by Paul Magrs
I kiss her cheek gently, as if I don’t really want her to wake up at all. And I plod heavy-limbed out of her stark private room. Gladly I leave the hospital behind and walk back to town.
Jessie – the real Jessie – had gone for ever, hadn’t she? I am pretty sure of that. There was precious little left of the woman we had known. The erstwhile glamour puss and waitress, turned to bitterness and gall amongst the endless baubles and tinsel of the Christmas Hotel. That woman had gone, eaten away by the primitive womanzee possessing her. That’s what Cleavis believes, and I must believe, too. He sees monstrousness as a canker, as a demonic form of possession, from which there is no going back. Not quite how I see it, of course. I’m nine-tenths monster myself. It’s a very ordinary thing to be, in some ways. It’s all about how you comport yourself in public.
Oh, dear. I’m starting to think I should have done something. I should have realised Henry was about to shoot. I should have been quicker. My reflexes are second to none. I could have elbowed him aside. Ruined his shot. I know I could have. But then what? Have him hit some innocent face in the crowd?
And . . . I cling to the faint hope. Perhaps Jessie isn’t dead. Possessed as she is of inhuman strength and capabilities . . . maybe she even survived her bloody drop into the briny?
We will find out, I am sure. A shudder runs through me then, and somehow I know I’m right. The day is warming up and I’m too hot in my good wool coat, but for some reason I am shivering. And I have a very distinct impression that Jessie still lives. She is waiting somewhere, out there. She will return to us.
That’s just as well. A presentiment. Good news, at any rate, to tell Effie when she comes out of her coma. I can tell Robert, too, when I see him this evening, at Sheila Manchu’s barbecue. I trust my instincts. I have learned to believe in what they tell me, even if what they tell me seems impossible at times.
And that’s why I believe these flashbacks I’ve been getting, at Henry’s prompting. I know they’re true. I can feel it in my waters. Whole conversations are coming back, word for word. I can even smell the musty silk carpets in the Tyler household, such a nuisance to keep clean. That heavy old furniture from his mother’s house. Polishing it in his study while he was at his college. Me, in his study, the venerable professor’s sanctum sanctorum. Of course it never occurred to either of them I would have any interest in his papers.
He used to write on the backs of old examination papers. Very frugal, was Reg, and he was right to be, after the war. He wrote in this very scratchy script, like runes, or something. So I had to squint and peer sideways at what he had written.
And such strange things he had written. His novel, The True History of Planets, was immense and disorderly. It had hundreds of characters and situations. There was very little consistency, very few jokes. Sometimes I was hardly sure what I was reading, scanning those sheets, one eye anxiously on the door for Edith. The few bits I did manage to make sense of filled me with a queer sort of dread. Stuff about old gods and gateways, far-flung dimensions, star-spanning creatures that interfered with humankind. All that funny business, coming out of his head, I thought! Just imagine what he dreams about! That dome of a brilliant skull of his. It seemed eggshell thin. All his precious secrets within. I feared brash Edith would smash it, turning over in bed, as easily as she smashed the shell of her breakfast egg, spraying bits everywhere, leaving it for me to clean up.
I suppose I even had a little protective crush on Reg Tyler, too, and his wonderful, strange book, as I did on Henry Cleavis. I had a crush on all the Smudgelings. I loved what they did. I imagined being among their number. Having their privileges – of class, gender, intelligence, wherewithal, everything – and being able to join them in their weekly get-togethers. It seemed to me they were making a voyage of discovery across the vast stretches of the human soul. The limits of the possible and the made up. Does that sound silly? Nevertheless, it was a voyage I felt myself barred from. I was – and am – lowly and inhuman. I could merely serve the tea in china cups and the cake and the port. And I could listen for scraps of the erudite and the fabulous, and that would have to content me.
When I arrive for Sheila’s barbecue I don’t get a chance to have a word with Robert. He is smart in his black outfit, but he is curt with me. He marches about between the hotel and the beer garden and I feel desolate inside when he nods me a hello and doesn’t stop to talk. Things will never be the same again between us. He did everything he could to save his aunty, and I am one of those who betrayed her. That’s how he will see it.
