Ritual in the Dark (15 page)

The thought of the waiting taxi worried him; he had no desire to leave the flat immediately. Finally, he went out and dismissed it, telling the man that he was being delayed. He felt guilty as he watched it drive away, but the guilt gave way to a sense of relief and relaxation as he closed the front door behind him. Excitement produced a watery sensation in the bowels.

In the sitting-room he switched on the electric fire, and knelt, warming himself at it for a moment. Then he crossed to the sideboard and opened the cupboard. It contained an array of liqueur bottles, mostly full or half full. With a sense of having the whole day to spare, he took them out one by one and sniffed them. Some he knew; most of them he had never heard of, or only seen on the shelves behind bars. He found a shelf of glasses in the other cupboard, and proceeded to line up a dozen along the sideboard, and pour a drop of liqueur into each. He pulled up a chair to the sideboard, and tasted each glass in turn: the Calvados, Chartreuse, Benedictine, anisette, maraschine, allasch. In some cases the taste was so agreeable that he poured more into the glass. After ten minutes he realised that he was becoming slightly drunk. There were still bottles untasted. He decided to leave them until later. The room was becoming warm; he removed his coat and flung it over an armchair. He said aloud: You lucky bastard, Austin. He returned to the other room, and was glad of its relative coolness.

When he pulled at the curtains, he realised that they moved on rollers; if necessary, they could be drawn to cover the walls of the room completely. He drew them back until they were all bunched in corners of the room. It made little difference to the appearance of the walls. They were painted black. A door in the corner was also painted black. The space where the window had been was boarded over like the fireplace; from the other side of the room, it looked like a continuation of the wall. The wall at the far end of the room, which had been completely covered by curtains, had two paintings hung on it. One showed a man in evening dress walking along a busy street; he was leading a pig by a length of blue ribbon; in the middle of his forehead was an enormous eye. The other showed a man in shirtsleeves, lying on his back under an apple tree in moonlight. The fruit and leaves of the tree were painted in deep greens and reds and blues; they possessed a misty and lyrical quality that contrasted with the completely yellow figure under the tree. The titles of both pictures were painted at the bottom of the canvases; Les Amours Jaunes, and, Self-portrait by Moonlight. Both were signed: Glasp, and dated 1948.

The other door led into a small closet, whose back wall was lined with bookshelves. He switched on the light to look through them, and found them disappointing. There were many standard works of English literature, and some volumes which he guessed to be Nunne’s college text books. There were several children’s books; when he idly took down The Bumper Book for Boys he found a signature: Austin Nunne 1935, inside the cover. An abridged edition of Frazer’s Golden Bough seemed to have been given as a school prize in 1940; it had evidently been thoroughly read; the text was covered with pencil-marks. It fell open at an early page as he leafed through it. He turned to the light to read a quotation marked in red ink:

‘The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that early period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them.’

He carried the book into the bedroom, and sat on the divan to read it. A curious sense of Nunne’s presence was beginning to grow in him. Once he looked up startled, expecting to see Nunne standing in the doorway, looking at him. He said aloud: I am yesterday, today and tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time. The sound of his voice released his tension, but left a sense of disquiet that puzzled him. He felt as if something unpleasant was about to happen, a sensation like the end of a nightmare. Then he noticed the grip, standing beside the fireplace. The disquiet was connected with the women’s clothes he had packed. As he tried to analyse it, he remembered that Nunne had asked him to return any open books that might be lying around to their shelves. He could not recollect having seen any. For some reason this worried him. He went into the other room and looked around, finding none. In the bedroom he pulled aside all the curtains, and peered between the divan and the wall. Finally, he raised the edge of the divan cover and looked in the three-inch space between its bottom and the floor. A book lay open, face downwards on the carpet. Its title was: Criminology, Its Background and Techniques. He turned it over, and found himself looking at a photograph of a woman with her throat cut. The caption under the picture read: Note defensive wounds on hands. He dropped the book on the bed, feeling sick, and went out to the kitchen.

