Collected Stories (5 page)

"Do you ever experiment, Chu-Chu?"

"Hmm," he sat up, suddenly mindful of his fifty pounds a day. "No. Why?"

"Don't."

There was a long silence, and Gore allowed his eyelids to droop. Then she was talking again, and her voice was like the hum of a distant bee.

He never did remember or understand what she was talking about; there was some reference to ancient rites celebrated in a deserted grotto, and he supposed she was recalling some drag session, but was too bored to question her. The days and evenings passed, and Gore began to put on weight.

One night he was disturbed by the sound of an angry voice, and after he had shaken sleep from his dulled brain, realised it was Greselda's. She was in the countess's room and seemed to be arguing with rising heat. She spoke rapidly in a language Gore supposed was Greek, and the other woman broke in with a vehement "No" several times, then both their voices rose in verbal battle, intermingling, one harsh, demanding, the other fearful, protesting.

Greselda came out on to the landing, still talking in that swift, savage tone, and Gore leapt from his bed when he heard the key being turned in his bedroom door. The maid said:

"Stay where you are. Do not try to come out, this is none of your business."

He heard her go into the bathroom, there was a rattle of metal, as though a knife had tapped on a plate, then the footsteps crossed the landing and entered the countess's bedroom.

"No - no," the countess's voice was high-pitched; Greselda spoke softly now, coaxing, soothing, and her efforts seemed to be rewarded, for the other woman after a while ceased to protest.

A sudden silence fell upon the little house, save for the perpetual murmur of the nearby sea, and the wild beating of his heart. Then like a thunderclap it came. An ear-splitting scream, the pounding of naked feet, a dull thud, and the crash of a metal dish striking the landing wall. The scream sank to a moan, and emerged into a repeated "No - no - no," with Greselda providing a background of pleading, angry demands.

Gore wrenched at his door, the handle came off; then he rushed to the fireplace, took up a poker and jammed its point between the door and frame. The wood splintered, then the door flew open, and he was out on the landing.

The first object that caught his eye was a kidney-shaped enamel dish; it lay in the centre of the carpet and nearby was an open, blood-stained, cut-throat razor. Gore remembered the scene he had witnessed in the hotel, and felt the familiar sickening disgust, only now there was an unexpected element of pity. Greselda came out of the countess's bedroom carrying a rolled napkin in one hand, her face was marred by a darkening bruise under one eye, and her usually prim, tightly bound hair hung down to her shoulders. She glared at Gore, who said angrily, "Why don't you fetch a doctor?”

"Mind your business, and get back to your room."

"It is my business. Do you want to kill her? If you don't fetch a doctor, I will."

The woman's face tightened, the eyes became black slits of gleaming darkness, and her lips parted into a ferocious grin.

"Listen, pretty boy. Do you think Madam would not have a doctor, if there was anything he could do? Aye? Do you think she let old Greselda play with throat-cut razor if there was any other way? Ask her.” She pointed to the open bedroom door, "why not you ask her? I ask her.” She raised her voice. "You want your young man fetch doctor?"

"No!" The scream of denial made Gore retreat a few steps. "No, go back. Do not come in. Go. "

Greselda giggled; a horrible little titter.

"Go back to bed, pretty boy, and tomorrow when Madam is better, you play with her. She fondle your hair and feed you cream cakes. No one help her now, she no want doctor, no want Greselda — she no want help anymore." She nodded slowly, looking like an old she-wolf. "So be it. Go now."

Gore looked at the open bedroom door, the enamel dish on the carpet, the blood-stained cut-throat razor, then went back to his bed.

The countess did not come down until dinner time the following day, and Gore, whose curiosity was now tinged with a feeling of unexplainable dread, eyed her ravaged face anxiously. Outwardly, at least, she was calm; a black dress draped her slim form, and a matching scarf covered the whole of her head, being tied in a know under her chin. She ate little, but drank much, emptying glass after glass of fiery Tuscan wine that Gore found barely palatable. The wine brought no colour to her cheeks, but it loosened her tongue, played havoc with her usually precise English.

