Slave to Love Read online

  AND SO ALICE never got to call Mr. Crumlish Garnett. But she had liked him, and she never forgot that the Books Department at Enderby’s auction house was made up of Toffs, Tarts, and Swots, and that she was sui generis.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Smoked Lemur and Owl Spit

  “WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TODAY?”

  “Let’s have a look. . . . Oh, smoked lemur and owl spit. With rocket.”

  “Tasty.”

  Every day they acted out this little routine. It had begun when Alice suggested that Andrew might put something in his lunchtime sandwich other than cheese and pickle, and the next day he claimed he was eating whale and bacon on rye. They had begun eating their sandwiches together after Andrew warned her against the staff restaurant.

  “Dog food,” he’d said, nodding seriously.

  “What?”

  “Dog food. In the lasagne. I’ve seen the tins. It’s not even the good stuff, Pedigree Chunks or whatever, but crappy no-name dog meat. It’s one of Madeleine Illkempt’s cost-cutting exercises.”

  “Liar,” said Alice, but from then on it was sandwiches for her as well.

  When it was sunny they’d go and find a bench; if it rained they’d sit at their desks. Today they were outside in a little square, busy with shoppers and tourists and anxious office workers. A frail lady in an ancient fur coat ate an unseasonable ice cream, while her pet poodle, attached to a lead as long as a kite string, sniffed its way from lamppost to lamppost.

  Somehow two months had passed like this, Alice learning how to do her job, friendly unflirtatious lunches with Andrew, office politics swirling around her unnoticed. She had settled into the new pattern of her life, content that it would change again after a year, when she would resume her planned course, return to her island dreams.

  Perhaps unflirtatious wasn’t quite right. She was aware that Andrew was not the same with her as he was with the other people in the office. Sometimes she would catch him looking at her, and then he would run his fingers through his hair and start talking too quickly. She saw that his normal fluency would sometimes dry up when they were together, and although their silences were never awkward, they often seemed, in some way she could not quite understand, significant.

  Today was one of those days when the silences suggested that something important was about to be said. She felt a pleasant expectancy: not a thrill, not the feeling of tension and tumult she associated with romance, but the feeling was good, and she waited.

  “I hate parks,” Andrew said. The lady with the ice cream and poodle had set the train of thought in motion. He made as if to bite decisively at his sandwich (cheese still, without the least hint of lemur or owl spit) but then changed his mind.

  “What’s wrong with parks?” Alice replied. She was used to this sort of thing from Andrew. “I don’t think I could survive in London without them. It’s the only way to escape the clamor and rush.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the cliché, but it’s just a thing that people say without meaning it, or thinking about it at all. Parks are full of weirdos, and people doing tai chi, and old codgers with nowhere to go, and dogs, and pigeons with broken legs, and people making out as if nobody can see them. The ground’s always wet, and there’re trees and shrubbery and stuff all over the place. When did anyone ever have a decent conversation in the park? No, parks are for losers. There’s that Larkin poem, you know, about turning over your failures by some bed of lobelias.”

  Alice was laughing. “Have you ever actually been to a park?”

  “Yeah, loads.”

  “Which ones?”

  “You know, just parks. The Regent thing. And that other one, the Green one. No, not really. I told you, I don’t like them, I prefer to get drunk sitting down in the corner of a pub, not standing up with a can of psychostrength lager and a gang of old men with bandaged heads and piss stains down the front of their trousers.”

  “There’s a beautiful one I used to go to when I was young,” Alice said wistfully. “We used to bunk off from P.E. lessons and sit in the grass and eat ice cream. It saved me, in a way, because we lived in the country when I was very little, and London was . . . difficult. I still go there sometimes. I think even you’d like it. It has an aviary, and an enclosure with wallabies, and an old-fashioned bandstand. It’s not really a psychostrength lager kind of park. More cream tea.”

