The Face That Must Die

Chapter II

Before Cathy was halfway upstairs she was running. Somewhere in her pocket, amid the clumsy bundle of iced sticks that were her fingers, was the key. She poked the time-switch outside the flat and aimed the key; it was like trying to thread a needle while wearing gloves. The god of frozen fingers was on her side, for she managed to turn the key before the light clicked off.

She nudged the door shut with her shoulder, which felt like a huge lump, as though she were Quasimodo made of ice. A tiny Charles Laughton went swinging away in her mind, shouting “Sanctuary, sanctuary.” She ran to light the fire and squatted before it on the floorboards. Sanctuary much. God, her puns were getting worse.

The flames rose in their cage. As the bars turned orange, her body thawed and grew familiar; she wasn’t Quasimodo with fat unwieldy fingers after all. Christmas cards had fallen from the kite’s-tail display on the dangling tapes over the mantelpiece; she stuck them into place. She drew the curtains and began to tidy the room.

She picked up Peter’s sweater, which was lolling on the bed. He must have come home and gone out again. She collected the sprawl of his comic books from the round Scandinavian table and stacked them on top of the storage units. Books and a Tangerine Dream record occupied the chairs, as though keeping all his places. She put them away, sighing. It would be nice if he occasionally did more than empty ashtrays.

Today was macrobiotic day. This week she was going to make a vegetable curry. She hoped it would work. She cooked, adding more or less what the recipe indicated, tasting constantly.

Somewhere beyond the kitchen window a man was croaking. At last she made out that the word was “Rags, rags.” He sounded like a throaty old night-bird. But wasn’t it late for a rag-and-bone man to be calling? Perhaps he was searching for a lost dog.

Footsteps clumped upstairs. She heard Peter opening the door. “What’s for dinner?” he called.

“ Vegetable curry.”

Silence. A little encouragement would do her no harm. “Are you home?” she called.

More silence. Redundant questions made him irritable. But he might have been going out again, for all she knew.

“ The old arse-bandit was after me today,” he said loudly as he closed the door.

“ Peter!” Why must he be so eager to shock? Mr Craig might have heard him. Perhaps Peter had wanted him to hear, or perhaps he didn’t care.

“ He can’t get enough, that guy. He’ll end up leaving boys tied up in cupboards.”

“ You shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing.”

“ Who’s joking?” He strolled into the kitchen, pulling off his black wool cap. Dark straggly hair flopped over his shoulders. She must trim it soon, despite his protests. “He’ll be keeping them in his wardrobe soon,” he said. “Maybe he already is.”

He often trapped himself in his own jokes – carried on until they ceased to be funny, if they ever had been. It was as though he couldn’t find his way out, and it annoyed both of them. “Were you really speaking to Mr Craig?” she said, to help.

“ You mean the arse-bandit? Right on. We had a really intimate conversation.”

“ What about?”

“ What do you think? Can I please turn down that nasty rock and roll? I play it so late, and it’s so noisy. Not nice music like Beethoven.”

“ He didn’t really say all that,” Cathy said, half-convinced by the gist if not the wording.

“ He wanted me to turn the fucking records down.”

For a moment she felt as though his unexpected violence were directed at her. “You ought to buy some headphones,” she suggested.

“ Save up for them instead of buying comics.”

“ No way. Comics are an investment. I just got a new Swamp Thing and a whole stack of Fantastic Fours by Jack Kirby.” Perhaps he was fleeing that subject when he added “I’ll tell you what was weird – there was some weirdo watching me and Craig.”

That was all he seemed interested in telling her. “There was a man watching me in the library,” she said, mocking the hint of mystery in her words.

“ Yeah?” He sounded indifferent, restless.

“ The man with the limp. He came in the week you were working there. The one who limps. You know.”

“ No, I don’t. That’s why you’re telling me.”

He knew she couldn’t describe people, the pig. “There was a rag-and-bone man out there before,” she said: that seemed a better anecdote. “This little voice calling ‘Rags, rags.’ Or maybe he was calling his dog.” But Peter looked bored. She was glad when someone knocked at the door.

“ Ben and Celia have split up,” Peter said.

But they’d been married less than a year. News like that disturbed her, yet he’d announced it as though it were the weather forecast. Before she could begin the struggle of questioning him, he’d let in Anne and Sue.

“ Can we borrow your phone?” Anne said. “There’s supposed to be some good dope around.”

They must have heard him coming home: they wouldn’t have asked Cathy. Of course it was silly to be nervous – the phone wasn’t tapped.

