The callers insisted on the bell; the more they insisted the more determined she became not to reply. She slid down the wall beside the flat door and listened to the muted debate that now began on the step. It wasn't Hermione; it was nobody she recognized. Now they systematically rang the bells of the flats above, until Mr. Prudhoe came down from the top flat, talking to himself as he went, and opened the door to them. Of the conversation that followed she caught sufficient only to grasp the urgency of their mission, but her disheveled mind hadn't the persistence to attend to the details. They persuaded Prudhoe to allow them into the hallway. They approached the door of her flat and rapped upon it, calling her name. She didn't reply. They rapped again, exchanging words of frustration. She wondered if they could hear her smiling in the darkness. At last – after a further exchange with Prudhoe – they left her to herself.
She didn't know how long she sat on her haunches beside the door, but when she stood up again her lower limbs were entirely numb, and she was hungry. She ate voraciously, more or less finishing off all the purchases of that morning. The flies seemed to have procreated in the intervening hours; they crawled on the table and picked at her slops. She let them eat. They too had their lives to live.
Finally she decided to take some air. No sooner had she stepped out of her flat, however, than the vigilant Prudhoe was at the top of the stairs, and calling down to her.
"Miss Rider. Wait a moment. I have a message for you."
She contemplated closing the door on him, but she knew he would not rest until he had delivered his communiquй. He hurried down the stairs – a Cassandra in shabby slippers.
"There were policemen here," he announced before he had even reached the bottom step, “they were looking for you."
"Oh," she said. "Did they say what they wanted?"
To talk to you. Urgently. Two of your friends -”
"What about them?"
"They died," he said. "This afternoon. They have some kind of disease."
He had a sheet of notepaper in his hand. This he now passed over to her, relinquishing his hold an instant before she took it.
They left that number for you to call," he said.
"You've to contact them as soon as possible." His message delivered, he was already retiring up the stairs again. Elaine looked down at the sheet of paper, with its scrawled figures. By the time she'd read the seven digits, Prudhoe had disappeared.
She went back into the flat. For some reason she wasn't thinking of Reuben or Sonja – who, it seemed, she would not see again – but of the sailor, Maybury, who'd seen Death and escaped it only to have it follow him like a loyal dog, waiting its moment to leap and lick his face. She sat beside the phone and stared at the numbers on the sheet, and then at the fingers that held the sheet and at the hands that held the fingers. Was the touch that hung so innocently at the end of her arms now lethal? Was that what the detectives had come to tell her? That her friends were dead by her good offices? If so, how many others had she brushed against and breathed upon in the days since her pestilential education at the crypt? In the street, in the bus, in the supermarket: at work, at play. She thought of Bernice, lying on the toilet floor, and of Hermione, rubbing the spot where she had been kissed as if knowing some scourge had been passed along to her. And suddenly she knew, knew in her marrow, that her pursuers were right in their suspicions, and that all these dreamy days she had been nurturing a fatal child. Hence her hunger; hence the glow of fulfillment she felt.
She put down the note and sat in the semi-darkness, trying to work out precisely the plague's location. Was it her fingertips; in her belly; in her eyes? None, and yet all of these. Her first assumption had been wrong. It wasn't a child at all: she didn't carry it in some particular cell. It was everywhere. She and it were synonymous. That being so, there could be no slicing out of the offending part, as they had sliced out her tumours and all that had been devoured by them. Not that she would escape their attentions for that fact. They had come looking for her, hadn't they, to take her back into the custody of sterile rooms, to deprive her of her opinions and dignity, to make her fit only for their loveless investigations. The thought revolted her; she would rather die as the chestnut-haired woman in the crypt had died, sprawled in agonies, than submit to them again. She tore up the sheet of paper and let the litter drop. It was too late for solutions anyway. The removal men had opened the door and found Death waiting on the other side, eager for daylight. She was its agent, and it – in its wisdom – had granted her immunity; had given her strength and a dreamy rapture; had taken her fear away. She, in return, had spread its word, and there was no undoing those labours: not now. All the dozens, maybe hundreds, of people whom she'd contaminated in the last few days would have gone back to their families and friends, to their work places and their places of recreation, and spread the word yet further. They would have passed its fatal promise to their children as they tucked them into bed, and to their mates in the act of love. Priests had no doubt given it with Communion; shopkeepers with change of a five-pound note.
While she was thinking of this – of the disease spreading like fire in tinder – the doorbell rang again. They had come back for her. And, as before, they were ringing the other bells in the house. She could hear Prudhoe coming downstairs. This time he would know she was in. He would tell them so. They would hammer at the door, and when she refused to answer As Prudhoe opened the front door she unlocked the back. As she slipped into the yard she heard voices at the flat door, and then their rapping and their demands. She unbolted the yard gate and fled into the darkness of the alleyway. She already out of hearing range by the time they had beaten down the door.
