Ancient Images (8 page)

    He was talking at full speed, no longer aware of the curl wagging over his forehead as enthusiasm carried him out of reach of his self-consciousness. "Which you wrote your first book about," she said.

    "I thought someone should. It isn't every day you get to watch a genius at work. And then the book did so well the publishers came to me for another, and over a particularly drunken lunch I said I'd write a book about shower scenes in the movies."

    "A whole book?"

    "Yeah, that's what
I
thought when I sobered up. So I wrote about persistent images in the movies, starting with how if you don't end up dead in any shower you take since
Psycho
you can guarantee someone will leap in pretending to be the monster."

    "I'm waiting for the person in the shower to turn the heat up all the way and let him have it in the face."

    "I wish I'd known you then, I'd have used that. So I wrote about how if you're shown a newspaper headline in a movie, chances are the story underneath is about something else entirely."

    "Or whenever anyone walks past someone reading a newspaper you know the one who's reading will follow them."

    "Or whenever someone's reading a book they always hold it as if they're advertising the cover."

    "Or whenever someone talking on the phone is cut off they always jiggle the rest as if that will somehow bring the callback."

    "Or if someone refuses at the top of their voice to do something, the next thing you'll see is them doing it. Like, you know, a woman saying on no account will she stay the night."

    "Why, have you had that problem?"

    "Well, you know, now and then, mostly then, I guess." He reached for the Californian Chablis and stared hard at her glass while he filled it. "That wasn't meant to be a sly pass just now, you understand."

    "I didn't think it was sly."

    "Good, okay. So you see another reason I was pissed at Stilwell. I believe you can both be serious about movies and have fun speculating about ways to read them. Say, listen, I nearly forgot," he said, and stood up so quickly she felt rebuffed. "I got these for you."

    They were photocopies of entries in reference books for three of the names from Graham's notebook. "These look pretty old," she said.

    "The British Film Institute was the only place that had them. None of these guys worked in movies very long after they made
Tower
of
Fear."

    "But they would only have been young then. Why was that, do you think?"

    "Another mystery for you to solve. Or for us, if you like."

    "I'd be glad of any help."

    "Fine. Well, I think I've shown you all I have to offer. Maybe you can use a coffee?"

    "I wouldn't mind." If he didn't care enough to make a move, nor did she. Maybe he'd seen too many films to be able to act spontaneously in real life. She drank the coffee stiffly, feeling frustratingly English and prim, and said, "Thanks for the evening. I enjoyed it and I learned a few things."

    "Let's stay in touch," he said, "for Graham's sake," and his pause made her so breathless it was infuriating, all the more so because she couldn't tell whether or not he intended it to mean anything. She thought it unwise to kiss him goodnight: she patted his cheek on her way out instead.

    

    

    After the compactness of the flat, the vastness of the sky, blinking minutely down at her, came as a shock. His closing door took in the light from his hallway; darkness crouched forward on the path between the shrubs. Echoes dogged her as she hurried across the cobblestones. The furniture that sat outside shops in the daytime had been locked away; chairs perched on shadowy chairs beyond plate glass. As she made for her platform at Highbury & Islington, she glimpsed a man who must be very drunk further along the tiled ramp, crawling upward to ground level. A train with a few snoozers propped in it took her to Highgate, and she jogged up Muswell Hill. She came in sight of home, and screwed up her eyes. She didn't recall leaving the top of the window of the main room open so wide.

    The strip of darkness might be a shadow. High up in the house next to hers, a dog was barking as if it might continue until it lost its voice. She let herself into her building and ran upstairs. The time switch popped out of its socket as she scraped her key into her lock, and the night leaped through the skylight at her. She stuck her hand into the dark and groped for the switch in her hall. Her fingernails scratched the plastic, the button snapped down. 57

    She'd thought the apprehension she had felt as the time switch left her in the dark would vanish once she switched on her own light, but the silence of the rooms seemed ominously unfamiliar. She eased the door shut, holding the knob of the latch between finger and thumb, and dug out of her handbag the whistle that was supposed to deafen any attacker. She pointed it ahead of her, finger twitching on the button, as she tiptoed along the hall.

