La Femme Read online

  This time the landing was not entirely dark. A bar of light spilt from Lorraine’s doorway, kissing the carpet crimson. It gilded the fur of the Peke, and sparked in his maddened eyes.

  “Bad animal,” said the Peke. Black tears had worn little channels downwards from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes, as if he were truly saddened by my trespass. Then he howled like a hoover-blockage and charged.

  This time I raced to meet him, taking the malevolent mop head on. He had weight and size on his side, but I had surprise. We rolled and hit the wall, a ball of fur and snarl.

  Suddenly he pulled back and snapped at the air. His flattened head twisted this way and that, trying to fling loose the rodent forms which clung to his soft, shapeless ears. Others clung like rounded, brown burrs to tail and fetlock, collar and underbelly.

  Seizing my moment, I leapt to my paws. I raced for Lorraine’s door, and squeezed hastily through. The counterpane fringe tickled me as I dived under her bed, slinking myself flat against the carpet.

  Things were not as Lu Lin had predicted. The handbag was not under the bed, and Lorraine was not asleep.

  I watched Lorraine’s feet walk past with their nails of pink metal. The door gently closed, leaving an arc of ruffled carpet behind it. Above me the mattress bulged and creaked, and the feet disappeared upwards.

  When I crept out, Lorraine was stretched out on the bed in her shimmer-with-sleeves. She was box-talking very quietly, and she was twisting a long strand of her fur around her finger. Her voice made the same breathy, stealthy sort of sound as the door brushing across the carpet. It was a sound you could feel. To me it felt like being stroked wrong.

  While she talked, she turned a little bottle around in her fingers. It was a cylinder with a cream-coloured cap, and a grubby label on the front. As I watched, she spilled four little white balls out of it into her palm, and put the empty bottle back into the handbag beside her.

  My teeth tingled as I watched her lower the bag to the floor, and tuck it under the bed. I licked my nose, itching to snap at her fingers, but restrained myself because Lu Lin had said that might make Lorraine nervous. Instead I held still while Lorraine walked to the door, opened it again and slipped out.

  I hooked my lower jaw under the slender straps of the handbag, with the deftness of long practice. This time, however, they might as well have been steel chains. My teeth could barely dent the soft plastic, and my jaw ached with the effort of lifting them. I heaved, paws scuffling for purchase on the carpet. The bag barely shifted.

  Outside, I could hear Lorraine padding along the landing, and Matt’s door creaking open. I could hear Lorraine using her ruffled carpet voice. Matt answered in his kind voice, his hello-there-and-ruffle-the-tummy-coat voice. He often used that voice with Lorraine.

  Then I heard Matt’s door shut. Lorraine’s steps creaked downstairs. There followed the sound of the kitchen door singing open, and a clatter of pans. For a moment I felt only relief. Lorraine was out of the way, and would not see her bag inching along the floor.

  Then my fur brindled as I understood what Lorraine was doing down in the kitchen. She was preparing their bowls - Matt’s bowl. And she had taken with her four little white balls from the Bottle of Bad Death.

  Desperate, I hauled, tugged and struggled with the straps. I was dragging a bungalow. My teeth were about to pop from my head. A roaring filled my ears, and I barely heard the slithering rasps as the bag yielded inch by painful inch.

  Only when my tail struck against the door frame did I realise how far I had come. I shuffled my way backwards through the door, still dragging the bag. My legs were shaking now, puppy-weak. And as I tottered, almost slumping, the Peke hit me again like a furry train.

  I nearly let go of the bag, but I did not. Some remnant of will kept my jaws clamped around the straps.

  My strength was exhausted. The Peke was still in fighting form. But perhaps even that could be turned to account.

  I staggered to my feet, offering a tempting, undefended flank, and he lunged for it, his momentum carrying us along the carpet. Again and again I managed to stand, always presenting a side-on target to be charged by the Peke. Again and again I let him bruise, buffet and roll me, always in the direction of the stairs.

