Incarnate (22 page)

Perhaps he still had to get used to a third person in the house. He couldn’t expect the old lady to walk or be carried down the hill just now, he couldn’t expect an ambulance to come up here over the frozen snow. Good Lord, he had only to stay in the house; Joyce took care of the old lady’s needs while he kept out of the way. The old lady had yet to leave her room or, as far as he knew, her bed.

He looked away from Hampstead Heath to rest his eyes, which were determined to make out the microscopic skiers, He couldn’t be sure that he’d seen one of them fall. He closed his eyes, and then he realized he couldn’t hear the breathing. He mustn’t call the doctor before he knew what was wrong, if anything. All the same, it took him a while to step onto the landing and open the door of the guest room.

The room was pale with snowy light that glinted on the Christmas decorations Joyce had hung. The enormous mound of bedspread dominated the room, on the bed and in the mirror of the dressing table, doubly still. From the doorway he couldn’t see anyone under the mound. As he tiptoed into the room he had the notion, so odd that he didn’t know if it was a hope or a fear, that he might find nobody there at all.

He was nearly at the pillow before he saw the upturned lace half buried there. It looked even fatter than he remembered. The puffy eyes were closed, the mouth drooped open. He stooped to listen for breathing, close enough to see that she had no eyebrows or eyelashes unless they had sunk into the ungovernable flesh, close enough to wonder if the inside of her mouth was white as well. And then her lips moved feebly. They closed and quivered open with a snore. Her breathing recommenced, louder as he crept away, and he had almost reached the door when she piped, “I’m not asleep.”

He couldn’t help damning himself as he turned. The mound was shifting, the blankets and bedspread slipped off one enormous shoulder. He had to speak when her small eyes met his. “Is there anything you want?” he said.

She smiled, a wide smile that looked young. He thought she had teeth until he saw that the fat white ridges were gums. “You can stay and talk to me if you like, Geoffrey.”

Presumably she’d learned his name from Joyce. “Do you know, I don’t know what to call you,” he said, staying near the door.

She gave him a fat exaggerated pout that hinted what she might have looked like once. ”
You
know,” she piped.

“No, I don’t. Joyce didn’t tell me.”

“She’s a wonder. There’s not another like her.” The small colorless eyes closed on an appreciative look. “She’s out now finding somewhere, isn’t she? Out in this. She can’t do it all on her own, you know. She needs someone to speak up for her.”

Geoffrey felt accused. “I would if I could.”

“I didn’t mean you. No offense. She’ll find someone.”

He could only hope so. “You were going to tell me your name,” he said.

She sat up laboriously and minutely, displaying her bald head that looked even more like old cheese with a few cobwebs. “What would you like it to be?”

His heart sank. “I don’t mean to bother you,” he said, “but where do you come from?”

“Not far. Or maybe you’d think it was.” Presumably she didn’t know. “Thank you for letting me stay in your house,” she said. “You must tell me if I’m too much of an inconvenience.”

She tilted her head almost coquettishly. “I’m sorry I don’t talk much,” she piped, “but I like to listen.”

He felt trapped and then ashamed. “Would you like me to read to you?”

“Oh, I’d love that. Have you got the newspaper?”

He took her to mean today’s, and London’s. “I’ll have to go up to the shops,” he said, and felt deeply relieved when she looked grateful. At least he could get out of the house for a while.

Walking was easy at first on the frozen snow. The pavement was a mass of overlapping footprints like a dance school gone mad. By the time he reached the newsagent’s he was having to hold on to walls.

He bought the evening paper and struggled back up the hill. When finally he reached home he was hot and exhausted. At least he heard the breathing as soon as he opened the front door. He peeled off his wet clothes and toiled upstairs, resenting having panicked. Her head wavered up from the pillow as soon as he stepped into the room. “Oh, thank you,” she piped, with a smile so sweet that his resentment vanished. The smile didn’t even show her gums.

He brought in his office chair and sat by the bed to read her the newspaper. More murders in London than ever, more threats of terrorism, and he wondered if he should be reading her that kind of news, but she seemed eager for more. A television researcher had accused the police of giving her the third degree only to find that the policeman she’d accused had been in church at the time—there was a photograph of her, trying to hide her face as she emerged from a revolving door. The story amused the old lady, for the bedspread was quaking, and Geoffrey couldn’t help grinning. He turned the pages, he sat forward as the print grew dimmer. He didn’t know how long he had been reading when he heard Joyce closing the front door.

