The Deadly Space Between Read online

  I caught her wiping her eyes at the sink.

  ‘Don’t say anything to me,’ she snapped. I backed off.

  We spent the afternoon before the opera deciding what to wear. She had a fantastical array of costumes, all made by Luce. She could look like a flapper in orange taffeta with glass and amber beads, topped off with a pergola of feathers, or a gypsy with coins hanging from her breasts. She had slick black sheaths, which clung to her arse and thighs, softened by dripping Indian shawls in purple and green. She had a deep red velvet gown, floor-length, which she tried on that night before the mirror, but which she had never worn. She dressed me up as a lesbian boy in one of Liberty’s dashing tuxedos with a lilac bow tie and a green carnation made of silk. Then she shovelled me into a William Morris waistcoat and a pair of spats that pinched. We paraded before her silvered mirrors like forties film stars, preparing for an audition.

  I studied her body in the mirror. She was slender rather than thin. Her breasts shook as she pulled the dresses off over her head. The hair under her armpits and covering her sex was dark, like mine, but not as thick. I could see the gentle cleft of her cunt as she pulled off the black silk slip she wore beneath the dresses. It was the first time I had seen her naked since the night of the bonfire. She caught my eye in the mirror. I thought that she would be angry, but she only laughed and performed a frisky pirouette. Her hair flashed across her face and her stomach shook as she danced before me. She was like a schoolgirl, making an obscene gesture at one of her peers, just for the hell of it. She was showing off. Then she held up one of Luce’s more daring evening dresses against her white nakedness.

  ‘Oh, I can’t wear this. I’d look like Dracula’s bride. We’d be arrested.’

  The next black dress was one of the prototypes for the models we had seen at the last show. It was constructed out of handmade lace and decorated with shining black sequins. The collar arched stiff around her neck and the sleeves stretched down to heavy points upon her wrists. But the deep V-neck held with a Celtic knot all but opened out across her breasts, revealing their warm weight and the pale blonde line of hair descending towards her groin, which was only visible when she turned at a certain angle towards the light. She could have worn black knickers underneath the dress, but nothing else.

  ‘It looks great,’ I said, ‘really sexy. But you might pop out at the wrong moment.’

  She bounced up and down on the spot, as if she was skipping, and sure enough the dress stretched back under her armpit and her left breast suddenly leaped forth like the witch at a puppet show. It was made for a woman with less to reveal. We collapsed on her mattress snorting hysterically.

  ‘Luce must have done that on purpose. To get a load of the youthful titties!’

  I kicked off the spats and tightened the belt on my Fred Astaire trousers, which Luce had made for her, perfect with pleats and turn-ups. I realized then that I could easily have worn her dresses too. We were so astonishingly alike. We resembled two cut-out dolls, the same size, the same shape, the same colours. She lolled back, her naked breast was still exposed. I leaned over her, ogling like a lecherous seducer. I was aware that I was going too far, trying it on.

  ‘Madame, may I kiss your breast?’

  ‘You can if you like.’

  I had expected her to laugh and order me off, out and to hell. But she stretched out, one leg buckled up beneath her, and closed her eyes. The dress smelt of naphthalene. The flickering sequins scratched my cheeks. My hair fell across my eyes as I leaned slowly down and took her nipple in my mouth. I moved my tongue against her dark circle in a long slow curl. The tip hardened and rose to meet my tongue. I felt her hand on the back of my head as she pressed my face against her breast. I sucked her hard, suddenly aware that my penis was burning, pushing against the flies of Fred Astaire. I reached for the naked cleft where her pubic hair darkened and swept downwards, a place I had never knowingly touched. Gently she caught my hand and held it tight. Her eyes were still closed. I tightened my lips on her breast. I felt her weight shift beneath me as her legs parted. She pulled the dress up to the top of her thighs exposing her slit sex. Cautiously I kissed her breast once more, then let it go. She pressed my head down onto her stomach. I caught my breath for a moment. I could see the fine down of her pubic hair, darker at the rim where her body divided with the pink fissure opening beneath. I dared not move too quickly. I dared not speak.