    She pushed open the bathroom door and tugged the light cord just in time to see a movement so small it seemed stealthy. It was a drop of water losing its grip on the bathroom tap. She crept into her bedroom, where the reflection of the shaded lamp sprang into the gap between the curtains. She tiptoed down the hall to the door of the main room and flung it open, punched the light switch, leveled the tube at the room.

    A smell made her hesitate on the threshold, a faint stench reminiscent of stale food. Papers and the contents of her wastepaper basket were strewn around the couch: the cats had been having a fine time, apparently. The window in the gable end was open wider than she had left it. She tiptoed quickly to the kitchen doorway. Either the smell had lodged in her nostrils or it was stronger in the kitchen. The fluorescent tube jerked alight. The only food to be seen was in the two bowls on the floor-but where were the cats?

    "Bogart," she called, "Bac-was and drew a breath that made her teeth ache. Graham's notebook, which she had left on the couch, lay on the carpet beneath the open window, or at least the cover did. The remains of the pages, shredded and chewed, were scattered over the floor.

    Her fists clenched, almost setting off the whistle until she threw it on the couch. "You little buggers," she whispered, "where are you hiding? Come out or I-was She glared at the window, and saw that the top of the sash was marked by claws that had scraped off paint. She shoved the lower sash up and leaned out, her shadow lurching across the lit treetops as she tried to see past them into the gloom. She was still straining her eyes when the doorbell rang.

    She dashed along the hall and slapped the button of the intercom. "Yes? What?"

    "I'm not disturbing you, am I? I saw your light go on."

    She vaguely recognized the man's voice. "Who is this?"

    "I live across the road. We've said good morning. I drive the Rover."

    "Oh yes, all right," she said, furiously impatient, mostly with herself. "Well?"

    "You're the lady with the cats."

    Something in his tone made her catch her breath. "Yes?"

    "Do you mind coming down? I'd rather not-you know."

    She suspected that she did. She went downstairs apprehensively and opened the front door. He was tall and in his forties, and already pregnant with beer. He was rubbing his hands back over his hair so hard it tugged his forehead smooth. "Sorry," he said at once. "I was on the main road, not doing more than the limit, honestly. They ran out in front of me. I'd have had a bus up my rear if I'd braked. I found the address on the collars and I didn't know if you'd want to- There you are, anyway."

    She thought he was staring at his toes, embarrassed by the threat of her reaction, until she saw that he was eyeing what he'd laid neatly on the doorstep: two plastic bags full of fur and blood.

    The cat food must have been tainted, she thought. She'd smelled it in her rooms, the smell of what had driven the cats mad. The owner of the Rover had crossed the street now, walking slowly as if that were apologetic or respectful, leaving her to gaze at the bags. She didn't think she could bear to open them. She carried them to the back garden and took a spade out of the communal shed.

    She dug for almost an hour in her patch of flower bed before she was convinced the hole was deep enough to keep the bodies safe. The stray dog might still be roaming Queen's Wood, even though the accountants had complained to the police, and it might try to dig up the grave. She peered through the railings whenever shadows stirred. Too many bunches of roots appeared to be crouching bonily, but she could never catch sight of a watcher, only flowers shifting in the dark. Every time she peered she had to dab at her eyes.

    At last she finished digging. Holding each bag at both ends, so as not to feel how broken the cats were, she laid the bodies in the trench. "Goodbye," she said, "you rest now." She gazed down at the glint of plastic, then she replaced the disinterred soil gently and patted it smooth. "Look after each other," she said, and eventually went back into the house.

