by Tanith Lee
“That is so kind, Roy. I don’t want to upset Jan, you see. I mean this thing is just a passing – fancy. She’s too young for me, this chick off the plane from Spain.”
Chick.
Was Harris becoming his father? Is that how we fill the niches where the dead once dwelled, not like the ancients with their sacred bones or carved semblances, but by transforming ourselves into their image?
He downed his drink then.
“Well, it’s been good to see you. You look really good, Roy. I like the punk style. You ought to get some new publicity shots. I know a really splendid guy. I’ll send you his name and email. I can just imagine some tasty ladies in their forties really liking the look of you.”
Forty-five-year-olds, no doubt, the poor collapsed old cows.
I smiled.
We went out to his car.
“Why are the curtains drawn in there?” he asked me. “I meant to say before.”
He had indicated the front room.
“Some decorators painting it. It’s a mess at the moment. Stinks of paint too.”
“I know what you mean. Veronica – ah, pardon me, Vero – was having the villa painted. I’ve seldom seen a white so green. You know, I long for the good old days when you could hire a witch to cast a juicy curse.”
I smiled.
We shook hands.
“And you’re OK,” he said, “about that little thing with tonight?”
“Yes, Harris.”
He got into the Morris, careless of the whisky. He waved, and drove off down the road.
The only reason he had come to see me, evidently, was to establish his alibi. But whether I upheld it was really down to me. Doubtless I would. He was still partly my agent, after all.
XVIII
(‘Untitled’: Page 319)
CANDLELIGHT had revealed the face of Reiner.
He had survived the river. He was alive.
Having been dragged, about midday, into the Chamber of Revelation, Vilmos stood on legs that did not belong to him, made of strong stone like the supports of the Flavel Bridge. Planted in life’s rushing black water, they never shook.
Vilmos’s upper body too seemed to have its own physical if quiescent strength. He stood straight, his head held up, his arms and hands motionless at his sides. It was not either that he had been frozen and was too cold to move. It was that his body itself had decided it would not want to.
There was feeling in every limb, and in his torso and head, but though striped by severe flagellation and bruised by blows, pain was not all-consuming. He had no headache, had not had it, he thought, for more than twenty days – which was unusual. Awareness only was paramount. His mind worked intelligently and quickly.
Sometimes he did turn his head a little, for his head permitted him to do this. His eyes allowed him to move them freely. He had noted, his heart-beat was uncongested if rather slow, his breathing regular and deep.
Thus, seeing Reiner who might have been dead, slipping here and there through the crowd of men in the Chamber, Vilmos knew at once that Reiner had simply swum to shore.
Such an idea amused Vilmos. He felt for Reiner unfettered contempt. To survive now seemed, in some innate, inchoate sense, more slavish and conventionally drab than to have given in and drowned.
The import of the revelation did not strike Vilmos for a while, during which he continued to peruse the robed gathering of the Order of the Indian Mystery, as he stood upright in the centre of the room within a great new circle representing the Wheel. It had been made about him, its execution beginning in the late afternoon and proceeding through several hours. Those who had seen to this task had frequently grown exhausted. Some swooned and had to be replaced. Vilmos on his stony supportive limbs, his spine a reliable column, remained tall among them, watching the ones to the front and a little to either side, listening to those who worked behind him, since his head did not intend to let him to look over his shoulders, just as all the rest of him did not countenance the act of his fully turning round.
They had drawn the Wheel on the floor with the spilled blood of creatures brought in cages, from salt and liquefied silver, from ordure, which had been dried to powder and did not stink, or not greatly, and from the contents of vessels of milk. This last, according to what was said, was of three types. Firstly that of a virgin cow inspired to produce it by giving her a calf to foster, secondly of a whore who was feeding, or had been, her own baby, thirdly of a pure mother whose spouse belonged to the Order. There were other things also; chips of bone and splinters of wood, which Vilmos assumed had been hacked from reliquaries. Dusts ground from precious stones had been added in miserly quantities. But too there were other commodities. Some – many – Vilmos did not recognise. His mouth, tongue and throat did not wish to be used, and so he could not inquire.
The Master oversaw the entire labour. He chid the artisans, once or twice struck them with his staff. Those that fainted he chose to inspect. In some he found virtue. Others not. One he spat on, saying the fool smelled of drink and had perhaps upset the ritual. But in the end it seemed not; the old man was satisfied.
He had rarely glanced at Vilmos. He must know how Vilmos was, and that he had been primed to his present condition and use.
Vilmos did not even feel any anger at the Master, let alone entertain thoughts of revenge. Revenge, of course, could not enter into the equation. When all this was – done, Vilmos would be no more. As some other foreign poet had once described it, Vilmos was to be their torch, and like a torch they would not light him for himself. He would kindle and burn up, and reaching the sixth stage, the point of dark blue fire, his purpose for them would be accomplished, and his own life snuffed out.
Yes, for all these lumbering and inadequate imbeciles, for these talentless lesser things, he was to attain and instantly freely render up the power of utter dominion over the inner and outer spheres: Mastery of Self, Mastery of All.
