Mr. Flood's Last Resort(94)

I get onto the bed, feeling along the wall. Behind the door high-pitched noises are racing along the corridor. It is only a Catherine wheel; it’s bonfire night at Bridlemere! Somewhere deep in the bowels of the house there is a corresponding scream, then a deep groaning slump that shakes the walls. Some great beast is turning, dying.

The house is giving up.

My fingertips search blindly along the wall until they find the edge of the frame.

*

BEFORE ME is a dressing table, damask curtains, cold glass, and the sweet, sweet rush of cold night air. Behind me is a superheated door, flames tonguing the keyhole, heat blistering the paint.

*

OUTSIDE THERE are lights and shouting; the garden is festive with firefighters. I have the best seat in the house. From here I watch a hundred cats run into the night. From here I see Larkin on the roof of the caravan, counting them to safety, each shadowy pelt. As the last cat leaves he turns, jumps down, and runs after.





CHAPTER 47




The ward slumbers in a predawn lull. The patients are asleep. I see their huddled shapes in the light from the empty nurses’ station. I hear their breathing and the creaking of their waterproof mattresses. We are like sickly ships sailing through the night, a cargo of drips and slippers, crosswords and catheters. The nurses are nowhere to be seen and neither are the police officers that were here earlier, all civility and radio crackles.

From my bed I can see into the corridor and into the corridor comes an animal. It rounds the corner on light-stepping paws, claws clicking on the floor. It disappears for a while behind the nurses’ station to reappear standing in the doorway.

I know better than to follow a fox in life.

*

THE STREETS of West London are quiet but for the sound of my slippers flapping on the pavement. The saints are waiting outside the house: all the usual suspects are here. St. Dymphna is cleaning her lamp on the hem of her robe. St. Valentine has his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears, St. Monica looks to be admonishing him. St. George and St. Rita stand side by side, looking up. They’re watching the birds turn overhead in the first pink rays of morning.

*

BRIDLEMERE IS untouched by flame; it’s as if the fire hasn’t happened. I move through the house flanked by saints. The dawn slants in through the windows illuminating the unwashed dishes in the sink, the tin of custard powder on the table, the jumble in the hallway outside Cathal’s lair.

I push the door of his workroom open.

Manolete still grimaces on the bench. St. Rita blesses herself as we pass by him. In the middle of the room stands a curtained booth. Above it is a sign, painted in dull gold letters:

Madame Sabine

Yesterday’s History Today

I RUMMAGE in a jar on the shelf, find a coin, and put it in the slot at the front of the machine. The coin drops and the curtains judder open.

Madame Sabine grinds into action. Raising her head with a jerk, addressing the room with her glittering painted stare. The saints begin to mutter and draw back into the corners. St. George pulls down his visor and St. Dymphna gathers her cape around herself. St. Valentine stops picking his teeth and St. Rita straightens her veil. St. Monica folds her arms with a thin-lipped grimace.

The crystal ball has gone. In front of Madame Sabine is a book. Her hands click over it in a series of blessings, a brisk mechanical rite. The book opens.

A wind picks up. Wood shavings skitter along the floor and cobwebs bounce in the cornices. Loose screws and paint pots start to circle the room. Cloaks and robes, veils and chain mail are whipped up and swirled. Halos flicker and dim. The saints stumble and look around themselves for shelter. And now, with the wind, comes a sudden loud clackety drone, not unlike a faulty extractor fan.

St. Rita lets out a sob. She mouths something I can’t understand before her shape begins to change. She flattens into an arc, a monochrome flash that bridges the room in one sudden streak to pool on the book’s open pages. St. George follows, his body elongating to a silver dart that hits the book with an incandescent flash. St. Monica crumples like a crisp packet and rolls towards the booth. Then she is gone too, up into the book, with a tepid fizzle.

St. Valentine races to the door in a bid to escape but he is dragged back. He starts running, but he’s going the wrong way on a moving treadmill. He’s losing ground. The book waits, open-mawed. St. Valentine shoots me a look of wall-eyed panic before his face folds and he is sucked in, disappearing with a sudden flare of cardinal red.

In a lancing rift of light St. Raphael emerges from a cupboard, his heart-shaped face solemn and the arched shadows of his wings battered by crosswinds. He raises his eyes and bursts into a blizzard of sable feathers that are whipped and spun into a handsome tornado. The tornado crosses the room and revolves above the booth, a spinning velvet funnel. It pulses there, growing and retracting. Then it descends into the pages of the open book, dissolving with a dark sparkle.

St. Dymphna watches it all from the corner of the room. Her veil blown back and her plait unfurling. She looks over at me and smiles. Then, taking up her lamp, she walks forwards, holding a still, strong-burning flame before her. And in a moment she too is gone.

The book closes. The black cat at Madame Sabine’s elbow gives a metallic purr and the two fat taxidermy chaffinches shake their wings in a desultory fashion.

Madame Sabine’s head drops forwards. She regards me with a sudden searching gaze, her black irises bright. Her hands make one last pass and then drop, lifeless, back onto the counter. Her head yanks up with a clattering of her coin-edged veil. A card drops into a recess below and the curtains fitfully draw themselves closed.