Ancient Images Part 5

The floor was cluttered with piles of magazines and videoca.s.settes. Sound-track alb.u.ms were strewn across a red two-seater couch. Trantom gathered up the records clumsily, splaying his fingers almost as wide as the breadth of the covers, and dumped them beneath a shelf of plastic monsters. As Sandy sat down he dropped himself beside her, seesawing the couch. "They write for my magazine," he said, his voice even higher with pride. "That's John in the T-s.h.i.+rt that writes our video reviews, and this is Andrew Minihin. You must have heard of him." him."

When she shook her head and smiled Minihin grunted, Trantom sn.i.g.g.e.red incredulously, John's thighs began to vibrate as if he were preparing to run laps of the cluttered room. "You m/'ve. A paper wanted all his books banned," John insisted, and listed them: "The Flaying. The s...o...b..ring. It Crawls Up Y. It Crawls Back Up Y. Entrails that they wouldn't let him call that they wouldn't let him call Puke Puke and and Die, Die, that was the best yet." that was the best yet."

"I've seen them around."

"Wondered how anyone could buy such c.r.a.p, did you?" Minihin said.

The three men grinned at her as if they were watching a trap. She imagined them as three witches with Halloween hats, and felt more in control. "Not that I remember."

"I used to, because c.r.a.p is what it is," Minihin said with a klaxon laugh. "It's what you have to write to compete with films like this one here. If millions of silly b.a.s.t.a.r.ds want to read it I'd be even stupider than they are if I didn't give it to them. Maybe some of them will grow out of it. I'm getting fan mail from ten-year-old kids." 72 "Watch out, you'll have her wanting to cut your books," John said.

Sandy lost her temper just enough to give her voice an edge. "Do you believe everything you read in the papers? Can't you see that Stilwell wrote that about me because I dared to suggest he was wrong about the film my friend was looking for? I don't cut films, I a.s.semble them, and I'd be a born-again archivist as far as this film is concerned. Except if everyone I approach is going to believe what Stilwell said about me I may as well not bother. Would you like to turn that down? I'm not used to having to talk over someone screaming."

Trantom groped down the side of the couch until he found the remote control. The zombie dentist on the screen continued his work in silence, and Trantom muttered, "What do you think, boys?"

"The paper could be after her like the other one went after Andrew. They don't like anyone who stands for horror."

Minihin shrugged as if the question mattered as little as anything else. "All right," Trantom said, "we trust you. We'll help."

"You'll tell me what you told Graham."

"We didn't tell him anything. He'd heard of my magazine and thought we'd know collectors who might have a copy of the film. I mean we'll help you look."

His enthusiasm was so great that it carried him past his stammering. "That's kind of you, but I really only wanted to find out if you had a lead," Sandy said.

"He keeps his wife on one. What's your problem?" Minihin demanded. "Don't you want to be a.s.sociated with us?"

"You haven't seen the magazine," Trantom said, and grabbed one from a pile behind the couch.

It was a stapled bunch of duplicated typed pages called Gorehound. Gorehound. She thought someone had spilled coffee on it, 73 She thought someone had spilled coffee on it, 73 until she realized that the stain was meant to ill.u.s.trate the t.i.tle. "I should have thought the film I'm looking for wouldn't do much for you after the kind of thing you watch."

"Some films were pretty good even then," John disagreed. "Lugosi bursts a blind man's eardrums in Dark Eyes of London, Dark Eyes of London, and that was before the war." and that was before the war."

"And before that, in The The Raven, Raven, he cripples Karloff's face," Trantom added eagerly, "and locks him in a room full of mirrors." he cripples Karloff's face," Trantom added eagerly, "and locks him in a room full of mirrors."

"And in The The Black Black Cat Cat he starts ripping his skin off," Minihin offered. he starts ripping his skin off," Minihin offered.

"If your film was banned it must be good," Trantom said. "If it's horror we're interested. We can never get enough."

"No f.u.c.ker tells us what to do."

Sandy wasn't sure if Minihin was talking about censors.h.i.+p or her. She found their enthusiasm more disturbing than their suspicion of her had been. It made the room seem smaller and hotter, and raw as the silenced carnage on the screen. "So you can't tell me anything about the film itself."

