The Printer's Devil (17 page)

Parking the Beetle, he noticed that his office light was on. When they bought the house, he and Kim had tossed for offices in the two spare bedrooms: she had the smaller, at the front of the house; his was larger, but, being at the side, gave only on to the next-door wall.

Living as they did in a cul-de-sac, traffic noise was negligible. Alan frowned, not quite knowing why, and trudged to the front door, his briefcase heavy as a headstone.

He found Kim sitting in his office, hunched like a spider in his swivel chair, with her legs drawn up. She never sat neatly - or did anything tidily. Her feet and hands were too big, her small frame too angular, more like a gangly adolescent boy than a woman in her thirties. Her androgynous appearance suddenly disturbed him, like something strangely new.

‘Hi, magician,’ said Kim.

Alan’s heart vaulted in his breast with something like horror, something like panic. He saw, without surprise, the scrying-glass and cloth on his desk before her, and felt his face turn transparent with guilt.

In the instant when he was about to confess all to her, something locked like a clamp on his tongue, paralysed his speech centres, and he found himself, of all things, laughing.

Kim’s face sent a pang through him: stony and remote. He sensed the coiled anger behind her pose, and deep inside, he quailed. Some part of him still strained towards her, towards the light, but it was pitilessly suppressed by something Alan could take no credit for. For a long second he saw her as in a blaze of lightning: everything was clear as revelation. Then, too quickly for him to react, the moment was past, and he sensed her receding from him. It was like a dream in which something he had known all his life suddenly became entirely unfamiliar.

Horrified, he saw her hand close round the glass, and, with an inarticulate sound, moved to stop her. He gripped her wrist. It was a mistake. When her first wrench failed to free her, she said, ‘Let go,’ in reasonable tones; but when that had no effect, she biffed him in the eye.

It was not a hard blow, but Alan’s perception cleared slightly.

‘Don’t look in the glass!’ he exclaimed, and was shocked by the despair in his voice.

‘Why not?’ asked Kim, looking down at his hand, which still held her wrist.

Alan, following her gaze, released it quickly. ‘I don’t think it’s - controllable,’ he replied, remotely surprised that he was being permitted to answer, to warn.

‘And the Verony? Is that uncontrollable too?’

‘The glass,’ Alan went on, ignoring the question. ‘It shows you things that aren’t - aren’t pleasant. They seem too... huge, too —’

‘Over-reaching?’ she suggested, remembering her sensation in the studio.

He nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, that’s just it. You don’t see them clearly. That’s the worst thing. No, maybe it’s the best thing. Fangs, claws.’

‘Talons,’ said Kim. ‘Scales. Reptilian eyes.’

‘You’ve looked in it, then,’ Alan said flatly.

‘No. No, that was something else.’ Something that came after me, she didn’t add.

Alan stared at her, saying no more. The silence stretched, hanging between them, teased out until its substance became impossibly fine.

Then Kim looked away and, surprisingly, began to sing softly.

‘Sconto col sangue mio l’amor che posi in te!

Non ti scordar, non ti scordar di me ... ’

‘I pay with my blood for loving you! Never forget me...’

Alan heard her voice as never before, the strange tenor quality of it: nothing of the feminine, as even a counter-tenor’s holds. The atmosphere cleared, lightened, as if the mu sic were freshening the air. He felt the hairs rise on his arms.

Kim felt it too. Slowly, she replaced the scrying-glass on the desk, and got to her feet. Alan followed her out of the room.

‘The Verony?’ she asked.

Alan shook his head.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Danger in the glass; nothing in the cloth.’ He could see she didn’t quite believe him. Hands shaking, Alan picked up two tumblers from the draining-board; located the bottle of scotch and poured two large measures; handed one to Kim.

‘Can you tell me what’s happening?’ she asked.

‘It’s the glass,’ said Alan. ‘There’s something in it that wants out.’ He did not say what else had happened since he looked in it.

‘All that treasure-hunt business, then?’ Kim said. ‘It was bait, was it? Bait to find the glass?’

‘I don’t believe there’s treasure as such, no.’

‘Treasure, “as such”?’ echoed Kim.

‘No gold. No hidden coins or jewels. Maybe...’

‘Maybe what?’

