The Evil Seed (17 page)

I wasted no time in
trying to distinguish her features through the blurry glass; instead I ran as
fast as I could down the staircase, steadying myself with my hands as I crashed
against the wall on the landing and again, in the porch. I tore out of the
front door and into the night, her name on my lips, my face flushed, my cry
wasted on the cold air. She was gone.

I ran down the road
after her, searched every side-street, every porch, every archway. I ran back
on my tracks and tried the back of the building, the alley where the dustbins
were kept in neat rows; nothing. Rosemary had vanished.

Cursing, I even went
back to the dingy cellar in which I had met Robert, but by now it was closing
down, and Robert was gone, too.

I went back to Rosemary’s
apartment then, and I waited for her to come home; I waited for a long time,
but she never came.

From that night, when I
waited outside Rosemary’s door, I felt outcast from my life and from the lives
of ordinary people. It was then that I began to dream again; dreams of
Rosemary, overpowering in their imagery, and the more I dreamed, the more my
dreams became reality and my life spun meaninglessly away around me, like water
down a drain. I dreamed of her every night in longing and a transfixed kind of
fear … she was the witch of my secret desires, my Blessed Damozel, her hair
the blood-red veil through which I beheld my dreams. I was sick with renewed
longing for her, sick with guilt and worry for my friend Robert.

I forgot to eat, forgot
to work, spent my days in idle and morbid contemplation of my bewitchment. I
sat in coffee-shops, hoping for a glimpse of her, as if seeing her again would
solve everything, while around me the summer blossomed, and Cambridge grew
heavy and restless with the coming of it. There must have been something in the
air of the place even then, for the papers were full of reports of crimes, thefts
and assaults, and the continuation of the police investigation on the ‘Body in
the Weir’ case (now being treated as murder and coupled with warnings to the
public to stay away from the river, or any isolated place at night), but I
hardly noticed them, moving through life as I did without a ripple.

Twice I caught sight of
her, once from afar, alone, and once with Robert. They stopped when I greeted
them; Rosemary looked pale and ill, her face robbed of all colour in the strong
sunlight, but she was still beautiful, her pale lavender eyes fathomless in her
angular face, her bright hair tied strictly back beneath a dark-green scarf.
Robert,
to
my astonishment, looked rested and well, with no sign of the
haunted, hunted look I had noticed in him before, and he responded to my
cautious enquiry with good temper and a friendliness which reminded me strongly
of our earlier friendship and of the old days, before Rosemary. She, however,
said little; she had been unwell recently and had had to stay in bed; nothing but
a touch of influenza, Robert assured me, but he knew that she was not yet in
the best of health; she was delicate, she was too thin, and she needed rest.

Robert was almost
possessive with me; he talked incessantly while Rosemary said virtually nothing
and I mouthed platitudes. I had never felt as remote from him as I did then; he
was a minor character in the chequered background of my existence, bled dry of
individuality. His facility for talk, which I had once admired, was revealed to
me to be the light, pretentious banter of the dilettante; I saw no real
intelligence behind his charm, felt ashamed that once I had almost worshipped
this man with the unquestioning awe of a high school freshman. What I felt then
was the first step in Rosemary’s domination of me; I began for the first time
to envy my friend.

I watched the pair of
them go with mixed feelings; but uppermost in my mind was the fact that they
were to be married in August, and that if I was to act, I had better act
quickly. You see, I had wrestled with my conscience for long enough; I was
infatuated, and maybe I fancied that Rosemary was not as happy as she might
have been with Robert. Clutching at straws, I imagined her forced into an
unwelcome marriage with a man I had seen to be disturbed and unstable; I
fancied her falling ill with worry, pining, maybe, for the man who had saved
her from the river, and who now seemed too busy to pay any attention to her. I
behaved, in fact, like the moonstruck young fool I was. The truth was too
simple to be obvious to me: it had been a novelty for me to play the part of
the hero; it was a feeling I wanted to experience again.

