was sure to get back at me some way through Peter. She was clever at such things.
Far off on the eastern horizon I saw a flicker of lightning. We were going to have a storm. “Good,” I said out loud, “it’ll clear the air.” If I wasn’t going to take deliberate steps, I’d have to be sure of my self-control so I wouldn’t say something by accident. I paced the terrace a couple of times till I felt I was ready to go back in, noting with a faint surprise that I was wobbling slightly.
The waiter must have been around again: there was a fresh gin-and-tonic in my place. Peter was deep in a conversation with Len and scarcely acknowledged my return. Ainsley sat silent, her eyes lowered, jiggling her ice cube around in her ginger-ale glass. I studied her latest version of herself, thinking that it was like one of the large plump dolls in the stores at Christmas-time, with washable rubber-smooth skin and glassy eyes and gleaming artificial hair. Pink and white.
I attuned myself to Peter’s voice; it sounded as though it was coming from a distance. He was telling Len a story, which seemed to be about hunting. I knew Peter used to go hunting, especially with his group of old friends, but he had never told me much about it. He had said once that they never killed anything but crows, groundhogs and other small vermin.
“So I let her off and Wham. One shot, right through the heart. The rest of them got away. I picked it up and Trigger said, ‘You know how to gut them, you just slit her down the belly and give her a good hard shake and all the guts’ll fall out.’ So I whipped out my knife, good knife, German steel, and slit the belly and took her by the hind legs and gave her one hell of a crack, like a whip you see, and the next thing you know there was blood and guts all over the place. All over me, what a mess, rabbit guts dangling from the trees, god the trees were red for yards…”
He paused to laugh. Len bared his teeth. The quality of Peter’s voice had changed; it was a voice I didn’t recognize. The sign saying TEMPERANCE flashed in my mind: I couldn’t let my perceptions about Peter be distorted by the effects of alcohol, I warned myself.
“God it was funny. Lucky thing Trigger and me had the old cameras along, we got some good shots of the whole mess. I’ve been meaning to ask you, in your business you must know quite a bit about cameras…” and they were off on a discussion of Japanese lenses.
Peter’s voice seemed to be getting louder and faster – the stream of words was impossible to follow, and my mind withdrew, concentrating instead on the picture of the scene in the forest. I saw it as though it was a slide projected on a screen in a dark room, the colours luminous, green, brown, blue for the sky, red. Peter stood with his back to me in a plaid shirt, his rifle slung on his shoulder. A group of friends, those friends whom I had never met, were gathered around him, their faces clearly visible in the sunlight that fell in shafts down through the anonymous trees, splashed with blood, the mouths wrenched with laughter. I couldn’t see the rabbit.
I leaned forward, my arms on the black tabletop. I wanted Peter to turn and talk to me, I wanted to hear his normal voice, but he wouldn’t; I studied the reflections of the other three as they lay and moved beneath the polished black surface as in a pool of water; they were all chin and no eyes, except for Ainsley’s eyes, their gaze resting gently on her glass. After a while I noticed with mild curiosity that a large drop of something wet had materialized on the table near my hand. I poked it with my finger and smudged it around a little before I realized with horror that it was a tear. I must be crying then! Something inside me started to dash about in dithering mazes of panic, as though I had swallowed a tadpole. I was going to break down and make a scene, and I couldn’t.
I slid out of my chair, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, walked across the room avoiding the other tables with great care, and went out to the Ladies’ Powder Room. Checking first to make sure no one else was in there – I couldn’t have witnesses – I locked myself into one of the plushy-pink cubicles and wept for several minutes. I couldn’t understand what was happening, why I was doing this; I had never done anything like it before and it seemed to me absurd. “Get a grip on yourself,” I whispered. “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” The roll of toilet paper crouched in there with me, helpless and white and furry, waiting passively for the end. I tore some of it off and blew my nose.
Some shoes appeared. I watched them carefully from under the door of my cell. They were, I decided, Ainsley’s shoes.
“Marian!” she called. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said. I wiped my eyes and came out.
“Well,” I said, trying to sound controlled, “getting your sights set?”
“We’ll see,” she said coolly. “I have to find out more about him first. Of course you won’t say anything.”
“I suppose not,” I said, “though it doesn’t seem ethical. It’s like bird-liming, or spearing fish by lantern or something.”
“I’m not going to
“Nothing,” I said. “You know I can’t drink very much. It’s probably the humidity.” By now I was perfectly under control.
We walked back to our chairs. Peter was talking at full speed to Len about the different methods of taking self-portraits: with reflecting images in mirrors, self-timers that let you press the shutter-release and then run to position and pose, and long cable-releases with triggers and air-type releases with bulbs. Len was contributing some information about the correct focussing of the image, but several minutes after I had sat down he gave me a quick peculiar look, as though he was disappointed with me. Then he switched back to the conversation.
What had he meant? I glanced from one to the other. Peter smiled at me in the middle of one of his sentences, fondly but from a distance, and then I thought I knew. He was treating me as a stage prop; silent but solid, a two- dimensional outline. He wasn’t ignoring me, as perhaps I had felt (did that account for the ridiculous flight?) – he was depending on me! And Len had looked at me that way because he thought I was being self-effacing on purpose, and that if so the relationship was more serious than I had said it was. Len never wished matrimony on anyone, especially anyone he liked. But he didn’t know the situation; he had misinterpreted.
Suddenly the panic swept back over me. I gripped the edge of the table. The square elegant room with its looped curtains and muted carpet and crystal chandeliers was concealing things; the murmuring air was filled with a soft menace. “Hang on,” I told myself. “Don’t move.” I eyed the doors and windows, calculating distances. I had to get out.
The lights flicked off and on and one of the waiters called “Time, gentlemen.” There was a pushing back of chairs.
We descended in the elevator. Len said as we stepped off, “The evening’s young, why don’t you all come over to my place for another drink? You can take a look at my teleconverter,” and Peter said “Great. Love to.”
We went out through the glass doors. I took Peter’s arm and we walked on ahead. Ainsley had cut Len out from the herd and was allowing him to keep her safely behind.
On the street the air was cooler; there was a slight breeze. I let go of Peter’s arm and began to run.
9
I was running along the sidewalk. After the first minute I was surprised to find my feet moving, wondering how they had begun, but I didn’t stop.
The rest of them were so astonished they didn’t do anything at all for a moment. Then Peter yelled, “Marian! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
I could hear the fury in his voice: this was the unforgivable sin, because it was public. I didn’t answer, but I looked back over my shoulder as I ran. Both Peter and Len had started to run after me. Then they both stopped and I heard Peter call, “I’ll go get the car and head her off, you try to keep her out of the main drag,” and he turned around and sprinted off in the other direction. This disturbed me – I must have been expecting Peter to chase me, but instead it was Len who was galloping heavily along behind me. I turned my head to the front just in time to avoid collision with an old man who was shambling out of a restaurant, then glanced back again. Ainsley had hesitated, not knowing which of them to follow, but now she was bouncing off in the direction Peter had taken. I saw her wobble in a flounce of pink and white around the corner.
I was out of breath already, but I had a good head start on them. I could afford to slow down. Each lamp post as I passed it became a distance marker on my course: it seemed an achievement, an accomplishment of some kind to put them one by one behind me. Since it was bar-closing time there were quite a few people on the street. I