  But this was my time, my turn. I need no longer deny or repress the scale of all that I felt for her: all the desire, all the fascination and all the longing. I shifted my weight gently above her and gazed into her open sex. She lifted her hips to greet me. I was astonished at how dark the folds of delicate flesh appeared to be. She was swollen and engorged. I peeled back the hood over her clitoris with my fingertips and began to lick her small protruding mound. My mouth was instantly drenched with a rich salty liquid. Her legs parted still further and she pushed herself against me. I increased the pressure and speed of my movements. But I took my time. I wanted her to desire my touch so much that she would not be able to resist. I wanted her to beg me to make love to her. I wanted her to say yes. She tasted salty and odd. Gradually, her breathing changed and deepened and her stomach heaved. She came quickly in my mouth, crying out to me as she did so. My penis throbbed and burned as I sucked her dilated sex.

  I had never desired her so much before. I was in pain.

  I knew, even then I knew, that I had to wait until she wanted me to touch her, strip her, enter her body with my own. But now I was certain that we were playing a waiting game. I had only to wait.

  She sat up slowly, full of hesitation and regret. Her eyes were black and strange. Not now, not yet.

  ‘We’re supposed to be deciding what to wear,’ she said reproachfully.

  I cupped the liberated breast in my hand, caught her wrist in mine and made her feel the shape of my penis still captured in the pleats and folds of my dancing trousers. She ran her fingers lovingly all along its length then took hold of both my cheeks and kissed me hard on the lips, sliding her tongue into my mouth as she did so. She tasted of paint and garlic. I took a deep breath, then kissed her back, squeezing her nipple between my finger and thumb. I was angry that she had stopped me.

  ‘Why not?’ I demanded.

  ‘Because if we start doing that we will never be ready on time.’ She stood up. The dress fell to the floor in a torrent of sequins.

  ‘Iso, have we ever done this before?’

  I began to remember something irrevocably lost, something that had ceased to chime in my mind, but was still there, like the sound of a bell underwater. Here was a house on the beach, sand on the lino, and the damp smell of collected shells, wet trunks lying in knotted heaps, and a terrible windy night when the surf rose up towards the dunes. I remembered the sound of its crashing slap upon the sand, coming closer and closer. I slept in her arms, my mouth encircling each of her nipples in turn, her salt skin sore against my own, her kisses tasting of the sea. I felt my tiny hairless prick sinking inwards, buried in the warm ravine between her legs as she rocked like a gentle wave beneath me.

  ‘We have, haven’t we? When I was much younger and we were on holiday.’

  ‘We always used to sleep together in the great big bed,’ she sighed, peering into the wardrobe and pulling out a sober suit of Lincoln green.

  ‘Did you like it when we did?’

  She looked at me directly, her face full of tenderness.

  ‘I love you, my sweet. You are my first and only love. I shall always love you.’

  I lay flat and gazed at the Indian tent bedspread hanging in folds and coils above me. Here was a great white embroidered elephant and here were Krishna and Rada. Krishna, for some reason best known to himself, was bright blue. I felt delighted and justified. My erection subsided. I had not been deceived. It was I who had changed more radically than she ever had. Yet she accepted me back into her body, whenever I leaned against her belly, her thighs, her breasts. She was the open do
or. She had never pushed me away, forcing me to leave her, find someone else, grow up. The silk twist she had let down for me had never frayed or broken. It held, tight and strong.

  She put on the suit.

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Like Robin Hood. You got any red shoes? You always look wonderful in primary colours.’

  She preened and turned before the mirror. I gazed at her. She now looked older, more elegant.

  ‘You’re so beautiful, the fairest of them all.’

  There in the mirror she stood, framed and fixed in red and green as if she was a nineteenth-century portrait of an aristocrat in hunting costume. She was the Wolf Man’s mother, ready for the forests and the great sweep of snow. The figure in the mirror bowed low before me.

  * * *

  The box at the opera was coated in deep red velvet. Iso’s suit shone luminous against the reds. She looked extraordinarily vivid in her lavish fragility of green. She looked as if she was part of the set. Roehm’s pale grey eyes never left her face. I watched him feeling irritably in his pockets for the cigarettes he couldn’t actually smoke inside the house. I leaned my elbows on the padded rim of the box and watched the incoming hordes. Some people, even those sitting in the stalls, were far more casually dressed than we were. I followed a boy in T-shirt and jeans who was nibbling a Choco-Bar. This was a little disappointing. I gazed at Roehm’s white tie and silk lapels with passionate approval. I wanted them both to look elegant and rich.

