Клайв Баркер – Sacrament (страница 19)

‘I forget all the names,’ Jacob confessed.

Rosa brought her hands back up to his face, and caught tight hold of it. ‘Remember for me,’ she said to him.

There was a carpenter called Bernard—’

‘Oh yes. He was very rough with me.’

‘And Darlington—’

‘—the draper. Very tender.’ She laughed. ‘Didn’t one of them wrap me up in silk?’

‘Did he?’

‘And poured cream in my lap. You could be him. Whoever he was.’

‘We have no cream.’

‘And no silk. Think of something else.’

‘I could be Jacob,’ he said.

‘You could. I suppose,’ she said, ‘but it’s not as much fun. Think of someone else.’

There was Josiah. And Michael. And Stewart. And Roberto—’ She moved her body to the rhythm of his litany. So many men, whose names and professions he’d borrowed to excite her, wrapping himself in their reputations for an hour or a day; seldom longer. ‘I used to like this game,’ he said.

‘But not any more?’

‘If we knew what we were…’

‘Hush now.’

‘…maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Not as long as we’re together. As long as you’re inside me.’

They were knitted now, so tightly wound around each other, limbs and kisses intertwined, they would never be separated.

She started to sob again, the breath pushed out of her with every thrust. Names were still coming to her lips, but they were fragments only, pieces of pieces—

‘Sil…Be…Han…’

She was lost to sensation; lost to his prick, to his lips. For his part, he had given up words entirely. Just his breath, expelled into her mouth as though he were resurrecting her. His eyes were open, but he no longer saw her face, nor the candles that shook around them. There were instead vague forms, particles of light and dark, pulsing before him; dark above, light below.

The sight brought a moan from him. ‘What is it?’ Rosa said.

‘I…don’t…know,’ he replied. It pained him to have this sight before him and not understand what he was seeing, like a fragment of music to which he could put no name, though the notes went round and round his head. But for all the anguish it caused him, he would not have had it taken away. There was something in the sight that quickened a secret place; a place he never spoke of, not even to Rosa. It was too tender, that place; too frail.

‘Jacob?’

‘Yes…?’

He looked down at her, and the phantom evaporated.

‘Are we done so soon?’

Her hand went between her legs, and took hold of his prick. Half its length was still inside her, but it was rapidly softening. He tried to push it back in, but it simply concertinaed against the tightness of her arse, and after a couple of dispiriting attempts he withdrew. She stared at him rancorously.

‘Is that it?’ she said.

He put his prick away, and got to his feet. ‘For now,’ he said.

‘Oh am I to be fucked in instalments then?’ she said, pulling her skirts down over her pudenda and sitting up. ‘I give you my arse against my better judgment and you don’t even have the decency to finish.’

‘I was distracted,’ he said, picking up his coat and putting it on.

‘By what?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ Jacob snapped. ‘Lord, woman, it was just a fuck. There’ll be others.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she replied sniffily.

‘Oh?’

I think it’s high time we let one another alone. If we’re not out to make children, then what’s the use of it? Huh?’

He stared hard at her. ‘You mean this?’

‘Yes, I do. Most certainly. I mean it.’

‘You realize what you’re saying?’

‘Indeed I do.’

‘You’ll regret it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll be weeping for want of a fuck.’

‘You think I’m that desperate for your ministrations?’ she said. ‘Lord, how you deceive yourself. I play along with you, Jacob. I pretend to be aroused, but I have no desire for you.’

That’s not so,’ he said.

She heard the hurt in his voice, and was astonished. It was rare, and like all rarities, valuable. Pretending not to notice, she went to her battered leather satchel and pulled out her mirror, and squatting beside the candles for better light, studied her reflection. ‘It is so,’ she said, after a little time. ‘Whatever was between us is dying, Jacob. If I loved you once, I forgot how. And frankly I don’t much care to be reminded.’

‘Very well,’ he said. She caught his image in the glass; saw the look of distress that crossed his face. Rarer than rare, that look.

‘As you say,’ she murmured.

‘I think…’

‘Yes?’

‘I…I would like to be alone for a while…’

‘Here?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

He flicked his fingers together, and a feather of flame leapt from them, extinguishing itself above his head. She did not care to watch him exercise this peculiar gift of his. She had her own skills, picked up, as Steep’s had been picked up, like jokes or rashes, somewhere along the way. Let him have the room to brood, she thought.

‘Will you be hungry later?’ she asked him, sounding (much to her perverse delight) like a parody of a wife.

‘I doubt it.’

‘I have a meat-pie, if you want something.’

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘We can still be civil, can’t we?’ she said.

He let another flame go from his fingertips. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’

With that, she left him to his musings.

X

Halfway along the track that led from the crossroads to the Courthouse, Will heard the squeaking of ill-oiled wheels behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see not one but two bicycle headlamps a little distance behind him. Breathing an inventive little curse, he stood and waited until Frannie and Sherwood caught up with him.