by Graham Joyce
He shook his head. He obviously wasn't going to tell me.
"Who doesn't like dogs?"
Charlie Fraser looked down at the floor, then lifted up his head and stuck his chin out at me. He had this infuriating smirk on his face. It was superiority, confidence in some knowledge that I didn't have. Then he shook his head again, as if to say, no, there are some things you're not smart enough to grasp.
I'm not a violent person. I'd had one big fight in my life and that was when I was six years old. But that provocative smirk released in my brain a photo-flash of white heat and I stepped forward and hit him twice, once on his nose and once on his chin. He fell back hard against the door, but didn't go down.
His hand went to his nose, which was already streaming with blood. Nipping it between finger and thumb, he took a step forward. "You've broken my nose, you ape," he said. "Get me a tissue."
Chapter 9
Frankly, I didn't want to take Otto's money. I would much rather have closed the sale with the loathsome poet, Ellis. I once attended one of his awful poetry readings, in a bookshop on Charring Cross Road, where Jaz introduced us. I hadn't gone there to hear Ellis's whining verse; I'd gone for his custom.
I'm obviously out of touch in so many ways. My idea of a poet is of some rough diamond in a threadbare flying jacket, slouching, in need of a shave, his breath stinking of garlic and black beer: the kind of charming brat who thinks his rancid breath alone is a challenge for any woman. But my stereotypes were all unpicked with this glimpse of Ellis, who turned out to be one who appreciated the sharper weave and the finer thread.
I could tell you that his three-quarter-length coat fluttered with Armani's moniker, that the hidden lifts in the heels of his gleaming shoes obscured a Prada tag, or that the lovely Daniel Hanson scarf that he so carefully unwound from his soft white throat was handcrafted in China from the finest silk. I mean, what use to anyone is a well-dressed poet? I remember thinking it would be a pleasure to take his money for a forged book.
I also recall noticing something very odd about the poet's beak as he flicked off his scarf and eyed the thin assembly that had turned out for him on that damp night. It was as if the moment of wrinkling his nose one time too many at some nasty smell had been trapped on his face. Below the thatch of his scruffy hair it hung like an icicle from a barn roof; dripping, too, because he had a tic, a nervous habit of running his index finger under his snout as he glanced about him.
Oh hell, I thought, have I really got to sit here and listen to this dog's spittle-flecked, yammering verse? Yes, was the answer. We needed the sale, needed the money.
Jaz had told me that Ellis had been in the running for the laureateship. I had to check what that meant. Someone who composes poems about the Queen and is paid with a butt of sack, or a sack of butt, I can't remember. Anyway, Ellis didn't get it; he got a kick in the butt instead. But in my research on our target I'd studied a slim volume of his work.
Oh, give me the tongue of angels to describe his poetry. Well, it's very modern. It's clearly about something; but I have from it the feeling that I'm being told a joke which I don't get. Though I do get the sense that this doesn't matter, isn't a problem: that having the reader or the audience feel thick is part of the intention, that incomprehensibility is part of what makes his poems great.
Anyway, to my surprise he stepped forward and said, in what's called an Estuary accent round here and in a voice loud enough not only for the present audience of six, but for everyone on the lower floors, "Gawd! Bit parky for poetry, innit?"
My life! I remember thinking. Stroll on! Here's one who can jump easily from the Oxford High to my own dark origins on the Old Kent Road and back again without missing a single beat. And I thought: You be careful, sunshine, you're on my manor now, and we are not mocked without payment.
It was perhaps a week after our visit to the nightclub—a week in which I'd failed to hear a single report from Stinx—when I used my lunch hour to pay a visit to Antonia at GoPoint. As usual, GoPoint had been emptied of its inmates for the day, with the exception of a therapy group in the small meeting room. The door to the meeting room had a vertical glass panel and I looked in on them. The group sat in a circle on hard plastic chairs and Antonia was leading the group in discussion. I'm not sure what they do in these sessions exactly: lay out their life stories, lament where it all went wrong, resolve to do better. I expect that's the drill. Celebrity addicts pay thousands for the same drill at The Priory and I don't think GoPoint, for all its scuffed paintwork and patches of damp, is any more or less effective.
I watched through the window, rather uncomfortably, as Antonia, with her arms spread wide, explained her four-step routine. There were half a dozen men and women in the group, and also in a circle, behind their chairs, stood their respective demons.
Each member of the group had at least one demon; though one woman had three, clustered behind her chair. The demons were listening intently to what Antonia was saying.
A word on demons, as I don't expect everyone to know exactly what I'm talking about here. Demons do not have leathery wings. Neither do they have horns, cloven hooves, monkey heads or any of the usual representations from religious mythology. They can easily slip into or retreat from the human form of their hosts. But when they have externalized themselves—as they all had in this instance—they become passive, muted, even slothful, though this can disguise the danger they represent. They only have use for us to quicken their own intentions.
