Pepper Moriarty said tightly, 'I'll go find Norman. Don't hang up. Or do, if you can't afford it.'
'I can afford Valhalla, Mrs. Moriarty.'
'Then you can afford to stay on the line, can't you? And it's Ms.'
SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 10:28 P.M.
Norman was waiting for them when they arrived at Valhalla. He was slouched in the passenger seat of his Dodge Charger wearing a red check overshirt and a black T-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on it, and he was eating a hamburger stuffed with kumquats. 'Brown, orange, they're complementary colours.'
'You could have had cheese. That's orange,' said Effie, wrinkling up her nose.
'I don't know. It's all to do with karma too. You can't eat the flesh of a domestic animal along with the curdled milk of another domestic animal. You have to have something completely inanimate, and remote. Something that came from a long way away and can't answer back.'
'Well, that probably makes sense,' said Craig, slapping him on the back. 'I never heard of a kumquat that answered back. But come to that, I never heard of a hamburger that answered back.'
'I guess you never went to McDonalds.'
He carefully folded up his paper napkin and tucked it into his glovebox. Then he climbed out of the car and stretched and shook himself like a dog. 'The day I've had. Me and two other guys, we're restoring a Dutch barn over at Nelsonville, and we, like, replaced the pentice and we hung new doors, all in one afternoon. Seventeen-hundred seventy-five that barn was built, the year before Independence. They knew how to build a barn in those days. That barn's going to be standing in another two hundred years, I'll bet you.'
'How much?' asked Craig.
'How much what?'
'How much do you bet me?'
Norman frowned at him from out of his hair. 'What does it matter? Even if you win, you won't be around to collect it.'
'You want to bet on that, too?'
Norman opened the Charger's boot and took out a large bundled-up futon, tied with sisal string. 'Hope this is okay. It's all I could find. It used to belong to some old hippie but mom washed it since then.'
'Looks fine to me,' said Effie. She could smell herbs on it, and flowers. Obviously Pepper Moriarty had kept it in the storeroom at the Hungry Moon. Norman carried it up the steps for them, past the statue of the headless woman, to the front door.
The sky was dark blue and glossy as lapis lazuli, and it glittered from one horizon to the other with millions of stars. That was one of the things that Effie missed, living in the city. They gave the night such depth, and such a feeling of timelessness. She loved the idea that she was seeing the stars as they used to be, thousands of years ago. She loved the idea that somewhere far away in space, if they had telescopes that were powerful enough, people could look towards Earth and see her as she was when she was a little girl, skipping up the steps of the Red Oaks Inn, hand-in-hand with her father. They would still be able to see her hundreds of years in the future, when she was long dead and lying next to her parents in Cold Spring cemetery.
If someone in the furthest reaches of the galaxy can still see you, dancing and laughing, how can you ever die? 'What are you looking at?' Craig asked her.
'The stars. Look, the Dragon, Draco - and there's Ursa Minor, the Little Bear.'
He grasped her elbow and led her to the house. 'You always were a romantic, weren't you?'
But all that Effie could think about was that Valhalla's black bulk completely blotted out a whole section of the sky. She could feel its coldness and its vinegary dampness; and as Craig turned the key in the lock, she could feel its unwelcoming atmosphere, too. The wolfish bell-pull glared at her through the shadows, and she remembered what Norman had told them about it: that it would bite off your hand if you rang it when you weren't welcome. She could almost believe it.
Norman tossed back his hair and followed them into the gloomy hallway. 'My mom wasn't too pleased with what you said about psychic vibrations.'
'Oh, no?' said Craig, with a conspicuous lack of interest. 'She said that people who can't sense psychic vibrations are suffering from mental gangrene. Like, a piece of their consciousness has gone dead, and has started to rot, and gives off this very offensive odour.'
Craig turned and stared at him. Norman shuffled from one foot to the other, an odd little skip of embarrassment. 'Your mom said that?'
Norman looked uneasy. 'She has a way of saying what she thinks, like right out front.'
'Maybe she should keep her thoughts to herself.'
