The Black House

13

It was a high windy spot, on the crest of a hill, with room for a dozen cars, and it was empty. Though Caroline had left the party before he did, and Munday was delayed for what seemed to him a long while at the door by Awdry urging him to explain what he meant by his letter to The Times (Awdry knew the letter by heart and kept repeating, “But why misfits?”), she was not at the parking lot when he arrived. A light rain began to fall, making a pattering like sand grains on the car roof; the sound of the rain isolated him and made him think she wouldn’t show up.

Past the gorse bushes, shaking stiffly at the front of the car, was the valley, some lighted windows which were only pinpricks, and a glow at the horizon, the yellow flare of Bridport. He saw through the dribbling side window an arrow-shaped sign lettered To Trail. He sat in the car with his gloves on wondering if he was being made a fool of: he was not used to acting with such haste. He knew the risk, but it would be far worse if she didn’t meet him. The wind sucked at the windows—he wanted relief. But the moments of his suspense, instead of provoking in him calm, only recalled similar suspense in Africa, Claudia’s eye orbiting his unease, her saying in a tone her clumsiness vulgarized into a threat, “Why don’t you ever come over and see me when you’re in town?” The first night at her house while he was talking she had got up from the sofa and left the room, just like that, and called to him. He found her naked, smoking in bed: “Are you very shocked?”

“I think it’s ill-advised to smoke in bed.”

Later, she had wanted to know what African girls were like in bed. Munday said, “Fairly straightforward, one would guess—I don’t really know. I’ve never had one.”

She said, “You’re lying. Martin’s always screwing them.”

“I’m not Martin, thank God.”

“Are you trying to get at me?”

He had made love to Claudia on three occasions; the first time it was her desire, the second his curiosity, the third time routine—the unchanged circumstances of time and place made it so—and that last time was disappointing for both of them, though only she said it. Those nights returned to him now with horrible clarity: how she had stubbed out her cigarette and then rolled onto her back and lifted and spread her legs, holding her buttocks up with the hands, waiting with a kind of anonymous patience for him to enter her. And he had thought: it was this that troubled women most, it gave them fear, the position that made them most vulnerable, the lifted cunt opened and exposed like a smarting valve the slightest force could injure. Pity killed his desire, but he knew that any hesitation on his part would have ridiculed her surrender. “No, don’t stop,” she had said when he finished, and she had reached down and held him inside her and chafed his penis against her with her hand, finally dropping it and crying out—the cry that reached Alice. “Never mind her,” Claudia had said, but she had changed the bottom sheet so the houseboy wouldn’t see the stain. The next time she didn’t stub out her cigarette, but rested it in the ashtray next to the bed, as if she would return to it shortly. It was a rebuke Munday turned into a challenge, and he had made love to her until the cigarette had burned to ashes.

Ten minutes passed like this. The rain was hitting the car with force now. He was sure Caroline wasn’t coming, and he prepared to leave, but slowly, hoping that in his delay she would appear. The road was dark, there was only the rain and wind; his face was against the glass-and he was peering down the road when the offside door opened. Caroline got in—the overhead light had gone on and off, but he saw only her hands and a wet unfamiliar coat.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.

“I’m glad you waited,” she said. “I was parking my car.”

“It’s windy up here.”

She did not reply to that. She said, “Back up and drive a little further on. But don’t go too fast or you’ll miss the turning.”

He reversed and started slowly down the road, commenting on the rain and the fogged windows. But she said nothing, and it seemed wonderful to him that so little had been spoken and yet they knew so much: they carried directions within them, the wordless sex-wish beneath fixed circuits of hinting talk. Caroline leaned forward and wiped at the window. She said, “There, turn left.”

Munday swung the wheel and they descended a steep curving lane, wetter than the other road had been, and in parts awash with streams of water spilling from the bank, and rivulets that drained from the road they had left. This water coursed over stones by the roadside and cleaned them bone-white, and the falling rain gave motion to the loose briars that hung in bunches at the top of the partially eroded banks.

The storm was more intense in this valley, which seemed at times a flooding cavern riotous with wind.