He blinked at the room, which was almost dark. The old lady was asleep. He stumbled out with the chair, then hurried down to Joyce. “Any luck?”

“I may have found somewhere.” She straightened up from pulling off her boots. “Only may have. Someone wants it for one of those hamburger places. You’d think we’d get priority, but they’re going to make us fight.”

“Surely they’d have to let you have it if people knew what the situation was.”

“That’s right, they knew. I saw some of my old folk today, they’re going to write to all the papers. They want to come back to me, even though they’re being taken care of. I won’t let them down, not while I’ve got two legs and a voice.” She glanced up the stairs. “How’s she been?”

“No trouble really. I read to her for a while.”

“That’s my Geoffrey. I can always count on you. I’m glad you’re making friends.”

“It’s you she wants, you know.” He followed her into the kitchen, where she was boiling milk to lace with rum.

“You don’t mind her staying, do you?” Joyce said. “The sooner I find somewhere, the sooner she can go.”

“It’s just that I’m looking after her and I don’t even know her name.”

“Sometimes it’s one thing, sometimes another.”

She mustn’t know either. “Where does she live?”

“Why do you want to know that?” When she turned from pouring the milk into mugs, she looked angry. “If you want her to leave, just say so. She’s frightened to stay at home during the day, but if you can’t stand her, back she must go.”

“I didn’t say that.” But he was suddenly wondering what Christmas would be like. He might have raised that point, except that Joyce was staring at the newspaper he was still holding. “Where did you get that?” she demanded.

“On the High Street. She asked me to.”

“Oh, well, if she asked …” She looked dubious. “Best not to leave her alone again, though.”

They left the living-room door ajar, even though they could hear the old lady’s breathing when it was closed. He sipped his laced milk as he glanced through the newspaper, where he could remember hardly any of the items, before handing it to Joyce. Then she cried, “Good God!” He jumped up.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Don’t be tiresome. Look here.” She was pointing at the photograph of the woman who hadn’t managed to hide her face. “Did you read this? It’s a miracle, that’s what it is. I’ve been wanting to pray, you know. Maybe this is meant to tell me I should.”

“What, the woman who tried to defame the police?”

“Never mind that. She must have had her reasons.” She was slapping the photograph impatiently. “I know her, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I met her years ago. Oh, Geoffrey, what luck.”

“Well, so you know her.”

“Geoffrey, sometimes you’re worse than my old folk.” She smiled tolerantly at him. “She works on television, don’t you understand? She’s exactly what I need. Let these hamburger people make trouble for me now and I’ll go straight to Molly Wolfe.”

20

T
HE
Christmas lights of Oxford Street stained the snow like petrol. As Danny turned the comer into Wardour Street, a roof dripped on him, but he couldn’t have cared less. He stopped at the Rank poster windows, because he wanted to read about next year’s films, not because he was pretending that he wasn’t going to Soho. He didn’t need to pretend, he never had. He didn’t need to go to Soho now, and that was why he would.

The Essential was showing films by Martin Wallace, whoever he was. Danny picked his way past, mincing on the frozen slush, to the staggered crossroads of Old Comp-ton Street and Brewer Street, the lights of their shops throbbing. Perhaps it was because he meant to give himself a present that the lights made him think of Christmas.

Someone was laughing in a newsagent’s on Old Comp-ton Street, and he hoped they were laughing at Molly Wolfe. He’d seen her picture in the paper, and now he knew where she worked. He wouldn’t have to look for her in Soho on his afternoon off. There couldn’t be a better place to celebrate than Soho, not when she had made him go there in the first place.

Or at least, his dream of her had. That was all he remembered clearly from that time eleven years ago, the dream of her and another female writing sexy letters for him to take to the printers. In the dream he had been home at once, hiding in his room to read the magazine, only to find that all the letters were about him, the only man they knew who never had erections. All the photographs of naked women, and their open thighs, had been laughing at him.

