To the Devil - a Diva! (15 page)

At first Colin was foxed by the unfamiliar geography of Lance's flat. When he turned into the dark corridor behind the kitchen he didn't have a clue where he was heading. Behind him, the raucous music and canned laughter of
Menswear
was blaring out on the telly's stereo surround sound. The voices of the principal characters – bizarrely, Lance among them – piped up at his back. Colin could also hear Raf and Vicki talking away. They weren't really concentrating on the show. They had started talking in earnest, now that Lance and Colin were out of the way. No longer on best behaviour, they were gassing eagerly about the advent of Karla Sorenson.

Suddenly Colin realised that he didn't want Lance to know how doolally that pair was on Karla. He saw the potential Raf had to really hurt Lance's feelings. Colin could see that Raf could be quite vicious; his tall, elegant pal had a nasty streak right through him. He could also see that Lance was soft as muck.

There was a spill of light at the sharp corner of the hallway. ‘Lance?' he called, feeling his way gently along the wall, hoping he wouldn't knock into anything expensive. As he inched round the bend he came face to face with Lance's shrine.

Lance was on his knees in his alcove, whispering under his breath to the glowing portrait. Everything was lit softly by cathedral candles: soft, yellow, beeswaxy. Colin was dumbstruck for a second or two, staring at this apparition in the fussy, gold-leaf frame: this benign, almost holy, glamorous studio photo of the woman. She had broad, strong cheekbones and those l950s kind of pointed breasts. Her long, elegant fingers were clasped together.

Her calm, silvered eyes were staring out from the glass, past the bowed, bare back of the praying Lance. Colin caught his breath in his throat, because it seemed that those silver eyes were staring straight at him. Like he'd been caught sneaking up on Lance. The eyes appeared to flash a warning at him, but it must have been a trick of the candlelight. When he stared back, he saw that the eyes were lustreless and dead.

‘Lance,' he tried again, and then Lance was getting up shakily and rounding on him. The heat from his body was intense. ‘Are you OK?'

His host was looking furious. It was as if he had been disturbed doing something weird. Something wrong. His fists were bunched at his sides. God, he's going to punch me, Colin thought, and took a hasty step back as Lance loomed over him. Then the wall was right at his back.

‘What are you doing round here?' Lance's voice was steady and low. Colin knew that he was talking like that so the others wouldn't hear him over the telly, but it also sounded sexy as hell.

‘I thought you were having a funny turn,' Colin whispered.

Lance looked down at him. Colin was suddenly very conscious of their proximity. Only an inch or two between
their bodies. The older man was trying to intimidate him. Colin smelt the warmth and musk coming off his skin – the smell of someone in his pyjamas all day, all interlaced with the scent of beeswax and bitter red wine.

‘Worrying about me again, were you?' Lance said. ‘You've been doing a lot of that.'

‘Yeah …' Colin said. Oh, great, he thought. It was like he had forgotten all of his lines. Lance was playing out a scene as if he was in some fantastic TV play – beautifully lit and sexy with menace – and his broad, warm silhouette was blocking out the light, and Colin had turned stupid and silent with fright.

Lance waited and then he let out a low, bored sigh. ‘OK, then. You've made your move, Colin. I knew you would.'

Colin frowned. ‘What?'

Lance was looking disgusted. ‘You guys are all the same. All thinking I'm the same as on the telly. Up for it with anyone. Up for it with any randy little queen who pops by. My life isn't a porno film, whatever you might think. And it isn't a sitcom, either. It's serious, actually, and really quite dull.' He was getting het up and louder. Colin could feel spittle on his face. Just a speck or two.

‘Lance, I don't know what you're on about.'

‘You! The same as the milkman, the script courier, even Adrian the fucking producer. You all think that I'm at it all the time! And all thinking you can just demand your own piece of me …'

‘Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about.' Colin was getting fed up with being shouted at. ‘This is obviously some mad frigging psychodrama of your own, Lance. I just came round to see if you were OK throwing
up and then I find you worshipping a picture of some old slapper—'

The next thing he felt was a flat-handed smack, right in the face. It was like being hit by a shovel. Colin could smell something weird, like salt and vinegar crisps, just before he blacked out and slid down the alcove wall.

