Gill Alderman - The Memory Palace

‘Christopher probably is. Guy is quite a different other. Once he played the black dog, cold Master Robin to a coven of witches.’

‘Many years ago.’

‘I am here because of it. And Dominic.’ He opened his eyes. They focused lazily, adjusting to the twilit distance between Alice’s neck and the marble nymph. Her sylvan sister stood beside her now, frozen in an attitude of suspense. He blinked and closed his eyes again, too involved with Alice’s body to make sense of what he saw, if it had any sense in this illogical night. Women in childbirth took notice of neither bombs nor portents; he, held more securely than a child deep in Alice’s birth-canal, had no interest in the world beyond it. He abandoned himself to the sensation their conjoined movement produced.

Lying still, exhausted; dead within her, he succumbed to the curiosity which awoke in his mind now that his body was satisfied. He opened his eyes wide. The second nymph, who still stood on tiptoe, surprised in her prurient, lustful eavesdropping, was Helen. The door behind her was open. He could make out the dark shapes of furniture in another room. Perhaps she wants to begin again, bring me another dozen lusty women to serve? he thought.

Helen knelt beside the bed and laid a hand on each of them, himself and Alice.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I knew you were still an adept. Roszi – Alice, you were always a sublime minx.’

‘It is better, far, far better,’ Alice murmured, ‘than my icy spring, or school, or imprisonment – oh far, far more than my golden torture.’

Guy, listening to them, half believed he dreamed; but, no, this body-warmed sheet was real, this golden hair, this small, aroused breast.

‘Love is close to torture, is it not?’ Helen inquired.

‘Ah – yes!’ he said, and Alice echoed him, ‘Yes – ah! – yes.’

To lie with them both, as once he thought he had, sometime, in the witches’ dreaming long ago: inwardly he rehearsed an invitation: Will you join us? – No – Helen, come a little closer – lie down on this side. As if she heard him, Helen drew back and stood by the statue of the nymph.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘But you must not touch!’ He studied her, marble-distant beyond Alice’s warmth and the smell of her pleasure, far away. The body was as perfect as the face. Dawn, which he suspected of trespass in the room, bringing parting, bringing day, made a goddess of her. Here was no slender woodland seducer; no maid of chill waters. She had heavy breasts, a small waist, swelling hips; all of these no older, no less alluring than they had been when she left him at the age of twenty-two. She had the dangerous look of Herodias, the cunning of Jezebel, the beckoning come-hither blatant sexuality of a Salome cast in metal, heated in the fire, poured into an unimpeachable mould.

The pain of desire, which Alice had likened to torture, returned to torment him as he lay looking at her untouchable nakedness, feeling Alice’s pliant flesh and will against him.

‘Why deny me?’ he said. ‘Georges must enjoy you!’

‘Georges. Ah Georges, who slumbers soundly! He understands my predicament – I must go back to him. Sleep!’ Swiftly, she turned away and passed through the doorway. He heard her turn the key. The door was made impregnable and Georges slept with her behind it, behind the thin shield of its panels. Guy lay quiet, entirely limp and relaxed, every part still except his mind. Alice slept. He rehearsed the unquiet night, going over and over its many and intimate details until his imagination was sated. He remembered Alice’s uncalloused feet, her straight toes and her tender earlobes, her waist, her lips, her tongue, her navel: all these asleep beside him. He remembered the bracelet Helen used to wear about her left ankle, her painted toe-nails, the many rings which pierced her neat ears, how he could almost span her waist with his two hands and how her tongue met his; the jewel he had removed with his lips from the deep pit of her navel: all these asleep beside his successor, Georges Dinard.

He remembered the serious young man he once had been and the insatiable rake who still woke in him; the Christian he was and the pagan, the husband and the philanderer. He remembered his books standing in a line at home, all with crimson covers and the distinctive lettering of the legend beneath each title: A Book in the Malthassa Series, by Guy Kester Parados – or Christopher Guy Young whose unremarkable name he had let drop as carelessly as a lost handkerchief. He signed everything now, books, contracts, cheques, with Parados’s name.

The early birds were waking. Words from the first line of The Making of Koschei haunted him: ‘I began building the year the …’ He chased the troublesome ghosts from his mind – he was on holiday, enjoying such a vacation! He fell asleep as the sun came up and turned the cold white statue gold.

Guy woke again because his left hand was aching. The struggle to come fully awake was aggravated by troublesome thoughts of typing and driving. Maybe Sandy’s Chinese balls! He grinned, half asleep. Of course, not Sandy. Alice. And it was Thursday, the third day in France. Alice was lying on his hand. He freed it. The ache continued and his right hand gave a sympathetic twinge.

‘Blast!’ he said. He would get up, walk for a while. Relax and forget it.

The sun was well up. He leaned out of the window, the sill covering his nakedness. Georges Dinard’s car, he was glad to see, was a plain four-door Citroën. It sat like a lumpen ox beside his shiny predator. Vineyards crowded the village and their bright uniformity stretched into the distance, over hill and through valley, meeting whatever tracts of forest stretched out to meet them in a blur of dull and biting greens. When he turned from the window and saw Alice sleeping under the watchful eye of her tutelary nymph he felt at least twenty-five and, simultaneously, as old as a biblical patriarch. David, wasn’t it, who needed a virgin to warm him in his dotage? Alice slept, but maybe Helen was awake, about. He stretched and massaged his hands before collecting the scattered garments which, when they were assembled to clothe him, made up the image the world perceived as Guy Parados.

In the kitchen a cooling pot of coffee was the only sign of life. Guy found a cup and drank some of it black. Outside, the garden was in shade and, suddenly needing the sunlight which had warmed him at the bedroom window, he went out and walked swiftly across the grass until the shadows were behind him. He opened the door which led into the orchard.

The black vardo was closed up. He glanced at and avoided it, striking out for the far side of the orchard where, instead of the vines he expected, a small stand of hazels and other scrubby trees hid a plantation of conifers. An indeterminate but regular noise drew him: it sounded for all the world like a giant drumming deep in the heart of the wood. There was no hedge or other boundary and he walked amongst the trees until he found a ride where tall grasses and a few foxgloves struggled upwards in the dim light. The ground was dry and strewn with old pine needles and cones. He followed the ride and the sound until he came upon a clearing. Here stood a group of ruinous wooden buildings that looked as if they had been old before the wood was planted. Some letters were chalked upon the nearest. When he was close enough to see them properly he made out the single word ‘Arcadie’ and the memories and associations it woke confused him. Someone had written it there as a joke, he supposed.

Ivy made the place picturesque and the early morning sun reached with long fingers into the clearing. The puzzling noise had resolved itself into a regular beat. He stood in the warmth and willed his seething mind blank for precious, restful moments. Relax! On holiday! Then he walked quickly to the barn and looked into it. A man was sawing wood at a small saw-bench powered by a compact little engine. The brassy shine of the engine and the smell of hot oil attracted him. He took a step forward and the man, who was turning to reach for a fresh branch, looked round and gave him Dominic’s insolent grin.