Angel of Ruin

by Kim Wilkins

  something?” I asked, dreading her saying yes. I was not a good cook at my soberest.

  “No, no, it’s all under control. Neal!” she called, going to the doorway of the kitchen. “Sophie’s here.”

  He was with us in seconds, buttoning up his shirt, pink-faced and smelling of aftershave. “Hello, Sophie.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and I noticed my heart was beating faster. Of course, one way to fill the emptiness would be sex, but I had avoided thinking of that until now. But with Neal? What about Chloe? What about my standards? I stepped back, the careful soberness of those who know they are close to being exposed making my words and movements precise.

  “Hello, Neal,” I said, not meeting his eye. These invisible urges are always perceptible whether we admit it or not, and he had sensed my body’s sudden openness. He gazed at me hopefully while Chloe chopped carrots behind us.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

  My brain said no, but the head it lived in was nodding. “Sure,” I said.

  “Red wine or white?”

  An old school friend’s voice came back to me: don’t mix your drinks. “Red, thanks.”

  Soon I was furnished with a glass of wine and the three of us were sitting around the table while dinner — smelling deliciously of garlic, butter and onion — cooked in the oven.

  “You said you were bored, Sophie,” Chloe asked.

  “Yes, I can’t seem to get my head together to study these last few days,” I said.

  “You should drop by the shop if you’re bored,” Neal suggested. “We could always go for a coffee.”

  “I’ve started smoking again,” I admitted guiltily. “I’d stopped for a couple of months.”

  Chloe frowned. “I have asthma. You won’t be wanting to smoke here, will you?”

  “No, I didn’t even bring them with me. I know how anti-social it is. And it’s so expensive. Today I spent my last few quid on cigarettes. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” I was talking way too much — far more than I wanted to — but the emptiness required it. For my entire career, I had relied on the stupid neediness of other people to drive them to talk too much. I didn’t like it happening to me.

  “We can loan you some money, if necessary,” Neal offered. “Can’t we, Chloe?”

  Chloe’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Of course. Do you want some money?” I saw her glance at Neal, and realised she knew he had a crush on me. I wondered how many times previously his wandering libido had come to her attention.

  “No, I expect I’ll manage.”

  “Sophie, you don’t seem yourself,” she said softly, and now the genuine care was back in her voice. “Are you a little down about something?”

  “Everything,” I blurted, and gulped the remains of my wine.

  “Let us refill that for you,” Neal said. “Is it about this ex-boyfriend?”

  “He’s not really my ex. That is, I still consider him my partner. The break is only temporary, I know it is.”

  They exchanged the fool’s-paradise glances, as I knew they would.

  “We can introduce you to some nice men,” Chloe said. “If you’d like some male company, nothing serious.” She fetched the wine from the kitchen bench and brought it to the table, sliding into a chair opposite.

  “Chloe, I’m sure that’s not what Sophie wants.” Not what he wanted either, I knew.

  “Thank you, but no,” I said. “I’m fine, really. Just a bit melancholy.”

  “It happens to all of us, dear,” Chloe said refilling my glass. I was heading into dangerously drunk territory.

  “What brought it on?” Neal asked. “Because a feeling always starts with a thought.”

  A chime on the doorbell had Chloe springing out of her seat. “Excuse me, that’s probably one of the other guests.”

  Three of the other guests, actually: Marcus and Mandy, who I had now picked for a couple, and Deirdre behind them. Chloe ushered them in ahead of her, clucking about wine and entrees and poor Sophie who was feeling a little depressed. Mandy sat her bony body next to me, big-jawed Marcus offered Chloe a bunch of flowers, and Deirdre … well, Deirdre took one look at me and shrieked.

  “Deirdre, whatever’s the matter?” Chloe said, rushing over.

  Deirdre glared at me, her left eye fluttering like a shutter in a breeze. “Where have you been?” she said. I was drunk, so this frightened me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. My mouth grew dry.

