Wolf Whistle

He’d been so stupid! It was as clear as the waters from an Umbrian spring what had been happening. Other People were keeping Claudia from her beloved Magic. His fingers curled into claws. It was his fault. He should have realized sooner. All those letters he had sent without a solitary word by return-it was obvious. Her letters had been intercepted. The knuckles on his hand grew white. Now he knew Other People were between them, it was easy.

‘true love will always conquer,’ he wrote, and the candle guttered when he laughed. Theirs was a love which would last for all eternity. Other People could not keep them apart. He wrote that down as well.

‘other people can not keep us apart.’

Magic laughed again, and had there been fresh eggs in the room they would have curdled. He could not be sure, of course, that Claudia now received his letters, not when Other People interfered. He’d have to send her something else. What? He chewed his bottom lip for inspiration. What would scream his feelings for her, let her know she had not been abandoned.

‘i have not abandoned you.’ Write that down as well. Cobs of sweat broke out on Magic’s forehead. Somewhere, hundreds of letters, written in her own sweet hand, lay mouldering in a box. ‘i will find them,’ oh, yes he would, and then he could take down all those poor, unhappy copies from his wall and nail up the genuine love-filled articles. All of them.

Well, now he knew his letters were being read by Other People, they ought to know who they were dealing with. Yessir, they ought.

‘when you my darling love slave press your rosy nipples to my lips and plead with me to whip and beat you — ’

He felt a jolting in his loins, and the nib flew across the page as he envisaged all that he would do. He described the taste of blood, the pain, the pure, exquisite torture… He had nearly filled the page before he remembered his mission.

‘and when we fly to heaven sated and complete then other people will not need to die.’

Would they understand, he wondered? Yes, of course they would. They were clever people, these stealers of letters. Almost as clever as Magic was himself.

X

The door at which Claudia rapped was about as impersonal as a door can be. Hinges iron, studs without rust, timber durable, common, and because holm-oak rots down slowly, there were no clues as to the age of the door-a criterion which applied equally to the servant who opened it. Stolid and dough-faced with a nose like an anchor stone, the woman could have been any age from fifty-five to seventy. Her hands, puffed and red from scrubbing, offered no hint, her hair was dyed black and she wore a yellow scarf which concealed the lines around her neck. Claudia felt herself on shifting sands. Doorkeepers, without exception, were male.

‘I’m here to see Kaeso,’ she said breezily. ‘Is he in?’

‘Nnnn.’

Claudia thought irreverently of Cypassis telling Jovi about poor little Echo, spurned by Narcissus and reduced to repeating other people’s endings. However, this was no cave and this, certainly, was no nymph. Not now. Not ever. Doughface was examining the visitor like a fisherman inspects a mackerel and Claudia felt her blood start to bubble.

‘If it’s too difficult, I’ll rephrase the question. Is he in?’

‘Nnnn.’

Just as Claudia was about to yank on the scarf round this awful creature’s neck, Echo stepped aside and wagged one swollen finger to indicate that the visitor should remain in the atrium. Had she been a dog, Claudia suspected she would have been expected to sit.

The hall, like the entrance, was miserably neutral. A bleak geometric mosaic, black, white and brown, hardly a challenge for the designer, and the walls had been painted yellow and green, the colours of spring, but the lack of ornamentation and the dogged repetition of colour blocks denied more imaginative connotations. There was, of course, the obligatory pool in the centre but again, this was a passive rectangle of water, not a sparkling, chattering fountain.

She could leave, of course. Walk out now. Hire another tracker, heaven knows there were plenty to choose from-men who traced runaway slaves, errant wives, missing children. But Kaeso had a reputation which went way beyond mere pursuit…

Time passed. Claudia’s ears strained for sounds, and picked up none, and that was the worrying part. The street itself sat tucked away on the flat of the Quirinal, comprising mostly of tenements for the moderately well-off artisans, craftsmen, self-sufficient freedmen. A quiet, respectable suburb, where no dogs barked, no hawkers touted, no children kicked inflated pigs’ bladders through your windows every half hour. But indoors? In a house this size, you’d expect to hear servants scurrying about, floors being swept, pans clattering in the kitchens. Here there was only silence. And where were the smells that make a home? The camphor scent of rinsed linen? Or yellow cones of juniper burning day and night to keep the snakes at bay?