‘Of course you may take photos,’ I said. ‘I took photographs sometimes for the Oth … for Dr Ketterley.’
But I was pleased that she had asked the question. It showed that she regarded the House as I did, as something deserving of respect. (Dr Ketterley never learnt this. He seemed incapable of it somehow.)
In the Tenth Southern Hall I made a detour to the Fourteenth South-Western Hall to show Raphael the People of the Alcove. There are (as I have explained before) ten of them and the skeleton of a monkey.
Raphael regarded them gravely. She gently rested her hand on one of the bones – the tibia of one of the males. It was a gesture conveying comfort and reassurance. Don’t be afraid. You are safe. I am here.
‘We don’t know who they are,’ she said. ‘Poor things.’
‘They are the People of the Alcove,’ I said.
‘Arne-Sayles probably murdered at least one of them. Perhaps he murdered all of them.’
These were solemn words. Before I could decide how I felt about them she turned to me and said with great intensity, ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.’
I was astonished, even a little alarmed. No one has ever been as kind to me as Raphael; no one has ever done more for me. That she should apologise seemed to me inappropriate. ‘No … No …’ I murmured and I put up my hands to fend off her words.
But she went on with a bleak, angry look on her face. ‘He’ll never be punished for what he did to you. Or for what he did to them. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing he can be charged with. Not without a lot of explanation that literally no one will want to believe.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I said that this is a perfect world. But it’s not. There are crimes here, just like everywhere else.’
A wave of sadness and helplessness washed over me. I wanted to say that the People of the Alcove had not been murdered by Arne-Sayles (though I have no evidence to support that assertion and the probability is that at least one of them was). Mostly I wanted Raphael to come away from them so that I could stop thinking of them the way she thought of them – as murdered – and go back to thinking of them the way I always had before – as good, and noble, and peaceful.
We continued on our way, stopping often to admire a particularly striking Statue. Our hearts grew lighter again and when we reached the Coral Halls, we refreshed ourselves with looking at their wonders.
Though the Coral Halls are dry now, it appears that at one time they were flooded with Sea Water for a long period. Coral has grown there, changing the Statues in strange and unexpected ways. One may see, for example, a Woman crowned with coral, her Hands transformed into stars or flowers. There are Figures horned with coral, or crucified on coral branches, or stuck through with coral arrows. There is a Lion enmeshed in a cage of coral and a Man holding a Little Box. The coral has grown so profusely over his Left Side that half of him appears to be engulfed in red-and rose-coloured flames, while the other half is not.
Late in the afternoon we returned to the First Vestibule. Just before we parted Raphael said, ‘I love the quiet here. No people!’ She said the last part as if it were the greatest advantage of all.
‘Don’t you like the people in your own Halls?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘I like them,’ she said, with no very great enthusiasm. ‘Mostly I like them. Some of them. I don’t always get them. They don’t always get me.’
After she had gone, I thought about what she had said. I cannot imagine not wanting to be with people. (Though it is true that Dr Ketterley was sometimes annoying.) I remembered how Raphael had wondered which of the People of the Alcove had been murdered and how the simple fact of her posing the question had made the whole World seem a darker, sadder Place.
Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not. Perhaps that is what Raphael means.
Strange emotions
entry for the thirtieth day of the ninth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
I once wrote in my Journal:
It is my belief that the World (or, if you will, the House, since the two are for all practical purposes identical) wishes an Inhabitant for Itself to be a witness to its Beauty and the recipient of its Mercies.
If I leave, then the House will have no Inhabitant and how will I bear the thought of it Empty?
Yet the simple fact is that if I remain in these Halls I will be alone. In one sense I suppose I will be no more alone than before. Raphael has promised to visit me, just as the Other visited me before. And Raphael really is my friend – whereas the Other’s feelings towards me were mixed, to say the least. Whenever the Other left me he went back to his own World, but I did not know that at the time; I thought that he was simply in another Part of the House. Believing that there was someone else here made me less lonely. Now, when Raphael returns to the Other World, I will know that I am alone.
And so for this reason I have decided to go with Raphael.
I have returned all of the Dead to their allotted places. Today I walked through the Halls as I have done a thousand times before. I visited all my most beloved Statues and as I gazed on each one, I thought: Perhaps this will be the last time I look on your Face. Goodbye! Goodbye!
I leave
entry for the first day of the tenth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls
This morning I fetched the small cardboard box with the word AQUARIUM and the picture of an octopus on it. It is the box that originally contained the shoes Dr Ketterley gave me. When Dr Ketterley told me to hide Myself from 16, I took the ornaments out of my hair and placed them in the box. But now, wanting to look my best when I enter the New World, I spent two or three hours putting them back in, all the pretty things that I have found or made: seashells, coral beads, pearls, tiny pebbles and interesting fishbones.
When Raphael arrived, she seemed rather astonished at my pleasant appearance.
I took my messenger bag with all my Journals and my favourite pens and we walked towards the two Minotaurs in the South-Eastern Corner. The shadows between them shimmered slightly. The shadows suggested the shape of a corridor or alleyway with dim walls and, at the end of it, lights, flashes of moving colour that my eye could not interpret.
