't have time.

--The dressing room...

There's no need to complete the thought. We both know.

The next window
. The next window will almost certainly take us into Griffyn's bedchamber.

I suppose that knowing this should quicken our pace, but for reasons I can't define, we are more deliberate than ever in preparing for the next descent, and Colin is visibly reluctant as he crawls once more down the building face, rests his hands on the lintel, protrudes his trembling head into the waiting space. His head, craning for a view, darts from side to side--whether to see better or to avoid discovery, I can't be sure--and his body actually swings in my hands, like the pendulum of a kitchen clock, before going still again. And then it arches with such a violent motion I have no choice but to pull him up straightaway.

--It's
her
, Mr. Timothy!

--You're sure?

--'Course I'm bloody sure! The blinds was open, and there were...well, fuck it, you don't think I knows Filly when I sees her?

--And are they...

--What?

--Are they...?

I can't speak it.

--It were just
her
, Mr. Timothy. Sittin' on the edge of the bed.

Philomela. Directly below us. Ten feet from deliverance.

--Wait here, Colin.

--We can both on us go, Mr. Timothy, there's a
balcony
, ain't there?

This I wasn't expecting: an unadorned piece of masonry, the length and breadth of a coffin, extending three feet on either side of the window and catching us in its grip like a soft stone glove. The good fortune of it is almost more than I can bear. Here we stand, shielded from below by the fog, shielded from above by the sky, Philomela but a few breaths away, and our cab (God willing) just up the road.
As Colin advertised, she is sitting on the edge of a canopied four-poster, her head bare but the rest of her bridal raiment intact. Her face is only slightly averted--we might easily rap on the window and persuade her to open it--but now there is another, larger barrier to consider.

Lord Frederick Griffyn. Standing just a few feet off.

His coat has been shucked. The collar round his neck has been loosened. The red geranium has been plucked from its buttonhole and laid gently on a chiffonier. And at this very moment, with infinite care, Lord Griffyn is divesting himself of his waistcoat.

Precious little of the wedding night about him. He sheds his outer clothing and tugs at his shirt frills with the banal, ritualistic air of a man married forty years. And Philomela takes so little notice of him one might think they were occupying two parallel daydreams--until Lord Griffyn draws a penknife and charges her.

Colin's hand jumps to the window; my own hand closes round the carving knife in the knapsack; but these are the mere tokens of our impotence, for we are no better equipped to assist Philomela than we were an hour ago, a day ago. We can only watch, with a sense of violation that must be nearly equivalent to hers, as Griffyn removes her shoes, caresses her feet, and, with his knife, scissors the silk stocking from her leg.

But when I see Philomela's head jerk away, when I witness the tiny, myriad ways in which pride and rage and fear contend within her, then I know that the violation is hers alone to bear. We cannot possibly share it.

There is, however, a chance of reprieve. Griffyn has abruptly left the bed and made for his dresser, and he is reaching for something...I can't quite make out what...pinkish gold in colour, the size and shape of a fat orange, with sprouts of hard green leaves at its top. He weighs the thing in his hand as if preparing to hurl it, but what he does next fairly steals my breath away. With slow, surgical precision, he drives his knife straight into the thing's heart-- cuts it clean in two, to reveal a beautiful tracery of cream and brilliant red.

A pomegranate.

Ever the good host, he offers half to Philomela and seems not in the least offended when she refuses. Smiling gently, he takes up his half of the fruit and, with his knife, scoops one of the seeds from its casing and mashes it against the girl's naked foot until the red pulp bursts free. He then pops the stripped seed into his mouth and from there repeats the procedure again and again, seed after seed, until her entire foot is dyed the same ruby colour as the fruit's flesh. A stain like blood, seemingly ineradicable, until Griffyn begins the slow work of licking it off-- his tongue working in darts and feints, his eyes shuddering, his entire face relaxing into a look of deep and bottomless satisfaction.

I cannot look away, any more than I can interfere. Only prayer is possible, and the words go dry on my lips.

But perhaps the mere intention of prayer is enough, for Griffyn, once he has finished his occult mysteries, declines for now to pursue them further, instead moving back to the dresser to extinguish the candle still burning there. He does the same with a candle on a buhl tray, and now a crepuscular gloom settles over the room, liquefying each object and imparting to the air a new solidity.
It also emboldens Colin and me to press our faces against the window. And by some miracle of simultaneity, it sparks Philomela out of the bed and onto her feet. A protective instinct on her part, feeble in itself, but with this added effect: it draws her closer to the window, until only her own preoccupation can keep her from seeing what is so palpably there, not five feet away.

Frantic, we wave our hands in mad orbits, hop up and down in a private trapeze act, but her eyes persist in turning inwards...until Colin, despairing of everything else, falls back on the simplest possible gesture, lays his hand flat against the window like a starfish pressed against the wall of an aquarium.

The very thing. Philomela's eyes draw in, her head pops back. Her mouth forms a word or a name, or perhaps just a bubble of astonishment.

