Spirit (49 page)

‘Come in for a drink before you go,' she asked Lenny, as they opened up the door, and stepped into the hallway.

‘I should get back, really, before it gets any worse.'

Laura was dancing a mazurka on the doormat to knock the snow off her boots. ‘You could always stay. We have plenty of spare beds.'

‘Oh, come on,' Elizabeth coaxed him. ‘We do have something to celebrate, after all.'

Lenny said, ‘Okay . . . but just one, and only one. Otherwise mom will start worrying.'

‘We do have a telephone, you know,' said Laura.

‘So did Alexander Graham Bell,' Lenny retorted.

‘Oh, sure . . . but you're handsomer.'

Elizabeth went around the sitting-room, drawing the curtains. When she reached the last window, she paused, to watch the snow. A wan light was falling across the garden, so that she could just make out fir trees, and the handrails around the swimming-pool steps. So many years had passed since she had first moved here, and since Peggy had drowned. But even after all these years, she was tied here still by what had happened, by memory and by superstition. She longed so much to be free of this house, to be free of fairy stories. The time had come to grow up, and to face the world with maturity and understanding and wit. Icicles and swords and magic spells were no longer enough. Imagination was no longer enough. This was a time for real responsibility.

Touching Lenny was real. Caring about Lenny was real. It was time that the spindly dreams were swept away. It was time that the Peggy-girl was swept away, and the Snow Queen with her.

The fire crackled in the bedroom hearth. The shadows leaped around the room like Isadora Duncan's dance troupe. Elizabeth lay in bed watching Lenny undress, half-silhouetted by the flames. He was so lean and tall. He wasn't a muscle-man, but there wasn't a spare ounce anywhere. His chest was flat and his stomach was flat and his thighs were two hard curves. His bottom was high and rounded and small. He wasn't hairy, apart from a small crucifix of soft black hair in the middle of his chest. His right shoulder-blade was marked with a crude white scar, like a teacher's tick of approval. A mortar had exploded ten feet away from him, on an island whose name he couldn't remember, or wouldn't.

He turned towards her, and she glimpsed his penis, rearing high and thick and very hard. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and touched her cheek, and she kissed his hand.

‘Can you manage?' she said.

‘I think so . . . these bandages don't help.'

She heard the tearing of the sachet, followed by the snapping and stretching of the rubber. Then he was climbing into bed, and lying next to her, almost on top of her, his skin chilly, his penis hard.

‘Don't rush,' she whispered, kissing his ear, kissing his hair. ‘Don't rush, my darling . . .'

His hand cupped and massaged her breast, and she felt her nipple harden. He kissed her, and his fingers coursed down her naked side, right down to her hip, so that she shuddered. They were clumsy and unfamiliar with each other at first, as lovers always are. But at last he lifted himself on top of her, and she guided his rubber-sheathed penis into her wet vagina, and he
thrust and thrust until he shuddered at last, breathed a long, luxuriating, ‘Oh,' and climbed off her.

But she held him close, and slipped off his rubber, and massaged his soft spermy penis with her fingers, because she had adored every moment of it. His lovemaking would become more assured, and she would get to know him better, and in any case she loved him, his flat ironing-board body and his scar and his big tight balls. She licked him in his ear, and licked his stubbly cheek, and his lips, too, and climbed on top of him.

‘I think I died and went somewhere better than heaven,' he said.

She ran her fingers through his hair. ‘I love you.' She whispered. ‘I love you so much.'

She was just about to kiss him again when the wind whined and screamed in a sudden gust, and the windows rattled and a door just across the corridor slammed shut with a deafening bang.

Lenny screamed, ‘
Mortar
!' and twisted out from underneath her like a muscly anaconda.

‘
Down
!' he yelled at her. ‘
Down
! '

‘What?' he said. ‘Lenny, what are you – '

Lenny shouted, ‘
Down
!' again, and smacked her head so hard that she tumbled sideways across the bed and almost fell off the other side. Her left ear was singing and she felt as if her cheek were ballooning out. She sat up, dragging the blankets around her, and stared at him in bewilderment.

‘Lenny?' she said. ‘Lenny, can you hear me?'

His back was turned. His head was dropped between his shoulders.

