The Hunger Read online

  Yes, indeed, it promised to be an interesting evening. John went down the gallery that connected the two wings of the house, feeling the humid coolness of the evening beyond the windows, passing beneath the portrait of his mother that his father insisted remain outside her old room.

  The stairway had been lit as if for a ball, as had the front hall and the large dining hall. Servants were setting three places at the massive table. Why his father had not chosen the more intimate yellow dining room John could not imagine. His father’s voice could be heard beyond the great hall, in the formal parlor. John crossed the hall and paused as the door was opened before him.

  Then he knew why the pomp. And he knew no amount of brandy would addle his father this night, nor bezique send him off to sleep.

  There was no word to describe her.

  Skin could not be so white or features so perfect, surely. Her eyes, as pale as delft, as pellucid as the sea, flickered to him. He fought for some appropriate word, could only smile and bow, then advance.

  “This is my son, John.”

  His father’s words were as distant as an echo. Only the woman mattered now. “I am charmed, ma’am,” John said softly.

  She extended her hand.

  “The Lady Miriam,” his father said, his tone revealing just a trace of irony.

  John took the cool hand and pressed it to his lips, lingered just an instant too long, then raised his head.

  She was looking at him, not smiling.

  He was shocked by the power of that glance, so shocked he turned away in confusion.

  His heart was pounding, his face was blazing hot. He covered his upset with a flourish of snuff. When he dared look, her eyes were merry and pleasant, as a woman’s eyes should be.

  Then, as if to tease him, she looked at him again in that shameless, wild way. Never before had he encountered such brazen effrontery, not even from the most primitive scullery or back-street whore.

  To see it in such an extraordinary and obviously refined beauty made him shake with excitement. His eyes teared, involuntarily he extended his hands. She seemed about to speak but only ran her tongue along the edges of her teeth.

  It was as if his father had ceased to exist. John’s arms came around her, around Miriam, for the first time. The embrace electrified him, inflamed him. His eyes closed, he sank into her softness, bent his head to her alabaster neck, touched her salty and milky flesh with his open lips.

  Laughter sprang out of her like a hidden blade. He jerked his head up, dropped his arms. In her eyes there was something so lascivious, so mocking and triumphant, that his passion was at once replaced by fear. Such a look he had seen —

  Yes, in a panther some East Indians had been displaying at Vauxhall Gardens.

  The light, furious eyes of a panther.

  How could such eyes be so very lovely?

  All of this had happened in no more than a minute. During this time John’s father had stood transfixed, his eyebrows raised, his face gradually registering more and more surprise. “Sir!” he burst out at last. “Please sir!”

  John had to recover himself. A gentleman could not so dishonor himself before his father.

  “Do not be angry with him, Lord Hadley,” Miriam said. “You cannot imagine what a flattery it is to be attended to so fervently.”

  Her voice was soft and yet it filled the room with vibrant intensity. The words may not have pleased John’s father, but they foreclosed any further disapproval. The old lord bowed graciously and took the lady’s hand. Together they strolled farther into the great room, pausing before the fireplace. John moved along behind them, his manner outwardly deferential. Within, his heart was seething. The woman’s manner and appearance were the most wonderful he had ever known, a thousand times more wonderful than he had imagined possible. She trailed behind her an attar of roses. The firelight made her skin glow. Her beauty made the dank old room blaze with light.

  At a signal from his father, a piper began to play on the balcony. The tones were stirring, some Scottish air at once beautiful and fierce. Miriam turned and looked upward. “What is that instrument?”

  “A bagpipe,” John said before his father’s mouth could open. “It’s a Scot’s device.”

  “Also Breton,” his father snapped. “That is a Breton piper. There are no Scotsmen in Hadley House.”

  John knew differently, but he did not contradict.

