The Hunger (2 page)

Into the bag he also tossed the girl’s wallet and hairbrush and some of the cosmetics scattered over her dresser. Then panties and bras and a stack of 45-rpm records from the floor. He stopped in the bathroom for toothbrush, hair spray, more cosmetics, shampoo and a somewhat clean blouse he found hanging on the shower-curtain rod.

In fifty seconds the car would come down the street, Miriam was always on schedule, so John hurried out the way he had come, pausing only to lock the cellar door behind him with his piano wire. He moved swiftly down the driveway and waited in a flowering dogwood.

His body tingled; his awareness seemed to extend into every detail of the world around him. No effort was needed to concentrate now. He could feel the peaceful presence of the dogwood, hear even the smallest sounds, the rustling of a beetle, the ping of a slowly cooling engine block in a car across the street. Above him the stars had resolved into myriad colors: green and yellow and blue and red. The breeze seemed to stir each leaf with a separate touch. John felt a sharp and poignant sense of the beauty around him. Life could not be sweeter.

The appearance of their car made him smile. Miriam drove with the caution of a blind octogenarian. Accident obsessed, she had chosen the Volvo because of its safety record and innocuous appearance. Despite its sturdiness, she had it equipped with a heavy-duty gas tank, truck brakes, an air-bag restraint system as well as seatbelts and a “sun roof” that was actually an extra means of escape.

Dutifully, he trotted over to the slowly moving vehicle, tossed his burdens into the backseat and slipped in beside her. There was no question of his driving, of course. She never relinquished the wheel unless absolutely necessary. It was comfortable to be with her again. Her lips felt cool and familiar on his cheek, her smile was bright with pleasure and success.

Saying nothing, she concentrated on the road. The entrance to the Long Island Expressway was two blocks away and John knew she would be worrying about the chance of being stopped by the local police before they reached it. They would have to answer embarrassing questions if that happened.

Until they reached the ramp neither spoke. As they pulled onto the freeway, however, he felt her relax. The last bit of tension broke.

“It was just
beautiful
,” she said.“He was so strong.”

John smiled. He husbanded his own exhilaration. Despite his years at it, the kill itself never pleased him. He was not excited by the actual act, as was Miriam.

“Yours went well, I hope.” It was a question.

“The usual.”

She was staring at him, her eyes twinkling like those of a pretty doll. “I had such a nice time. He thought he was being raped by a girl.” She giggled. “I think he died in ecstasy.” She stretched, luxurious with postprandial ease. “How did Kaye die?”

He supposed the question was her way of giving him support, to show interest, but he would rather forget the ugly little act and concentrate on the joy that was its reward.

“I had to use the chloroform on a dog.”

Miriam reached over and kissed him on the cheek, then took his hand. She was so sensitive; she knew from that one remark all that had occurred, the difficulties he had endured.

“They all end up the same sooner or later. I’m sure you were very humane. She probably never really understood what was happening to her.”

“I miscalculated. I should have anticipated the dog. That’s all that’s bothering me.”

But it wasn’t, not quite. There was also this feeling, strange and yet remembered. He was tired. It had been a very long time since he had felt so.

“You can never give a perfect death. There will always be suffering.”

Yes, that was true. And even after all these years he did not like to inflict suffering. But it shouldn’t weigh on him like this. Feeding was supposed to make you feel vital and alive.

This could only be a passing phase, the result of his having been thrown off-balance by the dog. He decided to dismiss it from his mind. He turned to the window, stared out.

The night was magnificent. He had always seen a great truth in the dark, a kind of joy, something forgiving of such violence as his. Thinking of it brought a welcome sense of justification.

The lights of towns came and went. John felt deeply in love with it all. He allowed himself a little of the pleasure of the kill, reflecting how he was fundamentally happy in his life.

Before he quite realized it his eyes had closed. The humming of the car began to mingle with the voices of memory, distant memory.

