Читать книгу Imajica - Clive Barker, Clive Barker - Страница 34

In her rage at his conspiracies Jude had contemplated several possible ways to revenge herself upon Estabrook, ranging from the bloodily intimate to the classically detached. But her nature never ceased to surprise her. All thoughts of garden shears and prosecutions dimmed in a short time, and she came to realize that the worst harm she could do him - given that the harm he’d intended to do her had been stopped in its tracks - was to ignore him. Why give him the satisfaction of her least interest in him? From now on he would be so far beneath her contempt as to be invisible. Having unburdened herself of her story to Taylor and Clem, she sought no further audience. From now on she wouldn’t sully her lips with his name, or let her thoughts dally with him for two consecutive seconds. At least that was the pact she made with herself. It proved difficult to keep. On Boxing Day she received the first of what were to be many calls from him, which she resolutely cut short the instant she recognized his voice. It wasn’t the authoritative Estabrook she’d been used to hearing, and it took her three exchanges before she realized who was on the other end of the line, at which point she put down the receiver and let it lie uncradled for the rest of the day. The following morning he called again, and this time, just in case he was in any doubt, she told him:

‘I don’t ever want to hear your Voice again,’ and once more cut him off.

When she’d done so she realized he’d been sobbing as he spoke, which gave her no little satisfaction, and the hope that he wouldn’t try again. A frail hope; he called twice that evening, leaving messages on her answering machine while she was out at a party flung by Chester Klein. There she heard news of Gentle, to whom she hadn’t spoken since their odd parting at the studio. Chester, who was much the worse for vodka, told her plainly he expected Gentle to have a full-blown nervous breakdown in a short time. He’d spoken to the Bastard Boy twice since Christmas, and he was increasingly incoherent.

‘What is it about all you men?’ she found herself saying. ‘You fall apart so easily.’

‘That’s because we’re the more tragic of the sexes,’ Chester returned. ‘God, woman, can’t you see how we suffer?’

‘Frankly, no.’

‘Well, we do. Take it from me. We do.’

‘Is there any particular reason, or is it just free-form suffering?’

‘We’re all sealed up,’ Klein said, ‘nothing can get in.’

‘So are women. What’s the -’

‘Women get fucked,’ Klein interrupted, pronouncing the word with a drunken ripeness. ‘Oh, you bitch about it, but you love it. Go on, admit it. You love it.’

‘So all men really want is to get fucked, is that it?’ Jude said. ‘Or are you just talking personally?’

This brought a ripple of laughter from those who’d given up their chit-chat to watch the fireworks.

‘Not literally,’ Klein spat back. ‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘I’m listening. You’re just not making any sense.’

‘Take the Church -’

‘Fuck the Church!’

‘No, listen!’ Klein said, teeth clenched. ‘I’m telling God’s honest fucking truth here. Why do you think men invented the Church, huh? Huh?’

His bombast had infuriated Jude to the point where she refused to reply. He went on, unperturbed, talking pedantically, as if to a slow student.

‘Men invented the Church so that they could bleed for Christ. So that they could be entered by the Holy Spirit. So that they could be saved from being sealed up.’ His lesson finished, he leaned back in his chair, raising his glass. ‘In vodka Veritas,’ he said.

‘In vodka shit,’ Jude replied.

‘Well, that’s just typical of you, isn’t it?’ Klein slurred. ‘As soon as you’re fucking beaten you start the insults.’

She turned from him, shaking her head dismissively. But he still had a barb in his armoury.

‘Is that how you drive the Bastard Boy crazy?’ he said.

She turned back on him, stung.

‘Keep him out of this,’ she snapped.

‘You want to see sealed up?’ Klein said. ‘There’s your example. He’s out of his head, you know that?’

‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘If he wants to have a nervous breakdown, he can have one.’

‘How very humanitarian of you.’

She stood up at this juncture, knowing that she was perilously close to losing her temper completely.