  They ate a brace of grouse, high and sour, followed by lamb, pudding and trifle. John remembered that meal well because of how surprised he had been when Miriam did not partake of any of the food. Course after course went past untouched. It would not have been polite for them to inquire why their guest did not care for the food, but at the end of the meal John’s father seemed sunken in dismay. When she at last took some port he brightened.

  No doubt he had been afraid that his physical appearance was so unpleasant to her that she was not going to stay the night. John almost laughed aloud when he saw how his father grinned when she drank, his loose dental plates making it look as if he had a mouthful of stones.

  During the course of the meal, Miriam had glanced twice at John and both times had communicated such warmth and invitation that he himself was greatly encouraged.

  When the evening ended he went to his room full of eager anticipation. He dismissed Williams at once, dropping his clothes off, tossing his wig aside, standing at last naked. He went close to the grate, warming first one side of himself and then the other, and then jumped into bed. The sheets had been swept with a fire brick until they were warm and so the bed was quite comfortable. He lay sleepless, astonished that he had taken to his bed without his nightclothes, deliciously excited. On the nightstand he left three gold sovereigns gleaming in the candlelight.

  He lay listening to the wind and the rain, warm and safe beneath his quilts, waiting. Hours passed. His body, fixed in the tension of extreme excitement, began to ache with need.

  Without knowing it, he fell asleep. He awoke suddenly, dreaming of her. The room was no longer absolutely dark. Fumbling on the night table, he found his watch and opened it. Almost five A.M.

  She wasn’t going to come. He sat up. Surely any sensible whore would have understood the meaning of the glances that had passed between them. The three sovereigns lay untouched. The fool had not come to claim her own.

  By now his father must long since have been done with her. Bracing himself for the cold, he swept his covers aside and rose from the bed. He could not find where Williams kept his nightclothes and so was forced to put on his pants and blouse of the night before. Grabbing up the gold coins, he hurried down the corridor.

  A bright fire burned in the grate in the guest room. The bed was occupied. John went to it, placed his hand gently on her cheek.

  He felt rather than saw her smile. There was no confusion, no befuddlement of awakening. “I wondered if you would come,” she said.

  “My God — you should have come to me!”

  She laughed. “I could hardly do that. But now that you’re here, don’t catch cold.” She let him into the bed. He tried to control his shaking but could not. This was like bedding the daughter of the greatest lord of the realm. There was nothing whorish about her now. Usually, they were at least a little coarse, their eyes hard with the truth of the word. But here was all innocence and fluttering purity — and the most blatant lust.

  She allowed him to undress her. Naked, she drew him to her and deftly removed his own clothing. “Come,” she said, rising from the bed.

  “Come?”

  “To the fireside.” Their arms about each other’s waists, they walked to the fire. The room was warm because her maid had obviously laid this new fire within the hour.“Be truthful,” she said.“Am I not the first?”

  “In what sense?”

  “The first you have really loved.” She touched him most shamelessly, most wonderfully. He looked down at her hand, amazed that so simple a gesture could bring such pleasure. It was all he could do to keep his fe
et.

  “Yes! I love you!”

  Her body, perfect in shape, pert and yet voluptuous, overwhelmed him with its beauty. She lifted her face to his, brought her arms around his neck, parted her lips. He kissed her, kissed into her open mouth — and tasted sour, oddly cold breath.

  “Come back to the bed,” she said. She led him by the hand, paused, and held him at arm’s length. “Let me have a good look at you first,” she added. Her hands ran down along his chest, touched his hard-muscled belly lightly, and did not hesitate to examine his private parts. “Are you ever ill?” she asked.

  “The whited sepulcher? Certainly not!” He was astonished by her impertinence. What business was it of hers if he had the infection?

  “It is a disease communicated from body to body,” she said absently. She was talking nonsense. “But it doesn’t matter. I was curious about the general state of your health.”

  “I’m quite well, madam.” He brushed past her, got into the bed. She looked down at him, laughed lightly, and twirled about the room, her body full of the grace and beauty of youth. John was entranced but he also was growing impatient.

