By the time they have climbed the concrete steps from the beach on to the promenade I can tell what it is about.
‘You ask him,’ says Sarson.
‘Why don’t you want to? He’s your friend. All right, we’ll both ask him together.’
‘No, you do it,’ he says. ‘It’s better coming from you.’
Suddenly Roxanne capitulates. ‘Okay, then.’ She looks at me and smiles warmly. ‘All right, love? Had a nice day?’ It is as if she is speaking to a child. She sees that something is wrong, approaches me, and hooks her arm into mine. She says: ‘Let’s go for a little walk together along the prom, prom, prom, shall we?’
‘It’s nearly the half,’ I say.
‘Oh, bother that! I can get changed in five minutes if I want to. Come along, love.’
We leave Sarson leaning over the promenade railings, staring at the sea. As we walk Roxanne explains to me what I already know about her and Giles Sarson. She then starts making a long explanation about something while my mind is elsewhere. Love and the wind have brought colour to her cheeks. Her brittle, birdlike quality has a vitality about it. I have never seen her look so beautiful, or so young. She is saying that Sarson and she need to ‘be together’, but this is impossible in her digs because of a landlady ‘with a face like a prune who watches me like a hawk’. On the other hand at the Metropole nobody minds anything, and, so long as she can avoid Rex (and Mort too, I suppose), she can spend time in private with Sarson. I do not ask why they need a bedroom to be private in because I know. And I know why I have to be absent from the room. She would like to come in the morning, because in the afternoon she will need to spend some time with Rex. I say nothing.
She says: ‘I know it’s difficult to understand——’
‘I do understand.’
‘No. I mean what you don’t understand is Giles needs me. So does Rex in a way. You don’t need anyone, Peter love.’
It takes me some time to think about this, but I decide that she is right. I say that of course she can use our room to be with Sarson, and I will vacate it for them. She throws her arms about me and kisses me on the cheek, as Judas did. Sarson is waiting for us, red-faced and scowling rather. When Roxanne tells him the result of our discussion he rather solemnly shakes hands with me. It is the first time I have seen him completely at a loss.
That night in my dreams I am treading on the clouds like one of the Sons of Light. Far below me I see the six who remain. Five are still far ahead, but one stumbles in the silver shallows.
VI
As arranged, I have got up early and had breakfast. I don’t know if Roxanne is with Sarson. It is a fine day, and I have been for a long walk by the sea. I have had a vague thought of trying to look for the coast and estuary that I see from the sky in my dreams. I have not yet been successful.
I come back to the Metropole at about ten, thinking that I might spend some quiet moments in the hotel ‘library.’ It is a rather old fashioned amenity for such a splendid modern hotel, but it is a favourite refuge for me. I can spend a happy hour or two looking at all the drawings in the bound volumes of Punch. I do not want to go upstairs to my room. It is a matter of pride: to intrude on a possible intimate moment between Sarson and Roxanne would make me feel like a child again. All the same, the inconvenience of it all annoys me.
But I do not get as far as the library. Rex is in the hall with his chauffeur, Mort, who has a bag of golf clubs over his shoulder.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he says, as if I were late for an appointment. ‘Where’s Giles?’
‘I don’t know. He’s out somewhere. He’s not here.’
‘Well, I’m just off to Sandwich for some golf and I want someone to caddy for me. I suppose you’ll do. We’ll just have to leave Sarson behind. And where’s Roxy? I phoned her digs but she’s gone out too. I thought everyone would like a trip out to Sandwich.’ He seems very petulant and out of sorts, just like Sarson is when other people won’t join in his fun.
He takes out a cigar and then starts patting the pockets of his blazer. ‘Damn. I’ve lost my lighter again. Have you seen my lighter, Mort?’ Mort shakes his head. ‘I want my bloody lighter.’
I say: ‘Do you mean the one you gave to Sarson?’
‘Sarson? You mean Giles, don’t you. For God’s sake stop talking like a bloody public schoolboy. No, not that one. That’s just a silly thing some fan gave me. No, I mean my Cartier one. I’ve lost the thing. It has my initials on it.’ It is the unhappiest I have ever seen him. ‘Well, I suppose any lighter will do. Go up to your room and borrow the one I leant to Giles.’
