‘These were the girls behind the curtains, sir, the denizens of “Down Below”, all with hearts that beat, like yours, and souls that suffer, sir.’
‘And what did you do?’ asked Walser, chewing his pencil.
‘Myself? The part I played in Madame Schreck’s chamber of imaginary horrors? The Sleeping Beauty lay stark naked on a marble slab and I stood at her head, full spread. I am the tombstone angel, I am the Angel of Death.
‘Now, if you wanted to sleep with the Sleeping Beauty, sleep in the passive and not the active sense it was, she being in such precarious health and Madame Schreck loth to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. If you wished to lie down beside the living corpse and hold in your trembling arms the entire mystery of consciousness, that is and is not at the same time, why, that was available, cash down. Toussaint would put a bag over your head and lead you out of the Abyss upstairs to the Theatre and there you’d wait, hear nothing, see nothing . . . absolute darkness, absolute silence and you alone with your thoughts and those phantoms your imagination had distilled from the sight of the girls below. Then Toussaint would spirit the hood off you and there we’d be; he’d hauled us up from below on a well-oiled dumb waiter in the wall in the interim.
‘Only a branched candlestick cast sombre light and shadow over Beauty sleeping on her bier and I stooping over, with my bent wings and my sword, Death the Protectress, you see. So if any of ’em does try to get up to anything not on the tariff, I can rap ’em over the knuckles there and then. As for Beauty, she sighed and murmured and all the time knew nothing, but I would watch the shivering wretch who had hired the use of the idea of us approach her as if she were the execution block and, like Hamlet, I would think: “What a wonderful piece of work is man!”
‘By and by, there was a gent started to come marvellous regular, once a week, on Sundays. He always donned the most peculiar costume to venture Down Below, a sort of velvet frock that came down to his knees, plum-coloured and trimmed with grey fur and, on his feet, shiny red leather boots with little bells at the ankles that rang out very sweetly as he walked along. Round his neck, on a gold chain, hung a big medallion of solid gold most curiously figured that I often saw Madame Schreck cast her eye on enviously.
‘The figure engraved on this medallion was that of a pardon my French member, sir, of the male variety; that is, a phallus, in the condition known in heraldry as rampant, and there were little wings attached to the ballocks thereof, which caught my eye immediately. Around the shaft of this virile member twined the stem of a rose whose bloom nestled somewhat coyly at the place where the foreskin folded back. Whether the thing was ancient or modern I could not tell, but it represented a heavy investment.
‘He who sported this quaint jewel was in his later middle years, of long, lean, slightly stooping build, with a complexion veering towards the mauvish and mottled, as if he suffered from the cold, but fine, thin features with a high, crooked nose and very close-shaven cheeks. And a pair of wandering, watery, blue eyes, eyes of a man unhappy with his world. To finish off his outfit he always wore a big, round, beaver hat, like a drum, but with the brim turned up all round, and you could see no hair under it. The first time Madame Schreck lifted up the curtain on me, he jumps half out of his skin and calls out: “Azrael!” After that, he comes only to see me. He wants nothing of the Beauty but has me hauled up to the upper room by meself and walks round me, whickering to himself and playing with himself under his petticoat and Fanny, to tease me, calls him my “fancy boy”.
‘For six Sundays, he arrives to worship at my shrine, but, on the seventh, as we girls were sitting down to dinner, Madame Schreck sends a message by Toussaint for me to go and see her.
‘We did very poorly for our dinners in that morbid sepulchre. The tippling old crone in the kitchen would have burned a boiled egg when she’d got a glass inside her so Fanny always put up the Beauty’s invalid diet and I remember that Sunday especially because the cook passed out on the Saturday night and Fanny sent Toussaint out to pick up a bit of pork on tick, which he had done. So Fanny bustled about the pans and put a decent leg with crackling and a dollop of apple sauce on the table for us and just as we was tucking into it, I was summoned to Milady’s bedroom and it was the last Sunday dinner I ever ate in that house.
‘“There’s a gentleman made an offer,” says Madame Schreck. She’s sitting at her desk with her back to me and only a gas mantle over her, hissing like a snake, to give light.
