Wrong Turn - I Find Myself Alone

by Zoe Jasmine

  “You'll stay with Allegra, then?”

  “No,” he said. “Not now.”

  “It means nothing to me.”

  “It doesn't matter—”

  “John, you're not listening. It means nothing to me. I don't care.”

  “I don't believe you, but it doesn't matter if I did. I'll do what I want.” He was testy and severe, and paused at the head of the stairs to look back at her. “I'm not easy with all this. Think what you like. The company retains a suite in a Swiss Cottage hotel for visiting luminaries and functionaries. I can use it for a while. I've done so in the past, when I was having the front rooms redone. That's where I'll be. You can have the phone number and we can meet for meals from time to time. The place is yours until you go. You are going on to Romania?”

  “I think I am. But it's hard to think.”

  “Take your time,” he said, turning around. He sounded so like another therapist, dismissing her, she imagined kicking him in the back of the head while she had him in such close range. She could see him sprawl against the corner, his teeth scraping the wallpaper as he fell, his lip split open, gushing, his forehead a sudden explosion of color.

  “I can as easily go,” she said. “I can find a B-and-B, or just—go. Just go. This is your house and frankly, my love, it's your mess.”

  But he didn't hear her, or attend. As they descended to the main entrance hall, they saw now that Mrs. Maddingly's door was ajar an inch or two. Perhaps it had been so earlier and they hadn't noticed.

  “Mrs. M?” said Winnie. She moved ahead of John.

  “Do you think—?” he said, but followed. “Someone is annotating the text of this room?”

  “She talks to herself in notes. Her short-term memory bank is broken.”

  “Bankrupt memories. What does she go on about?”

  Closer up, the smell wasn't celery, was it, but a kind of char, as if wet were seeping into the chimneys from above, and depositing soot all the way down on the brick hearths of the ground floor.

  “Mrs. M?”

  John began to read. “THEPILLSARESPEAKING. What does that mean? REMEMBERTUESDAY.REMEMBERCHUTNEY.REMEMBERALAN,HE'SYOURHUSBAND. We're on a roll here, she's remembering fairly well I think. At least she's remembering to remind herself.” He approached the chimney. The mantel was fringed with gummed notes, each one featuring a single letter, quaveringly shaped. But the line of letters did not read as a word. Some of the letters were backward.

  “Seven letters. It's a sort of Scrabble,” he said. “Maybe she's trying to address the thing you say was haunting the fireplace.” He sounded as if he thought he was in a Noël Coward play; even the way he stood infuriated Winnie. One hand out at the mantelpiece. So proprietary.

  “Mrs. M, I'm coming through; don't be startled,” said Winnie in a loud voice, and went into the kitchen, pulling a string attached to an overhead light.

  The charred smell wasn't damp smoke, but something in the oven, set at a low heat. “Apparently she's as bad a chef as she is a housekeeper,” said Winnie in a stage whisper. “I've always wanted to write a book for the culinarily impaired: The Despair of Cooking .” She rummaged for a pot holder and ended up using a tea towel folded over several times.

  “Jesus, that's vile.” John wouldn't even come in the kitchen.

  She singsonged to give herself the nerve.

  "Davy Davy Dumpling,

  Put him in a pot.

  Sugar him and butter him

  And eat him while he's hot."

  She opened the door with the tips of her fingers. Her gag reflex kicked in and she tried to hold it in, but couldn't, and slopped all over the floor. She managed to close her eyes to keep from studying the splash of lunch to see if it had fallen in the jagged shapes of the slashed cross, but the imagined pattern of it was engrained in vermilion on the inside of her eyelids.

  “Bloody hell,” said John, “as if it didn't smell bad enough in here already.” But he came into the room and ran water, and dampened the tea towel to pass to her. “Sit down, dear; you're more overwrought than I thought.”

  “I'm not overwrought,” she said, when she could speak, when the ropes of liquefied lunch had been cleared from her sinuses. “She's gone bonkers, not me. She's baking Chutney.”

  “I think he's done,” said John, and turned the oven off.

