Fascinated Read online

  ‘She’s gone!’ whispers Frank, returning to the window and searching for his mermaid through the dirty glass.

  Webster opens the kitchen door and the masked intruders enter the house. The silence settles upon them like dust. The air stinks with the smell of old food. A dozen empty pizza cartons neatly stacked on a metal table. A bowl of cats’ milk on the floor.

  Beyond the deserted scullery they find themselves in a large room filled with armchairs clustered around a TV set the size of a cocktail cabinet. The armchairs are filled with bags of knitting, torn copies of True Romance and books of crossword puzzles. A paper balloon for a lampshade. A fruit bowl for an ashtray.

  They pick their way across the room and reach a flight of stairs dimly lit by a murky red light where, peering through the balustrades, they catch sight of the girl in the cowboy boots vanishing into a bedroom. Webster leans against the newel post, turns to Frank and points a finger to heaven and then they begin to climb up through the crimson twilight.

  At the top of the stairs a Chinese lantern casts a feeble blush of light along a narrow corridor paved with a strip of purple carpet. The walls are lined with framed photographs of fantastic big-breasted women dressed as pixies and Roman slave girls, like a small-town picture palace advertising future attractions.

  Webster creeps forward and pauses beside a bedroom door. He turns the knob with a twist of his fist and furtively peeks through the gloom. He beckons Frank and grants him a view of a giantess, wrapped in a nightmare of chiffon, slumped asleep on a brass bed. A long wig of nylon hair hangs like an animal pelt from a mirror.

  ‘That’s Uncle Joe,’ whispers Webster, gently closing the door again and moving along the corridor.

  They pick another room, prising open the door, leaning forward into the shadows and there, sprawled naked on a ruined bed, with his head submerged in the mangled pillows, one leg trapped in the sheet, one leg dangling overboard, they find Harry Cocker. He’s asleep beside a half-dressed woman. She is young and skinny in boxer shorts, shoulders hunched, turned away from him, curled in a ball like a petulant child. They are snoring.

  Frank follows Webster into the room and they tiptoe slowly towards the bed. The floor is littered with clothes, bottles, satin cushions in the shape of hearts and a circus of stuffed toy animals. A pink plush hippo with button eyes, a brown bear and a lion cub; a chimpanzee in a bowler hat, a giraffe and a kangaroo.

  Now he stands next to Webster, staring down at the Beast, and waits for something to happen. At any moment the vampire will open its blood-bloated eyes, bare its fangs in a bellow of rage, throw out its arms and drag him down through the gates of hell. Frank feels the room start to move around him. The sweat seeps through his knitted hood and collects in the fingertips of his gloves. The girl moans softly, her legs twitching as she runs through her avenue of dreams towards the beckoning daylight.

  At the far end of the room light is pouring through a crack in a door. Webster weaves a pantomime with his hands, instructing Frank to guard the bed while he sets out to invade the bathroom. He picks an empty champagne bottle from the carpet and weighs it in his fist, hesitates, twists on his heel, sprints forward, catapults through the bathroom door and is lost in the luminous fog.

  Lloyd is sitting in the bath with his legs wrapped around a fat, freckled girl armed with a sponge the size of a skull. She is staring vacantly at the ceiling, her arms raised, the sponge held high above her head, while Lloyd supports her breasts in his hands, grinning at them, licking his mouth, as if he might eat one for breakfast.

  As Webster storms through the door the girl shouts, drops the sponge and tries to escape Lloyd’s embrace by yanking him apart at the knees. Lloyd roars in pain and surprise. The bath erupts in a plume of green foam as the girl clambers out and scampers to hide herself in a corner, wrapping her face in a towel.

  Lloyd explodes from the bath and turns to confront his assassin. The water spills from his shoulders, a beard of bubbles hangs from his chin. Webster raises the bottle and slaps it against the palm of his hand. Lloyd grins, stamps the floor with his wet feet, snatches at the girl, struggles to pull her into his arms, spreading her into a shield. But the girl is slippery with soap. She screams, wriggles loose and plunges into the bath again, trying to hide beneath the water.

  The bottle bounces against Lloyd’s head. He whistles and turns away, leans like a drunkard against the wall. Webster hits him again and this time Lloyd makes a queer little grunting noise in his throat and slithers from the wall to the floor. The blood spurts from his ear and tumbles in tiny crimson beads.

