Dark Dance (12 page)

Maria was beside her and began to set extra eating utensils for Rachaela, where she stood at the table’s head.

Rachaela sat down in silence, and ate what was offered her.

And the Scarabae began to chatter. They twittered and chirruped amongst themselves like a nest of small, harsh dangerous birds with razor beaks.

She heard odd words only, the hubbub was so great—
lace, omelette, chesspiece.

And Anna, the usual spokeswoman, was talkative, and once or twice she directed at Rachaela a pitiless smile.
You see how we can be,
it said.
Do you like this better?

On the edge of insanity the room crackled and vibrated.

Rachaela sat mesmerized, in a shrinking fascination. It was like being in a demented music-box. A twist of a key would silence them. But which key was it?

When the plates were polished clean, the fruit had gone round and been demolished in its turn, the teapots came, three this time.

Rachaela sat on in the aviary of noise. She drank tea.

Alice and Sasha were the first to rise.

Rachaela rose also and went up to them.

She had recognized Alice, who wore a plum-red knitted cardigan, a long string of crimson beads.

‘Alice, tell me about the attic.’

‘Oh, the attic,’ Alice said at once, like clockwork. ‘Full of trifles. A dress of my mother’s—’weird notion, this one had had a mother‘—on a dummy. And the old rocking-horse, do you remember, Sasha?’

‘How does one get into the attic?’ said Rachaela.

‘A stair,’ said Alice. ‘We’ll show you.’

The others watched as they went from the room. The noise did not subside.

They walked up to the landing and turned to the left. The corridor curved like a worm, branched. Alice chose left again. They passed through an annexe with a window of Salome dancing with the head of John-or so Rachaela interpreted the saffron and cerise glass. There were bare floorboards beyond, closed doors, a narrow stair going downwards and another up, uncarpeted. Rachaela had never come this way. It was gloomy, sulkily lit by glimmers of Salome, old reds of dying sunfall on a peeling wall.

‘Up there,’ said Alice. ‘Now you know.’

Sasha said, ‘Watch out for Uncle Camillo. He stores wine in the attic.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Alice, ‘he made ever such a lot. Quite horrible it was, very sour and add. Undrinkable. But he said he liked to do it, make the wine. In the kitchen the corks kept popping. So now he stores it up there.’

As Rachaela stepped on to the stair, Alice waved to her, ‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ as if seeing her off on an epic train journey.

The attic door was free of webs, in use. There was a lock, but it stood ajar. She pushed it. The two women had gone.

The attic ran long and high. It was crammed with things. She saw chests, old wardrobes, stuffed birds, indeed a dummy with a scarlet musty dress, the rocking-horse in blood and snow suspended in a shaft of light. A window pierced the end wall, round and spoked like a wheel. The glass, dusty, greenish, was clear. A dream window in the wrong place. By its shining illumination she gradually saw the ranks of brown bottles standing up everywhere, and at last Uncle Camillo seated in a rocking-chair he had perhaps mistaken for the horse.

He was out of the shaft of light, yet the attic was sprinkled by it. It touched white sparks on his clasped and wiry hands, three rings, and lit the long hood of albescent hair. His eyes were shut, but as she stared at him, he opened them.

‘Giddy-up,’ he said to the rocking chair, and made it go. The creaks were like emanations of his etiolate body.

‘The light,’ said Rachaela.

‘You’ll have to put up with it,’ he answered. ‘Avoid the direct beam.’

‘It doesn’t worry me.’

‘It will.’

‘And you,’ she said, ‘aren’t afraid of the light.’

‘Too old,’ said Uncle Camillo, rocking. ‘Do you want to go down to the sea?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Is there a way into the tower?’

‘Adamus locks the door,’ said Camillo. ‘Adamus ran away. Into the outside world, alone. Then he came back.’

‘You know the way into the tower,’ said Rachaela.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Over the roof.’

He pointed at the window. Rachaela walked into the full glare of the murky glass. There was a catch, the window might be opened. Outside lay a flat roof with a parapet of stone. One of the weather-vanes balanced at a crazy angle, it was a dragon. Beyond the flat roof was another, and then the cone of the tower. Under the lid of the cone a tall dark window, dyed glass and leading. It looked inaccessible.

‘Have some wine,’ said Uncle Camillo.

