The Comfort of Strangers Read Free Page A

Each store prominently displayed its burglar-alarm system. It was the total absence of traffic in the city that allowed visitors the freedom to become so easily lost. They crossed streets without looking and, on impulse, plunged down narrower ones because they curved tantalizingly into darkness, or because they were drawn by the smell of frying fish. There were no signs. Without a specific destination, the visitors chose routes as they might choose a colour, and even the precise manner in which they became lost expressed their cumulative choices, their will. And when there were two together making choices? Colin stared at Mary’s back. The street lighting had bleached her blouse of colour, and against the old blackened walls she shimmered, silver and sepia, like an apparition. Her fine shoulder-blades, rising and falling with her slow stride, made a rippling fan of creases across her silk blouse, and her hair, which was partly gathered at theback of her head with a butterfly clasp, swung backwards and forwards across her shoulders and nape.
    She stopped at the window of a department store to examine an enormous bed. Colin drew level with her, lingered a moment, and then walked on. Two dummies, one dressed in pyjamas of pale blue silk, the other in a thigh-length nightie trimmed with pink lace, lay among the artfully dishevelled sheets. The display was not quite complete. The dummies were from the same mould, both bald, both smiling wondrously. They lay on their backs, but from the arrangement of their limbs – each lifted a hand painfully to its jaw – it was clear they were intended to be reclining on their side, facing each other fondly. It was the headboard, however, that had caused Mary to stop. Upholstered in black plastic, it spanned the width of the bed with a foot to spare on either side. It was designed, on the pyjama side at least, to resemble the control panel of a power station, or perhaps a light aircraft. Embedded in the shiny upholstery were a telephone, a digital clock, light-switches and dimmers, a cassette recorder and radio, a small refrigerated drinks cabinet and, towards the centre, like eyes rounded in disbelief, two voltmeters. The nightie side, dominated by an oval, rose-tinted mirror, was sparse by comparison. There was an inset make-up cabinet, a magazine rack and a nursery intercom. Balanced on top of the refrigerator was a cheque on which was written next month’s date, the name of the department store, a huge sum and a signature in bold strokes. Mary noticed that the dummy in pyjamas was holding a pen. She took a couple of paces to one side and an imperfection in the plate glass caused the figures to stir. Then they were still, their arms and legs raised uselessly, like insects surprised by poison. She turned her back on the tableau. Colin was fifty yards along, on the other side of the street. Shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets, he was watching a book of carpet samples methodically turning its pages. She caught him up and they walked on in silence till they came to a fork at the end of the street and stopped.
    Colin spoke in commiseration. ‘You know, I was looking at that bed the other day too.’
    Where the street divided there stood what must have once been an imposing residence, a palace. A row of stone lions stared down from beneath the rusting balcony on the first floor. The high-arched windows, flanked by finely grooved, pitted pillars, were blocked with corrugated tin which had been fly-posted, even on the second floor. Most of the announcements and pronouncements were from feminists and the far Left, and a few were from local groups opposed to the redevelopment of the building. High up, above the second floor, was a wooden board which announced in bright red lettering the name of the chain store that had acquired the site, and then in English, in quotation marks: ‘The shop that puts you first!’ Ranged outside the grand front door, like a line of premature customers,