Books of Blood: Volumes 1-6

  "That's something, I suppose."

  Hammersmith stared up at Galloway, his erupting brows knitted in anger.

  "You runt," he said, “you were screwing her, weren't you? Fancy yourself like that, don't you? Well, let me tell you something, Diane Duvall is worth a dozen of you. A dozen!"

  "Is that why you let this last production go on, Hammersmith? Because you'd seen her, and you wanted to get your hot little hands on her?"

  "You wouldn't understand. You've got your brain in your pants." He seemed genuinely offended by the interpretation Galloway had put on his admiration for Miss Duvall.

  "All right, have it your way. We still have no Viola."

  "That's why I'm cancelling," said Hammersmith, slowing down to savour the moment.

  It had to come. Without Diane Duvall, there would be no Twelfth Night; and maybe it was better that way. A knock on the door.

  "W ho the fuck's that?" said Hammersmith softly. "Come."

  It was Lichfield. Galloway was almost glad to see that strange, scarred face. Though he had a lot of questions to ask of Lichfield, about the state he'd left Diane in, about their conversation together, it wasn't an interview he was willing to conduct in front of Hammersmith. Besides, any half-formed accusations he might have had were countered by the man's presence here. If Lichfield had attempted violence on Diane, for whatever reason, was it likely that he would come back so soon, so smilingly?

  "Who are you?" Hammersmith demanded.

  "Richard Walden Lichfield."

  "I'm none the wiser."

  "I used to be a trustee of the Elysium."

  "Oh."

  "I make it my business -” "What do you want?" Hammersmith broke in, irritated by Lichfield's poise. "I hear the production is in jeopardy," Lichfield replied, unruffled.

  "No jeopardy," said Hammersmith, allowing himself a twitch at the corner of his mouth. "No jeopardy at all, because there's no show. It's been cancelled."

  "Oh?" Lichfield looked at Galloway.

  "Is this with your consent?" he asked.

  "He has no say in the matter; I have sole right of cancellation if circumstances dictate it; it's in his contract. The theatre is closed as of today: it will not reopen."

  "Yes it will," said Lichfield.

  "What?" Hammersmith stood up behind his desk, and Galloway realized he'd never seen the man standing before. He was very short.

  "We will play Twelfth Night as advertised," Lichfield purred. "My wife has kindly agreed to understudy the part of Viola in place of Miss Duvall."

  Hammersmith laughed, a coarse, butcher's laugh. It died on his lips however, as the office was suffused with lavender, and Constantia Lichfield made her entrance, shimmering in silk and fur. She looked as perfect as the day she died: even Hammersmith held his breath and his silence at the sight of her.

  "Our new Viola," Lichfield announced.

  After a moment Hammersmith found his voice. "This woman can't step in at half a day's notice." "Why not?" said Galloway, not taking his eyes off the woman. Lichfield was a lucky man; Constantia was an extraordinary beauty. He scarcely dared draw breath in her presence for fear she'd vanish.

  Then she spoke. The lines were from Act V, Scene I: "If nothing lets to make us happy both. But this my masculine usurp'd attire, do not embrace me till each circumstance. Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump. That I am Viola."

  The voice was light and musical, but it seemed to resound in her body, filling each phrase with an undercurrent of suppressed passion.

  And that face. It was wonderfully alive, the features playing the story of her speech with delicate economy. She was enchanting.

  "I'm sorry," said Hammersmith, “but there are rules and regulations about this sort of thing. Is she Equity?" "No," said Lichfield.

  "Well you see, it's impossible. The union strictly precludes this kind of thing. They'd flay us alive." "What's it to you, Hammersmith?" said Galloway. "What the fuck do you care? You'll never need set foot in a theatre again once this place is demolished."

  "My wife has watched the rehearsals. She is word perfect."

  "It could be magic," said Galloway, his enthusiasm firing up with every moment he looked at Constantia. "You're risking the Union, Galloway," Hammersmith chided.

  "I'll take that risk."

