Ancient Images Part 2

She found Toby at the railing by the Thames, his face solemn as the lowing of boats on the river. He looked paler than ever; so, disconcertingly, did his ginger hair. "It's soothing here, isn't it?" she said.

"I used to think so. Let's go up," he said as if he wanted to get it over with.

In the lift he blinked every time the glowing numbers changed. He unlocked the flat and stood aside for her. Sunlight streamed into the main room, which felt cold and deserted. His steel and gla.s.s tables had gone. "You aren't living here," she said.

"I stayed the first night, but after that it began to get to me. I was having to keep all the lights on. Not because of Graham. I don't know what it is, except there's a dead smell about the place. Let me give you what I found and then we'll go."

33 34 He took down several volumes of an encyclopedia, revealing a wall safe between two bookshelves. "Where are you living?" Sandy said.

"With my parents while I put myself back together. Would you believe they're trying to fix me up with a nice girl? If I don't move out soon they'll be turning me into a stockbroker like the old man, training it into the City five days a week with my bowler on my lap and my portfolio stuffed with lunch." He pulled back his cuffs like a safecracker. "Shush a minute."

She was glad he felt able to put on a show for her, though she knew it was also for himself. The sunlight was creeping toward the bedroom, where a dressing gown lay on the bed. The tumblers clicked, and Toby reached into the safe. "This will mean more to you than it does to me," he said.

It was a dog-eared red notebook. At the top of the first page Graham had written TOWER OF FEAR in elaborate capitals. Each of the next few pages bore a different name and address and telephone number, all scored through lightly. "I decided against giving it to the police." Toby said. "It didn't seem right to have the police upsetting more people for no reason. Graham said most of them were old and frail."

"They're the ones he contacted about the film."

"Most of them worked on it, I think. It's not as if any of them would have come here after the film," he said with a hint of defensiveness. "At least the police seem to have crossed me off their list of suspects, though they couldn't find any prints." He closed the safe and walled it up with books. "Maybe that notebook can prove our friend at the Daily Daily Friend Friend wrong." wrong."

"Did you call him?"

"What I called him is what you should be asking, except it's not for your delicate ears. And I wanted to know if he 35 cared to set his reputation against Graham's. He bl.u.s.tered and then he shut up. I expect to read an apology next week."

"Did you tell him you'd seen the film yourself?"

"I only saw a snippet, old Boris up a tower watching someone being chased across a field at night, and to tell you the absolute truth, I wasn't anxious to see any more. Neither of us wanted to be the one who switched off the lights that night."

"It must have been some film if it could do that to you both."

"It must have been the film, yes. What else could it have been?"

She hadn't meant it that way, and his response made her feel unexpectedly nervous. The sunlight had reached the bed now, and she realized that a shadow on the duvet must have been the long shape she'd mistaken for a dressing gown. Toby was right about the dead smell, she noticed, a faint stench like stale charred pastry that reminded her of the last time she was here. "I'm glad you thought I should have this," she said, slipping the notebook into her handbag, and made for the door.

She walked Toby to Victoria Station and left him at the barrier. On her way into the Underground she thought he'd followed her, but there was n.o.body to be seen behind her on the escalator that sailed downward with a faint inconsolable squeal. She sat on a bench on the empty platform, the breaths of oncoming trains stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. She leafed through Graham's notebook, but couldn't concentrate; she found she had to keep glancing along the platform toward the tunnel. Some fault in the mechanism made the train doors reopen after she boarded, as if someone had leaped on at the last moment. The galloping rush of the wheels made her think of a hunt in the dark.

Someone was walking a dog in Queen's Wood. Sandy couldn't see the owner, but she heard the animal in the 36 undergrowth. Once she glimpsed its ribs through a gloomy clump of bushes. Even if it was a greyhound, it looked in need of feeding. She would have shouted to the owner to call it off if its sounds hadn't stayed in the undergrowth as Sandy reached the gate.

