Rupert Thomson - Death of a Murderer

The most important ball in the game. The one that’s worth more than all the others. The difference between winning and losing.

“Where the fuck’s the black?” a man yelled.

Nobody knew. The ball had disappeared.

It was a mystery.

The second he took that ball out of his pocket he knew what it meant: she had decided she was going to sleep with him. His heart jerked, as if his body had been speeding and he had just stamped on the brakes, and he stayed in the Gents for longer than he needed to. He was putting off returning to the bar, delaying the look that would surely pass between them, and the understanding they would have.

But nothing happened that night. In fact, nothing happened until the following Tuesday, and even as she left his flat on Wednesday morning she told him not to get used to anything because it might not happen again. Her life, she said, was complicated enough already. Though disappointed, wounded too, somehow he had seen this coming. He knew he was lucky to have been with her at all, and he was already grateful for the little he’d received. At the outset, then, she learned a couple of things about him: one, he didn’t feel that he deserved her, and two, he was entirely at her disposal.

She would visit his flat. He was never allowed to visit hers, though. She didn’t want her friends to see them together. She wouldn’t meet his friends either. She gave him her phone number, but didn’t tell him where she lived. She didn’t let him take any pictures of her and wouldn’t even go into a photo booth with him; she didn’t want their relationship recorded. What went on between the two of them was to remain private, secret. Hidden. If the world found out, pressure would be brought to bear on them, and that, she said, would be the end of it. He did his best to abide by her rules, but as the weeks went by it began to seem unnatural, stifling, even cruel. When he tried to tell her how he felt, she interrupted.

“Look, this isn’t serious, ” she said. “We’re just having fun.”

He nodded gloomily. Fun.

Once, in early March, she let him take her away for the weekend. To spend two consecutive nights and days with her was unheard of, but even as he counted his blessings he knew the weekend would never be repeated, so his mood as they drove up the motorway that Friday evening was one of thinly disguised despair. It was late when they arrived at the hotel, and the bar was already closed. Luckily, Venetia had brought some champagne with her. After the long drive north, he needed a drink, but the simple act of following her into an unfamiliar room excited him so much that he had to make love to her immediately, before they could even open the bottle. In the past, she had always insisted on having the lights off and the curtains closed, as if she belonged to a different generation, another time. That night, though, they did it with the TV on, and he could see her as she lay beneath him on the quilted counterpane, her narrow, boyish hips, her thin legs, almost stick-like, and her surprising breasts, which were out of proportion to the rest of her. Her body seemed more voluptuous than usual, in fact, and he wondered if she was having a period, but when he was inside her, it didn’t feel like it. Afterwards, she smeared his sperm over her nipples with the tip of her forefinger. “I like the feeling when it dries,” she said. “It goes all tight.” And he was so tired and dreamy that he barely noticed this veiled reference to previous experience, other men.

Rousing himself at last, he popped the cork on the champagne and poured her a glass. Later, he sat on the floor beside her while she had a bath. From the bedroom came the lurid, almost delirious soundtrack of a Hammer horror film. When she stretched out in the water, with her head resting against the side of the bath nearest to him, her black hair hung over the edge, and he touched the ends of it without her knowing. Violins played a high, thin note. A woman screamed, then screamed again. Venetia’s hair balanced on the palm of his hand like something standing upright. He still thought she was holding back — even in that moment, when he seemingly had everything he could possibly have hoped for. Was she just too lavish for him? Or was she only giving a part of herself, the least she could get away with? Even before that weekend, he had started hoarding items that belonged to her — lip salve, nail varnish, a pair of laddered tights. She didn’t notice: she was always losing things. He even kept some split ends that she had cut off in his bathroom when she was drunk one night. If she had known that he had some of her hair in a plastic film canister, and that he opened it from time to time and smelt it, she would probably have called him a weirdo and left him on the spot. But he was only trying to fill the gaps, get closer. We’re just having fun. He didn’t want it to be fun. He wanted it to be for ever.

Waking early the next morning, he turned in the bed and ran his right hand over the curve of her hip and down between her legs. She leaned sideways and took something from her bag on the bedside table. At first he thought she was going to pass him a condom, but then he saw her fit a mask over her eyes. The mask was beige, with the words air india on it.

“You’re not going to wear that, are you?” he said.

“Yes,” she said coolly. “Do you mind?”

Though startled, he could already envisage the erotic possibilities — how her blindness might give him licence. “Well,” he said, “if that’s what you want…”

After they had finished making love, she told him that he had gripped her so tightly when he came that she felt as if he had somehow reached through her skin, all seven layers of it, right into her muscles, even her bones, as if he had penetrated her body all over, and not just in the one place.

“I didn’t hurt you?” he said.

“No,” she said. “I liked it.”

Later that morning, they walked along a short stretch of the Pennine Way. As he stared off into the distance, the shadows of clouds blue-black on the smooth sides of the fells, he asked her about the eye-mask. What was it exactly, he said, that she didn’t want to see?

“I’m shy,” she said.

He laughed. “You? Shy?”

She was standing knee-deep in rough grass, a piece of saxifrage in the palm of her hand.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

“I’m not afraid.”

“Is it me?”

Her hand closed over the small white flower, and she gave him a look that came at him straight and level. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

This was both succinct and ambiguous — was she telling him not to overestimate his own importance, or was she trying to reassure him? — but he also sensed a kind of shakiness or trepidation, and he knew he’d stumbled on something that might help him to explain her. She wouldn’t elaborate, however, and he decided not to press her. Instead, he took her hand, which he would never have dared to do if they hadn’t been the only people for miles around. She affected not to notice, but he thought her fingers tightened around his. Rare though they were, such moments gave him hope: in time, perhaps, she might go a little easier on him…

That evening they drank pints of Guinness in the hotel bar, served by a man from the Midlands. In his early forties, with a gold tooth and a wicked tongue, he was soon making Venetia laugh with tales of local scandal, and Billy saw that for all the intimacies of the past twenty-four hours he had no hold over her, no claim whatsoever.

At dinner Venetia took charge of the wine list, ordering a white to go with their starters, then switching to red for the main course.

Billy shook his head. “It’s amazing, the amount you drink.”

“It must be the Scottish side of me,” she said. “My father—” She checked herself. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”