Incarnate (11 page)

Her parents were in Devon. A phone call would prove that, but she didn’t need to phone. She was alone in the flat, which was the way it ought to be. She flung open her bedroom door to give herself no chance to be nervous. She was awake now, she knew what was real. The mirrors on the hall walls multiplied themselves as she switched on the lights. Coffee was what she seemed to need, not sleep. Or perhaps she should go back to MTV, except that Martin and Leon might have left by now. Her parents weren’t here and she ought not to want them to be, she would be staying with them over Christmas. Their presence had been a dream.

She halted halfway between the kitchen and the front door. Had the pimply man whose moustache seemed to have decided that it didn’t want to come out after all really spoken to her, not today but years ago? Had he really said that she had made it happen, whatever
it
was? She mustn’t think that, the world was full of pimply men with spiky hair, Soho especially. It was ridiculous to think he was the same man or that she could recognize him after eleven years. She didn’t know his name, she told herself. She didn’t know… . She had only dreamed that it was Danny Swain.

10

D
ANNY
hadn’t realized it was so far to Chelsea. By the time he reached Sloane Square he was already late. Birds exploded from crusts of bread on the spattered pavement under the plane trees as he ran across the square. Danny’s shirt was sticking to his armpits, the trousers of the suit he hadn’t worn for thirteen years were squeezing his stomach like corsets, but he didn’t care. He was sure that he was going to get the job.

A girl who wore a dress composed of veils ran ahead of him on King’s Road, smelling like spring. A silver car that he thought was a Rolls-Royce waited outside an antique shop where a tall woman was examining mirrors, and he wondered where the chauffeur was. Everyone on the street and in the boutiques looked bright and young and full of life, not at all like the noisy young people and grumpy old folk who Came to the Hercules. They made him feel sure of himself. Perhaps he’d dreamed he would get the job, perhaps he could still have those dreams after all.

He almost ran past the side street where the Royal was. By now he was ten minutes late by the Mickey Mouse clock that he glimpsed in a boutique. It didn’t matter, the manager could be interviewing whoever else had applied for the job. Danny was sure they wouldn’t have as much experience as he had. His thirteen years at the Hercules were worth something after all.

He stood and admired the Royal before he went in. A red carpet held by polished golden bars led up steps that looked like marble, past posters for a week of Fred Astaire. That was the kind of films his parents liked, and they would be able to get in here free if they didn’t mind traveling so far. Perhaps he and his parents could move to Chelsea to help his mother get well. He would certainly be earning more than Mr. Pettigrew paid him at the Hercules.

The small foyer smelled of metal polish and carpet cleaner. Life-size stills of Chaplin and Bogart faced each other across the thick red carpet beneath a whispering chandelier. A young woman in dungarees was cleaning the window of the paybox. When he told her he was a projectionist, she said, “Go straight up to the manager’s office.”

The carpet was so thick he couldn’t feel the stairs. He was climbing the black mirrors of the walls in the suit that he’d worn when Mr. Pettigrew had interviewed him. This time his mother wasn’t with him, he would be able to speak for himself. He knocked at the manager’s door. “Come,” a voice said.

The only person in the room was a woman. She wore a black suit and white blouse, and was sitting behind a heavy desk. She was about his mother’s age. For a moment he felt tricked and nervous, but why should he care? She must be seeing how smart he was as she glanced at him through the glittery frame of her spectacles, not how his head was too small for his neck or how his moustache would never grow properly. “Mr. Swain?” she said.

“Yes.” He closed the door quickly—a blue suit with a brooch on the jacket swung back and forth on the hook— and sat down at once. “Yes,” he said again in case he hadn’t said it loud enough, remembering his mother’s admonition: “Go on, Danny, speak up for yourself.”

“I’m Miss Astaire.” He was almost sure that was what the manageress said as she lifted bags of money into the safe. He thought of making a joke in case she had said Mrs. Tare but decided not to. She closed the safe and spun the wheel before she turned to him. “Did you have much trouble finding us?”

“No.” His voice seemed very loud in the small room, but better too loud than too low. “Just walk along King’s Road like you said,” he added to show that he had taken notice.

“I asked you that because you really should have been here half an hour ago.”