‘Lenny . . .' she repeated. She shuffled her way towards him, and laid her hand on his back.

‘I can't do it, can I?' he said, and he was sobbing. ‘I can't get over it.'

He smeared the tears away from his eyes with the back of his
hand. ‘So young . . . They gave us training, but they never trained us for Guadalcanal . . . they never trained anyone to have their legs blown off or their faces on fire or the guts falling out all over the beach.'

He stared at his bare feet on the bedside mat. ‘We've been talking about spirits. But the spirits of those guys are going to haunt me for ever; until I die; and I'm afraid to meet them when I do.'

Elizabeth held him close. She didn't know what to say. All she could hear was the wind rising, and the snow pattering urgently against her window.

She fell asleep shortly after she heard the hallway clock chime two. The wind was still whining, and a distant shutter was banging –
pause
– banging.

She dreamed that she was walking through a frigid palace, in a time long after she was dead. The palace was silent and dark, and there was nobody there. They had all left years ago, so that only she remained, walking hopelessly from room to room. She knew that she would never find her way out; and that even if she did, the palace was set in the middle of a vast and snowy waste, thousands of miles from anywhere warm, thousands of miles from summer gardens where children played and every flower told its own story.

She reached across the bed, feeling for Lenny's naked back. He was gone. All she could feel were cold white sheets, with snaking wrinkles in them like the snow.

‘Lenny?' she said, and turned around, and sat up. ‘Lenny – where are you?'

The fire had died, and the bedroom was dark. The wind was screaming now, like a demented beast. Elizabeth dragged herself across the bed and switched on the bedside lamp. No doubt about it, Lenny was gone. But his clothes hadn't gone, and neither had his wallet or his shoes.
Oh, I have left my –

‘Lenny?' called Elizabeth. Maybe she didn't have anything to worry about. Maybe he had gone to the bathroom, that was all, or hadn't been able to sleep.

He had shocked her and upset her, hitting her like that, but at least she could understand why he had done it. She had met more than one veteran who seemed to have escaped the war uninjured: Peter Vanlies from Freestone Books, Rudge Berry from the
New Yorker
. Friendly, balanced, equable men – until something inexplicably frightened them or riled them, and then they became Marines again, instantly, capable of any violence, out of control.

She climbed out of bed and walked across the bedroom naked to pick up her robe. It was then that she became aware of an unexpected coldness in the air, even colder than the wind that was blowing, even colder than the snow. She turned around, and there was the Peggy-girl, floating at the end of her bed, her face whiter than ever, her eyes even darker, her lips even bluer with frostbite.

Her dress was soiled now, soiled and greasy, and it stirred listlessly in the wintry draught. She held out her thin, blue-veined arm, with its frostbitten fingers, and said, ‘Lizzie . . . you've betrayed me.'

‘Betrayed you? I haven't betrayed you! Why can't you leave me alone? I don't need you, Peggy. I don't want you! Just go, and go for ever, and leave me alone!'

‘Lenny hit you, Lizzie. I can't allow that.'

‘Lenny hit me because Lenny has problems. I didn't like him hitting me, and I never want him to hit me again, but I know what his problems are, and I love him, and I want to help him to solve them. Can you understand that?'

‘Lenny won't ever hurt you again.'

Wide-eyed, terrified. ‘What do you mean? What?' Oh God, don't tell me . . .

‘We haven't killed him, don't worry,' smiled the Peggy-girl.
She danced a slow aerial ballet around the bedroom, her feet barely skimming the floor. Her smugness and her dirtiness were frightening. So was her ever-encroaching frostbite. Her feet and her ankles were so black now that she looked as if she were wearing boots.

‘Where is he?' asked Elizabeth, hoarsely. ‘What have you done with him?'

‘Don't you
know?
teased the Peggy-girl. ‘Can't you possibly guess?'

‘Tell me,' said Elizabeth. ‘Please.'

‘I was Gerda, wasn't I? You guessed that much. But I didn't have a Kay.'

‘You've taken him.'

‘Yes, we've taken him. The Snow Queen took him on the sledge and carried him away, and now he's sitting in her palace, naked as naked, on the Mirror of Reason, cold as cold, trying to form the word Eternity, so that he can escape . . . which he never will.'

‘You
bitch
!' screamed Elizabeth. ‘You horrible little
bitch
!'

