Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirty-Five
Duncan left Sal’s place around six. Nimble Shanks Annie said goodbye from the sofa with a wolfish grin, Sal saw him to the door and pecked him on the cheek for farewell.
“What do I owe you for all this?” It suddenly occurred to him to ask.
“Oh, more than you can possibly ever repay.” She saw the look on his face. “I’m joking, Duncan. We’re witches, not the hosts of hell. I’ll talk to Annie, work something out. You can settle up once all this is done.”
“You know I’m good for it, Sal.”
“Oh yes. Now go on with you. Stay out of the rain. See you tomorrow evening. Bye.” She closed the door with what felt like unseemly haste.
Duncan stood listening for a stupid moment, ear tilted to the panels of the door. Heard nothing at all. If the two witches had any immediate gossip about him, they were clearly sharing it at volumes too low for eavesdropping to work.
Presently, the black cat came soft-footed up the stairs, took station just beside his left foot, and stared up at him curiously.
Duncan shook his head at his own idiocy, prodded the cat out of the way with the toe of his boot, headed down the stairs, then out into the rain.
He got lucky with the trams, was back at the Doorbell Club before seven.
He fended off a pointed comment from the doorman that Miss Belle D’Or would like to speak with him urgently, went straight up to the third floor instead.
He found Arthur in the dim, red-flock quiet of the corridor outside the door to Niamh’s room, straddling an obvious boudoir chair in reverse.
A couple of Belle’s girls floated about him like attendant nymphs with some grim, monster-headed demigod.
“Doctor’s in with her now,” the sharpshooter murmured. “Said he wouldn’t be long.”
“I guess we’ll wait, then.”
The doctor was as good as his word. Duncan had barely managed to peel off his soaking coat and hand it off to one of the girls, who said she’d hang it for him—he warned her, as mildly as he could, not to go into the pockets where the two Webleys were still pulling the lining out of shape—when the door of 307 opened and a small, neat man, impeccably dressed and clean shaven but for a small, neat mustache, stepped out. His expression was grave.
“You are the…husband?” he asked Duncan in a surprisingly deep voice. His tone was dubious on the last word.
Duncan nodded. It was easier than explaining. “Aye, that’s me.”
“Then I am very sorry for you, sir. It’s my opinion that your wife has an uncommon species of cancer in her lungs, and there is very little to be done about it.
The recent, ehm, privations I understand her to have gone through will have done nothing to improve the situation, and may have triggered these worsening bouts of coughing.
But the condition itself is not new. It is many months advanced. ”
It was nothing Duncan hadn’t been expecting deep down inside, but still, he felt himself go cold as the disease was named. As if he stood in an elevator whose cables had been abruptly cut and it dropped out from under his feet.
“She gave up smoking months ago,” he said numbly.
“Yes, so she tells me. Of course, it’s by no means clear that there is any link between the habit of smoking and this disease.
You shouldn’t believe every alarmist pamphlet you read, hmm?
But even allowing such a link, perhaps owing to her weaker feminine constitution, I’m afraid ceasing to smoke once the cancer is extant would not be of much help. ”
“There must be something you can do.” Duncan, bargaining desperately.
The doctor shrugged. “There are some experimental treatments with radium, and with X-rays of course. But success rates are low. The techniques are in their infancy, and the treatments often cause a great deal of suffering for what is, in my professional opinion, very little reward.”
“You’re saying she’s going to die?”
“I am sorry. But I would be remiss if I gave you unfair hope of some miraculous cure, some arcane ritual with radiating crystals or other such nonsense of this new age. I deal in medicine, not magic and superstition, and even in these times, it is to medicine that we must cleave.”
“How long?” Duncan asked flatly.
“A year, maybe two. Rapidly worsening health within eight to ten months. More than that, I’m afraid I cannot usefully predict. Beyond those eight to ten months, she is in God’s hands.”
“I thought we were cleaving to medicine, not superstition.”
The doctor looked at him reproachfully. Pursed his lips.
“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” he said in measured tones, “I have done what I can. I must see the mistress of the house now. It is she who is paying.”
—
She was sitting in an easy chair in the corner, facing the door when he let himself into the room.
