by Anne Billson
And that was all he knew about her, though she already seemed to know everything there was to know about him. It was uncanny, he said, they'd only just met and already she knew him better than he knew himself. But then she was an old family friend.
I wondered aloud whether she would be going away once her business had been completed. Duncan wasn't sure, but I didn't have to ask what he would do then. I knew, because I knew all about obsession. He would follow her, even if she went to the ends of the earth.
She would be a tough nut to crack, but I didn't think she'd be impossible. In my more optimistic moments, I saw Violet Westron as a challenge.
I was besotted all over again, and it was worse than before. I couldn't concentrate on anything else. I went home and drank a bottle of cheap wine. For the first time in my life I bought a packet of cigarettes and painstakingly smoked every last one of them, even though they made me cough and splutter. I awoke in the middle of the night with a parched throat and a throbbing headache, and all I could think about was the memory of those eyes. There had been danger in them, yet I had chosen to ignore it.
That night I sat up in bed, browsing fitfully through some of the art books I had taken out on more or less permanent loan from the college library. Somewhere at the back of my brain was something I knew I had to try and remember, but I couldn't think clearly enough to keep it in focus. I turned the pages of Symbolist Painters, making faces at the sphinxes and shady women. I'd always liked those pictures before, but now they reminded me of her.
My subconscious must have been working overtime, because suddenly what I'd been trying to remember was right in front of me. The picture of an abandoned city, water gently lapping against its closed doors. The artist's name was Khnopff. I scanned the text until I found what I hadn't known I was looking for. 'The great painter of the Sphinx-Woman was the Belgian artist Khnopff (1858-1921).'
Perhaps I'd remembered it incorrectly, or perhaps Duncan had got the name confused. I leafed through some of the other pages. Perhaps it had been Kubin (1877-1959) or Kupka (1871-1957). But no - he had definitely said Khnopff. 1858-1921. I had to read it several times before the significance of the dates sank in.
Khnopff had died in 1921. If she had been telling the truth, if he really had painted her portrait - even if she'd been a child at the time - it would mean she was a lot older than she looked.
I reckoned she was at least sixty.
In the weeks that followed, I would occasionally spot Duncan wandering around with a somnolent expression on his face. Sometimes he noticed me and said hello. More often he seemed lost in his own little world, hardly speaking to anyone. Once or twice I heard him humming - that drinking song from La Traviata again, and something or other from La Boheme, and one or two other things I didn't recognize. Duncan had never much cared for opera, but now he was obviously getting an education in it.
At the end of the day, I would hang around long after everyone else had gone home, hoping against hope that he would come by and invite me out for a drink, just for old times' sake - but he never did. As far as he was concerned, I'd ceased to exist. Entire days would go by when I didn't see him at all. People noticed his absence, and made comments. Ruth, one of the few people aware we'd been seeing each other, asked me if he was all right. Then she saw something in my expression and asked me if I was all right. 'I'm fine,' I snapped, and she knew better than to ask again.
I went for long walks, trying to fill the empty hours. I revisited places where Duncan and I had been together. I couldn't understand why being there without him should make me feel so unhappy. On the face of it, nothing had changed - I was still walking, on the same two legs, across the same stretch of the park, stopping at the same pond to watch the same ducks. I was still sitting in the same pubs, drinking the same drinks and munching the same brand of crisps. But it wasn't the same. I tried to pretend it was, but it wasn't. There was something missing, and it wasn't just Duncan.
I was still going to the same cinemas, too, though for obvious reasons I couldn't watch the same movies, not all the time. I pored over film textbooks, searching in vain for mention of lost German masterpieces. I sat through all the German films I could find, just in case, but never once did I see those eyes up on the screen. The films, being German, did nothing to lighten my mood.
The good news was that I lost my appetite. Cakes and croissants no longer gave me pleasure. The weight fell off until, for the first time in my life, I discovered I had cheekbones - they'd been buried there all along. I stared at them in the mirror. The face that stared back was pale and interesting. It was some consolation, but not much. What was the point of cheekbones? What was the point of anything, when I couldn't have what I really wanted?
I couldn't sleep. I would lie there, fretting and perspiring in a shallow fever of helplessness. I wrote long, rambling letters to Duncan, and tore them up. I wrote long, rambling letters to myself, and to this Violet person, and I tore them up too. My room was strewn with stream-of-consciousness confetti.
One night, the fever got so bad I felt like banging my head against the wall. The only way I could stop myself was by getting up and getting dressed. I went for a walk, with no idea where I was heading. My feet took me all the way up the High Street to the Grand Union Canal. I clambered over the locked gate and walked alongside the water, thinking how easy it would be to step into the dark reflection. I heard the night-time noises of the zoo, and walked and walked. Sometimes the path tried to lead me away from the water, but each time I found my way back. I walked for hours, until I found myself at the north end of Ladbroke Grove. I had never meant to go there, but my feet had developed a mind of their own. Now they took me south, overland. They took me straight to Duncan.
