How To Make Friends With Demons Part 30

"Suffering," Antonia said. "He sees other people's suffering. And his own. He sees it as demons. Real demons."

"But I don't see yours, Antonia," I said.

"No. That's because I trick them. You know you once asked me what it is they seem to be waiting for. Always waiting. You know what it is they wait for? Permission to leave." She shook her head at me. "I love you, William, because for you life has never stopped taking your breath away. Because you are generous to all its creatures. You give them a home. But sometimes they don't want one. I'm dying, William-I had to say this to you."

"Antonia," I said. "Antonia."

"Shhh! Listen to this," she said. "Anna is going to take over the running of GoPoint."

"What?" I said. I looked at Anna, who nodded back at me. "When was this decided?"

"Just now. While you were looking for a vase," Anna said.

After leaving the hospital I desperately needed a drink. I couldn't face the braying, cigar-smoking demons of Chelsea so we headed up to the Embankment, to the more civilised caves of Gordon's Wine Bar, where they play no music and serve only wine.

In Gordon's low-cellar bar you need to stoop to get to a table. The light from the candles doesn't even penetrate to the dark corners and everyone in the place seems to be engaged in either a tryst or a conspiracy. Samuel Pepys lived in the building in the seventeenth century; Rudyard Kipling wrote The Light That Failed in the parlour above the bar. It's one of my favourite bars in all of London, but it didn't do much to lift my spirits.

"She's only got weeks," I said. "Maybe only days. You're full of surprises, you know that?"

"That's me," Anna said.

"The funding is a constant nightmare."

"You'll help us." She knew all about the antiquarian-books racket, because I'd told her.

"I'm having trouble funding myself just now. You'll be exhausted. It will drain all your energy."

"I'll have you to comfort me."

"It would be easier just to pa.s.s on the a.s.sets to one of the neighbouring agencies. St. Martin-in-the-Fields. They do good work."

"What's easiest is not always what I want."

"You'll be broke all of the time."

"Yeh. Could be."

I looked around the cellar bar, casting an eye over the gloomy corners and the huddled couples, as if a spy or an enemy might be in the bar, listening to us. But everyone had their own private conspiracy to worry about. I thought Anna's idea to keep GoPoint open was crazy, even though I would support her if I possibly could. All this made it more crucial than ever for me to get hold of Stinx, to find a new buyer to step in for Ellis. The truth was I didn't know where to begin.

I didn't have to ask her why she wanted to do it. Because while the world is filled with people who just need to let their demon go, there is another group who need to find themselves one.

Chapter 35.

Just three days before Christmas, Antonia died.

When someone dies-someone whom you love-the world is a changed place. A distinctive light has gone out of the world. Nothing puts the world back as it was. I've said before that these lies are told as a kindness and a sedative, but they don't help. They are demonic, actually. They cheat our humanity. They take our attention away from the true value of the fleeting moment. It's a value only people like Antonia ever learn: the briefer the life, the more precious; the more certain we are that life is a sealed unit in time, the more we should celebrate its infinite s.p.a.ce; the more dark and absurd, the harder we should strain our eyes to peer into the miracle of it.

I didn't cry when I heard about her death. There was no need to. She'd led an impeccable life. I would more likely cry for myself, for my stupidities, vanities and wasted time.

But even though I didn't shed a tear I did feel adrift. I desperately wanted to have people around me, and I suggested to Anna that we get a big silly dinner going for Christmas Day: invite everybody and half of h.e.l.l. She was all for that.

I knew that Fay would want Sarah at home with her for Christmas dinner and that Lucien would want to blowtorch a live goose or whatever was fashionable. However, I had no objection to the kiddiewinks staying with me and Anna. Neither of us were great cooks but we could probably stick a feather in a dish of pate and call it Norwegian Woodc.o.c.k, a la Lucien.

Sarah was pa.s.sionately against catering Chez Lucien. There was a third option of their spending Christmas with Mo's mother and father. In response to this suggestion, Mo said nothing, but looked like he'd rather scalp himself with a chainsaw.

So it seemed to me that Sarah and Mo would be there, and Jaz didn't have any better invitations. "As a Sikh I'd be very glad to join in with your Middle Eastern shepherd-cult-of-death festival. By the way, I've got some news about Ellis. He told me he still wants the book.

But he's refusing to deal with '

that loony.' I think he means you."

"Oh," I said. "Yes, I was a bit brusque with him."

Jaz also revealed that Stinx had once given him a key to his studio apartment. I was pretty tied up with work, what with all the administrative oversee of the GoPoint, not to mention chairing the first meeting of the government's useless Youth Homelessness Initiative, but I did manage to go round there one evening.

