"You never mention such things, either."
"Ah, but that"s different. I am intensely curious about myself." He looked away for a moment. "I have almost an obsession about it, which is why I say nothing."
Even as he spoke, I was thinking of that night when I saw him dressed in women"s clothes. I could think of very little else as we talked together: it was as if someone were sitting with him, waiting for the opportunity to break into our conversation. There is a theory that the first human being was androgynous; so when I looked at Daniel, was I looking at some quest for the original state of the world? "Let me get you a drink," was all I said. I went out into the kitchen, and looked with something like pleasure at the pile of shining plates, the gleaming knives, and the shelves neatly stacked with food. In fact I could not quite remember placing everything so carefully, or polishing the crockery so brightly. But where were the wine and the whisky? The bottles had been moved, and it took me a moment to locate them in a cupboard beneath the sink. I was becoming absent-minded, and I pinched myself very hard before returning to Daniel. "I wish I had your pa.s.sion," I said as I poured him his usual whisky.
"But you do. You have a pa.s.sion for some more general past. You have a pa.s.sion for your work."
"And now you"re going to tell me that I"m escaping from myself. Or that I"m avoiding the present." He said nothing, but began examining his finely cut fingernails. "Well, you would be right. I can"t bear to look at myself. Or look into into myself. I really don"t believe that there"s anything there, just a s.p.a.ce out of which a few words emerge from time to time. And perhaps that"s why I never see people properly. I have never really seen myself." myself. I really don"t believe that there"s anything there, just a s.p.a.ce out of which a few words emerge from time to time. And perhaps that"s why I never see people properly. I have never really seen myself."
"I think it"s more interesting than that." He got up from his chair and went over to the wall, tracing a narrow crack in it with his forefinger. "I suspect that, without realizing it, you are reinventing yourself. It"s as if you were trying to create some new family. Some new inheritance. And so you have forgotten your own past."
I replied more angrily than I expected. "But what about you? What do you remember?"
"Oh, I remember everything. I remember sitting up in my pram. I remember walking for the first time. I remember hiding under the dining-room table." He noticed my look of surprise. "It"s not that unusual, you know." He paused, and once again I could feel the presence of the woman he had become by putting on the red dress and the blonde wig. "I suppose that nothing has been quite the same since."
"So you miss being a child?"
"Doesn"t everyone? Everyone except you?" He was drinking his whisky too quickly. "Do you remember that bridge you saw across the Thames?"
"Of course."
"I have a theory about that. I don"t suppose you"d like to hear it?" His usual sceptical, even supercilious, manner had for the moment disappeared.
"Has it something to do with your Moravians, or whatever they were called?"
He pretended to ignore me. "I think time may be a substance as real as fire or water. It can change shape. It can move to a different position. Do you see what I"m getting at?"
"I"m not sure."
"That was your bridge. It was a part of time that had stopped." He helped himself to another drink. "Have you ever wondered why this area is so peculiar?"
"So you"ve noticed it, too."
"It"s because all the time has flowed here, into this house, and there is none left outside. You hold all the time in this place." I was too surprised to say anything at all. "And there is another theory, as well. That there are some dimensions in which time can travel backwards."
"So I"m over before I"ve begun?"
"Isn"t that the t.i.tle of a song?"
"I don"t remember." We looked at each other expectantly, and I knew that I had to speak. "I saw you the other night, Daniel."
"I don"t know what you mean."
"I saw you in Charlotte Street."
For a moment he held on to the edge of the chair very tightly. "I could give you a very good theoretical explanation," he said. "There was a group of radicals who used to dress up as a protest against Old Corruption. It"s a very ancient tradition." I looked at him in astonishment, and then I began to laugh. "I"m glad you can see the funny side," he said. But he would not meet my gaze, and stared into his drink. "Ident.i.ty is a very strange thing, Matthew, and I can"t begin to explain it. I told you I was intensely curious about myself, but I still haven"t really found the clue to the mystery. In that respect, at least, we resemble each other. In earlier times no one gave such matters any thought, perhaps because they were part of an orderly universe "
"Oh no. People have always wondered."
