The Killing Doll (24 page)

He lit the two blue candles on the altar and filled the cup with wine Dolly had brought him in a glass. Before evoking a god the magician should cleanse his temple with a Banishing ritual and Pup had told Dolly this had been done, though in fact he had done nothing, he knew himself incapable now of getting up to any of this mumbo-jumbo while alone.

He turned towards Dolly, who was sitting on a floor cushion, and began the evocation, holding in his hands the cup of wine. The words he used would have shocked Crowley or Abremalin the Mage, for they were a hotch-potch and a mingling of every conjuring recipe, diabolic litany and summoning prescription Pup had ever absorbed into his consciousness. From lost mythologies he dredged up names and titles the world has long forgotten. His language was that of Dr. Dee, of Jacobean sorcery.

“I evoke thee, the Bornless One,

The terrible who dwellest in the Void Places,

Anubis, son of Nephthys,

Of the race of Asar-Un-Nefer, the resurrected Osiris,

Jackal-headed, Lord of the Mummy Wrappings,

Anubis Osirides, Lucifuge, Thanatopher,

Thou who walkest in the Deeps,

And hath sight in thy feet,

O, Adonai, Gnomus, Salamandrae,

Begetter of Light and Transcender of Mortality …”

And so on.

Dolly watched and listened, rapt. She had drunk a whole bottle of Valpolicella before the ceremony began. Her head was throbbing and she had a feeling of breathlessness and tension. Now she wished she had not drunk quite so much. She had selected Anubis from a book of Pup’s called
Interpretations of the Book of the Dead
because of his attribute of conducting souls to the Other Side but now she asked herself if perhaps she had also chosen him because of his freakishness, his dog’s head. She and the god had something in common, they were both different, both bearing a disfigurement that could not be concealed.

She put up her hand to touch the nevus but Myra’s hand brushed it before hers could. They had come to join her in the temple, she could hear them whispering to each other, though she could not decipher the words. And she was reminded of Mrs. Fitter’s seances. There was the same feeling, as of impending excitement, of suspense. Pup, restoring the cup to the altar, was setting light to the contents of a small bowl filled with pieces of incense sticks. A powerful scent of burning patchouli and sandalwood arose from it. He blew out one of the candles. The burning bowl glowed red and a little thin smoke came off it. It was dark in the black-walled room now and dark with the darkness of a winter’s night at nine o’clock out there beyond the blue blind.

The candle cast a soft beam on Pup in his golden robe but his face was in shadow. In the far corner to the left side of the window, Dolly could make out the dim forms of Myra and Edith, their white robes falling about them like the drapery on Greek statues. Pup entered the chalk circle, closing it where he had stepped in with the point of the elemental wand. He laid the wand across his feet and lifted the glowing bowl up high.

It was silent in the house. The two women had ceased to whisper. The traffic seemed to have stopped, though you could never hear much of it in the back here with nothing much behind but the old railway line.

“I adjure thee, Anubis, Osiris’ son or haply son of Ra, come forth! Appear instanter,
venite, venite,
Lucifuge! Come forth and show thyself in thy immortal shape … !”

An absolute silence but for his voice. It had grown cold in the temple, nearly as cold as in the hall when Edith had been conjured. Gooseflesh was coming up on Dolly’s arms and shoulders.

“Appear, Osirides, Lord of the Lower World, Guide of Souls, Bearer of the Caduceus and Palms …”

Dolly had begun to tremble. “Pup …”

He did not hear her. At this stage he always enjoyed himself, he enjoyed the acting. You could understand what those old dabblers in the occult had got out of it, the names and the archaic language alone.

“Arise, appear, I command thee, incarnate Anubis, Conductor of the Dead, Funerary Prince,
fundador sepulcrorum,
come forth …”

The yellow fumes which had begun to rise from the square inside the circle now swelled towards the ceiling, hiding Pup from Dolly’s sight, hiding the candle and the bowl of smoldering incense. It was the first uncoiling of this smoke which had made her cry out to him. But he was obscured now in thick acrid yellow, a fog that smelled of fire, and his words dwindled as if he were far distant from her.

And now a shape was forming in the dark smoke, rising up, standing there ceiling-tall, its tower of headdress wreathed in rings of yellow fume. The body was naked and glistening as if made from bronze and the face which thrust itself forward with elevated snout was the face of a dog.

