Free Legenda Maris by Tanith Lee Page A

laughter. “Listen to this—”
    Very occasionally, between the spasms of
noise from the bar, you could just hear the soft shattering boom of the ocean.
    Angela said the punch line and we all
laughed.
    We got to the fifth round.
    “If you put a bell on,” Ray said to me, “I’ll
give you a ring sometime.”
    I was starting to withdraw rather than
expand, the alternate phase of tipsyness. Drifting back into myself, away from
the five people I was with. Out of the crowded public house. Astral projection
almost. Now I was on the street.
    “You know,  I could really fancy you,”
said Ray.
    “You want to watch our Ray,” said
Angela.
    Jill giggled and her jelly chest
wobbled.
    It was almost nine, and the sixth round.
Jill had had an argument with Terry, and her eyes were damp. Terry, uneasy,
stared into his beer.
    “I think we should go and eat now,” said
the extra-marital relationship.
    “Yes, sir,” said Angela.
    “Have a good time,” I said. My voice was
slightly slurred. I was surprised by it, and by what it had just vocalised.
    “Good time,” joked Angela. “You’re
coming, too.”
    “Oh, no—didn’t I say? I have to be somewhere
else by nine.”
    “She just wants an excuse to be alone with
me,” said Ray. But he looked as amazed as the rest of them. Did I look amazed, too?
    “But where are you going?” Angela demanded.
“You said—-”
    “I’m sorry. I thought I told you. It’s
something I have to go to with the woman where I stay. I can’t get out of it.
We’re sort of related.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” said Ray.
    “Oh well, if you can’t get out of it.”
Angela stared hard at me through her mascara.
    I might be forfeiting my rights to their
friendship, which was all I had. And why? To stagger, cross-eyed with vodka, to
Daniel’s house. To do and say what? Whatever it was, it was pointless. This had
more point. Even Ray could be more use to me than Daniel.
    But I couldn’t hold myself in check any
longer. I’d had five days of restraint. Vile liquor had let my personal animal
out of its cage. What an animal it was. Burning, confident, exhilarated and
sure. If I didn’t know exactly what its plans were, I still knew they would be
glorious and great.
    “Great,” said Ray. “Well, if she’s
going, let’s have another.”
    “I think I’ll have a cream sherry,” said
Angela. “I feel like a change.”
    They had already excluded me,
demonstrating I would not be missed. I stood on my feet, which no longer felt
like mine.
    “Thanks for the drinks,” I said. I tried
to look reluctant to be going, and they smiled at me, hardly trying at all, as
if seeing me through panes of tinted glass.
    It was black outside; where the street
lights hadn’t stained it, the sky looked clear beyond the glare, a vast roof. I
walked on water.
    Daniel’s mother had been drunk when she
told me about the rape. Truth in wine. So this maniac was presumably the true
me.
    The walk down the slope in the cold
brittle air neither sobered me nor increased my inebriation. I simply began to
learn how to move without a proper centre of balance. When I arrived, I hung on
her gate a moment. The hall light mildly suffused the door panels. The upstairs
room, which was his, looked dark.
    I knocked. I seemed to have knocked that
door thirty times. Fifty. A hundred. Each time, like a clockwork mechanism,
Mrs. Besmouth opened it. Hallo, I’ve come to see Daniel. Hallo, I’m drunk, and
I’ve come to scare you. I’ve spoken to the police about your son, I’ve said you
neglect him. I’ve come to tell you what I think of you. I’ve booked two seats on
a plane and I’m taking Daniel to Lourdes. I phoned the Pope, and he’s meeting
us there.
    The door didn’t open. I knocked twice
more, and leaned in the porch, practising my introductory gambits.
    I’m really a famous artist in disguise,
and all I want is to paint Daniel. As the young Apollo, I think. Only I couldn’t
find a lyre. (Liar.)
    Only gradually did it came to