The Cutting Room (3 page)

And all the ivy leaves were black.

Sweet, do not even stir your head,

Or all of my despairs come back.

Paul Verlaine, `Spleen’

I WAS BACK at the McKindless residence by six. I dismissed

the squad at ten with instructions to be back by eight. I had a good, rough idea of what was in the place and knew we could

do it in a week - just. I was about to leave when I

remembered the attic.

Miss McKindless had retired some time during the

afternoon, presumably to her brother’s ground-floor study.

Places look different after dark. An hour ago the house had

been full of the shouts and jokes of the porters as they

packed and shifted stuff into the vans outside, now it was

deathly still. It was strange climbing the stairs to the upper floor unsure of whether I was alone in the house. I had no

wish to frighten the old lady - there’s a spectral aspect to me: it’s not for nothing they call me the Walking Dead and so I sang softly to myself as I climbed, a bit of Cole Porter,

It’s the wrong time,

In the wrong place

Though your looks are lovely,

It’s the wrong face,

It’s not her face,

But it’s such a lovely face,

That it’s all right by me.

I thought I heard laughter, so faint I couldn’t be sure whether it had come from downstairs or above me. Miss McKindless

still busy at her work and amused by my rendition, no doubt, but it spooked me a little. I knocked on the door of the spare bedroom at the very top of the staircase and when there was

no reply entered.

The room was the sparsest in the house, empty except for a

bed, a small bedside cabinet and half a dozen chairs. The walls were a glaring white, as if they had recently been repainted.

None of the chairs matched; a harlequin set, we would call them in the trade. I had been in the room earlier in the day and dismissed it as not worth a second inspection. Perhaps it was the late hour and tiredness but now there seemed

something sinister about the arrangement of the chairs. They were grouped round the bed as if six people had kept vigil.

Perhaps they had: this was a house of death, after all. Perhaps Mr McKindless had requested a Spartan room in his last days.

Still, the arrangement gave me the creeps. I moved the chairs into a row against the far wall, opened the drawer of the

bedside cabinet and looked in. At the very back was a small

white object. I slid my hands in and retrieved it. It was an intricately carved netsuke. The ivory was cool, smooth against my hands, responding to the heat of my flesh, growing

warmer as I turned it in my palms. At first I couldn’t make

out what it was meant to depict. There was a confusion of

limbs, a complex jigsaw of bodies that formed a perfect sphere my eye found difficult to disentangle. Then, as puzzles do, it all came into focus and I dropped it on the bed. There were

three bodies, two female, one male. The blade of the carver

had rendered them round and chubby, but athletic nevertheless.

They gripped each other in an erotic combination

impossible in actual life, but that was not what had shocked me. What made me drop the ball was the look on the face of

the carved man, a leer that pulled you in, a complicit stare that drew, attention to the dagger in his hand, for as he

penetrated one girl with his cock, he stabbed the other

through her heart. The features of the stabbed girl were

caught between surprise and pain. Her companion as yet

knew nothing of her fate: her expression was of simple delight in the game. It was a truly horrible object and worth several hundred pounds. I took out my silk handkerchief, wrapped

the netsuke in it and placed it in my pocket.

The ladder to the attic was folded against the ceiling, as

Miss McKindless had described. I found a pole behind the door and hooked it down. I could see why the old lady would find

access impossible. I hadn’t mentioned it, but despite my

height, I’m not good at altitude. I put my foot on the first rung, the aluminium rattle sounding loud against the silence of the house, and climbed. The trap had a Yale and a mortise

lock. I struggled for a minute or two, holding the ladder with one hand, fumbling around in my pockets for the keys with

the other, changing hands, finding the keys, then searching for the right ones in the anonymous jumble. The ground started

to slip away. I reeled against the ladder, realising I was about to lose balance, then a key turned smoothly in the mortise,

the Yale beside it clicked home, I pushed open the trap door and hauled myself in.

I stood for a minute in the dark, half crouched, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath, then, unsure of the

height of the ceiling, cautiously straightened and felt for the light switch.

I was standing in a long, thin room perhaps half the length

of the house. Bare floorboards, clean for an attic. The ceiling began midway up the walls, angling to a peak. Three small

windows that would let in a little light during the day. Along the right-hand wall were racks of metal shelving holding tidily stacked cardboard boxes. The left wall was covered in waisthigh, dark oak bookcases, books neatly arranged. In the centre

were a plain office desk and chair, to their left a high-backed armchair, comfortable but scruffy, inherited from some other room, beside it a bottle of malt, Lagavulin. Dead man’s drink.

I unscrewed the cap and inhaled a quick scent of iodine and

peat which caught the back of my throat. It was the good stuff, right enough. There was no cup so I took the end of my shirt and rubbed it along the mouth of the bottle before taking a

good slug. I was curious about the contents of the cardboard boxes but turned first to the bookcase.

It is revealing how people arrange their books. I was once

in a house where the couple, man and wife, committed

collectors of first editions, had placed every book in a sealed

plastic bag, then on the shelves, spine in, pages out. `That way they won’t get sun-damaged,’ they explained. Others

arrange books according to height, the tallest first, top shelf, left-hand corner, tapering down to the tiniest at the very

bottom. Me, I have them willy-nilly, on suitcase, shelf and

floor.

