Fifty-Minute Hour (65 page)

I wheel the other way, watch a breastless woman crunch into a canapé, grains of gleaming caviar spilling down her dress. I lick up not the caviar, but grains of conversation – jargon once again, double-talk, obscure and arcane words. They're all fixated on their conference, arguing absurdities or pursuing petty feuds, while the Pope lies in a pool of blood with a bullet through his heart. They don't even know he's dead. And if I tried to break the news to them, they'd assume I was deluded, stamp me with some label, turn me into a ‘case', force me into line with electric-shocks or chemicals, or suggest I had a decade of their cruel and specious therapy.

My breathing's harsh and laboured as I continue searching for John-Paul, skirt the whole vast bar, scan all its hidden alcoves, the extension at the back. No sign of him at all, so I stride back down the passage and along to the reception desk. It's pandemonium there. The news of the Pope's murder has just been flashed on radio, and the receptionist is sobbing, her male colleagues flapping hands and tongues as they tattle in Italian.

‘313,' I rap.

The weeping girl fumbles in the pigeonhole. ‘That key's out,' she quavers, in broken snivelling English.

‘Of course it is,' I tell her. ‘My husband's got it on him. He was meant to meet me at the airport, but he got the plane-time wrong.

I'm absolutely frazzled, been hanging round for hours. I'm dying for a wash and change, need the second key.'

‘But …'

‘Look, he
told
me to go up. I reached him on the phone, at last; had to have him paged, in fact, by some useless airport clerk. He was still waiting for my plane, only left a tick ago, and will be at least another hour or two, judging by the traffic. I don't intend sitting in reception half the afternoon, while he struggles with the roadblocks.' I tap impatient fingers on the desk, swish my fur irritably around me. Fur disarms suspicion, spells money, status, rank. You never keep fur waiting, or tell it to fuck off. The girl doesn't even recognise me, though she was the one who turfed me out so rudely just eight days ago. I'm a different person, not just different clothes.

A cluster of excited guests are now jostling at the desk, a frenetic clamour rising about the murder of the Pope; staff and strangers joining in in several different languages, and the radio emoting to itself. Then an impatient man behind me starts bleating for his own key – also wants his passport, his mail, his map, his bill. It's too much for the girl, who'd just started to explain to me that my husband hadn't told them he'd need a double room, nor mentioned that his wife would be arriving. She's even picked the phone up, to dial his number, check my story, check he isn't in. But the (blessed) man behind me interrupts again, sounds increasingly hysterical as he pushes to the front. The girl lets the receiver fall back on its cradle, shrugs defeat as she listens to his tirade, hands me the spare key.

My self-possession leaves me as I glide up in the lift. I'm feeling very sick again. The hump beneath the duffel coat seems to have lodged in my own throat, and my hands are damp and sticky not with sweat but blood. I alight at the third floor, huddle in a corner while I fight the waves of nausea, fight to gain control. Anger's easier than pain, helps to keep the horror out: obscene and hideous images of Seton's headless body. No – it didn't happen. He wasn't there at all. It was someone else who doctored his umbrella, fired his sawn-off shotgun. I only need to slip back just one night, see him in Giuseppe's flat instead of in St Peter's, lying sated and contented on our pile of tangled rugs. It was like a consummation. I gave him everything, poured out myself like wine for him, let him drink till he was dizzy. It was
then
he died, not later, died between my legs. I remember my own suicide when John-Paul went away: that astounding perfect moment when I let go of mind and being; let go of pain and time. Seton went like that, spilled out of his body into ecstasy and void. I undo my heavy coat, let my hands stroke slowly down my breasts, trace their curving warmth beneath the clingy wisp of dress. I'm naked underneath it, naked for John-Paul. I'm widowed now, and free for him; have waited months and months to be his wife.

