When Cornelius did not take his attention from the girl, the old woman turned and placed the jewellery box onto the dressing table with a quiet click. From the corner of his eye, Cornelius saw her lean on the table’s edge, her arms braced, her back lifting and falling with slow breaths. After a long, silent moment, she raised her head and met her own eye in the mirror. Cornelius saw her map the contours of her aging face; saw bitterness and hatred, then cold determination take their place in her expression.
She straightened and turned to face the room. ‘You’ll want to stay, of course,’ she said, crossing the room to the girl. ‘Gentlemen do so like to watch.’
Without looking her in the eye, she began undoing the buttons on the girl’s coat. Roughly she tugged it free and cast it aside on the dressing-table chair.
‘It’s a good job I’m here to help her find her feet, I can tell you. She wouldn’t have an idea what to do without me.’ She slapped the girl’s side, like a butcher in a market. ‘Never even worn a corset, have you, girl? Well, you won’t fit into one of my dresses without one – so prepare yourself.’
One after another, she opened the buttons on the girl’s blouse. With no ceremony at all, she stripped the garment from her and flung it atop the coat. Muttering, she bent to unbuckle the girl’s belt.
All through this, the girl watched Cornelius, her dark eyes intense, warning him against harming the old woman. He bowed in gracious acquiescence, content to allow her the illusion of choice. So long as the girl behaved, he would be happy to leave her more malleable friends alone. As the actress tugged the girl’s skirt from her, Cornelius turned his attention to the bed and began undoing the many tiny buttons that adorned the glittering dress.
The light was almost gone, and the dress took on a subtle, translucent quality as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The fabric shimmered beneath his fingers, and he smiled bitterly. It was perfect – Vincent would love it. How could he not? Didn’t Cornelius always give Vincent what he wanted, long before he even knew he wanted it? Hadn’t he spent years finding all the things that would make Vincent happy?
He would keep the hair and jewellery simple, perhaps leave the throat bare. Pretty, but not ostentatious – that is what he likes.
These thoughts absorbed him as he undid the costume’s many fastenings, and he didn’t notice the lack of movement behind him until the silence prickled his neck. He turned to find the women staring at him, the girl a gleaming, dark-eyed vision in petticoats and stockinged feet, the crone a pensive shade beside her. Cornelius straightened from his work, unsure of the problem.
‘Might you like to lend a hand, sir?’ suggested the actress. Dropping stiffly to her knees, she gestured him to the girl’s side. ‘Here, sir,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could help me?’
She was indicating the floor by the girl’s heels. Cornelius went and crouched beside her, thinking a buckle needed undoing.
‘Do you think I should remove more petticoats?’ She lifted the hem of the girl’s underskirts. ‘I have left … one, two, three, four,’ she counted, eyeing him as she lifted the hems one at a time until the girl’s slim ankles were exposed.
Cornelius looked at the skirts gathered in her hand, looked at the old woman, looked back at the skirts. ‘I … well, what do you suppose?’ he asked. ‘What is the usual arrangement for a dress like this?’
The woman gazed at him a moment as if perplexed. Then she delicately ran her finger up the girl’s black-stockinged calf. The girl’s leg twitched. ‘Are these stockings acceptable?’ murmured the old woman.
Cornelius huffed in exasperation. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, climbing to his feet. ‘It’s the dress that matters – why should I care about the stockings?’ He looked around at the scattered clothes. ‘You said she needed to put something else on, or the dress will not fit her … Where is that thing?’
The old woman sat back on her heels. His reaction to the stockings seemed to have thrown her. ‘Do you mean the corset?’ she said at last.
‘Yes, the corset. Where is it?’
She got to her feet and rummaged in her bags. ‘She’s a big girl when compared to me. I’m not making any promises …’
Cornelius began fussing with the girl’s hair, shaking it out, running his hands through it, spreading it across her shoulders and letting it tumble down her back. She was no more than a doll to him, a mannequin, and so it shocked him when she spoke, and jarred him when he once again looked into those piercing eyes.
