Imajica

3

She felt well satisfied with the morning’s work, and treated herself to a glass of wine with her spartan lunch, then started unpacking her loot. As she laid her hostage clothes out on the bed her thoughts returned to the pillow book. She regretted leaving it now; it would have been the perfect gift for Gentle, who doubtless imagined he’d indulged every physical excess known to man. No matter. She’d find an opportunity to describe its contents to him one of these days, and astonish him with her memory for depravity.

A call from Clem interrupted her work. He spoke so softly she had to strain to hear. The news was grim. Taylor was at death’s door, he said, having two days before succumbed to another sudden bout of pneumonia. He refused to be hospitalized, however. His last wish, he’d said, was to die where he had lived.

‘He keeps asking for Gentle,’ Clem explained. ‘And I’ve tried to telephone him but he doesn’t answer. Do you know if he’s gone away?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I haven’t spoken to him since Christmas Night.’

‘Could you try and find him for me? Or rather for Taylor. If you could maybe go round to the studio, and rouse him? I’d go myself but I daren’t leave the house. I’m afraid as soon as I step outside …’ he faltered, tears in his breath, ‘… I want to be here if anything happens.’

‘Of course you do. And of course I’ll go. Right now.’

‘Thanks. I don’t think there’s much time, Judy.’

Before she left she tried calling Gentle, but as Clem had already warned her, nobody answered. She gave up after two attempts, put on her jacket, and headed out to the car. As she reached into her pocket for the keys she realized she’d brought the stone and the bead with her, and some superstition made her hesitate, wondering if she should deposit them back inside. But time was of the essence. As long as they remained in her pocket, who was going to see them? And even if they did, what did it matter? With death in the air who was going to care about a few purloined bits and pieces?

She had discovered the night she’d left Gentle at the studio that he could be seen through the window if she stood on the opposite side of the street, so when he failed to answer the door that was where she went to spy him. The room seemed to be empty, but the bare bulb was burning. She waited a minute or so, and he stepped into view, shirtless and bedraggled. She had powerful lungs, and used them now, hollering his name. He didn’t seem to hear at first. But she tried again, and this time he looked in her direction, crossing to the window.

‘Let me in!’ she yelled. ‘It’s an emergency.’

The same reluctance she read in his retreat from the window was on his face when he opened the door. If he had looked bad at the party, he looked considerably worse now.

‘What’s the problem?’ he said.

‘Taylor’s very sick, and Clem says he keeps asking for you.’ Gentle looked bemused, as though he was having difficulty remembering who Taylor and Clem were. ‘You have to get cleaned up and dressed,’ she said. ‘Furie, are you listening to me?’

She’d always called him Furie when she was irritated with him, and that name seemed to work its magic now. Though she’d expected some objection from him, given his phobia where sickness was concerned, she got none. He looked too drained to argue, his stare somehow unfinished, as though it had a place it wanted to rest but couldn’t find. She followed him up the stairs into the studio.

‘I’d better clean up,’ he said, leaving her in the midst of the chaos and going into the bathroom.

She heard the shower run. As ever, he’d left the bathroom door wide open. There was no bodily function, to the most fundamental, he’d ever shown the least embarrassment about, an attitude which had shocked her at first but which she’d taken for granted after a time, so that she’d had to re-learn the laws of propriety when she’d gone to live with Estabrook.

‘Will you find a clean shirt for me?’ he called through to her. ‘And some underwear?’

It seemed to be a day for going through other people’s belongings. By the time she’d found a denim shirt and a pair of overwashed boxer shorts, he was out of the shower standing in front of the bathroom mirror combing his wet hair back from his brow. His body hadn’t changed since she’d last looked at it naked. He was as lean as ever, his buttocks and belly tight, his chest smooth. His hooded prick drew her eye; the part that truly gave the lie to Gentle’s name. It was no great size in this passive state, but it was pretty even so. If he knew he was being scrutinized he made no sign of it. He peered at himself in the mirror without affection, then shook his head.

‘Should I shave?’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Here’s your clothes.’