  "As you say, it's nothing to me. But if a little bird was to tell them, you'd have egg on your face." "Hammersmith: give her a chance. Give all of us a chance. If Equity blacks me, that's my look-out." Hammersmith sat down again.

  "Nobody'll come, you know that, don't you? Diane Duvall was a star; they would have sat through your turgid production to see her, Galloway. But an unknown… Well, it's your funeral. Go ahead and do it, I wash my hands of the whole thing. It's on your head Galloway, remember that. I hope they flay you for it."

  "Thank you," said Lichfield. "Most kind." Hammersmith began to rearrange his desk, to give more prominence to the bottle and the glass. The interview was over: he wasn't interested in these butterifies any longer. "Go away," he said. "Just go away."

  "I have one or two requests to make," Lichfield told Galloway as they left the office. "Alterations to the production which would enhance my wife's performance."

  "What are they?"

  "For Constantia's comfort, I would ask that the lighting levels be taken down substantially. She's simply not accustomed to performing under such hot, bright lights."

  "Very well."

  "I'd also request that we install a row of footlights."

  "Footlights?"

  "An odd requirement, I realize, but she feels much happier with footlights."

  "They tend to dazzle the actors," said Galloway. "It becomes difficult to see the audience."

  "Nevertheless… I have to stipulate their installation."

  "OK."

  "Thirdly – I would ask that all scenes involving kissing, embracing or otherwise touching Constantia be re-directed to remove every instance of physical contact whatsoever."

  "Everything?"

  "Everything."

  "For God's sake why?"

  "My wife needs no business to dramatize the working of the heart, Terence."

  That curious intonation on the word 'heart'. Working of the heart.

  Galloway caught Constantia's eye for the merest of moments. It was like being blessed.

  "Shall we introduce our new Viola to the company?" Lichfield suggested.

  "Why not?"

  The trio went into the theatre.

  The re-arranging of the blocking and the business to exclude any physical contact was simple. And though the rest of the cast were initially wary of their new colleague, her unaffected manner and her natural grace soon had them at her feet. Besides, her presence meant that the show would go on.

  At six, Galloway called a break, announcing that they'd begin the Dress at eight, and telling them to go out and enjoy themselves for an hour or so. The company went their ways, buzzing with a new-found enthusiasm for the production. What had looked like a shambles half a day earlier now seemed to be shaping up quite well. There were a thousand things to be sniped at, of course: technical shortcomings, costumes that fitted badly, directorial foibles. All par for the course. In fact, the actors were happier than they'd been in a good while. Even Ed Cunningham was not above passing a compliment or two.

  Lichfield found Tallulah in the Green Room, tidying.

  "Tonight… "Yes, sir."

  "You must not be afraid."

  "I'm not afraid," Tallulah replied. What a thought. As if-”

  "There may be some pain, which I regret. For you, indeed for all of us."

  "I understand."

  "Of course you do. You love the theatre as I love it: you know the paradox of this profession. To play life. ah, Tallulah, to play life… what a curious thing it is. Sometimes I wonder, you know, how long I can keep up the illusion."

  "It's a wonderful performance," she said.

  "Do you think so? Do you really think so?" He was enc
ouraged by her favourable review. It was so gaffing, to have to pretend all the time; to fake the flesh, the breath, the look of life. Grateful for Tallulah's opinion, he reached for her.

  "Would you like to die, Tallulah?"

  "Does it hurt?"

  "Scarcely at all."

  "It would make me very happy."

  "And so it should."

  His mouth covered her mouth, and she was dead in less than a minute, conceding happily to his inquiring tongue. He laid her out on the threadbare couch and locked the door of the Green Room with her own key. She'd cool easily in the chill of the room, and be up and about again by the time the audience arrived.

  At six-fifteen Diane Duvall got out of a taxi at the front of the Elysium. It was well dark, a windy November night, but she felt fine; nothing could depress tonight. Not the dark, not the cold.

  Unseen, she made her way past the posters that bore her face and name, and through the empty auditorium to her dressing-room. There, smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes, she found the object of her affection. "Terry."