Dolly screamed with all her might. She screamed as she had screamed at the seance when Myra appeared. She leapt to her feet, knocking over with a sweep of her arm the candle on the altar and hurling the little wax effigy into the square at the feet of the god. For a second she stood there, arms out, and then she plunged forward in a faint.

Pup had finished, had run out of epithets and titles when Dolly screamed. He had turned his back and set down the smoky basin and within a moment would have crossed to the door and switched the light on. He spun round when Dolly screamed but he wasn’t quick enough to catch her as she fell.

The candle had got knocked over and gone out but in its fall had set light to whatever it was Dolly had had in her hands, something of cloth and wax that burned fiercely on the bare boards. He put the light on. With the help of the dagger he picked the burning object up and dropped it into the bowl.

Dolly opened her eyes. He knelt down beside her.

“Are you okay? What made you do that?”

She stared. She raised herself up and looked at what was in the bowl, still burning.

“You saw him?”

A cold finger seemed to touch his spine. “I saw nothing. There was nothing to see. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it, I’m a fool. I went too far.”

She got up, casting looks about her. The light turned the temple back into a boxroom with unaccountably black walls and a blue rag pinned up at the window.

“Where is he now?”

“Come downstairs,” he said gently. “I’ll make you a hot drink. Are you all right? Shall I carry you? I bet I could.”

She put out her hand and touched the bowl. “Good, that’s good. Are you sure he’s gone?”

It was useless to argue with her. “He’s gone. I banished him. I promise you he’s gone.”

Pup was almost hysterical with self-disgust. He bundled Dolly out and banged the door. Downstairs he made tea for them both, hot strong Indian tea. Dolly sat silent, drinking it, both hands clasped round the cup. He thought of the beginning of it, the start of her trouble that was a good deal more now than mere strangeness. Surely that had been when, in adolescent folly, he had carried out that soul-selling ceremony on the old railway line. She had been normal before, or as normal as any woman could be with a thing like that on her face. But once he had introduced her to the occult, the blight had begun, the gnawing into her mind of evil. Was that then what the books really meant when they spoke of an invisible world entering the real world of a practitioner or follower of magic, an addict of magic? Was that what one must infer from the ancient writers when they talked of demons conjured up that afterwards could not be banished? Did they really mean a mind split off from reality—schizophrenia? These days Dolly seemed always to be accompanied by invisible companions; she saw things and heard voices. What had she seen just now in that room?

She must see a psychiatrist, she must have treatment. He took her to her bedroom. While she undressed he fetched from the bathroom cabinet a sleeping pill from a bottle that had been Myra’s. He sat on the bed beside her and took her hand. He had this piece of business to get done and get done perfectly, he had to find someone he could trust to be left in charge of the new branch—when all that was over he’d find her a psychiatrist. And meanwhile he’d look after her, he wouldn’t leave her alone too much, he’d stay in more in the evenings and he’d never have anything more to do with the occult.

The Seconal sledge-hammered her into eight hours’ heavy sleep and when she awoke it was to an immediate recollection of how utterly the Ashley Clare effigy had been destroyed. If in the process of that destruction she had been vouchsafed a sight of the dread god, that was the price she must pay. It was proof, too, of Pup’s marvelous magicianly powers.

Yvonne was coming in the afternoon. It would be the first time she had ever come without a reason—that is, a reason apart from just wanting to see Dolly. This time there was no green dress to be fitted or skirt hem turned up. Dolly went up to the temple and unpinned the blue blind from the window. She picked up the candle and put it back in the candlestick and she took hold of the bowl and examined its contents. The tweed and cotton and the hairs had been entirely consumed in the burning and the body had melted, so that all that now remained in the bowl was a twisted lump of gray wax with bits of joss stick embedded in it.

The doll she put away in the remnants box. She didn’t want Yvonne to see it. When she had dusted the room and put a bottle of Asti in the fridge, she went upstairs and dressed herself very carefully for Yvonne, the soft dressmaker suit in blue-and-gray check Viyella, fuchsia-pink polyester blouse with the Princess of Wales stand-up neckline and bow tie, navy belt and navy pumps, grey ribbed tights. Her hair was longer than it had ever been, grown long because Yvonne’s was. She looped it carefully across three-quarters of the nevus and fastened it above her ear with a pink slide. Myra and Edith whispered together in a corner of the bedroom. It was as if they had a secret, for they kept breaking off to look at her, and sometimes they giggled. She had never known them to giggle before.