Neither Bogart nor Bacall came to greet her as she unlocked her door. They prowled the main room while she examined the notebook, wondering if Graham might have indicated which of his informants he suspected had a copy of the film. Few of the names scattered across Britain and abroad meant anything to her. "Come on if you're so anxious to return to the wild," she said to the pacing cats, and took them out for a walk.

Perhaps the dog in the woods was a stray. No wonder the cats stayed close to her. She thought she saw its eyes glistening, but they turned out to be weeds blurred by shadows. "I think we're safer at home," she said to the cats, which raced into the house as soon as she opened the door.

She took the notebook with her while she baby-sat for the young accountants on the ground floor. She was beginning to think Toby had meant the book as a plea to her. She had a busy week ahead, editing a play whose male lead had fallen ill before his reaction shots could be filmed. She had made nothing of Graham's notes before the newspaper reviewer responded to Toby's call.

She read the paragraph in the lift at Metropolitan, newsprint soiling her hands. "Sorry if any of my faithful readers thought I was getting at Graham Nolan last week. A very close male friend of his rang up to shrill at me for saying Nolan could ever have been wrong, but believe me, the last film Nolan tried to find wouldn't have been worth finding even if it existed. Even Karloff and Lugosi didn't want to own up to it, and anyway someone owns the rights, so if Nolan had really had a copy he would have been breaking the law. I say let him rest in peace now. He earned it." 37 Sandy tore the column out of the page and placed it in her handbag before dropping the rest of the newspaper in the bin next to her desk. She felt tense all day, even more so when she let herself into her flat. She had time only to get changed and hurry out again to dinner in Chelsea.

When conversation at the far end of the table in the conservatory her friends had built onto their apartment turned to Graham, at first she didn't realize that it had. A headmistress with several combs in her hair was saying, "Not that I'd wish it on him, but at least he went before he could infect the world with whatever the film was."

Sandy wouldn't have listened if their hosts hadn't been trying to hush the woman surrept.i.tiously. "I'm sorry, what was that?" Sandy said.

The headmistress stared at her as though Sandy had entered her office without knocking. "We were discussing the television fellow, the one who fell off the roof. I was saying that if he didn't want to go that way, perhaps he shouldn't have been so eager to revive horror films. Some of my children watch nothing else."

Sandy paused to be sure of speaking calmly. "He told me the film was a cla.s.sic, and I believe him. Thank you very much for dinner," she said to her hosts, "and now if you'll all excuse me, I mean to prove him right." The incident was almost worth it for the way the headmistress was gaping at her, but Sandy was perspiring with rage by the time she came up from the Underground. As soon as she reached home she made the first phone call. 38 She caught sight of Roger Stone as she came into Soho Square. He was marching up and down the pavement with his hands in the pockets of his green corduroys, tossing his broad head to throw back an unruly curl of blond hair and whistling s.n.a.t.c.hes of the score of an Errol Flynn movie. He was as tuneless as anyone she'd ever heard. He began to hum a march, occasionally alluding to the melody, as he pa.s.sed the office of the British Board of Film Censors. She sidled through a gap in a rank of motorcycles under the trees that shaded the gra.s.s, and called "Here I am, Roger."

He choked on whatever note he was about to aim for and clapped a hand over his mouth, and watched her cross the road, his dark keen eyes smiling ruefully. "It isn't every day you hear that kind of overture before a movie," he said.

"True enough."

He pushed his lower lip forward in a rueful grin, then looked more solemn. "Listen, today's movie isn't the one I was expecting, may not be the kind you go for. Maybe we can go for coffee or a walk and come back here in time to meet your quarry."

He was talking like someone rushing to finish a tongue twister. "What kind of film is it?" she said.

"Some kind of horror comedy. Gross, therefore funny, supposedly. Not Graham's kind of movie at all."

"We disagreed sometimes. I may like it more than he did, and I want to be sure of catching your colleague."

"No colleague of mine, let me tell you. Okay, I'll brave 39 the movie if you will. You can hide your face on my shoulder if you need to," he said, and added, "I mean, don't feel you have to," so hastily that she was immediately fond of him and at her ease with him.