They are all squat, somewhat shorter than human beings, and are always slow-moving. Their substance is elusive to describe, being comprised of something akin to loose soot. People who are sensitive to demons will often refer to them as a kind of shadow, but unlike a shadow they are three-dimensional, detached and assert full integrity. Goodridge in his Categorical Evidence refers to their substance as solid black vapour. Fraser, right from the beginning, called it swart-cast.
Believe me, it is no joke. The first time you encounter this substance in the form of these beings, you feel like your skin is being flayed. The terror is such that the fluid of your eyes seems to freeze at the sight of them.
One of the demons became sensitive to my presence behind the door. It turned slowly, cast a disinterested gaze over me and returned its attention to Antonia. Their faces are somewhat indistinct: it's as if a lesser god had made a prototype being, without the full detail of Creation. But although their faces are blurred, they are individualised, unique, and their facial expressions readable. Right at that moment they all looked as though they were listening for a flaw in her argument, a fault in her position, a moment of psychic exhaustion, a chink. They fear Antonia. They cannot approach her. For them, an indomitable light burns around her, and for that reason she fascinates them.
Perhaps the most mystifying thing about demons when externalised is their passivity. They always seem to be waiting for something. Waiting for something to happen.
In the same way that the demon sensed my presence at the door, Antonia did, too. She looked over her shoulder, smiled at me and held up three fingers to indicate she just needed a few minutes to wrap up the proceedings. She returned to her summing up, and then the entire group got up from their chairs to embrace each other in turn. I believe they call it giving support. But as one did so I noticed her chair threaten to topple backwards, until one of the demons attending behind reached out a hand—a limb, a paw, a hoof, I don't know what—to steady it. Though the demons each took a step back away from Antonia as she approached to hug their respective hosts.
It was remarkable to watch.
Antonia came out of the room, beaming at me, letting the door close on the group, who were in no hurry to abandon the warm interior for the cold streets outside. Antonia kissed me on the cheek and grabbed my hand, leading me into her office—a tiny cupboard with a phone and a computer workstation. She put an electrical kettle on to boil and dropped teabags into a pair of mugs.
"I know," she said, still beaming.
> "How could you possibly know?"
"It's all over your face, William!"
"No it's not," I protested. "I've got my poker face on."
"He whose face gives no light shall never become a star."
"Why are you always throwing William Blake at me?"
Antonia leaned over and pinched my knee between finger and a powerful thumb. "You clever bugger! You clever, clever bugger!"
"Hey! Hey! Stop messing! I haven't showed you the cheque yet."
"You don't need to. Here, I'm going to kiss you." She swung her lithe frame across me and sat in my lap. With her hands locked behind my head she planted an impassioned kiss on my lips. I mean a lover's kiss. A power kiss. She was still kissing me when one of her colleagues opened the door.
Antonia broke this kiss. "William has brought us a reprieve, Karen! He's saved us again. As a reward I'm going to fuck him until his dick is blue. Then you can do the same, Karen."
I tried to laugh it off but I was embarrassed. "That won't be necessary."
Karen was a slightly overweight redhead with pale blue eyes and a figure by Rubens. "You won't be able to stop her if she wants to. Or me. Kettle's boiling."
Karen told Antonia something about essential repairs to the heating system. At last Antonia climbed off me, giving me the chance after Karen had retreated to present her with the cheque.
Without even looking at the figure written on the cheque, she fanned it through the air, as if drying the ink. "I've learned not to ask you where this comes from."
"No, don't. Or I would have to lie."
I certainly would. There was no way that I was going to tell her that the cheque she had in her hand came from the money I'd saved on Robbie's school fees plus a sizeable loan I'd taken on my own account. If I had told her she wouldn't have accepted it. I tried hard not to think about what would happen if Stinx didn't come through with the work, or if we didn't make the sale. If either of those things happened I was going to be in a big hole.
"I don't care if it comes from the devil himself." She regarded me steadily. "What's wrong, William?"
"Nothing's wrong."
"You're not happy."
"Of course I am. I've brought you the money I promised. I'm ecstatic."
"Is it that wife of yours? Is that it? You have to let her go."
"She's already long gone, I'm afraid."
"Non-attachment, William. You can't be attached to people any more than you can be attached to things in this world."
Something always happened when she burned her eyes into you, as she was doing at that moment. Her eyes were like flint-stones. I felt like a little pile of dry kindling which she was trying to get to burst into life. It was always deeply unnerving. I got up and made the tea myself, since it was clearly going to be a long time coming otherwise.
"Send him a woman," Antonia said. "Oh please send him a woman. Someone to root out the invisible worm that flies in the night."
"I don't know who you're talking to, Antonia, but I wish you'd stop."
"You know perfectly well who I'm talking to."
