Darkness, I

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  To Jacques Post and Maarten Asscher

  With thanks for the first gifts of Holland.

  O, my heart, confess not against me as a witness!

  Magical inscription on a Scarabaeus

  Chapter One

  The child on the tomb:

  A little mound of stone, and above it this slim, breastless figure. She was draped in a classical way. Yet her blind blank face reminded him—he did not know why—of the effigies of Easter Island, which he had seen in pictures. There was no name, or date.

  The grave stood just outside the boundary of the air-strip, behind the barbed wire. And beyond the flat unearthly plain rolled all the way to the distant hills, raked by a chill dry wind.

  Sometimes a pilot might leave a flower at the stone child’s feet. One or two of them called her Santa Blanca. The missions from this place were not overt, probably often outside the law... even so, he did not understand why they felt they must placate the child. He had never left her a flower.

  Miguel Chodil walked.

  The sun was glaring in a sky of dilute stratos.

  The white shape of the twin-engined plane looked too solid, as if she could not fly. But then, that was her trick. Last night, there had been a red moon over the city. The ancient peoples would have said that foretold a death. But whose? In a whole night, after all, someone was bound to die.

  They had already loaded her up. Chodil boarded, and cast a quick inspecting eye along her belly.

  It was always similar.

  Boxes that probably held books, containers of oil and kerosene, various tinned stores, such as any base might require. But there, glowing in their crate, golden oranges, and dark pink peaches, the yellow candles of bananas. And in the straw, greenish Peruvian brandy.

  Chodil checked the lashings, and, satisfied, went forward into the cockpit.

  Out on the runway a guard had come up, and was standing staring at the aircraft, his Kalashnikov across his shoulder. Chodil waited. The guard moved away suddenly, as if he had seen evidence of some threat.

  Chodil tried the plane over.

  She made her usual sounds. She felt alert and springy. Perhaps too eager. ‘Calma...‘he said.

  As he took her down the runway, her accustomed rocking motion was familiar as the rhythm of a horse. He knew better than she when she would try to swerve, and kept her steady.

  He drew her up into a shallow accelerating climb, and she levelled perfectly, settling on the wide blue sky in a drone of power.

  Fifty minutes and he would need to take her down again to her first refuelling, and later there would come the second stop, where the Russians would offer him vodka and he would pretend to drink—it broke their hearts when you did not play with them. Two unmapped isles, the second whiter than the first, its coast littered with the bones of blue whales, creatures, it seemed to him, too big to love.

  As he flew south, Miguel laid out his final destination from memory. He had, after all, made this journey twenty times.

  The blue crystal sky would dip eventually through into a blue crystal sea. And there the cumulus had dropped upon the water in white ice, floating cliffs and domes and castles. And the terrible white land rose behind, to its points of mountains.

  Death was only that. That whiteness. The lost creatures that roamed its fringes, the inner stopped clock of its cold white heart.

  Chodil grimaced. He sang to the plane, and told her of the woman he had had in the city. He liked to make the plane a little jealous.

  Three hours to go.

  Chapter Two

  When the snow began to fall, she was at the back of the procession, lagging behind, unsure. She had a feeling, despite the grandeur, that it was all some hoax. Something stupid, which seemed to irritate, but not alarm her.

  She knew what she was seeing. They were Ancient Egyptians. The women in tight-lapped gowns of half-transparent white linen, some with bare round breasts, and the men in kilts of linen or leather. They wore too, redolent of every epic, the characteristic collars, with garnets and blue glass paste on ribs of gold. Black wigs. Eye make-up like the lines around the eyes of lynxes. You could not mistake them.

  Here and there a fan of ostrich feathers waved. Others were wheeling supermarket trolleys piled with golden vessels and cones of scented wax.

  They toiled upward, up towards the great pyramid.

  It seemed to her the pyramid was constructed of old books, some of which were even dilapidated paperbacks.

  Women wailed. It was a funeral. Who was dead?

  In the dream, she thought, Oh, it’s Ruth.

  And when she thought this, the dusk sky opened and the snow began to fall.

  The Egyptians stopped. They seemed appropriately to freeze. Rachaela found herself, perhaps unwillingly, walking forward now through the static lines of men and women. She came up to where a priest was. He had a leopard-skin over his shoulder, and on his head was the pointed mask of a black jackal with tall ears.

  Adamus...

  Of course, he had returned from death himself, to oversee the obsequies.

  The mummy-case was leaning above a shaft in the side of the pyramid. It was golden, richer even than the case of the famous boy king, Tutankhamun. The form of a girl was painted on it, and she had two long black plaits. Yes, it was Ruth all right.

  They lowered the sarcophagus into the depths.

  I should feel something. Should I?

  Then the case had vanished, and she stood there, feeling nothing, not even the cold of the falling snow.

  They were all gone, and it was night now. The snow ended.

  Above the pyramid a single star blazed like a diamond.

  And Ruth’s ka slid up out of the tomb.