There, the daylight made him feel better. He ran the tap, and stared at the water that ran in a smooth stream. It soothed him. The room he had left seemed in some way unclean; he felt no desire to go into it again. It was the first time he had seen a photograph of a violent death; it seemed to taint the air he breathed with tangible disgust. He felt almost as though he had discovered a mutilated body in Nunne’s cupboard.

He told himself that the disgust was stupid, that he had no right to be shocked by physical violence. After a while he returned to the bedroom, and made himself take up the book again. This time the photograph made less impact on him. He sat on the bed with a sense of bravado, and looked through the book. It seemed to be a well-documented textbook for the use of the American police. A whole chapter dealt with stolen cars, with photographs of the marks made by tyres on mud; another dealt with fingerprints and footprints. It was the final chapters of the book which examined causes of death and identification of the dead, that contained most of the photographs of violence. He found himself turning the pages with a tension that was like being prepared for a physical blow. He made himself read the captions before he looked at the photographs: when he had finished looking through these, he returned the book to the top shelf, among the volumes on forensic medicine. Still standing on the divan, leaning against the wall for balance, he opened some of these, and glanced into them. The photographs had ceased to shock him; he felt only a heaviness of continual disgust in his stomach. When he lowered his eyes to the shelf underneath, containing Mallarmé, Nerval, de L’Isle-Adam, Schopenhauer, he experienced a sense of unreality. It seemed to him that these men had known nothing of the reality of death when they wrote, that somehow the photographs made nonsense of the obsession with sin in de Sade and Baudelaire.

As he stood there, his feelings seemed to black out, like a sudden breakdown in a film; for a moment, he was overpowered by a sense of his own absurdity. It was the vastation that had come to him on the previous Sunday in the night. It was as if he was watching something over which he had no control, and that terrified him. He sat down on the divan. The feeling began to disappear. He tried to capture it, feeling strongly that he must outface it and examine it. It disappeared completely.

He became aware of the coldness of the room. He sat there, scowling into space, trying to analyse the fear. It was difficult, but he was certain it had to do with his own identity. He thought about the words that had come into his mind as he had stood there. Absurd. Arbitrary. He said aloud: It is because I might be anyone or anything. Or not exist at all. But if I didn’t exist. . . I. Exist. They mean the same thing.

He began to walk up and down the room, thinking in words, as if talking. It was elusive. I. My own. The legitimate me recognises nothing as its own. All is alien. Even existence. I must disown existence too. If I exist, I am trapped.

A new idea came to him. Limitedness. I don’t want limits. It is limits that are alien to me. The universe, space, time, being. Nothing must be limited. I am god. I am yesterday and today. I am the god Tem, maker of heaven, creator of things which are. If I am not, life is meaningless.

He took down a volume on forensic medicine, and stared at a photograph of a man who had been killed in a railway accident. It failed to revive the vastation. The death in the book no longer represented reality. Like Baudelaire and de Sade, it was still two moves away from reality.

After washing and drying the liqueur glasses, he walked to Kensington High Street and caught the tube. He was glad of the lunch-hour crowds. Silence and the sense of uncertainty had left him tired.

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The Scotswoman opened the door; when she saw him, her face tightened. He said quickly:

The father is expecting me.

He was. It’s time for his rest now.

He was irritated by her manner, but repressed the resentment, saying politely:

I’m sorry. I’ll come back again another day.

She hesitated, then stood back and opened the door:

Come on inside, an’ I’ll see how he feels.

He said quietly: Thank you. He kept his voice lowered in case Maunsell was downstairs; he had no particular wish to see him at the moment. The woman went upstairs without bothering to show him into the waiting-room. He was glad she didn’t waste words. When he approached the glass-panelled door, he heard a murmur of voices from outside. He stood in the dark hallway, leaning against the banister. The woman appeared on the stairs, beckoning him up.

He can’t spare more’n a few moments. He should be asleep. He’s been at it all day.

I won’t keep him long, Sorme promised.