“Not half an hour.” It couldn’t have been twenty minutes since he’d seen the Mickey Mouse clock, not even ten. “Not that long,” he said at the top of his voice.

She was looking oddly at him; you couldn’t call it a smile. “Do you remember what time I said?”

“Half past ten.”

She pulled back her sleeve. “And what time does this say?”

“Oh.” The Mickey Mouse clock had tricked him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t think it would be so far.”

“I wonder if you realize you would have to make that journey every working day.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, but he felt trapped in the office with the small barred window; how late would he be at the Hercules this afternoon? “I’m sorry,” he said again to make sure she believed him. “I thought you would be interviewing the others.”

Again she gave him her odd, not quite smiling look. “You’re the only applicant today.”

He smiled at her, he couldn’t help it. He didn’t even have to compete for the job, it no longer mattered if he was late at the Hercules. “Oh, good.”

She sat back, tugging her cuffs over her watch. “So tell me about yourself. How much experience have you had?”

“Thirteen years.” When she didn’t react he said it again at the top of his voice; he never knew when he was speaking too low. “Thirteen years.”

“I heard you the first time. No need to shout.” She was staring past him. “You’ve always been a projectionist, have you?”

“Not always,” he said, in case she was testing his intelligence. “Ever since I left school.”

“Well, I assume so.” Again the odd look. “What drew you to the job?”

“The films. I only liked the good ones, ones like you show, I mean. Old ones.” He was hoping that would please her, but her expression didn’t change. “My dad was a projectionist, so he let me help him in the box when I left school. He got me the job.”

“You’ve worked there ever since, have you?”

“Yes.” He wondered whether he should say, “Except on my days off,” but she didn’t seem to care that much about words.

“Where?”

He should have been ready for that. He was going to get this job, it was his dream come true, but he didn’t want Mr. Pettigrew to know he had been for the interview, just in case. “How do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said patiently, “which cinema?”

“Just near where I live. Down Seven Sisters Road.” Surely he didn’t have to name it. But she was staring at him, less patiently. At last he mumbled “the Hercules” as indistinctly as he could.

“The Hercules, did you say?” She was smiling and shaking her head, and he thought she was impressed until she said, “Is that still Sidney Pettigrew’s cinema?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know the name of your own manager?”

“Yes, I do. It’s Mr. Pettigrew.” He hadn’t been cunning enough. “I don’t know what his first name is.”

“You don’t know—” She was staring past him again. “Well,” she said slowly. “Why do you want to leave the Hercules?”

Again he felt trapped, for he hadn’t realized she might ask. He couldn’t say he hated Mr. Pettigrew for treating him like a dog, not when Mr. Pettigrew might be a friend of hers. He couldn’t say that he wanted a job he had got for himself instead of the job Mr. Pettigrew had given him as a favor to his father because it was clear nobody else would employ him, just because he wasn’t very good at speaking. He wanted to be somebody, that was all, somebody more than the schoolboy who had never been able to speak up when the teacher had said, “Got a bone in your throat, Danny?”; more than the teenager who’d locked himself in the toilet to hide from the girls who said, “Got a bone in your trousers, Danny?”; the girls kicking the toilet door and telling him what they were going to show him, until he hadn’t dared go out when the afternoon bell rang because the girls would be waiting for him in the classroom. He couldn’t say any of this, he mustn’t get confused, mustn’t let his enemies confuse him. His trousers were hurting his crotch, his stomach felt squeezed and he was afraid he was going to fart, and suddenly he realized he didn’t know how long she had been waiting for him to answer; he couldn’t see her watch as she glanced at it. All at once he had an answer, and it came as a shout. “I don’t like the films at the Hercules.”

“I see.”

“Really,” he said, thinking of the trash he often had to show.

“All right, if you say so.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Thank you for coming.”

He jumped up and shook her hand, and held on to it when she tried to let go. “Have I got the job?”

He couldn’t see why she looked uneasy: Mr. Pettigrew had told him at once. “I really think you must wait to hear from me,” she said.

He couldn’t go back to the Hercules without knowing, not when he was going to be so late. “Can’t you tell me now?” he said as she pulled her hand free.

“I think it would be unfair to the other applicants.”

“You said I was the only one.”

