The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [118]
Noel took two great gulps of beer. “Who’s Terry?”
Norval looked up quickly, then just as quickly inhaled the last of his cigarette. So, Samira did some snooping around, he deduced. “You tell me.”
Noel took a blind stab at it. “The person you once loved. Who you call Bess in your novel.”
Norval crushed out his cigarette. “Je vais aller pisser. I may or may not be back.”
Noel sat and waited, repeating the name Terry over and over, watching the letters change chromatophorically into Cynara. Yes! The truth about Norval is in that poem. That was his confession! He closed his eyes, conjured up the last stanza. When he reopened them, Norval was sitting across from him, slumped in his chair. Seconds passed before he looked up. Noel searched his friend closely, trying to read the truth in his eyes. Should he continue to bluff his way through this?
“You did love Terry. Because the relationship was doomed, because he or she was sick, because like Cynara—and Bess—Terry was dying, am I right?”
“Piss off.”
“Tell me what happened. Was it like in your novel?”
Norval paused. “No.” The word was spoken in a humbler key and with a look that Noel hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t anger. It was more like bone-weary, world-weary sadness. His mask had slipped. For the first time since the two friends had met, Norval’s expression was the same as Noel’s.
Chapter 18
Norval’s “Diary” 52
On an unremittingly monochrome day in the fall of 1989, at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac near Nottingham, Norval rapped on Mrs. Pettybone’s front door. He unhooked his leather knapsack, turned round to examine the front yard: walkways swept and reswept, hedges clipped with Euclidean precision, garden ruthlessly weeded, leaves dusted, gnomes groomed.
He clapped the polished knocker again, harder, and was answered by the rattle of a chain, the sound of bolts being drawn back and a key turning in the deadlock. Like a mastiff bitch peeping out of a doghouse, a woman’s face emerged—tense, hurried, hostile. She examined Norval top to bottom and didn’t seem to like what she saw. “What do you want?” she growled.
“A room.”
“And what makes you think I’d have a room?”
“Because it says B & B on the sign.”
“Oh, is that still up?”
“And it says ‘Welcome’ on the mat.”
Mrs. Pettybone eyed Norval’s unshaven face and riotous hair, his mud-spattered greatcoat and high boots, like relics from an ancient war. “Well you’re not welcome. I’m full up.” She closed the door with force.
“Gally gave me your address!” Norval shouted, with irritation, at the oaken wood. He had come a long way, on foot, in mud.
Inch by inch, creakingly, the door reopened. Mrs. Pettybone, her face now drained of colour, seemed to be struggling against tears. “Come on in, then, and sharp about it. And take those boots off.”
Inside, it was clean—mercilessly, tyrannically clean—with the stench of disinfectants warring with the scent of air fresheners. A pink carnation motif on the curtains and wallpaper, fake daffodils on the mantelpiece, funereal furniture waxed and polished to a frenzy.
They stood, without words or motion, sizing each other up. A halfcentury-old volcano, Norval decided, dyed red hair, smouldering eyes, churning and foaming inside, and yet attractive in a way … A bone-lazy young hooligan, Mrs. Pettybone decided, handsome enough if you scraped through the layers of dirt, but a hooligan all the same. “What you need is a good scrub,” she said.
“Does that come with the room?”
“Don’t be impudent. How many days, Mister …?
“Blaquière.”
“How many days do you intend to stay, Mr. … Black whatever. Mr. Frenchman with the Oxbridge accent.”
Norval glanced at the burnished floors and unblemished walls. Starry Night, with Van Gogh’s name in large letters along the top, hung on one of them, and on the floor beneath it stood a padded mallet, oriental looking. “Just the one.”
“Are you married?”
Norval gave a quarter-smile, shook his head. Où est le rapport? “Hardly. Why do you ask?”
“Because I have a daughter