The Bohemian Girl Part 7

Denton looked grim. 'The first paragraph is a word-for-word theft from the first paragraph of one of my books. Partway through, his scribbles start to use the outline for the book I'm working on. That outline was in my desk when I left London!'

'He's been in your house? What else is missing?'

'Nothing that I know of. But - G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Munro, he's been in in here. He's sat in my chair, he's lain down on my bed, I'll bet anything he took a c.r.a.p in my WC because he couldn't control himself!' here. He's sat in my chair, he's lain down on my bed, I'll bet anything he took a c.r.a.p in my WC because he couldn't control himself!'

'Burglars do that, it's true - often in the middle of the carpet.'

'Munro, I thought this was some harmless b.o.o.by. Now I think otherwise. It's - it's "creepy"!' A British reviewer had called Denton's second book 'an American fantasy of the creepy variety'. Now the word had come home to roost.

Munro's stolid face seemed to become wooden. He stared at Denton. 'I don't see what it's about.'

Denton got up and took a few steps down the room, then back. 'I think it's about imitation.'

'You lost me.'

'"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Would-be writers imitate writers who've made it - "playing the sedulous ape", Stevenson called it. I think "Albert Cosgrove" may have gone a few miles beyond that.'

'So you make him out a loony.'

'I don't know. But it's creepy, finding something of my own that somebody else has taken over lock, stock and barrel. He may even believe he made it up himself.'

'You mean, if he knows it's yours, he's an honest thief; if he thinks it's his own, he's mad - that it?' Munro tapped the crease in his soft hat lightly with the side of a hand. 'He dangerous, you think?'

'How would I know?'

'Well, he hit you with a poker. I think we'd best put some minders on you - see if he's following you about.'

Denton didn't like the idea of minders. 'He may just be some kid who's wild to be somebody.'

'The somebody is you?'

'I certainly hope not.' Denton was no enthusiast of the new pseudo-science of psychology, but he'd read enough - Krafft-Ebing, James - to know that there was a form of fantasy that merged into obsession. He sometimes wrote about it, in fact, although differently, expressing it as a ghost or a demon instead of an aspect of personality. He wondered now if Albert Cosgrove had used 'demon' in his t.i.tle as a deliberate imitation. Or was it identification? 'Maybe he wants to hide in somebody else.'

'From what? You're off in fairy-land, Denton.' Munro got up. He jiggled his hat on a finger inserted into the crown. 'Sending you love notes, sort of, was he?'

'You make it sound female - like a schoolgirl's crush. Atkins said something like that.'

'Well?'

'Yes, it could be like that.'

'You have any of his letters?'

'Burned them the night I got home. No, maybe I have the one that came yesterday-' He knelt by the grate, saw only ash and dying coals. 'I'll look for it. Maybe it's in the waste bin.'

'And you've forgotten the address.'

'I'm not even sure there was one.' He jammed his hands into his pockets. 'I get letters like that, maybe not as excitable, all the time. It comes with the profession.'

'The trials of the famous. You ever answer them?'

Denton huffed. 'These had been here for a while. Of course I didn't answer them. My G.o.d, in one he wanted a copy of each of my books, signed, with a personal inscription!'

'But there wasn't an address?'

'I don't think so. He isn't rational.'

'Mmp.' Munro b.u.t.toned his overcoat. 'Anyway, you're to be a good citizen and take yourself down to New Scotland Yard before six tonight. And we'll put somebody to trail you. And you're going to let us know anything else that happens. Aren't you.' It wasn't a question.

'Anything related.'

Munro gestured with the hat, holding it so its brim was vertical and waving it up and down. 'And you're not to go off on this by yourself! I don't care if you were once upon a time the Lord High Sheriff of America, we're we're the police authority here.' the police authority here.'

'My main concern is to finish my book.'

'Good. Keep that in your head and we'll be all right.' He put his hat on. 'You ever report that girl as a missing person?'

'I never established that she was missing.'