I stood beneath the trees on the opposite side of the road and stared up at the light in his second-floor window. It was the only light in the block, the only light in the street. I wondered what he was doing, up at such an unsociable hour. I debated whether to call in and demand a cup of tea. It was four in the morning, but that wasn't what stopped me from ringing the doorbell. He wouldn't care what time it was - he didn't care about things like that any more. I didn't ring because I knew what his reaction would be; polite, as always, but thinking, all the time, about someone else. It would have been unbearable.
One or two cars went past. I walked round the block three or four times, doing a brisk pin-step, then stopping again in the shadow of the trees. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but after half an hour or so, the front door opened. He stepped out, and of course she was with him, wrapped in her furs. I couldn't see so well from where I was standing, but her movements were not those of a sixty-year-old woman. She was petite and childlike, not wizened and old. I'd made a mistake, or Duncan had, or perhaps she'd told him a downright lie.
He stooped and she kissed him. At least, I think that's what she did. Her hair fell across both their faces so that I couldn't see properly. I think he started to say something, but I couldn't be sure. She left him there, staring at her back as she walked away, pulling her hat down over her face and folding herself tightly into the fur. He drank in one last look, as though she was all the sustenance he had, and turned round and went back inside the house and shut the door.
I wondered why she was leaving so early, why she was walking, why hadn't she phoned for a cab. I had nothing better to do, so I followed her. It was the first time I'd ever followed anyone, and in those days I wasn't too good at it. I did all the things I'd seen them do in movies - stopping to tie my shoelace, ducking into doorways, turning to gaze into shop windows. It was ridiculous; we were virtually the only two people on the streets, and still she gave no indication of having seen me.
She walked surprisingly fast, all the way down Ladbroke Grove and along the Harrow Road. She looked neither to left nor right as she went, and I stuck with her all the way.
And that's how I found out what she really was.
Chapter 3
I thought at first the gates had bee
n left unlocked, because she slipped between them. When I got there I found they'd been padlocked after all, but the chain was slack and left enough of a gap for a skinny person to squeeze through. Thanks to my recent weight loss, I made it.
So she liked cemeteries too. She and Duncan made a fine pair. Inside, the faint moonlight illuminated ranks of tombstones glowing softly in the undergrowth. Violet was a dark and distant blur on the path ahead. After a few seconds I lost sight of her, but now I could hear her singing softly to herself. 'Libiamo, libiamo...' I couldn't understand the Italian, but I knew it was that bloody drinking song again.
What the hell was she up to? I had to find out. Whatever it was, I would be able to use it against her. I trod cautiously, avoiding the gravel and sticking to the grassy verges, trying to make as little noise as possible. Vandals had passed this way before me. Monuments had been daubed with graffiti, angels had lost their noses, graves gaped in preparation for the day of judgement. I wondered how I'd allowed myself to be lured into this stupid place, at this stupid time of night. But it never occurred to me that I might be putting my life in danger.
A pale grey mass loomed ahead: a mausoleum. I climbed the steps to the portico and was greeted by the stench of urine, and of something else, something familiar I couldn't quite identify. I was wondering which of the three paths Violet had taken when there was a clatter of metal which echoed and clashed - I stopped dead, ears straining, hardly daring to breathe, but the echo died and the rest was silence. I homed in on the source of the sound, and found myself creeping along a passageway lined with pillars; to the right they opened on to a moonlit courtyard; to my left they stood guard over the dim outlines of family tombs.
I had my ideas, most of them far-fetched. I thought she might be involved in espionage, or terrorism, or a spare-parts surgery racket. Or a black-magic cult whose members danced naked and sold their stories to the News of the World. I was an incurable romantic with a vivid imagination, but it stopped short of embracing the paranormal as a part of everyday life. I had always liked horror movies, but had never imagined the creatures they depicted were real. I didn't believe in vampires. But the process by which disbelief turned to acceptance was fairly swift, and it started around the next corner.
There was a soft rustling sound, like dry leaves trembling in the gentlest of breezes. I turned the corner, and what I saw was this: the moonlight casting pale strips across the floor, and a writhing shape slumped against one of the pillars. I knew the shape wasn't human because it had too many limbs. An arm flopped sideways on to the ground, and I heard the rustling again as the hand involuntarily tightened its grip around a crinkly plastic bag. Then a leg kicked out, also involuntarily, and once again a thick crepe sole came into contact with the tin and sent it spinning away on its side. As soon as I spotted the red and white label, I knew what the other familiar smell had been. Cow Gum had always been a vital factor in my collage assembly.
I took another look at the shape, and realized it was not a single entity, but two separate figures conjoined in an unnatural manner. The first figure was hunched over the second, which was skinny and male and slumped on the ground. The first figure was Violet, and she was making small bobbing movements - rather suggestive movements, I thought, only it wasn't a blow-job because whatever she was doing was concentrated around the head and neck. I could see by the way the other figure sagged that she hadn't been giving him the kiss of life - the closely cropped head lolled in a state of open-mouthed narcosis. One of his legs was locked in a violent spasm, the other crooked back at an unnatural angle. Then she stood up straight and wiped her chin with the back of her hand. She gazed down at him impassively, as though getting her breath back, before gripping his shoulders and dipping her head once again.
