“They have a section for this sort of thing?”
“They have such treasures there, and they don’t even know it,” Chuck snorted. He was in his element now. “Like those inscriptions on temple doorways. You know what a swastika is, right? Turning one way it raises things, turning the other way it dispels them. Keep things out, keep them in. It’s just a matter of the scientific application of the right symbols, no more spiritual than turning bath faucets on and off.”
He spoke with such fluency and conviction, so unlike the rambling Bohemian discourse I was getting used to, that it was rather charming. I wondered if Chuck would try to steal me away from Carl, and whether I would let him—for a while, anyway.
I also thought of turning on and off, of Daniel’s unstable creatures which could be destroyed by breaking the magic spell which sustained them. Chuck was indeed groping towards power.
There was an outburst of cawing above us. Dark birds were bickering noisily in the high, naked branches of an oak.
“I hear a murder,” I said.
“Wh-what?” Chuck said, then laughed. “Oh, I understand you. A murder of crows. They seem to be having a dispute.”
The crows rose up, black wings beating, before settling back down in a different configuration around a large nest-like object they were pecking at. At first I thought they must be devouring some fledglings—crows do that sort of thing, you know—but it was entirely the wrong season.
“I wonder if they’re eating mistletoe berries,” said Chuck. “It grows on the oak. The Druids used to harvest it for their ceremonies. Wouldn’t that be something powerful?”
“Is that why we kiss under the mistletoe?” I asked, leaning a fraction closer, but he moved away from me. I should have known. New Englanders were the Puritans who found England too impure for them. Chuck’s motive for walking with me was not romance.
I looked up again. It seemed to me that the crows were pecking something more substantial, but the thought that came into my mind was far too ghoulish to suggest. Chuck’s mention of the Druid sacrifices must have planted the idea.
“I like your friends,” said Chuck. “They’re unconventional, they talk of crazy things. I never met people like that before. You’re like a little secret cult.”
“What?”
“You’re all dedicated to art, which is just another form of human striving towards the ultimate, like religion. Take that jazz party. Jazz is traditional African voodoo music, to summon the gods. It like a religious ritual, isn’t it?”
I thought about The Waste Land, with its seemingly meaningless words, its cryptic passages, the deliberately misleading notes. Perhaps even that was a book of spells and prophecies, if you knew the secret.
“And that old house you live in,” he went on, getting warmer. “It has a history. That clock—and there were two witches here in the seventeenth century who were tried by fire—and I want to talk to you about the Whatleys—”
“How tedious,” I said. “Yes, another American tourist looking for quaint local colour, witches, and human sacrifices. I thought you were more original than that, Chuck.”
“Please don’t call me Chuck,” he said. “Call me Charles. Julian introduces me as Chuck because he knows I hate it.”
“My apologies, Charles.”
We walked on. I had an uncomfortable feeling. Could an unintentional ritual summon Daisy’s phantom to dance in my kitchen? What if somebody else thought we were dabbling in the dark arts? What if Estelle and her brutish driver decided I had overstepped the line? Would they kill somebody, throw a man out of a window if they thought he was involved?
“Miss Sophie,” said Chuck, “my researches are not frivolous. These are matters of the utmost gravity. Your assistance in certain matters could advance the cause of human knowledge in ways that you can barely—”
“No,” I said flatly. “Much as I enjoy your company, I won’t have anything to do with your researches and I will not have you poking into odd corners of my house, or sacrificing so much as a fly.”
Chuck stopped, took a step back, and bowed low.
“My sincerest apologies, Miss Sophie. I won’t trouble you any further with my most impertinent requests,” he said coolly. He did not take my arm again.
Conversation became rather strained, and I was relieved when we finally reached my street. Chuck bowed again, turned, and walked out of my life forever. I later learned that he had left for Europe to pursue his researches, wherever they led. Probably into conflict with Estelle, or someone like her. I did not want any part of it.
The conversation with Chuck was a warning, and I was determined not to get involved in any such business ever again. I was a deserter and I would sit this one out whatever happened. No more jazz parties, nothing that might hint at rituals.
III
When I got home Claudia handed me a glass of white wine and an envelope. She knows my moods well. There was no stamp; it had been delivered in person, and my heart skipped a beat as I recognised Daisy’s elegantly looping calligraphy. Inside was the briefest of notes inviting me to tea at Lyons Corner House in West Norwood next day.
“How’s your ghastly old Freudian?” Claudia asked languidly, sinking into an armchair.
“Actually he’s a tolerably nice Jung man,” I said. “But so awfully wearisome with all his questions.” I held up the note. “Did you see her?”
“She was pretty enough,” said Claudia, wrinkling her nose. “If you like the bourgeois, goody-two-shoes type. Couldn’t melt butter with a blowtorch. Fearfully unfashionable—”
“Daisy’s a good sort,” I assured her. “I suppose she didn’t say anything?”
“She asked after you,” said Claudia. “I think she thought I was the maid.”
She looked down at her ankle-length black dress and sighed.
“Daisy is alive then?” I said without thinking. Claudia looked vaguely at me.
