Armistice (21 page)

“But what can Felicity find?”

“I don't know, yet. He likes Felicity.”

“That much is obvious, but your Felicity can't find any evidence because there isn't any. She can't find a witness to the card game because they're dead. So she's getting under the guard of the suspect for what, a confession? Something incriminating?”

“You've been thinking about this longer than me,” she said, making it sound as if Jonathan's will was weak.

He sat down opposite her and kneaded his scalp with both hands. He sighed. A twinkle returned to his eye.

“How does Felicity speak?”

“Like this.”

“Say a bit more.”

“I can't think what to say.”

“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”

As she said it as Felicity, she couldn't help smiling. Jonathan smiled, too.

“Do you know the story of Hamlet?” he asked.

“We read it at school.”

“The man who knows what he should do but can't do it. The man who's been instructed by a ghost,” said Jonathan.

“Does Dan's ghost instruct you?” she asked.

“No, not literally, not like Hamlet's father.”

He got up and paced the kitchen.

“This is how I see my life: I became a barrister by accident. When I was born no one would have dreamed of predicting this future for me. I was supposed to work in a mill or something. But I got here. But I'm here under sufferance, I sometimes feel. They tolerate me and others like me so they can say that anybody can progress and improve themselves if only they try hard enough, therefore society is fair. If Dan had had the help I've had he might have been in my position. This makes his death even more enraging, because he was killed by a man with no talents, a man who has had everything served up to him. A weak man in a powerful position. Which is what I see about me, every day, and it makes me sick.

“What happened to Dan added to grievances already kindled in me. There's another incident that drives me. In the war, earlier, there was a young lad, Irish, one of those who the government knew was under age but they turned a blind eye because they needed the numbers. He was sixteen when he enlisted, just seventeen when he got shell shock, still just seventeen when he was court martialled for leaving his post—he wandered about behind our lines, incoherent—not deserting, not what I'd call cowardice. And he was seventeen when we executed him. The firing squad wouldn't pull their triggers. The officer in charge had to shoot him.”

Philomena twitched as if she'd been slapped.

“That wasn't me,” added Jonathan. “I defended him. I was his failed defense counsel.”

“It doesn't sound like there was much you could do.”

“But it was wrong!” He turned away from her, picked up
a bottle of Scotch, made to dash it against the wall, thought better of it, poured some into a glass instead, drank it down. Silence.

“Another thing about Hamlet is that he thinks about killing himself,” Philomena said quietly.

Jonathan drained his whisky and poured himself another generous helping.

“Where does the name Pygmalion come from?” she murmured, trying to get him to speak.

“It's a myth. Pygmalion's a man. He avoids women. He's a sculptor. He makes a beautiful sculpture of a female. He falls in love with it. Venus hears his wish that she be real, and makes it so.”

“And they live happily ever after?”

Jonathan shook his head, still facing away from her.

“Do you think about stories all the time?” she asked.

“My clients tend to fit certain recognizable types, with variations. In certain situations human behavior is quite predictable.”

“What's your type? And don't say Hamlet; he's a prince.”

“It's quite difficult to say what your own type is,” said Jonathan, still facing away.

“Setting aside the prince bit, you're not all Hamlet, are you?” she said. “Your father wasn't killed by your mother's lover, for instance.”

“Actually, now you come to mention it …” said Jonathan, making her fear for a moment that she'd overstepped the mark—his father might have been killed by his mother's
lover for all she knew. But he turned to her and grinned to release her. They both smiled for a few moments.

“What's Anthony Dore's type?” she asked.

“You've probably seen more of him than I have,” replied Jonathan. He winced and flashed another smile to show that that wasn't accusing her of anything.

“He's insecure,” she said, “but I don't know what he was like before you accused him of murdering Dan.”

“Middle son of three. Fact. Least popular son—speculation, based on anecdote. Elder brother Edward, mentioned three times in dispatches, school rugger hero, in the law, doing well, killed in war—facts. Younger brother Albert, generally loved by all, pianist, medical school; enlisted early, also dead—facts. Anthony, middle son, no particular talent, does something in the City. Killed comrade on battlefield because he'd lost his family's wealth gambling with a working-class man, couldn't face the music.”

