Neverwhere, Page 2

  Richard had been awed by Jessica, who was beautiful, and often quite funny, and was certainly going somewhere. And Jessica saw in Richard an enormous amount of potential, which, properly harnessed by the right woman, would have made him the perfect matrimonial accessory. If only he were a little more focused, she would murmur to herself, and so she gave him books with titles like Dress for Success and A Hundred and Twenty-Five Habits of Successful Men, and books on how to run a business like a military campaign, and Richard always said thank you, and always intended to read them. In Harvey Nichols’s men’s fashion department she would pick out for him the kinds of clothes she thought that he should wear—and he wore them, during the week, anyway; and, a year to the day after their first encounter, she told him she thought it was time that they went shopping for an engagement ring.

  “Why do you go out with her?” asked Gary, in Corporate Accounts, eighteen months later. “She’s terrifying.”

  Richard shook his head. “She’s really sweet, once you get to know her.”

  Gary put down the plastic troll doll he had picked up from Richard’s desk. “I’m surprised she still lets you play with these.”

  “The subject has never come up,” said Richard, picking up one of the creatures from his desk. It had a shock of Day-Glo orange hair, and a slightly baffled expression, as if it were lost.

  And the subject had indeed come up. Jessica had, however, convinced herself that Richard’s troll collection was a mark of endearing eccentricity, comparable to Mr. Stockton’s collection of angels. Jessica was in the process of organizing a traveling exhibition of Mr. Stockton’s angel collection, and she had come to the conclusion that great men always collected something. In actuality Richard did not really collect trolls. He had found a troll on the sidewalk outside the office, and, in a vain attempt at injecting a little personality into his working world, he had placed it on his computer monitor. The others had followed over the next few months, gifts from colleagues who had noticed that Richard had a penchant for the ugly little creatures. He had taken the gifts and positioned them, strategically, around his desk, beside the telephones and the framed photograph of Jessica.

  The photograph had a yellow Post-it note stuck to it.

  It was a Friday afternoon. Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn’t occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once. Take this particular Friday, for example. It was, as Jessica had pointed out to him at least a dozen times in the last month, the most important day of his life. So it was unfortunate that, despite the Post-it note Richard had left on his fridge door at home, and the other Post-it note he had placed on the photograph of Jessica on his desk, he had forgotten about it completely and utterly.

  Also, there was the Wandsworth report, which was overdue and taking up most of his head. Richard checked another row of figures; then he noticed that page 17 had vanished, and he set it up to print out again; and another page down, and he knew that if he were only left alone to finish it . . . if, miracle of miracles, the phone did not ring It rang. He thumbed the speakerphone.

  “Hello? Richard? The managing director needs to know when he’ll have the report.”

  Richard looked at his watch. “Five minutes, Sylvia. It’s almost wrapped up. I just have to attach the P & L projection.”

  “Thanks, Dick. I’ll come down for it.” Sylvia was, as she liked to explain, “the MD’s PA,” and she moved in an atmosphere of crisp efficiency. He thumbed the speakerphone off; it rang again, immediately. “Richard,” said the speaker, with Jessica’s voice, “it’s Jessica. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  “Forgotten?” He tried to remember what he could have forgotten. He looked at Jessica’s photograph for inspiration and found all the inspiration he could have needed in the shape of a yellow Post-it note stuck to her forehead.

  “Richard? Pick up the telephone.”

  He picked up the phone, reading the Post-it note as he did so. “Sorry, Jess. No, I hadn’t forgotten. Seven P.M.., at Ma Maison Italiano. Should I meet you there?”

  “Jessica, Richard. Not Jess.” She paused for a moment. “After what happened last time? I don’t think so. You really could get lost in your own backyard, Richard.”

  Richard thought about pointing out that anyone could have confused the National Gallery with the National Portrait Gallery, and that it wasn’t she who had spent the whole day standing in the rain (which was, in his opinion, every bit as much fun as walking around either place until his feet hurt), but he thought better of it.