‘But he’s not there!’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, boy, can’t you do what you’re told for once!’ To my shame, tears begin to start in my eyes. I sit down. Rex says: ‘Oh, dear God! Stop snivelling. Mort, go up to the boys’ room and get my lighter.’
‘The door’s unlocked,’ I say. And it is so. I had taken the key with me when I left Sarson sleeping that morning. I do not know why. To this day, I swear I do not. While Mort is gone, Rex does not exactly apologise, but he talks to me about golf, a new obsession of his, and how, in return for caddying for him, he would teach me how to play.
Mort returns carrying the silver pistol in his hand. He presents it to Rex who lights his cigar.
‘Did you see my wretched nephew Giles up there?’
Mort shakes his head. He has his back to me so I cannot see his expression.
That evening I see Sarson only briefly at tea in the Hotel. He says little, but is subdued and nervous. At the theatre I see Roxanne, who is pale and hurried in her movements. I watch from the wings as she assists Mephisto in his magic act. When she gets into the cabinet which is about to be pierced with swords there is look of fear on her face. But why? She has done it before, and nothing untoward happens, of course. During the interval of the second house I am walking down a backstage corridor when Joey King comes up behind me and, without a word, steers me in to Billy Wilshire’s dressing room.
Billy points to a chair and I sit down. He is in the costume he wears for the show: a grey flannel shirt, shorts, knee-length woollen socks and sandals. His horizontally striped V-necked pullover is comically too short. The chestnut toupée is on, but the peaked school cap rests jauntily on the bald wig block. He is a demonic caricature of a schoolboy, like the ones you see in The Beano.
Joey says to me: ‘All right, son. What d’yer know, eh? What d’yer know?’
Before I can reply, Billy interprets. ‘We know something’s going on. There’s an atmosphere. We can tell. It’s Rex and Roxanne, isn’t it? They’re both very how’s-your-father tonight. What’s happened?’
‘Has she been putting it about? Has that Giles been up to his tricks? Has Miss Muff been at home to Mr Sausage? What’s the game? Eh? Eh?’
For the second time that day I burst into tears. This time I don’t know why, because inside I am excited. The hot tears as they pass down my cheeks set my skin tingling. I feel power rising in my veins.
‘Have a nice drop of port,’ says Billy.
‘Don’t give him that muck. He wants a shot of brandy.’
‘No. You don’t want to give a kid brandy. That’s expensive stuff.’
‘Come on! Give us your brandy, you mean little runt. I could do with a nip as well. It’s in that cupboard, I know.’
‘It’s locked. I’ve got the key. You’re not having that. It’s Remy Martin four star.’
‘Give it here, you tight-arsed little bugger.’
Joey, big and bloated, makes a grab for the silver chain that hangs from little Billy’s belt and goes into the pocket of his shorts. It is there that he keeps the key to his special private drink cupboard. They begin to wrestle and curse, the red-faced comedian and the wizened little schoolboy, and during that struggle I escape.
I wander in the fresh breeze of the Seabourne night, feeling the world spin round me as I try to catch up. I stand alone halfway between my childhood and the adult world with no
place for me, but I am not afraid. I am the watcher now.
When I go back to the stage door shortly before the final curtain comes down. Mort is standing in the shadows in cap and uniform. This is unusual, because Rex likes to walk back to the Metropole after the show, and it is a fine night. I do not wait to see what happens, but go round to the foyer to buy myself some chocolate.
Sarson is not in the room when I go to bed that night. When I dream, I am tearing down through the sky towards the estuary. The five are far ahead of me up the river but the sixth is running slowly. I can see the golden curls on her head. I am coming to take her up as Zeus stole Ganymede in the guise of an eagle. I will take her away into the blue vaults of the sky where we shall be alone forever.
As I fly down to meet her I can see the fingers of my hands becoming longer, and wiry black hairs sprouting from their backs. I am disgusted, and wonder how my mother will react to this deformity. But at the same time I know it will prove useful when I come to scoop up the naked girl child who is running and stumbling in the turbulent surf at the river’s mouth.