And so one night, maybe
two weeks later — it must have been near the end of May — I went back there, to
the place where she lived, and since then I have lived in hell, reality passing
me by in a bright, remote flow, myself a shadow among shadows. I see monsters
everywhere and know that they are real, for she has made a monster of me too,
in allowing me to know what should have remained unknown, and she mocks me, as
well she might, knowing that for all my knowledge I am helpless. No one will
believe me, no one will touch me. She remains inviolate.

I sought her out of my
own accord, at dark of night and after having imbibed more courage than was
good for me, hoping, perhaps, to find her alone. I had built her up so high in
my fancy that I believed that on a single word from me she would abandon Robert
and come to me unquestioning. I believed it so desperately that as I came to
her door, my face slick with sweat, my glasses slipping down my nose, and my
heart fluttering like a bird’s with something other than the steep climb up
the stairs, her absence hit me like a blow. The door was locked, all the lights
out. I hammered on the door; no answer.

My disappointment was
too much for me to bear; I sank down on the dark landing beside her door. I
could not have moved if I had tried, and I knew that if I left the place, I
would never have the courage to come there again. Some part of me must have known
that it was all folly, that I had betrayed my friend and made myself
ridiculous, but I refused to admit it then, and I waited, curled up against the
door-jamb, eyes closed. As I waited, despite the discomfort of my position, I
must have gone to sleep.

It was dark, as I said,
and I waited for a long time between sleep and wakefulness. Once I was aware,
in the haze of my drowsiness, of someone passing me by, stealthily; once I
heard clear voices from another world come to me from the stairwell. I do not know
how long I waited. The dark pressed upon me, I smelt dust and floor polish and
turpentine, and maybe I dreamed. I hoped I dreamed.

In my dream I awoke to
darkness; even the lamp at the bottom of the stairwell had been put out, and
the night was cold. I shifted on the wooden floor, pulled my coat further
around my shoulders and tried to think. Maybe I already regretted having come
in search of Rosemary; maybe I was afraid of whatever it was which had brought
me to her door; in either case, the white heat of my ardour had cooled, and at
last I considered going home.

Shaking the stiffness
from my cramped limbs, I stood up, feeling foolish. I had failed in everything:
as a friend, as a scholar, as a lover. Since I had pulled Rosemary from the
river, everything I had ever cared about had fallen apart; and what had I done?
I had fallen apart too, slowly, like an old scarecrow, and crawled here to die
in front of her door, in front of her ridicule. What on earth had I hoped to
achieve? Spleen filled me. Suddenly my anger changed direction, and Rosemary
was its target, Rosemary with her lovely face and her strange ways, Rosemary
who had been gone all night, Rosemary who was going to marry another man,
Rosemary who had brought me here, somehow, and, in a blaze of irrational anger,
I turned towards the door and threw myself at it with all my strength. Well, I
was not a strong man; I was short of sight and short of breath, so I can only
surmise that the reason the door opened then was that it had been unlocked
while I slept. Whatever the reason, it burst open and I catapulted into the
room, coming to land against an armchair at the far side of the chamber. My
glasses fell off as I stumbled, and it took me half a minute or so to find them
again in the unfamiliar place, so that it was some time before I was in a fit
state to look around.

The small room was dimly
lit by a lamp draped with a green silk scarf, and there were a number of items
of furniture neatly positioned around it: two chairs with embroidered cushions,
a dressing-table, on which rested bottles and boxes and toiletries, a bed,
pictures on the walls, a fur rug on the floor. There was a strange smell in the
air, too sweet, like incense, which made my head spin. I remember this now,
but, at the time, very little registered in my mind but the two men sitting by
the door, one on a chair, the other slumped on the floor, both looking at me
with an amused, but savage intensity.

My first reaction was
horror; I had come to the wrong room. I backed away in desperate embarrassment.

‘Excuse me
—
wrong
room, sorry
…
’ but before I reached the door, which was still standing
open behind me, another thought struck me, so forcibly that I stopped again
and stared at the strange tableau upon which I had just entered.

