Fisher stood watching her with concern on his face. ‘Are you sure you can walk all right? Would you like to sit down?’
Kym blinked in surprise. ‘I didn’t even know I was standing.’
‘When I came in here you were sitting there by the fireplace. You say you suffered an electric shock?’
‘Yes, I touched the terminals. Don’t worry.’ She managed a smile. ‘It’s low voltage. Perhaps made my hair stand on end a little bit.’
Fisher smiled. ‘Your hair’s fine.
‘I should see to the clock. Those chimes were going crazy. Bong, bong, bong.’
‘Really? We couldn’t hear anything.’
‘So you and Marko didn’t leave me?’
‘No, we wouldn’t do anything like that. We stayed up in the gallery. Marko hit the light switch every time they went out. I kept watch to make sure you were OK.’
His concern touched her.
‘Thank you.’
‘Only when the light went out and we couldn’t switch it back on for a few seconds we saw that you’d gone.’
‘Oh, I found my way through the façade by touch. I didn’t want to waste time.’
‘The moment you vanished I came down here. Though I had to wait out in the walkway area when the lights went out. The switch is crap. It must be faulty. It takes a minute or so to reactivate.’
‘So you didn’t see the man in bare feet? Or hear the chimes go crazy?’
From the way Fisher smiled, Kym realized he thought she was pulling his leg. ‘Chimes? Bare feet? I don’t get it.’
‘No, neither do I now, Fisher.’ She sighed. ‘You know something? I must have blacked out when I was fooling around with the bare wires. I think the shock got reality and dreams all mixed up inside my head.’
‘Are you sure you’re OK? You don’t want to sit down?’
‘I want to get out of here before the lights go again. But if you will allow me to take your arm?’
His smile was a warm one. ‘By all means. Let me know if you need to rest.’
‘I will, Fisher. Thank you.’
Fisher made it to the doors to the entrance hall, with Kym linking her arm with his, before the timer tripped the light out again. He paused in the doorway as The Promenade that ran beneath the frowning façade of the medieval house was plunged into darkness once more.
‘Oh?’ she exclaimed.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I forgot to switch off the clock. Those chimes will drive everyone crazy.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘I ripped the power cable out of the junction box. It’s dead.’
Fisher felt her palm through his shirt as she lightly touched his chest. Her dark eyes caught the daylight falling through the hallway windows. ‘Thank you again.’ Her smile and her Eastern European accent captivated him. ‘I think you have saved my life today.’
Fisher had feared she’d been dying as she sat there by the fireplace in that weird house within a house. Her eyes were dull. Her chest had been jerking in convulsive starts as she choked for breath. What he didn’t tell her was that she’d been sobbing as she sat there. A heart-breaking sound of sheer grief.
Marko ran lightly down the stairs. ‘What ho, captain,’ he called cheerfully. ‘Got it done?’
Kym answered for him. ‘He has. And he rescued me, too.’
‘Did you need rescuing?’ Marko asked in surprise.
‘Yes. Fisher, my hero, rescued me. I don’t know what to do to repay him.’
Fisher quelled any comment Marko might have planned to make with a glare.
‘I guess Fabian will be expecting us to report back,’ Fisher told her.
‘OK. I’m going back to my room to rest. Gentlemen.’ She nodded at them. ‘I’ll see you later.’
When she’d walked away Fisher saw that her balance had returned.
Marko winked. ‘When you going to collect payment from her, Fisher?’
Grinning, Fisher put his arm around the man and pressed his fist against his face. ‘Go play your drums, Marko, and don’t say another word.’
Marko grinned back. ‘Yeah, but you don’t know what I’m thinking, do you?’
‘Behave, you strange little man.’
Marko’s grin grew even wider. ‘I’m imagining you. And I’m imagining Kym. She’s wearing a silk robe as she glides toward you.’ He adopted an Eastern European accent. ‘Oh, Mr Fisher. Thank you for saving my life. Take what you want. Only be gentle with—’
‘OK, I warned you.’
