Aickman's Heirs

by Simon Strantzas

  “Oh, they’ll sell, but it wasn’t a great haul. He was only having a clear-out. Moaning about having to get rid of everything for lack of space, but I’m sure he’s paid for storage. There wasn’t anything special...No. Nor that.

  “Oh, yes, some signed firsts, but nothing really...Baker’s no fool; he’s a collector himself. Let me have all his wife’s books—those loving inscriptions! Obviously couldn’t stand to look at them again. You think? No, she’s not collectible. Except that one with Archibald, and he didn’t have that, of course. Uh-huh.”

  My skin prickled as I eavesdropped shamelessly.

  “Seven boxes—no cherry-picking. Probably only a dozen I’d really—uh-huh. Uh-huh. Downstairs. I’ll price them this weekend. If you want. Ok. Sure. Listen, you know that bloke in Camden Town....”

  I moved along the shelves, out of his sight, towards the back of the shop to the stairs leading down. Although there was no sign to invite customers to check out the stock on the lower floor, neither was there anything to say it was for staff only, so I descended, stepping lightly.

  Downstairs it smelled of damp and dust and paper. The room had walls lined with metal shelving, double-stacked with books, and there were at least a dozen cardboard boxes on the brown and cream linoleum. The only lighting came from a single, low-wattage bulb dangling from a ceiling cord, and the corners were thickly shadowed. I took a step away from the stairs, then froze as one of the shadows moved. It looked like a man.

  I opened my mouth to say something, anything to turn the sinister moment towards normality, but when the shadow reached the place where the light from the hanging bulb should have lit up his face and turned him into a person, there was no face. No longer a shadow, it seemed to be a life-sized figure of a man cut out of kraft paper, and it moved towards me too fast for me to scream—even if I had wanted to.

  Then he was on me, arms wrapped about me, pressed hard against me; thin and light though he was, I could feel every naked, masculine inch of him. It was such an unexpectedly welcome pressure that I relaxed and melted into the embrace. I opened my mouth for his kiss, and arched my back and pressed myself against him, and as I did I remembered Tommy in our most intimate moments together, and the memory was so strong and physically irresistible that I groaned and lost myself in a convulsion of pleasure.

  It was over in a second. Surely I had imagined it all, briefly overcome by the lingering effects of jet-lag in the poor light and bad air of the room. But there was a man—I couldn’t see his face, for he was standing with his back to the light, but he was there, blocking my way to the boxes I was so curious about, holding a book. The book in his hands was a small hardcover, and he pressed it on me, pushing it against my breast.

  I caught hold of it before he could go farther, and quickly darted up the stairs. Although I knew I’d felt hands on my naked breasts, I was fully dressed for the London winter, and my navy blue coat was buttoned up to my collar-bone.

  The man behind the counter frowned when I thrust the book at him. “Where’d you get this? I haven’t had a chance to price them yet. Oh, all right—“

  Although I really meant to return it, it was easier to pay him the pound he asked and go. It was already dark outside. I rather wished I had let the man wrap my purchase, because the binding had an unpleasant, greasy feel in my ungloved hand, and for that reason I didn’t like to put it in my purse.

  The train was crowded. There was nowhere to sit, and I had no chance to examine the book I continued to clutch until I got home.

  There was no lettering on the pale brown spine, no title or publisher’s colophon. Inside, after two blank sheets, the title page:

  The Rejected Swain’s Revenge

  “J.W.A.”

  Below those two lines, centred near the bottom of the page, was a sort of symbol or device that looked like two letters intertwined, but I wasn’t quite sure what letters.

  Turning another page I found another two blank sheets; between them, a folded square of blue notepaper. Unfolding it, I recognized the handwriting from the letters Tommy had shown me years before.

  My sweet Lady Anne,

  I’ve done what I can, but it was never enough to please you. You were a hard mistress. Will your new man find life with you any less difficult, I wonder?

  Something in the pages of this book may move you as my own caresses never could. I wish you joy of it.

  With all my heart, I remain

  Forever yours

  A.

  I was both disturbed and excited by this unexpected discovery and I wished more than anything that I had Tommy to share it with. He’d produced a bibliography of Archibald’s work, and I was absolutely certain it had not listed “The Rejected Swain’s Revenge” even as a variant title. Could this have been produced by a private press? But then what had happened to the other copies? Why had no one heard of it? It seemed hardly possible that he had written, and caused to be printed, a book meant to be read by just one person, yet that is what I suspected.

  Just thinking about reading it made me feel like a sneaking, spying, peeping tom—but how could I resist? I justified what I was about to do with the reflection that Archibald could not mind because he was dead, and Sarah Anne Lyons had not cared enough to take the book away with her when she left her husband—anyone might read it now.

  Except, as I found as soon as I began to read the densely printed slabs of prose, it was hard to imagine anyone who would care enough. It was almost unreadable, an incomprehensible mess that reminded me of the automatic writing favoured by the Surrealists. There was no story and no argument. Whenever there was a sudden burst of clarity, it was to reveal a sexual scene, unusually graphic for the normally proper and tastefully suggestive author, and astonishingly unpleasant.

