The Hellbound Heart

EIGHT

1

There was thunder that night. A storm without rain, which made the air smell of steel.

Kirsty had never slept well. Even as a child, though her mother had known lullabies enough to pacify nations, the girl had never found slumber easy. It wasn't that she had bad dreams; or at least none that lingered until morning. It was that sleep itself-the act of closing the eyes and relinquishing control of her consciousness-was something she was temperamentally unsuited to.

Tonight, with the thunder so loud and the lightning so bright, she was happy. She had an excuse to forsake her tangled bed, and drink tea, and watch the spectacle from her window.

It gave her time to think, as well-time to turn over the problem that had vexed her since leaving the house on Lodovico Street. But she was still no nearer an answer.

One particular doubt nagged. Suppose she was wrong about what she'd seen? Suppose she'd misconstrued the evidence, and Julia had a perfectly good explanation? She would lose Rory at a stroke.

And yet, how could she remain silent? She couldn't bear to think of the woman laughing behind his back, exploiting his gentility, his naïveté. The thought made her blood boil.

The only other option was to wait and watch, to see if she could gain some incontrovertible evidence. If her worst suppositions were then confirmed, she would have no choice but to tell Rory all she'd seen.

Yes. That was the answer. Wait and watch, watch and wait.

The thunder rolled around for long hours, denying her sleep until nearly four. When, finally, she did sleep, it was the slumber of a watcher and waiter. Light, and full of sighs.

2

The storm made a ghost train of the house. Julia sat downstairs, and counted the beats between the flash and the fury that came on its heels. She had never liked thunder. She, a murderess; she, a consorter with the living dead. It was another paradox to add to the thousand she'd found at work in herself of late. She thought more than once of going upstairs, and taking some comfort with the prodigy, but knew that it would be unwise. Rory might return at any moment from his office party. He would be drunk, on past experience, and full of unwelcome fondness.

The storm crept closer. She put on the television, to block out the din, which it scarcely did.

At eleven. Rory came home, wreathed in smiles. He had good news. In the middle of the party his supervisor had taken him aside, commended him for his excellent work, and spoken of great things for the future. Julia listened to his retelling of the exchange, hoping that his inebriation would blind him to her indifference. At last, his news told, he threw off his jacket and sat down on the sofa beside her.

"Poor you," he said. "You don't like the thunder."

"I'm fine," she said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Fine."

He leaned across to her and nuzzled her ear.

"You're sweaty," she said matter-of-factly. He didn't cease his overtures, however, unwilling to lower his baton now that he'd begun.

"Please, Rory-" she said. "I don't want this."

"Why not? What did I do?"

"Nothing," she said, pretending some interest in the television. "You're fine."

"Oh, is that right?" he said. "You're fine. I'm fine. Everybody's fucking fine."

She stared at the flickering screen. The late evening news had just begun, the usual cup of sorrows full to brimming. Rory talked on, drowning out the newscaster's voice with his diatribe. She didn't much mind. What did the world have to tell her? Little enough. Whereas she, she had news for the world that it

would reel to hear. About the condition of the damned; about love lost, and then found; about what despair and desire have in common.

"Please, Julia"-Rory was saying-"just speak to me."

The pleas demanded her attention. He looked, she thought, like the boy in the photographs-his body hirsute and bloated, his clothes those of an adult-but still, in essence, a boy, with his bewildered gaze and sulky mouth. She remembered Frank's question: "How could you ever have married such a dullard?" Thinking of it, a sour smile creased her lips. He looked at her, his puzzlement deepening.

"What's so funny, damn you?"

"Nothing."

He shook his head, dull anger replacing the sulk. A peal of thunder followed the lightning with barely a beat intervening. As it came, there was a noise from the floor above. She turned her attention back to the television, to divert Rory's interest. But it was a vain attempt; he'd heard the sound.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Thunder."

He stood up. "No," he said. "Something else." He was already at the door.

A dozen options raced through her head, none of them practical. He wrestled drunkenly with the door handle.

"Maybe I left a window open," she said and got up. "I'll go and see."

"I can do it," he replied. "I'm not totally inept."

"Nobody said-" she began, but he wasn't listening. As he stepped out into the hallway the

lightning came with the thunder: loud and bright. As she went in pursuit of him another flash came fast upon the first, accompanied by a bowel-rocking crash. Rory was already halfway up the stairs.

"It was nothing!" she shouted after him. He made no reply but climbed on to the top of the stairs. She followed.

"Don't..." she said to him, in a lull between one peal and the next. He heard her this time. Or rather, chose to listen. When she reached the top of the stairs he was waiting.

"Something wrong?" he said.

She hid her trepidation behind a shrug. "You're being silly," she replied softly.

"Am I?"

"It was just the thunder."

His face, lit from the hall below, suddenly softened. "Why do you treat me like shit?" he asked her.