  They found Mrs. Maddingly in the bedroom. She was dressed in a tartan overcoat and a hat, and she wore grimy lilac gloves. The coat had fallen open and beneath it she was naked and soiled. “She may be dead,” said John into the phone, miraculously getting someone in emergency services instead of a recording. “We don't know. We haven't approached her as close as that and we don't intend to. She's not family.”

  Winnie felt as if she had had a part in Mrs. Maddingly's demise. The feeling was old and powerful. It was one she had felt before. It was a feeling that Winnie could wear like a coat herself, and be naked and ugly underneath it.

  She sat primly on an upholstered footstool in the parlor as they waited for the ambulance. She looked at the letters on the mantel.

  And what could it mean?

  G BR. Great Britain?

  W A near the S: did that mean was ?

  Great Britain was . . . A? A? Avalon? Atlantis? Avaricious?

  “Don't move off, now,” said John. “Don't leave us.”

  “How dare you say that when you just abandoned me? To all of it, to all this? And lied to me about it too? Don't talk to me, and don't mind me, I'm just upset.”

  But she couldn't help it.

  While the floor show had been lumbering on, the roads had become slick. The car Doroftei drove was old, its back fitted out with one long vinyl-covered seat. The car slithered and swerved down the mountainside, though it didn't frighten her, as both sides of the road were heaped with plowed snow, readying a soft landing in the event of an accident. Doroftei was driving slowly enough, safely, and no other traffic to worry about, really. So when the centrifugal force of the car urged her over, nearly into John's lap, she slid, laughing, as if at a carnival ride. Put there by the force of the weather of another country, another culture. She did not pull away. Her hand slid out of her glove, or did John slip it out himself, and their hands, in the dark, clasped with something other than a handshake.

  “Anchor you,” he said, a promise or a threat.

  “Anchor me?” she said, a request or a protest.

  Mrs. Maddingly was bundled onto a stretcher. She was not dead yet, apparently.

  “You want to do the cat thing or the hospital thing?” asked Winnie, now in control, at least as much as she ever was.

  “Hospital,” he said. “She's my neighbor. I suppose I ought.”

  That left Winnie to dispose of the soft-fleshed cat.

  She brought some newspapers from John's flat so she could soak up the remaining blood. She'd never been squeamish and she worked delicately, as if it made a difference to poor Chutney that her gestures were slow and patient. The brown goo sponged into the paper, overtaking a headline. Wake up that hedgehog sleeping in your bonfire, said Derwent May. Protect animals on November 5, particularly hibernating hedgehogs . The story warned about more Guy Fawkes Day disasters, and the proclivity of hedgehogs to nestle deeply into bonfire piles erected in advance and unattended for some time. The story ended as the blood seeped over the text: “Last year the RSPCA even reported some youths throwing two hedgehogs into a bonfire at Biggeswade in Bedfordshire. Their bodies were discovered in the smouldering remains of the fire. Hedgehogs are not like phoenixes: they will not rise again with glittering prickles from the ashes.”

  “Nor will you, Chutney,” said Winnie, “or at least you better not.” She double-bagged the corpse, roasting pan and all, in some Sainsbury plastic bags and then dropped the whole mess into a white bin liner. She couldn't bring herself to leave another dead cat out for Camden Council rubbish removers to collect. So, praying that Chutney hadn't had some sort of collar with identifying tags, Winnie waited until dark and then walk
ed over to West Heath, which local lore considered a cruising site for gay men. She found a dense growth of bushes, shoulder height. Hoping that there were no fellows hidden inside busy at getting jolly, she lobbed the remains of Chutney as far as she could, and walked soberly back to Rudge House, for all the world like a solicitor on her way back from the office in Golders Green.

  “Be glad you're made of stone,” she said to the hedgehog outside John's door.

  And now the place was empty, in a way it had never been: vacated of everything that had intention or motivation. The furniture seemed incoherently arranged. The prints of roses still lining one of John's baseboards did not look like roses with their echo of lilt and perfume, but only like old faded paint on old paper, encased in glass and wood. The painting of Ebenezer Scrooge/Ozias Rudge was mawkish, and it now seemed as if the old geezer was struggling to get away from being encased in a sentimental legend.

