Dark Companions (14 page)

He’d compare the texts in his office, where he was more comfortable. As he rose, he noticed a few faint dusty marks on the carpet. They approached behind his secretary’s chair, then veered away. He must have tracked dust from the cellar, which clearly needed sweeping. What did his housekeeper think she was paid for?

Again his footsteps sounded muted. Perhaps his ears were clogged with dust; there was certainly enough of it about. He had never noticed how strongly the house smelled of old books, nor how unpleasant the smell could be. His skin felt dry, itchy.

In his office he poured himself a large Scotch. It was late enough, he needn’t feel guilty—indeed, twilight seemed unusually swift tonight, unless it was an effect of the swarms of dust. He didn’t spend all day drinking, unlike some writers he could name.

He knocked clumps of dust from the book; it seemed almost to grow there, like grey fungus. Airborne dust whirled away from him and drifted back. He compared the texts, line by line. Surely they were identical except for her single correction. Yet he felt there was some aspect of the typescript he needed urgently to decipher. This frustration, and its irrationality, unnerved him.

He was still frowning at the pages, having refilled his glass to loosen up his thoughts, when the phone rang once. He grabbed it irritably, but the earpiece was as hushed as the house. Or was there, amid the electric hissing vague as a cascade of dust, a whisper? It was beyond the grasp of his hearing, except for a syllable or two which sounded like Latin, if it was there at all.

He jerked to his feet and hurried down the hall. Now that he thought about it, perhaps he’d heard his secretary’s extension lifted as his phone had rung. Yes, her receiver was off the hook. It must have fallen off. As he replaced it, dust sifted out of the mouthpiece.

Was a piece of paper rustling in the hall? No, the hall was bare. Perhaps it was the typescript, stirred on his desk by a draught. He closed the door behind him, to exclude any draught, as well as the odour of something very old and dusty.

But the smell was stronger in his room. He sniffed gingerly at
Tales Beyond Life
.
Why, there it was: the book reeked of dust. He shoved open the French windows, then he sat and stared at the typescript. He was beginning to regard it with positive dislike. He felt as though he had been given a code to crack; it was nerve-racking as an examination. Why was it only the typescript that bothered him, and not the original?

He flapped the typed pages, for they looked thinly coated with grey. Perhaps it was only the twilight, which seemed composed of dust. Even his Scotch tasted clogged. Just let him see what was wrong with this damned story, then he’d leave the room to its dust—and have a few well-chosen words for his housekeeper tomorrow.

There was only one difference between the texts: the capital I. Or had he missed another letter? Compulsively and irritably, refusing to glance at the grey lump that hovered at the edge of his vision, he checked the first few capitals. E, M, O, R, T… Suddenly he stopped, parched mouth open. Seizing his pen, he began to transcribe the capitals alone.

E mortuis revoco.

From the dead I summon thee.

Oh, it must be a joke, a mistake, a coincidence. But the next few capitals dashed his doubts.
From the dead I summon thee, from the dust I recreate thee…
The entire story concealed a Latin invocation. It had been Damien Damon’s last story and also, apparently, his last attempt at magic.

And it was Tharne’s discovery. He must rewrite his introduction. Publicised correctly, the secret of the tale could help the book’s sales a great deal. Why then was he unwilling to look up? Why was he tense as a trapped animal, ears straining painfully? Because of the thick smell of dust, the stealthy dry noises that his choked ears were unable to locate, the grey mass that hovered in front of him?

When at last he managed to look up, the jerk of his head twinged his neck. But his gasp was of relief. The grey blotch was only a chunk of dust, clinging to the mirror. Admittedly it was unpleasant; it resembled a face masked with dust, which also spilled from the face’s dismayingly numerous openings. Really, he could live without it, much as he resented having to do his housekeeper’s job for her.

When he rose, it took him a moment to realise that his reflection had partly blotted out the grey mass. In the further moment before he understood, two more reflected grey lumps rose beside it, behind him. Were they hands, or wads of dust? Perhaps they were composed of both. It was impossible to tell, even when they closed over his face.

The Invocation

He opened the gate stealthily; perhaps she wouldn’t see him. But he had hardly touched the path when she unbent from the garden. “There you are, Ted,” she said, waving a fistful of weeds at him in vague reproof. “A young man was asking for you.”

