‘Why didn’t he leave instructions for her body to be resurrected, too?’
‘She wanted Albert to supervise her revival personally. After all, she was the Queen, Empress of India, and Albert was the only man she trusted to ensure that all went well. She didn’t know how she was going to die, you see, and she might have been taken by an illness that wasn’t curable yet in the year 2000. In that case, she said, it would be enough to know that he had returned to life and vigour, and that she could remain as a shadow at Osborne House to watch him fulfil his destiny.’
Roger Frost handed the book over. ‘Unfortunately, as we all know, we still can’t bring dead people back to life, no matter what they’ve died of, and no matter how much we used to love them. And I’m not saying that I don’t believe in ghosts, but nobody’s ever seen the ghost of Queen Victoria, have they?’
‘I have,’ said Michael.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘There is a ghost of Queen Victoria. I saw her last night. I talked to her, for God’s sake. How do you think I knew about Abdul Karim?’
Roger Frost looked at Michael for a while with his lips pursed. Then he said, ‘It’s all right. You can have the book for a fiver if you want to.’
‘I saw her. She was crying in her bedroom. Then I met her in the children’s summer house.’
There was a very long pause, and then Roger Frost said, ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
It was eight o’clock, and dark. They stood together in Albert’s writing room, listening to the grief-stricken sobbing coming from the Queen’s sitting room next door.
‘Do you want to see her?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t know,’ said Roger Frost. ‘I don’t really think I do.’
Michael went to the door and eased it open three or four inches. He could see the small black figure sitting at the writing desk, her head bowed. He beckoned Roger Frost, who, after some hesitation, came to join him.
‘Jesus,’ was all he said.
Later, Michael said, ‘There’s only one thing I can think of.’
‘What’s that?’ said Roger Frost, wiping his mouth and putting down his pint. They were sitting in the Old Anchor in West Cowes, a noisy, smoky bar full of yachtsmen.
‘Well, we can’t just let her wander around Osborne forever, can we? I mean, Albert’s never going to come back, which means that she’s going to spend the rest of eternity grieving for him. We’ve got to find a way to put her to rest.’
‘Loads of ghosts do that – what’s different about her? Just because she’s royalty.’
‘I can’t let her do it, that’s all. I can’t let her suffer like that.’
‘So what do you propose? Get in a priest, and have an exorcism?’
Michael shook his head. ‘I read your book last night. In the appendix, you’ve set out the Hindu ritual that Abdul Karim used to bring her spirit back.’
‘That’s right. That was in some of his papers. I had it translated. Thought it was cobblers, when I first read it.’
‘Well … supposing we use the same ritual to bring Albert’s spirit back? Supposing we reunite them – not physically, we can’t do that. But at least we can bring their spirits back together.’
Roger Frost sniffed and helped himself to another handful of dry-roasted peanuts, which he churned around his mouth like a cement mixer. ‘I thought you had a screw loose the moment you walked into the shop.’
In the Durbar Room, half an hour before midnight, Michael laid out a pattern of candles on the polished floor, and drew with chalk the Shri-yantra, a circular pattern filled with overlapping triangles. If you meditated on this yantra long enough, you could look back into the dizzying mouth of space and time, back and back, to the beginning of creation.
The room echoed, except for its dead spots, and the dripping candle-flames made it look as if shadowy spirits were dancing across the coffered ceiling.
Roger came quietly into the room and stood beside him. ‘I can’t guarantee this is going to work, you know, just because I printed it in my book. For all I know, Abdul Karim was nothing but a shyster.’
‘Well, we can only try,’ said Michael. He picked up the book and turned to the ritual, the Paravritti, the ‘turning back up’.
He began to recite the words. ‘We who are looking back into time and space, we call you to find the spirit of our lost son, Prince Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg, and carry him forward on the stream of creation. Let his spirit rise from where it lies asleep so that it can come to join us here.’