I took one last look at the Eternal House. I shivered. Raphael took my hand. Then, together, we walked into the corridor.
PART 7
MATTHEW ROSE SORENSEN
Valentine Ketterley has disappeared
entry for 26 november 2018
Valentine Ketterley, psychologist and anthropologist, has disappeared. The police have made inquiries and discovered that before his disappearance he made some unusual purchases: a gun, an inflatable kayak and a life-jacket – purchases that his friends all agree were completely out of character: he had never shown any inclination to be waterborne before.
None of these items has been found in his house or office.
The police think that possibly he used the inflatable kayak to travel to a remote spot and then used the gun to kill himself; but there is one officer, a man called Jamie Askill, who has a different idea. He believes that the sudden and unexpected disappearance of Dr Ketterley must be linked in some way to the sudden and unexpected reappearance of Matthew Rose Sorensen. Askill’s theory is that Ketterley imprisoned Rose Sorensen somewhere, in the same way that Ketterley’s one-time supervisor and tutor, Laurence Arne-Sayles, imprisoned James Ritter years before. Ketterley’s motive, thinks Askill, was the same as Arne-Sayles’s: to manufacture evidence of Arne-Sayles’s Theory of Other Worlds. Ketterley became alarmed when the police uncovered the link between himself and Rose Sorensen. Faced with the exposure of his crimes, Ketterley let Rose Sorensen go and then killed himself.
Askill’s theory has the advantage of accounting for the reappearance of Matthew Rose Sorensen at the same time – give or take a day or two – that Ketterley d
isappeared, which is otherwise an odd coincidence. Where the theory falls down is that neither Arne-Sayles nor Ketterley ever used the disappearances as evidence of anything. In fact, for many years Ketterley had been loud in his denunciation of Arne-Sayles.
Undeterred, Askill has questioned me twice. He is a young man with a pleasant, good-natured face, little brown curls all over his head and an intelligent expression. He wears a dark blue suit and a grey shirt and speaks with a Yorkshire accent.
‘Did you know Valentine Ketterley?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I visited him in mid-November 2012.’
He looks pleased with this answer. ‘That’s just before you disappeared,’ he points out.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘And where were you?’ he asks. ‘While you were gone?’
‘I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.’
Askill pauses and frowns. ‘That’s not … You’re not …’ he begins. He thinks for a moment. ‘What I mean is that you’ve had problems. A breakdown of sorts. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Are you getting treatment for that?’
‘My family have arranged for me to see a psychotherapist. To which I have no objection. But I have refused medication and so far, no one has insisted.’
‘Well, I hope it helps,’ he says, kindly.
‘Thank you.’
‘What I’m trying to get at,’ he says, ‘is whether Dr Ketterley persuaded you to go anywhere. Whether he kept you anywhere against your will. Whether you were free to come and go.’
‘Yes. I was free. I came and went. I did not remain in one place. I walked for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kilometres.’
‘Oh … Oh, OK. And Dr Ketterley wasn’t with you when you walked?’
‘No.’
‘Was anyone with you?’
‘No, I was quite alone.’
‘Oh. Oh, well.’ Jamie Askill is slightly disappointed. I am disappointed too, in a way: disappointed that I have disappointed him. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I know you’ve already talked to DS Raphael.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s amazing, isn’t she? Raphael?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not surprised that she found you. I mean if anyone was going to find you, it was probably always going to be her.’ He pauses. ‘Of course, she can be a little … I mean she doesn’t really …’ He fishes in the air with his fingers to catch at the elusive words. ‘I mean she’s not necessarily the easiest person in the world to work with. And time management? Definitely not her thing. But honestly, we all think the world of her.’
‘It is right to think the world of Raphael,’ I tell him. ‘She is an extraordinary person.’
‘Exactly. Did anyone ever tell you about Pinny Wheeller?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Who or what is Pinny Wheeller?’
‘A guy in some city in the Midlands – where Raphael started out. He was an upset sort of person, a troubled person, the sort of person that ends up having a lot to do with us.’
‘That’s not good.’
‘No, it’s not. There was this one time something happened to set him off and he climbed up inside the cathedral tower. He got onto a sort of gallery and was shouting abuse at the people inside the cathedral. He had some bales of old, dirty newspaper that he used to take everywhere, and he started setting it on fire and throwing it down onto people.’
‘How terrible.’
‘I know. Frightening, isn’t it? When we – I mean the police – got there, it was evening – all dim and dark with flaming sheets of newspaper floating about and people dashing everywhere with fire extinguishers and buckets of sand. Raphael and another guy tried to get to Pinny Wheeller, but when they were in the stairwell – which was a really tight, confined space – Pinny threw a load more burning newspaper down and some of it wrapped itself around the other guy’s face. So he had to go back.’
‘But Raphael did not go back,’ I say, with great certainty.
