Personal Darkness Read online

  Sometimes he cleaned the trike in a large utility room beyond the kitchen. Sometimes he and the two girls went riding it. The stuffed horse's head attached between the handlebars had once been scorched to the bone.

  She did not know why she wanted to hear the story of his escape. Perhaps only because, in a curious way, Camillo had been bound up for her with Adamus. And there was no way on earth Adamus, hanged by the neck and devoured by flames, could come back from the dead.

  "They don't open doors, here, after dark," Camillo said. "Very wise. London was always a jungle."

  Once before he had told her a story of an escape. She had wanted him to stop. She had thought he might be dying, that time. He was almost three hundred years of age. Or was he only a terribly crazy, normal old man, insanely sane like the other three gray hamsters watching TV.

  "Down on the beach," he said, "that's where I was. I'd gone to make a fire."

  His words pulled her back. She stared at him.

  "To make a—"

  "A fire. Like the time Sylvian was cremated."

  The Scarabae burned their dead. Who had this fire been for? For Ruth? For Anna's memory? Or for himself?

  "Go on," she said.

  "Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet."

  Rachaela said, "The hat suits the fish. It needed something."

  "Then I saw the house catch alight," he said. "It was a vision."

  "Like the burning town, when your father and mother fled in the sleigh."

  "No, not like that. That looked real, convincing. The house looked like a stage set in a bad film. I watched until it had all come down. Then the daylight broke."

  "Why didn't you—" she said "—why didn't you come up from the beach?"

  "I couldn't," he said. He said, "I cried for the rocking horse. She burned it."

  "And the Scarabae, did you cry for them?"

  Camillo gave his high mad giggle. It was like the other times, as if he had left it too long without a sign of mental instability.

  "I climbed up later," he said. "Nobody there. I went through the ruin. I found some strange things. Do you remember my horsy? I found the head. It's on the trike now. My horse."

  He got up, and walking over to the fish, he took a lipstick out of his pocket and began to crayon the round lips. "Maple Kiss," said Camillo. "One of Tray's. And where did I meet Lou and Tray? But that comes later." He stepped back from the fish. "What do you think?"

  "It's very attractive."

  "When I came away from the house, I walked across the heath. I walked above the sea. I walked for days. I caught a rabbit once, to eat it. But I couldn't kill it. It was so alive. I ate grass. The rabbit ran off and told the other rabbits old Uncle Camillo had taken a bite out of it, but the rabbits didn't believe it. One evening there was something on the beach below. So I climbed down again. It was another fire. What do you think I found?"

  "People," said Rachaela.

  "A road ran through to the beach. There were ten bikers like soldiers in black leather, and the bikes shining in the firelight."

  Rachaela saw in her mind's eye the fire and the dark sea, and the bikes and the black-clad men, and Camillo gazing like an eldritch boy.

  "They said," said Camillo, " 'Hallo, Granddad.' I said, 'I'm too old to be your grandfather.' That made them laugh. They gave me some of the beer they were drinking and a pork pie. They asked me if I had escaped from somewhere. I said I had. They laughed again and said, 'Good for you, you old cunt.' I slept on the beach and in the morning I got up on the back of one of the bikes. We roared off along the road and into a town by the sea. They were like Cossacks. The roads cleared and everyone ran. The young girls looked after them."

  Camillo put the lipstick away.

  He said: "We had steaks at a pub. Then there was a fight with some other customers. I fought alongside the Cossacks. They were surprised. They said, when we had got out, This old geezer can handle himself.' They asked my name. They always called me Camilla after that. I got some money later, and made them rich. Then they bought me the gear. We parted the best of friends. They wouldn't have stayed rich long. The drink, the black metal horses."

  Rachaela did not ask about the money. The Scarabae could command funds, certainly she had seen that by now. The story was as much a fairy tale as the other, the story of the flight by night over the snow. Both probably were true.

  "The lipstick compares favorably with the cherries," said Camillo.

  "Yes."

  "And I met Lou and Tray at a concert. Not Prokofiev, of course. A gig. They attached themselves to me like pretty flowers to a gnarled old branch. They think I'm some fallen star. And do I sleep with them? What does Rachaela suppose?"