  She posed in the doorway for a moment, letting the fact of her reappearance sink in. He went quite white at the sight of her, so she pouted a little. It wasn't easy to pout. There was a stiffness in the muscles of her face but she carried off the effect to her satisfaction.

  Galloway was lost for words. Diane looked ill, no two ways about it, and if she'd left the hospital to take up her part in the Dress Rehearsal he was going to have to convince her otherwise. She was wearing no make-up, and her ash blonde hair needed a wash.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, as she closed the door behind her.

  "Unfinished business," she said.

  "Listen… I've got something to tell you…

  God, this was going to be messy. "We've found a replacement, in the show." She looked at him blankly. He hurried on, tripping over his own words, "We thought you were out of commission, I mean, not permanently, but, you know, for the opening at least…"

  "Don't worry," she said. His jaw dropped a little. "Don't worry?" "What's it to me?"

  "You said you came back to finish -" He stopped. She was unbuttoning the top of her dress.

  She's not serious, he thought, she can't be serious. Sex? Now?

  "I've done a lot of thinking in the last few hours," she said as she shimmied the crumpled dress over her hips, let it fall, and stepped out of it. She was wearing a white bra, which she tried, unsuccessfully, to unhook. "I've decided I don't care about the theatre. Help me, will you?"

  She turned round and presented her back to him. Automatically he unhooked the bra, not really analysing whether he wanted this or not. It seemed to be a fait accompli. She'd come back to finish what they'd been interrupted doing, simple as that. And despite the bizarre noises she was making in the back of her throat, and the glassy look in her eyes, she was still an attractive woman. She turned again, and Galloway stared at the fullness of her breasts, paler than he'd remembered them, but lovely. His trousers were becoming uncomfortably tight, and her performance was only worsening his situation, the way she was grinding her hips like the rawest of Soho strippers, running her hands between her legs.

  "Don't worry about me," she said. "I've made up my mind. All I really want…"

  She put her hands, so recently at her groin, on his face. They were icy cold.

  "All I really want is you. I can't have sex and the stage. There comes a time in everyone's life when decisions have to be made."

  She licked her lips. There was no film of moisture left on her mouth when her tongue had passed over it. "The accident made me think, made me analyse what it is I really care about. And frankly -” She was unbuckling his belt."- I don't give a shit -”

  Now the zip.

  "- about this, or any other fucking play."

  His trousers fell down.

  "- I'll show you what I care about."

  She reached into his briefs, and clasped him. Her cold hand somehow made the touch sexier. He laughed, closing his eyes as she pulled his briefs down to the middle of his thigh and knelt at his feet.

  She was as expert as ever, her throat open like a drain. Her mouth was somewhat drier than usual, her tongue scouring him, but the sensations drove him wild. It was so good, he scarcely noticed the ease with which she devoured him, taking him deeper than she'd ever managed previously, using every trick she knew to goad him higher and higher. Slow and deep, then picking up speed until he almost came, then slowing again until the need passed. He was completely at her mercy.

  He opened his eyes to watch her at work. She was skewering herself upon him, face in rapture. "God," he gasped, "That is so good. Oh yes, oh yes."

  Her face didn't even flicker in response to his words, she just continued to work at him soundlessly. She wasn't making her usual noises, the small grunts of satisfaction, the heavy breathing through the nose. She just ate his flesh in absolute silence.

  He held his breath a moment, while an idea was born in his belly. The bobbing head bobbed on, eyes closed, lips clamped around his member, utterly engrossed. Half a minute passed; a minute; a minute and a half. And now his belly was full of terrors.

  She wasn't breathing. She was giving this matchless blow-job because she wasn't stopping, even for a moment, to inhale or exhale.

  Calloway felt his body go rigid, while his erection wilted in her throat. She didn't falter in her labour; the relentless pumping continued at his groin even as his mind formed the unthinkable thought: She's dead.

  She has me in her mouth, in her cold mouth, and she's dead. That's why she'd come back, got up off her mortuary slab and come back. She was eager to finish what she'd started, no longer caring about the play, or her usurper. It was this act she valued, this act alone. She'd chosen to perform it for eternity.