"It m/'ve upset someone," John suggested.

"Told them something they didn't want to know," Minihin said.

It was clear that they were only speculating. "If there's any way you can help I'll let you know," Sandy said, and pushed herself off the couch. "But the people I need to meet may be as wary as you were, and they'll also be considerably older."

The men stared at her, red-eyed from the film, from its reflection or from the way it quickened their blood. All three were between her and the door. Someone exploded on the screen, and red splashed the walls and furniture and the faces of the men, which seemed to swell like sponges. "Turn up the sound," John said. "They're pulling her tongue out." 74 "Tongue my a.r.s.e," Minihin disagreed. "That's her liver."

John clasped his knees to stop them jerking and gasped, "Turn it up, quick, turn it up."

Trantom rummaged on the floor for the control, and Sandy sidled past him. She was almost at the door when Minihin sprang to his feet and came after her, one pudgy hand outstretched. He was reaching to turn out the light so that they could see the image more clearly. They and the furniture appeared to be leaping to catch spurts of red from the screen. As Sandy slipped past the coatstand and the bicycle, the woman with the bruised eyes looked out of a bedroom next to the kitchen, a baby mouthing at her breast, which was covered with scratches. The television screamed, and the woman winked heavily at Sandy. "If it wasn't her it might be us."

Trantom blundered along the corridor, shouldering the coatstand against the wall, as Sandy unchained the outer door. The dog in the flat opposite was snarling and whining. Someone must have hit it to make it sound so nervous. Sandy stepped onto linoleum the color of mud between glistening tiled walls, and Trantom wobbled after her. "What's that?" he stammered as if he had been about to ask her something else. "Did you bring someone with you?"

Sandy peered along the corridor. She didn't think she'd glimpsed a shadow dodging out of sight around the bend of the bare gray stairs, but he made her feel as if she had. "Of course not," she said.

"Got to be careful." He stepped back clumsily, almost tripping over his ragged doormat. "Never know who might come snooping around after my films."

"If you were a gentleman you'd see me to my car," she said, and gazed at him until it drew him into the open. He rushed at the stairs so recklessly she was afraid for him. He was stooping, b.u.t.ting the air as if to warn anyone who 75 might get in his way. As she followed him, the smell of sweat and motor oil met her on the stairs.

He flung the street door open and blundered out, fists clenched. The street was deserted for hundreds of yards. Something that smelled of stale food scuttled behind him in the dark--a hamburger carton, which Sandy kicked aside as she made for her car. "I'll let you know if I trace the film," she said, and he took refuge in the building at once. As she turned the car she thought that he or one of his companions had darted out of the building to beckon to her. It must have been the shadow of a lamppost, a shadow that dropped to the ground as her headlights veered away. It had been too thin even for Trantom's undernourished friend. 76 13.

When Sandy came off the urban motorway she found she was driving for the sake of driving, to give herself a chance to think. It didn't work. She stopped the car outside Regent's Park, by the zoo. Above the park the edges of clouds were raw, but the light wasn't sufficient to show her what kind of animal was prowling beyond the railings. She stared at the cover of Gorehound, Gorehound, and then she drove to a phone box. She needed to talk. and then she drove to a phone box. She needed to talk.

Roger answered halfway through the first ring. "You're at your desk," she guessed.

"Sure am. Is this Sandy Allan? How are you today?"

"I'm ... various things, such as sorry if I interrupted you."

"I'll be through with this paragraph in quarter of an hour. Why don't you come over? That is, if you've nothing-was "Nothing I can think of."

"G.o.d, I'm predictable, right? I'll try and make myself more random while I'm waiting. If I'm not here I'll be around the corner buying wine."

"Yes, let's celebrate," Sandy said as she got into her car. She felt lightheaded with too many emotions all at once. She sat with the window down, breathing the night air that smelled of flowers and wild animals, for a few minutes before she drove off.

