That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote (4 page)

Munching on a biscuit, she watched the tiny figures of a tour group standing near the Edge, peering down at the sands which covered Sheol
’s other graveyard. Closer, in the middle of the no-man’s land, a group of children were playing ‘Masked Avengers’. Their high voices carried on the wind:

The men in the masks,

The ladies in the masks,

See how they kill, see how they kill–

Six
-shooters and switchblades,

Swords, daggers and poison,

We all fall down,

We all fall down.

Some souls lose all things but the love of beauty;

And by that love they are redeemable

–
P.J. Bailey,
Festus

Near the middle of the night, Seaming dithered in front of the brick arch – formerly a minor gate in the old city wall and now a decoration in a lane. If there existed a main entrance to the Ravels, it was that arch. It stood only half a furlong from the glitz of Cake Street, but the short distance marked a change of register from the demimonde to the underworld proper. Behind the gaudy theatres and beer halls the streets became dark, the buildings closely pressed, the walls bare of signs, posters, paint – of everything except light-absorbing soot.

Seaming
smoked a cigarette, a last procrastination, while a polka spinning down from a loft somewhere invited him to head back, spend the rest of the night with friends, and let that be that.

Act as if you belong
,
she had told him,
and you’ll be safe enough
.

He took three slow breaths, then stepped
through the arch.

Immediately he was struck by cold, a sensation he remembered from his single prior excursion into the Ravels. He had gone in with a few others after an evening of drinking, and they had ventured only a few blocks into the worming scrawl of alleys before their liquid courage ran out
.

Tonight he had to go
in much further, and all alone. His poet friend Stroud had urged him to refuse the commission, but Seaming had argued that an artist should welcome all experiences, even dangerous ones. Stroud had solemnly clasped his hand and promised him a flattering elegy.

Seaming had no intention of putting Stroud to the trouble of composing any such work. Indulging a secret taste for cloak
-and-dagger aesthetics, he had prepared a disguise, scouring the riverside flea markets until he found a heavy black coat and a stovepipe hat which, he hoped, combined to give his unimposing person a grim and sinister air. To add some further menace to his costume he had borrowed an imitation pistol from an acquaintance who ran a small theatre, and a sturdy knife from Stroud, who had a fetish for sharp objects and owned a collection of various blades. He felt more secure knowing that he had one real weapon, even if he had no idea how to use it. With his small drawing case clutched under his arm, the other hand shoved in the trouser pocket where he had stowed the knife, he plunged ahead.

The cold was soon joined by a burning smell
– this, too, he remembered from before – as if there were a fire nearby, but he could see no sign of smoke or flames. The sounds of Cake Street dwindled away behind him, while the darkness thickened in the streets – so small that they seemed like tunnels in a mountain of brick. In the absence of street lamps, only occasional dull lights in the tenement windows, brown with oil and dust, confirmed the presence of living beings.

Seaming kept his eyes averted from the windows as, following the directions he had memorised, he crept along by the general faint light of the city, which streaked the
cloudy March sky with a gravy of ruddy greys and left enormous enclaves of shadow unprodded.

He began to fancy that
he could hear constant movement – mostly animal scrabblings, but sometimes human footsteps. These never came from ground level, but always from somewhere above or below. He formed an impression of a world of rooftops and sewers, a world more three-dimensional than the ordinary one, where human beings had learned the insect trick of making all surfaces serve as the ground plane. To distract himself, he tried to concentrate on this aesthetically interesting aspect of his surroundings; however, as distractions went, it fell some way short of ideal.

He wished he had a lamp, or
even a candle; but his visitor had warned him that a light carried in the Ravels identified its bearer as a mucker, with no legitimate business being there – as legitimacy was esteemed by the locals – and thus fair game for any bored or idle cut-throat.

She had been fair and slight, and wore a sequinned mask that covered her whole face. He felt that she must be a gentlewoman who had fallen on hard times, for she was well-spoken, and her dress, though years old in style, was of fine make and fabric.

She had come to his studio hoping, she said, that he could help her. Showing him a cutting from a recent magazine article on local painters
in which he had been featured, she had indicated a heavily underlined paragraph:

Alfred Seaming’s portraits could be images of saints. He perceives an urgent need for a new idealism. ‘What is the point of merely reproducing the commonplace world, with all its banality and vice? I wish to paint my sitters’ noblest qualities, which, I believe, are the qualities of their true selves.’

‘Yes,’ he said hurriedly, ‘quite so.’ While he stood passionately by the words, he was embarrassed by how pompous they looked on paper. The truth of the matter was that he delighted in painting flattering portraits, and knew he had a knack for doing so that amounted to a kind of genius, while remaining modestly unwilling to take an interest in how high or low the flag of that genius might fly on the walls of civilisation when all was reckoned. The academic art establishment had made him into something of a mascot, and encouraged him to make much of his philosophy.

