666 charing cross road, p.11
666 Charing Cross Road, page 11
‘I told you, I found him in the night. He looked so strange.’
‘He’s often restless,’ Jack said.
‘But he was like that as a child. I have seen him disturbed like this before. He was a sensitive boy.’
Jack tutted. ‘Weren’t we all?’
‘I mean, sensitive like he saw things. Spirits. He saw things no one else could see.’
‘Really?’ Jack was intrigued. Ricardo had never mentioned anything like this before. He’d said his mother was a supernatural nut, but not that he thought he was in any way susceptible himself.
‘Surely you must have seen how strangely he has been behaving these past few days?’
Jack pursed his lips as they carried on down the long street. It was lunchtime and he was heading back to work. He’d been hoping to spend the hour with Liza in a posh coffee shop, but Liza wasn’t answering her phone for some reason. Instead he had been stuck with this crazy woman, who was intent on acting like a soothsayer and tagging around after him.
‘Surely you must think so too,’ she urged him. ‘You haven’t known him long, I know. But there is something different about my son.’
He agreed with her, but he didn’t want to say so. Ever since Thanksgiving, in fact, and their visit to Shelley and Daniel. Something had got to Ricardo and altered his mood, though Jack couldn’t exactly say how. It was something to do with Daniel, obviously, and this pass he had apparently made.
Consuela was hugging herself as they crossed a busy road. She was wearing only a shawl over her flimsy tasselled dress. Suddenly Jack felt touched by the sight of her. He thought about her devotion to her son. The way that she had come dashing out to consult Jack on his lunch hour, full of concern about Ricardo. Jack found it hard to imagine his own mother acting quite so obsessively. She was keener to let him confront his own problems and what she described as ‘lifestyle choices’. She was more concerned with the affairs of the various charitable and cultural committees she sat on.
‘There is a chill wind,’ Consuela was saying now, in a lower voice, so that Jack had to walk slower and bend towards her. ‘Can’t you feel the cold? It’s coming from the east. From the old world. Something bad is blowing in… something has come to the island.’
Jack found himself actually shivering. Real foreboding suddenly hit him in the chest, and his heart started beating faster.
‘There is something bad here, Jack.’ She looked up into his face, and he thought suddenly that she looked like a little doll. That perfectly painted face, with its eyebrows arched like Marlene Dietrich’s in The Devil Is a Woman. Her shiny boot-black hair was scraped back into a tidy bun. He felt a quickening of compassion for this tiny, ardent woman and the way she kept herself looking so perfect, even when camping out on his sofa and living out of laundry bags.
She saw that her message had got through to him, and so, after patting his hands firmly, she let him return to work at Fangtasm.
All that afternoon, Jack got on with his usual tasks by rote. It was a quietish day, and he filled the time by dusting the glossy rosewood shelves. He spent some time shuffling some of the stock back into order. His gaze fell on the paranormal romances and the vampire books. Could it be that Consuela simply read too many of these things? Was she blurring reality with the myriad crazy fantasies in her head?
Jack really didn’t know. All he knew was that Ricardo’s mood had shifted. He was surly, incommunicative. He had become brusque and demanding in bed.
Well, maybe that feature of the mood shift wasn’t that bad.
But also, he looked at Jack sometimes as if he hardly knew who he was. Jack sighed. That had an element of truth to it, though, didn’t it? They had hardly known each other for any time at all. They had moved much too fast in their urge to be together.
He talked with customers and his boss, and with Lame Wendy, who came to relieve him for the evening shift. He even felt his cares and worries drift away a little as the street lamps came on outside and he realised suddenly it was time to go home. Now the snow was ankle deep, and it startled him to see it coming down so thick and fast. It looked wonderfully seasonal out there, and it was almost a shame to leave the cosy, antiquey ambience of Fangtasm for the short trip home. It was only a few blocks to Thompson Street, hardly a major schlep. He borrowed some of the trade mags to show Consuela which books were being published in the next six months. She’d be pleased, he reckoned, to get some insider gossip about them. And maybe he’d think about inviting her to the Christmas soiree at Fangtasm, the evening after next. She’d be bound to love it.
