To the Devil - a Diva! (10 page)

There was a view from her windows that she didn't recognise. She'd thought she still knew this city well. This was the centre, right by the TV studios, right at the end of Deansgate. Still, she didn't recognise the view. Where the sludgy old canals once lay parched and dilapidated, they'd put flatblocks with balconies. There were restaurants under the railway arches. A Harry Ramsden's on the road to Eccles, by what appeared to be a casino. It would take some getting used to.

The suite they'd given her wasn't all that bad. Flatteringly posh enough. Orchids were set out on the bedside table, along with her morning's press cuttings, and a little note from the producer, Adrian. Slimy, but beautiful penmanship. Public schoolboy type, she knew. Call him, he said, when she arrived, safe and sound.

Now she was up here, though, all she wanted was a lie down. A calming nap. The Brunchtime show, the press attention, and the ride up here had worn her down. All her insides were jumping about. She had to get a grip. She could blow it all by being too nervous and too keen. Let Adrian the producer with the beautiful hand wait a little while. Let other people get on with their jobs now. Flissy had her agenting to do, more negotiations with the TV people. All Karla had to
do was be ready, sit tight, and keep her gob shut for a bit. Everything would fall into her lap.

But first, an afternoon nap, and still the same dream. It had pursued her here to the North, to her grand new setting. The dream that had gone on for years.

That awful old man with the bald and freckled head. He was looming over her, lording it over her. Two long ears like rashers of bacon stuck to the sides of his head. An ugly man, radiating ill will and temper. Something magnetic about him, though. Something that made you look twice and that drew you in. He was so cultivated. He knew about opera and art and the Left Hand Path. So mannered, so polite. And he talked very quietly, so that you had to lean in to pick up what he was saying to you. And by then you were lost.

He was a Count. That's what the make-up and costume girls had told her. A real Count, born. It wasn't a fake title. When he came to visit the cast and crew on location there were whispers, flurries of excitement.

North Wales in February. l968. They were camped in a slate quarry, as far away from the Sixties as anyone could be. Everything dreary and damp. Spirits low on the set of ‘Get Inside Me, Satan!' The Count was coming and somehow that cheered everyone and boosted morale. The regal presence of this bald, malign old gent.

The freckles on his head had been the colour of Brussels pate. In her light sleep in the afternoon, all these years later, Karla shivered at the sight of him again, running a cool finger over those freckles on the dome of his skull. He came back so clearly in her dreams. She had never forgotten a single detail of his compact, bristling figure. He was the author of the
novel, and he'd had a hand in the shooting script. A clawed, twisted hand. A great personal friend of the producer, the backers of the movie. A friend of so many influential people: well-connected, powerful. Of course Karla had needed to get to know him. She was the star of his show. She was meant to be breathing life into what everyone agreed was the Count's greatest creation.

He was also a millionaire. Had been one even before all those worldwide bestsellers. The greatest, most successful Occult writer the world had ever known. Sitting in Karla's trailer in a Welsh slate quarry. Opening the brandy, talking with her as they sat in front of a hissing gas fire.

Not that he ever claimed to be an occultist himself. He explained this to her patiently, mildly, spreading his pointed fingers as he warmed his glass.

‘Oh, no. Never. In fact, my various novels and literary endeavours exist for the sole purpose of warning the foolish public of the very real dangers in dabbling with such powers.'

‘I see,' Karla said, drawing her legs up on her ocelot banquette and considering him over the rim of her glass. He was like a little gargoyle. Not so powerful here, in her mobile home from home.

‘There are evil charlatans out there, Miss Sorenson,' the Count said. ‘Replaying the old rituals and misusing the ancient texts. They do it simply to seduce young men and women; to exploit them to their own vile ends. But, besides the charlatans, there are also some genuine cults and occultists and these are to be avoided even more strenuously. It is these people I write about and it is against them that I counsel caution.'

‘Well, I can't see me being in any danger from Satanists,' Karla smiled.

The Count raised an eyebrow. ‘You speak too rashly. Here, in this place, you are embodying evil itself. This brings you very close to the dangers I am describing. You must watch out for yourself, Karla.'

She shrugged, lightly, and laughed at him. For a second, his eyes blazed at her.

‘Sometimes I feel these are the last days,' he said, his voice thickening. ‘The world is going mad. Hedonism is everywhere and the old, sensible hierarchies and orders are being chipped away and eroded day by day. I am compelled to make a stand, personally, publicly, against a society that has started to believe that everything should come easy and free to them. A society that has started to celebrate decadence … and evil.'

