Gerald Kersh - Prelude To A Certain Midnight

Why not?

Or why not Graham Strindberg? He was a plunger into strange depths. He believed that there was a God, and that there was a Devil. But not knowing exactly how things stood he did not like to commit himself. Graham Strindberg saw everything from every viewpoint, all at the same time; and he saw himself as a self-supporting state, beautifully mountainous, elegantly painted with sunsets, traditionally neutral. He was a little Switzerland in an embattled universe. Equally protected, the agents of heaven and of hell sunned themselves by the placid lakes of his retirement. He was neutral territory, where the saints and the demons were all one, as long as they did not assert themselves by daylight.

Yet what queer contracts might be mace under the blanket of the dark?

Good is a gentleman; Evil is a cad — a gentleman gone wrong. Good is a dog; Evil is a fox. Good, as a gentleman, tries to think well of the watchful enemy; but Evil knows all the tricks.

Given a certain midnight (thought Asta), such neutral territory might find itself possessed by the Powers of Evil. Shame and remorse might come with the daylight… but a sçrangled child would still be lying with a blackened face in a rotting house… .

Impossible, impossible! cried the daytime mind of Asta Thundersley. Why impossible? asked the scavenging intelligence of the dark. What has lie done that is good? What has he done that is evil? He can fly into a rage. To which Side Of The Fron tier does his anger belong?

Asta shook her head. Rain was falling: dawn was far away. She made herself some tea. The kitchen was warm: the stove was a good one — it never went out, and one dirty little shovelful of coke kept its fire alive for a day and a night. This was a comforting thought. So much kindly warmth out of a handful of slaggy cinders! Putting her elbows on the table she fitted her resolute chin into the cup of her joined hands. She was calmer now, and drowsy; almost at peace.

If Asta had closed her eyes then she might have fallen asleep; but she opened them and saw, on the lowest rack of the dresser, a large oval dish, biscuit-coloured and patterned in high relief. This dish had not been used upstairs for many years. The pattern crept in and out around a lobster.

Mothmar! said Asta, starting up. The body of the lobster resembled Mothmar’s nose, and the extended claws his eyebrows. Mothmar Acord had a baked, glazed, pitted face — a dish-shaped face, discoloured by oriental suns and high fevers, and distorted by unholy passions. The oval dish might have been Mothmar’s head on a pillow — only the mouth was not there. His mouth was difficult to describe and impossible to forget. The upper lip was a Cupid’s bow: the lower was sucked away so that it radiated wrinkles like the ribs of a fan. Under heavy brows like frayed packing-string, his murderous little blue eyes stared you out of countenance and then withdrew into spider webs of wrinkles while the mouth smiled downwards. He had lived most of his life in the tropics; drank soberly for hours, and then suddenly got drunk and pinched you viciously, always smiling. Mothmar had the air of a man gone rotten without ripening, in too much sunshine — the kind of sunshine from which a man tries to hide, and so goes yellow and decays.

Why not Mothmar Acord? Why not?

But if it comes to the matter of that, why not Sinclair Wensday? There was a pleasant fellow, tall and popular, well-spoken, well-mannered, generous, and good-looking in that tired, dissipated way which makes women interested. Sometimes he was gloomy: sometimes he was hilarious — it was whispered that Sinclair Wensday took drugs — he had what they call a ‘cocaine personality’. Nothing was proved. It was known that he had had love affairs with two or three girls of the neighbourhood. Men wondered how Sinclair Wensday could have anything to do with anyone but his wife, Avril, who was extremely beautiful. Women wondered how Avril could have anything to do with any man but Sinclair, who, they were agreed, was terribly attractive. He looked like Galahad gone to the devil. When she was sullen and quiet Avril might have sat to a painter of biblical pictures: she was a martyr with dull red hair and half-closed eyes, seeing Paradise between the bars of black lashes. Then, when she smiled — which was seldom — she looked like a whore. Everybody knew that Avril and her husband loved each other. Yet they could not live together — they separated for ever about four times a year. Sinclair Wensday would come into the Bar Bacchus with wild eyes, his collar unbuttoned, and a drying scratch on his cheek. He would look left and right with desperate expectation; then lose a couple of inches of stature as he sank into himself at the bar. ‘Well, this is it,’ he would say, gulping liquor, ‘once and for all, this is it…’

Soon he would vomit unassimilated miseries. Avril slept with this one, Avril slept with that one, Avril went to bed with the other one… but he loved her, loved her!

At the same time, in the Firedrake two streets away, Avril would be rolling a sleeve to show a bruise, or pointing to a black eye and sobbing: ‘This is it . Definitely, this is it .’ And she would describe how Sinclair slunk out to make love to half the women in town.

In a week they would be together again in the Bar Bacchus, squeezing hands half in love and half in loathing, exchanging glances and sighs, and snarls.

Who could say how such savage love might end? It was nothing but hate and lust, thirst for power and the desire to be hurt and to hurt! Why not Sinclair Wensday?

Asta sighed in the middle of a yawn, or yawned in the middle of a sigh; whispered ‘Murderers, murderers,’ and fell asleep.

Mrs Kipling came down at half-past seven next morning and saw her bent over the table with her stubborn forehead in the crook of her left arm. An end of her grizzled hair was floating in a cup of cold tea, and her right hand clutched a teaspoon.

‘Tea, Kipling!’ shouted Asta, starting up.

Mrs Kipling screamed: she had thought — almost hoped — that Asta was dead.

27

At eight o’clock the first post came. The postman had to ring: one of the envelopes was too bulky to pass through the slot of the letter-box. It came from Schiff, and was stuffed with samples of carnival novelties; paper hats, coloured streamers, coiled toys designed to stretch out squeaking and tickle your neighbour, uninflated rubber balloons of unconventional patterns, red card. board noses, masks, balls of pith for throwing at people, and all kinds of amusing invitation-cards.

Near the bottom of the second page Schiff had written:

‘… To be for the present unhappy in the position to not on account of certain circumstances over which I have no control be, as I ordinarily would, in a position to gladly and with my hand on my heart as one friend to another offer you free of charge my services, gives me grief and unhappiness. My Formule I give freely and hope to, in happier circumstances over which I trust I shall have the fullest control, give more as it is in my nature to ordinarily do. I at, however, the present sad moment, am by the circumstances with grief compelled to ask Consultant Fee L5 . o . o. (Five Pounds Exactly.) The Formule, which I baptize in the name of BATTLEAXE, is as research has made clear a psychic laxative and brain-cathartic of the first order. Put on the Market it could not fail to succeed, in which case I have a cheaper formula almost equally as good as the one that I have with all possible admiration and respect pinned to this note…’

The Formule, on Page Three, was as follows:

THE FORMULE

According to Quantity, in the Following Proportion

Take 1 Bot. ORANGE CURACAO