Piranha to Scurfy

by Ruth Rendell

  “Pull yourself together,” Ribbon said aloud.

  Housework day. He started, as he always did, in Mummy’s room, dusting the picture rail and the central lamp with a bunch of pink and blue feathers attached to a rod, and the ornaments with a clean fluffy yellow duster. The numerous books he took out and dusted on alternate weeks, but this was not one of those. He vacuumed the carpet, opened the window wide, and replaced the pink silk nightdress with a pale blue one. He always washed Mummy’s nightdresses by hand once a fortnight. Next his own room and the study, then downstairs to the dining and front rooms. Marle’s publisher would have received his letter by the first post this morning and the department that looked after this kind of thing would, even at this moment probably, be readdressing the envelope and sending it on. Ribbon had no idea where the man lived. London? Devonshire? Most of those people seemed to live in the Cotswolds; its green hills and lush valleys must be chock-full of them. But perhaps Shropshire was more likely. He had written about Montpellier Hall as if he really knew such a house.

  Ribbon dusted the mahogany cabinet and passed on to Mummy’s little sewing table, but he couldn’t quite leave things there, and he returned to the cabinet, to stand, duster in hand, staring at that drawer. It was not transparent on this sunny morning and nothing could be seen glowing in its depths. He pulled it open suddenly and snatched up The Book. He looked at its double redness and at the pentagram. After his experiences of the past days he wouldn’t have been surprised if the bandaged face inside had changed its position, closed its mouth or moved its eyes. Well, he would have been surprised—he’d have been horrified, aghast. But the demon was the same as ever; The Book was just the same, an ordinary, rather tastelessly jacketed cheap thriller.

  “What on earth is the matter with me?” Ribbon said to The Book.

  He went out shopping for food. Sandra On-the-other-side appeared behind him in the queue at the checkout. “You’ve really upset Glenys,” she said. “You know me, I believe in plain speaking, and in all honesty I think you ought to apologize.”

  “When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it, Mrs. Wilson,” said Ribbon.

  Marle’s brother got on the bus and sat behind him. It wasn’t actually Marle’s brother; he only thought it was, just for a single frightening moment. It was amazing really what a lot of people there were about who looked like Kingston Marle, men and women too. He had never noticed it before, had never had an inkling of it until he came face to face with Marle in that bookshop. If only it were possible to go back. For the moving finger, having writ, not to move on but to retreat, retrace its strokes, white them out with correction fluid and begin writing again. He would have guessed why that silly woman, his cousin’s wife, was so anxious to get to Blackwell’s; her fondness for Marle’s works—distributed so tastelessly all over his bedroom—would have told him, and he would have cried off the Oxford trip, first warning her on no account to let Marle know her surname. Yet—and this was undeniable—Marle had Ribbon’s home address, since the address was on the letter. The moving finger would have to go back a week and erase “21 Grove Green Avenue, London E11 4ZH” from the top right-hand corner of his letter.Then, and only then, would he have been safe ...

  Sometimes a second post arrived on a weekday, but none came that day. Ribbon took his shopping bags into the kitchen, unpacked them, went into the front room to open the window—and saw Demogorgon lying on the coffee table. A violent trembling convulsed him. He sat down, closed his eyes. He knew he hadn’t taken it out of the drawer. Why on earth would he? He hated it. He wouldn’t touch it unless he had to. There was not much doubt now that it had a life of its own. Some kind of kinetic energy lived inside its covers, the same sort of thing that moved the small thin bush across the lawn at night. Kingston Marle put that energy into objects, he infused them with it, he was a sorcerer whose powers extended far beyond his writings and his fame. Surely that was the only explanation why a writer of such appallingly bad books, misspelled, the grammar nonexistent, facts awry, should enjoy such a phenomenal success, not only with an ignorant illiterate public but among the cognoscenti. He practiced sorcery or was himself one of the demons he wrote about, an evil spirit living inside that hideous lantern-jawed exterior.

