Walkers (18 page)

She stepped into the tub, drew the
pink vinyl shower-curtain around herself, and turned on the faucet, hot and
hard. Although there was no evidence that what had happened to her was anything
but a vivid nightmare, she made sure that she washed herself thoroughly. She
felt polluted by what she had imagined about Ronald DeVries.

She also felt frightened.

She towelled herself, and dressed,
choosing light beige slacks and a white short-sleeved blouse. She brushed her
hair, but didn’t blow it dry. It was only seven o’clock, and by the time she
had called a taxi to take her to work and made herself some coffee, it would be
practically dry anyway. She switched on her radio and went through to the
kitchen. She hummed along with ‘We Are The World’.

The telephone rang. She went back
through to the living-room to answer it. ‘Hallo?’ she said. She was a single
girl living on her own. She never gave her name until she knew who was calling.

‘Nancy? Is this Nancy?’ The voice
sounded very far away. ‘Who is this?’ asked Nancy.

‘Don’t you recognise my voice? This
is Ronald, Ronald DeVries.’

Nancy felt a cold prickling, all the
way across her back. ‘Ronald? What do you want?’

‘I just wanted to know whether you
enjoyed yourself, Nancy.’

Nancy pressed her hand against her
forehead. ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I
did
enjoy myself. That is, until you decided to lose your temper,
and accuse me of all kinds of things I hadn’t even done.’

‘No, Nancy, not then. I wasn’t
talking about
then.
I was talking
about afterwards.’

‘Afterwards? What do you mean,
afterwards? There wasn’t any afterwards. I went home to bed.’

‘And you dreamed, Nancy, didn’t you?
You dreamed!’

A sensation of pure, slow dread
began to crawl through Nancy’s veins, branching gradually towards her heart.

‘How do you know that?’ she
demanded, shakily. ‘How do you know that I dreamed?’

‘Most people
dream,
Nancy.’

‘But how did you know that I
dreamed?’

Ronald was silent for a long time.
Nancy could hear the long-distance wires crooning and warbling.

‘Ronald,’ she repeated, frightened
and impatient, ‘How did you know that I dreamed?’

Ronald laughed. For an instant, she
could have sworn that his laugh turned into a snarl. Then he said, ‘I know that
you dreamed, Nancy, because you dreamed about me. That’s how I know that you
dreamed.’

T
wo days later, Henry was sitting in
his living-room listening to Beethoven and drinking chilled vodkatinis when
there was a buzz at the door. He closed his eyes in long-suffering martyrdom,
and let the buzzer go five or six times before he finally heaved himself out of
his chair, and walked with dragging footsteps into the hall.

‘Who is it?’ he bellowed, swaying on
his slippered feet.

‘It’s me, Gil Miller.’

‘Ah, the redoubtable Gil Miller.
Hold on for just a moment, and I shall furnish access.’

Henry unchained the door, and opened
it. Gil hesitated for a moment when he saw him, unshaven, wearing a fraying
blue bathrobe, with a large glass of vodka in his hand, but Henry said, ‘Don’t
mind me. It’s Friday morning, and I’m having fun.’ He led the way into the
living-room, leaving Gil to close the door, and he waved his arms expansively,
so that he sent a neat splash of vodka right down the back of one of the sofa
cushions. ‘Beethoven! Ludwig van Beethoven!’ he proclaimed.

Gil nodded towards the frosted jug
of vodkatinis. ‘How many of those have you had?’ he asked, but not critically.

‘I don’t count my drinks,’ said
Henry. He sat down abruptly, spilling more vodka on his bathrobe. ‘Drink cannot
be measured like days of the week, or like linoleum, or socks. Drink is an
endless river, flowing majestically towards the sea. From mountain-top to
ocean, via the kidneys of a million million devotees. And when I fall,
exhausted by my pleasurable duties, there will always be another to take my
place.’

Gil said, ‘I’ve been thinking about
Springer.’
‘Ah’
Henry replied, with
alcoholic sagacity.’
You’ve been
thinking
about Springer. Well, I too have been thinking about Springer! In fact I have
hardly been able to think about anything or anyone else . .

