"Sleep, Pale Sister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Joanne)

10

I’d been following her for nearly a week before I made my move; she was difficult game, and I had to tread carefully if I was not to frighten the girl away. As it was, she was touchingly trusting; I met her every day after that and within the week she was calling me Mose and holding my hand, just like a child. If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn she was a virgin.

Not my usual tipple, I hear you say? Well, I couldn’t have explained it either. I suppose it was the novelty of playing the prince, after being so many times the knave…Besides, she was beautiful.

A man could fall in love. But not me.

Still, there was something about her, something at the same time cool and deeply carnal, something beyond that girlishness which sparked off some latent emotion in me. She was an entirely new experience; I felt like an alcoholic, his palate jaded with heady intoxicants, tasting for the first time one of those sugary children’s drinks. Like him, I paused to relish the newness, the unfamiliar sweetness. She was without any sense of right or wrong; she followed me wherever I wished to lead her, shivering with pleasure when I touched her, hanging on my every word. We talked far more than I ever did with any other woman; I forgot myself in her presence and told her about my poetry and art, my dreams and longings. I mostly saw her in the cemetery-it had the advantage of being huge and rambling, with plenty of enclosed places to hide. One cold, dull evening when Henry was working late we met by the Circle of Lebanon; there was no-one around, and the devil was in me. Effie smelled so good, like roses and white bread, and her face was flushed with the cool air. Her hair had been blown by the wind and little tendrils of it fell all around her face.

For a moment I was all hers.

It was the first time I had kissed her on the mouth, and I forgot everything I had planned about not alarming her. She was standing beside a vault, and I pushed her right up against the wall. Her hat fell off-I ignored it-and her hair came half unpinned around my face. I pulled the rest of it down and ran it through my hands, gasping for breath like a diver before I prepared to plunge again. I don’t suppose it was the kind of kiss she expected, because she clapped her hands to her mouth with a little cry and stared at me, her face scarlet and her eyes like saucers. I realized that my hasty impulse had probably wrecked all my careful planning and I swore, then swore again at myself for swearing.

Recovering, I pulled away from her and fell to my knees, playing the part of the Repentant Lover. I was sorry, more sorry than I could say, for having alarmed her; no punishment could be too bad for me. I had succumbed to a momentary weakness, but I loved her so much; I had so longed to kiss her, ever since I first saw her, that I had lost control. I was not made of stone; but what of that? I had frightened her, insulted her. I deserved to be horsewhipped.

Maybe I overdid it a trifle, but it was a technique which had worked well enough before with married women; I had researched it carefully in the pages of The Keepsake and, God help me, in this case some of it was nearly true. I peered up cautiously to see if she had taken the bait and, amazingly, she was rocking with laughter, not unkindly but uncontrollably. As she saw me looking at her she burst out again.

Little Eff rose rapidly in my estimation. I stood up and grinned ruefully.

‘Well…it was worth a try,’ I said with a shrug. Effie shook her head and laughed again.

‘Oh, Mose,’ she said. ‘You are a hypocrite! You should be on the stage.’

I tried another tack: the Unrepentant Lover.

‘I’ve often thought that,’ I said. ‘Still, it usually works, you know.’ I ventured a disarming smile. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m not sorry.’

‘That’s better,’ said Effie. ‘I believe that.’

‘Then believe this,’ I said. ‘I love you.’ How could she not believe it? At the time, I nearly did myself. ‘I love you, and it’s killing me to see you married to that pompous ass. He doesn’t think of you as a woman, he thinks you’re his thing, his beggar girl, his sick little fallen angel. Effie, you need me; you need to be taught how to live, how to enjoy life.’

I was almost sincere. Indeed, I practically convinced myself. I looked at her to see how she was taking it and her straight gaze fixed mine. She took a step towards me and such was the intensity of her expression that I nearly backed away. Almost abstractedly she lifted her cold hands to my face. Her kiss was soft and I tasted salt on her skin. I held back, allowing her to explore my face, my neck and hair with her fingers. Gently she pushed me towards the vault. I heard the gate open behind me and allowed myself to be manoeuvred inside. It was one of many family monuments in the cemetery, shaped like a tiny chapel, with a gate to protect it from the curious, a chair, prayer-stool and altar, and a little stained-glass window at the back. There was just enough space for two people to enter, shielded from view. I closed my eyes and stretched out my arms for her.

The gate slammed shut in my face.

I opened my eyes quickly and there she was, the minx, grinning at me through the bars. At first I laughed and tried to push the door open, but the catch was on the outside.

‘Effie!’

‘It’s frightening, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Effie, let me out!’

‘Being locked up, unable to get free? I feel that with Henry all the time. He doesn’t want me to be alive. He wants me to be quiet and cold, like a corpse. You don’t know what it’s like, Mose. He makes me take laudanum to keep me quiet and good, but inside I want to scream and bite and run naked through the house like a savage!’

I could feel the passion and the hatred in her; you can’t imagine how exciting that was to my jaded taste. But I was uneasy, too. For a moment I contemplated abandoning the whole campaign, asking myself whether she wasn’t too hot for me to handle, but the appeal was too much. I growled at her like a tiger and bit at her fingers through the bars. She laughed wildly, a bird’s mad scream across the marshes.

‘You won’t betray me, Mose.’ It was a statement. I shook my head.

‘If you do, I’ll bring you back here and bury you here for ever.’ She was only half joking. I kissed her knuckles.

‘I promise.’

I heard her push the catch open in the gloom, and she stepped into the vault with me. Her cloak fell to the floor and her brown flannel dress with it. In her underclothes she was a wraith, and her touch was burning brimstone. She was all untutored, but made up for that in her enthusiasm. I tell you, I was almost afraid. She tore at me, bit me, scratched me, devoured me with her passion, and in the dark I was incapable of telling whether her cries were of anguish or of pleasure. She returned my careful gentleness with a violence which tore at the heart. The act was quick and brutal, like a murder, and afterwards she cried, but not, I think, with any sorrow.

There was a mystery in her which left me with a feeling of awe, of sanctity, which I never felt with any other woman. In some incomprehensible way I felt that she had purified me.

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking I fell in love with the chit. Well, I didn’t. But that evening-only that evening, mind you-I thought I felt something deeper than the brief passions I had had for other women. As if the act had opened up something inside me. I wasn’t in love with her; and yet, when I returned to my rooms that night, all aching and scratched and feeling I had been in a war, I couldn’t sleep; all night I stayed beside the fire thinking of Effie, drinking wine and looking into the flames as if they were her eyes. But however much I drank I did not manage to quench the thirst which her burning touch had begun in me, nor could a whole brothel full of whores have stilled the ache of wanting her.