She inspected his studio thoroughly, the glittering face making a study of each and every painting. At last she said,
‘Yes. You do have a talent for idealisation. But you will also need courage. If you have it, it does not show in your work. So, Mr Seaming, are you braver than you look?’

He was taken aback by her bluntness, though he couldn
’t deny the accuracy of her assessment. He hazarded a guess that the mask might be hiding not only her identity, but a face scarred or deformed. Still, what sort of horror could be under there that he would need more than ordinary bravery to look at it? He felt she was being overly theatrical. Somewhat on his dignity, he replied that while he was obviously not any sort of hero, he was not a craven man.

‘
Prove that,’ she said, ‘and I will commission you. Whatever your usual fee is, I will pay triple. Danger should offer rewards, after all.’

Seaming
inquired what kind of proof she had in mind: was he to fight a duel? Walk slowly across Tourbillion Parade in the evening rush hour with his eyes shut?

Nothing so foolish as either, she informed him. He had only to visit her in three nights
’ time at a certain address in the Ravels, which she handed him on a plain card. If he would simply arrive there, at an hour after midnight, she would consider that proof of sufficient courage. He must also, she said, bring the tools of his trade.

He
came close to telling her that he was too busy. But his pride balked and his avarice flinched, and even his curiosity, usually a rather passive organ that functioned merely as an adjunct to his imagination, made small murmurs.

Seaming found himself saying yes, she could expect to see him there.

Later that day, feeling nervous and depressed, he had told Stroud the particulars of the situation. Stroud, whose father had probably been a count, had reminded him that he was merely a common man and had no obligation to be brave.

Seaming
had argued that even a common man should avoid hypocrisy. Lack of adventurous spirit surely fell among those tedious, petty and banal things he had always professed to despise.

Stroud shrugged and said that he personally had never bothered to refrain from hypocrisy, but if Seaming wanted to worry like a poor hound and chase himself into uncomfortable corners, it was his business. This goading had galvanised Seaming
’s spirit: he would not decline the dare.

The air was no longer cold, but humid and greasy.

He had just suffered down a
pitch-dark, sludge-bottomed defile between blind walls, where he had had to feel his way to a covered stair. The stair had brought him to a derelict quadrangle, down the middle of which he now hurried, favouring that exposed route over the shadows in the cloisters. Oppressed by the sense that calamity was imminent, it was only the fear of betraying himself as an outsider that kept him from breaking into a run.

Calamity refrained from occurring
. Beyond the quadrangle there was an area, ascending a hill, of more prosperous if not much more pleasant appearance. The modestly wide street into which he stepped was a grand boulevard by comparison with the alleys below the stair, and the increased space brought a dilution of the darkness. He found himself among the ornate facades, as showy as they were cast down by the ravages of neglect and vandalism, of once-desirable addresses. But if the residents were better off than those below, they were no more open about their presence. There were only the same infrequent window lights, all heavily cloaked behind curtains and blinds, and the same dislocated sounds. Amongst the latter he heard an accordion playing, as if at a great distance. The music brought back to him, in a strange intense rush, memories of old gypsy men and their dances on the common in the village where he was born. He felt again his childish fear of the sounds and smells of their camp, his terror of everything about them.

Seaming caught his imagination before it ran away with him completely. He told himself to at least be rationally afraid, if he was going to be afraid at all
.

According to the directions his visitor had given him, he was nearing his destination.
He counted streets until he reached the one he was to turn up, and after climbing the hill for ten minutes he found the house.

It stood on the corner of a cross street, on the other side of which was a kind of overgrown, heavily wooded park. His nerves gave pitiful thanks that he did not have to go any closer to the pitch
-black massif of trees.

The name
‘Park View’ was spelled out in rusty iron letters on the portico. A sullen glow penetrated the fanlight. Seaming pulled the bell-rope and waited. No one came. He gave the rope another tug. He couldn’t hear the bell ringing. He knocked, feeling that he was being watched from all directions, particularly from the park, which looked more like some wild ancient forest, harbouring primitive evils, than anything remotely civic. He waited again, for as long as he could endure, then knocked with more force, deciding that if no one answered this time it would not be at all dishonourable to leave his calling card and make his way back on the double. This time, however, he heard the sound of someone approaching, followed by the decisive clicks of more than one lock.

The door opened
.

In the hall, holding a bunch of keys, was a child in a carnival costume
.

No.

Not a child. It was some kind of old circus grotesque, an ancient stunted woman. What Seaming had at first taken for a mask was thick, white, dry makeup. Her black hair was piled up in a lacquered dome half as tall as herself. A wide-skirted dress belled from her waist to the floor.

She bowed stiffly. As she straightened, she said in a voice atonal and distorted,
‘How can I help you?’

Her mouth had remained shut as she spoke.
Seaming stood dumbly, his muscles and thoughts gone slack.

She bent forward and straightened again. The question repeated itself, in exactly the same mechanical monotone. He realised
that she had a false voice box like that of a talking toy.