Crowds swarmed around the glow of the stations at Euston and St. Pancras and King's Cross. The five-way 77 intersection at the Angel was a tangled knot of streetlamps and unlit side streets. Sandy sped through the knot into Upper Street, and parked outside the arch that led to Roger's. When she slammed the car door the sound scuttled over the cobblestones. She hurried through the arch to the door opposite the path darkened by shrubs. Before she could ring his doorbell, she was blinded.

Roger had glanced out between his curtains. The desk lamp was pointing straight at her face. His footsteps beyond the blur that had wiped out most of her vision sounded more distant than the stealthy restlessness behind her, which must be twigs sc.r.a.ping the edges of the path. As soon as she heard him open the door she walked blindly in. "Sure, come in," he said in her ear, and then, "Sandy, what's wrong?"

She didn't know where to begin. Now that she was inside she was happy to wait for her sight to return, but staying mute seemed unreasonable. She heard the door shut, and he came closer. "It's okay, don't talk if you need to be quiet," he said, and put his arms around her.

It was her temporary sightlessness as much as her silence that made her feel she had found him at last, in a place beyond words. She hugged him and hung on as they walked leisurely down the hall. She felt surrounded by his warmth and awkward gentleness, by the smell of his skin and of a sweetish after-shave he must have dabbed on his face for her benefit. The walls beyond the patch of blindness opened out as he led her to the nearest armchair. When he placed her there and made to let go she held firmly on to him. "This won't be very comfortable," he murmured.

"Then let's go where it will be," she said, and touched his tongue with hers. The contact blazed through her like sunlight, awakening her nerves. To her delight, he lifted her and carried her into the bedroom. However many films this might be like, she could tell he wasn't acting out any of them. Before they reached the bed she had unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt, and their open mouths were pressed hungrily together. 78 His face came into focus as he lowered her onto the bed. She brushed his hair back from his forehead as he pushed up her blouse and freed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s for his mouth to excite. She raised her hips so that he could slip her panties down for her to kick away, then she unzipped him quickly and took hold of his rearing p.e.n.i.s. She ran her fingertips along it until he moaned, and then she dug her nails into his b.u.t.tocks and pulled him into her. She felt herself widen, sucking him deeper, and thrust her tongue deeper into his mouth. His hands squeezed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pa.s.sed lingeringly down her and lifted her thighs to stroke inside them. She came almost at once, and then again. The second time he cried out and came too, hugging her shoulders helplessly, throbbing inside her as if he might never stop.

She held on to him and kissed his eyes and lips while he dwindled inside her. Eventually he lay back and pulled the duvet over them. She rested her head on his arm and gazed at him. She felt drowsy, calm, remote from the rest of the day's events, completely at home. At last he said almost apologetically, "I did get some wine, by the way."

She smiled at his tone and kissed his cheek. "You think we ought to celebrate, do you?"

"Sure. I mean, if you do."

"Need you ask? Lead me to it. If I don't match you gla.s.s for gla.s.s, it's only because I'm driving."

"You don't have to drive tonight if you don't want to."

"Well, I don't suppose I do. And do you know, I don't suppose I will. I've n.o.body to go home to, after all."

"Except your cats."

"I'm afraid Bogart and Bacall have joined the great film show in the sky."

"Sandy, I'm sorry. Is that what was wrong? When did it happen?"

"Last night. They were run over. It seems much longer ago." That struck her as even sadder than their deaths, but she didn't realize she was weeping until he wiped away the 79 tears. "I think I might like some of that wine now," she said indistinctly.

"I'll bring it," he said, and swung his legs off the bed, p.e.n.i.s wagging.

She dabbed at her eyes with the duvet and wrapped it around herself. When Roger came back with the bottle he was draped in a black robe edged with gold thread. He insisted on her wearing it, and tramped bare-b.u.t.tocked to the bathroom for a terrycloth robe for himself. Sandy poured the wine, and they touched gla.s.ses. "Here's to beginnings," she said.

"And many episodes."

"With lots of action."

"Leading to climaxes."

"You needn't worry on that score. You made up for the rest of the day at the very least."

"s.h.i.+t, you mean it wasn't only your cats being killed?"

"Shall we say it's been a varied kind of a day? I've been given time off work whether or not I want it. So I started out to look for Graham's film, and met some people who made me wonder if I should. They write a magazine. I'll show you."

