Playing for the Ashes (44 page)

“You’d have to talk to my dentist. Shall I give you his number?”

“Would you do that?”

“And more. I’d even eat
fettuccine à la mer avec les crevettes et les moules
.”

She smiled again. “I had a taste of it myself. Lord, it was dreadful. I’m hopeless, Tommy.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Denton took mercy upon me at half past nine. He whipped up something with chicken and artichokes that was absolute heaven. I bolted it down at the kitchen table and swore him to secrecy on the subject. But there’s more of it left. I saw him stow it away in the refrigerator. Shall I reheat it for you? Surely I can do that much without burning down the house. Or have you had dinner somewhere already?”

He told her that he hadn’t, that every moment he’d expected to bring an end to the day’s work, but that at every juncture the investigation had simply kept extending itself. He admitted he was famished, he drew her to her feet, and they descended the stairs. They avoided the dining room and its steadily solidifying
fettuccine à la mer
and went instead to the basement kitchen. Helen rooted through the refrigerator while Lynley watched. He felt absurdly comforted in some childish way by the sight of her shifting through jars and plastic bags to pull forth a container in triumph. What was this all about, he wondered, this sudden feeling of total complacency? Was it the ring and the fact that she had chosen to wear it? Was it the promise of a moderately decent meal? Or was it her behaviour, bustling about his kitchen, acting so decidedly wifely towards him, bringing plates from cupboards, taking cutlery from drawers, dumping the chicken and artichokes into a stainless steel pot, setting the pot into the microwave, smacking its door shut with an air of—

“Helen!” Lynley leapt across the kitchen before she had a chance to turn the microwave on. “You can’t put metal in there.”

She looked at him blankly. “Why ever not?”

“Because you can’t. Because the metal and the microwaves will…Hell, I don’t know. I just know you can’t.”

She studied the machine. “Goodness. I wonder…”

“What?”

“That must be what happened to mine.”

“You put metal in it?”

“I actually didn’t think of it as metal. One doesn’t, you know.”

“What? What was it?”

“A tin of vichyssoise. I’ve never cared for it cold, you see. And I thought, Let me just pop it in the microwave for a minute or two. That was that. It boomed, hissed, fi zzled, and died. I remember thinking, No wonder they serve it cold, but I thought it was the soup. I never actually connected the tin itself to the booming, hissing, and fizzling.” Her shoulders drooped and she sighed. “First the fettuccine. Now this. I don’t know, Tommy.” She twisted the ring on her finger. He put his arm round her shoulders and kissed her temple.

“Why do you love me?” she asked. “I’m utterly without hope and completely without promise.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I ruin your dinner. I destroy your pots.”

“Nonsense,” he said and turned her to him.

“I nearly blow up the kitchen. Lord, you’d be safer with the IRA.”

“Don’t be absurd.” He kissed her.

“Left to my own devices, I shall probably burn down this house and all of Howenstow as well. Can you imagine the horror of that. Have you tried?”

“Not yet. But I will. Momentarily.” He kissed her again, drawing her closer this time, teasing her mouth and lips with his tongue. She fitted him naturally, and he marvelled at the entire miraculous, antipodal nature of male-female sexuality. Angle for curve, rough for smooth, hard for soft. Helen was a wonder. She was everything he wanted. And the moment after he had something to eat, he’d prove it to her.

Her arms slipped round his neck. Her
fin
gers moved languorously into his hair. Her hips pressed against his. He felt simultaneously hot in the groin and dizzy in the head as two appetites battled for control of his body.

He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d managed to have a well-balanced, strength-producing meal. It had been at least thirty-six hours, hadn’t it? He’d had a single boiled egg and a slice of toast this morning, but that hardly counted when one considered the number of hours that had passed since then. He really ought to eat. The chicken and artichokes were sitting on the work top. The concoction would take less than
fiv
e minutes to reheat. Five more to devour. Three to wash up if he didn’t want to leave the remains for Denton. Yes. Perhaps that was the best idea. Food. Less than fifteen minutes and he’d be right as rain, he’d be strong as an ox, he’d be fit as a fiddle. He groaned. Jesus. What was happening to his mind? He needed sustenance. This very instant. Because if he didn’t eat, he couldn’t possibly…

Helen’s hands drifted down his chest, unbuttoning as they went. They dropped to his trousers and teased his belt loose.

“Has Denton gone to bed, darling?” she whispered against his mouth.

Denton? What had Denton to do with anything?

“He won’t be wandering into the kitchen, will he?”

The kitchen? Did she actually mean them to…No. No. She couldn’t mean that.

He heard the sound of his zip being lowered. A veil of black gauze seemed to fall before his eyes. He thought about the likelihood of his passing out from hunger. Then her hand was against him and whatever blood was left in his head seemed to pound elsewhere.

He said, “Helen. I haven’t eaten in hours. Frankly, I don’t know if I’ll even be able to—”

“Nonsense.” She brought her mouth back to his. “I expect you’ll do just
fin
e.”

He did.

OLIVIA

M
y legs have been cramping. I’ve dropped four pencils in the last twenty minutes, and I haven’t had the energy to pick them up. I just take another out of the tin. I keep writing onwards and try to ignore what my handwriting’s evolved to over the past few months.

Chris came through a moment ago. He stood behind me. He rested his hands on my shoulders and kneaded my muscles in the way I love. He put his cheek against the top of my head. “You don’t have to write it all at one go,” he said.

I said, “That’s just what I’ve got to do.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask. You know.”