I desperately needed to change the subject. "Antonia, you have to be careful. I go to these government offices, you know. Meetings with bigwigs. I hear things. Your name comes up occasionally. You make fools of them. They want to see you fall."
"They've always wanted that."
"They're scared of you. They're out to get you."
She brandished the cheque I'd given her. "But I have the protection of angels."
I wanted to tell her she also had the predatory attention of demons, but I let it pass. Instead I said I had to go. In fact I had to get back to work at the office. But before I went she insisted on hugging me.
The hug went on for way too long. But I let it, because I wanted her warmth and her golden light and her indomitable goodness to sweep through my bones; because her proximity was clean air in a dirty city; her peerless position was a vibrant colour amongst the multitude of rotting grey souls that was all of us in London; because her breath in my ear as she hugged me tight was the whispered promise of salvation.
Chapter 10
I don't know why I answered that young woman's email. I don't know if it was Antonia's excessive hugging, or her appeal to the heavens to send me a woman. But answer it I did, if only to say that, no, I wouldn't be able to meet with her.
Hear that? That's an interesting sound. It's the sound of me lying to myself. In fact what I said in my email was that I, too, enjoyed meeting her in the Museum Tavern that day. I said I was pleased we had a mutual connection through Antonia at GoPoint and that I was glad she thought it a cause worth supporting. I suppose I then went on a bit about the plight of the homeless, as if that was really what the correspondence was about. Then I thanked her for the invitation for wine or coffee but pointed out that I was terribly, terribly busy these days and couldn't think when I might possibly find the time.
There's the truth of it. I didn't say yes and I didn't say no. I merely complained that I couldn't think where or when. Then I told myself that was an end to it. But in fact, and without knowing it, I'd merely set her a little problem to solve. And through these tiny, tiny openings do demons fly.
The following day she responded to my email. In it she recalled that I'd mentioned to her that my place of work is in Victoria (I'm sure I hadn't); that she was working at a temporary job over there that very week (what a coincidence); and that she even knew a nice pub that served a very fine range of La Belle Dame Sans Merci (had she nailed me so quickly?). I assumed that last touch was to let me know she'd been all ears that day I met her in the Museum Tavern.
What the bloody hell does she want? I thought.
I let another day go by before replying. Somehow I ended up arranging to meet her one lunchtime.
Meanwhile I was worried about Antonia. Though her warmth and light still flowed, I thought she looked tired. I mean, she was always completely knackered by the way she lived, and she wouldn't allow herself a moment's respite from the battlefield. I wondered what it did to her, when her inmates drew goodness from her every day like that; or even when I lingered over a farewell embrace, sucking the virtue from her, sucking, always taking.
It made me remember the Bible story of Jesus and the woman who can't stop her period. She reached out to touch the hem of his garment and Jesus said he felt the power flow out of him. I never understood whether that meant the unfortunate woman's menstrual blood was so bad that it acted on Jesus like green Kryptonite does on Superman; or whether it meant that the good stuff had jumped from him to her; or whether he was at first reprimanding her because he didn't want to be touched by an impure woman. And it's no good asking someone who claims to know about these things, because they don't. The Bible itself is an amorphous creature remade by every new reader into images of themselves. The point with Antonia and people just like her is: Do we steal their goodness?
Before I left GoPoint she said something odd. "Hey, you threw me a strange one the other night."
"Huh?"
"Seamus. The old soldier. Gulf veteran."
"Oh yes. You didn't mind?"
"Of course not. But he's in a bad way."
"Yes."
"Wakes up screaming the house down every night. Pisses himself with fright. Keeps calling someone a liar."
"Oh. That sounds bad."
"Worse than bad, actually."
"Fuckin' awful."
"Yeh, but we in the West have our oil from the Gulf, so it's okay that he has nightmares. When will it end, William?"
"It won't end. We'll continue to do evil and to tell ourselves we're doing good. It's called being rational."
She stared at me with the eyes of William Blake looking at a seven-year-old chimney-sweep. She is on fire with love. Sometimes I can't even stand to look at her. I waved farewell and walked back to work.
On my return to the office, Val handed me my telephone messages. "Are you all right?" she asked. "You look exhausted."
"I've
been up to GoPoint. Always makes me feel drained." The truth was I was worried sick about the risk I'd taken with my bank loan.
"There was an article about Antonia in one of the tabloids on Sunday. Said she has a criminal record. And was in a psychiatric ward for three years."
"Did it say she was a former girlfriend of the current Home Secretary?"
"Really?"
"Oh yes. They'd leave that out. Until it suits them."
I retreated to my desk. There was a message from the junior minister's office, wanting to confirm my support for the government youth initiative. Bollocks, that could wait. There was also that crazy book-launch invitation card. I had no intention of going along. Charles Fraser was nowhere near the top of my list of college chums with whom I might have enjoyed being reunited.