I’m in a light frock with a cardy over my shoulders, in case it turns cool. I wish I hadn’t come out at all.
There’s a jovial feeling – a spirit of revelry and lightheartedness – here at the Miramar this evening that hardly fits my own mood. Every one of Sheila’s guests, and various well-wishers from town, have gathered to attend the opening of her beer garden. At first I think they’re all drunk, the way they’re carrying on. But I don’t think they are. Not yet. They are just happy to be here, in this arcadian place with all the bamboo trellising and the wickerwork furniture. I must admit, Sheila’s done a nice job. No expense spared. There’s a blazing fire, for decoration more than anything, because the actual barbecuing seems to be going on at a rather futuristic-looking machine in one corner. There, hanks of bloody meat and festoons of fresh sausages are waiting to be scorched.
Henry bustles up and draws me away, to sit with him at a small wicker table by the dog roses. As he pats my hands I tell him I feel as if I’ve lost Robert’s friendship for ever – because of him. He is sympathetic, but I can’t help feeling that he’s brushing the topic aside. As ever, Henry is dead set on what it is he wants to discuss. ‘How is your memory doing?’ he asks earnestly, leaning in.
I frown at him. He seems so ardent. ‘It’s all right,’ I grumble. Somewhere in the garden, music starts up. Some kind of wartime jazz, presumably for the oldies. I feel like telling him that my memories are no business of his. I feel a stab of rebellion then. But I know it’s no use. Of course it’s his business.
‘Do you remember how we went to London on the train together, hm?’ he asks. He’s still patting my hands, in a rather insinuating manner.
I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t remember that. Not at all. Together? London? Surely you aren’t suggesting . . .’
Henry Cleavis gives an almost ribald chuckle – which surprises me. ‘It was all in the line of duty, Brenda. Nothing suspect. Nothing untoward.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I say stiffly, as delicious cooking smells start to waft across the noisy beer garden. But am I glad? Wouldn’t I have adored it if Cleavis had whisked me away for a dirty weekend? I almost blush to imagine it. I’m finished with all the romance business these days, of course, but back then I think I would have gone off with Henry at the drop of a hat. If he had clicked his fingers I’d have run off with him, to London or anywhere.
Because, of course, I was very drawn to him, then. There was something about him that put me at my ease. The others – especially Tyler – treated me like a servant. They barely treated me like a person. I was an ungainly lummox bustling about. I couldn’t understand a word they said, and so they needn’t modify their speech or hold their tongues while I served them their nightcaps and their midnight snacks. And so I learned far more about the Smudgelings than I was meant to. They’d have been horrified to know how much I knew.
There is dancing starting in Sheila’s beer garden. I sit there swaying and aching, wishing more than anything that Henry would ask me up. There’s a knot of revellers, all silhouetted and glamorous against the trellis and the rose bushes. They jostle and make merry. What would Effie say? You don’t need a man to ask you up to dance. Don’t be ridiculous, woman! If you want to dance, get up there and dance! But my heart’s heavy tonight. I feel as though I’m wearing a corset of iron. Clodhopping boots of lead. I couldn’t dance if I tried.
‘I remember going to you . . . with my suspicions,’
I tell Henry quietly, sipping the cocktails that are brought to us.
‘Good.’ He nods.
‘The next time the Smudgelings convened at your college. A little after that night when Freer turned up so late. A few weeks later and it was even snowier, darker. A week before Christmas that year. And I called you out into the hallway. I had to tell you. What I thought was the truth.’
‘Which was . . . ?’ What a teacher Henry Cleavis sounds like just now. Drawing the answers out of me. So encouraging and sparkly.
‘Parts of Professor Tyler’s manuscript were missing. The old feller hadn’t even noticed, so set was he on the pieces he was writing. He was so closely focused, so myopic and trusting, he never looked behind him. And his sour-faced wife was betraying him. I had watched her. Giving sheaves of his precious manuscript away – to that wicked man, Freer. Her lover!’
