Personal Darkness (10 page)

Ruth had shut the door behind her.

She poised in the small room, looking at Blackie, and at his penis. Her face was whiter than the rice they had eaten but her lips were scarlet and he would be a lovely fit.

Her eyes were funny though. Who cared?

Ruth ran her hand lightly over Terry's table, among the books and spent cans. She took up a Biro and drew off the cap.

Blackie was not concerned with the pen. Everything was in a wonderful slow motion. He was looking forward to the T-shirt coming slowly off. Ruth was a big girl, better than that bloody Julie, like two gnat bites, stupid mare.

Ruth came toward Blackie, slowly, slowly, and he took hold of the edge of the T-shirt. But he had slowly raised it only half an inch when she stabbed him quickly and thoroughly through the windpipe with the Biro.

Terry and Jenny had had sex, on the carpet. Julie had been expected to join in, but where was the fun in that, making it nicer for them and nobody bothering with her?

Now Jenny was asleep on her back on the floor wearing only her shoes and her bracelets. Terry was probably finished. He had taken out the Polaroid camera, the flash sparking white in the sixty-watt lamplight, and was snapping Jenny with her hair in the curry dishes.

Julie went toward the door.

"Let those two get on with it. That bastard. That cow," said Terry.

"They can rot," said Julie. "I'm going for a fucking piss."

"Bloody bitch," said Terry. Perhaps he meant Ruth.

They had certainly made a noise up there, rolling on the floor, judging by the way the ceiling rocked, even over the music.

Julie went out and up the stairs. Halfway, she paused and took off her high-heeled green shoes, allowing one to drop back into the hall, carrying the other up to the bathroom, then aimlessly letting it fall outside.

While she was in the bathroom, she listened. Not a whisper from the lair.

That Blackie. That was the last time. They were going to stop all this. She did not—had
never
liked it. And Terry. He had drunk far too much, he would be sick in the morning. And the bloody milkman would come at six o'clock. Well, he could wait.

Julie flushed the lavatory and walked from the bathroom. As she came onto the landing the light went out. Julie swore, and then Ruth stabbed her in the throat with one of her green high heels. Rather as Blackie had done Julie tried to throw up around the obstruction. And died.

Terry put on another tape. He turned it up, but the volume control was at its limit. He could not see why old mother Macdonald had complained. It was not very loud.

The room was a mess. Julie would be ratty. He felt a little queasy. Must have been something a bit off in the curry.

When Ruth came in, he took a Polaroid shot of her, and the flash exploded, Terry laughed when she jumped. She held one of Julie's shoes in her hand, in fact the one from the bottom of the stairs.

"Got ya."

Ruth turned to him.

"You are a bitch," said Terry, weaving on his feet.

Ruth ripped out the side of his neck with the metal point of Julie's heel.

Terry squealed, and as he went down, the Polaroid photograph ejected from the camera. He lay on the floor, trying to get up, his neck all wet but not hurting, and saw Ruth lean over and pick up the tape player from the table. She brought the machine down on his head, with enormous strength and great attention.

When Terry was still, Ruth took one of the empty beer cans and tore it open as she had seen Blackie do. And moved to the sleeping Jenny.

When Ruth had let Victoria from the wardrobe, she fed the cat in the kitchen. Victoria had come out quite willingly once the music was switched off. She sniffed the body of Julie on the landing, and next Terry's body briefly, below, but the corpses did not hold her interest. When she had eaten, Ruth carried Victoria back upstairs. The cat sat on the side of the bath as Ruth washed off the ejected blood.

The bed in the bedroom was clean and they slept there, the cat on Ruth's pillow, Ruth's cheek in the cat's soft fur.

Ruth had a lie-in in the morning. About midday, she got up, fed the cat again—the last tin but one of the cat food—and made herself beefburgers, peas, and oven chips from Julie's slender stores.

The milkman had not roused her. He often could not rouse Julie and Terry.

When she had had the food, Ruth checked the house for anything useful, and took some T-shirts of Julie's and Terry's, and a small amount of paper money which she found in a drawer.

