‘I haven’t been begging. I just went for a walk.’
‘You’ve been crying, love.’ Rosa hugs me with Kevin. He needs changing, and I wriggle. Rosa says, ‘What is it then, Abbie? Some bloke been having a go at you? Is it that Finn, dirty bugger?’
‘No,’ I say, but I can’t stop crying.
‘Never mind. You’ll get a flat soon. So will I. My friend Michelle did the tarot cards for me, and there was this king and this bloody great house, so I’m gonna be rich. And soon Kev will be walking, and then we can go along to the toddlers’.’
‘The what?’ I ask.
‘The mum-and-toddler group. It’s a jammy dodger there. There’s this bloody great room, all warm and full of toys and mums and kids and coffee and free biscuits. No more begging for us.’
‘It sounds nice. Can I come?’
‘Not you. You’re too old, darling. Never mind. Maybe in a few years you’ll have a baby, too, then you can be just like me.’
I’m cold and wet. It’s nearly dark. ‘I’m going back to the hotel,’ I say.
‘Hang on, we’ll all come with you. You don’t wanna go back there on your own, else Eileen’ll have a go at you.’ Rosa rounds up the children and takes her commission. Then we all go back to Sandringham House laughing and eating sweets and crisps. We’re a gang. I don’t feel so frightened of Eileen when I’m with them.
Rosa says, ‘Soon as Eileen opens that door, you all rush in and get up them stairs fast as you can. Right?’
So I ring the bell, and this is my bell, my front door, just like the Phillimore Gardens one, and Mum’s upstairs – old and blind but still Mum. I really don’t understand.
Finn opens the door. He says, ‘Well, if it isn’t the karate kid.’ He gives me a dirty look. We all scoot past him. Eileen’s knitting, staring at us over her blue plastic glasses that stick out at the corners. We all rush in, but Eileen pulls me back. The others escape upstairs ’cept Rosa. She’s my friend, so she waits for me.
‘I want a word with you, Miss Abigail Mankowitz. You come back here, young lady. I’ve told you before you have to sign your name when you come in and out.’
‘You didn’t make the others sign.’
‘Well, they’re just kids, aren’t they? Not like you with your tricks and your gran and your goings on. I’ve had a word with Mr Taggart about you, and there’s a social worker coming soon to sort you out. Put you in care and your gran into a home. And you should be in care, too,’ she says to Rosa. ‘Or prison. I know what you get up to in that park.’
‘We don’t get up to nothing. Just playing. I do like your new glasses, Eileen, they really suit you,’ Rosa says. Then we run upstairs. ‘And I hope you die of it!’ Rosa whispers, and we laugh.
‘She’s always saying she’ll throw us out. Can she really, Rosa?’
‘Nah. Mr Taggart doesn’t give a fuck who’s in his hotels. He gets money from the government, see, and the more people there is in a room the more he gets.’
‘I hate Eileen.’
‘Daughter of darkness and bride of Frankenstein rolled into one, that’s Eileen. See ya tomorrow.’
Rosa’s my friend. She’s had a very interesting life. When she was thirteen she ran away from a children’s home in Devon. Then she came to London and got pregnant with Kevin. His dad is sometimes an Arab prince, sometimes a drug dealer and sometimes a student.
Mum’s really happy to see me. When she first got old I couldn’t tell what she was feeling, but now I can. She hugs me. It’s like being hugged by a spider. ‘You’re soaked. Where have you been?’
‘I went back to our old house, but Daddy isn’t there any more. It’s empty. And just now Eileen went on again about putting me in care and you in a home.’
‘We’ll find somewhere else to go,’ Mum says. But we’re both frightened. She touches my tears, then she says, ‘I had a dream. I was wandering through tunnels searching for you. You were lost, and I was terrified. I passed a starving cat and a cowering dog, but the animals made no sound. The silence was unbearable. I called out your name, and I opened the door of an empty room, and cold fetid air rushed at me. I shut that door and opened another. I was in a kind of cell with dirt and rubbish all over the floor. Eight sad little children sat on a filthy bed, but you weren’t there. One of them said, “Our mummy isn’t alive at the moment.”’
