This impression lasted for a fraction of a second; it was like gazing down onto the surface of some fluid, pure alcohol for example, when all at once the surface becomes absolutely still and then you see your own reflection, and beyond it an abyss, and you feel yourself being sucked down into the abyss and there is a flash of not knowing whether the reflection is, in fact, the real you.
Then the reflection was erased, the animal sat back and Madelene pulled the carafe from her pocket. Using both hands, she filled it from the jar, took a swig, had to put down the carafe in order to catch her breath and would have lifted it again. Except that she could not, because some sort of plank had been placed on top of it. Her eye ran the length of the plank and met the ape’s eye. It had put its hand over the carafe.
Madelene backed away.
“No,” she said, “you’re probably right.”
Leaves and creepers dropped back into place in her wake, like waters converging. Soon only the ape’s eyes were visible; then the thicket closed up and the animal was gone.
six
Madelene and Adam had been married for six months when Andrea Burden held a party at her home in Mayfair, the ostensible purpose of which was to welcome Madelene to the family. One minute after getting there Madelene had tried to make a run for it, but Adam had held her back.
Present had been twenty-odd members of the family, a cross section of the present and future British elite—men who had been fitted for their first dress suit at the age of five and women who had had servants to do their bidding from the cradle. And in Andrea Burden’s company every one of them, regardless of age—from the youngest teenager to seventy-year-old Sir Toby, the government advisor on veterinary matters—had been as jumpy as a shoal of minnows sensing the shadow of the pike.
Drenched in champagne, the party had swum through a succession of rooms all opening off one another to end up in a dining room that looked for all the world like a gilded well, lit only by candelabra that were reflected over and over again in the burnished precious metals of the dinner service and with so many oil paintings on the walls that the wallpaper was only visible at those spots where a painting had been taken down and replaced by a small white card from Lloyd’s stating to which special exhibition the picture was on loan.
In this room Andrea Burden had made a speech in which she thanked every one of those present—none of whom Madelene had laid eyes on before—for their support in setting up a “development corporation”—a term that Madelene was hearing for the first time here—for Primrose Hill, Albert Terrace and Gloucester Gate—places that lay Madelene knew not where. So Madelene did not, in fact, understand one word of the verbal side of this welcome, but while Andrea was speaking she kept her eyes on her and what she saw was that Adam’s sister was neither a buxom queen bee nor a wiry, indefatigable she-spider but that she was slender, smooth, angelic and deadly and that one of her objectives in gathering all of these people together was to smite as many as possible with one blow. This blow was delivered by her speech and when it came to an end the company stayed down. Her guests had listened to it sitting bolt upright, eyes fixed on the tablecloth, with no hope of fleeing, transfixed by a blood tie of the sort which, beneath the seeming chaos on the surface, binds an anthill together through rigorous discipline. Afterward dessert was indeed served and a feeble conversation was even struck up and Madelene sensed that these guests must have felt the lash before now and developed a high threshold of pain. But the company as a whole was still reeling and one by one couples slipped away, seen to the door and kissed on the cheek by Andrea Burden, who graciously accepted their transparent excuses.
When only Adam and Madelene were left, the hostess sank into a capacious armchair across from them and eyed Madelene’s wineglassful of cognac.
“She doesn’t scare that easily, does she?” she said to Adam.
Madelene realized then that Adam’s sister was driven by motives more complex than common malice. She had felt a twinge of curiosity, an urge to get to the bottom of the other woman.
Not long afterward Andrea Burden had shown them to the door. They had gone down just three of the front steps when she came after them.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Adam, but they’ve been checking up in the kitchen; there’s a fork missing.”
Adam halted and stared wordlessly into the night.
“You two are, of course, above suspicion. I just thought I ought to mention it. It is C. J. Vander after all.”
“I’ll send you a replacement,” said Adam, tight-lipped.
Then he and Madelene had leaned on one another—she reduced to a spineless jelly by drink and he rigid with suppressed fury—and together they had stalked off into the night.
Since then Madelene had seen Andrea Burden only briefly and in passing, until three days earlier when she had come with the ape. Now Madelene was on her way to see her again. For the second day running she was on the underground, heading this time for Aldgate and struggling, as she sat there, to reconstruct her ambiguous picture of Adam’s sister.
* * *
Madelene had begun that day by changing her life.
She had woken up two hours earlier than usual, after a short but deep sleep, to the conviction that the past two days had been a bad dream, a hallucination, and that she was now going to make a fresh start. Even before she was fully awake she had perceived that the true meaning of life lay in love, that from now on she was going to live for Adam, unselfishly, following her mother’s example, maybe even give up drinking. And after a little concentrated effort in front of the mirror she raced down to the kitchen, still in her dressing gown, to persuade Mrs. Clapham to let her do the honors for Adam herself.