He led her around the square to a film distributor's offices. On the way to the bas.e.m.e.nt he said, "Did you happen to bring Graham's notebook?"

"d.a.m.n, I knew there was something. My cats were acting up this morning. I don't know what's got into them."

"I can tell you about some of the guys in the notebook. Harry Manners was a character actor, must be in his seventies. Leslie Tomlinson will be even older. He was a stuntman before there was sound. I should have asked you to read out all the names when you phoned me," he said as they stepped into the auditorium.

Not only the floor but the walls and the dozens of seats were carpeted in dark red. About twenty people, most of them men, lounged here and there on the seats. A few turned from chatting to greet Roger. "Presumably we can start now," someone on the front row grumbled--an old man with a sharp veinous nose, protruding eyes, large ears that reminded Sandy of the handles of a jug. Roger followed her into the second row and nodded at the man's back. "Len Stilwell of the Daily Daily Friend," Friend," he mouthed. he mouthed.

As soon as the film began, Stilwell stooped forward and fumbled in his lap while peering up at the screen, at an actress with enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Sandy thought he was adjusting his p.e.n.i.s until she realized he was scribbling notes. A vampire with hair slicked back like Lugosi's sank his teeth into the woman's left breast, which deflated with a hiss that sounded disapproving. A man guffawed, then two more, while Roger showed Sandy his gritted teeth.

If there was an audience for the film, Sandy wouldn't like to live next door to them. She laughed when a vampire left his false teeth in his victim's neck, but even that made her feel as if something she was nostalgic for were being spoiled. 40 A tottery doctor called Alzheimer kept missing the vampires' hearts with his stakes, hammering squelchily though he was blinded by squirts of blood, and she sensed Roger's embarra.s.sment on her behalf. When the film tried to convince her that eye-gouging was comic she looked away and patted Roger's arm to cheer him up. "The End" dripped off the screen at last. "That's a relief," she said.

Stilwell turned and looked down his nose at her. "Just another b.l.o.o.d.y horror film."

"Is that what you'll write?"

She meant it conversationally, but he seemed insulted. "Who are you, may I ask? Where are you from?"

"I'm Sandy Allan from Metropolitan, and this is Roger Stone, who's written a shelf of books about cinema."

"Well, a few," Roger said. "Shower Scenes, Scenes, you might know." you might know."

Stilwell raised his nose further. "Wasn't Hitler at the Movies: Portrait of a Clown Hitler at the Movies: Portrait of a Clown by you? Some would say that was in decidedly bad taste." by you? Some would say that was in decidedly bad taste."

"Maybe, but not mine. Think about the way the movies have portrayed him."

"I just write consumer reports, I've no time for cleverness. Nor to argue, I may add," he said, and turned away.

"Don't go," Sandy said. "I wanted to ask you about something you wrote."

He gazed at her like an indulgent teacher. "What did you want to know?"

"Why you said what you did about Graham Nolan."

She could have meant the tribute--her tone was neutral--but at once his ears grew alarmingly red. "Why should that concern you?"

"I was a very close friend of his."

"Not another one who thinks he was infallible! He was only a film buff, you know. Good heavens, we can all make mistakes." 41 "Except Graham didn't in this case," Roger interrupted. "Sandy described to me what his friend saw, and there's no such scene in any other film."

"You've seen every film ever made, have you?"

"I've seen every Karloff movie, and I mean to see this one. I'm researching a book about American performances in foreign films."

"Make up your mind whether you mean English or foreign." Stilwell lowered his voice as reviewers loitered on the stairs to listen. "Let's just drop the subject, shall we? None of us are going to prove anything, and you wouldn't be allowed to broadcast the thing even if it existed."

"I'm not a broadcaster," said Sandy. "I'm a film editor, and I mean to prove Graham right."

"Who let you in? This show was only for the press," Stilwell said for everyone to hear. "If I were you I'd give up before I drew too much attention to myself."

"Seems like you've already done that," Roger said. "Just tell us the name you left out of your column and we'll leave you alone."