  Rachaela knew about the ka—like her dead daughter, Rachaela had read Haggard’s novel, Morning Star. And what was a ka? Astral body more than ghost. The double that was freed at the negation of the flesh.

  Ruth’s ka was very glamorous. It wore a black dress with silver embroidery at the throat, and its black hair hung long and lustrous down its spine. The face of Ruth’s ka was beautifully made up, the lips pale red, the eyes like smoulder.

  ‘Hallo, Ruth,’ Rachaela said.

  ‘Hallo, Mummy.’

  And then the k
a came towards Rachaela, and Ruth held out her right hand.

  On the tips of her fingers rested a still, soft flame.

  Rachaela meant to back away, but she could not. Ruth, starter of fires —

  Ruth was in front of her, near enough Rachaela could smell the perfume her ka had put on—Lancôme?—and hear the rustle of her dress.

  Ruth extended the star of flame upon her hand.

  And Rachaela discovered that she had opened her mouth, wide, in a rictus, as once in her childhood she had had to do at the dentist’s —

  And then there she was in his chair, the old black kind that you felt should have had straps to tie you down.

  ‘Now,’ he said, the faceless memory, leaning forward, ‘I think you’ve done a bit of damage here. Too many sweets, I shouldn’t wonder. This will be a little bit uncomfortable, I expect, but you’ll be a brave girl, won’t you?’

  And then Rachaela knew that Ruth had put the flame into her mouth, even before the dentist loomed over her again with his buzzing stinging wasp of a drill, to give her the only filling of her life.

  And he said, ‘Now just swallow that little flame, please, and then rinse round.’

  Rachaela swallowed the flame.

  She woke up with her head pressed into the pillow. Rachaela was alone... She turned, slowly, stiffly, unknotting her muscles, and Althene lay beside her, silently asleep.

  Who are you? Rachaela thought.

  Even unconscious, her face wiped of cosmetics, her hair stranded by the movements of somnolence, Althene was utterly herself, complete.

  Well, since you’re foolish enough to be here beside me, I could wake you up, tell you my troubles.

  I dreamed of my dead and murdered murderess-demon of a daughter.

  Taking care, rather awkwardly Rachaela angled herself out of bed, and curled the sheet back over Althene.

  It was warm and close, a hot late-summer night. From the open window, scents of trees, plums, a hint of the river.

  Rachaela went out of the bedroom noiselessly and into the bathroom. Washed by white moonlight through the opaque pane, she saw her shade in the mirror. A Klimt woman, young and high-breasted, with a pushing pregnant belly.

  Almost eight months.

  No, she had to be rational. She was not very big. Like that last time, when she had fooled half London that she had only grown overweight.

  Last time, with Ruth.

  But Ruth had been born, and Ruth had grown up. Ruth had become a woman at eleven, and presently she had become also terrible, a killer... and then, conversely, beautiful, and loved. Until she broke the rules of her lover. Until she killed again. Ruth, lady with the knife, bringer of fire. And when he disowned her, her Malach—white-haired warrior-priest—there in that second house of stained-glass windows, how she had screamed.

  They had thought she ran away with Camillo. And yet, Camillo was her enemy, the ordinary unkind kind. He would never have helped Ruth. And Ruth, any way, had been beyond help by then.

  What night had it been, when the telephone rang—Tuesday, Thursday? And Rachaela, half sleeping, heard Althene speaking very low. And then, Althene in the doorway, like a phantom. A messenger from the dead.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.’

  ‘I want to know.’

  ‘Well, you’re awake now. I shall have to tell you.’

  And Althene sighed. She came forward and Rachaela sat up. Althene said, ‘I don’t know how you will feel. Eric called us.’

  Rachaela said, ‘It’s Ruth.’

  ‘Yes. But also not.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘Apparently.’

  It seemed a busy bicycling couple had found her, in a wood. Someone had stabbed Ruth through the left breast into the heart. By the time her body was come upon, her beauty had dispersed for ever. Food for worms.

  Rachaela said, ‘She was dead when he left her. She died that moment. Will they tell him too, Malach?’

  ‘I expect he will be told,’ said Althene.

  Rachaela lay down again. She looked up at the ceiling in the dark, and Althene went away. What do I feel?

  But then, and now, two weeks after Eric had phoned them (no doubt Michael had dialled), Rachaela could only remember how Ruth had screamed when Malach cast her off.

  Had she screamed like that, too, when the knife went into her?

  And had Camillo done that?

  ‘Damn,’ said Rachaela softly, to the moonlit bathroom. ‘Fuck this.’ Out. Get out of my mind.

  But this was why she had dreamed of the demon. Of Ruth. Because of the phone call. And because of the new, the other life, of which somehow she had not rid herself.

  Althene had said, ‘I can find you a doctor. If you don’t want the pregnancy to go on. And you don’t.’ But Rachaela had not wanted that interruption, not yet. An abortion—illness, trauma. However well she was treated, however little fuss was made. She wanted to be with Althene, and to pretend that nothing was in her womb.

