He was just at the junction, reflected in all the mirrors, so I could see he was fabulous from every angle, and at first I thought he was coming towards me, to the lifts. My knees felt weak at the thought of actually sharing the lift with him. But he was really going the other way. The four images of him I could see wheeled to the right – I think it was to the right – and walked off the mirrors. I was smitten enough by the sight of him to run back to that corner to get another look at him as he walked away – he had the sexiest walk – but he must have gone into one of the nearest rooms, because by the time I had tottered over there the cross-corridor was empty. All I saw were multiple versions of myself, looking small and lost.
Then the lift came and I sprinted back and got in it. Further mirror, showing Maree looking glum and frustrated. Still, I’m bound to see him again. And I ask myself what has become of my feelings for Robbie, that I could be so knocked sideways by a total stranger. But it was all right. As soon as I looked inside me, I was as raw as ever in the place where Robbie was torn away. Yet I still feel weak thinking of that fabulous man. I must be very odd.
I was coming back through the foyer with another load, watching the image of myself in the ceiling dangling bags and clutching my VDU to my tummy, when I was accosted by the Dutch Case. “Let Case take your case – this is what I am here for!” he cries, and whips my vet’s bag out of my straining fingers. “Where to?” And he set off for the lift anyway.
I went after him at a panting trot. Dad proudly gave me that bag – and it’s never been any real use, bless him! – and I didn’t trust Case with it one bit. When we got to the lift, he tried to wrestle the VDU out of my grip too, but I hung on to it and he only got the carrier bag with the flexes in.
“Let me take it all. I am an excellent beast of burden,” he said.
I said no, I could manage the rest, thank you. So we went up in the lift protesting at one another, and then he said was I a computer freak? And I said no, I just used it.
“But I am a great freak, in all sorts of ways,” he said. I believed him. “I can do tricks with viruses,” he says. “I once made every computer in Rotterdam display the same nonsense rhyme on the stroke of midday.” He recited the rhyme in Dutch. It took four floors.
“Very clever,” I said. We left the lift and started the trudge round the five right-angles.
“We will set up your computer and then you will eat with me,” he said.
“No thanks,” I said.
“But you must. I will make it a Dutch treat,” he said beguilingly. “Dutch joke.”
“No money,” I said.
“But I have no money either!” he exclaimed. “So let us have a Barmecide’s feast and drink warm water together!”
“I have work to do,” I lied.
When we got to my room, he tried to stay and set up the computer. I was quite determined he wouldn’t. I didn’t trust him not to fill my software with Dutch jokes. I didn’t trust him, period. I more or less kicked him out. He leant back in round the door and smiled meltingly. “Such a strong mind!” he said. “Call on me if you change it. I am room 301.”
“Go away,” I said.
After I set up the computer, I was hungry. I found the service stairs, just in case Case – oh God, another Dutch joke! It’s catching – was hanging about by the lift. I don’t know what it is about that boy (or perhaps I do) and anyway, I’ve been crossed in love and Case is a bit of a come-down after that fabulous Nordic type, so I went down the stairs and found the dining room. The prices posted on the board outside made my hair curl. So I went to the bar, hoping they did sandwiches. I was afraid I was going to have to starve until breakfast.
Mirrors again there, too, not only behind the bar, but the whole end wall, so the place looks huge. They did the most expensive ham rolls I have ever eaten. I bought half a pint of orange juice and found a place to sit.
That bar was crowded with strange conversations. Some Americans next to me were avidly discussing something called a “shared world” (I thought it was something we had no choice about sharing), and someone just behind me kept saying, “It’s no skin off his nose if I filk his filk!” A highly hairy man in front of me was complaining, “It’s his inker that lets him down every time!” Then I heard a girl screaming out, up by the mirror end, “Come to the Gophers’ Orgy! I’m just starting it now!” to which several people yelled, “Oh, shut up, Tallulah!”
I turned to see who was shouting and saw, of all people, that prat Venables!
