Chapter Six
Gregor and Lucy drive away from the heart of the city, with the great broad river to their left. Old spreading trees shelter the road and the houses hide behind ornate walls. Above the branches Lucy sees thin clouds passing over the stars like smoke from a distant fire. She imagines that it comes from Archie’s filthy flat, that everything in that place is now ash. She closes her eyes and imagines flames curling up the side of the wall-sized plasma TV, melting the image of the woman. She imagines the blood on the floor heating up, the thick red pool bubbling.
Gregor turns the car suddenly right. She opens her eyes and sees a long shadowed driveway, with dense hedges on either side. In front is just blackness.
“Where are we going?”
Gregor doesn’t answer.
* * *
Martin stopped writing. Through the window behind him the sky had darkened to a deep charcoal blue and the glow of the computer screen in front of him was the only light in the room. He turned off the computer and went downstairs.
He was still watching the car pass through the city as he kissed Alison’s cheek and asked her how her day was. As Alison put their plates on the table and sat opposite him he was on the bonnet of the car, looking at Gregor and Lucy through the windscreen, rocking and bumping with the rolls of the road, the warmth of the engine beneath him, feeling the city wind in his face.
As Alison told him about where she had been thinking of going on holiday this year, Martin heard the rattling drone of the engine, the wheels on the street, the buzz of the city. He saw the pale drawn skin of Lucy, watched the changing reflections of the passing shop windows in her eyes, studied her wide mouth and angular cheekbones, her thin nose and the dark long lashes. He leaned in through the windscreen to see the colour of her eyes, green with flecks of silver, like sunlight shining on a shallow coral reef. He followed the line of her profile as she looked out the side window, so defined, her sharp chin and elegant neck. He saw her turn to Gregor and he heard her voice as she said slowly, “I want to go to Mexico.” Alison was filling his wine glass and saying, “It’s expensive, but wouldn’t it be something?” Lucy turned away to look at the passing city and said quietly, “Mexico looks so good.”
* * *
The headlights show a set of tall gates which open as they approach. An old Georgian style house is revealed, with an arch over the front door. Gregor pulls up and walks around to her side of the car, opening the car door. Cold air hits her and she pulls the jacket closer around her, bringing her knees up to her chest.
“Come on,” he says, “it’s warm inside.” He takes her by the arm and they walk across the gravel to the front door. He switches the light on and the hallway appears. It is big enough to hold Archie’s apartment, with warm amber walls and a wooden floor. A gloriously patterned rug with swirling patterns of shimmering gold on deep violet runs all the way to the foot of the stairs. As they walk across it Lucy looks at her dirty bare feet on the thick weave and finds herself squeezing Gregor’s arm. She stops. He glances at her, then walks ahead.
“We’ll get you some clothes upstairs.”
As she follows him through the grand hallway she sees a door ajar, opening to a parlour room. The stairs are elegant with a carved banister, which is smooth and warm to touch, like recently bathed skin. There is a little landing area and the stairs turn back toward the front of the house. Lucy follows Gregor as he goes up another flight, turning lights on as he goes. At the top, the walls are a yellow cream from the ceiling down to a dado rail and beneath the wooden rail is wallpaper, textured ridges of swirling paisley patterns encrusted with purple and silver.
“Do you live here alone?”
“Not anymore.”
There are four doors and Gregor leads her to the furthest one on the right. He opens it and gestures inside. Lucy walks into a bedroom. A mound of pillows and cushions cover the double bed. On the wall is a painted portrait of a little girl, her blond hair tied into pretty plaits. Her painted face is on the verge of tears. Lucy touches the canvas.
“Who is that?”
Gregor is still standing in the doorway. “Who does it look like? It looks like you maybe?”
A large window is sunk into the deep outer wall, with a cushioned sill. Lucy can see the driveway and the black four-by-four, the gate and beyond. The lights of the city pulse in the distance, from the high rises and the houses, like every building has a fire inside, hollowing it out. She turns and Gregor is standing in the doorway with a blue tracksuit in his hands. He hands it to her.