Roger Frost, with a very serious face, began to recite the ‘Om … ’ There was a time when Michael would have found it ludicrous, but here in the Durbar Room, with midnight approaching, and the figures of Indian gods and goddesses leaping in the candlelight, it sounded sonorous and strange, as if it were a summons that could wake up spirits from days and years and centuries long forgotten.
‘We call on our lost son Prince Albert to open his eyes and return to the house of his greatest happiness. We call him to rejoin the ones he loved so dearly.’
It was then that Roger touched Michael’s arm. From the far door, a small dark shadow had appeared, a small dark shadow with a pale, unfocused face. It made no sound at all, but glided toward them across the floor, until it was standing just outside the circle of candles.
Roger said, ‘I’m seeing things.’
‘No,’ said Michael. ‘She’s there.’
‘What are you doing?’ she said, in that tissue-papery voice.
‘The ritual,’ said Michael. ‘Abdul Karim’s ritual. We can’t bring back the Prince Consort’s body. We don’t have the power to do that. But perhaps we can bring back his spirit.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘You can have his spirit back here, at Osborne. You can both be together again.’
‘What?’ She sounded aghast. ‘Don’t you understand? Once you’ve called up a spirit, it can never go back.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that, once you’ve summoned him, he’ll have to stay with me, whether he wants to or not, forever.’
‘But I thought that’s what you—’
Michael was interrupted by a sound like nothing he had ever heard before – a low, agonized moan that made him feel as if centipedes were running up his back. He felt a sudden draft, too – a draft that was chilly and smelled of dust and long-enclosed spaces. The candle flames were blown sideways, and some of them were blown out altogether, so that the Durbar Room became suddenly much gloomier.
Out of the darkness, a dusty-grey figure appeared, so faint that it was almost invisible. It seemed to be moving toward them, but Michael couldn’t be sure. The small shadow woman took two or three steps away from it, toward the door. Michael stood where he was, his fists clenched tight, his breath quickening, his heart pounding harder and harder.
The figure stood still for a moment. It was no more substantial than a grey net curtain hanging at a window. Michael thought that he could see a luminous white face, and the indistinct smudges of side whiskers, but that was all. Gradually, as it came nearer, its substance began to thicken and darken.
By the time it was standing by the pattern of candles, the shape was clearly Prince Albert, a small, portly man in young middle-age, deathly white, with a sharp nose and an oval face, and drooping moustaches. He was wearing a dark uniform decorated with medals and a large silver star.
His image wavered, in the same way that a television screen wavers when somebody moves the aerial. He turned this way and that, as if he couldn’t understand where he was or what was happening.
‘Albert,’ Roger whispered. ‘It’s Albert, you’ve brought him back.’
The figure opened and closed its mouth but didn’t seem able to speak. Michael kept squeezing his eyes tight shut and opening them again, because he simply could not believe that this was real.
It was then that the shadow-woman walked around the Shri-yantra and glide
d slowly toward Albert with both arms outstretched.
‘My love,’ was all she said. ‘Oh, my love.’
Albert stared at her. At first it was obvious that he didn’t recognize her. She came closer, and took hold of both of his hands, and said, ‘It is I, my love. They’ve brought you back to me.’
‘Back?’ he whispered, his voice thick with horror. ‘Back?’
‘This is Osborne,’ she said. ‘You never lived to see this room. But this is Osborne. We can be happy again, my darling. We can stay here forevermore.’
Albert slowly pushed her away from him, still staring at her. ‘What’s happened to you?’ he asked her. ‘Can this really be you? What’s happened to you? Your hair! Your skin! You’ve withered away! What kind of devilish spell have they cast on you?’
Michael said, ‘No spell, sir. Only time.’
Albert frowned at Michael like an actor peering into a darkened audience. ‘Time?’
‘You died at the age of forty-two, sir,’ put in Roger. ‘Your Queen here was eighty-one when she went.’