  Webster lets the bottle slip through his fingers and watches it roll against the bath. The girl in the bath is sobbing loudly, her knees drawn against her chest, hiding her face in her hands. Lloyd stays on the floor, his mouth clicking open and shut, his head in a shining pool of blood.

  Now the Beast awakes, snaps open his eyes and stares at the man in the knitted hood who is looming over the bed. He springs to life with a terrible shout, kicking the skinny girl to the floor, as he plunders the pillows in search of his gun. He snatches at a small, blunt revolver, wraps the gun in a fist and punches the fist at Frank’s head.

  Frank is so surprised that he simply stands and stares. He looks down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and he remembers the spud gun he carried as a boy, the smack and sting of potato pellets as he fought long duels in the dusty heat of late summer afternoons and the smell of the percussion caps that came on peppery, pink paper rolls to fit his silver Colt .45 and the penknife he wore with the bent blade and the Captain Fantastic atomic stunner and for a moment it’s as if his entire life will parade before his startled eyes.

  The Beast fires at Frank’s head but the skinny girl in the boxer shorts, clutching the sheets as she tries to haul herself from the carpet, throws herself over the edge of the bed like a drowning sailor reaching a life raft and the mattress groans and sinks beneath her weight, knocking the Beast askew as his finger squeezes the trigger.

  Frank staggers, stunned by the noise, blinded by the muzzle flash, as the chimpanzee in the bowler hat jumps from the floor and explodes in a snowstorm of feathers. The hat cartwheels across the carpet in a trail of glittering sparks. The girl screams and the Beast, cursing, turns to her in a rage and clubs at her head with the gun. The girl shrieks and squirms and tries to gaff him with her fingernails as Frank recovers his wits, scrambles across the bed, locking his hands around the Beast’s neck.

  The Beast falls back, hoping to shrug Frank loose, but Frank is quick to seize the advantage and knocks the gun from his fist. He’s scared and dazed but angry enough to fight with reckless courage. He has the Beast by the throat and is trying to corkscrew his head from his shoulders when the girl, jumping for the safety of the floor again by using the bed as a trampoline, grinds the Beast’s testicles under her heel, making him shriek and kick out his legs, cracking her in the groin with his knees, knocking her down against Frank’s shoulders, driving him forward over the Beast with his hands still locked around his neck, and the three of them slither to the carpet in a helter-skelter of fear and loathing.

  For several moments they roll, one upon another, as spiteful as brawling children, until the Beast pulls away, stretching an arm across the bed, growling with pain, groping in the sheets for the gun. Frank is wrestling with the girl who, more by accident than design, has managed to master a hammerlock. She is sitting astride him, concentrating the last of her strength in pulling his arm from its socket, when the bathroom door bangs open and Webster stumbles forward. He’s blowing like a wounded walrus and his boiler suit is spattered with blood.

  The Beast grabs the revolver, launches himself across the bed and fires three shots towards the light. But he’s too late. Lloyd Cocker, armed with the empty champagne bottle, has joined the fight again and clubbed the back of Webster’s head. When Frank flings the girl against the wall and turns in search of his partner he finds him slumped on the floor with Lloyd standing over him, swinging the bot
tle.

  Lloyd is grinning and staring at the wisps of smoke that drift from the holes in his chest. He raises one hand and dabs at a hole with his fingers, sighing softly as if lost in admiration for some wonderful conjuring trick, while his legs buckle and his spine turns to rubber making him concertina into the bathroom and the arms of his fat and freckled companion.

  The Beast is flabbergasted. He stands up and wipes the hair from his face. He looks lost. He stares at Frank, the gun in his hand, the broken bed, the feathered floor, the girl with her face pressed into the wall. Then he starts slowly across the room, moving like a Sleepwalker, perched on tiptoe, probing the air with his outstretched hands, stepping carefully over Webster and locking himself in the bathroom where he lets out a series of terrible screams.

  Frank hauls Webster to his feet and navigates him from the room.

  ‘Have we finished?’ he shouts above the uproar around them.

  ‘It’s time to go home!’ wheezes Webster.