I don’t mean he was shouting. He wasn’t. He was sitting on a tall bar stool, chatting to the blond glossy man. Because of the mirror up that end, I had him in front and back view, so there was no mistake. From behind, there was the long, smooth head, and in the mirror was his long, smooth face with the gold-rimmed specs – and the face was just turning away from me with much the same horror on it that I was feeling, seeing him. At least he wasn’t wearing a suit this time, but he had on a smart suede jacket and a pristine polo-neck sweater. Altogether he was out of place. I’d have bet large odds he’d ironed his jeans.
“Ouch!” I said, and jerked my eyes away. This was lucky, because it showed me in the mirror that Rick Corrie was standing doubtfully looking down at me. “Oh, hello,” I said to him.
“Hello. Is nobody looking after you?” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”
I said yes please, I’d like a vodka, if he would. He looked so dismayed that I realised he thought I was Nick’s age. A lot of people do. “I’m twenty,” I told him. “Honestly. Do you want to see my birth certificate?”
“I think I don’t want you to push your specs up your nose at me like that,” he said. “I can see it means trouble.”
Then he fetched himself massive amounts of beer and me a vodka, and we talked for a bit. He loves Uncle Ted’s demons too. I said my favourite was the blue three-legged one that kept pushing its face through bedroom walls to see what people did in bed. His favourite one was the one that was just a pool of saliva that took the skin off your ankles. And we both agreed that the demon that came up at you out of the loo was a bit too close to real fears for comfort. Then his beeper went. He left his beer and pelted away to deal with a crisis. I was sorry. But I could see that in ordinary life Rick Corrie would arrange to be called away by beepers too. He was one of those people who find it hard to talk to anyone for very long. I think a lot of the people here may be like that.
But it was a shame, because it left me to the mercy of an awful woman who was just the opposite. While I was talking to Rick, I noticed her drifting up to the Americans in the next seats, and that they all said, “Hi, Tansy-Ann” and then turned their backs on her. I can see why. And the moment Rick left, this Tansy-Ann creature pounced on me.
“Tell me all about it!” she said. “I’m Tansy-Ann and I’m a healer.” When I stared at her rather, she added, “Your aura is one big grey psychic cloud. Let me give you a back-rub. It’ll stop you being so sad and tense.” And she pushed me forward in my chair and started sort of kneading at my shoulders. I didn’t like it. Neither did I like her. She was the big grey psychic cloud, if you like. She was biggish and plumpish and her face somehow retired behind her large, probing nose. And she was dressed in something orange and shapeless covered with millions of little cold dangling pieces of yellow metal that jangled when she pounced, and I didn’t like that either. I wriggled away from her probing cold hands and said I didn’t feel like a back-rub just now.
“A hand-massage then!” she exclaimed, diving and jingling round in front of me. “I’m real good at massaging hands. It’s the most soothing experience in the world. You’ll love it!” And, blow me down, she grabbed my hands and started squeezing and bending them about.
I took them away and sat on them. I said I was all right. Thanks, Tansy-Ann.
“You need to sort out your sex life!” she cried. “You’re British. That’s what’s wrong with you. I know! Let me set you straight.” Then she leant over me and talked. And talked. After a
while I didn’t listen. Tantric sex came into it, and karma, and auras. But then, somehow, she seemed to be talking about widow spiders and the joys a rat felt running in a maze. I just sat there and decided that it wasn’t that her nose was that big. It was just that it sort of probed at you as she talked. It seemed to poke about greedily for something she could get off me. Maybe she was a vampire. Possibly she was cuckoo. But I still didn’t have to like her. I made several attempts to get up and go. She just pushed me back down again and went on talking. She had got on to Tarot at some stage. She said she would sort me out by doing a reading.
I was rescued by the sweetest lady. She was shortish and plumpish and darkish, with a rosy sort of innocent face, and she simply came up behind Tansy-Ann and murmured something to her.
Tansy-Ann leapt backwards from me, yelling out, “Is that so?” Then she was off like an orange juggernaut through the bar, hitting tables and spilling people’s drinks and yelling out, “Excuse me! I have to go see to my exhibit!”
