Incarnate (27 page)

Danny had never expected to feel grateful to him. “So can I work in the video place?”

“I’m dreaming. I’m not hearing this.” Mr. Pettigrew stood up slowly as the zombies had. “Get in your box and don’t come out until you’re told. And here’s something for you to think about: if we’re closing, I promise you’ll be the last to know.”

Danny climbed the worn steps to the projection box. He should have known that the manageress would tell on him, for she was under Molly Wolfe’s control—even her name had been meant to bewilder him. Now Molly Wolfe was trying to get the Hercules closed while Dr. Kent kept him confused, so that Molly Wolfe could sell cassettes of herself like the one he’d seen in the booth in Soho. He knew exactly what was going on, and he meant to make sure that everyone did.

He switched on the tape of music for the auditorium, songs that Mr. Pettigrew recorded from the radio, editing out the disc jockey and the commercials. Children were running into the auditorium, banging all the tip-up seats and stamping their feet for the film to begin. He watched the spottily luminous clock above the purple curtains, and grunted with relief when it was time for the film. As soon as Mandy brought his cup of tea he could begin.

The first reel was over before she gave it to him, along with a dirty look. The tea was so hot he couldn’t hold the plastic cup. He put it on the ledge of his window to the auditorium, he trampled on the carpet where the magazines were hidden, then he took out his pad and sat on his high chair to write.

It was the only way to deal with Dr. Kent and Molly Wolfe. Putting her face in the magazines was no good, not when the positions were already unsatisfyingly familiar and when afterward he felt disgusted with himself. Going back to Dr. Kent to make her think she’d got the better of him would be to trick himself, for there was no reason to go back. Publicity was what they were scared of, you could tell from the way Molly Wolfe had tried to hide her face from the newspaper—the same newspaper that people had been writing letters to about the sex shops. That paper wouldn’t let her stop it printing what he wrote.

“Dear Sirs,” he wrote, and sucked his pen. His mouth tasted tinny by the time he began scribbling. “The people who wrote and said they didn’t want any sex shops in Soho where they live ought to be told there is somewhere a lot worse there, at 8 St. Quentin’s Court off Wardour Street, where Dr. Guilda Kent takes people she catches coming out of sex shops by saying she’ll tell people they were there.” He had to be careful now not to give away who he was; he was sure that when he’d written to the papers during all the uproar about the CIA giving people drugs, when he’d told them to look nearer home, in Oxford, they’d thrown away his letters as soon as they’d read his address on the flap. “She uses Soho as a front,” he wrote, enjoying his succinctness. “She is involved with Molly Wolfe who you reported, who you can see in the sex shops, so you can see that one of them is luring victims for the other.” That would make people have to think which was which, think for themselves for a change. “If you don’t believe me go and ask them and see them hide their faces,” he finished, and began to copy the letter out neatly while he thought of a name to call himself.

He stopped at “involved” and took out the thesaurus,, which was dragging at his nipple as his mother said he used to do to her. “Implicated” sounded better, and he wrote that instead. He finished the copying and signed himself A. Mann, then he went to his window and saw that Mr. Pettigrew had called the police.

Children were dodging from row to row to borrow tickets from children who’d paid to get in, while Mr. Pettigrew and Mandy and the police tried to head them off and Mickey Mouse waved a wand, trying desperately to stop the multiplying magic. Danny moved his plastic cup so as to watch the show, and it wasn’t until he heard the hiss of leaking tea that he realized the projector was melting the cup. When he tugged at the cup most of it came away, spilling tea down the projector and jerking the film off the screen, toward the dusty cut-price chandeliers.

Mr. Pettigrew came in as soon as the police had marched away their captives. “Why don’t you set the place on fire and be done with it,” he said when he saw the base of the cup oozing down the side of the projector. Danny’s throat went dry—Mr. Pettigrew was treading on the magazines. “Off tomorrow, aren’t you? Allah be praised and bless all the nignogs. If I could pay your dad his rate I’d have him back full time.”

Danny hardly heard, for Mr. Pettigrew had shown him that he couldn’t send the letter. If he sent it without signing his real name, then Dr. Kent and Molly Wolfe would be able to lie, because there would be nobody to stand up against them. If he signed it his mother might find out he’d been to Soho. He knew what to do, they hadn’t beaten him.