"You're just tired," she told him.

"Why though?" he persisted, childlike. "What have I ever done to you?"

"It's all right," she said. "Really, Rory. Everything's all right." The same hypnotic banalities, over and over.

Again, the thunder. And beneath the din, another sound. She cursed Frank's indiscretion.

Rory turned, and looked along the darkened landing.

"Hear that?" he said.

"No."

His limbs dogged by drink, he moved away from her. She watched him recede into shadow. Lightning, spilling through the open bedroom door, flash-lit him; then darkness again. He was walking toward the damp room. Toward Frank.

"Wait..." she said, and went after him.

He didn't halt, but covered the few yards to the door. As she reached him, his hand was closing on the handle.

Inspired by panic, she reached out and touched his cheek. "I'm afraid..." she said.

He looked round at her woozily.

"What of?" he asked her.

She moved her hand to his lips, letting him taste the fear on her fingers.

"The storm," she said.

She could see the wetness of his eyes in the gloom, little more. Was he swallowing the hook, or spitting it out?

Then: "Poor baby," he said.

Swallowed, she elated, and reaching down she put her hand over his and drew it from the door. If Frank so much as breathed now, all was lost.

"Poor baby," he said again and wrapped an embrace around her. His balance was not too good; he was a lead weight in her arms.

"Come on," she said, coaxing him away from the door. He went with her for a couple of stumbling paces, and then lost his equilibrium. She let go of him, and reached out to the wall for support. The lightning came again, and by it she saw that his eyes had found her, and glittered.

"I love you," he said, stepping across the hallway to where she stood. He pressed against her, so heavily there was no resisting. His head went to the crook of her neck, muttering sweet talk into her skin. Now he was kissing her. She wanted to throw him off. More, she wanted to take him by his clammy hand and show him the death-defying monster he had been so close to stumbling across.

But Frank wasn't ready for that confrontation, not yet. All she could do was endure Rory's caresses and hope that exhaustion claimed him quickly.

"Why don't we go downstairs?" she suggested.

He muttered something into her neck and didn't move. His left hand was on her breast, the other clasped around her waist. She let him work his fingers beneath her blouse. To resist at this juncture would only inflame him afresh.

"I need you," he said, raising his mouth to her ear. Once, half a lifetime ago, her heart had seemed to skip at such a profession. Now she knew better. Her heart was no acrobat; there was no tingle in the coils of her abdomen. Only the steady workings of her body. Breath drawn, blood circulated, food pulped and purged. Thinking of her anatomy thus, untainted by romanticism-as a collection of natural imperatives housed in muscle and bone-she found it easier to let him strip her blouse and put his face to her breasts. Her nerve endings dutifully responded to his tongue, but again, it was merely an anatomy lesson. She stood back in the dome of her skull, and was unmoved.

He was unbuttoning himself now; she caught sight of the boastful plum as he stroked it against her thigh. Now he opened her legs, and pulled her underwear down just far enough to give him access. She made no objection, nor even a sound, as he made his entrance.

His own din began almost immediately, feeble claims to love and lust hopelessly tangled together. She half listened, and let him work at his play, his face buried in her hair.

Closing her eyes, she tried to picture better times, but the lightning spoiled her dreaming. As sound followed light, she opened her eyes again to see that the door of the damp room had been opened two or three inches. In the narrow gap between door and frame she could just make out a glistening figure, watching them.

She could not see Frank's eyes, but she felt them sharpened beyond pricking by envy and rage. Nor did she look away, but stared on at the shadow while Rory's moans increased. And at the end one moment became another, and she was lying on the bed with her wedding dress crushed beneath her, while a black and scarlet beast crept up between her legs to give her a sample of its love.

"Poor baby," was the last thing Rory said as sleep overcame him. He lay on the bed still dressed; she made no attempt to strip him. When his snores were even, she left him to it, and went back to the room.

Frank was standing beside the window, watching the storm move to the southeast. He had torn the blind away. Lamplight washed the walls.

"He heard you," she said.

"I had to see the storm," he replied simply. "I needed it."

"He almost found you, damn it."

Frank shook his head. "There's no such thing as almost," he said, still staring out of the window. Then, after a pause: "I want to be out there. I want to have it all again."

"I know."

"No you don't," he told her. "You've no conception of the hunger I've got on me."

"Tomorrow then," she said. "I'll get another body tomorrow."

"Yes. You do that. And I want some other stuff. A radio, for one. I want to know what's going on out there. And food: proper food. Fresh bread-"

"Whatever you need."

"-and ginger. The preserved kind, you know? In syrup."

"I know."

He glanced round at her briefly, but he wasn't seeing her. There was too much world to be reacquainted with tonight.

"I didn't realize it was autumn," he said, and went back to watching the storm.