Читаем The Complete Short Stories полностью

That it was a woman’s house was obvious. Shaped like an enormous orchid, it was set back on a low concrete dais in the centre of a blue gravel court. The white plastex wings, which carried the lounge on one side and the master bedroom on the other, spanned out across the magnolias on the far side of the drive. Between the two wings, on the first floor, was an open terrace around a heart-shaped swimming pool. The terrace ran back to the central bulb, a three-storey segment containing the chauffeur’s apartment and a vast two-decker kitchen.

The house seemed to be in good condition. The plastex was unscarred, its thin seams running smoothly to the far rim like the veins of a giant leaf.

Curiously, Stamers was in no hurry to switch on. He pointed to left and right as we made our way up the glass staircase to the terrace, underlining various attractive features, but made no effort to find the control console, and suspected that the house might be a static conversion — a fair number of PT houses are frozen in one or other position at the end of their working lives, and make tolerable static homes.

‘It’s not bad,’ I admitted, looking across the powder-blue water as Stamers piled on the superlatives. Through the glass bottom of the pool the car parked below loomed like a coloured whale asleep on the ocean bed. ‘This is the sort of thing, all right. But what about switching it on?’

Stamers stepped around me and headed after Fay. ‘You’ll want to see the kitchen first, Mr Talbot. There’s no hurry, let yourself feel at home here.’

The kitchen was fabulous, banks of gleaming control panels and auto units. Everything was recessed and stylized, blending into the overall colour scheme, complex gadgets folding back into self-sealing cabinets. Boiling an egg there would have taken me a couple of days.

‘Quite a plant,’ I commented. Fay wandered around in a daze of delight, automatically fingering the chrome. ‘Looks as if it’s tooled up to produce penicillin.’ I tapped the brochure. ‘But why so cheap? At twenty-five thousand it’s damn nearly being given away.’

Stamers’s eyes brightened. He flashed me a broad conspiratorial smile which indicated that this was my year, my day. Taking me off on a tour of the rumpus room and library, he began to hammer home the merits of the house, extolling his company’s thirty-five-year, easy-purchase plan (they wanted anything except cash — there was no money in that) and the beauty and simplicity of the garden (mostly flexible polyurethane perennials).

Finally, apparently convinced that I was sold, he switched the house on.

I didn’t know then what it was, but something strange had taken place in that house. Emma Slack had certainly been a woman with a powerful and oblique personality. As I walked slowly around the empty lounge, feeling the walls angle and edge away, doorways widen when I approached, curious echoes stirred through the memories embedded in the house. The responses were undefined, but somehow eerie and unsettling, like being continually watched over one’s shoulder, each room adjusting itself to my soft, random footsteps as if they contained the possibility of some explosive burst of passion or temperament.

Inclining my head, I seemed to hear other echoes, delicate and feminine, a graceful swirl of movement reflected in a brief, fluid sweep in one corner, the decorous unfolding of an archway or recess.

Then, abruptly, the mood would invert, and the hollow eeriness return.

Fay touched my arm. ‘Howard, it’s strange.’

I shrugged. ‘Interesting, though. Remember, our own responses will overlay these within a few days.’

Fay shook her head. ‘I couldn’t stand it, Howard. Mr Stamers must have something normal.’

‘Darling, Vermilion Sands is Vermilion Sands. Don’t expect to find the suburban norms. People here were individualists.’

I looked down at Fay. Her small oval face, with its childlike mouth and chin, the fringe of blonde hair and pert nose, seemed lost and anxious.

I put my arm around her shoulder. ‘Okay, sweetie, you’re quite right. Let’s find somewhere we can put our feet up and relax. Now, what are we going to say to Stamers?’

Surprisingly, Stamers didn’t seem all that disappointed. When I shook my head he put up a token protest but soon gave in and switched off the house.

‘I know how Mrs Talbot feels,’ he conceded as we went down the staircase. ‘Some of these places have got too much personality built into them. Living with someone like Gloria Tremayne isn’t too easy.’

I stopped, two steps from the bottom, a curious ripple of recognition running through my mind.

‘Gloria Tremayne? I thought the only owner was a Miss Emma Slack.’

Stamers nodded. ‘Yes. Gloria Tremayne. Emma Slack was her real name. Don’t say I told you, though everybody living around here knows it. We keep it quiet as long as we can. If we said Gloria Tremayne no one would even look at the place.’