  Ribbon reached out a slow wavering hand for The Book and found that, surely by chance, he had opened it at page 423. Shrinking while he did so, holding The Book almost too far away from his eyes to see the words, he read of Charles Ambrose’s wedding night, of his waking in the half-dark with Kayra sleeping beside him and seeing the curled-up shape of the demon in the corner of the room.... So Marle had called off his necromancer’s power, had he? He had restored the ending to what it originally was. Nothing about Mummy’s death and burial, nothing about the walking tree. Did that mean he had already received Ribbon’s apology? It might mean that. His publisher had hardly had time to send the letter on, but suppose Marle, for some reason—and the reason would be his current publicity tour—had been in his publisher’s office and the letter had been handed to him. It was the only explanation, it fitted the facts. Marle had read his letter, accepted his apology, and, perhaps with a smile of triumph, whistled back whatever dogs of the occult carried his messages.

  Ribbon held The Book in his hands. Everything might be over now, but he still didn’t want it in the house. Carefully, he wrapped it up in newspaper, slipped the resulting parcel into a plastic carrier, tied the handles together, and dropped it in the waste bin. “Let it get itself out of that,” he said aloud. “Just let it try.” Was he imagining that a fetid smell came from it, swathed in plastic though it was? He splashed disinfectant into the waste bin, opened the kitchen window.

  He sat down in the front room and opened Tales My Lover Told Me, but he couldn’t concentrate. The afternoon grew dark; there was going to be a storm. For a moment he stood at the window, watching the clouds gather, black and swollen.When he was a little boy Mummy had told him a storm was the clouds fighting. It was years since he had thought of that, and now, remembering, for perhaps the first time in his life he questioned Mummy’s judgment. Was it quite right so to mislead a child?

  The rain came, sheets of it blown by the huge gale that arose. Ribbon wondered if Marle, among his many accomplishments, could raise a wind, strike lightning from some diabolical tinderbox and, like Jove himself, beat the drum of thunder. Perhaps. He would believe anything of that man now. He went around the house closing all the windows. The one in the study he closed, then fastened the catches. From his own bedroom window he looked at the lawn, where the bushes stood as they had always stood, unmoved, immovable, lashed by rain, whipping and twisting in the wind. Downstairs, in the kitchen, the window was wide open, flapping back and forth, and the waste bin had fallen on its side. The parcel lay beside it, the plastic bag that covered it, the newspaper inside, torn as if a scaly paw had ripped it. Other rubbish—food scraps, a sardine can—were scattered across the floor.

  Ribbon stood transfixed. He could see the red-and-silver jacket of The Book gleaming, almost glowing, under its torn wrappings.What had come through the window? Was it possible the demon, unleashed by Marle, was now beyond his control? He asked the question aloud, he asked Mummy, though she was long gone. The sound of his own voice, shrill and horror-stricken, frightened him. Had whatever it was come in to retrieve the— he could hardly put it even into silent words—the chronicle of its exploits? Nonsense, nonsense. It was Mummy speaking, Mummy telling him to be strong, not to be a fool. He shook himself, gritted his teeth. He picked up the parcel, dropped it into a black rubbish bag, and took it into the garden, getting very wet in the process. In the wind the biggest bush of all reached out a needly arm and lashed him across the face.

  He left the black bag there. He locked all the doors, and even when the storm had subsided and the sky cleared he kept all the windows closed. Late that night, in his bedroom, he stared down at the lawn. The Book in its bag was where he had left it, but the small thin bush had moved, in a different directio
n this time, stepping to one side so that the two fat bushes, the one that had lashed him and its twin, stood close together and side by side like tall, heavily built men gazing up at his window. Ribbon had saved half a bottle of Mummy’s sleeping pills. For an emergency, for a rainy day. All the lights blazing, he went into Mummy’s room, found the bottle, and swallowed two pills. They took effect rapidly. Fully clothed, he fell onto his bed and into something more like a deep trance than sleep. It was the first time in his life he had ever taken a soporific.

