by R. N. Morris
Another thing he had not known: shooting stars travelled in pairs. Perhaps he was seeing double? He tried to focus on one pair of stars, trying to force the twin blobs of light back into one. The effort made his headache worse.
The stars were moving backwards, shooting their tails out in front of them. It wasn’t what he would have expected at all.
They were big, too. Bigger than the stars he usually saw when he looked up. Wherever he was, he was closer to the stars than he had ever been.
Ever since he could remember, he had tried to picture the universe. Even as a small boy. It was always the last thing he did before going to sleep. He would lie there, staring up at the swirling blackness of his ceiling, watching it open up into an immeasurable vastness. He would feel his bed break loose from his bedroom floor and soar. He would have to close his eyes to keep the vertiginous panic at bay.
He would already have said his prayers: kneeling by the bed before he got in, eyes tightly closed, murmuring the words with quiet intensity. God bless Mother. God bless Father. God bless Nanny. God bless Granddad. Godbless Granny. God bless Grampa …
They had to have different names for his mother’s parents (Nanny and Granddad) and his father’s (Granny and Grampa), so they would know them apart. And so God would know who to bless. But he always asked for them all to be blessed, so what difference did it make?
He had believed in God back then. That was before God had abandoned him. It’s hard to believe in a God who abandons you. Who takes your parents and leaves you in a filthy madhouse, full of screaming lunatics and men like Stanley Ince to look after you.
But maybe the seeds of his atheism had been sown before his time in Colney Hatch.
In his childhood, he had imagined God to be as he was depicted in his Sunday school Bible. The white-bearded old man in the sky, appearing between parted clouds. But even back then, the universe he imagined was resolutely Godless.
All that vast expanse opening up in his mind, and yet he could find no space in it for God.
Higher and higher his imagination would soar. Above the earth’s atmosphere. Out into the solar system. And then beyond that, into the galaxy.
He would reach a point beyond the galaxy, beyond the stars, a place of utter emptiness and desolation. He would begin to panic. His breathing would become short and rapid. His loneliness here was oppressive. And the thought that this emptiness went on forever infected him with a physical terror.
His young mind needed to put some kind of limit on the infinite. So he would imagine a kind of solid construction existing around the universe. A cube made out of some jet-black, diamond-hard substance. This would calm him. But then he would realize that there had to be something beyond the cube. Either that, or the cube would need to be infinitely thick itself. And he was caught in the same trap again.
The infinite would overwhelm him once more.
And if infinity was solid, then there was definitely no space for God.
Perhaps he had always suspected it. But he had clung to the hope, willing himself to believe as he shifted his scrawny behind on all those church pews over the years. There had to be a God. So many grown-ups told him there was.
He had longed for a sign that would prove God’s existence. He had even tried making very specific requests in his prayers, to see if God was listening. Nothing covetous – he knew that was a sin – just a polite, earnest plea for God to show Himself in some way. Please God, if Thou art there, please move the curtain slightly.
And lo! The curtain stirred!
But he knew his bedroom window was open and the stirring could easily be explained by a draft.
Looking back now, he wondered if the reason he had said his prayers so conscientiously was to drown out the silence that he knew was there behind everything.
His young dreams came to be haunted by a precocious sense of utter loneliness. He would wander through deserted streets, lost and alone in strange, uninhabited cities. In these dreams, he would stop as he heard his name called out, only to realize it was just the wind blowing through the empty spaces. There was an ache where the memory of his parents ought to have been.
He was sixteen when he heard the first voice. He wondered if it was God, speaking to him directly at last. But the voice put him right on that.
‘Don’t be fucking stupid.’
More voices came to join the first. The voices of a tree, a squirrel, a lamppost, countless strangers, and even notable figures from the newspapers. But all of them steadfastly refused to be identified as God.
The voices were not always with him. When they were, it was terrifying. They drowned out his own thoughts and urged him to do things he didn’t want to do.
But sometimes it was worse when they were silent. He always had the sense that perhaps they were still there with him, watching him silently, storing up information that they could use against him. They always knew his most humiliating secrets. Or if they had gone away, it was only to plot some fresh evil with which to torment him on their return.
He always knew they would be back.
He could invariably feel their impending return. Almost smell it. Cedric would feel the approach of the voices in a build-up of pressure in his head. That pressure would spread throughout his whole body. At some point he would realize that the pressure consisted of them – a chorus of voices, first whispering, then rising to a clamour of competing malice.
He made his first suicide attempt at nineteen. His admission to Colney Hatch came soon after that.
It was there that he met Dr Leaming. Dr Leaming had told him that the voices were nothing to be afraid of. They were not external entities – not the things they pretended to be, still less demons who possessed him. They were part of him. He created them. They were nothing other than his own thoughts, to which he had given a separate identity, because of their unwelcome nature. But they were not his enemies. They did not mean him harm at all.
He simply had to learn how to control them. And the way to do that, according to Dr Leaming, was to engage with them. To talk to them, in other words.
