Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen
“We need a clean break,” Aloysius insisted.
“Y’mean, his legs?” Charlotte sought to clarify.
“No. A divorce.”
She looked at him dubiously. “But we’re not married. And besides, I love you.”
“I mean that you and Arthur, to whom you are, if I’m not mistaken, still married, should get a divorce.”
“Ah!”
He lay heavily on her back, in bed, having just completed a mutually beneficial erotic transaction, his manhood slowly deflating inside her like a once-proud balloon now fatally punctured on the point of a fence.
“I couldn’t leave me children,” she said with finality. “A judge would give ’em to him. I’m sure that’s what they’d want—a free and easy life, without their mother hectoring ’em left and right—but that would be the end for me.”
“But you’ve left him. In all but name. Let’s face facts.”
“Let’s face what?”
“Facts.”
“Oh. But then, I’m still afraid of him.”
He laughed.
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. I laughed.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you believe, if it came to it, I could best him in a fight?”
“But he’s sneaky, Arthur is. I know him—don’t forget that I been married to him for twenty years.”
“I haven’t forgotten. Does it sound like I’ve forgotten? Would we be having this conversation if I had?”
“Betsy’s advising him, and she’s the master of tricks up sleeves. A bull-headed angel, who fights for what she thinks right, by any means she can, absolutely heedless of any authority which might say otherwise. She’s probably taken his sketches and stashed ’em round the hotel, in case something should happen to him.”
“‘Something should happen to him’? What do you mean by that?”
“If you killed him. He might have found a way to disseminate the drawings from beyond the grave.”
“Nobody’s said anything about killing the bloke!”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody’s said anything about killing the bloke!”
“Saying what about what?”
“Are you having trouble hearing me?”
“Well, me face is shoved into this pillow, you know. You’re pressing down on me pretty hard, you know.”
“Sorry.” He gently withdrew and rolled over beside her. Sighing with relief, she took the opportunity to pull the covers over her, thereby restoring a scintilla of dignity to herself.
“I’d just said that I had no intention of killing the man.”
“No?”
“No! Why would you think that?”
She shrugged, but it was dark, so he couldn’t see.
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“I did. I shrugged.”
“Oh. Well, I couldn’t see.”
“Shall I turn on the light?”
“Why?”
“So you can see me shrug.”
“No. It’s not necessary. Now that you’ve told me you have, I can picture it.”
“To be fair, I admit that it weren’t much of an answer, in any case. And yet—at that moment, in my life, it was the only answer I had to give.”
“Do you want me to kill him?”
“Heavens no.”
“Good.”
“Even though it would solve the problem.”
“Of course.”
“But it would be wrong.”
“And would no doubt create many more problems in its place.”
“Perhaps.”
“So let’s say no more about it.”
“Fine.”
“. . .Although, I must say. . .”
“What?”
“No, nothing. You know, those kids of yours—I’ve come across a few of them.”
“Where?”
“Lurking about, behind things, in cupboards, hiding. I’ve seen their evil eyes. That Danny—is that his name?”
“Danny.”
“I wouldn’t be too surprised if he stabbed me in my sleep. I wouldn’t be too surprised to one day wake up dead.”