As soon as he encountered the faint disinfectant smell in the corridor, he was reminded of his talk on the previous day; a feeling of anticipation came over him as he reached the door. It disappeared immediately when he saw the priest, the curiously ugly face above the pyjama jacket; instead, he experienced the same slight disappointment he had felt on first meeting him.

Father Carruthers was sitting in the armchair by the fire. A plaid rug and an eiderdown were wrapped around the lower half of his body.

Come and sit down. How are you?

Sorme laid the raincoat on the bed, and sat in the other armchair.

I’m fine, father. I’m expecting Austin back today or tomorrow.

Good. You’ve heard from him?

He’s phoned me twice since yesterday.

The priest grunted, and regarded him steadily. Sorme realised what he was thinking. He said:

They weren’t just social calls. He seems to have something on his mind. Has he always been inclined to get excited over nothing, father?

In what way?

Well. . . being strange and secretive. Acting like a conspirator. I’m a little worried. . .

I’ve never known it. In what way is he strange?

Sorme told the story of the phone calls, and ended by describing the flat.

While he talked he was aware of having the priest’s complete attention.

The priest asked finally:

I would like to know your exact reason for speaking to me of all this.

The question embarrassed Sorme. He considered his answer carefully. He said slowly:

Austin fascinates me. And I don’t fully know why he fascinates me. And. . . well, I like him. Do you see?

He said this almost defiantly, because he could think of no other way of expressing it. The priest smiled, and the ugliness dissolved in the benevolence that flickered at Sorme.

I understand.

Besides. . . that flat of his. . . it made me feel I know him a lot better. And that I want to know him a lot better.

The priest closed his eyes. He talked with his face turned towards the fire, as if talking to himself.

What you tell me of this flat is new to me. And to some extent it is a surprise to me. But, after all, there is perhaps no reason to be surprised. It probably explains why Austin stopped coming here. Romanticism is a dubious refuge, but it is not a dangerous one. And no one remains in it for a long time.

Sorme interrupted: You think he’ll come to the Catholic Church eventually?

I think that it is not impossible.

Sorme considered this, staring into the fire. The eyes in the white, invalid’s face remained closed. He said:

Romanticism. . . I see your point. That accounts for de L’Isle-Adam and Huysmans and the rest. But what about the crime photographs? And de Sade.

You have answered yourself. De Sade—another romantic. Sadistic pictures. . .

I don’t know that they were sadistic. They were just revolting.

For the sadist, the revolting causes pleasure.

Is Austin a sadist, father?

He asked the question quickly, and without thinking. Almost immediately he wondered if he had gone too far. The priest’s eyes opened and regarded him; the voice said calmly:

Shall we say. . . he has tendencies. . .

Sorme said bluntly:

Look here, father. If you think I’m talking out of turn, tell me so flatly. I don’t want to pry.

The priest said, smiling:

Yesterday, I hardly knew you. Today, you know a great deal more about Austin, and I know you a little better. I think we can speak frankly.

Sorme felt relieved; the removal of the ambiguity made him more relaxed. He smiled broadly:

Thank you, father. That’s kind of you. You see, I do feel a sort of tentative responsibility for Austin. I felt rather touched when he said I was the only person he could trust.

Quite.

But I don’t understand at all. Those women’s clothes, for instance. . .

Where are they now?

Sorme said with sudden alarm:

I left them downstairs in the hallway.

That doesn’t matter. They’ll be quite safe.

Sorme scowled at the palms of his hands. He said hesitantly:

Father, I’m going to tell you what I’ve got on my mind, and if you think it’s tosh, just tell me so.

I will.

Well, look here, it’s like this. . . Yesterday morning, two policemen tried to interview an old man in the house where I live. . . about the East End murders. Now I’m sure they had no special reason—no real suspicions of him. He was just an odd sort of crank, and perhaps he’s been in some sort of trouble with them before for a sexual offence, and he’s probably one of dozens they’d interview. Now Austin’s asked me to get some women’s clothes out of his flat. Supposing he’s expecting the police to want to interview him about the murders? Supposing he’s known to them as a man with sadistic tendencies? Does that make sense?