Fascinated

  ‘You’re disgusting!’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Go to hell!’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘He didn’t touch me.’

  ‘Prove it!’ He steps forward, breathing through his mouth in shallow spurts to protect himself from the volcanic heat of her many perfumes. If he can get close enough, if he can penetrate the pyjamas, there’s a chance he’ll catch the scent of her skin, the sweat of fear on her shoulders, the gloss of terror between her thighs, and that will give him the power he requires to gaze down into her soul.

  ‘I don’t have to prove anything to you,’ she says, backing away from him. He’s driving her into a wedge between the cupboard and the wall.

  ‘Would you rather send an innocent man to the gallows?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ She glances into his bleak face and finds something flickering in his eyes, some tiny flame of excitement as he stares up and down her pyjama buttons.

  ‘I’ll strike a bargain with you,’ he whispers.

  Valentine shakes her head, cringing away from his outstretched hand.

  ‘I can smell if you’re telling the truth,’ he murmurs as he creeps forward, ‘and if you’re telling the truth we’ll say no more about it. But if I can smell him on your skin … if I can smell where he fondled you …’

  Valentine strikes the skirting board with her heels and flattens herself against the wall with her hands protecting her stomach. She wants to shout and scream, strike back at him, kick him where it hurts and run to the Turk for help. But she can only stand and watch in fascination as Kadinsky’s hand reaches out to the collar of her pyjamas.

  ‘I won’t hurt you …’ he gasps as his fingertips touch her neck, flutter down to her breasts and pick at the jacket buttons.

  She shuts her eyes and whimpers, waiting for him to seize her with his cold and murderous hands. But Kadinsky grunts and recoils in horror, snatching away his fingers as if her skin had scalded him, retreating from the astringent assault of jasmine, tuberose and vanilla; musk, amber and frankincense, hawthorn, honeysuckle and cedar; lavender and sandalwood. Her poisonous brew of bottled scents stings his nostrils, burns through his delicate mucous membranes, scouring his nose and making him sneeze.

  ‘You’re disgusting!’ Valentine tells him again, quickly pulling her jacket together. She doesn’t know what’s happening here but she’s quick to seize the advantage.

  Kadinsky gropes for his handkerchief to shield his mouth and nose from destruction. It’s as if he’s been caught by a violent fit that all but cripples him. He gasps and chokes and sucks at the air like a man in danger of suffocation.

  Valentine ventures forward and to her great astonishment Kadinsky starts to retreat, stumbling along the corridor. ‘Do you know what my father would do if he knew you were trying to fuck me?’ she hisses triumphantly as she chases him to his bedroom door.

  ‘You’re a stupid girl!’ growls Kadinsky, turning abruptly and making her stop in her tracks. His eyes are wild. His voice is reduced to the merest whisper. ‘Did you think I would shag you like a tart?’

  ‘You’d do anything!’

  ‘You’re wrong. I have very particular inclinations. You’ll discover them for yourself if you try to interfere with me.’

  ‘I’d rather kill myself!’ she spits at him.

  He springs forward, grabbing her hair and twisting her savagely to the floor. ‘Oh, but that’s essential!’ he whispers into her face. ‘And while you’re still warm I’m going to strip you and wash down your corpse …’

  Silence settles over the house.

  Valentine bolts her bedroom door and lies awake in the dark waiting for Kadinsky, shrunk to the size of a woodlouse, to scramble up through a crack in the floor or batter with black crow wings against the shivering glass of the window.

  Kadinsky sleeps softly, dreaming of the long, malodorous summers he spent as a boy exploring the town drains and butchers’ shops, urinals, kennels and public laundries.

  The Turk in the basement dormitory, having locked the house and set the security systems, is left with nothing but to count the maids and, finding none murdered or missing, snaps out the lights and tiptoes to bed, thankfully wrapping himself in the blankets.

  Conrad, alone in the cinema, sits and continues to stare at Dawn who looms majestically over him, taunting him with her loose-limbed performance, mocking him with her youth and beauty. His hands are stretched out in supplication. His eyes are brimming with tears.

  Silence settles over the house adrift in the rain-drenched night.