She brewed his tea, and made toast. She walked down to the garage with him, and once the car had turned the corner and driven out of sight she had a sudden urge to run, through the kitchen garden and out through the little door in the wall and out onto the pavement. There she would stand and wave, unexpected and stunning, as he drove past. She heard the buzz of the automatic gates and her hands were already in the air when it dawned on her that Adam’s Aston Martin was retreating into the distance, that for the first morning ever he had turned right instead of left.
Right was the wrong way, eastward, in the opposite direction from Regent’s Park and the Institute. To begin with, Madelene just stood there. Then she whipped off her slippers and ran.
She rounded the corner in time to catch a last glimpse of the car’s rear end. She was still waving and shouting when a car pulled away from the curb a few yards ahead of her, and just as it occurred to Madelene that this was the same white car driven by the same gray man whom Clapham had turned away and whom she had seen again later, a truck with a picture of a dog on its door swung out and drove after the white car that was following Adam, and neither of the drivers in the two pursuing vehicles noticed Madelene, who was left standing there forlornly with no one to wave to, witness to a pattern she could not understand.
* * *
Back in her room, on her bed, with trembling hands she fished out her carafe, glanced fearfully about her like a deer on a riverbank, then knocked back two half glassfuls in quick succession.
She immediately grew calmer. Ordinarily, alcohol sparked off an amusement park inside Madelene, complete with a roller coaster in which, after climbing into it, there was no way of predicting in which direction you were likely to be catapulted. This time, however, she was not catapulted anywhere, this time the liquid immersed her in mellow, voluptuous sentimentality. She thought of Adam, of his iron will, his drive. She started to cry. Her tears watered the rose-pink satin and up sprang the desire for a grand reconciliation. She had to see him right away. She had to have him now, physically, inside her. Anywhere, in his office if necessary.
She grabbed the telephone and dialed his direct line, her longing for the sound of his voice so powerful that she had no chance to be surprised when the secretary answered.
“May I speak to Adam?”
she said.
From the woman’s voice and her reply Madelene gathered three things. That the secretary believed she was speaking to Priscilla, that she had already given up any idea of resistance and that Adam had managed to fool the world once again and to cover his tracks.
“Mr. Burden is working at home,” she said. “Can I take a message?”
Madelene leaned back against the wall. Had she been alone, the conversation would have stopped there. But she was not alone. The secretary had summoned up a spirit, one that was now materializing. Priscilla took the receiver out of Madelene’s hand.
“Write this down,” she said. “‘Your body means more to me than all the streaky bacon in Smithfield Market.’”
Then she replaced the receiver.
She walked out into the corridor, down the stairs and through the house, not with any particular end in view but because she was too shaken to sit still. In the doorway to the terrace stood Clapham.
“Might I offer you a steaming-hot cup of freshly brewed mocha?” he said.
Madelene took the rose he held out to her.
“As long as it’s strong,” she said.
* * *
It was strong, black and thick as oil paint, and as she drank it, Madelene’s eyes rested thoughtfully on Clapham. He seemed to be in good form, relaxed; everything was as normal. From his laid-back vantage point he could discharge his duty while at the same time exercising the control of an authoritative butler over the woman who was his superior in name only.
He thought they were alone on the terrace as always. Only Madelene detected the shadow of the other woman falling across the table.
“The car you turned away yesterday, I don’t know whether that might have been any of my business?”
Clapham drained his cup and set it down, bottom up, in a definitive tradesman’s gesture.
“Duty calls,” he said.
Madelene’s eyes clouded over. Right at this moment, more than ever before, she needed him to have remained in his seat. For him to have laid his head—metaphorically speaking—in her lap and shown her kindness and just a smidgen of respect. But instead here he was joining up with the caravan that had broken camp that morning, leaving her all alone in the British Sahara.
“Sit down!” she said.
Clapham froze.
“You do not get up when I am talking to you.”
The man bowed his head. He felt the sting but could not see from which direction the blows had come. Madelene herself hardly knew. Priscilla alone was aware that the tone of voice she was now brandishing over Clapham’s head came from Adam. That it was his master’s voice the man in front of her was obeying.
“The white car, Clapham?”
“The veterinary authorities.”
Neither of the two women had ever heard of such a body, but they realized they were riding a wave that might break at any minute and there was no time to look back.
“On what business?”
“To see Mr. Burden.”
“And you said?”
“That Mr. Burden was not at home.”
Madelene paused, allowing events to build up to the final question.
“Where is Mr. Burden?”
Clapham’s frame stiffened. Slowly Madelene and Priscilla got to their feet.
“Where is Mr. Burden?”
“Aldgate. The Animal Welfare Foundation.”
Madelene followed through with her action, and Clapham ducked as though he really was expecting a blow.
