I go to the Housing Office, where I burst into tears and declare that I’m the victim of domestic violence and my daughter and I have nowhere to sleep tonight. The man behind the desk stares at me with pity and offers me a tissue. My tears are genuine; I’m confused and exhausted, glad of the throbbing pain in my eye and cheek that back up the story I want him to believe. He makes a few phone calls and gives me an address in Bayswater where Abbie and I can go.
Then I walk to the Metaphysical Bank, where I draw out all the money in my account – five hundred pounds – and close it. It will give us a few weeks before Abbie and I are thrust upon the tough mercies of the Welfare State. I’m a familiar figure at the Bank now, so nobody looks surprised when I open the door behind the counter and go into the big, chandeliered reception-room where I’ve attended so many parties. It’s deserted this morning, neglected and dusty, strewn with empty glasses and brimming ashtrays.
I take the crystal lift down to the level where pasts are bought and sold. We bought our house out of the profits from slave ships that sailed from Liverpool in the 1760s. Our house? I realize now that it has always been yours. Angrily I wonder how long it’ll be before another woman moves in with you. Jealousy outlives love. In the white-marble casino, even at eleven in the morning, gamblers in evening dress are drinking and laughing. Several identical red-carpeted corridors stretch in all directions, but, although I’ve only been here once before, I don’t hesitate about which one to choose. Even from this distance I can feel the magnetic pull of my contract, can hear the silence as the building holds its breath and watches to see what I will do.
Although I’ve often tried to ignore my contract, I know, as I walk down the corridor to the black wrought-iron spiral staircase, that I’m battling with serious powers. Not one of those punters in the casino is gambling for such high stakes as me. I’ve got everything to lose, and I’m not sure what I can gain. I think of Ivan Karamazov saying to his brother, ‘It’s not God I don’t accept, Alyosha – only that I must respectfully return him the entrance ticket.’ That’s what I have to do now, although what the ticket was for and who I’m returning it to are still in doubt.
If this is the end I’m unprepared for it. In nearly a century I seem to have learnt nothing. I see far more beauty in the world now than when I was genuinely young, so much beauty that it’s very hard to leave it. If I don’t die immediately I’ll look like Molly. Older, perhaps. I’ll have nothing, nobody except Abbie, and who will look after her? I pause on the staircase, terrified. I could still go home and forget about all this. Maybe last night was just a kind of nightmare; maybe I imagined it all. Of course, you and I have rows, but so do all couples who have been together a long time. Perhaps, for Abbie’s sake, I’d better just go back now and make it up with you. You are a bit arrogant but –
The voice of my femunculus drowns my thoughts:
A bit arrogant? Make it up? I don’t believe I’m hearing this.
I wish you’d stop eavesdropping on my thoughts. What do you want?
I’m trying to make sure that daughter of yours grows up with more sense than her mother.
Um, I think I’ll just go home.
Oh no you won’t. You have no home now. You can’t go back and behave as if nothing has happened. Now you know who he is, what he is, you can never shut your eyes and go back to sleep again. You must destroy that contract or be destroyed, both you and your child.
But how are we going to survive? An old woman and a little girl without any money or friends. And if I die what will become of Abbie?
There are no answers. She’s gone, and I’m alone again on the stairs, spiralling down. I feel dizzy, faint and breathless, as if old age has already seized me. The pale-green mist is rising towards me now, chilling my bones and making me stumble. At the bottom I slip on the rocky floor of the tunnel. I look down at my hands in terror, to see if they’ve already aged. No, they’re still the hands of a young woman, pink and soft.
At the end of the tunnel the shiny metal door bulges. This time, to my surprise, I’m able to decipher some of the words that float there, dancing from Arabic to Japanese to Gothic script: contracts … kingdom … night … security … beware. I stand in front of the door and my voice comes out as a whisper. Then I say my name again, more loudly.
The words in the centre of the door spin around, whirling faster until they are not words at all but a fiery vortex. A small hole opens and a parchment scroll appears. I reach out for it. As soon as I touch the warm contract I remember this smell of blood and fire and ink. I unroll it, my fingers once again leaving bruises on the delicate surface, and this time I can read the words you once read to me.
