The Twisted Heart (9 page)

‘The lectures? Algebraic curves; affine and projective varieties; the Zariski topology; applications of the Riemann–Roch Theorem—' Joe broke off with a sardonic smile.

‘I see.'
Affine and projective varieties
. So,
affine and
projective varieties
, yes. Into the tense quiet that followed, Kit said, ‘You'll have to forgive me.'

‘Consider yourself forgiven.' He smiled at her again, more gently. ‘I'm no great shakes at it,' he said. ‘I'm nothing special. I'm about as good as ordinary gets, put it that way. I inhabit a dusty little corner of what the Americans call the “ivory basement”.'

‘I'm sure you're being modest,' said Kit. She thought about what she had done that day, and said, ‘I don't think I'm up some ivory tower either, you know, although maybe I am, viewed from the outside. It feels more like I'm at an ivory horror show.' She was groping for a way to neuter this remark, when Joe took her aback by asking, ‘Do you mind being tall?'

‘No,' she replied doubtfully. ‘The great thing is that it works as a disguise. People think, oh, that tall girl—and
then they don't think anything more about it. So even though you stick out, or especially because you stick out—what I mean is, because you seem to stick out, you can hide away inside and people just don't think about you. And it's good when you travel. The sorts of countries where Western women are, are—'

Joe's mobile had begun to ring loudly in his pocket. He fumbled for it. ‘Hi,' he said, then listened to the person the other end babble. ‘What's—' He shot his watch out from under his sleeve and frowned at it. Kit glanced at her radio clock. If there was any thought, she shrivelled, whatsoever, thought of them catching the Intermediate class, they had dwindling leeway now, unless they were going to take a cab, or Joe had a car. He was a don, a maths lecturer, a grown-up. She was still astonished. It could be he had a car.

The person on the phone, a man, sounded keen, pressing. ‘It'll have to be quick,' Joe said. He looked at his watch again, brow lowered. ‘Yes, I did—I have. I'm with her right now. All right, all right,' he said irritably. ‘Yes, no, I'm not—Humpty? Okay, bye.'

He lifted his annoyed gaze to meet Kit's concerned one. ‘I have to drop in at The Forfeit,' he said.

‘Oh?'

Joe stood up. ‘What do you think of Lucille?' He looked at his mobile, then put it in his pocket.

‘Lucille? Do you mean Michaela?'

‘The dance instructor.'

‘Oh, right, sorry. Yes. Well, she's great.' Kit felt acutely ill-at-ease. She didn't want to have to go to the dance club
ever again. ‘She's very shouty, though,' she said. ‘I mean, she never stops. I find her teaching method a bit odd.'

‘It's more than odd,' said Joe. ‘I don't think she has any formal training. I'm not sure it's even real steps, but I do like her.' He stepped towards the door. ‘You coming?'

As they went down the stairs, Kit asked, ‘Who's Humpty?'

‘My brother. What were you saying—if you're tall, when you travel?'

‘If—? Oh, yes, countries where Western women are pestered in the streets. I guess—I mean the ones I've been to, they're also countries where the men are dreadfully short. I once said to a man in Egypt, “If you carry on like that, I'm going to
spit on your head
.” And I could have done. And he went away.'

‘Jesus.'

‘I know, idiotic of me, but I'd had enough. Fucking hell. Lucky by sheer chance he wasn't a spit fetishist or something.'

‘Carry on like what?'

‘What?'

‘You said you said, “If you carry on like that, I'll spit on your head.”'

‘Oh, you know, he wanted me to have a drink with him, and I'd learned a bit of swearing in Arabic, so I swore at him in Arabic and he said, “Not only are you beautiful, but you speak Arabic!” They always tell you you're beautiful. It's depressing.'

‘Is it?'

‘It makes you feel as though you don't exist.'

‘You just told me the advantage of being tall was that it stopped people thinking about you.'

‘Oh. Yes, I did.'

Kit walked along the street slightly behind Joe, kicking at the leaves that had started, that week, to fall. Though it had been Joe himself who'd been making her feel claustrophobic, this had left her with a compelling wish to get out of her room. Of course, by staying put she could have evaded whatever was to come; but she hadn't had the grit to do it, to say ‘no', so now the dismal business of
no
, still remained, presumably.