There is barely time enough even for that: Griffyn has now wrapped his arm round her waist and is guiding her back to the confines of the four-poster. If he were to glance out the window--or even take a single survey of her face--he would realise that something was amiss, but he is far more concerned with the positioning of her body between the immaculate white sheets. Takes great pains to get it right, arranges the tresses of her hair on the pillow, extends her arms, tilts one hip towards the ceiling, parts her feet. And then, like an artist perversely intent on shrouding his own work, he begins to close the organdy bed curtains.

The heavy crimson fabric drags along its cumbersome track, smothering the light, transforming the bed into a glade. It swallows Philomela's head, then her torso, then her feet.

And the only reassurance I can take is that she knows, she
knows
that once those curtains are drawn, we are lost.

No way of being sure, really, what words or intonations she uses. All I can say for certain is that with just a few feet of curtain left to draw, Griffyn pauses in his work and inclines his head towards his bride's.

Ten seconds...twenty seconds...my heart pounding away the intervals, Colin's heart pounding right along...and finally Griffyn's hand drops to his side. He takes a step towards the window.

Colin and I lurch back to our respective corners, press ourselves against the balcony's perimeter. We hear the sounds of a window being dragged open against its will. An ancient set of blinds, jerked upwards. And then a voice, at once fluty and grainy, shot through with amusement.

--There you are,
petite gamine
. Fresh air aplenty.

I close my eyes. I draw in my breath, and at the same time, I draw in Griffyn's words:

--Do you remember,
jeune fille
? Do you?

And when I open my eyes again, the window stands open, and the blinds are all the way up, and Griffyn has turned his back on us and is, at this very moment, stepping towards the bed.

--Do you recall what happens to naughty girls who make naughty noises? It may be the window, so shockingly open. It may be the sight of that long, wagging finger. Whatever it is, it's too much for Colin. Not pausing for a signal, he squeezes his little body through the opening and, before I can even make to follow, hurls himself at Lord Griffyn's elegant back.

The good lord topples in stages. First to his knees, in an attitude of mock piety. Then, as the full brunt of Colin's weight makes itself felt, he collapses belly first on the Indian matting.

What an anticlimax is this! The man we have spent an entire day hunting offers no resistance whatsoever when I roll him onto his back...barely blinks when I press the butcher's knife to the brown skin of his neck--not even when a tiny petal of blood blossoms forth.

--Not a word, Lord Griffyn. Not a word, or I'll slash you from ear to ear.

If he is astonished, he gives no sign of it. Every possible reaction has been so speedily absorbed that he looks only as though he has been expecting us for a very long time.

--Tie his hands, Colin.

Our rope ladder, of course, is already spoken for, so Colin must make do with the silken cord of Griffyn's dressing gown, which has been draped over the doorknob to the adjoining room. The sash serves its new purpose admirably, and I think Colin takes special pleasure in forcing Lord Griffyn into a sitting position and yanking the bonds as tightly as he can round his wrists.

Nothing, however, disturbs the composed features of our host's face. He merely cocks his head to one side and, with a quiet twinkle, says:

--I should have been only too delighted to include you on the guest list, Mr. Cratchit.

My name. My name, coming from his mouth.

--Although I'm not sure
girls
would have been quite to your taste.

The knife draws back from his throat.

--But why quibble when you have brought such a darling little boy with you? Good evening, my dear! Would you like me to show you round downstairs? I know some frightfully rich men, simply sneezing with loot. I could introduce you to all of them.

--I could interduce you, too. Blokes as would peel the skin off your bones, inch by inch.

--Ooh, delicious.

One can't always tell, with well-bred people, whether they are seriously entertaining a suggestion or simply being polite. But there is in His Lordship's smile some answering chord--some presumption of affinity--that, more than anything else he could have done, recalls me to my rage. Everything now is fuel for it: Griffyn's long, oddly shaped body, swelling at the hips; Colin's bruised face; the pink residue on Philomela's bare foot, the ivory obscenity of her costume.

I raise the knife. Higher. Higher. And then, like ligatures, Colin's slender fingers wrap round my belt.

--No, Mr. Timothy. Come away.

--It's what Philomela told us to do.

--No.

--Kill them before they kill us. And I didn't listen, and now Gul--

Most embarrassing: I can't even voice the last syllable. It is out of kindness, perhaps, that Colin assumes the role of speaker, raising himself on tiptoe and whispering in my ear:

--You ain't the one to do it, Mr. Timothy. It ain't in your nature, is it?

But it may well be in Philomela's nature, for as I step back, she is coming hard on, and before anyone can stop her, she has snatched the knife from my hand and driven it in a clean, sure line towards Lord Griffyn's face. The knife halts a mere inch from his mouth and then begins to inscribe a slow circle around his bulbous lips. A bizarre, almost religious gesture--I can't make sense of it until I remember, in a flash of second sight, the scene by Lord Griffyn's carriage. This was the very sign he made to her:
Breathe a word to anyone
, it said,
and forfeit your tongue
.