  Now Andrew was laughing, but his eyes had narrowed. He’d suddenly realized that this was the fabled shot-to-nothing, the freebie, the chance to ask Alice out without actually seeming to ask her out. Better than a movie, better than a drink. No declaration of intent was needed, no fear of rejection, no embarrassment at all. This could all be passed off as an innocent trip to the park. A mere matter of friendship. But still, how to ask her. Words. What happened to them when you needed them? And anyway, it wasn’t true that there was nothing to lose. What if she didn’t even want to be friends? Wasn’t that worse than not wanting to go out with him? (On balance he decided it wasn’t worse, but only by between 6 and 11 percent, depending on other variables.)

  “Wallabies,” he said, after a few moments of computation. “You’re winding me up. No? Well, if you say so. I’ve always liked the idea of wallabies. Little kangaroos. Charming fellows. Mmmm. It is, you know, on this plane of existence, isn’t it?”

  Alice already had a reputation for being a little dreamy, and Andrew occasionally teased her, staying, he hoped, on the right side of being an arse.

  “Yes, Golders Hill Park. It’s a sort of offshoot of Hampstead Heath. But without the men having sex with each other in the bushes.”

  “Why don’t you show me round tomorrow. You know, the wallabies and the cream teas?”

  “You really want to come?” Alice was delighted with the idea.

  “As long as you’re not stringing me along over the wallabies.”

  “I’ll meet you by the flamingos at ten,” said Alice.

  “Oh,” said Andrew, completely forgetting to close his mouth until several seconds had passed. He then had a desperate urge to run away, to find somewhere safe to hide. How could they just go on chatting when something so momentous had happened? What if he loused it up, started talking about the wrong thing? And what was the wrong thing with Alice anyway? She was so bloody mysterious it could be anything. What was that pet subject of hers? Snails, that was it. She’d been going to do research on their snaily ways. Mustn’t be rude about snails. Keep off snails altogether, that was the only safe route.

  And then of course he could think about nothing else: snails in garlic butter, snails beaten to death by maniacal thrushes, snails crunched under an unyielding boot.

  “I’ve got to go,” he spluttered.

  “Where?”

  “Er . . . the chemist.”

  The chemist! Was he mad? Why did he say chemist? She was bound to think he was going to buy ointment for some disgusting ailment. Or worse. She would think he had already assumed she was easy and would be pleasuring her up against a tree in plain sight of the appalled wallabies, so he had to stock up on condoms.

  “Okay,” Alice said, looking a little puzzled. It was the expression of hers that he most loved, the little vertical lines between her eyes, the slight pursing of her lips.

  “Cough syrup,” he said hazily. “Feel a tickle coming on. Must medicate.”

  They departed in opposite directions. Andrew wore a look of stunned joy. It was fortunate that his legs were capable of working on their own, because if they had required any conscious assistance he would have hit a bench or telephone box or simply fallen to the ground in a helpless tangle. She left looking happy if not ecstatic, her mouth half smiling.

  The half smile still lingered as Alice left the square. Five minutes later she approached a crosswalk on Bond Street. The smile was no longer physically present, but its afterimage seemed to linger in her face, adding a mysterious luster. She paused at the crosswalk, saw the green man turn to red, and settled in to wait for it to change back again. And as she wait
ed she allowed her mind to focus, for the first time, on what Andrew really wanted, on what Andrew might be. The trouble was, she had so little experience. And had she really agreed to meet him in her park tomorrow, her special park? Oh, God. What should she wear? What if he wanted to . . . wanted to . . .

  And then she looked up to see if the traffic-signal man had changed. But before her eyes reached the crossing light she saw a tall, boyish figure striding toward the road, toward her. Her thoughts of the park, of Andrew, and of the clothes she might wear dissolved like rice paper on her tongue.