At least she was outside, however, added to which, despite herself, she felt somewhat intrigued.

‘We won't be long,' said Joe.

‘That's okay.'

‘You know The Forfeit? I usually meet him there on a Friday, that's why—' he sighed. ‘It won't take any time.'

‘That's fine. Whatever you like.'

As they strode along, they descended into talking about their colleges, how good the food was or wasn't in hall, how and where they worked, the exact nature of their workloads, Kit feeling more and more like driftwood.

She had been past The Forfeit often enough, and could summon to mind its front window, which was frosted and ornamentally etched; but the glass was all she had ever noticed about it. This was her first time inside. There was sawdust sprinkled on the rough plank floor, which she took to be an affectation, while the pictures on the walls
showed bombers and fighter planes from the Second World War.

‘Humpty,' said Joe, and gestured palm upwards to a skinny but appealing-looking young man on a bench against the back wall. His clothing was trashed. He had black, curly hair. Joe rested a hand on Kit's shoulder. ‘This is Kit,' he said.

‘Sit down,' said Humpty.

Kit pulled out the stool in front of her, but then hesitated because Joe hadn't moved.

‘Sit down,' said Humpty again. He smelled of cigarettes. When Kit had first arrived in Oxford, before the law changed, she had particularly liked tobacco in the air in pubs, late afternoon. She hadn't been a passive passive-smoker, but on purpose had sat close to people who were smoking.

Joe checked his watch again, then darted a look at her. ‘You'd like something?'

She had no idea what was going on, but grasped that this was an unexpected opportunity to waste time. If there was any chance it would make dancing impossible, then—‘Yes,' she replied.

To Humpty, Joe said, ‘Be normal, all right?'

‘Who's normal?' asked Humpty; or perhaps, ‘Whose normal?' Kit wasn't sure.

Joe shook his head and went to the bar.

‘What do you think of the war?' said Humpty.

Kit now sat down. ‘The war?' she said. Humpty was staring off past her with great intensity. The war? Kit thought. The war? Which one? What kind?

‘I think there ought to be a law passed that says, next time a prime minister takes this country to war, as soon as the first British soldier's killed, the prime minister's taken straight to hospital and has his legs surgically removed.'

He had a kind of twitch, Kit saw, and his mouth was never quite still.

‘Make them think twice about sending other people to fight,' Humpty said. ‘If you're the British prime minister and a British soldier's killed because you sent him to war, your legs get removed. Of course, don't get me wrong, there'd be a state funeral, for the legs.'

‘Oh really?'

‘Definitely. Come on, massive. If there was a state funeral for the prime minister's legs, wouldn't you go?
I'd
go. Massive state funeral, for the prime minister's legs?'

‘What if an enemy soldier's killed?

Humpty looked sage. ‘For every single as-they-say “enemy” soldier killed by as-they-say “our forces”, the prime minister has to go to the parade ground outside Buckingham Palace and execute a horse.'

‘Himself? By hand?'

‘Yes, himself. Execute a horse, in public, outside Buckingham Palace, for each guy on the other side who's killed.'

‘Well well, that would cause a fuss,' said Kit.

Humpty's twitch got slightly worse. ‘That's the point.'

‘No, I get it. Make that cows, and you could help out with the TB problem. Or how about condemned attack dogs?'

‘Human beings divide into two kinds,' said Humpty, ‘those
who have certain knowledge they're going to die soon, and those who don't.'

‘Whether, in fact, they're going to or not,' replied Kit.

This was simply a joining-in sort of a remark, but Humpty shook his head in jittery fashion so as to convey to her that she had inelegantly amplified a statement that had been clear enough already.

Kit wanted to shout, ‘Stop twitching'—to see if it would work.

‘How did you meet Joe?' Humpty asked, as Joe came back with a pint for himself and a half of something for Kit—shandy, she discovered, a drink she greatly disliked. She took a large mouthful anyway.

‘At a dance club?' she said, not pleased to have the subject raised.

Joe sat down on the bench. ‘You know what,' he said, ‘someone once told me this thing, that you can't really dance until you can dance superbly on a brick.'

