by Fiona Mozley
Fedor opens his eyes. His irises are as black as his pupils, and in the dim light they almost look recessed. He pulls his jaws into a wide, prolonged yawn, revealing thin canines, broad and jagged molars, and a pink, colubrine tongue with short, coarse bristles. Agatha takes hold of Fedor’s head with both hands, and when he closes his mouth and settles his jaws together, she draws her palms towards her, along the length of his nose, then back again towards the flopping ears.
The dog fidgets. He sniffs at her lap then begins to whine. He wants up. His hind legs are tensed and he bobs on the spot several times, asking for permission. Agatha pushes her chair back to give the pup room to emerge, and Fedor springs to her lap. He places his bony hips on her knees and his front paws on the tops of her thighs. Spindle claws dig deep. She will have red indentations later.
Agatha’s study is on the second floor of her Georgian townhouse, in Mayfair. It is where she spends most of her day and is one of the finest rooms in the house, with an intricate parquet floor, high ceilings framed with Roman cornicing, and three tall sash and case windows along one side. Through the windows she can see the street, which is wide, clean, and lined with plane trees and expensive cars.
Her desk is littered with documents. There are tenancy contracts and outlines of planning permissions. There is a letter from one of her sisters. It reads: Give us our fucking money, you fucking Russian slag. This is on top of a pile of documents she was readying for the forthcoming arbitration. Beneath a newspaper, she finds the photograph the antique dealer showed her earlier in the day. It shows a white handkerchief marred by a small, somewhat faded bloodstain. According to the letter of verification, the handkerchief is French, dates from the 1790s, and the blood came from the foot of the guillotine. During the Great Terror, when notable individuals were decapitated, spectators used to rush forward and collect souvenirs: blood, hair, items of clothing. The morbid mementos are still collected: the more famous the decapitated party, the higher the price.
Agatha has been fascinated by the Revolution since childhood and has accumulated items from the period ever since she has had the money to do so. She used to spend the summer school holidays with her mother in Monaco. She was alone much of the time. She sat and read by the hotel pool, or in the restaurant between meals while the staff were clearing breakfast and preparing for lunch. Sometimes she wandered down to the beach by herself and read her books on the sands while watching leathery old ladies in bikinis arrange and rearrange diamond necklaces on their sagging chests. She covered herself head to toe in factor-50 sun cream and propped herself up with a couple of towels and her school rucksack. In the evenings, her mother went to parties and Agatha was left in the hotel room. She ordered room service and was later told off for drawing attention to her neglect.
One morning at breakfast, Agatha’s mother, Anastasia, told her that the King of France had arrived in town. She said she would be going to a party with him that night.
“But there is no King of France,” Agatha pointed out.
“He is some kind of pretender,” Anastasia explained. “He’s descended from the old kings and queens. The ones who were overthrown and slaughtered by the guillotine.”
“So he isn’t really the king.”
“He would be the king if they hadn’t been deposed. If there had been no revolution and no Napoleon.”
“But there was a revolution and Napoleon.”
“But apparently lots of people in France would rather there hadn’t been, and they see him as the rightful king.”
During this exchange Anastasia had avoided making eye contact with her daughter. Agatha was skeptical, and Anastasia quietly agreed with her, and Agatha knew her mother agreed with her.
Later, when Agatha returned to school, she went to the library and got out all the books she could find on the French Revolution, the ancien régime and the Bourbon succession. She read about their descent into decadence, their lavish lifestyles, their fashions, their affairs, their huge gambling debts, their war debts, their parties, their illegitimate children. Then she read about their demise. The trials. The executions. She read about all the chances they were given by the revolutionaries to save themselves, and about how they squandered those chances. She read about their unquenchable belief in their own rights, their total ignorance of or refusal to believe what was happening right in front of their eyes.
The fragility of law and order is never far from Agatha’s thoughts. News had recently come in of a revolution in South America. She kept checking the news on her phone, and scrolling through sets of images. There were crowds of people running through tear gas to storm government buildings. Flags were torn down, and documents were torn up. Statues were tipped on their sides and kicked and spat on.
Nobody but Agatha seems at all concerned about the prospect of revolution in this country. Everyone walks around in a state of extreme presentism, as if the world has always been the same and always will be the same. She feels alone in her concerns, as if she is alive in 1913, with a unique foresight of what is to come, or at Versailles in 1788. What did Madame de Pompadour say when she left the palace? Après nous, le déluge.
Agatha pushes Fedor down, and stands. The room is unlit. She has been sitting at her desk all evening and the long dusk has burned low. There’s something about the night in this city that is brighter than the day. The spread of muddy phosphor illuminates dark corners. The emphasis of shapes that sunshine melts. The drawn, bending, sonorous beams of buses loping from stop to stop.
Fedor trots across the large, oblong room and scratches the paneled door with his front paw. Bare wood shows through the paintwork from prior expressions of impatience.
Agatha follows him and pulls at the handle. The lights in the landing are dim but she can just about see the shadow of a man standing to the right of the doorway.
“Have you been there the whole time?” she asks.
“Yes,” Roster replies.
