The Wanderer (8 page)

‘Seems you didn’t take heed,’ he said, took a roll-up from his shirt pocket, lit it with a match struck on a filthy thumbnail. He cupped his hand round the flame, drew on the fag, got it smouldering.

‘You’d’ve done well to’ve listened to me,’ he went on, without taking the roll-up from his mouth, letting it dangle from his bottom lip.

But I’d turned away. I put my earphones back in, set off briskly, not once looking back, Blind Willie’s hoarse zeal drowning out anything further he might have said.

I

I’d had an eternity to brood over the writing of this memoir, to order my impressions, to consider by what alchemy to turn incident into prose; yet, when I came to set down the first words, to begin, I faltered. Baffled by its convolutions, I’d no idea at what point to open my story.

Perhaps the proper way to have started would have been to introduce myself, give my name, but that’s something I couldn’t do. My memory’s no better than that allotted any common man, is entirely unsuited to immortality. The events I’ve written of, and those I’ve still to tell, seared, burnt, blistered, scarred my brain, but I’ve forgotten much else. My recall of names is especially poor; mine was lost to me long ago, as were those of the others I will write of: I’ve made up those used in this account.

Deprived of this gambit of name-giving, that brazen alloy of brag and cozen, that feigns a laying bare, while claiming sway, it took me many hours of staring up at the wheeling constellations and ruminating before I hit on an opening. I knew I’d need to plunge in, write swiftly, allow myself to be swept along by the currents of my tale, or else I’d founder. I decided simply to begin at the beginning, cast my mind back to that time, long ago, when I saw the eldritch skull beneath the skin of the wonted world and my life was changed forever. But what happened to me on that dreadful night is only part of what I wish to set down here; I must, lest I lose the momentum I’ve built up, press on.

II

Having found out the world I’d known was merely a bright painted scrim, and glimpsed the vile shambles on stage behind, I shambled through life, staggered, listless. My brain had baulked at what I’d seen, yet I was sure it was no delusion. The ground beneath my feet had been undermined; I felt it might at any instant give way, and I fall through into some dread cavern. The next year and a half passed in routine and tedium; my seared nerves took solace in the bland and dull. After a while, though, I began to gag on that pap life. I wished no longer to cower from, but rather to confront my fears, and in so doing perhaps put them to rout. I grew frantic to talk with others who’d suffered as I had, to share my tale with people who wouldn’t sneer or doubt my reason.

It was then I conceived my plan of placing classifieds in national newspapers, advertisements seeking those who’d seen, as I had, dread things. Sifting through replies was frustrating; I had many, lots mocking, several clearly deranged. In the end, I winnowed them down to just six, the only ones, I believed, in good faith and showing sound mind. I contacted these respondents, arranged a meeting.

The day set soon came round. It was midwinter, less than a week before Christmas, but though it was cold, and blustery, it was sunny. After lunch, I took a walk across to Hampstead Heath. On top of Parliament Hill, a number of people flew kites, a colourful flock against the clear blue sky. I spent some time gazing out over the city from that spot, seeking landmarks, my eyes returning again and again to the dome of St Paul’s, which looked the top of some bald giant’s head, some bald giant buried to his brows in the silt of the floodplain. Then I went home, continued work on a critical essay on
The Lost World
I was writing for a journal of Conan Doyle studies. I managed a few
paragraphs, but, when the light began to wane, I grew agitated, unable to concentrate.

Though I’d managed to keep most friends, in spite of the impassivity that was my bulwark against the quailing of my mind, I’d been feeling, sometimes, alone, since I knew all would have met my telling of the diabolical Punch and Judy show with concern or scorn, but not belief. I’d been, then, in previous weeks, filled with joy at the thought of meeting others who might hear and give credence to my tale. But, as the time of the gathering approached, I grew apprehensive, anxious lest the evening be filled with horror. I fought to quell these misgivings. Would that I had not.

I still, though, had nearly two hours before I needed to leave. So I put on the radio, listened to the tail end of an interesting programme about the Delta blues. But it was followed by a comedy panel show, and the forced drollery twanged my nerves, and I got up to change the station. Turning the tuner knob at haphazard, I happened upon some loud yowling, perhaps a radio play, which startled me, set my heart hammering in my chest. I switched off the radio, went through to the bathroom to splash my face at the sink.