‘They're the ones that buy your novels,' Karla said. ‘And who want to watch movies of your books. Have you ever thought about that?'

His face darkened. ‘Of course I have. It's a terrible irony and one that is offensive to me in some ways. I myself am a symptom of my own worst fears.'

For a second he looked a pathetic figure. Karla watched him. Then his eyes flashed again.

‘I find the paradox of my importance both delicious and highly profitable.'

The Count had arrived in his smoke grey Daimler and he stayed in their quarry for three days. He brought three yorkshire terriers, gallons of champagne and brandy, two thousand cigarettes, his trusty Remington travel typewriter and his ancient hag of a wife, Magda, who hobbled about
the place in a floor-length mink. Magda had squawked in dismay at the bleakness of the quarry, the quality of the catering, and the fact that the Count paid her less than no attention during those heady days of shooting.

The Count was mucking in eagerly with the young people. The crew were long-haired, in filthy jeans and afghan coats. They looked malnourished and they were stoned. The cast were blue-skinned like the slate itself. They were dressed indecently and their performances elicited shivers of salacious disapproval from the movie's author. They were doing such a good job. He strode around the valley floor, stepping nimbly over cables, rubbing his
liver-spotted
hands and snorting gleefully through his pugilist's nose.

He was especially delighted with Karla Sorenson at the peak of her devilish perfection.

His delight was something that she basked in. That covered her like a second skin.

It was a sensation Karla remembered and relived in nightmares all this time later. Even when she put her head down for just forty winks.

She still had time to reach the inevitable ending of that dream. The end of the three days of filming. When the old Count's wife met her own spectacularly grotesque end. Karla could still see it all and the dream wouldn't let her wake until she'd witnessed it all. Over thirty years later, it was tattooed on the insides of her eyelids.

She had to fight herself awake. Panting, sweating, flustered.

I'll never be free. That was her first thought, whenever she woke.

There was no protection in splendour, no succour in luxury. The old demons would always have their way.

But here, now, in the suite at the top of the Prince Albert in Manchester she was resolving: they wouldn't stand in the way of her career. They wouldn't come between her and this next reinvention of herself.

She had too much work to do.

It was going to be a wasted day. Lance decided that he deserved it. He'd had rotten news. The worst. And all he could do in response was lavishly waste the whole day.

No one was talking to him. That afternoon he tried to get in touch with the
Menswear
office. Again and again. They weren't saying anything at all and Adrian the producer wasn't coming to the phone. Lance supposed he was too busy buttering up that depraved old hag.

What he should be doing, what he was scheduled to do, was learning his scripts for next week. They had been couriered around at lunchtime by a motorcycle boy, who'd come clattering up the iron rungs of the fire escape just like he did every Friday. Dropping off the thick wodge of scripts – five fat volumes – and getting Lance to sign for them. Creaking in his motorcycling leathers, grinning through the visor of his helmet. Generally Lance looked forward to the courier's weekly appearance, even though the package of laser-printed words and words and more words meant a whole lot of work for him. Learning by rote had never been his strong point. Lance preferred things to be spontaneous.

There wasn't the slightest ounce of joy in the courier's advent today. Lance signed with a sigh, barely looking at
him, and the lad went away perplexed. Missing the usual banter and tip. Sometimes Lance even made him a cup of tea. Not today. And the scripts still lay in their padded envelope on his dining table, untouched hours later.

I should open them, he thought. I really should. I don't want to fall behind. I can't. I can't slip behind and let that prehistoric bitch steal my thunder. Next thing I know they'll be looking for excuses to kill me off. I'll get fewer and fewer scenes each week. I'll be dwindling away. I'll rip through page after page of script, looking for what meagre lines I've got left to me and soon enough there won't be any at all …

He'd seen this happen before, to unpopular members of the cast. Those who proved difficult, demanding or just inept. One minute their character would be hale and hearty and at the centre of the show. Next, they'd find themselves hooked up to life-support and all the cast was gathering round them. They'd have to play dead with tubes up their nose, ekeing out their pathetic, final scenes.

Then, with Lance out of the way,
Menswear
would become the Karla Sorenson show. They might as well change the name now, and have done with him.