  Winnie was gripped with a dull remorse. She had neglected the needs of old Mrs. Maddingly. Winnie had not been responsible for her, of course, but presumably there'd been no issue of the Maddingly marriage. Who knew if the old lady or her dead spouse had had siblings, cousins, nieces, or nephews?

  Next to the chair, on the telephone table, was today's Independent . John had dropped it there when they'd come in. Because the exposed pantry walls in the kitchen now made the whole flat seem as repugnant as an open sore, Winnie had no urge to move around in the apartment. She was not very religious, preferring to take her fantasy safely in the pages of books rather than in the uplifting superstitions of ideologues, but she couldn't help thinking suddenly that the house felt like the tomb of Jesus in the garden. What a nightmare for those women coming to mourn their friend and brother, the crucified rabbi, to see the tomb open and his body gone! One of the original horror stories. How did any of them survive without benefit of intensive modern psychotherapy?

  Maybe they had themselves exorcised. Could you actually arrange an exorcism with the Church these days, especially if you were neither a believer nor a major donor?

  She picked up the newspaper and gave herself a stern upbraiding: Look at the real, harsh, stupid world. A by-election contested. The Liberal Democrats in an internal snarl. A polio scare in Lithuania. Feng shui hits the East End at last. The revival of an early Buñuel film. She didn't care about any of this, but read it as if searching for the answers to secrets. She could find none.

  The phone rang, startling her. Her paper fell, making a tent, as she reached for the receiver. She was sure it would be news of Mrs. Maddingly. “John,” she said.

  “No, Irv,” he answered. “That is Winnie Rudge, I take it?”

  She had not given him her number. She had never told him her name. “What are you calling me for?” Her tone was neutral; it might be Opal Marley's, it might not.

  “You took off in something of a rush, as you may remember. You were so distraught you left behind your parcel. The cloth thing. So I'm calling about that, but also I'm calling to see how you are. You had me no small amount of worried, the way you reacted to the news that your cousin was in his office working.”

  She took a moment to remember. “That wasn't the kindest thing for me to do, I suppose.”

  “Oh, kindness, it takes a while for a fellow to request kindness of someone. It comes, eventually, but kindness isn't what I'm looking for. I'm much more basic. I'm looking for information.”

  “Namely?”

  “Namely, are you all right?”

  But she didn't deserve that much attention. “Oh, I'm going mad, you can see that as well as anyone. Of course I'm not all right. First I learn my only remaining friend of the heart has been avoiding me and lying about it, for reasons I still can't fathom. Then I come back to this place with him, hoping for a shred of normalcy, a return to the way things used to be—and what next? You want to know what next? The old bat downstairs has cooked her cat, the one that attacked and killed its siblings and companions. I don't know how she did it, but then she put on a coat and collapsed, a stroke or something, we don't know yet.” The we slipped out, she hadn't meant it. “I mean I haven't heard from John since he left for the hospital with her. You're tying up the phone line.”

  “He'll call later,” said Irv, unruffled. “When am I going to see you again?”

  “Why do you want to see me?”

  “Do I have to have a reason?”

  “Yes. No one wants to see me at all, much less without a reason.”

  “Well, that's self-derision of a particularly high school variety. How's this for a reason: to return your shroud to you.”

  “It's not mine. I suppose technically it's John's.”

  “I'm not going to return it to him. I'll give it to you. Look, I know you're in Hampstead. I'll come up there. I don't mind.”

  “Where are you? I don't even know where you're staying.”

  “I've rented one of those sublets you find advertised at the back of the New York Review of Books . A flat in Maida Vale. But I'm not there, I'm at a phone booth. I'll grab a cab and come over. You sound as if you need not to be alone.”

  “I don't know if I'm fit company. As you sweetly pointed out.”

  “I don't want to come up to the house. Not that I'm spooked by your ghost story, I just don't want to meet your cousin yet. I'll be at the door of the Hampstead Tube station in forty-five minutes, say.”

  She brushed her hair. She could do that much to make herself fit company. She left John a note. If he had rung while she was on the line with Irv Hausserman, he didn't ring back. She taped the note to John's front door with nine inches of adhesive tape. Then she headed out into the early evening, threading her way through rush hour at full gridlock, her calves lit rosy by brake lights.

