Personal Demons

by Christopher Fowler

  Malcolm waited until the coast was clear and boarded a lift. The two floors on which the suites were housed were marked by a pair of unlabelled brass buttons. The first took him to a curving blue corridor with recessed doors, but here the numbers fell short of the one on Marisia's key, and a maid eyed him suspiciously as he examined the doors, so he continued up to the second. Alighting, he soon found himself facing the door of the Archduke's suite. With a pounding heart he inserted the key and twisted it in the lock. Surely there had to be something extraordinary within. Why else would the General and his staff have such a need for secrecy? The door swung silently wide, and he stepped into the room.

  General Sullivan sat in his office with his head in his hands, as a sense of infinite sadness settled upon him. He supposed it was inevitable that such a thing should happen, that the outside world would finally invade his kingdom. He had been taken in by Malcolm Bridger. A simple routine check on the biographer's background told him that five years ago Bridget had been dismissed from a notorious tabloid newspaper for breaching their code of ethics, such as the publication had. And now he was being allowed to snoop around the hotel, peeping and prying. The general had made his first foolish mistake, and it had to be put right immediately. With a heavy-hearted sigh, he summoned Mr Satardoo.

  Malcolm stared about him. Nothing was out of place here – quite the reverse, in fact. The Archduke's suite was luxurious beyond all imagining. The furnishings were more suited to a Moorish summer palace. Great teak-framed windows, swathed in fine gilt silk, ran from floor to ceiling, and the light from the sea threw brilliant undulations on to the arched sapphire walls. The rooms around him swayed blue and gold, gold and blue, like a tropical aquarium in the sky. Each room, it was said, had its own style, one like a winter palace in Samarkand, another like an Egyptian seraglio. Why would the management wish to hide such magnificence? Puzzled, he began a systematic search of the rooms.

  Mr Satardoo tipped himself on to the points of his shoes and looked about the sun-lounge. 'I understand our elusive gentleman biographer was briefly sighted here earlier. Have you been vouchsafed such an epiphany?' The head bellboy dreaded being asked anything by Mr Satardoo because he rarely understood a single sentence that issued from the under-manager's lips.

  'I'm sorry, sir?'

  'Mr Bridger. Have you seen him?'

  'Oh yes, sir. He was sitting with the Archduke's ladies, out by the bandstand.'

  Mr Satardoo flickered a smile of grim satisfaction and headed outside. His eagerness to please had caused a betrayal of the General's trust, and now it was up to him to win back his reputation.

  The lounge contained a dark-mirrored cocktail cabinet better stocked than the American Bar at the Savoy. Malcolm poured himself a small whisky, swilling it around the tumbler as he conducted his investigation. From the window he could see the distant bandstand and the silk dresses of the slumbering concubines. He failed to notice that the weather was changing out to sea, however, and that the yachts were reluctantly returning to their harbour. Allowing the malt liquid to spill around his tongue, he wandered from room to room, his journalist's eye searching for the slightest hint of something untoward.

  There was nothing unusual in the bathroom, if one ignored the fact that it was carved from lazurite the colour of a night sky. The bedrooms of the Archduke's courtesans were painted in delicate yellow-green shades of topaz, a gemstone that hung in heavy pendants from the lamps on their writing tables. The master bedroom was similarly opulent, if more alarming. The bed itself was carved in the shape of an enormous black swan, perhaps twelve feet long and as many wide, the mattress covered with a glittering onyx bedspread. It was more like a Stygian vessel than a couch of temporary repose. Frowning, he drew closer.

  It was while he was examining this particular item of furniture that he discovered the brass-lined holes, ten of them on either side of the base, and another six set in the headboard of the bed. They were evenly spaced along the wood, none of them more than half an inch across.

  What on earth, he wondered, could they be for? He touched them lightly with his forefinger and tried to reason; these rooms were only available to the few clients who met certain criteria demanded by the hotel. Nobody spoke of the situation, but everyone knew it to be true. Why did no-one probe deeper? If something wrong, something bad was going on, why wasn't it exposed?