  Valentine is woken by a pair of maids wailing at her bedroom door. When she throws back the bolts and demands to know their business they cannot speak but find themselves struck dumb with terror, grasping her by the wrists and running her down the corridor towards the marble staircase. The ribbons fly from their aprons and their legs are flashing like angry scissors. They can’t stop running until they reach the family doctor, standing guard at the steps to the basement cinema. And here they promptly abandon her and hurry away, hand in hand, to howl in the freedom of the kitchen pantry.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ says the doctor softly, placing a hand on her shoulder, and he lets the monocle fall from his eye as a token of respect for the dead. ‘One of the maids found him sitting in front of Bullwhip Beauties at five twenty-five this morning. She said he looked so peaceful she thought he was asleep until she noticed that his teeth had fallen out. That’s when they called for my services. I’m sorry.’

  He dips into his pocket and removes a top set of porcelain teeth wrapped in a large blue handkerchief. Valentine stares at the teeth, the pendulum swing of the monocle, and continues to wait for the floundering physician to give her some word or sign to tell her this is only a dream that will pass in another moment or two and she’ll find herself in bed again with the maids waiting to serve her coffee.

  ‘I want to see him,’ she says at last.

  The doctor takes her hand, folds her fingers into a fist and presses the knuckles against his mouth for the comfort of it. ‘His heart stopped,’ he murmurs. ‘We shall have to take him away. You understand. It’s routine. We’ll want to examine him before we issue the death certificate.’

  ‘Yes. Whatever you think.’

  ‘I’ll write you a prescription. Is there anything in particular? I can give you something to calm you down, something to perk you up, something to keep you awake, something to put you to sleep …’ he says, staring mournfully into the folds of her dressing gown.

  ‘No. There’s nothing.’

  ‘Why don’t we go down and say goodbye to him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She allows the doctor to fondle her arm as he leads her down the stairs. His clothes smell of mentholate snuff. She notices, for the first time, a crumpled pair of surgeon’s gloves hanging from his jacket pocket. The cinema is cold. The lights have been turned down. The curtain is drawn against the screen.

  Here rests the Mirrors of Mars, the Darkness at Noon, the Storm in the Eye of Phosphorus.

  Here rests the Grand Panjandrum of Paddington, the Hammer of Highgate, Golem of Golders Green, Mayhem of Mayfair, Doomsday Dundreary, Last of the Mohocks, King of Buncombe, clan chief of the Gaberlunzie, Beelzebub the Babbler, Napoleon in Fancy Nylons. Attila the Hen, Jumping Jack-pudding, Baron Bruiser, the Sultan of Sleaze.

  Valentine stares at her father and finds him reduced by death to nothing more than a fat old man in soiled knickers and a faded frock.’

  He sits in his favourite chair, his head bent to his chest and his arms thrust between his knees. The black silk ballgown sags from his chest, breaking in waves around his splayed legs and spreading across the floor. His skin is dreadfully white. His nose and mouth are turning blue. The air is pickled with urine and brandy.

  ‘He didn’t suffer,’ says the doctor gently.

  ‘His heart,’ says Valentine, venturing as far as the chair and staring at the empty brandy bottle caught in
the folds of his skirts. Sad and unlovely old man. She wonders if she’s expected to weep. She feels nothing. She is empty. She has been abandoned.

  ‘His heart,’ confirms the doctor. ‘And his liver and lights. I gave him advice. He never listened. Did he make any arrangements? Do you know if he left instructions?’

  ‘Instructions?’ She gathers her courage and removes the necklace at her father’s neck, fumbles with the diamonds that dangle still from the blue and bristling ears. A pity to waste them. Is it true that diamonds melt in fire?

  ‘The funeral,’ says the doctor. ‘The final resting place.’

  ‘I want him cremated,’ says Valentine firmly. ‘I want his ashes sealed in a bottle.’ She slips the earrings into a pocket, wraps the necklace in her fist.

  The doctor glances at the bereaved but doesn’t care to question the wisdom of her decision. Grief reveals itself in a thousand different disguises. ‘Would you like me to remove his frock?’ he suggests. ‘Perhaps we could find him some pyjamas. It might be more appropriate …’

  ‘He’s wearing his favourite gown. Don’t disturb him.’