Within moments he was awake again and his vision had gone sparkly and silver and Lance was on his knees and trying to get him up – he thought – to start bashing him again. Colin started shouting, ‘Get off! Fuck off! Get off!' but Lance was hoisting him up by his armpits and shouting back, ‘I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' and they were one big tangle of limbs. Colin tried to slap him away and Lance was pulling on him and then Colin was shaking and couldn't get his balance at all. ‘You shouldn't have said that about my mum,' Lance was saying. ‘I had no choice. You shouldn't have said it …' Now he was crushing Colin's arms against his body with his own hot, bare arms and Colin continued to struggle, thrashing about and shouting: ‘That ABSOLUTELY KNACKED you FUCKING BASTARD! I don't care WHO it is on your photo! THAT FUCKING KNACKED! I CAN'T HEAR PROPERLY NOW!'

Then, all of a sudden, he came over exhausted. He was still and he realised he was locked in Lance's grip. The world was still rocking quite a bit and the nausea had set in.

‘You are all just after my body,' Lance said, very distinctly.

‘What? What the fuck are you saying?'

‘Aren't you? Isn't that why you came back?'

Colin blinked. The silver stars were starting to settle.
His whole face felt mushy and numb. ‘No, Lance. It wasn't. That's not why I came here at all.'

Slowly Lance relinquished his grip. He let Colin stand on his own two feet. Colin wavered slightly and then drew himself up properly. His red-tufted spikes of hair were flattened and his face had started to swell on one side. He glared back at Lance and the moment went on just a shade too long.

Then they were kissing each other, hard, and their teeth were clashing, noses smashing against each other's: Colin's hands on Lance's waist, Lance's hands clamped over Colin's ears.

Obviously she couldn't eat anything. Not after that.

Whether that awful Sole Veronique had been an hallucination on her part, or whether it was a full-blown manifestation of some kind, was quite beside the point.

Karla had been shaken to the core.

She sat for some time at the best table in the Prince Albert restaurant, breathing shallowly and trying to rearrange her jangling nerves. She'd had her fish dish taken away and the waiter looked most disappointed that she hadn't enjoyed it. By the looks of it, Ms Sorenson had just given it a sort of shove across the plate, splashing some of the pale sauce on the table cloth. She hadn't even touched the grapes. Now the word would go round the kitchens; Ms S. hadn't enjoyed dinner one single bit. The waiter asked if he could fetch her anything else: she waved him brusquely, tremblingly away.

Then she drank a whole bottle of the pale green wine. Had anyone else in the room seen her staring goggle-eyed at the peremptory and accusatory fish? Had she cried out in shock and dismay when it had started to harangue her? She couldn't remember. But the place seemed the same, quite unperturbed, the murmur of conversation running under the sickly-sweet piano music. The conversation had flowed
over and past her: the subject of her ravishing presence in the restaurant had been turned over and casually discarded in the swiftly-rushing flow of table talk.

Was she going crazy? What was happening to her? Nothing like this had happened to her in years. Nothing impossible or mad or reeking of the vilest sorcery had crossed her path in God knew how long. She was losing her knack, seemingly. She had no equanimity in the face of impossible things. Not anymore. She would have to get a grip. She couldn't go getting all worked up at the slightest thing. Not when she was on a mission. When everything was inching along towards culmination.

She had to be a star. She had to be at the peak of her performance. That was what the Brethren required of her.

Yet – Christ, that Sole Veronique had scared her.

At last she looked up to see that the dining room's occupants had mostly left. Only a few tables were still being used. Time for her to take her leave. She collected up her Sobranies and her wits, stuffed everything into her evening bag, and wondered where Kevin the porter had got to. She needed his stout form for support right now. Inwardly she was cursing. What was the point of having abject slaves and myrmidons to tend your whims, if they just diddled off when the mood took them?

Rather bad-naturedly Karla got up, hoisted her little bag and clip-clopped in her tortuous heels, out of the restaurant, and into the bar.

It was smoky and relatively quiet. The place was done up in some kind of naval theme, with plush blue carpets and woodwork dark and shiny as melting toffee. The brass pumps and fittings winked at her alluringly and the sticky,
vividly colourful array of optics were dancing in her sights as she slouched over to the stools. She rested her elbows on the bar and felt ungainly as she sat down. She wasn't sure she hadn't heard something rip.

