Possession

  ‘And may I have a phone number?’

  ‘I’m er – staying – ’ Don’t give a number where he could check up and find your name, give him no clues. She stared around for inspiration, read the wording ‘South East Business Systems’ on the base of her VDU, and gave him the number printed beneath it. ‘See you Monday,’ she said.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  She did not like the way he had sounded, as if she had been a nuisance to him, as if he had not cared whether she’d rung him or not. It was now a quarter past ten on a Saturday night, she reminded herself; she wouldn’t have been too impressed if someone had rung her at this hour, asking if she’d look at a manuscript. She heard a harsh rattle. Oh, Christ, someone was trying to get in the door.

  She spun around, but there was nothing. She heard the sound again, distant, below her, and the bark of a dog again. She ran to the window and looked down. She saw a car with its wheels on the kerb, then Philip Main looking up, anxious.

  Already? How could he be here already? She fumbled with the window lock, pushed it open, and stared down. No, he couldn’t be here yet, too soon. Much too soon.

  ‘Alex, are you O.K.?’

  Chunks of time were disappearing. What was happening? What the hell was happening?

  ‘Alex? Shall I break the door down?’

  ‘No,’ she said, weakly. ‘I’ll give you the keys.’ She threw them down, saw him jump out of the way, heard the faint clank as they hit the pavement.

  Sighing with relief, she walked across her office. There was a growl outside her door. She opened it and saw a small black bull-terrier standing belligerently, baring its teeth, with a stream of slobber dribbling from its black gums. It gave a low rumbling growl.

  Footsteps raced up the stairs and Main appeared on the landing, puffing, dishevelled. ‘Black!’ he shouted. ‘Leave!’

  The dog glared at Alex, hungry for action.

  ‘Black!’

  Reluctantly, it backed off.

  Main put his hands out and rested them on her shoulders. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m O.K.’

  ‘I decided to come myself. What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  Alex stared at him, then burst into tears. ‘I don’t know, Philip. I don’t know what’s happening.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ he fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a handkerchief. ‘You are in a bad state.’

  ‘It was the phone; I heard someone on the phone.’

  ‘In here?’

  She nodded and took the handkerchief.

  ‘Sorry, it’s a bit grubby.’

  She squeezed it tightly, then dabbed her eyes with it. He led her over to the sofa and they sat down. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his cigarette. She watched the dog look around, uninterestedly, then trot out of the room.

  ‘Someone lifted up the receiver when I was calling you.’

  ‘There’s no one here now, I looked as I came up; the windows are all locked, as far as I could see. Are you sure?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It wasn’t a crossed line, outside somewhere?’

  She stared at him. ‘It felt so close.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘The person, whoever it was.’

  Main offered her a cigarette. ‘What are you doing here, at this hour, on a Saturday night?’

  ‘I – I needed your number – I didn’t have it at home. I’m sorry – did I disturb you?’

  ‘No more than the chap from Porlock disturbed Coleridge; you may have deprived mankind of the greatest poem of all time – I was about to write it –’ He smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry; I don’t know what is happening.’

  ‘I’ll drive you home.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I don’t want to go home.’

  ‘You’re not staying here, I won’t let you. I think you need some rest.’ He held out his lighter. ‘You can come and stay at my place,’ he caught her eye and stared straight back. ‘In the spare room. O.K.?’

  She smiled, and nodded, then winced at the strength of the cigarette. She stood up, and took Stanley Hill’s manuscript back into her secretary’s office, replacing it where she had found it. ‘I didn’t know scientists wrote poetry,’ she said, walking back into her office. ‘Are you ever going to let me see any?’

  ‘We’ll see.’ He smiled, mysteriously.

  She felt better after the first whisky, curled up on the floor on the thick rugs in front of the log fire. The walls of the room were lined with books, shelves of battered, loved books that went up to the high stuccoed ceiling. There was wood and leather everywhere; fine wood panelling, solid wooden furniture, antique but simple, well restored, and leather chairs, big, thick leather chairs and a massive leather sofa.