'Come on, man, she's my mom. She's entitled to have her opinions. Besides, she may be right.'
'And she's lent us a futon that was slept in by Wavy Gravy?'
Norman shrugged, and gave a slopy smile. 'I guess that's an opinion in itself.'
'Craig, for goodness' sake,' Effie interrupted. 'Where are we going to sleep? I didn't realise this place was going to look so creepy at night.'
Craig walked to the centre of the hallway and looked around. The starlight fell through the broken windows like chilled milk. He stood in the middle of the marble floor, tall and dark and unsmiling. Effie could sense that he was trying to pick up the feeling that Valhalla had given him before: the feeling that he belonged here, that the house wasn't just meant to be his, it was him.
'This place is going to be amazing,' said Craig, his voice echoing from everywhere. 'Can you imagine it?
'Chandeliers, polished marble floors, music.'
'Isolation,' put in Effie.
'What are you talking about, isolation? We'll have house parties every weekend!'
'Oh, yes? And how are we going to pay for them?'
'We'll have a few card games. Win a little here, win a little there. That should cover it.'
Effie couldn't believe what she was hearing. ' "We'll have a few card games"? Are you kidding me, or what? You're going to invite your friends up here for house parties, and then you're going to fleece them at poker?'
'People love to gamble. Especially people with lots of money. We'll be famous; we'll be rich; and we won't have to answer to anyone.'
'What the hell are you talking about? I can't even understand what you're talking about! Take me back to Pig Hill, I really don't like it here.'
He stepped towards her. The soles of his shoes squeaked on the fine grit that covered the marble floor. He laid his hands on her shoulders and stared directly into her eyes.
'Effie… for my sake, try to like it. This is where I belong. This is the house that I always wanted. This is the house that I always needed.'
'I just don't like it. Besides, it's unsafe. Look what happened to that poor surveyor.'
'Oh, Effie,' he said, and she could feel the warm breath on his face, and for some reason his closeness disturbed her. 'You're just feeling tired, that's all. We'll stay well clear of the library, and all of that side that has dry rot. We don't we go upstairs to the bedroom and make ourselves cosy.' He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of playing cards. 'See, look what I brought. We can even get some practice in.'
'I don't believe you sometimes,' said Effie. She didn't know whether to feel angry or exasperated or whether to laugh and admit defeat. But he stroked her forehead, touched her hair, and kissed her, and that made her feel good enough to look up at him and smile and say, with exaggerated reluctance, 'O-kayy. Maybe it could be fun.'
'Listen,' said Norman, 'if it makes you guys feel any better, like, I'll stay, too. I've always wanted to spend the night in a haunted house.'
Craig looked up. 'Norman... no matter what your mother says, Valhalla isn't haunted. Damp, I'll give you. Derelict, yes. But not haunted.'
'Whatever you say, supremo. But I'd still like to stay. It'll give me some time to look around, make you up some estimates. That roof is going to take some serious fixing.'
'I don't know,' said Craig. 'This was going to be a private party. Just Mrs. Bellman and me.'
'Hey… I won't get in your face. I'll have to do some measuring and some tapping and s
ome running up and down stairs, but that's the only way you'll know that I'm here. Mr. Discreet strikes again.'
Craig said to Effie, 'What do you think?'
'I don't think we have very much to fear from a kid in a Kurt Cobain T-shirt, do you?'
'I'm not sure. I'm not sure about anybody who worships the dead.'
Norman said, 'Come on… serious for a moment. Houses are different by night. During the day they show you all of their good side, do you know what I mean? By night they give up their secrets. All their creaks and groans and bad little memories. I always do a night inspection, when I'm planning to work on a house. You like catch the house unawares. It doesn't expect anybody to be looking at it, and you can be surprised at what you find… like a floor that didn't creak at all, during the day. Or a damp patch that you couldn't see by daylight.'
Effie gave Craig a direct kiss on his mouth. His lips were unexpectedly cold, as if he had been pressing them against a winter window. 'Norman can stay,' she told him.
