Angelica's Grotto Read online

  To the memory of Leon Garfield

  ‘Black is the most essential of all colours. Above all, if I

  may say so, it draws its excitement and vitality from deep

  and secret sources of health …’

  Odilon Redon, Journals

  Cited by Alfred Werner in The Graphic Works of

  Odilon Redon, Dover 1969

  ‘The wolf can hide in a dream. In the dream it will be

  a bird, or a woman you want to couple with. But when

  you do, the wolf will come out of the dream and open

  your throat.’

  Larry McMurtry,

  Commanche Moon

  Contents

  1 Breakage

  2 Escher, For Christ’s Sake

  3 The Meissen Girl, The Paxos Stone

  4 Fountain of Youth

  5 Worth Writing Up?

  6 A Person, Another Person, A Tree

  7 Fingers And Fins And Wings

  8 Fear, Guilt, Violent Fantasies?

  9 All At Sea

  10 First Session

  11 Angelica’s Grotto

  12 The Gorgon Smile

  13 Night Side

  14 Doe Not Call Upp

  15 Second Session

  16 Rock of Aged

  17 The Goodbye Look

  18 Halcyon Days

  19 The Quarry

  20 Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

  21 Noah’s ark

  22 Third Session

  23 Death And Life

  24 Hoka Hey

  25 A Taste of Honey

  26 Last Tango In Fulham

  27 30,000 Feet Up

  28 Pillow Talk

  29 The Gybe

  30 Fourth Session

  31 Unknown Tongues

  32 Underworlds

  33 Takeoff

  34 ‘El Choclo’

  35 Deck The Halls

  36 Gynocracy

  37 A Firm Hand

  38 Numbers

  39 By The Swells, By The Stars

  40 Fifth Session

  41 Really Perky

  42 Lot 37

  43 Happy Hour

  44 Oannes Says

  45 Last Session

  46 Rubicon Grove

  47 Deeply Moving

  48 Loomings

  49 Nimfb

  50 Catching The Bus

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  1

  Breakage

  ‘What happened to your nose?’ said Dr Mzumi in his beautiful lilting English. He was handsome, he was fit. His mountain bike leant against the wall behind him and above it were his framed certificates and degrees. On the other walls were photographs of Kenya and a red, black, and yellow kikoi. ‘You look as if you’ve been in a fight.’

  ‘Oxbridge wogs,’ said Harold Klein. ‘Oh shit.’ He fanned the air in an effort to make the words go away. ‘Terribly sorry, Dr Mzumi. That’s not me, really – words come out of my mouth and I don’t know what they’re going to be until I hear them.’

  Dr Mzumi tilted his head to one side. ‘If it isn’t you, who is it?’

  ‘What I mean is, I’m the one who said it but it’s not the sort of thing I’d ever say. Or think. I’m not that kind of person.’

  ‘Of course not. Was it something like this that got your nose … what, broken?’

  ‘Yes. Two ribs as well.’ Klein was a small man of seventy-two with a small beard, no moustache. He was not fit, not handsome. ‘I was on my way to the shops when I saw this big guy coming towards me, total stranger. Union Jack tattoo on his right arm and a dragon with a banner that said MOTHER on his left. H-A-T-E on the knuckles of his right hand and the same on the left.’ Klein touched his nose carefully.

  ‘What happened then?’ said Dr Mzumi.

  ‘I heard myself say, “Ugly lout.” He stopped and said, “You what?” and smashed my nose. H-A-T-E. I broke the ribs when I hit the pavement. Spent most of the day in Casualty at Chelsea & Westminster. I must learn to fall better.’

  ‘Better if you can learn to avoid falling. This inability to know what you’re going to say – when did it begin?’

  ‘Three weeks ago after I read this piece in The Times.’ He gave the doctor a cutting headed ‘Listening to the censor inside our heads’ by Anjana Ahuja. Dr Mzumi read:

  Imagine arriving at a party and spying an attractive guest across the room. As you snake towards him or her, your brain is rapidly calculating how to make an introduction. In the space of a few steps, a voice inside your head will have dismissed most chat-up lines as too bold, too ghastly or too clichéd. As a result, the phrase that eventually falls from your lips is likely to be a crafted piece of wordsmanship – concise, sophisticated and socially appropriate for a first meeting.

  The writer went on to describe ‘the cognitive skill that allows us to “talk” to ourselves’ and a projected three-year study of the phenomenon.

  ‘So you read this,’ said Dr Mzumi. ‘Then what?’

  ‘As I was reading it I began to get a leaden feeling down my left arm and an ache at the back of my throat. Next there came some really heavy angina. I’d had a myocardial infarction back in 1977 and this felt the same so I dialled 999.

