The Satyr's Head: Tales of Terror Read Online Free PDF Page B

flattened beneath his own.
    He wasn’t menaced; he didn’t recoil. Instead he reached up and brought the glove to his face. It glimmered white on his palm. The fingers were stiff, perhaps starched. He held it by the knuckles and let the fingers rest arched on his hand.
    In the kitchen a knife scraped. His wife had finished. Carefully be laid the glove over the books, where it posed lightly, coquettishly. He closed the door softly, as if apologetic, and returned to the easel. In a moment the girl in the photograph might move as desired and stare from the window. But the sun’s last shards were blunted; at a crossroads in the centre of the landscape, traffic-lights tripped up and down their scale. Two glasses chimed. He cursed his wife; jealous, she’d driven away his model. He strode out of the bedroom. ‘Are you going out?’ he demanded.
    She arranged the first ring of glasses, encircling the table-leg. ‘I want to do as much as I can tonight,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I thought you might like me to stay in.’
    ‘When I’m painting?’ She turned to him: surely he could have left that unsaid. ‘Watch what you’re doing!’ he shouted, but too late; kneeling, she overbalanced and her hand, flinching away from the glasses, caught the table-leg. The table reared. The glass top came down on the arm of a chair, and a star flew out between them.
    ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she cried, on the edge of tears. ‘I didn’t mean to.’ But he’d rushed to the table and grasped a carved leg. The ruined top ground and splintered and he whirled, brandishing the leg, topped with a head of jagged glass like an axe.
    ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I wouldn’t have done that.’ She tried to catch hold of his hand as it drooped. ‘We’d better get rid of it before someone gets hurt,’ she said.
    ‘Throw away the glass but leave the legs. I may be able to use them sometime. In a carving,’ he added bitterly.
    In the night he sat up. His wife’s face lay upward on the pillow, helpless. The black sun was hot beneath the horizon, like a coal about to set fire to the air. He plodded through the flat and turned on the kitchen light. The carved legs were piled in a corner; above them an edge of the curtain swayed. He thought he heard his wife call out. He would fight her; he would complete a painting to express the flat. If only he could see the girl, find the photograph. Behind him the door banged and sprang back. Someone moved silently to stand behind him, her hands almost touching his shoulders. She didn’t tint the white tiles of the kitchen. He swung about. Only the restless door moved. ‘I wouldn’t have left you,’ he said almost to himself.
    His wife was propped up by the pillows, waiting. ‘What were you doing?’ she asked.
    ‘There was something I wanted from the kitchen. I didn’t expect to find you awake.’
    ‘There’s a rat in your cupboard,’ she said.
    ‘Nonsense. What would a rat want in there?’
    ‘I heard something scratching at the door. If you’re not going to look, I will.’
    She slid out and was round the bed before he could move. Aghast, he slapped the light-switch. Electric light thrust out the moonbeams. She pulled open the door and craning on tiptoe, leaned her head inside. At last she decided: ‘It must be in the wall.’
    As she returned to bed he extinguished the light. ‘You haven’t closed the cupboard properly,’ he said. He opened the door as if to shut it with a slam. A moonbeam partitioned him off from the bed. He laid his hand on the rim of the cupboard, waiting, and the glove fell on his fingers like a caress.
     
    Dear Sir, I am in receipt of your letter— On the back he sketched the glove. At once his pencil traced her poised arm and ranged over her curves, the lead point sensitive as his fingertips. It smoothed her hair and formed the framed oval. But her face eluded him. The shutter of his mind had jammed. Was she facing him or smiling secretly in profile? He drove the point