Nineteen

Immediately, the phone at the other end of the line was picked up. ‘Hello.’

‘Er. Hello. Is that Harold?’

‘Speaking.’ It was a well-spoken and elderly voice, but Apryl instantly found herself disarmed by the hint of a confrontational attitude existing in one word alone.

‘Mmm. I was calling about the meeting on Friday night.’

‘The Friends of Felix Hessen, yes. Are you a Friend?’ He said it quickly and with an authority and self-importance she thought ridiculous.

‘Er. I’m not sure, but I’d like to find out.’ She giggled, but the voice at the other end remained silent.

‘Sorry, the meeting, I’d like to come.’

The silence continued.

‘Sorry, are you still there?’

After another few seconds of silence, the voice replied, ‘Yes.’

‘It said. I mean, the website said to call for details.’

Silence.

Her resolve faltered. And not only because of the forbidding silence. It was on account of what she now knew about Hessen. Who would want to be a friend of that? ‘Is it the wrong time to call? I apologize if it’s too late.’ She thought of hanging up.

‘No. No. Not too late,’ the voice said.

‘Then can I come?’

‘You know his work?’

‘Yes, I just read the Miles Butler book—’

‘Pah! There are better sources. My own work is published online and soon in hardback. I suggest you start there. It’s definitive.’

‘I will try.’

‘Advance copies are on sale at all of the meetings. But as they are held at a private address and our interpretations are quite vigorous, not to mention the unwarranted infamy that hounds some of our visiting scholars, we do vet attendees. Who are you?’

‘Mmm. No one really. Just visiting and I saw the website and bought the book.’

Silence again. Though it seemed loaded with disapproval. The guy was freaking her out. ‘And, my great-aunt knew him,’ she added softly, wincing with discomfort.

‘What did you say?’ he asked quickly, almost before she had finished speaking.

‘My great-aunt, she knew him. They lived in the same building.’

‘Which address?’

‘Barrington House in Knightsbridge.’

‘Yes, I know where it is,’ he said, sternly. ‘But why on earth did you not say so before?’

‘I. don’t know.’

‘Is your great-aunt still alive?’

‘No. She recently passed. But she mentioned him in her diaries. That’s how I got interested.’

‘Diaries?’ The volume of his voice suddenly increased. ‘You must bring them with you. I must’ – he paused, as if to calm down – ‘see them. Right away if possible. Where are you now?’

Immediately cautious, she lied, ‘But I don’t have them with me. They’re at home. In the States.’

‘No good to us there. Your fellow countrymen already have his sketches under lock and key. We must see the diaries.’

‘I can copy them, or something, when I get back.’

‘Have you got a pen?’ he asked with impatience. She told him she had. ‘Well take this down.’ He recited an address in Camden and made her spell it back to him. ‘Right, I’d suggest you get here early so I can brief you, and also to quiz you a little on your great-aunt. You’re practically the guest of honour.’

‘Oh, but I don’t want to be. I don’t really know anything about him—’

‘Nonsense, you are related to someone who actually knew the great man. Someone who stood in the presence of genius. We’d be delighted to have you here. You must come. We can help with expenses.’

‘No, that’s fine. Thanks. I’ll get there at sevenish.’

Harold then insisted on taking her number at the hotel, which she unwillingly gave, not being able to think fast enough to refuse. Then she rang off and sat back, feeling the perspiration dry on her brow. Her desire to go to the meeting had vanished. She began to suspect that anything connected to Hessen was weird and unpleasant. And she chided herself for mentioning Lillian’s diaries. Why had she said that? To impress him? She felt she had been indiscreet in a way that would come back to haunt her.

The phone beside her bed rang. Nervously, she raised the receiver. It was Harold. ‘Sorry, I pressed redial in error,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow then.’ He hung up while she was still thinking of something to say.

Twenty

And he went up again and again to the blood-lit place where so many masterpieces were stored in secret. And he fed from their darkness. Drank in the sense of eternity on those walls and engorged himself on the horror of the things that came out of a moving nothingness, on what came up writhing. Different things and parts of different things every time he walked inside.

