Angel of Ruin
Page 53
“Your own daughter?”
She shrugged. “It’s much easier while you live. Though a consolation I can offer is that your ability to generate the compulsion grows stronger and stronger. I have been close many times in the last few years. Even psychics who should know better have been tempted to listen, though they escaped early enough. In a few hundred years, you will find that you too have the ability to weave such a spell of magnetism around your words that people will start to be tempted. Then someone, like you, will ask you to tell the story. That’s all you need, one person to ask. Once they’ve asked, once they’ve accepted the warning, it will all be over.”
A few hundred years. Ridiculous visions of the Jetsons came to mind.
“I simply can’t believe it,” I said at last.
“You do believe it. You didn’t when you first came, but you do now.” She shook her head sadly. “I am sorry, I truly am. But would you leave me by myself now? I wish to spend my last moments in contemplation of my life; of what it has amounted to and how I treated those around me.”
I stood — difficult under the circumstances. I moved unsteadily to the door.
“Goodbye, Sophie,” she said.
I didn’t reply. I walked down the stairs on legs of rubber, hit the street and headed towards the cemetery. A devastatingly good-looking man dressed in black barrelled past me, nearly knocking me over, but I didn’t give him a second thought until I was waiting to cross the road.
Something niggled me about his appearance. And then I realised: he had a scar through his left eyebrow and across the top of his lip. Lazodeus, returning to compete for her soul.
I turned and ran back towards the old woman’s house. She had been waiting so long for Heaven that I couldn’t bear the thought of her being wrenched into Pandemonium, separated from the relief which she craved so much. I raced up the stairs and to the old woman’s room, but it was empty except for the chair and the few books on the shelf. No body, no withered skeleton, no empty black dress: none of those spooky-story tropes to heighten the atmosphere. Nothing.
I hope she made it.
My newly cursed life didn’t feel particularly different at first. I had no real friends at the time anyway, and my guess was that Neal and the other Lodge members would not be rushing to invite me for drinks any time soon. Mrs Henderson didn’t seem to notice I had changed forever, and a libidinous weirdo smiled unsteadily at me on the Tube that weekend. Clearly, I wasn’t revolting to him. The first time I tried to tell the story, however, I realised the full extent of the problem. I saw a junkie sitting in Russell Square. She had long, greasy hair and she stank like a goat, and she was wearing a Motorhead singlet top and a red kilt. I thought she was an easy target, so I sat down and said, “Hi.”
She fixed bleary eyes on me.
“Do you want to hear a story?” I asked.
“Leave me alone, you freak,” she muttered, and got up and walked away.
I tried it on a couple of other people, and they all had the same reaction, as though I had offered to sell them child pornography. Quite simply, nobody would listen to me, and I started to feel that I was the very freak the junkie had accused me of being. Worse, in small ways the generalised shunning began soon after. Gradually, shop assistants stopped meeting my eye, beggars stopped bothering me, nobody asked to sit with me in the pub any more, even when it was full, and I found myself playing a lot of squash by myself, bouncing that ball up and back on the wall alone.
I barely slept for thinking about it. I fantasised about Terry Butler that day in the cafe with Chloe, and how he’d asked me what was wrong. If he did it again, would he be out the door before I said, “It all started in the 1660s”? In really guilty moments, I imagined him passing on news of my misery to Martin, and Martin phoning to check on me.
What’s the matter, Sophie?
Funny you should ask, Martin …
But I couldn’t do it, not to someone I loved. I simply could not see my way out of this problem and ita frustrated me terribly because I like solutions, I like to overcome adversity, I like to win.
Was I frightened? Oh, yes. I often woke in the early hours of the morning, my heart racing and my palms sweating, as I contemplated an eternity of growing loneliness. I imagined seeing the world change all around me, but not being part of it, being a lonely old woman sitting in a room marked for demolition somewhere, waiting and hoping for someone to come by and listen to my story. It was not a pleasant notion. My thoughts were bent all the time towards solving the problem. The question which repeated itself over and over in my mind was, “How can I get somebody to ask me for the story?” What trickery could I use, what extortion, what coercion?
In the end, none was necessary.
I received a letter one morning from Imelda Frost, a literary agent on the Strand. I had sent her a query letter early on in my research with the Lodge, when I had yet to meet the old woman and still thought an exposé on urban magicians would make a good project. Every other agent I had written to had rejected the idea long since. Imelda’s letter read like this:
Dear Sophie
Thank you for your query. I would be very interested to read the manuscript arising from your experiences with the magical Lodge. I have a long-standing interest in matters both anthropological and supernatural, and know of a number of publishers who may be interested in such a work. Please send it or drop it in.