He dressed quickly, repairing to his bedroom to find a pair of boots, leaving her to idle in the studio while he did so. The painting of the couple she’d seen on Christmas Night had gone, and his equipment - paints, easel and primed canvases - had been unceremoniously dumped in a corner. In their place, newspapers, many of their pages bearing reports on a tragedy which she had only noted in passing: the death by fire of twenty-one men, women and children in an arson attack in South London. She didn’t give the reports close scrutiny. There was enough to mourn this gloomy afternoon.

Clem was pale, but tearless. He embraced them both at the front door, then ushered them into the house. The Christmas decorations were still up, awaiting Twelfth Night, the perfume of pine needles sharpening the air. ‘Before you see him, Gentle,’ Clem said, ‘I should explain that he’s got a lot of drugs in his system, so he drifts in and out. But he wanted to see you so badly.’

‘Did he say why?’ Gentle asked.

‘He doesn’t need a reason, does he?’ Clem said softly. ‘Will you stay, Judy? If you want to see him when Gentle’s been in …’

‘I’d like that.’

While Clem took Gentle up to the bedroom, Jude went through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, wishing as she did so that she’d had the foresight to tell Gentle as they drove about how Taylor had talked of him the week before; particularly the tale about his speaking in tongues. It might have provided Gentle with some sense of what Taylor needed to know from him now. The solving of mysteries had been much on Taylor’s mind on Christmas Night. Perhaps now, whether drugged or not, he hoped to win some last reprieve from his confusion. She doubted Gentle would have any answers. The look she’d seen him give the bathroom mirror had been that of a man to whom even his own reflection was a mystery.

Bedrooms were only ever this hot for sickness or love, Gentle thought as Clem ushered him in; for the sweating out of obsession or contagion. It didn’t always work, of course, in either case, but at least in love failure had its satisfactions. He’d eaten very little since he’d departed the scene in Streatham, and the stale heat made him feel light-headed. He had to scan the room twice before his eyes settled on the bed in which Taylor lay, so nearly enveloped was it by the soulless attendants of modern death: an oxygen tank with its tubes and mask; a table loaded with dressings and towels; another, with a vomit bowl, bed-pan and towels, and beside them a third, carrying medication and ointments. In the midst of this panoply was the magnet that had drawn them here, who now seemed very like their prisoner. Taylor was propped up on plastic-covered pillows, with his eyes closed. He looked like an ancient. His hair was thin, his frame thinner still, the inner life of his body - bone, nerve and vein - painfully visible through skin the colour of his sheet. It was all Gentle could do not to turn and flee before the man’s eyes flickered open. Death was here again, so soon. A different heat this time, and a different scene, but he was assailed by the same mixture of fear and ineptitude he’d felt in Streatham.

He hung back at the door, leaving Clem to approach the bed first, and softly wake the sleeper. Taylor stirred, an irritated look on his face until his gaze found Gentle. Then the anger at being called back into pain went from his brow, and he said:

‘You found him.’

‘It was Judy, not me,’ Clem said.

‘Oh, Judy. She’s a wonder,’ Taylor said. He tried to reposition himself on the pillow, but the effort was beyond him. His breathing became instantly arduous, and he flinched at some discomfort the motion brought.

‘Do you want a pain-killer?’ Clem asked him.

‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I want to be clear-headed, so Gentle and I can talk.’ He looked across at his visitor, who was still lingering at the door. ‘Will you talk to me for a while, John?’ he said. ‘Just the two of us?’

‘Of course,’ Gentle said.

Clem moved from beside the bed and beckoned Gentle across. There was a chair, but Taylor patted the bed, and it was there Gentle sat, hearing the crackle of the plastic undersheet as he did so.

‘Call if you need anything,’ Clem said, the remark directed not at Taylor but at Gentle. Then he left them alone.

‘Could you pour me a glass of water?’ Taylor asked.

Gentle did so, realizing as he passed it to Taylor that the man lacked the strength to hold it for himself. He put it to Taylor’s lips. There was a salve on them, which moistened them lightly, but they were still split, and puffy with sores. After a few sips Taylor murmured something.

‘Enough?’ Gentle said.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Taylor replied. Gentle set the glass down. ‘I’ve had just about enough of everything. It’s time it was all over.’

‘You’ll get strong again.’

‘I didn’t want to see you so we could sit and lie to each other,’ Taylor said. ‘I wanted you here so I could tell you how much I’ve been thinking about you. Night and day, Gentle.’

‘I’m sure I don’t deserve that.’