"I haven't the least notion what you mean," Stilwell said, breathing so hard his nostrils whitened.

"You wrote that someone owns the rights to Tower Tower of of Fear. Fear. Who would that be?" Who would that be?"

"How should I know?" The look he gave Roger to demonstrate his good faith seemed to rebound on him. "Don't you stare at me," he yelled. "Behave yourself while you're in someone else's country. And as for you, Miss Allan, remember we have laws that protect a man's property."

"But not to stop me proving the film exists."

Stilwell swung round, his ears crimson, and stalked upstairs. "I needn't have said that," Sandy admitted to Roger.

"I shouldn't have let him needle me, but Christ, what a son of a b.i.t.c.h. I can't stand these guys who don't give a s.h.i.t 42 for what they write about and look down on anyone who does. And for someone like that to set himself up as more informed than Graham when Graham can't even answer back ...8 He slapped his fist with his palm and grinned apologetically at her. "You'll be thinking I care too much."

"Not at all," Sandy said, though she had been a little disconcerted by the vehemence of his reaction, "and I thought you performed admirably. We can always think of what we should have said, but there's never a retake. Let's have a coffee before I head back to work."

Leaving Soho Square, they walked past the Pillars of Hercules, under the arch that was thick as a room behind Foyle's, and sat at a table outside Break for the Border. "You were saying on the phone you helped Graham find out about the film," Sandy prompted.

"In a small way only. I talked to some people."

"Anyone I've heard of?"

"Jack Nicholson." He fell silent while their waitress enthused about the actor, and when she moved away he said, "We had a fine time partying, reminded me of my own easy rider days, but he couldn't tell me much. Except when he and Boris were working on The The Raven Raven they were talking about how kids would get to see it in America but here n.o.body younger than sixteen could, and Boris said there was a film he'd made he was quite glad to see suppressed." they were talking about how kids would get to see it in America but here n.o.body younger than sixteen could, and Boris said there was a film he'd made he was quite glad to see suppressed."

"Meaning Tower Tower of of Fear." Fear."

"I guess. Then I talked to Ed Wood. Angora Love."

"He liked to dress up in women's sweaters."

"Right, and made a film about it that Lugosi narrated. Maybe you know Lugosi's doctor said Lugosi ended up on morphine because he used to be so anxious. Wood told me Bela once admitted to him that it was a movie he made in England that caused him the most grief. Now, he might just have resented it because it virtually got him barred from England for the rest of his career, but I talked to Peter 43 Bogdanovich about it and he thought that wasn't the whole story."

"He asked Karloff about it?"

"While they were filming Targets, Targets, yes. Bogdanovich interviewing Karloff sounds like a contest for who would be more of a gentleman, and he didn't get much out of him about this film except that he really didn't want to talk about it at all or even about the director, Giles Spence. I don't know if you realize Spence died the week they finished shooting, in a car accident somewhere up north." yes. Bogdanovich interviewing Karloff sounds like a contest for who would be more of a gentleman, and he didn't get much out of him about this film except that he really didn't want to talk about it at all or even about the director, Giles Spence. I don't know if you realize Spence died the week they finished shooting, in a car accident somewhere up north."

A breeze chased through the pa.s.sage outside the restaurant, bearing a smell of bread rolls from the kitchen, and made Sandy shiver. "I'm beginning to realize how little I do know about the film. What do you think it was about it that upset so many people?"

"It may just have come at the wrong time. There was some kind of a debate in your Houses of Parliament that I keep meaning to check out. That's me, Slow and Steady Stone, except forget the steady part, more like easily diverted. Christ, I wish I'd gone to Graham's that night when he invited me. I might have been there in time."

"I know how you feel."

"Not that I'd have been able to do any better than you," he said, so hastily that she leaned over the table and gave him a kiss. "Uh, thanks," he stammered.

"That was just to let you know you needn't be afraid I won't know what you mean."

"Well, good. Me too. I mean," he said, and gave up when she smiled at him.