“Here, try this,” he says, “we’ll get you fixed up in the morning. I’m going to get some food. Make yourself at home.”
Then he is gone, padding away down the hall. The front door shuts.
Next to the bedroom door Lucy sees a circular mirror, the ring frame of which looks like it is spun from golden strands of silk. Half-closed eyes squint out from dark pits and her cheekbones protrude above hollow cheeks. Gregor’s car rumbles down the rattling gravel, past the iron gates, which then whir slowly closed. She is alone. A grey ghoul stares at her from the golden frame. Is this what Archie has done to her? She turns away from the mirror.
She puts the bottom half of the tracksuit on and pulls Gregor’s jacket tighter around her; she is getting used to its smell. She goes back out to the landing and opens one of the doors to a pristine bathroom, white tiled with a large corner bath with steps into it. Towels are folded neatly over a rail on the wall, matching the pale blue colour of the sink and toilet. Through another door is a large room with a running machine and a weights bench, a blue mat on the floor and a TV screen that fills the wall. She tries the other two doors but they are locked.
She kneels and runs her fingers over the swirling silver and purple on the bottom half of the walls. Then she stands and goes back down the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase she turns right through to the TV room. There are two large sofas, a big screen television, and a wall of books. As far as she can make out they are all biographies: Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Ted Bundy, Dennis Nilsen. Heroes, statesmen, and killers side by side.
Lucy walks through double glass doors into the kitchen. She flicks the light switch and a smooth light grows from the bulbs embedded in the ceiling revealing a mesh of the old and the new: a stone sink with a hand basin that looks like it has been carved from an ancient mountainside, and a sleek coffee machine with a green digital display. The cupboards are muted green and stretch from floor to ceiling and match the colour of the pots and pans hanging from hooks on the opposite wall. In the centre of the room a stone plinth like a derelict Greek column rises and is topped with green marble, smooth, glossy, and embedded with the crisscross of fine white threads.
Lucy touches the smooth surface. She sees it as a piece of a distant planet, the reflections from the bulb above like the glow of a sun, the web of white lines scars on the rock surface and dry river beds, a landscape she will never experience.
Every surface in the kitchen is clean. There are no crumbs, no coffee cup rings on the worktops. The fridge, tall and silver, stands in the corner. Lucy sees her distorted reflection. Her head looks tiny and squeezed, the jacket she is wearing bulges and grows, and her blue track-suited legs look short and fat. As she moves, her reflection elongates and slides, her body follows her head, squashed and stretched, and she walks to the back of the kitchen through an archway and into the dining room. There is a long table of thick old wood and sturdy wooden chairs sit heavily on the stone floor. Off to the left another archway shows the first steps of a staircase curving out of sight.
On the other side of the table are glass sliding doors, and Lucy sees herself again, skinny and grotesque. She walks toward herself before cupping her hands around her eyes and peering through the glass. She sees grass and overgrown flower beds, old trees, and a statue of two lovers in an embrace, their two bodies joining at the hips and melding into one, curving gracefully into the earth. Lucy pulls at the doors but they are locked.
She walks back through the kitchen and out into the hallway where she came in and she sees the door of the parlour again, half-open. Inside is a room painted white and a large sleek table, dark polished wood with office-style chairs around it. On the wall hangs a painting, luscious but elusive, a web of blues, greys and reds, with streaks of light and shapes appearing and disappearing behind each other. The more she looks at it, the more the colours move and shapes slide across the canvas. Lucy is overcome, and a dizziness sways her.
She backs out of the room to the hallway until she feels the thick rug beneath her feet. Then she lies down. There is not a sound. It is a silence inside a beautiful ornate box, sealed tight. With her cheek on the violet weave with golden spirals, she closes her eyes. She sees again the flames rise in Archie’s little flat, burning, burning.
***