Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

He simply knew. “Then yes, she did look like her. Like Mum. When she was young. I didn’t see it at first. But later - sometimes I’d look at her and think Christ, is that why I want her? It used to frighten me, Nick. I mean really frighten me. A female Oedipus. Oh,” she laughs in a quick hoarse whinny, “why not. She was half Greek. Or so she said.”

Nick thinks of the madwoman in the road off Harley Street, Jonquil Franks. A Mediterranean, Pond had said, Greek perhaps.

Serena has gone out and come back, starting to wipe her eyes with a bunch of tissues.

“Nick, I’m sorry about earlier. Do you understand, I’m still in a state. Maybe I shouldn’t be. But so much has happened. It’s like that Shakespeare stuff, isn’t it, troubles not coming single spies but in battalions. Let’s…”

“Sit down,” Nick says, “please.”

She sits and gazes at him, her face scrubbed and patchy and about fifteen years of age.

“You,” he says, “had a thing with a blonde, blue-eyed woman, about twenty-eight, called Kit or Kitty, who looked like our mother.”

“I told you…”

“And so did Laurence. And so, if you can call it that, did I. I had sex with her, anyway. As I’m sure Laurence did. Just like you.” Serena’s mouth has fallen open. She does not close it. Nick says, “That seems very odd to me. Doesn’t it to you? All three of us - with her?”

“Nick…”

“But there is even more. She did a great job on you of mind-fuck. She also tried that one on me. As for Laurence, I’ve got, as they say, good reason to believe she also fucked him up very badly. Even to the extent of fucking him up so badly it caused his death.”

Serena lets out a low animal scream. It seems nearly inadvertent, more like one of the old kettles that used to whistle as it came to the boil.

But then she stands up. She has completely changed.

He is unsure into what, exactly.

Gamma

“No, I said stay there. Until I call you.”

“I don’t think this is a great plan. I told you what she was like. Even he was careful, and he was experienced. He knew what not to do.”

“So do I. Stay there. Till I call.”

With a sinking heart he watches her cross the intervening space and go briskly down the steps. The security light has flared on. For a second it has shown Serena’s half-turned face, which she had cleansed quite make-up-less, the skin unflawed save by the faintest pencil marks of lines by her mouth and under her eyes.

He had tried to persuade her not to come here, but the tiredness, he thinks, made him give in. Even made him go with her. Now he stands under the larger of the big bare trees. He has to wait, as in some sinister infantile game, until she calls. It is crazy. He knows this. But there he is.

Nick had felt he had to tell her about Jonquil Franks. As about Pond, who Serena might have met at Angela’s house. Serena is unsure if she did. She had reckoned anyway Angela had only hired some private dick after Laurence went missing. Nick had elaborated on this theme however, adding the account of what Pond had told him - Laurence’s affairs, the affair with Kitty Price or Andrew.

Serena was - is - convinced. Hence the journey to Marylebone in a cab.

Are the press following them? Nick suspects he will always think now they are everywhere, watching, snapping him. No one had seemed on their tail, yet when a single car moved into the road behind the cab, even when it went on past them, he was aware one more shot of him, and of Serena, might now be off to decorate the tabloids.

Has she knocked on the door of the basement flat? He does not remember hearing her knock. But the security light is stable, burning bright. Quite likely the old woman is out. Or will not answer. Or - has Kitty returned here? - is it Kitty who will undo the door…?

Nick finds he takes a step forward.

Exactly then he hears a screech. It is like the cry of an owl, or more perhaps the cry of the prey of an owl as talons and beak strike home. It freezes him. Or so he thinks, but already again he moves forward.

There is a sort of bang, a collapsing noise. (He recalls the noises on Angela’s phone as she presumably wrenched it from the hands of the girl who had answered him.) Light washes up from the doorway to augment the searchlight eye of the security lamp.

Serena shouts. He identifies it as his name.

He goes on again, with the impelled, dutiful reluctance of the conscripted soldier.

When he is down the steps and has reached the doorway, Serena says in her new hoarse voice, “Is this her?”

“Yes,” he says.

The door of the basement flat is wide open and the overhead electric light turned on, a hard hundred watt bulb. Serena stands sidelong between him and Mrs Jonquil Franks, who is sitting on the floor with her legs stuck out before her like a dropped doll. Her lunatic eyes are wide as any door, coal black and staring with terror.

Nick is astounded at her overthrow. He notes one cheek is red - did Serena hit her? But Serena’s left hand has another sort of red, and lightly drips.

“What did…?”

“She bit me, stupid stinking old bitch. But I had a tetanus jab last month, so I’ll be fine. Unless of course she’s rabid.” Serena glances at Mrs Franks. Serena laughs.

Mrs Franks says nothing.

“Well,” Serena says to Mrs Franks, “Kit told me something about you. You brought her up, did you?” (Mrs Franks still says nothing and does little. She only stares from one of them to the other, with her enormous eyes.) “That would account for Kit’s fucking awful accent. And her mental instability. You did a great job.”

Nick is