Deep Secret (17 page)

“That was Mervin Thurless,” said the blond, glossy man gravely.

The audience, to my surprise, clapped and cheered. A lot of people laughed. They were like that, the people at this convention – surprisingly good-humoured and in a holiday mood: as if they had come to enjoy themselves as much as listen to writers talk about books. I spent the rest of the very boring Ceremony looking around at them.

My first thought was that the police would be in trouble here, if there had been a crime and they needed descriptions of the man on the scene. About nine-tenths of the men had beards and wore glasses. Otherwise there were people of all ages, from the eccentric-looking old man with the hearing-aid to the long-haired people’s baby (which had to be carried outside crying around then) and quite a number of children. There was also more than a fair share of achingly glamorous young females. But there were also more than usual numbers of Wendy-shaped fat ones. There was a whole row of them, male and female, just along from Nick and me, and I stared fascinated at their huge tightly stretched T-shirts, each with something clever or weird written on it. They made me feel pleasantly slender for a change. The men were none of them my types, fat or thin. I don’t go for beards and glasses. But I thought I could quite fancy one or two of the willowy types in paramilitary gear, or the dark one in black leather and mirror shades sitting beside Uncle Ted on the platform. But I know what
really
struck me: the hall was full of people I’d like to get to know. An unusual feeling for sulky, solitary me, that. This feeling extended particularly to the large sprinkling of shy-looking middle-aged ladies (much to my surprise). I found myself looking at the skinny greying one nearest – she was in a bright patchwork jacket – and thinking that whatever she did for a job, it bored her, and she didn’t get on with her workmates, so she clearly lived a passionate life among books instead. And I would have liked to talk to her about some of the things we’d both read.

By the end of the Ceremony, I was thinking that the punishment was not really a punishment at all. Ha, ha. That was before Janine swept down on Nick with “Come along, darling. We’re going to eat with the other guests,” and whisked him away.

I was left on my own for the rest of the evening.

It was a bit like your first day at school or college. I didn’t know anyone and I had no idea what to do, and everyone was charging and bustling around me, knowing exactly where they were going and who they were going with. So I pushed my specs up my nose, squared my shoulders and went to my car to bring my most valued things up to my room. I did the first load unhindered – or unhindered by anything except the weird effect of those mirrors on the corners of the corridors. And there were five right-angle corners. I counted. There and back, going to the lifts both ways. And I was standing waiting for the lift to go down for the next load when I happened to look back at the nearest corner. And I saw the MOST FABULOUS MAN I’d ever seen in my life. Tall and Nordic and slim, deep-set eyes, no beard, no glasses – just
staggering
. To die for, as Robbie’s bint Davina would say.

He was just at the junction, reflected in all the mirrors, so I could see he was fabulous from every angle, and at first I thought he was coming towards me, to the lifts. My knees felt weak at the thought of actually sharing the lift with him. But he was really going the other way. The four images of him I could see wheeled to the right – I
think
it was to the right – and walked off the mirrors. I was smitten enough by the sight of him to run back to that corner to get another look at him as he walked away – he had the sexiest walk – but he must have gone into one of the nearest rooms, because by the time I had tottered over there the cross-corridor was empty. All I saw were multiple versions of myself, looking small and lost.

Then the lift came and I sprinted back and got in it. Further mirror, showing Maree looking glum and frustrated. Still, I’m bound to see him again. And I ask myself what has become of my feelings for Robbie, that I could be so knocked sideways by a total stranger. But it was all right. As soon as I looked inside me, I was as raw as ever in the place where Robbie was torn away. Yet I still feel weak thinking of that fabulous man. I must be very odd.

I was coming back through the foyer with another load, watching the image of myself in the ceiling dangling bags and clutching my VDU to my tummy, when I was accosted by the Dutch Case. “Let Case take your case – this is what I am here for!” he cries, and whips my vet’s bag out of my straining fingers. “Where to?” And he set off for the lift anyway.

I went after him at a panting trot. Dad proudly gave me that bag – and it’s never been any real use, bless him! – and I didn’t trust Case with it one bit. When we got to the lift, he tried to wrestle the VDU out of my grip too, but I hung on to it and he only got the carrier bag with the flexes in.