The dog begins to lick the man’s wrinkled hands feverishly. Agatha notes again the discrepancy between the affection Fedor shows to her and to Roster.
“You spoke to Elton,” Roster says.
“I did,” she replies. “Were you listening?”
“It’s difficult to hear properly through these doors but I caught the gist. You’re taking my advice.”
“I told him what you said.”
Roster nods.
The dog whines.
“There’s fresh water in his bowl,” says the old man. “I’ll take him out for his evening business.”
He lopes down the stairs, hunched like a locust. The borzoi trots behind without being called, all legs and bones and white feathers: an albino vulture.
Tremors
Debbie McGee feels the ground beneath her quake and grind. The vibrations catch the cracked skin on the soles of her feet. They pulse up through her legs, into her pelvis and up through her organs. The tremors unsettle thin blood in loose veins. The residue of cartilage that still resides between her bones drags and creaks. The liquid around her brain trembles and the coarse strands of her hair quiver. Her eyes are no longer instruments of vision but instruments of vibration. They are now tactile. Touch becomes her only sense. Light and color fade, and the scent of the cellar diminishes.
Debbie stoops and bends her knees until they touch the ground. She holds out her arms and turns both palms away from her body and places them on the ground. She holds herself on four points like a half-spider awaiting prey then lowers her right ear. The compacted sun-starved bare earth is cool against her face.
The trembling stops. She presses her cheek deeper but feels nothing. She stretches out her limbs and lies on her front, listening. She hears vermin in the walls and feels the cold and damp.
She remains in that position for nearly half an hour, until Paul Daniels comes to find her.
“What are you doing?”
“Listening to the earth.”
He leaves, and pulls back the curtain across the opening that lea
ds to that part of the cellar.
Debbie listens for a while more, then turns her head to try the other ear. After twenty minutes in this position she rolls onto her back and falls asleep.
Grubs and worms, awakened by the tremors, begin to settle again within the tunnels they have mined. They have followed the quaking rocks and dug deeper than ever before. Now the clamor from below has quietened, they are left with the familiar shuffle of the city above: the pulsing of human footsteps, rubber wheels scuffing tarmac, pencils being dropped, hammers striking nails, knives and cleavers landing on chopping boards, mugs of hot coffee clunking on tables, bums on seats, bodies on beds.
Woodlice dwell in the cracks between the bricks of the cellar wall, in the places where Victorian mortar has worn away. When night falls and the little light that refracts through the squares of glass between the cellar and the pavement fade to an amber glow, they creep from the cracks and scuttle around and over the sleeping woman and gather any fabric or flakes of skin that still hold sustenance.
Dark Room
The room is dark but still a place for looking around. Three women watch Bastian as he and Rebecca pass. Two of the women return to their conversation but the third stirs her cocktail and keeps her eyes fixed on the back of Bastian’s head, his shoulders, his long back, the way his auburn hair catches the dim reddish haze and shines like dull tarnished copper, the color of a well-worn penny. She looks away only when Rebecca, at Bastian’s side, turns and catches her eye.
The club is decorated in varnished wood and glass. Mirrors hang in strategic locations to create the impression of infinity held by four walls. Light speaks to light. There is a bar at the back and a collection of dark leather armchairs.
A barman pours measures of gin then tips them into a cocktail shaker and adds measures of vermouth. He seals the lid and shakes then pours the liquid into tall martini glasses.
Bastian watches him work then orders two gin and tonics. The waiter sets the glasses on the bar and fills them with the liquids over crushed ice. Bastian pays with a crisp twenty-pound note and refuses change. The waiter thanks him. Rebecca stretches her lips over her teeth to form a smile. There is something mocking in the expression.
They sip in unison. Rebecca stands back to allow Bastian to lead the way to a table. He finds one with two deep leather armchairs and looks back at his girlfriend to see if the selection is acceptable.
“Not there. I always sink into those kinds of chairs. They’re too deep. How about the high stools?”
Bastian picks up his drink, which he had tentatively placed on the table, and leads Rebecca to the high stools.
Rebecca checks her phone. “They’re running two minutes late,” she says.
Bastian nods. He isn’t sure he has ever bothered to text someone about a two-minute delay. He sips his drink. It is too cold, and his molars begin to ache.
They are waiting for Rebecca’s work colleagues. She has a new job helping to value and market East Asian ceramics at one of the big auction houses. The people she has met so far move in similar social circles: it turns out they have mutual friends from school and university. Bastian hasn’t met them yet but has heard stories from Rebecca. A couple are bringing boyfriends, and one who, for some reason, is already married, is going to bring her husband.
“So you’ll have someone to talk to,” Rebecca said when she told him who would be there. Bastian wasn’t sure whether she meant the husband in particular or the men in general, but he felt uneasy either way.
The group of seven arrive together from a work event which Rebecca was too junior to attend. Bastian shakes hands with the men and kisses the women’s cheeks.
The women gather around Rebecca and relate tales from the party: news of eccentric colleagues, descriptions of the canapés and the venue, professions of how little they enjoyed the evening and how much they would have rather been here with her. The men ask Bastian about his work and then about his university and his school. The husband, Dave, remains largely silent.
