Ramsey Campbell: The Face That Must Die

Peter returned. “I emptied it in Harty’s bin,” he told the girls. “Old bugger thinks he owns the place.” He displayed the empty kitchen bin to Cathy, like a hunter’s prize.

“ Jim says he can get some good Canadian acid,” Anne told him. “Purple Pyramid – it takes you right out of your head.”

“ Great. I can keep a tab for summer.”

Sue dawdled in, coughing as she smoked the joint down to the cardboard tip and lit another from it. “I hope you know how lucky you are, leaving the libraries,” she told Peter. “We couldn’t get through the day without a joint.”

Cathy grimaced, sharing her thoughts with the stove. The only time she’d worked with them, the girls had sat stoned and giggling at the desk for most of the afternoon. When the flat across the landing had fallen vacant Peter had told them at once, though Cathy had wanted it for Ben and Celia. Would her friends have split up if she’d been close enough to mediate?

“ Craig was after me to turn the records down. Christ, his flat isn’t even under ours.”

“ It couldn’t have been our records,” Sue said. “We were out last night.”

“ He complained to us once, though. Isn’t he oily?” Anne squirmed and grinned, as though at a disgusting joke. “And the way he tries to be sort of stiff, as though if he lets go he’ll flop all over the floor. We told him to piss off.”

“ I don’t mind him,” Cathy said.

All of them stared at her. “Sure, he’s a very warm and wonderful human being,” Peter remarked in a spurious American accent.

That joke had become a cliche in itself. If she heard it just once more – They were wandering more slowly and aimlessly; they made her kitchen feel crowded and untidy. The girls gazed at the wall-charts of recipes; they might have been in an art gallery. “Pass me the garam masala, please,” Cathy said.

Sue stared as if she were talking a foreign language; Anne turned to the spice rack, but stood looking bewildered. Peter began laughing. “Never mind,” Cathy said irritably. “All of you go in the other room.”

As they did so, someone else knocked at the door. Bloody hell! She made for the door; she wouldn’t put it past them to answer it while smoking. But Peter was already there. It was Fanny from downstairs.

“ Hello, Peter. Oh, there you are, Cathy.” She advanced, stretching out her hands, which were multicoloured as a palette. “I’m sorry to come pillaging. Could you spare any sugar? Oh buttocksbumanarse I, forgot to bring a cup.”

“ I might have half a grain to spare.” Cathy filled a mug from the tin. “What are you painting?”

“ I’ve just finished. Come and see.” When Cathy hesitated, she added wistfully “You can tell me if it’s any good.”

Fanny’s flat looked as though a living-room, a bedroom, a newspaper cutting service and a studio were battling to occupy the room. An easel stood on a wad of paper thick as a carpet; a drawing-board was folded behind the couch, which at night spread its arms and became a bed. Faces clipped from publications gathered everywhere; a mug of coffee defended its island on the crowded table. The walls brandished spotlights. “That’s it,” Fanny said with an uneasy laugh, and gestured at the easel.

The painting teemed with babies. Some sat in prams, some lay in cartons, on yellowed newspapers, on earth. They laughed, cried, dreamed, played with the air or with themselves, looked bewildered, delighted, abandoned. They were many colours. Some were vivid yet false as photographs in a housewives’ magazine, others were drawn in crayon or marker pen and had a child’s truth about them. Some were fat as tyres, some were skeletally thin. A few were bruised or worse.

“ Yes, it’s good,” Cathy said. “It’s really good. You’ve put a lot into it.” Her words seemed inadequate. She wondered what features a baby of hers would have: Peter’s teeny leftover of a nose, her eyebrows that met in the middle like a Hollywood werewolf’s, Peter’s beard?

“ And here’s my masterpiece.” Fanny showed her a notice painted in the style of her signature, elaborate as New York subway graffiti: PLEASE KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED. “Commissioned by Mr Harty, my first patron. I keep forgetting to put it up,” she said. “Come and hold the tacks while I remember.”

On her way to the door, Cathy noticed a metal bird. It was rough as chipped flint, yet gracefully slim. “Are you going in for sculpture now?”

“ Someone gave that to me.” Did her tone imply a new relationship or a treasured memory? “I want to try working in clay sometime,” she said.

At the bottom of the stairs she tapped on Mr Harty’s door. His dressing-gowned shoulder emerged, and then his bald head; two tufts of grey hair perched above his ears like packing, as though he’d just been removed from his box. “That’s right, Miss Adamson,” he said to Fanny. “Too many people have been wandering about. We don’t want just anyone coming in. There are enough criminals without putting a temptation in their way.” He withdrew like a jack-in-the-box; his lid clicked shut.

Fanny pointed at the other ground-floor flat. “I forgot to tell you,” she whispered, “I saw Mr Nameless Bell at work the other day.”

His was the only doorbell that lacked a name. “You’ve found out where he works?” Cathy hissed. “Is he a spy?”

Fanny thumbed tacks into place. “No,” she said mournfully. Her words threatened to collapse with laughter. “He works in Woolworth’s.”

“ Oh dear.” Cathy couldn’t control her voice, which broke into a jumpy shout. “I thought he must be at least a detective.”

They fled upstairs, giggling. The last of the babies were drying. “When’s your exhibition?” Cathy said.

“ Next week. They’ve given me the whole of the Bluecoat Gallery.”

“ That’s good.” Fanny’s grimace made her ask “Don’t you think so?”

“ I don’t know. I hope so. I just don’t know if it’ll reach the people I want to reach.” She sounded embarrassed and self-deprecating as she added “Come and see it if you want to.”

“ Thanks, Fanny. We will.” The smell of curry drifted downstairs, mixed with a hint of cannabis. “I must go and give himself his dinner,” she said.

She’d reached the top landing when Fanny called “Cathy!” She looked down unwarily. The fall plunged away beneath her; the walls shifted, the stairwell gaped like a throat.

“ I’m awfully sorry, I forgot to ask if you had any raisins. This exhibition has me all jumbled up.”

The moment had passed, and Cathy felt better for having survived it. “I’ll send Peter down with them,” she said.

The girls and Peter were reading his comics. They glanced up to see who Cathy was. She felt like an intruder. Sometimes, in unguarded moments, she wondered if Peter preferred them to her. This year she’d cooked her first full Christmas dinner – but he’d seemed more interested in going next door to smoke.

Grumpily he undertook to deliver the raisins. “And then your dinner will be ready,” she said.

The girls looked up, in case that included them. At last they wandered out, saying “See you later, Peter.”

Not here, if Cathy could help it. They cluttered the flat. They weren’t worth resenting: Sue had a big bum that flopped from side to side as she walked, Anne’s hair was like a thatched crash helmet. But she could stand seeing less of them. Were they trying to turn the top floor into a commune? It annoyed her to have to ask persistently for things they’d borrowed. On Christmas Day her mother had come for dinner; on Boxing Day she’d invited her father. Even on Christmas Day, when Peter’s parents had come too, he’d kept sneaking next door.

When he returned from Fanny’s she said “When are we going to see the Halliwells?”