Ancient Images Part 8

The large wry handwriting proved easy to decipher once she identified several of the letters, but all it seemed to let her know was that the notes were random ideas rather than the products of research. "Man killed while building tower ... his accidental death dedicates it to some pagan G.o.d ... biblical parallels (Babel; others?) ... demands sacrifice ...8 Much of the notes concerned Lord Belvedere, apparently the Karloff character: 8... haughty, strutting, vainglorious, impervious to argument, chauvinistic, unyielding ...8 After more of this, written at such speed that some of the letters had torn the paper, Spence had tried his hand at dialogue: ------------------------------------118 "Belvedere: You are trespa.s.sing in what you say. Never dare to question an Englishman's t.i.tle to his land. Do not judge my country by the savagery of yours.

"Gregor: Can't you see that your denial lets it grow stronger? Truth is our only weapon against that which has been buried but not destroyed. While you deny the blood your ancestors caused to be shed, it will have blood."

A breeze prowled through the gra.s.s on the cliff, and a s.h.i.+ver took Sandy by surprise. She wondered if Eames had paraphrased the dialogue or hadn't bothered to incorporate it in the film. There seemed to be an insight lurking behind her thoughts, but it wouldn't emerge into the light of her mind. She took out the musty book and glanced at "The Lofty Place." Yes, the character was called Lord Belvedere; Gregor had been added to expand the tale to feature length, of course. She closed the book and gazed out at the leisurely unraveling of the waves. That helped her relax, but she was still feeling dissatisfied and thick when it was time to return to the hotel.

She ate Cromer crab at a table set for one in the dining room that overlooked the beach, which was almost deserted now. Before long she had to stop herself trying to creep up on the idea that was staying stubbornly out of reach. She kept thinking the waves looked like a shape that reared up and crouched, slithered on its belly along the glistening sand, reared up again closer to her. She was tempted to order another half-bottle of Chablis, but decided that the show at the end of the pier might be what her nerves needed. She drank a token cup of coffee and strolled out of the hotel.

The evening was reawakening. Couples promenaded arm-in-arm above the beach, wheelchairs squeaked. Close to the pier a back street jangled with pinb.a.l.l.s and tenpenny rides. In the twilight the inflated beach toys that hung in bunches outside shops looked like huge strange vegetables. Families were hurrying down the zigzag ramp that de ------------------------------------119 scended from the esplanade. She joined the queue as it began to clatter onto the pier.

The manager was standing in the doorway of the pavilion, rocking on his heels and bowing to the audience as they filed in. He saw Sandy, and slapped his brilliantined scalp. "Tommy Hoddle. I forgot to mention you to him. I'll have a word with him before the final curtain."

The auditorium was almost full, of at least as many children as adults. Sandy's seat was on the aisle, close to the exit. In the row ahead of her a small boy was licking a green ice lolly whose wrapper showed a vampire with his hair slicked back. Nearer the stage, a little girl was clutching a gray doll with a boxy head and bolts protruding from either side of its neck. As Sandy noticed those, the lights went out.

The curtain rose to reveal two headscarved women chattering over a garden fence, complaining about newcomers to their village. Only that morning the man with the pizza wagon had offered one of them a bite of his big salami (hoots of shocked mirth from a party of old ladies), and what about the family who'd bought the old house on the hill and who never came out in the daytime? They even sent their little boy to night school. "It'd drive me bats to live like that," one woman crowed, to a few knowing groans from the audience.

The woman carried on in that vein for a few minutes, the dialogue not merely begging for laughs but c.o.c.king its leg as well, and then the spotlight beam which denoted the sun dropped like a stone. Children in the audience began to murmur and stir. "It's all right, they're friendly vampires," a mother behind Sandy whispered. "The little boy saves everyone when there's a flood at the end. He turns into a bat and flies to get help."