She glanced through it before pa.s.sing it to him. Trantom's misspelled editorial was addressed to "all the psychos and sickos like us." An article by John the Maniac described weeks of wandering around seedy video libraries in search of under-the-counter horrors. Andrew Minihin's page concluded, "They're only special effects, and if you can't tell the difference you must be sick in the head, so f.u.c.k off to a nuthouse and let the rest of us enjoy them." Sandy refilled the gla.s.ses while Roger scanned the pages. "Somehow I doubt Graham would have had much time for them," she said.

"I remember now, they presented him with a copy of their organ, gave him one of their organs as you might say. He thought the joke was on him. He was kind of relieved 80 they weren't any help, because he would have felt obliged to invite them to his premiere. Imagine having to introduce these guys to royalty."

"It isn't how squalid it is I mind so much as how meaningless."

"Sure, the cinema disappearing up itself, or reverting to a kind of magic show. If you have to spend your time reminding yourself it's fake and that's the point, what is is the point? Maybe it's a rite of pa.s.sage for people who never grow up. But when audiences have had enough of being shocked they generally want something more subtle, and you might be helping to revive that by finding Graham's movie." the point? Maybe it's a rite of pa.s.sage for people who never grow up. But when audiences have had enough of being shocked they generally want something more subtle, and you might be helping to revive that by finding Graham's movie."

"I suppose so."

"Listen, don't let me bore you. Maybe you're thinking I'm like those guys, living in the movies because I'm scared of real life."

"Why should I think that? Using your talent is part of real life, and you're using yours to make people see what you see, make them look again."

He smiled rather wistfully at her. "The best I can hope for is that we're both right. Movies are somewhere I could go and let my feelings out for a couple of hours, once I was old enough that my folks had to accept I could go out by myself. I guess I got into the habit of suppressing how I felt in case it made them anxious. I should tell you they had their reasons. I had a sister who died of meningitis when I was three years old and she was six."

"Poor little thing. Do you remember her?"

"Sometimes I dream I see her face, but I don't remember it really. The one memory I have is of her coming into my room and standing at the end of the bed with the light from the doorway behind her. She looked as if she was drawn in light, turning into light, you know? My folks tell me that must have been her saying goodbye the night they had to take her to the hospital." 81 Sandy licked a stray tear from his cheek. A hint of after-shave underlay the salty taste. "I wouldn't say you were afraid of reality."

"Maybe just of getting involved in case I lose someone else." Then he grinned. "That's Hollywood bulls.h.i.+t, don't you think? It doesn't work that way unless you've seen too many movies and let them do your thinking for you. Deep down most of us need someone. I do."

"It's mutual," Sandy said, feeling as if his former awkwardness had been transferred to her.

"I hope you don't just mean that the way Charles d.i.c.kens did."

"Nothing so literary. I mean what I feel."

"You feel good. I'd say we've something more to celebrate, but we've killed the wine."

"I can think of a better way to celebrate."

This time it was unhurried and inventive, and taught them more about each other. Afterward they lay exhausted in each other's arms, and soon they were asleep. Whenever Sandy awoke, his closeness was a renewed surprise and a sleepy pleasure. Once she awoke convinced he had a dog which they'd forgotten to let in, and was halfway to the door until she realized her error. She was missing the cats, she told herself, but snuggling under the duvet with Roger was such a compensation that she slept again almost immediately.

In the morning he brought her breakfast in bed and then worked at his desk. She showered and hoped he might join her without being asked, but this was one shower scene he was shy of. She used his toothbrush and went out to find him, his hair dangling above the keyboard of his word processor. She held his shoulders and stooped to kiss his forehead. "Such a lot can happen in one day," she said.

He reached up and stroked her neck. "So what's happening today?"

"I ought to go on my travels. I shouldn't let Graham down, or my lunch date." 82 "I have to work on this book for at least the next couple of days, but maybe I could catch up with you after that if you want company."

"I'd like that."

He saved his file and slipped the disk out of the word processor. "If you need to make any calls, go ahead while I take a bath."

