Black Rock Page 10
Angela opened the kitchen door and peered down the hall at him, frowning. ‘Martin?’ she called.
Martin looked up at her, blankly. She was dressed in cycling shorts, Nikes and a baggy cotton sweater, and there was a pan of something steaming in her hand. It smelt like bolognaise, but Martin didn’t remember her saying she was going to cook it. Angela was pretty. She wasn’t thin, but you couldn’t describe her as overweight either. ‘Voluptuous’ was the word Martin used to use.
For a moment, he tried to summon up some of the love he’d once had for her, and when that failed, some of the lust. It didn’t work. It would have been much simpler if it had; he could have fallen into her arms. This was what she’d been hoping for since he’d split with Essenjay and moved back in as her lodger. It was too late, he supposed. Things had moved on and he now looked on Angela as little more than a friend.
‘What?’ he asked. The kids were in the lounge playing Sonic the Hedgehog II, and squealing and shouting advice over the racket it was making. The whole thing should have been a picture of domestic bliss. And if it hadn’t been for that sales conference at which he’d first met Essenjay, it still might have been.
‘Did you get through?’ Angela repeated, absently stirring the steaming pot.
Martin shook his head.
‘Oh,’ Angela said, ‘You’d better come and eat then. It’s nearly ready.’
While Martin was trying to decide whether or not she looked smug, he tried the number of Essenjay’s next door neighbours, Janet and Dave, wondering if he should have come back here at all.
It only made things more complicated. The kids wanted to know why he and Mummy slept in different rooms for one thing, and whether he was here to stay for another. Then there was Angela. She hadn’t crept into his room in the dead of night yet, but he kept thinking that she would, soon. And a part of him wanted her to. The part that hadn’t been anywhere warm and wet except the bath for the better part of ten weeks. Martin knew that if that started again he was going to have all sorts of trouble breaking off for the second time. There might occasionally be such a thing as a free lunch but there was certainly no such thing as a free shag.
‘Hiya, you’re speaking to a genuine genius, what can I do for you? Dave Bett’s voice said in Martin’s ear.
If there was one thing Martin was certain of, it was that Dave was no genius and never would be - at least while he had a hole in his arse. A genuine mental midget would have been a more apt description.
‘Hi, it’s Martin,’ Martin said.
‘What, Martin, the Martin?’ Dave enquired, his tone cooling.
‘Yeah,’ Martin replied. He had never said anything derogatory about Dave - not in his presence anyway - but he didn’t have to. Martin was not good at concealing his innermost feelings about people at the best of times, and when faced with someone who had the brains of an ironing board was unable to prevent himself from using his superior intelligence to tie that person up in knots. Dave might not have been able to put his finger on what it was he didn’t like about Martin, but somewhere along the line he’d begun to feel inferior. And people didn’t like to feel like that - which was one reason Martin did it.
‘Oh,’ Dave said. This time his tone read: why are you phoning me, you arrogant motherfucker.
Martin said, ‘Look, I’m a bit worried about Essenjay…’
And Dave, seeing his opening, quickly cut in, ‘Well, she wasn’t very worried about you the last time I spoke to her.’
‘That may be,’ Martin replied, ‘but I called her earlier this afternoon and something had happened to her. She said she needed an ambulance and rang off. Now I’ve been trying to contact her ever since. Her mobile won’t respond. I thought she might be in hospital, but when I tried her home phone, it’s constantly engaged which suggests that she’s in. I’m a little worried about her condition and I was ringing to ask if you’d seen her today.’
There was a silence, presumably while Dave digested this information. ‘Saw her this morning when she went out,’ he finally said. ‘She seemed OK then. Full of the joys of spring in fact. Hang on a mo.’ Dave clapped his hand over the mouthpiece of his telephone but his muffled voice could be heard as he shouted to Janet: ‘Hey Janny, you seen Sarah-Jane tonight? Only that twat Martin’s on the phone. He says he can’t get hold of her.’
Martin listened to the pause, during which, he assumed, good old Janny was telling Dave that it wasn’t surprising that twat couldn’t get hold of her because Sarah-Jane no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. Then he heard Dave shout again. ‘Yeah, I know, but he says she’s had an accident. Ambulance case. Go and knock her up and see if she’s in. Yeah?’
Dave took his hand off the phone and said, ‘Janet’s just going to knock on her door. D’you wanna hold on, or will you call back?’
Til hold on,’ Martin said, ‘if you don’t mind.’
Dave grunted, presumably because he did mind. But he was being a good neighbour and if that meant letting Martin hold on, that was what he was going to do. ‘She won’t be two shakes,’ Dave said.
