‘Thanks. I don’t think there’s much time, Judy.’
Before she left she tried calling Gentle, but as Clem had already warned her, nobody answered. She gave up after two attempts, put on her jacket, and headed out to the car. As she reached into her pocket for the keys she realized she’d brought the stone and the bead with her, and some superstition made her hesitate, wondering if she should deposit them back inside. But time was of the essence. As long as they remained in her pocket, who was going to see them? And even if they did, what did it matter? With death in the air who was going to care about a few purloined bits and pieces?
She had discovered the night she’d left Gentle at the studio that he could be seen through the window if she stood on the opposite side of the street, so when he failed to answer the door that was where she went to spy him. The room seemed to be empty, but the bare bulb was burning. She waited a minute or so, and he stepped into view, shirtless and bedraggled. She had powerful lungs, and used them now, hollering his name. He didn’t seem to hear at first. But she tried again, and this time he looked in her direction, crossing to the window.
‘Let me in!’ she yelled. ‘It’s an emergency.’
The same reluctance she read in his retreat from the window was on his face when he opened the door. If he had looked bad at the party, he looked considerably worse now.
‘What’s the problem?’ he said.
‘Taylor’s very sick, and Clem says he keeps asking for you.’ Gentle looked bemused, as though he was having difficulty remembering who Taylor and Clem were. ‘You have to get cleaned up and dressed,’ she said. ‘Furie, are you listening to me?’
She’d always called him Furie when she was irritated with him, and that name seemed to work its magic now. Though she’d expected some objection from him, given his phobia where sickness was concerned, she got none. He looked too drained to argue, his stare somehow unfinished, as though it had a place it wanted to rest but couldn’t find. She followed him up the stairs into the studio.
‘I’d better clean up,’ he said, leaving her in the midst of the chaos and going into the bathroom.
She heard the shower run. As ever, he’d left the bathroom door wide open. There was no bodily function, to the most fundamental, he’d ever shown the least embarrassment about, an attitude which had shocked her at first but which she’d taken for granted after a time, so that she’d had to re-learn the laws of propriety when she’d gone to live with Estabrook.
‘Will you find a clean shirt for me?’ he called through to her. ‘And some underwear?’
It seemed to be a day for going through other people’s belongings. By the time she’d found a denim shirt and a pair of overwashed boxer shorts, he was out of the shower standing in front of the bathroom mirror combing his wet hair back from his brow. His body hadn’t changed since she’d last looked at it naked. He was as lean as ever, his buttocks and belly tight, his chest smooth. His hooded prick drew her eye; the part that truly gave the lie to Gentle’s name. It was no great size in this passive state, but it was pretty even so. If he knew he was being scrutinized he made no sign of it. He peered at himself in the mirror without affection, then shook his head.
‘Should I shave?’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Here’s your clothes.’
He dressed quickly, repairing to his bedroom to find a pair of boots, leaving her to idle in the studio while he did so. The painting of the couple she’d seen on Christmas Night had gone, and his equipment - paints, easel and primed canvases - had been unceremoniously dumped in a corner. In their place, newspapers, many of their pages bearing reports on a tragedy which she had only noted in passing: the death by fire of twenty-one men, women and children in an arson attack in South London. She didn’t give the reports close scrutiny. There was enough to mourn this gloomy afternoon.
Clem was pale, but tearless. He embraced them both at the front door, then ushered them into the house. The Christmas decorations were still up, awaiting Twelfth Night, the perfume of pine needles sharpening the air. ‘Before you see him, Gentle,’ Clem said, ‘I should explain that he’s got a lot of drugs in his system, so he drifts in and out. But he wanted to see you so badly.’
‘Did he say why?’ Gentle asked.
‘He doesn’t need a reason, does he?’ Clem said softly. ‘Will you stay, Judy? If you want to see him when Gentle’s been in …’
‘I’d like that.’
While Clem took Gentle up to the bedroom, Jude went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, wishing as she did so that she’d had the foresight to tell Gentle as they drove about how Taylor had talked of him the week before; particularly the tale about his speaking in tongues. It might have provided Gentle with some sense of what Taylor needed to know from him now. The solving of mysteries had been much on Taylor’s mind on Christmas Night. Perhaps now, whether drugged or not, he hoped to win some last reprieve from his confusion. She doubted Gentle would have any answers. The look she’d seen him give the bathroom mirror had been that of a man to whom even his own reflection was a mystery.
Bedrooms were only ever this hot for sickness or love, Gentle thought as Clem ushered him in; for the sweating out of obsession or contagion. It didn’t always work, of course, in either case, but at least in love failure had its satisfactions. He’d eaten very little since he’d departed the scene in Streatham, and the stale heat made him feel light-headed. He had to scan the room twice before his eyes settled on the bed in which Taylor lay, so nearly enveloped was it by the soulless attendants of modern death: an oxygen tank with its tubes and mask; a table loaded with dressings and towels; another, with a vomit bowl, bed-pan and towels, and beside them a third, carrying medication and ointments. In the midst of this panoply was the magnet that had drawn them here, who now seemed very like their prisoner. Taylor was propped up on plastic-covered pillows, with his eyes closed. He looked like an ancient. His hair was thin, his frame thinner still, the inner life of his body - bone, nerve and vein - painfully visible through skin the colour of his sheet. It was all Gentle could do not to turn and flee before the man’s eyes flickered open. Death was here again, so soon. A different heat this time, and a different scene, but he was assailed by the same mixture of fear and ineptitude he’d felt in Streatham.
He hung back at the door, leaving Clem to approach the bed first, and softly wake the sleeper. Taylor stirred, an irritated look on his face until his gaze found Gentle. Then the anger at being called back into pain went from his brow, and he said:
‘You found him.’
‘It was Judy, not me,’ Clem said.
‘Oh, Judy. She’s a wonder,’ Taylor said. He tried to reposition himself on the pillow, but the effort was beyond him. His breathing became instantly arduous, and he flinched at some discomfort the motion brought.
‘Do you want a pain-killer?’ Clem asked him.
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I want to be clear-headed, so Gentle and I can talk.’ He looked across at his visitor, who was still lingering at the door. ‘Will you talk to me for a while, John?’ he said. ‘Just the two of us?’
‘Of course,’ Gentle said.
Clem moved from beside the bed and beckoned Gentle across. There was a chair, but Taylor patted the bed, and it was there Gentle sat, hearing the crackle of the plastic undersheet as he did so.
‘Call if you need anything,’ Clem said, the remark directed not at Taylor but at Gentle. Then he left them alone.
‘Could you pour me a glass of water?’ Taylor asked.
Gentle did so, realizing as he passed it to Taylor that the man lacked the strength to hold it for himself. He put it to Taylor’s lips. There was a salve on them, which moistened them lightly, but they were still split, and puffy with sores. After a few sips Taylor murmured something.
‘Enough?’