The New Uncanny (8 page)

The dissimilarity in height between the cellar and the living room became something of an obsession, and eventually I had to do something about it. It was a very simple thing. All I had to do was to lower the floor of the cellar by exactly thirty-seven inches, and the two rooms, above and below, would be perfect spatial mirror images of each other. I suppose it was something to do with symmetry.

So I took a pickaxe to the floor of the cellar. It hardly needed it. The floor was a ropy thing made of asphalt under a thin layer or concrete. A garden fork could just as well have done the job. It yielded, under its crisp shell, thousands of sticky, black grains that I had to scoop into a bucket and carry upstairs and out into the back garden. Beneath the asphalt I was into the raw earth of the world under my house, which I dug down into. Then when I had gone far enough, I leveled off and finished with a layer of good cement. It was hard, aching work, and took me several weeks (I’m not as strong as I was). But at the end of my work I had a room, below my living room, that was its proportional twin.

It occurred to me then to set about duplication of the room above in other ways. Firstly I bought floorboards to nail over the joists of the cellar ceiling to form a perfect replica of the floor above. In effect I now had two floors back to back. Onto this upside-down floor I tacked rugs identical to those in my living room, and in the same position. I bought furniture identical to the furniture in my living room, and placed it on the upside down floor of the cellar, in identical positions once again. This was a harder task, and one I could only just manage on my own. Bolting a settee to the ceiling of a cellar is work for a strong man. I will not go into details about how I managed it, except to say that I adapted techniques I read about in an account of the building of Salisbury Cathedral. Nor will I detail the many journeys I had to make in order to find chairs identical to those that furnished the living room. But the exquisite delight I felt when I achieved my aim, when I found my replica suite, my coffee-table’s double, the lamp-stand’s long lost and long-forgotten twin, in some distant junk shop or car-boot, was indescribable. Though perhaps it is not unlike that experienced by an actual twin, who has been deprived of the knowledge all his life, to find himself reunited with his brother from the womb.

I now had everything on the floor of my living room reproduced exactly upside down on the ceiling of the cellar, bolted fast, the cushions of the seats stitched to them, and all other precautions taken to make a convincing upside-down room, identical to the original.

And so I began work on the walls. Bare brick in the cellar, I plastered them as best I could (I’m no handyman, really), and after a reasonable period of drying out, papered them with the rose pattern I had so long lived with (and which was very, very hard to find). The paintings that hang on them were also difficult to reproduce, and I had to try my hand at copying one of the simpler ones myself, the result of which endeavour surprised and pleased me. It took me several years of hard work to reproduce everything in the living room. One thing I couldn’t reproduce, of course, was the view from the front bay window. I had to satisfy myself that drawn curtains would do. Eventually I worked out how to make them hang convincingly, which involved a hidden rail at the bottom of the curtain, so that in reality the curtains hang downwards into the pelmet. I succeeded very well, I think, in giving them a convincingly unfastened look.

The most enjoyable touches were the two light fittings (one a chandelier) that in the real room hang from the ceiling on thin lengths of flex. Again, trompe l’oeil was involved in producing flex that would hang upwards and support a shade; moreover, I fashioned a modest chandelier, just like the one above ground, and managed, with glue and solder, to make the crystals hang upwards instead of downwards. I think if there is any true crowning glory to my upside-down room, it is in the upside-down chandelier, with all its crystals pouring casually upwards as if there was nothing untoward in their world at all. Of course, I wired the lights up to work just like the lights in the real living room.

Completed, my project gave me many moments of unspeakable joy. Just sitting in my arm chair, knowing that beneath the floor there was another armchair, hanging, in a room where everything else hung that should have stood, and which stood that should have hung, just knowing it was there, was enough to cause delight. It was as though my life was a reflection in a pool, into which I could actually enter. It was as though narcissus could indeed embrace his own reflection.

The experience of descending the cellar stairs into the inverted world below, to suddenly find oneself the only upright thing in a room turned upside-down, to be given the sense that gravity pushes upwards rather than downwards, to feel oneself floating, in fact, was an experience of delirious, dreamy delight.

And one I had to share.