" but we are so puzzled. Wouldn"t it be nice to return to some of the old theories? Soul and body? The four humours?"
"Oh, they never worked."
"Of course they did. Everything works in its own period. Don"t you think that people were cured by medieval doctors, soaking up black melancholy bile with white saltpetre? We could no more use their remedies than they could use ours, but they did work once. That"s what you have to remember. Of course some people say that they might work again." He was paying very little attention to me now, and seemed to be looking at something in the corner of the room. "I suppose that"s why so many are interested in magic. s.e.xual magic."
"What?"
He seemed embarra.s.sed, almost furtive, for a moment. "Nothing. I was really thinking about my interest in what you saw. I have never understood it properly. Sometimes I feel as if I"m excavating some lost city within myself. Do you know what I mean?" He got up from his chair, and started pacing around me. "Why does everything have to be so secret, so deeply buried? It"s like the sealed window upstairs." He stopped. "I"m sure there must be a sealed window here, aren"t you?" He began walking around the room again, even more agitated than before. "We think that there must be some secret part of us which is made of gold. Which does not rust, and which is not corrupted. Do you know the quotation? And yet, if we found it, it would probably be fool"s gold." He went over to one of the old walls, and ran his delicate hand across its mottled stone texture. "When I dress up, I must look a fool. And yet it is part of me. It gives me the strangest pleasure. It is like s.e.x, without having s.e.x. I don"t understand it at all."
I did not want to hear any more about his concealed life, and I tried to divert him. "Is it true what you said about the radicals?"
He turned round and faced me. "Oh yes. London breeds strange habits. In the eighteenth century a group of Marjories, as they called themselves, started fires at Tyburn and burned down the gallows. That"s why the executions were switched to Newgate." He smiled now, and went back to his chair. "I"m afraid I"m much more docile."
I sensed that he was still holding something back but, as I said, I did not want to get too close to the source of his obsession; it would have been too painful, too extreme. He sensed my nervousness, and waved his hand in the air as if he were dismissing the subject. "Now," he said, "in real ghost stories they always explore the attic of the old house."
"But there is no attic."
"Oh. What about the bas.e.m.e.nt?"
"We"ve done the bas.e.m.e.nt already."
"That"s true. A room under the stairs?"
"Non-existent."
"I think you will find at least a cupboard."
We went into the hallway and there, as he predicted, was some hollow panelling just beneath the staircase; I had not noticed a small catch on the side, but Daniel knelt down and unfastened it at once. It was almost as if he had not needed to look for it. "How did you know it was there?" I asked him.
"There is always a cupboard under the stairs. Haven"t you read Lady Cynthia Asquith?" But at that moment I realized he knew this house very well. "Ah," he said, more quickly now. "Pipes. I wonder if you get your water from the old Fleet River. That would account for your behaviour."
"What behaviour?"
"h.e.l.lo, what"s this?" He pulled out, with some difficulty, a wooden box with a black cloth laid across it. I turned away as he uncovered it. "Toys," he said. "A child"s toys." I closed my eyes for a moment. When I turned round again, he was taking out a small cardboard fish with a tin hook attached to it; there was a glove puppet beside it, and a spinning-top. I picked up a small book, the pages of which were made from some kind of shiny cloth. "I remember this," I said, looking at the letter "D" which had a child climbing upon it.
"What?"
"I do remember something about my childhood now. These are my toys. But what are they doing in this house?"
At that moment there was a loud knock upon the front door, and both of us were so startled that for an instant we clutched each other. "Matthew! Matthew Palmer! Where"s my little sprout?" It was my mother, calling through the letterbox, and in my dismay I quickly brushed the toys back into the cupboard and closed it: I did not want her to see them in my hands. Daniel stood up, and seemed unaccountably nervous as I went over to the door; my mother offered me her cheek to kiss, and I could smell the Chanel upon her skin. It was the same perfume she had used when I was a child. "The lover is parking," she said. "He"ll probably never get here." I introduced her to Daniel, and she looked at him with the strangest mixture of curiosity and distaste. "Haven"t I seen you before?" she asked him.
