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THE FIRST GLIMMERS of daylight lit the woods around the house. The window was open and it was dark inside. Noonie’s eyes took a few seconds to adjust. Thank God, everything was as she’d left it. She climbed in.
“Are you okay?” Edward said, from below.
“I’m in now. I’ll see you at ten.”
She undressed, tied the clothes he’d lent her in a bundle and dropped them to him. She stopped short of blowing him a kiss. Part of her regretted saying she loved him. She was still married, after all, and she didn’t know what condition Charles was in. Even ill and eighty, he might still have another twenty years left. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel about that, much less do.
Edward lowered the ladder, folded it short and tucked it under his arm. He turned to wave, apparently changed his mind and blew her the kiss she’d been too cautious for. She was glad. She closed the window.
She opened her suitcase, put on a bathrobe and grabbed her sponge bag. She’d washed at Edward’s, but in a daze. She needed a shower then she’d go straight to Charles and confront whatever was lurking in his room. It couldn’t be what it seemed last night. She’d been on the receiving end of a practical joke. She hoped.
She pulled the chest of drawers back to its right place and stepped onto the landing. She didn’t know the way to the bathroom but it was unlikely anyone was awake in the house to help her.
But there was a light on behind the door opposite hers. It was ajar so someone was awake. She remembered Charles’s room was at the end of the corridor, so it wasn’t him.
She went to knock. But she couldn’t help seeing inside.
‘Susan’. That’s right. In a navy blue pullover, cotton trousers and black brogues. She examined herself with obvious distaste in a full-length mirror. On a table lay a filofax and a pair of plastic fangs such as might be had for a few Bahts in a joke-shop.
Noonie knocked. Susan started and turned round, apparently horror stricken. Before Noonie could speak, the door slammed in her face.
She knocked again, determined not to be intimidated. “Is it okay to take a shower?”
“Yes, take a shower!” said a hurried voice.
The door opened. Susan stood to attention in a long overcoat. “What did you just see?”
“A pair of plastic fangs.”
“Er, yes, that was Valérie’s idea. Sorry.”
“I - ”
Suddenly, Susan sat down hard on her bed and burst into tears. “Okay, okay, I work for the Post Office!” she said, as if it had been drawn from her by hours of torture. “I’m not going to work today! I’m going to commit suicide, okay! I’ve got nothing left to live for!”
Her eyes closed, her chin dropped onto her throat and her breathing deepened.
After what seemed like an age, Noonie realised she was asleep.
She tiptoed over and checked she wasn’t mistaken. Then she laid Susan on her bed and covered her with the quilt. She noticed a bottle of sleeping tablets on the bedside table.
She’d threatened to commit suicide. Perhaps a ready bottle of pills wasn’t a good idea. She put it in her pocket, switched out the light and closed the door on her way out. She heard Susan snore.
Twenty minutes later, she’d showered and changed. She was no longer afraid of anything in this house, including whatever was in Charles’s room.
She towelled her hair, marched across the landing and let herself into Charles’s room, making sure to close the door noiselessly. It was a lot lighter now so she could make everything out.
On the other side of Charles’s bed stood a portly man with the hard, red face of someone who is either habitually angry or drunk or both. He was bald except for four dandruff-flecked tufts of grey hair, two above his ears, two inside. He wore an open necked shirt and trousers with stains on the thighs. He regarded her with fury.
She told herself there was nothing to be frightened of, but she felt all last night’s terror returning. She was about to introduce herself when he spoke.
“Madame Butterfly, I presume?”
“Me?”
“Do you know who Madame Butterfly is?”
“What?”
“Do you know who Madame Butterfly is?”
“A character in an opera?”
“Real name Cio-Cio San, marries Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, an American naval officer. Thinks she’s in love. He gives her a good seeing-to then sails into the sunset. When he returns, three years later, he’s married to an American woman. Meanwhile, poor Butterfly’s had his baby. The Americans snatch the baby and Cio-Cio tops herself. The end.”