Sue wandered into the kitchen, smoking a joint. “Oh, hello,” she said as if she couldn’t quite place Cathy. Eventually she doled out a question. “Been to the library today?”

No, she’d been pouring boiling oil on people’s heads. “Yes,” she said curtly. She disliked intruders in her kitchen. She refused the joint and said “Will you ask Peter to empty the bin?”

When Peter appeared, he plainly resented being asked in front of the girls. But he grabbed the bin, and shouted to Anne “Ask if there’s any acid.”

Cathy hoped there wasn’t. Grass she didn’t mind so much, but LSD dismayed her. In the park Peter had cried “For Christ’s sake don’t leave me” gazing at a crippled decayed branch; his pupils had been swollen and flickering. She wouldn’t take acid; the idea of losing control frightened her. Besides, she’d never seen anyone made more pleasant by a trip, nor any couple grow closer.

Peter returned. “I emptied it in Harty’s bin,” he told the girls. “Old bugger thinks he owns the place.” He displayed the empty kitchen bin to Cathy, like a hunter’s prize.

“ Jim says he can get some good Canadian acid,” Anne told him. “Purple Pyramid – it takes you right out of your head.”

“ Great. I can keep a tab for summer.”

Sue dawdled in, coughing as she smoked the joint down to the cardboard tip and lit another from it. “I hope you know how lucky you are, leaving the libraries,” she told Peter. “We couldn’t get through the day without a joint.”

Cathy grimaced, sharing her thoughts with the stove. The only time she’d worked with them, the girls had sat stoned and giggling at the desk for most of the afternoon. When the flat across the landing had fallen vacant Peter had told them at once, though Cathy had wanted it for Ben and Celia. Would her friends have split up if she’d been close enough to mediate?

“ Craig was after me to turn the records down. Christ, his flat isn’t even under ours.”

“ It couldn’t have been our records,” Sue said. “We were out last night.”

“ He complained to us once, though. Isn’t he oily?” Anne squirmed and grinned, as though at a disgusting joke. “And the way he tries to be sort of stiff, as though if he lets go he’ll flop all over the floor. We told him to piss off.”

“ I don’t mind him,” Cathy said.

All of them stared at her. “Sure, he’s a very warm and wonderful human being,” Peter remarked in a spurious American accent.

That joke had become a cliche in itself. If she heard it just once more – They were wandering more slowly and aimlessly; they made her kitchen feel crowded and untidy. The girls gazed at the wall-charts of recipes; they might have been in an art gallery. “Pass me the garam masala, please,” Cathy said.

Sue stared as if she were talking a foreign language; Anne turned to the spice rack, but stood looking bewildered. Peter began laughing. “Never mind,” Cathy said irritably. “All of you go in the other room.”

As they did so, someone else knocked at the door. Bloody hell! She made for the door; she wouldn’t put it past them to answer it while smoking. But Peter was already there. It was Fanny from downstairs.

“ Hello, Peter. Oh, there you are, Cathy.” She advanced, stretching out her hands, which were multicoloured as a palette. “I’m sorry to come pillaging. Could you spare any sugar? Oh buttocksbumanarse I, forgot to bring a cup.”

“ I might have half a grain to spare.” Cathy filled a mug from the tin. “What are you painting?”

“ I’ve just finished. Come and see.” When Cathy hesitated, she added wistfully “You can tell me if it’s any good.”

Fanny’s flat looked as though a living-room, a bedroom, a newspaper cutting service and a studio were battling to occupy the room. An easel stood on a wad of paper thick as a carpet; a drawing-board was folded behind the couch, which at night spread its arms and became a bed. Faces clipped from publications gathered everywhere; a mug of coffee defended its island on the crowded table. The walls brandished spotlights. “That’s it,” Fanny said with an uneasy laugh, and gestured at the easel.

The painting teemed with babies. Some sat in prams, some lay in cartons, on yellowed newspapers, on earth. They laughed, cried, dreamed, played with the air or with themselves, looked bewildered, delighted, abandoned. They were many colours. Some were vivid yet false as photographs in a housewives’ magazine, others were drawn in crayon or marker pen and had a child’s truth about them. Some were fat as tyres, some were skeletally thin. A few were bruised or worse.

“ Yes, it’s good,” Cathy said. “It’s really good. You’ve put a lot into it.” Her words seemed inadequate. She wondered what features a baby of hers would have: Peter’s teeny leftover of a nose, her eyebrows that met in the middle like a Hollywood werewolf’s, Peter’s beard?

“ And here’s my masterpiece.” Fanny showed her a notice painted in the style of her signature, elaborate as New York subway graffiti: PLEASE KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED. “Commissioned by Mr Harty, my first patron. I keep forgetting to put it up,” she said. “Come and hold the tacks while I remember.”