Henry nods, very pleased with me. He sucks up green foaming cocktail through his ’tache. ‘You’ve done very well, Brenda. You’ve recalled quite a lot. Was it very disturbing, to have all of this past life come back to you?’
I shake my head quickly. ‘When you have as many memories as I have, you have to stash them away a little deeper. It takes longer, but it doesn’t always hurt to bring them out again.’ Now I’m lying, and I can see that Henry knows it.
‘Do you remember that I listened to you? I believed in you? I let you take me aside and tell me that one of our Smudgelings was an evil man? A villain?’
I smile. ‘Yes, I do remember that. I was staggered. I could tell you were a decent sort, but . . . I hardly expected to be believed so easily . . .’
‘I think I already knew that Freer was up to no good.’ Henry sighs. ‘And it was all my fault. It had been I – so naively trusting and silly – who had read William Freer’s peculiar, satanic novels and lapped them up like a schoolboy. Though Tyler and some of the others were against it – hating his writing, his ideas – I campaigned to have him join us. I thought the knowledge he seemed to have, of evil, of magic and the devil, would stand us in good stead. Would help us in our fight. The good fight. Um.’ Henry looks at me bleakly, and then he smiles. ‘Because, of course, you realised almost straight away that we weren’t just a writers’ circle, didn’t you? More than a gathering of friends and academics?’
‘I did.’
‘You knew what the Smudgelings were really up to, in their ongoing battle against the creatures of the night. We were godly and righteous crusaders against the darkness. And, of course, coming at it from a slightly different angle, you yourself were caught up in that struggle too, weren’t you? You still are, Brenda. And so am I.’
Henry’s voice has dropped to a seductive murmur, under all the hullaballoo of the barbecue. Which, I suddenly realise, is no mean feat. The barbecue around us is a rather boisterous affair. The guests have been whipped into a gluttonous and celebratory frenzy. They abandoned knives and forks a while ago, and the dancing is no longer confined to the dance floor. There’s something curious going on in this beer garden, but it’s as if Henry and I are no longer even part of this scene. We aren’t infected by the atmosphere because we are caught up in the past. We are plunging backwards and now we can focus on little else but the sound of our own voices.
‘And we worked together then?’ I ask. ‘We went to London?’
‘We chased Freer. We went after him. For Tyler’s manuscript. We wanted to know why it was so important to him that he had to purloin the only extant copy. We went to get it back. That very night.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can recall any of that,’ I say. Now I’m ravenous, as the cooking smells thicken on the dusky air. The sharp excitements of the night are getting to me, and stirring my juices up. There are too many distractions here in the beer garden of Sheila Manchu. I shake my head to clear it. ‘But it’s like there’s a great big wall in my mind at that point. I just don’t remember . . .’
Henry nods understandingly. ‘That is why I would like, um, permission. To try to get to the truth. By taking us both somewhere quieter and less frenetic, and hypnotising you.’
It turns out that I am an easy subject. Who would have thought it? I fondly imagined I would be all defences and strong fortifications. But, it turns out, as I sit there in my bobbly green armchair at home, later that night, it takes only a matter of minutes for me to go under. I am even aware of what I am saying as I say it, though it’s as though the words are speaking themselves.
It’s like watching myself on a screen, somehow. And it’s shocking, the detail that the past comes up in. Suddenly, I’m right back in 1946.
‘I am keeping a close eye on Edith Tyler. I know she is planning something special. I am on the alert, waiting for her to move. Once or twice her lover, Freer, comes by in the afternoon, while Professor Tyler is in college. Again she slips him individual chapters of Tyler’s novel. They are handwritten in that scratchy lettering and my heart boils with anger when I see Freer slipping away, into the snow, his lips hot with Edith’s kisses and the professor’s masterpiece under his cloak.
‘And then comes the night of the flight to London.