The women at the fence peered into the wings and fled as the family appeared, a cloaked man who intoned "Good evening" in a deep indeterminately foreign voice, a hooded hooded ------------------------------------120 woman wheeling a pram shaped like a coffin and shaking a rattle made of bloodshot eyes, and finally a diminutive comedian wearing a cloak and short trousers, who was greeted with applause and cheers. They sang a song, "Flit-- tery Flappery Floo," and then complained of a smell of garlic and retreated offstage to make way for the pizza wagon, whose proprietor sang "You can't-a have-a da pizza without-a you gotta da garlic" while Sandy considered walking on the beach until the curtain. What she thought might be the world's oldest young couple sang a tepid love duet, until the simpering fiancee pushed her beau away. "Behave yourself, here comes my father," she said as the band struck up the theme from a television series about the police. It could only be announcing Tommy Hoddle, and Sandy sat forward to watch.

He backed onto the stage, stooped over as though the lantern in his hand were bending him. His policeman's helmet was too large, his jacket and trousers were absurdly small, exposing his bony wrists and ankles. The jump he gave as he pretended to notice the audience made her think of a grandfather trying to entertain youngsters. He pushed up his helmet, which had slipped even lower, and goggled at them.

His downturned mouth was so wide it might almost have been painted on. His eyes seemed larger and more prominent than they had in the one film of his and his fat partner's that she'd seen. He cupped his ear until someone in the front row shouted "Boo," and then he nearly fell over backward. "He's just pretending," the mother whispered behind Sandy, for his panic was so convincing it was barely funny. Even the reappearance of the two gossips came as a relief.

He had to go up to the house on the hill, they cried, and find out what them foreigners were up to. They scattered as the diminutive vampire came onstage to sing "I'm just a little bats today." A blackout made him vanish, a rubber bat ------------------------------------121 swooped across the stage, and the lights came up for the first interval.

The next act began with Tommy Hoddle in front of the curtain, dressed as a scoutmaster and singing "With me little peg and hammer in me hand" in a high occasionally shaky voice. No doubt the tent pegs were meant to come in handy later on as stakes. An owl hooted onstage, and he took refuge in the wings while the curtain rose to display the vampires' front room, mirrors turned to the wall, a coffin by the fireplace, false fangs in a gla.s.s on the mantelpiece, the midget vampire playing with a tarantula doll. "Don't let him go on there or you'll wake granny," his mother said, indicating the coffin, and glided away to answer the doorbell. She came back followed timidly by Tommy Hoddle, and offered him a drink. "See if you can dig up your father, wherever he is," she said to her boy, and they left Hoddle alone.

He didn't notice the coffin at first. Sandy felt her lungs tightening as she waited for his leap of panic. He peered up the chimney, he picked up the gla.s.s in which the teeth bobbed and opened his mouth to take a gulp without looking. Several old ladies shrieked with mirth and shock, a reaction that seemed to disconcert him more than it should, for the gla.s.s rattled sharply against the wooden mantelpiece as he put it back. He paced to the footlights and stared over them, eyes bulging. "What's to do?" he inquired, just as the lid of the coffin began to rise.

Children squealed and pointed, and he leaned forward and cupped his ear. "Behind you," a little girl called uneasily, but he pretended not to hear. When other children took up the cry, he only stared harder--not at Sandy, of course, though he was looking in her direction. "Remind me of what?" he said in an odd flat voice, as if he had performed the script so often that he was repeating it automatically. "Behind you!" the audience shouted, and he seemed to freeze. ------------------------------------122 He wasn't staring at Sandy, his eyes widening until a little boy near her covered his own, gasping, "They're going to pop." He was staring past her at the exit. "Behind you!" the audience yelled, laughing loudly at last, and she found herself joining in. The shouts didn't move him, but only Sandy turned to look where he was staring.

Just beyond the gla.s.s doors, where it had grown almost dark, a man was standing. She couldn't see his face or any other details, except that his silhouette seemed exceptionally thin, yet she had the immediate impression that he was waiting there for one of the performers in the show. He must be carrying a bouquet to present to someone, she thought: that was why she could see a glimmer of flowers about his face. The audience laughed louder still, and she turned to see Tommy Hoddle race offstage, so clumsily he almost toppled across the footlights.