‘“What gentleman and how much?” I asks, immediately suspicious.
‘“He gives his name as ‘Christian Rosencreutz’ and very generous he is.”
‘“How generous is generous?”
‘“Fifty guineas to you, less commission,” she says, over her shoulder, keeping up her scribbling in her damned ledger the while, and all at once I lost my temper with her.
‘“What, fifty rotten guineas for the only fully feathered intacta in the entire history of the world? Call yourself a procuress?”
‘I grabs hold of her shoulder and picks her right up out of her chair and gives her a good shake. She is light as a bundle of sticks and gives out a faint rattle. How she squawks and: “Take your hands off me!” But I goes on shaking her until she gasps: “Well, very well, then – a hundred guineas.”
‘“Well, pull the other!” thinks I to myself for I don’t believe that for one moment, but: “Madame Bloody Schreck,” I insist, “you’ll not take one penny commission, either, since you’ve paid me nothing since those five bright shiners six months ago and kept me here a prisoner since!”
‘And I shook her again, until she squeals: “Very well, no commission! That makes two hundred guineas, you bloodsucker.” Then I let her go.
‘“Open the safe,” I orders.
‘She goes and roots under her pillow and fetches the key. Very reluctant she is to do it. She scuffles over the floor in her black rags and veil with a sideways, scurrying motion and her head turns from side to side as if she were looking for a rathole to slip down but I’m the avenging angel now, and she can’t escape me. While her back is turned, I seize the opportunity to shed my blouse and shake out my plumage. She opens out the safe, stretches in her mittened hand, but just as her trembling fingers touch the gold, I catch hold of her shoulders again and – up we go! Up! Up! Up! Thank God for high ceilings! Up we go, until my head knocked against the plaster, and I hooked the old girl on the end of the curtain rail by her back collar and left her there, flapping and yapping and kicking her little arms and legs in the air and nothing she could do about it.
‘“Now I can negotiate from a position of strength,” I says. “How much did he really offer?”
‘“A thousand! Let me down!” And she yips and yowls.
‘“How much did he put down in advance?” I demanded, for I am an honest girl.
‘“Half in advance! Let me down!” But I descend alone and plunge both hands in the safe, intending to take from it only what is mine by rights, plus her commission, but, while I sat on her bed counting out the shiners, comes a diabolical knocking at the door. Whoever knocks has ripped off the muffling crepe, to make his point, you never heard such a din.
‘The gold it was that trapped me, for I could not bear to cast aside that glinting pile of treasure and flee, even when I heard furious footsteps on the stairs. Toussaint hurtles in, pale beneath his pigmentation, making the wildest gestures with his hands, and on his heels two great louts with gallows-meat all over them, rigged out in tunics, sandals and cloaks like a comic opera and they hold between them a fishing net.
‘I spread my wings immediately but whither shall I fly? The windows is all boarded over . . . is it up to the ceiling, to hover there all night? Join my old Madame on the other end of the curtain rod, to lodge there with her like a pair of gargoyles? My wits deserted me and as I fluttered like the cornered bird I was, these bullies trawled me in a trice and hauled me off downstairs, banging my bum on each step as I went down, leaving behind us a gaping safe, a hea
p of money, a confounded manservant and the old bat hanging halfway to heaven, which is as far to it as she’ll ever get, rot her soul.
‘The front door slammed behind that thrashing bundle of fright and feathers that was myself, I am deposited in a four-wheeler and whirled off into the night.
‘I demand of these fine gentlemen: where are you taking me? But each sits still as a statue with his arms folded on his chest, staring straight in front of him, and never says one word. The blinds pulled down, the horses galloping like blazes. And I resign myself to the hazard of events, sir, since I can do nothing else.’
FIVE
‘As I judged it, not more than two hours passed before the horses moderated their headlong passage. We halted. One bully opened the door and the other took the net off me and, doing so, took care to get a good feel at my titties. I smashed him in the mouth with my elbow and he give over with a curse. I wrapped myself up in the travelling rug and, shrugging the buggers off, stepped proudly out of that carriage under my own steam, as if invited, not kidnapped.