.apart from bloody Springer.’

He touched Gil’s chest very lightly
with the flat of his hand, and burped a deeply suppressed burp, and then said,
‘Sit down, please. I implore you.’

‘You’re drunk,’ said Gil.

‘I know,’ said Henry.

‘Maybe I should call back tomorrow
morning, when you’re sober.’

‘Don’t! You won’t get any sense out
of me then.’

Gil blew out his cheeks, and thought
about it, and then reluctantly agreed to sit down. Henry lifted the jug and
waved it so wildly in the air that Gil was sure that he was going to spill it
all. ‘Would you care for a... libation, m’dear boy?’

‘I’m fine. I have to drive.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Henry. ‘Driving is
a chore that I have long since abandoned. I have a car though, you know. A
Mercury, 1971 vintage. Nine thousand miles on the odometer, that’s all. It’s in
the garage, draped in tarpaulin, waiting for the day when I finally make up my
mind that I have drunk sufficient for one lifetime.’

Gil said, ‘Has Springer called on
you?’

Henry looked truculent. ‘Springer
never stops calling on me. And each damn time he looks different. Three visits
in two days. First, he looked like a nun, all dressed up in white. Then he
looked like the Dalai Lama on his day off. All saffron-yellow robes. He called
again this morning... about an hour ago... wearing some black apparatus.

Well, I say “he,” but he isn’t really
a “he”, is he? He’s more of an “it”. He could even be a
“she”.’

Gil sat down, crossing his bare,
tanned legs. ‘And each time he called on you, he asked you the same question?’

‘That’s right. Just that one
question.
“Have you made your mind up
yet?”
And then, when I told him no, to wait a little longer, he left. No
argument, no bother. No oratory.

But each time he left me feeling
guiltier than I had the time before. So now I’m feeling
very
guilty. And I expect to feel even more guilty as the day wears
on.’

Gil said, ‘Do you think we ought to
do it?’

Henry shrugged, and drank, and made
six or seven different faces. ‘How should I know? Chase some mythical beast? It
doesn’t even sound
sane,
let alone
logical. It doesn’t even sound
real.’

‘Then why do you feel guilty when
Springer asks you if you’ve made up your mind?’

‘Because -’ Henry began harshly, and
then stopped himself, and pouted. ‘Because – I don’t know. I don’t know what he
is, or what he represents, or what he’s doing here, or why. He simply has that way
of making me feel guilty. You have to understand that it doesn’t take very much
to make me feel guilty. My ex-wife makes me feel guilty.
You
make me feel guilty.’

He drained his glass, and burped
again, and said, ‘Drink, the endless river . . . flowing with awful majesty...
towards the sea. Taking a detour, of course, through the human kidney. That’s
what they call... a pleasant diversion.’

Gil watched him for a while, as the
music came to a mighty crescendo and then died away. Quite casually, he said, ‘Springer’s
been round to see me, too. He asked me the same question. I guess he’s talked
to Susan, as well.’

‘I see,’ said Henry. ‘And what did
.you tell him? Or her! Or it? Do you know what I told him? Or her? Or it? I
told him that everyone has their own path to follow. Everyone has their own
duty to perform. And that
my
path did
not wend its way anywhere near mythical beasts, nor killer eels; and that my
duty was certainly not to search for invisible rapists.’

‘I told him I’d do it,’ said Gil.

Henry stared at him, blearily. ‘You
did
what?’

‘I told him I’d do it,’ Gil
repeated.

Henry opened and closed his mouth,
as if he were stupefied. But then he said, ‘My dear young man... you don’t even
know what hunting this beast
entails!
Remember
that policeman, on the beach, the one who lost half of his face! Remember the
girl!

Believe you me, this beast, whatever
it is, is no mean opponent. Come on, we’re not hunting for rabbits here! We’re
hunting for something that as far as I can determine is supernatural. Like a
poltergeist! Or a vampire! Or – or, or, the Devil himself!’