  ‘In the ambulance the paramedics gave me oxygen and did a one-lead ECG and we were chatting so I didn’t notice anything until I was in Casualty again on a trolley and a nurse with a really wonderful rear view walked past. I said to myself, “If the Good Lord made anything better he kept it to hisself.” That’s a quote from A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren. Have you read it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyhow, when I said it I thought I was talking to myself but I heard myself speaking out loud. The nurse turned and shook her head and said, “Never say die, eh luv?” I said, “Jesus, let’s pull ourself together,” and I said that out loud too. That’s how it’s been ever since, and it’s such an embarrassment! Once I’ve started talking I can follow what I’m saying and I can say appropriate things. But I never know what my first words will be so I never know when I’ll come out with something that’ll get me into trouble.’

  ‘You could be a regular visitor to Casualty if this keeps up,’ said Dr Mzumi.

  ‘That’s why I’m here. Can you send me to someone who can help me get my inner voice back?’

  ‘I’ll arrange for you to see Professor Slope.’

  ‘Slippery?’

  ‘Psychiatrist. He’s Consultant at the George III Mental Health Centre and he’s very likely come up against this sort of thing before. I see in your notes that it was a myocardial infarction. How’re you …’

  At that moment Klein had in his mind the image of an hourglass with all the sand in the bottom. ‘It doesn’t get turned over,’ he whispered into his hand. ‘It’s a one-way trip.’

  ‘Feeling now?’ Dr Mzumi had said. He noted the hand over the mouth. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘In places.’

  ‘I was thinking of your heart.’

  ‘No problems at the moment. Evidently it wasn’t all that serious. They upped my Adizem and perindopril dosage and lowered the Imdur.’

  ‘How’s the angina?’

  ‘Not too bad. I only had to stop and take glyceryl trinitrate once on the way here.’

  ‘Diabetes under control?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Legs?’

  ‘The claudication’s not as bad as it was. I think what I’m getting in the drug trial is bezafibrate and not a placebo.’

  Dr Mzumi turned to his computer, updated Klein’s prescription, printed it out, signed it, and gave it to him. ‘When’s your next appointment at the Cardiology Clinic?’

  ‘Two months.’

  ‘When was yo
ur last angiogram?’

  ‘Some time in ‘93, I think.’

  Dr Mzumi made a note in Klein’s folder. ‘When you see Dr Singh he might want you to have another one. And I’ll get a letter off to Professor Slope today.’ He shook Klein’s hand. ‘Mind how you go.’

  Klein was looking at Dr Mzumi’s bicycle. ‘I had to give up cycling last year,’ he said.

  ‘Because of the vertigo?’

  ‘Yes. Broke two ribs on the other side.’

  Dr Mzumi made another note in Klein’s folder. ‘A CT brain scan and a carotid angiogram might be a good idea. They’ll send you an appointment.’

  ‘Thank you. One day you’ll be old and pissing in two streams too. Sorry. Bye-bye.’

  Klein went to the 14 bus stop in the Fulham Road. Although he’d walked from his house to the surgery by way of Eelbrook Common, Novello Street, Munster Road and Mimosa he didn’t feel like going back that way. Novello Street always seemed unlucky to him; the terrace of little houses looked at him in a way he didn’t like.

  Klein’s relationship with the 14 bus was a complex one: the old doubledecker Routemasters often kept him waiting for much too long and he could never be sure of their moods: sometimes, small and inconsequential in the distance, they suddenly loomed large and implacable like a Last Judgement; at other times they were quite docile. Their redness of course was variable, on some days sweet to the eye and on others threatening. Today the bus arrived reasonably quickly and seemed tame enough; the people who had clustered at the stop without queuing pushed ahead of Klein but he found a seat next to a very large man full of elbows and rode to Fulham Broadway with one buttock seated and the other tense.

  From there he walked to his house that looked across Eelbrook Common towards the District Line. The Underground was Klein’s favourite means of transport; in the end-of-September dusk the trains were poignant as they rumbled westward to Wimbledon, eastward to Tower Hill, Barking, Upminster. Look at our golden windows, they said. Ride with us; we are the safe haven between the troubles at either end.

  2

  Escher, For Christ’s Sake

  The George III Mental Health Centre was a squarish brick building in World’s End. Automatic doors opened when they saw Klein coming. ‘I don’t like to be taken for granted,’ he said, but went in.

  The waiting room had five chairs, two small round tables, six magazines, and a receptionist behind glass who was busy on the telephone but indicated by gestures that Klein should take a seat. All of the magazines had beautiful half-naked women on their covers and their titles were GUILT, SHAME, DREAD, HORROR, DESPAIR, and SUICIDE FOR SINGLES. ‘Don’t try it on with me,’ said Klein, and looked away. When he looked back the magazines were DIY WORLD, CAR BOOT JOURNAL, GAY CUISINE, SWINGING SENILES, BIPOLAR GARDENING, and THE PRACTICAL DEPRESSIVE. ‘Still not quite right,’ he said, and didn’t look again.

  A pear-shaped deflated-looking man tending towards the lachrymose slumped into the room and sat down heavily.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to start a conversation,’ Klein whispered into his hand.

  ‘Why are you so withdrawn?’ said Pear-Shape.