‘I saw before me a mansion in the Gothic style, all ivied over, and, above the turrets, floated a fingernail moon with a star in its arms. Somewhere, a dog, howling. Around us, a secrecy of wooded hills. Although this mansion was antique in design, in execution it was new; raw brick showed through the ivy and the front door of fumed oak had fresh brass plates hammered in to simulate studs. This door stood open and let out a great deal of bright light from the vestibule.
‘The bullies grabbed hold one of each my arms, again, and would have frogmarched me up the front steps except I wrestled free but nowhere to go except that door, which shut behind me with a bang.
‘Only the current copy of the London Times laying on an oak chest was proof I had not been somehow magically transported into an earlier age, in which all was new because it was new, not because it was repro. I stood in a square antechamber of large, square-hewn stones. The floor, flagged, the roof, fluted, and, in the central groin, aptly enough, the same figure of the winged, rosy phallus as Mr Rosencreutz wore round his neck. This was carved in some dark stone, perhaps marble. All brightly lit – as I judged by electricity, but the sources of illumination concealed here and there in folds of walls.
Through a stone portal was a small room, all panelled, and I could see a man sitting in one of a pair of carved oak chairs beside a low oak table with a lovely vase of white roses on it. His face was hidden because he was reading in a big book, like a Bible, with clasps.
‘For one minute, I didn’t recognise Mr Rosencreutz without his hat; bald as an egg he surely was, his head gleamed as if the maid had gone over it with the same cloth she used on the silver. He didn’t have his plum-coloured frock on, either, but a sort of long, white nightshirt tied with a rope. But when I saw his pendant, I knew my man and bitterly regretted the thousand guineas I’d left behind at Madame Schreck’s, I can tell you. Then I remembered how the deal had been, half on account, half on delivery, there was another pony owing, so, very politely, I gives him a: “Good evening, Mr Rosencreutz.”
‘Now he condescends to lower his book and look me over and I do not doubt I am a disappointment to him, bundled up in his old rug and all a mess. But he doesn’t let on by a flicker of a muscle.
‘“Welcome, Azrael,” he says. “Azrael, Azrail, Ashriel, Azriel, Azaril, Gabriel; dark angel of many names. Welcome to me, from your home in the third heaven. See, I welcome you with roses no less paradoxically vernal than your presence, who, like Proserpine, comes from the Land of the Dead to herald new life!”
‘Which is all very well, no doubt, but I thought, in that case, the least he could do was ask me to sit down and he never thinks of that, nor does he even offer me so much as a cup of tea after the very trying journey I’ve had of it, but he goes on smiling at me, his poor old rheumy eyes all a-swim.
‘“And what a pretty angel it is!” he says, sentimentally. “Even if it does have a smut on its nose!”
‘“Show us the bathroom and let’s have a wash, then,” I smartly ripostes, and he stops admiring his purchase sharpish, as if he hadn’t bargained for it talking back. A mite crestfallen, he mumbles: “Through that door, up the staircase, first right on the landing,” and goes back to his book which, as I pass, I see is written in the Latin language and goes by the name of Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum.
‘What a bathroom! Dear God, talk about ’is ’alls were made of marble! And towels an inch thick! And bags of hot water steaming out of the taps! This is the life, I thought, and poured in half a bottle of Trumper’s Essence of Lime before I immersed myself in the aromatic tub. But first of all I hung my petticoat over the keyhole so Mr Rosencreutz couldn’t take a peek.
‘Now, sir, you may wonder how I deal with my wings whilst I bathe. Well, as with all fowl, my feathers are reasonably waterproof but it’s not “water off a duck’s back” with me, alas. Best not get sodden, else I founders. I groom my wings a bit with my fingertips, as far as I can reach, and splash them a bit more, and give myself a good shake, and then I’m good as new. So I took care to keep my wings out of the bath, you see, but the rest of myself I washed perfectly normally and what with his lemon soap and all, I had a fine old time.
‘As I was mopping up with the bathsheet, I heard, as I had known I would, a scrabbling at the door and I snap: “That’s quite enough of that! And, what’s more, I’m not coming out of this bathroom until you fetch me something decent to wear!”
