‘You there.’ He decided to make a final concerted effort. ‘Are you deaf?’
He fought to regain sense of surroundings and there, quickly, in sharp focus, someone stood looking through the pane of the reception office window. Clement went to meet him in the foyer.
‘Wondered if you might be asleep,’ said the man without humour.
‘Sleeping the sleep of sequence,’ Clement answered.
‘I’m trying to locate St Margaret’s Crescent. I’ve an appointment there very soon and do you think I can find it? Been round the block three times already.’
Clement’s stomach spoke with a gurgling, sounding like water draining from a sink. He went back into the office and pulled open a drawer to produce a map. He brought it back out and unfolded it carefully, laying it onto the carpet tiles of the foyer. Both men crouched down, resting on their haunches, to inspect the city’s intricate nervous system displayed in lines of red, black and blue.
The visitor jabbed a finger onto the map. ‘Here we are. This is us here, right? So…’ He placed both palms flat down and leant forward as if about to perform a handstand. It seemed to Clement as though he had solidified there, on the foyer carpet, becoming a piece of sculpture for other visitors to admire. But no sooner had he thought this, the man pushed himself up to stand. ‘Around the corner, next right, next left; thanks.’ He went out quickly. The movement of the revolving door displaced a wedge of coldness into the foyer. Clement shuddered but remained crouching for a while, following the meandering course of a road on the map until it ran out to the west.
When he returned to the reception office he remembered the apples bought in the market. He retrieved one of the green fruit from the paper bag in his holdall and bit: it tasted of soap. Disappointment but he felt grateful, for at least the spell had been broken which had overtaken and anaesthetized him.
A pack of playing cards lay on a small table. Clement emptied the box of its contents and shuffled them before laying two face down, then putting the palm of his hand over one of them. If he relaxed and focused attention he was sure the front image of the card would declare itself.
The telephone rang. He blinked and stiffened. The ringing was rude and clamorous in his quiet capsule. He was indignant for the intrusion into his privacy. No need to answer, it would stop soon enough.
Like a solid which can become liquid then gas, all can transmute to sound, if not from without then originating from within, he concluded.
Perhaps he was the generator. Sonorities, trembling resonances, setting up oscillations to reach a climax of unbearable plangency, bells clanging with a furor and with surging tones of such unparalleled power as to become firm again…
To solidify into a telephone, ringing insistently, never letting up until Clement leaned over and lifted the receiver to his ear.
24
‘Seven of hearts,’ a female voice said quietly from the other end of the line. Clement brought the telephone to the table and turned over the playing card.
‘How did you know that?’ he asked with surprise. ‘How’d you possibly know? Unless, I suspect, you were born with the gift, a rare talent bestowed to the few. You’re able to take the phenomenon of cause and effect and reverse it, am I right? Would you teach me this? I’ve a serious use for such a discipline. But then, perhaps it’s trickery after all. Like your palm-reading friend. He’s not to be believed.’
‘Not so. Quite a few things he told me have come true.’
‘Like what? Tell me just one if you can.’
‘You wouldn’t be interested.’
‘Of course I would. Wouldn’t have asked otherwise.’
There was a pause from the other end before she said, ‘My job.’
Clement gripped the telephone receiver harder: any aspect concerning Bernadette’s new job angered him. He sucked in his bottom lip and tried not to speak but words flowed under their own pressure. ‘I see; yes, I understand. He told you about the job; told you how you were going to deceive your husband.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘And that you were going to…’ he searched for the right expression, ‘harm our marriage.’
An interruption of laughter and so loud, Clement had to pull the receiver away from his ear.
‘Harm our marriage!’ she echoed. ‘I’ll tell you Donald, if our marriage has been harmed as you call it, it happened well before I got the job.’
‘What are you saying? What do you mean?’
‘Listen, I’m not prepared to argue anymore. I’ve got my job and that’s that. There’s no more to be discussed.’
‘OK,’ he said finally, ‘you can have your job and I won’t take it away.’
