The Palace Of Curiosities Part 13

'Alfred?' I say to encourage him.

'Oh. Yes. Sorry, Abel.'

'Sorry? What for?'

'My friend,' he breathes. 'Yes. Strange thoughts. Well.' He runs his finger round the inside of his collar and undoes his shirt b.u.t.tons. 'It is so hot.'

I smell his musk, the scent of trapped meat. I look at him closely. He gazes back with a curious expression on his face. My hopes wilt. Perhaps I have been mistaken.

'If you have changed your mind we can talk another time, Alfred.'

'No!' He grabs my hand. 'No,' he says, less urgently. 'Let us talk a while. You're my pal. I want to tell you. I do have thoughts.' He coughs with the effort of speaking. 'About things I am afraid to tell.'

'You are afraid, too?'

It rushes in upon me: all the frightening memories I have hidden from him, afraid to reveal them for fear they might become more real, more uncontrollable, more unbearable. How I have tamped them down, week after week, in fearful isolation. When, right before me, he was alone and hiding secrets too.

'I thought you might hate me,' I confess.

I think of the occasions I tried to tell him, how he shrugged me away. I was so afraid. But he is not shrugging me away now; his hand is hanging on to mine, tight.

'Abel,' he murmurs.

'I thought you did not want to know,' I say. 'I tried to tell you before.'

'Oh, Abel.'

He presses into my side, eyes swooning with drink; chucks his knuckles beneath my chin. My mind wavers in that way it does before I am plunged into a memory. Please: not now, I think. Not when I am so close to unburdening myself. I wipe at my face and my hand comes away clammy. It is exceedingly warm, for all that the fire is out: I open the neck of my shirt to the navel. His nostrils flare and he shuffles closer.

'My memories plague me, Alfred. I cannot sleep. I cannot think right. Sometimes I am close to understanding, then all is s.n.a.t.c.hed away.'

He breathes deeply, fingers tracing the edge of my cheek.

'I can't think right, neither. It's the drink.'

'I have such thoughts.' My voice cracks. 'So many pictures.'

I try to shake them out of my head, but now that I have opened the door to their knocking, I cannot close it again. His hands slide up my arms, cup the bones of my shoulders and squeeze.

'Shhh,' he says. 'Hush now.'

He brings his face close to mine, eyes flicking over me like a tongue.

'Help me understand,' I hiss through clenched teeth.

'Yes,' he whispers, his features tight. 'Hush now. You'll wake the house.'

I clutch my arms around him, and cannot tell if he is feverish, or I am.

'Yes. Help me,' I say. 'I'd give anything.'

'I am so drunk, Abel. I believe I could do anything.'

He heaps his weight against me and we slide off the bench on to the floor. I try to get up, but he holds me down, teeth working their way up the column of my throat, hands grabbing the hair at the nape of my neck and pressing his face to mine, sticking his tongue between my lips.

'Alfred-' I try to say, but his tongue is in my mouth and I cannot get the word out.

'Shhh,' he wheezes.

He grips my hand, squeezing so pa.s.sionately I wince; he guides it between his thighs and rubs my palm against the firmness there.

'Oh, Abel,' he pants, breath faint and fast as a rabbit, clutching me against the hardness, jerking my fist up and down in faster and faster strokes. 'G.o.d, no,' he whimpers, and hangs on fiercely.

The rubbing becomes ever more frantic; he groans into my ear, grasp tightening as his body begins to wind its spring towards release. Then he pauses, seizes my arms and flips me over, nose-down on the stamped-in grease of the floor. His fingers scrabble violently at the waistband of my trousers. I do not know why he feels he must force me. He could simply ask. I take a breath to tell him that I am quite willing, breathe in dirt and dust and hair and start to sneeze, my whole body racked with noisy spluttering.

As I catch my breath I become aware that Alfred has stopped grinding against me. I twist round to face him, straddled across my thighs.

'You may continue, if you wish,' I say.

'What?' he stutters.

He gawps at the palms of his hands, then at their backs, as though they are those of a stranger and he is discovering them for the first time.

'You want this. You are my friend. I'll give you anything, body and soul, if it's your desire.'

I resume my p.r.o.ne position, propping myself on my elbows so that I do not breathe in more dust and set off another fit of wheezing.

'No!' he gasps. 'You are shameless.'

'There is no shame.' I smile over my shoulder. 'It is the pleasurable joining of bodies. You do not need to coerce me. I have done it before.'

'Done it before?' he repeats, slowly.

'Of course!' I laugh with the sudden flood of happy memories. Flesh sticky with joyful excitement, the delicious parts of women and men. 'Many times.'

'Many times? How you-'

His face twists, untwists and twists again. I did not think it possible for a man to reveal so many warring emotions in so short a time.

'You you-' He gathers in a deep breath and then hurls it out. 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You filthy sod! This is not my doing,' he gulps.

He looks at his body as though it is suddenly foreign. He sees the tent in the rough fabric of his breeches and his fingers fly to cover the evidence of his arousal.

'No. This is not what I want.' He slams a fist into his groin and whimpers in pain.

'Alfred, you are hurting yourself.'

'This is you,' he snarls. 'You make a man do things he does not want to.'

I raise myself into a sitting position and lay my hand upon his shoulder.

'Alfred. I am happy. Be happy with me.'

'Let go of me, you b.u.g.g.e.r.' He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, turning away. He will not look at me. 'You're evil. A perversion of all that's clean and good.'