Then it all got confused, but for a few seconds I'd had a grandstand view, and I'd seen what had been left of the side of his neck. The blood which was still pumping gently out of the wound - which was turning his white shirt dark and his dark anorak even darker - had-been black and not red in the half-light, so I don't think it was that which was now making me feel queasy. I might have been hyperventilating, and I hadn't been eating properly for the past few days, but more probably it was sheer physical shock. Just because I believed what I was seeing didn't mean I was taking it in my stride. I felt a sound forming in the back of my throat. I knew I had to stop this noise from happening, so I jammed my fist into my mouth and retreated as far as I could into the deepest shadow. I would have turned and made a run for the gates, but I didn't altogether trust my legs.
Then she looked up again and I almost choked. She was looking right at me - but she didn't appear to see me at all. Later on, I would learn it wasn't the shadows which saved me. They can see in the dark, these people, like cats, and Violet had been around for so long she could scent dinner at fifty paces. If she'd been operating at full throttle, she would have been on to me in an instant, ripping my throat out with her teeth, or slicing my jugular with her fingernails, or cracking my head open on the flagstones, laughing as she did so. I found out later she was capable of all these things, and that there were several circumstances which combined to save my neck. First, she hadn't fed for several nights, and now this over-hasty blow-out was blunting the sharp edge of her senses. Nor was she behaving in orthodox undead fashion: she was ignoring all the recommended procedures, pursuing impromptu strategies of her own, taking risks, leaving herself wide open. Just because she was in love for only the third time in three hundred years, she thought it gave her the green light to behave like a complete idiot and forget what she was being paid to do. But then Violet didn't care about that. She didn't care about anything, except maybe Duncan.
And she had deliberately picked nourishment she knew would be contaminated with additives - Cow Gum and, at a guess, Lamb's Navy Rum, Carling Black Label, speed - whatever the pathetic squirt had managed to pour down his gullet prior to having it ripped out. Later, I realized she had provided him with most of these substances herself. It was how she had lured him there in the first place.
So when she stood up straight and wiped her mouth and looked around, she didn't see me, and neither did she, pick up my scent. I didn't know it then, but she was completely out of her skull. For the next few minutes she stood over the crumpled body, staring down at him as if to establish the state of play. He was either dead or dying, and she didn't give a damn. She brushed her hair back from her face, and, for the first time, I saw colour in her cheeks. She looked astonishingly beautiful in a predatory sort of way, but I thought she also looked weary. It was the weariness of someone who needed to catch up on a few hundred years' worth of sleep. It was then I knew she wasn't just old, she wasn't just weird - she wasn't even human.
This time I didn't think I could suppress the noise. It really had nothing to do with me, but it was coming up anyway, and now I knew for sure it was about to turn into something louder than a whimper or a gurgle - it was going to be a howl. I decided I could no longer fight it, and it would have been all over then and there, if my mouth hadn't suddenly been clamped shut so abruptly I felt the sharp edges of my front teeth slice into my gums. The howl died, smothered at birth by a hand smelling of whisky and tobacco and soap. I plucked at it feebly, but a tentacle wrapped itself around my waist and I was being pulled up and away, and I was kicking my feet in the air. My first thought was that she'd got me, but I could see Violet was still somewhere up ahead, and the tentacle wasn't a tentacle at all - it was an arm. I felt, rather than heard, a wet whiskery mouth pressed up against my ear and a hoarse whisper, 'Don't move. Don't make a sound. Do anything and you are dead.'
Up ahead, in a foggy vignette, I saw Violet delve into her coat pocket with a leisurely, almost dreamlike movement. When her hand emerged, there was a small cylindrical object in her fingers. I didn't realize what it was, not until she swivelled the gilt casing and began to apply the lipstick to her mouth. Her hand was sure and steady; she had no need of a make-up mirror. Which was just as well, because
even if there had been a mirror she would not have been able to see herself reflected in it.
Andreas Grauman was tall, but he was made even taller by the snakeskin boots with stacked heels and platform soles. They were the most ridiculous boots I had ever seen. Grauman told me later they were not particularly to his taste, but Violet had taken a fancy to them and bought them for him, and he had worn them ever since, out of respect.
The last thing I remembered was Violet putting on her lipstick, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the back seat of a car and a long-haired hippy with wire-rimmed spectacles was leaning over me with his hand up my skirt. My reaction was instantaneous and unthinking. I slapped the offending hand as hard as I could, and said, 'Stop that immediately!' He laughed. But took his hand away.
I suddenly remembered what I'd seen and sat up in a panic. 'Where is she? Where am I?' I twisted around, trying to look out of the windows, but they were all misted up. 'You are in my car,' he said, 'which is parked near the cemetery.' There was a slight accent. He wasn't English.
I thrashed around, trying to find a way out, but we were in the back seat of a Ford Cortina and the doors were at the front. 'Let me out,' I said. There wasn't a whole load of room to manoeuvre. One of my elbows caught him on the edge of his jaw, and he reacted as though he'd been cuffed by the heavyweight champion of the world, shying abruptly away, rubbing his chin and gingerly feeling around inside his mouth. 'Shit,' he said. 'Please be careful.'