  “I’ll meet you at your place,” said Jessica. “We can walk down together.”

  “Right, Jess. Jessica—sorry.”

  “You have confirmed our reservation, haven’t you, Richard.”

  “Yes,” lied Richard earnestly. The other line on his phone had begun to ring. “Jessica, look, I . . .”

  “Good,” said Jessica, and she broke the connection. He picked up the other line.

  “Hi Dick. It’s me, Gary.” Gary sat a few desks down from Richard. He waved. “Are we still on for drinks? You said we could go over the Merstham account.”

  “Get off the bloody phone, Gary. Of course we are.” Richard put down the phone. There was a telephone number at the bottom of the Post-it note; Richard had written the Post-it note to himself, several weeks earlier. And he had made the reservation: he was almost certain of that. But he had not confirmed it. He had kept meaning to, but there had been so much to do and Richard had known that there was plenty of time. But events run in packs . . .

  Sylvia was now standing next to him. “Dick? The Wandsworth report?”

  “Almost ready, Sylvia. Look, just hold on a sec, can you?”

  He finished punching in the number, breathed a sigh of relief when somebody answered, “Ma Maison. Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” said Richard. “A table for three, for tonight. I think I booked it. And if I did I’m confirming the reservation. And if I didn’t, I wondered if I could book it. Please.” No, they had no record of a table for tonight in the name of Mayhew. Or Stockton. Or Bartram—Jessica’s surname. And as for booking a table . . .

  It wasn’t the words that Richard found so unpleasant: it was the tone of voice in which the information was transmitted. A table for tonight should certainly have been booked years before—perhaps, it was implied, by Richard’s parents. A table for tonight was impossible: if the pope, the prime minister, and the president of France arrived this evening without a confirmed reservation, even they would be turned out into the street with a continental jeer. “But it’s for my fiancée’s boss. I know I should have phoned before. There are only three of us, can’t you please . . .”

  They had put down the phone.

  “Richard?” said Sylvia. “The MD’s waiting.”

  “Do you think,” asked Richard, “they’d give me a table if I phoned back and offered them extra money?”

  In her dream they were all together in the house. Her parents, her brother, her baby sister. They were standing together in the ballroom, staring at her. They were all so pale, so grave. Portia, her mother, touched her cheek and told her that she was in danger. In her dream, Door laughed, and said she knew. Her mother shook her head: no, no—now she was in danger. Now.

  Door opened her eyes. The door was opening, quietly, quietly; she held her breath. Footsteps, quiet on the stone. Perhaps he won’t notice me, she thought. Perhaps he’ll go away. And then she thought, desperately, I’m hungry.

  The footsteps hesitated. She was well hidden, she knew, under a pile of newspapers and rags. And it was possible that the intruder meant her no harm. Can’t he hear my heartbeat? she thought. And then the footsteps came closer, and she knew what she had to do, and it scared her. A hand pulled the covers off her, and she looked up into a blank, utterly hairless face, which creased into a vicious smile. She rolled, then, and twisted, and the knife blade, aimed at her chest, caught her in the upper arm.

  Until that moment, s
he had never thought she could do it. Never thought she would be brave enough, or scared enough, or desperate enough to dare. But she reached up one hand to his chest, and she opened . . .

  He gasped, and tumbled onto her. It was wet and warm and slippery, and she slithered and staggered out from under the man, and she stumbled out of the room.

  She caught her breath in the tunnel outside, narrow and low, as she fell against the wall, breathing in gasps and sobs. That had taken the last of her strength; now she was spent. Her shoulder was beginning to throb. The knife, she thought. But she was safe.

  “My, oh my,” said a voice from the darkness on her right. “She survived Mister Ross. Well I never, Mister Vandemar.” The voice oozed. It sounded like gray slime.

  “Well I never either, Mister Croup,” said a flat voice on her left.

  A light was kindled and flickered. “Still,” said Mr. Croup, his eyes gleaming in the dark beneath the earth, “she won’t survive us.”

  Door kneed him, hard, in the groin: and then she pushed herself forward, her right hand holding her left shoulder.