Even now, I could just roll it up and post it back through the door. The parchment’s hot, as if my fingers have warmed it, and I can feel it resisting me. I stare down at it, muttering, as if it’s alive:
‘We’re going now.’
I climb back to the spiral staircase. With every step the contract becomes heavier, hotter, so that I have to take off my striped blazer and wrap it around my hands to protect them. Instead of carrying me up the stairs as it did once before, the mist drags me back and makes the steps dance in front of my eyes. They’re revolving, moving up and down like a mad escalator, disappearing as my foot approaches each one. Weak and sick, I lean heavily on the metal banister.
When at last I reach the top I’m so exhausted that I collapse on to my knees in the deserted corridor. My sore cheek brushes against the contract, which scorches my bruised skin. You’ll come for me now, you or your servants, those shadowy masked figures from my nightmares. But nobody appears.
After half an hour I’m able to stand up. I pass the casino again, none of the gamblers even glances at me. As I approach the crystal lift the parchment becomes cooler and lighter. I put on my blazer, hold the contract quite openly and walk out of the Bank.
You’re in the hall waiting for me, very tall and grim. The sunlight passes straight through you, giving your skin a reptilian tinge.
‘What has happened to your face?’ I catch sight of it in the hall mirror, where I’ve admired my own reflection so often. My right eye and cheek are a mass of red and purple where I abused the tree. You reach out to touch my wounded face, but I back away. ‘Who did that to you?’
‘I did it to myself. I’m going to leave. You can’t stop me.’
‘You’ve always been free to go.’
‘I can’t stay with you now I’ve seen what you’re really like, how evil you are.’
‘Are you sure that whatever you saw came from me? Evil, devil, mad, bad, hell: how weary I am of the insults you people hurl at me, projecting your own problems comfortably outside yourselves. Do you think it’s easy to carry the burden of thousands of years of spiritual buck-passing? There’s nothing I’ve done that hasn’t originated in the human heart – in your heart, Jenny.’
‘Not mine. Women are better than men.’
‘I used to think so. As a matter of fact, next time, I might reinvent myself as a woman. My experiment with you has convinced me that this is going to be the age of women.’
‘Well, your experiment’s over. I’m going to destroy my contract.’
‘Really? And how are you going to do that?’
‘I suppose … I’ll tear it up.’
You laugh. ‘Have you tried? Even if you tore it into a thousand pieces it would reassemble itself and post itself back to the Fizz.’
‘Then I’ll burn it.’
‘You can if you like. It will rise from its own ashes like a phoenix and fly back to the other contracts.’
‘There must be some way of destroying it.’
‘Must there? Do you still think this is just a sheet of old parchment?’
‘It must have happened before.’
‘Never. Do you think the gift of eternal youth is a small thing, to be given up so lightly? And you’re comparatively young. Some of our clients are thousands of years old, not much younger than me. These contracts h
ave to last for ever, and they do. Who would be such a fool as to give up the chance of being young and good-looking and rich for eternity?’
‘I am such a fool.’ You stare at me. Without hatred, I observe with surprise. At this moment I can’t hate you, either. Loving you has grown into me as trees sometimes grow into the walls of houses. I stoke my own anger in one last, huge effort to uproot that love and leave you.
‘You seem to think I hand out these contracts like chocolate bars to every woman who catches my fancy. As a matter of fact, you were the only woman in centuries who touched me in the place where my heart might be. If I had been human I would have loved you. If you had let me love you I might have become entirely human. Even now it’s not too late. I wouldn’t really hurt you or Abbie, you know that.’
You take a step towards me, and I feel your power. I could drop the contract, go upstairs with you and suspend my doubts between the sheets as I’ve done so many times before. Then I could pick Abbie up from school, as usual, and bring her back to our lovely house – but I remember you and the other shadows bending over my daughter that night.
‘No. Tell me how to destroy it.’
You look surprised, and there is pain in your eyes as you say, ‘There is a way, but it will destroy you as well. The years that have been held back will rush upon you and devour you. You may suffer horribly, even die. You have no idea how ruthless Death is towards those who cheat him. All these years you’ve been under my protection, whether you knew it or not. But as soon as the contract disappears you will lose all your defences, not only youth and money but immunity to illness and infection. Those horrible bruises and scars on your face may never heal.’