My flat was on the top floor of a mansion block about halfway up Highgate Hill,
³
a little uphill of the spot where, in the folk tale, Dick Whittington (why is it I can recall this name and not my own?) heard the bells of Bow Church calling him and turned back, and just by the place where, or so the tale goes, William Powell, the Highgate Prophet, passed on, one sunny morning, in April 1798. Powell’s tale is strikingly bizarre. He’d been a parsimonious Treasury clerk till he’d won a sum on a lottery and grown spendthrift, lazy and insolent at work. He’d been sacked from his position, the money had soon run out, and he’d ended up destitute. It was after his fall he became known as the Highgate Prophet; he’d a strange ritual: early every morning, in all seasons, all weathers, he’d walk from the Sloane Street
poorhouse he lived in, to the foot of Highgate Hill, stand a moment in contemplation, raise up his arms to the sky, then run up the hill. If he was spoken to by a passer-by, or stopped, or looked back, he’d return to the bottom, start again, would keep on till he managed to dash all the way up in one go. He’d explain, should he be asked about his odd behaviour, his conviction the world would end if ever he failed in his rite. Well, that fine spring morning in 1798, he did, dropped dead, heart burst. Of course, the world did not end then, or so, anyhow, it would seem.
⁴

Being high up, my flat commanded good views, and the bathroom window, which faced south-east, afforded a prospect of the river basin, from the City to the Isle of Dogs, and, on a clear day, even of far-off Shooter’s Hill. That evening, though it wasn’t late, six o’clock by the chimes of a nearby church, it was already quite dark, and all I could see were strewn lights below and, above, in the east, glimmering, the first faint stars of the evening. The sky was clear, and I hoped it would remain so; the following morning saw a celestial event, a total eclipse of the moon, apparently the first Winter Solstice eclipse since the seventeenth century, which I wanted to see.
⁵

Returning to the living room, I poured myself a whisky, settled into my armchair to read from my collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. I find Poe’s prose, with its bizarre mixture of the punctilious, the arid, the droll, and the macabre, a calming influence. His idiosyncratic genius lies not only in the narratives themselves, but in the way they crystallise some abstract notion. I began with ‘The Angel of the Odd’, superficially the most frivolous story he ever penned, though a close reading reveals it to be a poignant account of the havoc alcohol can wreak on the mind. I found myself distressed by the eerie tale that followed ‘The Angel of the Odd’ in my anthology, ‘MS. Found in a Bottle’, so flipped to ‘The Sphinx’, a story I had, since my return from the Fairchild Institute, found absolutely invaluable as a means of
staving off madness. Under its influence, all that seems grotesque admits of a rational interpretation. It helped calm my perturbation.

When it was time, I dressed warmly to spite the cold, in coat, scarf, and gloves, then left my flat, locking the door behind me. Little did I realize I should never return.

For the meeting place of the gathering, I’d settled on a pub in Borough, the Nightingale. It was a convivial old boozer, and I’d chosen it in part because I thought its friendly air would mitigate the horrors we were there to tell of. I also knew that there’d be a lock-in, a tradition of the landlord’s in the weeks running up to Christmas, which would allow ample time for the unfolding of our tales.

Walking down Highgate Hill, the festive decorations everywhere struck me, jarred with my mood: Christmas trees, tinsel, fairy lights. I headed for the stop at the hill’s foot, where I could catch a bus to take me all the way to London Bridge. It would have been quicker to travel by tube, but I’d, of course, conceived an acute loathing of the chthonic. When the bus came, I got on, went upstairs; I always preferred to travel on the top deck for the view it afforded. The bus drove down Holloway Road, almost deserted at that time, to Highbury Corner, where an altercation started up between the driver and a youth who’d boarded without paying. The engine, at idle, juddered. Finally, the youth was intimidated into getting off by other passengers, who were annoyed at being held up, and we were on our way once more. When I next paid attention to where we were, the vehicle had just turned onto City Road. A row of shabby Georgian terraces there recalled Mildmay Park, filled me with dread. I stared down at my feet till the bus reached Finsbury Square.

Then, raising my head to look out, I saw office buildings, constructed, according to some strange panoptic rationale, almost entirely of glass. The road was congested and progress was slow. A few minutes later, passing Moorgate, I glimpsed 30
St Mary Axe through a gap between buildings; its tessellating windows reminded me of an insect’s compound eye.

Finally, the bus crossed London Bridge, the lights of waterfront buildings reflected in the river below, gemstones strewn on a jeweller’s blackcloth.