'Please. Talk to me.'

'Talk to you? You f.u.c.king nancy-boy.'

'Alfred? You are my friend.'

'Don't say that. Never. Do you hear? Never.'

'I do not understand.' I try to hug him closer.

'What are you doing?' he gulps. 'You're f.u.c.king hurting me, you s.h.i.t-stabbing piece of filth.' He raises his fist and thumps me on the side of the head. I let go and he scrambles away. 'You disgust me.'

'Alfred, why are you being like this?'

'Like what? Nothing happened here, and don't you ever dare say any different.'

He tidies his trousers where they have fallen open and staggers to the cellar door.

'Alfred,' I call.

'Leave me alone.'

I say his name again, but he is gone. I follow him down the dark stairs to my empty pallet. There is nowhere else to go. Alfred is breathing heavily on the mattress next to mine. I do not understand what has happened. I have no words to bring my friend back to me.

I lie down, open the gates of my being and wait for the pleasurable images to return, but the door swings loosely on its hinge. Nothing. I am an abandoned house, my l.u.s.tful ghosts gone for the evening. No. Please. I want them. I can make them happen. I can bring them to me.

Fill me, my soul cries.

My voice rings against the walls. I shall bring my dreams to me with the force of my will; they are mine. I grit my teeth. I had so many delightful memories. I want them, now! If I am tormented so often with pictures of death, why should I not have the comfort of lascivious thoughts also? It is the cruellest trick. I scrabble in my mind's pond.

Perhaps I can find my other recollections. There was something about steps. Was I running? The more I try to remember, the more impossible seems the task. Something about a clock; but there are no clocks in this cellar. So why am I thinking about clocks? Or was it a knife? I tumble into a void, and it holds no comfort.

EVE.

London, MayJuly 1857 Mr Arroner pushed open the double doors.

For the first month of our marriage he had kept this one particular room locked and was most coy when I enquired what lay within, lifting his eyebrow teasingly and counselling patience. How anyone could stay patient I did not know, for day after day fresh deliveries were swallowed by the mysterious doors and I was ordered upstairs so as not to spoil the surprise, as he put it. However far I leaned out of the window I could never see enough to quench my curiosity. I was on the verge of imagining him to be a true Bluebeard when he called me downstairs.

'Dear wife. I hope you are not disappointed. I know this salon is a little cramped. You deserve finer, I know.'

'Finer?'

He did not seem to understand why my chin was slack with wonder. The room stretched the entire width of the house. The fireplace bristled with fire-irons, the mantelpiece with candlesticks, and windows stretched all the way from the skirting board to the plaster cornice. Even the wallpaper was alive, flapping with crimson birds.

'Oh! My dear!' I gasped, struggling to find adequate words.

I dared not move, scared that if I placed one foot over the threshold the spell would be broken and this vista would shimmer and wink out.

'I hoped to impress you with this wedding gift. But it is a sorry sight, is it not? Soon you shall have grander apartments. Forgive me, Mrs Arroner, do.'

I seized his hand with such excitement he flinched a little.

'Oh, my dearest Josiah!' I breathed. 'This is wonderful!'

He patted the top of my head. 'I knew you for a kind creature from the moment I met you. How tenderly you preserve your husband's pride.' He swept out his hand. 'Dear wife, it would please me greatly if you would enter.'

I took a deep breath. Spell or no spell, this was mine. I stepped inside, hungry for more of the room's delights. There was so much s.p.a.ce between myself and the walls; even between myself and the nearest piece of furniture. I wondered if this was how the Queen lived. I doubted it: she had palaces, and a stream of servants; but all the same, I felt like a princess. I walked in boldly, my toes brushing against Persian carpet at every step, and stretched out my hands; whirling around till my skirts flew up in a dance of their own. At last I stopped, giggling with dizziness. My husband was looking at me with a small smile on his lips.

'Dear, sweet wife,' he said calmly.

There was a podium of sorts set against the furthest wall, covered with a broad rug. At its centre stood a carver chair, plump with red and cream striped satin. Before and below it were a quant.i.ty of smaller chairs arranged in a half-circle; not close enough to touch whoever might be sitting on the dais, but near enough to see the rise and fall of their breathing.

'What a curious arrangement,' I laughed. 'Are you going to invite a musician to entertain us?' Anything might be possible in my grand new world.

'Ah, my dear! That chair is for your comfort alone. Here is where you shall receive our guests. You must be eager to welcome my friends, must you not? For they are full of eagerness to meet you, my wonderful new wife.'

I gazed up at my Adonis.

'But, my love, must I sit alone?' I asked.

He tickled me beneath my chin. 'Dear, foolish child! I shall not leave your side for an instant!'

My natural curiosity would give me no peace.

'But, my dearest Josiah, is it not a little strange for me to be so raised above your friends? Will they not think me proud?'

'Of course not. It is the done thing, in fashionable society. It is how ladies of finest breeding receive visitors.'

I looked at my paws: I knew nothing of breeding. I desired to ask more questions, but he was already describing the wallpaper, and how much it had cost him. After some minutes spent thus, he smiled very broadly, and his eyes glittered.

'We shall begin this very afternoon. Many of my most intimate acquaintances ache to see you.'

He was distracted throughout luncheon, glancing from his pocket-watch to the wall-clock, only speaking to press me into eating my plateful of eggs poached in b.u.t.ter.

'I am too excited to eat,' I said.