But every discussion he tried to initiate with his voices ended with their screaming vile abuse at him, until he gave in and agreed to do whatever they commanded. His voices always won.
And after his voices finally coaxed him on to the top of the East Wing tower (from which he had to be forcibly removed before he had a chance to obey the rest of their instructions and throw himself off), Dr Leaming was directed to consider a different therapeutic approach.
Cedric tried to remember how he had got from Colney Hatch to a place where he could look down on shooting stars. They must have let him out of the asylum. He had no memory of that. Perhaps he was cured. It was certainly a long time since he had heard the voices. Yet he could not believe he was free of them.
He could not say how long he had been walking the streets of north London. At some point, the blackness at the edge of the universe had come down and possessed the city. Somehow it must have acted as a bridge, bringing him to this unexpected vantage point. It was a blackness so thick you could walk upon it.
As the stars passed beneath him, disappearing under the bridge of blackness, he felt it: that brimming of pressure in his head that normally presaged the return of his voices. But instead of the voices, he found that he could hear the thoughts of the stars beneath him. Being stars, their thoughts were not verbal. They consisted of a clanging, clashing stridency.
A chill went through him. He had believed the stars to be neutral to the affairs of men. So far above the Earth were they, that it was absurd to think they concerned themselves with anything mundane. And yet, hearing that sound left him in no doubt of their concentrated malevolence towards humans. Were they gathering their forces for some kind of attack? It could not be ruled out.
Cedric realized that he had been brought to this place for a reason. No man had ever come so close to the stars. No man before him had ever been granted access to their thoughts. It was up to him to st
op them.
The only weapon he had against them was his humanity. He must find a way to wield it.
The stars must have discovered his intentions. They were closing in on him now. They shot by behind him, their angry thoughts a deafening roar.
But he was not afraid. And the way to defeat them, he realized, was to show them that he was not afraid.
He stripped away his clothes and dropped them into the blackness. Then climbed upon a parapet that ran along the bridge that had brought him here.
The cold wind that blew at the end of the universe caused all the hairs on his body to stand on end. He swayed for a moment in the wind, then leant into it. The universe took over, pulling him towards the shooting stars below.
FIVE
Quinn turned his key and opened the front door carefully. It was half past five on a bright afternoon in early summer. The kind of day on which, if you knew nothing about the countless tragedies that had occurred in all the days preceding it, you might be hopeful for the future.
It was not an indulgence Quinn allowed himself. In fact, the fine weather only made him feel more anxious, in a general way. He had often been struck by the absurdity of the pathetic fallacy. As far as he was concerned, the weather was indifferent to the sufferings of mortals. He was immune to the charms of a sunny day and, unlike Sergeant Macadam, he had never had his spirits lifted by a change in the weather.
Let it shine, let it rain, it was all the same to Quinn. His trusty ulster served him equally on all days.
He closed the door behind him with all the tensed control of a cat burglar.
This was where he lived, and yet he still did not feel as if he belonged here.
His fellow lodgers had only recently, after the death of Miss Dillard, discovered what he did for a living. They had begun to look at him in what was evidently a new light. Even those two young coves who worked at the Natural History Museum, Timberley and Appleby, seemed to treat him with uncharacteristic respect. They no longer quipped about him behind his back in Latin. The Latin remarks he overheard passing between them now were tinged with a sombre excitement. It irritated him that they kept up this public school game. But now it seemed they were hiding their comments from him not out of mockery, but awe. Not to put too fine a point on it, they thrilled at the sight of him.
It was naturally bewildering for them to discover a celebrity in their midst. Especially one who had earned his fame by his dealings with notorious criminals and death.
Once or twice they each separately tried to engage him in conversation about his work. It seemed that they had independently conceived the ambition of writing detective stories and were intent on plying him for ‘info’.
He was understandably anxious to avoid them as he came in.
For different reasons, he was just as anxious to avoid his landlady, Mrs Ibbott. She oppressed him with her solicitude. She seemed to be labouring under the entirely false apprehension that he had, after all, entertained tender feelings towards the deceased Miss Dillard. It was certainly true that his emotions concerning Miss Dillard were complicated and troubling. A part of him wished that he had been able to alleviate some of the distress that led ultimately to her suicide. God knows, he had tried. But what efforts he had made were made out of his sense of their shared humanity. There never could be any romantic aspect to it.
If anything, his reasons were selfish, shameful even. He suspected that he only helped her in order to feel better about himself. And she punished him by killing herself.
That’ll teach him.
It is always unnerving coming back to a house that has recently been visited by death. Hard to shake off that sense of something missing, however tenuous or oblique one’s connection to the deceased. Absurdly, he felt himself overcome by a strong sense of wanting to avoid an encounter with Miss Dillard herself.
Even after her death, he had not been able to shake off the sense that there was something between them, something that needed to be addressed.