"Not as far as I know."
"But there"s something familiar about you." She seemed puzzled. "It will come to me in a minute."
Geoffrey suddenly arrived in the hallway, and Daniel took advantage of the temporary confusion to leave. Once again he seemed embarra.s.sed, and my mother watched him go with a somewhat grim expression. I noticed then how old she had become; she had lost weight, and her right hand shook slightly. "Now," she said. "Do show me and the lover around."
I went to the door and watched Daniel as he opened the gate and, without looking back, hurried down Cloak Lane. It suddenly occurred to me to walk around the side of the house: I looked up and there, on the top storey, was a window sealed with brick. He had known about it, just as he had known about the cupboard under the stairs. It was clear to me now that he was acquainted with this house, and might even have been deliberately leading me towards my old toys. But how was such a thing possible? How could he have known?
"Your father was such a dark horse," my mother said as I came back into the hall. "Fancy keeping this to himself." She walked into the ground-floor room as nonchalantly as if she owned the place herself. "I suppose he used it for a bit on the side."
"I don"t think, mother, it"s that sort of house."
"How would you know?" At moments like this I recognized the depth of her animosity towards my father and even myself; it was as if we had been involved in some act of vengeance or violence against her. "Well, never mind. Where"s the lover gone?" I turned round, but Geoffrey had disappeared. Nothing in this house seemed to stay in the same place.
"Just poking around," he said. He had gone up the stairs without us, and I resented his familiarity in my father"s house. "You"ll probably get a good price for it."
"I"m not putting it on the market. I"m going to live here."
I enjoyed announcing my intention so flatly, and I was delighted to see the expression of fear upon my mother"s face. "But you"re not going to sell up in Ealing?" she asked me very quickly.
I hesitated for a few seconds, unwilling to rea.s.sure her. "Of course not. It"s yours."
"That"s a good boy." She seemed to breathe more easily, and took a pocket mirror out of her handbag; she peered into it, and brushed some powder from her face. I saw it falling on to the old stone floor. "Well, my darling, you"re a better man than your father. I"ll give you that." I wanted to ask her about the toys I had just found, but I could not bear to mention my childhood to her. "Now will you show me the house, please?"
The trouble did not begin until we reached the top floor. "There"s a lot of dust up here," she said. "Typical of your father." She waved a hand in front of her, as if she were scaring away a fly or wasp; but I could see nothing. We went downstairs to the next floor and, to my surprise, I realized that there was no dust at all in my own bedroom; it looked as if it had been swept clean in preparation for my arrival. Geoffrey had adopted his professional role as a surveyor, for want of anything better to do, and was busily tapping the walls and scrutinizing the ceiling. My mother seemed to enjoy the process: it was as if the house, and therefore my father, was being subjected to some long-overdue judgement.
"What was that?" she said.
"What?"
"I thought I saw something over there." She pointed, strangely enough, towards the wall beneath my window.
"It must have been a fly," I said. "A summer fly."
But then, when we descended the stairs to the ground floor, she started back again in horror. "Something just moved again." She was looking at that part of the hallway in front of the bas.e.m.e.nt door. "Did you see it? It was like some creature. Some little thing."
Geoffrey was laughing at her. "It"s the old girl"s eyes. All sorts of bits and pieces floating in them at her age."
She was looking at me accusingly, as if I were responsible for these distortions in her vision. "Come on," she said. "Let"s finish the grand tour."
I approached the bas.e.m.e.nt with some caution, with the momentary fear that my mother had glimpsed a mouse or even a rat. I shook the handle as loudly as I could, and then opened the door. "Come down here," I told her. "This also has been one of the dark places of the earth."
I don"t know why I said this: she managed to laugh, but I suppose I was pleased by the horror that pa.s.sed over her face. She followed me down the stairs, but when she reached the last of them and stood within the bas.e.m.e.nt itself, she looked around in fear. "There is is something here," she said. "It"s just as if it were in the corner of my eye, but it"s not in my eye. It"s here." Then, roughly pushing past Geoffrey, she retreated back up the stairs. something here," she said. "It"s just as if it were in the corner of my eye, but it"s not in my eye. It"s here." Then, roughly pushing past Geoffrey, she retreated back up the stairs.
