Turquoiselle Page 2

  “Yes. But I don’t.”

  “That’s all right then.”

  “Do you?” she asked at once.

  Carver had shaken his head. “No.” No, he thought. Donna was more than enough.

  As he drove into the village, the car sliding slow now, with a long soft feral purr, he saw dim yellow in the curtained side window of The Bell. The purring note might be a signal the engine, as before, was about to play up. And The Bell was having another lock-in late drinking session.

  Carver pulled over and parked in the yard. He did this now and then, Ted at the Bell did not object.

  “Oh, it’s you, mate,” said Ted, letting him cautiously through under the porch like a secret lover. “What’ll you have? Usual?”

  “Thanks, Ted.”

  “Long old day for you, up town?” Ted asked the ritual question.

  “Yes. Too long.”

  “Here you are, then. Lock Heim.” Ted added the Jewish good wish with his emphatic regulation phonetic misspelling.

  “Cheers.”

  Carver drank the black coffee in a corner of the bar, away from the rest of the small group who were habitually here during a lock-in, and after harder stuff, not always limited to alcohol.

  He would spend a quarter of an hour, leave the car and walk the rest of the way. By doing that he could be home about 1.30. She must be asleep by then for sure. Donna slept easily and deeply. He would not wake her. The spare room was fine.

  A bird was singing in the lane, up among the trees with the stretch of fields behind them; there was unbroken woodland on the other side, behind the house. Despite this nocturnal aria it was not a nightingale, though musical enough. A blackbird, very likely, but roused by what? The lane’s few and isolated street-lamps had failed to come on tonight; often they did not work.

  No lamps showed in the house. Occasionally Donna did turn them out, even in the hall and inside the glassed-in front door. Only a security bulb flared on therefore as he got near, as it did anyway for every fox, badger or neighbourhood cat.

  Carver unlocked the entrances, using another three keys, here, one for the glass panel and two for the main door.

  Having gained the inner doorway, he glanced out again, and noted the night staring back at him as the security bulb extinguished: the primal and unnegotiable darkness. Quietly he shut outer and inner doors.

  Living sound sprang up without warning, not twenty feet away in the unlit enclosure.

  For a moment Carver, if anyone could have seen, became an invisibly distended and sparkling electric wire of attention. But in another moment, just before the lightning strike came of all the hall lights bursting on together from a master switch, he had relaxed, shrunk down again into an uninterested traveller re-entering his home.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Donna screamed, standing between the main room and the hall, vivid with incandescent irritation and a sort of fear.

  Carver looked at her.

  “You know where I’ve been.”

  “Do I? Where?”

  “At work, and then at the bloody dinner for the client afterwards. As I told you I’d probably have to be.”

  “Yes, told me. You told me. Do you know what fucking time it is?”

  “Thirty-three minutes past one.”

  “You said – you said – if you were going to be later than midnight you would call me.”

  “No, Donna, I didn’t say that.”

  “You did. You did – and then no call – and when I tried your mobile it’s off – as it always is off when you’re out–”

  “No, Donna. Only I can’t always get a signal or clear reception when I’m driving. You know that.”

  “I know so much, don’t I? Not enough though. Where have you been? There is someone, isn’t there? Some shitty bitch you’re seeing – and I’m pregnant, Carver, I’m going to have your baby–”

  Donna was crying. “Look,” he said, “let’s go and sit down. I’ve been held up by roadworks all the way. Let’s have a drink...”

  “I can’t have a fucking drink – can I – I’m fucking pregnant–”

  He returned her into the room, her unseen sparks of frustration and rage and sorrow flying off her – he could sense her own primitive electricity; in the half-light that now illumined everything, he could almost see the glitter of it. He organised her sitting on the couch. He went out to the kitchen and brought her back half a glass of white wine from the fridge. “It won’t hurt you.”

  “It will. You want it to hurt me.”

  He sat beside her as her momentum ran down, (like the batteries he had visualised inside the doll-people between Trench Street and Holland Row). She sipped the drink, staring at the enormous, currently blank screen of the TV.