“Let me take it all. I am an excellent beast of burden,” he said.

I said no, I could manage the rest, thank you. So we went up in the lift protesting at one another, and then he said was I a computer freak? And I said no, I just used it.

“But I am a great freak, in all sorts of ways,” he said. I believed him. “I can do tricks with viruses,” he says. “I once made every computer in Rotterdam display the same nonsense rhyme on the stroke of midday.” He recited the rhyme in Dutch. It took four floors.

“Very clever,” I said. We left the lift and started the trudge round the five right-angles.

“We will set up your computer and then you will eat with me,” he said.

“No thanks,” I said.

“But you must. I will make it a Dutch treat,” he said beguilingly. “Dutch joke.”

“No money,” I said.

“But I have no money either!” he exclaimed. “So let us have a Barmecide’s feast and drink warm water together!”

“I have work to do,” I lied.

When we got to my room, he tried to stay and set up the computer. I was quite determined he wouldn’t. I didn’t trust him not to fill my software with Dutch jokes. I didn’t trust him, period. I more or less kicked him out. He leant back in round the door and smiled meltingly. “Such a strong mind!” he said. “Call on me if you change it. I am room 301.”

“Go away,” I said.

After I set up the computer, I was hungry. I found the service stairs, just in case Case – oh God, another Dutch joke! It’s catching – was hanging about by the lift. I don’t know what it is about that boy (or perhaps I do) and anyway, I’ve been crossed in love and Case is a bit of a come-down after that fabulous Nordic type, so I went down the stairs and found the dining room. The prices posted on the board outside made my hair curl. So I went to the bar, hoping they did sandwiches. I was afraid I was going to have to starve until breakfast.

Mirrors again there, too, not only behind the bar, but the whole end wall, so the place looks huge. They did the most expensive ham rolls I have ever eaten. I bought half a pint of orange juice and found a place to sit.

That bar was crowded with strange conversations. Some Americans next to me were avidly discussing something called a “shared world” (I thought it was something we had no choice about sharing), and someone just behind me kept saying, “It’s no skin off his nose if I filk his filk!” A highly hairy man in front of me was complaining, “It’s his inker that lets him down every time!” Then I heard a girl screaming out, up by the mirror end, “Come to the Gophers’ Orgy! I’m just starting it now!” to which several people yelled, “Oh, shut up, Tallulah!”

I turned to see who was shouting and saw, of all people, that prat Venables!

I don’t mean he was shouting. He wasn’t. He was sitting on a tall bar stool, chatting to the blond glossy man. Because of the mirror up that end, I had him in front and back view, so there was no mistake. From behind, there was the long, smooth head, and in the mirror was his long, smooth face with the gold-rimmed specs – and the face was just turning away from me with much the same horror on it that I was feeling, seeing him. At least he wasn’t wearing a suit this time, but he had on a smart suede jacket and a pristine polo-neck sweater. Altogether he was out of place. I’d have bet large odds he’d ironed his jeans.

“Ouch!” I said, and jerked my eyes away. This was lucky, because it showed me in the mirror that Rick Corrie was standing doubtfully looking down at me. “Oh, hello,” I said to him.

“Hello. Is nobody looking after you?” he said. “Can I get you a drink?”

I said yes please, I’d like a vodka, if he would. He looked so dismayed that I realised he thought I was Nick’s age. A lot of people do. “I’m twenty,” I told him. “Honestly. Do you want to see my birth certificate?”

“I think I don’t want you to push your specs up your nose at me like that,” he said. “I can see it means trouble.”

Then he fetched himself massive amounts of beer and me a vodka, and we talked for a bit. He loves Uncle Ted’s demons too. I said my favourite was the blue three-legged one that kept pushing its face through bedroom walls to see what people did in bed.
His
favourite one was the one that was just a pool of saliva that took the skin off your ankles. And we both agreed that the demon that came up at you out of the loo was a bit too close to real fears for comfort. Then his beeper went. He left his beer and pelted away to deal with a crisis. I was sorry. But I could see that in ordinary life Rick Corrie would arrange to be called away by beepers too. He was one of those people who find it hard to talk to anyone for very long. I think a lot of the people here may be like that.