I didn't find Stinx, but under the workbench I saw a rat the size of a small dog gamely chewing on a green loaf of bread. I had to throw a toaster at the rat to chase it away. I saw not a trace of the work I'd hoped was nearing completion. Nothing. I washed up some dishes before leaving, and left a note pleading with Stinx to get in touch.

Christmas Eve fell on a Sat.u.r.day and Anna and Sarah together came to the startling realisation that we hadn't got a tree. They determined to fix that, and out they went to kidnap one from somewhere. While they were out I received an unexpected visitor.

"Robbie! Come in, come in! What a surprise!"

He was wearing this long, black trench coat, like one of these schoolkids h.e.l.l bent on peer-a.s.sa.s.sination. He looked over my shoulder. "Is Sarah here?"

"Cool coat! She's out looking for a Christmas tree."

"Is Mo here?"

"He's out with her. Are you stopping?"

"What about your new girlfriend? Is she here?"

"Anna, she's with them. They seem to have formed a posse."

"We don't say posse any more, Dad. Or cool."

"No, of course you don't. Come on, let me help you off with that lovely coat."

We went through to the lounge and sat down. I offered him a beer-I know I was trying too hard. He opted instead for a gla.s.s of pop. I found some age-old stuff but he complained that all the fizz had gone out of it. I asked him how his mum was, and how Lucien was and how Claire was, and he answered me rather formally. He kept rubbing the sides of his shoes together.

Despite the fact that I work for a youth organisation I'm not great at talking with teenagers, even my own. In fact, I'm useless at it: there, let it be said. They hit thirteen and they are swallowed up by the Valley of Demons for seven years. I do know that some people don't emerge until they are thirty-three-and-a-third, but most come out from the undergrowth clutching, by the time they are twenty, a shiny nugget of reasonableness.

Then Robbie astonished me by blurting out, "Can I stay here over Christmas?"

"Here? You want to stay here?"

"Yes."

"Of course you can, Robbie. Of course. You're very welcome, you should know that. What's gone off at home?"

"Nothing. But last year was a nightmare, right? Lucien and all his cooking, right? He gets all worked up for three days. He's started already. You can only eat what he says when he says.

Even if you want cornflakes, right? Everything has to be a perfect Christmas and he gets me to video it all? I don't want a perfect Christmas. I want to be somewhere where it won't be. Won't have to be perfect."

"Well, you've come to the right place."

"I don't mean that. I just mean, right, that like, it's a nightmare, right?"

I heard the door open. The tree-hunters had returned with an enormous blue-green Serbian Spruce. There was some excitement as to how we were going to get it in the house and when we did it was of course too tall for the room.

"Anna, this is my son Robbie. Did you have to get such a big one?"

Anna kissed Robbie on the cheek and wished him a Happy Christmas. He couldn't take his eyes off her. "It was that one or a real scrawny, tiny, tired-looking thing, wasn't it, Sarah?"

I was sent to get a saw so we could hack a foot off the bottom of the tree. While I was working away at the trunk, I told Anna that Robbie wanted to stay.

"Good!" she said. "But have you told him what we're doing tomorrow?"

I hadn't had a chance. Anna and I, along with Sarah and Mo, had promised to go down to GoPoint to help organise a Christmas party for the homeless people there. Not everyone's cup of cold custard is it? But that was what we were doing.

"I'll tell him," said Anna.

I continued to saw at the trunk as Anna steered Robbie away. I pretended to be engrossed in the task as she put her hand on his shoulder, told him what we were going to do in the morning and asked him if he'd like to come along.

"What, with like, like, dossers?"

"Yes," she said. I didn't have to look. I knew she would be giving him the big-eye. "It'll be great. You wanna come with us?"

"What, Christmas with the tramps, like?"

"Yeh! Pretty wild, hey?"

He said nothing. He didn't look like he thought it was pretty wild at all. I carried on sawing.

A tiny snowstorm of sweet pine dust scented the air.

There were some minor domestic complications. If Robbie had now joined his sister Sarah in deserting the home front, that would leave my other daughter Claire gamely trying to sh.o.r.e things up, even though of all three she would be the one who would rather be here with me the most. But there you are: she was also the unselfish type who would put her own comfort second.

The thought of Lucien in his holly-decked designer kitchen, stuffing his sausage and spinning his pastry for a deserted dining room, was too much even for me.

I called a counsel of peace and asked what could be done to save everyone's Christmas. I asked the kids to think about Claire. "Come on," I said, "it's Christmas Eve. Think." As if brain-power was in greater supply during the festive season, like dates and walnuts.