Victoria looked up at him in anguish. ‘I am still myself, my love. And I have kept my love for you intact, for so many years.’
Albert’s mouth opened and closed, but he still couldn’t speak. Something glistened on his cheeks, and Michael realized that he was witnessing an extraordinary spiritual phenomenon – the sight of a spirit, crying.
‘I am still your darling,’ begged the shadow-woman, reaching out again to touch him. ‘I am still your wife and the mother of your children.’
‘And they?’ asked Albert, his mouth puckered with grief.
‘Dead, sir,’ said Roger. ‘All long dead. I’m sorry.’
Albert gradually sank to his knees, and his head dropped as if he were waiting for an execution that would never come. The shadow-woman put her hands on his shoulders, but he was inconsolable. She had lost her young husband when he died, but now he had woken from the dead to discover that he had lost his sparkling young wife.
‘Can you not find it in your heart to love me, now that I am old?’ asked the shadow-woman.
Albert couldn’t answer. All he could do was bury his face in his hands and remain where he was, too grief-stricken to move, while the candles in the Durbar Room guttered and died.
Michael saw them only once more, on the afternoon that he was due to leave. He was carrying his suitcase out to a waiting taxi when he happened to turn and look along the broad avenue that led to the shore of the Solent. It was difficult to see them, in the foggy half-light, but it looked as if they were walking very slowly toward the house. She was leaning on his arm for support. He had his face turned away from her.
Michael watched them for a while, then climbed into the taxi.
‘Are you all right?’ asked the taxi driver.
‘Yes, why?’ said Michael, and it was only then that he realized that his eyes were filled with tears.
WITCH-COMPASS
On his last night in Libreville, Paul went for a long, aimless walk through the market. A heavy rainstorm had just passed over and the air was almost intolerably humid. He felt as if he had a hot Turkish towel wrapped around his head, and his shirt clung to his back. There were many things that he would miss about Gabon, but the climate wasn’t one of them, and neither was the musty smell of tropical mould.
All along the Marché Rouge there were stalls heaped with bananas and plantains and cassava; as well as food stands selling curried goat and thick maize porridge and spicy fish. The stalls were lit by an elaborate spiderweb of electric cables, with naked bulbs dangling from them. Each stall was like a small, brightly coloured theatre, with the sweaty black faces of its actors wreathed in theatrical steam and smoke.
Paul passed them by, a tall rangy white man with short-cropped hair and round Oliver Goldsmith glasses, and already he was beginning to feel like a spectator, like somebody who no longer belonged here.
A thin young girl with one milky eye tugged at Paul’s shirt and offered him a selection of copper bracelets. He was about to shoo her away when he suddenly thought: what does it matter any more? I won’t be here tomorrow; I’ll be on my way back to the States, and what good will a wallet full of CFA francs be in New Milford, Connecticut?
He gave the girl five francs, which was more than she probably made in a week, and took one of the bracelets.
‘Merci beaucoup, monsieur, vous êtes très gentil,’ she said, with a strong Fang accent. She gave him a gappy grin and twirled off into the crowds.
Paul looked down at his wallet. He had hardly any money left now. Three hundred francs, an American Express card which he didn’t dare to use, and a damp-rippled air ticket. He was almost as poor as the rest of the population of Gabon.
He had come here three and a half years ago to set up his own metals-trading business. Gradually he had built up a network of contacts amongst the foreign mining companies and established a reputation for achieving the highest prices for the least administration costs. After two years, he was able to rent a grand white house near the presidential palace and import a new silver Mercedes. But his increasing success brought him to the attention of governments officials, and before long he had been summoned to the offices of the department of trade. A highly amused official in a snowy short-sleeved shirt had informed him that, in future, all of his dealings would attract a ‘brokerage tax’ of eighty-five per cent.
‘Eighty-five per cent! Do you want me to starve?’
‘You exaggerate, Mr Dennison. The average Gabonese makes less in a year than you spend on one pair of shoes. Yet he eats, he has clothes on his back. What more do you need than that?’