He trudged home through the snow, secretly delighting in it, even as it buffeted him along the streets. The smells of hot food from street vendors still braving the weather reached him as he hurried along. Hot dogs, boiled onions, sweet crisp waffles… they were making his stomach ache with hunger, but he kept on, hoping that Consuela would be cooking up one of her feasts again.
When he made it up the fire escape, he found that neither Consuela nor Ricardo were home. A sudden cold pang went through him. She’s out there somewhere. Without much of a clue where to start, Consuela was hunting for her son. Determined to bring him safely home.
Chapter Thirteen
Liza didn’t know what to do that day. In her life she was used to being the practical person; the one that everyone else turned to. Any quandary, any bizarre situation. Nothing could faze her. She had seen it all in her very long and interesting life.
However, she had to admit that this new situation — this visitation — was reasonably unusual. Even for her life.
All that day she was forced to stay indoors. There was no way she was leaving that… that person alone in her apartment. Poor Rufus whined and scratched at the door to be out. He was desperate for his trot around the park and the streets. The dog could smell snow on the air, she was sure, and he was keen to go racing about in it. But she wouldn’t let him. Not yet.
She wasn’t sure what to do.
Maybe when Shelley came back from work that evening, maybe then Liza could slip out with Rufus. And Shelley could watch over… the woman. The thing. The Scottish Bride, as Shelley called her. Bessie.
‘How are things going?’
‘Oh, fine,’ growled Liza. It was after lunchtime, and Shelley sounded far too breezy at the other end of the phone. Her aunt knew she was faking that casual tone. ‘Has, er, has… anything happened?’
‘No,’ snapped Liza. ‘She’s sitting on the sofa and staring straight ahead. She’s hardly said a word.’
‘Right…’ Shelley’s voice trailed off.
Liza was trying to make a sandwich, one-handed, with the phone clamped to her ear. She was starving, but she wasn’t keen, for some reason, on eating in front of her intruder. I’m like a hostage in my own apartment, she thought wildly. When she had asked the… woman if she wanted something, the interloper hadn’t said a word. She appeared to be back in a deep sleep.
‘I’ve talked to the police. I’ve given a statement to the press. It’s been chaos here.’
‘And Daniel?’
‘We don’t know where he is. He never turned up for work.’
‘You still think it was him, huh?’ Liza said, crunching down on a pickle.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Fact is,’ said Liza, ‘the thing’s… the effigy is still… doing stuff it shouldn’t be. Like walking and talking, y’know. I don’t see how Daniel can be responsible for that.’
‘Me either,’ sighed Shelley. ‘But from the museum’s point of view, it looks pretty suspicious for Daniel. He vanishes, and so does our prize exhibit. He’s dropped himself right in it.’
‘Huh,’ said her aunt, thinking that Shelley sounded much too pleased about that fact. ‘In the meantime, I’ve got another new lodger.’
‘Look,’ said Shelley hurriedly, ‘I gotta go. I’ll be home around seven.’
Home, thought her aunt, clicking off the phone. Shelley thinks she’s moved in with me permanent. Great.
Suddenly Liza had a feeling she was waving her old, comfortable, mainly solitary life goodbye.
She stared at the woman-shaped creature on the sofa. In the harsh winter light of day from her tall windows, the face on the effigy looked a bit more human. She was pinched and pale in complexion, but she didn’t look quite so monstrous, perhaps. Her hair hung in tatters, as did the rags she was wearing. Now that Liza took a good long look at her (she felt braver now, in the more prosaic and bright afternoon), Bessie looked rather less like a desiccated mummy than she did some poor soul who’d spent years living rough.
She was rocking, very gently, on the sofa. Back and forth. Slowly, almost imperceptibly. Liza drew closer and saw that the woman’s eyes were slightly open. They were shrewdly taking in her surroundings. The dark pupils darted back and forth, fixing at last on her hostess.