  In the morning he looked through the yellow pages and found a firm of tree fellers, operating locally. Would they send someone to cut down all the shrubs in his garden? They would, but not before Monday. On Monday morning they would be with him by nine. In the broad daylight he asked himself again what had come through the kitchen window, come in and taken That Book out of the waste bin and, sane again, wondered if it might have been Glenys Next-door’s fox.The sun was shining, the grass gleaming wet after the rain. He fetched a spade from the shed and advanced upon the wide flower bed. Not the right-hand side, not there, avoid that at all costs. He selected a spot on the extreme left, close by the fence dividing his garden from that of Sandra On-the-other-side. While he dug he wondered if it was a commonplace with people, this burying of unwanted or hated or threatening objects in their back gardens. Maybe all the gardens in Leytonstone, in the London suburbs, in the United Kingdom, in the world, were full of such concealed things, hidden in the earth, waiting ...

  He laid Demogorgon inside. The wet earth went back over the top of it, covering it, and Ribbon stamped the surface down viciously. If whatever it was came back and dug The Book out, he thought he would die.

  Things were better now that Demogorgon was gone. He wrote to Clara Jenkins at her home address—for some unaccountable reason she was in Who’s Who—pointing out that in chapter 1 of Tales My Lover Told Me Humphry Nemo had blue eyes and in chapter 21 brown eyes; Thekla Pattison wore a wedding ring on page 20 but denied, on page 201, that she had ever possessed one; and on page 245 Justin Armstrong was taking part in an athletics contest, in spite of having broken his leg on page 223, a mere five days before. But Ribbon wrote with a new gentleness, as if she had caused him pain rather than rage.

  Nothing had come from Dillon’s. He wondered bitterly why he had troubled to congratulate them on their service if his accolade was to go unappreciated. And more to the point, nothing had come from Kingston Marle by Friday. He had the letter of apology—he must have, otherwise he wouldn’t have altered the ending of Demogorgon back to the original plotline. But that hardly meant he had recovered from all his anger. He might still have other revenges in store. And, moreover, he might intend never to answer Ribbon at all.

  The shrubs seemed to be back in their normal places. It would be a good idea to have a plan of the garden with the bushes all accurately positioned so that he could tell if they moved. He decided to make one. The evening was mild and sunny, though damp, and of course, at not long past midsummer, still broad daylight at eight. A deck chair was called for, a sheet of paper, and, better than a pen, a soft lead pencil. The deck chairs might be up in the loft or down here, he couldn’t remember, though he had been in the shed on Wednesday evening to find a spade. He looked through the window. In the far corner, curled up, was a small dark shape.

  Ribbon was too frightened to cry out. A pain seized him in the chest, ran up his left arm, held him in its grip before it slackened and released him.The black shape opened its eyes and looked at him, just as the demon in The Book looked at Charles Ambrose. Ribbon hunched his back and closed his eyes. When he opened them and looked again he saw Tinks Next-door get up, stretch, arch its back, and begin to walk in leisurely fashion toward the door. Ribbon flung it open.

  “Scat! Get out! Go home!” he screamed.

  Tinks fled. Had the wretched thing slunk in there when he’d opened the door to get the spade? Probably. He took out a deck chair and sat on it, but all heart had gone out of him for drawing a plan of the garden. In more ways than one, he thought, the pain receding and leaving only a dull ache. You could have mild heart attacks from which you recovered and were none the worse. Mummy said she had had several, some of them brought on—he sadly recalled—by his own defections from her standards. It could be hereditary. He must take things easy for the next few days, not worry, try to put stress behind him.

  Kingston Marle had signed all the books she sent him and returned them with a covering letter. Of course she had sent postage and packing as well and had put in a very polite little note, repeating how much she loved his work and what a great pleasure meeting him in Blackwell’s had been. But still she had hardly expected such a lovely long letter from him, nor one of quite that nature. Marle wrote how very different she was from the common run of fans, not only in intellect but in appearance too. He hoped she wouldn’t take it amiss when he told her he had been struck by her beauty and elegance among that dowdy crowd.

  It was a long time since any man had paid Susan such a compliment. She read and reread the letter, sighed a little, laughed, and showed it to Frank.

  “I don’t suppose he writes his own letters,” said Frank, put out. “Some secretary will do it for him.”

  “Well, hardly.”

  “If you say so. When are you seeing him again?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” said Susan.