The laughter died down, and there was silence. In the midst of the laughter Sandy thought she heard a clank and thump backstage, as if a door had been flung open. The vampire mother and her son appeared from the wings, and were so obviously bewildered to find n.o.body for her to give the gla.s.s of red liquid to that the audience roared approval. The small comedian made several puns and jokes before saying rather desperately, "Let's go and see what's keeping my dad." They hurried into the wings, and the stage stayed deserted for so long that the audience grew restless. Their murmurs invoked a figure in black, not a vampire but the manager. "I'm very much afraid to have to announce that Tommy Hoddle will not be able to continue," he said. ------------------------------------123 The audience seemed not to miss him, nor did the plot of the show. During the interval Sandy looked for the manager to ask what was wrong, but couldn't find him or the thin man with the flowers. She squirmed throughout the third act, and thought the cast would never finish singing "Flittery Flappery Floo" at the end. She willed Tommy Hoddle to appear at the curtain call, but there was still no sign of him when the audience left amid an upheaval of folding seats.

The manager was waiting by the doors to apologize for the hiatus. Sandy hung back until she would be able to talk uninterrupted. As she approached he brushed his fingertips hard across his forehead, pulling his eyebrows momentarily awry. "I'm sorry I didn't come back to you," he said, "but you'll have realized we had problems."

"I couldn't have thrown him by just being here, could I?"

"Did he know you?"

"No."

"Then no, you couldn't have, because he wasn't aware you were after him. I didn't get a chance to tell him."

All the same, she felt somehow responsible. "Do you think I might be able to talk to him now, at least say h.e.l.lo to him?"

The manager gazed unreadably at her. "I'm afraid that's impossible," he said, and showed her out and locked the door behind her. ------------------------------------124 She was still on the pier when the lights at the front of the pavilion went out, extinguis.h.i.+ng her path. The night seemed to take a step forward. For a moment she thought she saw the man with the flowers leaning toward her from the cliff, but it must be a scrawny bush. A breeze crept behind her, bearing an unidentifiable smell that made her think something had died nearby. She hurried to the top of the concrete ramp and back to the hotel.

Because she felt in need of company, not so much to talk as just to be with, she went into the bar and carried a gin and tonic to a seat by the window. The dark waves appeared to have found a piece of wood: a long thin object lay at the water's edge, glistening as it fidgeted like a dreaming dog. Sandy tried unsuccessfully to distinguish its shape, then glanced around as a couple entered the bar. They were two of the cast from the show: the vampires.

As soon as they sat down, Sandy went over to them. The man's hair was still combed back in a V from his high forehead; there was a trace of stage makeup in the woman's reddish eyebrows. She looked up first, her wide face tired and wary. "May I sit down?" Sandy said. "I was just at your show."

The man blinked at her over his shoulder. Without makeup his round face looked porous as a sponge. "How were we?"

"Good for the children."

"But not so good for you, eh?"

"Perhaps I wasn't in the mood."

"Thank G.o.d for a spoonful of honesty. Sometimes meeting one's audience feels like being lowered slowly into treacle. Sit down by all means," he said, and sat back expansively. "Better days are on their way. This winter will see Hattie here in an Agatha Christie, and I'll be making merry with Robin Hood."

"At least we're working here, Stephen, when it seems half the country is resting," Hattie rebuked him. ------------------------------------125 "Resting is more of a task than working," he agreed, and said deadpan to Sandy: "The worst part is not having somebody telling one what to say and do."

"Though there are lines it's a nightmare to have to repeat at every performance."

"I heard a few tonight, did I?" Sandy suggested.

Hattie gave her a sharp look. "I was hoping the strain didn't show."

"Not on you, but what about the unofficial interval?"

The actor and actress exchanged glances like a secret sign. "Maybe Tommy's act got the better of him," Stephen said.

"How do you mean?"

"Maybe he'd done it so often he forgot he was only pretending to be panicked. Some nights he's been so d.a.m.ned convincing that the producer's had to tell him to tone it down for the sake of the younger members of the audience. That's what one calls living one's role, I suppose."

"Is he better now?"

"We trust so. Any particular reason why you ask?"

"I was hoping to speak to him."

"Ah, that is who you are. The manager mentioned you'd approached him. Speak about what?"

"I'm researching a film in which he and his partner appeared."

The actor gazed at his colleague, who showed him her empty hands. "I don't know when you'll have a chance to speak to him, if at all," the actor said. "None of us knows where he is."

A wind tried the window and then blundered away into the night. On the beach a piece of the dark stirred and settled itself. "He didn't just run off the stage, he ran off the pier, and n.o.body saw him stop running," Stephen said. "As we came over here the theater was alerting the police."

