The Horse With My Name (17 page)

When I looked at her again, she was smiling. ‘What?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’ Her face had reddened slightly, but it could have been the wine.

‘No, come on, what’re you smiling at?’

‘Nothing. I . . .’ She trailed off. She tried to hide her smile behind her hand, but it was getting longer. Finally she dropped it away and nodded down. ‘You have an erection.’

I followed her gaze. I cleared my throat. ‘No. It’s just the way the trousers crease.’

‘It’s an erection.’

‘It’s the trousers. I’m not
that
big.’

‘I know an erection when I see one.’

‘That will be down to your long riding career.’

‘There’s no need for that.’

‘You brought it up, so to speak.’

‘You’re saying it’s not an erection?’

‘No, I’m saying it
wasn’t
an erection. Now I’m not so sure. It’s all this talk of erections.’

She giggled. ‘You get excited by talk of erections? Derek’ll be home soon if you’re that way inclined.’

‘I haven’t been inclined at all for a long time. Why were you looking at my trousers anyway?’

‘The carpet was making me dizzy.’

‘You can’t handle your drink.’

‘Perhaps you should put me to bed, then.’

‘Is that an invitation?’

There was a clarity in the brilliantly blue eyes she held steady on me that suggested she was not really drunk at all. ‘It might be,’ she said.

‘Well either it is or it isn’t.’

‘Well it depends on whether the invitation would be accepted or not.’

‘Jesus Christ, of course it would be.’

‘Just because you want a quick shag.’

‘No! Well yes as well. But I really . . .’ I was about to start off with the familiar litany, the one that’s handed to every boy on the eve of puberty, promptly memorised and then destroyed. I sighed. I just couldn’t be bothered with it. It was Patricia’s fault. I decided to overturn the habits of a lifetime and tell the truth. ‘Mandy,’ I said, ‘you are lovely, but please don’t make me give you all the shit about love and romance and wanting to get to know the real you . . .’

‘I don’t want that. I just want to know if you find me attractive.’

‘Of
course
. Why wouldn’t I?’

She shrugged and looked away. ‘I just don’t feel very, y’know . . .’

I took her hand. ‘Let’s go to bed. And shut up. You’re beautiful.’

She smiled meekly. I stopped her in the bedroom doorway. ‘One thing.’

She looked suddenly unsure.

‘Will you wear your jockey gear?’

At that point I made my excuses and left.

As if
.

It had been a long time since I’d gone to bed with a beautiful woman. With
any
woman. I was out of practice. If she noticed she didn’t complain. She was shy but not passive, quiet but not unresponsive. All the same it was important that I lasted more than one minute, but it didn’t seem likely. As I moved above her I could feel myself rushing helplessly towards climax.

I looked desperately to the shelves above her bed. I looked at book titles: thrillers, a whole run of Agatha Christies. I tried to picture the elderly Agatha Christie in her underwear, but it did nothing to still the rush towards . . .

Desperately I tried to divert my attention.

A piggy bank.

A framed show-jumping certificate.

A photo of her father handing over a trophy to her.

A photo of a pre-teenage Mandy running on the beach with her mum and dad.

I stopped mid-stroke.

The blood drained from my face, and elsewhere besides. Instantly.

‘Dan . . . what’s the matter . . . what’s wrong . . . what’s . . .?’

Her mother, laughing as she ran, so proud of her daughter, so in love with her husband, so happy with that moment in time.

So Hilda.

17

‘You’re white, you’re shaking . . . am I that ugly?’

‘God no . . .’

‘Well what then . . .?’

‘I don’t know. I . . .’

‘I
am
. . .’

‘You’re not . . . I . . . it’s been so long . . . my wife . . . my son . . . I’m sorry . . . it was going so well . . . I was about to . . . It would have been Niagara, but now I need Viagra.’

‘I’m so embarrassed, I should never . . .’

‘No . . . you should, of course you should . . . It’s me . . . not you . . . I swear to God.’

‘But . . .’

‘But nothing. Come here.’

I hugged her to me. Her mother. Hilda. My brain was fit to burst. My stomach was cramped. My lungs were contracting. I couldn’t raise a breath, let alone an erection. I felt something damp against my shoulder, and realised that Mandy was crying. I hugged her harder and tried to reassure her, but nothing would work. I turned and she rested her head on my chest. As I stroked her arms I saw that there
were thin scars around her wrists. Across, like an amateur, not straight up, like a professional. Good thing too.