  “Bad animal,” slavered the Peke, with the voice like eggs in a blender. He had me pinned against the banister, and there was nowhere left to roll. “Bad animal.” The gerbil hanging from his eyebrow did nothing to increase the sanity of his appearance.

  Then he faltered, jaw opening and shutting, rodent-beleaguered ears shifting nervously. Both of us heard a series of ascending creaks on the stairs.

  Gerbils sprang out of Lorraine’s path as she climbed, a bowl of steaming red on the tray in her hands. The red smelt of tang, and summer, and… and the strange bitterness of my last meal at Lorraine’s feet.

  The Peke sat back onto his haunches and made himself into a Toby jug of greeting, wiping his front feet through the air in front of his nose. Seeing him distracted, I lunged for the stairs with my last scrap of strength, the bag straps still clamped between my teeth.

  I reached the top step at the same time as Lorraine. I felt my nose touch against well-washed person-skin, its texture somewhere between rubber and rose petal. Then the bag’s leathery weight struck Lorraine’s ankles, and one of her feet hooked in an unexpected strap.

  There was a squawk from above me, and soup rained against the wall. Lorraine pitched forwards and landed with a crash, coming within inches of crushing me.

  I lay helpless on the top step, panting for the breath I did not have and did not need, while Matt ran out to help Lorraine. Dimly I watched as he put his arms around her and helped her sit up, all the while using his hello-there-and-ruffle-the-tummy-coat voice. She sat rubbing at her leg, her shimmer gathered in ripples around her. Matt tutted over her spilt handbag, and picked up her shines and bobbles for her.

  Then he stopped with inches of me, paused and frowned. Before darkness washed me away I saw him pick up a little cylindrical bottle with a cream-coloured cap, and stare at the label.

  *

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Lu Lin looked up from her urn-top meditation, and to her credit hid her surprise well.

  “Benjamin!” She closed her eyes into the most entrancing sky-needles of welcome. “You are just the hero I thought you were.”

  “When were you going to tell me, Lu Lin, or were you hoping it would never come up? When were you going to tell me about the burnout?”

  Lu Lin yawned. With half of my mind I was fascinated by how beautifully she sleeked her ears when she yawned, narrowing her face to a point, and the way her tongue curled like a rose petal. With the other half of my mind I knew that this was a trick she used when she needed a moment to think.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” A beautiful level contralto. Sweet as summer plums. Smooth as custard.

  “This was never about a single sofa, was it?” I asked. “It was a territory matter all right, though. Up until now, you’ve had the garden, and most of the downstairs. That would never be enough for you, though, would it? Not while there were beds upstairs, and all those perfumed bottles on the bathroom windowsill begging to be nudged into the bath. But the little rodents that used to be so scared of you had taken the hall and stairs, and some crazy old veteran ruled the landing.”

  Lu Lin smoothed her dark, grey gloves and said nothing.

  “Was I supposed to come back at all, Lu Lin?” I demanded. “Or was I just supposed to eat my way through the gerbils, maim the Peke so you could finish him off later, then rain on Lorraine’s parade before I burned out and left you with the house to yourself?”

  She stopped grooming and regarded me steadily. A tiny, pink petal-tip of her tongue was still protruding, forgotten.

  “I think I always hoped you would come back, and I am doubly glad now.” There was no shame in Lu Lin’s voice, no remorse. “I always hoped that some day I might look at you and see th
e eyes of a cat smiling back at me.” She rose and stretched herself into a croquet hoop, pulling the pale sheath back from each precise translucent claw. “You and I, my darling, must have a long talk. You cannot imagine the plans I have for us, the ways we might spend our eternity…”

  I watched her settle, mesmerised by her tail as it wound itself around her delicate feet. I ran my tongue over my nose.

  “If you want me,” I said quietly. “I’ll be in the lounge, drooling on Matt’s knee.”