He had never been able to get that dream out of his head. Molly Wolfe had put it there, with Dr. Kent’s help, put it in through the wires they had stuck to his face. Soon he hadn’t been able to go into a newsagent’s without seeing magazines that reminded him of the dream, that made him feel contemptuously watched, unable even to think unheard. He’d fought back, he’d stayed always aware of his enemies that were everywhere, unobserved by anyone but him. He’d realized just in time that they were trying to make him say they were there so that his parents would think he was mad and have him put away where his enemies would be with him all the time until they drove him mad. Sometimes as he’d strolled down Wardour Street, he’d stood on the corners of the sex streets, wondering if they sold those magazines that made his crotch feel warm.

He might have bought one if he could have thought of a hiding place. When at last Molly Wolfe had led him there, he’d been too intent on following her to notice where he was going; and that had been the day after he’d dreamed a second time that she was handing him the sexy letters.

He could still dream what was going to happen. She and Dr. Kent hadn’t robbed him of that after all. They had only tried because they were scared of him. It hadn’t mattered that he had lost her in Soho, he’d gone back there every day that there wasn’t an afternoon show at the Hercules. Once, when the man behind the counter had said loudly, “Everything’s for sale, gentlemen,” Danny had bought a book called
Erotic Cinema
so that the man wouldn’t know what he really liked or throw him out for not buying. He’d thought of losing it on the way to the Hercules, then just in time he’d realized he could hide it under the carpet in the projection box. As soon as the evening’s film was running, he had opened the brown-paper package. But the book he had bought in his red-faced haste wasn’t called
Erotic Cinema
at all, it was called
Erotic Enema.
He’d torn it up on his way home that night and scattered the pieces like a glossy paper chase. Molly Wolfe and her spies might see the kind of thing that really excited him and have their opinion of him confirmed.

But now it was Molly Wolfe that everyone was jeering at. He grinned at the thought of all those photographs everywhere of her. As soon as he reached the shop with the opaque window, he went in.

He had his pound notes ready in his hand. He’d changed the new notes from the bank for old ones, in case the bank could trace that he’d come here. The shopman gave him a handful of fifty-pence pieces and said “Thank you, sir” so sincerely that Danny felt he was the equal of all the businessmen at the racks of magazines. Some issues of a magazine called
Janus
—two-faced, all women except his mother were—contained installments of a dictionary of spanking films, but that wasn’t what he had promised himself. He sidled toward the viewing booths, toward the sounds of cries and pleas.

Handwritten titles were taped to the doors:
Penitent Penny, Rueful Rhoda, Tearful Tess. Spanking in the Office
was the one he wanted, but the illuminated sign above the door said “IN USE.” He could see you weren’t supposed to queue, you had to stroll blank-faced as if you weren’t interested. To keep himself busy, he glanced about to see that nobody was watching, then locked himself in to wait with
Penitent Penny.

When he fed the slot, an erect penis appeared on the door. A mouth was working on it in time to a James Last record, and there was panting that made him think of his mother, though it sounded as if it were down a well. Would he look like that, swollen and purple and bulging with veins? He squeezed his eyes shut as the penis ejaculated. It made him think of a sewer outlet.

When his fifty pence ran out, he sat and waited without putting in money until the shopman banged on the door and shouted, “Pay up. pay up, whoever you are.”

“Coming,” Danny stammered, his face burning, and wondered why the shopman said, “Then you’d better keep it to yourself.” He stumbled out of the cubicle, and saw that the one he wanted was no longer in use.

He bolted the door and groped beside his flaccid penis for the handful of change. At first nothing appeared on the door in response to his coin. He was nerving himself to go out and complain when the picture lit up, a little askew and blurred but clear enough. A man was shaking his finger at a girl behind a desk and waving a typed letter in her face. He dragged her off her revolving chair and across his lap, he was pulling up her skirt and picking up a ruler, and she was Molly Wolfe. Danny sat forward to stare at the blurred face—it
was
her, he was sure it was—until his growing penis forced him back. When the picture vanished, too soon, he fed in more money, more. His spine was grating against the wall, but he could feel nothing but his penis, unbearably sensitive, impossibly huge. Oh. God yes, this was what was meant to happen, she was struggling and trying to cover her bottom, oh. God yes, go on, that was what she’d been deserving for eleven years, oh, God, he panted aloud, oh, God … Oh, God, the film had stopped, and he had no more fifty pences.