On her way to the door, Cathy noticed a metal bird. It was rough as chipped flint, yet gracefully slim. “Are you going in for sculpture now?”

“ Someone gave that to me.” Did her tone imply a new relationship or a treasured memory? “I want to try working in clay sometime,” she said.

At the bottom of the stairs she tapped on Mr Harty’s door. His dressing-gowned shoulder emerged, and then his bald head; two tufts of grey hair perched above his ears like packing, as though he’d just been removed from his box. “That’s right, Miss Adamson,” he said to Fanny. “Too many people have been wandering about. We don’t want just anyone coming in. There are enough criminals without putting a temptation in their way.” He withdrew like a jack-in-the-box; his lid clicked shut.

Fanny pointed at the other ground-floor flat. “I forgot to tell you,” she whispered, “I saw Mr Nameless Bell at work the other day.”

His was the only doorbell that lacked a name. “You’ve found out where he works?” Cathy hissed. “Is he a spy?”

Fanny thumbed tacks into place. “No,” she said mournfully. Her words threatened to collapse with laughter. “He works in Woolworth’s.”

“ Oh dear.” Cathy couldn’t control her voice, which broke into a jumpy shout. “I thought he must be at least a detective.”

They fled upstairs, giggling. The last of the babies were drying. “When’s your exhibition?” Cathy said.

“ Next week. They’ve given me the whole of the Bluecoat Gallery.”

“ That’s good.” Fanny’s grimace made her ask “Don’t you think so?”

“ I don’t know. I hope so. I just don’t know if it’ll reach the people I want to reach.” She sounded embarrassed and self-deprecating as she added “Come and see it if you want to.”

“ Thanks, Fanny. We will.” The smell of curry drifted downstairs, mixed with a hint of cannabis. “I must go and give himself his dinner,” she said.

She’d reached the top landing when Fanny called “Cathy!” She looked down unwarily. The fall plunged away beneath her; the walls shifted, the stairwell gaped like a throat.

“ I’m awfully sorry, I forgot to ask if you had any raisins. This exhibition has me all jumbled up.”

The moment had passed, and Cathy felt better for having survived it. “I’ll send Peter down with them,” she said.

The girls and Peter were reading his comics. They glanced up to see who Cathy was. She felt like an intruder. Sometimes, in unguarded moments, she wondered if Peter preferred them to her. This year she’d cooked her first full Christmas dinner – but he’d seemed more interested in going next door to smoke.

Grumpily he undertook to deliver the raisins. “And then your dinner will be ready,” she said.

The girls looked up, in case that included them. At last they wandered out, saying “See you later, Peter.”

Not here, if Cathy could help it. They cluttered the flat. They weren’t worth resenting: Sue had a big bum that flopped from side to side as she walked, Anne’s hair was like a thatched crash helmet. But she could stand seeing less of them. Were they trying to turn the top floor into a commune? It annoyed her to have to ask persistently for things they’d borrowed. On Christmas Day her mother had come for dinner; on Boxing Day she’d invited her father. Even on Christmas Day, when Peter’s parents had come too, he’d kept sneaking next door.

When he returned from Fanny’s she said “When are we going to see the Halliwells?”

“ Yes.”

She hadn’t time to be infuriated. “I want to see them on New Year’s Eve. We’ll go out for a meal, just the four of us.”

“ It’ll have to be somewhere cheap.”

She was looking forward to seeing her friends, and didn’t feel like arguing. “Did you like Fanny’s painting?”

“ It was all right.”

“ She wants us to go to her exhibition.”

“ Oh Christ, you didn’t say yes, did you? They’re all a con, those exhibitions. Full of posers pretending they know what they’re talking about.”

But it was Fanny’s. Her look of reproof must have reached him, for to break her silence he said ‘‘Anything interesting happen today?”

Interesting? She was no longer sure. She’d meant to tell him how the park had looked that morning, grass and bushes painted with light and rain – everything had glowed, and the tears it brought to her eyes had made the landscape crystalline – but he seemed to resent her ability to see these things without drugs.

“ Nothing special,” she said, hoarding the memory. “Come and help carry the plates.”

When she brought the rice from the kitchen he was peering through a crack in the curtains, like someone made wary by loneliness Before she could join him, he let the crack fall closed. “Just some guy watching the house,” he said. “Probably one of Craig’s boyfriends. I thought he might be fuzz. He’s gone now.” Perhaps he was reassuring himself as he said “Nothing to worry about.”