‘You’re all lit up,’ she whispered. ‘Do you know that? For the very first time, you’re giving off light.’
He paused, his hands in her hair. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re all alive now. Like that man from the garden.’
‘Luke?’
‘And those little children. You’re giving off light, just like them. For the first time since I’ve seen you. You’re feeding it.’
The actress approached again. She seemed pleased to find Cornelius with his hands buried in the girl’s hair. Smirking, she came up behind the girl and put her arms around her waist, wrapping her in some stiff bodice of boning and canvas. Still reaching from behind she did up a long series of clasps on the front of the bodice, and gradually the girl’s breasts were raised, her waist pinched.
Across the girl’s shoulder, the old woman lifted her eyes to Cornelius. ‘You need to hold on here,’ she murmured. Taking his hands from the girl’s hair, she placed one on each of the girl’s warm hips. ‘There will be some tugging.’ She began fiddling about out of sight. ‘Like I said, she’s a big girl when compared to—’
Abruptly, she heaved at the back of the bodice. The girl was almost ripped from Cornelius’ grip, and he tightened his hold. The old woman heaved again. Cornelius met the girl’s eyes. They were glittering and pained as the constricting garment tightened around her. She raised her hands to steady herself against his chest. The process seemed to go on forever, and Cornelius found himself holding tightly, looking down into the girl’s face as her body was hauled at and jerked against him.
‘Do you even know my name?’ she whispered.
Shocked, he stepped back, releasing her, but the job was done, and the old woman came to stand by his side, admiring the strange shape into which they had forced the girl’s body.
‘Doesn’t it do wonders for her?’ asked the woman. ‘Don’t you like what it does for her … um …’ She gestured to the top of the garment, where the creamy swell of the girl’s breasts now strained against the pale fabric of her chemise. ‘Oh, do try not to look so tragic, girl. Smile, for goodness sake. Learn some art. No gentleman wants to look at a scowl!’
Cornelius pulled away. The girl looked awful, imprisoned and mutilated, as if she had been squeezed in two. Disconcerted, he skirted the bed and backed all the way to the window.
The actress squinted at him in renewed uncertainty. ‘Sir?’ she asked.
‘It … it has grown quite gloomy,’ he said. ‘I will fetch some candles. Raquel has always enjoyed candlelight – she will be certain to have some to hand.’
He left them in the gathering dark and almost ran into the adjoining room. He came to a halt just inside the door, his heart hammering. He could hear the actress whispering as he stood motionless in the shadows, and her words gradually replaced his crawling shame with anger.
‘You can’t do this without me, girl. Don’t think you can. This is obviously a sophisticated man – you’ll have to do more than drop your bloomers and close your eyes to keep your hooks in him. Oh, spare me that look! I’ve heard you, with your “Joe, Joe, Joe”. And I’ve seen you, too, as soon as you think my back is turned, holding hands with that American boy. You think I don’t know how a girl gets by? You can drop the act with me.
‘But you must be careful with that man – he’s no grab-handed street boy. He’ll buy all the innocent eyes and fluttering virginal heart you have to offer, but when it comes down to it you’ll need to know what you’re doing with him. I know his type. You need to ha
ve technique. I can help you with that. You follow my advice, keep me close, and we could be well set up here – we could be here for years.
‘Are you clean? When was the last time you washed? Here, I have perfume …’
Cornelius listened to all of this with his jaw set and his fists clenched. The filthy old pander. The dirty, shameless, appalling old whoremonger. How could she?
Then he lifted his eyes and caught his reflection in the sheen of the dusty window. You hypocrite, he thought. Holding on to what you’ve got the only way you know how. What difference is there between you and that desperate old harridan?
His eyes flicked away from his reflection. There was plenty of difference, plenty. That creature in the room next door was nothing like him. Barely sixty years old and already used up, she was, like the girl, like the rest of humanity, a flicker, a hiccup, a dust mote on the face of time. Here and gone in the blink of an angel’s eye, they were nothing. They meant nothing.
