Banquet for the Damned (5 page)

Standing still inside the door, he looks at the glass-panelled bookcase fixed to a wall and filled with scholarly hardbacks written by the lecturing staff. Reminders of knowledge he does not have turn his stomach over. Dipping his head to steady his breathing, Dante catches sight of his scuffed biker boots and faded jeans and feels his legs go immediately numb.

On his left, beside an oaken honeycomb of pigeonhole post boxes, he sees a white door marked SECRETARY, and hears the judder and clatter of a keyboard from within. For a moment, the idea of running back to Tom and loading up the Land Rover glows in his thoughts.

'All change serves a purpose,' Eliot had written in words he could understand. 'Change and progress are not accidental; they come through the unchaining of an imagination. And behind them, faith and the will must power the sails.'

Dante forces himself toward the door and gives it a firm knock. Through the wood, he hears a long sigh and then a shrill female voice says, 'Yes.' Through the small gap he's made between the door and the frame, he pokes his head inside before following it with an arm. A woman, frowning but handsome, sits straight-backed behind a desk and computer.

Dante smiles. Her face doesn't move. He swallows. She raises an eyebrow above her glasses, perched halfway down her thin nose and fastened around her neck with a gold chain. 'Yes?' she asks, unable to conceal her annoyance. When her slender hands reluctantly leave the keyboard they create a red flash of long and immaculate fingernail. When he opens his mouth, a rasp dislodges from the back of his throat.

'Do you speak?' she asks.

'Yes,' he whispers before clearing his throat. 'I –'

'Will you come in? I can't hear you.'

Dante shuffles through the door and crowds his body into the corner, as far away from the woman's stare as possible. 'I'm here for an appointment with Mr Coldwell.'

The woman studies him. 'Dante Shaw,' she says to herself. 'What an appropriate name.'

'Sorry?'

'Nothing,' she replies, and leaps from behind her desk with an alacrity he doesn't expect from a secretary who works in a School of Divinity. High heels cage her feet and an elegant tight-fitting dress – sleeveless and cut above the knee – turns her slender shape into neat lines and hard curves. With an expert's ease on pencil-thin stilettos, the glamour-puss and guardian walks across to him, her pale legs flashing like a strobe, luring his eyes down. 'My name is Janice Summers. I am the senior administrator. Do you mind me inquiring about the nature of your appointment?'

'I'm here to assist Mr Coldwell with his research,' he announces in a voice controlled enough to submerge his Brummy accent.

She places her hands on her hips and a mocking smile spreads across her mouth. 'Research, you say. An investigation of Scotch whisky, no doubt?'

Dante flushes with annoyance. 'Research for his second book, actually.' His face reddens further, as he suddenly feels foolish about his use of the word 'actually'.

But, for a moment, whatever he said introduces a fleeting spectre of vulnerability to the woman's hard face. 'Book?' Her voice is little more than a whisper.

Dante nods his head, rejoicing inside from something that feels like an unexpected victory. She takes a deep breath and smiles, weakly. 'I had no idea Eliot was considering another book. I mean who would . . .' She stops herself, and reaches for the door handle behind him. Shuffling to one side, he lets her open the door. In a voice softer than her opening salvo, she asks him to follow.

Beside the administration office is a door marked STAIRWELL. As she moves down the stairs, he catches sight of her profile and notices the inquisitive, bird-like face has become preoccupied again. Eager to break the uncomfortable silence, he says, 'I've never met Mr Coldwell. We've not even spoken on the phone. I hope he isn't too busy.'

She frowns at him as if he has said something imbecilic. Dante averts his eyes and decides it will be better to stay silent around Janice Summers, who continues, with a puzzled expression on her face, to teeter down the stairs to a door marked
BASEMENT
.

Taking what he feels are reluctant steps, she then walks along the narrow basement corridor between walls covered with a patchwork of flyers, lists, scholarship details and emergency evacuation procedures. The corridor is lit by two overhead strip-lights, and a glimmer of natural light seeps through a dirty window in the top of the fire escape, situated at the far end of the passage.

