Neverwhere (2 page)

“Almost ready, Sylvia. Look, just hold on a sec, can you?”

He finished punching in the number, breathed a sigh of relief when somebody answered, “Ma Maison. Can I help you?”

“Yes,” said Richard. “A table for three, for tonight. I think I booked it. And if I did I’m confirming the reservation. And if I didn’t, I wondered if I could book it. Please.” No, they had no record of a table for tonight in the name of Mayhew. Or Stockton. Or Bartram—Jessica’s surname. And as for booking a table . . .

It wasn’t the words that Richard found so unpleasant: it was the tone of voice in which the information was transmitted. A table for
tonight
should certainly have been booked years before—perhaps, it was implied, by Richard’s parents. A table for
tonight
was impossible: if the pope, the prime minister, and the president of France arrived this evening without a confirmed reservation, even they would be turned out into the street with a continental jeer. “But it’s for my fiancée’s boss. I know I should have phoned before. There are only three of us, can’t you
please
. . .”

They had put down the phone.

“Richard?” said Sylvia. “The MD’s waiting.”

“Do you think,” asked Richard, “they’d give me a table if I phoned back and offered them extra money?”

In her dream they were all together in the house. Her parents, her brother, her baby sister. They were standing together in the ballroom, staring at her. They were all so pale, so grave. Portia, her mother, touched her cheek and told her that she was in danger. In her dream, Door laughed, and said she knew. Her mother shook her head: no, no—
now
she was in danger.
Now.

Door opened her eyes. The door was opening, quietly, quietly; she held her breath. Footsteps, quiet on the stone.
Perhaps he won’t notice me,
she thought.
Perhaps he’ll go away.
And then she thought, desperately,
I’m hungry
.

The footsteps hesitated. She was well hidden, she knew, under a pile of newspapers and rags. And it was possible that the intruder meant her no harm.
Can’t he hear my heartbeat?
she thought. And then the footsteps came closer, and she knew what she had to do, and it scared her. A hand pulled the covers off her, and she looked up into a blank, utterly hairless face, which creased into a vicious smile. She rolled, then, and twisted, and the knife blade, aimed at her chest, caught her in the upper arm.

Until that moment, she had never thought she could do it. Never thought she would be brave enough, or scared enough, or desperate enough to dare. But she reached up one hand to his chest, and she
opened
. . .

He gasped, and tumbled onto her. It was wet and warm and slippery, and she slithered and staggered out from under the man, and she stumbled out of the room.

She caught her breath in the tunnel outside, narrow and low, as she fell against the wall, breathing in gasps and sobs. That had taken the last of her strength; now she was spent. Her shoulder was beginning to throb.
The knife
, she thought. But she was safe.

“My, oh my,” said a voice from the darkness on her right. “She survived Mister Ross. Well I never, Mister Vandemar.” The voice oozed. It sounded like gray slime.

“Well I never either, Mister Croup,” said a flat voice on her left.

A light was kindled and flickered. “Still,” said Mr. Croup, his eyes gleaming in the dark beneath the earth, “she won’t survive us.”

Door kneed him, hard, in the groin: and then she pushed herself forward, her right hand holding her left shoulder.

And she ran.

“Dick?”

Richard waved away the interruption. Life was almost under his control, now. Just a little more time . . .

Gary said his name again. “Dick? It’s six-thirty.”

“It’s
what
?” Papers and pens and spreadsheets and trolls were tumbled into Richard’s briefcase. He snapped it shut and ran.

He pulled his coat on as he went. Gary was following. “Are we going to have that drink, then?”

Richard paused for a moment. If ever, he decided, they made disorganization an Olympic sport, he could be disorganized for Britain. “Gary,” he said, “I’m sorry. I blew it. I have to see Jessica tonight. We’re taking her boss out to dinner.”

“Mister Stockton? Of Stocktons?
The
Stockton?” Richard nodded. They hurried down the stairs. “I’m sure you’ll have fun,” said Gary, insincerely. “And how is the Creature from the Black Lagoon?”

“Jessica’s from Ilford, actually, Gary. And she remains the light and love of my life, thank you very much for asking.” They reached the lobby, and Richard made a dash for the automatic doors, which spectacularly failed to open.

