style="font-size:15px;"> Now the book beckoned, with its chimeras and its sorceries; all ambiguity; all flux; and her pragmatism would be worthless. No matter. Whatever the years had taught her about loss, and compromise, and defeat she was here invited back into a forest in which maidens tamed dragons; and one of those maidens still had her face.
Having scanned three or four of the stories, she turned to the front of the book, in search of an inscription. It was brief.
‘To Suzanna.’ it read. ‘Love from M.L.’
It shared the page with an odd epigram:
Das, was man sick vorstellt, braucht man nie zu verlieren.
She struggled with this, suspecting that her rusty German might be missing the felicities. The closest approximation she could make was:
That which is imagined need never be lost.
With this oblique wisdom in mind, she returned to the stories, lingering over the illustrations, which had the severity of woodcuts but on closer inspection concealed all manner of subtleties. Fish with human faces gazed up from beneath the pristine surface of a pool; two strangers at a banquet exchanged whispers that had taken solid form in the air above their heads; in the heart of a wild wood figures all but hidden amongst the trees showed pale, expectant faces.
The hours came and went, and when, having been through the book from cover to cover, she briefly closed her eyes to rest them, sleep overcame her.
When she woke she found her watch had stopped a little after two. The wick at her side flickered in a pool of wax, close to drowning. She got to her feet, limping around the landing until the pins and needles had left her foot, and then went into the back bedroom in search of a fresh candle.
There was one on the window ledge. As she picked it up, her eye caught a movement in the yard below. Her heart jumped; but she stood absolutely still so as not to draw attention to herself, and watched. The figure was in shadow, and it wasn’t until he forsook the corner of the yard that the starlight showed her the young man she’d seen here the day before.
She started downstairs, picking up a fresh flame on the way. She wanted to speak to the man; wanted to quiz him on the reasons for his flight, and the identity of his pursuers.
As she stepped out into the yard he rose from his hiding place and made a dash for the back gate.
‘Wait!’ she called after him. ‘It’s Suzanna.’
The name could mean little to him, but he halted nevertheless.
‘Who?’ he said.
‘I saw you yesterday. You were running –’
The girl in the hall, Cal realized. The one who’d come between him and the Salesman.
‘What happened to you?’ she said.
He looked terrible. His clothes were ripped, his face dirtied; and, though she couldn’t be sure, bloodied too.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice scraping gravel. ‘I don’t know anything any longer.’
‘Why don’t you come inside?’
He didn’t move.
‘How long have you been here?’ he said.
‘Hours.’
‘And the house is empty?’
‘Except for me, yes.’
With this ascertained, he followed her through the back door. She lit several more candles. The light confirmed her suspicions. There was blood on him; and a cess-pit smell.
‘Is there any running water?’ he said.
‘I don’t know; we can try.’
They were in luck; the Water Board had not turned off the supply. The kitchen tap rattled and the pipes roared but finally a stream of icy water was spat forth. Cal slung off his jacket and doused his face and arms.
‘I’ll see if I can find a towel,’ said Suzanna. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Cal.’
She left him to his ablutions. With her gone he stripped off his shirt and sluiced down his chest, neck and back with chilly water. She was back before he was done, with a pillow-slip.
‘Nearest thing I can find to a towel,’ she said.
She had set two chairs in the lower front room, and lit several candles there. They sat together, and talked.
‘Why did you come back?’ she wanted to know. ‘After yesterday.’
‘I saw something here.’ he said, cautiously. ‘And you? Why are you here?’
‘This is my grandmother’s house. She’s in hospital. Dying. I came back to look around.’
‘The two I saw yesterday,’ Cal said. ‘Were they friends of your grandmother’s?’
‘I doubt it. What did they want with you?’
Here Cal knew he got into sticky ground. How could he begin to tell her what joys and fears the last few days had brought?
‘It’s difficult …’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m not sure anything that’s happened to me recently makes much sense.’
‘That makes two of us,’ she replied.
He was looking at his hands, like a palmist in search of a future. She studied him; his torso was covered in scratches, as though he’d been wrestling wolves.
When he looked up his pale blue eyes, fringed with black lashes, caught her scrutiny. He blushed slightly.
‘You said you saw something here,’ she said. ‘Can you tell me what?’
It was a simple question, and he saw no reason not to tell her. If she disbelieved him, that was her problem, not his. But she didn’t. Indeed, as soon as he described the carpet her eyes grew wide and wild.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘A carpet. Of course.’
‘You know about it?’ he said.
She told him what had happened at the hospital; the design Mimi had tried to show her.
Now any lingering doubts about telling the whole story were forgotten. He gave her the adventure from the day the bird had escaped. His vision of the Fugue; Shadwell and his coat; Immacolata; the by-blows; their mother and the midwife; events at the wedding, and after. She punctuated his narrative with insights of her own, about Mimi’s life here in the house, the doors bolted, the windows nailed down, living in a fortress as if awaiting siege.
‘She must have known somebody would come for the carpet sooner or later.’
‘Not for the carpet,’ said Cal.