He turned to look at her in astonishment. "It"s not like your old mum," he said. I conducted him around the bas.e.m.e.nt, while explaining Daniel"s theory that this was once the ground floor of a house which had gradually sunk into the earth. He was particularly intrigued by this, and went over to look at the marks above the sealed door. "They"re not made by a surveyor," he said. "They don"t mean anything at all."
I suddenly felt very tired, and turned to leave. Reluctantly he followed me up into the hall, where we found my mother sitting on the stairs. "What has the lover been telling you?" She tried to sound light-hearted, but quite failed to do so. There was an expression upon her face, at once preoccupied and vindictive, that I had never seen before.
"I was giving him a surveyor"s judgement."
"I wouldn"t talk to him about judgement, if I were you." She was brushing something off her sleeve, with a look of disgust. "It might frighten the little sprout." Now she stared down at me, with the same look. "They say that beetles thrive on dirt. Is that why you"ve got so many of them? This is a filthy house. Something happened here, didn"t it? Something smelling of filth and s.h.i.t. I can smell your father here." I was climbing the stairs, in order to help her, but she put her arms out to ward me off. "You smell of him too," she said. "You always did." Now she got up, and gazed at me with such ferocity that I expected her to hit me. I put my hand up to shield my face, and she laughed. "Don"t worry," she said. "Your father is still looking after you, isn"t he?" She went down to Geoffrey, who took her arm and led her gently out of the house without saying anything.
I was so shaken that I went up to my room and lay on the bed, looking at nothing in particular. What had suddenly aroused all this anger and madness? I went over to the window; they were standing at the bottom of Cloak Lane. Geoffrey had his arm round her; they were talking quietly together and looking back at the house with something like fear.
I took a bath at once, and scrubbed myself clean with an old-fashioned brush I found there. Then I lay in the water as I would lie upon a bed, but there was so much mist and steam around me that I seemed to be lying in some tube of opaque gla.s.s as the water poured over my face and limbs. And, yes, it was a dream, since I put out my arm and touched the gla.s.s with my barely formed fingers. I struggled to get up, and a more terrible sensation overwhelmed me: what if it had been that creature she had seen here? What if something in the bas.e.m.e.nt had goaded her to fury? I stepped carefully out of the bath, and wrapped a towel about me as gently as if I had entered some other kind of dream.
On the following morning I left for the National Archive Centre in Chancery Lane. I had often worked in that dark building just opposite Carnac Rents, and I had often been comforted by it; its familiar echoing presence, its subdued lighting, its m.u.f.fled sounds, its scarred wooden desks, seemed to protect me and lead me towards my true self. Most of the old parish registers and ratebooks were now on microfiche, but I still preferred to consult the bound volumes which had been placed in the Blair Room. The staff knew me well enough to let me wander there at will, and a quiet protracted search guided me to three leather-bound volumes which contained the records of the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, in the sixteenth century. I could hardly lift them from the shelves, and when I held them in my arms I savoured the stink of dust and age. It was as if I were lifting down corpses wrapped in their shrouds. And of course this was precisely what they contained names, signatures, the long-dead set down in lists, lying one upon another just as they might have been buried under the ground. I am accustomed now to the peculiarities of sixteenth-century script, but even so it was hard to decipher some of the words scratched in an ink which had faded to the lightest brown.
A door opened behind me, and I could hear the footsteps of one who was coming closer to me. I did not turn round, but waited. "Let me tell you an interesting story, Mr Palmer." I knew the voice of Margaret Lucas very well; she was the archivist in charge of the Blair Room, a thin, almost skeletal woman who dressed in the most vivid colours. She also had a habit of saying the most extraordinary things largely, I suspect, because she had no confidence in herself. She concealed herself from ordinary attention by always being surprising. "Have you read Swedenborg, by any chance?"