Cornelius fetched a box of candles and matches from Raquel’s spare wardrobe. The old woman stopped whispering when he returned to the room, and, all business, he went about setting the candles into their holders and lighting them.
‘Let us put her in the dress,’ he said. ‘I should like to test it out in the candlelight. Then we can head down to the séance.’
You
YOU ARE WALKING down a staircase in darkness. Ahead of you walks a man. He is invisible to you in the dark, but I can see him. Through your eyes, I see him. He is carrying unlit candles. There are matches in his pocket. He passes a painting on the wall – the intelligent, dark-skinned face of the man he loves – and his fingers brush the frame as a caress. Behind you, hopeful and frightened, is an old woman. Her hopes are pinned on you. You are nothing to her but a currency.
Your heart and lungs and stomach are squeezed in the grip of a merciless giant, and you find it hard to breathe. You are thinking, Joe Joe Joe. I will find you. I will find you, Joe. It is this that has called me back. This and the singing, which is not aimed at me. It is not aimed at me at all, but I can hear it, as I know you can. It, too, called me back. From the cold arms of my mother; from a darkness so intense it hurt my thoughts; from eternity, it called me.
Need. Hunger. Loneliness.
And you.
You reach the bottom of the stairs, and the man leads you to a big room where there is a table set up with planchette and spirit board. The man means to test you with these things, to force open your mind so he may speak with the one who is with me here in the dark.
That will kill you. You must not allow it.
There are others sitting on a sofa in this room. They rise and the man smiles, waving them back down. He sets you up before a silent piano, behind a screen, and arranges you like a doll. He moves about the room, putting candles in holders and setting a match to them.
The old woman hovers by the door, unheeded and uncared for. Her hope is turning to bitterness. She is so close to hating you.
The man raises his head. The light of the candles is shaded from you by the screen, but his face is illuminated by them. He smiles across at the people on the sofa: the man he loves, the woman they adore.
‘This is just an hors d’oeuvre,’ he says.
He unshields the candles, and – as you have been commanded to do – you turn and turn and turn.
All is sparkling, all is brightness, the room about you filled with shivering light. There is a surge of wonder, and with it a howl, a scream, a vast, visceral, eternal rush. The creature with me rises up. It rises up. It is the one howling. It is reaching for the ceiling. Its arms, its wings, its face are turned upwards in painful need. At last. At last. At last. It feeds.
Hungry for Something
HARRY’S MOTHER WHISPERED, ‘Ehrich, was sitzt du da so rum?’ and he opened his eyes. The room was flooded with silent moonlight. For a moment he found himself listening for the sounds of New York; then he remembered where he was.
Tina. He had left her. He had turned and walked away and left her all alone with that man.
Frantic, he jumped to his feet and rushed into the hall. The women’s room was empty, and Harry came to a halt within it, frozen at the sight of clothing strewn about. With sick certainty, he picked a familiar garment from the floor. It was Tina’s blouse, the sprigged cotton cold between his fingers. How long had he been sitting, calm and motionless, across the hall, and in that time what had been done here?
Harry went to the closed door of the adjoining room, certain that he would find Tina crouched, huddled and ruined, within the darkness there. He realised that her blouse was still clutched in his hand and he dropped it. Tightening his jaw, he pressed open the door.
‘Tina?’ he whispered.
Only stillness and shadows greeted him.
Somewhere far off downstairs someone crashed their hands onto a piano. It was a jarring, dissonant chord that made Harry jump. Angry and aggressive, the music forced itself upon the silence of the house. Harry did not recognise the tune at first; then he realised that it was the third movement of Beethoven’s Mondscheinsonate – the Moonlight Sonata. A music-hall favourite. Harry had never heard it played with such rage. There was a frantic desperation to it that, in light of Tina’s scattered clothes, set Harry’s heart to racing.
In the attic above, the whisperers began moaning, low and yearning.
Harry made his way down to the first-floor landing. He paused in the segmented light of the arched window, staring down the main flight of stairs that led to the hall. The music was very loud down there, coming from a room somewhere to the right of the big horse. There was candlelight there, a scintillating blaze of it, which flooded the hall in warm contrast to the cold moonlight illuminating the rest of the house. The music, the sheer rage of the music, drew him downwards.