She laughed again but this time in mockery. ‘Won’t, you say? Can’t, more like.’
Clement spoke with a tremble. ‘Alright, can’t. But shouldn’t we be friends again? I do love you deeply, Binny. I sometimes think if there’s like on one side of love, there might be hatred on the other. No intermediate state. You don’t fall out of love and land up feeling neutral. Understanding me? Want us to love and like, before it’s too late. Don’t want us to leave love behind in our silly squabbles. Not that I could ever hate. Never could.’ There was silence at the other end of the telephone.
‘Never hate, always love you,’ he said loudly, the words catching in his throat.
‘Who is this?’ another voice demanded and the quality of it sounded different.
‘We’re pulling ourselves apart. Let us reunite.’
‘I’m sorry, I think I’ve got a wrong number.’ There was a click before the telephone line became a lifeless hum.
With annoyance, Clement dropped the receiver back onto its base.
Again, solemn introspection. He slumped in the chair and stared blindly into space. When the clock above the window whirred, he threw a hateful glance for being disturbed, and the machine was silenced. The blunt ticking became quieter, each fine tick, no larger than a grain of salt, falling and collecting as fragile transparent stalactites, hanging down from the counter to the vinyl-tiled floor.
He wanted to vandalize the delicate structures though he knew, with the insistent progression of time, it would not take long before they were built again.
The activity was beginning to annoy him. He did think to find a vacuum cleaner to suck the whole lot up but remembering the pencil and pad he had purchased; the thought was forgotten. He felt an urge to write, to clarify important topics.
He got the items from his overcoat pocket and pulled the chair closer to the table by the back wall.
No sooner had he held the pencil in readiness, ideas fled. All that remained was potential, a compulsion to express himself only. The white rectangle of the pad with its feint blue lines mocked him. He nervously went to chew the pencil the wrong end. He tasted bitter graphite.
He dare not disgrace the dignity of the fresh page with any randomness. What is to be expressed must be essentially fundamental, he told himself. Perhaps he should write on a scrap of paper, to prepare and modify the script until perfection is achieved. Only then would it be fit for the pad, written with care in his best handwriting.
He had been scribbling jagged lines on the corner of the first page. He was despondent then; the purity had been desecrated, its virginity taken without ceremony. Should he rip this page from the spiral binding? He decided not to; he would use it to work out a piece of prose before committing it – exactly and succinctly formulated – to a fresh clean page.
A stream of inconsequential words flowed through his brain, the one insisting the formulation of a cousin: ‘Coin, cone, clown, crown, brown, bain, drain, train; rain, sane, seen, sown, sawn, lawn, pawn…’
He tapped the side of his tipped head as if the words would empty out from his ear. Then he plunged in, and wrote:
Dissolving of Veal the Tanner was gradual, gradual. Started on autumn night when skies were bruised – hard tracery of dead branches clawed against the real moon. Walking to cottage, in the past val
ley, twisted hunchback disturbing him by whistling tuneless dirge. Reminiscent of a sailor who, many years long since departed, did whistle up a storm.
What is that tune?
Question best left unanswered. Turn of the heels hunchback crawls into orchard, apples shrivelled in the slugged grass.
Veal arriving home. Wife looks up from knitting. Perished rubber at marked changing of husband’s appearance.
Hunchback lope between mossy trunks. Rabbit scream while torn by owl talons.
Hesitant wife standing. Gently places hand upon Veal’s hand. Two hands. Veal the Tanner becoming so scarecrow scarecrow, expected rustle of straw.
Clement leaned back in the wooden chair to view the story. He read through the piece twice and crossed out a few of the adjectives. He was pleased with the result. He turned the page, being ready to write it again in a neater hand, but was dismayed to find he had been using too much pressure: there was his story in stencil. Maybe he shouldn’t worry; use the notebook for initial workings and purchase a new notebook to write it again precisely and neatly. He might buy a fountain pen and a bottle of blue-black ink to do the job properly.
