Duval brought down some coffee and slices of chocolate cake around 5:30. That’s what his watch said, but she didn’t know whether it was morning or afternoon; the nature of the food indicated it was probably the latter.
He seemed much more relaxed, so she asked about his book: “I’ve read up to her returning to St. James’s church. I know there’s an Amen at the end, but you said you were still working on a conclusion. If you’ve finished it, can I see it? I know so much about Christine up to the age of twenty-two-is that right? — but what about her later years as an anchoress? Did she stay there, or did she leave again?”
Michael smiled at her transparency. “I haven’t finished the conclusion, but I will show you soon.”
He talked for a while on what he had read about Bolivia. At the end of his long monologue, Marda said simply, “Seems all jungles and revolutions.”
As she finished her last piece of cake, she said, in a patently wheedling tone, “Michael, I have a favour to ask. I don’t like to think about…the other rooms. But from what I have learned-from what you have taught me-I would like your other guests to have a proper burial.” She paused, trying to read his facial expression, but she could not discern the impact of her question.
Marda continued, “I suppose it would be too…difficult…to arrange a church burial, but couldn’t you do something in the garden? You said it’s quite secluded. And then you could say a blessing, even though it’s not holy ground. Excuse my presuming to tell you about Christian rites, but it would seem proper. Or have I spoken out of turn?”
“No, I had considered the same thing myself,” said Duval in a very conciliatory fashion. “They were suicides, they starved themselves, so I felt I could not take them to consecrated ground. But they should be treated with some dignity. It would be wrong to leave them where they are, especially if I do go to Bolivia.
“I should have done it before. I do apologise to you for not giving them a Christian burial. I will do it in the next few days, but I will tell you beforehand. I shall close your door and close the grille-I don’t want you to get upset again.”
Smiling, he added, “Is that to your satisfaction?” He enquired as though he were promising to take a favourite young niece to the funfair.
Marda heard the faint chime of a doorbell for the first time. She realised that he must have left the main cellar door open for the sound to carry this far.
He pretended to look unconcerned. “Ah, I was not expecting a visitor. Too late for the post. Perhaps somebody to do with the local elections, or a Jehovah’s Witness.”
The bell rang again. He quickly excused himself and, without shutting the cell door, hurried up the stairs.
Marda waited for a few seconds, and then put her head around the door. She ran along the corridor and up the short wooden stairs to the main cellar trapdoor, begging God that it would be unlocked. She tried the handle gently at first, then more and more frantically while trying to avoid being too noisy. It was locked. She thought of trying to shout through it. To scream. To bang.
She didn’t.
Marda returned to her cell, her eyes brimming with tears, the first for more than a month. She sat picking up bits of cake crumbs with her fingers and waited.
He returned within ten minutes, seriously agitated.
“Who was it?” Marda tried to ask as casually as she could.
“Bishop Templeton. Insufferable intrusion. Some excuse to drop off information about Bolivia. Said that he had to visit a friend in Shere anyway. He just wanted to snoop around my house. Blast him!”
Marda didn’t know what to say; she let him rant. Eventually she said, “The bishop doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. You always get men higher up in a bureaucracy who are afraid of new ideas.”
Duval turned on her. “Don’t give me this Job’s false comforter routine. If I hadn’t locked the door, you would have been out screaming for the bishop to lock
Marda looked at his blazing eyes and felt utterly forlorn. She didn’t think he could have heard her fiddling with the lock.
“No, no, Michael. I was sitting here waiting for you. I was just trying to be kind because you seemed so upset. I want to help you.”
“You’re a liar. Just like the rest of them.” As he stormed out of the cell, he spluttered, “Yes, I’ll bury them, and you…if I can’t trust you.”
He locked the cell door, switched the light off and closed the grille.
Marda felt the fear again, that same cold fear of her early incarceration. She prayed that it was not entirely her fault, just a tantrum because of the bishop’s unexpected visit. He had been severely rattled. She would not cry, she swore to herself, but she needed to do something, not just endure as a passive victim of his moods.
She sank on to her bench and lit up a cigarette. For a change, it was quite warm in the cell; she pulled up her robe and rubbed her legs a little, feeling the hairs she had not shaved for months. As she puffed a smoke ring in the dim light of the paraffin heater, she moved her hand up her legs to remind herself of human touch. Utter desolation closed in on her soul, as she longed to touch someone who loved her. And to be held. She was held now by the dark, cold walls of a tomb.
She pulled her bare legs to her chest and curled into a foetal position. Through the black despair she thought of her mother’s comforting arms around her when she’d suffered nightmares as a child. She was not a promiscuous person, but she had always enjoyed physical contact. Marda remembered the warmth and kindness of her first real lover, Gerard. Where is he now? she wondered. Hours of gentle passion on balmy evenings in Bordeaux seemed to belong to the memory of another person, another life, another planet; that kind of intimacy was almost impossible to imagine, then, now or ever again. She worried that her sexuality had drained away for all time.
She recalled how intense and sensual Gerard had been, the immaculate manners over dinner and in bed, so strong and yet so tender. He loved to undress her slowly, delicately, patiently; “Rushing love-making is as ungraceful as galloping through a fine meal,” he had told her in his lilting French, grinning boyishly, with his charm an essential ingredient of his being-rather than the often superficial tactic of the English. Effortlessly but with utter concentration, he would ensure her orgasm before he penetrated her-she remembered how she would involuntarily arch her back and raise herself into the air, and he would laugh, and kiss her, and continue to satisfy her, not ending until her series of orgasms, and her moans and shouting, had excited him sufficiently to reach his own climax. And then he would hold her closely in his arms, and say that he loved her, and she believed him then-and she believed him now, and would tell him so over and over again, in the most romantic language on earth, if only he were here…
She stroked her arms and then her legs, trying to stimulate her dying senses. Tentatively, she massaged her inner thigh. She had not touched herself like this since she was a teenager, and it felt good. All sexual thoughts had evaporated the moment she had been captured. Occasionally, and very weakly, they drifted back, but she tried to suppress them, for her only connection with humanity was her gaoler. She knew precious little about sadomasochism, yet she feared that new sexual stirrings might somehow be connected with him. She shuddered at such a depraved idea.
She willed the priest from her thoughts, and forced herself to concentrate on Gerard: his jet-black hair, his tanned limbs, the smile which reminded her of a schoolboy pirate, the little notes he sent her, the occasional bouquet of flowers, and always his sense of mischief and irreverence. And she spoke to the darkness: “Why did I stop seeing you? We never quarrelled, and there has never been anyone else, at least for me…if only I could reach out and phone you, to say I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, and that I love you.” She had never been able to say it to Gerard’s face, but she could now.
Her struggle for sheer survival had dominated nearly all her thoughts, but her longing for human touch, physical contact, sexual passion, all overwhelmed her. Suddenly, and just for a moment, she needed sexual release more than anything in the world, and just as suddenly she decided on what she must do with her tormentor.
XII. The Last Supper