  ‘I don’t understand. Why are you so against it?’

  ‘Mumbo jumbo, it’s a load of nonsense; we die and we’re gone.’ He clapped his hands together, suddenly, violently; it made her jump, and the dog rushed over to him, barking excitedly.

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘I know it; it’s proven. Down, boy, down! Good Lord, you’re an intelligent woman, you can’t still believe in God! Darwin’s proven; the game’s up for the Holy Joes.’ He exhaled a lungful of smoke and the sharp gaunt features of his face became hazy and soft for a moment as the smoke wafted up around him; he looked demoniac, she thought, satanic, and for an instant she felt a tiny shudder of doubt about him.

  ‘If we were part-spirit, part-man, we’d have free will, girl. We don’t, we’re all prisoners of our genes; it’s all laid out, the DNA, the computer program in your genes, from your mother and your father; the colour of your eyes, the size of your fanny.’

  She grinned, relaxing again.

  ‘Even the way you’re going to think.’

  ‘We have free will, Philip.’

  ‘Rubbish. You and I have no more free will than a dog, than Black.’

  ‘I thought dogs had free will?’

  Main pointed a finger at his dog. ‘Black kills cats; if he sees a cat when he’s not on the lead, he’ll kill it; it’s in his genes, he can’t help it, and he can’t be stopped.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You saw how obedient he was in your office. I told him to stop and he did. He’ll obey me on everything, except a cat; if he sees a cat, that’s it; he’ll tear its throat out.’

  ‘That’s bad training.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing I could do about it; there’s nothing any trainer in the world could do about it; it’s in his genes and it can never be removed.’

  ‘You said that spirits could have genes too.’

  ‘We’ve evolved God in our minds; it’s our survival mechanism, dates back thousands of years, when man first tried to explain why he was here. You’ve met spiritualists, mediums; they’re all loopy or else they’re very smooth. The loopy ones think they’re genuine, the smooth ones are hoods; they’re good at telepathy, they pluck Uncle Harry out of your memory banks, tell you things you already knew, throw in a few others for good measure, you go “Gosh, Wow, Triff!” Then you think a bit, and you say “How is Uncle Harry?” And he says, “Fine,” and you go away, and you start thinking about it, and the doubt sets in. Look, you think, I buried Uncle Harry last week. He’s in his grave, or his ashes are in this urn, and now we’re talking to each other again and you want to talk more and more and you’ll find you can’t, because Uncle Harry can’t think of anything else to say.’

  He drew deeply on his cigarette, and smiled. ‘He was a boring old fart when he was alive and you suddenly expect him to become interesting because he’s dead.’ He stopped, seeing the tears in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, girl, but you’ll only do yourself harm up there.’ He tapped his head. ‘Your son was a nice lad; but you’ve just got to accept that he’s dead.’

  She stared at him for a long time. ‘I can accept it, Philip. But I’m not sure he can.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The bright London Sunday mo
rning unfurled through the grimy windscreen of Philip Main’s Volvo; it was like trying to watch television through a frosted glass window, Alex thought. London looked different on Sundays, the sense of urgency had gone from it. There was time on Sundays, time to walk, time to think; London was a good place on Sundays.

  She felt rested, having slept well for the first time, she realized, since the news about Fabian.

  She looked down at the car’s ashtray, jammed open and thick with butts, at the piles of papers, magazines, documents, cassettes lying in the floorwell around her feet. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for last night. It did me a lot of good.’

  ‘We managed,’ he said gently.

  ‘Managed what?’

  ‘Managed.’

  ‘You talk in riddles sometimes.’

  ‘Managed to restrain ourselves.’

  She smiled and looked at him, cigarette protruding from his moustache, head hunched slightly forward, as if he was too tall for the car. ‘You have quite an ego, don’t you?’

  ‘No – just sometimes –’ he trailed off.

  ‘Sometimes what?’