Pup intended to get home early. He was going to stay in that night and the next and the next, until he was sure Dolly was better. Andrea cut his hair at 4:30, blew it dry, pouted when he said he had to get home to his sister. He drove her back to Mount Pleasant Gardens and saw for the first time Diarmit Bawne, who had come out of the house, down the steps, carrying a green and gold Harrods bag.

For a moment, as he parked the van, he thought Yvonne hadn’t come. There was no green Porsche parked outside. But as he entered the hall there came to him a delicate floating nuage of musk and flowers. The relief was enormous, disproportionate somehow. But he told himself he wanted her friend to be there, he wanted her to have a friend.

They were sitting on the sofa, drinking Asti, Yvonne, naturally, on Dolly’s left side. He was seized with a pang of compassion for his sister, so dowdy in her homemade clothes, the silly blouse that showed up her florid skin. Of course it was the contrast with Yvonne that highlighted it, Yvonne, who was a sprite, a pixie, a naiad, in a dress that was of wool yet filmy and lacy, pale as ivory, with a malachite necklace and thin silver bangles on her white arms.

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Green glass, goblin, why do you stare at them?
Give them me—No.

What had made him recall that from some old school anthology? He asked her how she was, sat down and accepted a glass of their wine.

“My car’s being serviced and I won’t have it till tomorrow. Dolly says you’ll be awfully kind and take me home. But you don’t have to, really you don’t, I can phone for a taxi.”

“Of course I’ll take you home.”

“We’ll have another bottle of wine,” Dolly said.

She didn’t see the quick glance that passed between Pup and Yvonne. Pup shrugged.

“I’d rather have something to eat.”

Dolly said rather huffily, “It’s all ready for you on the kitchen table. Don’t I always have your meal ready for you?”

He fetched a trayful of it into the living room: cold Tandoori chicken wings, bridge rolls, potato crisps, pickled gherkins, lemon curd tarts, and pineapple-flavored yoghurt. Yvonne accepted a potato crisp or two and then she ate a tart and all the yoghurt. Dolly opened a second bottle of Asti. She did it quickly, she hurried. For some time she didn’t like being out there alone in the big old kitchen after dark.

It was nearly 10:00 before Yvonne said she ought to go. She said to Dolly on the doorstep: “George was going to be home for the weekend but he phoned and said he couldn’t make it. He’s going to stay at that flat and look after Ashley Clare.”

“Look after him?”

“Didn’t I tell you? He’s ill. He’s got a mysterious virus, he’s quite ill.”

20

V
enus (or possibly Psyche or Helen) reclined on cushions, naked but for the obligatory wisp, and contemplated her beauty in a gilt-backed hand-mirror while a wrinkled crone—her face providing a contrast and, to non-immortals, a foreboding—crouched on the far side of the bed, holding in her outstretched hands a necklace of pearls. The painting was large, executed but for the flesh of the young beauty in rather dark oils. Its gilt frame sat opulently on the ivory watered silk with which the walls of Yvonne’s bedroom were covered.

“George never liked it,” Yvonne said.

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Pup sat up, bent over her and smoothed the thistledown hair back from her forehead.

“She’s too fat for modern taste, though. She’s not half as beautiful as you.”

“No one’s ever said I was beautiful since my first husband died.”

“We don’t have to talk about him, do we? Or George. One’s dead, poor chap, and the other one’s no good to you, so let’s forget them and talk about us. I think we ought to get up now and get dressed and then I ought to take you out to dinner.”

Yvonne looked at her diamond watch on the bedside table and gave a little shriek. “Oh, look at the time! D’you know we’ve been in bed for seven hours!”

“And on a Sunday too.”

“Peter, I want you to know I was never unfaithful before, not to either of my husbands. I promise you I won’t mention them again but I just wanted you to know. I mean that I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing. It really has to mean something to me. I won’t say I was attracted to you that first time we met when poor Myra was alive, it was more like a huge emotional upheaval I felt. And that combined with your powers, Peter, like some kind of god or guru …”