His eyes snapped open. This was not normal. He opened the sun roof to let in some cool air. The pattern of their lives was extremely regular. You slept six out of twenty-four hours, and it came upon you about four hours after you ate.

What, then, was this?

He was drifting, half-asleep, into a very pleasant sensation, his mind possessed by a soft sigh of remembrance, of dream . . .

For a flash it was as if he were in an enormous, cold room lit with candles, a fire crackling in the grate. He was surprised. He had not thought of the ancestral home of the Blaylocks since he had left England. And yet now he remembered his own bedroom so well, the incessant dampness, the grandeur, the familiarity.

Miriam was as beautiful now as she had been then. He would have touched her, held her, but she did not like to be disturbed while she was driving.

He remembered the tall windows of his room with their view of the North Yorks Moors, where gypsy fires flickered at night. The faces and voices of the past flooded into his consciousness. Drowsily, he watched the strange modern landscape pass the car, the endless lights, the cramped, scruffy little houses. How alone he was in this world.

He closed his eyes and was at once transported to a wet, gray afternoon at Hadley. It was a special afternoon — or would be within the hour. He remembered himself as he was then, a fashionable lordling just finished with two years at Balliol College. He had been dressing for dinner, his valet hovering about with stockings and cravat and shirt. His assumption was that the guest would be some ghastly political acquaintance of his father and the evening would consist of sanctimonious discussions about the mad old king and the profligate regent. John didn’t give a damn about court. He was much more interested in bear-baiting and running his hounds on the moor.

As he was dressing, a carriage rattled up the drive. It was a magnificent equipage, drawn by six stallions, attended by two footmen. Their livery was unfamiliar. When a lady in white silk emerged from the carriage John snapped his fingers impatiently for his wig. It had been too long since his father had brought a whore to Hadley. Despite all his infirmities and his frequent confusions, despite the goiter, the dim eyes, John’s father retained a superb taste in females. When he sought a woman’s company, he usually cast about among the shabbier edges of the aristocracy for some physically attractive, charming creature without sufficient property to interest his son.

Except they usually did.

“The master’s away,” he sang softly as Williams adjusted his cravat and sprinkled a bit of scent in his wig, “we shall have a merry day.”

“The master is here, sir.”

“I know that, Williams. Just wishful thinking.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The usual preparations, Williams, if she is appealing.”

The man turned and went about his duty. He was a good valet and knew when not to respond. But John could be certain that the halls from the sitting room to this bedroom would be empty of servants at the appropriate time, and the lady’s maid would not follow her mistress.

That is, if his father could be sotted with enough brandy to make him forget his plans, and enough bezique to bore him to sleep.

Yes, indeed, it promised to be an interesting evening. John went down the gallery that connected the two wings of the house, feeling the humid coolness of the evening beyond the windows, passing beneath the portrait of his mother that his father insisted remain outside her old room.

The stairway had been lit as if for a ball, as had the front hall and the large dining hall. Servants were setting three places at the massive table. Why his father had not chosen the more intimate yellow dining room John could not imagine. His father’s voice could be heard beyond the great hall, in the formal parlor. John crossed the hall and paused as the door was opened before him.

Then he knew why the pomp. And he knew no amount of brandy would addle his father this night, nor bezique send him off to sleep.

There was no word to describe her.

Skin could not be so white or features so perfect, surely. Her eyes, as pale as delft, as pellucid as the sea, flickered to him. He fought for some appropriate word, could only smile and bow, then advance.

“This is my son, John.”

His father’s words were as distant as an echo. Only the woman mattered now. “I am charmed, ma’am,” John said softly.

She extended her hand.

“The Lady Miriam,” his father said, his tone revealing just a trace of irony.

John took the cool hand and pressed it to his lips, lingered just an instant too long, then raised his head.

She was looking at him, not smiling.

He was shocked by the power of that glance, so shocked he turned away in confusion.

His heart was pounding, his face was blazing hot. He covered his upset with a flourish of snuff. When he dared look, her eyes were merry and pleasant, as a woman’s eyes should be.