"So, little Chu-Chu, you worry about me. Greselda say you worry a lot, want to call doctor. That is true, yes?”

"I was concerned about you,” Gore nodded, and rather to his surprise, realised he spoke the truth. “If you are ill, you should see a doctor."

"You know nothing about it”, she shouted at him, her eyes blazing.

"Careful, Madam," Greselda warned.

"Why for I be careful? He already damned. He no talk."

Greselda shrugged and continued to watch Gore, with, he suddenly realised, an amused, half-pitying expression.

The countess drank in quick succession two more glasses of wine, then her head came up so that the curls of her wig danced

"Greselda get out."

"As Madam commands." The woman quietly left the room, but as she turned to close the door her eyes met Gore's over the countess’s muffled head, and now the amused, pitying expression was unmistakable.

"So," the countess belched and drank some more wine, "you worry about me. Can it be that you have some regard for me that is not entirely dependent on my cheque book? If so, it would not be for the first time. Pity and love are twin sisters. One can hardly tell one from the other. Why do you not speak, my Chu-Chu?"

Gore did not know why he could not speak; could not explain the cold paralysing numbness that was rising up from his feet, so that he could not move a muscle; was not, in a few moments, able to flicker an eyelid. But his eyes could see, even if they could not as yet relay to his brain, what they saw. But somehow the countess was changing. Then she spoke again.

"This wine. I drink, it goes down to my tummy, and there it enters my blood, and the heart, it pumps up to my head and my brain - it becomes woozy, and cares for nothing anymore. But this good wine, it do not stop there, it goes higher, and lots of other little brains becomes woozy, and..." She leant a little further over the table, and spoke in a loud whisper "... they begin to wriggle."

Gore could not move, could not speak, but his heart had the power to race, to thud, to almost choke him, and his eyes could see the scarf-covered head.

It was heaving slightly. Like a pool of spilt milk, rippled by a gentle wind, little waves of silk rose and fell; just over her forehead a tapering peak grew upwards, eased the scarf back, then sank down again. A hole came into being, and from it a tiny strand of auburn hair tumbled out. The scarf was alive now, jumping, writhing, the knot under her chin tightened, her cheeks squeezed inwards, and her head assumed an egg-shaped appearance. The auburn wig was escaping from under the scarf, twisting, jerking, seemingly angry at its confinement; then the countess whispered again.

"I would not allow Greselda to cut them any more. The pain is too great, and they grow stronger every time.”

A tiny, diamond-shaped head came from under the wig, it wriggled down over her forehead, then flicked a minute forked tongue. Another slithered out over her left temple, closely followed by another, and then another, until she had a nightmare fringe of finger-thin snakes, coiling, twisting, waving, and glaring with microscopic blood-red eyes.

"You still worry for me?"

Slowly she untied the knot under her chin, and jerked the scarf away. Then, her teeth bared in a mirthless grin, she raised both hands, and removed the wig. They all reared up and waved their heads. Rooted in red, boil-like bulges, they had blue-veined skins, lightly covered with delicate golden hair; those at the front were thin, and averaged some four inches in length, while those further back were thicker, much longer, and overlay the short, stubby ones that coated the skull base, and hung down over the neck.

The wine the countess had consumed was beginning to have its affect. The entire hideous mop was threshing wildly, several heads were fighting among themselves, others were becoming hopelessly entangled, and the countess picked up a carving knife.

“Chu-Chu," she presented the knife to him, handle foremost, "be a good boy - cut my hair."

He sat, a motionless statue, paralysed in every limb, unable to move his head or close his eyes, but his lips could still part, and he screamed. One long-drawn-out scream.

The door opened, and Greselda came in carrying her kidney-shaped dish and cut-throat razor; she walked calmly over to the countess, and laid the dish down upon the table.

"Do not be so foolish, Madam," she said in English, "let me cut them off. You know if I don't, they will grow right down to your waist "

The still statue that was Gore opened its mouth and screamed again.

