by Ashly Graham
Dark scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘H’m. Bacon or sausage? Silly question.’ Returning to the table with an accumulation of further helpings of everything, the reverend, seeing himself under observation, circled a protective forearm around his plate. As he cast an opprobrious glance around the table the action of his jaw, which had equal facility of movement in all directions, accelerated.
The devil lady looked away with a shudder and vowed never to place herself again in the position of seeing him eat. ‘Look, Effie. Today all I wanted was to offer you breakfast and have a little chat. Which is highly irregular, I might add, more irregular than you can begin to know. But I am forgetting my manners. More coffee for anyone?’ Dark’s arm shot up like that of a schoolboy in class who knows the answer to a question. ‘Not you, you twerp. Ophelia? Ophelia, are you with us?’
Effie looked at her distracted companion and replied for her. ‘I believe that we have both had a sufficiency, thank you.’ As annoyed at herself as she was for treating Diemen with even a modicum of respect and politeness, she wanted to know more...a little more. She hardened her voice. ‘Although you report to, what is he called?, the Father of Lies, I’ll ask this question anyway: is there a part of you that wishes it had a second chance? To do things over again, I mean. Only for Good this time, not for Evil.’
It had nothing to do with all the caffeine she had drunk, or lack of food, but as the words sank in warning signals went off in the devil lady’s head. She felt on the verge of fainting. She was being drawn into a discussion about the nature of her condition, and that was anathema to her and to all she stood for. What was Ophelia thinking?, she asked herself. Ophelia was by far the more dangerous of the two, the DL knew that, and her lack of contribution to the discussion was disconcerting. Nonetheless, filled with a sudden recklessness, she felt compelled to reply and honestly. Whatever sophistries she might employ in answering would not be convincing.
‘Although now I have neither heart nor soul, once I had both. My heart once was true, and once my soul was pure. Though I was deprived of happiness long ago, I know the meaning of it better than any mortal, because in me experience has been transformed into memory and knowledge, the memory and knowledge of Paradise Lost. Returning to the land of the living is the greatest punishment because it is a constant reminder of perdition. Here I still hear the birds sing, and see the sun go down at night, and the moon rise. I still listen to music and read poetry, and can appreciate them, but I am tormented by my aesthetic appreciation . The fires of Hell are but a weak metaphor for the torment of loveliness. Constantly I am reminded of how, once, my life’s blood, and every hair on my head, and my hands and feet and nails, and the organs of my body, were mine, inhabited by my soul, created for me. I recall how my soul wept to see Evil metastasize within me, and rebelled against me, and beat against my ribs. At the time I even revolted myself as I did as I did. For beware! The injuries most to be feared by humans are those they inflict upon themselves.’
Effie felt numb. ‘Such openness, from you? Pray tell, why?’
‘My words are all the proof you need of their truth, for I can gain no benefit from uttering them. Whatever I say or do or think now, I cannot hope for forgiveness. But the information I have given you, a soul on the right side of life with freedom of choice, may save you from Hell. That is as true as your days and my nights are long.’
Something like electricity passed down the table, and, her body racked with sobs, the devil lady got up, knocking her chair over, and staggered back against the wall. Tears were coursing down her cheeks and she was wiping them away. Effie, shocked and embarrassed, looked to Ophelia who, despite the emotion of the moment, was sitting demurely with her hands folded and eyes cast down. No greater reaction was evident in the Reverend Fletcher Dark: now that he had emptied the breakfast trays of comestible items, he had moved on to toast and marmalade. The devil lady lurched behind him to the door, mumbling an apology and begging her guests to excuse her. Flinging it open, she bumped chests with her manservant as he straightened from listening at the keyhole.
The DL thrust him aside, so violently that he fell to the floor, and ran down the hall to the powder room. When he scrambled to his feet he went out too, his inquisitiveness replaced by alarm. His fate was intertwined with hers; what went for her, went for him.