“The only one today, I said. You’re the last.” She looked a little nervous, his voice had been so loud and harsh; he could still feel it in his throat, a soreness that was growing. “Well, perhaps in your case I should make the exception,” she said. “You’ve a good secure job at the Hercules. I should hold on to it if I were you.”

His throat felt as if he had swallowed her soap, the smell of which was choking him. “Haven’t I got the job?”

“Yes, at the Hercules. Not here, I’m afraid.” She was stepping round the desk. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for opening.”

He turned toward the door so that she wouldn’t see his face. He ought to have told her his mother was ill, that he needed the job so that he could afford to have his mother looked after properly, but it was too late now, and anyway she wouldn’t care. When he jerked the door open her suit leaped off the hook toward him. “It’s all right, I’ll see to that,” she said, but he wasn’t trying to catch it. He wanted to trample it, grind his heels into it, but she caught it in midair. He shoved the door out of his way and strode blindly out past Chaplin and Bogart and Astaire, his eyes stinging with daylight, with the air that was sharp and bright as knives.

King’s Road looked cheap now, full of girls with tired eyes dressed in flimsy clothes that would be worth nothing in six months. He snarled as he ran past the boutique with the Mickey Mouse clock. The car outside the antique shop wasn’t a Rolls-Royce or even silver. As he ran across Sloane Square, slithering on droppings, his armpits felt like sponges, cold and soaked.

The man in shirt-sleeves behind the ticket window made him wait because he asked for Finsbury Road instead of Finsbury Park. “No such place, mate,” he kept saying until Danny felt as if he no longer knew where he lived. Eventually the woman behind Danny in the grumbling queue told the man what he meant, and Danny ran down to the trains.

Ten minutes dozed by before a train came, and then he had to change at the next station, Victoria. He wouldn’t even have time to change out of his suit now. He felt as if it were squeezing him smaller, smaller. The train carried him beneath the West End, past King’s Cross and into the long darkness that came before Finsbury Park, a tunnel four stations long on the route map but full of nothing except roaring dark. He tried to understand how he could have been tricked out of his job at the Royal when he was sure he had dreamed he would succeed. Had the dream been a trick as well? Had they managed to harm his mind after all this time, when he’d fought them off for eleven years?

He ran up the sloping tunnel at Finsbury Park and onto Seven Sisters Road. Nothing seemed familiar; half of the Greek signs on the shops didn’t even bother to explain themselves—he was surprised the numbers on the clocks weren’t foreign too. The clocks agreed on how late he was, he mustn’t go home to change, and then he realized that he must, otherwise Mr. Pettigrew would see that he’d been for an interview. He turned off Seven Sisters Road, along the concrete path.

The flats were concrete terraces on top of terraces on top of terraces. As he panted up the stairs to the second balcony he struggled to pull out his key so fiercely that he almost tore his hip pocket. The postman had been to Danny’s, for his father was limping away down the hall, stuffing a letter into his pocket. “Back already, are you,” he growled without looking, and slammed the parlor door behind him.

Danny had to lie down on his bed before he could squirm out of his trousers. He heaved the mattress up and laid the suit underneath. He peeled off his sodden shirt, and then he heard his mother’s asthmatic wheezing in the hall. She had opened the door before he could shout, and he felt as if she’d caught him playing with himself. “Are you home for lunch?” she said, covering her eyes and retreating into the hall.

“I can’t,” he said nervously. “I’m late.”

“Promise me you’ll have a proper meal. We’ve two ill people here, we don’t want you ill too.” Her wheezing labored away down the hall, and he was glad that at least she hadn’t asked why he had worn his suit, for he would have had to admit he had failed.

A wind met him on the balcony, and he felt the spikes of his hair spring up. He couldn’t do anything about that now, though it made his scalp crawl. A clock chimed somewhere: half past twelve. He ran alongside the giant white arrows flattened on the tarmac of Seven Sisters Road. Everyone was trying to confuse him, the manageress at the Royal and the man in the Sloane Square ticket office, trying to make sure he couldn’t get away from where his enemies wanted him, make sure he was too anxious about his mother to be able to think. But they wouldn’t stop him thinking, that was one thing they couldn’t do to him. They must be worried now, to have made sure he didn’t get the job. They were worried because at last he was sure who their leader was.