'Albert Cosgrove is police business enough for you for this year, anyway.' He stood, bear-like, by the door, turned abruptly. 'Dammit, I know it isn't your fault, Denton, but you're a bleeding magnet for loonies and misfits! I'll see myself out.'

And he did. Denton heard the rumble of Atkins's voice mingle with the sound of the front door's opening.

When Atkins came up, Denton was back in his chair. 'You heard?' he said.

'Couldn't help myself. Dumb waiter left open through oversight. '

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was in here. He took my outline. G.o.d knows what else he did.'

'Kind of makes you want to give everything a wash, don't it.'

'What d'you think?'

'I think you've put your foot in a bow-wow's mess. Best take a few weeks in Italy.'

'We just got home.'

'Awfully nice, Italy.' Atkins pursed his lips. 'I think I'll hang on to the derringer for a bit. You really think this Cosgrove is mental?'

'I don't know. I don't need these distractions just now!' don't know. I don't need these distractions just now!'

'Say it louder, General. Maybe they'll go away.'

Dr Bernat came in towards noon and looked at his arm and his head and told him he was a very hard nut. When he was done with the back of Denton's head, Bernat came around to the front, stepped closer, lifted his spectacles to look at Denton's eyes. He had to stand on tiptoe to do so, a short man with a beard, stocky, rather handsome. 'Your eyes are not happy, Mr Denton.'

'I've been working.'

'Eye strain.' Bernat backed away and picked a book at random from the shelf and opened it. 'Read.' He held the book at eye level several feet from Denton.

'Uh - no, too small-'

The doctor came a step closer. 'Now?' He moved again. 'Now?' 'It's blurry.'

Bernat closed the book with a clap. 'You are needing eyegla.s.ses for the close work.'

'I haven't got time to go someplace and go through a lot of rigmarole! '

Bernat was writing on a pad. 'You can go to Harley Street and pay several pounds and then go somewhere else and pay several more for eyegla.s.ses.' He handed over the paper. 'Or you can go where I am going and where Whitechapel people are going and pay very little. You just try on gla.s.ses until you are finding a pair you like. Very nice people, also Jews like me, helpful - I am recommending it.' He looked over his gla.s.ses. 'Go today.'

'I'm already supposed to go to New Scotland Yard to have my fingerprints taken.'

'That sounds interesting. Good for you!' He reached up to put a hand on Denton's shoulder. 'Splash cold water on the eyelids when there is pain or, what is the word - stinging. Also rest once each hour. Also look away from the work at some distant beauty-' He waved a hand. 'Maybe a pretty girl. But only at a distance!' He laughed and headed for the door. 'Don't be putting too much strain on that arm. Meanwhile - look at a pretty girl.'

Denton was off at two towards the typewriter's with more ma.n.u.script; then he took the underground to Whitechapel because his eyes were on fire and he thought that if he didn't get relief, he wouldn't be able to go on with the book. Far behind him, a fat man in dark clothes seemed to appear, then be replaced by a thin man in brown, then reappear. These were his police minders, he supposed.

He found his way to Newark Street and the Fancy Modern Imperial Spectacles and Eyegla.s.s Emporium, where dour young men in business suits and pince-nez behaved as much as possible like doctors, helping the clientele pick gla.s.ses from shallow trays that covered twenty or so long tables.

'Short-sighted, is it?' a youth said.

'For reading.'

'Fuzzy? Not clear?'

'That's it.'

'No tunnelling? No like looking through the keyhole? No black around the edges?'

He left, the possessor, for one and six, of spectacles with thick rims the motley colours of a cat ('best artificial tortoise'). He thought he looked comical in them but decided he'd let n.o.body see them except, perhaps, Atkins. With the gla.s.ses in his pocket, he went back to New Scotland Yard, where a man who smelled like a navvy held each of his ten fingers one by one and pushed them into an inked pad as if he meant to break them.

He fell into bed at ten and was asleep almost at once.

CHAPTER SIX.

It was raining again the next day as he made his way down the Embankment to meet Janet Striker. A telegram had come from her at noon: BANDSTAND GARDENS CHARING CROSS BRIDGE 5 PM STOP STRIKER.