So that is how I came to bamboozle acquaintances I met at The Earl of Chatham, the rather innocent, almost destitute young men who frequented that once family-friendly place, and who could easily be bought drinks. I would invite them home, after many reassurances that I was not an old queen, and they would accompany me back, usually because they had nowhere better to go, and not much prospect of a roof over their head for the night. I would sit them in the armchair, plying them with Jim Beams and playing Count Basie on the record player, until they passed out in a drunken swoon. Then I would carry them down to the cellar, lay them down on the floor (the ceiling), and leave them alone to wake up, but still with Count Basie playing on the now upside-down record player. I would return to the right-way-up-room, and wait. It could take a long time, but eventually there would come a cry from downstairs. ‘Jesus Christ’ they might say, ‘Holy Jesus, get me down, get me down,’ and I would go downstairs into the cellar, peep at them from round the corner and see them writhing on the floor (the ceiling), petrified at their weightlessness, terrified at their defiance of gravity. At first I would hang from the stairwell and peek at them upside-down, as if I too were part of the upside-down world, to increase their sense of being on the ceiling.

‘What’s the matter old chap,’ I would say, ‘feeling a bit light headed?’

They would stare at me with about-to-be-shot eyes, hyperventilating, unable to find words, pressing themselves to the floor (the ceiling).

‘You should be pleased, old chap,’ I would say, ‘you’ve learnt how to fly. Aren’t you the clever one?’

I would then reassure them that it was simply something they’d drunk. I would tell them to close their eyes and let me take care of them. Then I’d carry them back upstairs, plonk them down in the right-way-up living room, tell them to open their eyes again. From their perspective they had not left the room at all, merely descended from its ceiling to its floor. The look of tender alarm on their faces, as they felt about the arms of the chair, and the floor with their feet, to ascertain whether they really were back on the ground, and the way they looked up at the ceiling, apprehensive of the horrible notion that they might, at any moment, plummet towards it, was something to cherish.

I have plans for extending my underhouse, so that the whole house, every room including the loft, should be duplicated. It would be a work of many, many years, and one I may not live long enough to complete. To open up so much empty space beneath my own house could be dangerous. I have this peculiar thought that, having completed my duplicate upside-down house, and having weakened the foundations of the right-way-up house, the latter will eventually collapse into the former. If the right-way-up house fell down into the upside-down-house, one must suppose that the two would cancel each other out, and that both houses would simply disappear. And if I happen to be asleep in my bed (right way up or upside down – how would I know?) what would become of me? I would have folded myself out of existence. A rather attractive thought. I’d better start digging.

THE FEATURELESS ROAD. The driving rain.

White lines, empty fields.

The endless rhythm of the stop-go shunt, a Newton’s cradle of cars on the motorway heading north-west. The occasional church spire in the distance piercing the dark grey wadding of the clouds. The monotony is relieved by a fizzing spot of fluorescent yellow up ahead. You squint, peer through the windscreen, rub with your sleeve at a stubborn patch of fog on the glass. The view clears. The fluorescent spot grows, elongates, becomes a figure.

The motorway narrows from three lanes down to two. The traffic slows accordingly. The man in the high-visibility clothing moves his left arm up and down, telling you to slow down further. He’s standing hard by the crash barrier on the central reservation. He’s either suicidal or insane or both. There has to be a better way to warn drivers of impending hazards, you think. Sure, he’s completely covered in hi-vis gear, from the hood of his jacket to the turn-ups of his trousers, but you can’t imagine this man’s UK counterpart happily standing that close to moving traffic on the M1. Maybe the Belgians pay danger money, or perhaps, as seems likely from the standard of the driving, all Belgians are clinically insane. Admittedly this may be the birthplace of surrealism, but still.

You twist your head for a closer look as you roll past. The planes of his face seem abnormally severe, his skin unnaturally smooth. Do motorway maintenance workers really shave every morning?

‘Tell me where it comes from, this love of our country.’

