Weaveworld

3

The back yard gate had been pushed closed by the removal men, but left unbolted. Cal opened it, and stepped into the yard.

If he had expected some revelation, he was disappointed. There was nothing remarkable here. Just parched chickweed sprouting between the paving stones, and a litter of chattels the trio had discarded as worthless. Even the shadows, which might have hidden some glory, were wan and unsecretive.

Standing in the middle of the yard – where all of the mysteries that had overturned his sanity had been unveiled – he doubted for the first time, truly doubted, that anything had in fact happened the previous day.

Maybe there would be something inside the house, he told himself; some flotsam he could cling to that would bear him up in this flood of doubt.

He crossed the ground where the carpet had lain, to the back door. The removal men had left it unlocked; or else vandals had broken in. Either way, it stood ajar. He stepped inside.

At least the shadows were heavier within; there was some room for the fabulous. He waited for his eyes to accommodate the murk. Was it really only twenty-four hours since he’d been here, he thought, as his sharpening gaze scanned the grim interior; only yesterday that he’d entered this house with no more on his mind than catching a lost bird? This time he had so much more to find.

He wandered through to the hallway, looking everywhere (or some echo of what he’d experienced the day before. With every step he took his hopes fell further. Shadows there were, but they were deserted. The place was shorn of miracles. They’d gone when the carpet was removed.

Half way up the stairs he halted. What was the use of going any further? It was apparent he’d missed his chance. If he was to rediscover the vision he’d glimpsed and lost he’d have to search elsewhere. It was mere doggedness, therefore – one of Eileen’s attributes – that made him continue to climb.

At the lop of the stairs the air was so leaden it made drawing breath a chore. That, and the fact that he felt like a trespasser today – unwelcome in this tomb – made him anxious to confirm his belief that the place had no magic to show him, then get gone.

As he went to the door of the front bedroom something moved behind him. He turned. The labourers had piled several articles of furniture at the top of the stairs, then apparently decided they weren’t worth the sweat of moving any further. A chest of drawers, several chairs and tables. The sound had come from behind this furniture. And now it came again.

Hearing it, he imagined rats. The sound suggested several sets of scurrying paws. Live and let live, he thought: he had no more right to be here than they did. Less, perhaps. They’d probably occupied the house for rat generations.

He returned to the job at hand, pushed open the door, and stepped into the front room. The windows were grimy, and the stained lace curtains further clogged the light. There was a chair overturned on the bare boards, and three odd shoes had been placed on the mantelpiece by some wit. Otherwise empty.

He stood for a few moments and then, hearing laughter in the street and needing its reassurance, crossed to the window and drew the curtain aside. But before he found the laughter’s source he foresook the search. His belly knew before his senses could confirm it that somebody had entered the room behind him. He let the curtain drop and looked around. A wide man in late middle-age, dressed too well for this dereliction, had joined him in the half-light. The threads of his grey jacket were almost iridescent. But more eye-catching still, his smile. A practised smile, belonging on an actor, or a preacher. Whichever, it was the expression of a man looking for converts.

‘Can I be of help?’ he said. His voice was resonant, and warm, but his sudden appearance had chilled Cal.

‘Help me?’ he said, floundering.

Are you perhaps interested in purchasing property?’ the other man said.

‘Purchasing? No … I … was just … you know … looking around.’

‘It’s a fine house,’ said the stranger, his smile as steady as a surgeon’s handshake, and as antiseptic. ‘Do you know much about houses?’ The line was spoken like its predecessors, without irony or malice. When Cal didn’t reply, the man said: ‘I’m a salesman. My name’s Shadwell.’ He teased the calf-skin glove from his thick-fingered hand. ‘And yours?’

‘Cal Mooney. Calhoun, that is.’

The bare hand was extended. Cal took two steps towards the man – he was fully four inches taller than Cal’s five foot eleven – and shook hands. The man’s cool palm made Cal aware that he was sweating like a pig.

The handshake broken, friend Shadwell unbuttoned his jacket, and opened it, to take a pen from his inside pocket. This casual action briefly revealed the lining of the Salesman’s garment, and by some trick of the light it seemed to shine, as though the fabric were woven of mirrored threads.

Shadwell caught the look on Cal’s face. His voice was feather-light as he said:

‘Do you see anything you like?’

Cal didn’t trust the man. Was it the smile or the calf-skin gloves that made him suspicious? Whichever, he wanted as little time in the man’s company as possible.

But there was something in the jacket. Something that caught the light, and made Cal’s heart beat a little faster.

‘Please …’ Shadwell coaxed. ‘Have a look.’

His hand went to the jacket again, and opened it.

‘Tell me …’ he purred, ‘… if there’s anything there that takes your fancy.’

This time, he fully opened the jacket, exposing the lining. And yes. Cal’s first judgment had been correct. It did shine.