  They went to the King William IV and perched on unreasonable stools. The clamor of businesspeople having the first drink of the evening was comforting. Behind the bar hung a sign: IFYOUWANT ANIGHT OFPASSION,TALK TO THEBARTENDER. “I don't believe I'm that desperate,” said Irv.

  “I wonder if she was actually intending to eat that cat? You're very good to see me when I'm like this.”

  “I don't know you any other way.”

  “You don't know me at all.”

  “Touché. You're right. But I know you better than I did this morning. I spent some time on the computer when I got back to my little bedsit. I checked Amazon-dot-com for Winifred Rudge and, while I was at it, Opal Marley. I found an Ophelia Marley, Ph.D. Any relation?”

  “Oh, all that.” She was surprised how nervous she felt. “Look, I'm sorry. I was rather mortified to be meeting compatriots in a gypsy's tea room. I should have owned up. It is Winnie Rudge. Promise. But how did you find out? And John's number?”

  “I phoned Ostertag, badgered him to phone your friend Rasia, who didn't know any Opal Marley but who knew that someone named Winnie Rudge was in residence. And Rasia rang some neighbor of hers to get your cousin's phone number.”

  So everyone in Hampstead knew that Winnie had been introducing herself as Opal Marley. That would surely help her public relations campaign. She waved her hand. “Noms de plume, you get attached to them.”

  “I suppose you might. Well, I clicked on the Amazon-dot-com message that said ‘Other books by Winifred Rudge' and I got a list of your publications. Kiddie lit, right? Fairly complete, I would warrant. But I saw that your last new book was published three years ago, and prior to that you'd been putting out at least two books a year for a decade or more. Why the hiatus? Do you have several other pen names? Or are you working on a new book?”

  “You mean, am I inventing all this parapsychology stuff so I can hew out a chunk of narrative from my experience? That's not how it works. And anyway, why are you asking?”

  “You seem bent on presenting yourself as a total flake, and you don't seem a total flake. Not really. You seem like someone having a hard month or two. Slightly cagey about your past. So what? I've had my share of hard months and I know. If you're working on a novel, maybe your sens
es get heightened and your reactions get more, oh, extreme. I don't know, I'm not a novelist. But also if you're working—well, that's a good sign. A person who can work is, in my limited experience, capable of a certain amount of happiness. And I hope that for you.”

  “Why should you bother? Why should you care?”

  “Vague low-grade busybody interest. Nothing more than that. Are you working?”

  She didn't answer at first. He laughed and said, “If you're seriously nuts, you'll imagine I'm an emissary of your publisher sent to nudge you along, a kind of amanuensis.”

  She was greedy over the little bowl of dried wheat things, thinking. “I intended to work,” she said at last. “And my mind turns over various plot devices, it's true. But if you mean am I sitting daily and scribbling strings of jeweled thought in jeweled prose, the answer is no.”

  “I see. Fair enough.”

  She couldn't tell if he looked relieved or disappointed. But he went on. “Well, then this next won't be of use to you as a novelist, but it's still interesting. It was just noon when you rushed off, leaving behind the parcel of cloth on the pavement. It was about one-thirty when I got home. Eight-thirtyA.M . back on the East Coast. I e-mailed a colleague in the history department, knowing he'd be there; he always schedules himself to teach in the morning so he can start drinking at noon. Thinking about your shroud, I asked him to poke around in the indexes and find me a local authority on the fabric arts. Best he could do at short notice was the V and A. In all its huge depths I thought I'd get shunted into the sidetrack of some underling's voice mail, but then I got served up a steaming hot slice of luck. Turns out there's a Belgian expert visiting for a few weeks, on a grant. Very eager to appear the affable guest and be invited back. Agreed to see me and look at the cloth. I got a cup of lukewarm tea out of the exercise.”

  “You went there? You showed him the shroud? What did he say?”

  Irv patted the plastic bag holding the exhumed garment. “Madame Professor Annelise Berchstein said there were many chemical tests, processes of examination by electron microscope, et cetera, that could be conducted, at some cost. She said that wool fibers exposed to light and air tended to rot in a matter of decades, but that in some circumstances, due to a combination of how they were treated and a history of sound storage, the rare cloth came to light that was quite a bit older.”