Gil uncrossed his legs and sat up
straight. ‘You’ve agreed to do it, too, haven’t you?

That’s why you’re drunk, and
listening to all this music.’

Henry slitted his eyes.

Gil said, ‘I bet you agreed to do it
before I did. You went away and you thought about it, the same way I did, and
in the end you couldn’t think of a single decent reason for saying no.’ Gil
looked around him. ‘I mean, Henry, what do you have to lose?’

Henry came over and laid a trembling
hand on Gil’s tee-shirted shoulder. He looked down at Gil with watering eyes.
Somewhere beneath those heaped-up blankets of alcoholism that were smothering
his emotions, he felt genuinely touched by Gil, the son he should have had and
never did. He had always been too selfish to have children, too preoccupied
with Marx and Engels and Russell and Kant.

He quoted Kant now, as one of his
justifications for having agreed to do what Springer demanded. ‘Two things fill
my mind with ever-increasing wonderment and awe... the starry heavens above me,
and the moral law within me.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Gil. Henry had
been speaking very indistinctly.

Henry said, ‘My reason, I suppose,
for saying yes. That, and the fact that I believe what Springer says, although
don’t ask me why.’

‘And this – Ashapola?’ asked Gil.
‘What do you think about that?’

Henry shook his head. ‘You can call
God whatever you like. You can think of Him in any way you want. He’s still
God.’ He paused for a moment, and then he said, ‘We’re still talking about the
never-ending struggle between good and evil, Gil. That’s why I told him yes.
Whatever Ashapola happens to be, He obviously stands for enlightenment, and
kindness, and protecting the innocent. That girl on the beach was an innocent,
and look what happened. If nothing else, other young girls should be protected,
and she – well, she should be revenged.’

He sighed, and then he added,
‘You’re right, of course, my dear young boy, I have nothing at all to lose. A
few books, most of which don’t really belong to me. A few heaps of paper. A
good pen, and about forty bottles of vodka. No life any more, nothing worth
worrying about, anyway. I couldn’t ever kill myself, don’t think that, but I’m
no longer afraid of dying.’

Gil said, ‘I agreed to do it because
I’ll never get the chance to do it again. And because of that girl. And – well,
because,
that’s all.’

Henry sat down next to Gil, and the
two of them were silent. Then, at last, Henry suggested, ‘We ought to call him.
Or her. Or it. We ought to meet him, now that we’re both decided.’

‘What about Susan?’ asked Gil.

Henry said, ‘No. She’s too
vulnerable. She wouldn’t make a very good beast-hunter, believe me. I was taken
caribou-hunting once, you know, in Canada, and there were two women with us,
and they were an appalling liability. They did nothing but chatter and complain
about how far they had to walk.’

‘I don’t think hunting for this
beast is going to be very much like a caribou-hunt,’ said Gil, trying not to
sound facetious. He didn’t quite know why, but he was beginning to like Henry,
even to feel protective towards him. He had never come across anybody like
Henry before, somebody who could spout philosophy and reel off lines of poetry
and smart remarks without even hesitating, and at the same time act with such
lack of reverence for anything and everything, including himself. He didn’t
necessarily
admire
Henry. But he
would have liked very much to count him as a friend.

‘It could be
very
dangerous, you know,’ said Henry.

‘Maybe so. But Springer wants Susan
to help us, doesn’t he? And he must have a reason. He wouldn’t have suggested
that she should get involved if he didn’t think that she could take it.’

Henry stood where he was, thinking,
tilting now and then from side to side, as if he were standing on the deck of
an ocean liner in a mild swell. ‘Has it occurred to you what Springer actually
is?’ he asked Gil, changing the subject.

‘Well, no, I don’t know. Just some
kind of sexless kind of a guy, that’s all. Like a Buddhist monk or something.’

Henry raised his eyebrows. ‘I think
he’s more than a Buddhist monk, you know. And I don’t think he’s sexless. I
think he’s a mixture of all sexes, known and unknown. I think he’s a microcosm
of everything you ever wanted, an encyclopaedia rather than a book.’