This it seemed the Devil granted to the Order, having become sick of the idiocy of mankind. For Satan loved God. He longed hopelessly only to be forgiven and raised.
And Vilmos felt neither fear nor struggle in him. He did not care anymore what became of him.
Like Satan, Vilmos was sick of the world and all its works. And if God did not want him, neither did Vilmos want any part of God.
And then. He beheld Reiner.
And a little while after, perhaps two or three minutes after, Vilmos saw what this meant. And also he saw that none but he had seen it – either Reiner, or what his presence suggested. The rest of them, the rabble in the Chamber, the educated and wise, virtuous acolytes chosen of the Master, the cripple-hearted Master himself – none of them saw or knew.
The very fitness of Vilmos, and his use to them, was predicated upon his having killed men and women to the number of thirteen. For this reason had they not brought him here another man to slaughter, while the girl they brought for his carnal release they swiftly removed after congress, in case he might offer her also death – and so increase the number of the slain.
But Vilmos, since Reiner lived, had formerly killed in total only eleven, and now, with his single murder here, only twelve.
After all, something salient in the rite was out of alignment, a broken bone sticking from the skin of the spell.
TWENTY-ONE
Lynda left me, not only because of her well-off aunt near Manchester. I haven’t been quite honest about that either in these pages or with myself.
Lynda left me because, the night she put it to me that she – and I – might go up north, where things were cheaper and the aunt presided, we had a row.
We’d often fought. When I tried not to join in it only made her more furious, I think. Certainly my neutral answers and refusal to lose my rag seemed to provoke her at these times to greater acrimony.
“Oh, you just sit there, Roy. Just sit there with that book. Don’t you understand I want something a bit more than this rotten little flat and working for that horrible old rat
, Christmas…” She meant her boss, a Mr Christmas. “…and your stupid hours at that library and never having any money or doing anything exciting. Oh, you just sit there. You don’t care, do you? Long as your dinner’s on the table, long as I’ve washed and ironed your clothes.”
In fact we shared a lot of the chores. But for some while, Lynda had seemed to believe my late nights at the library, compulsorily working until six-thirty or eight p.m., were my choice in order 1) to get out of cooking a meal or helping clean the flat or 2) to avoid Lynda.
“But why do I bother to say anything? You won’t try anything new, will you? You’re like a bloody old man, Roy, you’re like some old guy of forty-five.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry. You’re not!” she screamed. And then dropping back to a tone, which even she herself would describe as sarcastic, “But it’s no good trying to shift you, is it? No good being sarky even. You have to have your own little way, don’t you, Roy? Roy knows best.”
She was always on about my liking to have my own little way. I’ve mentioned this before. It rarely failed by now to get on my nerves.
“I’m sorry, Lynda. Why don’t you go and visit your aunt? I can’t take any holiday now, you know that.”
“Yes. I know that.” Her thin lips squeezed almost white. The hard fluorescent kitchen strip shot lightnings over her glasses.
“Look, I need to go and try to finish that story in a minute – there’s a good chance they’ll take it but I have to have it with them before next…”
“That’s all you do, isn’t it? You’re out all bloody day and half the night and then you’re off to write some story. Some rubbish. How’d you know they’ll publish it? They didn’t want the last one.”
“No.”
“Oh, but you go on. You have your own little way. I don’t know why I bother to come to bed. You sit and read, or scribble, or you’re in the lounge typing till midnight. I can’t even watch TV in there. And it’s been two weeks since we last – since you know what.”
I put down the book and looked at the back of it, unseeing. I couldn’t say to Lynda that I found her by now unappetizing. That I really needed to be – well frankly very ready – before I could make love to her. And to make matters worse I’d had a bit of a thing about a woman at work. She was a few years older than me, quite pretty and very happily living with a man. Obviously I’d been aware I stood no chance, but I’d enjoyed her being there, working with her. We got on well, saw eye to eye on a lot of things. She’d read a story of mine published in one of the magazines and praised it, (I published under my real name then). She said I shouldn’t be working in the library at all. About five days before my row with Lynda this woman, I won’t put her name, had been transferred to another branch nearer her home. She was delighted to go. I’d wished her well. I’d kissed her cheek and shaken her partner’s hand. She said they’d be looking out for my first published crime novel.
“Lynda, I’m tired.”
“Not too tired to scribble. Not too tired to type and turn the lounge into your office. Paper everywhere. Books. A tip.”
“Lynda…”
“Oh, shut up!” She surged to the door. “You do the bloody washing-up. I’m going to bed. You…” She paused. “You can sleep in the lounge.” We had no couch. She meant on the floor or in a chair. “You can go to hell!”
I got up. Although we fought, somehow I had never really lost my temper. It was as if, even for rowing with her I had to be in the right frame of mind. But now I was.
“Fuck off to bed, then,” I shouted. “And if you want to go to your aunt’s so much just fucking go. In fact I’ll go. I’m leaving. Get out of the way…” I pushed past her.
Now she ran after me into the bedroom. “What are you doing?” she bleated. But she could see. I was shoving a few clothes into a bag. Next I went to the bathroom and got my shaving stuff and toothbrush. “What?” she kept saying, “What?”