It wasn't her fault, Sandy thought: it couldn't be. She imagined Tommy Hoddle out there in the night, still ------------------------------------126 running, eyes and lungs bursting. "It may just have been stage fright. That never really goes away," Hattie said. "Which film are you researching?"

"The one he made with Karloff and Lugosi."

The actress opened her mouth, and then she fed herself a sip of whiskey before speaking. "Did he know that was what you were after?"

"He couldn't have."

"We can't blame you for chasing him away, then." All the same, the actress fixed Sandy with a gaze that would have reached the back of a theater. "If you're feeling kindhearted, you might leave him alone when he does come back."

"If you think that's advisable."

"You aren't offended, are you? Meeting you would buck him up, I'm sure it would, if you were wanting to ask him about anything except that film. Chances are it was partly to blame for how he acted tonight."

"How could it be?"

"You'd be surprised. He's often said his nerves were never the same since, and he thinks it's what gave his partner a bad heart, doesn't he, Stephen?"

"Billy did drink," Stephen said.

"Did he before they made that film?"

"Maybe not as much."

"Then don't make me out to be a liar." She gazed at Sandy with a fierceness that seemed both weary and habitual, and said, "We may as well tell her what he told us. At least then she won't need to go bothering him."

"Tell her about the film?" When the actress nodded impatiently he said to Sandy, "He told us about it in here one night, over quite a few drinks. As a matter of fact, he was sitting where you're sitting now."

Sandy suppressed an irrational urge to look behind her, at the stretch of the window that was out of her sight. ------------------------------------127 "But when we asked him about it the other day," Hattie interrupted, "he seemed to wish he'd never brought it up."

"Which is to say, what happened to his partner." Stephen closed his eyes, and Sandy couldn't tell if he was collecting his thoughts or using an actor's trick to build suspense. "We gathered that for most of them the film was simply a job to be done well, but in his way Billy took it as seriously as the director Giles Spence did. Billy had thought it was going to be one of those thrillers where the ghosts are explained away at the end. He said he was afraid that his and Tommy's audience would resent not being told at the end not to worry, but he turned out to be afraid of something else."

"What was that?" Sandy said, trying to ignore the restlessness on the dark beach.

"He must have been superst.i.tious, not just in the way of all of us theatricals. The more progress they made on the film the more nervous he became, apparently, until he began to get on Tommy's nerves as well. They'd always shared a room wherever they were working, but now he would hardly allow Tommy to go to the lavatory by himself. Tommy says the worst of it was that Billy refused to admit he didn't want to be left on his own."

"Tell her what's supposed to have happened on the film."

"I was about to," he said, and paused to display the rebuke. "Billy was convinced there were people on the set who shouldn't be, for one thing--we a.s.sume he meant people. He ruined more than one take because he said someone made a face at him round the scenery, and he got more nervous when the director asked what kind of face. Then there was something about a smell when they were in the last week of filming. They couldn't trace it, they thought it had to do with some plumbing nearby, and so they did ------------------------------------128 their best to forget it, all except Billy. He kept insisting it was something dead."

"Something someone had hidden in the studio to spoil the film, he meant," Hattie said.

"I'm not sure if he did or not. Anyway, two incidents nearly finished him. Whether they drove him to drink or vice versa you must judge for yourself, young lady. One day he was checking his makeup in the mirror and he thought he saw Tommy come into the room behind him, only he wasn't sure if it was Tommy because he couldn't see the face. Then he knew it wasn't Tommy or anyone else who ought to have been there, because of what was covering the face, and that was all he'd say. I imagine Tommy didn't try very hard to get more out of him."

"Two incidents, you said."

"The other was on almost the last day of filming. They were shooting a scene where Tommy and Billy had to run off in opposite directions, onto other sets, you understand, which weren't lit particularly well just then because they weren't in use. So Tommy and Billy ran off, and the director shouted cut and print or whatever one shouts in those circ.u.mstances, and then Billy ran back trying to scream. It wasn't until weeks later that Tommy managed to get him to say what he thought he'd seen. All he would say was that he'd run into something he'd thought was propping up the scenery, because n.o.body could fit into a corner like that, only it had started to come after him."

