6

Matt

My life had become endless operas sung in foreign languages; the sight of those alien faces staring from their tin frames like dead gnats pickled in jars; and the feel of her alien hand between my own nervous fingers.

‘You would like to hear the other side?’ she asked.

‘Not just yet,’ I said. My head was filled with music. I lit a cigarette and watched her move about the room. I had resolved that this would be my last attempt at getting her into the bedroom, that I’d devote all my energies to the task in the last hours of our relationship, and that if I failed I would go down gloriously, all flags flying. There’s no future in persuading the unpersuadable, or in unravelling impenetrable mysteries. And Bella, it seemed, was content to keep our relationship as many yards from the locked bedroom door as possible.

She moved about the room emptying ashtrays, fussing with this or that, rearranging the forest of photographs in such a way that – or did I just fancy it – they were staring in a circle into the room like unwelcome guests at a wedding. Something about the photographs unnerved me. Was it her slavish attention to them? Was it because of an almost morbid element I sensed in her attitude to them? Or was it because the most obvious picture of all was missing from the collection?

I had asked myself enough unanswered questions to occupy a market research firm for a month. And the time for such questions – a luxury, in my circumstances – was almost over. I fully intended to leave Bella that night for the last time. Nor did I plan to return to Eric’s room. This was the ultimate break. Three thousand pounds in my coat, a taxi to London Airport, and a quick flip to anywhere warm. Enough is enough.

Let them settle their own battles. An adage that I believed, but that I hadn’t always adhered to in my crowded life.

Bella sat down and crossed her plump legs. She had her eyes fixed on my face.

‘Opera is so beautiful,’ she said.

‘Indeed, yes,’ I said.

‘It takes you out of this world,’ she said.

‘To where?’

‘Does that matter?’

I went to where she sat and laid one hand on her knee. She didn’t move a muscle. Her eyes, shining, suggesting a warmth that I had still to discover in her, were staring into my face. Slowly I started to move the hand, inch by inch, up the inside of her leg. When I was about four inches from where I wanted to be, she clamped down on me. She was shaking her head.

‘You have a dirty mind,’ she said.

I moved away. A dirty mind – that was an interesting if somewhat prohibitive remark. Did she confuse healthy lust with unhealthy lechery in her mind? Or perhaps she didn’t know that there was a difference between the two.

I sat down and took out my cigarettes.

Having lit one, I said,

‘I’m a man, I have normal male appetites. And …’ I paused for maximum effect, my face heavy with the pain of the secret I was about to reveal. My last tactic, my last gambit. The card that I had been saving, thinking all along that I’d never have to use it.

‘And what?’ she asked.

Good. She was interested.

‘I am in love with you.’

She looked serious for a second and then threw her head back and laughed. She looked attractive doing that, but I couldn’t quite conceal my surprise at her action.

‘Why are you laughing? Is love a laughing matter?’

‘Love. You make me sick up to here,’ and she indicated a place level with her throat. She walked about the room. ‘Love. There is no love. In the whole world there is no such thing. Selfishness, yes. Hatred, yes. Envy. The need to be dominant. Yes. Yes. Yes. But love, no, there is no such a thing as this.’

I said, ‘I only know what I feel.’

She picked at a bowl of flowers on the table.

‘Do you think, do you dream that because you tell me this I am going to lift up my skirt for you and say come to me? You are stupid.’

‘I know what I feel,’ I said, simulating the breaking of one heart in my expression. ‘I know that you’re hurting me. Why? Why are you doing this?’

I was on my knees. It was impressive. The tone of my voice was exactly right. I clutched the hem of her skirt and tugged gently, half-hoping that it might just fall off. But it was held in place – like that other intriguing part of her anatomy – with a hoop of unblemished steel.

‘Stop crawling, stop it,’ she said.

‘I would crawl to the ends of the earth for you,’ I said.

She pushed me away and walked to the other side of the room. She was fidgeting with a piece of paper in her fingers. On my knees, I went stumping after her. There is little advantage, I realised, in being a dwarf. Even so, I didn’t rise. I looked up at her.

‘You are interested only in my bed,’ she said.

‘No, that isn’t true. You know that isn’t true.’

‘Do you deny it?’

‘I’m interested in you,’ I said. ‘I’ve been let down before by a woman. I said I was never going to get emotionally attached again. But look at what’s happened, look at what you’ve done to me, what you’re doing to me.’