Mr McKindless had employed the age-old method of

alphabetical by author, with the occasional grouping of

publisher. Regimented over three shelves was a large collection of Olympia Press. Little green and white paperbacks

pressed together - The Sex Life of Robinson Crusoe, Stradella, White Thighs, The Chariot of Flesh, With Open Mouth…

I have always admired Maurice Girodias. He founded the

Olympia Press some time in the 1950s in Paris. Pornography

was in the family, but before he put his profits into a hotel and lost he was a master of the art. Girodias would invent

(un)suitable titles, advertise them as available for sale, and then, depending on the response to his advertisements,

commission a writer to produce the book. Many a penurious

writer subsisted on his cheques and not a few successful ones lost their royalties. He claimed that some tourists came to the city simply to purchase his titles. I agreed. The Olympia Press concentrated on the avant-garde, particularly sex, and people will travel further than Paris for that. Like many collectors McKindless seemed to have been compelled to own every

title. I scanned through the novels. Yes, here it was, the first edition of Burroughs’s The Naked Lunch in its slip case. I had never handled one before. All the Henry Miller was here, too.

The Olympia novels were just a start. Shelves and shelves of erotic fiction. It was a library that would fetch something. I took a rough note, glad it wasn’t me who would have to

manoeuvre the boxes down the ladder. Here was the private

man. The personality I had missed below stairs, confined to the attic like a mad Victorian relative.

I pulled open the drawer to the desk and had a look inside.

Stationery, some nice pens, nothing much. Out of habit my

fingers skimmed the underside of the drawer. There was

something taped there. I took out my penknife and slit it free.

A simple white card. GPM camera-Z Cryptic. I replaced the drawer and slipped the card into my pocket.

%`- I considered stopping. Almost left right there. It was the whisky that drew me back. One more drink, leave the van in

the driveway till morning, last orders at the Melrose, then a walk through the park and see what gave. It was the good

stuff. A reward for working so hard, being clever enough to

arrange a big deal, a pat on the back from me to me.

I should know myself: that bottle was too full and I was

too empty. I took it with me and started on box number one,

the kind of thing all good citizens leave behind, paperwork, old documents, things that really could have been thrown

away and kept for why? The next two boxes were pretty

much the same, old magazines, records, more paper, my

progress was slowing, the bottle halfway lower in its mark

than when I began. One more box I decided - leave it on an

even number, while I could still negotiate the ladder. At first it looked like more of the same. The general detritus of life, bumf, short for bum fodder, bills filed then kept to no

purpose, bank statements - all showing an impressive

balance - insurance policies never claimed on.

To anyone watching, my investigations would have appeared

haphazard, but I have the skill of the searcher. Without

looking I can sort silk from cotton velvet, cashmere from

angora, I can tell with my finger tips an etching from a print.

And I can turn base metal into gold. I think that if there is

anything good in a box I will find it. Who knows what’s

passed me by?

It was an envelope. Just a buff-coloured, thick-papered,

document envelope. Straight away I knew it held photographs.

I could feel them, the weight, the uniform size, photos

not good enough for an album. Two thick rubber bands

secured the folds, one pink, one blue. Pink for a girl. Blue for a boy. I pulled the bands off, slipping them tight round my

wrist, they caught in the hairs of my arm, swift visions of mad nights. I kept them there, a taut reminder, and slid the

photographs into my hand.

Mr McKindless is wearing a white shirt and bow tie. His

hair has lost some of its Brylcreemed bounce, it lies damp and plastered across his forehead. His attention is focused on the young girl in his arms. She is pretty, pale-faced and lipsticked.

Her head thrown backwards in his embrace, her dark curls,

ringlets almost, tumbling away from her face. She is naked

except for suspenders and stockings, and seems almost asleep.

McKindless looks as if he is talking, trying to rouse her. Still she gazes, sleepy and smiling, not at him but towards the man who is entering her. This second man is half out of frame, a torso of chest and arms and erect cock, his right hand pointing towards his member, his left on his hip like some music-hall queer. A second girl, dressed like the other, sprawls carelessly to his right, her cunt revealed. She lies watching McKindless and his companion, her left leg under the other’s left arm. She looks bored. I have seen factory girls look that way towards the end of their shift.

The background was anonymous, a black and white stripe

of wallpaper, a door frame, but I guessed they were in Paris.

These, no doubt, were what had required my discretion. I

wanted to go home. I took another tilt at the whisky and

turned the photograph over. Written on the reverse, in

pencil, was Soled et Disoli.

I began to flick through the rest. More of the same. Mr

McKindless in sweaty action, his thin, pigeon chest, hairless and neon white - well, even a spider has a body. Then girls, girls, girls. Some holding power in their gaze, others

wretched, sad.

A housewife, head bent, lifts her dress, hiding her face,

revealing her sex. Two girls undo their clothing, look into

each others eyes, and, laughing, touch. Breast to breast,

tongue to tongue. A woman is sprawled on a bench. White

gloves lie next to her on the seat. She pulls her jumper up over her head, hiding her face, displaying her breasts.

I could date them roughly from the clothes. Stockings held

just above the knee, patterned day dresses in cotton and

crepe de Chine, suede shoes with high, thick heels. Postwar, but only just. Had Mr McKindless been a Tommy with a Box

Brownie? The background varied, different rooms and

studios, but they had poverty in common.

A girl stands in a bath, soaping herself before the lens.

Now she is climbing out of the tub, bending, exposing her

rear like some Degas beauty.

The room was stark. It reminded me of the high-ceilinged,

linoleum-floored, kidney-chilling bathrooms of my youth.

A woman forgers her crotch in a kitchen, a broom is

propped against the wall behind her, she is wearing felt

slippers.

Now Mr McKindless again, face flushed with drink and

pleasure. A more formal arrangement this time. McKindless

and another man, undressed sentinels, a naked lady reclines on the crest of a sofa, posing between them. Her arms are raised above her head in an arch; she has the flourish of Anna

Pavlova. McKindless is half supporting her, one arm round

her thin waist, the other on her thigh. Beneath them, on the seat, a man and woman embrace. The woman breaks the

clinch, saying something to a person out of view, something