‘So?’ I say. ‘Have we got to go and live in tunnels now?’
This is the story Mum tells me at bedtime. She isn’t a lot of use, but she does know lots of stories.
‘Long, long ago there were three sexes, not just two: male, female and hermaphrodite. These people were round with four arms and four legs, one head with two faces, four ears and two hearts.’
‘Did they have two bums?’
‘Yes. They walked very fast on their four legs, and when they were in a hurry they turned cartwheels. Men came from the sun, women came from the earth and hermaphrodites from the moon. One day they had a revolution against the gods. Zeus was angry, but he didn’t want to destroy them because then he wouldn’t have anyone to worship him or make sacrifices to him. So to punish them Zeus sliced each one in half like an avocado. Then each person only had two legs. As he watched them stagger around Zeus said that if they rebelled again he’d slice them into four so they’d have to hop. When he saw how uncomfortable they were, Zeus took a little bit of pity on them but not much because Zeus wasn’t a soppy god. He told Apollo to turn their faces around so they faced the other way and to pull their skin tighter and tie it in the middle to make a tummy button.’
‘Did they have an anaesthetic?’
‘No. They were very sore, and, even worse, their one heart was broken. They remembered how wonderful it was when they were joined together, and they wobbled off on their two legs. They wandered all over the world searching for their other half. So that’s what love is. Are you awake, Abbie? If you find your lost twin you must never leave him.’
Sibyl
‘The Metaphysical Bank. Can I take you through security?’
‘No. Pastoral Care, please.’
‘Did you wish to use our counselling service? Do you have a contract with us?’
‘I invented the contracts.’
‘May I have your identity number, please?’
‘For the time being I have no identity, which is why I need counselling.’ I swear under my breath as the baffled clerk disappears. I’m so nervous that my eye’s twitching. I’ve never asked for help before. Then I recognize the voice of the branch manager, a stockbroker who jumped out of his Wall Street window in 1929. He should understand something about personal crises. ‘Hello? Is that you, Carl? This is Leo – I mean this was Leo. I’m having problems – I don’t know how to phrase this – deciding who to be next.’
The voice on the other side of the phone is bland as margarine. ‘Why, Leo, it’s good to hear from you. We were wondering what had happened to you. You weren’t at the last directors’ meeting. Which century did you wish your counselling to take place in?’
‘I really don’t know much about it. Which do you recommend?’
‘Well, there’s Roman therapy. They believe in opening your veins in a hot bath.’
‘That’s no use to me, I’d just have a few scars and exactly the same problems as I had before.’
‘Well, you could try the Inquisition. We sometimes find it works in cases of extreme self-possession and persecution mania. They’re not very caring, of course.’
‘Haven’t you got anything more – timeless?’
‘We have a very respected oracle in a cave under the Earls Court Road. Classical, I’d say, rather than timeless. Speaks in doggerel and never washes.’
‘Well, I suppose that’ll have to do. How do I make an appointment?’
How I detest this time of year. I swear at myself every time I pass a Christmas tree or a cluster of fairy lights. Yes, I admit I’ve got into the habit of talking to myself lately. Six months since they disappeared. I walk down Redcliffe
Gardens and into the Earls Court Road, turn right and ring the bell of an unprepossessing basement. The door is opened by a dark thick-set woman in a purple caftan and curlers.
‘I was sent here by the Metaphysical Bank.’
‘Ah, then you must be Leo. I’m Fatima. Haven’t seen you since Derby Day, 1921. How’s that pretty girl who was with you? Dead, I suppose.’
‘Strangely enough, she’s the reason I’m here.’
‘I thought she might be.’
‘Well. Good to see you.’ We kiss guardedly on the doorstep, scrutinizing each other close up. I’m struck by the leathery texture of her skin. ‘You did take out a contract with us, didn’t you? If you don’t mind my saying so, I wouldn’t have known.’