The lady smiled at me and went away. She was wearing a long crimson robe thing and lots of necklaces, which ought to have looked as strange as Tansy-Ann’s orange, but it didn’t. There was all the difference in the world. The crimson robe looked natural, somehow, as if the lady deserved to wear it and usually did wear it. I wondered who she was.
(Later: I found out she’s called Zinka Fearon and everyone I asked says she’s marvellous.)
As soon as Tansy-Ann’s yells died away into the distance, I fled back here to my room and started writing this. Widow spiders! I thought to myself as I came up in the lift. Rats! Massage! How the hell does she think she knows rats enjoy mazes? And what has Tarot to do with any of it?
Nick banged at my door and came in a while back. It was after midnight by then. And we both said, “Where the hell have you been?” at the same instant, which made us both laugh. Then he said that I didn’t miss much, not eating with the guests – it was dead boring, and one of them was a man called Something White he’s always hated. He’d escaped before the end and looked for me, because Universe Three was showing The Princess Bride and he wanted to see it with me.
“But you’ve seen The Princess Bride three times already, to my certain knowledge!” I said.
“I still wanted to see it,” he said. “I went by myself in the end. But that wasn’t what I came to say. That prat with the silver car who gave you the money – he’s here.”
“I know!” I said feelingly. “I’ve been wondering if we summoned him up by doing the Witchy Dance. It just seems so unlikely – here, of all places.”
“Well,” Nick said, looking rather odd, “you could be right. I’ll tell you – I was just coming out of the lift just now, and I saw him standing up at the end of the corridor where the mirrors are—”
“About ten reflections of him. I know,” I said, thinking of the fabulous Nordic type.
“No,” Nick said. “No, that was one of the odd things. There was only him. No reflections at all. But then the walls and the mirrors started turning round him. Like a wheel. I mean, I saw the edges of the mirrors as they went round past him. Honestly.”
We stared at one another queasily. Nick doesn’t say things like that unless they’re true. And I could see he was not having me on. “Remind me never to do the Witchy Dance again,” I said.
“I think it’s this hotel,” Nick said. “It’s the weirdest place.”
“And full of weird folk,” I agreed.
That was over an hour ago at least. I kept plugging away at the keyboard because there is a disco going on downstairs. Another weird thing about this hotel is that you can’t hear a thing from any of the people chasing about in it, but you can hear the disco loud and clear through four floors. But I think it’s stopped now. I might get some sleep, with luck.
[1]
From the account of Rupert
Venables
Scarlatti played in my car all the way to Wantchester. I bore it. I even changed the tapes myself so that Andrew, sitting solidly beside me, should not notice there were three of us. Andrew was remarkably cheerful. He looked out at the wintry landscape and smiled as if it were high summer and blue sky, instead of bare fields under sulky grey rolls of snowcloud. He had just designed the perfect vacuum cleaner, he said. New principles. Should last through the twenty-first century. He asked me to drop him outside the Cathedral in Wantchester. This I did. He ducked out of the car briskly. And then ducked back in to look at me gravely.
“There’s a presence in this car,” he said. “Does it worry you?”
“No,” I said, somewhat thunderstruck. “It’s quite benign.”
“How about that!” Stan said as I drove on up the empty market street. “The man’s a psychic empathy!”
“I suppose he had to be, or he wouldn’t have got into the barn that evening,” I said, slowing down to swing into the hotel car park. “But it’s unlikely that I – What the—?”
A horribly battered car blocked the archway. At the moment when I swung in behind it, its driver hurled open his door and rushed, waving and gesticulating, upon a car stopped just beyond the entry. Against that car, two heads were bobbing, one high and dark, the other low and like a lion’s mane – that lion having been dragged backwards through a hedge recently, of course. I did not even need the sight of two hands, spiked like stilettos, coming into view with a memorable flick, flick, flick, to know what I was seeing here.
“I don’t believe this!” I said, and backed away in a howling half-circle.
“What’s going on? What’s up?” Stan wanted to know.