  “You misunderstood what I said, Donna,” he told her.

  “I thought you’d been in an accident,” she whimpered, “I thought you were dead.”

  When finally he had got her up to bed, helped her undress, and arranged the duvet over her, fetched her hot rosehip and camomile tea, tucked her in, he left her, with the bedside lamp on the lowest turn of the dimmer, like a difficult child scared of a monster under the bed. Presumably there would soon be two of those, two children, her and the child; maybe two monsters as well. As he passed the spare room on the way downstairs again, he abruptly registered unexpected proof of the intention of this.

  On top of the double bed was spread a magazine. It demonstrated, in articles and garish photographs, how the changing of such a space might be accomplished: spare room to something suitable for a baby, a toddler, a kid of five to fifteen.

  Below in the kitchen Carver turned off the light. He stood looking out into the garden behind the house. The night remained, still on watch and staring back. But, his eyes adjusting, he could see stars now, sharply bright as if with frost, between the trees of the wood beyond. He had a late start tomorrow, did not need to leave the house until twelve o’clock.

  Carver placed his hand inside the pocket of his coat. He turned an object there loosely over and over, but not removing it. Tomorrow morning he would put the object out in the shed. With the other stuff. He could just see the shed’s glimmer from here, faintly. It might only be starlight. One could never be certain, until closer. On nights of full moon you could not be sure at all.

  Once a thief, always a thief. Heavy had pronounced the word Theave however, those countless ill-assorted years ago.

  Carver went to sleep swiftly, but Donna woke him about 5 a.m., being sick in the second bathroom nearest the spare room, instead of in the more private en suite. He listened, monitoring her now, but the noises soon stopped. She retreated to her bed again, slamming the door, with a strong healthy vandalistic crash.

  Heavy said, in Carver’s dream, “What’s it mean, your name? Is it means to be you’re a sculptoror, you know, carving things – or you carve stuff in stones for dead bodies. Or you’re a butcher? You carve up meat?” Shut up Carver answered. Heavy screamed at him on a high metallic note. Carver undid his eyes, and the alarm clock said 9 a.m. He killed its siren, and went to the second bathroom along the corridor. It was untouched, it seemed, by anything – even the towels were dry when he used them after the shower.

  Two

  Silvia Dusa was standing by the fourth floor annex coffee machine, weeping. In the half-light through the blind and the tarpaulin that covered the window-glass also on the outside, her tears shone spectacularly, like mercury.

  Carver halted. He said and did nothing for a moment.

  But this was, in the most bizarre way, like a direct piece of continuity, following somehow instantly, (despite the interval of domestic attendance, sleep, waking, and the drive back to London) on that other sobbing outcry of Donna’s last night. They resembled two takes in a movie. Only the actress had changed.

  After a minute, “Can I help,” he said. A neutral tone.

  No condemnation, no kindness, no pulsing rush to know or assist.

  “Go to hell,” she hissed, and
turned away.

  He too turned instantly, but as he did so she said, in a low, crushed voice, “No – wait. Wait–”

  Dusa was perhaps, ethnically, if only partly, of Italian origin. But she had a Spanish glaze to her, her hair thick and coal-black, eyes dark, and everything clad in a fawn, honeyed skin. Her hot temper was a by-word in the office. Now she cried mercury tears in a breath-lisping near noiselessness, but with the passion of a drama by Lorca.

  Carver stood at the wall, and waited. Obviously, coffee right now was out of the question. He had not really wanted coffee anyway. He did not either want this.

  “I must talk to someone,” Dusa muttered, angrily.

  “Yes?” He spoke warily. One had to remember, almost all the social spaces were open to Security. You should be careful what, even innocently, you said, did, unless being careful might itself seem suspicious.

  “It’s my mother,” said Dusa, now in a strangled tone. “She’s ill.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No you’re not. Only I am sorry. She is my mother, not yours.” She shot him one of her laval glances, full of hate, loathing and despair. Some of them found this sexy. Carver wondered why. She pushed past him, her body brushing over his. (Neither was this at all arousing.) Her scent remained, it had a strange theme of musk and oranges; something smoky, another element acidulous and sharp.