At home he hid the letter under his bedroom carpet and was still tonguing breakfast from between his teeth to chew as he made for Soho the next morning.

Wardour Street, was almost deserted. Perhaps Dr. Kent was taking a Christmas break. The door at the foot of the stairs was open, and it occurred to him that he might be able to look through her files. That sent him tiptoeing across the court. When he looked up the stairs she had come out of her office and was waiting for him.

Her long face smiled as he clung to the doorway. His penis felt as if it had retreated into his crotch from cold and panic. “Happy Christmas, Danny,” she said. “Come right up.”

If he tried to step back he would fall on his face. That must be why she was smiling, grinning like a horse. The staircase seemed so long and steep he thought he would never reach the top. She went back into her office as if she were tired of waiting, and now he could creep out while she wasn’t watching, except that he wasn’t going to turn back and leave her unchallenged. She couldn’t keep him climbing the stairs forever, though he was sure she was trying. The thought seemed to release him, for almost at once he was at the top.

“Close the door.” She turned from the filing cabinet with a card in her hand. He stamped his feet—gray ice pattered down the stairs—and closed himself in. The glare of the frosted glass left “Know Yourself” in mirror writing on his eyes. “What brought you back to me?” she said.

He had to tell her what she must want to hear, though it tasted like bile in his mouth. “I need your help.”

“I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion yourself.” But she didn’t sound altogether convinced. “What persuaded you?”

He felt his mouth stiffen. He had no answer at all. She would know he was lying, that he hadn’t come for help but to get the better of her. When she sat forward, he would have shrunk back, except that his spine was already digging into the chair. “Were you lonely over Christmas, was that it?”

He felt grateful, and then furious with himself for it.

“Yes.”

“I can see how you would be.” She was toying with his file card. “And is your manager still making you show films you don’t like?”

“Yes,” he said, relaxing, since that was true enough.

“They still don’t turn you on?”

“No,” he said, more relaxed.

“It sounds to me as if he needs me too. What was the name of the cinema again? You told me but I’ve forgotten.”

“No I didn’t,” Danny said at once, beginning to enjoy himself.

“Oh, didn’t you? Well, never mind. I’m glad that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to you, Danny. Anyone who reads magazines like the ones you showed me has to be terrified of women. I’d like to get hold of their subscription list, I can tell you. It would keep a team of psychiatrists busy for years.”

“It’s all right reading about doing it to boys though, isn’t it? All those Billy Bunter books, all the school stories where the boys get beaten. They’re still in children’s libraries, I’ve seen them. Nobody tries to have
them
stopped. I wrote to the papers about them once but they never put my letter in.”

She was gazing wide-eyed at him. and he had a sudden dreadful feeling that he’d said too much. Eventually she said, “You see, you can talk. You shouldn’t be so afraid that people won’t listen.”

She was listening to make him talk. When she’d done that eleven years ago, she had nearly destroyed him. She gazed at him over her praying hands. “Tell me something, Danny. Have you ever asked a girl to go out with you?”

Now he knew to keep his mouth shut, but the trouble was that was an answer too. “Why not?” she said.

“Because I don’t need to.”

He’d meant to say he didn’t want to. He bit his tongue for playing tricks on him, bit until he heard the flesh crunch. “Not good enough.” she said. “You don’t believe it and neither do I. Why don’t you take a girl out and find out what it’s like? Are you scared your mother wouldn’t want you to?”

He pressed his aching tongue against the roof of his mouth and managed to say, “You leave my mum alone.”

“You know what it is, don’t you Danny? She’s scared of letting you do anything without her and that makes you scared of what might happen. You’d be free if it weren’t for her.”

He was on his feet before he knew it, his knees shoving the desk into her. “That’s not true,” he screamed.

“Isn’t it?” Surely the desk had hit her, he hoped wildly that it had, but she seemed unperturbed. She must be pretending. “Show me, then. Show me what you can do.”

He almost did. Her throat was within reach, the street might still be practically deserted. She would tip back in her chair until her head smashed against the wall, her legs would kick helplessly on the desk until he climbed on top of her, pinning her down, biting at her face so that she didn’t simply die, biting as the zombies had. By the time he’d imagined all that it was too late, his impulse had missed its chance. He sat down hastily, both his prickly body and his mind feeling like someone else’s. “Now show me,” she said.