‘You’re awake,’ Liza said. ‘Are you hungry? Do you eat?’
The woman made a strange noise, deep inside her sunken chest. It sounded rather like the rumbling strings within an old piano. ‘I haven’t eeaten in soo long,’ she said at last. The voice was just as weird as it had been last night, in the terrifying dark. That unplaceable accent. Was it really Scotch? Liza couldn’t tell. She put it out of her mind, the fact that she was talking to something made out of old bones and skin and patchwork.
Suddenly, irrevocably, this was a real woman. For Liza, this was the moment that Bessie became, once and for all, an actual person. With rights and a history and everything else a person could want.
‘You’re starving, huh?’
‘I’ve beeen asleeeep soo long,’ said Bessie. ‘And I’m still soo coold.’
Liza swung into practical mode. ‘All right then, let’s get movin’. I got some sweetcorn chowder in the refrigerator. Can you handle that?’
‘Soouup?’ asked Bessie, looking up so hopefully that Liza’s heart went out to her. The woman’s face was withered and grey with neglect. She was filthy, Liza realised. She was encrusted with the dirt and dust of ages. But could she withstand a bath or a shower? She looked like she might dissolve at the first touch of hot frothy water. ‘I’d like soouup, yesss…’
Minutes later, Liza had seated her visitor at the small kitchen table, and was studying her as she taught herself to eat again.
‘Who are you?’ she asked Bessie. ‘Where do you come from?’
Bessie looked up at her and blinked. She licked her dry lips with a dark tongue. She gulped and winced as the soup scalded her throat. ‘I doon’t know,’ she said, at last. ‘I doon’t knoow anny moore.’ Her eyes stared straight at Liza then. Liza jumped a bit, because the eyes were suddenly a marvellous green. A glittering jade. Alive with a strange intelligence and an intensity she had never seen before. She was sure those eyes hadn’t been like that earlier.
It was as if the woman was returning to warm and vital life, step by step, right before her own astonished eyes.
‘When they found you and put you in the… in the museum,’ said Liza, ‘they decided to call you Bessie.’
The stranger’s face twisted into what Liza realised was supposed to be a smile. The spoon was halfway up to her mouth as she tested the name out. ‘Besssieee. I like thaaat. It’ss a goood naaame.’
‘Bessie it is, then,5 said Liza. Then she burst out with, ‘You’re magic, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not natural. You’re real, but you’re not in any way natural at all. You shouldn’t really exist, should you?’
Bessie stared at her. There was some glimmering of understanding in those jewel-like eyes. ‘Yees. I reememberr thaat. I amm not a natuural wooman. I am not like otherr woommen aarre…’ Liza felt an overwhelming urge to pat Bessie’s hand. It was a like a bundle of twigs under her palm. ‘Never mind, honey. You’re in New York City now. You can be any kind of woman you damn well want.’
It had been the toughest day Shelley had ever spent at her museum. Not only had she had to field questions from the police and the press, she’d had Ruthie’s barbed comments about Daniel all day too.
‘What’s he want with an effigy anyway? Kinda creepy, huh? Guess he’s English, I suppose. They can be weird, with their private schools and all.’
Shelley refused to be drawn. She’d had enough to contend with, dealing with disappointed visitors who’d come to see Bessie. For the moment they were content to stare at the empty plinth where the Scottish Bride had stood, but she knew that novelty wouldn’t last long.
She was glad when it was time to go home. But then she thought about what she was heading home to face, and how it wasn’t really her home anyway. She’d be sharing Aunt Liza’s settee with the woman this whole fuss was about in the first place. A woman who didn’t even really exist.
As she shrugged on her coat and prepared to brave the wintry streets, a queer thought struck her.
This had all begun with that book.
Now, Shelley trusted her intuition. It was wild and impulsive, but it had got her out of more scrapes than it had put her into. She remembered Aunt Liza standing here with that weird book she’d got in the post. She was talking about how she’d give it to Daniel to study.
