by Anne Billson
Duncan was now looking down at me with a faint smile, but I could see he was smiling only from a misplaced sense of bravado. The sight of the blood, fake though it was, had turned him pale and sweaty-looking. It was hot and stuffy in the tiny room, but not that hot and stuffy.
‘Duncan?’ I whispered. ‘Duncan? Are you all right?’
He wasn’t listening. He was staring past my head, at the wall.
He said, ‘I think she’s back.’
Chapter 3
The occasion demanded a cigarette, so I pulled one out and lit up. There was no ashtray, so I used the floor. Duncan didn’t object. I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed. He was too busy staring at that last picture, looking as though he’d seen a ghost.
I inhaled, exhaled, and coughed. ‘Not her,’ I said at last. ‘Doesn’t look anything like her.’
‘Of course it’s not her.’ He sounded peevish. ‘What do you expect? But look at them.’
I looked again. ‘Just some people in a studio. Just a way of showing the clothes. Some stupid fashion editor had what she thought was a bright idea.’
‘You know there’s more to it than that,’ he said, adding - quite unnecessarily - ‘You were there.’
I protested. ‘You did most of it.’
‘You helped.’
‘Only because you asked me to.’
‘Christ, I wish...’ His voice trailed away.
‘These are just photographs,’ I said. ‘Stupid ones. These people think they’re being deliciously witty, but they’ve got it wrong. ‘I mean, we could cook up something much heavier if we put our minds to it. This is much too restrained. I can’t see any limbs being hacked off. What about the chiffon scarf? The body bags? The burial at the crossroads?’
At each word, Duncan flinched as though white-hot needles were being inserted into his flesh. He had to prop himself up against the edge of the bench. I offered my seat, but he shook his head and instead helped himself to a cigarette. It was a long time since I’d seen him smoking. That, as much as anything, brought home the seriousness of the situation.
When he spoke at last, it was slowly and carefully. ‘I don’t believe this is a coincidence. These photographs are here for a purpose. She’s back, and she wants me to know it.’
I told him he was reading too much into the pictures. There was no need to panic. There had never been any need to panic. We had always covered our tracks. But he wasn’t listening to a word I said. ‘It was the worst day of my life,’ he muttered, staring bleakly at the fashion spread. ‘I don’t know what went wrong.’
Neither did I.
‘I blew it,’ he went on. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’
It occurred to me he might welcome the chance to feel guilty all over again. It was high time to nip that in the bud. ‘Don’t be silly. You did what you had to do. So did I.’ I closed the magazine with finality and stared at the cover. A big white baby-soft face winked back at me. ‘Jesus Christ! Do they do that every month?’
Duncan nodded sympathetically, though I’m not sure he grasped the precise nature of my phobia; I’m not sure I even grasped it myself. ‘Gives you the willies, doesn’t it?’ he said, smiling sadly. I forced myself to take another look. Wink or no wink, the cover shot was not particularly unusual, neither was the Bellini logo. On the face of it, the magazine was interchangeable with any of the other new publications cluttering our newsstands: Eva, Riva, Diva, Bella, Nella and Stella, and so on.
I turned to the contents page and checked the masthead. The publisher was Multiglom, a name I recognized as one of the first big companies to plant its headquarters in the Docklands area. None of the other names were familiar. The editor was either Japanese, part-Japanese, or pretending to be one or the other. It figured; Japan was still deeply trendy in media circles.
I flicked through the pages. Faint perfume wafted up from scratch ‘n’ sniff advertising inserts which Lulu had already peeled open and rubbed against her wrists. There was a report on the Milan fashion shows, and an interview with a famous film director who had been commissioned to shoot a cosmetics commercial with a budget exceeding those of all his feature films combined. There were pictures in which debutantes in white satin ballgowns stuck their tongues out at the camera or hoisted their skirts up to expose their legs, and an amusing photo-feature in which the fashion editors had lured some of the Have Nots off the street and into the studio where they’d been decked out in designer clothes. After the shoot, I assumed, they’d had their smelly old rags restored to them and been thrown back into the gutter.
