23

He could feel it—Maria was slipping along one of the paths, and he had to stop her.

But as he hurried toward the house he could see no one. He held his breath and listened. He had the itchy sensation that he was in the company of someone, but there was only sunlight and heat.

He knew then that it was his need to speak with Maria that had tricked his hearing. Maria was not calling his name. He was calling hers, over and over again, in his mind.

He stopped. He wanted to fall to the ground, slither through the dry weeds and hide. Someone was coming. The smell of the grave could not be detected from here, but whoever was lightly stepping along the path had to be stopped.

He gave a cry of welcome.

Sarah gasped and put her hand to her throat.

He apologized for startling her. He was always glad to see her, but now his enthusiasm seemed to surprise her, or trouble her. She stammered, “I looked everywhere. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

“For what?”

Her voice steadied, and she continued, “I looked everywhere for you, Ham.”

“But you knew I was out here, didn’t you? You expected to find me here.”

“I haven’t been spying on you,” she said, quietly.

Speke could not respond to her steady gaze.

She continued, “I was just speaking with Mr. Bell.”

“Christ, I’ve been awful. The man must think I’m the rudest creature in the world. I can’t begin to talk about myself, Sarah. Maybe he should …” He should find another subject, he nearly said. “I hate to keep him waiting.”

“He understands.”

“Does he?” Speke wondered. A man who understood so much could be a great deal of trouble. “Have you seen Maria?”

“She’s in the garden, I think, or in her studio.”

Sarah was deliberately not saying something, Speke could tell.

“It’s very peculiar,” he said, trying to make it sound amusing. “I kept hearing her voice, calling me.”

“I didn’t hear her,” said Sarah.

“No, I decided it was my imagination,” Speke began, but then realized she was saying something about going to the City today with Bell. She wanted to know if that was all right.

“You’re leaving?”

“For the day.”

She was aware that he sounded very happy, and was, he thought, a little surprised, even offended. But it was perfect. She should elope with Bell. That was all there was to it. She should escape with Bell, and never come back. They should have wonderful lives together, and leave this place to its fate.

He took her by the arm, and guided her along the path, back toward the house. “You’ve done so much for me,” he said.

“Ham, are you all right?”

“Fine.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m trying to do more exercise. Get in better shape.”

“GQ said you were an exercise maniac.”

“That was a little unkind, wasn’t it?”

“You need me here.”

“You should travel more, Sarah. You’ve done too much to help me.”

“I’ll stay.”

“I want you to go. Get out of here. I insist.”

It was the ideal solution. With Bell gone, there was no one to fall into the grave by accident, and no one to ask any questions. Besides, she really did deserve a day off. Poor, hardworking, steadfast, trusting Sarah.

“Ham, please. You’re obviously under some kind of stress—”

“I’m a man of iron these days. Everyone knows that.” He made an extravagant wave. “All my troubles are in the past, Sarah. All healed, long since.”

She did not respond.

“I’m a healthy man,” he said.

“Be careful, Ham.”

“I’m like a rock.” He kicked a knob of serpentine out of the path. “Besides, you want to go to the City. You have a spark in your eye.”

She did not speak for a moment. “I can’t look after you this way, Ham. You have to turn to Maria for this kind of help.” She considered for a moment, and added, “You have to turn to yourself.”

“I have my inner resources.” He could not meet her cool, caring eyes. “I just had a little trouble working up some notes for the biography. I was writing about my dreams. My nightmares. The really ugly nightmares I had when I was a kid. Kids have worse nightmares than grownups do. They have to visit all the horror for the first time, a world of fire and violent men and earthquakes. They almost can’t do it. It gives them terrible dreams.”

“Ham, it’s all right. Whatever you think is wrong. It’s all right. There’s nothing that can’t be survived, as long as you have your body and your mind.”

Sarah still believes in me, Speke told himself. She still believes in life.

Inside the house it was cool.

The lounge was silent, that deep quiet that soaks in the footstep and the voice. Have a drink, a voice said, a serpent uncurling in his belly. Go ahead, you deserve it.

He put his hand on the crystal that held cognac, but did not take a drink.

There was a splash in the aquarium. The piranha had snapped at nothing, apparently, breaking the surface of the water. Speke loved the quicksilver bright fish, and he loved the house, this refuge, this citadel of rooms he could enter like a boy, ever surprised at what he found. But he knew that he had neglected this house, and his life, in a fundamental way.

I’m wasting time, he nagged himself. Delaying the inevitable.