“Speculation,” said Philomena. “The music made him more fearful than the consequences of murder?”

“Correct,” said Jonathan. “Whatever the actual reality, that is how he saw it, in his mind. Or he was just angry, and Dan didn't matter.”

He poured them both another drink. They sat in silence, not looking at each other. The kitchen began to feel crowded, airless. It became so that again they couldn't look at each other, for fear of what might happen. She swallowed hard and often, searched for something distracting to say: “Ever since Dan's death I've been waiting to do something. To act.
I should feel surprised by my behavior since I came to London.”

Jonathan nodded to show he understood. “I should stop taking dope,” he said. “I only really use it now when I know that after a recess I'm going to be on my feet, presenting my case. I use it to engender the feeling that nothing can go wrong. Having said that I also use it afterward, too, to celebrate. I'm an addict, let's face it. I'll find whatever excuse.” He went to the doorway and beckoned. “Come on. I'll show you something.”

She worried he was going to disclose something terrible to do with drugs. “Show me what?”

“Something.”

She looked alarmed.

“What are you scared of it being?” he asked.

“Everything. Anything.”

“Fear of the unknown. But if you sat there and guessed for a thousand years you wouldn't get it. I promise that it won't harm you.”

“It?”

“Come. Come.”

She stood and let Jonathan lead her back down the hallway to a closed door. It was a room he kept locked.

“This is the third bedroom,” he said, unlocking it.

Bedroom?! She nearly protested, opening her mouth.

“Not in use as a bedroom,” Jonathan reassured.

He opened the door and stepped in and switched on the light. She gasped. Jonathan turned and gestured for her to
enter beside him. It had once been an ordinary room. Now, every wall was painted and re-painted with images and fragments and slashes of color, reds and browns and oranges. The splashes on the ceiling testified to the violence of the person responsible. Some of the individual images were of men dying and being brutal, killed and killing in various ways. There was a recurring one of a pair of figures locked in what could only be a fight to the death. The whole wasn't composed in any ordered way that Philomena could make out; it looked like it had been done at different times, in different moods. There were pots of paint and brushes strewn about the floor. There was one easy chair, ruined by paint. It had also been slashed. A kitchen knife was embedded in it. The room brought tears to her eyes.

“All my own work. I'll have to do it up and replace the chair before the landlord comes around,” said Jonathan. “You can have a go, if you like.”

He hadn't known that he was going to suggest that. Philomena looked at him to check that he meant what she thought he did.

“But it's yours.”

He tried to smile. “You can't make it any messier than it is.”

She felt sick with tension. Jonathan picked up a paint brush and handed it to her. “There're some overalls over here.”

But all she could think of was that she really wanted to be naked. “Will this paint wash off skin?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Jonathan, not catching on, prying the lids off various cans.

And without looking at Jonathan Philomena slipped out of Felicity's dress and shoes and out of her new silk undergarments and she was naked. Jonathan saw her and he grunted. She picked up a tin of paint and took aim and threw the contents so hard at a wall that some of the paint splashed backward, spattering her bare skin. Her eyes shut to save themselves. It was red paint, crimson, so it resembled blood. She felt the paint run down her body, opened her eyes. There was some left in the tin. She tipped it upside down over her head and it poured over her shoulders and down her back, a rivulet, in the groove of her spine, down and down, cold? Hot? Must be cold. She was panting.

Jonathan looked on. White skin, brown hair at armpits and lower down. Green eyes flashing, red paint dripping. Jesus! His instinct was to strip off as well but fatally he hesitated, felt too awkward, too inhibited. And he had an erection.

Philomena incidentally smeared some of the red drips across her blushing skin as she took better hold of the brush and started to drag the paint spatters across the wall, working fast, spreading this way and that before it dried.