‘I don’t know. Can’t guess.’ Alan drained the whisky in one gulp, grimacing. He disliked the taste of neat scotch.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d found something in the tomb? I presume that is where they came from?’ Alan nodded. ‘I - something stopped me. Like I felt, oh, that it wasn’t worth mentioning.’

‘Why not?’

‘It wasn’t anything as logical as thought. There was just this... strong disinclination to say anything at all.’ Kim swallowed a mouthful of scotch. ‘There’s nothing logical about any of this. First you find the tomb, which leads you to the well, which then leads you to the bells - which then lead you
back
to the tomb. Why?’ ‘If I knew—’ began Alan, and stopped in frustration. He thought he did know, but couldn’t tell Kim. Physically, was unable to tell her. His head drooped with weariness; he knuckled his eyes fiercely.

‘Go to bed,’ said Kim.

‘I guess so.’ He forced himself to his feet, staggering with exhaustion, and made his way upstairs.

Kim, following later, found him fast asleep and fully clothed on the bed. She stared at him for a while as if he were something alien, then threw a blanket over him and crawled into bed herself.

In the morning Alan woke feeling curiously weightless. Everything seemed very bright, as if snow had fallen outside and the room was flooded with its strange unheavenly light. A purpose throbbing like a pulse within him, he extricated himself from the blanket which had wound itself round him during the night, and ran down the stairs to the kitchen.

Blearily, Kim accepted the coffee he handed her. She was too sleepy to want to pursue the looming mystery, and shortly departed for the studio to re-shoot MicroMagic, without much thought of the day ahead.

Alan, meanwhile, rode high on his cloud of euphoria until he had pulled on random clothes and re-established himself at his desk. Then he opened the drawer and extracted his precious spiral-bound notebook, turning it to the page too long delayed.

A Receipt to make a Maiden Enamour’d of a Man.

Rubbing his bristly chin with an obscure pleasure, Alan re-read the spell and began to collect together the ingredients he had carefully accumulated, crushing them in his mortar to a fine and fragrant powder.

Unlike his first mixture, the smell of this melange was beguiling, heady and delightful. He was tempted to rub a pinch of it beneath his nose, but did not do so, in case it somehow spoiled the spell. When it was completed, he folded the powder carefully in a piece of clean paper and stowed in his pocket. Then he telephoned Josie Griffiths.

‘Debbie still on for tonight?’ he said.

‘Looking forward to it eagerly! Really, it’s awfully nice of you, Alan. Are you sure it’s not too much trouble?’

‘Not at all,’ replied Alan. ‘My pleasure.’

Kim peered at him strangely when she returned home, but Alan had steeled himself to appear normal and felt he was succeeding fairly well. Debbie turned up after he had devoured, with evident relish, a large plate of greasy sausages and chips.

He made, in the cafetiere, strong bitter coffee, and stirred his powder into Debbie’s cup along with two spoonfuls of sugar. Debbie, who knew his preference for mouth-shrivelling brews, drank it with apparent enjoyment and a large amount of cream. Watching her, Alan wondered when and how the magic would take effect.

‘I’ve never done this before, so I bought a textbook,’ he told Debbie. She took the paperback from him and flicked through it, smiling at some of the pictures.

‘You don’t really speak any Italian, do you?’

‘Not properly,’ she replied, seriously. ‘I’ve learnt some arias, and I know what they mean, but that’s sort of parroty, isn’t it?’

Alan nodded.

‘I can’t break it down into “so-and-so” means “so-and-so” —’ She sang then, extraordinarily well:

‘Un bel di vedremo Levarsi un fil di fumo Sull’estremo confin del mare.’

Alan felt his skin crawl.

“‘One fine day”,’
the girl said,
‘“we’ll see a wisp of smoke rising over the farthest horizon of the sea.”
But what’s what?
“Un bel di
- everyone knows that. Some of it’s like French (you were right), so you can guess - but I want to know how to put it all together! It’s so
frustrating!’

Quite unexpectedly, Alan was suddenly overwhelmed by deja vu: his own eager, younger self, believing nothing to be impossible; that everything could be learned; that he alone was master of his fate. The abrupt realisation that long ago all those illusions and dreams had faded away without his noticing - that Mephistopheles could invade anyone, had he but lost enough - brought tears to his eyes, as sharp as a sudden east wind. He shuddered.