“It’s after six, Mister Mayhew,” said Mr. Figgis, the building’s security guard. “You have to sign out.”

“I don’t need this,” said Richard to no one in particular, “I really don’t.”

Mr. Figgis smelled vaguely of medicinal liniment and was widely rumored to have an encyclopedic collection of soft-core pornography. He guarded the doors with a diligence that bordered upon madness, never quite having lived down the evening when an entire floor’s worth of computer equipment upped and left, along with two potted palms and the managing director’s Axminster carpet.

“So our drink’s off, then?”

“I’m sorry, Gary. Is Monday okay for you?”

“Sure. Monday’s fine. See you Monday.”

Mr. Figgis inspected their signatures and satisfied himself they had no computers, potted palms, or carpets about their persons, then he pressed a button under his desk, and the door slid open.

“Doors,” said Richard.

The underway branched and divided; she picked her way at random, ducking through tunnels, running and stumbling and weaving. Behind her strolled Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, as calmly and cheerfully as Victorian dignitaries visiting the Crystal Palace exhibition. When they arrived at a crossroads, Mr. Croup would kneel and find the nearest spot of blood, and they would follow it. They were like hyenas, exhausting their prey. They could wait. They had all the time in the world.

Luck was with Richard, for a change. He caught a black taxi, driven by an elderly man who took Richard home by an unlikely route involving streets Richard had never before seen, while holding forth, as Richard had discovered all London taxi drivers will hold forth—given a living, breathing, English-speaking passenger—on London’s inner-city traffic problems, how best to deal with crime, and thorny political issues of the day. Richard jumped out of the cab, left a tip and his briefcase behind, managed to flag down the cab again before it made it into the main road and so got his briefcase back, then he ran up the stairs and into his apartment. He was already shedding clothes as he entered the hall: his briefcase spun across the room and crash-landed on the sofa; he took his keys from his pocket and placed them carefully on the hall table, in order to ensure he did not forget them.

Then he dashed into the bedroom. The buzzer sounded. Richard, three-quarters of the way into his best suit, launched himself at the speaker.

“Richard? It’s Jessica. I hope you’re ready.”

“Oh. Yes. Be right down.” He pulled on a coat, and he ran, slamming the door behind him. Jessica was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. She always waited for him there. Jessica didn’t like Richard’s apartment: it made her feel uncomfortably female. There was always the chance of finding a pair of Richard’s underwear, well, anywhere, not to mention the wandering lumps of congealed toothpaste on the bathroom sink: no, it was not Jessica’s kind of place.

Jessica was very beautiful; so much so Richard would occasionally find himself staring at her, wondering,
how did she end up with me?
And when they made love—which they did at Jessica’s apartment in fashionable Kensington, in Jessica’s brass bed with the crisp white linen sheets (for Jessica’s parents had told her that down comforters were decadent)—in the darkness, afterwards, she would hold him very tightly, and her long brown curls would tumble over his chest, and she would whisper to him how much she loved him, and he would tell her he loved her and always wanted to be with her, and they both believed it to be true.

“Bless me, Mister Vandemar. She’s slowing up.”

“Slowing up, Mister Croup.”

“She must be losing a lot of blood, Mister V.”

“Lovely blood, Mister C. Lovely wet blood.”

“Not long now.”

A click: the sound of a switchblade opening, empty and lonely and dark.

“Richard? What are you doing?” asked Jessica.

“Nothing, Jessica.”

“You haven’t forgotten your keys again, have you?”

“No, Jessica.” Richard stopped patting himself and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

“Now, when you meet Mister Stockton tonight,” said Jessica, “you have to appreciate that he’s not just a very important man. He’s also a corporate entity in his own right.”

“I can’t wait,” sighed Richard.

“What was that, Richard?”

“I can’t wait,” said Richard, rather more enthusiastically.

“Oh, please hurry up,” said Jessica, who was beginning to exude an aura of what, in a lesser woman, might almost have been described as nerves. “We mustn’t keep Mister Stockton waiting.”

“No, Jess.”

“Don’t call me that, Richard. I loathe pet names. They’re so demeaning.”