‘When it comes I am ready for the pursuit. Mrs Ford the cook is suspicious. I’m pulling on my old boots in the cellar kitchen and she’s squawking at me. She knows something is up. I shouldn’t be leaving tonight. I am needed here. But I won’t listen to her. I’m tailing Edith Tyler, who has packed a compact weekend case and is slipping about the house like a shadow; like someone preparing to leave for the very last time. Reg is out for the evening. It is Thursday. He is at yours, Henry. At your college rooms, drinking sherry and talking with the rest of the Smudgelings. He has no idea his wife is about to leave him.
‘I watch through a crack in the door. She’s in the professor’s study. She’s in the drawer where the rest of his manuscript is waiting. She hefts the last remaining chunk of one hundred pages. That’s the lot. Now she has taken everything and she looks pleased with herself as she puts it in her case, squashing down the top and snapping the clasps. What has Freer told her he will do with Tyler’s book? Have it published himself, and halve the cash with her? Or is it just a bargaining tool? Bring me your husband’s precious book and you can be mine, Edith? Either way, she’s nicked it.
‘And now she is out in the snowy streets of the suburbs. She’s struggling in the direction of town, slipping and sliding in unsuitable shoes. I know she’s meeting Freer and there’s only one place she can be heading to – the train station.
‘I am out of the house after her. All I know is that I won’t let her get away with this. My loyalty is with the professor and the Smudgelings. I make a swift detour into the very centre of town, knowing that I’m surer on my feet than Edith is, in all this snow. I lumber heavily but quickly to the college where I know you reside, Henry.
‘I only passed this way once before, when I first came to this ancient city. The pale, spectral buildings disturbed me. Their windows were dark and I felt that eyes were looking out at me, studying me. They were like castles, these colleges, and their inhabitants frowned at me and made me feel I had no place here. Tonight I can’t afford to feel disconcerted. I duck through the portcullising of the porter’s lodge. I try to keep to the shadows; ducking and flitting through courtyards and up smooth stone staircases and corridors. I follow the signs and dread the approach of anyone asking me what on earth I think I’m doing. How will I explain? I am Tyler’s servant. Concerned for the theft of his manuscript; the absconding of his faithless wife?
‘At last I find your set of rooms, Henry. I take a deep breath and bang, with both heavy fists, at your door. Panic is surging through me now, and I know I have to work hard to convince you of the urgency of my mission, otherwise Edith will get away. She must be aiming for the five to seven. The last train to London this evening. Freer lives in London. She is going to him.
‘All of this comes out in a rush. You’re clutching me by the shoulders in your shabby passageway. It smells of kippers and light ale
and the brown-spotted must of old books. You look at me as if I’m on my last legs. You try to calm me like you would a startled horse, whispering and petting. I sit on a rickety chair and you bring me a glass of treacly sherry. I hear you making excuses to the other Smudgelings. You don’t tell them I am here. You quietly close the door on your study, where the fire crackles and your friends gather and their low, murmuring voices are so reassuring, so safe. While, out here in the hallway, I am telling you an outlandish story to do with your best friend’s wayward wife.
‘You look shocked at first, pulling on your moustaches. “Freer left early this evening,” you say at last. “He read us one of his poems – rather shorter than usual – and left about thirty minutes ago. It was quite surprising.”
‘ “He’s gone to the station to meet her!” I burst out. “They’re running off together with the professor’s book. Tell him! Tell Tyler!”
‘But you are firm on this point. “Not yet,” you say. “Let’s sort this out as best we can, without upsetting the poor, betrayed professor.”
‘And next thing I know you’ve dragged out this colossal, rickety bike from under a heap of coats and papers. I’m scurrying down the courtyard after you and you’re ringing the bell. Commanding me to get on the seat while you pedal. Well. It’s a sturdy enough contraption, I suppose. They really knew how to make bikes in those days. But I think we’re lucky to survive that trip out of the college and through the frosty heart of town. I try to keep my legs up and just give in to the momentum, and I think you do yourself a mischief, pedalling like a demon. We’re going like the clappers through these narrow streets. You know all the quick routes and all the sly passages. We just about kill a number of unwary students as we bowl along.