  Alice had never felt anything like this before. She had always assumed that love at first sight was a romantic myth, a thing for childish minds, for the deluded. But now she gasped like a schoolgirl, and her breath would not come back to her, and she reeled and had to put a hand on the cold iron railing to steady herself. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes the world around the boy was blurred and insubstantial but he was clear as a raven against the snow, and she saw him in a way that made her know she had never really seen anything before. She saw the fine dense blackness of his hair as it swept with such sensuous, careless charm across his face, she saw the full Slavic lips that fell so easily into a pout—not the pout of a spoiled child or a sulking teenager but a little o, a pout of pure surprise. She saw those high cheekbones, cheekbones that would have looked cruel, tyrannical, implacable, had they not slid into the fine smiling lines around the eyes. The eyes, to Alice, were something of a mystery. No matter how many times she later replayed the incident, winding backward and forward, slowing it down or speeding it up, panning back to take in the whole street, or the whole of London, or zooming into ultra close-up, she could not settle on the color of the eyes. It was not even the precise shade that was in question—not some unimportant semantic quibble about hazel or chestnut or rowan—it was that Alice could not even decide if they were blue or brown, dark or light. Sometimes they would burn through her with an intense cobalt light, or dazzle with shimmering bright crystal; at others they would fold in on themselves in wave after wave of growing darkness, like evening falling on a forest.

  And he was looking at her, confident on the crosswalk. His eyes, those impossible eyes, met hers, but only for a second. Because now he sensed that something was wrong. He was alone. Where were the others? Alice saw that the little crossing man was still red. She put her hand to her mouth and would have shouted, but she was still without breath.

  The car came from his right: metallic blue, nondescript. There was a thick crusting of grime around the butterfly pattern of the wipers. And coming too fast. Alice could see the driver: a young woman, blond, smart, untroubled, looking ahead. Looking but not seeing. But seeing now. Seeing him. Her body tensed and she stamped down on the brake. Tires screeched.

  The boy absorbed the car, the truth of the car, and turned slowly—so slowly she realized there must be some distortion in her perception—back toward Alice.

  And he smiled.

  What could that smile have meant? At the time, Alice couldn’t take in meanings, couldn’t take in anything other than the horror of what was happening. Only when she later replayed the images did she try to understand. Was it some reckless adolescent bravado, a determination to show no fear in the eyes of the world? Was it a smile of sadness for the world he was leaving? Was it a smile of love for Alice, a love engendered in that moment of desire and death? All seemed to carry something of the truth, but none contained it fully. There was something else. Something darker. Something in the boy—but how could it be?—that said yes, yes.

  BACK IN THE office that afternoon, the afternoon when everything changed, Alice was surprised to find that nobody noticed anything different about her. It seemed that no one could see the penumbra of light encircling her or sense the dramatic transformation that had taken place within.

  But no, nothing. The only comment as she made her way slowly, like a bride, to her desk, was one of Pamela’s deafening whispers: “Alice, where have you been?”

  Pamela, or Pammy, or Spam, had been there longer than anyone else, and was seen as a sort of retaining wall that couldn’t be demolished without dire if unspecified consequences. Of course it was possible that she retained nothing at all, supporting only her own considerable weight. Originally she had typed letters, but now that everyone did this for themselves her main responsibility was ordering the rubber bands that spilled and coiled in pointless abundance from every drawer, like intestines after a battle.

  “Mr. Crumlish has been around. He’s got one of his faces on. You know, the one like Easter Island. He’ll be using one of those thingummy bobs—metaphors—on you if you’re not careful.”

  Sensitive Garnett Crumlish might well have noticed Alice’s distress, but unknown to Pam he had already silently left the building for, as far as he was concerned, the last time.

  Andrew would have noticed. But Andrew was in meetings all afternoon, and Alice had gone home by the time he returned to his desk. He was secretly relieved: He was still worried about messing up before the Big Date and also concerned that he might somehow use up his conversation, leaving him with nothing to say tomorrow.

