Incarnate (23 page)

He waddled bowlegged to the door as soon as he could. His penis was tingling. He wasn’t going to leave empty-handed after having spent so much. He grabbed the magazines that contained the dictionary of films, though he was horrified by how much he was spending. “Thank you, sir,” the shopman said, “enjoy your Christmas,” and Danny told himself that it was just this once, to celebrate. As soon as he was out of Soho, nobody would know what the brown-paper package was; He had just stepped onto the pavement when a woman said behind him, “Danny Swain.”

He mustn’t turn. He could run before she saw the package. He had to run while his legs were still flexible, for his body was stiffening as if his blood were turning into concrete, his brain already felt like a stone. The street was lengthening, the shops were stretching like pictures on clastic, he couldn’t run all that way. Of course that wasn’t happening, it was one of the things his enemies were trying to put into his mind. He turned around.

She was a large-boned woman with a long face, whose expectant grin looked as if she were challenging him. Let her grin, it didn’t matter that his lips were swollen hard and closed, he could stare at her while he tried to remember who she was. People shoved by him on the narrow icy pavement or stepped into the road, and suddenly he realized that all of them could recognize him. They couldn’t say that he had been in Soho without revealing they had been here themselves, and the same went for her, whoever she was. He glared at her to tell her so. “Don’t you remember me?” she said.

It was all he could do to shake his head. “Well, you’re not the Danny Swain I remember.” she said. “We’ll have to do something about that. Not the same articulate chap at all.”

She was using his name in the street for everyone to hear, and he was almost sure that she was taunting him. Suddenly he knew where he had met her, but the recognition jammed his lips shut as it dawned hotly on his face. “That’s right,” she said, smiling. “Guilda Kent. I’d have been offended if you really had forgotten me.”

It was Dr. Kent, Molly Wolfe’s crony Dr. Kent, who had done her best to destroy his mind. He felt trapped yet gleeful, if he could only think why, and in danger of losing control.

“So what brings you here, Danny?” Dr. Kent said.

By the time he managed to open his lips he’d thought of a reply. “What does you?” he mumbled, but it didn’t sound as clever as it had sounded in his head.

“You mean what do I do, don’t you? Well, it comes to the same thing.” She was taunting him, he knew that now, but not in the way the girls at the Hercules did; she had a purpose, he thought she was still a doctor, still something to do with the mind. “I came here,” she said, “because it’s the ideal place to find people like you.”

He wished desperately that he knew what shape his swollen lips were making. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know what kind of person you are? Then you need me, Danny. We’ll son you out, I give you my word. Come along.”

“Not this time,” he wanted to say. She’d tricked him once, she’d made him feel important until he’d been able to talk without stammering, talk about the things his parents didn’t want to know, his dreams. He’d taken a fortnight off to go to Oxford even though Mr. Pettigrew had threatened to sack him if he did. and Dr. Kent had done her best to jumble up his mind so that he couldn’t put it back together. “Won’t,” he said so loudly that people on the opposite pavement stared.

“What’s wrong?” If her smile was meant to be reassuring, it didn’t fool him. “It won’t be like last time, don’t worry. We’ve finished with dreams. I want to bring you back to reality.” When he didn’t move, her smile grew firmer. “Follow me, Danny, or I’ll have to follow you.”

He didn’t know what she might be capable of. The street was threatening to change, the neon lights were throbbing so hard that he could almost hear them, a shrill discordant jagged pounding that would scrape the inside of his skull, and then all at once his head was clear, he had to stiffen his lips so as not to grin. She thought she had outwitted him when in fact she had played into his hands. She was going to show him where to find her, and he already knew where to find Molly Wolfe. Perhaps Molly Wolfe had sent her to confuse him, but he was cleverer than both of them put together. “I’m coming,” he said loudly, and glared at two sailors who laughed.

She led him onto Wardour Street, to the block that the sex shops had reached. The frozen slush seemed not to hinder her at all. Maybe she’d walked the street so often that she knew exactly where to tread. She waited for him in the entrance to a court between two sex shops, little more than an alley. Dustbins crowned with fallen icicles stood by doorways. As he arrived panting in the court, she was unlocking the nearest door.