‘“Well, I assure you,” said Mr Rosencreutz, “it would go the worse for you, Azrael, if you should come out of your lustrations in the rags in which you entered them, so I propose a little riddle with you. Are you fond of riddles, Azrael?”
‘I said nothing.
‘“If,” he says, “you solve me this riddle, I will give you a hundred pounds gratuity, over and above what is owed already, and nothing to do with Madame Schreck.”
‘“Riddle away,” says I at once and he snickers to himself with glee.
‘“Beautiful lady who is neither one thing nor the other, nor flesh nor fowl, though fair is fowl and fowl is fair – tee hee! tee hee hee! in order to enact the ritual for which I have engaged you, you must come out of the water neither naked nor clothed.”
‘He wheezes away behind the door with delight at his own ingenuity.
‘“And I won’t let you out of the bathroom until you’re ready!” he adds. Then the only sound through the keyhole is that of his heavy breathing.
‘The thought of that hundred pounds concentrated my mind wonderfully and I sat down on the side of the bath until I had puzzled my way out of the conundrum. As you can see, sir, nature has blessed me with exceedingly long and abundant hair. So I combed it out and covered myself up with it in the same way that Lady Godiva insubstantially yet modestly clothed herself on her celebrated ride through Coventry. I had more than enough hair in which to hide myself, I’m happy to say, but how to make all secure? Well, I plaited one single lock and chopped it off with Nelson’s swordlet, that I’d kept with me, as always, tucked in my stays. And I used that plait to girdle my waist and make all secure, not forgetting to strap my gilded mascot next my skin beneath it, I assure you.
‘“Right you are!” I cried, unlocking the door, and burst out upon him in a cloud of citron steam, and he gobbles away to himself with a mixture of gratification and, perhaps, regret, for who can tell what he’d thought up for me if I hadn’t come up with the answer.
‘I’m happy to say a very substantial meal has arrived in the reception room below while I’m having my wash and brush up – salad, and cheese, and a cold bird. Which I’m that famished, I nibble a drumstick of, though, if there’s the option, I won’t touch a morsel of chicken, or duck, or guineafowl and so on, not wanting to play cannibal. But, this time, in my extremity, I whisper a prayer for forgiveness to my feathery forebears and tuck in. And there’s a very decent bottle of claret, to wash it down, so I have some of that. Straightaway Mr Rosencreutz starts to ramble on.
&
nbsp; ‘“Don’t you run away with the idea there’s anything fleshly, indecent or even remotely corporeal about our meeting this night of all nights, when the shining star lies in the moon’s chaste embrace above this very house, signifying the divine post-diluvian Remission and Reconciliation of the Terrible, for there is a secret admonition of which the motto of pure courtesy is an obfuscation. For it is not: ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’, but ‘Yoni soit qui mal y pense’, yoni, of course, in the Hindu, the female part, or absence, or atrocious hole, or dreadful chasm, the Abyss, Down Below, the vortex that sucks everything dreadfully down, down, down where Terror rules . . .”
‘So that was the signification of his gold medallion! The penis, represented by itself, aspires upwards, represented by the wings, but is dragged downwards, represented by the twining stem, by the female part, represented by the rose. H’m. This is some kind of heretical possibly Manichean version of neo-Platonic Rosicrucianism, thinks I to myself; tread carefully, girlie! I exort myself.
‘He’s so appalled himself at the notion of the orifice that the poor old sod mumbles and whimpers himself to a halt, though he’s no stranger to the Abyss, himself, used to come every Sunday, just to convince himself it was as ’orrible as he’d always thought. I pour myself another glass of claret, to strengthen myself, and one for mine host, too, who seems to need it. He tosses it off absentmindedly and, after a few moments, recovers his equanimity sufficient to turn his mind to happier things.
‘“Flora!” he cries. “Quick spirit of the awakening world! Winged, and aspiring upwards! Flora; Azrael; Venus Pandemos! These are but a few of the many names with which I might honour my goddess, but, tonight, I shall call you ‘Flora’, very often, for do you not know what night it is, Flora?”
‘I try a dollop of his excellent Stilton, pondering as I savour it the baroque eclecticism of his mythology.
‘“April thirtieth,” I says, suspicious lest this turns out to be another riddle.