  ‘I’ve already phoned for an ambulance. Do you want me to leave you alone with him?’

  ‘No!’ Valentine shakes her head and steps away from the corpse. ‘I think I should go and speak to the maids.’

  The doctor smiles and screws back his monocle, fussing around the dead emperor like a little haberdasher, pulling at the lines of the gown, arranging the tucks and pleats, letting Valentine make her retreat.

  Kadinsky, aroused by the noise of the maids and the shimmering scent of death, lies in wait at the top of the stairs. A jackal excited by carrion. He’s wearing a loose cotton dressing gown and a silver chain at his throat. His bare feet are sheaves of bones, wrapped in strings of green vein.

  As Valentine emerges he scoops her violently into his arms, making her yelp as she wriggles loose and presses herself to the wall. The necklace clutched in her fist sparkles like a fire-drake’s tail.

  ‘What happened?’ he whispers, restless and grinning, nodding towards the cinema stairs.

  ‘It’s finished,’ she says briskly. ‘You can get out.’

  ‘He’s dead?’ says Kadinsky and whistles.

  ‘My father no longer requires your services.’

  ‘I never abandon my clients,’ he says, reaching out with a lazy hand to pull at her sleeve.

  ‘You no longer have a client!’ she says fiercely, snatching her sleeve away. ‘Don’t you understand? You don’t have any business here. This is my house and I’m telling you to leave.’

  ‘I never leave unfinished business,’ he says, smiling, scratching his jaw with his fingernails.

  ‘What does it take to get rid of you?’ she hisses. ‘What do you want? Why can’t you leave me alone?’ Her pleading leaves her strangled and she swallows hard, tasting the salt of tears in her throat.

  ‘Let me look at the necklace,’ he says suddenly, snapping his fingers.’

  Valentine stares at the fire in her fist. ‘It’s old. Genuine antique,’ she says hopefully, surrendering the diamonds.

  Kadinsky grunts and stares at the stones. He weighs them, rattles them, holds them to the light, sniffs at them suspiciously. He glares at them through narrowed eyes, holds them to his mouth and breathes on them, allows them to swing from his bony wrist.

  ‘Take it,’ Valentine urges him. ‘Take the necklace and leave me alone.’ Her heart is pounding. She’ll give him rubies and amethysts. She’ll give him sapphires and strings of opals.

  Kadinsky smiles, watching the tears as they start to spill from her dark and glittering eyes. ‘It’s not enough,’ he whispers and throws the necklace to the floor.

  The morning is cold. The sky, washed with rain, gleams like a polished steel bowl. Frank and Webster stand among the tombstones feeding a bonfire with the contents of Conrad’s treasure chest.

  ‘It’s time she had a Christian burial,’ says Webster, tossing letters into the fire and perhaps, by this simple act of cremating the dreams of her thousand tormentors, they are helping to lay Dawn to rest.

  The fire eats away at the mildewed declarations of love, promises of unholy wedlock, death threats and sporting photographs of their authors wearing hoods and gauntlets in corners of suburban sitting rooms.

  The smoke gathers the pamphleteers into a dark and wobbling column, rolling them together, a tower of corpulent satyrs wielding handcuffs and corkscrew dildoes, pushing them as high as the trees where it gradually dissolves in the sunlight.

  ‘When are we going to leave?’ says Frank, as they throw the empty chest to the fire.

  ‘Are you ready?’ says Webster, slapping his jacket. His pockets are stuffed with money, fat rolls of banknotes retrieved from the floorboards in the attic. His vest has been lined with travellers’ cheques. He’s equipped to travel the world.

  ‘There’s nothing to keep me here,’ says Frank, yet finds himself glancing towards the gates, still hoping that Valentine will appear to join them in their great escape.

  ‘We’ll go down to Soho and pick up some passports and then we’ll be as free as the birds,’ says Webster.

  ‘Is it really that simple?’

  ‘People disappear every day of the week. Hundreds of them. They walk away from their lives and vanish. You know that. You’ve done it yourself.’

  Above their heads the serpent of dreams uncoils in a sparkling flight of chains, shackles, curry-combs and bastinadoes. The fire crackles and spits as it drives out the last of the demons.