He left me alone. He’s in the workroom now, crafting a hutch for Felix. “Six feet long,” he told me. “Most people don’t understand how much room a rabbit needs.” He usually works with music playing, but he’s kept both the radio and the stereo off because he wants me to be able to think and write clearly. I want as much as well, but the telephone rings and I hear him catch it. I hear the way his voice goes soft. It’s gentle round the edges, like brandy if brandy were composed of sound. I try to ignore it, the “Yes…No…No real change…I won’t be able to…No…No, it isn’t that at all…” A long terrible silence after which he says, “I understand,” in a voice that hurts me with the way it aches. I wait for more, telltale whispered words like
love
, like
want, miss
, and
if only
, telltale sounds like sighs. I strain to hear even as I recite the alphabet backwards in my head to block out his voice. I hear him say, “Only patience,” and the words get fuzzy on the paper before me. The pencil slips and falls to the floor. I reach for another.

Chris comes into the galley. He plugs in the kettle. He takes a mug from the dresser, tea from a cupboard. He places his hands on the work top and lowers his head as if he’s examining something there.

I feel my heart beating inside my throat and I want to say, “You can go to her. You can go if you like,” but I don’t because I’m afraid he’ll do it.

It hurts too much to love. Why do we expect it to be so wonderful? Love’s misery on misery. It’s like pouring acid into one’s heart.

The kettle boils and clicks off. He pours the water. He says, “Want a cuppa, Livie?” and I say, “Ta. Yes.”

He says, “Oolong?”

I say, “No. Have we got any Gunpowder?”

He rattles through a cupboard for the tin. He says, “I don’t know how you abide this stuff. It doesn’t taste like anything but water to me.”

“One needs a subtle palate,” I say. “Some tastes are more delicate than others.”

He turns. We look at each other a while. We say in silence all the things we can’t take the chance of saying aloud. Finally, he remarks, “I ought to finish that hutch. Felix’ll want a place to doss tonight.”

I nod, but my face feels tight. When he passes me, his hand brushes near my arm and I want to catch it and press it to my cheek.

I say, “Chris,” and he pauses behind me. I breathe and it hurts rather more than I expect. I say, “I’m probably going to be at this thing for a good few hours longer. If you’d like to go out…take the dogs for a final run or something…pop into the pub.”

He says quietly, “I expect the dogs’re all right.”

I look at this yellow lined pad, the third I’ve started since beginning the writing. I say, “It can’t be much longer now. You know.”

He says, “Take your time.”

He goes back to work. He says to Felix, “Now tell me, son, would you like a western or eastern exposure in your new accommodation?” and the hammering begins, quick blows, one-two for each nail. Chris is strong and skilled. He doesn’t make mistakes.

I used to wonder why he took me on. “Was I a whim of the moment?” I’d asked him. Because it didn’t make sense to me that he’d pick up a whore, buy her two cups of coffee and a spring roll, take her home, put her to work at carpentry, and end up inviting her to stay when he had no intention—not to mention no desire—of screwing her. At first I thought he meant me to whore for him. I thought he had a habit to support and I kept waiting for the sight of needles, spoons, and packets of powder. When I said, “What’s this all about anyway,” he said, “What’s what all about?” and looked round the barge as if my question referred to it.

“This. Here. Me. With you.”

“Is it supposed to be about something?”

“A bloke and a girl. Together they’re usually about something, I’d say.”

“Ah.” He shouldered a board and cocked his head. “Where’s the hammer taken itself off to?” And he’d set to work and set me to work as well.

While we were finishing the barge, we dos-sed on two Lilos, to the left of the stairs, at the opposite end from the animals. Chris slept in his underwear. I slept in the nude. Sometimes in the early morning, I threw the covers off and lay on my side so that my breasts looked fuller. I pretended to sleep and waited for something to happen between us. I caught him watching me once. I caught his eyes slowly wandering the length of my body. I saw him look reflective. I thought, This is it. I stretched to arch my back in what I knew from experience was a lissome movement.

He said, “You’ve remarkable musculature, Livie. Do you exercise regularly? Are you a runner?”

I said, “Hell.” Then, “Yeah. I suppose I can run when I have to.”

“How fast?”

“How’m I supposed to know?”

“How do you feel about the dark?”

I reached out and played my hand down his chest. “Depends on what’s going on in it, actually.”

“Running. Jumping. Climbing. Hiding.”

“What? Playing war games?”

“Something like that.”

I slipped my fingers into the waistband of his underpants. He caught my hand in his.

“Let’s see,” he said.

“What?”

“If you’re good at something besides this.”

“Are you queer? Is that it? Are you undersexed or something? Why don’t you want to do it?”

“Because that’s not how it’s going to be between us.” He rolled off the Lilo and got to his feet. He reached for his blue jeans and shirt. He was dressed in less than a minute, his back to me and his neck bent so that I could see the knob at the nape where he looked most vulnerable. “You don’t have to be that way with men,” he said. “There are other ways of being.”

“Being what?”

“Who you are. Of value. Whatever.”

“Oh, right.” I sat up, pulling the blanket round me. Through the stacks of timber and the unfinished framing of the interior of the barge, I could see the animals at the other end. Toast was awake and chewing on a rubber ball, as was a beagle Chris called Jam. One of the rats was running on the exercise wheel inside the cage. It made an odd sound like the
rat-a-tat-tat
of machine-gun fire heard at a distance. “So go ahead,” I said.

“With what?”

“The lecture you’ve been so hot to give me. Only you’d better be careful because I’m not like them.” I flung my arm towards the animals. “I can walk out of here any time I like.”

“Why don’t you?”

I glared at him. I couldn’t answer. I had the bed-sit in Earl’s Court. I had regular clients. I had daily opportunity to expand my business out on the street. As long as I was willing to do anything and to try everything, I had a steady source of income. So why did I stay?