The Night People! fashion feature seemed an aberration, as though it had been thought up by a different editorial team. I was surprised the publishers hadn’t demanded it be toned down; those centre pages were not the sort of thing normally considered suitable for the shelves of a family newsagents.
‘OK,’ I allowed grudgingly. ‘It might not be a coincidence.’
Duncan said nothing. He was fiddling with his thumbnail, doing something unbelievably vicious to the cuticle.
‘I said, ‘If you’re really worried, I could check it out.’
He looked up at last. ‘How?’
I dropped the end of my cigarette on to the floor and ground it out with my heel. ‘I could go and see them. They look as though they could do with some creative consultancy. Lulu says they pay well.’
‘Lulu says? How in hell would she know?’
‘She said she was going to see them.’
'Like hell she is. She’d better keep out of this.’
I didn’t think this was entirely fair, and said so. Lulu might have had half her brain missing, but she was still entitled to make her own decisions.
‘Lulu knows nothing,’ Duncan said, perhaps more truthfully than he intended, ‘and I want it to stay that way.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, but I’ll go in and talk to whoever thought up those photos. Or maybe I can talk to the editor.’
‘The editor,’ he echoed. All of a sudden there was a faraway look in his eyes. ‘That name. Did you see?’
‘See what?’ I turned back to the masthead. ‘Rose Murasaki? Never heard of her.’
‘Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese writer of the Fujiwara era. Eleventh century. She wrote The Tale of Genji.’ I’d almost forgotten Duncan had once been an avid Japanophile. He’d had a big thing about martial arts movies, had seen Sanjuro ten times or more, trying to work out how Toshiro Mifune had managed to draw his sword and plunge it into Tatsuya Nakadai’s heart, all in a single movement so the blood spurted out like a geyser. I wondered whether he’d been able to watch it again at any point over the last thirteen years, what with his latterday aversion to gore. Maybe he still found it bearable; the film was in black and white, after all, and he’d told me the gushing blood was nothing but chocolate sauce.
‘So this is a distant relative,’ I suggested. ‘Or more likely someone’s idea of a hip literary reference.’
‘That name,’ said Duncan. ‘Murasaki.’
‘So?’
‘It’s the Japanese word for purple.’
This was so rich I started to laugh, but I forced myself to stop before I got carried away. Even in my own ears, the laughter sounded too loud in that cramped space.
Duncan was beginning to ramble. ‘Pink and purple. Did you know the Japanese don’t have blue movies, they have pink ones? And did you know the French title for Pretty in Pink was Rose Bonbon? And did you know Rose Bonbon was the name of a striptease at the Crazy Horse?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Isabella Rossellini told me that.’
‘Really?’
‘And she also said that - ‘ He stopped in mid-sentence and picked up whichever thread it was he had lost. ‘It’s the ultraviolet,’ he said, jabbing the magazine with his finger. ‘Sunburn and ultraviolet. Purple. Violet. Murasaki. That’s why she picked the name.’
‘Do you really think so?’ I asked doubtfully.
�
�I know so.’
‘Duncan, you don’t know anything.’
He looked wounded. ‘I knew her. You didn’t know her at all. To you, she was less than human.’ I bit my tongue to stop myself blurting out that it wasn’t just my verdict - she was less than human whichever way you looked at it.
‘Be careful, Dora,’ he said, so solemnly that I almost started laughing again. It was the first time anyone had ever told me to be careful of... what? A magazine? The colour purple? Someone who had been dead for thirteen years?
‘You’re probably right,’ he went on in a rush. ‘It’s probably just coincidence. But of all the things I’ve done in my life, that was the most evil, the most awful, the most unforgivable, and someone, somewhere, is wanting to make me suffer for it, and - do you know - I think we deserve to suffer, because I don’t feel good about what we did at all...’
‘I know I’m right,’ I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone. ‘I know there’s nothing to worry about. You’re getting worked up over nothing. Look, I’ll go and see these people and find out what’s going on, but I promise you: it will be nothing. Nothing.’