I turned round, and tried to smile. "I don"t believe I have. No." All the time my hands were lying across a deed written on parchment; I could feel the texture of the paper beneath my fingers, and it was like earth baking in the heat of this modern city.
"Oh, have you not? I happen to be something of an admirer. Dip into Heaven and h.e.l.l, Heaven and h.e.l.l, and everything will be explained. But this is the point I"m getting to, Mr Palmer." She had come round to the side of my desk, and I saw that she was wearing a purple two-piece outfit, with a scarf of bright blue loosely wrapped about her meagre neck. "Swedenborg tells us that, after death, the human being is taken to the society where his love is." I did not know what she meant and so great was my eagerness to carry on with my work that, without thinking, I had looked down again at the names in the old parish records. She did not seem to notice. "He says that each of us goes to a house and to a family not the same ones we possessed on earth, not them at all, but to the house and the family that correspond to our ruling pa.s.sions. Whatever we wished for on earth we shall find after death." and everything will be explained. But this is the point I"m getting to, Mr Palmer." She had come round to the side of my desk, and I saw that she was wearing a purple two-piece outfit, with a scarf of bright blue loosely wrapped about her meagre neck. "Swedenborg tells us that, after death, the human being is taken to the society where his love is." I did not know what she meant and so great was my eagerness to carry on with my work that, without thinking, I had looked down again at the names in the old parish records. She did not seem to notice. "He says that each of us goes to a house and to a family not the same ones we possessed on earth, not them at all, but to the house and the family that correspond to our ruling pa.s.sions. Whatever we wished for on earth we shall find after death."
She was silent for a moment, and I was not sure how to reply. "That"s quite a coincidence," I said. "I"m looking for a house and family too."
She examined the volume for a moment. "In that case, Mr Palmer, I suggest you try the churchwarden"s accounts first. You"ll find them at the back." The pages were heavy enough and as I turned them, year by year, it was as if I were uncovering the dead; in the sudden revelation of each page, I brought their names blinking into the light. "There is a curious story attached to this, you see." Margaret Lucas was still standing over me. "There was a young man who used to come to the Blair Room a great deal. Did you ever see him? Short, and rather fat. Very shabbily dressed. His name was Dan Berry." I shook my head. "He used to do what you"re doing now. Going through the registers and accounts. At first I thought he was a researcher, but it turned out to be something more private. He had a small notebook, and I could see that he had written down certain names. He told me that they were his ancestors. But not in the sense that you and I would mean it." I stopped turning the pages, and looked up at her. "He told me that the names came to him in dreams."
"That is a mistake," I said, "a researcher would never make."
"I"m not someone who believes in madness, Mr Palmer. I believe people can lose their normal ident.i.ty for a while, but that is all. They simply regress. Now our friend Dan Berry was convinced that they were the names of his true family."
I still had my hand upon the ancient register, with the corner of a page curled up between my fingers. "How did he know?"
"Somehow these were people who had been like himself. Who had felt the same things. Thought in the same way. Perhaps they even looked alike, although I can"t remember if Dan told me that." I was surprised that she had allowed this young man to wander unimpeded through the archives, yet I began to sense what she must have sensed that there was something wonderful about such a quest. "He had a list of ten or twelve. He wasn"t sure from what period they came, but I was able to help him in that department. Where are you going to find Raffe Kyteley except in the sixteenth century?"
"But what did he hope to discover? Even if he found some of the names..."
"That was the interesting part, you see. He was sure that they had all lived in the same area of London. He came here believing that they had at various times inhabited the same street, or even perhaps the same house."
"And then?"
"Well, then he disappeared."
"I see."