‘I don’t care!’
‘You might die. And if you do live, you may be less than mortal.’
‘I accept those terms.’
‘What about Abbie?’
‘She comes with me.’
‘This is crazy. Where are you going?’
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘What an extremist you are. I always thought you were intelligent enough to compromise. Well, give me the contract. At midnight tonight I will destroy it. I warn you: the effects will be immediate. And terrible. I won’t be able to help you.’
Shaking, I hand you the contract and go upstairs to pack.
Midnight
Abbie comes out of school, swinging her lunch-box and a rolled-up painting, says goodbye to Emily and runs up to my taxi.
‘Your face!’
‘I had an accident.’
Abbie hugs me and tries to kiss it better, her lips searing my torn and swollen face.
‘Why have you got suitcases? Are we going on holiday?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Where?’
‘To a hotel.’
‘Is Daddy coming?’
‘No.’
‘You’re getting divorced,’ Abbie says with the matter-of-factness of a child who has grown up watching soaps. ‘Oh, I forgot. You’re not married, are you?’
‘Daddy’s staying at home. We’re going to live in a hotel for a while.’
‘In the middle of term?’
‘You can still go to school. It’s not very far away. I’ll take you every morning.’
‘Has it got a swimming pool like that hotel we stayed at in New York?’
‘No, it won’t be like that.’
Abbie’s enthusiasm for her holiday lasts until the taxi draws up at Queensway Square. It isn’t a proper square, more like a street with miserable grass and trees squeezed between the grubby, blistered Victorian houses.
‘It’s like a very old wedding cake. Miss Haversham’s,’ she mutters.
While I get our luggage out of the taxi Abbie wanders off and peels a strip of plaster off the nearest wall. ‘Yuck! It stinks of metal and dirt and sick and pigeons.’
‘Come on! I need some help.’
‘Why can’t the porter carry our cases?’
‘There won’t be a porter. Don’t be so damned lazy.’
I don’t often swear at her, so Abbie is offended. With chilly dignity she picks up her lunch-box, camera and koala-bear rucksack. ‘Where’s Johnny?’
‘Don’t be silly, you can’t take a dog on holiday.’
‘But a fox might eat him. Daddy won’t remember to feed him. He doesn’t like animals.’
‘Abbie, for Christ’s sake shut up. Let’s just get inside.’
She follows me resentfully to the steps of Sandringham House. Old newspapers and beer cans litter the pavement. ‘Funny sort of hotel. Why do we have to ring the bell?’
The door is opened by a thin woman with orange hair who says her name is Eileen and that she’s the manager. Behind her a smell of dirty carpet, stale spices, cabbage and chips hovers thickly. There’s barely room for the three of us to stand in the dark hall, where grease oozes out of the walls and slithers into our hair. There are signs pinned up all over the walls. Abbie reads one of them aloud, ‘HACKNEY HOMELESS FAMILIES, KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA EMERGENCY HOMELESS FAMILIES. Do not enter or leave the hotel without signing the register. No visitors are allowed in your room. Do not cook or store food in your room. Children are not allowed to run or play on the stairs or in the hall …’
‘The porter will show you to your room,’ Eileen says.
The porter turns out to be a young Irishman wearing a tartan shirt and jeans who says, ‘Hiya! I’m Finn.’ There’s an awkward pause while I wonder who is supposed to carry our cases upstairs. Eileen stares dourly at this bruised woman and her snotty child. If we’re troublemakers we’ll be transferred to another hotel. I know this without being told. I’ve already regressed to an earlier self, not much older than Abbie, who has no money and lives in fear of the workhouse. I want to please the woman with orange hair, so I pick up both suitcases and Abbie follows, sensing my fear. There’s no lift. Although it’s June the heating is on and seems to be fighting a battle with the damp. We’re sweating and our throats are parched. Finn leads us down a hot silent maze of corridors, up and down three separate staircases.