  Suddenly she leaped onto the bed. It was a tall four-poster and her jump was so high that it seemed almost uncanny. He tried to laugh, but something about her movements stopped him. She seemed almost angry as she came into the covers. “You know nothing of love,” she said in a loud voice. Then she was beside him, squatting. A pixie smile came into her eyes. “Would you care to learn?”

  “I should say so. You’re already tardy with my lesson.”

  Without warning she grabbed his cheeks and kissed him fiercely. Her tongue pressed between his teeth. It felt as rough as a broom besom and he drew back in surprise. How could such a thing be in a human mouth? It was quite horrible. He looked at the door.

  “Don’t fear me,” she said. Then she laughed, bright, ringing through the gray predawn.

  John was not a superstitious man, but he wondered about the gypsy camps at this moment. Could this be a gypsy witch, come to claim Hadley for her own? She must have seen the expression in his face, because she all but flung herself onto him. Her hands moved across his body, her flesh touched his, her face presented itself for his kisses.

  And he did kiss her. He kissed her as he had never kissed anybody before. He covered her lips, her cheeks, her neck with kisses. Then she took her breasts in her hands and offered them. Before this moment John had not known the pleasure of kissing a woman there. His heart welled up with happiness. Gypsies forgotten, he lost himself in the pleasures of the flesh. She pressed his head downward until he was kissing her most secret intimacy.

  The pleasure of it amazed him. She moved with quick dexterity, and before he knew it he was also being kissed in this way.

  In a few minutes she had awakened feelings in him he had known nothing of. Waves of exultant happiness swept over him. He could feel her excitement rise to match his own. Never had a woman made him feel so wonderfully competent, so good. Then her mood changed. Gently, insistently she moved beneath him until they were face to face. Her legs spread, her eyes invited. A little sound, half joy, half fear, escaped her lips when he slipped into her. Then her hands came up and grasped his buttocks and they began.

  John fought manfully, but his excitement was so intense that it was only moments before he was pounding into her, pounding and shouting her beautiful name, shouting without a care for the ears of servants, shouting in great and glorious love.

  He sank down on her. “Marry me, whore,” he breathed. Her fingers scraped slowly along his back, the nails digging into his skin. Her face remained impassive. Her nails hurt but he would not cry out. He was too happy, too far transported. “Lady Miriam, you must be my wife.”

  “I am not a real lady.”

  He laughed. “You must be!”

  In that moment he had married her. Their spirits would not again be parted.

  He remembered those first wild years of love, the wonder and the horror of it, the sheer blaze of lust. So much had been gained and so much lost.

  They raped the estate. The peasants ran away. The gypsy fires died. The old lord withered and also died. John was lost in her, lost and not yet found. Lost in love with her.

  * * *

  Miriam was worried. John’s head lolled, his mouth hung open. He was obviously dozing. For them such a thing was abnormal. Either they were awake or they Slept, the deep revitalizing trance peculiar to their kind.

  He shifted restlessly. There was only one thing that could be wrong. She shook her head, refused to accept it. Not so soon, surely not!

  She slammed the car into fourth. Lights flashed by as they hurtled toward New York.

  “You’re going too fast,” he said over the roar of the wind.

  “We’re the only car on the road.” The speedometer hovered near eighty. Miriam threw back her head and laughed, bitter and angry. He could not fail so soon. She loved him so — his youth, his freshness. She slipped her hand into his, felt him return the pressure.

  “You were dozing, weren’t you?”

  She felt his eyes on her. “I had a dream.”

  “Like Sleep?”

  “A sort of daydream. I was only half asleep. I was dreaming of when we met.”

  She could have shouted with relief. A daydream! Now the glorious feelings that followed feeding reasserted themselves in her. The bumpy old highway, the crumbling city, all revealed secret beauty. In her heart the sense of relief was followed by the familiar love, a sort of gratitude for the existence of humankind.