"But I didn"t see. That"s the point. It was a Friday afternoon, about three months ago, when he arrived in a state of great excitement. He had found one of the names a week before, in a parish register of 1708. And he thought he was close to finding another. He wanted to make the connection." She pulled up a chair and, although there was no one else in the room, began whispering to me. "On that particular morning I happened to be consulting Key"s Guide to Early Parish Registers, Guide to Early Parish Registers, a very disappointing work, when I heard Dan cry out. I thought for a moment he was ill, but then he came rushing up to me. "I"ve found it," he shouted. "I"ll be back later!" Now you know very well that I"m a discreet person." I nodded. "I didn"t even take a peek at his desk until it was time to close. In fact there wasn"t much to see, just a nineteenth-century rate-book from Stoke Newington. But in his excitement he had left behind his satchel, so of course I expected him to return. He never did. He never came back." She had been twisting her scarf round and round in her fingers, so that now it was dangerously tight around her neck. "Would you like to see his bag?" a very disappointing work, when I heard Dan cry out. I thought for a moment he was ill, but then he came rushing up to me. "I"ve found it," he shouted. "I"ll be back later!" Now you know very well that I"m a discreet person." I nodded. "I didn"t even take a peek at his desk until it was time to close. In fact there wasn"t much to see, just a nineteenth-century rate-book from Stoke Newington. But in his excitement he had left behind his satchel, so of course I expected him to return. He never did. He never came back." She had been twisting her scarf round and round in her fingers, so that now it was dangerously tight around her neck. "Would you like to see his bag?"
I could hardly refuse, so I followed her to the back of the Blair Room where she had a small office; it was littered with volumes, ancient and modern, but I noticed a copy of Vogue Vogue slipped beneath Young"s slipped beneath Young"s Eighteenth-Century Estates Compendium. Eighteenth-Century Estates Compendium. "I keep it here," she said. She opened a drawer in her desk, and took out a nondescript canvas backpack with "Dan Berry" daubed on it in red ink. "I can"t prove it," she went on, "but I think something happened to him. I wrote to the address he gave on his research application, but it was returned unopened. He had lived in a hostel. I visited it. Hold on a second." "I keep it here," she said. She opened a drawer in her desk, and took out a nondescript canvas backpack with "Dan Berry" daubed on it in red ink. "I can"t prove it," she went on, "but I think something happened to him. I wrote to the address he gave on his research application, but it was returned unopened. He had lived in a hostel. I visited it. Hold on a second."
She was about to jump out of her window. She had opened it very wide, and was now leaning out at a perilous angle above Chancery Lane; I was poised for some kind of rescue, when I saw a puff of white smoke rising above her right shoulder. She was having a cigarette in a building where smoking was forbidden, although the sight of a woman hanging from a window some five storeys high might itself have caused comment. I picked up Dan Berry"s satchel for a moment, and it was as if I had touched some dead creature. And yet there was something so poignant about his story that I could understand why Margaret Lucas had been moved by it. To attach yourself to those who came before you, to dream of a home, and then to vanish ... She backed into the room so quickly that she startled me. "I don"t know why I keep it." She took the canvas satchel from me. "He doesn"t need it now."
There seemed little else to say, and so I returned to my desk and to the ancient volume. The churchwarden"s registers, as I ought to have known, provided the most immediate evidence; here were the church rates for the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, formerly known as the nunnery of St Mary, and I chose the period between 1560 and 1570 for the beginning of my search. They were easy enough to decipher, primarily because there seem to have been very few private houses in the vicinity of the old nunnery; and then I saw it. There was a reference to "Cloack House, beyond the nuns" priest"s chapel". I had opened upon 1563 and, in a ruled column alongside the reference to the house, someone had written "Acc"t of John Dee, his customary t.i.thes".
I gave out an involuntary shout of triumph (I wonder now if it was the same cry Dan Berry had made, at the moment of his discovery): Cloack House beyond the chapel was obviously my sixteenth-century house in Cloak Lane. The name of its owner was also familiar to me although, in the surprise and excitement of my discovery, I could not quite remember how I knew it. Margaret Lucas had come up beside me. "When I heard that shout," she said, "I presumed you had found something."
"I"ve found the house, and I"ve found its owner."
She scrutinized the page with her usual ferocity. "Now that is a name I do recognize. John Dee."
"I know it too, but..."
"I hate to tell you this, Mr Palmer." She was smiling in the most peculiar way. "The previous owner of your house was a black magician."