“Oh yes,” she said. “She was alive. Sometimes I wish I were dead.” She sighed again, overcome with emotional exhaustion. I could tell that another of her grand amours had failed, falling flat as predictably as a schoolgirl attempt at a cordon bleu soufflé. Griddlebone jumped into her lap, and she rubbed his head distractedly.
“Claudia,” I said, “whatever happened?”
“It’s all over between me and Gregory.”
Claudia was, in her own way, a witch: she had Circe’s power of turning men into swine. I had not paid much attention to Gregory. He was a dour playwright and director who mumbled when I talked to him. Claudia said I was too intimidating on the subject of literature. I had not been aware that ‘it’ had ever been going on between Claudia and Gregory, but evidently he had finished with her the previous day.
“It’s Another Woman,” said Claudia. “He’ll have seen some girl on the street and promised her she could be Cleopatra or Joan of Arc …”
I envied Claudia her ability to fall in and out of love, and how she preferred to place dynamite under her relationships rather than leave an unsatisfactory one standing. She retold the story of love and loss yet again, and my mind turned away from Daisy.
I was in Lyons Corner House half an hour early. I did not know what to expect; I was not expecting anything. I took a table and was nervously scanning the room for the millionth time when she appeared right next to me, so close I almost jumped. Daisy, large as life and pretty as ever. A yellow-and-white dress does not suit many complexions, but on her it looked completely natural, set off with a tiny hat and matching bangles. She trailed the faintest hint of sandalwood.
“Hello, Daisy,” I said.
“Hiya, Sofia,” she said cheerfully, dropping her handbag and pulling up a chair. Her smile was genuine. I have no idea how the churning of emotions was distorting my own face. “Where have you been? I looked everywhere, but nobody knew. And I found you in that house. What are you doing there?”
“There was an inheritance,” I said.
The waitress appeared and we ordered tea and, at D
aisy’s insistence, a selection of fairy cakes.
“How are you? I’ve been so worried, you just disappeared.” She leaned forward, frowning. “People are saying awful things about you, but I think it’s only because you’re not there.”
“I thought you just disappeared,” I said. She laughed as though I had made a joke.
“No, I’m still here. But seriously, nobody has seen you for months. Your mother doesn’t answer my letters—I don’t suppose she forwarded anything to you?”
Mummy had never approved of any of our set. She would have liked Daisy if only she knew her.
“Daisy,” I said, “you did disappear, you vanished, Daniel said—” I stopped and Daisy waited patiently for me to go on. “He said you disappeared.”
Daisy shook her head slowly. “Poor Daniel, it was so tragic with that fire. I don’t think he was ever the same after that night at the church. They said you’d been looking after him, at the funeral…” She trailed off, seeing my expression.
I just stared at her. It was Daisy, it was definitely Daisy, and she looked exactly the same as before. In my widow’s black, with my widow’s face after months of crying and drinking, I must have looked completely different. I must have looked as mad as I was beginning to feel.
“I saw you at that jazz party the other week—” I started.
“Yes!” said Daisy. “And I saw you! But I couldn’t get to you because there was this boy, but someone told me you lived right there with all those arty people, and that’s how I found you!”
I opened The Waste Land and unfolded the newspaper story, showing her the picture. “Was he the one you were dancing with?”
She read slowly, moving her lips, and the tea and cakes arrived.
“Oh, that poor boy,” said Daisy. “I didn’t know his name …”
“Daisy,” I said, “it’s fantastic to see you again, but I’m really worried that something awful is going to happen. Is happening.”
Daisy put her hand on mine and squeezed. “It’s all right, Soph. I’m here and you’re here again. You don’t have to hide.”
It was all wrong, but there was nothing I could say. So we had our tea and cakes, which Daisy devoured with quick bites of her perfect little teeth, and she asked me about Carl and parties and what she called ‘the arty people’ I was with. We talked about the dreadful Dr Hamilton and everything I’d been doing. I learned that she had nobody special at the moment, but was obviously as popular as ever, mixing with what George had called the ‘Second Eleven’ of his social circle. They went on treasure hunts and sprees and weekends in the country, but the girls were very dull and she missed me terribly.
It all felt perfectly natural, and I realised how much I had missed her. At the end we kissed and agreed to meet again soon.
“Now I know where you are, you shan’t escape,” Daisy said. “I shall force you to come out and enjoy yourself.”
When she had gone I wondered if it was all a hallucination, if I had been sitting in the tea room talking to myself. But here was her empty tea-cup next to mine, and only one of them with lipstick-marks, and the scattering of cake crumbs by her place.
Events gathered speed over the next few days, so much so that when I tried to explain to Dr Hamilton, I had trouble assembling all the pieces into a coherent sequence. I pressed the latest strip of newspaper into his hand.
RAILWAY FATALITY.
Passenger Killed After Fall From Train.
Young Man Died Instantly After Carriage Door Swung open.