  “Where have you been? What have you heard? How much? Is it all over?”

  “Deirdre, you’re making no sense and you’re frightening poor Sophie,” Neal said.

  Deirdre turned to him and shook her head. “It’s us who should be frightened of her. She’s been to see the Wanderer.”

  The upshot was I was kicked out. Politely, of course. Chloe was practically in tears as Marcus and Deirdre insisted over and over that I had to leave. I was a danger to them. I had brought the compulsion with me. I could not be trusted to keep it to myself. I was to have no further contact with them until they had worked out what to do about me. I threw the last of my wine down my throat, got up unsteadily and attempted a dignified exit. Neal offered to show me out, but I said it wouldn’t be necessary.

  He followed me, of course, Deirdre calling out behind him to be careful. When we were clear of the building he pulled me over and pressed my back against the window of a closed shop.

  “What? What is it?” I asked impatiently.

  “How did this happen?”

  “I didn’t believe you. I wanted to know what the old woman’s story was.”

  “You didn’t believe us?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, we should be sorry. You were so new to it all, Deirdre came in, and she had been touched by the spell. It was still with her and it transferred to you. Tell me the truth. Why did you go to see her?”

  “I just wanted to.”

  “You had to? You felt compelled?”

  “A little,” I agreed.

  He ran his hand through his hair and groaned. “I feel so guilty. It’s our fault — it’s Deirdre’s fault. We exposed you to this, so we’re going to have to help you get out of it. How much have you heard?”

  “Some, not all of it.”

  “You can’t go back.”

  I groaned. “I’ll die if I don’t go back.”

  “Much worse will happen if you do go back.”

  “I’m so confused. I have never felt so bad in my life.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll speak to the others. We’ll take care of it. Just promise you won’t go there tonight. Promise me.”

  I didn’t tell him it was impossible for me to go there tonight, that I still had three days to wait. “I promise, I swear.”

  He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Let me give you some money.”

  “No, there’s no need,” I said with absolutely no conviction.

  “I insist. It’s our fault, it’s all our fault, and we’ll take responsibility for it.”

  He offered me sixty pounds, which I took and put in my bag.

  “It will be all right, Sophie,” he said. “You’re not to worry.”

  I flung my arms around him and for a surprised moment he held me close. I would have taken him home then and engaged in hours of intense sex, ultimately meaningless and certainly not the satisfaction I craved. But, as I suspected, he preferred to have his affairs in his imagination. He resisted my kiss, left me smacking my lips against empty space.

  “Sophie, I have to go,” he said regretfully. “The others will be worried and they might come looking for me. But don’t worry, we’ll help you.”

  I nodded, tight-lipped, as he turned and walked away. I saw him disappear into his building, and I sagged against the window and I cried. His offer of help when I felt so helpless was more than my sad heart could bear.

  It is interesting to me, now, to note how much time passed before I accepted that my melancholia had an
ything at all to do with the supposed curse of the Wanderer. But then, one can believe something for a long time before one will say it out loud, even form a coherent thought about it. I believe I am under a curse. Those words did not organise themselves into a sentence in my head for a very long time, and certainly not directly after being shrieked at by Deirdre and offered money by poor, bumbling Neal. As I walked home I swore at them all for fools, and for having put the idea in my head that a curse would come over me if I talked to the old woman, for certainly I was downhearted and suggestible, and that’s why I had fallen into this depression. As I sat on my windowsill, chain-smoking, I reasoned that Deirdre had had contact with the old woman herself, and that was how she knew I had been to see her; and she had used that information to frighten me. As I lay in bed, kicking at the covers then pulling them back on, I decided Chloe had put her up to it because she knew Neal fancied me, and all the sweetness and concern were just a front for darker feelings.

  As I sat up at three a.m. and finished transcribing the tape, and read some more of Paradise Lost and skimmed through another biography of Milton, I felt a little better — just a little. And I didn’t know why, though I felt vaguely frightened.