  A Winter Bewitchment

  Storm Constantine

  Areta, the countess of Graserve, sat upon her morning terrace; the breakfast things had been cleared away. A clean perfume of star pine and doebloom wafted down from the hills behind the villa, warmed by the late summer air. The countess sat at a table of iron, forged carefully to appear delicate, which was covered in packages of letters and other papers. She wore a saffron morning robe and her luxuriant moss-blonde hair, thinly streaked with silver strands, was bound up on her head in a tousled pile. She was frowning a little. Her graceful left hand rested upon a stack of letters on her knee; these had been bound with a faded red ribbon, which now lay about them in a tangle. The lady’s companion, a young, dark-skinned woman named Mimosa, sat on a stool beside her, helping to sort out the papers. The countess made a small sound.

  “What is it, my lady?” Mimosa asked.

  The countess smiled ruefully, her mouth turning down at the corners. “Ah well, I was only thinking.” She tapped the letters. “Some of these are from my husband when we first met. He knew poetry then, of course.” She laughed tightly. Her free hand indicated the letters on the table. “Some are from other men, dated both before and after the day of my marriage. Now they are no more than fading ink upon paper. I think I must burn them all.”

  The young companion stirred. She was from the far south, her dark skin tinted a curious shade of green that was so subtle you might think you imagined it, or it was a caprice of the light. “They are more than paper, my lady.”

  The countess smiled down at her companion, rested her right hand upon the unruly tumble of inky curls that seemed to burst from Mimosa’s dark green head scarf. “I have no man to say sweet words of love to me. I have no man eagerly awaiting clandestine meetings, his heart full of poetry and beating fast in his hunger. I have no man to make exquisite love to me; I only have men who want sex, which is meaningless.” She tapped the letters again and then shuffled them into a neater pile with both hands. “That is what I mean.” She referred to her husband and her lover, both of whom had come to disappoint her. She thought upon how time had faded the splendour of first love, of excitement. All that was left was passionless domesticity in the marriage, and a kind of dull routine in the affair. She and her lover met for coffee, discussed books and plays, occasionally went to a hotel room, but there was no fire in their eyes, no fervour in their hearts. Hardly a point even for secrecy any more. Perhaps this was just an inevitable part of growing older.

  The countess was quite sure she had said none of this aloud, yet Mimosa appeared to have heard every word. “Perhaps all this is true, but if you’ll forgive my importunity, it is the love affairs that have aged. Your own ageing is irrelevant.”

  The countess raised her brows. “What are you saying?”

  “You talk as if all is lost, but it is not.”

  “I’m not sure what is lost would be welcome back, in all truth.”

  Mimosa grinned. “If you could have any man in the city, who would it be?”

  “Well, the obvious answer would be one, if not all, of the beautiful young things who strut about the stages of our world, or who paint, or who write books. There are many beautiful ones of those, aren’t there?”

  “There are,” said Mimosa, but she too sounded unconvinced.

  “But really…” The countess closed her eyes for a moment. “If it were to be any man, I would like it to be a man of character, of… power… perhaps someone of whom I might be slightly afraid. By that, I do not mean a bad or violent man, but something of a mystery.”

  “That too would be my choice,” said Mimosa. “This is partly why my family sent me north, ostensibly to discover and learn about different cultures, but really to separate me from home. My choices were not universally approved among my people.”

  The countess laughed. “Were you sent away in disgrace?”

  Mimosa sighed. “I wish that were the case. I simply kept a journal.”

  “Ah.”

  “It is no easy thing to have your dreams laid bare to the light of day, then mocked and criticised. I burned the journal as you are thinking of burning your letters, but if anyone is to destroy such precious memories it should not be the dreamer herself.” For a moment Mimosa’s face wore an expression of heartbreaking wistfulness, then she made a visible effort to pull herself together. “But that is not our subject on this beautiful morning. Come, my lady, think of the man you want.”

  “I think, dear Mimosa, there must be an archetypal man, who is the ultimate desire of all intelligent women. We could list all his traits, but is there such a man within the city?”

  Both women were silent for a few moments, then: “Zachary Wilde,” said Mimosa.

  The countess considered. “He is handsome, true, rich beyond imagination, and overlord – for there is no other word – of one of the most successful businesses of our time. But he is also very married, and happy with it, by all accounts. His public image is of the contented family man, always seen with dogs and children.” She grimaced. “I fear he is beyond temptation.”