I said, ‘You haven’t had a happy life.’

There was a little shrug. ‘It’s been okay.’

‘Your parents divorced when you were young. Acrimoniously.’

She rubbed at her eyes. ‘That’s a big word to use in bed.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. You’re right.’

‘What happened, he got custody?’

‘No. They reached a compromise that made each of them happy. Boarding school.’

‘That explains the English accent.’

‘What English accent?’

‘Well now.’

She stroked my chest. I didn’t ask about the slices on her wrists. They were self-explanatory. There is a tendency by ugly or average-looking people to presume that beautiful people don’t have problems. But they do. Sometimes bigger ones. Just that nobody believes them. I also had problems. I was being lied to on a colossal scale. People were trying to kill me because of lies. I wanted to kill someone because of lies. I said, ‘Nice picture.’ She followed my gaze up to the beach photo above us.

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘Long time ago. Happy families.’

‘Tell me about your mother.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m interested.’

‘I’m naked in bed beside you and you want to know about my mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t reassure me or anything.’

‘I have reassured you.’

‘Not enough.’

‘You’re great, you’re beautiful and I fancy the arse off you. I am a sad, inadequate individual who can’t perform. Satisfied?’

She sighed. ‘Okay. Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

We lay in silence for a while. We heard a car crunch along the driveway, then the back door opening and footsteps in the kitchen.

‘Derek won’t . . .?’

‘He knows better.’ She pushed herself up on one elbow. She sniffed up. ‘My mother,’ she said, ‘lives in Belfast. I don’t see much of her. When I got out of boarding school I came to live with Daddy.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s marginally less mean and bitter than she is, and I have to live somewhere. Also, I want to ride horses and win the Grand National, and there’s a better chance of that than with Mummy. Her horses are nags.’

‘What happened that they split up?’

‘Daddy always had an eye for the fillies. He liked having sex with women he wasn’t married to as well.’

‘And Hilda didn’t approve.’

‘Well, naturally she . . .’ She trailed off. Her brow furrowed. ‘How do you know her name?’

‘I . . . well, I told you. I was doing a book. I’ve done a little background.’

Her eyes narrowed. The temperature dropped. ‘You’re still doing the fucking book, aren’t you?’

‘I . . .’

‘All this, all this fucking seduction––’

‘It was hardly sed––’

‘Just to get fucking information . . . I don’t believe you!’ She reared up.

‘It wasn’t like that, I swear to God, I really––’

‘You’re a fucking bastard––’

‘There was very little fucking.’ I meant it as gentle, self-deprecating humour. But somehow it missed its mark.

She growled. ‘And you think you’re so fucking funny. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and you were just laughing at me all the time. You sucked me into bed and made me take my clothes off and all the time you were laughing. You didn’t even fancy me. You couldn’t even keep your fucking erection. It was all fucking
research
. What’re you going to do, describe my tits in great detail? Describe how I move or moan or how I touch a man or how I don’t? That I’ve cut my wrists before? Oh don’t deny it, I saw you looking at them. You’re a sad fucking bastard, Dan Starkey, and I’m even sadder for falling for it.’ She threw the quilt back and climbed out of bed. I looked at her, me ashen-faced and mumbling
nothings
. She grabbed one of her breasts and thrust it out towards me. ‘Take a good look. Do you want a photo?
Here
.’ She thrust her groin towards me. ‘Interview this,’ she spat. She burst into tears. She fled into the ensuite bathroom and slammed the door. I heard the toilet seat go down, and then sobbing.

I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what to say.

She was wrong.

But not totally.

I said her name several times, without knowing what to say after it.

I said, ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘Fuck off!’

‘Coffee?’

She hammered the door in frustration. The shock of it made me jump.

‘Just get
out
.’

‘Mandy . . .’

‘Now!’

I sighed, and stayed where I was. ‘Look, I’m really––’

‘Are you not gone yet?’

‘All I did was remember your mum’s name. Where’s the crime in that?’

‘Go away.’

‘Please come out.’

‘I’m on the toilet.’

‘You’ve been a long time. Are you having trouble working things out?’

There was a pause, and then a very faint giggle.