“Spare any change?” The man sat in a doorway. His beard was yellow and gray, and his eyes were sunken and dark. A hand-lettered sign hung from a piece of frayed string around his neck and rested on his chest, telling anyone with the eyes to read it that he was homeless and hungry. It didn’t take a sign to tell you that; Richard, hand already in his pocket, fumbled for a coin.

“Richard. We haven’t got the time,” said Jessica, who gave to charity and invested ethically. “Now, I do want you to make a good impression, fiancé-wise. It is vital that a future spouse makes a good impression.” And then her face creased, and she hugged him for a moment, and said, “Oh, Richard. I
do
love you. You do know that, don’t you?”

And Richard nodded, and he did.

Jessica checked her watch and increased her pace. Richard discreetly flicked a pound coin back through the air toward the man in the doorway, who caught it in one grimy hand.

“There wasn’t any problem with the reservations, was there?” asked Jessica. And Richard, who was not much good at lying when faced with a direct question, said, “Ah.”

She had chosen wrongly—the corridor ended in a blank wall. Normally that would hardly have given her pause, but she was so tired, so hungry, in so much pain . . . . She leaned against the wall, feeling the brick’s roughness against her face. She was gulping breath, hiccuping and sobbing. Her arm was cold, and her left hand was numb. She could go no farther, and the world was beginning to feel very distant. She wanted to stop, to lie down, and to sleep for a hundred years.

“Oh, bless my little black soul, Mister Vandemar, do you see what I see?” The voice was soft, close: they must have been nearer to her than she had imagined. “I spy, with my little eye, something that’s going to be—”

“Dead in a minute, Mister Croup,” said the flat voice, from above her.

“Our principal will be delighted.”

And the girl pulled whatever she could find deep inside her soul, from all the pain, and the hurt, and the fear. She was spent, burnt out, and utterly exhausted. She had nowhere to go, no power left, no time. “If it’s the last door I open,” she prayed, silently, to the Temple, to the Arch. “Somewhere . . . anywhere . . .
safe
. . .” and then she thought, wildly, “
Somebody.
”

And, as she began to pass out, she tried to open a door.

As the darkness took her, she heard Mr. Croup’s voice, as if from a long way away. It said, “Bugger and blast.”

Jessica and Richard walked down the sidewalk toward the restaurant. She had her arm through his, and was walking as fast as her heels permitted. He hurried to keep up. Streetlights and the fronts of closed stores illuminated their path. They passed a stretch of tall, looming buildings, abandoned and lonely, bounded by a high brick wall.

“You are honestly telling me you had to promise them an extra fifty pounds for our table tonight? You are an idiot, Richard,” said Jessica, her dark eyes flashing.

“They had lost my reservation. And they said all the tables were booked.” Their steps echoed off the high walls.

“They’ll probably have us sitting by the kitchen,” said Jessica. “Or the door. Did you tell them it was for Mister Stockton?”

“Yes,” replied Richard.

Jessica sighed. She continued to drag him along, as a door opened in the wall, a little way ahead of them. Someone stepped out and stood swaying for one long terrible moment, and then collapsed to the concrete. Richard shivered and stopped in his tracks. Jessica tugged him into motion.

“Now, when you’re talking to Mister Stockton, you must make sure you don’t interrupt him. Or disagree with him—he doesn’t like to be disagreed with. When he makes a joke, laugh. If you’re in any doubt as to whether or not he’s made a joke, look at me. I’ll . . . mm, tap my forefinger.”

They had reached the person on the sidewalk. Jessica stepped over the crumpled form. Richard hesitated. “Jessica?”

“You’re right. He might think I’m bored,” she mused. “I know,” she said brightly, “if he makes a joke, I’ll rub my earlobe.”

“Jessica?” He could not believe that she was simply ignoring the figure at their feet.

“What?” She was not pleased to be jerked out of her reverie.

“Look.”

He pointed to the sidewalk. The person was face down, and enveloped in bulky clothes; Jessica took his arm and tugged him toward her. “Oh. I see. If you pay them any attention, Richard, they’ll walk all over you. They all have homes, really. Once she’s slept it off, I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
She
? Richard looked down. It
was
a girl. Jessica continued, “Now, I’ve told Mister Stockton that we . . .” Richard was down on one knee. “Richard? What are you doing?”