Poor Imelda. Still, it was easy enough for her to pass it on, too, what with publishers distressed by their slush piles and always asking for hot properties from reputable agents. And then, with enough intriguing advertising and a stylish jacket, a publisher can always make a buyer think she wants it. One buyer is all it takes, really.
So, as you see, I’m off the hook. Martin and I are back together and I expect I’ve a good sixty years left in me yet, and that’s enough, that’s just fine. But what about you? This is a serious business, and you don’t want to take it lightly. I suppose you could pass this book on to a friend. If you can find one.
I warned you, you know. It’s right there on the first page. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Author’s Note
Anne, Mary and Deborah Milton were real people. When I found out that John Milton dictated his epic to his daughters, I immediately started to speculate on whether they could have changed his work without his knowledge, because of his blindness. The thought amused me enough to look up some biographical information about them. To my absolute joy I found out they didn’t get along with their father, that Mary actually said the words spoken in Chapter One (“that was no news to hear of his wedding, but if she could hear of his death that was something”), and that in his will he left the girls a family debt and called them his “unkind children”. Various accounts list Anne as subnormal, retarded, and in one biographer’s words “dippy,” though not much evidence exists beyond the fact that she had a limp and some difficulty speaking. In fact, the biographers seem to have it in for all the girls, one implying that they must have really tried poor Milton’s patience, and another suggesting that they were very irritating to live with; but I’m sure living with an egotistical genius who has a sharp tongue and a cruel sense of humour would be no picnic. Milton’s earliest biographer, Edward Phillips, summed up the situation in this way: “It had been happy indeed if the Daughters of such a Person had been made in some measure Inheritrixes of their Father’s Learning; but since Fate otherwise decreed, the greatest Honour that can be ascribed … is to be Daughter to a man of his extraordinary Character.” Hmm. So consider this book a kind of redress, a speculative account which, I hope, requires no previous knowledge of Milton or his great poem. I had long wanted to write about the loyalties of sisters to sisters, of daughters to fathers, and this provided me the perfect opportunity.
One important caveat: even though this book has its inception in fact, it is a work of fiction, and the astute will no doubt spot the bent truths. As far as possible, however, I have adhered to recorded dates and fact
s. But no, there are no records which suggest that a fallen angel lived in the attic of Milton’s house on Artillery Walk. Which I think is a very great pity.
My heartfelt thanks are due to a number of people. Philip Birger at the Milton’s Cottage Trust in Chalfont St Giles was kind enough to open the cottage for me in the dead of the winter tourist slump. Without his support this book would have been impossible for me to imagine. Thank you, too, to the Eleanor Dark Foundation and Peter Bishop at Varuna Writers’ Retreat, a magical place in the Blue Mountains where I finished the story on a misty morning while the maple leaves quivered in the breeze outside my window. My support team at HarperCollins are due the greatest thanks for their passion and commitment, especially Stephanie Smith who humours my hysteria with good grace. A little dog named Max, who was murdered in winter last year, has kindly provided his name for my purposes. I know he is still sorely missed. For some small but crucial details I owe debts to Ian Mond and Julia Morton. A close circle of truly great friends always exercises its patience and understanding with me when I am in “the zone,” and I count among that number Drew Whitehead, who once loaned me a book on Milton even though it meant he had nothing to read on the train that day; Lynnie and Vinnie — everybody needs good neighbours; and my beloved Mirko, who provides live music while I write and somehow lives through my mood swings. Thanks also to my family, especially Frank Wilkins. I am eternally sorry that I do not write cowboy books, Grandad. Finally, and most crucially, thanks to super-agent Selwa Anthony. She is an unstoppable force, and her faith in the power of the word can move mountains.
About the Author
Kim Wilkins was born in London and grew up at the seaside in Queensland. She has degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing, and has won four Aurealis awards for fantasy and horror. Her books are also published in the UK and Europe. Kim lives in Brisbane with her partner, her baby son, and two spoiled black cats. You can write to her at mail@kimwilkins.com, or find more information at www.kimwilkins.com
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Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2001
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
Copyright © Kim Wilkins 2001
The right of Kim Wilkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Wilkins, Kim.
Angel of ruin / Wilkins, Kim..
ISBN: 978-0-7322-7883-0 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-0-7304-9238-2 (ePub)
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