  ‘Sometimes –’ the words trailed away and evaporated. He leaned forward, pushed a cassette into the player, and a second later Elkie Brooks sang, loud and clear, all around her. He grunted, leaned forward again and turned the volume down. ‘So, the vicar told you to try to find out more about Fabian?’

  ‘The curate. Yes.’

  ‘And what have you found out so far?’

  ‘That he didn’t ditch his girlfriend, Carrie – she ditched him.’

  ‘What does that tell you? That he was proud?’

  Alex laughed. ‘I feel so stupid, you know, about last night.’

  ‘The mind plays tricks when you get tired.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a medium called Morgan Ford?’

  He shook his head and inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

  ‘How can you tell a genuine one from a fake?’

  ‘There are no genuine ones.’

  Alex stared at him. ‘You scientists can be so damned smug, you’re infuriating.’

  He pressed the horn irritably at a small rented car, all four of its occupants gawping at Liberty’s façade. ‘No, we just state truths people don’t like to hear.’

  ‘That’s equally smug.’

  She was mildly surprised to see her Mercedes standing where she had left it, not towed away, ticketed or vandalized. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘You’re going to be all right now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think I’ll take you out to dinner tonight, just to make sure.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t really like going back to an empty house in the evening. Come round to me and I’ll make some supper.’

  ‘About eight?’

  Alex drove off feeling cheerful, relaxed; but the pain would come back, she knew. It was all piled up in her head, waiting to avalanche; it would be worst in the late afternoon when the sunlight began to fade; the depression would come, the way it always had, late afternoon on Sundays, all her life, since she was a small child.

  She drove south over Vauxhall Bridge and down towards Streatham, not relishing the task she faced of trying to find Carrie and breaking the news to her. She didn’t even have an address. All she could remember was that they had been passing an antique shop with a row of chairs out on the pavement, when Fabian had said, ‘That’s where Carrie lives, Mother,’ and she had looked over to the right and seen the tower blocks. It was at the start of a hill, very similar to the hill she was on now; she saw an antique shop, closed, boarded up and two grey towers in the distance to the right. She turned and headed towards them, down a narrow street lined with beat-up cars and grimy vans: a tight hemmed-in street. Two black kids were playing a game on the pavement; they stopped and looked at her and she felt herself blushing, felt somehow that she had no right to be here, that she was out of her allotted territory.

  The road wound round and up through a seemingly endless row of two-storey council dwellings, stark metal staircases leading to the upper floors. Towels, sheets and underwear hung from the balconies and windows; it felt like a ghetto.

  The two tower blocks now loomed straight up in front of her, crumbling, pre-cast concrete; they stretched into the sky like a pair of giant dismal tombstones.

  Alex got out of the Mercedes, locked it carefully and walked into the lobby of the nearest building. Most of the glass from one door panel was lying on the floor and the other door was wedged permanently open. The word FUCK had been aerosolled across a wall in large crimson letters, and there was an unpleasant smell she could not identify.

  She looked down the name panel. It was there: E. Needham. She felt a confusion of emotions suddenly. It would have been easier if there had been no name; the decision would have been made, and she could let it rest.

  She pushed the button and the huge lift door slid open; it was more like a goods lift than a passenger lift. SUCK YOUR BALLS. The crimson aerosol artist had been at work in here too. She pushed the button for the third floor and the door shut, slowly, jerkily. She wondered if she would have been more sensible to have walked. There was an almost imperceptible jolt and the doors in front of her began to slide downwards, slowly, almost agonizingly slowly. The lift smelt foul, like a public lavatory, and suddenly she noticed, to her horror, a puddle of urine on the floor beside her. She moved away. There was a clunk and a judder and the lift passed a marker for the first floor.

  Finally, it jerked to a halt and she stepped out into a grimy stone-floored corridor. There was a faded ban-the-bomb roundel sprayed on the wall, and further along someone had carved PIGS into the wall with a chisel. She stopped outside number 33, a blue door with a spyhole, and looked for the bell. She pushed it, heard a rasp like an angry insect, and waited. A moment later a woman’s voice called out, ‘Yeah?’