They traveled on the lane for some minutes, came to a junction and, at Caroline’s word, turned again into a straighter lane; narrowing, the lane led downward. Their slow speed made it hard for Munday to judge how far they had gone; he knew they were in Marshwood Vale, but he had lost his bearings—they might be going in circles, they might easily have been in Bwamba, at night on the forest road in a cold April downpour. It was an unusual feeling, for the size of the lanes and their continuous winding, promising arrival at every curve, suggested to Munday progress through the layout of a gigantic game, crisscrossed with routes. They were players, bluffing their way along, and there was a hopeless comedy in making so many turns. The lanes were walled with earthen banks, from which in places clods had fallen and broken in the road, and just a car’s width, the lane passages were deep square grooves cut in the valley slope. The car splashed round another bend, the engine surging and Caroline spoke up: “Look, a badger.”

The creature was caught in the headlights, amid shooting white flecks of rain. Munday slowed the car. The pinched black and white head faced them, the bright eyes flashed, and then it was off, bounding away from the car. Munday picked up speed but stayed well behind the animal, and as if being chased, it leaped onto the bank, sniffing for refuge. Then it blundered down and scrambled to the opposite bank, keeping ahead of the car. Munday continued on, fascinated by the sleek dark thing darting from bank to bank, nosing for a burrow and finally shooting straight along the roadside for some distance, pursued by the moving lights, running in a low glide, its head down, its damp tail switching.

“He’s scared, poor thing,” said Caroline. “Your lights are blinding him.”

Munday flicked off the headlights and stopped the car. They were in complete darkness: the rain was loud, drumming on the roof. Munday said, “We’ll give him a chance,” and pulled off one glove and reached for Caroline’s thigh. He fumbled under her coat and felt her dress, warmed by her leg, and then a pouch of softness he pushed with his excited hand. She parted her legs and helped with her hips, and his hand found the satin-covered jowls of her cunt At once he was aroused; and the dark, the rain, the road, the badger in flight only provoked a greater fury in him. But she said gentiy, “No,” and she stretched out her arm, reached forward, not so much directing him as seeming to grasp for something that remained invisible to him.

Munday turned on the headlights and the badger’s lighted eyes appeared up the road, beyond her hand. The badger had stopped when they had, and for the moment after the lights were switched on it held its look of curiosity on its striped face. It began again to run, and after twenty feet frisked wildly at the bank. Caroline said, “They kill them.”

As she spoke the badger flung itself up the wet gleaming bank and slid into an opening at the top, disappearing through a tangle of brambles.

She said, “They eat their haunches.”

Concentrating on the badger’s flight and distracted by his touching Caroline (it seemed a swift and crazy memory already—had he done it?—he wore only his left glove), Munday had not noticed that the car was climbing. He crossed a stone bridge; he changed gears and the car labored up a grade. They made their way upward now, along a curving lane, the rain falling in bright beaded screens, slanting against their headlights, passed into the road.

“Don’t tell me you walked all this way.”

“I’m not taking you to my house,” she said.

The sentence captivated him and made that circuitous passage through the wet lanes of the valley an extraordinary event: he was lost, she was showing him the way, directing him through a landscape she knew. The route was hers, a surprise, the suspense her doing; he was in her hands.

The road widened and led to another, even wider; there was a cottage, its front door flush with the roadside, and further on a new turning, The Yew Tree’s hanging sign with its motto on a painted pennant, Be Bold—Be Wyse, the lighted telephone booth, the pillar box, the long row of massive oaks, the bend in the road where he had once panicked— now he drove slowly—the telephone pole, and at last a thick rose-bush beating against a fence. Munday parked. He said, “No—not here.”

“Yes,” she said.

“We can’t,” he said. “Emma, she’s—”

“She’s asleep,” said Caroline. “It’s late.” She spoke with a persuasive kindness; but Munday was pleading.

“No, she never sleeps. She’s wakeful.” Munday leaned towards Caroline. “She’s not well. You don’t know.”

Beyond the rain-marked window of the car he saw the side wall of the Black House, the irregular contours of the broken dripping stone. It was as if he were facing his own guilt. He heard the wind blowing at the wall, and sounds he knew well, that tearing of wind on the dead grass, its purr on the swaying overhead wires, the tree limbs knocking, the grinding gate Emma had left open when he had dropped her earlier. But it was the familiarity of the sounds, not their strangeness that frightened him.

“Please,” he said.

“Go in and see,” she said, not budging. The calmness in her voice overcame him.