An uncarpeted staircase led up to a glass-paneled door. Wasn’t this the kind of place that prostitutes in Soho used? But the glass panel said “Know Yourself Ltd,” and when she unlocked the door, he saw it led not to a bedroom but to an office: a chair on each side of a flat white Scandinavian desk, a filing cabinet, two abstract paintings on the wall behind the desk. A fluorescent tube jerked alight as she closed the door, and he sat down at once, to have time to place the magazines gently under his chair while she went behind the desk. She sat down and balanced her chin on her splayed fingers and gazed at him.

She needn’t think that would make him talk. He looked away, at the paintings, but their black-and-white lines began to flicker and shift as if the fluorescent tube were failing. “Look around all you like,” she said, and made him jump. “It may not look like much compared to where we met last, but it’s all I need. It’s in Soho. That’s where the people come who most need my help.”

She wanted him to think he needed help. “Aren’t you going to ask me what kind of people?” she said.

“No.”

“People who are scared of other people, Danny. Especially of women. Why are you so scared of us?”

Just let her keep on and he’d show her that she ought to be scared of him. her and Molly Wolfe. “You’ve no right to say that,” he mumbled.

“You gave me the right by coming up here. Are you scared because we make you feel the way you’re feeling now?”

She wasn’t clever enough for him. A draft was chilling his soaked ankles, and he would have moved his icy feet except that would make her think she had him worried. “What way?” he said slyly and wondered if she’d heard. “What way is that?”

“Cold and scared. Wondering if I locked the door. It’s open, Danny, you only have to try it. But you won’t, because you know you need me. You need me as you’ve never needed anyone, not even your mother.”

The draft was rustling the brown paper. He wanted to reach down and hush the package, but that would draw her attention to it. Was she trying to hypnotize him, was that why she kept repeating words? She had no chance. “You leave my mother out of this.”

“Why, how do you feel about her, Danny? Does she make you feel inadequate too?”

“My mother’s ill. You leave her alone.” He was shouting partly to drown the rustling of paper. “She shouldn’t even be living where we’re living, it’s making her worse. If I had a better job we could afford to move.”

“And why can’t you get a better job?”

Because she and Molly Wolfe and their spies were always trying to confuse him, that was why. He mustn’t let her see that he knew; he must let her think she was confusing him. “I don’t know.”

“Isn’t it because your mother never gave you a chance to speak up for yourself? Don’t look so surprised, Danny. Perhaps you’ve forgotten you told me. You wouldn’t have been able to talk about your dreams except your mother wasn’t there for once, that was what you said.” She looked sympathetic. “You can’t get a good job because you’re scared to talk. I think you’re scared to communicate with people in case they see you as you are. I think above all you’re scared in case your mother does.”

“You leave my mother—” He’d said that already, she was making him say it again, but why shouldn’t he? “You leave her alone.”

“No,
you
leave her alone, Danny. That’s exactly what you’re doing. You know if she found out where you’ve been today when you could have been looking for a better job, you wouldn’t be able to face her.”

Let her go on taunting him, trying to blame his mother. “You don’t know where I’ve been,” he muttered.

“Why, how long do you think I was watching you, Danny? What are you trying to hide down there?”

For a moment he thought she meant the way his hands were folded over his crotch. “You might as well let me see,” she said, “unless you mean to walk out of here right now. But I promise you that won’t be the last you see of me.”

He mustn’t reach down, but her eyes were making him, forcing him to pick up the package. “What have we here?” she said, just like a teacher finding a comic book during a class.

She peeled the tape off the wrapping with her long red fingernails and shook out the magazines. Danny’s face was so hot it felt raw. She was leafing through page after page of girls sprawled across knees, and he was struggling desperately to think what he could say. Perhaps he should agree with everything she said about him, except that he might start believing it of himself. She paused at an installment of the dictionary of films. He thought of saying he needed the magazines to know about films for the Hercules, and then he had it. “I know,” he said, but surely not aloud.

She looked up, shaking her head. “Who do you think you’re getting even with, Danny? Why do you think you need to?”

The answer was her and Molly Wolfe, but she must believe he was too stupid to realize. “Those magazines,” he said, taking a breath to be sure he would be heard. “They aren’t for me.”

“Really?” He could see she hadn’t expected that. “Who is your friend that you’re running errands for?”