'All right, then. Norman can stay. But careful where you walk, Norman, okay? I don't want you kebabbed, the way that surveyor was.'
'Do you mind not saying kebabbed?' asked Norman. His eyes were very large and swimmy behind his spectacles. 'Morton was a friend of ours. You know, my mom and me.'
Craig cleared his throat, said 'Sorry', although he didn't sound it.
They climbed the left-hand staircase. The risers creaked, and they could hear the pegs straining, but the stairs on the whole were very firm. Norman's flashlight played sword fights between their legs, and cast humped and jumping shadows on the walls.
'It's a good thing it's summer,' Norman remarked, shining his flashlight down to the hallway below them. 'This place would be freezing, else.'
'I think it's cold enough now,' said Effie. She could feel a terrible deadness in the house; a sense of memories that had gradually sunk to the floor, and gathered in crevices; and words that had turned into powdery ash. They reached the landing that overlooked the hallway, and Craig opened the double doors, which swung back silendy, to reveal a gloomy red-carpeted anteroom, with a single tilted-over chair in it. At one dme, there must have been sofas to sit on and mirrors on the walls. The screw holes for the mirrors were still visible. Norman flicked his light around, from floor to ceiling, and then diagonally across the walls, and said, 'This part of the house is pretty good. You're looking at decoraung costs here - paint, paper, carpeting, that's all. You could leave it till last.'
There were two doors on the opposite wall of the anteroom: a single door on the right which led to the corridor that ran the length of Valhalla's second storey, and a pair of solid oak double doors, stained and marked but still in near perfect condition. Effie approached them, and touched them with her fingertips. They were elaborately hand-carved with roses and briars and lilies; and the faces of scores of hooded women with their eyes closed, all with their eyes closed. Above the women's heads were curly carved clouds, like a Durer etching, and ravens flying.
'This is so strange,' she whispered. But she found it alluring, in a way. It had the same allegorical quality as the stained-glass window on the other side of the house: a riddle, but an explanation too, if only you knew what it was trying to explain. 'They're not dead, these women, because they're standing up… But why are their eyes closed?'
'And look at this,' said Craig, coming up behind her. 'There's a man with his back turned, just the same as the window… and a tower, with flags. And look at this writing, on the flags.'
Cut into each of the banners, in exact serif script, were the words Samvi, Sansavi, Semangelaf.
Norman peered closely at the doors, lifting his spectacles so that he could see them in more detail. 'They're really wild, these doors. You couldn't reproduce them today. Where would you get the craftsmen? I mean look at those faces, man, you could almost believe that they're living and breathing. You could almost believe that they're going to open their eyes, and scream at you.'
'Don't,' Effie admonished him. 'I'm edgy enough as it is. If I thought for one moment that they were really going to open their eyes-'
Craig rapped one of the women's faces on the bridge of the nose, hard, with his knuckle. 'Happy?' he asked Norman, half jocular and half aggressive. 'What did I say to you before? No more haunted house stuff.'
Effie was tempted to mention the sobbing that she had heard in the blue-carpeted bedroom. She even started to say, 'You may not think it's haunted, but-' But she thought she heard somebody catch their breath - a woman - and her tongue curled up in mid-sentence and she stopped herself. She looked around, both frightened and excited. Yet neither Craig nor Norman appeared to have heard anything, and they both carried on as if nothing had happened.
Craig took hold of her arm, and said, 'It's spooky, I'll give you that. But spooky isn't real. Spooky is all in the mind.'
'I'm pleased you're so confident,' said Norman.
Craig twisted both handles of the double doors, and opened them up. They stepped into the master bedroom, a huge room with floor-length windows overlooking the gardens (although they were inky black now, because it was night). Above their heads there was a domed ceiling with small clerestory windows pierced in it, and faded murals of flying angles with immense feathery wings and coral-snakes like venomous zigzag bangles, and diving cormorants and yellow macaws.
Norman flicked his flashlight from one side of the dome to the other, and Effie saw fruit trees and flowering vines, and a forest thick with pale cream lilies. A nude man stood with his back turned. A woman in a black nun's habit stood with her eyes closed.