"Tommy says he was never the same after making that film, and it wasn't even released."

"Does he know why?" Sandy asked.

"If he does, he isn't telling. He did say to us that once the director died, everyone Tommy knew who'd worked on it was quite glad to see it quietly buried."

"In Tommy's case that may have been because he hoped it would help Billy sort himself out," Hattie said. "They stayed together for the sake of their act, but offstage Billy ------------------------------------129 nearly drove him crazy, Tommy says. Billy didn't just not leave him on his own, he kept on at him to put on more weight, can you imagine? When Billy had drunk too much he would always start to sing some kind of a song. 'Bony and thin, bony and thin,' he'd sing. And drunk or sober, he would nearly have a fit if Tommy ever stood behind him. Whenever they were walking he'd step back to make sure Tommy stayed in front, especially if they were casting shadows. Tommy got so desperate he suggested they should build it into their act, but Billy wouldn't admit he was doing it. Tommy thought he mightn't even have realized he was."

"How did he die?" Sandy said, though she wasn't sure that she wanted to hear.

"They were going out to entertain the troops during the war," Stephen said. "Tommy decided he absolutely had to get away on his own for half an hour before they left--told Billy he'd bring him a bottle of Scotch. So Tommy came back in half an hour and there was Billy at the dressing table, with the doily he'd pulled off it draped over his knee and all the jars of cream smashed around him on the carpet, and him dead and staring back over his shoulder with his eyes nearly springing out of his head."

"Tommy went out with the troops anyway. At least he had that to keep him going."

"Nothing like hard work to take your mind off things."

"Until tonight, in his case," Sandy said.

"He'll be back. You can't keep an old dog down in this business," Stephen a.s.sured her. "Young lady, we must be going before our landlady locks up, but don't you let your sleep be troubled by anything we've said. I've heard stranger tales in a lifetime of treading the boards."

Sandy didn't quite see why that should be rea.s.suring. When they'd left, Hattie favoring her with a regal wave, she stared out at the wakeful night and then sent herself up to her room. To her surprise, she drifted off to sleep almost as soon as she crawled into bed. ------------------------------------130 The dawn roused her, spreading golden furrows across the sea. She made herself coffee with the kit provided in her room and went out on the balcony to taste the last of the mist. She wouldn't trouble Tommy Hoddle, she promised herself, though perhaps she might call him on on her way back south. She put down her cup and leaned over the balcony, and saw that one name on the poster for the show at the end of the pier had been pasted over. her way back south. She put down her cup and leaned over the balcony, and saw that one name on the poster for the show at the end of the pier had been pasted over.

She showered and dressed hurriedly, and headed for the pavilion. Only a cleaner was there so early, but she told Sandy all that she needed to know, in a booming monotonous voice. The police had found Tommy Hoddle late last night. He couldn't have been looking where he was going. He'd run off the edge of the cliff and was dead of a broken neck. ------------------------------------131 All she could do was drive to Birmingham. She drove southwest across the flat land, past King's Lynn where the market was served by the sea, past the orchards of Wisbech, where apples were glazed with a lingering dew. Soon the sky grew smudged, first with the burning of peat on the Fens and then with the smoke of factories that had ganged up on the cathedral at Peterborough. Further on, amid pastures and spires that gleamed through trees, the steel town of Corby was rusting, as though the ancient landscape were reclaiming its elements. The road began to flourish old names--Marston Trussell, Husbands Bosworth--until it reached the motorway, where the race of cars sent her speeding past Coventry toward Birmingham.

Her drive had been prolix, but at least it wasn't confusing until she reached Birmingham. She followed the ring road in search of the hotel she'd called from Cromer, until she felt as if she would never stop driving: the road was like a racetrack, with her playing the mechanical hare. At last she checked into a hotel opposite the railway station, and canceled her other reservation as soon as she was in her room; then she went out for a stroll before lunch.

It proved to be almost as easy to lose one's way on foot as it had been while driving. Pedestrian underpa.s.ses led under the pavements outside department stores and emerged in front of gloomy offices or at the edge of razed ground where yellow excavators gnawed the earth, When she'd had enough of the snarling of machinery she made for the nearest ------------------------------------132 underpa.s.s, which seemed bound to lead back toward the shops she could see but was unable to reach because of the traffic.

