I hadn't had a chance. Anna and I, along with Sarah and Mo, had promised to go down to GoPoint to help organise a Christmas party for the homeless people there. Not everyone's cup of cold custard is it? But that was what we were doing.
"I'll tell him," said Anna.
I continued to saw at the trunk as Anna steered Robbie away. I pretended to be engrossed in the task as she put her hand on his shoulder, told him what we were going to do in the morning and asked him if he'd like to come along.
"What, with like, like, dossers?"
"Yes," she said. I didn't have to look. I knew she would be giving him the big-eye. "It'll be great. You wanna come with us?"
"What, Christmas with the tramps, like?"
"Yeh! Pretty wild, hey?"
He said nothing. He didn't look like he thought it was pretty wild at all. I carried on sawing. A tiny snowstorm of sweet pine dust scented the air.
There were some minor domestic complications. If Robbie had now joined his sister Sarah in deserting the home front, that would leave my other daughter Claire gamely trying to shore things up, even though of all three she would be the one who would rather be here with me the most. But there you are: she was also the unselfish type who would put her own comfort second. The thought of Lucien in his holly-decked designer kitchen, stuffing his sausage and spinning his pastry for a deserted dining room, was too much even for me.
I called a counsel of peace and asked what could be done to save everyone's Christmas. I asked the kids to think about Claire. "Come on," I said, "it's Christmas Eve. Think." As if brain-power was in greater supply during the festive season, like dates and walnuts.
"You could," Mo offered, "invite all of them round here for Christmas dinner."
"No," three voices snapped back at him. One of them was mine.
We found a solution. Instead of deserting Claire, it was decided that Robbie, Sarah and Mo would have the big Christmas lunch with Fay and Lucien after spending the morning at GoPoint. Then in the evening all four of them would come over and join us for a second Christmas dinner. I would have to square it with Fay, of course, but at least no one need feel neglected or trapped. I celebrated this small victory for common sense by opening a bottle of a very special Châteauneuf-du-Pape while the kids decorated the tree with thrilling sparkly crap they'd bought in a last-minute sale.
I think it's good to leave things until the last minute. I sipped at my wine watching my children in the act of decorating the tree, holding aloft glass decorations of green and gold, baubles of silver and red.
On Christmas Eve every year one of the old twilight demons comes down the chimney, and we all take part in a conspiracy not to believe in him. But we actually have faith in him so much that we would never let go of the bizarre rituals associated with this particular demon.
There are other things that happen, too, and I wanted to stay awake until midnight to see them.
But before that could happen we had more visitors. Jaz and Stinx turned up together. They'd bought with them not only an unplucked orange-beaked goose that someone was going to have to de-feather and gut but also their respective partners. Tagging along behind Jaz was a handsome Australian rugby player; and stepping in Stinx's wake came the ethereal Lucy.
"We finally get to meet!" I said to her, pumping her hand. I was surprised. This heartbreaker, this temptress,
this demon
—I mean Stinx's other demon, besides the booze 'n' drugs—turned out to be a jolly but rather plump and matronly middle-aged woman. Maybe I'd been expecting Mata Hari. I think I looked at her with rather too much intensity, trawling for something fiendish behind the eyes, because she looked away from me rather nervously.
"He's been hiding from us," Jaz said.
"It's true," Stinx said. "Come with me, William. Got a Christmas present for you."
He beckoned me out of the kitchen and into the front room. I switched on the standard lamp and there was his folder. He hadn't wanted the kids to see it. Stinx quietly closed the door behind us, shutting out the buzz of conversation emanating from the kitchen. In the quiet of the room he laid his folder on the table and unzipped it.
I wanted to grab at the results immediately but I knew I had to let Stinx unwrap, because even his wrappings are works of art. It's part of the persuasion. We're in the business of preciousness. The jewel is served up inside the Fabergé egg, and the egg comes on a velvet cushion.
I mean his packaging was itself gorgeous vellum. Stinx makes patterned, stitched wraparound covers so beautiful they distract the eye from the object—the forgery. Even though the forgery will fool or at least confound the most trained eye, the cover, the special wraparound, is somehow the clincher. Stinx gets the calfskin himself, soaks, limes, de-hairs, scrapes, dries, cuts, sews and embosses it. To hell with the forgery, this man is a consummate artist. The customer is so enthralled that he always has to ask if the vellum cover comes with the price. No, it's not for sale. It's a presentation jacket, protective and beautiful, to enhance the rare object within.
Then we relent. At a high price.
There were two copies as promised, three volumes apiece bound in morocco green leather. The bindings were lightly scuffed in different places and on one copy the binding threads were fraying badly in the middle of one of the signatures. The broken leather grain of one cover was scourged with red-rot and the other had "fallen victim" to some advanced photochemical degradation caused by sunlight. The joints in both books were starting to give. I hardly wanted to touch them: the samples were durable enough and yet promised—pleasingly—to fall apart with extreme age at the touch of careless fingers. Inside, even the paper mottling varied between the two copies. I held one of the copies up to my nose and sniffed. Stinx blinked at me as I inhaled two centuries of mildew, gas-lamp pollution, sunlight in a study, and finally the varnished oak of a bookcase upright against which the book had rested this last century or so.