  When I awoke at ten o’clock the next morning, I fought with my impulses for around ten minutes, then got dressed and walked down to Soho for breakfast at a patisserie. I was cramming my face with apple danish and strong, strong coffee, when I looked up and saw a familiar figure on the street outside. Marcus from the Lodge of the Seven Stars. He saw me look at him, and ducked away. Strange. But then, perhaps I had been mistaken.

  In any case, I barely thought about it for the rest of the day, being so taken up with my growing despondency. It was only later that evening that it became important.

  I couldn’t return to the Bishop’s Gate because I owed them so much money, so I walked down to a pub on Tottenham Court Road. There was a big uni crowd, and I felt a bit old and a bit ordinary amongst all the bright young things from University College. The pub was much trendier than my usual preference; odd jazz music played, people drank cocktails and spirits, the decor was in stark, unexpected colours. I nursed a beer in the corner for most of the evening and didn’t make eye contact with anybody. Then, when I left at closing time, there he was again: Marcus, lurking across the street. And I knew that they were watching me. This was Neal’s grand idea for helping me: to watch me until I attempted to go to Old Street, and then stop me seeing the old woman.

  I was annoyed. I walked right up to him and said, “Are you following me?”

  “Sophie, what a coincidence to see you here,” he replied, grinning his square grin. “Do you want me to walk you home?”

  “What’s all this about?”

  “We’re trying to help you.”

  “I’m going home now, and I don’t need an escort.”

  “I’ll come with you and make sure you get there safely.”

  He walked alongside me, asking me occasional questions, but I maintained an aggravated silence.

  “Goodnight,” he said, as I turned the key in the front door lock.

  “Goodnight.”

  He watched me go inside, then took off. I showered and got ready for bed, wondering why they thought it was safe for me to be left alone overnight. But then as I went to the window to draw the curtains I saw, in a car parked across the road, Deirdre sipping from a thermos. She must have pulled the short straw for the first night shift.

  Surely they wouldn’t keep it up for the rest of the week? Surely they couldn’t stop me from actually going to see the old woman? I was furious with them for being so certain I was in some kind of supernatural trouble, because their conviction — a conviction that led to them giving up sleep and taking out a twenty-four hour watch on me — frightened me to death.

  The pressure built and built and built. The urge to return to the old woman and hear the rest of the story felt like unerring instinct. And it was still two days before I could return. I could not have felt more desperate had I been a week without food or water. I woke up distracted, depressed. I cried at cat food commercials in Mrs Henderson’s television room. I smoked until my coughing threatened to split me in two. On Tuesday I started drinking at ten in the morning.

  The strangest thing was that, despite my attributing the depression to post-Martin break-up, I had all but forgotten him. It was not his face which I imagined at night, his voice or his smile. It was the old woman I fantasised about — the image of her silhouetted against the dusty sunlight — and I felt lost and forlorn in her absence.

  My resentment against Chloe began to build to dangerous levels. It was her jealousy that had made all this happen: she had plotted with Deirdre and the others to scare me half to death and make me think I was under a curse, and in my fragile emotional state it was working. This was just the kind of psychological torture that the Lodge — their heads so full of stupid ideas about magic and the universe — would dream up. My conviction that Chloe was behind it all was magnified by the fact that I never once saw Neal on watch. If I had been thinking straight, I would have remembered that Neal was the only one of them with a full-time job, and that I didn’t really know who was watching me half the time. They tried, for the most part, to sink into the shadows.

  It was late afternoon, the day before I was to return to the old woman, when I stepped out to buy something that might help me sleep. I was determined to go to bed even before the sun went down, and to sleep through what promised to be the longest and most agonising night of my life. I bought some herbal sleeping remedies at Boots, and then a bottle of wine with which to wash them down and improve their effectiveness. I was shoving these items into my bag when I caught sight of Chloe watching me from inside an electrical shop. A dull rage began to throb inside me, and I wondered just how far she would go, how far she would follow me, and what she would do to stop me.