“He’s no friend of mine.” Saying that made him grin savagely. “He’s the manager where I work.”

“And where is that?”

“A cinema.” He didn’t want her questioning Mr. Pettigrew. “He makes me show dirty films after-hours for his friends.”

“Really?” She was gazing wide-eyed at him. “Does that bother you ?”

“Yes, it does.” He remembered the veined penis. His face was burning with resentment at having been tricked into seeing that. “He shouldn’t make me. That isn’t my job.”

“He makes you come to Soho too, does he?”

“That’s right, he does. He likes those kind of films best. He wants a list of them.”

“Afraid to be seen round here himself, I suppose. Well, I do seem to have misjudged you.” She slipped the magazines into their wrapping and replaced the tape. “But not really. If you weren’t so scared of people you wouldn’t let yourself be used that way.”

“You stop saying I’m scared,” he muttered.

“You stop me, Danny. Go on, show me you aren’t scared of me. Go on, I want you to.”

He was afraid now—afraid of what he might do to her before he was ready. “Stop it,” he mumbled.

“You’re scared of me, Danny. Scared because I know so much about you. It’s my job to know, Danny. That’s how I help people like you. But I can’t help them if they won’t admit they’re scared.”

“All right, I’m scared.” Suddenly he was desperate to leave before he could touch her. “Give me those now or I’ll be late.”

“Can’t your manager wait?” She slapped her hand, palm down and fingers spread, on the magazines. “Suppose I won’t give them to you?”

“Then don’t.” He mustn’t try to get them, in case he lost control. “I’m going,” he said, trying to turn toward the door.

“Take them, Danny. Here you are.” She stood up between the vibrating paintings and held out the package.

You’ve enough problems without my adding to them. Now, when shall I see you again?”

She had taken a file card out of the cabinet and was writing his name: Swain, D. “I don’t know,” he said, his lips making shapes that got in the way of the words.

“Make it soon, Danny. Don’t give me the bother of having to track you down.” As he opened the door, she said, “If you don’t come back you won’t know how much I know about you.”

She was only saying that to make him come back, she didn’t even know where he lived. He hurried down the stairs before she could call him back to ask. How could she expect him to come again after the way she’d treated him? Because she would say she’d done it for his own good, of course—he could hear her saying so, smug and patronizing. He hoped she would be surprised when he came back, but she wouldn’t like it when he did. What was good for him wouldn’t be good for her.

He pulled out his note pad and wrote down the address of her office, then walked toward Oxford Circus Underground. He was going home, and Mr. Pettigrew would just have to wait for his magazines. On Oxford Street he started grinning, for anyone who noticed his package would think it was a Christmas present. He wished he didn’t have to take it to Mr. Pettigrew, he would have liked to keep it for himself.

The packed train made him feel hot and grubby, and so did the sloping tunnel that he had to climb. The sky glittered above Seven Sisters Road, surfaces that looked like pavement in the dark gave way beneath his feet. He held on to the icy handrail as he ran up the slippery steps to the flats. When he shouted to make sure he was alone, only his flattened voice came back along the boxy hall.

He went straight to the bathroom, which was cold as its white tiles, and began to unpick the tape from the wrapping. He must be careful in case Mr. Pettigrew suspected it had been tampered with. He sat on the edge of the metal bath and leafed through the magazines, but something was wrong with every sequence of photographs: they were out of order, or the woman forgot to look as if she were suffering, or the beating left no marks. Every other kind of sexy photograph was real now—why not these? He wished he could take out the staples and rearrange the photographs, tell Mr. Pettigrew to go and buy his own.

And then he remembered they weren’t for Mr. Pettigrew at all. Dr. Cunt .had almost confused him into thinking they were, but she couldn’t trick him. He’d pay her back for that as well, her and Molly Wolfe. He’d start now. He got scissors and glue from the kitchen drawer and went to look for the photograph. He found the newspaper in the kitchen bin. The outer pages were stained with ketchup, but Molly Wolfe’s face was untouched. He cut it out and glued it over the face of the photograph he liked best, a girl being held down by her mother while her father striped her with a birch. He propped the magazine against the bath taps, and struggled to unbutton his fly to let out the writhing. He had just time to free his penis before it spurted over the tiles above the bath.