But Madelene did not strike him. Gently she patted the uncooperative, unsympathetic, uncomprehending figure before her on the head.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said.
seven
You find them on the drab fringes of every European city: little offices where elderly ladies volunteer their time to discreet societies dedicated to genteelly, and quite inconspicuously, pleading the case for the preservation of the hedgehog or the gillyflower or the water shrew. And it was in such surroundings that Madelene had envisaged finding Andrea Burden. That, however, was not what she found.
The lobby on the thirteenth floor of the House of the Animals in Aldgate was not drab but actively gray and, standing before the polished tombstone on which the floor directory had been inscribed, Madelene began to suspect what was brought home to her in no uncertain terms once she had been let in by two steel-gray security guards—who then sent for a man in a gray suit—and had embarked on a long trek after said suit: that the Animal Welfare Foundation was not housed in one office or one section of some open-plan office floor but that this organization occupied a floating continent which took up one whole floor of the most expensive chunk of real estate in the world.
At journey’s end sat two secretaries in a room as vast as the antechamber of a mausoleum. By now, under other circumstances, Madelene might well have felt overwhelmed by the weight of such surroundings. But not today. During the twenty minutes she had spent in the underground she had found some comfort. Not just in what she had drunk but also, and more especially, in a clear certitude as to her errand.
She had reviewed her previous meetings with Adam’s sister, even though this severely taxed her powers of recall—she was by no means sober now and had been anything but sober then. This exercise had nevertheless had a calming effect on her, since she had eventually come to the conclusion that behind Andrea Burden’s frosty demeanor there beat a warm and human heart. And if there was anything Madelene needed right now it was solace and human kindness. In Andrea’s presence she would confront Adam, the other woman acting as a fond but firm intermediary, and everything would turn out just fine. Whereas Madelene had boarded the train like an animal fleeing a forest fire that has finally reached its own lair, she arrived at her destination like a lost chick seeking shelter under the mother hen’s wing.
And there was in fact something rather maternal about Andrea Burden’s smile as she entered the outer office, a warmth in the kiss she planted on Madelene’s cheek, a protective air to the way in which she shepherded her into her office and closed the door behind them.
Then, softly, standing just inside the door, she delivered the first right straight to the chin.
“Madelene darling,” she said, “what can I offer you this early in the day? A large gin?”
Alcohol was Madelene’s most intimate secret, a deep-seated chamber of her heart, awash with liquid, which she could have sworn she had succeeded in hiding from the outside world. Until now.
In the gulf of suspended reality that now opened up, it occurred to Madelene that the one way above all in which animals differ from human beings is in the consistency of their thought processes. The most terrifying thing about the permanent uncertainty from which she herself suffered was its volatility. There were days when she mistrusted her body, others when she feared for her sanity and still others when she lost faith in her marriage, her hair, her financial situation, her actions, her smell, her senses. The possibilities were endless. Whenever she thought that she had now arrived at an albeit lengthy but at long last definitive index of all the forms taken by her self-hate, up it would pop in some hitherto unseen guise.
The face before her represented the antithesis of this inner imbalance. Andrea Burden eyed her with the cold, appraising curiosity of a reptile.
The room was empty; there was no sign of Adam. As things now stood, that was all for the best. Madelene sank down onto a chair.
“I just wanted to see this place,” she said.
“A workplace must seem quite stimulating. To someone who doesn’t actually do anything.”
Madelene knew her time was up. She would find herself an elephants’ graveyard to which she could drag herself off and die. If only she had the strength to get up out of the chair.
“A little drink would be lovely,” she said.
A glass was placed in front of her.
“This place, why does it look the way it does?” she asked.
“The endangered species and the most popula
r pet animals attract very large sums of money. We distribute these funds.”
“It looks like a crypt.”
“Death is a great confidence inspirer. All banks are designed to look like burial vaults.”
“Where’s Adam?”
Andrea Burden made no reply. She had walked around behind the chair; Madelene could feel her hands on the chair back.
“You must see the view,” she said. “Before you go.”
The chair lurched under Madelene. The other woman had turned her and the chair around in a semicircle.
Madelene closed her eyes, smarting from the gin and surprised by the force of this maneuver. Then she opened them.
Three of the office walls were of plate glass. Beneath and before them stretched London, remote and unreal.
Andrea Burden had remained standing like a nurse behind a patient in a wheelchair.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
London was not a city. Madelene could see that now. For a city has an end. There was no limit to the irregular, rippling expanse of stone below her. Even at the point where the curve of the earth formed the horizon, buildings reared up, out on the visible bounds of the universe.
She could see that it was too vast for just one sort of weather. Around them, over St. Katharine’s Dock and the Thames, the sun was shining. The sky over the new City was cloudy and gray. To the east, over Docklands, it was raining. And on the south side of the river hung a yellow curtain of industrial fumes.
“How can anyone bear to live here?” she said.
“We adapt. Even to an existence such as this. The ability to adapt is the mark of a human being.”
Andrea Burden stepped into the light, alongside the chair.