‘If you must know, my clients like me to look a little more mature. After all, the oracle’s several thousand years old and looks it. We can’t be vestal virgins for ever. Anyway, you’re not looking particularly young or beautiful yourself – unshaven, seedy. You look like death warmed up, if you really want to know. Come in.’ She leads me down a corridor with a linoleum floor, opens a door and brusquely lifts a trap-door in the floor. ‘You can go straight down. There’s no point in sitting around in the waiting-room. You’ll only frighten our clients.’
The stone steps leading down to the cellar ooze with grease, and the stench that drifts up, of damp and unwashed wisdom and sacrificial bones, reminds me unpleasantly of my disastrous visit to the sibyl at Cumae sixteen hundred years ago. I half fall down the stairs into the darkness of the cave-like cellar, pick myself up and say irritably, ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea. When they said “Classical” I didn’t realize they meant you. You’re pre-Christian. You couldn’t possibly understand my problems.’
Silence. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I can just make out a cage swinging from the ceiling and a tiny figure – or a large bird? – crouched in it. There’s a sound like wind stirring in a pile of leaves. Then a thin dry voice:
‘Well? What is your question?’
‘Who must I become next?’
‘There is no must but only dust. There is no being only seeming. Find the child who once you lost. Restore the sight of the blind one dreaming. Invent a future you can bear.’
Another silence. Then I say impatiently, ‘I dare say I’m being thick, but I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. As for finding the child, I’ve been trying for months. But how? People don’t talk in riddles nowadays, you know.’
‘I do,’ the voice says more robustly. ‘Although I often wonder why I bother.’
‘Is that it then? Is that my counselling? Can’t I just talk to you? Sibyl, please, I desperately need a mother figure to confide in, and you’re probably the last person around who’s older than me.’
‘Well why didn’t you say so?’ the voice says in a much warmer tone, with a faint Viennese accent. The door of the cage opens, and I can dimly see a tiny figure stepping out of it.
Then there’s a flash, and I’m lying on a red velvet chaise-longue in a large, bright room. A small, elderly woman in a black trouser-suit sits behind a carved wooden desk, resting her chin on her folded hands and staring at me intently. The face above the hands is so deeply lined it appears to be tattooed, and she’s staring at me out of dark, sunken eyes. The noxious smell of the cave has been replaced by polish and cologne. I close my eyes and talk as I’ve never talked to anyone before.
‘That’s better. Thank you. Do you know, I think I like this century better than any of the others. There’s not much of it left, of course. But if only I could find Jenny and Abbie again I’d choose to stay here. It seems to me a lot of barriers are coming down. Between good and evil, men and women, people of different races and religions. Not between rich and poor, unfortunately, but I can’t take responsibility for that. I’m here, I suppose, because I want to join the human race. I rather like them. I know they’re weak and foolish and muddled and frequently destructive, but, still, they have their charm. I’m so bored with my own tricks and evasions. I want to be not honest exactly but no worse than anyone else. To forget my pasts and live quite simply. I don’t suppose you’ve ever had a patient like me before,’ I say with pride.
‘You come to me in droves,’ she says wearily.
‘We do? You mean there are others like me?’
She opens her desk diary and waves it at me. ‘My dear, there are more of you than I have hours in the day. Professional confidentiality forbids gossip, you will understand, but I can tell you that many of your colleagues – angels, devils, agents, franchisees, whatever we want to call them – are going through an identity crisis. And not only you, but the eternally young and rich come to me, too, weeping, groaning – I had one of them here only this morning. The most beautiful courtesan in the harem in Byzantium, still a top model, but she’s had enough. She envied me my wrinkles. Tragic.’
‘So I’m not alone?’
‘Far from it. We could form a support group, but it would fill the Albert Hall.’
‘Until the beginning of this century I’d say I was quite well adjusted. I seduced young girls, tempted thieves, handed weapons to psychopaths, led teetotallers to inns and loving husbands to brothels. The usual kind of thing. It was repetitive, but so are most jobs. My magic and alchemy had degenerated into cheap tricks in music halls. Then one day a young girl came to me, striking-looking but nothing special. Not particularly talented or intelligent.’
