The Old Silent

the only makeup she wore was on her eyes, with too much shadow, as if overdoing them made up for underdoing everything else. Her lashes were so heavily mascaraed they looked like tiny, dry twigs that hid rather than enhanced the dark brown eyes beneath.

What interested him even more was her ambivalence: her voice was raised as if she meant to separate herself from others; at the same time, when she could easily have chosen a half-dozen other places to sit, she had plopped herself down by Melrose.

Far from projecting her chosen image of Brash Young American, Melrose thought she was more a play of light and shadow. He wished, though, that she hadn't chosen shouting as her vocation…

Ah, but it wasn't, he discovered when he asked her if she was touring or just what?

'I'm researching my next book.' Having bunged up her hair into a sort of large blossom, she scooped down on the sofa and pressed her head against its back. From a zipper pocket in the black leather jacket she pulled out a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes and shook one out for Melrose, then one for herself. When her loops of linked metal necklace clanged and the hammered bronze earrings clapped, she sounded like someone on a chain gang.

'Book? You're a writer, then?'

She nodded, exhaling a bale of smoke that hung in the air between them as she turned her head to look at him from under lowered lids and lashes. 'I am hot, very hot in New York ['New Yawk'] at the moment. And you know what it is to be hot in New York ['New Yawk'].' Her face turned away from him as she inhaled deeply.

'As a matter of fact, no.'

Her eyes widened as she turned her cheek against the sofa to give him a splendid, startled-doe look.

'Say again? Do you mean you've never been to New York? God, where else is there?'

'Well, speaking of God, there's Rome.'

Her nose wrinkled. 'Are you kidding? The pope's there.'

'Last time I heard, yes. How about London?'

'Too provincial.'

'Moscow?'

'Come on. Moscow's just a logo and a pose.'

That took care of any future summit meeting, at least, so he changed the subject. 'I don't believe I've read anything by an Ellen Taylor; but I'm not up on hot young New York writers.' Quickly, he added, in case he had sounded offensive, 'But that's no reflection on your hotness. I've just never got much further than Rimbaud.'

She considered this. 'He's not bad.'

'I believe he was quite hot at the time.'

'Wouldn't surprise me.' Some more exhaled smoke fogged the air. 'Anyway, Taylor isn't my writing name. It's Tamara.'

' 'Ellen Tamara'? Hmm. Perhaps you've not been published in Britain?'

'Not Ellen, just Tamara. One name. Like Cher or Sting or Dante.' She appeared to be searching the table for a clean glass, and seeing none chose the Princess's slightly smudged one, which she wiped out with a napkin.

Melrose stopped in the act of filling the glass she held out to him and considered. 'You left out Michelangelo.'

'When I was writing under my own name I couldn't sell a damned thing. Couldn't even if I wrote like Hemingway.

The which I resemble, incidentally.' As she searched up an ashtray, the chains and bracelets clattered.

'Ernest? Or Mariel?'

Another lungful of smoke billowed out as she laughed.

'Very funny. Fortunately, I can take a joke. Fame hasn't altered me, nor 'custom staled my infinite variety.' Despite the celebrity, I'm still a humble person.'

So then was Cleopatra, he did not say.

'No, once you get bitten by fame, you're ruined. My editor said, 'In your case it would take a rabid dog.'' She raised her glass as if toasting her editor. 'He's very supportive like that.'

'He sounds brilliant.'

She shrugged. 'But he thinks I should go back to writing the way I did before.'

'And how was that?'

'Not so experimental-straight narrative, more or less. Gothic type. A little like Bronte, a little le Fanu, a soupqon of James.'

Melrose had just then taken a sip of sherry and choked. 'HenryJames?'

Slapping him on the back, she said, 'You okay?'

'No.' His throat felt grainy, his voice rusty. 'No. You'll have to do an emergency tracheotomy. Look, no one writes like Henry James now, and Lord knows no one used to write like Henry James, except Henry James. And how is it you manage to include him in your Gothics Unlimited list?'

She turned her head so sharply the metal earrings clinked against her face. 'Say again? What about The Turn of the Screw?'

He had to admit that was a bit Gothic.

She studied her nails to see, apparently, if there was anything else to bite. 'And there's Portrait of a Lady. You've read that, surely.' Now she was chewing on a morsel of thumb.

'Of course.'

'I rest my case.'

'On what?' He started chewing on his own thumbnail. Was she mad?

'You must not've understood it,' was her oblique answer.

It really was too much. Was this gritty, poorly spoken girl actually educated, knowledgeable, informed, and- surely not-talented?

She had checked the watch that was far too heavy for her bony wrist and was saying, 'Well, got to vamoose. I thought maybe I'd have a meal in the village. Maybe at one of those hotels.'

She rose quickly and jammed the black helmet over her head. With her small face peering out from the black dome, she looked a little like an astronaut who'd been hanging around so long she'd shriveled.

Melrose stood up. 'I have to be going myself.' He gathered up his coat and stick and followed her out the door.

As they walked across the stone courtyard, Melrose looked in through the mullioned window of the dining room where, at one end of the long table, were seated the Princess and Major Poges; at the other end, the Braines. Yet the panes were cloudy and the window so ivy-clad that the faces and forms bathed in the dull gold and rose light were broken into wavering squares-a blur of turquoise, a wedge of dark wool, a glint of a lavender sleeve. Having seen them in action, Melrose found it odd seeing them in this ornamental light. They seemed to dissolve and reform in the fragmented patterns of a kaleidoscope. Around the table, fluttering and disappearing and returning was the maid, Ruby, in a crisp white apron. Ann Denholme appeared in one of the panes and then fell away.

'… and only twenty-nine, and I'm a millionaire. Can you believe that?'

'Why not?'

'I'm too young, goddammit,' she said, kicking a stone back toward the pile.

They had come to her 'bike,' which took Melrose utterly by surprise. He was expecting some fancy ten-speed; what he was looking at was a BMW approximately the size of a baby elephant. 'You mean you ride this?'

She sighed, lit another cigarette, and shook her head. 'No, I walk it on a leash.' Then she went on about early fame as she looked up at a night sky as smooth and black as onyx and just a few cold stars that looked eons apart and probably were. The moon was full and bright and luminous. From here the dining room window looked as illusory as a cascade of rainbow water. From the barn, whose outlines melted into the sky, came a series of hectic barks, and a dog came out of the darkness into a patch of moonlit ground. It was the border collie he'd seen earlier. The dog looked a bit too sharp for Melrose's taste; he preferred his own dog, Mindy. ('Your Ralph Lauren dog,' said