  Alex stared at the door. ‘Mrs Needham?’ She waited, but nothing happened. Somewhere down the corridor she could hear a baby crying, and above her the faint blare of pop music. She rang the bell again.

  There was another long pause. ‘Yeah, who is it?’

  Alex stared at the door. ‘Mrs Needham?’

  ‘Who is it?’ The voice was closer now and she heard the shuffle of footsteps, saw the glint of movement in the spyhole. ‘What yer want?’ said the voice, hostile.

  ‘I want to speak to Mrs Needham, please.’

  ‘You from the Council?’

  ‘No. My name’s Alex Hightower. My son used to go out with your daughter.’

  There was a long silence. Alex heard a hacking cough, then silence again. ‘Hallo?’ she said, nervously.

  ‘So what yer want? I’ve paid me TV licence.’

  Alex frowned, baffled. ‘I just want to have a word with you about your daughter, Carrie. Do you have a daughter, Carrie?’

  A pause. ‘Yeah.’ Another pause. ‘What she done?’

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Needham. I have some news to give her. Please open the door.’

  There was another hacking cough and she heard the sound of bolts sliding; the door opened a few inches. She saw a much younger woman than she had expected, someone her own age, but a pinched, hardened face, aged by neglect, sourness and a sallow complexion that was desperately in need of some fresh air. She must once have been very pretty, and she could be attractive now if she made the effort. She stood there, her hair a nest of curlers, cigarette hanging from her lips, in a dirty blue dressing gown, looking her up and down. ‘You’re not from the Council?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they got some funny ideas.’ Alex saw the eyes stare at her shiftily, then dart nervously around. The woman jerked her head and stepped back; Alex took this to be an invitation and stepped into a short hallway which stank of sour milk and cigarette smoke. Through the door to the right she could see the kitchen, the table stacked with a pile of empty beer bottles. The woman led her into an L-shaped bedsitting room. ‘Carrie, you said?’ br />
  Alex nodded and stared around at the unmade bed, the bare walls, the clothes, trash, magazines and unwashed dishes strewn around at random, at the filthy windows and the magnificent views out over London beyond.

  ‘My son, Fabian, used to go out with your daughter – until quite recently; I think they split up just after Christmas.’

  The woman stared blankly, drew heavily on her cigarette, even though it was down to the filter, screwed up her nose, took another drag and stubbed it out. ‘Ain’t seen her; she don’t come here much.’ She turned her face away from Alex and coughed again, a long, hacking cough. She turned back. ‘Sit down, throw those papers on the floor. I’m afraid it’s not much here; they don’t give you much now, the Council, if you’re on your own.’

  Alex removed a pile of newspapers and a half-completed pools coupon from the sofa, and sat down.

  ‘Gone her own way, if you know what I mean.’

  Alex sensed the woman eyeing her up and down. ‘All children are difficult, one way or another.’

  ‘I don’t know about no Fibbin – wozzisname, Fibbin?’

  ‘Fabian.’

  ‘Don’t know about ’im. She din’t say nothing about him.’

  ‘He was killed in a car crash two and a half weeks ago. I know he was very fond of Carrie; I thought she ought to know.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ the woman said, matter-of-fact, and Alex wondered if perhaps the woman had misheard her.

  ‘I thought Carrie might have come to the funeral, you see.’ Alex bit her lip; she wanted to get out of here, away from the stench, this wretched woman, the filthy flat.

  ‘I’ll tell her when I see her, dear – dunno when that’ll be. I’m sorry, haven’t offered you nothing – don’t get many visitors, see, except from the Council.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘Cup of tea or something.’

  ‘No thank you, really.’

  ‘She’s in America.’ She nodded at the mantelpiece and Alex saw a postcard with a picture of a skyscraper.

  ‘How long has she been there?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘Dunno how long she been anywhere; just get postcards, nothing else; get ’em regular, I suppose,’ she shrugged. ‘Know some mums don’t even get that.’