Not immediately clear, the meeting place had been sorted out with the help of a Baedeker's, the sense that her knowledge of London was better than his, awareness that she too was a walker; he had wondered if she walked the city at night when she couldn't sleep or when she had to escape (her mother, her life). Then the connection to streetwalker, her past, although she had told him she had tried the streets only once, too naive to know how or where, and had been pulled towards Mrs Castle's wh.o.r.ehouse on Westerley Street.

He had set down almost forty pages that day. Work blotted out concern.

He was walking on the river side and crossed over the street when he reached the plaque that celebrated the engineer who had tamed the London sewers and built the Embankment. Ahead, he could see the bandstand, white and a green that was turning black in the gloom, a pointed roof with a flagpole where no flag was flying. An omnibus clopped by in the roadway, water splas.h.i.+ng around the horses' hooves; he saw movement on the bridge, shapes, but little that suggested life, rather some city of shades, that Homeric h.e.l.l where there is no fire but only the absence of what we take to be human.

He saw her first as a black blot in the shadow of the bandstand. The blot took on a shape, skirted and therefore female, something widening it above - a rain cape. Another hideous black hat. He felt anger at her: she seemed to offer so little for him to have come this far for.

'You're here,' he said. He had come up three wooden steps. Under the white ceiling, no rain fell, but the floor was wet, puddles lying in low places.

'Of course.'

She was leaning against a white railing; a furled umbrella stuck out at an angle. 'You're very wet.'

'Aren't you?'

'I took a cab. It's a poor place to have picked for a rainy day. I thought we'd walk.'

'Well-'

'No. It was raining when I sent the telegram; I knew better. Maybe I thought you wouldn't come.'

He leaned one shoulder against a post. The bottoms of his trouser legs were drenched. He shook water off his hat and put it back on.

'Have you been working?' she said.

'All day.'

'Something new?'

He told her about Cieljescu and the novel.

'What's it about?'

'Oh-' He wanted to hurry things, caught himself. 'A marriage. A man and a woman.'

'Are they happy?'

'Of course not. What sort of novel would that be?' She didn't smile. He said, 'They destroy each other, but they don't see that that's what they're doing. They're always - undermining - it's worse than undermining, it's going to each other's weaknesses. It's like a long mutual siege.'

'What's it called?'

He chewed his lips. He didn't like t.i.tles, which always sounded stupid to him. 'It used to be called The Machine. The Machine. Now it's Now it's The Love Child The Love Child.'

'You didn't say they have a child. More than one?'

'No, no, no children. It's a - it's what they, mmm, nourish in each other. Books always sound so stupid when I talk about them.' He looked away down the Embankment, chewing his lower lip. 'What I saw was that when things go bad, it isn't one of them or the other. It's both of them. A bad marriage is a conspiracy between two people to destroy themselves. So it's something they give birth to and then encourage and - nourish. So the husband begins to see - he thinks he sees - a child, a boy. He sees him out a window. Then the boy is older; he sees him again. Then the next time, the boy is nine or ten, there's something wrong with him, some look, some expression - he seems sly, his eyes too wide apart. And so on. They're raising a monster child and they don't know it.'

'Does she see it?'

'Oh-' He tried to smile away his embarra.s.sment. 'At the end, he thinks she does. She sets fire to herself and he thinks something made her do it. The trouble with talking about a book when you're working on it is that then you don't want to work on it. It sounds so foolis.h.!.+'

She waited several seconds and then said, 'I've been thinking about what you said. And what I said. Like you and your book, I don't like talking about it.' She drew a pattern with the tip of her umbrella. 'I went to see Ruth Castle.' Ruth Castle was the madam who owned the house on Westerley Street where Janet had once worked. 'Ruth is a wise woman, a good woman. She's drinking a lot now, but she has a good head on her shoulders. We talked for ages.'

'Well?'

She looked up at him. It was the first time really since he'd come up the steps. 'You frightened me, Denton. You wanted too much all at once.'