She was laughing. Outrageous woman. I was pleased that I wasn’t a genuine suitor. My heart would have broken at this kind of reception. But the more she laughed, the more attractive I found her, and the more I found her attractive the greater became my desire. It was almost an obsession with me now. I’d never gone after a thing so single-mindedly before. For God knows what reasons, I had to have her. Once would be enough. I wasn’t asking a great deal, only the sort of favour any right-headed widow at the prime of her life would grant. If she didn’t like the idea she could always have closed her eyes.

‘Get up on your feet,’ she said.

At last I rose. I took a snotty old handkerchief from my pocket, held it tightly to conceal the stains, and blew my nose with a great display of sadness.

‘You are weak and I do not trust you,’ she said.

Had I been overdoing it? ‘Why? Why don’t you trust me?’

She didn’t answer. She held back the blind and looked out into the darkening street.

There was a long silence while I considered my next move. Force? Only in the last resort. Only when love failed me.

The silence was broken by a noise from the back yard. There was the cry of a human voice and the roar of the dog. I hadn’t seen her come to life so quickly before. In a flash she was across the room and into the hallway. I followed her out. She pulled open the door to the yard, muttering to herself in Italian.

In the yard was an astonishing sight. Eric was circling the snarling dog, from time to time putting the boot in at the animal’s head. I was so amazed by this that for a moment I couldn’t move.

Bella screamed. I rushed into the yard and gripped Eric by the shoulders and threw him against the wall. He looked at me dazed. His face was covered with blood. His jacket was stained and dirty. He was almost unrecognisable. The vacuity had gone from his expression: in its place was a look of terror and anguish. I almost felt pity for him.

While he lay there I turned to look at Bella. She was bending over her dog, stroking and whispering. The dog seemed only to be suffering from shock and, of the two, Eric appeared to have come off worse in the encounter. His trousers were ripped where he had been bitten and his legs were splashed with blood.

I bent down beside him.

I whispered to him, ‘You bloody great idiot. Say nothing. Just keep quiet.’

But he didn’t know what I was talking about. His breath smelled of whisky. Poor bastard. He had come to the end of his tether.

Bella came rushing across. She stood looking down at Eric for a moment and then she spat on him. He got up, very slowly, and then moved towards her. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. One word of recognition from Eric and I could kiss Bella’s bed and the dream of her flesh that had sustained me for the past week a final farewell. They looked at each other. Eric was trembling and she had an almost savage look of hatred on her face.

I gripped Eric by the arm. As I did so Bella brought up her knee and forced it sharply into his groin. I could feel the shock of the pain run through him. She did this two or three times before I realised what was happening.

I moved towards the house, still holding Eric.

‘Murderer,’ Bella was saying. She was standing behind me, trying to get at Eric’s body. ‘Murderer. Bloody murderer. How could you could you could you –’

I got Eric into the hall. He was silent, but his eyes were open. He had gone beyond the point of pain, when the system has absorbed all it can take.

I propped him up against the wall.

She had scissors in her hand. I didn’t know where she had got them from, but there they were, flashing in the dim hall, flashing down through the air towards Eric.

But not towards his face. Not towards the most natural point of attack. They were dipping in a lower arc, moving to a point between his legs. I shoved my arm forward and the blades scraped over the side of my wrist. She dropped the scissors and stood there looking shocked and hysterical. It was then I became aware of the fact that she had intended to stab him in the testicles. I felt nausea inside.

Eric looked at me.

He said, before I could stop him,

‘Matt, please don’t let her kill me. For God’s sake, don’t let it happen.’

I put my hand across his mouth. Stable doors and bolted horses. I glanced at Bella. Had she heard? She was staring blindly at a point just over Eric’s head. She must have heard. She must have heard him, understood the recognition in his voice. But she showed nothing.

‘Matt,’ he said again.

I started to move him towards the front door before further damage could be done. But by then it was too late. I opened the door and pushed him out into the street. He slid down the steps and turned and looked at me, but in the poor light I couldn’t see his expression. And even if I had seen it, I doubt whether I would have understood it.

I closed the door. Bella had gone into the yard. I went into the sitting-room and lit a cigarette. I felt my nerves begin to play, tingling. When she came back she didn’t look at me. She sat down and stared calmly at the wall. It was the kind of calm that comes before a storm. It was the kind of silence in which you can read all sort of things. Hints, threats, unspoken words.

‘Is the dog all right?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice flat.

I looked at her. Why had she tried to stab him in the balls? Did it make sense? Instinctively, you go for the face in such situations. It’s the first thing you think of marking because the face is vulnerable and has expressions that you might want to destroy. But what sort of instinct had led her to want to hurt him there?

She was looking at me.

‘Why did he call you Matt?’

‘He must have been mistaken.’

‘No, he looked as if he knew you.’