Firstly, the young man
on the floor was ill. Not just ill, but frighteningly so, his face livid even
for that greenish light, his eyes and mouth gaping holes in his face. What was
more, he looked hurt; a thin dark trickle of blood embroidered the side of his
mouth, disappearing down the side of his throat and into the collar of his
shirt. As I stared at him, I realized that he was just a boy, still in his
teens, his ragged hair as fair as flax; and from the exhausted way in which he
was lying on the ground, he looked to me to be close to unconsciousness. The
other man was older, maybe between forty and fifty; black hair allowed to grow
long, a dark, heavy coat, features which were at the same time sharp and
disturbingly feminine. He too was pale, almost sick-looking, with the
consumptive look of one who has exhausted himself with debauchery; and although
I judged him to be considerably older than myself, he exhaled something much
younger than I had ever been, some primal radiance which transfigured him. As I
watched, he covered the boy over, protectively, with his arm, and watched me
without a word.

Maybe it was this
gesture which led me to believe that he had hit the boy; maybe I took it for
defensiveness — you must remember that I was still as close to being drunk as I
ever got, and in those days it took considerably less alcohol to do that than
it does today — but I took a step forwards.

‘What’s going on?’ I
asked. ‘Who are you?’

‘Friends,’ said the dark
man softly.

‘Whose friends?’ I
demanded, my voice a little too shrill.

‘Well, Rosemary’s, of
course,’ he replied. He paused for a moment. ‘And you, of course, are Daniel
Holmes.’

I was rather taken-aback
at that.

‘How do you know me?’

‘We know all Rosemary’s
friends,’ said the dark man with a slow smile. ‘Don’t we, Rafe?’ And he smiled
down at the flax-haired boy, reaching down to brush his face with one long
white finger. The boy did not answer, but turned slightly towards me, and I
caught a glimpse of long lashes shadowing a high cheekbone; he too looked oddly
androgynous, and in that position he reminded me suddenly, sharply of Rosemary.
I wondered for a moment if he could be her brother. I took another step towards
them.

‘What are you doing
here?’ I asked. ‘And where’s Rosemary?’

‘Rosemary? She’ll be
here soon. We’re here to see her.’ He gave a short laugh, as if what he had
said amused him.

It may be difficult for
you, in your different time and with your different morals,
to
understand
fully the sense of outrage I felt then, hearing his casual words. Sometimes I
find it difficult myself to remember what it was like to be young and
principled.

‘Rosemary is going to be
married in August,’ I said coldly. ‘I don’t think that she should be
entertaining
friends
in her rooms at this time of night. Does she know
you’re here?’ The dark man shrugged as if it was not important. I glanced again
at the figure collapsed on the floor.

‘Is that boy sick? Is he
hurt?’

‘No.’

His insolent tone
nettled me.

‘He looks sick,’ I said,
‘and he’s bleeding. If you don’t tell me what’s going on now, I’ll report you
to the police. That boy should be at home in bed. And you, you shouldn’t be
here in Rosemary’s room without her knowledge!’

His tone was flat,
almost bored. ‘Rafe’s all right. He’s been drinking, and he’s not used to the
stuff yet.’ Idly, with a long, pale index finger, he wiped the trickle of blood
from Rafe’s cheek, then, without talking his green eyes from mine, licked the
blood from his hand. The gesture was somehow more explicit than any
pornography, and I felt myself flushing angrily.

‘A boy that age shouldn’t
be drinking at all!’ I cried, partly to hide my sense of unease, and I stepped
closer to the boy he called Rafe.

‘Look. Wake up. Where do
you live? I can take you home, if you like. Are you all right?’ I cast a
smouldering glance in the direction of the dark man, only to see that he was
smiling again.

Rafe said nothing, but
gave a faint moan, and turned his head away petulantly, like a sick child.

‘Where do you live?’ I
took hold of his shoulder; it felt very cold beneath his thin shirt. Another
thought struck me.

‘What were you taking?’
I questioned urgently. ‘What was it? What were you drinking?’

It seemed to me that the
boy’s breathing was shallow; that his face was too pale, his skin too cold.

‘For God’s sake, what
was it?’ I almost screamed. ‘Can’t you see he’s dying?’