Gradually, that afternoon, he sunk into a terrible gloom. He was determined not to drink, however. He'd had a tiny sip first thing, but that was only to steady his nerves. He absolutely refused to get stewed. He'd just sit quiet. Being depressed. Doing nothing. Having what the Americans called a Mental Health Day.

Hm.

He went to see if he had any more empty bottles to sling down into the alleyway, but they were all gone. Even my empties are deserting me, he thought miserably.

Now he was even wishing he hadn't been so deliberately frosty with the motorcycle boy. He hadn't done anything wrong. He didn't deserve to be snubbed. Lance could have asked him to stay a little while. Pass some time chatting. Just chatting. Taking Lance out of himself, out of this crushing mood.

It wasn't just gloom and pique, he realised with a start.

It wasn't just professional rage.

Lance sat bolt upright on his white leather settee and tried to snag the threads of emotion tangling through him. He tried to put a name to them. And when he could he found, with a desolating pang, that upmost amongst them … was fear.

I am afraid of Karla Sorenson, he thought. She terrifies the life out of me. And then, when he thought about going to work next week, into rehearsal and meeting her and greeting her and having to put on a falsely welcoming face – there was this awful black dread coursing through him.

She will be the death of me, he thought. Just as she was for Mum. That's what she's come to Manchester for. She's here to take my very soul.

At this, he sat quiet for a bit. Completely motionless. Then his eyes started flicking around the room.

He hurried through to the alcove just off his rumpled bedroom, to stand before the consoling studio portrait of his mother.

‘I – I need advice,' he stammered. ‘I need to be brave.'

He stared up into her silver grey eyes. They were so understanding. They even seemed to narrow in concern across the years. Mum was smiling at him benignly from beyond.

When she spoke her voice was liquid, musical, rushing through the glass and into him.

‘Then brave you must be, my son. It is all true. Dark forces are gathering in Greater Manchester. But you must fight on.
Menswear
is your show and proud I am of you for being its star. You must never slip, Lance. You must be professional at all times. Do it for me, my darling son. Learn your lines. Don't let them see that you are hurt and afraid. Prove to me that you can do it.'

Dry-mouthed, Lance watched the silvery sheen depart from the portrait's limpid eyes.

‘I will, Mum,' he said hoarsely. ‘I'll do everything you say.'

He wanted to shout out to her. To beg her to come back to him.

But he knew he had to be a big boy now.

‘That's amazing, Raf.'

Vicki said this about three times as Raf divulged his news.

‘That's really amazing.'

She didn't get a chance to say anything else as he gabbled on. It wasn't like him, really, to gabble like that. Usually he retained his poise and cool. That was what Raf was all about. He was like a supermodel, the way he stropped and strutted about. Up and down the dusty aisles of SpoilerSpace Comics. He never broke out of that studied calm, never dropped his cool. That was why Vicki regarded him with awe, the way only someone half his height and nearly twice his weight could do. Raf was her hero.

She looked down at herself. Down at her Yoda T-shirt. Couldn't see over her boobs. Oh, he was a different order of creature completely. He was a supermodel and she … I have a look of Ken Barlow, she thought glumly.

‘Are you taking in the magnitude?' Raf asked her sharply.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Oh, yes, Raf.' Thinking: if only. She looked up into his face.

‘We have to mobilise,' he seethed, staring off into space,
beyond the racks of comics, way beyond the snuffling punters. ‘We have to plan this step by step … like a military operation.'

Vicki had missed something. Hang on. Go back. What had he been suggesting? What were they planning? And did it even matter? She'd follow him to the ends of the earth, she decided. You gorgeous skinny boy bitch.

He was staring at her. Eyes like Frappelatte from Nero's. Strong and cool. And a bit milky.

Snap out of it, Vicki, she told herself. He doesn't want anything from the likes of you. You are just his stout lieutenant. Privy to all his odd little schemes.

‘We have to get to her,' he said. And took a deep breath. ‘We have to get to Karla.'

‘Perhaps we could ask her to come to the shop and sign some merchandise?' Vicki suggested.

Raf sneered. ‘Merchandise? Sign? Her?! Her, of all people, come to this tatty dump and scrawl her name on tat, on absolute awful fucking tat for this lot?' He gestured to the few customers. They were keeping their heads down.

‘We stock some of her DVDs,' Vicki mumbled. ‘And posters and stills and that …'

‘Ha!' gasped Raf. ‘You think I'd share her … that I'd share Karla with the kind of … people we get in here? That I would share her with FANS?'