He was feeling peculiar. Like the way Mr Klipps’ instructions had ceased to be understood, so the words upon the page lost meaning. Mere wriggling marks on paper, possibly an archaic set of symbols which might have meant something long ago. He turned his chair away from the pad on the table, and the curved top rail hit the wall.
If only he were able to obtain a dreamless, empty state, block out inner and outer semblance. All he could do was stare, sunken in the chair with his peaked cap crooked and a peculiar smile haunting his features. Perhaps there was mirth to be found in his situation, only it had not revealed itself as yet. He was prepared to believe that. There was no other reason for smiling. Indeed, every reason not to.
Clement experienced a surge of stamina as if he had been slapped across the face. He felt more in touch with reality than at any other time during the morning. He needed to stretch his legs. He wanted to inspect the offices in the building.
25
Umbrellas had blossomed in the distorted world beyond the revolving doors. Figure shapes moved past, appearing to Clement to be as ludicrous as their apparatus. And all had become anonymous grey. Sky overcast, raining grey distemper. Stone of buildings opposite, with their wavering awnings, had been stained to the hue of whitish slate. Cars were black or lighter shades of the same; indeed, every grey shape walking by wore grey overcoats or raincoats, and the clods of flesh which served for faces had been drained of colour. Clement was aware of the same process happening to him.
He was sure his blood had drained to his legs. He felt faint again. If only he had eaten at breakfast. For certain, if only he had eaten in the past few days.
Bringing up the insides of his wrists to rub his eyes, he accidentally knocked his cap and it fell to the carpet tiles. He let it stay there.
Like a fireworks rocket he had possessed a fierce energy for a duration but had quickly fizzled out. Unsure as to where he was going, he turned and staggered towards the lift then leant on a button.
The jaws of the lift rattled open and he fell inside. Slowly he slid down until his buttocks came to rest on the metal floor and he drew in his knees. With hands clasped around his ankles, he rested his chin.
At last he could achieve an unconscious state. There was no rush to move. The pose was reminiscent of his stay in the wardrobe the night before. This was important, he was convinced. Unclear as to how, only that this duplication of bodily posture in the cocoon was a significant element in his spiritual explorations. If only he had other elements, he could attempt to focus the energies of synchronicity and significant insignificance.
He pressed down upon his knees, his back sliding up a steel side of the lift, and stood upright.
Purely upon impulse, his hand reached out to a panel and he poked a button there, marked with the number two. The smokey button lit and with a squeak and a rattle, the lift doors closed.
He envisaged for a moment being trapped in this squeezing metal box, running around like any animal would in a cage; but then with a jolt, there was the sensation of movement and whining lift mechanism.
Another jolt, another pause, another hiss and rattle as the lift doors opened again.
Beyond the confines of the lift was a textured wall, brightly lit by lighting strips and lamps. A metal plate showed the floor number etched into its surface. Another exotic plant stood in its white tub on the corridor carpet. The red cylinder of a fire extinguisher stood guard further along the wall. The bouquet of cleaning fluids, hum of lights. Clement admired the view as though regarding a painting in a gallery but then the lift doors interrupted him and began to close. He jumped into the corridor with a nimble step.
The offices on each floor ran the length of the perimeter on four sides. He strolled casually, feeling important. He held his lapels and smirked. What responsibility he possessed, importance bestowed upon him for the honourable task of guarding this respectable building.
Each door to the offices was identical except for different digits upon it. He began to speak each office number as he went by as if it were a particular task he should perform.
After walking along two sides and while turning into the third, he stopped. Other than the shuffling as he brushed his blue nylon uniform, the soft padding of his feet on the carpet and the humming lights, there had been quietness. But then a feeling descended, quite unexpectedly, that someone was following. He turned rapidly to catch the intruder by surprise. The corridor was bright and empty.