  What was the Imperial Rex trying to hide?'

  Elise insists she saw him get out of the lift on the seventh floor, Mr Mack.'

  'I don't see how that's possible. He's not in possession of a key.'

  'She says she saw one in his hand, sir, not more than ten minutes ago. She didn't think nothing of it, until she saw him searching the door numbers. Was going to ask him what his game was, not being allowed on the floor and all, but he got back in the lift just as she went up to him.'

  As Mr Mack listened to the girl, his eyes widened.

  Malcolm Bridger racked his brains. What was it about the Archduke that set him aside from other men? Was his stately mantle of melancholia simply an attitude donned with his status? Or was there a deeper purpose that drove him here to the gilt mirrored halls of the world's most luxurious hotel?

  Pondering the question, he climbed up upon the great black swan and lay back on the bed, his hands resting lightly on the ebony coverlet. Gulls wheeled past the great curved windows, driven inland by the changing weather. The room grew darker with his thoughts. Lying here, Malcolm found that there was something conducive to introspection. The pulsation of lightwaves on the ceiling, the dull glitter of gold mosaics in the Gustav Klimt murals, the gentle harmonies of musical instruments as delicate as celestial windchimes, the mingled scents of fresh-cut grass and ozone, of a woman's perfume lingering on a warm pale neck…

  Women. No more women in my life, he thought, remembering the wife who had left him, the child she would not allow him to see. He asked himself why he had refused to let her into his heart, questioned the path that had finally brought him here. How, he asked himself, did I ever come to be so alone?

  And when he raised his head at the noise, he found them all looking at him, Mr Satardoo, Mr Mack, Mrs Opie and the General himself, their faces a mixture of pity, kindness and infinite patience.

  'I assume you understand now?' Mr Mack gently asked. Mrs Opie appeared by his side and wiped his eyes with a white linen handkerchief.

  'I… I'm not sure.'

  'These suites are only for those who are sure,' said Mr Mack as the others quietly left the room, pulling the doors shut behind them. 'They are reserved for guests who have definitely decided. Perhaps you have decided, and don't realise it yet. You are all alone in the world, aren't you? Try to tell me how you feel.'

  Malcolm tried to marshal his thoughts. 'I'm tired,' he said finally.

  'Then you have come to the right place,' smiled Mr Mack. 'Our lives begin in such high spirits, but once we see the world for what it is, it fatigues us. Disappointment is a tiring emotion, Malcolm. Where we had hoped for understanding, we find only cynicism, where there once was love is only selfishness. Our lives empty out with the passing years, until sometimes there is nothing left but our corporeal form. It is in this state that our special guests arrive, and here find final peace. Just as you shall.'

  He walked around to the side of the bed and pressed a switch recessed in the headboard. His voice was a monotone as soothing as a calm sea. 'It is important for you to relax, Malcolm, to find serenity at the end, just as the Archduke will when he is ready, just as hundreds of others have.'

  He's right, thought Malcolm, his eyes welling with tears. He felt the pinpricks brush his skin, and his body began to lose its tension. From the ten holes on either side of the bed, and the six in the headboard, the steel filaments had snaked out, piercing his clothes and entering the flesh of his neck, his arms, his torso, his legs, nipping into his veins, pumping fluid in, draining away his fears and doubts, filling his head with visions of tranquillity.

  'No more unhap
piness, Malcolm, no more uncertainty, and you have the General to thank. He wanted to provide a haven for those who wished to end their lives. He is shocked by the sordid, disordered way too many people reach their final moments. You come into this world in peace and warmth and love. Why is there no provision for leaving it in the same manner? Well, there is, Malcolm, but of course people aren't allowed to decide such things for themselves, and such a wonderful service is deemed not to be in society's best interests. Why not, Malcolm, answer me that? Where is the harm?'