During the last three visits, Seth had concentrated his efforts on the paintings in the two end bedrooms. Spaces designed for sleep, but now converted into gallery space by an unknown presence; perhaps the one that flickered through the mirrors. And he had gone inside these rooms to learn. To stare like a child into a forgotten pond in an overgrown garden. Peering at the black surface to marvel at the slim white shapes moving through weed and water so cold an immersion of a single finger would take one’s breath away. And maybe the finger too.

Once his duties had been taken care of, and after he’d lied to Mrs Roth following her continued complaints of noise from the empty flat beneath her – the bumping, the slamming of doors, the heavy dragging of things through the insulated darkness of number sixteen – only then, with the impediments removed, did he quietly retrieve the key from the safe in the head porter’s office and enter the gallery.

Up he had gone, taking the stairs carefully, some time between three and four in the morning when the world slept, with his pager clipped to his belt in case a resident called the house phone, or arrived in the early hours from an airport and pushed the front doorbell. Excited by the trespass, afraid of what he might see but eager to be engaged, he had closed the door behind him and turned the lights on.

On his second visit, which seemed so long ago now, like a distant but still memorable nightmare, something was in there with him. Something he couldn’t see. The presence, indistinct but powerful, that offered no threat to him physically. But something dangerous in a greater sense because it should not, by the laws of nature, be there. It manifested in the reddish light as a sense of motion and sound. Out of sight. Behind the closed doors of the mirrored room, where he heard occasional creaks caused by quick footfalls that moved back and forth rapidly, and then stopped abruptly by the threshold as he passed by.

He’d save the mirrored middle room until last. His instincts had told him to. He had caught a glimpse of movement in there on his first visit and was not ready to see it again. Not yet. So the correct sequence had to be followed. That room should be appreciated last of all. And perhaps when he did venture in, an introduction of sorts would be made.

His stomach still melted at the very thought of engaging with something so far beyond his comprehension, so far beyond all but his most recent experience. Or maybe that was just the old Seth trying to resurface; the vacillator, the dithering coward, the indecisive and contemptible weakling who had failed to follow his vocation, who had fallen at the first sign of criticism. Only now was he beginning to understand that the opinions of others did not matter. That they could not even begin to understand the places he must visit, and the visions he must record. There could be no half measures, no compromise. Not again. Not ever.

The hooded boy had suggested as much. Had told him that he was being helped and guided to see things as they were. He knew it, and was alarmed at how comfortable he felt with the steady insistent manipulation that surrounded him, slipped inside him, and pulled him up here. To study a master’s work.

But had they arranged the beating? Thrown him under the clawed feet of jackals for that terrible kicking on cold, wet London paving because he’d entertained thoughts of escape in that bar? That hooded figure had something of the same brutalized innocence as his attackers, the same contempt for anything but itself. The idea that those vicious weasel faces in baseball caps were the hooded boy’s emissaries made him feel as if he was out of his depth and the shore was too far away to reach. Or maybe, he tried to convince himself, they were just more evidence of what he must re-create in paint. Of what this city was truly filled with, resembling the things that shrieked and twisted on the walls of apartment sixteen. The final destination for us all. But if the beating was a warning then his will could not falter again. The will must triumph.

It was taking his body a long time to put itself back together. And parts of it weren’t fixed yet. He walked with a limp and suffered shooting pains through his left hand. The cornea of his right eye was scratched and infected and bloodshot, and he still couldn’t manage a deep breath.

Seth talked to himself as he uncovered the portraits in the two end rooms for the fourth time, keeping his eyes shut as each was unveiled, before sitting on the bare floorboards, his sketch pad and pencils clutched in his white fingers. He muttered aloud to keep his mind together and aware of itself, because it was so easy to lose a sense of yourself before these things in rags that pulled themselves apart on the red walls. It was the only way to not cry out. To not allow cold panic to fill him up and force him to flee while scratching at the skin of his face, cutting it with his long nails.