  And she ran.

  “Dick?”

  Richard waved away the interruption. Life was almost under his control, now. Just a little more time . . .

  Gary said his name again. “Dick? It’s six-thirty.”

  “It’s what?” Papers and pens and spreadsheets and trolls were tumbled into Richard’s briefcase. He snapped it shut and ran.

  He pulled his coat on as he went. Gary was following. “Are we going to have that drink, then?”

  Richard paused for a moment. If ever, he decided, they made disorganization an Olympic sport, he could be disorganized for Britain. “Gary,” he said, “I’m sorry. I blew it. I have to see Jessica tonight. We’re taking her boss out to dinner.”

  “Mister Stockton? Of Stocktons? The Stockton?” Richard nodded. They hurried down the stairs. “I’m sure you’ll have fun,” said Gary, insincerely. “And how is the Creature from the Black Lagoon?”

  “Jessica’s from Ilford, actually, Gary. And she remains the light and love of my life, thank you very much for asking.” They reached the lobby, and Richard made a dash for the automatic doors, which spectacularly failed to open.

  “It’s after six, Mister Mayhew,” said Mr. Figgis, the building’s security guard. “You have to sign out.”

  “I don’t need this,” said Richard to no one in particular, “I really don’t.”

  Mr. Figgis smelled vaguely of medicinal liniment and was widely rumored to have an encyclopedic collection of soft-core pornography. He guarded the doors with a diligence that bordered upon madness, never quite having lived down the evening when an entire floor’s worth of computer equipment upped and left, along with two potted palms and the managing director’s Axminster carpet.

  “So our drink’s off, then?”

  “I’m sorry, Gary. Is Monday okay for you?”

  “Sure. Monday’s fine. See you Monday.”

  Mr. Figgis inspected their signatures and satisfied himself they had no computers, potted palms, or carpets about their persons, then he pressed a button under his desk, and the door slid open.

  “Doors,” said Richard.

  The underway branched and divided; she picked her way at random, ducking through tunnels, running and stumbling and weaving. Behind her strolled Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, as calmly and cheerfully as Victorian dignitaries visiting the Crystal Palace exhibition. When they arrived at a crossroads, Mr. Croup would kneel and find the nearest spot of blood, and they would follow it. They were like hyenas, exhausting their prey. They could wait. They had all the time in the world.

  Luck was with Richard, for a change. He caught a black taxi, driven by an elderly man who took Richard home by an unlikely route involving streets Richard had never before seen, while holding forth, as Richard had discovered all London taxi drivers will hold forth—given a living, breathing, English-speaking passenger—on London’s inner-city traffic problems, how best to deal with crime, and thorny political issues of the day. Richard jumped out of the cab, left a tip and his briefcase behind, managed to flag down the cab again before it made it into the main road and so got his briefcase back, then he ran up the stairs and into his apartment. He was already shedding clothes as he entered the hall: his briefcase spun across the room and crash-landed on the sofa; he took his keys from his pocket and placed them carefully on the hall table, in order to ensure he did not forget them.

  Then he dashed into the bedroom. The buzzer sounded. Richard, three-quarters of the way into his best suit, launched himself at the speaker.

  “Richard? It’s Jessica. I hope you’re ready.”

  “Oh. Yes. Be right down.” He pulled on a coat, and he ran, slamming the door behind him. Jessica was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. She always waited for him there. Jessica didn’t like Richard’s apartment: it made her feel uncomfortably female. There was always the chance of finding a pair of Richard’s underwear, well, anywhere, not to mention the wandering lumps of congealed toothpaste on the bathroom sink: no, it was not Jessica’s kind of place.

  Jessica was very beautiful; so much so Richard would occasionally find himself staring at her, wondering, how did she end up with me? And when they made love—which they did at Jessica’s apartment in fashionable Kensington, in Jessica’s brass bed with the crisp white linen sheets (for Jessica’s parents had told her that down comforters were decadent)—in the darkness, afterwards, she would hold him very tightly, and her long brown curls would tumble over his chest, and she would whisper to him how much she loved him, and he would tell her he loved her and always wanted to be with her, and they both believed it to be true.