The draft under the door was flapping the sodden cuffs of his trousers, yet he felt he was burning. “Show you what?”

“How you’d ask a woman to go out with you. Go ahead.”

He was staring at his hands, forcing them apart to grip his knees. “Don’t want to,” he muttered.

“You will when you know you can. You need to, Danny. Have a try.” She snapped his card against the desk to make him look up. “Unless you’d rather we discussed it with your mother first.”

“You don’t know where she lives.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she said, and his sudden triumph turned to panic: perhaps she would follow him home instead of just sending her spies. “If you don’t want me to, then you know what to do. Go on, Danny, ask me, try.”

Almost everything he’d said to her was a pretense, but he couldn’t say those words. Maybe he could mouth them, that wasn’t really saying, but she said, “No good, Danny. I didn’t hear a word.”

He took a breath so deep it rasped his throat and made his head throb. He forced the words out without thinking what they meant, it was the only way they would come. Half the syllables stuck in his throat. “Will yuh guh ut wuh muh,” he heard himself muttering.

“Better, but I still can’t quite hear.”

He wanted to leap up, to make her flinch. “‘Will you go out with me!” he shouted.

“Of course I will, Danny. When?”

Were they still pretending? Suddenly he saw that he could get her away from her office, get her where he wanted her. “New Year’s Eve,” he blurted.

“Your cinema is closed then, is it? Perfect. Shall we say about eight? We’ll take my car. Give me your address and I’ll pick you up.”

“You mustn’t,” he said, neither must she see that he was afraid she would talk to his mother. “All right then,” he said, suddenly cunning. “It’s 2 Thane Villas. That’s where I live.”

She wrote that down and smiled at him until he smiled at how easily fooled she was. “I really think we’re making progress. For old time’s sake I’m not charging you yet,” she said. “When we’ve finished you can decide how much it’s worth to you.”

It was already worth more than she knew. He only wished he had been able to think of an address that wasn’t just a few blocks away from home.

“You look happier,” his mother said when he went home, “now you just stay that way,” and they had one of their best evenings together, playing Snap and rummy, his mother turning girlish when she won a trick and crying “Oh, you pig” when he did. “You’re a good boy, Danny. Your father thinks so too really,” she said as he brought her bowl of boiling water full of medicine, and she was just draping a towel over her head and starting to inhale the steam when his father stalked in from work. “What the hell do you mean, telling Pettigrew I said he was closing?”

“But you did.” Danny appealed to the steaming faceless mound. “He did, didn’t he?”

She uncovered herself gasping. “I thought so.”

“And he goes blabbing straight to Pettigrew. And yesterday he tried to set the place on fire—not that Pettigrew mightn’t be grateful, he’d make more on the insurance than he makes with showing films these days.”

Danny went to his room and wondered if his father had noticed; he’d been talking about Danny as if he weren’t there. Danny was there all right, all there. He lifted the carpet to make sure of the letter to the paper. What troubled him as he climbed into bed was that Dr. Kent had tricked him into saying more than he wanted her to know. Well, she might get the better of him when it came to words, but that would only make it worse for her. Now she’d made that clear, he didn’t mean to waste much more time in talking.

25

T
HE
S
PIRITUALIST CHURCH
was a house off Gray’s Inn Road. Stone animals sat on the gateposts of the small square garden, but even though a snow fight had robbed them of their camouflage it was impossible to see what species they’d belonged to. A man with pale consoling eyes led Freda to the jumble sale, a room set with trestle tables full of clothes and books and dwarfish sandwiches, and Freda could tell it was the chapel from the hushed way everyone spoke. Middle-aged women who looked dressed for an afternoon’s bingo greeted Doreen and said how well she looked, but all the talk was so small it seemed clear that everyone was nervous for the sale to be over, the service to begin. Freda hung back, breathing the smells of incense and old carpets, and watched the bravely cheerful faces of the newcomers, the impenetrable faithful brightness of the veterans. The lady at the clothing table, a mauve hat pinned to her head, said, “Bless you, Doreen, that’s truly generous of you,” and Freda wondered if she realized they were Harry’s clothes, wondered for a moment if Doreen were relinquishing too much too soon.