Marko bolted down the corridor in the direction of the ballroom. Fisher followed trying to shout threats but finding his laughter made the words come out all wrong.
In the ballroom, Fabian stood at the keyboard. He shuffled pages of music. With barely a glance up he asked, ‘What kept the pair of you?’ Then the hidden clock chimed three times. Annoyed, he stabbed his finger into the air. ‘And weren’t you going to put a stop to that?’
CHAPTER 12
Fisher sat on the end of his bed to pull off his shoes.
‘OK, Room.’ Fisher adopted schoolteacher tones of authority. ‘You’re going to behave yourself tonight, aren’t you?’
The art of flippancy, he thought. Kill a sense of foreboding with a light-hearted comment. Does it work every time? Does it hell.
The time was 11.15. Around him the house creaked as it settled itself into the cold witching hours until dawn. Hawthorn squirmed outside his window in the breeze. They were like shaggy beasts with coats of spikes that constantly shook themselves in a state of barely suppressed agitation as cold air currents rushed at them from the swamp. He imagined what it would be like to walk through that swarm of bushes with their stabbing thorns …
‘Stop it. You’re brooding,’ he told himself. ‘Get some sleep. Fabian’s going to be on your back if you’re not up by seven. Obey the master … his every whim is your command.’ Flippant comment number two. Yeah, but check out Fabian’s rules: Bed before twelve. Rise at seven. No heavy duty liquor (that’s wine and beer only, then only in moderation, and, hell knows, Fisher could use those golden shots of whisky tonight; you didn’t know what the house would pull on you next – hey, Fisher, what’s that you said about brooding?). What’s worse? That Fabian imposed all these rules? Or that he, Marko and Sterling agreed to go along with them? Of course … it’s that promise of money flooding into your bank account, of seeing your face on the cover of music magazines. Fabian has sold them the dream. They’ve bought it. Now they’re prepared to go along with the guy.
The wind blew harder. It drew a single note that became a rising cry in the night, before subsiding to a sobbing sound. For a second he believed it really was someone in distress. Only the blast of air currents came again to swirl around the carved stonework to draw out yet another cry that seemed to combine human emotion with a quality that was deeply inhuman, as if the architecture of the house colluded with the cold north wind to mimic a human being – one with all the frailties and the fears that beset every living man and woman. The cry came again. It forced currents of ice through his veins. The cry grew louder. It was the north wind shaped by the stone lips of the house; only it throbbed with human emotion. Fisher sat there hypnotized by the sound. The grief he felt for his own father that lurked just below the surface of his joking, what-the-hell-let’s-party disguise threatened to spill over and seize hold of him. And here he was: alone in his room in The Tower – a house that contained a grim, forbidding inner house. Loneliness poured in as relentlessly as the cold jets of air whistling through gaps in the window frames. I’m alone. There’s no one to talk to. As solitude threatened to crush him, wild thoughts flooded his head … of searching for whisky, or just racing out of the house to run through the woods and fields until exhaustion annihilated this volcano of grief inside of him – as all that weighed down on his spirits with the suffocating pressure of grave soil being mounded over a coffin, the house with its ally the north wind, subtly altered the sound of the air currents gusting across
the grim masonry. The cry rose again, this time into a screaming jet sound that was twice as loud as before. Branches rattled at the glass window panes; stiff, dead fingers frantically tapping. Now as the scream decayed, the sobbing sound wasn’t repeated. This time that pulse of throaty notes didn’t imitate an expression of grief; it was a chuckle. It delighted in the effect it had on the 22-year-old sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. It mocked his misery, this grief of his; this was something it could feed on …
Fisher ran his hands through his hair. ‘Stop it.’ Did he tell the gales to stop? Or did he tell himself to stop these brooding thoughts that were drowning him? At that moment he couldn’t tell. He only wanted out. And, dear God, at this moment any exit will do …
The sound didn’t register at first. Then it came again. Someone tapped lightly at his door.
If I open it, who’s gong to stand there? What’s going to stand there? Dad? As dead as nails? Or something without a human face? Flippancy became malignant now. His comments didn’t protect him. They burrowed into his soul to rot it from the inside out. Tap, tap, tap …
‘Fisher?’