  "You like to ride things," Rachaela said, bleakly, "why not Lou and Tray?"

  "Superb," said Camillo. "Now you can go away."

  "I'm thinking of it," she said, slowly.

  "Your former plaint, that you would leave us all. That you would take the nasty Ruth and vanish."

  "Ruth has vanished."

  "Like a demon," said Camillo. "Gone, yet not exorcised."

  "Do you believe," Rachaela said, "that she—"

  "No, I won't talk about Ruth, either. Or even about you. When I learned that I wasn't the last, that they were here, in this house, I came back to them. Scarabae. We always come back, even if we have gone away. Let that be a lesson to you."

  Lou and Tray were sunbathing on the terrace, while the gray woman stood over them with her basket.

  In the drawing room, the Scarabae had finished with the news and were watching an action film. A man hung from an American building one hundred floors up. But did not fall.

  There was never a hint of restraint now. It was easy to come and go.

  Rachaela left the house.

  The day was hot, with a pale dusty sky like India.

  She walked down past the great houses with their timbered fronts and bay windows and triple garages, and wide green lawns, down through the semidetached villas where there were children playing noisily in gardens, and cars filling the air with the smell of burned macaroons.

  In the London village there were cake shops and boutiques, a florist's, and a hair salon, Lucrece, to which presumably the gemini of Lou and Tray had come.

  Rachaela moved along the pavement, which was full of a glitter like chips of diamond. The cars snarled by and the people swung past, their hot flesh and summer clothes, polished dogs with strawberry tongues, and kids on bicycles.

  How much longer would she want to be out by day? (That had been her name once, Day.) How long before she kept indoors, behind the syrupy-colored windows, whose stained lights seemed sunk into the furniture so far that, even if the windows should be blasted out, the colors must remain?

  And that policeman on the corner, what would he know to do, or not to do, if she went to him and said, / am a Scarabae?

  For she had overheard a flutter of talk between Lou and Tray. That time, they said, Cami had been stopped on the bypass, because he did not have a helmet on. And there had been a scene at the side of the road, and suddenly, over the walkie-talkie had come some garbled message, and the police officers had backed away, telling

  Camillo how sorry they were. Leading him like a king to the trike. Wishing him a nice journey.

  Of course, Camillo was a film director. What else?

  But Camillo was not anything of the kind, and any way, such men were fair game. No, it must be because Camillo was Scarabae.

  Rachaela passed the policeman, who followed her only appreciatively with his eyes.

  She bought complex cakes in the shop, for Sasha, Miranda and Eric, Michael and Cheta.

  With a sensation of defeat, that was only the veneer for some other, deeper, darker, more arresting, more peculiar emotion, like waiting, she went back up among the villas and neat streets that led toward the common. Home.

  CHAPTER 11

  WHEN THE YELLOW DOOR OPENED, A black woman stood there, fat, and fragrant like apple blossom. She
smiled at once and behind her black eyes were blue seas. Her black eyes were bright and lit, and there were depths to them, soul-windows. Unlike the paint-black eyes of the girl outside.

  "Mrs. Watt?"

  Delilah Trinidad eased her bulk a little, from one flat shoe to the other.

  "No, pet. Mrs. Watt? I never hear of Mrs. Watt."

  Down by the curb, James, Delilah's son, was cleaning his Datsun, his slim body moving to the tempo of his pride.

  Delilah looked at him, and wondered if he had heard of a Mrs. Watt.

  "This is the house," said the white girl with long black hair.

  "No, pet," said Delilah, "if she ever here, she gone." But Delilah was troubled.

  "I've come a long way," said the girl. "Into London."

  Out of the cool blue hallway behind the yellow door, another girl appeared. She was the shade of dark chocolate, and where Delilah was fat, she was slender, like a young tree. She had the beauty of a model, an icon of high African art. Unlike Delilah, too, she had an English voice, but not the voice of the street. This was RADA.

  "What is it, Mom?"

  "Dis young girl, she looking for a Mrs. Watt. She better come in, have a cup of coffee. She come all the way to London, Pearl."