The firearms had vanished from this room long before he arrived, pilfered perhaps by servants or nephews decades ago. Guns were frankly evil, in Speke’s view, and he was happy to have not so much as a twenty-two on the estate. He had used the mounts for a display he knew was in doubtful taste, oars from Hitchcock’s Lifeboat and a spear, with a rubber head so old it was gray and stiff, from a Johnny Weissmuller movie.

The steel-bright creature pulsed peacefully in its tank. He never mentioned this to guests, but the piranha, for all its hatchet blade fierceness, was a vegetarian variety, and had never tasted blood.

Maria, he thought-whispered, where are you?

She must be in her studio, as Sarah had suggested, and he had promised her he would never enter that cottage uninvited. After all, they had both agreed, an artist needs that extra measure of privacy.

He often had imaginary conversations with his father. His father merely listened, in his fantasies, preoccupied as he had been in life with some tiny, intricate piece of work. Speke was, as usual, sour with the realization that his father would never listen to one of his songs. Would he have liked my music? Possibly not. His father would certainly not like any of the foul language spat between the characters in the plays. His brother Art had commented on Speke’s fondness for what Art called “the fuck word.”

Look at you, he told himself. You are wasting time. You have left unfinished business. This inner voice was like a talking computer in an early scifi movie, the voice an electric pencil sharpener might have if it got smart.

Wasting time, hurrying from room to room looking for your bride, mooning over your father, muttering about your brother, riding the ancient hobby horse of the many things your family could not, or would not, do for you.

Sarah looked into the room. “Are you sure, Ham?”

“Go, please. And have a wonderful time.” He laughed. “Bell is so lucky.” He silenced himself, because he did, to his surprise, feel a wrench of jealousy.

He laughed at his own feeling of emptiness as she left, at his own desire to call her back.

If I have a gift, he told himself mockingly, it is a rare talent for stalling. Procrastination. First the book, now the movie. Gentlemen, I see no reason why we should completely dig up and unwrap Mr. Asquith’s corpse all in one morning. Why not wait until the afternoon? Gentlemen, a day is fit for any shape. It’s like water. It knows all outlines, all configurations. I think a stroll among the prize roses and a drink would be in order. And then a survey of the library and a drink.

What a strange man I am, such an unlikely alloy of stubbornness and self-deception. We never really know that one person we will never meet, who carries us every heartbeat of our lives. Ourselves, that living shadow, eludes the hand. Jesus! Was this the day Brothers was coming? Or was he here yesterday? He doesn’t come every single day. Or does he?

What if Bell falls into the grave while he’s waiting for Sarah to put on her going-shopping outfit? He might go jogging while he’s waiting, and get Asquith all over him. That would certainly look bad in chapter one of Speke: The Life.

The window opened with difficulty. Tires crackled up the drive, and Bell’s Fiat caught the morning sun. But the sky beyond the ridge of trees was sprinkled with wheeling birds.

Don’t let them see them, he prayed. Let them keep driving. Don’t let them stop. Surely they have to see the tangle of vultures beyond the trees. Maybe—was it possible?—the wind would rise, and they would smell the body.

The green car slowed. They smell it! Of course they did. You can’t leave a body that size half dug up.

Then the gears shifted, the engine finding a lower, stronger note. Speke scrambled to the drive in time to see the Fiat vanish around the curve.

For the moment it was not Maria he needed. He wanted to call to Sarah, to call her back to his side.

But it was too late.

What was it that called him back to the grave so suddenly? Was it the spinning shape of one of the black birds, or the snap of teeth in the distance, so far away he could not have heard them. He found himself running. Unseemly, this rush, he told himself. But he couldn’t help it. There was a sound that he recognized from a corner of his mind, a corner that understood animals and hunger, and the kill.

He stopped, panting hard, and put his hand out to the branch of an oak to steady himself. This can’t be, he thought. Surely I’m mistaken.

It was not the snap of teeth, not even a growl. Something more subtle than that, the rasp of animals taking nourishment. The secret, furtive beasts were feeding.

Branches snatched at him as he charged through the undergrowth. What he saw made him scrabble on the ground for rocks. Black wings flapped upward. He shouted something half-speech and half-howl, and flung a stone at the two slinking, dirt yellow, long-tailed coyotes.

Then he froze, unable to take another step.

The coyotes had dragged the body from the grave.

The body was completely out of the earth, now, and the carpet had unrolled. The corpse was exposed, lying in the bright morning sun.

Speke could not breathe. This was worse than he could have dreamed. This was far worse than any of his childhood nightmares.

Something horrible had happened to Asquith’s body.