  She covered each individual book Kingston Marle had signed for her with plastic wrap and put them all away in a glass-fronted bookcase, from which, to make room, she first removed Frank’s Complete Works of Shakespeare, Tennyson’s Poems, The Poems of Robert Browning, and Kobbe’s Complete Opera Book. Frank appeared not to notice. Admiring through the glass, indeed gloating over, her wonderful collection of Marle’s works with the secret inscriptions hidden from all eyes, Susan wondered if she should respond to the author. On the one hand a letter would keep her in the forefront of his mind, but on the other it would be in direct contravention of the playing-hard-to-get principle. Not that Susan had any intention of being “got,” of course not, but she was not averse to inspiring thoughts about her in Kingston Marle’s mind or even a measure of regret that he was unable to know her better.

  Several times in the next few days she surreptitiously took one of the books out and looked at the inscription. Each had something different in it. In Wickedness in High Places Marle had written, “To Susan, met on a fine morning in Oxford” and in The Necromancer’s Bride, “To Susan, with kindest of regards,” but on the title page of Evil Incarnate appeared the inscription Susan liked best: “She was a lady sweet and kind, ne’er a face so pleased my mind—Ever yours, Kingston Marle.”

  Perhaps he would write again, even if she didn’t reply. Perhaps he would be more likely to write if she didn’t reply.

  On Monday morning the post came early, just after eight, delivering only one item. The computer-generated address on the envelope made Ribbon think for one wild moment that it might be from Kingston Marle. But it was from Clara Jenkins, and it was an angry, indignant letter, though containing no threats. Didn’t he understand her novel was fiction? You couldn’t say things were true or false in fiction, for things were as the author, who was all-powerful, wanted them to be. In a magic-realism novel, such as Tales My Lover Told Me, only an ignorant fool would expect facts (and these included spelling, punctuation, and grammar) to be as they were in the dreary reality he inhabited. Ribbon took it into the kitchen, screwed it up, and dropped it in the waste bin.

  He was waiting for the tree fellers, who were due at nine. Half past nine went by; ten went by. At ten past the front doorbell rang. It was Glenys Next-door.

  “Tinks turned up,” she said. “I was so pleased to see him I gave him a whole can of red sockeye salmon.” She appeared to have forgiven Ribbon for his “attitude.” “Now don’t say what a wicked waste, I can see you were going to. I’ve got to go and see my mother—she’s fallen over, broken her arm, and bashed her face—so would you be an angel and let the was
hing-machine man in?”

  “I suppose so.” The woman had a mother! She must be getting on for seventy herself.

  “You’re a star. Here’s the key, and you can leave it on the hall table when he’s been. Just tell him it’s full of pillowcases and water and the door won’t open.”

  The tree fellers came at eleven-thirty.The older one, a joker, said, “I’m a funny feller and he’s a nice feller, right?”

  “Come this way,” Ribbon said frostily.

  “What d’you want them lovely leylandiis down for, then? Not to mention that lovely flowering currant?”

  “Them currants smell of cat’s pee, Damian,” said the young one. “Whether there’s been cats peeing on them or not.”

  “Is that right? The things he knows, guv. He’s wasted in this job, ought to be fiddling with computers.”

  Ribbon went indoors. The computer and printer were downstairs now, in the dining room. He wrote first to Natalya Dreadnought, author of Tick, pointing out in a mild way that “eponymous” applies to a character or object which gives a work its name, not to the name derived from the character. Therefore it was the large, blood-sucking mite of the order Acarina that was eponymous, not her title. The letter he wrote to Raymond Kobbo would correct just two mistakes in The Nomad’s Smile, but for both Ribbon needed to consult the Piranha to Scurfy volume. He was pretty sure the Libyan caravan center should be spelt “Sabha,” not “Sebha,” and he was even more certain that “qalam,” meaning a reed pen used in Arabic calligraphy, should start with a k. He went upstairs and lifted the heavy tome off the shelf. Finding that Kobbo had been right in both instances—“Sabha” and “Sebha” were optional spellings and “qalam” perfectly correct—unsettled him. Mummy would have known; Mummy would have set him right in her positive, no-nonsense way, before he had set foot on the bottom stair. He asked himself if he could live without her and could have sworn he heard her sharp voice say, “You should have thought of that before.”