  Pearl slipped her arm around her mother's cushion shoulders. She did not know it, but by doing so, she had filled up the doorway now, like a fence, the big woman and the slender woman as one.

  "I'm sorry," said Pearl. "You seem to be lost. Have you tried next door? They may know."

  And now a dog came up from the blue hall, a black dog, black as the Trinidads, and with a carven head, and it put itself into the space where the women's bodies had left a little gap.

  Ruth looked at the dog. "May I touch him?"

  "Oh, he's fine," said the beautiful girl.

  Ruth put out her hand, and the dog permitted her to stroke his forehead. He gazed at her, but that was all.

  James had left the Datsun all soapy. He walked up the path, grinning and friendly.

  "What's up, Pearl?"

  "You come in now," said Delilah Trinidad to Ruth. "Come in. We think about it."

  The two women leaned together unconsciously. Their bodies had once been one, and not forgotten. Love. There was love.

  And the young man on the path, with the sponge in his hand, amused, tender. Love, also.

  Somewhere in the house a child happily laughed. The dog smiled and panted.

  "There go the baby," said Delilah.

  Ruth took a step back.

  "I made a mistake," said Ruth.

  She turned, and walked away from them. She looked very small, and truly black, the black of the dark and the shadow and the night.

  Delilah watched Ruth go, her eyes wide and sad.

  "Poor chile," she said. "Poor little girl."

  Something like Ancient Egypt, night river water, and fire. But it was only the Thames at its most muddy, and a bonfire of refuse up on the bank, under the derelict warehouses, keeping three tramps warm.

  The sun had died on the river like a broken egg. The barges passed, and miles up were the rusty docks, and farther the big white ship with the fancy name.

  But here it got cold.

  There had to be a fire, even in summer.

  "Look," said Jimbo, "poor little bird."

  "You let it be," said Sedge.

  And deep in his drink of sour red wine, Baldy said nothing at all.

  But Jimbo had had a daughter once, in another life, and finally he got up and crept along the bank toward the small dark girl.

  "Here," said Jimbo, "here, girlie. D'ya want to come down to the fire? We won't hurt ya."

  The girl turned a white face with dark lips and eyes.

  "No, thank you."

  "It's warm. It's better. The fire keeps the rats off."

  "No."

  And down the incline, Sedge stood up by the fire in his cardboard raincoat, and he bellowed. Sedge was a devil. He would not share.

  Jimbo left the girl and went back, and Sedge seized his arm as if he would kill him.

  "Leave her alone I said."

  "But she's just a kid."

  "The streets of London," said Sedge, "are paved with child." He sometimes said these things. He pulled Jimbo down. "Bad. She's bad."

  And Baldy hiccuped, and passed the wine.

  Ruth sat above the river, listening to it. At a distance, far enough, the tramps' fire crackled. After a time, she went through the contents of Amanda Mills's bag. There were T-shirts and clean underclothes, Kleenex, makeup, toothpaste and deodorant, and money.

  Ruth was hungry, although she had gone to a burger bar for a double hamburger and french fries, fruit pie and cream. She was always hungry now. Sometimes she bought Kit-Kats and Mars, and ate them, or bananas and apples off a stall.

  That had been the first thing, after the fire. Hunger. She had gone over the heath away from the sea, and her face had hurt very much, where he—Adamus—had struck her, her eye swollen and her mouth bruised. But she had still wanted to eat. She did not look back. She had killed all the Scarabae. Burned them up. Only she remained.

  And Rachaela. Probably Rachaela—Mommy. But Ruth did not think about this.

  She was like a butterfly freed from a chrysalis. A hungry butterfly.

  The night heath was familiar, as if she had been out on it before. Things moved about in the undergrowth and she hoped to see an owl. But she saw nothing.

  She came to a road, and she had known it would be there.

  As Ruth stood looking at the road in the dark dimness of early morning, a car spun out of the blackness behind two beams of light. It was going very fast, and Ruth stepped aside. The car flashed by her. Then pulled up with a complaint of brakes. It sat on the road, and Ruth did not move. Then the car reversed slowly back toward her.