  He found she had put a piece of paper, half a page torn from a corner-shop notebook, into his hand. He made himself the unwanted coffee, still holding the paper, then walked off again, not looking at the note, neither concealing nor making anything of it, as if forgetting.

  Back in his room he dropped the note on the table, left it there and sat before the screen, next activating and running through the current disc-file on Scar.

  The Third Scar: Remember, the curse always has to do with the third one. Take the plot from this point to the other two possibilities: 1) A mark on the left hand, present since childhood, or the left arm, perhaps more recent. And 2) The terrain allocated for any relevant meeting.

  Carver cleared the screen. The second plot point was new. He would need to contact Latham, who today was on leave. As if catching sight of it and recollecting, he reached out and idly took up the paper note. Dusa’s pencilled scribble was eccentric but readable. Long’s 12. She had hardly chosen a secluded or private place then, which might indicate either extreme caution or the genuinely mundane. Carver was inclined in any case not to go, he had other things to do, and for all Dusa knew could have another unavoidable date, like the dinner the previous evening. In that event, however, he might as well visit Long’s and lyingly explain to her before escaping.

  He switched off the computer, got his jacket, and went along the corridor to the lift. Downstairs, BBS was back on duty. “Can I just check you, Mr Carver?”

  Bugger Back-Scratcher made a thorough job of this, he always did with the male contingent. (“Gay as the Gordons,” Latham said.) Last night though Bugger had not wanted to feel Carver over, which in a way had been lucky, as last night Carver had had the stolen object in his pocket. Then again, one could always make an excuse. The kind of things that would cause a problem – unauthorised cash, cards, files or weaponry – were not involved.

  The sun was fully out again, shining down on Holland Row and its garlanded trees. A slender creeping stain of orange was after all just burning through the leaves, fairly subtle as yet, as in Silvia Dusa’s perfume, and, just as Silvia Dusa maybe was, gathering speed and strength to pounce.

  She was not inside the pub, a cramped and old-fashioned venue with nooks and crannies, so Carver walked round it once, to be sure, then out again. And there she was, by the doorway with her head arrogantly lifted.

  “The park,” she said.

  “All right.”

  He wondered why he had acquiesced so quickly and pliantly. No doubt because of the traces of tears still under her eyes. You learnt, he thought, to behave in this way, or sometimes you did, less empathy and human decency than some type of social conditioning. Or was he only curious?

  They – Westminster Council, ostensibly – were having something done along the paths, blocking them. Boards were laid out in order pedestrians could, after all, trample over the grass. Birds poured across in clutches, protesting yet, from force of habit, indifferent to the always-disturbing interference of mankind.

  She did not speak for a while. At last she said, “We will sit here.” A decree? But then, a hesitation: “Yes?”

  “Yes. Why not.”

  They sat on a bench under the trees; a few leaves lay on the ground, for the path, just here, was unimpeded. A dull working rumble from some mechanical device came at measured, aggravating intervals.

  “You see, Car,” she used his office nickname, “I have – I’ve done something stupid.”

  A long, long gap, with three choruses of the rumbling machine.

  He said, “You mean about your mother.”

  “No. This is not about my mother. Oh, she’s ill. Who cares, the old bitch. I hate her, always I have, from seven years of age. This is something stupid I did, when not thinking clearly. I have – given something to... to someone.”

  What? was what most people would say, Carver thought. Instead he replied calmly, “You need to talk to Jack Stuart.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Dusa. As quickly as you can.” (He could not use her own circulating office nickname – it was the obvious one, with the letters ME attached at the front.) “You need to talk to him before four this afternoon.”

  She shook her head; or it was more that she shivered violently all over. “Then I’m dead. Aren’t I? Aren’t I, Car?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve done. No –” He looked directly at her, with a face of stone. “You don’t tell me. You tell Jack Stuart.”