  Malcolm was numb. His mind was alert, but all panic had ceased. He realised that from the moment he had lain on the bed, the very air above him had changed. Tiny jets had been triggered by the pressure of his body on the mattress. He remembered his childhood, running in the park with a blue paper kite, being lifted in the air by his father, endless summer days, storms over the downs, the deaths of his parents, the loss of his faith, his wife at the door with her son in her arms, the grey days that had replaced his hopes, and nothing mattered any more. Nothing.

  His memories faded into sleep, and the sleep deepened into death.

  Mr Mack studied the departed biographer with a sad sigh. He walked to the telephone and rang Mrs Opie. 'Tell the Archduke we're still cleaning his room,' he said, his voice filled with reverence for the departed. 'Have Mr Bridger's bill made up and lose it in the Archduke's dining expenses. And see what you can get for his luggage from the usual source.'

  'One hundred and fifty rooms, of which forty-seven are themed suites of unrivalled opulence' reads the new brochure for the Imperial Rex. 'So many guests have found peace with us.'

  MIDAS TOUCH

  (Author's Note: In the process of developing the character of Judy Merrigan for a new multiple-plot novel called 'Soho Black', I wrote her part out as a short story. If you're planning to read the novel, you may wish to delay reading this tale, although the two versions are substantially different.)

  Everyone knows about the Midas touch, right? Those M's are among the few pieces of mythology one still remembers; the Medusa, the Minotaur and Midas – the man with the golden touch. I should have been warned by his name.

  My name is Judy Merrigan, another M and no myth, just an ordinary Mrs. I was thirty-two when I moved from Arizona to England to be with my husband for the four inglorious years our marriage lasted. Michael and I met in Phoenix, where he taught classical history at the university. He took me out to dinner and asked if he could take me home. It turned out he meant all the way home. From Phoenix to Sussex, England, quite a culture shock. It was my first trip to Europe, only I didn't see any of the things you're supposed to see. Even Texas boys get to visit Paris when they graduate, but I found myself marooned in a silent English suburb with funny little front gardens and round red mailboxes and bay windows, looking after a man who needed a mother more than a wife.

  I had given up a successful career as a graphic artist to do this. There was no way I could keep my clients from my new overseas base, and I couldn't start afresh without contacts. Besides, Michael didn't like me working. We separated because he wanted more children, and I wasn't crazy about the ones he already had.

  I had no intention of returning to Phoenix and subjecting myself to my father's barbed remarks about the failure-rate of modern marriages; I decided to stay on in England so long as I could move to London. My divorce papers came through and suddenly I was on my own in a city I hardly knew. Most people would have been thrilled at the prospect of independence, but I was scared. Michael had spent four years bullying the confidence out of me. As I walked down an impossibly crowded Regent Street, I realised just how much I had distanced myself from the world outside.

  When my mother died she left me a little money, and as there wasn't much forthcoming from the divorce settlement, I used her bequest to fulfil a dream. I bought my own property. Not the kind of place Michael or my father would ever have approved of – that was part of the charm – a town apartment, cosmopolitan and chic and central to everything. The third floor of a renovated two-hundred-year-old building with polished hardwood floors and large airy rooms, in Great Titchfield Street, part of the area they call Fitzrovia (I loved those names), where the sidewalk cafes and corner pubs and late night stores steeped with trays of exotic vegetables make it the closest you can get in Central London to a New York neighbourhood.

  This was the first time I had a place I could truly call my own, and I spent every last penny fixing it up. I thought I could use part of the lounge as a studio and resume my interrupted career. Got myself a deal with an illustration agency, made a few contacts, but the industry had changed while I'd been away – computers had replaced illustration work with photo-composites. I didn't get downhearted. At the start of that hot, thundery summer I leaned out of my window watching the world pass below, convinced that somebody somewhere would still need watercolours, gouaches and pencil sketches, and that I could produce them from my penthouse eyrie.

  There were others in the building; a woman in the apartment below, and an old Greek couple in the first-floor flat with its ground-level grocery. There was one more apartment, opposite mine, separated by a small dark landing. The brass sign on the door read Midas Blake, but I never saw him. Maria, the Greek lady, told me he was strange. 'What kind of strange?' I asked her.