When the double-decker pulled into the terminus, I alighted, struck out for the Nightingale. On the way, I passed a man in the entrance to a pharmacy, lying on his side, back to me, knees drawn up to his chest, swaddled in a frayed blanket, half a beer can, jagged torn edge, with a few coins in, by his head. In the glass of the chemist’s door, I could see his face reflected. He was youngish, had short, brown hair, a full, matted, reddish beard. Though his eyes were half open, I was sure, from the sedate, regular rise-and-fall of his chest, he slumbered. On his nape was a crude tattoo in blue ink, pigment bled, hard to make out. I leant in to peer. It seemed a sword, straight crossguards, blade hanging down. Just then he snorted, twitched, and, thinking he was, after all, awake, to cover my gawking, I scrabbled in my pocket, drew out a pound, tossed it into the makeshift alms cup. But when the coin hit with a loud chink, he stirred, opened his eyes, blinked, looked dazed. Turning, he squinted at me, then pulled out, from beneath his bedding, a pair of glasses, black plastic frames held together with gaffer tape, put them on.

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.’

Grunting, he rubbed his eyes under the thick lenses.

‘Just got to sleep.’

‘Well…Sorry.’

I backed away.

‘Arsehole.’

I went on, pace brisk.

On reaching the Nightingale, I saw fitful flickering behind the frosted panes; a fire was burning in its hearth, and I was glad,
because of the cold, the gusting wind, and because it would make the place even snugger. The pub’s board, a painting of the songbird it was named for, squalled as it swung restlessly back and forth. I went inside, looked about. Many of the pub’s appointments dated back to when it first opened, the late- Victorian period. The space was partitioned, by wooden screens inset with panels of etched glass, into a public bar and saloon at the rear; the island bar was mahogany with a pine counter, and had a canopy carved with a row of leering heads, Green Men, foliage sprouting from their mouths, wreathing their faces; and the walls were decorated with a lapis-tile dado and hung with fly-spotted mirrors in tarnished gilt frames. Apart from the wavering glow of the fire, the only source of light was a motley array of standard and table lamps, dim bulbs, but the effect was cosy, not dismal. There were Christmas decorations up: paper chains, swags of ivy, sprigs of mistletoe, and a tree hung with silver baubles and clumps of angel hair, but they were muted, sparse, didn’t irk me.

I’d told the others to carry a copy of
The Sphinx of the Ice-Fields
,
⁶
as if we were a book group meeting to discuss it; I knew them, by this token, by the volumes laid out on the table. They sat in slightly strained silence, by the fireplace, in the saloon. I’d meant to be early, but the truculent youth at Highbury Corner and the traffic in the City had delayed me, and it was already five past the hour, and, seemingly, I was the last but one to arrive. I joined them.

We began by, in turn, giving our names and occupations, that ritual of first gatherings. As I’d stipulated replies to my classified should be anonymous, provide no identifying personal details, it was the first time I learnt anything about those I’d invited to attend. A young man wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a suit jacket introduced himself first. He was William Adams, a graphic designer. A woman in her late twenties, strikingly pretty, dark complexioned, long dark hair, spoke up next; Rashmi Natarajan,
a legal secretary hailing from Edinburgh. Then came Elliot Wainwright, a pensioner from Norwich, with a cheery lined face, shock of white hair, and white tufty eyebrows. The stylishly dressed middle-aged woman sat next to him seemed familiar to me. Her name was Jane Ellis. She described herself as a single mother of two from Blackheath, but, as she was speaking, recognizing her brittle accents, I realized why I knew her: she was the author of a number of historical romances, one of which,
The Feminine Monarchie
, a fictionalization of a love affair early in the life of Charles Butler, the, till the book’s publication, relatively obscure seventeenth-century musician, grammarian, and apiarist, the ‘Father of English Beekeeping’, had sold very well and been adapted into a Hollywood film. Jane had been quite a bit in the public eye till about four years before, when it had been announced she was retiring from writing. She was followed by Duncan Wolfe, a butcher from Glasgow, a sullen man whom I judged to be in his mid-twenties. His mien suggested one who’d seen and endured much: he’d a wearied air, sallow skin, drained blue eyes, his long, tangled beard and close-cropped hair were dredged with grey, and he was missing an arm, the right, severed quite high, near the shoulder, the sleeve of the old-fashioned, worsted suit he wore was pinned across his chest. I was the last to give my name, tell of my job.