He did not sound as mad as she had thought him. He did mad things perhaps to camouflage an awful misfit sanity.

‘No, thank you.’ She opened the window. It was quite possible to climb through. She surveyed the roofs, the window beneath the cone. He might close and secure the window when she was outside, stranding her. He rocked, placidly. She did not think he would. He would, as he had advised her, avoid the direct beam of the light. ‘I’ll need to come back,’ she said. She did not believe she could get into the tower this way. She did not think that, even if the tower window might be opened, the man Adamus would open it.

She got through the window and stood out on the open roof.

Other roofs of the house spread below, hints of walls, and then the tawny ground, the trees of the garden and the wood. The sea gaped to one side, green today and restless. A thin drizzle fell.

She crossed the roof, stepped over on to the second.

As she approached the tower, she heard a piano playing, coarse brilliant strokes, a line of angry melody that matched the writhing of the sea, the boom of the foam.

She thought of a radio or record player in the tower. He was like her, he wanted music, and allowed modern machines to bring it to him. In there too the typewriter had clicked.

She reached the window. Following the heavy leading, she saw the shape of a lion standing over not a sheep but a warrior in armour. The dense colours were not to be made out. There was no apparent means of entry.

Rachaela rapped harshly on the window. Then drew back her fist, alarmed at what she had done.

But the piano music continued. Nothing moved in the tower to indicate she had been heard.

Rachaela went back through the rain. The attic window leaned open, Camillo was still rocking.

She climbed in more awkwardly.

‘Yes, I’ll have some wine.’

‘You’re welcome. Help yourself.’

‘I can’t open the bottles.’

‘Then you will have to go without.’

Rachaela said, ‘You have a key to the tower door.’

Camillo said, ‘Was he playing the piano? There’s a way in. Did you knock? Perhaps he didn’t hear you.’

She sat down on a low chest in the dust. Camillo rocked. He said, ‘I’m the oldest of them.’

‘They told me.’

‘Like to hear my age?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t. Can’t remember. Giddy-up,’ he said to the chair, and closed his eyes again. Then he said, ‘I know a way down to the beach. Walk by the sea.’

To humour him, she said, ‘All right. I’ll go with you.’

She expected another rebuff. Instead he got instantly out of the chair. He ducked with a skittish agility beneath the ray of light. A pile of armour glinted in the corner, a sword. He had taken the mouse out of the big cat’s mouth.

‘Come along then,’ he said, ‘Rachaela.’

Beyond the place where the path turned back into the wood, bushes overhung and obscured a flight of steps cut into the cliff. They were slippery and dangerous, and Rachaela descended with caution. But Camillo went down them like a ferret, fearless and coordinated. Beneath there was a high stranded beach, a cove, while either side the sea came in and cast itself against the obdurate skirts of the rocks.

‘At low tide,’ said Camillo, with the kind of air of one giving desired information, ‘Carlo catches fish.’

‘I thought the cat caught all the food.’

‘Gulls, rabbits,’ said Camillo. ‘Once it caught a robin and let it go. I saw.’

‘Mice,’ said Rachaela.

‘Did you like the mouse? It was perfect.’

‘Yes it was. Someone cleared it away, Cheta or Michael.’

‘Probably put it in the stew,’ said Camillo. He gave his high pitched madman’s giggle, as if he had left it too long.

They were in the daylight. Camillo did not bother with it any more than he bothered with the fine rain. His skin was like thin paper, the bones like a framework of hard sticks. He did not look frail.

‘Why does the family avoid daylight?’ said Rachaela.

‘It doesn’t agree with them.’

‘And you?’

‘Nothing agrees with me. I like the colours by day. Once I couldn’t bear them. I remember a night ride that ended in the dawn and I hid my head and wept.’

‘Somewhere else,’ she said.

‘Far away.’ He spoke very fast in another language. It might have been Russian or some Serbian tongue. He cackled. He said, ‘Shan’t tell you the family history. It’s all muddled up in my head. I remember a cathedral on Christmas Eve and a dunghill and two hundred women and all the dogs, but I forget where or when. Why should I care? I’m not interested. Not even in you. Just a brief glimmer at first. But you’re so predictable, girl. Exactly what I would have guessed. Wandering about in your black clothes and your white skin. You’ll run away too, but you’ll come back. You’re the one. Like him.’