She scrambles onto a sand bank, but I am now hovering just above her. I am between the sun and her white back. She feels the cold shadow pass across her, and looks up. I see the fear and pain in her eyes and I open my arms to reassure her, but all she sees is a hanging shadow with long grasping fingers. I seize her. She is wet and cold and soft. She falls to the ground and I fall with her. Her back is convulsed with sobs, so I grasp her to me, but she shrinks into the sand. Her flesh turns soft and spongy until all that is left of her is the foam of the sea washing over the smooth tawny sand bank. She has gone, but still it seems the smooth, wet sand is convulsed by her sobs. I dig my hands further in, but now I am conscious of waking, and a voice saying ‘Get off!’ I wake to find my arms around Sarson, naked and shivering in my bed.
VII
‘What the hell were you playing at?’ says Sarson.
‘What d’you mean? I was asleep and you were in my bed.’
Sarson has no answer, so he gets up and puts on pyjamas and dressing-gown. He pretends nothing has happened, as I do, but he cannot hide his nerves. He starts pacing about in front of the window. The moving lights of a car throws his shadow around the room.
‘Mort came in and found us,’ he says after a while.
‘Yes.’
‘You know? How? Were you there when he— You knew! You bloody knew!’
He comes and stands over me. His face is in shadow. Only faint light from the street comes through the muslin curtains.
‘Rex wanted his lighter,’ I say.
‘Then why didn’t you come and get it yourself.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘What do you mean, you couldn’t? And another thing, why did you take away the key so we couldn’t lock the door. You planned all this, didn’t you?’
‘No, Sarson.’
‘“No, Sarson!” You little toad! You were jealous because I could do it with a girl and you couldn’t. You planned it all. You’ve spoilt everything. I never want to speak to you again. I never liked you. Now I hate you. I let you come on holiday because my ma felt sorry for yours, because she and you live in a ghastly little flat off Baker Street and can’t even afford a proper house. You’re pathetic. You’re nothing but a sneaking, pathetic little eunuch living in a slum with his ghastly mum. Go to hell!’
I am shocked but my mind is cold and hard. I am surprised he doesn’t attack me, so I ask him if he wants to fight me. He says: ‘I wouldn’t soil my fists with you, you dirty little weakling!’ I say I am perfectly ready to fight, and I get out of bed and square up to him. He retreats. He has seen me box at school and he must know that I am not much good at it, but he will also know that I am not afraid. Sarson never went in for boxing at all.
This gives me the opportunity to tell him it was all an accident, that I tried to stop Mort going up to get the lighter, but I couldn’t. I ask him what Mort did when he found them.
‘He didn’t do anything. He just took the lighter. It was on the chest of drawers.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Nothing. Just stared at us with those fish eyes of his.’
‘He probably won’t say anything to Rex.’
‘Want to bet?’ I didn’t.
The next morning we were up early for breakfast, and so was Rex. We look for signs that he knows about Roxanne, but he gives nothing away. He does seem unusually stern and sober though, quite like an ordinary adult. He drove us to Sandwich, where we accompanied him round eighteen holes in drizzling rain. When Sarson asked him where Mort was, Rex replied shortly that he had gone up to London.
Just before the first house at the Grand Pavilion there is turmoil. Dennis Smith (Mephisto, The Great Illusionist) is not normally someone who causes a stir among the company, but tonight he, and more particularly his wife Lily, are making a great fuss. Lily is one of those wives whose natural hostility to her own husband is only turned outwards when he is under attack. At this moment she is raging against everyone: the company, the management, the stage management. In the first place, one of his cabinets had gone missing, the one into which Roxanne entered in a sequinned leotard, disappeared, and, a few moments later, reappeared wearing a ball gown that appeared to have been made out of the Union Jack.
