Kraven Images

by Alan Isler

  The front door was boarded shut. The house seemed to be in the last stages of decay. Most of the windowpanes were gone; shards and slivers of broken grass littered the ground at his feet. The weather of many seasons had scavenged the house’s innards. It must have been unoccupied for a decade and more, preparing for the wrecker’s ball.

  He peered through the window of what in Kraven days had been the study, then a noble room, wood-panelled, furnished in comfortable dark-wine leather, books of the previous owner lining the walls, a fine blue and white Chinese rug on the polished floor; peered gingerly because of the jagged edges of glass in the window frame and accumulations of bird and fieldmouse droppings; peered, and recoiled in shock. Two gigantic wolves, their fangs bared, their red eyes glittering, were leaping at him across the room. No, not wolves, two watchdogs, German shepherds. He prepared to run on legs spongy with terror, his mouth dry, but his legs refused the brain’s command. The dogs had made no sound. He forced himself with pounding heart to look into the room again. The dogs were still in mid-leap, frozen en route to the jugular. There was only one dog. Its reflection leaped at a slightly odd angle in an oval mirror that leaned against a shattered packing case. Dust and debris were everywhere. The words Up Leeds U were crudely painted on a rotting panel wall. A cobweb furry with dust ran from the tip of the dog’s nose to the floor. The dog was stuffed, preserved in vicious attack, silently snarling, ready for the kill. It leaped from a low metal stand disguised as a log athwart bracken. Since only its hind legs made contact with the stand, it achieved balance with the aid of a steel rod that ran from a point in the log’s centre straight up into its rectum. No wonder the poor creature was out of sorts. Kraven’s heart resumed its normal rhythm.

  So the study had come to this. It was here that they had sat shiva for his father, sat on the floor for seven days of misery, while the new spring sun shone outside and the sounds of reawakened life darted in through the open window. It was here that they had sat shiva for Tante Carlotta and Tante Erica and Onkel Gusti, blown to smithereens with the air-raid shelter in far-off Hampstead at the end of the same evil year, victims of a freak bombing, inexplicable, one of the many ironies of the war, and there had been little enough of them left to bury. Onkel Ferri had spent three months in a straitjacket after that, screaming until his voice gave out, and then screaming with no sound at all. When at length they had let him out, he was at thirty-seven an old man, but calm, philosophical, and already the Compleat Mourner. By then Opa had already begun his withdrawal from the world. It proved a slow process, but with the Divine Sarah’s help he had made it in eight years.

  The sun had gone. It would probably rain again. The leaden weight of the heavens had begun to press down. Was there any point in spending the night in Harrogate, here among his ghosts? He had seen all there was to see. If he wished he could drive back to London and not bother at all with the train. It wasn’t much more than two hundred miles. He looked at his watch: it was only five o’clock. A cold wind soughed through the trees; the house creaked and keened, calling him. He felt an impulse to climb in through the study window, to curl up on the littered floor, to sleep. In panic, he turned his back on the house, strode rapidly along the path and out into the road. He could be in London tonight: he would be in London tonight.

  The rain began, slowly at first. Kraven started to run, but within seconds it was pelting. The light went out of the sky. He was soaked to the skin. There was not much to be gained by running any more. Panting, he slowed down to a walk. The Barrow was just around the corner.

  ‘Don’t have t’ask if it’s raining, do we then?’ said the hall porter amiably. He had the round pink face and short-clipped hair of the English sergeant-major, but he stood like a question mark, slovenly, unpleasing to the eye.

  Kraven had squished his way to the porter’s desk and now stood in a pool of his own creation. The water streamed from him, from his hair, down his neck, his eyes, his cheeks; it dripped from his nose, his chin, his fingers. His clothes clung to him, cold and wet. Damp wool had rubbed his crotch sore. He was not amused.

  ‘I’d like my key, please. And be so good as to have the Cashier prepare my bill. First a hot bath and a change of clothes, and then I’m leaving. Let’s say an hour.’

  ‘It were joost a joke, sir,’ said the porter in alarm.

  Was that supposed to be a joke too? Kraven couldn’t tell. ‘A sudden change in plans.’

  ‘They’ll charge you fort full twenty-fow’r hours.’

  ‘So be it.’

  ‘And you forfeit your breakfast, sir, that’s worked in toot nightly rate.’

  ‘Let’s leave it to the Cashier, shall we?’

  ‘Oh aye, but I thought th’d like t’know.’

  Kraven squished his way to the lift and rang the bell. The gate opened and Kraven stepped into the lift. ‘Don’t ‘ave t’ask if it’s raining, then,’ said the liftboy cheerily. It must be a local joke.

  In the bathroom a grand Victorian bath stood on massive clawed feet. It served all the guests at Kraven’s end of the corridor. A sign near the lightswitch urged the bather to be kind enough to rinse the tub after use. Happily for Kraven, whoever had preceded him there had been obedient to the prompting. Kraven drew the water and soon immersed himself, rediscovering the simple sensuous delight of a hot bath, a pleasure that a decade of showering in New York had rinsed from his memory. The steam rose visibly; the condensation formed in large droplets on the ceiling and on the walls and ran in tearful columns to the floor. Weeping walls, that was the local phrase for them, that’s what Gladys had called the scullery walls. ‘Them’s weeping walls,’ she had told him when he’d asked where the water came from. Nicko had found that funny, but not Gladys. ‘I’m the won as ‘as t’wipe’m, moogins.’