After a short interval the manservant returned. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he stood at the entrance, he wrung a kitchen cloth in his hands as he humbly said, ‘My m-mistress apologizes for her indisposition and asks, if you could spare a little more of your time, whether you might join her in the withdrawing-room when you are finished breakfasting.’
This time it was Ophelia who spoke. ‘Please tell Mrs Diemen that we hope she soon feels better. We are ready to do as she requests.’
Relieved, the serving-man escorted Ophelia and Effie across the hall and opened both double doors. Inside and as usual, despite the earliness of the hour and relative warmth of the day, the fire was burning; but with the difference that the flames were leaping up the chimney like wolves around treed prey. Looking apprehensively to the hearth, the man motioned for the guests to make themselves comfortable in the armchairs, and hastily withdrew. The pair said nothing while they sat, not even to remark that the fire, for all its liveliness, was giving off no discernible heat. They were joined after a few minutes by the reverend, who was disgruntled at having had to quit the table prematurely. He was holding his napkin, not for the purpose of wiping his mouth but to hold what he had wrapped in it; also, his jacket pockets were bulging.
‘Misery me!’ he moaned, ‘to miss that marvellous marmalade. ‘Gone now, for the most part, are the granary bread, the wholemeal, and the stone-ground slice; the wheaten, and the carawayed rye. Gone are the crusty rolls, the croissants and baguettes, the brioches and the poppy bagels, ’cept for a few. Gone are much of the heavenly honey, the jubilant jam, the jocund jelly. Never mind the snows of yesteryear, François Villon, you frivolous Frog: the snows may come again, mais où sont les pains d’aujourd’hui? Where are today’s loaves? Ay me.’ Belching twice, Dark sank onto the window-seat, and gazed sightlessly outside with the tragic expression of one who feared that the world was about to come to an end.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Effie and Ophelia sat in front of the snapping fire, engrossed in thought. The golden flames that surrounded the red and white core were tinged with the green of oxidized copper, and the tips were cobalt blue. Abruptly, Effie leaned forward and peered into the blaze. Snatching the poker from the stand she lunged several times at the largest log, withdrawing her arm quickly. The fire demons and imps, who had been galvanized into disorderly activity by the women’s entrance, tumbled over each other.
When the sergeant demons picked themselves up, they set about restoring order with their pitchforks, pausing to shake their fists at Effie.
Slowly the drawing-room door opened and the devil lady entered looking like death warmed up. She walked to an easier chair than the others were in and, sinking into it, cast a fearful look at the demons as they formed into ranks. The manservant, no longer strutting on his heels but padding and obsequious, entered bearing a tray on which were a pot of fresh coffee and three cups, milk and sugar.
‘My apologies for deserting you,’ said the devil lady weakly, looking away from the fire, ‘and thank you for staying a while longer. If you are not too pressed for time, may I offer you a final cup of coffee?’ Both women nodded. The DL waved her hand at the servant, who, uninstructed, stirred in milk and sugar in accordance with the preference of each of the three women, and set the cups on the occasional tables beside them. Dark, unacknowledged and unserved, remained slumped glumly in the window-seat, mourning the loss of whatever toast and Frank Cooper’s Original “Oxford” Coarse-Cut Seville Orange Marmalade that he might not have secreted about his person.
His office complete, the serving-man stepped back to his habitual position at the door, immobile except for the twi
tch of a muscle in his face.
Effie opened her ever-present shoulder-bag and carefully removed a greaseproof paper package. ‘I nearly forgot. Yesterday was baking day and we brought you some rock cakes.’
‘Actually, every day is baking day,’ Ophelia added. ‘As well as serving them on Sundays, we take some with us when we go about the parish, to give to people. Effie bakes a lot of rock cakes. They’re very popular.’
Her friend continued, ‘So we thought you also might like some. They’re a bit burnt on the outside, but that shouldn’t bother you. Sorry, I didn’t quite mean it like that.’