Roxanne, too, has disappeared, though this does not worry Mephisto so much, because another of Dave Dixon’s dancers has been trained as his assistant. Joey King tries to make a joke out of it all, but fails. Lily’s scorn burns him. Then she comes up to Sarson and me. ‘You two. Do you know anything about this?’ It is less a question than an accusation. We say we know nothing but my heart is banging and my ears are burning just like a guilty man.
I have seen her, you see, in my dreams or my mind’s eye, and she lies on the sands in Seabourne bay with the sea washing over her, playing wearily with the little folds of her dress. Her blue eyes are still open but they have stopped looking, and they are veiled in a tissue of wet golden hair. She is gone, but I force the tears back from my own eyes in case they become suspicious. I know Billy and Joey will be looking to corner me again and ask questions, so I slip away and watch the show from one of the boxes. There is one box in the theatre which is hardly ever used, but I use it. From it I can look down in secret. Rex’s rendition of ‘I’ll Send My Love’ is very emotional tonight. There is a catch in his voice when he sings:
Wherever you may be
On land or sea
I’ll send my Love
And if I die, my love
Then from above,
I’ll send my love,
I’ll send my Love!
Is he trying to impress me with the sincerity of his grief? If not me, who else? Himself?
Nobody has seen Roxanne. She was not at her digs, and there were no signs that she had packed her bags and left. Rex wants to phone the police. Sarson looks pale and pained, but this is only for my benefit. Everybody is acting. In the interval of the second house I meet Joey King smoking a cigarette outside the stage door. He says: ‘What d’you know, eh, boy? Eh? Eh? What d’you know?’ I say nothing.
When the show is over Sarson, Rex, and I eat fish and chips and wander along the front, but we don’t say much. Rex is constantly looking around him, searching I have no doubt for a blonde, birdlike creature in a blue raincoat. Sarson is glum. I know he can’t wait to get back to our room where he can talk. When we do, he talks endlessly about Roxanne until I pretend to fall asleep. He does a bit of sobbing for my benefit, then falls asleep himself.
I am wide awake when she comes. This time it is not a dream but something different. Sarson in the other bed is locked in sleep, but my senses are sharp. The distant sound of the sea cuts my ear like a knife. The yellow glare of street lights through the muslin curtains hurts my eyes. It is a hot night, and we have opened the French windows which give out onto a tiny balcony overlooking the sea. The first thing I notice is a slight swaying of the muslin curtains, and then she is in the room
standing opposite me at the end of my bed, naked. In the dim light she looks as if she has been made of silver. I can see that she is wet all over.
Her eyes are open, but they are dead fish and say nothing. Am I afraid? Fear is only fear if there is uncertainty, and I feel bound to what is about to happen. She puts one knee on the bed and I can feel her weight. The bed creaks under her. It is as if she is made of stone. She begins to crawl towards me from the end of the bed. The wet and the cold and the weight of her penetrates the thin sheet and blanket. Then with a fierce movement she has thrown them aside.
She is on me now. Her body is cold but lithe, and as slick and wet as a seal’s. She is tearing at what I have on to get at my nakedness. Cold, wet weight and restless movement is all I feel now, and her icy lips touching every part of me. She does not speak; I say nothing. No words need to be said. She is the cold wet girl of all my dreams whose passion is the passion of violence. We understand one another, and when she leaves my damp bed I am a boy no longer, but a man. It has been a marriage and a funeral all in one. I can look Sarson in the eye now and face him down into the grave.
I wonder what happens to him and the five others that remain from my dreams. Do they lie wet and dying on some shore? No, don’t tell me. That happened later in the time I will never remember again. The seven are all sleepers now, and like the seven sleepers of legend they will wake for me at the final reckoning.
They found the body of Roxanne on the sands just before noon on the following morning. They won’t say, but I think she has been strangled. She was not naked; she had on her blue raincoat. Naturally they question everyone, particularly Rex, but Sarson too, and me. I am not able to help them very much, but I do mention Mort the chauffeur, and how I had seen him waiting outside the theatre. They seem interested in Mort, or Mortimer Nodder as they call him, so I tell them about him talking to Roxanne that time. I am glad to have helped. I think they suspect Mort.
MASQUES OF SATAN Page 30