  Alas, poor Gladys, buxom, limber Gladys, a young woman as ugly as an old potato. She had had an endearing way of snitching up her nose if she was either pleased or displeased. She had exuded sex, even a child was aware of it. Kraven had a momentary recollection, a mere feathery teasing at a corner of his brain, impossible to say whether of something that had actually taken place. He had joined Gladys in her bed in the attic. It must have been a Sunday morning or she’d have been up and about her duties; on the other six days she got up when it was still dark. She lay on her back and held him between her legs, where it was moist and warm and tickly. He liked it there. Her flannel nightie was rucked up under her breast. She held his child’s body under the arms and moved him up and down, up and down, between her legs. She moaned a happy moan. She smelled a good smell too, a smell he had never come upon on any woman since. He thought of hay and new sweat and warm milk. ‘Th’moozn’t tell thy moom, moogins, or she’ll ‘ave me out ont dole.’ He had known not to tell without her prompting, but had he known why? And in any case, had it even happened?

  Gladys would be sixty today, an old woman, if she was still alive. Good God, bouncy Gladys sixty! He shed a tear for her, stretching himself out at full length in the tub, a girl of whom the very memory and after all these years still had the power to move him: a masthead pointed skyward from the water. It was a sincere tribute and bespoke a Kravenesque taste for the bitter-sweet. Meanwhile, the hot water was a soporific. Lazily he soaped himself.

  On the next weekend that Felix Kraven had been able to come up to Harrogate, there had been no WREN officer with him. Father and son played in the garden all Saturday afternoon. Felix had been the lion, a ‘ravaging, ravenous, rampageous Beast’, and Nicko had been the White Hunter, bravely stalking his dangerous quarry through veldt, scrub and jungle. Sometimes the Beast had become aware of pursuit and turned on the Hunter (‘Roar-r-r!’), sending him scrambling, shrieking and laughing, for cover. The game had gone on for hours. Every now and then Opa had joined in, leaning out of the kitchen window and holding his stick like a rifle: ‘Look out, Hunter, look out!’

  The Hunter’s gunpowder caps, hard to come by in wartime, had fallen into the damp grass (‘O bother!’) and wouldn�
�t fire. Never mind, there was still the bow and arrows. Unobserved by the Beast, who fortunately had taken a moment to put away the deckchairs in the potting shed, Nicko had climbed up to his secret place. He had picked up his bow from his hidden armaments and selected an arrow.

  Kraven, one towel around his waist and another around his shoulders, stood at his Barrow window, his body still radiating hot-bath warmth. The rain had scarcely let up, but the sky had lightened somewhat, which perhaps augured well for the weather. But it was impossible to see the house. It had disappeared, lost behind the trees that swayed in the wind, lost in the rain itself and in the still poor quality of the light, a pervasive green-wet dimness. He turned from the window and began to dress.

  ‘Time to come in, you two,’ called Mummy from the kitchen window.

  The Beast emerged from the potting shed.

  ‘Where’s Nicko, Felix?’

  The Beast looked all about him. ‘Come along, Nicko, it’s teatime.’

  Rats! Just when the game was getting going. The White Hunter remained silent in his secret place. It wasn’t time to finish yet. It wasn’t fair.

  ‘Nicko, the game is over,’ called the Beast a trifle sharply.

  He was looking in the wrong direction, ha-ha!

  ‘Baked beans on toast,’ called Mummy, ‘and for whoever is good, a poached egg.’

  Silence.

  ‘Nicholas, it is no longer a choke.’ Daddy’s mood could change in a trice. ‘When you are called, you answer.’

  But to answer would be to give away the secret place. Nicko made not a sound.

  ‘I say, Victoria,’ said the Beast, momentarily distracted and resuming his careful English, ‘look here, a perfect rose. But surely it is weeks before its proper time.’ He struck a pose, his right hand over his heart, his left raised towards Mummy in the window, and began to sing, ‘The first rose of summer…’ Mummy blew him a kiss. And he reached to pluck the rose even as Nicko took careful aim with his bow and arrow. Daddy looked suddenly startled, clutched at his heart, gasped, and collapsed, his face in the rose bed. Mummy screamed.

  ‘Good,’ thought Nicko. ‘Serves him right.’

  But he had come down from his secret place after that.

  Kraven buttoned his shirt and contemplated the present. His slate, he assured himself, was indeed wiped clean. Had he not reason enough, then, to rejoice, reason in overplus? Had he not stumbled quite through the wreckage of his past? He had, he had. Alone once more, he would begin again. Quand même!

  Sitting on the low stool in his Barrow room and pulling on a sock, Kraven discovered he was weeping. He was weeping uncontrollably, his shoulders heaving, tears streaming down his cheeks. He sobbed for a long time. He sat on the low stool and grieved – not so much perhaps for what he had lost as for what he had found.

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  Epub ISBN 9781448114894

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  First published 1996

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  © Alan Isler 1996

  First published in the U.S. by Bridge Works Publishing Co.,

  Bridgehampton, New York.

  Alan Isler has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1996 by

  Jonathan Cape,

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  Random House Australia (Pty) Limited

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0-224-04293-9