  “Show me a human being beyond temptation, and I will show you a changeling,” Mimosa declared, a trifle bitterly.

  “I don’t want another affair,” said the countess. “It’s far too demanding. What would be preferable is admiration, some fluttering of the heart, some excitement… Perhaps no more than that.”

  The conversation was cut short by the arrival of the count on the terrace. He was a tall, lean man, who like his wife had aged well. He was still what was called ‘darkly handsome’, and no doubt desired by many women who didn’t know him, but he had a tendency to obsess over petty things nowadays, and had also taken to whistling in a warbling way, or humming tunelessly, both of which the countess remembered her grandfather doing.

  The count sat down, lifting a sheaf of papers from his chair. He seemed not to notice the contents of the table, but nodded at Mimosa. “How’s your father, my dear?” he asked. This question emerged every time he saw Mimosa.

  The countess sighed inwardly.

  Mimosa inclined her head politely. “He is very well, thank you, my lord. In his last letter he enquired about your new horse.”

  “When you next write to him, tell him I will be sending him a shipment of vine seeds, which I believe grow very well in southern soil. They don’t do badly here, but from what I’ve heard wine made from these vines when grown in the south is like a catsup of the gods. In fact…”

  “Well, let’s clear away these things,” said the countess to Mimosa, gathering up the letters and papers strewn around her.

  The count began to hum beneath his breath, staring out over the terrace at the perfect sea.

  *

  The Wildes had come from the ocean, the family and their entourage arriving two centuries before on three stout ships. The Graservites had been puzzled why this obviously monied clan had decided to uproot themselves from their estates in the western land of Saravey and sail en masse to Graserve. They had brought cobblers and farriers with them, bakers, farmers, sock-menders, jewellers, perfumiers and doctors. In fact, the entourage could well have comprised the stock of a small town. Before bringing any of his tribe ashore, the patriarch of the Wildes, Jebariah Amos, had requested an audience with the mayor of the city. The meeting had been private, but afterwards the mayor had appeared convinced the Wildes, though numerous, would be a worthy addition to the population of Graserve. The reason given for the mass emigration was that the Wildes were uncomfortab
le with the politics of their native land, where wealth and success were frowned upon as being the fruits of demon worship. Saravey was notoriously puritan, but it seemed conditions were worsening. In comparison to the average Graservite, the Wildes were to a man and woman far more prim and conservative in outlook. Only the fact that Jebariah Amos requested permission to build an estate some miles from the city convinced the mayor their rather alien ways wouldn’t upset any of the natives. And he’d made clear to Jebariah Amos that he would countenance no subtle attempts at religious conversion. The Wilde patriarch had agreed to this. Subtly, and miraculously without causing insult, he implied it was the wish of he and his wife to keep their people separate from the Graservites. It was the land that had called to them from the sea as they’d sailed the coast looking for a home, not the people of the city. The mayor approved a parcel of land for the Wildes and tax arrangements were made to mutual satisfaction.

  The Wildes flourished, and over the centuries mingled more with the people of Graserve. They always retained a certain aloofness, but on the whole were absorbed into the populace. As in Saravey, they became immensely successful in business.

  Such was the heritage of Zachary Wilde.

  *

  Mimosa and the countess walked that afternoon in the Raven Park that overlooked the hills behind the city rather than the sea. They fed the ravens, paused by the fish pond to watch the lightning glimmers beneath the smooth surface, and finally sat down upon Lady Miranda Terrace, where they purchased tea and saffron buns, and here observed other walkers who came to refresh themselves.

  “Have you thought more upon our plan?” Mimosa enquired.

  The countess turned her eyes to the girl. “What plan?”

  “Of seducing Zachary Wilde.”

  The countess laughed. “Dear Mimosa, I thought that was a game. I don’t have the energy to make it a reality, even if I could.” She reached out with a cool hand and touched Mimosa’s cheek. “You, my dear, would stand far more chance of such a victory than I.”