I didn’t believe what I was saying for an instant, I was just saying what I thought would shut him up, but he took a deep breath and was back to his normal charming self. ‘What on earth would I do without you, Dora?’ He smiled and dipped forward and pecked me on the forehead. ‘You don’t mind? I never wanted to drag you into any of this. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m still not thinking straight...’
I tried to make my face glow with sincerity. ‘You’d better get back to your guests. Lulu’s imagination will be running riot.’ I felt like kissing him properly, none of that pecking, but he would have been shocked. Not because he was afraid of being unfaithful to Lulu, more because it wasn’t the sort of thing he expected from me.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Lulu.’ He picked up the magazine and rolled it into a thick tube and held it up to his eye, like a telescope. ‘She wanted Alicia to have a look at this, didn’t she.’ He hovered uncertainly, as if waiting to be told what to do next.
‘If I were you,’ I said, “I wouldn’t show Alicia. Too tasteless. It might upset her.’ I eased the magazine from his grasp. ‘Tell Lulu you’ve lost it. Tell her you’ll buy another one tomorrow.’
‘Oh yes. Of course.’ As he was moving towards the door, I added, ‘And don’t forget to tell everyone we just had great sex.’
He smiled warily, unsure whether this was supposed to be a joke. ‘You shouldn’t be nasty to Lulu. She really likes you.’
‘Oh, I bet she does.’
‘She does,’ he insisted. ‘Only the other day she was saying how much she admires how you always get what you want.’
‘She does all right for herself.’
‘She’s been having a hard time of it lately, only you’d never know it. She keeps things bottled up.’
I was fed up with all this talk about Lulu. She didn’t interest me in the slightest. ‘Why don’t you go back into the other room,’ I said. ‘I’m going to stay here and have another cigarette.’ I couldn’t have one outside; Alicia would have killed me for contaminating the baby’s airspace.
‘Right,’ he said, backing through the door into the office. He paused again. ‘Dora...’
‘It’s OK, Duncan. Really it is. It’s not her. She hasn’t come back. There is no way on earth that she could come back. Not after everything we did.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. He seemed relieved, as though my word was law. ‘And you won’t mention any of this to Lu?’
‘Don’t be daft. She’d get us locked up.’
He forced a smile. ‘See you,’ he said. He went out, and I heard Lulu saying something as the office door opened. Then it closed again, and the sounds of the outside world were cut off, and I was left alone with my thoughts. I finished that second cigarette, and promptly lit another one. I reckoned I had every right to chain-smoke. My cigarette hand was shaking. The more I tried to hold it steady, the more it shook. I stared at it detachedly. It belonged to someone else.
It was all so obvious. I hadn’t been convinced, not to begin with, but that was because I hadn’t wanted to be convinced. Duncan was paranoid, but then he had every reason to be, because there was no doubt about it, none at all. The fashion spread was a joke, a ridiculous gesture, but it was also as good as a calling-card. She was back. She thought she could waltz right back into his life, after all these years.
I didn’t know what she wanted. I just knew I was going to stop her from getting it.
It was one of those nights. The Krankzeits had visitors. They were on good form, twisting the night away until well past three. I needed to blot out the day’s events to make a fresh start in the morning, but I couldn’t even get to sleep. I tried to think instead, but I couldn’t concentrate on my thoughts. The noise from upstairs got me stuck in a mental groove which flickered pink, purple, violet, pink, purple, violet, until the colours took on a life of their own and started dancing the can-can in my head. I knew from experience it was no good banging on the ceiling with the end of a broom; the Krankzeits were making so much noise it would have taken a bomb to attract their attention. Many times I’d toyed with the idea of sending them one.
After an hour spent trying to stuff the corners of the duvet into my ears, I gave up and sat down at my desk, donned my rubber gloves, and cut up some magazines to compose a letter to Patricia Rice. It wasn’t a particularly inspired letter; I was too bleary-eyed to summon up much creativity at that time in the morning. But I called her a CoMmIE LEsBiAN CoW, even though I knew perfectly well she was neither commie nor lesbian, and I informed her that her every move was being watched by mR BoNes and his BoDy ROt CReW, members of a Californian killer-hippy cult which was plotting to take over the whole world, starting with Lambeth.
