Chapter 55

 

I can smell his skin. I open my eyes. It’s dark. The wind throws nails of rain against the windows. We are in his bed.

Gene is lying beside me. His face is in shadow. A sheet clings to the outline of his body, moving as he breathes.

Everything is too clear for night. My eyes feel full of sand. My lenses are probably ruined.

But what a way to go.

I push myself up on an elbow and look at him. While I have twenty-twenty vision I’m going to make the most of it. How amazing to be here with him.

He twists over and pins me like a judo throw. His face is above me, in shadow. I look for his eyes. They are a sliver of white, like mother of pearl. Restless, questioning.

Pressed under the bridge of his arms, I smile. ‘You’re always watching, aren’t you? Never let your guard down.’

His face comes closer.

‘Don’t you dare hypnotise me now,’ I say on a gasp for air. ‘I want to remember this.’

He pulls back, looks at me thoughtfully, then strokes one hand over my eyelids, closing them.

‘I want to show you something. Stay there. Keep your eyes closed.’

I feel him move away, leave the bed. The sweat from his touch leaves cold prints on my skin.

The bed gives as he climbs back on and prowls over like a puma. My skin prickles at his warmth.

One hand is placed over my eyes. The other pulls at my shoulder. Sit up.

I do. A band of silk makes a mask over my eyes and nose.

I try to investigate.

‘Don’t touch.’

He moves behind me. Glassy fabric brushes against my back as he ties the band. He is wearing a silk dressing gown. An exquisite idea.

I want to see him in it but the band is a blindfold.

More silk settles on my shoulders.

He guides my arms into sleeves, then clambers around me onto the floor, pulling my hand.

I get up. His hands fasten the robe then he gets behind me, steering me. My feet navigate a rough textured carpet. A few paces and there’s the metal runner between the carpets in two rooms.

‘Why the blindfold? It’s dark anyway.’

‘Shh. You’re in the doorway.’

One stride; two. I try to remember the layout of his flat. Bathroom to the right, lounge to the left. Where are we going? More strides, then he turns me left and whispers.

‘Stop.’

I try the blindfold but his hand says no.

Noises. A metal bar, like a fire door opening. A smell, like beeswax polish and the old tea scent of antique fabric. He nudges me forwards.

The texture under my feet changes. It’s wooden floorboards. Dusty, with wide gaps between. Like piano keys.

He’s taken me through the fire escape into next door.

‘What are we doing?’

His answer is to lead me onwards. For a moment I’m disorientated and don’t want to go. Then something makes me feel warm, like it’s right to be in here.

I don’t believe in atmospheres or auras, but this room has one. It must be a smell or a noise. I can’t walk any more until I know. Must take this silk off my eyes.

He stills my hands. Still as lead. He could whisper the fear away from a panicking bird.

His silk gown rustles. He puts something in one of my ears.

A headphone.

It comes alive with a faint hiss. Timpani, trembling into life. An orchestra answering with an emphatic A, as though all the instruments are snapping their eyes open.

Then, tumbling out of it, the piano.

Grieg’s piano concerto in A minor.

‘You’ve been listening to this?’ I fall back deliciously against him like a sweet memory of being sixteen. My eyelids flutter on the silk binding, wanting to open.

Gene puts his arms around me, pinning me still. Blindfold stays. Closes his fingers around my right hand which is trying to play the air. I feel the familiar burn of pain in my wrist and so I surrender.

He must have the other headphone because I can hear it as a fuzzy echo.

The Grieg halts, skips to something else. No more the anguished questions of A minor. Now G major, grounded and resolved. A Rachmaninov prelude.

Everything disappears except Gene’s solid warmth behind me. His silk arms, his head leaning on mine. We stay there, the notes streaming around us, like Klimt’s lovers in the fireflies.

It is so long since I listened to music properly. I haven’t dared. But at this moment, it is sweet, not bitter. Because it is not what matters now.

The prelude rises and rolls and the last note exits into silence.

Gene removes the headphones. Still he stops me taking off the blindfold, puts a finger to my lips. Shh.

He’s such a showman. What’s he going to do now?

There is a noise like an object being put on a wooden box. It echoes. A faint metallic resonance.

I tear the blindfold off.

We are standing at a piano keyboard.

Gene sits on the bench and pulls me down beside him. He’s stolen my balance and the ground is heaving under me. I fall against the bench.

The strings inside the keyboard reverberate again.

That’s what the aura in the room is. Two hundred steel strings in an iron frame.