From the shadows of the hall, Harry peered through open doors into a vast ballroom. Tina sat opposite him, in a lone chair on the far side of the room, shadows at her back. A table at her elbow held a spirit board. She was dressed in Ursula Lyndon’s gold-sequined costume. From the upward slant of light it would seem that much of the floor within was covered in candles, and they reflected off the dress and spangled Tina and her surroundings with shivering radiance. Her attention was fixed on something out of Harry’s sight in the far corner of the ballroom, the source of the music. Her face was strained, her eyes glittering.
Are you hurt? he thought. What has he done to you?
A sofa was positioned between them. On it sat three distinctive figures, their backs to Harry. The carriage driver was lounging at the closest end, his arm stretched along the ornate back. His strong profile was outlined in candle glow, the soft mass of his dark hair coloured by it. Raquel nestled comfortably against him, her head leaning against his shoulder. Her legs seemed to be up on the sofa, her feet perhaps even resting in the lap of Lord Wolcroft, who sat on the far end, nearest the candlelight. His face was hidden from Harry’s view, his shoulder-length hair pure, unbroken darkness, rimmed in a thin thread of gold. All three were motionlessly absorbed by the music, Raquel and the carriage driver so rapt that their faces were blank.
Harry stared at Tina, wishing she would look his way, wanting her to know that he was there. But she could not seem to draw her attention from the far corner of the room, where someone was pouring all their rage into a violent rendition of the Mondscheinsonate’s third movement, Presto agitato.
I will be back for you, thought Harry. Just hold on.
Silently, he backed away.
The best thing would be to head for the stables and see what he could find by way of transportation. Even if he had to perch Tina and the old woman on the back of one of the carriage horses, he’d do it. He’d put them on his own back if he had to – just so long as they got away from this crazy place.
Making his way through the library, he exited via the French doors, slipping out onto the moonlit terrace. He came to a halt there, his shadow stretching long and black ahead of him on the flagsto
nes, the moon glaring down on the back of his neck.
What about Joe? he thought. Last time he’d seen him Joe had been lying on the carriage seat, a blanket flung across him as if he mattered nothing at all. Was he still there? If he was, Harry would take him with them. He wasn’t going to leave Joe’s body here for these vultures – God knew what they’d do with it.
‘Contemplating a walk, are you?’
Harry shrank back against the wall of the house. A chuckle drew his attention to the far side of the roses, and there, so much a part of the shadows that he was invisible until he raised his hand, was Luke. He was sitting on a bench, his back against the stone wall of the sunken garden, his arms folded, his legs stretched out before him. He grinned as Harry found him.
‘Caught you,’ he whispered.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
A soft snort told Harry that he had a high opinion of himself if he thought Luke was there for him. ‘I come to watch the bats,’ he said, and he tilted his chin to indicate the space just above the roses.
Their petals were black in the moonlight, and moths big and small rose and fell from the heavy blossoms, bright as glimmering stars. A sudden flutter of shadow disturbed the fragrant air, and Luke made a satisfied sound.
‘I’m awaiting on that one,’ he said, pointing high above.
A good five or six bats were swooping and diving, gorging themselves on the aerial creatures of the rose garden, but up above them, barely discernible against the stars, a single member of their species flew in aimless circles. Luke followed it with his eyes. ‘It’s been like this a good few nights past now. I’m awaiting on it.’
Harry glanced furtively back to the terrace, wondering if he could slip away. Luke chuckled again.
‘How do you figure dealing with Himself’s dogs, eh? They won’t be so friendly now you’re up and about, you know, and there’ll be no distracting them with a coin pulled from their ears. Animals don’t have our sense of wonder, boy; things like that don’t stop them in their tracks.’ The man nodded, as if agreeing with himself. ‘Only Eve’s fallen children are stopped in their tracks. It’s the last residue of our closeness with God, I reckon, the ability to see the wonder of things.’
Resonance Page 17