Debbie was staring at him curiously. ‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Alan. ‘Just what people used to call
“a goose walking over my grave”.’

‘I never heard that saying,’ said Debbie. Her eyes - blue as the spring-flowering ceanothus in the front garden - looked huge to Alan, and her lips were slightly parted. A terrible longing swelled in him as he looked at her, a pain which gripped his vitals. The felt his breath grow short and cold sweat spring out on his forehead.

For a moment he was terrifyingly convinced that he was having a heart attack, and stared at Debbie in anguish, frightened that the powder was acting upon him instead of upon her. She, for her part, stared back with a curiously blank expression as these thoughts chased each other through Alan’s mind; then she shook her head slightly as if to clear it. With a feeling akin to panic, Alan controlled a strong urge to kiss her.

By the time they had finished the lesson, Alan was half-convinced nothing had happened - and, on the other hand, half-convinced that something
had
.

Debbie’s father came to collect her, and she kissed Alan on his scratchy cheek.

‘Same time next week!’ she confirmed. ‘’Bye, Alan, ’bye, Kim.’

‘Well, Mr Chips?’ Kim enquired. ‘How was it?’

Alan blinked. ‘Easy enough. She’s very bright, Debbie.’

‘Growing up, too,’ remarked Kim.

‘I suppose so,’ murmured Alan. Kim raised one eyebrow and seemed on the point of saying something. Alan, his head suddenly reeling, squeezed his eyes shut and stared at the bright darkness inside them. ‘I’m for an early night,’ he added, and shot an anguished glance at her, but she had turned away. ‘G’night,’ he muttered.

‘Night,’ responded Kim absently.

When she was sure Alan was asleep - he proved impervious to a poke in the ribs - Kim padded to his office and picked up the scrying-glass.

Unsure quite why, unless some deep-rooted instinct wanted her to be on home ground, she took it into her own office and put
Turandot
on quietly in the background. Then she sat down at the desk, cupped the glass in her hands, where it lay heavily, and stared into it.

Clouds. The first things she saw were clouds, boiling and swelling, clenching, simmering. Something was tossed amongst them, like a leaf on titanic air-currents; she stared at it for some time before realising it was an aircraft, and recalled her hectic flight from Rome.

Be still, storms.
She did not articulate the words in her mind, nor was she part- icularly aware of their presence in her brain. They just were.

Not controllable, eh?
thought Kim, as the tossing clouds became quiescent. A wolfish grin lit up her face. She was not aware of it.
Now, glass, what will you show me next?
she asked.

Faint and far-off, she saw a man in an alchemist’s workshop, the image familiar from films and Dulac illustrations. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Roger Southwell. A tall, dark-haired man, he did not look as though he washed very often. His hair hung lank and stringy. The picture she saw of him was like a television broadcast on a snow-stormy night.

Oh, go away,
thought Kim crossly.
You’re the cause of all this trouble, aren’t you? Come on, glass, show me something useful.

The image broke up, resolved itself briefly to a robed man climbing a steep mountain trail, then whirled into static again. Kim resisted the urge to thump the glass as she would an ancient radio, and glared fiercely into it.

Now a face swam into focus, as close as in a mirror, and Kim gasped involuntarily, flinching back. It was not her face reflected, but the face of a young man, perhaps twenty-five years of age. He stared out at Kim, with eyes as grey as hers, as fixedly as she stared at him, but not, it seemed, seeing her. She saw details: sweat shiny on his forehead and upper lip - which was less than perfectly shaved - the tenseness of muscles in his jaw, as if his teeth were clenched; a small cut on his chin. So involved was she that her fingers rose to its equivalent location on her own face.

With an effort, Kim distanced herself from the reflection which was not her own; heard, distantly, from the stereo, the words
‘Nessun dorma... nessun dorma...’None shall sleep...

In the glass, the young man blinked several times, very rapidly. He moistened his lips with his tongue, then bit his upper lip. Kim saw it whiten around the pressure of his teeth. He was frowning. His eyes never moved.

She stared at him, trying to project intense concentration. Suddenly he closed his eyes as if in pain. Kim drew back, and the face retreated too, revealing a glimpse of sparrow-coloured hair, long and rat-tailed. In the instant before the man’s face faded, she saw his left eyelid jump twice as with a tic.