  “Bless me, Mister Vandemar. She’s slowing up.”

  “Slowing up, Mister Croup.”

  “She must be losing a lot of blood, Mister V.”

  “Lovely blood, Mister C. Lovely wet blood.”

  “Not long now.”

  A click: the sound of a switchblade opening, empty and lonely and dark.

  “Richard? What are you doing?” asked Jessica.

  “Nothing, Jessica.”

  “You haven’t forgotten your keys again, have you?”

  “No, Jessica.” Richard stopped patting himself and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

  “Now, when you meet Mister Stockton tonight,” said Jessica, “you have to appreciate that he’s not just a very important man. He’s also a corporate entity in his own right.”

  “I can’t wait,” sighed Richard.

  “What was that, Richard?”

  “I can’t wait,” said Richard, rather more enthusiastically.

  “Oh, please hurry up,” said Jessica, who was beginning to exude an aura of what, in a lesser woman, might almost have been described as nerves. “We mustn’t keep Mister Stockton waiting.”

  “No, Jess.”

  “Don’t call me that, Richard. I loathe pet names. They’re so demeaning.”

  “Spare any change?” The man sat in a doorway. His beard was yellow and gray, and his eyes were sunken and dark. A hand-lettered sign hung from a piece of frayed string around his neck and rested on his chest, telling anyone with the eyes to read it that he was homeless and hungry. It didn’t take a sign to tell you that; Richard, hand already in his pocket, fumbled for a coin.

  “Richard. We haven’t got the time,” said Jessica, who gave to charity and invested ethically. “Now, I do want you to make a good impression, fiancé-wise. It is vital that a future spouse makes a good impression.” And then her face creased, and she hugged him for a moment, and said, “Oh, Richard. I do love you. You do know that, don’t you?”

  And Richard nodded, and he did.

  Jessica checked her watch and increased her pace. Richard discreetly flicked a pound coin back through the air toward the man in the doorway, who caught it in one grimy hand.

  “There wasn’t any problem with the reservations, was there?” asked Jessica. And Richard, who
was not much good at lying when faced with a direct question, said, “Ah.”

  She had chosen wrongly—the corridor ended in a blank wall. Normally that would hardly have given her pause, but she was so tired, so hungry, in so much pain . . . . She leaned against the wall, feeling the brick’s roughness against her face. She was gulping breath, hiccuping and sobbing. Her arm was cold, and her left hand was numb. She could go no farther, and the world was beginning to feel very distant. She wanted to stop, to lie down, and to sleep for a hundred years.

  “Oh, bless my little black soul, Mister Vandemar, do you see what I see?” The voice was soft, close: they must have been nearer to her than she had imagined. “I spy, with my little eye, something that’s going to be—”

  “Dead in a minute, Mister Croup,” said the flat voice, from above her.

  “Our principal will be delighted.”

  And the girl pulled whatever she could find deep inside her soul, from all the pain, and the hurt, and the fear. She was spent, burnt out, and utterly exhausted. She had nowhere to go, no power left, no time. “If it’s the last door I open,” she prayed, silently, to the Temple, to the Arch. “Somewhere . . . anywhere . . . safe . . .” and then she thought, wildly, “Somebody.”

  And, as she began to pass out, she tried to open a door.

  As the darkness took her, she heard Mr. Croup’s voice, as if from a long way away. It said, “Bugger and blast.”

  Jessica and Richard walked down the sidewalk toward the restaurant. She had her arm through his, and was walking as fast as her heels permitted. He hurried to keep up. Streetlights and the fronts of closed stores illuminated their path. They passed a stretch of tall, looming buildings, abandoned and lonely, bounded by a high brick wall.

  “You are honestly telling me you had to promise them an extra fifty pounds for our table tonight? You are an idiot, Richard,” said Jessica, her dark eyes flashing.