‘My subconscious thinks you do,’ Taylor replied. ‘And, while we’re being honest, the rest of me too. You don’t look as if you’re getting enough sleep, Gentle.’

‘I’ve been working, that’s all.’

‘Painting?’

‘Some of the time. Looking for inspiration, you know.’ ‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ Taylor said. ‘But first, you’ve got to promise you won’t be angry with me.’ ‘What have you done?’

‘I told Judy about the night we got together,’ Taylor said. He stared at Gentle as if expecting there to be some eruption. When there was none, he went on, ‘I know it was no big deal to you,’ he said. ‘But it’s been on my mind a lot. You don’t mind, do you?’

Gentle shrugged. ‘I’m sure it didn’t come as any big surprise to her.’

Taylor turned his hand palm up on the sheet, and Gentle took it. There was no power in Taylor’s fingers, but he closed them round Gentle’s hand with what little strength he had. His grip was cold.

‘You’re shaking,’ Taylor said.

‘I haven’t eaten in a while,’ Gentle said.

‘You should keep your strength up. You’re a busy man.’

‘Sometimes I need to float a little bit,’ Gentle replied.

Taylor smiled, and there in his wasted features was a phantom glimpse of the beauty he’d had. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I float all the time. I’ve been all over the room. I’ve even been outside the window, looking in at myself. That’s the way it’ll be when I go, Gentle. I’ll float off, only that one time I won’t come back. I know Clem’s going to miss me - we’ve had half a life together - but you and Judy will be kind to him, won’t you? Make him understand how things are if you can. Tell him how I floated off. He doesn’t want to hear me talk that way, but you understand.’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘You’re an artist,’ he said.

‘I’m a faker.’

‘Not in my dreams, you’re not. In my dreams you want to heal me, and you know what I say? I tell you I don’t want to get well. I say I want to be out in the light.’

‘That sounds like a good place to be,’ Gentle said. ‘Maybe I’ll join you.’

‘Are things so bad? Tell me. I want to hear.’

‘My whole life’s fucked, Tay.’

‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’re a good man.’

‘You said we wouldn’t tell lies.’

That’s no lie. You are. You just need someone to remind you once in a while. Everybody does. Otherwise we slip back into the mud, you know?’

Gentle took tighter hold of Taylor’s hand. There was so much in him he had neither the form nor the comprehension to express. Here was Taylor pouring out his heart about love and dreams and how it was going to be when he died, and what did he, Gentle, have by way of contribution? At best, confusion and forgetfulness. Which of them was the sicker then, he found himself thinking. Taylor, who was frail but able to speak his heart? Or himself, whole but silent? Determined he wouldn’t part from this man without attempting to share something of what had happened to him, he fumbled for some words of explanation.

‘I think I found somebody,’ he said. ‘Somebody to help me … remember myself.’

‘That’s good.’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, his voice gossamer. ‘I’ve seen some things in the last few weeks, Tay … things I didn’t want to believe until I had no choice. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.’

‘Tell me …’

‘There was someone in New York who tried to kill Jude.’

‘I know. She told me about it. What about him?’ His eyes widened. ‘Is this the somebody?’ he said.

‘It’s not a he.’

‘I thought Judy said it was a man.’ ‘It’s not a man,’ Gentle said. ‘It’s not a woman, either. It’s not even human, Tay.’ ‘What is it then?’

‘Wonderful,’ he said. He hadn’t dared use a word like that, even to himself. But anything less was a lie, and lies weren’t welcome here. ‘I told you I was going crazy. But I swear if you had seen the way it changed … it was like nothing on earth.’

‘And where is it now?’

‘I think it’s dead,’ Gentle replied. ‘I wasted too long to find it. I tried to forget I’d ever set eyes on it. I was afraid of what it was stirring up in me. And then when that didn’t work I tried to paint it out of my system. But it wouldn’t go. Of course it wouldn’t go. It was part of me by that time. And then when I finally went to find it … I was too late.’

‘Are you sure?’ Taylor said. Knots of discomfort had appeared on his face as Gentle talked, and were tightening.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I want to hear the rest.’

‘There’s nothing else to hear. Maybe Pie’s out there somewhere, but I don’t know where.’