Open-mouthed, the devil lady looked from one woman to the other. The receipt of a gift had erased the distress from her face. No one in deathly memory had ever presented her with anything.
‘Oh! But how delightful! I won’t wait for tea, but if you don’t mind I’d like to have one right away. I feel in desperate need of some comfort food. Do please join me if you like.’ She nodded vigorously to her man and he went out, returning quickly with a rectangular plate. As he held it out to receive the items while Effie unwrapped the greaseproof paper, she noted that it was very old plate, with spider veins in the glaze, and painted with a classical scene of nymphs and satyrs. She removed the rock cakes, which looked like cooled volcanic lava, from the package and laid them reverently on the plate.
Motioning to the manservant to serve his mistress, when he proffered her the plate the DL’s hand hovered briefly before selecting the largest of the items.
She took a bite and pronounced it delicious with her mouth full.
‘Will you have another?’ said Effie, before she had finished the first one.
The devil lady crammed the remainder in her mouth and swallowed several times without chewing properly. Then she winked conspiratorially at Effie and took another rock cake before her man could pass the plate to the pair. ‘I shouldn’t but I will.’
Ophelia and Effie declined the rock cakes, and sipped their coffee: once, twice, thrice, and set the cups and saucers down on the side-tables.
From the window-seat the reverend was paying close attention out of concern that the rock cakes should disappear before he could secure one or more for himself. Getting to his feet, like a gun dog pointing at a pheasant he leaned forward with one plump paw raised and his bottom sticking out, before hurrying forward and grabbing several from the plate.
Immediately upon touching the rock cakes Dark yelped as if he had been electrocuted, and with an involuntary jerk of his arm lobbed them into the air. Then, doubling over, he bent at the knees and executed a sequence of perfect somersaults back to the window-seat, where, unfolding himself, he sat whimpering and nursing his injured hand under his armpit.
When they landed, in the hearth, the rock cakes bounced into the middle of the fire.
The devil lady, oblivious, continued to eat. Cheeks bulging, her eyes brimmed with pleasure at the voluptuous sensations that she was experiencing, many of them, as she savoured the taste and texture of the rock cakes and greedily swallowed each bite. Wondrous and beautiful scenes from her living past were appearing before her eyes and in her mind.
A thunderclap rent the air, and, in the confined space of the room, a wave of ear-popping pressure seemed to force the walls outwards. Lightning flashed, the demons went rigid, the flames leaped up, and the imps were fried to a crisp. Next, the entire contents of the fireplace were sucked up the chimney. Then fork-tongued multicoloured flames blew back onto the hearth, and raced in all directions across the room as if they were chasing trails of gunpowder, without setting anything alight.
Then they were extinguished and there was silence. A small amount of soot from the chimney fell onto the grate; but otherwise the hearth was cool and clean, without a trace of ash, the blacking fresh on the fire-brick lining.
Effie and Ophelia, who had been knocked off their seats by the explosion and sonic shock, uncovered their ears and got up from where they had been lying in the foetal position. Setting their chairs upright they sat down again and gripped the arms, white-knuckled, staring dead ahead. When nothing further happened, they untensed sufficiently to turn and ask in a quavering voice if the other was all right. After hoarsely reassuring each other several times that they were, they turned their attention to their hostess.
The devil lady had also fallen to the floor several yards away from the women, where her body was frozen into an inhuman posture as if she were double-jointed all over. Suddenly her face reassumed mobility and began contorting, and there was noise again, unearthly noise, as she began pouring forth ugly and unintelligible sounds through clenched teeth. Her legs started moving in a horizontal frenzy as if she were pedalling a bicycle at top speed, so fast that the silk rug rucked up underneath her. She began tearing at her stomach.