She drew a breath. She was going to use it to say something. But she let it out.
“You’re the new ‘Madame Swinter’?” he said. “Yes?”
“That’s right ...”
“Consummated your marriage yet, might I ask?”
He looked as if he might become violent. She had to keep the conversation – such as it was – going.
“Yes,” she said.
“You lie.”
“Who are you?”
He dropped his hostility and bowed at the neck. “Allow me to introduce myself. Richard Appleton, Charles’s doctor. I understand you married just over a month ago. Would it be fair to say you thought he was much younger than he is?”
“I didn’t know he was eighty.”
“So who told you he was eighty?”
“Is he?”
“Yes, but who told you?”
“A friend of mine.”
“Name of Edward Grant?”
“How did you know that?”
He smiled. “I saw him helping you back into the house. I see a lot of things in this place. Things I’m not supposed to. It was quite a tumble you took last night, hanging out of the window like that. You were lucky not to break something, Madame Butterfly. No, Edward Grant and I go back a long way although he doesn’t know it. He didn’t even know of my existence until recently.”
“How ill is Charles?”
“As ill as can be. I’m afraid there won’t be any more all night romps, him mounting you like a lust-crazed stallion on amphetamines, you unable to control your wholly unexpected, from-the-depths-of-your-very-being shrieking into the - ”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you think? He’s senile.”
She was getting angry. “What sort of a ‘doctor’ are you, anyway? Does anyone else even know you’re here?”
He scoffed. “Valérie called me in. Susan’s not much good for anything. Let me ask you, how old did Charles tell you he was?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Allow me to show you something.”
He took her over to Charles’s bed. For the first time since she had come into the room, she took her eyes off Appleton to examine her husband. The roots of his hair had grown white, although each tip still retained the dye he had obviously been wearing in Thailand. He held his shrunken head loosely, his mouth hung open and his lips were thick with spittle. He was in pyjamas. Although his eyes were open, he showed no awareness either of her or of the conversation. He smelt of surgical spirit and unscented soap. On his bedside table stood six different jars of tablets.
“Charles?” she whispered.
He made no response. Meanwhile, Appleton undid his pyjama buttons. When he finished, he levered Charles forward off the bed and pulled the flannelette jacket down to his chest. Charles’s head drooped forward as if on a slack spring.
“Look,” Appleton said. He indicated a line like a scar that ran all the way round Charles’s body, just below his neck-line. Without waiting for her to react, he rolled up Charles’s sleeves to indicate a similar scar all the way around each wrist.
“What ... are they?” she said.
He smiled. “The condition of the flesh above and below ought to give you a clue. Here’s another clue. Young on one side, old on the other.”
Now that he’d pointed it out to her, it was obvious. Above the neckline, Charles’s flesh was relatively taut and, despite his condition, relatively youthful-looking. The same for the flesh below his wrist lines. On the other side, it was that of an eighty year-old man.
“Some sort of cosmetic surgery?” she said.
“Good. There are also cuts under his chin, for the conventional face-lift. But this is much, much more than that. It involves the very latest techniques, to the point where some of it was frankly experimental. It’s what I suppose might be called a ‘skin-lift’ although there’s no official tag for it yet. Even Valérie’s never heard of this sort of thing and she’s a cosmetic surgery addict. It’s the surgery of eternal youth. In twenty years time, if all its teething problems can be ironed out, it’ll be ubiquitous. The trouble is, as I say, right now, it’s still in its early stages. So we were about to reach the point where, if we had to make Charles’s skin go any further, it would have become translucent. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen him without a shirt on, have you?”
“No.”
“Hot country, Thailand. Did that never strike you as odd?”
“I just thought he was very ... proper.”
“Eternal youth was what he wanted. It’s what we all want.”
“I don’t want it.”