‘Adamus.’

‘The boy.’

‘Is he my father?’

‘If he says so,’ said Camillo. He crouched on a rock like a gargoyle and his long white hair fluttered in the wet wind. The sea burst and sank, like hopeless anger.

‘Why am I important?’

‘A gene,’ said Camillo. ‘We all carry it. It comes out in some. Adamus. You.’

‘What do you mean?’ She felt a stab of fear.

‘There were others,’ he said, ‘but they died. Only the two of you left. The rest of us would have liked to have had it. Glamorous and wicked. At first the family drove out the black sheep. Then it harboured them. The family revels in its differences.’

Suddenly Camillo sprang up. He executed a little gallop round and round on the strand. He used a whip. He neighed and the cove echoed with the equine human sound. The madness was his garment but he had put it on so often it claimed him. The mask had become the skin.

Rachaela frowned impatiently, waiting for the horse dance to end. But part of her wanted to gallop with him, make believe. She had never had a childhood. At eleven years the one doll she had had, a hard ungiving model child, was taken from her and deposited at a local charity shop. There Rachaela saw her in the window for a week; then someone bought her.

Camillo the sea horse rested.

‘He has to come to you,’ he panted, ‘or you go to him. It’s a pattern, unavoidable. And so you want to go to him, break in on his mystery.’

‘He watched me asleep,’ said Rachaela.

‘Unforgivable,’ said Camillo. Then, ‘I’ll show you the way into the tower. Any of them could have done it, but they love a game. Cheta or Maria or Michael would have taken you.’

‘I dreamed you have a key,’ she said.

‘A young woman dreams of me. I’m flattered.’

They went back up the treacherous steps. Rachaela slipped and saw the cliff and the sea whirl. She completed the climb nearly on all fours, in terror.

But Camillo did not fear death, darted straight up and did not slip once.

They went back into the house by the side door Camillo had used on leaving. It led via a passage into the morning room where Peter and Dorian breakfasted, and now sat post-luncheon, both slumbering in chairs before a fire. In sleep they looked dead. Camillo paid them no attention. The morning-room window showed a queen picking green grapes in a vineyard—Jezebel?

Camillo did not take her back to the attic. He took her as far as the annexe with the Salome, and there pointed down the descending narrow stair.

‘Leads to a corridor, which ends in a door. Open the door and go into Adamus’s tower. Knock first.’

‘He didn’t knock when he spied on me.’

‘Don’t knock then.’ Camillo hopped upstairs.

Rachaela hesitated and then went down.

The corridor was unlit save by the stairwell, a pink sauterne Salome light.

She passed shut doors, webby, which she did not want to open. The corridor bent round, and the light faded into a depressing eerie darkness. The ultimate door appeared, as in the dream straight ahead.

Rachaela reached it. She listened. The piano still played, something of Brahms, it seemed to her, a piano concerto without the orchestra.

She was not ready.

She turned away and hurried back into the light.

Rachaela put on her pale blue dress and a brooch of twisted silver she had once found lying in the rain outside the flats.

She went down to the drawing room and stood by the white fireplace, waiting for Anna and Stephan. She was used to eating with them by now in the evenings. They did not come.

Michael entered belatedly with the tray of bottles and decanters.

‘Where’s Anna?’

‘I don’t know, Miss Rachaela.’

Just as they had been unexpectedly at the cheeping lunch, now they would not appear.

Rachaela dined alone on a fish casserole and gooseberry tart.

The fire cracked and flared in little spurts as heavy rain came down the chimney.

After dinner Rachaela found her way back to the unlit morning room. No one was there, the hearth black.

Rachaela sat for an hour before the dining-room fire. No one entered. She spent ten minutes in the drawing room, where the golden clock kept silence. It had no hands.

No one entered any of the rooms. It seemed to Rachaela that through the dregs of the afternoon no one had passed along the passage outside her door.

Michael, who alone had served her at dinner, had now vanished.

The house mewed and tossed like a tree in the rain and rising wind. It might now have been empty, but for herself.

Rachaela returned upstairs. She went to the bathroom and prepared herself for bed. In the bedroom, she sat in one of the nightdresses before the fire. Outside the unruly weather sounded like a storm at sea. She heard the ocean itself rolling in on the land.