‘Thanks,’ Martin replied.
‘What have you been up to, then?’ Dave asked.
‘Not a lot,’ Martin replied.
Silence.
Angela came out of the kitchen carrying two plates of spaghetti bolognaise, passed Martin, nodded at the food and entered the war zone. There was a brief squeak of protest from one child, and Sonic the Hedgehog fell silent.
‘You didn’t have to pull the plug, Mum,’ the other child complained. ‘We were half-way through the labyrinth zone. We’ll have do it all over again.’
‘Not tonight, you won’t,’ Angela said and closed the door.
Ours is still in the pot, Martin told himself. She’s waiting for me to be free so we can eat together.
He didn’t feel hungry at all. He was still hopelessly in love with Essen jay, she was in some sort of trouble, and there was a large, immovable block of ice in his mind which, presumably, was going to feed him the latest details about what was happening - when it got bad enough.
‘Is she back yet?’ Martin asked.
‘Nope,’ Dave said.
Silence.
Inside the lounge, the six o’ clock news began.
Martin’s mental box of ice shimmered as if a light had been turned on inside it. He frowned, willing the block away. A picture began to form there, pulling itself together from pastel shades of colour which seemed to slide into the crystal block from nowhere. It didn’t happen rapidly, but it was difficult to discern what was taking place.
‘Be back soon,’ Dave predicted.
Martin didn’t speak. The picture had solidified now - if that was the right word. (It seemed more as if it had slid together like angled geometric pieces which fitted to one another to make a whole.) And what he was now looking at, while he sat her
e and listened to Dave’s measured breathing, was another picture of Black Rock.
Except that this time he was looking at the inside of it. The lounge. The lounge was just as he remembered it from the book - if indeed he did remember it, and he could no longer be certain. It was big and there was an open fireplace with a sheepskin rug in front of it, and leather sofas and deep pile carpet. Essenjay was there in that room. Alone. But it was what she was doing that seemed strange. She was touring the room adjusting things.
Except that she wasn’t simply tidying up, the way she would at home; sling this cushion here, chuck these magazines there. Essenjay, who normally tidied only when her belongings approached critical mass, wasn’t just tidying a room that was already tidy, she was doing it with the utmost care and a kind of furtiveness.
In Martin’s mind’s-eye block of ice, he watched her, as she went about her strange business; altering the position of an ornament by a few millimetres, twisting another by only a few degrees. And while she worked, she kept glancing over her shoulder. As far as Martin could discern, she was alone in the room. Now she was dragging one of the heavy sofas around so that the seats faced the front windows.
Then Martin began to understand.
If what he was seeing was real - and he wasn’t sure about that - Essenjay had been feeling the pressure of their parting as keenly as he had. If he’d cracked because he imagined he could see her doing things from afar, then she’d cracked too.
What she was suffering from here was obsessive compulsive disorder syndrome. It was a fairly common behavioural complaint of the type which often began with the subject feeling that their hands were dirty and ended up with them showering twenty or thirty times a day. People under pressure often developed it. Martin knew a little about it. He’d read of a man in Gloucester who believed he was responsible for all horses. If he didn’t line up all his belongings each morning before nine so that they pointed north, a certain amount of horses would die in agony.
And this was what his image of Essen jay was doing. She was moving the furniture and ornaments so that they all faced a certain direction.
Because she was obsessed.
Who are you trying to kid, kiddo? Martin asked himself. It’s you who’s sitting here having visions, not Essenjay. It’s you who’s obsessed, not her.
He grew increasingly uncomfortable.
‘Oh, here she comes now,’ Dave suddenly announced and Martin jumped
‘Hello Martin?’ Janet had evidently grabbed the phone from her husband. ‘There’s a light on, but if she’s up there she isn’t answering the door. What did you say was the matter with her?’
‘When I called her this afternoon she told me she needed an ambulance,’ Martin said.
Then Janet asked a question which stopped Martin dead in his tracks. It shouldn’t have done, because as he frequently told his colleagues, he was knife-sharp. It left him feeling a little better in one way, and a lot worse in another. The question was so simple he didn’t know how he’d managed to miss it.
‘Was the ambulance for herself?’ Janet asked.
And suddenly Martin knew that it wasn’t. If he’d half a brain, he would have realized that straight away. People who were injured didn’t tell you to get off the line because they had to get an ambulance quick, they told you they were hurt and needed help. And they didn’t sound so snotty either. In any work of fiction presented to him, Martin would have picked up on this instantly. In real life things weren’t quite as cut and dried. In real life you had your own emotional and mental welfare to take into consideration on top of everyone else’s.