  So, the cold, blustery, wet spring, walks by the river, dinners in strange little restaurants, sex in the blue bedroom of the flat. Nothing to fear now. And the companionable cosy hours, painting, Althene reading, or the games with clothes and make-up, that there had been before. Hot buttered toast and tea. A mother who was also a lover who was also a husband. Time piled up in an hour-glass. If only it could be made to stand still.

  Although, in a way it had. Rachaela had only to look at herself again. Her firm moon-white body, twenty-six years of age, a woman well over forty —

  Scarabae time.

  Althene did not say, ‘My child. A Scarabae child. You must.’

  So it was easy, to let things slide. As if the child was not real. Now it was too late.

  The doctor eventually provided was polite, gentle, and encouraging. She did not query Althene’s presence. They were Ms Day and Ms Simon. But luscious Althene, although she could not be blamed, was secretly and fundamentally the cause. The father of Rachaela’s burden.

  I don’t want it. Why didn’t I let go?

  She looked: The belly. Who was there?

  One of the cats, black-faced Jacob, came into the bathroom. Only cats were permitted to disturb the night.

  Rachaela lifted him, and he balanced a second, clawless, purring, on the handy ledge of her fecund stomach. Then he climbed up on to her shoulder and sang in her hair.

  She could have learned the gender of the baby. But she had resisted that.

  She did not want it, did not want the responsibility of killing it, wished it did not exist, pretended it did not exist.

  Just like the time before.

  ‘I think someone is watching the flat.’

  ‘Who?’ Althene crossed the conservatory and came out beside her on the south-facing balcony.

  From below, they would appear to be two young women. One slenderly pregnant.

  ‘Someone was under the garden wall. It’s happened before. The other night I heard a noise—’

  ‘One of the cats,’ said Althene.

  ‘Juliet was out. But yesterday I saw a man going by, and he stood out there, by the river, looking up.’

  Althene said nothing.

  Rachaela said, The Scarabae are always liable to watch us. I mean my Scarabae, at the house.’

  They might.’

  ‘Now I’m carrying a child, and they’ve probably found out, the way they find out everything. And we’ve left them in the dark.’

  They’re used to that, I imagine.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be having a baby.’

  ‘So you’ve said. But you are.’

  ‘I’m a coward. Selfish. That’s why I didn’t get rid of it. It’s what would be done to me. I don’t care about the child.’

  ‘You don’t know the child yet.’

  ‘I knew Ruth.’

  Althene said. ‘Yes.’ She bent to touch the dry soil of the red geraniums. It was Althene who watered the plants, Rachaela forgot.
/>
  ‘I dreamed about Ruth,’ Rachaela said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was nothing. Egyptian. But she was interested in Ancient Egypt. God knows. Perhaps they all go back that far. They seem confused about their ages. If I credit any of them is three hundred years old then why not three thousand? They grow old, and then they get younger. Miranda was doing it. I don’t know them. I don’t know you.’

  ‘I do my best to alter that,’ said Althene. ‘I tell you great amounts about myself.’

  ‘Yes, your mother, and the house in Amsterdam. But your childhood sounds all wrong, doesn’t it. One minute like the nineteen twenties, and then like something much earlier. Or is that your technique?’

  ‘I feel very old, Rachaela, sometimes. And sometimes young. I began to feel young when I saw you first, at that window, glaring down at me. I felt myself wake up.’

  ‘And set yourself to have me.’

  ‘And succeeded. How clever I’ve been.’

  ‘I still don’t know you.’

  ‘How dare you,’ said Althene sweetly, ‘suppose you could know me so quickly. It will take you many, many decades even to begin.’

  ‘Do we have them? Many many decades?’

  ‘We have, certainly, some cold wine in the refrigerator.’

  Rachaela lifted the watering-can and made offerings to the parched flowers. Over the river, the art deco building let forth its soft chemical plume.

  ‘Aren’t I drinking too much for a pregnant woman?’

  ‘A little wine is always good. And, you’re Scarabae. You can drink what you like.’

  ‘I’m half Scarabae.’

  ‘It’s enough.’

  Along the mud flats, a man was walking slowly. His head was not turned towards the apartment. Behind him, leftwards, the sun westered, scaling metal ripples over the river like a fire.

  Ruth... fire child.

  Althene came back with two long green glasses of the white wine. As she emerged, the sun touched her face with Inca copper, and the curve of her breasts, that looked so real inside the amber silk shirt.

  Rachaela felt a warm resinous stroke of desire.

  She did not know any more, or care, what it was she wanted, Althene the woman, or her hidden maleness. In the dark, Rachaela could turn and smooth over the flat loins under their sheath of satin night garment, and find the creature sleeping, coiled shameless at the centre of this perfumed female icon. And it would raise its head, and next a beautiful woman would lie against her, sideways now for the comfort of the contorting pregnancy, and pin Rachaela through with the golden pin.