  ‘And Kadinsky?’

  ‘Kadinsky won’t bother his head. By the time he gets here and starts the hunt the trail will be cold. And we’ll be burning our feet on a coral beach on the other side of the world.’

  ‘And Valentine?’

  Webster kicks at the scattering embers. ‘She’s a survivor. She won’t come to any great harm. When we’ve settled ourselves we’ll send her a ticket and tell her to come for a visit. We’ll buy ourselves a villa and keep a few rooms for guests.’ He’s still a fugitive and yet he’s already planning barbecues and beach parties, sending out invitations to friends.

  Frank looks out towards the far wall of the cemetery where the rhododendrons are pushing their way through the ranks of headstones. He won’t leave without Valentine. He’ll take Webster to the airport and help him catch his flight to the sun. And then he’ll come back into town and find a way to reach Valentine without getting caught in Conrad’s trap. He’s resolved to tell Webster at the boarding gate when there’s no time left for arguments. Webster must get away from here. After all the years of fighting Conrad’s battles he’s earned the right to walk around in a straw hat and beach towel.

  He’s been awake for most of the night trying to work out a plan for survival. He knows he can escape Kadinsky by finding a suitable foxhole. There are thousands of cheap hotels in this city. He’ll rent a room and sit in the dark, waiting for the danger to pass him. The footsteps in the corridor beyond the door. The telephone that rings at midnight. He’ll rent a room and fill it with silence. Webster and Conrad are old street fighters. They believe the universe to be in a state of perpetual conflict. Their lives are nothing but trials of strength. Frank has been taught to avoid confrontation. His own life has been an elaborate game of surrender and compromise. He’ll survive again by imitating death. He’ll win his freedom by enduring a term of imprisonment. Despite all the talk of a blissful old age, he suspects that Webster has resigned himself to meeting a sudden and violent end.

  ‘Did you bring a gun?’

  ‘Shooters?’ says Webster with a look of disgust. ‘We don’t need shooters. We’re going to make a fresh start.’ And to demonstrate his commitment to their new life he trudges back to the cottage and returns with a pile of his own precious scrapbooks and throws them onto the funeral pyre.

  The Peekaboo Club is a basement beneath a bookshop in a passage linking Berwick with Brewer Street in Soho. A neon sign fizzles on a frosted-gl
ass door: Take Your Own Photos of our Lovely Nude Models. The passage is stuffed with key-cutters and tattoo artists, bed shows and massage parlours. The air is heavy with the stink of hotdogs and deep-fried doughnuts. Tourists shuffle through this arcade, silent and staring, heckled by pimps and beckoned by rent boys, checking their street maps for direction as they fondle the clasps on their money belts. At night, when the lights turn the cobbles to rhinestones, the passage becomes a circus freak show filled with whispered promises of dangerous delights.

  Frank and Webster arrive in the early evening, pushing through the market in Rupert Street, avoiding the drunks, the dippers and junkies, ignoring the tarts, the touts and the tourists, and find themselves, delivered at last, beside the bookshop window.

  ‘Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut,’ says Webster softly as he checks the address.

  Frank open his eyes on the bookshop window and peers at the rows of magazines. Beaver Bondage. Gutbucket Glamour. Prosthetic Parade. Wet-Nurse Wonder.

  Frollicking Fatties. Beneath the magazines, shelves of vibrators like curious plastic gherkins. In one corner of the window inflatable rubber women with faces like goldfish are folded into dusty boxes. Behind the boxed women, displays of leather underwear, rubber pants and aprons.

  He follows Webster through the frosted-glass door and down a steep staircase where they find themselves in a corridor guarded by a girl in a cardigan and a pair of old trousers. The girl sits in a torn armchair wedged beneath the stairs. A small table beside the chair is covered in cheap cartridge cameras, packs of film, a dirty ashtray and copies of Hello! and Chat. After the noise of the street above them the silence seems startling.

  ‘It costs twenty quid,’ the girl tells them, without moving from the chair. An electric fire glows at her feet. ‘We supply the camera, the film and the model of your requirements guaranteed in the nude. That’s me.’ She looks at Frank and tries a smile as she pulls herself from the chair and draws back a curtain to reveal the little studio.