    The smell was gone from her silent rooms. She went down on all fours to the feeding bowls, but could find no trace of it there. Nevertheless she found the empty tin and scraped the remains into it to be analyzed, then she sat on the bed and wept for a while. Afterward she picked up the fragments of Graham's notebook, but they were indecipherable. She remembered most of the details, she told herself, not just the names, except that her head was aching too badly at the moment for her to recall. Her nostrils felt stuffed with rust. She went to bed so as to close her aching eyes.

    When she managed to sleep she kept wakening convinced that the cats were near her. Remembering why they weren't made her feel hollow and frail. Once she dreamed that one of them was outside the window of the main room. She saw a thin lithe shape leap from a treetop and grasp the sash, dragging it down, and awoke with a cry that left her heart quaking.

    In the morning she felt so empty that she ached. Why couldn't she have stayed at home last night instead of wasting time on her frustrating visit to Roger? Everything seemed meaningless, no longer worth her trouble, and that frightened her. On the Underground she hugged the carrier bag that contained the tin of cat food and clenched her fist on the overhead strap.

    The host of the consumer-advice program was Piers Falconer. On screen he wore a permanent concerned frown, but when she looked into his office his large round face was almost blandly welcoming. He frowned when he heard her story, and took the tin from her. "I'll send it in today for analysis and let you know the outcome the moment I hear."

    She went upstairs and tried to interest herself in editing a tape shot at a soccer match, where spectators attacked the away team as they came onto the pitch. The people around her left her alone when she kept answering them monosyllabically, until Lezli came looking for her. "Phone for you."

    "Sandra? We've been meaning to call you. How are you? Still enjoying your work?"

    It was her father. His voice made her feel unexpectedly homesick for the house in Mossley Hill, the log fires he would light as soon as the winds off Liverpool Bay turned chilly, the long evenings when she had been able to discuss all her adolescent problems without holding anything back. Homesickness solved nothing-her parents didn't even live there now-and she didn't want him to know how upset she was when, at that distance, it would only make him feel helpless. "Oh, pretty well," she said.

    "We heard that your friend died. We remembered how fond you said you were of him, how he helped get you known and so forth."

    She wasn't quite sure of his tone. "Graham and I had a lot of respect for each other."

    "Well, there's nothing wrong with that. We tried to bring you up to appreciate all kinds of people, within certain limits." He cleared his throat and made her think of the pipe he smoked, whose smell had made Bogart and Bacall restless when he and her mother had stayed overnight. "A neighbor pointed out a comment in the paper to us just yesterday. The person searching for the film your friend claimed he found-that isn't you, is it?"

    "Yes, it is. Why?"

    "For your mother's sake, Sandra, I hope you'll leave it alone."

    "Because of what the paper said about it, you mean? I've met the man who wrote that and he's harmless, don't worry."

    "But we do. Surely an old film isn't worth the fuss."

    "It might be, and Graham's reputation is. You wouldn't want me to let a friend down."

    "Time always confirms the reputation of the deserving. Think of Bach. Why risk your own good name? If the film was objectionable when it was made, it may still be, if it even exists. Neither your mother nor I have heard of it, though it's the kind of thing we would have lapped up before the war changed all that. You'll give it up, won't you? Let it rest, and then your mother can."

    "Does mother know you're phoning?"

    "She won't even admit she's anxious, but I know her as well as I know you."

    "Then you know you brought me up to do what I thought was right even if you disagreed."

    "How can this be right-some trash with two old hams in it? What can be right about a horror film?" He sounded desperate with realizing she'd outgrown him. "Won't you promise?"

    "Daddy, I'm sorry, but I already have."

    "God help you then," he said heavily, and rang off.

    She was staring at the speechless lump of plastic in her hand and feeling as if guilt were gathering as solidly inside her-guilt at leaving him anxious, at reminding him that she and her mother understood each other more than he often did, even at being almost as upset about her cats as she had been by Graham's death-when Lezli murmured, "Boswell wants to see you."