  I hurried up to Goodge Street station. The lift was beeping and I got in; the door closed just as she arrived. On the platform, a train was waiting. I stepped on, but then the train didn’t move for a minute and I saw Chloe get on in the next carriage. I changed at Euston and she followed me, and I knew I was going to Old Street, and she probably knew too and was panicking. It would have been so easy to lose her, and I felt smug and relieved, because they couldn’t really stop me. The closer I came to the old woman’s residence, the more the pressure began to lift, and I felt light-headed.

  I saw Chloe on the platform at Old Street, and I broke into a run and sprinted away from her, up City Road as fast as my legs could carry me — which was significantly faster than her — to Bunhill Fields burial ground. Then I crouched behind a headstone and waited, waited.

  Chloe appeared a few moments later, puffing, dashing through the cemetery. She didn’t see me, and I sprang out and pounced on her with a loud, “Ha!”

  She shrieked, and I laughed. She tried to laugh too, but it was uneasy, and I think she knew my laugh was hysteria and not amusement.

  “What are you doing, Chloe?” I asked, no longer laughing.

  “I —”

  “You’ve been following me. All of you have been watching me and following me, but do you see how easy it would be for me to get away from you if I wanted?”

  “Sophie, we’re only trying to help.”

  “Help? By putting stupid ideas in my head that scare me half to death and make me depressed and crazy?”

  She gazed at me like a trapped bird for a moment. A light wind moved in the treetops and a threesome of tourists walked by.

  “Sophie,” she said softly, “if you feel depressed and crazy, that’s not because of us.”

  “Yes, it is. You and Deirdre hatched this between you because you can’t stand that Neal fancies me. Yes, that’s right, I’ve noticed too. You’ve preyed on the fact that I’m lonely and vulnerable and you’ve put this idea in my head and now I can’t get it out.” My voice shook and I started to cry. Chloe tried to touch my shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me,�
�� I said, shaking her off violently and taking a few steps away.

  “Sophie, you feel this way because of the curse. And the only way to make it better is to fight it, and not go back. Because if you hear the story until the end, things will be much worse.”

  “How could I feel worse than I feel now?” I sobbed. “I hate you for what you’ve done to me.”

  “I haven’t done anything, and if you look in your heart you’ll see that. I think you know, deep down, what’s really going on here.”

  “Don’t give me your stupid new age crap. How stupid do you think I am? As stupid as you? Do you realise what idiocy you lot go on with? Do you realise how ridiculous you all look?”

  I saw Chloe glance over my shoulder and spun round to see Neal approaching. I looked back at Chloe.

  “I called him from the station,” she said apologetically.

  “Come on, Sophie, we’ll give you a lift home,” Neal said as he came closer.

  “I don’t want to go home.” I wanted to sit right there, in the cemetery, as close as I dared get to the old woman, because I feared if I turned up at her place early she may refuse to see me ever again.

  “It would be better if you fought it, Sophie. Why don’t you have lunch with Chloe, take your mind off it? Our treat.”

  “All right,” I said, because they didn’t know it was impossible for me to return to the old woman yet. “All right. You’re both right, I have to fight it.”

  Neal put an arm around me, and Chloe let him. They bundled me into Neal’s car, and drove me away from the cemetery. The hideous anxiety began to clutch at my stomach harder and harder the further we drove. I began to whimper as we pulled up outside a cafe near the British Museum.

  “You girls have a nice lunch together,” Neal said. “I have to get out to Greenwich this afternoon.”

  “Goodbye, darling,” Chloe said, leaning over to give him a kiss. She helped me out of the car and Neal drove off.

  “Don’t worry, you’ve done the right thing,” Chloe said as we walked into the cafe. “The first refusal is the hardest. Next time you feel like going back, it will be easier to resist.”