“Wait here,” he said. He got out of the car and hurried into the house, crossed through the kitchen and went upstairs, testing the carpet as he climbed. He listened briefly at the head of the stairs and then he proceeded along the hall to the bedroom. The door was ajar; he eased it open a few more inches and heard the wind-blown rain sifting against the window glass. He saw a heap of bedclothes and Emma’s hair spread on the pillow—sleeping, she always looked like a casualty. For seconds he mistook his own breathing for hers, then he closed his eyes and concentrated and heard her breathing with heavy slowness, like someone inflating a balloon. He whispered, “Emma,” but the rhythm of her breathing went on uninterrupted. Again he whispered her name, louder, almost as if he wanted her to wake up and in waking prevent him from going any further with Caroline in the house: “Emma ”

But she did not wake; the sounds grew snorelike, resigned, and her deep sleep was like desertion. He was trapped between two women conspiring in the dark for him to take all the blame. He felt for the latch and took the key from inside. He shut the bedroom door and locked it.

He found Caroline in the living room. There were tall green candles burning in the wall holders over the mantelpiece. Caroline was kneeling in front of the fireplace, blowing at the remains of a fire, a few embers on which she had placed a mound of wood-shavings.

“Where did those candles come from?” asked Munday.

She continued to blow softly at the sparks. Then she said, “I found them in the back hall cupboard.”

“I had no idea there were candles in it.”

“Pass me some of that wood,” she said.

Munday took some small split branches from the keg and placed them on the hearthstone. He stepped away and watched her coax the fire with her breath; her face was set against a small circle of sparks. She knelt and peered as if at a reflection she was attempting to kiss, for her lips, as she blew, were that shape.

“I didn’t see the light go on,” said Munday. “I would have seen that back hall light from the upstairs bedroom.”

“I didn’t need the light,” she said. “Ah, it’s caught.” The shavings burst into flames and lighted her face. She piled on more shavings and bits of stringy bark

and then wood-chips and the split branches Munday had set before her.

“We have firelighters,” Munday said. “They’d have it going in seconds.”

“I prefer to do it this way,” she said, and pushed a dry stick, white as flesh, into the flames.

Munday said, “It’s wrong—us here.”

Caroline fed the fire. It crackled, louder than her voice as she whispered, “Don’t you see? This is the only place it’s right.”

“She's sleeping,” said Munday, after a moment.

“Ah,” said Caroline, and smiled, but Munday was not sure whether she was smiling at what he had just said or at the fire, which she stacked with larger pieces of split wood. It was roaring in the chimney now, and the air moved in the room, larger and much brighter with the tall candles and the sticks alight.

“We’ll wake her,” Munday said in a voice so small it was as if he had spoken something pointless to himself. He looked at Caroline; she was barefoot, she still crouched, her buttocks on her heels; she was naked under her dress, and her breasts swung as she worked with the fire.

“Then don’t talk,” she said. He was fascinated by the way she attended to the fire. It reddened her skin, and standing above her and a little to the side he could see through the sleeveless opening in her dress and the long open collar, the snout of one breast with its firelit foraging nipple. For the first time since he-had entered the room she moved her shoulders and looked up at him. “Why are you wearing that coat?” She lunged for it and snatched the edge of it and drew him down beside her, making him drop to his knees. Wriggling, she shook out of the top of her dress and pushed it down her arms and worked it to her waist with her thumbs. She left it there, bunched under her white stomach that jutted forward as she kneeled. She was half naked, in a sarong. Munday watched her, too startled to move, and he saw in her breasts and belly and navel a body mask, the shape of a face, with nipples for the eyes, the kind Africans sometimes carved for erotic dances. But theirs were ebony and this was white, the stark face of a willing girl-woman, given expression by the moving shadow of the fire, a plea hatching from her eye-sockets beseeching him to kiss. Then he was tasting' it; it was caressing his tongue. Caroline had reached for his head, and with one hand behind his neck and the other under her breast, she lifted her breast into his face. Munday nuzzled the tender orbit of the nipple while she held the breast in her fingers, offering it like fruit.