That book of magic spells…
She shook her head. This was crazy. Black magic stuff. But it was nonsense, wasn’t it?
And yet, last night, she had seen the Bride, Bessie, alive. If that wasn’t supernatural, what was?
She said good night to Ruthie, who was wearing a Bessie T-shirt and a mournful expression, and counting up the day’s takings. ‘Do you think there’ll be a ransom note?’ Ruthie asked.
Shelley blinked. ‘For Bessie? You’re kidding, right?’
‘She was getting famous around town. She’d been in the newspapers. People get greedy and they look for opportunities.’
Shelley shook her head. ‘Maybe you’re right. G’night, Ruthie.’
As she made her way through the quickly trudging crowds, the traffic, the litter, the endless noise and city smells, Shelley wondered about the feasibility of perhaps making an all-new Bride out of odds and ends. Maybe they could put one together and fake her for the sake of the viewing public? Just a few old rags… a papier mache head…
She steeled herself to march across town to Daniel’s place. She’d need a few of her own things if she was going to be camping out. She’d call a cab from his building to get all her bags to her aunt’s. She felt desolate as she strode and slithered through snow that had turned to demerara sugar on the pavements. This was the end of her thing with Daniel. Almost even before it had begun.
She walked the streets feeling like she was about to start living on them. She’d hardly had time to get used to her fancy address, her fancy living. Now she’d be living under that heap of boxes, or in the alcove behind those filthy bins. That was the life she’d blundered into, and all because she’d staked too much, too soon, on a bad relationship.
All her relationships had been rotten, hadn’t they? Every single one. This was failure. It was worse than failure, actually, because something messed up and spooky was happening at the same time, as well.
She hauled herself up the stone stairs in Daniel’s building and knew, before she even got to the top, that he was home again. There was just something in the air. Some kind of tingle. Some indistinct signs of life that she could sense, even before she heard the music coming from behind the apartment’s front door.
It was Bauhaus, the old British Gothic band. God, Daniel was dragging out his vinyl records. He had come home and was clearly having some kind of nervous breakdown, revisiting the music of his teenage years. Once he had confided to Shelley how he’d been a punk, a Goth, a crusty, a raver… anything and everything that would have shocked his rather conservative parents. She remembered the tale of how his father had once angrily taken a heap of his punk records and burned them on a bonfire in their huge back garden. Daniel had tried to stop him, begging and weeping, and been beaten for his insubordination. This scene had haunted Daniel. He’d cried when he’d told Shelley the story, which had touched her. She’d tried to comfort him, but he’d pulled away, covering up his upset with a harsh laugh.
She knew that this music, blasting out like this, had a secret significance. For some reason it scared her, as if something beaten down in Daniel was choosing to reassert itself. Something inside him that had turned bitter and hard over the years.
Shelley let herself into the apartment, wincing at the noise. And then she blinked with surprise. There was a party going on in here. This was something Daniel had once said would happen in his immaculate place only over his dead body.
About a dozen young people were hanging about in the living room and the kitchen. They were slouched and sprawled decoratively on every surface. They were all elegance, model-slim, perfect, pale, epicene creatures. Androgynous men and women of every race and description. Shelley gazed around in astonishment at what looked like an R-rated fragrance ad.
They were rather strange, all of them. They moved very slowly, as if drugged, as if they were breathing a more languid atmosphere than Shelley. They were necking and fondling each other, but in a measured and elegant fashion. It was as if a very gradual orgy was taking place, and Shelley had come crashing slap-bang into the middle of it.
‘Daniel!’ she yelled. A few of the beautiful young people turned to look at her, smirking. ‘Daniel, are you here?’ My God, she thought. Maybe they’re all squatters. Weird, sexy squatters.
She found Daniel in their bedroom. He was with a young woman and a young man, both lying on the bed. Shelley almost fell through the floor in shock. Luckily, they were all dressed. Well, apart from the young man, who was shirtless. Daniel was sitting cross-legged on his wickerwork chair, and straight away Shelley knew something was wrong with him.