  “You’ve brought a Third Person,” she said, staring at him, “you have recorded what I’ve–”

  “No. I didn’t think to bring one, Dusa. You said you were upset over your mother. I believed you.”

  “Shittalk. You believe nobody. I believe nobody.”

  “Believe me. Stuart. Before 4 p.m.”

  Carver stood up, and at once she had risen too and caught his arm. “You bastard – you bastard!” Her voice flared strongly now and piercing.

  Along the board-path a couple of heads turned. He and she would look like two quarrelling lovers.

  “Let go, Dusa,” he said, his own voice deliberately dropping, and icy. But this did not work on her, as he had guessed it might not.

  She leaned close, staring at him, her eyes grown huge, so he could see they were not black, but a sort of dark mulled bronze. “Carver – help me.” It was not a plea, it was a demand.

  They were struggling over some obscure mental abyss – was it fear? Anger? Or an irrational plan of hers, a kind of madness that, to her, seemed essential of execution, and that she must have dealt with by someone else. “Will you speak to Stuart for me, Carver?” Both her hands were on him now, flat on his chest, burning through the jacket and his shirt, immediate and familiar, unwanted.

  “Stop this, Silvia,” he said quite briskly. “I can’t do anything. I’m not important in the office, you know. I’m no one. An errand boy. Speak to Latham if you’re too scared to go straight to Stuart.”

  She dropped her hands, the way a cat would put down its paws, seeing no advantage and losing interest. Where their heat had been he felt the warmish day strike two cold blows.

  Silvia Dusa lowered her eyes. She was not crying any more, not breathing fast, perhaps not really breathing.

  “I shouldn’t have come to you.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll do what you say.”

  “It’s the only way for you to sort this out, Silvia.”

  He thought, stop using her first name. It set up a fake intimacy that was useless and had no part here. It had served its purpose.

  He turned and began to walk, without hurry or delay, away from her over the pathw
ay, then the wobbly boards. He had an urge to look back once, hearing behind him a woman’s running steps on the open grass. But it was not Dusa, too heavy for her, and the shoes were trainers. He saw he was quite correct when a big young woman presently passed him, and went thumping off through the park towards Horse Guards Road.

  What had she done? Pointless to wonder even. Probably nothing much. Or else something vast and irredemable. Did he care? He was unsure. His own reaction any way by now would be tangled up in her attempted involvement of him, and the general repercussions any inane or insane mistake could always throw up for everyone, whether let in on the error or not.

  That evening he left the car stabled at the office – there had indeed been a slight fault with the engine – he should no doubt not have risked coming back into London with it that morning, but it would often allow you a couple of hours grace before at last giving out. He took the train down as far as Lynchoak. He was meeting Latham in a steakhouse off the Maidstone Road.

  “Weird bloody names these villages have round here,” said Latham, as they sat drinking red wine, the meal ordered; it was not yet 8 p.m. “Lynchoak – a hanging tree, one assumes. Christ. And that by-way back there near the motorway. Tokyo Lane? Tokyo – I ask you.”

  “Yes,” said Carver.

  His mind had skewed abruptly over, as it kept on doing, to the tussle with Dusa earlier. He could still, now and then, feel the heat of her two hands on his chest, and the later cold patches that followed, as if she had leeched something out of him to keep her warm for the winter to come.

  “You’ve got some bloody weird places near you, haven’t you, Car. What is it – Bee Church.”

  “Beechurst.”

  “Oh, I see. God knows,” said Latham, chomping his way along a piece of garlic bread with cheese and evident enjoyment.

  He liked, Latham, what he called “Plebfood” – pizza, steak, chips ice-cream. “Bee–churst,” he repeated, reflectively. “Be cursed.”

  The waiter came to refill their glasses. The first bottle was done and Latham ordered a second. Driving would not be a hurdle, for either of them. “What did you think of the new script?” Latham asked. His face, a minute before sanguine and relaxed, had put on a lizard-like, snake-like concentration, emotionless but entirely focussed.