Mr. Flood's Last Resort(75)

Wasn’t it always like this? She smiles wryly. The madwoman and the visionary dancing hand in hand, sharing the same tambourine?

As for the practicalities, she knows how to work the room because her father was a market trader, selling knockdown crockery. It’s the same thing, only she’s selling dead people and she doesn’t collect the money now; someone else does that for her.

“Do you ever see saints?” I ask.

She frowns.

“You know, martyrs, with robes, halos?”

She looks at me blankly. “I know what a saint is.”

“It doesn’t matter. What did you see tonight?”

Eleanor pulls on her boots. “Red-haired woman, pale face.”

I want to sit down but I can’t move. “The Red Queen?”

“And a girl holding her hand,” she says, throwing her gear into a sports bag.

I can hardly speak. “What did she look like?”

“The girl?” Eleanor zips up her bag. “Big smile, blond hair.” She screws the lid on the quarter bottle and slips it into the pocket of her jacket.

“And the well? You said something about a cat in a well?” For a moment I think of Beckett.

Eleanor shrugs. “Most likely a metaphor; the dead like a metaphor.”

“A metaphor for what?”

“No idea.” She picks up her crash helmet. “One more thing: that guy you’re with.”

“Yes?”

“He’s not who he says he is.”





CHAPTER 36




My heart is submerged; she lies low. A tin can covered with barnacles, a wrecked submarine skulking through murky depths. I follow her, brushing the silty seabed with my hair. I see the tiles are still there. We swim in an octagon, my heart and I, past rusty arches. Above us little creamy moons shine with halos of light.

When I catch my heart I will drag her to the surface and crack her open. I’ll take a flashlight to her dank leaking chambers. All blighted iron and worn rivets. I’ll find the skeletons and ripped-up ticker tape. Maydays unsent, warnings interrupted—she couldn’t get a message out; they came scrambled or not at all, salt water in the mechanism, bugs on the line.

There’s a flash in the water. A woman swims towards me, sleek-limbed, white moon of a face. She hesitates in the water, dead-eyed; hair billows around her face. Then she barrels past, filling my eyes and nose with bubbles. Beyond there is an explosion of red, a cloud that spreads through the water, unfurling in swirls and curlicues.

*

THE BACKS of my knees are wet. I wipe my face on a corner of the sheet, tasting salt on my lips.

I look at him, in the bed. I take it all in. His hair, a darker blond at the nape of his neck, the muscles on his back, and the shape of his spine narrowing downwards to the curve of his buttocks. His left hand is over the bedclothes. I lean forwards and study it again, closely, although I don’t need to. I know it well enough now. The scar on the bulb of his thumb, the freckles on the back of his hand, and the barely perceptible dip on his ring finger where his wedding band usually is.

In his hometown the day is dawning with a chill in the air.

In a while his wife will make breakfast and get the children up for school. Maybe they’ll ask where Daddy is. Maybe she’ll cry into their lunch boxes or slam the door of the fridge too hard. Or maybe she’ll just stand at the sink, staring out of the window, a cup cradled in her hands. How would she not know about the other women, that there would be other women? You only need to look at him: his smile, his body, and the wolf behind his eyes.

For he is a wolf, a snaggle-fanged, handsome wolf, easy-limbed and gray-eyed.

He’s not who he says he is, not that he’s doing much saying.

I slip out of bed and pick up his jeans. Closing the bedroom door behind me, I pull out his wallet and open it.

A wad of cash. Nothing else.

No photos of the twins or the son he takes to the park for a kickabout every Sunday. No driving license, cards . . . I should be surprised, but I’m not: it’s the wallet of an adulterer. I close it and push it back into his pocket.

When I steal back into the bedroom he’s rolled over, his breathing slow and regular. Loping feral in some dream forest, his flank twitches in his sleep. Or maybe he’s pretending that too.

I see a movement out of the corner of my eye.

A dim hand comes around the bedroom door holding a spectral rose, long stemmed, glowing red.

*

I HOLD a finger over my mouth and St. Valentine follows me into the living room.

“Well now, isn’t love grand?” he gloats. “There’s Johnny Quicksilver back in your bed, like he never left. A fine-looking man and a handsome man, with those brilliant gray eyes and all the skills he has in the sack. A fierce and energetic lover, and imaginative. God, the things—”

“Do you ever stop?”

St. Valentine sits himself down and pats the sofa next to him. On the coffee table I notice the local paper opened at the lonely hearts column. The page is covered with iridescent golden circles.

“Did you do that?”

“It’s good to keep your options open, for when your man moves on. How about a widower with a semidetached in Hounslow? Likes walks.”

I sit down, narrowing my eyes. “Get to the point, little man.”