“Mallory,” I said through clenched teeth, as I went forward on the other lock. “At her tribal dances again in the car park. What’s she doing here? I put an exclusion round my working after Andrew walked in, I know I did! I put an exclusion on Mallory particularly!” On the other side of the road there was a much smaller archway, which I remembered from my first visit. This proves how useful it is to inspect a site before doing a working in it. The notice on the smaller archway said HOTEL STAFF ONLY. I drove through it like a bullet. Beyond, as I had hoped, was a smaller car park, only half full. “Let’s pretend I’m the chef,” I said, and roared over to the far corner.
“Steady, steady!” Stan said. He was treating me like a horse again. He said soothingly. “That writer fellow on your programme – he’s called Mallory. Must be some relation. Must have been fixed up months ago. It can’t be anything to do with the working.”
I put my chin on the steering wheel, the better to feel my teeth grind. “There’s no such thing as coincidence, Stan. And the fact remains that she ought not to be here!”
“Yes, but she is and you have to live with it,” he said. “Just keep out of her way. Better put up a Don’t Notice round this car if you’re going to leave it here. I don’t need the manager sniffling around me.”
I put a blanket of modesty round the car as I unloaded my bags. When I walked away from it, even I could have taken it for a dismal, ordinary, slightly battered car like Mallory’s, like all the other cars around it. I hurried in through the Staff door. I wanted to get hidden in my hotel room before Mallory finished her fandango. I could still hardly believe she was here. Perhaps, I thought, I had made a mistake, and it was somebody else dancing beyond that archway.
I got to the foyer. The placid, stately area I remembered from my last visit was bedlam. Beards. Embraces. Heaps of luggage. Everyone in T-shirts. A roar of greetings. The only other person wearing a suit besides me was also wearing a floor-length cloak. While I waited for the maddeningly slow Finnish receptionist to find my key, I saw, upside down in the ceiling mirrors, a row of robed and cowled figures processing through the crowd. People drew back from them and pulled luggage out of their way, but otherwise failed to look at them. I could see why. Even upside down and in reflection, they gave off a strong smell of – well – power that was unright.
Still, they were nothing to do with me. I took a look in the mirrors again as I finally got my ke
y. Mallory and her young relative were just coming in through the glass doors of the main entrance. It was definitely them. Damn, I thought, and sped up the stairs. Here I was again delayed, this time by a row of people dispensing membership badges. The girl on the V-section clutched a teddy bear to herself and wanted to know what I wished to be called on my badge. A perspiring pair of lusty youths behind her were wrestling with the machine that made the things. They looked up expectantly.
“My name’s Rupert—” I began.
“Rupert Bear,” said the girl with the teddy. “Love it!”
“He looks more like Rupert of the Rhine,” said one of the lusty operators. A female, I realised.
“But he’s too cuddly!” said the teddy carrier.
“Venturesome as well,” said the operator firmly.
“Rupert Bear has lots of adventures,” the teddy carrier argued, injured.
The argument went on for some time. I was so unused to being discussed like this that I stood for a while, dumbly turning my eyes from speaker to speaker, until a loud, low voice with a sob in it, that could only be Mallory’s, sounded behind me on the stairs. I pulled myself together.
“Wrong, both of you,” I said. “Have you never heard of Rupert the Mage?”
They had not – which was not surprising, since I had only just made him up. “Who is Rupert the Mage?” asked the teddy one as she wrote it on the unmade badge.
“The preux chevalier of magicians,” I invented. “The books were all written in the twenties, so you may not have come across them.”
“Oh. A sort of magical Bertie Wooster!” the operator panted. She and her companion leant mightily on the machine to force it to make my badge.
I thought of Stan. “With an invisible butler,” I said. “Thanks.”
As I received my badge, Mallory advanced on the table for hers. I fled to the lift, where I rode to the top floor with a beautifully dressed transvestite boy, trying to think just where in my working I had let Mallory in instead of excluding her. I remembered those bursts of rage I had kept having about her. Those, I suspected, were the crux. They had caused me to be too preoccupied with her. Now, it seemed, I had to face the fact that I had entangled Mallory’s fateline with my own, and Andrew’s, and those of my four candidates. What a mess!
Deep Secret Page 13