The conversation continues beyond the first set of drinks and Bastian offers to fetch a round. The women order complex cocktails. The men order lager. Bastian has another gin and tonic. One of the women—the one who is married—comes over to Bastian to stroke his soft linen suit. “He’s lovely,” she says to Rebecca with a performative wink at her husband. “Can we swap?”
The women laugh. So do most of the men. The husband, Bastian notes with some discomfort, does not see the funny side, though his wife ignores him and has already returned to a conversation about vintage fabrics. Dave fixes Bastian with a threatening stare. Not wishing to cause a scene to satisfy any latent machismo, Bastian turns away and begins a conversation with someone else.
Half an hour and another round of drinks later, Bastian quietly makes his excuses and scouts for the loo. He has not been here before and is confused by the layout of the building. He searches the various rooms, first downstairs then upstairs, but sees neither signposting nor staff to ask. His search takes him along a dimly lit upstairs corridor, then through a heavy fire door.
He steps into a room. The squalor is vivid. There is a small coffee table, the kind that can be found in dentists’ waiting rooms, surrounded by chairs of a similar theme. The table is covered with boxes and cartons from pizzas and other sorts of delivered food. There are a couple of empty, scrunched cans and stacks of plastic glasses, sticky with multiple shades of sugar. Beyond the coffee table and armchairs there’s a space that looks like a makeshift campsite. There are four or five mattresses laid out across the floor with less than a foot between each of them. On the mattresses, there is a jumble of sheets and sleeping bags and a couple of blankets and pillows. Clothes hang on a rail at the back of the room and on the walls there are pictures, some photographs of people, some postcards showing white beaches, blue seas and skies.
Bastian notes that one of the mattresses is neater than the others. Its owner has pulled the sheets up to the top and tucked the corners beneath. He or she has then folded the blankets into squares and placed them on top of the pillow. Clothes and other belongings are stored in a green fabric suitcase in perfect alignment with the end of the rectangular mattress. This, Bastian guesses, is the occupant responsible for the small stack of plates and mugs that have been washed in the sink then placed on the plastic drying rack.
“Excuse me.”
Bastian turns to see a small woman, not more than five feet tall.
She studies him as he fumbles for words then looks past him into the room. She exhibits no surprise at the camp beds.
“Excuse me,” she says again.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The woman is wearing an apron and a pair of marigolds. There’s a bucket of dirty soap water at her feet, which is still swilling from having been set down a moment before.
“I was just trying to find the loo. It’s not clearly signposted.”
“Excuse me.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m sorry. I’ll go now.”
Bastian walks around the woman. She doesn’t come up to his shoulder. He hurries along the corridor, finds the loo, uses it quickly, washes his hands and makes his way back downstairs. As he takes the last few stairs he sees someone he knows. He speaks before thinking. “Glenda?”
Glenda stops on the first step so she’s the same height as Bastian, though he is now on the floor.
“How are you doing?”
He’s not totally sure the recognition has been mutual. Glenda seems confused by his presence. Maybe she doesn’t remember him.
“Oh, you know, all right,” she says. Then, after a pause, “How are you?”
“Yeah, good thanks. Really good.” Glenda doesn’t seem to have much more to say, so Bastian continues. “I haven’t seen you for ages. When did you move to London?”
“I’ve been here for a couple of years now.”
“Wow, I had no idea. Where are you living?”
“Right here in Soho, actually,” she says.
“I didn’t think anybody lived in Soho.”
“Yeah, well, they do. But I’m here through a kind of … series of events, I guess. A friend set it up for me. I’m living above the Aphra Behn near Soho Square. Do you know it?”
Bastian shakes his head. He pauses for a moment in his own questioning, wondering whether he could ask her to have a drink with him, whether he could persuade her to come and join his group, and how Rebecca would respond to that.
“What are you doing with yourself?” he asks.
“You mean in terms of work?”
“Yeah, well, maybe, yeah.”
“Various stuff. I did an internship with this talent agency for a while. You know, working with actors and that. Setting them up in roles. That was quite fun. And now I’m working at a kind of estate agents.”
“Oh right,” says Bastian.
“Yeah,” says Glenda. “It’s just a short-term thing, though. To make a bit of money. I work at the branch here in Soho, and obviously houses and flats go for loads in central London and you can make a lot on commission.”
“Oh right,” says Bastian. “I suppose you can.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. I mean, I don’t want to stay working there for long. I’m saving up so I can do a qualification in Theatre Directing.”
“In London?”
Glenda shrugs. “No. Probably not. Probably somewhere else. Maybe Bristol, or Manchester, or Glasgow. London’s too expensive.”
“But you’d have to give up your flat in Soho.”
“It’s not really a flat,” she says. “More of a room. And I don’t know how much longer I’ll be allowed to live there at the rent I’m paying. It’s all a bit dodgy.”
“Oh. Well, never mind then.”
Glenda looks down at her shoes, which appear too small for her feet, and are scuffed at the toe. “Yeah,” she says. “Anyway, what are you up to?”