Paul had refused to pay. But the next week, when he had tried to call LaSalle Zinc, he had been told with a great deal of apologetic French clucking that they could no longer do business with him, because of ‘internal rationalization’. He had received a similar response from DuFreyne Lead and Pan-African Manganese. The following week his phones had been cut off altogether.
He had lived off his savings for a few months, trying to take legal action to have the ‘brokerage tax’ rescinded or at least reduced. But the Gabonese legal system owed more to Franz Kafka than it did to commercial justice. In the end his lawyer had withdrawn his services, too, and he knew there was no point in fighting his case any further.
He walked right down to the western end of the Marché Rouge. Beneath his feet, the lights from the market stalls were reflected like a drowned world. The air was filled with repetitive, plangent music, and the clamour of so many insects, that it sounded as if somebody were scraping a rake over a corrugated iron roof.
At the very end of the market, in the shadows, an old woman was sitting cross-legged on the wet tarmac with an upturned fruit box in front of her. She had a smooth, round face and her hair was twisted into hundreds of tiny silver beads. She wore a dark brown dress with black-printed patterns on it, zigzags and circles and twig-like figures. She kept nodding her head in Paul’s direction, as if he were talking to her and she was agreeing with him, and as she nodded her huge silver earrings swung and caught the light from the fish stall next to her.
On the fruit box several odd items were arranged. At the back, a small ebony carving of a woman with enormous breasts and protruding buttocks, her lips fastened together with silver wire. Next to her feet lay something that looked like a rattle made out of a dried bone and a shrunken monkey’s head, with matted ginger hair. There were six or seven Pond’s Cold Cream jars, refilled with brown and yellowish paste. There was a selection of necklaces, decorated with teeth and beads and birds’ bones. And there was an object which looked like a black gourd, only three or four inches long and completely plain.
Paul was about to turn back to his hotel when the woman said, ‘Attendez, monsieur! Ne voulez-vous pas acheter mes jouets?’
She said it in surprise, as if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t come up to her and asked her how much they cost.
‘I’m sorry, I’m just taking a w
alk.’
She passed her hands over the disparate collection on top of her fruit box. ‘I think that is why you come here. To buy from me something.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘Then what is bringing your feet this way?’
‘I’m leaving Libreville tomorrow morning. I was taking a last look around the market, that’s all.’
‘You come this way for a reason. No man comes looking for Jonquil Mekambo by accident.’
‘Listen,’ said Paul. ‘I really have to go. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think you have anything here that I could possibly want.’
The woman lifted up the ebony figure. ‘Silence those who do you bad, peut-être?’
‘Oh, I get it. This is ju-ju stuff. Thanks but no thanks. Really.’
The woman picked up the bone with the monkey’s head and tapped it on the side of the box. ‘Call up demons to strangle your enemy? I teach you how to knock.’
‘Listen, forget it. I got enough demons in my life right now without conjuring up any more.’
‘Jonquil knows that. Jonquil knows why you have to go from Libreville. No money, no work.’
Paul stared at her. She stared back, her face like a black, expressionless moon. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.
‘Jonquil knows all thing. Jonquil is waiting for you here ce soir.’
‘Well, Jonquil, however you found out, there’s nothing you can do to help me. It’s going to take more than black magic to sort my life out. I’ll have to start over again, right from scratch.’
‘Then you need witch-compass.’
‘Oh, yes? And what’s a witch-compass going to do for me, whatever that is?’
Jonquil pointed with a red-painted fingernail to the gourd. ‘Witch-compass, genuine from Makokou.’
‘So what does a witch-compass do?’
‘Brings your feet to what you want. Money, woman, house. Work all time.’
‘I see. Never fails. So what are you doing, sitting in the street here, if you could use the witch-compass to guide you to whatever you want?’
‘Jonquil has what she wants. All thing.’
Figures of Fear Page 16