drop his work and rush to his mother’s bedside; only a polite request that Suzanna call back when there was ‘more news’. Meaning, presumably, that he didn’t expect her to ring again until it was time for him to send a wreath. So much for filial devotion.
The call done, she rang the hospital. There was no change in the patient’s condition. She’s hanging on, was the duty nurse’s phrase. It conjured an odd image of Mimi as mountaineer, clinging to a cliff-face. She took the opportunity to ask about her grandmother’s personal effects, and was told that she’d come into hospital without so much as a nightgown. Most probably the vultures Mrs Pumphrey had spoken of would by now have taken anything of worth from the house – the tall-boy included – but she elected to call by anyway, in case she could salvage anything to make Mimi’s dwindling hours a little more comfortable.
She found a small Italian restaurant in the vicinity of the hotel to lunch in, then drove to Rue Street.
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 top 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 forsook 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