Pausing before an unmarked door on the right, just before the fire exit, she then hesitates, and appears to be summoning the courage required to knock. Her face set with a grim concentration, she finally raps on the door.

In preparation for meeting his mentor, Dante brushes at his shirt, tightens his ponytail, and clears his throat.

A muffled sound rises from the unseen depths behind the door. As if repelled, Janice immediately steps back. 'Go on in,' she says, quietly, and it becomes apparent to Dante that she is not prepared to open the door and introduce him to Eliot. Instead, she hurries past him, back along the corridor toward the stairs. Dante places his hand on the door handle. A final glance down the corridor reveals Janice hovering in the mouth of the stairwell, still watching him, as if he is a menace. Eager to evade her eyes, he turns the door handle and enters.

A thick, smoky gloom confronts his eyes, all green-grey as if he is underwater. There is a strange spice in the air too, reminiscent of the cupboards in his gran's house, and thousands of book spines are crammed into every inch of ceiling-high shelf space, or littered across the tables and chairs. Closing the door, he turns to face a desk anchored heavily into one corner, beneath closed curtains faded to a shade of discoloured brass.

At first, the seated figure behind the desk is indistinct. In the dusk of the study, only an outline of Eliot's thin shoulders and lank hair can be seen. As he takes a puff on his cigarette, however, the little orange flare of burning tobacco briefly illumines the suggestion of a long nose and wide mouth. Between small hillocks of paperwork and pyramids of hardback books, Dante can see the shirt of the sunken silhouette. It may have been white, and there is a dark tie running down the front to broaden out between two barely visible arms. A weak band of light falls across the figure's slender hands, at rest beside a large overflowing ashtray.

'Hello Dante.' The shape speaks with a quiet, sonorous voice. 'I've been looking forward to meeting you for some time.'

'Me too,' Dante says, before immediately trying to analyse the connotations of his first words to Eliot Coldwell.

'Please come in and take a seat. I'm sure you'll find one before my desk.' All his words seem to have been weighed, in precise copper scales, before dropping through the air.

'Thanks.' Swinging his jacket off, Dante steals a glimpse at the great man's face now that he is closer. Dark eyes watch him beneath a broad and flat brow. Cheekbones are pointed and the jaw is square below hollow cheeks. Taut skin has weathered to a mahogany brown on his face and is salt-sprinkled with whiskers, but the neck is wizened. The distinguished face suggests wisdom, and time endured beneath foreign suns. A good face to end up and slow down with. Tom would look like that; he has that sort of skin.

'Is your accommodation satisfactory?' Eliot asks, his teeth stained and his breath tainted by alcohol.

'Yeah. Great. Thanks for –'

'Good. It provides a grand view of the sea, at any time of year.'

'We love it, Tom and I. Really it was very –' he has to remember to say good instead of cool '– good of you to sort us out. The place we were living in before, I think I told you –'

'In Birmingham,' the voice interrupts again.

Dante nods. He wants to offer his opinion of Birmingham, but checks himself, trying to find the right gear in his mind and an appropriate vocabulary with which to survive the very beginning of this journey. Eliot speaks again, his words softened by a constant wheeze. 'I went to Birmingham. In the fifties. The city suffered in the war. But the people have spirit, no doubt? All working-class cities have spirit, at least.'

'I guess so.'

'And your journey?'

'Ecstatic. I think escapes are.'

Eliot smiles. 'Yes, quite. Would you like a cigarette?'

'Cheers.' He reaches forward to accept the cigarette from Eliot. It is long and bound in black paper. Their fingertips touch and Dante tenses, before Eliot's hand withdraws to rest beside the ashtray. For a moment he admires the small gold hoop around the cigarette's filter before slipping it between his teeth.

'They are Russian. Black Russian cigarettes,' Eliot says, his stare making Dante glad of the dark.

'Cool.'

'I would offer coffee, Turkish coffee, of which I am fond, but Janice is frightened.'