But I didn’t speak to her again until I was at the front door. “Right. What you do, Lynda, is up to you. If you’re still here when I come back we can discuss it. But I hope you won’t be.” The flat was rented. She always had most of my wages to date and all her own. She would manage.
She said, crying now, her glasses dripping tears, pitiful and revolting, “What shall I do?”
“Whatever you like. Fuck off. That’s the best thing.”
I went out and downstairs and let myself into the street. It was after ten at night and raining. I felt a gust of relief flare through me, like raw cool oxygen. As if I could breathe again. It was less getting away from her than escaping the surge of potential violence I’d sensed suddenly present inside me. I have never physically hurt a woman. That night I felt I might have done.
One of the fellows from work was in the pub I ended up in, and he let me sleep on his sofa. “Good thing Jenny isn’t here tonight. She’d never put up with it.”
When I went back to my own flat two days later, crestfallen and feeling rather bewildered, Lynda had gone. She had left me a four page letter, written in her over-ornamented handwriting with plenty of misspellings and wrong grammar.
The gist was she had her Pride. Her father had always told her that if a man didn’t want her she must not want him, And she could see I no longer loved her, so she would indeed be “going up to Auntie’s.” She had taken her things, “like you would expect me to.” Actually she had taken quite a few of mine also, including some of my books – dictionaries and a thesaurus. She couldn’t possibly have wanted them. She must only have wanted to deprive me of them, I assumed, as I’d seemed to prefer them to her. Which of course I had.
Her father called me the night I left the flat, migrating back to my parents’ house for a brief stay, as I sorted out my financial affairs. “A great pity,” he sternly told me. “I always thought of you as rather a steady chap. I wouldn’t have let her marry you, Roy, if I hadn’t.”
I apologised for not being what he had believed me to be.
One wonders sometimes how often one has had to do that.
Since then I’ve never seen Lynda again. I never saw the other woman, from the library, again either. She was a bit like Maureen, not to look at, more her manner, although her accent was better and her voice not quite so musical or warm.
When Harris Wybrother had driven away I sat in my kitchen in Old Church Lane. I’d made some filter coffee, bought that day, an indulgence I don’t often allow myself. There were some chocolate biscuits too, and I ate four.
Something had puzzled me about Sej’s flat in the roof. Only I hadn’t quite realised what at the time. Now it had come to me.
The apartment had many things in it that were quite large, such as the piano, not to mention the couches that could be transformed to beds. And there were things that would have needed either careful packing or delicate handling – glasses, plates. The flat was also able to produce water in the kitchen and bathing areas, had radiators, and lights and a music centre which would require electricity.
How had the breakable or heavy items been got into the apartment, how had the washing machine been plumbed in and cooker connected? Only the freelance limber or foolhardy would chance that ladder up from the fire-escape. Certainly no one from the electricity board or the water services, let alone anyone delivering a piano.
There had to be, did there not, another entry and exit from the flat. But neither I nor Mr C, the expert, had spotted one.
At nine that night, just after I’d finished off the Vilmos chapter upstairs, someone rang the bell.
I went down and I thought, This won’t be him. But before I could decide what I felt, let alone open the door, the letter-box flipped up. George called through, “Roy, it’s me. Just a little something.”
I had no inclination to open up for George, but established habits linger. Or was it that? I unfastened the door quite swiftly despite its new bolts and locks.
The sun had only just gone. The sky was a broad silky blue, high clou
ds catching a peach afterglow, fading.
And there was George with a plate, and on the plate a round dark fruit cake.
“Vita, you see,” he said, with an abashed vaingloriousness. “She baked this afternoon, and she thought you might like this one.”
I stood at a loss again.
Belatedly it had occurred to me how I had been hoodwinked before by George and Vita, Sej using them to gain access. Now too he could have been out here. He could have been. But he was not.
The cake smelled good. My mother had sometimes baked, but not so successfully as Vita. My mother’s forte was jam tarts, her fruit cake tended to be merely laxative.
“That’s much too kind, George,” I said. I took the plate. “Wonderful. Please thank your wife very much.”
“Just look after yourself,” admonished George. He managed to convey this cake was not a reward, but a tick for effort. I still needed to keep up the work.
He plodded back and went in. I stood holding the cake looking up and down the road.
The bicycling boy bicycled past. The prancing poodle was being taken for a walk by the new man in the life of No 73.
Going in myself I shut the door, and re-secured it.
In the kitchen I put the cake to one side. After the coffee and biscuits I didn’t want it. I wasn’t sure I wanted it anyway. Too much contact with my neighbours could prove time-consuming and draining.
Besides, I hadn’t forgotten George and the scissors.
Poor old sod. It hadn’t been his fault.
I closed my mind to him and went upstairs to back up the last chapter I’d done of ‘Untitled’ on the machine. I supposed I should be pleased with it. It seemed to me I might suddenly have concluded the thing. But in a way I found that uncomfortable. The novel had been with me so long. And now what was I to do with it? No one would even want to glance at it. Writers, if they have any success at all, are always expected to remain in their handy and clearly-labelled ghettos A pseudonym? But all that was hypothetical. Probably tomorrow I’d want to rewrite that last chapter entirely.