Then, as if to tease him, she looked at him again in that shameless, wild way. Never before had he encountered such brazen effrontery, not even from the most primitive scullery or back-street whore.

To see it in such an extraordinary and obviously refined beauty made him shake with excitement. His eyes teared, involuntarily he extended his hands. She seemed about to speak but only ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth.

It was as if his father had ceased to exist. John’s arms came around her, around Miriam, for the first time. The embrace electrified him, inflamed him. His eyes closed, he sank into her softness, bent his head to her alabaster neck, touched her salty and milky flesh with his open lips.

Laughter sprang out of her like a hidden blade. He jerked his head up, dropped his arms. In her eyes there was something so lascivious, so mocking and triumphant, that his passion was at once replaced by fear. Such a look he had seen —

Yes, in a panther some East Indians had been displaying at Vauxhall Gardens.

The light, furious eyes of a panther.

How could such eyes be so very lovely?

All of this had happened in no more than a minute. During this time John’s father had stood transfixed, his eyebrows raised, his face gradually registering more and more surprise. “Sir!” he burst out at last. “Please sir!”

John had to recover himself. A gentleman could not so dishonor himself before his father.

“Do not be angry with him, Lord Hadley,” Miriam said. “You cannot imagine what a flattery it is to be attended to so fervently.”

Her voice was soft and yet it filled the room with vibrant intensity. The words may not have pleased John’s father, but they foreclosed any further disapproval. The old lord bowed graciously and took the lady’s hand. Together they strolled farther into the great room, pausing before the fireplace. John moved along behind them, his manner outwardly deferential. Within, his heart was seething. The woman’s manner and appearance were the most wonderful he had ever known, a thousand times more wonderful than he had imagined possible. She trailed behind her an attar of roses. The firelight made her skin glow. Her beauty made the dank old room blaze with light.

At a signal from his father, a piper began to play on the balcony. The tones were stirring, some Scottish air at once beautiful and fierce. Miriam turned and looked upward. “What is that instrument?”

“A bagpipe,” John said before his father’s mouth could open. “It’s a Scot’s device.”

“Also Breton,” his father snapped. “That is a Breton piper. There are no Scotsmen in Hadley House.”

John knew differently, but he did not contradict.

They ate a brace of grouse, high and sour, followed by lamb, pudding and trifle. John remembered that meal well because of how surprised he had been when Miriam did not partake of any of the food. Course after course went past untouched. It would not have been polite for them to inquire why their guest did not care for the food, but at the end of the meal John’s father seemed sunken in dismay. When she at last took some port he brightened.

No doubt he had been afraid that his physical appearance was so unpleasant to her that she was not going to stay the night. John almost laughed aloud when he saw how his father grinned when she drank, his loose dental plates making it look as if he had a mouthful of stones.

During the course of the meal, Miriam had glanced twice at John and both times had communicated such warmth and invitation that he himself was greatly encouraged.

When the evening ended he went to his room full of eager anticipation. He dismissed Williams at once, dropping his clothes off, tossing his wig aside, standing at last naked. He went close to the grate, warming first one side of himself and then the other, and then jumped into bed. The sheets had been swept with a fire brick until they were warm and so the bed was quite comfortable. He lay sleepless, astonished that he had taken to his bed without his nightclothes, deliciously excited. On the nightstand he left three gold sovereigns gleaming in the candlelight.

He lay listening to the wind and the rain, warm and safe beneath his quilts, waiting. Hours passed. His body, fixed in the tension of extreme excitement, began to ache with need.

Without knowing it, he fell asleep. He awoke suddenly, dreaming of her. The room was no longer absolutely dark. Fumbling on the night table, he found his watch and opened it. Almost five
A.M.

She wasn’t going to come. He sat up. Surely any sensible whore would have understood the meaning of the glances that had passed between them. The three sovereigns lay untouched. The fool had not come to claim her own.