  ‘You look great. Like one of the James Bond villains.’

  Roehm smiled slightly.

  ‘I don’t have the white cat.’

  ‘No, but you’ve got the fag and the eyes.’

  ‘Speaking of which . . .’ Roehm got up and went out to smoke on the stairs. When he stood up there was no more room in the box. He handed me the programme.

  ‘Tell your mother what it’s all about,’ he commanded.

  As he left the box he caught my eye. I recognized a sudden glitter of satisfaction in his gaze. I thought, he knows. Somehow, he knows.

  The programme was one of those thick information packs got up for the uninitiated which told you all about the first performances and reproduced unreadable posters in Gothic type. I began reading the script Roehm had officially delivered.

  ‘ “Weber took five years to compose Der Freischütz. He worked on the opera from 1817 to 1821, while he was Royal Saxon Kapellmeister in Dresden. But he chose Berlin, the intellectual capital of Germany, to present his masterpiece for the first time. At the first performance on the 18th June 1821, the overture was encored and the first act received with interested bafflement. But the audience rose to their feet at the climax of the Wolf’s Glen scene to belt forth their shout of triumph. Here was an opera, which expressed the artistic ambition of Germany. Here were the darkest regions of the psyche bursting forth into the daylight world.” ’

  There were pictures of the first sets. These improbable facades, which moved in all directions at once, were apparently immensely sophisticated for their time. The Wolf’s Glen scene was a tour de force. A wind machine sent all the painted branches into shivering fits and brought a rapturous gasp from that first terrified audience. The torrid effusions of the first critics were excessive, hysterical, bizarre. I read them out to Isobel, who was beginning to fidget.

  ‘ “Weber has captured the soul of the German nation. All our longings and dreams are represented here. This is the music that will fan the fires of our patriotism and bring us to a blaze, in which we shall recognize ourselves at last.” ’

  ‘I didn’t think it was political,’ she said.

  ‘Germany was becoming one nation then for the first time.’ I repeated one of my political history lessons on nineteenth-century German unification. ‘There was a common language and to some extent a common culture. Intellectuals used to move around the little princely states with a certain amount of freedom. But some states had savage censorship and some didn’t. It says here that Weber was rebelling against the dominance of Italian opera. The Prussian court had an official Italian composer called Spontini, who had once produced gigantic operas for Napoleon, adapted from classical myths. I’ve never heard of any of them. They were huge affairs, empire stuff. And very expensive. Freischütz was based on a German folk tale and developed out of the “Singspiel”, which was a native German form. So maybe it was cheaper. Weber was hailed as a national composer who had composed the first national opera. It wasn’t political exactly, it just got read in political ways.’

  Iso went skimming through the plot.

  ‘It’s awful nonsense, Toby. Listen to this. Max is a huntsman who has to win a shooting competition to earn the right to marry Agathe. He keeps missing. The evil Kaspar suggests that he comes down to the Wolf’s Glen and has a word with the satanic demon huntsman, Samiel, who does a nice line in magic bullets. You have to buy seven. Six will take out whatever you want to hit but the seventh bullet belongs to Samiel. Max buys in. Anything to get his fingers on Agathe. Meanwhile, the fair virgin maiden is faced with all sorts of silly omens and presentiments, pictures falling off walls and melancholy thoughts. An atmosphere of impending doom builds up, lightened only by the cheerful confidante. A comic role, I suppose. They send her a wreath rather than a bride’s crown. Totenkranz. That’s a wreath, isn’t it? She gets a Holy Hermit to make up a crown of white roses for her instead. Have you got that? You’ve got to remember the sodding hermit because he comes in at the end. Max and Kaspar turn up at the shooting competition armed with the magic bullets. Now what you also have to know is that Kaspar has done some sort of deal with the Demon so that he has to be given somebody’s soul on the big day. He can’t have Agathe because she’s so saintly and in the grip of the Hermit. But he can get either Kaspar or Max. So Kaspar fires off all six bullets, leaving the last one for Max. I suppose he thinks that it’ll ricochet off one of the trees and do for the aspiring bridegroom. Anyway, here comes the Prince and all the Huntsmen. Full chorus of yokels on stage. Max gets told to shoot the white dove. Heavy symbolism, geddit? White dove! They only ever represent one thing! Don’t look so vacant, darling. I keep forgetting that you are mercifully post-Christian. Agathe rushes up yelling, “Max, don’t shoot!” So she must have got wind of the bullet. Bang! And she collapses. But so does Kaspar. Samiel must be on stage too. Everyone else is. Chaos. Climax. Shock. Horror. On comes the Holy Hermit and revives Agathe. Must be a sort of resurrection theme. He tells everyone off for sin. Sentences and judgements all round. Kaspar’s dead. Samiel’s legged it, presumably clutching said sinner’s soul. Hermit abolishes the tradition of the Freischütz and calls for general repentance. Entire cast kneels and asks forgiveness from God.’