  One person did notice. It had been said of Ophelia that she was blind to those about her, but indifference is not at all the same thing as blindness. Ophelia saw Alice, pale and deathly still, at her desk. She saw that something traumatic had happened, without having the interest to wonder, let alone ask, what it might be. She registered a faint pleasure before her mind passed on to other matters—hair, nails, teeth—the bright close things she used to dazzle the threat of the boredom beyond.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Secret Garden of Alice Duclos

  ALICE WAS in the dream garden again. She looked back and saw the low arch and the little green door through which she must have entered. The garden was her special place. Its high brick wall kept out the wind and the world. Its paths wove complicated patterns, which, once deciphered, would tell her the answers to all her questions. The roses, always in bud and never blooming, dwelt partly in the garden and partly in fairy tales, guarding princesses, holding the impure or the unwary forever in their gauzy tangles. At the heart of everything stood the dead stone fountain and the dark green pool.

  She reached up and felt her father’s soft hands, felt with her fingertips for his smooth clean nails. The sensation filled her with excitement and yet soothed her.

  “Daddy, can we go to the fish?” she said, but she knew he would not answer. And then she was looking down through the shadows to where the long lazy goldfish slid and turned amid the darker green of the weeds. She could see the shape of her father reflected in the water, but the details were lost in the murk and silt.

  “Don’t the fish get cold, Daddy?” she asked, but again she knew that there would be no answer. She looked up to where his face should have been, but the sky was pure white and dazzled her eyes after the darkness of the water. She would close her eyes in the dream to shut out the light and, as her dream eyes closed, so her waking eyes would open onto the world.

  The garden of Alice’s dream was a distillation of the many gardens of her early childhood. Her father, Francis Duclos, was a doctor, specializing in infectious diseases. The fever hospitals he moved between all had huge grounds, acres of parkland with great horse chestnuts and yew trees and lines of dense privet. But the killers of the past, diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, even TB, had vanished or been attenuated, and so the long wards and open grounds and secret gardens were empty. Duclos found himself in a branch of medicine without a future, and yet for him it was the only medicine, the only life there could be. He wanted to grapple with the invisible enemy, to fire his magic bullets at the tenacious and merciless microbes.

  Around the core of the dream memory, other memories would form: less vividly, perhaps, but more soundly based in hard nuggety reality. She remembered collecting conkers for their beauty. No other children were allowed in the grounds and so, but for the occasional foray over the wall by th
e local urchins, she had the trees and their fruit to herself. She could still remember the intense biscuity smell of the newly opened chestnut and its dark iridescence. Her father showed her how to twist off the shell and would have taught her how to string them, ready them for warfare, but she could not allow their irregular organic perfection to be destroyed by the awl. She remembered cutting her wrist when she and an older cousin, come from France for the holidays, broke a pane in the hospital greenhouse to plunder tomatoes. The cousin burst into tears at the sight of her blood, and Alice had to guide him home. She remembered her father making her wrist better, calmly sewing the edges of the cut together. She saw again the white fingers working the needle, and she remembered that she had not been afraid, but she forgot that she had cried from the pain. She remembered living in a big old house that was always cold. There were better memories of a room in the nurses’ home; memories of running through the long corridors pretending to be Tarzan (who, after all, would ever want to be Jane?) with a toy knife stuck in her green knickers.

  Alice’s mother never had a role in her memories. Alice’s mother was too much part of her present to belong to her past. The past was for the good and beautiful things, worn smooth with the years. The past was for the dead, the sacred dead. Alice could, however, remember her mother’s special friend, one of the patients, a boy called Gulliver. He was dying from some intractable strain of consumption. Alice remembered his glistening eyes and the dark circles around them, and his long straining neck, and feared him, because on the only occasion Alice had seen him smile, his lips peeled back to reveal bright red gums.

  After the death of her father, Alice and her mother had moved to a small flat in St. John’s Wood. Kitty was from a prosperous family with what she always described as good connections, although to whom or what was never specified. She was sharp-faced and had once been very pretty. Her marriage to the tall handsome doctor seemed like a good one, until he decided to abandon London for drafty remote prisons, millions of miles from theaters and restaurants and dinner parties.