  ‘Strangers always start conversations with me when I don’t feel like talking.’

  ‘My name is Arbuth,’ said Pear-Shape.

  ‘Not?’

  ‘Arbuthnot is what it used to be. I had it changed by deed-poll. Nothing helps. What’s yours?’

  ‘Klein.’

  ‘Means little.’

  ‘Nothing means much these days. When you changed your name you should have covered your tracks and changed it to Cholmondely or Featherstonhaugh.’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s all right for some.’ Arbuth sniffed and pretended to read THE PRACTICAL DEPRESSIVE as Professor Slope appeared and said, ‘Mr Klein?’

  ‘Here,’ said Klein, and stood up.

  ‘How do you do,’ said Professor Slope.

  ‘Badly, thank you.’ They shook hands, during which Slope seemed to be looking over Klein’s shoulder.

  ‘My office is just down the corridor,’ he said, and led the way. In the office he motioned Klein to a chair and sat down behind his desk. Slope was sixtyish, had a neat little beard, rimless spectacles, French cuffs. Before him on the desk was Klein’s file. On the wall to his left was an Escher print, Three Worlds, with a carp lurking dimly in a leaf-strewn pond in which black and leafless trees were reflected. The other walls were bare.

  ‘Escher, for Christ’s sake,’ said Klein.

  ‘You don’t like Escher?’

  ‘Escher in a psychiatrist’s office is like a Pirelli calendar in a garage.’

  ‘Why is your arm in a sling? Have you been discussing art with anyone else?’

  ‘Very funny. Haven’t you got my notes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Professor Slope, without referring to the file, ‘and I know about the cholecystectomy and appendectomy, the prostate resection, the hydrocele operation, the triple bypass, the cataract surgery, and the right-lung lobectomy; I know about about the diabetes, atheroma, ischaemia, both myocardial infarcts, the hiatus hernia, and the vertigo. I know about the broken ribs and nose but there’s nothing in your notes about an arm.’

  ‘How did you do that without looking at my notes?’

  ‘I do memory exercises. How’s yours?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Let me just get a couple of details down. Date of birth?’

  ‘Four, two, twenty-five.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘I was, twice. My second wife died in 1977.’ He whispered her name into his hand, ‘Hannelore.’ He tried to see her face but saw instead that of the Meissen figure on his mantelpiece at home. ‘You never look at me,’ he whispered.

  Whispers into hand, Slope wrote. ‘Are you retired?’ he said.

  ‘No. I’m an art historian. I write books, did the Innocent Eye series on BBC2.’

  ‘Oh, yes – Sister Wendy sort of thing, eh?’

  ‘No.’ Klein whispered something into his hand again.

  ‘Right. Let’s get back to your arm. What happened?’

  ‘Woman ahead of me at the checkout counter in Safeway: she bent over and I said something I wouldn’t ordinarily say aloud. She hit me in the shoulder with a jar of pickles and I broke the arm when I fell. She didn’t hit me that hard – it was my vertigo that made me fall.’

  ‘You haven’t had that sort of encounter with women before this?’

  ‘Do I look as if I’ve got a Union Jack tattoo?’

  Slope directed his eyes to Klein’s forehead which for him was transparent. He considered Klein’s frontal lobes and wondered if they might be breathing a trifle hard. ‘Try to remember, Mr Klein, that I’m only gathering information. A straight answer would speed the process.’

  ‘The straight answer is that I’m not always in charge of my answers; that’s why I’m here. Haven’t you read Dr Mzumi’s letter?’

  Professor Slope stroked his beard. ‘Give me a moment, Mr Klein, while I have another look at your notes.’ He opened Klein’s file, a very thick one, and went through some of the loose sheets at the top of the stack. ‘They don’t always put things in the right order. Hmm, hmmm – here we are. You read something in a newspaper, you had an MI, and you lost what you call your “inner voice”.’

  ‘I really don’t know what else you’d call it.’

  ‘Can you clarify this inner-voice thing a little for me?’

  Klein clarified it a little, citing the Times article and describing what followed the reading of it.

  ‘This voice –’ said Professor Slope, ‘where did it seem to be coming from?’

  ‘From me. I could feel it in my vocal cords. At the post office while I waited in the queue I’d rehearse in my head what I was going to say, like “Fifty first-class stamps, please” and I’d feel it in my throat. Isn’t that how it is for everybody?’

  ‘People vary. Did you hear this voice as your voice or was it somebody else’s?’

  ‘It was my v
oice but I didn’t actually seem to be hearing it – it was just there.’

  ‘And how have you been feeling in yourself since it stopped being there?’

  ‘Lost, cast adrift. Frightened.’

  ‘Frightened of what?’

  ‘What I might say, what I might do.’

  ‘Like your remark to the woman in Safeway with the result that we see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Looking back on that, how do you feel about it?’

  ‘Embarrassed.’

  ‘What were you feeling at the moment when the words came out of your mouth?’

  ‘Embarrassment.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Like what?’