That would have been Ken, about their holiday. “Thank you, Mrs Dame,” he said and made to hurry up the path.

“Call me Cecily.” She’d taken to saying that every time she saw him. “I’ve asked Mr Mellor if I can plant some flowers. I like to see a bit of colour. If you want something done there’s no use waiting for someone else to do it,” she said, kicking the calf-high grass.

“Oh, right.” He had no chance now of hurrying away; the cats from the ground-floor flat were drawing themselves about his legs, like eager fur stoles.

She added the weeds to a heap and mopped her forehead. “Isn’t it hot. You’d think they could give us a breeze. Still, it won’t be long before we’re complaining about the cold. We’re never satisfied, are we?”

I would be, Ted thought, if you’d shut up for just a few minutes. I must be going, he opened his mouth to say as cats surged around his feet.

“Well, I’d better let you go. You’ll be wanting to get on with your studies.” But her gaze halted him. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” she said, “you remind me of my son.”

Oh no, he thought. God, not this anecdote again. Her wiry body had straightened, her hands were clasped behind her back as if she were a child reciting to an audience. “He was always in his books, never ready for his dinner,” she said. “Him and his father, sitting all over the place with their feet up, in their books. It was always just let me finish this chapter. And after his father died he got worse.”

Cats streamed softly over Ted’s feet, birds rose clapping from trees along the dual carriageway as she went on. “He was sitting there reading that
Finian’s Wake
, and I happened to know it hadn’t any chapters. I don’t know how anyone can waste their time with such stuff. Just let me finish this chapter, he said, while his dinner went cold. I was so furious I picked up a cream puff and threw it at him. I didn’t mean it to go on his book, but he said I did and used that as an excuse to leave me.”

Last time the cream puff had been a plate of baked beans on toast. “Yeah, well,” Ted muttered, shaking a kitten from his ankle. “I’m keeping you from your work.”

As he stamped upstairs, the wood amplified his peevishness. Right, sure, she was lonely, she wanted someone to talk to. But he had work to do. And really, there was no wonder she was lonely. Few people would be prepared to suffer her for long.

In his flat his essay was waiting, but he didn’t feel like writing now. He cursed: on the way home he had made himself ready to sit down and write. He tried to phone Ken, but the party line was occupied by two women, busy surpassing each other’s ailments.

He opened the window. The flowers in the decanter on the sill had withered, and he threw them towards the pile of weeds two stories below. Mrs Dame was nowhere in sight. After a while he heard her climbing the stairs, wheezing a little. For a moment he feared she might knock for a chat. But the wheezing faded upwards, and soon he heard her footsteps overhead.

His essay lay on the table, surrounded by texts.
Butcher’s Films; a Structuralist History. Les Films
“Z +”
de BUTCHERS et ses amis. The Conventions of the British B-Feature and the Signature of Montgomery Tully: a Problem in Decipherment.
When he’d chosen cinema as a subject he had expected to enjoy himself. Well, at least there was Hitchcock to look forward to next term.

The last line he’d written waited patiently. “The local-rep conventions of the British B-feature—” How on earth had he meant to continue? He liked the phrase too much to delete it. He stared emptily at the page. At last he stood up. Perhaps when he’d found out what Ken wanted he would be able to write.

As soon as he picked up the phone he heard Mrs Dame’s voice. “He said I distracted him from his reading. He sat there with his feet up and said that.”

God, no! He would never get through now. She saved up her phone calls for the evenings, when they were cheaper; then she would chatter for hours. Before he could utter the sound he was tempted to make, he slammed the receiver into its cradle. Her voice—muttering through the ceiling, drifting down into the open window—faltered for a moment, then went on. The occasional word or phrase came clear, plucking at his attention, tempting his ears to strain.

He couldn’t write unless he carried everything to the library, and that was a mile away. Surely he could read. He gazed at
Les Films
“Z + ”, translating mentally from the point at which he’d stopped reading. “Within the most severe restrictions of the budget, these gleams of imagination are like triumphant buds. One feels the delight of the naturalist who discovers a lone flower among apparently barren rocks.” But the room was growing darker as the sky filled with cloud. As he peered more closely at the text, Mrs Dame’s voice insinuated words into his translation. “Consider too the moment (one of the most beautiful in the entire British cinema) in
Master Spy
where June Thorburn discovers that her suspicions of Stephen Murray are, after all, unfounded. The direction and acting are simply the invisible frame of the script. Such simplicity and directness are a cream puff.”