At two o'clock, Ruth, carrying her bag and Victoria on alternate shoulders, used Blackie's lighter to set a small fire in Terry's lair, utilizing some of Terry's short fiction for the purpose.

The cat glared at the fire, and when the door of the lair was shut, Ruth carried the cat down and out of the house. She put Victoria by Mrs. Macdonald's door, separated by the safe distance of the garden passage. Ruth left Victoria on the Macdonald doorstep, eating her last tin of cat food off a saucer. Before she went away, Ruth rang Mrs. Macdonald's bell.

From farther up the street Ruth witnessed Mrs. Macdonald coming out, and Victoria trotting into her hall.

Smoke was already issuing from the top of Julie and Terry's house, but Mrs. Macdonald did not seem to notice it yet. She would say later the silence had puzzled her, for by eleven on Sundays Julie normally had the music center going.

The music center blew up at three o'clock arid the top floor fell through into the downstairs room, precipitating all that was left of Blackie and Julie onto the cheap carpet, which was by then also on fire. By then, too, Mrs. Macdonald, with a purring Victoria in her arms, had called the fire brigade.

BEYOND THE CONSERVATORY THERE WAS a terrace laid with peach and terra-cotta tiles. A statue stood on it, a draped stone woman with a stone basket on her shoulder. As summer had begun, red and wine geraniums had come from the basket.

Under the terrace six steps went down into the garden.

The garden had high walls of sepia brick, up which wisteria, clematis, and ivies grew, and other climbing plants with tendrils and heart-shaped leaves. Over the wall tops the trees of the common massed thickly. Trees had assembled inside also. It was a dark, overgrown, and in parts sunken garden, into which the sun pressed sharply in two or three places.

Lou and Tray were on the terrace, on long garden chairs. Their golden bodies were metallic with sunscreen. Each wore a tiny black bikini, Lou's with one diagonal strap. Tray had a small tattoo of an orchid around her navel. Their hair had changed as the days passed and Camillo let them, or ushered them, out and about; Tray's gold was streaked with white and Lou's was rose-red like the women in the hall windows. They were painting each other's toenails black with little stenciled designs in silver.

"Hi, Rach," said Lou.

"Isn't it lovely and warm," said Tray.

In the house, the Scarabae had gathered, as they sometimes did, to watch the TV news in the drawing room.

Lou pointed her flawless arm. "Cami's down there."

Tray smiled at Rachaela with flawless teeth.

Each girl was adorably beautiful, as if they had been fashioned out of some material, custom made, like Camillo's trike. There was not a pore in their skins, not an imbalance in their bodies. Their hair was silken floss. Lou had hazel eyes but Tray's were smoky blue. They could never conceivably age or deteriorate.

They had infiltrated the house more and more. Sometimes they even watched television with the Scarabae. But both girls were in a sort of dream that had only to do with their own perfection. They seemed to think Camillo was a film director or perhaps an elderly rock singer. Being dolls, they apparently expected to be often set aside, picked up again when required.

"You've got lovely hair," said Tray as Rachaela crossed the terrace.

To them she would look about thirty, therefore past her best. Tray was being kind, genuinely good-hearted, in offering the compliment.

"Thank you."

Rachaela went down the steps.

She followed the path into the thickets of oak trees, and came to what seemed a grove in a forest. Here an apple tree grew tall and bent and wild, fruitless. The terrace, the house, were invisible. A fountain in the form of a twisting fish rose from a mossy bowl. A little water still dripped from the jaws of the fish. On its head now was a straw hat with enamel cherries.

Camillo sat on the ground, cross-legged, watching her.

She had been able to find him in the past. She had found him now.

"Can't get up," said Camillo. "Too old."

He wore, as usual, his leathers, and a T-shirt which read, under the chain-mail,
Wild Thing
.

"It's time you told me," said Rachaela.

"Told you what? How impressive you are?"

"How you survived."

Camillo said, "Do you like the fish's hat? I found it in a jumble sale. Too good for a woman."