"I'll have to be heading back in a few minutes. I wanted to ask if you've any idea what the film was about."

"According to Graham, Karloff plays an aristocrat who owns some kind of haunted land, and Lugosi comes to England after his brother-in-law has been killed on the land. Usually it's the monster which is foreign, some kind of 44 invader--think of Dracula. Spence may have stirred up some hostility by making the monster English, especially just before the war."

"Was that what the original story was about?"

8 'The Lofty Place'? Maybe. I understand it's almost as rare as the movie."

A chilly breeze nuzzled her ankles, and she stood up. "I must go."

He accompanied her along Oxford Street and hesitated in the midst of the crowd at Oxford Circus. "Did you want to dictate Graham's notes to me or maybe bring them round to my place?"

"Best offer I've had for weeks. How does Thursday evening sound?"

"Great."

"I'll call you before then," she said, and watched him down the steps into the Underground.

When Lezli told her she looked pleased with herself, she wondered why she didn't feel calmer. It must be that she felt pursued by a pack of unanswered questions. Even walking home through Queen's Wood, Sandy felt tense, especially when she heard a child wailing in the gloom. The sound stayed ahead of her, and when she reached the house she realized she had been hearing the accountants' little girl. "Home now," the girl's mother said as she wheeled her into the hall.

"He wasn't ill, pet," her father rea.s.sured her. "He was just an old gentleman having a lie down on the gra.s.s."

His wink at Sandy presumably meant the man had been a tramp. She squatted by the stroller and tickled the little girl under the chin until she had to smile, then she went upstairs, thinking that she wouldn't have expected the child to be so easily upset. That was children for you, she supposed, and she had enough to ponder. Whatever the child had seen, it had nothing to do with her or with the film. 45 He would feel safer once he drove through the wood. The only figures he could see in the fields around him were scarecrows, and there wasn't even a bird in the vast indifferent sky, yet he felt watched. If anyone were following him along the road, from the town or the great house beyond it, he would be able to spot them several hundred yards away. It was just his imagination that was troubling him, his d.a.m.ned imagination which had brought him here in the first place and which he was beginning to feel was almost more trouble than it was worth.

He'd thought last time he had got the better of his enemies when he'd sneaked down under the chapel, but could that have done himself and his collaborators some harm? He didn't understand how, especially since today his enemies had seemed genuinely unaware of what he had been suffering. Could he have worsened his situation by coming back here by himself?

He couldn't have brought anyone with him. However nervous and persecuted he felt, he didn't want anyone to realize what he'd done until it was out in the open, incapable of being suppressed. Nor could his feelings trap him here, he vowed, striking the horn to scare away his fears and proclaim that he was coming. Nothing but the byproducts of his imagination could be waiting in the wood to head him off. As he heeled the accelerator he felt unexpectedly brave, as though he were spurring a steed into danger.

The shadow of the trees fell on him, a greenish shadow 45 46 damp and chill as moss. Trees crowded about the road as it wound into a hollow and wormed upward again toward the sunlight. Perhaps the sun had gone behind a cloud, for the hollow seemed darker than it had earlier. As well as the dimness, a smell of earth made him feel buried until the car swung toward the promise of daylight ahead.

As the car reached a brief straight stretch of road beyond the first curve, he looked back. Nothing was following him except the smell of turned earth, though why should that be following him? Down here it seemed ominous, perhaps because of the hint of something more unpleasant underlying it, and the shadows that dodged between the trees, just beyond the focus of his vision as he glanced at the road ahead. The way was clear. He had time for one more backward glance before the next curve, to rea.s.sure himself that the shadows were only shadows. He turned his head and saw a figure running after him on all fours along the dim road, a thin shape moving faster than the car.

Shock wrenched his head around further, sending a blaze of pain through his neck. His feet jerked wildly on the pedals, and the car lurched faster. For a moment--for too long--he was unable to look away from his pursuer. He twisted around to see where he was going just as the car swerved across the road. As he stamped on the brake, the car smashed into a tree.