Dante lights his cigarette, glad of the distraction between his lips, and he feigns a smoke-in-the-eyes frown to conceal his unease. 'Frightened?' he asks, amplifying his voice to conceal the squeak that is ready in his throat.

'Yes. Never comes down anymore, if she can help it. It's a shame. I miss her scent down here and her legs. She has good legs, wouldn't you say?' Dante sniffs and offers a grin that immediately begins to ache on his face. 'And what a mouth,' Eliot adds, slurring his words. 'Would a young man like to taste that mouth?' The skin stiffens across the bones on Dante's face and his mouth dries out. A wry smile forms on Eliot's thin lips. 'Don't be shy,' he says, but an awkward silence begins and Dante looks away, unable to bear Eliot's stare any longer. Was it mocking?

'Every researcher I've had, Dante, has swum in murky water.'

A quickening sense of importance pulses through him. 'Yeah, I'm really excited about the work.'

Eliot nods and considers the end of his cigarette. 'And you have much to read. Before we can begin the real work.'

'Read?'

'You read a great deal?'

'Yes. I know
Banquet
inside out. In fact I've lost count of how many times I've read it.'

'Thank you. But we must go beyond
Banquet
. Much further, into times and places I've discovered since that enthusiastic apprenticeship was written. I have quite a collection of, shall I say, rare material. I know it will interest you and it's necessary to complete the canvas. The oils may be a little dark at first, but the final portrait, I'm sure, will astonish you.
Banquet
has moments, but is rather innocent. Wouldn't you agree?'

He feels trapped. The gloom presses against him, shrinking his body and making his head feel heavy, while Eliot's eyes eat at every twitch that disturbs his face. 'I, I don't know about that. I mean, of course I will read anything you suggest. I'd like that. But I find it hard to fault anything in
Banquet
.'

'Your loyalty is touching in an age of fads, but it was written in the early fifties, Dante. Much has happened since. And it has been a long walk before nightfall.' Eliot finishes with a smile he seems uncomfortable with. 'A Long Walk Before Nightfall' was the last chapter – the tragic chapter – in
Banquet
.

When Eliot rises from behind his desk, Dante notices his shoulders are hunched and his limbs seem especially thin beneath the crumpled shirt and grubby trousers. He extends his hand toward Dante, as if a trial has been passed – a grin stretching his broad mouth, tensing the little knots of muscle at the sides of his jaw.

Standing up, Dante accepts the hand and is surprised by the strength in Eliot's grip and the dry texture of his palm. 'Thank you, Mr Coldwell,' he says, suddenly relieved and unable to conceal his pent-up emotions any longer. 'Thank you for, for everything.'

Eliot nods, but looks past Dante, in such a way as to acknowledge thanks but prohibit further praise. 'Call me Eliot. I think formality is a hindrance.' He moves from behind his desk and coughs. 'Some fresh air. I feel a stroll to the pier is in order.'

They leave the office and walk through the basement corridor to climb the steep and narrow staircase to the foyer. Remaining quiet, Dante is content to study Eliot and think on what he should say. He wants his conversation to be careful and measured, like Eliot's, who now pauses by the secretary's door and listens to the sounds of her keyboard clatter with something approaching sly amusement on his face.

In the sunlight that passes through the reception windows, Dante then notices, with a slight shock, the abrasions on Eliot's skin. There are scores of white nicks interwoven within the seasoned grain of his face. His treacle-coloured forearms are also marred with pink slits of scar tissue, and around either wrist he spots what looks like a ring of tender flesh. As if sensing his scrutiny, Eliot tucks his hands inside his trouser pockets. And watching him walk to the front door, Dante reflects that there is none of the leisurely elegance he remembers about his grandfather's walk, rather something tired in the way Eliot moves. Maybe it's nerves, he thinks. He's pissed and nervous. But in and around his pale-blue eyes, set wide apart in the leathered face, with pupils ringed by burnished gold, he senses a hard quality too; something reminiscent of the cruelty in his Maths teacher's eyes.