In a split second the DL was picked up by an invisible force and flung upwards and hard towards the ceiling, where her back crashed into the chandelier, which, when she fell disintegrated on top of her in a shower of broken glass and twisted metal. Then her manservant, his face a snapshot of panic, was slammed into the wall so hard that when his body crumpled to the floor an area of plaster came away with it. Fletcher Dark, meanwhile, who had been fumbling desperately with the catch of the central window, threw up the sash with all his might. When the frame juddered free of the fresh paint that adhered it to the sill, with an eldritch cry the reverend hurled himself headlong into the hydrangeas.
The room filled with a gritty pall of smoke. Multiple images appeared, of antic figures running, jumping, howling with rage. To Effie and Ophelia’s horror the demons returned, much larger this time than they had been in the fireplace, together with several huge devils who came up close and yelled and grimaced in the women’s faces. They had an awful, putrid smell that made them gag and retch. In an attempt to block out the pan-daemonium, the two women jumped up and into each other’s arms and hugged as tightly as they could with their eyes tightly closed.
When out of fear and a ghastly fascination they opened them, they saw over their shoulders squirming piles of rotting and blackened—but alive—human bodies being jabbed with stakes and having the skin flayed off them with knives by the demons. The bodies’ flesh was crawling with maggots, and their eyelids were fluttering like crazed moths. As snakes with flickering tongues coiled and tightened around their limbs and necks, worms spilled from mouths stretched wide in suffocating terror.
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the bedlam was over, and all the awful things and sights and smells were gone, vanished as if they had never appeared or existed. Quiet fell like a sledgehammer. The thin rays of a natural sun gleamed through the still-open window and hung like gauze in the air.
Tearful and disoriented and still clutching each other, the women headed for a bench where they sat and, disengaging, touched their own bodies and skin. Delicately they tested for pulse and temperature as much as for hurt. To their boundless gratitude they were alive, or experiencing a passable imitation of being so, and seemed to be unharmed.
Of the devil lady and her manservant there were no remains or evidence of their ever having been there; and, when Ophelia got up and stepped gingerly across the creaking floor to the window, she could see only an indented and trampled area amongst the hydrangeas to bear testament to the Reverend Fletcher Dark’s defenestration.
When with a crack like a pistol-shot Effie’s end of the bench collapsed and she slid to the ground, and scrambled up to exchange wide-eyed looks with Ophelia, both of them appalled that the episode might not be over—but then seeing and sensing from the atmosphere that it really was—they noticed that it was not a piece of period furniture they had been resting on, but a plain painted bench with more woodworm holes in it than there was structure.
The place was an extraordinary sight. Gone were the rich décor and elegant furnishings; gone was the Adam chimney-piece; gone were the pianoforte, the portraits, the antiques, the accent pieces; gone the lamps, the vases, the figurines, and the statuettes; gone the
Persian rugs, and the polished hardwood flooring. The room was virtually empty. The walls were peeling to reveal archaeological layer upon layer of patterned paper. The parquet floor was buckled under loose threadbare pieces carpet, a Homeric Trojan plain of bluebottle and woodlouse and spider and beetle and wasp corpses. The window frames were rotten and the panes cracked and obscured with mildew. The cobwebs that were in all the corners were torn and black with dust. A naked light-bulb hung from the middle of the Artexed ceiling, its flex looped midway to shorten its length. The chimney-piece was a plywood shelf, and the grate was filled with charred newspaper, circulars and crumpled cigarette cartons.
But as shabby as the room was, it was full of peace.
Returning to the middle of the room, Effie cleared her throat preparatory to speaking, and they both jumped at the echo from the bare surfaces. There was the unmistakeable sound of a scampering mouse, which to the relief of both women came from behind the wainscoting.
‘What just happened, Ophelia…’ said Effie in a tremulous voice—strangely, head Church Rat though she called herself, rodents were one of the few things that she was afraid of, and there was no furniture left in the room for her to stand on if one appeared—‘…was that really all to do with rock cakes? Just rock cakes?’