‘Is that why you want to float? Are you hoping - ’ he stopped, his breathing suddenly turning into gasps. ‘You know, maybe you should fetch Clem,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

Gentle went to the door, but before he reached it Taylor said:

‘You’ve got to understand, Gentle. Whatever the mystery is, you’ve got to see it for us both.’

With his hand on the door, and ample reason to beat a hasty retreat, Gentle knew that he could still choose silence over a reply; could take his leave of the ancient without accepting the quest. But that if he answered, and took it, he was bound.

‘I’m going to understand,’ he said, meeting Taylor’s despairing gaze. ‘We both are. I swear.’

Taylor managed to smile in response, but it was fleeting. Gentle opened the door and headed out on to the landing. Clem was waiting.

‘He needs you,’ Gentle said.

Clem stepped inside and closed the bedroom door. Feeling suddenly exiled, Gentle headed downstairs. Jude was sitting at the kitchen table, playing with a piece of rock.

‘How is he?’ she wanted to know.

‘Not good,’ Gentle said. ‘Clem’s gone in to look after him.’

‘Do you want some tea?’

‘No thanks. What I really need’s some fresh air. I think I’ll take a walk around the block.’

There was a fine drizzle falling when he stepped outside, which was welcome after the suffocating heat of the sickroom. He knew the neighbourhood scarcely at all, so he decided to stay close to the house, but his distraction soon got the better of that plan and he wandered aimlessly, lost in thought and the maze of streets. There was a freshness in the wind that made him sigh for escape. This was no place to solve mysteries. After the turn of the year everybody would be stepping up to a new round of resolutions and ambitions, plotting their futures like well-oiled farces. He wanted none of it.

As he began the trek back to the house he remembered that Jude had asked him to pick up milk and cigarettes on his journey, and that he was returning empty-handed. He turned round and went in search of both, which took him longer than he expected. When he finally rounded the corner, goods in hand, there was an ambulance outside the house. The front door was open. Jude stood on the step, watching the drizzle. She had tears on her face.

‘He’s dead,’ she said.

He stood rooted to the spot a yard from her. ‘When?’ he said, as if it mattered. ‘Just after you left.’

He didn’t want to weep; not with her watching. There was too much else that he didn’t want to stumble over in her presence. Stony, he said:

‘Where’s Clem?’

‘With him upstairs. Don’t go up. There’s already too many people.’

She spied the cigarettes in his hand, and reached for the packet. As her hand grazed his, their grief ran between them. Despite his intent, tears sprang to his eyes, and he went into her embrace, both of them sobbing freely, like enemies joined by a common loss, or lovers about to be parted. Or else souls who could not remember whether they were lovers or enemies, and were weeping at their own confusion.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1

Since the meeting at which the subject of the Tabula Rasa’s library had first been raised, Bloxham had several times planned to perform the duty he’d volunteered himself for, and go into the bowels of the Tower to check on the security of the collection. But he’d twice put off the task, telling himself that there were more urgent claims on his time: specifically, the organization of the Society’s Great Purge. He might have postponed a third time had the matter not been raised again, this in a casual aside from Charlotte Feaver, who’d been equally vociferous about the safety of the books at that first gathering, and now offered to accompany him on the investigation. Women baffled Bloxham, and the attraction they exercised over him had always to be set beside the discomfort he felt in their company, but in recent days he’d felt an intensity of sexual need he’d seldom, if ever, experienced before. Not even in the privacy of his own prayers did he dare confess the reason. The Purge excited him—it roused his blood and his manhood - and he had no doubt that Charlotte had responded to this heat, even though he’d made no outward show of it. He promptly accepted her offer, and at her suggestion they agreed to meet at the Tower on the last evening of the old year. He brought a bottle of champagne.

‘We may as well enjoy ourselves,’ he said, as they headed down through the remains of Roxborough’s original house, a floor of which had been preserved and concealed within the plainer walls of the Tower.

Neither of them had ventured into this underworld for many years. It was more primitive than either of them remembered. Electric light had been crudely installed -cables from which bare bulbs hung looped along the passages - but otherwise the place was just as it had been in the first years of the Tabula Rasa. The cellars had been built for the express purpose of housing the Society’s collection; thus for the millennium. A fan of identical corridors spread from the bottom stairs, lined on both sides with shelves that rose up the brick walls to the curve of the ceilings. The intersections were elaborately vaulted, but otherwise there was no decoration.