He pulled a sour face. “Oh, but it’s coming. You might not want it, Madame Butterfly, but it’s coming. Ageing is a disease. If it’s a disease, it must be curable. I’ve actually got colleagues – Aubrey de Grey, Michel Djerzinski, you must have heard of them? No, no, of course you haven’t, you’re just a little butterfly. They’re trying to cure it. And if they succeed, do you know what’ll happen? It’ll be the end of everything hard, everything difficult, everything worthwhile. We’ll be condemned to live in the world of the young for the rest of history.”
He’d gone even redder. He walked to the window and back again, filliping his fingers, panting, recovering his composure. “If you haven’t seen Charles with his shirt off, then you must have been lying when you said you’d consummated your marriage. Yes?”
She hardly cared to argue. She sighed. “Okay, yes. Why are you so interested?”
“I’d be very surprised if you weren’t. He’s gay.”
“Gay? How do you know?” She suddenly felt ill. She’d been deceived in every way it was possible for a new wife to be deceived.
“Because I myself am gay,” he replied. “Charles and I were lovers for exactly one year, fifteen years ago. He came out of the closet and he found the cool, fresh air too disturbing. So he went back inside and for the rest of his life he tried his hardest to stay there. Your husband was the love of my life. I love him now. Do you love him?”
She was shaking. “I don’t know. I did.”
“Now?”
“No.”
He gave a grateful smile and bowed from the neck again. “Sit down. Let me do the talking from here on.”
Shaking harder now, she sat down on the armless chair next to Charles, folded her hands and stared at the ground as if she expected it to open and receive her. Appleton sat down on the other side and his tone became almost affable.
“It was always me who did the chasing, of course. He was big on self-loathing and it was obvious from the start where it was all headed. After we fell in love, we travelled the world. After twelve months he broke with me. Thenceforth our communications were reduced to indirect orders, from him to me, to procure him cosmetic surgery.
“Of course, I got to know his first wife, Vivienne. I’m the village doctor, or one of them. I never spoke to her about our relationship but we became friends. He tried to construe that as my betrayal of him. Of course, I could never have betrayed him. I love him. Still, now.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because you’re his wife.”
“What does that even mean, any more?”
“Nothing, if that’s what you choose to make it.”
Her throat suddenly sank. “Where does Edward Grant fit into all this? Is he a homosexual too?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“You said you and he ‘go back a long way’.”
“I also said he didn’t know of my existence till recently. No, after Charles and I split up, Charles apparently decided to try his hand at Platonic love. He decided to keep zoo animals, in other words. Young, attractive men in dire need of help. Edward Grant was a failed inventor when Charles met him. Charles threw cash at him and he came good. Now he’s a millionaire. For what it’s worth, he’s almost certainly not gay. His relationship with Charles could never have lasted otherwise.”
“You said young men. Plural. Presumably, there were others.”
“One other. You should like him. A Thai restaurateur called Thanongsak Chongdee. Again, an out-and-out nobody till he chanced across Charles’s path.”
“Is that all? Are there any other murky secrets you feel you ought to tell me about? I mean, while we’re here? I might as well know everything.”
“Cosmetic surgery, true age, true sexual orientation ... No, I think I’m all done now.”
She put her head in her hands. She felt like laughing. It was so calamitous, it was almost farcical.
“I suppose you’ll be on your way back to Thailand,” he said. “You’ve got as much from him as you’re ever going to. When he dies, Valérie will go to court and argue he wasn’t in his right mind when he married you. I’ll be called as an expert witness and I’ll back her analysis. You won’t get a penny. You’ll be lucky to keep the clothes you’re standing up in if he had anything to do with buying them.”
She shook her head. Even her little gesture of magnanimity, her planned renunciation of the Will, was hopeless now. So long as she remained in this house she’d be despised as a gold-digger.
“One of us is redundant,” he said. “Either you stay in this house and I’m redundant, or I stay here and you’re redundant. Which is it to be?”
Damocles’ sword. They felt her hair stand on end.
“I’m staying here.” she said.
His mouth dropped open. “But – but that means I’m redundant. What? I don’t understand. Are you – are you some sort of mad Christian?”