  "My God, I thought I was seeing things."

  The man was middle-aged, plump, with a shiny-clean face and black line of mustache.

  Ruth, in her dress which had been designed in 1910, her sensible school shoes, her skeins of hair, looked in at him.

  "Your face—" said the man. "What's happened?"

  She had been told not to speak to strange men. But all that had changed.

  "My boyfriend," said Ruth, "hit me."

  "The bastard. My God, I'd better get you to a doctor. You'd better get in. Do you live round here…"

  "No," said Ruth. She went around and opened the door of the car, a Ford Sierra. "I don't want a doctor."

  "All right. We'll see."

  Ruth was in the car, and the man reached over and shut her door.

  "Do you want to go home?" said the man. He sounded coaxing, but this was a constant tone, with him. He was a rep, it was his business always to persuade, to something.

  "I can't," said Ruth. "Where are you going?"

  "Gavil Mount," he said. It might have been a crater on the moon, and in any case it would not matter, since they would not get there.

  "That will do," said Ruth.

  "Right you are, then."

  He started up the car and they raced forward, parting the night.

  The man was Tom Robbins, so he told her. At the moment his line was excellent little traveling packs for young ladies. She could take a look at his supplies, and see. Ruth did so. Each pack was in a floral case, and comprised a toothbrush, comb and brush, cleansing tissues, manicure scissors, nail file and emery board, and matching nail varnish and lipstick, eyeshadow and mascara, these last four varying from pack to pack.

  "Go on, take one," said Tom Robbins, who had never been able to get over a weakness for young pretty girls, although it had sometimes caused him bother at home and on the road.

  Ruth selected a pack with black and mink shadow, and Red Hot lipstick and varnish.

  "You'll look good in that," said Tom Robbins, "once that nasty bruise goes down."

  From one side she was a stunner, from the other like a horror film. Luckily one of his contacts at the Mount was a pharmacist in
a chemist shop.

  As they drew nearer the town, they moved onto the motorway, and signs came up for a Happy Eater.

  Ruth said she was hungry.

  When they had pulled in, caution made him keep Ruth, her bruise, and her outlandish dress, in the Ford Sierra. He brought her out a cheeseburger with an egg, fries, and a piece of gateau, and a Coke. She ate greedily, as if she were starved. Perhaps she was, she was slim as a wand.

  It was getting light when he drove off down the side lane.

  He had plans for Ruth, but these involved a nice little discreet hotel, a bottle of wine, and before that a visit to the chemist's shop, which would be open by the time they got there, and, along with the potion, a packet of three.

  Tom Robbins pulled into the lane in order to relax and have a smoke, away from the motorway, before driving on to Gavil. That was all.

  But when they were there, the red of the car blooming up in the dawn like the free lipstick he had given her, Tom made the error of rubbing Ruth's knee. It was a friendly gesture, nearly avuncular. He meant it to say, If you're willing, let's—but Ruth punched him hard in the genitals. And as he was leaning over the wheel crying, she got out the metal nail file from the kit and stuck it through his neck.

  She drank a little of Tom's blood, when he was dead. She did this because she knew she was Scarabae, a vampire. She did not actually enjoy the blood. It was a sort of duty.

  When she had run away from the car and Tom, carefully carrying her makeup kit, Ruth became lost in the English countryside, which was like a wild garden with roads, hills, and fields.

  At midday she came on a camper out in a meadow. No one was about but the door was unlocked. Ruth stole bread, Spam, cheese and tomatoes, a bottle of mayonnaise, and a carton of milk.

  These provisions did not keep her going long, but then it was not long before she found something else.

  The travelers had come off the highway and parked for the night by a wide stream. In the little wood, the birds were fluttering and shaking off their final songs. One edge of the sky was still gold, but dusk was rising.

  There were two ancient post office vans, painted black, and a battered Volkswagen. Thirteen adults, and four children between the ages of four and ten, had come out. A couple of the women were cooking on Primus stoves. They wore, male and female alike, the uniform of the summer road, bristle-cropped hair, cotton vests, army trousers, Doc Martens. They had lit a fire, and one man played the guitar beside it.