December 12.—A tragic accident occurred yesterday evening on the railway line between West Norwood Station and Sydenham Junction. The train was already well under way when a passenger, since identified as Julian Smith, is believed to have attempted to fasten a door which had been improperly closed …
Julian, our would-be writer and occasional homosexual, had made his last barbed comment, seduced his last unsuspecting victim. Dr Hamilton read on about how the door had flown open and Julian had been hurled out, how his appallingly mutilated remains had been found on the track a few minutes later. How a man sharing his compartment had been hysterical, raving about shadows, so much so that they had had to sedate him with chloroform. How the railway company had made a close inspection and declared that there was nothing wrong with the door latch. And how the other occupant of the compartment, a young lady, had been missed somewhere in the commotion and could not be traced.
“That’s her,” I said. “Daisy, she’s the mystery woman who was with him! And here, look at this.”
I produced another much-folded piece of newspaper, this one about how the aspiring theatre director and playwright Gregory Bathgate had hanged himself from a tree in Sydenham Wood. Nobody had explained why he had needed to climb to the top of an oak tree to do it.
“All dead!” I said. “People I knew! I even saw Gregory’s body hanging there and I didn’t recognise it at the time!”
There was another clipping and another, more Bohemian boys who had disappeared in recent weeks. They just dropped out and we never realised; one was found floating in South Norwood Lake in a state of decay, one was electrocuted by sticking a knife into a plug socket and burned all over.
The details were different, but certain elements kept recurring. Why had everybody else failed to see such an obvious pattern? How could the authorities have missed it when it was staring them in the face?
Dr Hamilton nodded, passing me back the fragments of newspaper. He had not given them as much attention as I expected. It was as though he had already seen them and knew all about it. Of course he knew about the Sorrows of Werther and the spate of suicides in Germany which it supposedly provoked among aesthetic young men. Perhaps he thought this sort of thing was to be expected among Bohemians. Or perhaps he thought I was making too much of it and imagining connections where they did not exist.
After all, Dr Hamilton could not be sure that I even knew any of these people, or if I was making it up. Even I was not so sure of my memory.
“I do understand how distressing this is to you,” he said. “I can tell how upset you are. I can only say again that I really do think that hypnosis would be of great use in your case.”
He had me in a corner and he knew it. You should trust your psychiatrist, but I had never entirely trusted Dr Hamilton. He would have said it was a sign of paranoia, but I always had the feeling that he was taking notes for a paper he was writing about me.
Perhaps I should have been a little less scathing about psychiatry in our early sessions. I should have been a little less forthright in my perfectly valid comparisons between his profession and that of witch-doctor. Of course in his profession he would record this type of hostility as mere transference. He would never take it personally.
But I was troubled by the type of questions he asked. He took too much interest in things which I did not wish to discuss, things which could be dangerous. I could not tell him why these things were dangerous, and that must have increased his impression that I was concealing some interesting neurosis. As our sessions went on I felt he was starting to see me as an interesting case, one that might be worthy of publication.
Well, I thought, if he wanted to hypnotise me so badly, as George would say, caveat emptor—let the buyer beware. I needed an ally, and Dr Hamilton was one of the few who might be able to understand.
Dr Hamilton did not swing a watch in front of my eyes on a long chain. Instead he just had me focus on a point on one of the ugly African masks while he droned on about my breathing slowing down, my eyelids getting heavy, and so on. My muscles relaxed one by one and it felt good. I let myself be covered by his words, as by a blanket of falling snow, deeper and deeper.
The masks on the wall receded to a great distance, and I could hear voices. One of them was mine.
“…like Persephone returning,” I was saying. “She was abducted by Hades, who appeared out of the ground and carried her off to the underworld, but Hermes rescued her and she was permitted to return to earth f
or a period each year.”
“And how do you feel about this?” Dr Hamilton prompted.
“I’m confused,” I said. “Human sacrifices don’t figure in classical mythology. Persephone’s cult was one of vegetation ceremonies…but there’s a rising and falling god, it says so in The Waste Land, who dies and returns …”
The masks on the wall had come closer again, as living faces. Their mouths were moving, but I could not hear what they were saying. It was chanting, like the sounds of the sea, but it was too far away.
“You feel that Julian Smith’s death was a kind of sacrifice,” he said. “In exchange for Daisy returning.”
“I had tea with her,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it, but it’s true. But I don’t understand, if Daniel brought her back when he died …”
“Was Daniel’s death also a sacrifice?” he asked.
“I—I don’t know. I don’t think he knew he was going to die, but he looked so happy, so peaceful, even when he was burning …”
“You actually saw Daniel burning?” Dr Hamilton asked. “You didn’t say before.”
“The flames blossomed, like orange flowers all coming out to bloom at the same time, and the light was dazzling, it was so bright. Illumination, he said.”
I could hear the chanting from the African faces more clearly now, and there were shadows moving all around them on the wall. And I could hear the scratching of Dr Hamilton’s pen as he took down notes.
“And were you there when Julian fell from the train also?” Dr Hamilton asked.
“No, no, the mystery woman wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Daisy; I told you that. As when that other man fell from his window in Westow Street, and the one hanging from the tree …”
More nib-scratchings from Dr Hamilton. The flitting shadows on the wall were annoying me; I couldn’t make out what they were, except that they looked like birds. Or bats; that was what they looked like. Big bat-wings, beating slowly not fluttering. Getting bigger.
The Dulwich Horror & Others Page 37