She wanted most of all to go back to All Saints, but she knew that such a tactic would only invite arrest. They would expect her to follow that route, counting upon her adherence to the first cause. But she wanted to see Death's face again, now more than ever. To speak with it. To debate its strategies. Their strategies. To ask why it had chosen her. She emerged from the alley-way and watched the goings-on at the front of the house from the corner of the street. This time there were more than two men; she counted four at least, moving in and out of the house. What were they doing? Peeking through her underwear and her love-letters, most probably, examining the sheets on her bed for stray hairs, and the mirror for traces of her reflection. But even if they turned the flat upside-down, if they examined every print and pronoun, they wouldn't find the clues they sought. Let them search. The lover had escaped. Only her tear stains remained, and flies at the light bulb to sing her praises.
The night was starry, but as she walked down to the centre of the city the brightness of the Christmas illuminations festooning trees and buildings cancelled out their light. Most of the stores were well closed by this hour, but a good number of window-shoppers still idled along the pavements. She soon tired of the displays however, of the baubles and the dummies, and made her way off the main road and into the side streets. It was darker here, which suited her abstracted state of mind. The sound of music and laughter escaped through open bar doors; an argument erupted in an upstairs gaming-room: blows were exchanged; in one doorway two lovers defied discretion; in another, a man pissed with the gusto of a horse.
It was only now, in the relative hush of these backwaters, that she realised she was not alone. Footsteps followed her, keeping a cautious distance, but never straying far. Had the trackers followed her? Were they hemming her in even now, preparing to snatch her into their closed order? If so, flight would only delay the inevitable. Better to confront them now, and dare them to come within range of her pollution. She slid into hiding, and listened as the footsteps approached, then stepped into view.
It was not the law, but Kavanagh. Her initial shock was almost immediately superseded by a sudden comprehension of why he had pursued her. She studied him. His skin was pulled so tight over his skull she could see the bone gleam in the dismal light. How, her whirling thoughts demanded, had she not recognised him soone
r? Not realised at that first meeting, when he'd talked of the dead and their glamour, that he spoke as their Maker?
"I followed you," he said.
"All the way from the house?"
He nodded.
"What did they tell you?" he asked her. "The policemen. What did they say?"
"Nothing I hadn't already guessed," she replied.
"You knew?"
"In a manner of speaking. I must have done, in my heart of hearts. Remember our first conversation?" He murmured that he did.
"All you said about Death. Such egotism."
He grinned suddenly, showing more bone.
"Yes," he said. "What must you think of me?"
"It made a kind of sense to me, even then. I didn't know why at the time. Didn't know what the future would bring -” "What does it bring?" he inquired of her softly.
She shrugged. "Death's been waiting for me all this time, am I right?"
"Oh yes," he said, pleased by her understanding of the situation between them. He took a step towards her, and reached to touch her face.
"You are remarkable," he said.
"Not really."
"But to be so unmoved by it all. So cold."
"What's to be afraid of?" she said. He stroked her cheek. She almost expected his hood of skin to come unbuttoned then, and the marbles that played in his sockets to tumble out and smash. But he kept his disguise intact, for appearance's sake.
"I want you," he told her.
"Yes," she said. Of course he did. It had been in his every word from the beginning, but she hadn't had the wit to comprehend it. Every love story was – at the last – a story of death; this was what the poets insisted. Why should it be any less true the other way about?
They could not go back to his house; the officers would be there too, he told her, for they must know of the romance between them. Nor, of course, could they return to her flat. So they found a small hotel in the vicinity and took a room there. Even in the dingy lift he took the liberty of stroking her hair, and then, finding her compliant, put his hand upon her breast. The room was sparsely furnished, but was lent some measure of charm by a splash of coloured lights from a Christmas tree in the street below. Her lover didn't take his eyes off her for a single moment, as if even now he expected her to turn tail and run at the merest flaw in his behaviour. He needn't have concerned himself; his treatment of her left little cause for complaint. His kisses were insistent but not overpowering; his undressing of her except for the fumbling (a nice human touch, she thought) – was a model of finesse and sweet solemnity. She was surprised that he had not known about her scar, only because she had become to believe this intimacy had begun on the operating table, when twice she had gone into his arms, and twice been denied them by the surgeon's bullying. But perhaps, being no sentimentalist, he had forgotten that first meeting. Whatever the reason, he looked to be upset when he slipped off her dress, and there was a trembling interval when she thought he would reject her. But the moment passed, and now he reached down to her abdomen and ran his fingers along the scar.
"It's beautiful," he said.
She was happy.
"I almost died under the anesthetic," she told him.
That would have been a waste," he said, reaching up her body and working at her breast. It seemed to arouse him, for his voice was more guttural when next he spoke. "What did they tell you?" he asked her, moving his hands up the soft channel behind her clavicle, and stroking her there. She had not been touched in months, except by disinfected hands; his delicacy woke shivers in her. She was so engrossed in pleasure that she failed to reply to his question. He asked again as he moved between her legs.
"What did they tell you?"