‘I know the Bastard Boy’s excuse,’ Klein went on. ‘He’s anaemic. He’s only got enough blood for his brain or his prick. If he gets a hard-on, he can’t remember his own name.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Jude said, swilling the ice around in her glass.

‘Is that your excuse, too?’ Klein went on. ‘Have you got something down there you haven’t been telling us about?’

‘If I had,’ she said, ‘you’d be the last to know.’

And so saying, she deposited her drink, ice and all, down the front of his open shirt.

She regretted it afterwards, of course, and she drove home trying to invent some way of making peace with him without apologizing. Unable to think of any she decided to let it lie. She’d had arguments with Klein before, drunk and sober. They were forgotten after a month; two at most.

She got in to find more messages from Estabrook awaiting her. He wasn’t sobbing any more. His voice was a colourless dirge, delivered from what was clearly genuine despair. The first call was filled with the same pleas she’d heard before. He told her he was losing his mind without her, and needed her with him. Wouldn’t she at least talk to him, let him explain himself? The second call was less coherent. He said she didn’t understand how many secrets he had; how he was smothered in secrets and it was killing him. Wouldn’t she come back to see him, he said, even if it was just to collect her clothes?

That was probably the only part of her exit-scene she would rewrite if she could play it over again. In her rage she’d left a goodly collection of personal items, jewellery and clothes, in Estabrook’s possession. Now she imagined him sobbing over them, sniffing them, God knows, even wearing them. But peeved as she was not to have taken them with her, she was not about to bargain for them now. There would come a time when she felt calm enough to go back and empty the cupboards and the drawers, but not quite yet.

There were no further calls after that night. With the New Year almost upon her, it was time to turn her attention to the challenge of earning a crust come January. She’d given up her job at Vandenburgh’s when Estabrook had proposed marriage, and she’d enjoyed his money freely while they were together, trusting - naively, no doubt - that if they ever broke up he’d deal with her in an honourable fashion. She hadn’t anticipated either the profound unease that had finally driven her from his side (the sense that she was almost owned, and that if she stayed with him a moment longer she’d never unshackle herself) nor the vehemence of his revenge. Again, there’d come a time when she felt able to deal with the mutual mud-slinging of a divorce, but, like the business with the clothes, she wasn’t ready for that turmoil yet, even though she could hope for some monies from such a seulement. In the meanwhile, she had to think about employment.

Then, on December thirtieth, she received a call from Estabrook’s lawyer, Lewis Leader, a man she’d met only once, but who was memorable for his loquaciousness. It was not in evidence on this occasion, however. He signalled what she assumed was his distaste for her desertion of his client with a manner that teetered on the rude. Did she know, he asked her, that Estabrook had been hospitalized? When she told him that she didn’t, he replied that though he was sure she didn’t give a damn he’d been charged with the duty of informing her. She asked him what had happened. He briskly explained that Estabrook had been found in the street in the early hours of the twenty-eighth, wearing only one item of clothing. He didn’t specify what.

‘Is he hurt?’ she asked.

‘Not physically,’ Leader replied. ‘But mentally he’s in a bad state. I thought you ought to know, even though I’m sure he wouldn’t want to see you.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Jude said.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Leader said, ‘he deserved better than this.’

He signed off with that platitude, leaving Jude to ponder on why it was that the men she mated with turned out to be crazy. Just two days earlier she’d been predicting that Gentle would soon be in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Now it was Estabrook who was under sedation. Was it her presence in their lives that drove them to it, or was the lunacy in their blood? She contemplated calling Gentle at the studio, to see that he was all right, but decided against it. He had his painting to make love to, and she was damned if she was going to compete for his attention with a piece of canvas.

One useful possibility did spring from the news Leader had brought. With Estabrook in hospital, there was nothing to stop her visiting the house and picking up her belongings. It was an apt project for the last day of December. She’d gather the remnants of her life from the lair of her husband, and prepare to begin the New Year alone.