"You gave me the key," she said, "which let Ruth out. They won't talk about Ruth. Ruth burned the house. Did they tell you about Miriam?"

"They don't tell me things, they never did."

"But you're resurrected, Camillo. That must make a difference."

He did not look like Camillo anymore, not with the dreadlocks and beads. His old forearms were muscular as steel. Hair grew on them, steel colored.

Yet since he had come here, he had grown introspective. He had shut himself away, sending the two girls out alone with handfuls of money so they could have their hair done, and could buy countless almost identical tiny black clothes, and silver for their golden limbs, and bags of chips and ice-creams, which was all they ever seemed to eat.

On his new music machine above in the house, Camillo played The Sisters of Mercy, Carter U.S.M., and Iron Maiden. Rachaela heard the murmur of these musics, like the sea in a cave.

Sometimes he cleaned the trike in a large utility room beyond the kitchen. Sometimes he and the two girls went riding it. The stuffed horse's head attached between the handlebars had once been scorched to the bone.

She did not know why she wanted to hear the story of his escape. Perhaps only because, in a curious way, Camillo had been bound up for her with Adamus. And there was no way on earth Adamus, hanged by the neck and devoured by flames, could come back from the dead.

"They don't open doors, here, after dark," Camillo said. "Very wise. London was always a jungle."

Once before he had told her a story of an escape. She had wanted him to stop. She had thought he might be dying, that time. He was almost three hundred years of age. Or was he only a terribly crazy, normal old man, insanely sane like the other three gray hamsters watching TV.

"Down on the beach," he said, "that's where I was. I'd gone to make a fire."

His words pulled her back. She stared at him.

"To make a—"

"A fire. Like the time Sylvian was cremated."

The Scarabae burned their dead. Who had
this
fire been for? For Ruth? For Anna's memory? Or for himself?

"Go on," she said.

"Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet."

Rachaela said, "The hat suits the fish. It needed something."

"Then I saw the house catch alight," he said. "It was a vision."

"Like the burning town, when your father and mother fled in the sleigh."

"No, not like that. That looked real, convincing. The house looked like a stage set in a bad film. I watched until it had all come down. Then the daylight broke."

"Why didn't you—" she said "—why didn't you come up from the beach?"

"I couldn't," he said. He said, "I cried for the rocking horse. She burned it."

"And the Scarabae, did you cry for them?"

Camillo gave his high mad giggle. It was like the other times, as if he had left it too long without a sign of mental instability.

"I climbed up later," he said. "Nobody there. I went through the ruin. I found some strange things. Do you remember my horsy? I found the head. It's on the trike now. My horse."

He got up, and walking over to the fish, he took a lipstick out of his pocket and began to crayon the round lips. "Maple Kiss," said Camillo. "One of Tray's. And where did I meet Lou and Tray? But that comes later." He stepped back from the fish. "What do you think?"

"It's very attractive."

"When I came away from the house, I walked across the heath. I walked above the sea. I walked for days. I caught a rabbit once, to eat it. But I couldn't kill it. It was so alive. I ate grass. The rabbit ran off and told the other rabbits old Uncle Camillo had taken a bite out of it, but the rabbits didn't believe it. One evening there was something on the beach below. So I climbed down again. It was another fire. What do you think I found?"

"People," said Rachaela.

"A road ran through to the beach. There were ten bikers like soldiers in black leather, and the bikes shining in the firelight."

Rachaela saw in her mind's eye the fire and the dark sea, and the bikes and the black-clad men, and Camillo gazing like an eldritch boy.

"They said," said Camillo, " 'Hallo, Granddad.' I said, 'I'm too old to be your grandfather.' That made them laugh. They gave me some of the beer they were drinking and a pork pie. They asked me if I had escaped from somewhere. I said I had. They laughed again and said, 'Good for you, you old cunt.' I slept on the beach and in the morning I got up on the back of one of the bikes. We roared off along the road and into a town by the sea. They were like Cossacks. The roads cleared and everyone ran. The young girls looked after them."