  Her thoughts went to little Alice Cavender, whom she would soon transform. When John’s winter actually came — many years from now — Alice would be rising to summer. As he withered she would flower, and Miriam’s love would slip from one to the next with none of the agonizing sense of loss she had experienced in the past. To reassure herself she sought a touch with Alice. It came promptly — Alice’s warmth, her smell, the fierceness of her heart. Then it was over, the bright little storm blowing away. A touch with Alice . . . how good. The girl was coming along well.

  As they crossed Flushing Meadow Park with the enormous Mt. Hebron Cemetery on the left and the World’s Fair Site on the right, Miriam watched John as closely as possible without ignoring the road.

  “Remember the Terrace Club,” he said.

  “How could I forget?” That was in 1939; the Terrace Club had been at the old World’s Fair. She could picture the cheerful beauty of its yellow and white walls and svelte stainless-steel furniture.

  “We danced there.”

  “That’s not all we did.” She well remembered John’s outrageous kidnapping of a girl from the powder room while she herself consumed the little creature’s date.

  Manhattan began to appear and disappear ahead as they rolled through Queens. How recent it all looked to Miriam. It seemed just a week ago the whole area had been swarming with builders. This had been a cobbled road; the air had been scented with the odor of tar and raw lumber. In those days the Long Island Expressway was not yet built and an electric tramway ran to Ozone Park. The bedroom suburbs beyond didn’t exist then. They had ridden the tram often, sitting on the rattan seats as it clicked and sparked and shuddered along, a raft of light in a great dark ocean.

  Soon the procession of cemeteries began: Mt. Zion, Calvary, Greenacres. A musty, cool odor filled the air.

  John turned on the radio, and her mellow mood was interrupted by a long, sorrowful tale being told by an old voice from nowhere, some used-up insomniac pouring his losses out to a talk show host.

  “Please.”

  “I like it.”

  “Then your taste is more bizarre than I thought.”

  “I like to listen to the old. I gloat over their infirmities.”

  That she could understand. She could well imagine how it must feel to John to have defeated the curse of aging. What an absolutely perfect man he was. She also began to enjoy the presence of the old voice in the air. It became a kind of coun
terpoint to John’s youth and vigor, making him seem more wonderful, a more inspired catch, than ever before.

  She drove swiftly through the Midtown Tunnel, up Third Avenue and across to Sutton Place. Their house was on the corner of a cul-de-sac, a small but elegant structure that revealed no sign that it was also a fortress. Miriam loved the sense of protection it gave her. She had lavished time and money on the security system. As technology advanced she had seized on every breakthrough and added it to the system. The window boxes full of petunias concealed a microwave perimeter alert. Each window and door was protected by an electrostatic barrier powerful enough to render an intruder unconscious. Even Miriam’s bed was protected by a new system which would drop steel shutters around it if anyone approached. In the back garden, among the roses, were sensitive motion detectors that could pick up the step of man or animal, and tell the difference. Cameras with light-intensifying lenses watched the alley and the area near the garage, the computer that controlled them vigilant for human shapes moving within their range.

  Once there had been a secret tunnel under the alley and garden, leading to a private dock on the East River, but the building of the East Side Drive had changed all that. Now protection was more important — and easier — than escape.

  She stopped the car, turned out the lights, and pressed the dashboard button that closed the garage door behind them. John got out at once, heading for the furnace room to burn the bags containing the remnants of their victims. He was hurrying so that the smoke would be gone before dawn.

  Miriam was embarrassed. She had allowed Alice to stay here alone this night, violating her own strict rules. Now John would have to know lest he make too much noise in the furnace room. “Don’t wake Alice,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter, I’m up.” Alice stood at the top of the stairs that led up from the basement. Her blue-gray eyes were directed at John and his two big plastic bags.

  “Stay upstairs,” Miriam said quickly. Alice ignored her, coming down the steps with feline grace.