‘Ah, Jenny!’
‘But how do you … She’s been here?’
‘I’m not allowed to tell you that. But everyone knows about you and Jenny. It was one of the great love affairs of the century.’
‘They do? How embarrassing.’
‘You have let yourself become an Englishman. Be careful.’
‘I don’t want to rush around starting wars and causing droughts and famines any more. I’d like to resign from the board of the Metaphysical Bank, only I don’t know how. I’d like to be the same person for ever, with the same woman and the same child. I know she can’t really be my child, but I feel as if she was and I do miss her. Horribly. Can’t you help me to find them?’
‘That would be unprofessional. Do they want to find you?’
‘I don’t even know if they’re alive!’ I howl.
‘One minute an English gentleman, the next a Transylvanian werewolf,’ she says thoughtfully and makes notes.
‘That’s why I’m here. I really don’t know who I am or want to become.’
‘I see. What do you remember about your childhood?’
‘I don’t think I had one. My earliest memory is of playing the harp and singing –’
‘A Marx Brothers movie?’
‘No. I mean – before the revolution up there – I was quite musical. Ten thousand harps, can you imagine the noise? Now I can’t stand that kind of music, it gives me a headache. But I wasn’t a child. I was about the size I am now. We were all ageless, sexless. Anyway, that’s all I remember: music, clouds, sunsets, sweetness, light.’
‘And were you happy?’
I lower my voice. ‘Well, actually, you weren’t allowed to be unhappy. Any complaints and you were out. That was how the revolution started, in fact. A few of us got together and decided to ask questions. What were we supposed to be praising all the time? Why couldn’t we go and help them if it was so awful down there? Why did children suffer and die? It was very exciting, but it didn’t last long.’
‘You were punished?’
‘I’ll say. They found out we’d been lusting after the daughters of men and that was the last straw. We were banished, excommunicated. All I remember is falling into this freezing chaotic darkness. I’d never seen the dark before. I was terrified.’
‘And where were you? When were you?’
‘In Greece. I’m not sure of the date,’ I sigh.
‘This was a very difficult time for you?’
‘Well, of course, I’ve always been a survivor. I found a woman – my first – you can imagine. I can
’t remember her name, but we lived in a cottage on an island in the midst of olive groves. At night I would gaze up at the sky and speculate.’
‘Did you long to return?’
‘No. My only regret was that I didn’t know where the others, my friends, had fallen to earth. I knew there were many of us, and I longed to talk to them.’
‘Did you ever find out what had happened to them?’
‘Gradually, over the centuries, some of us bumped into each other. Somehow I always recognized them. Belial commanded a pirate ship in the Aegean and terrorized the little fishing community where I was living. I noticed he had special powers – we all did – he could summon tempests and was quite indestructible. Even when all the men in the village caught him and set upon him with their axes he walked away unscathed.’
‘And did he stop menacing you when he realized who you were?’
‘Well, no, not exactly. I suppose I might as well be honest with you. I never have been with anybody else. As a matter of fact, I joined forces with him and we ended up controlling the whole coast. Then we met up with another fallen angel, running a string of bordellos in Asia Minor. Many of us went into business or crime, often both, sometimes the Church. As we got together we gradually formed an alternative power base. How else were we to manage? We made a bit of money as tempestorii, whipping up storms that spared the fields of the peasant who was paying us.
‘Then – I think it must have been in the third century – priests were already doing a roaring trade in indulgences. Pieces of the true cross, feathers from the wings of the Archangel Gabriel, a twig of the bush from which the Lord spoke to Moses. We realized we had something to sell, too. So we negotiated the first contracts, and the Banca Metafisica was founded. We were really very innovatory; this was centuries before the Italians started in banking or the Templars started to arrange money transfers for pilgrims to the Holy Land. We were quite prepared to help them, too. We had nothing against Christians. Later we lent money for the Crusades and also, of course, to Saladin.’
‘So you feel you had a good career?’
Loving Mephistopeles Page 26