“God!” He shoved his chair back violently; it clawed the floorboards. Her muttering seeped into the room, her words formed and dissolved. The heat made him feel limp and cumbersome, the heavy dimness strained his eyes. He went to the window to breathe, to find calm.

As he reached the window her voice ceased. Perhaps her listener had interrupted. Silence touched him softly through the window, like a breeze. The thickening sky changed slowly, almost indiscernibly. The traffic had gone home to dinner. The trees along the carriageway held their poses, hardly trembling. The hole that had been advancing along the roadway was empty and silent now, surrounded by dormant warning lights. Ted leaned his elbows on the sill.

But the silence wasn’t soothing. It was unnatural, the product of too many coincidences; it couldn’t last for long. His nerves were edgily alert for its breaking. Overhead a ragged black mass was descending, blotting out half the sky. It seemed to compress the silence. No doubt because he was unwillingly alert, Ted felt as though he was being watched too. Surely the silence, in its brittleness and tension, must be like the silence of a forest when a predator was near.

He started. Mrs Dame’s voice had recommenced, an insistent bumbling, It nagged violently at him. Even if he shut the window, trapping himself with the heat, there was nowhere in his flat he could escape her voice. He began to curse loudly: “Jesus God almighty…” He combined everything sexual, religious, or scatological he could think of, and found that he knew a good many words.

When at last he was silent he heard Mrs Dame’s voice, wandering unchecked. His chest felt tight, perhaps holding back a scream of rage. His surroundings seemed to have altered subtly, for the worse. Beyond the trees that divided the carriageway, the houses brooded, gloomily luminous, beneath the slumped dark sky. Dull red blobs hung around the hole in the road; the sullenly glowing foliage looked paralysed. The ominous mumbling of the city, faint yet huge, surrounded him. He felt more strongly as though he was being watched. He blamed everything he felt on her voice. “I wish something would shut you up for a while,” he said as loudly as he could, and began to turn away.

Something halted him. The silence was closer, more oppressive; it seemed actually to have muffled Mrs Dame’s voice. Everything shone luridly. A dark hugeness stooped towards him. The mass of black cloud had altered; it was an enormous slowly smouldering head. Its eyes, sooty unequal blotches, shifted lethargically; jagged teeth lengthened and dissolved in the tattered smile. As the mass spread almost imperceptibly across the grey, its smile widening, it seemed to lean towards him. It pressed darkness into the room.

He flinched back, and saw that the decanter was toppling from the sill. He must have knocked it over. It was odd he hadn’t felt the impact. He caught the decanter and replaced it on the sill. No wonder he hadn’t felt it, no wonder his imagination was getting in his way: Mrs Dame’s muttering had won.

When he switched on the light it looked dim, cloaked by smoke. Darkness still made its presence felt in the room; so did the sense of watching. He’d had enough. There was no point in trying to work. Another evening wasted. He clumped downstairs angrily, tensely determined to relax. Overhead the clouds were moving on, still keeping their rain to themselves.

Ken wasn’t in any of the pubs: not the Philharmonic, nor O’Connor’s, nor the Grapes, nor the Augustus John. Ted became increasingly frustrated and depressed. He must make sure of this holiday. He was going away with Ken for a long weekend in three days, if they were going at all. Just a few days’ break from Mrs Dame would let him work, he was sure. He managed to chat, and to play bar billiards. More and more students crowded in, the ceiling of smoke thickened and sank. His tankards huddled together on the table.

When at last he rambled home from an impromptu party, Mrs Dame’s light was out. The sight heartened him. Perhaps now he could write. And perhaps not, he thought, laughing at his beery clumsiness as he fumbled with his sandals.

The decanter caught his attention. A small dark object was visible inside it, at the bottom. He raised the sash in the hope of a breeze, then he examined the decanter. The facets of cut glass distorted the object; so did the beer. He couldn’t make it out. A lump of soot, a shifting pool of muddy fluid, a dead insect? No doubt it would be clearer in the morning. His sandals flopped underfoot on the floorboards, like loose tongues. He extricated his feet at last and slid into bed.