'My mom thinks it's supposed to be the Garden of Eden,' Norman remarked.
Craig paced around, looking up at it. Time and grime had mottled the flesh colours and rotted the apples on the Tree of Knowledge. In fact, on closer inspection, it wasn't just time and grime that gave it such an air of decay. There were thistles growing up between the lilies, the waterways were clogged with weed, and many of the trees were infected with parasitic fungus. If this was the Garden of Eden, it was the Garden of Eden after the Fall.
'It wouldn't take much to clean this up.' Craig asked Norman, 'Do you happen to know who painted it?'
'It was a local artist, Ruden McCane. He used to paint covers for Collier's and Woman's Home Companion. He was pretty famous. But Jack Belias could have afforded anybody. He could have afforded, like, Norman Rockwell. Or Maxfield Parrish. Or even Magritte, I guess.'
'I like it,' said Craig, nodding with enthusiasm. 'I really like it.' Then, 'How about this picnic? I'm starved. You going to join us, Norman?'
'Sure thing.'
Craig tossed him the car keys, quite hard. 'In that case you can bring up the hamper, and the lamps, too.'
Norman held up the key ring with one finger, and Effie thought for a moment that he was going to refuse. But he gave Craig an exaggerated grin and said, ' "Please"?' and off he went.
When he came back they unrolled their futon in the centre of the floor, shook it to plump it up, and then positioned four pressure lamps, one at each corner. Craig spread out the large plaid blanket from the car, as well as a waterproof groundsheet, while Effie opened up the picnic hamper that Pig Hill Inn had prepared for them, complete with plates and glasses and silver cutlery and red-check napkins. The hamper was packed with cold roast chicken, stuffed tomato salad, fresh colonial bread dotted with fragments of pecans and candied peel. Craig opened a bottle of Lanson champagne which had been kept chilled in a plastic wrapper.
'This is the life, hunh?' said Norman, sitting cross-legged and throwing his hair back over his shoulders. 'You wait till you get this place, like, all fixed up. You won't know yourselves.' The pressure lamps cast his shadow huge and wavering on the wall behind him, like the shadow of a witch or a hooded nun.
'So you really think you can do something with this place, then.'
'Sure. I've got the feel, that's the great thing. Got to tell you, though, I'm not really an expert. I studied a year at art scho
ol, in New York, but I could never draw too good and I quit. I mean I drew better than Picasso, but who couldn't. So I studied architecture for three years. I thought I was going to be Frank Lloyd Wright the second, but I didn't have the brain. I couldn't get it together with all those stress factors and all that load-bearing stuff.' He rolled his eyes. 'All that calculatin'. And concrete left me cold. But I did have a real good feel for old buildings, and taking care of them, and respecting what the men who first built them had been trying to achieve. So I started helping some of the local builders, real craftsmen that were friends of my mom, guys with beards, like, who knew about gam-breled roofs and shingle-sheathing and rusticated brickwork.'
He took a glass of champagne. 'I guess I'm more of an entrepreneur, if you know what I mean. I'm good at, like, getting people together. But restoring this place, that's my dream. When we came here for picnics, my mom and me, I used to look at this house and think, you know, what was it like when it was new, and perfect, and there was shiny copper on the roof, and flags flying.'
Craig sat down beside him. His face looked oddly distorted in the upward light from the pressure lamp, large nose, puffy eyes. 'Let me tell you something, Norman… Valhalla's going to look like that again.'
'Oh, hey,' Norman interrupted. 'I forgot to tell you. I found a window guy. A glazier, in Kingston. He's an old guy who used to do churches and stuff like that. I showed him the blueprints, and he's sure he can restore your windows. He can still make window-glass by the crown method, that's where they spin it around into a big circular sheet, like, and then cut it up… but you always end up with what they call a bullion, you know, that knobby bit in the centre. But of course they didn't have bullions here at Valhalla… the place was too quality. In the old days,you could tell that somebody didn't have too much money because they used the bullions as well as the plain part.'
The House That Jack Built Page 13