But it was a shame, because it left me to the mercy of an awful woman who was just the opposite. While I was talking to Rick, I noticed her drifting up to the Americans in the next seats, and that they all said, “Hi, Tansy-Ann” and then turned their backs on her. I can see why. And the moment Rick left, this Tansy-Ann creature pounced on me.

“Tell me
all
about it!” she said. “I’m Tansy-Ann and I’m a healer.” When I stared at her rather, she added, “Your aura is one big grey psychic cloud. Let me give you a back-rub. It’ll stop you being so sad and tense.” And she pushed me forward in my chair and started sort of kneading at my shoulders. I didn’t like it. Neither did I like her.
She
was the big grey psychic cloud,
if
you like. She was biggish and plumpish and her face somehow retired behind her large, probing nose. And she was dressed in something orange and shapeless covered with millions of little cold dangling pieces of yellow metal that jangled when she pounced, and I didn’t like that either. I wriggled away from her probing cold hands and said I didn’t feel like a back-rub just now.

“A hand-massage then!” she exclaimed, diving and jingling round in front of me. “I’m real good at massaging hands. It’s the most soothing experience in the world. You’ll love it!” And, blow me down, she grabbed my hands and started squeezing and bending them about.

I took them away and sat on them. I said I was all right. Thanks, Tansy-Ann.

“You need to sort out your sex life!” she cried. “You’re British. That’s what’s wrong with you.
I know!
Let me set you straight.” Then she leant over me and talked. And talked. After a while I didn’t listen. Tantric sex came into it, and karma, and auras. But then, somehow, she seemed to be talking about widow spiders and the joys a rat felt running in a maze. I just sat there and decided that it wasn’t that her nose
was
that big. It was just that it sort of probed at you as she talked. It seemed to poke about greedily for something she could get off me. Maybe she was a vampire. Possibly she was cuckoo. But I still didn’t have to like her. I made several attempts to get up and go. She just pushed me back down again and went on talking. She had got on to Tarot at some stage. She said she would sort me out by doing a reading.

I was rescued by the sweetest lady. She was shortish and plumpish and darkish, with a rosy sort of innocent face, and she simply came up behind Tansy-Ann and murmured something to her.

Tansy-Ann leapt backwards from me, yelling out, “Is that so?” Then she was off like an orange juggernaut through the bar, hitting tables and spilling people’s drinks and yelling out, “Excuse me! I have to go see to my exhibit!”

The lady smiled at me and went away. She was wearing a long crimson robe thing and lots of necklaces, which ought to have looked as strange as Tansy-Ann’s orange, but it didn’t. There was all the difference in the world. The crimson robe looked natural, somehow, as if the lady deserved to wear it and usually did wear it. I wondered who she was.

(Later: I found out she’s called Zinka Fearon and everyone I asked says she’s marvellous.)

As soon as Tansy-Ann’s yells died away into the distance, I fled back here to my room and started writing this. Widow spiders! I thought to myself as I came up in the lift. Rats! Massage! How the hell does she think she knows rats enjoy mazes? And what has Tarot to do with any of it?

Nick banged at my door and came in a while back. It was after midnight by then. And we both said, “Where the hell have you
been
?” at the same instant, which made us both laugh. Then he said that I didn’t miss much, not eating with the guests – it was dead boring, and one of them was a man called Something White he’s always hated. He’d escaped before the end and looked for me, because Universe Three was showing
The Princess Bride
and he wanted to see it with me.

“But you’ve seen
The Princess Bride
three times already, to my certain knowledge!” I said.

“I still wanted to see it,” he said. “I went by myself in the end. But that wasn’t what I came to say. That prat with the silver car who gave you the money – he’s here.”

“I
know
!” I said feelingly. “I’ve been wondering if we summoned him up by doing the Witchy Dance. It just seems so unlikely – here, of all places.”

“Well,” Nick said, looking rather odd, “you could be right. I’ll tell you – I was just coming out of the lift just now, and I saw him standing up at the end of the corridor where the mirrors are—”