He ignored the sensation, turned back and strode on, resuming the counting of numbers. ‘Twenty-two – twenty-three…’ he said, walking faster. He fought the temptation to turn again until reaching the end of the corridor.
If only he hadn’t blinked he would have been certain: the edge of a jacket disappearing into an office – or the figment of a fraught imagination. He continued along the fourth side.
In another attempt to dismiss irrational feelings, he spoke the door numbers loudly and dwelled upon each one until fed the next. He performed mental arithmetic, either adding the two digits together or multiplying the two of them and doubling the result. Despite this effort, the feeling persisted. He must check all four sides again.
As he turned into the first corridor, walking past the lift, he was sure he had seen the sole of a tan brown shoe ahead before it vanished into the second corridor. Clement licked his lips and broke into a trot. He would capture the intruder.
With his mind set upon the task of pursuing the encroacher, numbers of the office doors seemed indignant at being ignored after his previous intimacy with them. They wished to be interfered with – they caught his eye and demanded again to be multiplied, divided or halved. Clement would glance up as he trotted by, catching number after number until his mind was crowded with a pack of them.
Cursing numbers, he turned the corner to see an elbow, just before it was pulled into one of the offices. There was no need to hurry now for he knew where to find the culprit.
He reached the office door, turned the handle, and pushed.
26
The two people within the office ignored Clement as he entered and sat at one of the leather topped desks. A large-framed man stood by another desk with his back to him, as well as to a young woman who had sidled up. She gave a polite cough while clutching office files. The man wheeled around from perusing over the town through the window, the sea glimmering in the distance.
‘Ahh,’ he let out with a show of teeth. ‘The new secretary. Your name?’ He put a sizeable hand to his cheek.
The woman unloaded the files onto his desk, already covered with the same. She appeared nervous and seemed unable to answer, and she gulped.
Miss Prim, Clement thought then.
‘Miss Prim,’ she answered in a quivering tone. Strands which had escaped from her bun of hair waved feebly, caught up by the suction of an extractor fan. The sun, pu
shing its way through vertical blinds, spread itself generously about the office; the distant roar of traffic emanating from below.
‘No need to be nervous,’ the man expressed encouragingly. ‘Do your job well and I’m certain we will get along just fine. Who knows what bonuses you might be awarded?’ A mild smile broadened to a leer. He held out his hand, the fat fingers littered with rings. ‘Welcome to the company, Miss Prim. I am mister … mister…’
‘Mr Proper,’ called out Clement.
‘Mr Proper,’ said Mr Proper.
Miss Prim put her small hand within his. Hers were china-white and refined, contrasting with the ruddy backs and hairy knuckles of the other. She gave a curtsy and Mr Proper let out a laugh. ‘Charming,’ he said.
He indicated for her to be seated. And as she sat he did the same, nestling his bulk within a black winged chair behind his desk. They looked for a while, both waiting for the other to speak. A clatter of a typewriter came from one of the other offices. Clement noted the silhouette of a typist on the smoked glass of the adjoining office door. The handle of the door moved down but moved up again. He brought his attention back to the pair bathed in the hot sunlight, both waiting.
‘Where did you work before?’ muttered Clement.
‘Where did you work before?’ asked Mr Proper.
Miss Prim was tugging the edge of her dress over her knees while saying in a small voice, ‘My previous job was in Edgington. I was a secretary there also. But for the past year while I’ve been married, I have not been working.’
Mr Proper appeared taken aback. ‘A talented girl like you with your secretarial qualifications, typing skills and such, and your beautiful hair, not working for a total of one year? Am I hearing correctly? Is this what you are telling me?’
Miss Prim was blushing. ‘It’s my husband, you see,’ she answered, standing.
Clement leant forward to await the man’s reply but he seemed unable to speak again. ‘Perhaps he was right,’ shouted Clement to prompt him. ‘Perhaps your husband knows best. Perhaps you shouldn’t have got this job, being so close to the pier.’
Infinite Rooms: a gripping psychological thriller that follows one man's descent into madness Page 13