  They are sprinting along the corridor, clipping pictures from the walls, shaking dust from the Chinese lantern, and have almost reached the top of the stairs when Uncle Joe springs from the shadows, a monstrous genie wrapped in chiffon and waving a wicked carving knife. She swings the knife above her head, screws up her eyes and plunges the blade at Webster’s heart but finds herself swept away, as if a whirlwind had filled her nightgown, and falls to the ground, shouting and stabbing the floorboards. Before she has time to recover, Frank and Webster are through the kitchen and into the yard, shivering in the cold morning air, removing their hairy scarecrow heads, peeling their hands and shedding their skins into the Gladstone bag.

  The fat girl is choking, the thin girl is wailing, the Beast is moaning, his brother is bleeding, Uncle Joe lies stranded like an upturned turtle, the girl in the rhinestone cowboy boots hangs from a window, hoping to shimmy down a broken drainpipe, and Frank and Webster are walking with careful, measured strides away through the crowded and dirty streets. Frank swings the Gladstone bag in his hand. Webster pulls out the peppermints.

  Conrad, looking lovely in a white silk blouse and a pleated blue crepe skirt, is sitting in a gilded chair the size of a sultan’s throne. He’s wearing black stockings. His big feet, bulging from their high-heeled shoes, are planted slightly too wide apart, the skirt in a swag between his knees. He sits, with a silken elbow propped on the arm of the chair and his chin in the palm of his hand, listening to Webster describe the defeat of the Cocker brothers at the Golden Goose Hotel.

  Webster paces the room, waving his arms, snatching words from the air with his fingers, jerking his head towards Frank who stands patiently beside the window watching Valentine in the garden, strolling and smoking a cigarette. He transforms the ugly bedroom brawl into a whirling waltz of death, praises Frank for his courage, crowns his own battered head with glory, describes in exquisite detail the damnification of the brothers and finally, exhausted by his account of their triumph, swaggers across to Frank and shakes him by the hand.

  ‘He’s a killer!’ he shouts, laughing, slapping Frank’s shoulder and knocking him against the window.

  Frank grins and pulls himself from the curtains. He feels like a pirate in seven-league boots. The world is a thigh-slapping pantomime of devils, boggarts and cannibals. He’s a villain with eyepatch and badger moustache.

  ‘You deserve a drink!’ declares Conrad. He looks amazed. His nostrils flare, his eyes are huge, the tufts of his bristling eyebrows twist into fantastic curlicues. He steps down from the throne and clip-clops to a crystal table loaded with bottles.

  ‘What’s your poison?’

  ‘Do you have a beer?’ says Frank.

  ‘I’ve got everything,’ says Conrad, peering into the rainbow of bottles and decanters. ‘Scotch whisky, Irish whiskey, Russian vodka, Polish vodka, Dutch gin, London gin, cognac, calvados, white rum, Navy rum, tequila, schnapps, rice wine, palm wine…’

  ‘I’ll have a beer,’ says Frank.

  ‘I can’t find the beer,’ grumbles Conrad, growing impatient, shaking the table.

  ‘Give him a brandy,’ says Webster.

  So Conrad opens a bottle of cognac and fills three tumblers to their brims and they drink once for the healing power of the grape, twice for the scouring strength of the spirit and a third and fourth time because they’ve acquired the taste for it.

  ‘You’ll want to phone your wife,’ says Webster confidentially, poking Frank with his thumb.

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’ says Conrad.

  Frank smiles, confused, his senses saturated, and tries to remember the reason he wanted to talk to his wife. He’s forgotten his fight with Jessica and the bickering Bassett and the chairman of the Gooseberry Guild and all the fiddle-faddle of life. He’s become the great Apollyon, Beelzebub in a balaclava. The laughing larrikin. He’s drunk with excitement. He can still taste the gun smoke in his mouth.

  ‘It can wait!’ he says carelessly, draining his glass.

  So they have another drink and one bottle leads to another and Frank sleeps the afternoon away, slumped in the sultan’s throne.

  When he wakes up it is dark and the room feels cold. His eyes hurt and his bones feel broken. He falls from the chair and staggers in search of his companions, roaming the silent corridors of the house until he finds himself at the gates to the Turkish pavilion containing a marble swimming pool. The pavilion is lit by a thousand candles. The flames jump and flare on the walls and dance in the glittering water. In the centre of the pool floats Webster, beefy as a Smithfield bummaree, soaking his bruises. At the far end of the pavilion Conrad and Valentine are sitting in wooden deck-chairs, sharing a hamper under a giant parasol.