‘C’mon,’ I said.

‘C’mon yourself,’ she snapped, but it seemed less angry.

I sat on the bed for a few minutes, debating whether it would be diplomatic to put my clothes back on. I had the feeling, somehow, that if I did put them on I would never again have the opportunity to take them off in her presence. That a line would have been drawn. A wall built. A Hoover Dam constructed. There were a lot of images that flitted through my mind, and the most dominant one was of Hilda smiling at me, giving me her cutesy encouragement to travel south to investigate the death of Mark Corkery.

I wanted to throttle her.

And sleep with her daughter.

The bathroom door opened a fraction. A panda-eyed Mandy peered sheepishly out. ‘Perhaps,’ she said softly, ‘I misinterpreted.’

‘That’s okay,’ I said.

‘I over-reacted.’

‘No, you didn’t, it’s understandable.’

‘I hate myself.’

‘You shouldn’t.’

She smiled hesitantly. ‘Do you think,’ she ventured, ‘that you’d be up to that interview now?’

‘With your . . .?’

‘Mmm.’

‘I could try.’

She came fully out of the bathroom. She was naked and I was naked and we stood and hugged and kissed and she clung to me like the poor orphaned kid she felt herself to be. We fell back on the bed. As I moved down her she purred, ‘Tell me, do you intend to delve deeply?’

‘As deep as you will allow.’

‘Will the interrogation be painful?’

‘Only until I get to the truth.’

‘And what is the truth?’

‘You tell me.’

She clasped the back of my head and fell silent.

I nudged her awake. Her bedroom was at the back of the house and that, together with the size of the stables, meant that the room didn’t get much light, so it felt later than it was. Five, according to my watch. She came dozily back to life as I stroked her back. She said, dreamily, ‘What’s the smell?’

‘My apologies.’

‘No, I mean the burning.’

‘We burned the place up, sweet pea.’

She sat up. ‘No, I really mean the burning.’ Her nose crinkled.

I sniffed up. She had a point. ‘Dozy Derek’s left the dinner on.’

She looked at her watch, and didn’t look any happier. ‘I better go check.’

‘You’re not going out dressed like that. Relax. If you’re worried,
I’ll
go.’

I crawled down the bed and into my pants. Mandy relaxed back into the quilt. I smiled warmly at her. I felt happier and more relaxed than I had in a long time, and that
despite the fact that I had lied outrageously to her, wanted to kill her mother, and was suspected of four murders. I’d been in worse situations and was still alive to tell the tale. After all, James was my middle name.

I put on my shirt and my trousers and prepared to pad barefoot up the hall. From the bed Mandy said, ‘Put on your socks and shoes.’

‘What?’

‘Put on your socks and shoes. If you go up there in your bare feet it’ll look like we’ve been having sex.’

‘Will it? And if it does, so what? Are you ashamed of me? And meanwhile the house is burning down.’

‘Yes. It will look like it. And yes, it does matter. And I might yet be ashamed of you. And I don’t think the house is burning down, I just don’t want the place stinking of burned potato. Do you have a problem with any or all of that?’

I shook my head. I sat back on the bed and pulled on my socks. Mandy grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back, then kissed me. I sat up and tied my shoes. She kissed me again. She was quite obviously mental, but she was a good kisser.

I went to the door. ‘Will I pass inspection now?’

‘Wash your hands.’

‘What?’

‘Wash your hands. You smell of sex.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Completely.’ I tutted and walked into the ensuite. ‘He’s not going to
smell
me, y’know.’

‘Isn’t he? You don’t know him.’

I came out. ‘Now can I go?’

She nodded. I opened the bedroom door. ‘Dan?’

‘
What?
’

‘Don’t be long.’

I rolled my eyes. I closed the door behind me and walked
along the hall. The smell intensified. It was burning, but not
the house is on fire
burning, burning food. I entered the kitchen. There was smoke coming out of the oven. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, not being overly experienced with cookers. Open the door to let the smoke out, or open the door and a huge ball of fire melts me on the spot and takes the rest of the house with it. My inclination, as ever, was to slip out the front door and go home, let someone else worry about it. Except there were dead Chinamen in my home and I’d a nasty feeling that I’d fallen in love, or at least in lust. I’d a nagging fear, or hope, that I wasn’t going anywhere without her for quite a while.