Vicki flushed and blushed. She lowered her eyes and thought: I'm your fan, Raf. It was the first time she had put it to herself like this. But it was true. She felt about him like some people felt about Angel off Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But at least he was real. At least he was standing here in front of her, here behind the glass cabinets of the sales desk.
He was bristling with ferocious energy: real and just inches away from her sweating palms.

‘I won't share her,' Raf said quietly.

Yet you did, Raf, Vicki thought. Last October. At that convention down in Birmingham. When you came back glowing and gleaming and just about struck dumb. Like someone who'd had a conversion. You shared her then with a huge crowd of the unwashed. You'd seen her in the flesh, but you were just one of a sea of faces.

Wasn't that enough for you? And what are you planning now, with your eyes like the ice clinking in a Frappelatte? Suddenly Vicki felt a stab of nerves. What lengths was he prepared to go to? He was looking and sounding like some kind of stalker. Vicki knew what stalkers were like. She'd had a few of her own, working here. Really. Even me. She was proud of the fact, even though they'd turned her stomach, each and every one of them. Still. It was nice to get the attention.

The thought of that convention made her cross all over again. That do last October when Raf had swanned off with his new pal in tow. That Colin. The one who'd turned up this lunchtime. Raf said there was nothing going on there. Just a good pal. Mollifying Vicki. Not his best pal. Just another pal. Vicki didn't like the look of Colin, with his spiked red hair. Never had done. A real Canal Street puff. And fancy turning up here at lunchtime in a T-shirt that said Slag! all over the front. He'd get his head stoved in. No sense. Bad influence on Raf, Vicki was sure of it. Sure to drag him into silly gay boys' world and Raf wasn't very happy there, was he? He always came home depressed when he was out on the scene. Vicki couldn't see what any of them saw in it.

Anyway, Colin didn't like or know anything about the kind of stuff, the kinds of films that Raf based his life around. Vicki had snorted when Raf told her the story of how he and Colin had met during Mardi Gras. How the superficial twat hadn't even realised who Raf was meant to be dragged up as. ‘God, Raf!' Vicki had laughed. ‘It was so fucking obvious. You might as well have had a big sign round your neck saying ‘I am meant to be Karla Sorenson, the well known lesbian vampire queen.' What is he, blind? Who was he dressed as?'

‘No one,' Raf had laughed. ‘Nothing. Just some dancing little gay boy.'

Vicki had tutted. Raf didn't have any sense sometimes. He'd never been able to find his own level; his own context, if you like. If only he'd take Vicki's advice a bit more. She'd sort him out. She supposed maybe it was to do with his being Asian. It must make things so much more confusing for him.

Vicki's mother loved Raf to bits. Vicki had taken him for lunch there once. Dragged him all the way down to West Didsbury. ‘Oh, do bring that delightful girlish Asian boy back again, Vicki, love,' Mum had said, only recently.

Vicki brought herself back to the present. Raf was enlisting her.

‘I need you to come out with me,' he was saying, deadly earnest.

‘Where?'

‘What have I been saying?' he snapped and then controlled himself. He needed her. ‘Slag! bar,' he said. ‘Tonight. Colin's promised me that he's going to have a go at Lance, but I can't trust him to do anything useful. He's too flaky. Not like you.'

Bit of egregious flattery there, but Vicki wasn't complaining.

‘Lance Randall's always in Slag!, according to Colin. Never out. He lives just next to it and he's a complete lush. He's our weak spot. He's our way in to Karla.'

‘Lance Randall off
Menswear
?' Vicki gasped. She was a fan of his too. She could wear her Lance Randall T-shirt. ‘Are we going to meet him?'

‘Too right. And,' Raf smiled tightly, ‘one of us is going to seduce him.'

‘Isn't he gay?'

‘God knows,' said Raf. ‘He reckons he isn't. Anyway. You glam yourself up a bit. We'll meet at nine on the rooftop bar. Colin's going to try and introduce us and then we're in.'

‘So what am I there for?'

‘Support.'

‘Oh,' she smiled, brightening.

‘And,' Raf added, ‘if he turns out to be that way inclined, fanny bait.'

Vicki, shocked, started to laugh. ‘You're awful, Lance.'

‘Yeah, I know. But it'll be a laugh either way. You up for it?'

She beamed up at him. ‘Course I am.'