Calling so early in the day proved useful. She arranged two interviews that would lead her across the map from Hatfield without her needing to retrace her route. One was with Denzil Eames, who had written the film and who sounded querulously eager to be interviewed. By the time she'd finished, Roger was out of the bathroom, looking pinkly youthful in his terrycloth robe. She hugged him, but when his hands ran down her skirt and under it she murmured "I really ought to go home and pack. I'm supposed to be in Hatfield for lunch."

"Sure," he said, his hands springing away.

"Otherwise I'd stay, I hope you know. And I'd love to have you come after me when you can."

"Don't count on much of a start," he said, which made her want him so much that she hurried herself away to grab her handbag. At the door she kissed him, lingering even longer for the benefit of whoever she sensed watching. But when she let go of him at last, she could see n.o.body. How could anyone be thin enough to hide behind the shrubs in daylight? She gave Roger a last hug and ran across the cobblestones to her car. 83 As Sandy drove off the motorway near Hatfield she met the autumn. Tips of leaves were yellowing on trees that seemed to wither against the glare of sunlight from moist fields. When she rolled her window down she felt the chill that the buildings of central London had kept at bay. She drew a long breath that tasted of mist and smoke. Whenever she left the city behind, her senses reached out for the countryside, and she realized how habitually she kept them in check.

She had to do so in order to drive into Hatfield. The outskirts of the town were a maze of traffic circles and of roads whose numbers had been changed. Mechanical diggers flung mud about, a British Aeros.p.a.ce playing field gleamed emptily, prefabricated flats for students at the Polytechnic stood on thick stilts above mud. Sandy found herself driving back and forth between anonymous terraces and fields steeped in mist, and she was beginning to wonder if she'd come to the wrong Hatfield--there were at least two more in the Automobile a.s.sociation guidebook--when, among the omnipresent signposts to the Polytechnic, she caught sight of one for Old Hatfield. She had to drive twice around the traffic circle before the traffic would let her off.

The Georgian streets of the old town climbed to St. Ethelreda's church. On Fore Street the car began to labor until Sandy s.h.i.+fted down two gears. She caught sight of the name of the side street she was looking for, nailed to a blaze of sunlight and whitewash, and braked to let two women 83 84 wheeling baskets heaped with vegetables cross the junction. Halting gave her time to blink away the dazzle of sunlight, but as the car coasted into the side street, she blinked again. For a moment it seemed she had driven into a film. The street was a set along which an actor was striding.

She'd seen him half a dozen times, but never in color. He had been an innkeeper, a stallholder at a medieval fair, a pirate's first mate who had tired of killing and saved the heroine before dying on a sword himself. She was sure he'd had a tankard in his fist at some point in every film. She stopped the car and waited for him.

Harry Manners' jowls that used to shake with jollity were veined, she saw; his hair was gray and spa.r.s.er. None of this lessened him: as he came closer his presence seemed more overwhelming, less contained, now that it was scaled down off the screen. He must be nearly eighty, but his eyes were keen enough. He stopped fifty yards short of the car and peered under his gray caterpillar eyebrows at her, a smile sending ripples through his jowls. "It's you, isn't it?" he boomed, and strode toward her. "My luncheon treat?"

She climbed out and stretched. "How did you know?"

"I saw you hunting and hoped I was the lucky man." He clasped her hand in both of his. "Your voice was a melody, you are the symphony. I shall entrust myself to you. Ignore me if I cover my eyes occasionally."

"You aren't fond of cars."

"I wasn't even when they had to huff and puff to put on fifty miles an hour, especially after what happened to poor Giles Spence. As for how they drive outside town these days, is that what's meant by a white-knuckle ride? You'll excuse me if we don't go far. Will duck pie be to your taste?"

"Sounds tempting."

"To the Crooked Billet, then," he cried like several of his roles, and lowered himself into the pa.s.senger seat, tugging at his trouser legs that were wide as thirty years ago. 85 "Back down the hill. Not too too precipitately, if you'd be so kind." precipitately, if you'd be so kind."

As she turned downhill his face looked as though he was trying to suppress the flatulence of panic. As soon as she glanced at him he smiled bravely. "Please ask whatever you came to ask. Take my mind off my cravenness."