‘I am, as I said, a salesman,’ Shadwell was explaining. ‘I make it a Golden Rule always to carry some samples of my merchandise around with me.’

Merchandise. Cal shaped the word in his head, his eyes still fixed on the interior of the jacket. What a word that was: merchandise. And there, in the lining of the jacket, he could almost see that word made solid. Jewellery, was it, that gleamed there? Artificial gems with a sheen that blinded the way only the fake could. He squinted into the glamour, looking to make sense out of what he saw, while the Salesman’s voice went about its persuasions:

‘Tell me what you’d like and it’s yours. I can’t say fairer than that, can I? A fine young man like you should be able to pick and choose. The world’s your oyster. I can see that. Open in front of you. Have what you like. Free, gratis and without charge. You tell me what you see in there, and the next minute it’s in your hands …’

Look away, something in Cal said; nothing comes free. Prices must be paid.

But his gaze was so infatuated with the mysteries in the folds of the jacket that he couldn’t have averted his eyes now if his life depended upon it.

‘… tell me …’ the Salesman said, ‘… what you see …’

Ah, there was a question –

‘… and it’s yours.’

He saw forgotten treasures, things he’d once upon a time set his heart upon, thinking that if he owned them he’d never want for anything again. Worthless trinkets, most of them; but items that awoke old longings. A pair of X-ray spectacles he’d seen advertised at the back of a comic book (see thru walls! impress your friends!) but had never been able to buy. There they were now, their plastic lens gleaming, and seeing them he remembered the October nights he’d lain awake wondering how they worked.

And what was that beside them? Another childhood fetish. A photograph of a woman dressed only in stiletto heels and a sequinned G-string, presenting her over-sized breasts to the viewer. The boy two doors down from Cal had owned that picture, stolen it from his uncle’s wallet, he’d claimed, and Cal had wanted it so badly he thought he’d die of longing. Now it hung, a dog-eared memento, in the glittering flux of Shadwell’s jacket, there for the asking.

But no sooner had it made itself apparent than it too faded, and new prizes appeared in its place to tempt him.

‘What is it you see, my friend?’

The keys to a car he’d longed to own. A prize pigeon, the winner of innumerable races, that he’d been so envious of he’d have happily abducted –

‘… just tell me what you see. Ask, and it’s yours …’

There was so much. Items that had seemed – for an hour, a day – the pivot upon which his world turned, all hung now in the miraculous store-room of the Salesman’s coat.

But they were fugitive, all of them. They appeared only to evaporate again. There was something else there, which prevented these trivialities from holding his attention for more than moments. What it was, he couldn’t yet see.

He was dimly aware that Shadwell was addressing him again, and that the tone of the Salesman’s voice had altered. There was some puzzlement in it now, tinged with exasperation.

‘Speak up, my friend … why don’t you tell me what you want?’

‘I can’t … quite … see it.’

‘Then try harder. Concentrate.’

Cal tried. The images came and went, all insignificant stuff. The mother-lode still evaded him.

‘You’re not trying,’ the Salesman chided. ‘If a man wants something badly he has to zero in on it. Has to make sure it’s clear in his head.’

Cal saw the wisdom of this, and re-doubled his efforts. It had become a challenge to see past the tinsel to the real treasure that lay beyond. A curious sensation attended this focusing; a restlessness in his chest and throat, as though some part of him were preparing to be gone; out of him and along the line of his gaze. Gone into the jacket.

At the back of his head, where his skull grew the tail of his spine, the warning voices muttered on. But he was too committed to resist. Whatever the lining contained, it teased him, not quite showing itself. He stared and stared, defying its decorum until the sweat ran from his temples.

Shadwell’s coaxing monologue had gained fresh confidence. It’s sugar coating had cracked and fallen away. The nut beneath was bitter and dark.

‘Go on …’ he said. ‘Don’t be so damn weak. There’s something here you want, isn’t there? Very badly. Go on. Tell me. Spit it out. No use waiting. You wait, and your chance slips away.’

Finally, the image was coming clear –

‘Tell me and it’s yours.’

Cal felt a wind on his face, and suddenly he was flying again, and wonderland was spread out before him. Its deeps and its heights, its rivers, its towers – all were displayed there in the lining of the Salesman’s jacket.

He gasped at the sight. Shadwell was lightning swift in his response.

‘What is it?’

Cal stared on, speechless.

‘ What do you see?’

A confusion of feelings assailed Cal. He felt elated, seeing the land, yet fearful of what he would be asked to give (was already giving, perhaps, without quite knowing it) in return for this peep-show. Shadwell had harm in him, for all his smiles and promises.

‘Tell me …’ the Salesman demanded.

Cal tried to keep an answer from coming to his lips. He didn’t want to give his secret away.

‘… what do you see?’

The voice was so hard to resist. He wanted to keep his silence, but the reply rose in him unbidden.

‘I …’ (Don’t say it. the poet warned), ‘I see …’ (Fight it. There’s harm here.) ‘I … see …’

‘He sees the Fugue.’

