The Deadly Space Between by Patricia Duncker Page B

people were simply not on that scale.
    ‘I dreamed about him last night,’ I said, suddenly spiteful, courting a reaction.
    ‘Oh, did you?’ She walked out of the kitchen and locked herself in the downstairs lavatory.
    At last, I had drawn blood.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Luce’s house looked different. I couldn’t work out how or why. Here were the patterned cobblestones and the bower of ferns, neatly cut back for the winter, the tiny trimmed evergreens and the bank of Dutch bulbs, recently mulched, and all professionally cultivated by the landscape design team. No one ever pottered in Luce’s garden. It was kept under control by uniformed officials. The original creator of her courtyard landscapes had enriched his portfolio of ideas by a visit to Japan. The bamboo was strategically placed in relation to a group of stones and a still pool containing three lilies and a flotilla of psychotic carp. They circled endlessly, staring. The light over the front door signalled the end of the Japanese theme. Here beginneth modernism. One of the architects who built the Centre Pompidou at Beaubourg had also designed Luce’s house. The interior was all parquet floors and huge service tubes suspended from the ceiling, even in her abattoir kitchen. Luce owned a painting by Tamara de Lempicka, which represented two women intertwined. The figures also contrived to look like steel tubes. The place bristled with burglar alarms. There was one just inside the door. You had thirty seconds to switch the thing off before the entire house exploded with wailing sirens and the security service employed to watch the house from all angles, at all times, arrived in military-style armoured cars. There were tiny red eyes in the corners of every room which followed you around even when the alarm was supposedly at rest. The red eyes also operated outside the house. One of them was trained on the carp pool. I looked at Luce’s house and at the lady herself, sunk into her raw silk white sofa, and wondered how I could have spent my life with women.
    It was as if they talked in secret codes, like Freemasons. Luce, Iso and Liberty settled down to look at one another, to observe shifts, changes, tiny lines, hardening around the eyes, the gentle sea tides of each other’s appearance. They studied one another carefully, in case one of them needed instant rescue, but was unable to voice her plea. If all was well within their kingdom they would begin to build their conversational card houses. Each of them added another card to the edifice and even when they contradicted one another they never disputed the point or began an argument, because that would interfere with the programme of steady construction. They simply picked up the opposing point of view and ran with that. The link in the chain was always more important than either the subject or their differences. I had never noticed how the women talked before. It all seemed unnecessarily complex and pointless.
    I made all the usual gestures, reported on my A-level work, opened the wine, carried the sizzling prawns to the table. But I noticed the silences in Iso’s chatter. She had no intention of telling them about Roehm. We did not even need to discuss this. If she said nothing then he remained our secret.
    Our hidden complicity gave me an odd rush of pleasure. But I was now outside the triangle of women, observing them and their carefully tended trellis of love, which they built across their divisions. Luce boasted of her forthcoming certain triumphs in Paris and America. Her unspoken assertions were suddenly clearer to me than they had ever been and so was the fact that they were addressed primarily to Iso.
    ‘There’s a spring showcase of British fashions and British designs on at the Arches. Next year’s collections. You will both come, won’t you? I’ve got your invites here. And some more for the people at the gallery. I think it would be wonderful to hold a show at the gallery, Iso. When you’ve hung