When Finn unlocks one of the doors and waves us in it looks at first like an ordinary hotel room, with double bed, wardrobe, basin and shower. Abbie tries to salvage her holiday. She runs to the window, which is opaque with dirt and overlooks a well where four walls of grimy windows try to avoid each other’s gaze. If you look up you see a square of blue sky, and if you look down you see a sheet of cracked green glass, littered with nappies, syringes, cigarette packets and condoms. Abbie bounces on the bed, which immediately slips off the books it’s resting on. The pink shower curtain is torn, the sheets don’t quite meet over the mattress, the taps on the basin drip and the bedside lamp is broken.
As she watches me unpack Abbie asks querulously, ‘Is this a very expensive holiday?’
‘We don’t have to pay anything.’
‘Did you win it in a competition or something? When are we going home?’ She’s so hot that she has to go to the basin, drink tepid water from the tap and splash it all over her face and hands. I’m staring at my swelling face in the cracked yellow mirror. ‘Mummy? Shall I buy some ointment and put it on your face.’
‘No. I’ll be OK.’
‘But you’re crying. Does it hurt?’
‘No. I’m fine.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, darling. What would you like for supper?’
‘I’m not hungry. I want to go home.’
‘We can’t, I’m afraid.’
‘But what about my birthday? I can’t have my party here. None of my friends will come.’
‘We’ll have it out, at McDonald’s or at the swimming pool. You always wanted a swimming party.’
‘I want to have it at home. It’s important, you said so. I’ll be in double figures.’
‘Don’t cry, sweetheart.’ I sit beside her on the lopsided bed and hug her.
‘You’re crying, too.’
‘It’s just the heat, and … I’m very ti
red.’
‘Why is it that when grown-ups cry there’s always some excuse, but when I cry I’m just being a wimp?’
‘You’re not! You’re wonderful, that’s why we’re here, but … I can’t explain. Let’s go to the park. It’s so stuffy in here, no wonder we feel awful. We’ll unpack later.’
‘I hate my holiday,’ Abbie says balefully as we leave the room. She slams the door and the room shakes.
Outside the weatherless limbo of Sandringham House a beautiful summer evening flourishes. We run most of the way to the Bayswater Road and fall into the wide green embrace of the park. At six thirty it’s full of sunbathers, dog walkers, skateboarders, rich foreigners and poor natives. Abbie is straining like one of the dogs, pulling me towards a paved garden spouting with fountains. We sit on the edge of a fountain, its water a dazzling splash of crystal in the late sunlight.
‘We could come and live here. It’s much nicer than that dump of a hotel,’ Abbie says.
‘They lock this park at night, I’m afraid.’
‘We could camp.’ She stares fiercely at the park, inhaling space and freedom.
We have a picnic supper of bread and cheese and fruit and stay in the park until it closes at sunset. I indulge Abbie, push her on the swings, buy her ice creams and tell her stories, schmaltzy ones with moral signposts, as if to compensate for the amorality of our own story. She plays aggressively, desperately; plays at being a child.
All the time I’m thinking, how can this be the same park, the same city? Years ago, on one of our rare family outings, we visited Kensington Palace to see Queen Victoria’s doll’s house. Later, we sailed an expensive remote-controlled boat on the Round Pond. Abbie was a chubby, articulate five-year-old, bundled up in a red coat with a hood like a fat little dwarf, a parental giant on either side of her. Now we’re something called a ‘single-parent, emergency-homeless family’, and tomorrow we might not even be that.
These bed-and-breakfast hotels are as bad as the slums where Lizzie and I grew up – worse, because here families with children, junkies, prostitutes and people who are mentally ill are all jumbled up together under one roof, whereas in turn-of-the-century Hoxton it was possible to be ‘respectable’ and live next door to a brothel. As we reluctantly walk back to Sandringham House I’m on the verge of telling Abbie the truth. But what is the truth? I don’t want to terrify her with stories of demonic contracts and midnight transformations in case we wake up tomorrow morning looking just the same. After a few months as an emergency-homeless family we will have served our time, we’ll become the deserving poor and will be given a flat of some kind. It will be harder than our old life, but I’ll get a job and scavenge an education for Abbie.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 22