Soft yellow light; she’d lit the lamps. She still wore the nightgown Belle’s girls had loaned her, had combed her ink-black hair out long over the white cotton, let it lie past her shoulders onto her breast. She watched him out of her one good eye as he closed the door, locked it, and turned to face her.
“So now you know,” she said brightly. “All that sucking woodsman cock for nothing.”
“Don’t say that!” Biting back the rage as soon as it flared. He stood, desolate, marooned in the middle of the room. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
She looked steadily at him. “What difference would it have made, Duncan?”
“I—” He shook his head.
“Sure, you already knew anyway. I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I won’t notice.
How gentle you are with me.” She got up out of the chair and went to him.
Put both hands on his arm, leaned into him.
“I’m sorry about that woodsman’s cock line, that was a bitchy thing to say.
It’s just…the way I feel, I want to smash something, Duncan.
Upset everyone, break things, scream. I want to be fucked. I want—”
She put her wide open mouth into his upper arm, below the shoulder, bit into the damp cloth of his shirt and the muscle beneath. She made a muffled, high-pitched wailing sound into his flesh, put a chill on the nape of his neck and tears in his eyes.
He held her while she did it, as best he could.
Finally, breathing heavily, she lifted her face to him.
“I want you to fuck me, Duncan,” she said. “Please. Fuck me, make me come. Make all this go away.”
He thought at first he wouldn’t be able to—there was a weight like a sandbag in his belly, an aching in his throat.
But some vestige of the sultry atmosphere at Sal’s place, the interplay of carnivorous looks and lewd allusion, seemed to have found its way home in his pocket.
He looked down at the shape of her breasts under the nightgown cotton, felt the way she pressed one thigh between his legs, and abruptly he was hardening.
She felt it and laughed, eagerly, reached down to rub her open palm across the swelling, fumbled at his fly.
He was rock hard now, straining at the cloth.
She worked the buttons, got her fingers inside, then her whole hand.
She cupped the top of his prick with her palm.
He grunted, shuddered, took the nightgown in both hands.
Pulled down hard, popped the fasteners down the front, and tugged the fabric down her shoulders, exposed the tops of her breasts, pale white, stuffed together in the clasp of the paler white cotton.
The sight spiked through him, electric. He tugged again, harder, tore the thin cotton somewhere, he heard it, felt it give.
She laughed again, gabbling yes, Duncan, yes, yes, had by now unfastened his belt and trousers, was working his prick slowly in her fist. One more yank on the nightgown and it dropped, puddled around her feet.
He lowered his face, pressed it between her breasts.
She made a soft sound, let go his prick, clasped both hands on his head.
He drove her back to the edge of the bed and she let herself fold at the knees as she hit it, fall backward loose across the coverlet.
Her legs stirred languidly apart. He dropped to his knees, buried his face between her thighs, breathed her in.
—
Later, when they were both fully spent, when soft mouthings and rough handling alike failed to rouse either one of them to any further passion, and Niamh’s breathing finally deepened toward sleep, he eased himself carefully out of the tangle of their limbs under the covers.
It was close to midnight by the Mappin & Webb.
The tiny radio-static crackle of the breath in her lungs caught at the lower edges of his hearing as he kissed her throat.
He went around gathering up his clothes from where they’d been flung, dressed to shirtsleeves and stockinged feet, then let himself quietly out of the room, boots in hand.
The crackle of her lungs went with him, tangled in his ears, caught in the crimp of his mouth at one corner, the light gritting of his teeth behind the grimace…
The boudoir chair was still in the corridor outside, pushed tidily to one wall. He sat on it to put the boots on. Midway through the process, the door of the next chamber cracked open and one of Arthur’s nymphs from earlier peered out with a roll-up in her mouth. She grinned when she saw him.
“Ooh, you’re a noisy one, Mr. Campbell,” she giggled, and breathed copious cannabis smoke out into the hallway.
“Arthur still about?” he asked her.
The girl drew on her roll-up, gestured downward at the floor with it.
“Try the bar,” she said in a voice high and squeaky from holding the smoke in, then plumed it out at him and spoke normally again. “He’s usually there.”
But he wasn’t.