The keys are waiting. A strict row of black and ivory, smudged like old light switches with the prints of many fingers. Welcome home. I knew you’d be back. Come and tell me everything.

I shove it away and stand up. The stool scrapes on the floorboards. The steel strings ring. Like the piano is disappointed.

Other instruments stare out of the walls. A double bass in its case, like a bulbous coffin. Violins stacked on shelves in battered black cases. Antique piano stools with bald tapestry.

The door to the flat, revealing a wall and another door beyond, and, like a distant smile, the white basin in Gene’s bathroom.

In front of me, that piano.

Gene pulls me back onto the stool. I don’t look at the keyboard. I look at him.

The moon turns his hair intense black, spills a mercury sheen on his silk robe.

He whispers. ‘You could play. There’s nobody in the building. They’ve all gone home.’ He trails his fingers along my collarbone. Stops in the hollow in the middle. He smiles, as though he has had a ravenous idea, looks at his fingers between the V at the front of my robe. ‘Or we could see how comfortable this bench is.’

The piano sings a soft harmony to his voice. His fingers slip down my breastbone, putting flames on my skin.

He pulls his hand away. Puts his elbow on the dark wood of the piano case, tilts his head on his hand. Flicks the iPod. ‘Play that thing by Grieg.’

I stare at the keyboard.

Grieg, says the piano. My wrists hurt.

‘Play it like you did at Kate’s party.’ A lean leg slides against mine, the razor edge of his shin bone. ‘Or I will have to do now what I wanted to do then.’

Something starts to shake deep inside me. I kick his leg away, get up, lose my balance because his weight stops the stool moving back, stumble against the piano.

It answers with a shimmering growl.

I clamber over the stool, shouting, barely able to form sentences. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

My cry hangs in the metal wires. And in the violins and basses that sleep against the walls.

He stands up, reaches for me. I am already away from him, pushing past an antique Chesterfield to get to the fire door and the sensible world.

He follows me through on athletic strides. ‘Carol, listen. You’ve been desperate to play. You need to get it out of your system. It’s like a bereavement, you need to say goodbye.’

I reach the bedroom. Tears are turning my vision to liquid. My clothes are a comet tail on the floor. I snatch them up.

He puts a hand on my arm.

‘Carol, talk to me. This is no good.’

No. You want my reaction. You want me to scream at you. It’s all about control. It’s all tricks and games.

I push past him into the bathroom, barge the door shut, fling the clothes down. I start dressing, ripping my clothes away from his. Those dark jeans are tangled in mine. The intimacy is false, fake. I throw the jeans away from me, hard at the wall. The metal belt buckle crashes into a glass shelf, then the whole lot smashes into the bath. I haul on jeans, jumper, slam feet into boots.

‘Carol? The regressions are getting darker. Don’t you see? Something’s building.’

This is just a game to him. An arrogant theory of pain. He wants a reaction? I’ll give him a reaction.

I pick up an antique tooth mug from the basin and chuck it into the bath. It shatters, mingling with the remains of the glass shelf. I grasp the handle, now a hook of glass with jagged edges, and pull the door open. Just you dare charm me into making peace.

He isn’t there. I go out into the hall. Put the light on. The tea chests are in the living room, still not unpacked. Freak. The iPod and the Dictaphone are on the table. That tape’s mine. I’ll pick it up before I go.

A sound. I carve the air with my glass claws.

Something rushes me from behind. I hit the frame of the bathroom door. My ribs smash the air out of me. Gene is jammed up behind me, pushing me into the wall with his body.

He has my left hand, holds it against the door frame.

Elbows the door shut until it traps my hand.

His voice is in my ear. ‘When I was a kid my parents had terrible rows. I remember my father shutting my mother’s hand in a door. And then weeping all the way as he drove her to hospital.’

He increases the pressure. The edge of the wooden door begins to bite into the long bones of my hand. I can see it creasing the flesh. It’s like a knife already.

‘So drop the glass before you have to see me cry.’

I let my weapon fall. As it goes I hope it will spear his bare foot. It clatters onto the floor and spins against the skirting board.

He keeps me there a few seconds longer. To demonstrate who has control. He’s breathing fast. His chest rising and falling pushes me painfully against the wall. His sharp hip bones – and something else – press into my back.

He closes his lips languidly on my neck and gives me a tiny bite. ‘Thanks for a great evening.’ With one foot he kicks my pathetic dagger into the far corner. Then he backs away and releases me.

I don’t look back at him. I go down the stairs, pull open the front door and leave.