  She banged the programme down on her knees. I was slightly irritated.

  ‘OK, Iso, so you’ve just proved that nobody goes to operas for the plausibility of the plots.’

  ‘Well, yeah. I’ve seen operas on television and we watched that film of La Traviata. But I’ve never gone because Luce prefers the theatre.’ She stretched out her long green legs. ‘She says that the music is destabilizing, whereas you’re safe inside the spoken word, however disturbing.’

  ‘But lots of Shakespeare gets turned into opera.’

  ‘Yes, it does. Shakespeare’s characters are larger than life anyway. Think of Othello and Lady Macbeth. They’re already down there at the footlights, belting out their solos. All you’ve got to do is set the words to something thunderous.’

  She picked up the discarded information pack.

  ‘Look at this guy’s costume. He’s the Holy Hermit. Like one of the crusties. Weird.’

  The one-minute bell rang. Roehm came back into the box. The house was full of muted rustles, whispers and coughs. We looked up from the programme. Roehm’s eyes gleamed slightly as he gazed upon the two of us together. Then he bent down and kissed us both, one after another.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ said Roehm. ‘I hope that you enjoy the opera.’

  You w
as plural; we were you. He sat down and the chair shuddered. We were inordinately pleased with ourselves. We were the chosen, the elect, engulfed by his sinister gentleness. We belonged to Roehm.

  The house lights dimmed and the conductor appeared in the pit to warm and expectant applause. The performance began.

  Iso said afterwards that it was a bit like watching a Western in which all the characters were labelled, and the bad guy, in this case Kaspar, wears a black hat. The Holy Hermit turned up dressed like Jesus with long hair and sandals in a tatty white shift. Just so that we get the message. He’s got religious authority. Right? Agathe wore the immaculate white of chastity and innocence, the crown of crucifixion roses, which guarantees that she’ll get up again, satisfactorily resurrected, when the shooting stops. It was ridiculous, preposterous. Yet we watched, enthralled. We were impatient with the interval, anxious for the tale to continue, to be endlessly retold. We already knew the story, yet we could not bear to be separated from the telling and the retelling. The music was the key. It acted upon us in precisely the ways Luce had identified and so thoroughly mistrusted. It was compelling, mysterious, seductive. We ceased to think, to judge. And we were more powerfully entranced by one figure than by any other character.

  ‘Ihr seid begeistert, meine Kinder,’ said Roehm, laughing at our naive complicity with the traditional characters of fairy tales. We had eyes only for Samiel.

  The Demon Huntsman was clad in Lincoln green. He was huge, bigger than Roehm. He wore a floor-length cape of dark, swirling green, green hunting boots and falconer’s gauntlets of terrifying amplitude, as if his hands were larger than his arms. A dark patch covered one eye, the other eye glowed cyborg red. Traces of a decomposing skeletal frame were visible through the ravaged green of his costume. He swept silently across the darkened rim of the stage at crucial moments in the action and his voice when he spoke was magnified to a hollow echo.

  The Wolf’s Glen scene made use of computer-generated images on the backdrop. We saw and heard the satanic hounds loosed in the forest. The creatures flung themselves towards the audience down an elongated tunnel of green shadows. We heard the Demon Huntsman’s voice, urging them on, and the call of his horn. I realized with a shiver of fear that they were not dogs, they were wolves.