Jonathan felt like he was in the presence of Dan. She was elemental like Dan. She raised her arms and her breasts lifted with them. He was unable to resist imagining what sex with her would be like.

But he knew instinctively that she wasn't saying to him let's do it here and now. His experience in law told him that if he did force himself upon her in this circumstance no jury of men would blame him, but that wasn't the point. He
needed to think differently. Her nakedness spoke of her trust in him. She was trusting him, yes? She was saying to him: look, this is how intensely I feel and I have faith that you won't abuse it. She was telling him that he was special, just as he had told her she was to him by showing her the paint room in the first place.

He started tugging clumsily at his clothes, taking great gulping breaths in an effort to overcome his fear. It'd be a strange thing not to have an erection, wouldn't it? Philomena wasn't looking at him anyway. When he was naked he took up a pot of orange paint and splashed it on another wall and began to fashion it into garish shapes. Philomena looked across and saw that he was also naked and his erection and she let out a guffaw. She came to his wall and joined in with his vigorous shaping of the orange paint. She felt savage with desire.

She could've just taken him inside her, just had him, fucked some of her unbearable feelings away. Rutted and fucked until she felt normal again. They accidentally touched, just the lightest brush of upper arms. Perhaps not even their skins met but just the hairs standing proud. An electric shock went through them as they worked the paint hard. His body was ready, her body was ready, but the rest of them was not. He had his terrible secret, and she feared, she feared that if she took him inside her now, she feared for her mind.

After she was showered clean of paint and clothed again Philomena wondered what sort of goodbye they would have when she left Jonathan's apartment. In the event it consisted of a look into each other's eyes and an awkward handshake,
and Jonathan made a feeble joke about hoping she wouldn't stab him with her hatpin. A Rubicon had been crossed but there was no understanding yet of what new world they had entered. One thing was for certain: there was no going back. Not to innocence. Being naked together like that—they couldn't have done that had Dan been alive. Was it a betrayal of him, as bad as failing to bring his murderer to justice? They were both having these feelings and thoughts.

“Goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye,” said Jonathan.

She was walking away.

“Look,” called Jonathan, coming after her.

She turned, wondering what he was going to say, recklessly hopeful for a moment.

He caught the expectation in her eye just before she banished it. The moment passed so quickly that both of them only knew it when it was gone.

“I'll come down and get you a taxi cab,” said Jonathan.

They didn't speak while they were waiting at the side of the road, and didn't speak as she got into the cab. As it carried her away she felt she was embarking on a huge journey of which the taxi ride was only the first stage, leaving behind someone she wasn't sure she should be leaving.

Oh, Dan, why did you get mixed up in that stupid game of cards with Anthony Dore? And die just as the war ended? I'm not saying that it's your fault if he murdered you, of course not, but why weren't you hiding in a hole anyway, trying to stay alive so that you could come home to me
?

Is it better or worse if my next lover is your last best friend
?

Or should I be like those foreign women in black in mourning
?

Did Anthony Dore kill you
?

Must I avenge you
?

It was quiet, almost silent, when the sound of the motor died away. She heard the soft click as something landed on the ground near her feet. Instinctively she tried to recreate the projectile's trajectory—looking in the direction from which she calculated it had come. There were only deep, dark shadows. She was on her toes heading for the hotel entrance when the next missile came, the second click on the ground near her feet. She began to move faster, felt something hit her on the back—yelped and protectively put up her hands, scuttled to the hotel doors, forced her way through them. After carrying on into the hinterland of the foyer she turned and tried to see out. The bright lights made her blink. Shielding her eyes she peered from the lit foyer out into the night. Someone was out there. The dark was impenetrable—she could see no one, but knew she was being watched, that the anonymous thrower was still out there. Half expecting an object to smash one of the hotel windows she retreated backward, further from them, staring from one to another, and to the glass doors, waiting for some ghoulish visage to reveal itself. The surly porter looked on impassively. His lack of alarm
made her feel a little insane, as if she was in one world, of turmoil, while he was in an adjacent one where there was only indifference.