She clattered her knuckles and all of her heavy rings against the bar. ‘Shop!' she cried, and it came out as something of a screech. ‘Shop!' she tried again, and sighed and noticed that she'd drawn the attention of two elderly women sitting on the stools to her left. She'd made a show of herself and one of them was tutting. Karla shrugged and grabbed a fistful of Japanese-type snacks from the bowl in front of her.

Now the two old ladies beside her were cooing and nodding. Old hags, she thought, and looked back at the dizzying optics. ‘Shop,' she said again, flatly, and feeling queasy.

Then her forearm was being grasped and held down on the bar. She screeched again, thinking she was being attacked.

It was a mottled old claw that had taken hold of her: liver-spotted and rough as pumice-stone. She tried to yank her arm back and swung round savagely to protest.

Some horrible old woman was grinning and gurning right into her face. Karla recoiled at the stink of pickled onions.

‘Karla Sorenson,' the old woman jeered. ‘Well, well, lady. Just look at you. Who'd have thought you'd end up like this?'

My parched tongue stirs at last.

Let these papers be disinterred from their tomb and the shackles fall from my bony wrists. Stains of rust like pollen and orange blood. But now I can gesticulate as I tell my tale.

My eyes struggle to spring open. Fused with sleep dust and grave mould. Now I can speak. Good evening!

I speak to you from outside time. Really.

My name has been Fox Soames. All through the twentieth century. It is a name best known for being emblazoned in silver on the sheeny covers of paperbacks. For being embossed in gold on the spines of leatherette bookclub volumes. One hundred million worldwide in hardback! A couple more millions in paper-covered editions! I was a household name! Whole families gathered to quail at my words as fathers read aloud my latest instalment. Lone readers drew closer to the source of consoling light in their darkened rooms. They all turned my pages, smoothing them out. They were all drawn inexorably across my lines, a silent word of protest on their lips as they read on and on into hundreds of nights. My readers were in the rapt, seduced, fascinated stupor of those being dragged ineluctably into hell. Good evening!

So imagine my not inconsiderable chagrin at being silenced and stilled for all this time. For over forty years I produced a million words a year. I plucked them out of the air and tamed them. I hammered them out and nailed them
down. My volumes were sturdy coffins buzzing with captive sentences and I delivered them proudly into the world. Great fanfare, annually. My eager audience shivered. They were addicted to my every utterance. I was sorcerer and seer. A prophet really, with a task bestowed upon me from on high.

There was a warning I had to give mankind.

That's what my millions of words represented.

That's what the skull beneath the skin was shrieking. Blatant, explicit, under the trappings of popular
talespinning
.

But readers can be very stupid, I suppose.

I met a great many of my legion of enthusiasts during the decades of my effortless supremacy. The fools. They thought I had made everything up. They thought I was indulging, along with them, in dimwitted fantasies, in vicarious thrills.

Or worse, they would take me all too literally. They thought I had actually partaken of the revolting practices I described in my novels. The dolts imagined I was advocating for all and sundry the joys of the fiendish occult practices I was in fact condemning.

Even the ones who listened, never listened properly.

So I speak to you now, from outside time, from outside space, and I am full of hope. Welcome, readers.

Good evening!

Here is my study.

Observe this desk, which has pursued me across the world from home to home. I find it difficult to work at anything else. It's walnut. Take note of its freight of yellowing papers in apparently untidy stacks. Stories, articles, chapters, letters, all in various states of completion. I tap everything out on
that trusty Remington. Gun-metal grey. I keep the machine oiled and serviced, clean as my army revolver – which is cocked and locked in that bottom drawer. Just in case.

The shelves lining each of these walls: look. This side, everything is mine. All eighty-nine of my novels, in each edition, translated into every language thinkable. The remainder of shelf-space contains my reference works. Invaluable to me, in all aspects of my labours. Arcane volumes and more popular, vulgar works. All concern themselves with the occult. I make no bones about that.

Let me fill your glass. More brandy. Let us pull our armchairs up to the fire. Admire the mantelpiece. Flatter my taste. Everything here was built and fitted to my exact specifications. I am indeed a hard taskmaster where taste is concerned. Just ask my poor agent, my editor, my servants, and my dear wife, Magda. A man like me has to have things just so. This is necessary, in order to let the precious words come. So many souls are dependent on my work being completed satisfactorily. To my satisfaction. Not, as I have already hinted, for the simple purposes of entertainment. Rather, for the sake of the world.