He had to be strong. Courageous. If he was a true artist. Must learn to endure these sights and visions and learn how these truths could be depicted in his own studio at the Green Man. He knew it. Someone had been telling him all along. He just had to listen. They were inside him now. And they had opened the valves of his mind.

Later as he hung the key for apartment sixteen back on its hook in the safe, he heard the sound of a throat being cleared behind him. He slammed the safe shut and turned about quickly.

Stephen stood in the doorway of his office. ‘Hello Seth.’

Seth nodded quickly, swallowed. His thoughts scrabbled and scratched about, but his mind was exhausted by what it had just tried to comprehend. His face was white and shaky and full of guilt, he knew it. He could not think of anything to say, an excuse, a reason for why he would be in the head porter’s office, returning the key to a private apartment that porters were not permitted to enter without permission.

‘Problem upstairs?’ Stephen said, one eyebrow raised.

‘Just Mrs Roth,’ he blurted out, trying to think of the remainder of the lie but failing under the intense stare of his boss.

‘Oh?’

‘I. I didn’t want to wake you. Was nothing really. But she keeps phoning down. You know how she is.’

‘You’re not wrong there. Anything I can assist with?’

God no. ‘Nah. Peace of mind thing. That’s all.’ Stephen watched him closely. Seth tried to change the subject. ‘You’re up late.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Early, I mean.’

‘Janet’s having a rough time right now. I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s rest. And you look as though you know what I’m talking about.’ Stephen smiled, but the smile was not altogether pleasant. It looked sly. Seth’s sense of guilt deepened and made him swallow, causing him to look even worse.

Stephen walked into the office and sat on the corner of his desk. ‘Why don’t you take yourself home, Seth. I’ll cover for you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You only have another two hours anyway.’

Seth frowned. Stephen should be interrogating him, balling him out, placing him under suspicion. ‘I don’t know. You sure?’

Stephen smiled. ‘Sure. Take off. Looks to me like you’ve had a bad night. I know how demanding it can be. Before you came I had to cover the shift for a month before we could find a replacement – you. They never stuck around for long, Seth, your predecessors. Never had the stomach for it. Bloody art students. Not the right material for night guys. It’s a hard slot to fill. Takes a good man to do it right.’

Seth held his breath while trying to work out what Stephen was leading to, if anything. He had no idea what this was about. ‘I always wondered why you advertised in Art and Artists.’

‘One of the oldest residents, it was his idea. Had a personal interest in artists.’

‘Really. Who?’

Stephen waved a hand in the air. ‘He’s not around much any more. Doesn’t matter. But I follow orders, Seth. As do you, I might add. I’m very pleased with how you’ve fitted in here at Barrington House. You’re someone I can rely on. Takes a load off me, someone who does what’s needed around here. Pulls his weight, so to speak.’

‘Er. thanks.’

Stephen’s smile widened. ‘You know something, Seth, I might be looking for a replacement for myself in the not too distant future. Someone who can step up. Take responsibility for the building and all of its needs. And my successor would get the flat, rent free. Better salary too. I just need to put in a good word with the management. Might you be interested in that? A promotion? It’s a great opportunity. And I’d like to leave this place in good hands.’

Seth rubbed at the stubble around his mouth, looked everywhere but at Stephen. He’d thought he was going to get the sack, but he was being offered the head porter’s job. ‘I don’t know what to say. I mean, thanks.’

‘Think about it. It has its moments. Its demands. But the worst offenders are getting on a bit. They won’t be here for ever, will they? That’s worth keeping in mind.’

‘I guess so.’

‘And life would be a lot simpler without them, that’s for sure.’ Stephen chuckled. ‘Old Betty Roth wouldn’t be missed, eh? She can’t keep going for ever. I’d say she’s had a good innings. Same as those Shafers.’ He shook his head, smiling, then looked up sharply, straight-faced. ‘But not a word to the others about what I’ve said. You can keep a secret, Seth. I’ve no doubt about that. You can be trusted.’

Seth nodded. ‘Thanks.’

Stephen looked at the safe and then back at Seth. Touched his nose with his index finger and narrowed his eyes. ‘Until then, keep up the good work.’