“Should I shave?” he said.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “Here’s your clothes.”
He dressed quickly, repairing to his bedroom to find a pair of boots, leaving her to idle in the studio while he did so. The painting of the couple she’d seen on Christmas Night had gone, and his equipment—paints, easel, and primed canvases—had been unceremoniously dumped in a corner. In their place, newspapers, many of their pages bearing reports on a tragedy she had only noted in passing: the death by fire of twenty-one men, women, and children in an arson attack in South London. She didn’t give the reports close scrutiny. There was enough to mourn this gloomy afternoon.
Clem was pale but tearless. He embraced them both at the front door, then ushered them into the house. The Christmas decorations were still up, awaiting Twelfth Night, the perfume of pine needles sharpening the air.
“Before you see him, Gentle,” Clem said. “I should explain that he’s got a lot of drugs in his system, so he drifts in and out. But he wanted to see you so badly.”
“Did he say why?” Gentle asked.
“He doesn’t need a reason, does he?” Clem said softly. “Will you stay, Judy? If you want to see him when Gentle’s been in. . .”
“I’d like that.”
While Clem took Gentle up to the bedroom, Jude went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, wishing as she did so that she’d had the foresight to tell Gentle as they drove about how Taylor had talked of him the week before, particularly the tale about his speaking in tongues. It might have provided Gentle with some sense of what Taylor needed to know from him now. The solving of mysteries had been much on Taylor’s mind on Christmas Night. Perhaps now, whether drugged or not, he hoped to win some last reprieve from his confusion. She doubted Gentle would have any answers. The look she’d seen him give the bathroom mirror had been that of a man to whom even his own reflection was a mystery.
Bedrooms were only ever this hot for sickness or love, Gentle thought as Clem ushered him in: for the sweating out of obsession or contagion. It didn’t always work, of course, in either case, but at least in love failure had its satisfactions. He’d eaten very little since he’d departed the scene in Streatham, and the stale heat made him feel lightheaded. He had to scan the room twice before his eyes settled on the bed in which Taylor lay, so nearly enveloped was it by the soulless attendants of modern death: an oxygen tank with its tubes and mask; a table loaded with dressings and towels; another, with a vomit bowl, bedpan, and towels; and beside them a third, carrying medication and ointments. In the midst of this panoply was the magnet that had drawn them here, who now seemed very like their prisoner. Taylor was propped up on plastic-covered pillows, with his eyes closed. He looked like an ancient. His hair was thin, his frame thinner still, the inner life of his body— bone, nerve, and vein—painfully visible through skin the color of his sheet. It was all Gentle could do not to turn and flee before the man’s eyes flickered open. Death was here again, so soon. A different heat this time, and a different scene, but he was assailed by the same mixture of fear and ineptitude he’d felt in Streatham.
He hung back at the door, leaving Clem to approach the bed first and softly wake the sleeper.
Taylor stirred, an irritated look on his face until his gaze found Gentle. Then the anger at being called back into pain went from his brow, and he said, “You found him.”
“It was Judy, not me,” Clem said.
“Oh, Judy. She’s a wonder,” Taylor murmured.
He tried to reposition himself on the pillow, but the effort was beyond him. His breathing became instantly arduous, and he flinched at some discomfort the motion brought.
“Do you want a painkiller?” Clem asked him.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I want to be clearheaded, so Gentle and I can talk.” He looked across at his visitor, who was still lingering at the door. “Will you talk to me for a while, John?” he said. “Just the two of us?”