[MaC] "I didn't know..." [LONG]

[Schoner, Brian]

>>>> Warren was nodding now, watching the scene before him. "And 
>>>> Miss Diamond?" 
>>> 
>>> Michael had unsnapped the flap on his holster and his hand
>>> was on his sidearm, not taking any action, but concerned that
>>> desperate people take desperate actions. His eyes watched
>>> Powell closely. 
>> 
>> Cyril moved to stand slightly in front of Florence, interposing
>> himself between her and Phillip in case there was trouble. 
>
> Arabella came in just then. After her talk with Pamela she'd
> gone back downstairs to check on Flash, strangely confident 
> that nothing ill would befall her... She saw the tension,
> sensed it, and knew that it was centered on Evangeline's young
> nephew. "What has happened?" she asked.

Philip, for his part, seemed unaware of the questions, unaware of the
eyes on him. "The things she said," he murmured at last. "I didn't know
why she was being so cruel...I thought...someone else..." He turned to
face Arabella, seemingly at random. "I never got the letters," he said
apologetically. "When I went to see her, I didn't know..."

The story came out in bits and pieces, sobbed or shouted fragments that
could only be assembled into a coherent whole through laborious
backtracking and re-questioning of the broken young man. Many of the
details were unclear, and some might never be known; but as the horrible
spectacle played itself out, it seemed that it had happened something
like this...

[Text below is joint work of Brian and Mel.]

==========

He crept quietly out from the darkened party, circling around the inner
hall. Nola had come this way; where would she have gone? Anton's flat,
of course. But if she was there, Anton certainly wouldn't be playing so
calmly. Not with Nola in the state she was in. This wasn't a good time
for them to have the conversation they needed, but if it didn't happen
now...

The door to Anton's flat was open, as the ass Fitzroy had ordered, and
the piano notes were drifting through the door and into the dark. But
they didn't sound right. Something...a faint crackle among the notes.

A record player.

Philip had to stifle a bitter laugh. Served Fitzroy right. But if Anton
wasn't at the piano, where was he? More importantly, where was Nola?
Straightening his spine, he walked in to see.

The room in near darkness. The only lightwas a dim one near the recpord
player, and from a half-extinguished cigarette smouldering in an
ashtray. Nola was standing by the piano, leaning over it, and Philip
could imagine her long fingers caressing the keys ... the pianist ...

Then she turned sharply, and Philip realised that Barowenski wasn't
sitting at the piano - that they were, in fact, alone.

"Oh," she said, her tone dismissive. "It's you. I thought it was Anton."

"I'm sure you did," he said, finally letting loose the bitterness that
he had kept in check all evening. "Obviously, though, he has more
important things to do than spend time with you." Instantly, he
regretted his tone. Nola had always had that effect on him, making him
angry, then making him regret the anger, even without saying a word.

"You need someone who's willing, and able, to give you the time and
attention you deserve," he said softly. "Someone who appreciates you for
what you are." He gently rested his left hand on her shoulder, running
her famous hair lightly through his fingers. "Nola, don't give up what
we have. You have so much anger in you...let me help make it better."

"Make it better?" she said scornfully. "Don't you see, you fool, you
make it worse? What would I want with a coward, a crippled coward who
runs away from his comrades and his duty? Why should I take you, Philip,
when so many men are willing, brave men? Whole men?"

She looked down at his crippled hand and shuddered.

His first impulse was to strike her, ball up his fist and slam in into
her face; but some part of him sensed that, in some crazed way, that
would be what she wanted. Or was he too afraid?

He turned away, thrusting his hands into his uniform pockets. The
ever-curled fingers of his right hand, with what little sensation they
still had, felt something as they bumped into it. The landing gear
release; he remembered now.

That was what he had been reaching for, through the fire. He could have
opened the landing gear cleanly; a single tug on the handle, and let go,
and his hand would have been singed but unharmed. One simple tug, a
clean landing, a few days in bandages and back into the air. But the
squadron was going to start missions over France in a week, and the
thought of going across the Channel terrified him. Air combat didn't
scare him; he had flown, and flown well, in the skies above London. But
the idea of doing so over water, or over foreign soil, was somehow
terrifying to him. He had seen wounded men mustered out, and felt an
envy that he could barely admit to himself. And so, his hand on the
landing release, he had waited, gritting his teeth against the pain as
the flames licked at his jacket, then gnawed at his arm. Waited for the
burns to be bad enough. He had to be sure; he didn't dare undergo this
agony in vain. It had to be severe enough to end his career. So he
waited, until he knew that waiting any longer would leave him too badly
injured to release the gear at all.

His fingers had still been wrapped around the release handle when he was
pulled from the plane; they had had to sever the cable to get him out.
Someone had come to him in hospital and showed him the cable, talked
about it as a symbol of his bravery, asked if he still wanted it.
Philip, dazed by morphine and hating his own weakness, had looked away
and murmured something about a souvenir. He had found the handle, still
with a few feet of cable attached, tucked into his jacket pocket when he
left the hospital. He had left it there, not wanting to see it. And here
it was. His crippled fingers still wrapped around it easily, and why
should they not? It was the last thing they had ever held, would ever
hold. They would certainly never hold Nola again.

That was when it happened. Something in Philip's soul, which had held
him to the standards that men call civilized, snapped -- quietly and
decisively. He looked back at Nola -- drunk, bitter, hateful, beautiful
-- and she had already turned away, caressing the piano keys like she
had once caressed him. He brought his right hand out with the handle
gripped in it, took the end of the cable in his left, wrapped it
instictively around his left hand a few times. Without a word, he
dropped it over her beautiful, pale neck, then pulled. Before it reached
her windpipe, she said something -- a word? A name? He'd never know, and
didn't care. He pulled her back, away from the piano, away from anything
that could make a noise.

And as he strangled her -- her heels bashing at his shins, her nails
clawing at his hands, at her throat, clawing for air -- part of him
thought that this, too, was somehow what Nola wanted.

She fought - oh, how fiercely she fought that silent battle for life.
But her hairs fell forward over that face that was lovely no more as she
slowly grew still, and limp in his hands. And then there was no
movement, no more hoarse breath. She was resting against him, as she
should always have rested, gentle, biddable. A moment, an eternal
moment, when she was utterly his.

Then the record came to an end, and Philip was once again in the here
and now, with Anton's cigarette still smouldering in the ashtray and
Nola dead in his arms.

==========

<tag all>

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