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| The return of Biba. | |
| By eudimonia | ||||||||
| 13 January 2008 | ||||||||
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Third posting! hope my formatting is getting better. Don't know why the 1st post of this went wrong, thought I had aligned it all to the left... please be indulgent towards a novice. "Phoebe! where are you? you witch!" The enraged male voice echoed around the Kensington square. ''Phoebe! come out, now!'' If I was Phoebe I'd stay hidden, I thought, as I quickened my pace. The rain stung my face, it was starting to become sleet. "Phoebe! For Christ's sake where are you?" He sounded nasty, and close. I felt for my car keys in my pocket. As I crossed the road toward my car, I paused, I heard an unnerving sound, a low, suppressed moaning. I stopped. Between a Merc and a giant S.U.V was a form, a mass of hair and fur huddled on the curbstone. "Hey, hello, are you OK there?" I asked tentatively. I was several feet away from the sodden lump. I squatted down. "Are you alright?" "Oh my god, oh my god." A hoarse, female voice. "Are you OK ? " "Please, please, you've gotta help me, oh my god." She was terrified. She raised her head and I froze. I was transfixed, transfixed by the sight of Phoebe, Biba, Temple - Elliot. The woman who had shattered my heart, my life, in just 38 days. " Please, please help me, my husband, my, oh no,no." She sounded drunk. I remembered to breathe. I knelt down in the rain. I reached out my hand across 32 years. She shrank back, raising a fine white hand smeared with blood. She stared at it and started to wail incoherently. " Are you alright? Are you alright? Biba." My voice was strained. There was no reaction to my use of the nickname I'd known her by at university. She stared at me with huge, emerald eyes. Her curls glowed red in the street lights. Her hair was still bountiful, though not as big as in the hairy early seventies. "Phoebe!" The threatening male voice sounded very close. She was gibbering, wordlessly. "Quiet, shush, please, be quiet." I pleaded. I squatted between the cars beside her. Leaning forward I looked up the street. My knees creaked painfully. About fifteen feet away a huge, aging, rugby prop of a man stood. He was swaying, unsteady on his feet. "Oh no, oh no, it's James, oh my god." She was quieter, she tensed, burying her face in the damp fur of her coat. " Phoebe is that you?" He was breathing heavily. He sounded less angry, more desperate. As he reached our hiding place, I found myself leaping up to knee him in the groin. He collapsed to the ground, pole-axed. I stood over his shuddering form amazed at my action. "Leave him alone, leave him alone you bastard." Phoebe was up, leaning heavily on the Mercedes. "Is this your husband?" I asked, I was confused. At home I had a newspaper cutting. It showed Pheobe, looking beautifully fragile, leaving court beside her Dutch coke-baron husband. They had both gone to prison for importing illegal pharmaceuticals in industrial quantities. The photo was stuffed in the back of my filing cabinet, alongside the decree nisae from my marriage to Alison. The convulsing figure in front of me was obviously a different husband. "James, James, are you alright ?" Her voice was both hard and nervous. Phoebe stepped away from the car she stood straight and still, breathing deeply. She focused on me as I stepped back from James who had started to cry, big, broken sobs. I could feel my heart resounding against my rib-cage, I was sure she recognised me. But if she did she didn't show it. I was mesmerised by her, she still had the poise of a super-model. "Fuck sake, James, James get up!" She stood over him, she looked like she might kick him. James rolled over onto his back. I saw his dinner jacket and shirt were soaked with blood. " You, help me get him up." She commanded me. " He's bleeding, there's blood." I was petrified, literally, unable to move. James let out a rattling gasp, then was silent. "He's not breathing." I could hear my own voice, it sounded unfamiliar, high-pitched, quietly hysterical. I glanced down, there was blood on my trench-coat. I was appalled. There was blood on my hand, my right hand. I held it away from me and the blood ran off the finger tips, washed away by the rain. Phoebe was crouched over James pounding at his chest. James gurgled, he lurched up, Phoebe caught him, he vomited, retching forcefully over Phoebe's arm. Her mink was starting to resemble road-kill. She nearly dropped him in her disgust. "For Christ's sake, you bastard idiot James! James?" she screeched at him, James lolled back in her arms, vaguely conscious. For a moment she seemed about to dissolve into delirium but with a visible effort of will she pulled herself together. She took a number of measured breaths. Tilting her head back she let the rain cascade over her delicate features. shaking back her hair she fixed me with a forthright gaze. "Help me get him to my car, it's just over there." she spoke with the authority of a woman used to getting her own way. I looked in the direction she pointed. Ridiculously, I looked for the red Triumph Spitfire she had driven away in when she left me and returned to polo matches at country houses with Hugo and Tim. Left me, devastated, to wander the pool halls and pubs of my midlands home town, disappointed by every woman I met, including my wife. "But, but, we need an ambulance, the police." Part of my brain functioned, automatic pilot. "No! no, help me get him up." Her fierce tone did not conceal that she was scared. She lay James down on the tarmac, none too gently. Stepping over him with the meticulous care of a drunk, she was face-to face with me, I could kiss her, as I had done countless times in daydreams, fantasies where she returned to me, declaring I was her one, true love. Suddenly, there was a knife within an inch of my face. A proper, gang-land blade, like I had only ever seen in a movie. It was smeared with blood. At the base of her thumb was a tattoo, a tiny blue bird, wings outstretched. A knife and a tattoo. She touched my cheek with the knife, a chill caress. I was numb and biddable. "You get down on his left side, help me get him standing." I knelt next to James, he was gasping, he seemed unable to inhale. Phoebe heaved him up to a seated position, he gulped in air and started to cough as if he was choking. Phoebe took his big shaggy head in her hands, I saw she still wore her extravagant sapphire ring, for a moment I saw her naked in my scruffy student bed, naked save for rings and bangles. My reverie was short lived as Phoebe hissed at James, demanding his attention. "James, listen, we're gonna stand you up, for gods sake James, you have to get to the car." Phoebe looked at me, she saw me as rendered stupid with fear. She spoke with a cold edge of controlled fury. "Take his left arm, on the count of three we pull him up. One, two, three!" Miraculously, we hoisted him up and leaned him against an S.U.V. There was more blood on my hands, I could feel it, sticky, but I didn't want to look at it. I looked up, was that a sycamore tree to my left? "Come on James, You've gotta walk, come on." Phoebe pulled him to standing, he lurched forward slightly, using this momentum Phoebe started him of on a tottering run and they disappeared into the darkness, the click of her impossibly high heels punctuating the slosh of rain. The love of my life left me, again, without a backward glance.
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