The fire had grown larger and noisier with all the wood alight, and the storm over the chimney created sudden drafts, which washed the flames forward in furious bursts. Caroline toppled him, upsetting a chair, and knelt over him and swung her breasts in his face. They were loose, lengthened to purses, tickling his eyes. He tried to reach them with his mouth as she pushed his coat open and undid his shirt and tie. The motion of their bodies made the candle-flames waver, he saw them dance above the short hair of Caroline’s head, and he felt the fire in the hearth heating one side of his face and the side of his leg. He got up on one elbow and struggled out of his coat, Caroline pulled his shirt off and pushed his trousers down, and as she dug for his penis he kicked his shoes off and worked his trousers off his ankles. She cradled his penis in two hands and pressed her face to it, kissing it and finally sheathing it in her mouth. Then she closed her eyes and rolled her head, taking long adoring sucks. Munday lay back and held his breath; he felt the flutter of her rapid tongue, a buzz on the rawness of his groin, the tropical heat of her mouth and pressure so unusual and changing he buried his face in his hands and imagined he was being bitten in two. His legs told him she had detached the lower part of his body from the upper, but it was only in the lower part that blood flowed. He watched her then with amazement, as if she was attending to his live half, that twolegged creature with a rigid beak.

Then she stopped.

“What is it?”

She turned her head and sneezed twice, and wiped her mouth and returned to him.

The ceiling swam with mottled firelight, and Munday caressed Caroline’s legs, the backs of her thighs, and pushed the silken folds of her long skirt aside, unveiling the cool yellow-white globes of her buttocks. She straddled him, facing away, butting his chest with her knees as she crossed over, and still moving her head and making devouring gasps on his penis, she settled on him and moved her cunt against his face. Munday held loosely to her skirt and received her with his tongue, lapping the slickness of her vulva’s Ups. He was drowning, smothering pleasurably in fathoms of swamp, the ferns prickling his chin, his mouth teased by a pouring tide of eels and damp spiney plant-roots. His arms were helpless, his hands light, falling away from flotsam that dissolved in his grasp. Caroline moved slightly, thrusting down, and Munday licked the seam in the groove than ran to where her arse budded. She groaned and pitched forward, her face against the floor. Munday felt her saliva chilling his erect penis. She reached back, instructing him with her hand, flicking at her buttocks and whispering, “Yes, yes.” Munday parted her buttocks and licked at the rough pebbles of the bud. He warmed it, and it opened like a flower on his mouth; he darted his tongue into it, deliriously urged by her moanings. His skin burned from the fire, it seared his arms, and the side of Caroline closest to the fire was hot to the touch, hot enough for him to imagine her skin peeling from her flesh. This heat and her muffled sobs drove him on, and he ignored the fracture in his heart and licked at her in a greedy frenzy for her approval, until her sobs turned to soft howls of pleasure.

Finally, he released her and turned her over. But she became active and crouched beside him; she put one arm around his back and bent and took his penis in her mouth. She drew on it and fondled it beneath with her hand. He felt heat mounting in his loins and a tightening in the cords of his groin that made him tremble. He tried to push her head away, but the gesture warned her. She became excited and held him in her mouth with even more determination. Her eyes were wide open; she did not close them until Munday gripped her hair in both his hands, and he heard his own roaring voice reaching him from the flame-lit ceiling as he drained into her skull.

He woke after that; she was above him, still naked, putting a log on the fire, and beyond her on the wall, he saw the dead and disfigured candle stumps, homed, with long strings of stiff wax hanging from the holders. There was a blanket wrapped around him and he felt the fire’s warmth on his legs. At the base of the fire was a shimmering bed of hot coals, dark waves of chevrons floating across the purest red.

“They’re killing each other again in Belfast,” he said.

“What’s that?”

He looked at her and yawned. “You'd better wrap up. You’ll get a chill. That chair,” he said, “it’s got to be fixed.”

She was still feeding the fire, throwing the last sticks into it. She said, “Ireland is so green.”

“But even Africa is green,” he said sleepily. “And England, too . . . from here to the farthest . . . end of the world—” He dropped his head and dozed; he was talking in his sleep. The fire lit his dreams, which were of swamp and pathless jungle and a molten sun erupting at dawn and black shaven-headed girls in loinclothes tending plants like green fountains. The clumsy winged birds were there, and the papyrus; he recognized them, not from Africa, but from his other dreams. When he woke again he was shivering with cold, the fire was nearly out. The room was reduced to the small patch of flickering carpet before the fireplace, where he lay sprawled. The candleholders were empty, the chair righted, and she was gone.