She might have chosen a more appealing route. All the overhead lamps except one were smashed, their multicolored entrails dangling, and the one that still worked was buzzing and fluttering helplessly. Once she had walked beneath the lamp, the half of the pa.s.sage ahead seemed much darker. The glimmering tiles of the walls were blackened with graffiti like tangles of exposed roots. She trod on scattered fish-and-chip papers and almost lost her footing. She wondered if an excavator was digging close to the underpa.s.s, for the smell of stale food was mixed with a smell of earth: indeed, she thought she heard a trickling of soil and a faint sound of clawing. She hurried to the end of the pa.s.sage and glanced back out of the daylight. It must be litter which lay where the tunnel was darkest and which stirred as if it were about to leap from crouching. She made herself walk slowly up the ramp, into the sudden lunchtime crowd.

She ate lunch in a bar in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hotel. A blind man sitting at a nearby table had draped his coat over his guide dog, whether for warmth or concealment she couldn't tell. Every so often the coat would rear up as the dog's head emerged, its gray tongue lolling. Sandy patted the animal as she headed for the multistory car park.

She couldn't locate the m.u.f.fled sc.r.a.ping that she heard among the ranks of empty vehicles until it was beside her, and a figure slithered out from beneath a parked car, his hands glistening with oil. She was so angry with herself for flinching that the poor man must have thought she was swearing at him, not herself. She gave him an apologetic grin and took refuge in her car.

At least there were plenty of signs beside the tangled streets to guide her out to the route north. The retirement home where the stuntman lived was close to an exit from the motorway. Sandy thought the location might be inappropri ------------------------------------133 ately noisy, but though she saw the sign for The Dell almost as soon as she left the motorway, the land had already cut off the rumble of traffic. She swung the car between the globed gateposts and coasted up the wide drive.

The Dell was an extensive three-story house, sporting a weatherc.o.c.k on an ornamental tower. Nurses dressed in blue and white uniforms patrolled the gravel paths that wound about the lawns. Some were wheeling patients, one was shaking her finger at an old man in a wheelchair who had been surrept.i.tiously feeding birds behind a tree. As Sandy parked on a rectangle of gravel she noticed a play area, swings and slides and a seesaw. They must be provided for visiting grandchildren, she thought, not for inmates who had entered their second childhoods.

A receptionist was reading a hospital romance behind a desk in the hall, at the foot of a wide staircase. She placed the book open on the desk and broke its spine with the heel of her hand as she said, "May I help you?"

"I called earlier this week about speaking to Leslie Tomlinson."

"Oh yes. Would you like to wait a moment? I'll fetch nurse."

Sandy sat on a leather couch with rolled arms opposite the desk, where the hospital romance was trying feebly to raise itself. Upstairs an old woman was crooning "Tooraloooraloora tuppence a bag," while while in the ground-floor lounge several old people were watching a war film; a man wearing a beret waved his stick every time the enemy were hit. Soon the receptionist came back with two nurses, whose blue and white uniforms had begun to make Sandy think of fast-food waitresses. "Just see to Mr. Hunter. We don't want him wearing his hat indoors, do we?" the older nurse said to her colleague, and sat by Sandy on the couch. "You wanted to visit Mr. Tomlinson?" in the ground-floor lounge several old people were watching a war film; a man wearing a beret waved his stick every time the enemy were hit. Soon the receptionist came back with two nurses, whose blue and white uniforms had begun to make Sandy think of fast-food waitresses. "Just see to Mr. Hunter. We don't want him wearing his hat indoors, do we?" the older nurse said to her colleague, and sat by Sandy on the couch. "You wanted to visit Mr. Tomlinson?"

"Please."

"You're not a relative?" ------------------------------------134 "Just a researcher," Sandy said, displaying her staff card. "I wanted to ask him about one of his films."

"Have you come far?"

"From London."

"A fair way." The nurse brushed a speck, so minute Sandy couldn't see it, off her knee. "We certainly didn't antic.i.p.ate problems when we discussed your visit with you. Mr. Tomlinson was most responsive. But shortly before our lunch period today he took a turn for the worse."

"Because I was coming, you mean?"