Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (16 page)

 
          
He
slid up through the sheets, stretching comfortably. He felt refreshed—he
grinned: reborn. He only wondered why he had had the dream about the babies.
He’d had it a couple of times after his grandmother’s outburst, then it had
faded away. Still, if it had come back he could deal with it. He felt ready for
anything.

 
          
He
bared
his teeth at the dark.
Most
of all he felt ready for this writer who was hunting him.

 
          
It
reminded him of the cat he’d stalked in the playground that day. No doubt the
cat had been proud of its hunting, yet it had never noticed him behind it,
stealthily following. Only the master at the window had saved it. He grinned,
and chewed his tongue to taste blood. There would be nobody to warn Edmund Hall,
nor anyone who was helping him hunt.

 
          
Saturday, September 13

 
          
“Oh
God,” Clare said. “I forgot to tell George you were vegetarian.”

 
          
She
was driving along
Prescot
Road toward
Newsham
Park, the far side from the cinema. It was nearly
six o’clock. Beyond the wire fences at the edge of the pavement, people emerged
from small shops with the evening newspaper. Buses honked; ducks flew over them
back to the park, honking. Children watched a large green maggot writhing in
televisions.

 
          
Clare
turned at a film library that looked like a corner shop. A willow swept past on
her right. Silence settled on the street a hundred yards down, except for
Ringo’s
whirring. Ragged tousled gardens rolled by; trees
and low walls were painted with moss. A shampooed poodle and a lion gazed from
the window of a flat.

 
          
“Edmund
hadn’t even mentioned you to George,” she told Chris. “I rang George to thank
him for the invitation. He’s decided he may help Edmund after all. Well, I told
him about you, and he said you must come to dinner too.” She drove slowly,
gazing at the street plaques. “I don’t understand Edmund,” she said. “He seemed
grateful when I told him how you’d helped.”

 
          
“Yeah,
well,” Chris said. “So it goes.”

 
          
That
was from a book Rob had liked. “I think you’ll like George,” she said. “And I
bet his wife’s nice.”

 
          
The
three-storey terraces passed, their front doorways buttoned with strips of
doorbells;
Dylans
, singers or dazed stuffed rabbits,
gazed from posters through windows. At the end of the street the park opened out
with a flourish of trees, making room for a sky that was largely covered by
twin wings of white cloud. Ah, Hampstead Road. Clare turned right, and there
was the
Pughs
’ house.

 
          
It
was one of a terrace. Its front bay was held back from the pavement by a low
wall, painted crimson. The front door was painted orange, as were bricks around
the windows; the curtains, beyond which George stood up as he caught sight of
her, were orange and red. All of the
colours
still
looked quite bright. Through the curtains Edmund turned to wave, faintly amused
again.

 
          
The
front door jammed briefly. “This is Chris,” Clare said. “This is George.”
George gazed at her quizzically, and she took the risk. “Like my guitar,” she
said.

 
          
“She
always says that. Come and meet the wife. Alice!”

 
          
It
was a long thin house. A door opened far down it; sunlight fell out. “This is
Clare. And Chris,” George called.
“My wife, Alice.”

 
          
She
stepped forward from her blur in the box of light. Beneath slightly
greying
hair her face was wide-mouthed, smiling; her bright
eyes wrinkled, they’d had some wrinkles already. Her hips were wide; children
had taken the shape from her breasts. Under her apron her summer suit was
rather old-fashioned, clean but faded. Clare liked her at once. “It’s nice to meet
both of you,” she said with a laugh that went with the smile. “Excuse me if I
don’t shake hands, mine are greasy. I’ll come through to chat with you soon.”

 
          
“Oh,
Alice,” Clare said. “I’m awfully
sorry,
I completely
forgot to say Chris was vegetarian.”

 
          
“Don’t
worry about that. Do you eat eggs, Chris? Well then, no problem. I expect
you’re fond of animals? You’ll enjoy yourself here, then. It’s a menagerie.”

 
          
So
it seemed. In the front room, which was two rooms run together, a cat sat
looking fat and lazy, waiting for a nearby fly. Fish gaped at the air or shook
themselves into golden glides. A rabbit’s black and white nose ventured over
the arm of a chair, twitching its pink Y. Two children were calming the rabbit.

 
          
“Look
at
Flopsy
. You scared her,” the girl (twelve years
old?) said.

 
          
“There
you are,” Edmund said to Clare, leaning back expansively. Dozens of tiny
daggers on pink cloth bulged tightly over his stomach. “Come in, come in,” he
said.

 
          
George
poured her a sherry. “No, thank you,” Chris said. “A glass of milk would be
really nice.”

 
          
“I’m
Olivia,” the girl said, admiring his patchwork trousers. “I’ll get you some
milk.”

 
          
“Don’t
you drink beer either?” Edmund demanded, faintly amused. “What’s the matter
with you?”

 
          
“Nothing’s
wrong with a man for not drinking,” George said. “O thou invisible spirit of
wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call
thee
devil!” And it’s
Iago
who contradicts him. You were
saying you came from Liverpool, Ted.”