  I flipped ahead, to see if things got any better, but it was all like that. I put the book aside, feeling soiled, and wished I’d never picked it up. (But had I been given a choice?) There were too many familiar turns of phrase for me to console myself with the thought that anyone other than Archibald had written it, but why? What had he thought he was doing? I wondered if he’d gone temporarily insane when his lover left him. He’d obviously regained his senses, because he’d been writing brilliant and mysterious short stories up until the final months of his life.

  ‘Lady Anne’ should have burnt it, I thought, with an irrational flare of resentment. She should have had more care for his reputation, even if she no longer wished to share her life with him. Yet I flinched at the idea of destroying it myself. It was a book, after all, and even if I neither liked nor understood it, it had been written by a very talented author.

  Wrapping it in a shopping bag I stashed it out of sight in a drawer.

  That night I slept badly. I woke frequently, heart pounding, convinced there was someone else in the flat; a man in my room, approaching my bed. The nightmares were connected to the book, but I could not think of how I could safely get rid of it.

  In the morning, I packed my rucksack with clothes and books to last me a few days, took myself off to the nearest mainline station, and bought a ticket for the first destination that caught my fancy: Edinburgh. The Scottish city appealed to me for all sorts of reasons, not least among them that it had never, so far as I could recall, featured in anything Archibald had ever written.

  The cold, wind, and icy rain did not bother me. I thoroughly enjoyed myself over the next four days, exploring the Old Town, seeing the sights and indulging in the bookshops—I even went on a ghost tour. I slept well at night and ate the hearty “full Scottish” breakfast provided by my motherly landlady every morning, and went back to London feeling much happier, with one bag full of my dirty clothes and another full of books I had not been able to resist.

  There was a letter waiting for me at the flat; a handwritten note on headed notepaper from Sarah Anne Lyons inviting me to call on her, and suggesting a particular afternoon—now just two days away.

  That night, I slept well, better than I had in Edinburgh.
The simple trick of going away and coming back had given this borrowed flat the feeling of home. I did not open the book again, but told myself I’d been silly about it. All the same, I looked forward to returning it to its rightful owner.

  Sarah Anne Lyons lived in a pretty, white-stucco-fronted house in a terrace near the river. She opened the door to me, gracious and smiling, and insisted I call her “Anne.” Her beauty had not at all diminished with age, and she was even more beautiful in person than her photographs revealed. I felt quite overcome, almost in awe; she had that great charm and charisma that is the very definition of stardom.

  Her sitting room might have been lifted from a copy of The World of Interiors, with its elegant, modernist furniture and white marble fireplace surround. Everything was black and white or shades of grey, including the framed prints on the walls, with a few perfectly judged touches of scarlet. There was no bric-a-brac and no clutter, nothing on the occasional tables but a white porcelain vase of red roses and an ebony bowl filled with apples.

  The absence of books was especially striking, at least to me, but this was a room for entertaining visitors, not for curling up alone to read. Her office was probably lined with bookshelves.

  While I was still gazing around the beautiful yet impersonal room, she brought in a tea-tray, and we sat down to cups of Earl Grey and crisp little chocolate cookies, and had our chat. I hardly knew how to begin to speak to her—I felt like an uncouth visitor from another world—but she was very skilled at drawing people out, and before I knew it I was telling her all about my original, fortuitous, discovery of Until the Stones Weep, the effect it had had upon my own writing, how it had led to the relationship that I’d thought would be the most important in my life—“but that’s all over now.”

  She had listened to my outpouring dispassionately. Now she put her head on one side and gazed at me with her dark, inscrutable eyes. “Is it? Does anything—like that—ever really end?”

  I stared back, unable to reply. I wanted to ask if she was speaking of herself and J.W. Archibald, but didn’t dare.

  She said, with a sigh, “I suppose you want to know about The Secret Game.”

  Rather timidly I nodded. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t mind talking about Archie—not anymore. There were years—far too many years—when I wouldn’t, when I wanted to forget... You see, I hurt him very badly. Of course, I was young, but that’s no excuse for cruelty. I knew what I was doing, and there are always other ways of ending a relationship. I shouldn’t be surprised—I wouldn’t blame him—if for a time he didn’t really come to hate me. Love can easily be turned to hate, you know; sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two passions. Whereas what I felt for him was indifference. That’s a very hard thing for a lover to accept. But our relationship was never equal. He fell absolutely, passionately in love with me—really, with my looks. He wanted me, whereas I was never physically attracted to him. You never met him, did you? No, of course not. Even when he was younger, Archie was a very odd-looking man. Of course, what attracted me to him was not his body but his mind—he was just so clever! He knew absolutely everything about art, and music, and architecture, and so many other things. Knowing him was a great education—probably the best education I could have had; I was very badly brought up in that respect. So I was tremendously impressed by him, and eventually, although I was never in love with him in that way, he wore me down with the strength of his desire. We became lovers. He wanted to marry me –but that I would not do.”

  She set her cup down in its saucer, the little click providing punctuation.

  “All that is past. I am very pleased to say that we finally made it up. He forgave me, and we became friends again—just friends, but really friends—in the last year of his life.”