‘What if the person who tells you things, who you can't remember who said it—if it's the same person,' said Humpty. ‘I mean, what if it's the same person for everyone. There's this one person who goes round telling us all these things, who has this special quality that, you can't remember who they are. I'm talking like the Sandman, or Wee Willie Winkie, who, they have this thing that they can reach everybody, but with this person, the special thing is, you can't remember who they are. Wouldn't it be great to be that unrememberable person who says rememberable things? And it's your job that you have to go round saying things to people like, “You can't dance properly till you can dance
on a brick”, or, “Everyone has a bird's eye view of the stars”.'

Kit, assuming that not much was expected of her, found it in a way cosy to be sitting in a pub, Friday, late afternoon, with two brothers, having a drink and a chat; saw herself, in this way, as a person who had something to do and friends to do it with. ‘It would be quite a responsibility,' she said, mentally answering her last thought with the observation that, far from them being her friends, frankly, to her they were nobodies. She tried out a smile that promised more than she knew how to deliver, a sort of a smile that she saw often in the movies. ‘My mind is—'

‘No—' speaking over the top of her, Humpty said, ‘—no, no—'

‘—infested with all sorts of—'

‘—no, this would have to be a life for someone completely
irresponsible
,' he said, talking her down.

Kit took another swallow of the shandy.

‘The person no one can remember,' said Joe, ‘who tells us memorable things, is the brother of the angel who dances on people's graves.'

Humpty looked entranced by this suggestion, unless it was that he looked as though he'd been caught out. ‘Bet it was Evalina,' he said suddenly.

‘It was Evalina,' said Joe.

‘Evalina.' Humpty closed his eyes. ‘Talk about
dancing
—'

Kit pictured the minutes ticking away. She didn't want to dance. The thought of being asked to dance again as the boy—even the thought demoralised her. If this was what Joe had in mind, she would absolutely refuse. ‘You know what
makes seraphim different from other kinds of angels?' she said.

Humpty's eyes flew open again. ‘What?'

‘They're the lightest.'

‘Oh.'

‘I learned that at school.'

‘Humpty and I learned dancing,' said Joe. ‘Our headmaster was about a hundred and considered it essential.'

‘
Two
Rottweilers, he has,' said Humpty, jiggling his knee.

After a pause, Kit said, ‘He who?'

‘Guy who runs this place. Joe and me are convinced he keeps a woman locked away upstairs dressed in a WAAF uniform. Nothing new under the sun,' said Humpty, before topping this platitude with the conspiratorial observation, ‘—apart from all the new stuff, that is.'

Joe glanced at his watch—for the fourth time?

‘If you don't sleep well,' said Humpty, ‘you're—' Whatever he was after, it was evident from his expression that it was negative. ‘Joe doesn't sleep well.'

‘Sleep well—neither do I,' said Kit. ‘You do?'

‘Like the dead,' replied Humpty.

‘That isn't well,' she said, for no particular reason.

‘In your ill-informed opinion.'

‘Humpty—' said Joe.

Kit laughed, but inside she was thinking, God, this was a big mistake. I should really have stayed at home. I could be at home, doing something worthwhile, like
working
.

‘Have you eaten recently?' Joe asked.

Humpty did look starved. He dismissed the question, but
it struck Kit that if he had eaten anything much in the past month, it didn't show.

As he and Joe fell to discussing a person called Buddy, she allowed her mind to uncouple from their exchanges, and lifted her gaze until it snagged on a set of cracks that ran across the ceiling—a vision that occupied her fully until it came to her to ponder, again, the oddities of the Grimwood murder, as she had uncovered them earlier in the day.

She hadn't got as far as explaining this to Joe, but there were aspects of the case that didn't make sense. There had been two suspects. The first, never identified, had been a gentleman, Eliza's last-ever client, whom she had picked up across the Thames at the Strand Theatre, and had slept with hastily, or at any rate semi-clothed, in her back-parlour bedroom the night of her killing. The other had been her cousin, lover and pimp, William Hubbard, who ran the house and had spent that night up in the attics, as was his habit when she had a customer. It had been he who'd found her body when he'd come down before dawn the next morning.