Through a haze of anticipation she said: "They left a number for me to ring. So that I could be helped…" "But you didn't want help?"
"No," she breathed. "Why should I?"
She half-saw his smile, though her eyes wanted to flicker closed entirely. His appearance failed to stir any passion in her; indeed there was much about his disguise (that absurd bow-tie, for one) which she thought ridiculous. With her eyes closed, however, she could forget such petty details; she could strip the hood off and imagine him pure. When she thought of him that way her mind pirouetted.
He took his hands from her; she opened her eyes. He was fumbling with his belt. As he did so somebody shouted in the street outside. His head jerked in the direction of the window; his body tensed. She was surprised at his sudden concern.
"It's all right," she said.
He leaned forward and put his hand to her throat.
"Be quiet," he instructed.
She looked up into his face. He had begun to sweat. The exchanges in the street went on for a few minutes longer; it was simply two late-night gamblers parting. He realized his error now.
"I thought I heard -”
"What?"
"- I thought I heard them calling my name."
"W ho would do that?" she inquired fondly. "Nobody knows we're here."
He looked away from the window. All purposefulness had abruptly drained from him; after the instant of fear his features had slackened. He looked almost stupid.
They came close," he said. "But they never found me."
"Close?"
"Coming to you." He laid his head on her breasts. "So very close," he murmured. She could hear her pulse in her head. "But I'm swift," he said, “and invisible." His hand strayed back down to her scar, and further. "And always neat," he added.
She sighed as he stroked her.
They admire me for that, I'm sure. Don't you think they must admire me? For being so neat?"
She remembered the chaos of the crypt; its indignities, its disorders.
"Not always…" she said.
He stopped stroking her.
"Oh yes," he said. "Oh yes. I never spill blood. That's a rule of mine. Never spill blood."
She smiled at his boasts. She would tell him now – though surely he already knew – about her visit to All Saints, and the handiwork of his that she'd seen there.
"Sometimes you can't help blood being spilt," she said, "I don't hold it against you."
At these words, he began to tremble.
"What did they tell you about me? What lies'?"
"Nothing," she said, mystified by his response. "What could they know?"
"I'm a professional," he said to her, his hand moving back up to her face. She felt intentionality in him again. A seriousness in his weight as he pressed closer upon her.
"I won't have them lie about me," he said. "I won't have it."
He lifted his head from her chest and looked at her.
"All I do is stop the drummer," he said.
"The drummer?"
"I have to stop him cleanly. In his tracks."
The wash of colours from the lights below painted his face one moment red, the next green, the next yellow; unadulterated hues, as in a child's paint-box.
"I won't have them tell lies about me," he said again. "To say I spill blood."
"They told me nothing," she assured him. He had given up his pillow entirely, and now moved to straddle her. His hands were done with tender touches.
"Shall I show you how clean I am?" he said: "How easily I stop the drummer?"
Before she could reply, his hands closed around her neck. She had no time even to gasp, let alone shout. His thumbs were expert; they found her windpipe and pressed. She heard the drummer quicken its rhythm in her ears. "It's quick; and clean," he was telling her, the colours still coming in predictable sequence. Red, yellow, green; red, yellow, green.
There was an error here, she knew; a terrible misunderstanding which she couldn't quite fathom. She struggled to make some sense of it.
"I don't understand," she tried to tell him, but her bruised larynx could produce no more than a gargling sound. Too late for excuses," he said, shaking his head. "You came to me, remember? You want the drummer stopped. Why else did you come?" His grip tightened ye
t further. She had the sensation of her face swelling; of the blood throbbing to jump from her eyes. "Don't you see that they came to warn you about me?" frowning as he laboured. "They came to seduce you away from me by telling you I spilt blood."
"No," she squeezed the syllable out on her last breath, but he only pressed harder to cancel her denial. The drummer was deafeningly loud now; though Kavanagh's mouth still opened and closed she could no longer hear what he was telling her. It mattered little. She realised now that he was not Death; not the clean-boned guardian she'd waited for. In her eagerness, she had given herself into the hands of a common killer, a street-corner Cain. She wanted to spit contempt at him, but her consciousness was slipping, the room, the lights, the face all throbbing to the drummer's beat. And then it all stopped.
She looked down on the bed. Her body lay sprawled across it. One desperate hand had clutched at the sheet, and clutched still, though there was no life left in it. Her tongue protruded, there was spittle on her blue lips. But (as he had promised) there was no blood.
She hovered, her presence failing even to bring a breeze to the cobwebs in this corner of the ceiling, and watched while Kavanagh observed the rituals of hi«crime. He was bending over the body, whispering in its ear as he rearranged it on the tangled sheets. Then he unbuttoned himself and unveiled that bone whose inflammation was the sincerest form of flattery. What followed was comical in its gracelessness; as her body was comical, with its scars and its places where age puckered and plucked at it. She watched his ungainly attempts at congress quite remotely. His buttocks were pale, and imprinted with the marks his underwear had left; their motion put her in mind of a mechanical toy.