 
          
“Do
you want to hold our
Flopsy
?” the boy (eleven?) said
to Chris.

 
          
“Yeah.”
But the rabbit had hardly been dumped on his lap
when she leapt off and thumped the floor with her back legs, growling. “Don’t
do that, Mark,” Olivia said, returning with the milk. “She won’t be comfortable
with so many strangers.”

 
          
“Oh,
all right,” Mark said grumpily. He looked at Chris and brightened. “Do you like
astronomy?” he said.

 
          
Clare
remembered not to grin secretively at Chris. “Do you remember the trams going
along the middle of the carriageways?” George was saying to Edmund.
“And the overhead railway along the dock road?
Did you used
to go to the pictures all over town? I did when I was a lad, in case my parents
didn’t book them. And then when I came into the business, my friends would let
me watch their shows. I’ll never forget some of those places.” The rabbit
galloped around the room, twisting in mid-leap to come down backward. “The Mere
Lane, where they never turned the lights on—I never saw what it looked like
properly.
And the
Essoldo
Litherland
, where they’d start the film before they opened
the doors.
And oh, the Winter Gardens in Waterloo, where they put on
all the
old Hammer films for their last week and let all the
little kids in. I suppose they felt they had nothing to lose. It did the kids
no harm; they chased about and only sat down for the monsters. Ah, those old
theatres. They may have better projection today, but they’ve lost the
personality. Don’t you have memories of Liverpool?”

 
          
“I
suppose there are good things about the place,” Edmund said.
“If
you’re a pop singer or one of these Liverpool poets.
But it’s no use to
anyone in my line of business. You have to sever all ties and go where the
money is. And that’s London.”

 
          
“Do
your parents still live here?” Clare said.

 
          
“Yes,
in
Aigburth
. I bought them dinner last night,” he
said, gazing at Clare as if she should have let him take her. “Oh, I must tell
you,” he said to George. “There was this incredible queer at the next table
that some poor sod had had to buy dinner. An actor, he sounded like.”

 
          
Clare
faded out the anecdote. Chris was admiring a Japanese doll which Olivia had
handed him.

 
          
“And
he stood up and said, “Oh I can’t eat this, I can’t. Please, please take it
away. Seems to me,” Edmund ended loudly, “if you’re invited to dinner you ought
to eat what you’re given.”

 
          
“If
I’m cooking,” Clare said sharply, “I like to know people will enjoy it.”

 
          
“That’s
amazing,” Chris said, handing back the doll. There was an awkward silence.
“That’s where
Flopsy
pees,” Mark shouted, unaware
that his voice needn’t compete.
“In that box.
She used
to pee on everyone.” He looked up at the silence, confused.

 
          
Clare
smiled at him. “Right,” Chris said, and Alice opened the door. “Come and get
it,” she called.

 
          
Beyond
the long dining table a tap ticked in the metal sink; Alice tightened it. A
pudding in a tin raised itself feebly from a pan of boiling water and fell
back, fell back, fell. Alice carried over bowls of homemade chicken soup;
George opened bottles. “We must thank Ted for the wine,” he said.

 
          
“Thank
you, Ted,” the children said in chorus.

 
          
“Oh,
it was nothing. The least I could do. Pass the salt.”

 
          
Olivia
was reaching for the cruet when Alice said, “Let’s just say grace first,
Olivia.”

 
          
She
and the children whispered. George bowed his head, but Clare could see it was a
token gesture. Chris smiled at her across the table; next to her she sensed
Edmund’s impatience.

 
          
“Would
you like some grapefruit juice?” Alice asked Chris.

 
          
“That’d
be fantastic. Thank you.”

 
          
“Actually,
it’s quite real.
Not at all fantastic.”

 
          
“Olivia!”
Alice said.

 
          
“Well,
that’s what our teacher said when I said something was fantastic.”

 
          
Edmund
slurped the last of his soup. “That’s something wrong with Liverpool,” he told
George.
“The food.
I haven’t had a really good meal since
I got back—apart from this, I mean. Last night they tried to say they couldn’t
cook Steak Diane at the table. I soon sorted that out, I can tell you.
And told them how much brandy to use.
That looks good,” he
said as Alice hurried over with a steaming casserole of shepherd’s pie.

 
          
“Chef’s
special for you,” Alice told Chris, and watched approvingly as he ate a large
omelette
and salad. “Is it fun acting?” she said.

 
          
“Right.
It really is. Half the time I’m just doing my own
thing, being myself, you know. I reckon I’m most myself when I’m acting.
Whoever myself is.”

 
          
“Have
you played Shakespeare?” George said.

 
          
“Yes,
at school. I’m not really into that kind of acting. I do more improvisation.”

 
          
“Oh,
George,” Alice said.
“You and Shakespeare.”

 
          
“Show
me a greater playwright and I’ll buy you a yacht. It’s true, though, isn’t it?”
he said to Chris. “Everything is in Shakespeare. He makes you feel things as if
you’ve never felt them before. Whatever it is, he says it best. You describe a
book to
me,
I’ll show you the story in Shakespeare.”

 
          
“There’s
a few he didn’t write,” Edmund said.