"He does not love me," the countess said sadly. "I thought he did. But he has broken his poor little sanity."

Greselda gathered up a bunch of snakes in her left hand, then applied the razor.

The countess and Gore screamed together.

(1971)

Grandfather said he was never to go upstairs.

By “upstairs” he meant, of course, the second flight, the uncarpeted treads that led to the gable attic. His mother also stressed this unquestionable order in no uncertain terms: “Never, never, go up them stairs.”

These were the first words he learnt to utter when still in the pram stage, not all at once of course. First it was: “Nev-er,” that drooled off his baby tongue, then: “Go-o-o,” followed by: “’em stai-r-rs”, in a few months. “Mama” came afterwards, “Dadda” was never an issue — he was dead.

Lionel was ten before he began to consider the implication of this order. He could go to school, go to the pictures, go to visit Aunt Matilda, who lived two miles away, but he could never — not if he lived to a hundred — go upstairs to the attic. It was like Adam being told he must keep off apples. One day he approached his mother when she was in the midst of jam making.

“Why?" he asked.

“Why not?’ she snapped, being in that kind of mood.

“Why can’t I go upstairs to the attic?"

Her plump face turned to the colour of unbaked pastry, so that the veins in her cheeks looked like streaks of strawberry jam.

“What did you say?”

Lionel’s courage evaporated, and he muttered, “Nothing”, but it was too late, he was seized by his shirt collar and dragged into the presence of his grandfather who was dozing before the living room fire.

“He asked me why,” his mother gasped in a voice that could scarce be heard.

“Why!” Grandfather’s faded old man’s eyes gleamed with fear, his mouth sagged as though he were about to cry, then he was on Lionel, cuffing him about the ears, but without much force, for he was very frail.

“You-don’t-ask-why.” He screamed the words, and Mother admonished tearfully, “Careful, Dad, you’ll do yourself an injury,” whereupon the old man returned to his chair panting like a worn-out steam engine.

“Never ask why again,” he nodded weakly, “just never go up them stairs.”

This outburst must have hastened the work done by umpteen years (no one knew how old Grandfather was), for one morning, just over a week later, Mother found grandfather dead in his bed. Two men came and put him in a coffin, which was laid on two trestles in the front, to-be-used-only-on-special-occasions, room. Strange uncles and aunts, the existence of whom Lionel up to that time never suspected, came to pay their last respects. There was much drinking of grocer’s sherry and munching of biscuits; Lionel, scrubbed, brushed, and imprisoned in a tight black suit, sipped his lemonade, and wondered why they had all come so early, after all the funeral was not for two days yet. Aunt Matilda was there, a vast bundle of lavender and old lace, for she weighed all of eighteen stone; her false teeth were continually slipping which gave her a somewhat sardonic, amused expression, not at all in keeping with the occasion.

“How’s you like to stay with yer old auntie?” she enquired, after ruffling his hair, an operation which irritated him exceedingly.

“All right,” he conceded with reluctance.

It so happened he was spared this particular ordeal; news came some two hours later that a branch of the Tabernacle of Divine Wrestlers had burnt Aunt Matilda’s cottage down. Mother looked particularly worried and tried to palm him off on the other uncles and aunts, but with no success.

“Give him a black D-R-A-U-G-H-T,” advised Aunt Matilda, who seemed in no way put out by the destruction of her home, “’e’ll never hear a thing.”

They both overlooked the fact that Lionel could spell.

Mother was not a good actress. The next day she made continual and loud comments, stating he looked poorly, and how much good a nice basin of broth would do him, if consumed just before bedtime. She also unwisely added how well he’d sleep afterwards. When she was outside hanging up the washing Lionel inspected the kitchen. Apart from minced chicken, onions and chopped vegetables, there was a quantity of black powder in a white envelope. This he washed down the sink, and substituted black pepper in its place, then ran back to the living room just as Mother came back with her empty washing basket.