‘I’ve never seen him before in my life,’ I said.

‘I do not believe you,’ she said.

Savage bitch. I sat down beside her. When I took her hand it was cold and perfectly still. Was that what she wanted – the castration of the male species?

We didn’t say anything for a long time.

And then I said, ‘No, he was mistaken. Anyway, my name’s Edward Carson. I don’t know anyone called Matt.’

She looked at me wearily. There was nothing expressive of life in the dead face.

‘Like him, you want to harm my Rex. Isn’t that true? Isn’t there some sort of scheme between you?’

I laughed. ‘You’re joking.’

She shook her head.

‘I find it difficult to believe now.’

I said, ‘That’s your trouble. You don’t want to believe anything.’

She looked at me blankly.

‘Why don’t you leave me alone? Why don’t you go? I do not know what you want here. There is nothing for you here.’

Just like that. I could feel my frustrations somewhere inside me, shadows behind dark glass. But I couldn’t get up and leave the way she wanted me to. I’d gone too far along this particular road to make a detour at this stage. Apart from anything else, I felt angry with her. Whether it had something to do with the scene that had just taken place, or whether it was because of her continual refusal, I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I took hold of her hand.

‘You have to believe me,’ I said. A desperate last fling, a last attempt to remain civilised.

‘Leave me,’ she said. ‘Let me go.’

But why should I remain civilised when she wasn’t so far from the jungle herself? I remembered the scissors swinging down wildly on Eric. Was that civilised?

I pulled her blouse open. She started to move away from me. I got hold of her waist and dragged her down on the sofa. My time was running out, had almost run out. My patience had snapped long ago. She was throwing her hands against my face, striking me. But I could suffer that.

She managed to get her knee into the pit of my stomach and for a moment I rolled away, winded. She rushed out of the room and into the hall. I followed her just in time to see her vanish into the bedroom. Before I could get my foot in the door, I heard the lock snap.

I stood there for a bit, looking at the thick door. It was best to be rational. I could not have persuaded her, in a year, to come out to me – therefore, I had to get in. I kicked the door a couple of times but nothing happened, except that I wrenched my ankle.

‘Please,’ she said from inside the room. ‘Please do not come in.’

I didn’t listen. There wasn’t time. Part of me was saying, leave, leave now. But I had no time to listen to that either. I pushed my shoulder against the door.

‘I have bolted the door,’ she said. ‘You can never break it down.’

I rushed at the door again. My rage was increasing with every minute that I wasted, battering my body against the stubborn bloody wood. I stopped and looked round for something to use. In the silence I heard her scream a couple of times.

I found an axe in a cupboard at the end of the hall. It was a heavy instrument and the blade was rusty. But it would do far more than I could manage with my shoulder. She screamed while I banged the wood with the axe. She didn’t stop screaming. She wouldn’t stop. I wanted to get in there to make her stop. And then the bloody dog was howling from the yard.

Every so often I thought, Why am I doing this? But I’d gone beyond the point of asking myself stupid questions. I wanted the woman. I wanted to make her stop screaming. There were no answers to such questions anyway. I only knew I had to get through the door.

The wood began to splinter. Her screaming stopped. I could hear her sob. Christ, was she that afraid? I could hear her sob and beat her hands against the wall.

I drove the axe clean through the panel. And then, with a couple more blows, the whole panel came away. I could see into the room.

At last I could see into her bedroom.

There was only a small, dim lamp burning by her bedside. She was lying hunched up on the bed, her hands stuffed into her mouth, staring at me with a wild fear.

But it wasn’t at her that I was looking. It wasn’t at her. My eyes were drawn to a point beyond her head, to the other side of the room.

I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t take in what I saw.

On top of her furniture was a large glass jar. Inside the jar, suspended in liquid, was a white object covered in tattoos.

I stared inanely for a long time. The axe had fallen to the floor. Everything else suddenly didn’t matter. Everything had become concentrated on that object, that white object, covered with pictures, in the glass jar.

I started to say something. But as in a dream when it’s a matter of life and death that you speak, I could say nothing.

I turned and ran down the corridor away from the broken shards of the door. I pulled my coat from the peg and ran into the street.

I didn’t stop running until I got to Cricklewood Broad-way. A taxi. I had to get a taxi. I had to get to the airport. I stood on the kerb, feeling numb.

I stared at the passing traffic.

The taxi I wanted didn’t come. Instead, a large black Ford drew up beside me and I stepped forward, thinking only of putting a great distance between myself and Cricklewood, before I realised my mistake.

By then it was too late to turn and run again. By then it was too late.