Asking the question was a striking young woman of slender build and average height, her irregularly cut mahogany-coloured hair framing a face shaped like a warning sign. Eyes that glittered; a short, sharp nose, pointed like the bill of a goldfinch; lips painted a vivid red. When she leaned forward across the hotel breakfast table, peripheral vision gifted me a view down the front of her top.

‘What’s not to love about it?’ I said, careful not to let my eyes drop. ‘Beer, chocolate, medieval architecture.’

‘In that order?’

She flashed her teeth; one was chipped at the corner. Either her lower lip was uneven or she twisted it unconsciously while she spoke. I remembered reading somewhere that beauty was all down to symmetry. I’d thought it was rubbish at the time and now here was proof.

‘Definitely.’

‘No, but…’ she started, signalling the switch to serious interview mode by picking up a sachet of sugar and turning it end on end on the tablecloth. ‘The Eddy De Groot novels are bestsellers. You’re not telling me his creator is inspired by nothing more than a desire to sit drinking Duvel at pavement cafés in the Grote Markt.’

‘With a view of the Stadhuis.’

‘Exactly.’

‘No. In fact, just between you and me,’ I said, lowering my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, ‘I don’t actually like Duvel.’

She sat back, eyes wide.

‘I know, I know,’ I said, hands in the air. ‘The man who didn’t like Duvel. I don’t like tripels either. I like blond beers. I’ve always been partial to blonds.’ I gave her my winning grin.

‘Only blondes?’ she asked, sitting forward again.

‘As you probably know if you’ve read the books, I like the brown beers best.’ My eyes flicked down momentarily. ‘Westmalle, Ename, Chimay – but only the red or the blue.’

Around us, hotel staff were discreetly clearing tables.

‘So, Eddy De Groot, your Flemish detective, is you?’ she asked, bending the sugar sachet in half.

‘It’s easier than making stuff up.’

‘Your alter-ego?’

‘If you like. All I know is he’s not Poirot and he’s not Maigret, but he’s not Van der Valk either. I saw a gap in the market for a Dutch-speaking Belgian detective. Written by an Englishman.’

Now it was my turn to sit back in my chair. I took my eyes off her for a moment and looked around the breakfast room. She had described my Eddy De Groot novels as bestsellers. Which of course they weren’t, not in the UK, but they did OK in Dutch translation. In addition, they probably sold as many English copies here in Belgium and in Holland as they did back home, there were that many English speakers in the Low Countries. In any case, the figures obviously added up, or I wouldn’t get this treatment: five-star hotel, a reading slot at the Antwerp festival, a round of interviews with local and national media. The girl with the sexy mouth had come up from Brussels to do a piece for
De Standaard
. I wasn’t kidding myself it was going to last for ever, but I might as well enjoy it while I could.

‘It goes back to when I was a kid,’ I said, leaning forward and taking the sachet of sugar from her hand. ‘My dad used to bring me stamps off the ships. He was a customs officer and he used to rummage ships in the docks and bring me back stamps for my collection. The ones I liked best were the Belgian stamps. The picture of King Baudouin, the different colours. Pink, blue, green. Brown and grey. I liked the way the colours changed but the image remained the same. I wanted to own the whole set. I like having whole sets of things. Belgian stamps. Agatha Christie novels – Fontana paperbacks with the Tom Adams covers. No others.’ I toyed with the sugar sachet and shrugged my shoulders. ‘It’s a man thing.’

I watched her check the digital voice recorder.

‘When’s your deadline?’ I asked. ‘Do you have to go away and write this up this morning?’

‘I’ve got till tomorrow lunchtime,’ she said.

‘So what do you say we do this over lunch?’

I held my breath and caught her looking at my wedding ring. I said nothing. She smiled.

Rain falls without end from a sky made of lead. Your eyes are gritty. Your head lolls momentarily over the wheel.

Microsleep.

You exit the motorway. Pull over, rub your face. Get out, walk up and down. Fresh air, pouring rain. Get back in the car. Sit there looking out at the rain. You get your phone out of your pocket and stare at it. You check that you haven’t missed any calls or texts. You haven’t. You remember the time you spent ten minutes going all over the house looking for the phone, while talking on what you thought was the cordless landline. You even told the person you were talking to that you were looking for your mobile.