"You could," Mo offered, "invite all of them round here for Christmas dinner."

"No," three voices snapped back at him. One of them was mine.

We found a solution. Instead of deserting Claire, it was decided that Robbie, Sarah and Mo would have the big Christmas lunch with Fay and Lucien after spending the morning at GoPoint.

Then in the evening all four of them would come over and join us for a second Christmas dinner.

I would have to square it with Fay, of course, but at least no one need feel neglected or trapped. I celebrated this small victory for common sense by opening a bottle of a very special Chateauneuf-du-Pape while the kids decorated the tree with thrilling sparkly c.r.a.p they'd bought in a last-minute sale.

I think it's good to leave things until the last minute. I sipped at my wine watching my children in the act of decorating the tree, holding aloft gla.s.s decorations of green and gold, baubles of silver and red.

On Christmas Eve every year one of the old twilight demons comes down the chimney, and we all take part in a conspiracy not to believe in him. But we actually have faith in him so much that we would never let go of the bizarre rituals a.s.sociated with this particular demon.

There are other things that happen, too, and I wanted to stay awake until midnight to see them.

But before that could happen we had more visitors. Jaz and Stinx turned up together. They'd bought with them not only an unplucked orange-beaked goose that someone was going to have to de-feather and gut but also their respective partners. Tagging along behind Jaz was a handsome Australian rugby player; and stepping in Stinx's wake came the ethereal Lucy.

"We finally get to meet!" I said to her, pumping her hand. I was surprised. This heartbreaker, this temptress, this demon-I mean Stinx's other demon, besides the booze 'n' drugs-turned out to be a jolly but rather plump and matronly middle-aged woman. Maybe I'd been expecting Mata Hari. I think I looked at her with rather too much intensity, trawling for something fiendish behind the eyes, because she looked away from me rather nervously.

"He's been hiding from us," Jaz said.

"It's true," Stinx said. "Come with me, William. Got a Christmas present for you."

He beckoned me out of the kitchen and into the front room. I switched on the standard lamp and there was his folder. He hadn't wanted the kids to see it. Stinx quietly closed the door behind us, shutting out the buzz of conversation emanating from the kitchen. In the quiet of the room he laid his folder on the table and unzipped it.

I wanted to grab at the results immediately but I knew I had to let Stinx unwrap, because even his wrappings are works of art. It's part of the persuasion. We're in the business of preciousness. The jewel is served up inside the Faberge egg, and the egg comes on a velvet cushion.

I mean his packaging was itself gorgeous vellum. Stinx makes patterned, st.i.tched wraparound covers so beautiful they distract the eye from the object-the forgery. Even though the forgery will fool or at least confound the most trained eye, the cover, the special wraparound, is somehow the clincher. Stinx gets the calfskin himself, soaks, limes, de-hairs, sc.r.a.pes, dries, cuts, sews and embosses it. To h.e.l.l with the forgery, this man is a consummate artist. The customer is so enthralled that he always has to ask if the vellum cover comes with the price. No, it's not for sale. It's a presentation jacket, protective and beautiful, to enhance the rare object within.

Then we relent. At a high price.

There were two copies as promised, three volumes apiece bound in morocco green leather.

The bindings were lightly scuffed in different places and on one copy the binding threads were fraying badly in the middle of one of the signatures. The broken leather grain of one cover was scourged with red-rot and the other had "fallen victim" to some advanced photochemical degradation caused by sunlight. The joints in both books were starting to give. I hardly wanted to touch them: the samples were durable enough and yet promised-pleasingly-to fall apart with extreme age at the touch of careless fingers. Inside, even the paper mottling varied between the two copies. I held one of the copies up to my nose and sniffed. Stinx blinked at me as I inhaled two centuries of mildew, gas-lamp pollution, sunlight in a study, and finally the varnished oak of a bookcase upright against which the book had rested this last century or so.

The copy in my hand was miraculous. It was a work of genius: perfectly flawed.

"All right?" said Stinx.

"All right."

"Didn't let you down, did I?"

"Stinx," I said. "Stinx. Let me open a bottle of something very, very special for you."

"I'm sorry, William, I've got to tell you this. I've been drying out. That's where I've been these past few days. Lucy said the only way she'd come back to me is if I give up the drink. And everything else. William, I'm having to resign from the Candlelight Club. Forthwith, sort of thing. Official."

I carefully set down the beautiful forgery. "Heck, Stinx. That's serious news. I mean, we have a right to celebrate. We have a book and we have a buyer."