“I’m not a Christian at all.”
“So be it.”
He strode out of the room. She heard him descending the stairs.
She felt like a boxer who’d taken one too many punches. She just wanted to lie down and switch herself off. She looked at Charles again. He was unrecognisable. What was the connection between the man she had married and this – human body, on the bed in front of her?
It was not even as if he’d had broken down to become the body. No, the man had never existed. She’d married a ghost – and it had dissolved. She felt nothing for the body even though she’d just committed herself to looking after it for the rest of its life.
Nevertheless, two or three days ago, this wouldn’t have been her worst-case scenario. That was a Charles who’d ‘come to his senses’ and wanted to disown her.
There was a knock on the door. Valérie Swinter-Jones came in wearing a red dress with a cardigan and carrying a plate of sliced mango and a cup of something.
“How is he?” she whispered.
Noonie couldn’t find anything to say. There was only one honest answer.
“I’ve cut you up some fruit for your breakfast. I tend to make the food in this house so I’ll be making yours from here on. Fruit for breakfast, meat for lunch, fish for dinner. I’ll show you round the house later – if you’re staying, that is.”
“He’s senile.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that. It’s a risk you must have known you were taking, though, marrying an eighty year-old.”
“I thought he was fifty-five.”
Valérie looked incredulous then contemptuous. “What a disappointment, then.”
Noonie went over to the window. It was the start of a very sunny day. “I’m staying.”
“In that case, I’ll show you round the house later. Don’t mind Appleton, by the way. He’s spent the last fifteen years wracked with jealousy, he’s bound to be a bit odd. Fluctuates between sadist and saint. I’m sorry you had to meet him but it couldn’t be helped. He insisted on looking after Charles in your absence and since he had the expertise and he was acting gratis ... well, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Later on, we’ll go through some rest homes together.”
“Some what?”
“Rest homes. In the West, we put our old people into what are called ‘rest homes’, where they’re looked after by professional carers. Old people tend to live a lot longer over here I’m afraid and dementia’s fairly standard once you get past a certain age. It sounds a bit callous, a ‘home’, I know, but otherwise all the young people would have to give up working to look after all the old people and that just wouldn’t be sensible now, would it? I’ve already selected some for Charles. The cheapest, really. I mean, he’s not going to know where he is or what’s happening to him.”
“I’d like to look after him here, if that’s all right.”
Valérie double-took and smiled. “Do you know, I hadn’t thought about that before, but then, what else are you going to do? You can’t just hang around the house all day waiting for him to pop his clogs. You’d just be getting in the way. It sounds perfect to me. You look after him here, yes. You’ll have to take care of the house, as well mind. This is his house. Your husband’s house.”
“I know.”
“Of course, I’ll be living here too. And Susan. He is my father and Susan’s grandfather.”
“I know.”
“I’ll show you the sorts of things that need doing then when I show you round the house, later.”
Noonie suddenly realised that her status had been subtly fixed. She was to be an unpaid maid. Valérie had imposed her will on the situation to such a degree that it wouldn’t have seemed inappropriate for Noonie to thank her.
“Are you going to eat that fruit and drink the tea I made you, or shall I throw them away?” Valérie said.
“I’ll eat it now.”
“Good. When you’ve finished, there’s someone to see you downstairs. You’ve got visitor, girl. So eat up quickly. On the double.”
A visitor? Edward. Thank God. She’d never been so much in need of a friend before. She was ready to ask him to carry her away for ever.
She did as she was told while Valérie watched in silence. She returned the empty plate and cup. Valérie kissed Charles’s cheek and stroked his hair. Then she led the way to the living room.
But when she closed the door Noonie found herself face to face with someone not-Edward. Someone south-east Asian. He wore an expensive beige suit with suede loafers and he had a white handkerchief in his breast pocket and a flower in his lapel. He clutched a bouquet and a red box. He smiled.
“Welcome to England!” he said in Thai.
This must be Thanongsak Chongdee.