Mind your feet. Shift yourself along a bit. You're scuffing up the circle of salt. Didn't you see it? Your powers of observation disappoint me. Here, sit within the ring of my protection. As I tell my tale, you must remain inside this circumference. It's not there for decoration.

Right. Are we comfortable?

Let us begin with the eating of brains.

Don't splutter so. That brandy is expensive. And don't pretend you didn't know what you were likely to hear. This
evening you have strayed into the home of Fox Soames. To sit by his fireplace and to hear awful tales from the lips of the great man himself. Don't make out you didn't know it would give you the willies.

I was quite serious. My story for you this evening is concerned with an ancient and delicate procedure that both modern science and morality would declare barbaric.

But think on this. What a waste it is, that when a human body breathes its last, the precious brain – an organ miraculous in even the dullest of specimens – must also die. What a terrible misuse of material. All the lights go out suddenly, cleanly as the shutting down of the electrical grid. Blackout. And the process is irreversible. Those millions of cells – dark and shiny-moist, as dear as caviar – all die and their hard-won content, earned through the nightmarish work of day-to-day living: all of this is lost. The light is quenched.

Except.

There is a theory that those glittering cells may be salvaged and passed on to the remaining members of the tribe. Even our most brutish ancestors came to this conclusion.

You've guessed it.

My point is that those bygone hairy fellows, patrolling the frozen plains of northern Europe, were onto something after all. They weren't quite the primitive sillies modern man fancies. They lived so very close to elemental nature. They worshipped the things they felt imminently: bones, fire, earth and water. Material things they touched in their everyday business. Who amongst us can say the same thing? What, exactly, do you worship?

Perhaps not so brutish, after all.

As I discovered, when I ate – just a little, mark you – of my Great Aunt Helen's freshly-deceased organ. Back in the 1930s.

She was a formidable woman, rather like a stoat. She lived in a manor I was fully expecting to become accustomed to. I was her only living heir. All the branches of our distinguished family tree terminated with my good self. This was a heavy burden perhaps, for the young, trembling leaf I then was.

I would look at the glowering portraits hung in the main hall and I couldn't help wondering at the nature of our curse. All those great bald domes of skulls; the
liver-spotted
claws. My fiancée and I on that first night at Great Aunt Helen's stared back at those faces without much enthusiasm. We were young and feeling subtly menaced by this concentration of my forebears. My darling Magda murmured something to me to the effect that she hoped I wouldn't wind up resembling my grandfathers. They were indeed a terrible-looking lot. I shivered, as if fearful they might be earwigging on us. And their oily eyes seemed to flash in the smoky candlelight.

Magda was at her most beautiful then. Swan-necked, imperious. We were in our twenties and I was just down from Oxford. I say ‘down', as the popular cliché has it, and that was just how it felt. I had slithered and descended from all that light and air and lolling around and now real life was beckoning. Here in this ancestral home everything was mouldy and fly-blown. Nothing had moved. No one had passed through the main doors in decades.

Magda had been at first a little overwhelmed in these trappings. Her upbringing was of a different order to my
own. She had been rather stirred by the sight of the manor, knowing that she was destined to share it, eventually, with me. Her posture had stiffened, upon arrival, but by evening some of the gloom had crept into her. She became almost stroppy and satirical. By the time my aunt joined us for dinner Magda was quite tipsy. Bolting back large glasses of cool amber wine. Quelling her nerves and pretending she belonged.

The old lady was a shocking white. So frail, yet you knew she could lash out. There was still quite considerable force and will stored in that frame of hers.

That night the talk was cordial and general as she inquired into my education and, gently, as to my plans. She was rather shocked at my determination to pursue a career as an author. I was surprised, myself, at declaring my hopes so suddenly, so openly. It didn't do, in our world, to show one's hand so readily.

Great Aunt Helen thought my ambitions childish, and rather selfish. She wasted no time in letting me know this. ‘Historically, the Soamses have had a knack for dedicating themselves to the study of the Arts. A calling, you might say.' She looked at me down her long, sharp nose. ‘An almost priestly devotion that we Soamses share.'

I could sense beloved Magda growing restless and stiff at my side. She reached for the decanter once more and I could see that her movements had become blunt and jabbing. She giggled, ‘Your great aunt wants you to take holy orders, Fox.'