  'Very quiet,' she explained, 'keeps his door closed. Comes and goes late at night. Doesn't have a job, but always has money.' That didn't sound so bad. 'A nice man, though?' I asked.

  'Oh yes,' she said, smiling with her big white false teeth, 'very nice.' And then one night there he was, rattling his key at the lock as I arrived, looking over his shoulder at me. I didn't introduce myself. We just nodded to each other and turned our backs. He closed his door and I closed mine. I didn't see him again for an age. Never heard his latch click, or any sound from his apartment. For a big man he had to be very light on his feet.

  Then one hot Monday morning in June I had my bag snatched on the tube platform by this – child – no more than fourteen I swear, but strong and fast enough to break my shoulder strap and hightail it out of the station. The policeman I complained to at Tottenham Court Road took details indifferently, another statistic to be tallied. I cancelled my cards, bought a new wallet, then realised I was missing my spare keys. When I got home, Maria's husband Ari stopped me on the gloomy landing, where he was repairing a junction box. A tiny man, as soft and grey as a waterlogged potato, very gentle. Always giving advice, not all of it good. He told me I should change my locks just in case.

  'More expense,' I complained. I was up to my limit for the month, with still a week to go, so the lock stayed as it was.

  The good thing about London is you don't get brownouts. The bad thing is, I didn't know how to fix an English fuse. On the Thursday of that week I came home late to find the stairway in total darkness. I managed to grope my way up to the second floor, then heard someone on the landing above, and there was something about the sound that told me it wasn't right. I felt my heart beating faster and set my shopping bag down, listening. There was an angry shout, a scuffle of boots, the sound of someone being punched or slapped, and suddenly that someone was coming toward me at great speed, stamp stamp stamp, crashing past me and downwards, out of the door at the bottom of the stairwell.

  'Are you all right?' asked a deep male voice, cultured, out of breath, and I said yes, and in the flare of a match I found myself being introduced to Mr Midas Blake.

  He had long dirty-blonde hair to his shoulders, a stubbled chin scarred at the jawline, pale sensitive eyes. My God. Beautiful, but big and crazy-looking, at least a foot taller than me.

  'You sure you're all right?'

  'Yes,' I said again, puzzled now.

  'Your shopping got knocked over.'

  'Did it?' I couldn't see – too dark. How could he tell?

  'I'll fix the lights. I'll bring up your purchases.'

  And that was it. He showed me to my apartment and waited with another match while I dug around for my key
. As soon as I was through the door he pulled it shut behind me. A few moments later I saw the hall lights go on and found my shopping stacked neatly on my doormat. No sign of my neighbour. I nearly crossed the landing and rang his bell, but decided to let it go. In cities it's hard to figure out where privacy begins.

  The next morning, just after eight o'clock, there was a knock on my front door. Naturally I was looking as unattractive as I could possibly make myself, face cream, bendi-curlers and old sweatpants, and there he was, a big gold god, smelling of something fresh and citrus, standing awkwardly in faded shorts, a grey T-shirt and Nikes, unsure where to place his great hands.

  He explained that someone had tried to burgle my apartment last night, and pointed out scratchmarks on the front door. He'd seen the guy off before he could do any real damage. This morning he had reported the matter to the police.

  I offered my thanks, made coffee, told him more about myself than I intended. His size was daunting. The palest eyes stared out beneath a heavy brow, so that he appeared permanently angry. I explained about losing the keys, how the police would blame me for keeping my home address in my purse, how I couldn't afford to change the locks let alone install a proper security system.

  'You have to do something,' he said. 'These front doors are as thin as cardboard. You could put a fist through them.' When he asked me to come and see the security set-up in his own apartment, I accepted his offer.

  I found myself standing in a mirror image of my own rooms but the decor was radically different. The flat was filled with talismen and mystical paraphernalia, found-art, totems, prayer-wheels, trompe l'oeil wall paintings, mandalas and plants, greenery everywhere, thick green stems bursting from all the corners of the lounge, explosions of red petals, terracotta pots of every size. The kind of place a hippy would have if he was rich and had taste.