I prepare myself a moment before I drift along the corridor – spray my breasts with scent, smooth my tousled hair, try to calm my breathing as I pause outside his room. I insert the key so quietly it doesn't make a sound, turn it in the lock, feel the stiff door yield. I'm in a sort of antechamber and can't see much at all, save a stretch of plush gold carpet and a swathe of satin bed. I close the door behind me as softly as I can, creep a few steps in. The room is spacious, fortunately, so he doesn't even hear me; is sitting down the other end, at a desk beside the window, his back towards me, his shoulders hunched above a pile of books and papers. I admire his sense of duty, his endless diligence – the only one who's working, not propping up a bar. How could I have ignored him, even shrugged him off, allowed another father to replace my first and true one? He looks different, somehow – taller – his hair so rich and glossy it could have been stolen from a magpie, his suit a little lighter than his usual dark funereal grey. I edge up slightly closer, so I can check on all those tiny things which once held my life together, so familiar now they're old and trusted friends: his pack of kingsize Chesterfields, his snobby silver lighter which is only there for show, the deluge of dead matches, the tubes of mints and fruit-gums lined up by his ashtray, the prim pedantic fountain-pen he uses for his bills. I long to secrete them all away, start a new collection, preserve them for infinity in bullet-proof glass cases.

I watch him steer the pen across his foolscap, watch him pause a moment, deep in thought. I shouldn't interrupt him, wreck his concentration, which is so intense he's no idea I'm there. I start to back away, change my mind as I shock against the bed. He didn't book a double, that receptionist confided. I stroke its satin counterpane, cool beneath my hands. It looks big enough to me – big enough for both of us when he takes me in his arms, holds me till the sickness goes, till the bloodstains fade to white; holds me till he's sated, crying out with pleasure; the wild sheets damp, dishevelled; the blankets bucking, thrusting. I've got to make it perfect, the one great thing I promised him, the gift he can't return. I try to judge the distance, feel it's still too far, so I inch up even further, keeping every movement tiny, smiling for him, gentle for him, so he'll see how much I've changed.

At last I'm calm and ready, though I have to swallow once or twice before I dare to speak. I want my voice seductive, not stuttering or harsh. ‘John-Paul,' I murmur teasingly. ‘Are you glad to see your wife?'

He swings right round to face me; sees my faultless smile, sees the happy potent gun pointing at his heart; jerks up to his feet, staggers, half-collapses, clutches at a folder as if to use it as a shield. I keep completely still myself, grasp my right wrist with my left hand, to hold it absolutely steady, then slowly, slowly, slowly pull the trigger. I have to get it right this time, do what Seton asked me; not betray him, disobey him, but follow his instructions and kill John-Paul for him.

I don't flinch at the recoil, just stand motionless, watch ardent crimson petals flowering through his shirt. He falls without a sound, just crumples to the floor. I'm rather sorry, really. I wish he'd said my name, told me that he loved me.

‘I loved you, too,' I whisper, as I wipe my sweaty hands, return the damp Beretta to its case. ‘But Seton said we must kill the things we love.'

It's raining. Naturally. It always rains the days I see John-Paul. I It's the second day of March now, so there should be signs of spring, though I can't say they're all that obvious – just overflowing drains, the odd nervous spindly daffodil shivering in a window-box. I fidget on the couch, keep wanting to turn around to check up on my doctor, see how ill he looks, or changed. I hardly dared to glance at him when I first slunk in, shaking with sick nerves. We haven't met for seven weeks six days. There were certain complications on both sides.

It's not two-ten, or lunch-time, but half past ten – a.m. I've never had appointments in the mornings, and the light seems wrong; too weak and faint and blurred. I feel weak and blurred myself, have hardly said a word yet, censored everything so far, out of embarrassment, or pain. So many words lead back to blood, or Rome.

The small things haven't changed. The clocks keep ticking ticking; the answerphone clicks on and off with its sudden throaty cracklings. The sirens sound still crueller, or perhaps I simply mind them more because they jolt me back to Rome again. John-Paul makes his usual stealthy noises: sucking cough-sweets, lighting cigarettes. I don't think he should smoke – not now – it could be very dangerous, even kill him. I choke down thoughts of death, try to focus on the pictures, see some point and purpose in their swirls of sullen brown. Rain slaps against the windowpanes, dribbles slowly down.