The voice that finished the sentence was that of a woman.

‘Are you sure?’ said Shadwell.

‘Never more certain. Look at his eyes.’

Cal felt foolish and vulnerable, so mesmerized by the sights still unfolding in the lining he was unable to cast his eyes in the direction of those who now appraised him.

‘He knows,’ the woman said. Her voice held not a trace of warmth. Even, perhaps, of humanity.

‘You were right then,’ said Shadwell. ‘It’s been here.’

‘Of course.’

‘Good enough,’ said Shadwell, and summarily closed the jacket.

The effect on Cal was cataclysmic. With the world – the Fugue, she’d called it – so abruptly snatched away he felt weak as a babe. It was all he could do to stand upright. Queasily, his eyes slid in the direction of the woman.

She was beautiful: that was his first thought. She was dressed in reds and purples so dark they were almost black, the fabric wrapped tightly around her upper body so as to seem both chaste, her ripeness bound and sealed, and, in the act of sealing, eroticized. The same paradox informed her features. Her hair-line had been shaved back fully two inches, and her eye-brows totally removed, which left her face eerily innocent of expression. Yet her flesh gleamed as if oiled, and though the shaving, and the absence of any scrap of make-up to flatter her features, seemed acts in defiance of her beauty, her face could not be denied its sensuality. Her mouth was too sculpted: and her eyes – umber one moment, gold the next – too eloquent for the feelings there to be disguised. What feelings, Cal could only vaguely read. Impatience certainly, as though being here sickened her, and stirred some fury Cal had no desire to see unleashed. Contempt – for him most likely – and yet a great focus upon him, as though she saw through to his marrow, and was preparing to congeal it with a thought.

There were no such contradictions in her voice however. It was steel and steel.

‘How long?’ she demanded of him. ‘How long since you saw the Fugue?’

He couldn’t meet her eyes for more than a moment. His gaze fled to the mantelpiece, and the tripod’s shoes.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘You’ve seen it. You saw it again in the jacket. It’s fruitless to deny it.’

‘It’s better you answer,’ Shadwell advised.

Cal looked from mantelpiece to door. They had left it open. ‘You can both go to Hell,’ he said quietly.

Did Shadwell laugh? Cal wasn’t certain.

‘We want the carpet,’ said the woman.

‘It belongs to us, you understand,’ Shadwell said. ‘We have a legitimate claim to it.’

‘So, if you’d be so kind …’ the woman’s lip curled at this courtesy. ‘… tell me where the carpet’s gone, and we can have the matter done with.’

‘Such easy terms.’ the Salesman said. ‘Tell us, and we’re gone.’

Claiming ignorance would be no defence, Cal thought; they knew that he knew, and they wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. He was trapped. Yet dangerous as things had become, he felt inwardly elated. His tormentors had confirmed the existence of the world he’d glimpsed: the Fugue. The urge to be out of their presence as fast as possible was tempered by the desire to play them along, and hope they’d tell him more about the vision he’d witnessed.

‘Maybe I did see it,’ he said.

‘No maybe,’ the woman replied.

‘It’s hazy …’ he said. ‘I remember something, but I’m not quite sure what.’

‘You don’t know what the Fugue is?’ said Shadwell.

‘Why should he?’ the woman replied. ‘He came on it by luck.’

‘But he saw,’ said Shadwell.

‘A lot of Cuckoos have some sight, it doesn’t mean they understand. He’s lost, like all of them.’

Cal resented her condescension, but in essence she was right. Lost he was.

‘What you saw isn’t your business,’ she said to him. ‘Just tell us where you put the carpet, then forget you ever laid eyes on it.’

‘I don’t have the carpet,’ he said.

The woman’s entire face seemed to darken, the pupils of her eyes like moons barely eclipsing some apocalyptic light.

From the landing, Cal heard again the scuttling sounds he’d previously taken to be rats. Now he wasn’t so sure.

‘I won’t be polite with you much longer,’ she said. ‘You’re a thief.’

‘No –’ he protested.

‘Yes. You came here to raid an old woman’s house and you got a glimpse of something you shouldn’t.’

‘We shouldn’t waste time,’ said Shadwell.

Cal had begun to regret his decision to play the pair along. He should have run while he had half a chance. The noise from the other side of the door was getting louder.

‘Hear that?’ said the woman. ‘Those are some of my sister’s bastards. Her by-blows.’

‘They’re vile,’ said Shadwell.

He could believe it.

‘Once more,’ she said. The carpet.’

And once more he told her. ‘I don’t have it.’ This time his words were more appeal than defence.

‘Then we must make you tell,’ said the woman.

‘Be careful, Immacolata,’ said Shadwell.

If the woman heard him, she didn’t care for his warning. Softly, she rubbed the middle and fourth fingers of her right hand against the palm of her left, and at this all but silent summons her sister’s children came running.