The Peggy-girl looked taken aback. ‘He hit you, Lizzie. He took his hand to you, and hit you.'

‘Yes, he hit me! But it's my decision what I want to do about it! Mine, do you understand me, not yours! You have no right whatsoever to interfere in my life and take Lenny away from me! You had no right whatsoever to kill the Reverend Bracewaite, or Miles Moreton, or those movie people that Laura knew. You had no right to mutilate Aunt Beverley.
You had no damned right at all, and I'm going to make you pay for this, believe me?

The Peggy-girl was hop-skip-jumping in front of the hearth. Oh, yes, Elizabeth? And how are you going to do that?'

It was four-thirty in the morning and Elizabeth and Laura were sitting in the library, close to the fire. Even so, the house was so cold that they were wearing their overcoats.

‘I can't think of anybody,' said Laura, in despair. ‘And God almighty . . . it's nearly dawn.'

‘I have to be somebody
strong.
' Elizabeth insisted. ‘If I'm going to have any chance of saving Lenny, I have to be somebody
strong.
' She felt distraught, exhausted, too frightened for Lenny to think straight.

‘What about Scarlett O'Hara?' Laura suggested.

‘Can you really see me as Scarlett O'Hara?'

‘Maybe you don't have her temper, but you have her looks. And if you burned Atlanta, wouldn't that melt all the snow, and the Snow Queen, too?'

Elizabeth thought for a moment. ‘Burning,' she said.

‘Well, that's right, burning. The Snow Queen's afraid of fire, isn't she? That's why the Finland woman kept her house so hot, to keep the Snow Queen away.'

‘
Burning
,' Elizabeth repeated. She stood up, and looked quickly at all the books in the library. ‘Not here,' she said.

‘What isn't here?'

‘
Bleak House
. Can you see it anywhere?'

‘It's in your old bedroom. I saw it there yesterday when I went in to borrow your robe. What do you want
Bleak House
for?'

‘Esther Summerson, that's what I want it for. I always adored Esther Summerson. She was Ada's companion, don't you remember?'

‘I never read
Bleak House
. There was never anything literary to read at Aunt Beverley's, unless you count
Variety.
'

‘Esther Summerson was blonde and very beautiful . . . but more than that, she was strong and calm, and that's just the person I need. Gerda was strong, too, but her greatest strength was her persistence, not her depth of character.'

‘And the burning? You said “burning”, as if it was something important.'

‘It
is
important. Esther knows Mr Krook, who keeps a rag and bottle shop by the wall of Lincoln's Inn. Mr Krook dies of
spontaneous combustion. He catches alight, and burns, and there's nothing left of him.'

‘I've heard of spontaneous combustion. There was an article about it in the
Saturday Evening Post
. Some old farmer was sitting in his kitchen in Nebraska or somewhere like that, and they found his body half-burned down to the waist, even though the linoleum floor that he was lying on was hardly scorched.'

‘Exactly,' said Elizabeth. ‘I'm going to be Esther Summerson, and I'm going to take Mr Krook to meet the Snow Queen, and see how the two of them get along together.'

Laura slowly shook her head. ‘Listen to us,' she said. ‘Listen to what we're saying. We must be going out of our minds.'

‘If we're going out of our minds, where's Lenny? Don't tell me he walked off into the snow and left all his clothes behind.'

‘All right, then,' said Laura, standing up, and wrapping her overcoat tightly around her. ‘When do you want to take the peyote?'

‘As soon as I can . . . now.'

‘Don't you think you ought to change your clothes, like you did when you were Rosita? You ought to look a little more Dickensian.'

‘I could wear great-grandma's bonnet, couldn't I? This coat will look all right, and nobody's going to see what I'm wearing underneath.'

She hurried upstairs – first to her old bedroom, where she found a tatty paperback copy of
Bleak House
on the shelf next to her showjumping books and
The Last of the Mohicans
. Then she went through to her father's room. His great-grandfather had been so grief-stricken when his great-grandmother died that he had kept all of her clothes, of which the last surviving remnants were her tiny patent-leather button-up shoes, so small that Elizabeth had no longer been able to wear them when she was eight years old, and the grey velvet bonnet which she used to wear on Sundays.