I wipe my hands – they're sweating – hear a muffled cough behind me, some protracted furtive business with a box of paper handkerchiefs. John-Paul has a cold, a really heavy chesty one. I caught it instantly, within minutes of arriving. I know people say you can't catch colds without an incubation period, but I willed myself to do so. He's had so much pain already, I hoped to take it from him, bear his aching head for him, his swollen scratchy throat. It didn't quite work out like that, and we're both snuffling now, and hoarse, but at least we're sharing symptoms.

We've shared them for two months. I was extremely ill myself, the time he was away; stayed in bed for several weeks, though no one was aware. I just hid beneath the covers, waiting for the summons, the hammering on the door.

There's a faint smell of eucalyptus in the room. It wafts me back to childhood – off school with tonsillitis, my mother rubbing warm oil on my chest. Or was that just a fantasy: the gentle caring Mother I invented for myself? They're dead now, anyway – my mother, my two fathers, all my gentle fantasies, both the elder brothers who died before I knew them.

‘It's called the Eternal City,' I say suddenly.

John-Paul cannot speak, is fighting through a sneeze.

‘So people shouldn't die there.'

The sneeze begets another. I blow my nose in sympathy. It's already sore and swollen, and my throat grates when I swallow.

‘That other guy,' I mutter, almost talking to myself now. ‘They gave him a life sentence.'

John-Paul clears his own throat. ‘Which “other guy” d'you mean?'

‘That Turk – the one who tried to kill the Pope in 1981. I can't pronounce his name.'

‘Mehmet Ali Agca.'

‘Yes,' I say, impressed. ‘But Seton had that anyway.'

‘Had what, Nial?'

He seems a little slow today, can't follow what I'm saying. He's not as sharp, I realise, may never be again.

‘A life sentence,' I explain. ‘That's how he saw existence, like an endless spell in jail. I reckon he's much happier, released.' I'd like to add ‘Don't you?', but John-Paul rarely answers questions; seems subdued today, in any case, is probably still in pain – and I don't just mean the cold. His pain ignites my own. There's a fierce stabbing in my chest, a sense of crumpling, falling. I reach out and grip the hard edge of the couch, force my mouth to work. I feel I must keep talking now I've started, dispel that aching silence we've endured the first half hour; no sound except the weeping guilty rain.

‘There was this guy I used to know,' I say, groping for each word as if they're treacherous and slippery. (He was actually a client, but I keep that quiet since I've still never told John-Paul about my work.) ‘He was pretty ancient, almost in his eighties, an ex-naval type who'd been commander of a minesweeper way back in the war. He had this sort of trophy-board tacked up in his study, which he'd taken from the wardroom when the ship was sent for scrap. It showed all the mines they'd scuppered – a tiny painting of each one, like a score-sheet or a tally. You ought to have one like it, fix it on the wall here, to record your patients' suicides – the successful ones, at least.'

John-Paul doesn't answer, so I close my eyes and think about my client, see his board revamped – tiny desperate people on it, instead of callous mines; all sinking, drowning, foundering; screaming out for Saviours who neither heard nor came – Seton, headless, helpless, the last one on the board. I'd like to see him up there, daubed in red and black, commemorated somehow, not stinking in a mortuary or shovelled in a hole. It hurts to think of death, though the subject keeps returning, bobbing back like a bloated stinking body after shipwreck. He died because I didn't shoot, died instead of me. I'm wearing all his clothes. They're far too big and smell of pain, but they help to make him five. They also stop me screaming, losing my control; seem to hold things in, like armour.

The silence feels oppressive now, and dangerous. My hands are damp and shaking as I light a cigarette, hear John-Paul also lighting up behind me; the sudden angry flaring of a match. He's obviously resentful that I ever mentioned suicide. Suicide spells failure as far as he's concerned, and I know how failure hurts. I failed myself, didn't I, failed in my last act, failed to make it perfect, the final consummation, the full-blown loving gift. I try to cast my mind back, remember just what happened in that hotel room in Rome, but my head is aching terribly and it's hard to work things out, disentangle fact from fiction, or plain nightmare. Probably safer really not to mention death at all, maybe break the rule completely and talk about the weather – how wet it is for spring. Though perhaps it isn't spring yet, or we'll miss it altogether; leapfrog into summer – things parching, turning brown.

I flinch as John-Paul starts to speak, expect a chilly reprimand, though his voice is quiet, impassive.