‘Shall we break open the bottle before we start?’ Bloxham suggested.

‘Why not? What are we drinking from?’

His reply was to bring two fluted glasses from his pocket. She claimed them from him while he opened the bottle, its cork coming with no more than a decorous sigh, the sound of which carried away through the labyrinth, and failed to return. Glasses filled, they drank to the Purge.

‘Now we’re here,’ Charlotte said, pulling her furs up around her, ‘what are we looking for?’

‘Any sign of tampering or theft,’ Bloxham said. ‘Shall we split up or go together?’

‘Oh, together,’ she replied.

It had been Roxborough’s claim that these shelves carried every single volume of any significance in the hemisphere, and as they wandered together, surveying the tens of thousands of manuscripts and books, it was easy to believe the boast.

‘How in hell’s name do you suppose they gathered all this stuff up?’ Charlotte wondered as they walked.

‘I daresay the world was smaller then,’ Bloxham remarked. ‘They all knew each other, didn’t they? Casanova, Sartori, the Comte de Saint-Germain. All fakes and buggers together.’

‘Fakes? Do you really think so?’

‘Most of them,’ Bloxham said, wallowing in the ill-deserved role of expert. ‘There may have been one or two, I suppose, who knew what they were doing.’ ‘Have you ever been tempted?’ Charlotte asked him, slipping her arm through the crook of his as they went. ‘To do what?’

‘To see if any of it’s worth a damn. To try raising a familiar, or crossing into the Dominions?’

He looked at her with genuine astonishment.

‘That’s against every precept of the Society,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I asked,’ she replied, almost curtly. ‘I said: have you ever been tempted?’

‘My father taught me that any dealings with the Imajica would put my soul in jeopardy.’

‘Mine said the same. But I think he regretted not finding out for himself at the end. I mean, if there’s no truth in it, then there’s no harm.’

‘Oh I believe there’s truth in it,’ Bloxham said.

‘You believe there are other Dominions?’

‘You saw that damn creature Godolphin cut up in front of us.’

‘I saw a species I hadn’t seen before, that’s all.’ She stopped and arbitrarily plucked a book from the shelves. ‘But I wonder sometimes if the fortress we’re guarding isn’t empty.’ She opened the book, and a lock of hair fell from it. ‘Maybe it’s all invention,’ she said. ‘Drug dreams and fancy.’ She put the book back on the shelf, and turned to face Bloxham. ‘Did you really invite me down here to check the security?’ she murmured. ‘I’m going to be damn disappointed if you did.’

‘Not entirely,’ he said.

‘Good,’ she replied, and wandered on, deeper into the maze.

2

Though Jude had been invited to a number of New Year’s Eve parties, she’d made no firm commitment to attend any of them, for which fact, after the sorrows the day had brought, she was thankful. She’d offered to stay with Clem once Taylor’s body had been taken from the house, but he’d quietly declined, saying that he needed the time alone. He was comforted to know she’d be at the other end of the telephone if he needed her, however, and said he’d call if he got too maudlin.

One of the parties she’d been invited to was at the house opposite her flat, and on the evidence of past years it would raise quite a din. She’d several times been one of the celebrants there herself, but it was no great hardship to be alone tonight. She was in no mood to trust the future if what the New Year brought was more of what the old had offered. She closed the curtains in the hope that her presence would go undetected, lit some candles, put on a flute concerto, and started to prepare something light for supper. As she washed her hands, she found that her fingers and palms had taken on a light dusting of colour from the stone. She’d caught herself toying with it several times during the afternoon, and pocketed it, only to find minutes later that it was once again in her hands. Why the colour it had left behind had escaped her until now she didn’t know. She rubbed her hands briskly beneath the tap to wash the dust off, but when she came to dry them found the colour was actually brighter. She went into the bathroom to study the phenomenon under a more intense light. It wasn’t, as she’d first thought, dust. The pigment seemed to be in her skin, like a henna stain. Nor was it confined to her palms. It had spread to her wrists, where she was sure her flesh hadn’t come in contact with the stone. She took off her blouse, and to her shock discovered there were irregular patches of colour at her elbows as well. She started talking to herself, which she always did when she was confounded by something.