‘She didn’t say,’ Martin replied, feeling very stupid.
‘Oh well, there you are then,’ Janet said. ‘Nothing to worry about by the sound of it. The ambulance must’ve been for someone else. Like I said, her light’s on upstairs, so she’s been home since it got dark. She’s probably gone to the pub or something. I shouldn’t worry, Martin. I’ll tell her you were concerned when I see her. Perhaps she’ll ring you. Does she have your wife’s number?’
‘I’m not at my wife’s,’ Martin lied. He didn’t know how Janet had discovered where he was staying (perhaps Dave had heard the kids earlier or Essenjay had heard a rumour and told her) but he certainly didn’t intend to admit it. It wouldn’t look good if it appeared he’d run home to the wife the moment Essenjay had thrown him out. It would make him look exactly like the stereotypical philandering husband.
‘You’re not?’ Janet asked.
‘No,’ Martin said. ‘I’m with friends. Essenjay can reach me at the office if she wants.’
‘Okay,’ Janet said, sounding as if she didn’t believe him. ‘I’ll tell her.’
After she rang off, Martin remained crouched in front of the telephone until Angie came out of the lounge and laid a warm and somehow comforting hand on his shoulder. ‘Food?’ she asked.
Martin looked up at her, saw the pain in her eyes and knew how she felt. She wanted him like he wanted Essenjay.
There was no sense in it. If he was God - or Cupid, or whoever controlled these things - situations like this would not arise. If he’d been God, Angie and the kids would never have happened; it would just be him and Essenjay and she would feel the same way towards him as he did towards her. But there were parts of Angie’s character he would have grafted on to Essenjay first. Like Angie’s subservience. She had never wanted to share his possessions the way Essenjay did. His car was his car. It wouldn’t have crossed Angie’s mind to ask to be insured to drive it. Or to operate his Bang & Olufsen stereo, or his computer without his permission. Or to want to spend his money as though it belonged to her.
Suddenly he was angry. Any fool knew that women should support their men rather than imbuing themselves with the same status. And even if Essenjay could write a book - and even if it promised to be a damned good one - it didn’t make her equal to him. Who had the power to decide whether or not the public got to read that book?
And now he was angry at Angie too. Because she had a bovine expression and because having two kids had given her a slack belly and stretch-marks, but most of all he was angry because her spark had gone. Standing there before him, she looked like a woman whose spirit had been broken.
‘what do you want from me?’ he demanded, slamming the phone down.
Angie jumped back a foot, then cringed like a dog who knows it’s been bad. She didn’t say anything at all.
‘well?’ Martin said.
Inside the lounge, the sound of the television faded. The kids had turned it down. They would be at the door now, listening, their eyes wide and fearful. It was a scene Martin had played out many times before and he didn’t like it. Because it upset Angie and scared the kids, but most of all because he couldn’t stop him�
�self. And the reason he couldn’t stop himself was the same reason masochists willingly submitted themselves to torture: it felt so good. Martin, who was famous for his volatile temper, lit up like a high-power halogen bulb when it happened.
‘I just wanted to know if you want to eat now,’ Angie said in a tiny voice.
‘No you didn’t,’ Martin hissed. ‘What you wanted to know was, am I ready to come back to you yet, wasn’t it? What you wanted to know was when your meal-ticket is returning.’
Martin waited. The tension struck him as sexual. The game was domination, power mongering. Not physical, but mental. Except that it wasn’t a game, it was real. And he had no control over it, no sense of playing a role.
Essenjay hadn’t taken kindly to his attempts at dominating her. Essenjay had hit him with a rolling-pin, just as she’d described it in her book. And if he wanted proof, he only had to dip his head and look in a mirror. Just beneath the peak of his thinning hair was a large, livid scar where the rolling-pin had split his scalp. You could still see where the eight stitches had been.
‘Dinner,’ Angie mewled in her little voice. ‘I just wanted to know if you wanted dinner.’ Her voice was steady, but there were tears running down her face.
Martin glared at her for a few seconds as his anger passed. Then he dismissed her with a weary gesture.
And Angie went, leaving him alone with the phone and his ice-crystal vision of the woman who, for some unknown reason, he loved.
Essenjay was now in the hall of the house, facing the front door. The door seemed to have no handle or letter box. And no hinges, either. It was just a huge black door, studded with brass points. Martin couldn’t even discern where the door ended and its frame began.