‘No, she didn’t. Technically speaking she probably should have, but she didn’t. When she came out onto the gallery her hair was on fire. But, you know, she’s Raphael. I doubt she even noticed. The people down below had to shout at her to put the fire out. She sat down with Pinny Wheeller and she got him to stop throwing flaming newspaper everywhere and she got him to come down. Pretty brave, don’t you think?’
‘Braver than you think. She doesn’t like heights.’
‘She doesn’t?’
‘They make her uncomfortable.’
‘That wouldn’t stop her,’ he says.
‘No.’
‘Thank God, she didn’t have to do any of that with you. I mean she didn’t have to walk through fire or whatever. She just went to the seaside. That’s what I heard anyway – that she found you at the seaside.’
‘Yes. I was at the side of the sea.’
‘A lot of missing people turn up at seaside places,’ he muses. ‘It’s the sea, I suppose. It has a soothing effect.’
‘It certainly did on me,’ I say.
He smiles cheerfully at me. ‘Excellent,’ he says.
Matthew Rose Sorensen has reappeared
entry for 27 november 2018
Matthew Rose Sorensen’s mother and father and sisters and friends all ask me where I have been.
I tell them what I told Jamie Askill: that I was in a house with many rooms; that the sea sweeps through the house; and that sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.
Matthew Rose Sorensen’s mother and father and sisters and friends tell each other that this is a description of a mental breakdown seen from the inside; an explanation they find reasonable, perhaps even reassuring. They have Matthew Rose Sorensen back – or so they believe. A man with his face and voice and gestures moves about the world, and that is enough for them.
I no longer look like Piranesi. There are no coral beads or fishbones in my hair. My hair is clean and cut and styled. I am clean-shaven. I wear the clothes that were brought to me out of the storage in which Matthew Rose Sorensen’s sisters had placed them. Rose Sorensen had a great number of clothes, all meticulously cared for. He had more than a dozen suits (which I find surprising considering that his income was not large). This love of clothes was something he shared with Piranesi. Piranesi frequently wrote about Dr Ketterley’s clothes in his journal and lamented the contrast with his own ragged garments. This, I suppose, is where I differ from both of them – from Matthew Rose Sorensen and Piranesi; I find I do not care greatly about clothes.
Many other things were delivered to me out of storage, the most important being Matthew Rose Sorensen’s missing journals. They cover the period from June 2000 (when he was an undergraduate) until December 2011. As for the rest of his possessions, I am getting rid of most of them. Piranesi cannot bear to have so many possessions. I do not need this! is his constant refrain.
Piranesi is always with me, but of Rose Sorensen I have only hints and shadows. I piece him together out of the objects he has left behind, from what is said about him by other people and, of course, from his journals. Without the journals I would be all at sea.
I remember how this world works – more or less. I remember what Manchester is and what the police are and how to use a smartphone. I can pay for things with money – though I still find the process strange and artificial. Piranesi has a strong dislike of money. Piranesi wants to say: But I need the thing you have, so why don’t you just give it to me? And then when I have something you need, I will just give it to you. This would be a simpler system and much better!
But I, who am not Piranesi – or at least not only him – realise that this probably wouldn’t go down too well.
I have decided to write a book about Laurence Arne-Sayles. It is something that Matthew Rose Sorensen wanted to do and something that I want to do. After all, who knows Arne-Sayles’s work better than me?
; Raphael has shown me what Laurence Arne-Sayles taught her: how to find the path to the labyrinth and how to find the path out again. I can come and go as I please. Last week I took a train to Manchester. I took a bus to Miles Platting. I walked through a bleak autumn landscape to a flat in a tower block. The door was answered by a thin, ravaged-looking man who smelt strongly of cigarettes.
‘Are you James Ritter?’ I asked.
He agreed that he was.
‘I’ve come to take you back,’ I said.
I led him through the shadowy corridor and when the noble minotaurs of the first vestibule rose up around us, he started to cry, not for fear, but for happiness. He went immediately and sat under the great marble sweep of the staircase; the place where he used to sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the tides. When it was time to leave, he begged me to let him stay, but I refused.
‘You don’t know how to feed yourself,’ I told him. ‘You never learnt. You would die here unless I fed you – and I can’t take on that responsibility. But I’ll bring you back here whenever you want. And if ever I decide to come back for good, I promise I will bring you with me.’
The body of Valentine Ketterley, magician and scientist
entry for 28 november 2018
The body of Valentine Ketterley, magician and scientist, is washed by the tides. I have placed it in one of the lower halls accessed from the eighth vestibule and I have tethered it to the statue of a half-reclining man. The statue’s eyes are closed; he is possibly asleep; thick snakes and serpents entwine themselves heavily with his limbs.
The body is contained in a sack of plastic netting. The mesh of the netting is wide enough for fish to poke their mouths in, and birds their beaks; it is fine enough that none of the small bones will be lost.
I estimate that in six months’ time the bones will be white and clean. I will gather them up and take them to the empty niche in the third north-western hall. I will place Valentine Ketterley next to the biscuit-box man. In the middle I will place the long bones tied together with twine. On the right I will place the skull. On the left I will place a box containing all the small bones.
Piranesi Page 18