  “This was after you’d left your husband.”

  She shot me a look that made me think I’d gone too far, but then gave a reluctant nod. “Yes... Bert, the fact that I’d married him, as well as who he was... that was salt in Archie’s wounds, so... although I like to think we still might have reconciled, you’re right: the fact that I’d left Bert undoubtedly eased the way. Made it easier for poor Archie to re-admit me to his inner circle.”

  “When did he send you the book?”

  It was clear from her look that she did not remember, so I prompted: ‘The Rejected Swain’s Revenge.’

  She shook her head slowly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. The title means nothing to me.”

  So I told her about the bookshop in Notting Hill that had bought seven boxes of books from Albert Baker. “One was this very odd book. No publishing or copyright information. I think it must have been privately printed. I found a piece of notepaper tucked inside, addressed to ‘My Sweet Lady Anne’ and signed ‘A.’

  “No date?”

  “No date. But because it was in with your ex-husband’s books—“

  She was frowning, the expression adding years to her face. “Oh, it was too bad of him!”

  “Archibald?”

  “Bert!” She shook her head sharply, lips tight with anger. “He must have intercepted it, seeing the return address. It was—unfortunately—just the sort of thing he would do. He was always jealous of my past, of any part of my life that did not include him. He was so ridiculously possessive. He didn’t recognize the usual boundaries. He wouldn’t stop at reading my diary or stealing my mail...and how dare I complain, unless I had something to hide.” She stopped herself from saying more. After a few moments, the tension in her relaxed and she managed a wry smile. “One more crime to add to the ledger. Thank goodness, I don’t have to put up with his spying and prying any longer.”

  “Would you like to see it now? I brought it with me.”

  “No!” Her eyes widened in alarm before she recovered her composure and said again but more gently, “No, thank you.”

  “But he meant it for you—“

  “Whatever he meant by it, whenever it was sent, that time is past. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m glad that we were able to become friends before he died, and that’s how I’d like to remember him—not as a rejected, vengeful lover, but as my friend.”

  So I kept the book, although I did not open it again. It had not been written for me to read, and, crazy or not, I had a notion that my bad dreams had been caused by my trespass into its pages.

  I spent some time travelling around England, France and Italy, but went back to Texas in time for Christmas, ready to settle down and write a novel. It was at a New Year’s Eve party in Austin that I heard the news about Tommy.

  The old cynic had finally been trapped into marriage by some young thing fresh out of college. They were having their honeymoon in Vera Cruz, but would be back home in another couple of weeks.

  Why should I care if Tommy was married? I’d been leading my own life for years. I was over him. Why did it feel like a fresh betrayal, and the worst one; why did it feel like my heart was breaking? A line from one of Archibald’s stories floated through my mind: the heart doesn’t know what time it is.

  I knew then that I could not live in Austin again, and made it my New Year’s resolution to move. That very night I began asking about friends and acquaintances who had moved away to the west or the east coast, and when I had a handful of addresses, I wrote some letters. Within a week I’d learned that Maudie’s best friend from high school, now living in Brooklyn, needed someone to help with the rent from March, because her present roommate was getting married. I applied for the position. The thought of living in New York was exciting; maybe I could get a job in publishing.

  Before I left the city for good I mailed The Rejected Swain’s Revenge to Tommy, with the original note from Archibald inside, and a Post-It note stuck to the cover saying:

  Found in a London bookshop, from the collection of Albert Baker. Thought it would fit well in yours. Will repay close & careful reading.

  I did not sign it (I expected he would recognize
my handwriting) and I did not include an address, so it’s not surprising that I never heard from him about it.

  I scarcely gave him another thought as I was soon caught up in my new life in New York. But although I did not return to Texas for many years, Maudie kept me informed about what was going on. From her, I learned Tommy’s marriage did not even last a year. It was not an amicable separation. Community property laws gave her a claim on everything he owned, and he wound up selling his business to pay her off.

  Did I feel sorry for him? No. It was all his own fault. If he’d stuck to his position on marriage, as he had with me, none of it would have happened. Besides, I thought he’d bounce back as he had before. He probably already had a new girlfriend, and with his contacts in the book trade and his knowledge, everyone expected he’d soon open a new bookshop.

  That did not happen. He went on selling books out of his house, even issued his twice-yearly catalogues, but people in town saw less and less of him—he seemed to have become something of a hermit.

  It was only years later, when I was invited to a book festival in Austin, that I began to think of him again. The city was so changed, so much bigger and rebuilt I hardly recognized it as the sleepy, funky college town I’d known. The house where I’d once lived with Tommy had been knocked down, replaced by two tall, narrow townhouses.

  I wondered what had happened to him, but my casual enquiries led to blank looks, and I did not pursue the matter. I might never have known of his fate were it not for a chance encounter on my last night in Austin.

  I was in a group just leaving a restaurant on Sixth Street when I saw Tommy walking towards us. He was so terribly changed by age, I think I recognized him more by his stance and loose way of walking than anything else. He didn’t notice me; his eyes were cast down, and I did nothing to attract his attention.