He came out of it. For a moment his heart beat hard. He blinked. He realized he’d been in some place that wasn’t quite this room, or quite this time. He’d been in a dark place that desperate people find themselves trapped in. A dangerous place where you’re vulnerable. Now he was out. He’d escaped.
‘Fisher …’
‘OK.’ He crossed the bedroom to the door.
‘Fisher, hurry up.’
Those Eastern European accents. ‘Kym,’ he said opening the door, ‘you’ll piss off Fabian breaking the curfew. You know what he—’
Kym rushed at him with all the speed and fury of a whirlwind. She grabbed hold of his head with her hands to kiss him full on the mouth. The force of the kiss made him take a step back; immediately she used the heel of her foot to shut the door. The kiss caught him by surprise; although, he realized, he kissed her right back on the mouth, while he placed his hands on either side of her waist that moved so in such a supple way. Her furious kisses went on. Each time he expected her to break away a renewed surge rose inside of her. Soft lips pressed against his. Her hands slipped down his head as at last she broke the kiss to stand back. There she stared at him with nothing less than defiance.
‘Kym?’ he managed to say.
‘People use too many words,’ she told him still locking her eyes on him. ‘I say act first, so we know where we stand.’
‘Stand?’ Fisher’s heart beat hard. This wasn’t unwelcome, but … ‘What about Adam?’
‘You wouldn’t understand the nature of our relationship.’
‘I wouldn’t?’
‘I like you.’ She tossed her head. ‘Do you like me?’
‘Yes?’
‘Then we should make love.’
Is this the Czech way? He doubted it. This was Kym being Kym. Everything about her breathed a powerful eroticism: the swaying walk; her short dark hair that was glossy as silk; her clothes; those licorice black boots that hugged her beautiful calves. Ebony eyes that sent a shiver across his skin every time she looked at him. These thoughts flitted through his head. But to strip her naked? Make love to her? This whirlwind speed took him by surprise.
‘Well, Fisher, do you want me? Or would you like me to leave your room?’ In the end the answer didn’t come from him. The cold breeze droned around the iron gutters. It roused the bushes to strike their sticks of bristling thorns at the window pane. A night of this alone in his room … in this house …
‘Stay,’ he told her.
‘You want me, Fisher?’
‘Yes.’
‘But whatever we do, whatever our experience when we fuck, we don’t talk about it. OK?’
‘No. It’s just between you and me.’
‘And in the morning I’ll be with Adam. So we act as if there is nothing between us.’
‘But if you think you’re cheating on Adam—’
‘Who said anything about cheating?’ Her expression radiated cold waves.
‘It’s just that—’
‘Just nothing. As I said, you don’t understand our relationship. It’s not what you think.’
‘OK.’
‘You want me to go?’
Here’s your choice. The solitude of this room? A room that collapsed in on you? Or human company? To distract you from brooding thoughts?
Fisher lunged at her. She drew in a gasp of air, perhaps afraid he’d decided to attack her. But he hugged her against him, crushing her body against his as he kissed her on the mouth. The tension melted from her muscles. She became pliant again. A warm, healthy, supple-torsoed woman. Her fingers pushed through his hair. Her mouth had a cool freshness as if she’d been drinking ice-cold spring water. The passionate surges returned to her body. They were met by his.
Now there was no marsh being ripped by biting northerlies. He didn’t hear the tap of branches on the window, or the whine of air currents wrapping invisible limbs about the house. He kissed her with so much passion that the sheer heat of it all drove away the brooding thoughts that had nearly suffocated him a moment ago.
This time when she broke the contact, mouth on mouth, she smoothly slipped her sweater off to reveal her small, firm breasts. She kissed him on the face then lay back on the bed. As she pushed her thumbs into tight fitting ski pants she looked him in the eye and said, ‘Help me with these.’
