full of the hack and stink of Luckies, harshly smoked.
In the morning, she used their bathroom gingerly. English hygiene, sheâd discovered, was a haphazard pursuit lacking commitment or persistence. Soap softened into green Communion hosts in shallow pools on the sink beside either tap. Neither sliver produced suds. The water was cold. Not truly cold, of course. Water would need to be drawn from some deep artesian source to emerge truly cold in the sweltering, ambient heat of that summer. But it wasnât hot enough to encourage suds. Someone had at least put out a cleanish towel for her, though. She didnât remember it having been there from brushing her teeth with Davidâs borrowed toothbrush the previous night. Strange, she thought, scrubbing her teeth again, the purposeful mood a Monday had compared with the limbo of an English Sunday. She already felt focused, energized. She didnât feel as shaken as she had in the past by the cormorant dream. Perhaps she was getting used to it. And yesterday she had awoken to a worse shock than nightmares provided. She felt angry at herself, though, for not having gone to the police. Yesterday the intrusion into her flat had felt bruising and inexplicable. Today it felt like an opportunity spurned, a crime scene gone cold because of her own panic and hesitancy. She was outraged by the trespass, deeply angered by the fact of the violation now that the panic had dissipated. She wanted the offender caught and punished. Except that objectively there had not been much of a crimecommitted. Everything of it was in what might have happened and what might happen still. Alice felt under threat but knew that the best chance of dealing with that threat had gone. The police would not take seriously a complaint made more than twenty-four hours after the alleged committing of an offence.
She rinsed Davidâs toothbrush and put it back in the toothbrush mug in the bathroom cabinet. The cabinet had a mirrored door into which he no doubt looked at his reflection every morning. Except that most of the mercury had peeled with time and damp off the back of the mirror so that any reflection was incomplete, streaked with absence. He probably thought that his long hair made him look like one of the Faces. Or perhaps he planned to pull it back into a ponytail like the one so fetchingly worn by Ross Poldark. Poldarkâs hair was bushy but straight. The Faces had straight hair, too, teased into those urchin cockatoos they all wore. The trouble was that Davidâs hair was curly, and worn in the style he had it made him look like something out of a Burne-Jones painting. It put his appearance comically at odds with his nature, she felt, with that blunt accent and surly sense of obligation. He really wasnât Sir Lancelot. No more than his friend was an Apache. Oliver also wore his hair long. And he could have passed for a band member, his youthful face having that corrupt quality that drugs use sometimes inflicted. Inflicted or endowed, depending on your point of view. If Oliver was aiming for the debauched choirboy look of a Brian Jones or a Jim Morrison, he wassucceeding. She couldnât imagine him trying for anything less clichéd. He was the sort of young man who wanted to remind you of someone dead. Thatâs what he had meant when heâd claimed to have a death wish. What he really wanted was the safe kudos of resembling closely someone drugs had killed. He was probably very popular with the girls. She imagined they both were. Unless there really was some homoerotic quality to their Sunday-evening television viewing. That
Poldark
business was, frankly, a bit worrying.
Sheâd rinsed out her underwear the previous night and strung it across a hedge in their back garden to dry. It wasnât as if there was any risk of rain. It seemed this summer like it would never rain again. Rain seemed impossible, more of a folk myth than the persistent feature of the English
In the morning, she used their bathroom gingerly. English hygiene, sheâd discovered, was a haphazard pursuit lacking commitment or persistence. Soap softened into green Communion hosts in shallow pools on the sink beside either tap. Neither sliver produced suds. The water was cold. Not truly cold, of course. Water would need to be drawn from some deep artesian source to emerge truly cold in the sweltering, ambient heat of that summer. But it wasnât hot enough to encourage suds. Someone had at least put out a cleanish towel for her, though. She didnât remember it having been there from brushing her teeth with Davidâs borrowed toothbrush the previous night. Strange, she thought, scrubbing her teeth again, the purposeful mood a Monday had compared with the limbo of an English Sunday. She already felt focused, energized. She didnât feel as shaken as she had in the past by the cormorant dream. Perhaps she was getting used to it. And yesterday she had awoken to a worse shock than nightmares provided. She felt angry at herself, though, for not having gone to the police. Yesterday the intrusion into her flat had felt bruising and inexplicable. Today it felt like an opportunity spurned, a crime scene gone cold because of her own panic and hesitancy. She was outraged by the trespass, deeply angered by the fact of the violation now that the panic had dissipated. She wanted the offender caught and punished. Except that objectively there had not been much of a crimecommitted. Everything of it was in what might have happened and what might happen still. Alice felt under threat but knew that the best chance of dealing with that threat had gone. The police would not take seriously a complaint made more than twenty-four hours after the alleged committing of an offence.
She rinsed Davidâs toothbrush and put it back in the toothbrush mug in the bathroom cabinet. The cabinet had a mirrored door into which he no doubt looked at his reflection every morning. Except that most of the mercury had peeled with time and damp off the back of the mirror so that any reflection was incomplete, streaked with absence. He probably thought that his long hair made him look like one of the Faces. Or perhaps he planned to pull it back into a ponytail like the one so fetchingly worn by Ross Poldark. Poldarkâs hair was bushy but straight. The Faces had straight hair, too, teased into those urchin cockatoos they all wore. The trouble was that Davidâs hair was curly, and worn in the style he had it made him look like something out of a Burne-Jones painting. It put his appearance comically at odds with his nature, she felt, with that blunt accent and surly sense of obligation. He really wasnât Sir Lancelot. No more than his friend was an Apache. Oliver also wore his hair long. And he could have passed for a band member, his youthful face having that corrupt quality that drugs use sometimes inflicted. Inflicted or endowed, depending on your point of view. If Oliver was aiming for the debauched choirboy look of a Brian Jones or a Jim Morrison, he wassucceeding. She couldnât imagine him trying for anything less clichéd. He was the sort of young man who wanted to remind you of someone dead. Thatâs what he had meant when heâd claimed to have a death wish. What he really wanted was the safe kudos of resembling closely someone drugs had killed. He was probably very popular with the girls. She imagined they both were. Unless there really was some homoerotic quality to their Sunday-evening television viewing. That
Poldark
business was, frankly, a bit worrying.
Sheâd rinsed out her underwear the previous night and strung it across a hedge in their back garden to dry. It wasnât as if there was any risk of rain. It seemed this summer like it would never rain again. Rain seemed impossible, more of a folk myth than the persistent feature of the English
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