It was all to do with her expectations regarding him, of course. Expectations that he had been scrupulous not to encourage. But she was a lonely woman of a certain age, who took her consolation in the gin bottle. He now knew that she habitually went without food in order to fund her alcoholism. It was inevitable perhaps that certain fancies might take root in her inebriated mind. He suspected she had seen him as something of a kindred spirit, a shy loner aching for someone, anyone, of the fairer sex to show him a little tenderness, or even just interest.
He was not good with women, he knew that. He seemed to have the knack of encouraging the wrong ones and driving away those to whom he genuinely was attracted. She was right in one respect, Miss Dillard: he was lonely. He ached for the consolations of a physical relationship.
Was this what she had been offering him? And what he had rejected?
And then, to add insult to injury as it were, he had patronized her by secretly offering to pay the arrears she owed to Mrs Ibbott. Word had got back to Miss Dillard. She had been mortified. There was no other word for it. He had repaid her love with pity. And as a result, she had taken her own life.
And he had found her and raised her dying body and run with her over his shoulder, bundling her into the taxi Appleby had hailed on the Brompton Road.
There were things he needed to say to her that he would never be able to now. He began to wish for her presence after all, with an intense, regretful pang. He longed for the liquid gaze of her pewter-grey eyes, at first gently reproachful, but melting into forgiveness.
Of course, it was safe – as well as dishonest – to think like this now.
In the event, the person who burst out into the hallway from the parlour was the one member of the household who was probably as eager to avoid him as he was everyone else. This was Mary, Mrs Ibbott’s daughter. He had no doubt that she was uncomfortable in his presence. But he could not for the life of him say what he had done to cause this, other than exist.
On reflection, he believed that it was probably nothing to do with sex. He was so old, in her eyes, as to be beyond consideration as an eligible bachelor. And therefore he was incapable of arousing any of the awkward feelings that might be associated with such negotiations. No, it was surely more that she saw him as a faintly sad figure for whom she had no use. Mary Ibbott did not want sadness in her life. She wanted laughter and gaiety and fun.
One glance at Quinn was enough to tell her that he was never going to be the source of such things. If he had managed to present himself as a kind of jovial uncle figure, always ready with a joke and a wink, then she might have been able to tolerate him. But he was invariably tongue-tied in her presence, which not only seemed to disgust but also frighten her. The irony was that it was not on her account that he was so ridiculously embarrassed. It was because she reminded him of another landlady’s daughter, over whom, many years ago, he had made an absolute fool of himself.
Why must landladies insist on having daughters?
‘Good evening, Miss Ibbott.’ He was capable at least of being polite. But in such a way that made him wince at his stiffness.
To his surprise, she responded to him without her usual constraint. The excitement that had impelled her from the parlour animated her words. She was refreshingly free of any formality. ‘They’re here!’
‘Who are?’
‘The new lodgers! Mr and Mrs Hargreaves. They’re taking Miss Dillard’s old room.’ Now it was Mary Ibbott’s turn to wince. She closed her eyes tightly and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry. I know you were …’
‘No, no, no! Not at all.’ He must nip this in the bud.
‘Mummy told me. How you … what you did for Miss Dillard. What you tried to do. I think it was very noble of you.’
‘No,’ he insisted. ‘It was not that.’
His firmness seemed to take her aback, as if she had never considered him capable of any kind of resolute behaviour. He had the definite sense that he was being reassessed by everyone in the house. ‘It’s a prop
er tragedy. Did you love her very much?’
The question flustered him. ‘I–I–I … At any rate, I am pleased your mother has been able to let the room. Hopefully now there will be no more difficulties over the rent.’
Mary’s expression clouded. ‘How can you say that? Are you saying that Mummy wanted Miss Dillard dead?’
‘No, that wasn’t what I meant. Of course not. Look, I’m sorry to disabuse you, but I didn’t love Miss Dillard. Not at all. There was never any question of anything like that between us.’
‘But she loved you.’ Mary was insistent on this point.
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘That’s why she killed herself.’
‘We don’t know that. There was no note.’
‘There are some things that don’t need to be spelled out in a note.’
With that, she ran up the stairs to knock on the door of the new lodgers’ room. The door opened and she was admitted to a chorus of easy rapport. Under normal circumstances, Quinn would have found that painful to listen to. But he was still reeling from the extraordinariness of his encounter with Mary Ibbott. He had not exchanged as many words with the girl in the whole of his time in the house. The death of Miss Dillard had clearly served as some kind of watershed.
Quinn looked up the stairs towards the door that had now closed behind Mary. He could hear muted laughter coming from inside. It was not a sound that had been associated with the room when it belonged to Miss Dillard.
He could not help feeling a stab of resentment on her behalf. Then he imagined her pewter-grey eyes gently chiding him. ‘They don’t mean any harm. Let them be.’
He was under no doubt that his own mind had generated the words. But for some reason it had chosen to present them to him in Miss Dillard’s voice.
He felt a prickling in the hairs on the back of his neck. He even turned to look behind him. The late afternoon sun flared in the stained-glass panes of the door, before dimming. As the light changed, the gloom that draped the edges of the hallway stirred like curtains lifted in a breeze.