That moment of afterglow. He’d just lay down beside her on the bed. The cool air touched his bare skin. For the last half-hour he’d not been aware of it, or anything else for that matter, apart from the delicious sensation of locking limbs with Kym. Now their breathing began to slow as the heat of their passion passed. Kym turned her head to look into his eyes; her face no more than six inches from his.
‘Nice,’ she told him in the softly accented voice. ‘We made the right decision.’
‘I believe we did.’ Fisher smiled. ‘I know we did.’
‘I had to get out of the house,’ she explained.
‘Hmm?’
‘I knew I couldn’t leave this rotten house and go away. But I had to leave it for a little while. Like this. Do you understand?’
‘I guess I do.’
‘Don’t make a sad face. I like you. This wasn’t a … how you say it? A clinical fuck. It was two warm-hearted friends fucking. Isn’t that nice with you?’
Fisher felt the smile return to his face. ‘Nice? Awesome. Fucking awesome.’
She kissed him on the lips, then used her fingertip to trace a line around his face. All the time her eyes roved over his features as if embedding them deep in her mind, so she’d remember them.
‘You’ll stay the full month?’ she asked.
‘I guess so.’
‘A girlfriend waiting back home?’
‘No girlfriend. No day job.’
She gave a soft laugh. ‘Ah, no girlfriend. I wondered why you seemed so pent up. Like so full of inner pressure. Volcano, it goes’ – she tweaked his nose – ‘boom.’
‘I broke up with a girl a few weeks ago. We realized it had run its course.’
‘Ah, failure to commit. Classic case. Now … Here it comes again.’
She sat up as the chimes shimmered their ghost music through the air again. Solemnly, she sat there, looking up at the ceiling. When it finished striking twelve, she shivered. Fisher saw goose bumps rise on her skin.
Kym shrugged. ‘And to think I electrocuted myself today trying to disable the mechanism. And it’s still damn well chiming.’
He frowned. ‘I must have pulled out some obsolete wiring. The power feed might run into it from a different direction.’
‘Next time we take plenty of flashlights. I don’t intend to be stranded in darkness again. That old medieval house inside this one … pah, it’s weird. Whoever built this place must have been, you know? Lost in the head.’
‘You want to leave?’
‘Ah, I’m made of stro
ng nerves, Fisher. My husband tried to shoot me when I told him I was leaving. Now he’s in jail in Prague. I’m not easy to frighten.’ Fisher wasn’t sure how to ask this without sounding crass. Nevertheless …
‘Your relationship with Adam?’
‘Oh, what a bruise on your ribs. It’s enormous. What happened?’
‘It’s nothing. You and Adam. And Belle?’
Thoughtfully she stroked the bruise on his chest with a lightness he couldn’t have believed was possible. ‘You are curious, aren’t you? Belle has her own reasons. For me? It is necessary to embed myself in your culture and your society. Even with my university degree I’d be a chambermaid in one of your hotels, or carrying food to restaurant tables. Only I am determined to fast-track myself into a position where I have earning power and status. There, you know enough for now. Is what I do wrong?’
‘It’s ambitious.’
‘Then aren’t we cut from the same cloth? You obey all of Fabian’s little rules and sit like oh-so polite children listening to his music.’
‘Like children?’
‘Don’t kid yourself, Fisher. We’re the same. We’ve made our principles elastic so we can get what we want from life.’ She turned so she could kiss his bare chest. ‘Hmm, salty. And don’t look hurt again. I love salt more than sugar. I put salt on chopped apple. Try it sometime.’ She kissed him again. This time on his stomach. ‘Salt raw onion, too. Tastes wonderful.’ She ran her tongue across his midriff. ‘Nice and tangy. Hmm, do you know that our blood is virtually the same composition as seawater? We evolved. We left the oceans. But we still have the remains of gills inside our ears. And we have brought the sea with us. Our bodies manufacture salt water.’ She kissed him again then licked her lips. Then kissing quickly with a velvety softness she tracked her lips down across his stomach. Fisher had to clench his fist when he felt the delicious tickling sensation on his loins.
Then … a single chime. A rogue chime. Frowning, he glanced at his watch on the bedside table. Nine minutes after midnight. So, why the chime?