Aunt Helen frowned. ‘Not quite. I merely want to dissuade my nephew from wasting and abusing his most important gifts.'

Young fool that I was, I found myself warming to this obvious flattery.

‘We will discuss this further, Fox,' my aunt promised, and raked a glance over my bride-to-be. Withering.

Then the talk drifted back to Oxford and how my rooms at St John's had been close to the main gates, their leaded panes letting in the bright light of those open skies. How I could look over the Queen's Road to the saloon bar where I met my friends at lunch time. I counted among those friends some of the more senior dons.

‘Elevated company,' my Aunt raised her eyebrows, impressed, as I listed the names of my fellow scribes. ‘You have been lucky to make the acquaintance of such men, Fox. These connections will stand you in good stead.'

I beamed at her, pleased that my efforts to get myself counted amongst the membership of the Smudgelings had impressed her so. ‘Worming in' is what Magda generally called it. She thought me foolish for expending so much energy trying to come to the attention of Professor Reginald Tyler and the like.

‘Oh, they're an awful bunch, Helen.' She was slurring now, and I saw my aunt flinch and blanch at the interruption – and the familiarity. But Magda went on. ‘They sit about in that gloomy old bar, nattering on about their funny old books. Drinking the most horrible orange-coloured beer. And it's not as if they're doing anything important. They're writing stories about dragons and goblins and pixies. Children's stories! That's what they're all writing! And now Fox has caught the bug, too.'

My great aunt stilled her with a single look. ‘I approve of Fox spending time with these men. For they know the
power of the word. They know the magic of the word.'

I was nodding excitedly, feeling the effects of the wine myself, by now. ‘That's what Professor Tyler keeps saying. To write a thing … is to make it so.'

‘Then he is a very wise man.' My aunt smiled. Not a very warm expression. ‘He understands the first precept of magic.'

‘Magic!' Magda laughed.

Dinner was at an end, soon after that. Out swept Great Aunt Helen, dragging the white train of her gown over the flagstones. She took the glow of my self-satisfaction with her, and both Magda and I vaguely sensed that we had disappointed her.

Then, in the middle of that night, we were woken suddenly in our damp bedroom. Magda was first on the alert, tugging at my arm.

My aunt was shrieking and ululating from her own room, down the corridor. It was an awful racket. Who'd have thought the old dame had so much breath in her?

Full of gumption and spunk and, strapping as I was at that age, I hurried down the passageway to rap upon her door.

‘Great Aunt Helen?' I called, feeling a fool.

The shrieks had subsided into moans. I knocked again, more urgently.

‘Are you unwell? Shall I call for help?' Though who there was to call out to in the middle of the Norfolk wilderness, I'm sure I didn't know.

At last her quavering tones filtered back to me. ‘It is nothing. Leave me.'

And nothing was said the following morning.

Great Aunt Helen was bright and – for her – almost chatty as we picked over some decidedly rank kippers. I could see darling Magda's face screwed up in displeasure at the quality of the fare, but also at the dirtiness of the napkins, the mess of crumbs on the tablecloth. My fiancée was hungover and not enjoying her stay so far at all.

That day – to ameliorate the atmosphere and mollify my sweetheart – we took a trip into Norwich. I had recently furnished myself with a motorcar and I was keen to get away from the darkness of the manor. I wanted the two of us to go bowling through narrow country lanes hanging with baby's breath and wild poppies. We wanted to suck in the heady, healthy aroma of the East Anglian landscape: turkeys, pigs and broccoli. Then, a few hours of watching Magda fingering dress fabric and quizzing jewellers' assistants would settle my nerves. I was, as it happened, quite rattled by Great Aunt Helen's nocturnal outburst.

‘Was she drunk?' Magda asked me as she clambered out of the car. I had parked right beside the cathedral, under the sticky green shelter of a tall lime. ‘She was drinking rather a lot at supper, I recall.'

‘She wasn't drunk,' I said tersely. Magda was making me protective of my aunt.

‘Not that I could sleep anyway,' Magda sighed. ‘That mattress was sopping and stank of cats.' Then she put aside all thoughts of our uncongenial home-from-home and devoted herself to the task of exploring the shops.

That night Great Aunt Helen had another of her queer fits. This one was even more violent. Again I found myself banging on the sturdy wood of her bedroom door.