Gripping the fibre-tip pen in my left fist, I laboriously printed Patty’s name and address on one of the plain brown envelopes I’d bought from Woolworths. The Krankzeits’ visitors yelled goodbye and clomped laughing and weeping into the night, but Gunter and Christine continued to drop concrete blocks on their floor at regular intervals, so I took the opportunity to compose an angry letter to the council about the recent proliferation of rubbish on the street. From force of habit, I withheld my identity but listed the names and addresses of my next-door neighbours who had once held an all-night party and told me to fuck off when I’d complained about the noise, followed by the name and address of the drug dealer who owned the four Alsatians which sometimes howled all night because they were kept in a tiny backyard which was never cleaned, followed by a postscript in which I hinted that the noisy community centre down the road was allowing drugs to be sold on the premises. As an afterthought, I signed myself Gunter Krankzeit.
By this time, the noise had subsided into the to-and-fro-ing I recognised as normal bedtime routine, so I thankfully sealed the envelopes and crawled back into my bed. The last thing I remembered thinking about was Alicia, and the way she’d sniffed the air as I’d come out of the darkroom, and asked if anyone had been smoking. That had got me so mad I’d almost told her about Jack and Roxy.
I fell asleep watching the light fitting sway in time to the last dwindling thuds from upstairs.
Chapter 4
I dreamt about a boardroom where a dozen or so people were sitting round a table. They looked like regular executive types, but I knew they were not.
‘She can’t handle it,’ said one of the men. He looked familiar. In my capacity as dream director, I zoomed in for a close-up and saw it was Burt Reynolds. ‘She could easily lose control.'
‘Give her a chance,’ said someone else. It was Robert Redford - I had evidently assembled an all-star line-up.
‘But she’ll lose her head,’ Burt said. ‘And it’ll be a disaster, like before.
‘I think you’re wrong,’ said a woman with startled eyes. Good grief, I thought, what was Liza Minnelli doing here? ‘She’s learned her lesson.'
‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’ Burt coughed, as though embarrassed by what he had to say next. ‘I don’t know whether any of you are aware of this, but she still thinks she’s in love.’
There was some snickering at this. ‘Love?’ sneered Liza, and I saw now her eyes were not just startled, but glittering cruelly in a way I’d never seen before. ‘She doesn’t know the meaning of the word. She’s interested in nothing but power, and the wielding of it.’
I wanted to chip in and tell them no, they’d got it wrong, I really did love Duncan, I’d loved him for years. Perhaps not in the accepted sense, but my feelings for him were stronger than they appeared. But the role of dream director was limited to lining up the shots. I wasn’t really there, I could do no more than watch and listen as they went on discussing my case.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Burt, ‘she maintains he is still important to her, especially after Paris. We should keep her under surveillance. She might still do something rash that would jeopardize the entire project.'
‘In that case,’ said Robert, ‘may I suggest we contact the Hatman? Andreas Grauman has reasons of his own for wanting to keep an eye on her, which in my view makes him all the more trustworthy.'
There was a ripple of approval. ‘An excellent idea,’ said Liza.
Mention of Grauman made me feel uneasy. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn up in my dream. But then the debate took a weird turn, and they all started talking about Israelis and Palestinians. There was a time and a place for politics, I thought, and it wasn’t in my dreams. I listened for a while, tried in vain to vary the camera angle or cut to another scene, but succeeded only in waking myself up.
Next day my instincts were telling me things. I needed a holiday. I always needed a holiday, but, unfortunately for me, I was the conscientious sort. There were half a dozen deadlines looming - one of them for Jack’s magazine - and I prided myself on being reliable. Unreliability would lead to no work, would lead to no money, and we couldn’t have that, not while the Have Nots were roaming the streets as a reminder of what it would be like.