  Galloway could do nothing with the realization but stare down like a damn fool while this corpse gave him head. Then it seemed she sensed his horror. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. How could he ever have mistaken that dead stare for life? Gently, she withdrew his shrunken manhood from between her lips.

  "What is it?" she asked, her fluting voice still affecting life.

  "You… you're not… breathing."

  Her face fell. She let him go.

  "Oh darling," she said, letting all pretence to life disappear, "I'm not so good at playing the part, am I?" Her voice was a ghost's voice: thin, forlorn. Her skin, which he had thought so flatteringly pale was, on second view, a waxen white.

  "You are dead?" he said.

  "I'm afraid so. Two hours ago: in my sleep. But I had to come, Terry; so much unfinished business. I made my choice. You should be flattered. You are flattered, aren't you?"

  She stood up and reached into her handbag, which she'd left beside the mirror. Galloway looked at the door, trying to make his limbs work, but they were inert. Besides, he had his trousers round his ankles. Two steps and he'd fall flat on his face.

  She turned back on him, with something silver and sharp in her hand. Try as he might, he couldn't get a focus on it. But whatever it was, she meant it for him.

  Since the building of the new Crematorium in 1934, one humiliation had come after another for the cemetery. The tombs had been raided for lead coffin-linings, the stones overturned and smashed; it was fouled by dogs and graffiti. Very few mourners now came to tend the graves. The generations had dwindled, and the small number of people who might still have had a loved one buried there were too infirm to risk the throttled walkways, or too tender to bear looking at such vandalism.

  It had not always been so. There were illustrious and influential families interred behind the marble faзades of the Victorian mausoleums. Founder fathers, local industrialists and dignitaries, any and all who had done the town proud by their efforts. The body of the actress Constantia Lichfield had been buried here ('Until the Day Break and the Shadows Flee Away'), though her grave was almost unique in the attention some secret admirer still paid to it. Nobody was watching that nig
ht, it was too bitter for lovers. Nobody saw Charlotte Hancock open the door of her sepulcher, with the beating wings of pigeons applauding her vigour as she shambled out to meet the moon. Her husband Gerard was with her, he less fresh than she, having been dead thirteen years longer. Joseph Jardine, en famille, was not far behind the Hancocks, as was Marriott Fletcher, and Anne Snell, and the Peacock Brothers; the list went on and on. In one corner, Alfred Crawshaw (Captain in the 17th Lancers), was helping his lovely wife Emma from the rot of their bed. Everywhere faces pressed at the cracks of the tomb lids – was that not Kezia Reynolds with her child, who'd lived just a day, in her arms? And Martin van de Linde (the Memory of the Just is Blessed) whose wife had never been found; Rosa and Selina Goldfinch: upstanding women both; and Thomas Jerrey, and -Too many names to mention. Too many states of decay to describe. Sufficient to say they rose: their burial finery fly born, their faces stripped of all but the foundation of beauty. Still they came, swinging open the back gate of the cemetery and threading their way across the wasteland towards the Elysium. In the distance, the sound of traffic. Above, a jet roared in to land. One of the Peacock brothers, staring up at the winking giant as it passed over, missed his footing and fell on his face, shattering his jaw. They picked him up fondly, and escorted him on his way. There was no harm done; and what would a Resurrection be without a few laughs?

  So the show went on.

  "If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die -” Galloway could not be found at Curtain; but Ryan had instructions from Hammersmith (through the ubiquitous Mr. Lichfield) to take the show up with or without the Director.

  "He'll be upstairs, in the Gods," said Lichfield. "In fact, I think I can see him from here."

  "Is he smiling?" asked Eddie.

  "Grinning from ear to ear."

  "Then he's pissed."

  The actors laughed. There was a good deal of laughter that night. The show was running smoothly, and though they couldn't see the audience over the glare of the newly-installed footlights they could feel the waves of love and delight pouring out of the auditorium. The actors were coming off stage elated.

  "They're all sitting in the Gods," said Eddie, “but your friends, Mr. Lichfield, do an old ham good. They're quiet of course, but such big smiles on their faces."