The copy in my hand was miraculous. It was a work of genius: perfectly flawed.
"All right?" said Stinx.
"All right."
"Didn't let you down, did I?"
"Stinx," I said. "Stinx. Let me open a bottle of something very, very special for you."
"I'm sorry, William, I've got to tell you this. I've been drying out. That's where I've been these past few days. Lucy said the only way she'd come back to me is if I give up the drink. And everything else. William, I'm having to resign from the Candlelight Club. Forthwith, sort of thing. Official."
I carefully set down the beautiful forgery. "Heck, Stinx. That's serious news. I mean, we have a right to celebrate. We have a book and we have a buyer."
"I can have a lemonade with you," Stinx said.
"Coming right up. Let's join the others."
No one seemed to want to go anywhere and by eleven o'clock everyone except Stinx but including Lucy was pretty sloshed. But high on the early onset of temperance he was in great humour. He tried to talk me into joining him; then he gave up and instead he outlined his ideas. "Installation art," he pronounced. "That's our next racket. I'll churn it out. Jaz will proclaim in the papers that he's turned his back on poetry and is going into Art."
"Or," I said, warming to our enterprise, "we can do collectible wines. All you'll have to do is forge the labels."
"Or," said Jaz . . .
I was happy with these ridiculous plans. Everyone was animated, talking, wine-glow and candle-light shimmering in their eyes. Even Robbie was laughing and joking with Anna. I thought that on the morrow he might even come to GoPoint with Anna, Sarah, Mo and myself, to help the staff make a bit of a party for the inmates. Who knew whether he would or he wouldn't? He might, and that was enough. And if he did it would probably be to follow Anna around like a puppy. My son is smitten with my girlfriend. I know a demon approaching the landing strip when I see one.
With everyone talking and rather too full of Christmas cheer I looked at Anna, and I thought: I can be allowed to love this woman, even if she won't take my key. I looked from her to the boisterous scene in my kitchen. Well, it wasn't a family exactly: but it contained enough trouble to be as good as one.
I managed to peel away from the group and stepped outside into the backyard behind my house. There is an event that takes place every Christmas Eve at midnight and I didn't want to miss it. I don't know why or how it happens, but it does and always on the stroke of midnight. I call it the Ascent of Demons.
I folded my arms, stepped back and craned my neck to get a good view of the skyline. They had already started, dozens of them, quickly turning into hundreds. Yes, hundreds of demons, slowly ascending into the night sky over London. Up they went, perfectly still, like floating statues, each with its own clear space, rising like helium-filled balloons, but much more slowly. The ascending demons had taken on a uniform hue of resplendent, golden-brown. Up they went, leaving the Earth. I have no idea why. I knew they would be back, but right now they were leaving.
Someone burst out of the back door, looking for me.
"Here," shouted Stinx, "what you looking at?"
"London,' I said. "What a place."
He was quickly joined by all the others. They were all craning their necks now, trying to see what had so commanded my attention. But it was pointless trying to tell them. Pointless. You might as well try explaining it to the police. You might as well try telling your mother, or your child. If they can't see it, they can't see it.
The sky was filled with ascending demons now, all rising softly and slowly, many of them become only pinpricks of light, disappearing.
I looked from the sky to Anna, and from her to the rest of them. Unable to see anything in the sky, they had re-fixed their gazes upon me. Anna smiling, Stinx with one eyebrow raised, Sarah and Mo looking puzzled and indulgent, Robbie slightly disgusted, Jaz looking like he wanted to laugh. What an odd group. I loved them all. I fancied that I could see myself in the shining brilliance of their eyes. They reflected back at me, which was appropriate, because the biggest demon I faced was the one I saw in the mirror. Because he was the master of all the others. What should I say? I had lived in the shadow of a wrong I didn't commit and in doing so made a counterfeit of my own life. Faked my own death, in a way.
I knew it didn't matter what happened with Anna. Though I needed her more than ever to help me through, I was prepared for her to love me or leave me, to destroy me on the wheel of sex, to crush my heart to dust: I no longer felt I could control it, or her, or even that I should. We can't live with our foot over the mine. We can't. For the first time since my youth I was unshackled. I had love, even though it scorched me.
You let go. It's as simple and as complicated as Antonia had told me. You cry. You come. You sing. You laugh. You scream. You let go. No one needs to hang on to a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses.
I looked back up at the sky, blinking at the lustrous beauty of the ascending and departing demons. They formed an alphabet I was beginning to learn to read. They were fire in the sky.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35