  ‘Come over here and sit down!’ shouts Conrad, waving Frank forward with a sickle of pie crust. ‘It’s too late to get you home tonight. We’ll make a fresh start in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ says Valentine as he sits beside her in the shade of the parasol. She’s wearing a black swimsuit and smoking a cocktail cigarette. ‘Are you hungry?’

  Frank looks at the eggshells and salmon bones, the fruit skins and pastry crumbs. He shakes his head.

  ‘This is for you,’ says Conrad suddenly, wiping his hands in a napkin and pulling a briefcase from the darkness beneath his chair.

  ‘What is it?’ frowns Frank, catching it with outstretched hands, letting it slip, surprised by its unexpected weight. He imagines the briefcase packed with explosive, an intricate death trap of cut wire and nails.

  ‘Open it,’ prompts Valentine. ‘Don’t you want to open it?’

  Frank hesitates, strokes the knubbly crocodile skin, gently prints his fingertips against the polished brass lock.

  ‘It won’t bite,’ growls Conrad.

  So Frank snaps open the clasps and swings back the lid upon bundles and bundles of crisp, new twenty-pound notes.

  There is silence. Conrad grins and grinds his teeth. Valentine pulls on her cigarette. Webster drifts to the side of the pool and hauls himself from the water.

  ‘I can’t take your money,’ Franks says at last.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ grunts Conrad. He leans forward to check the notes for fear he’s packed roubles, rupees or zlotys.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ says Frank quietly. ‘But I can’t take it. There’s more money here than I could hope to earn in a year.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ says Conrad, looking at the money again with fresh interest. He’s impressed.

  ‘So what?’ demands Valentine impatiently, grinding her cigarette into the eggshells.

  ‘How could I explain it away?’

  ‘Tell ’em you got lucky!’ Webster shouts from the water’s edge. ‘Tell ’em you had a big win on the horses.’

  ‘I don’t play the horses.’

  Valentine snatches a bundle of notes from the briefcase, leans forward and stuffs it into Frank’s jacket pocket.

  ‘Buy something for your wife,’ she says flatly.

  ‘
You’re a strange bugger!’ grins Conrad, slapping his knees. And he lets out a great shout of laughter.

  Frank hurries home to surprise his wife. He buys her a dozen roses, wrapped in a crackling paper cone, and a box of pastries, fragile pillows of sugar stuffed with a fragrant almond paste.

  The streets are greasy with rain. The house, as he turns through the gate, looks empty and dark. He doesn’t need to ring the front bell but unlocks the door with his own key, pulls off his coat and walks to the kitchen.

  His wife is sprawled on the kitchen table. She is naked. Her mouth is open and her eyes are closed. Her arms are hanging loose and her bent legs raised against her chest. Bassett is slumped against her body, his fingers clutching the edge of the table, his shoulders wedged between her knees. His face has been contorted in death, the blind eyes bulging, the nostrils flared, the lips pulled away from the grinning teeth. His buttocks look grey in the dull winter light. His scrawny legs, bracing table and floor, have a cheesy, mottled appearance.

  Frank stops breathing. Walking into the room, at the moment of impact, he translates the scene as the consequence of some freak car crash where the victims, hurled from the tumbling wreckage, have been blasted through the kitchen window to fall, tangled and stripped of their clothes, on this polished pitch-pine table. The bodies are locked together, embracing dreadful, internal wounds, impossible to prise apart without tearing muscles or breaking bones. In his horror, blundering into this mortuary, he checks the desire to step forward and compose the twisted limbs of his wife, close her mouth and cover her nakedness with a towel.

  Nothing moves. Nothing makes sense. He is still holding the cone of flowers and the box of sugar pastries.

  He looks around the kitchen, as if seeking alternative explanations to the violence that confronts him. He divides the room into sections and cuts these sections into squares. He picks a square at random. He makes a list of everything he can find between the edge of the wooden window frame and the corner of the wall, extending from ceiling to floor. He counts the bottle of vodka and two glass tumblers containing slops of melted ice; an old-fashioned chrome toaster, a carton of Quaker Puffed Wheat, a plate of sandwich crusts, a perforated steel ladle, a spilled nest of plastic measuring spoons, a pair of scissors and a rind of cheese. No blood. No knives. No suicide note.