The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

Author:M. John Harrison [Harrison, M. John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781597800402
Publisher: Night Shade
Published: 1992-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

The Place of the Cure of the Soul

We are so quick to look for closure, for the clear termination of sections of our life, that we often invent it. After the debacle at 17, Hill Park I had assumed I would never be caught up with Yaxley again. Indeed, obsessed with the Pleroma, he did leave me alone for two or three years. But after his failure with the infolding, everything failed. The fear that he would be absorbed grew daily, until his whole position was undercut by it. Associated phobias developed to include a horror of dirt. That, and the residue of one too many magical operations, drove him out of the rooms above the Atlantis Bookshop and into a spacious modern block on the north side of Upper Richmond Road, close to East Putney tube station. There I found him, on a rainy, morning in June. He needed me again.

I walked past the building twice. It reminded me less of Yaxley than Lawson, and perhaps it was in fact some fossil of their brief partnership, prepayment for a sleight of hand which never came off. The people who lived there worked in property or investment banking. Traffic labored under their windows all day, but double glazing muted the noise to a comfortable hum. By night their black European executive saloons lined up outside in rows. I went through a cold well-kept entrance hall, unrelieved by two shallow brick structures like small municipal flowerbeds filled with decorative gravel, and took the stairs to the top floor. Between landings I wavered; touched for reassurance the white painted metal handrail. Had I heard someone coming up behind me?

“Yaxley?”

Modern flats have a precision, a bleak openness to their angles, which encourages hygiene. Yaxley’s was painted off-white throughout, with white woodwork. Every wall, every wainscot, was spotless. There were some rather nice carpets in a kind of flushed pink. Furnished properly, it might have been comfortable if rather affectless. But all I could find was a telephone on a table and, in the middle of the lounge floor, a state-of-the-art VCR. (When I switched it on, an unlabelled tape began to play. I switched it off again immediately.) The kitchen was fitted expensively enough, with oak units, Creda Solarspeed hob, butcher-striped roller blinds. Under the immaculate stainless-steel double sink I found Flash, Jif, sponge floor-mops, plastic buckets and Marigold rubber gloves—several of everything, all brand new, as if he had cached them against a siege; or agoraphobia.

The night before I had received a telephone call, I don’t believe from Yaxley himself. After I picked up the receiver there was a prolonged silence, into which I prompted—

“Hello? Hello?”

Nothing. Then someone said softly: “Go to this address—”

Other instructions followed, some infantile, some meaningless. I did not recognize the magical operation to which they referred. The voice was hard to hear, let alone to identify. It paused, failed, picked up again. Once or twice it laughed. “Two fucks and a pig,” it said. It seemed to come from a long way away, and there were other voices behind it.

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