The House of Doctor Dee

'I'm not frightened of anyone.'

'What are you doing here?'

'What do you think?' I remembered the three women of Turnmill Street, who had been taken away in a police van. 'And what are you doing? Dancing on your mother's grave?'

'Something like that. Where are you going now?'

'Nowhere. Just looking for some action.' She had a pretty but slightly unformed face, as if her true character were still waiting to emerge; her eyes were brown, her nose briefly sculpted, her lips very full and, for a moment in the half-light, she looked a little like a mannequin. 'Where are you going, then?'

Ever since I left the restaurant I had been filled with a strong sense of sexual desire; something about the relationship between Daniel Moore and my father must have excited me, I suppose, and I could hardly restrain my eagerness. 'Oh, I'm hanging around.'

'Chilling out?'

'Yes, that's it. I'm chilling out. What's your name?'

'Mary.'

'And where do you live, Mary?'

She tossed back her head. 'Over the river.'

'Over the river is half-way home.'

'What?'

'I was just saying that it's a nice place to have a home.'

She had a peculiar laugh; it was like a sudden expulsion of breath. 'Not when you're on an estate it's not. Where do you live, then?'

'Around the corner.'

'Is that so?' We started walking together past the church, and surreptitiously I cupped my hand across my mouth to smell my breath; the wine had washed down the last traces of vomit. She kept her hands deep in the pockets of her white leather coat, and did not look at me at all; she stared down at the pavement, and seemed to be going in the right direction without any guidance. We arrived at the entrance to Cloak Lane, and she glanced around for a moment. 'I've got a confession to make,' she said. I stared at her, but gave no reply. 'I'm a bit short of money, you see. I'm out of work for the moment.'

I had expected this. 'That's fine, Mary. I'll give you something. Don't worry.' In fact it did not displease me at all; it excited me even more, and I put my arm round her as we walked towards the old house.

'Is this yours?'

She sounded very interested, even eager; it may have been my own guilty imagination, but I did not want her to know that I lived alone in this house.

'No,' I replied. 'I live with someone. I live with my dad.'

'I thought I saw someone.'

'You couldn't have seen him.' I put my hand on her shoulder. 'He's out. He won't be back for a while.'

'Where is he, then?'

'He's at the bingo.'

'Don't talk to me about the bingo. My mum loves it.'

She did not resist as I pulled her closer to me and, kissing her on the neck, almost dragged her up the path. As soon as I opened the door, I knew what I wanted to do. 'Let's go down to the basement, Mary. No one will see us there.'

'Suits me. But I need my money first.'

'You'll get your money.' I wanted to hit her across the face, just as my father might have done, but instead I went upstairs and took some five-pound notes from an envelope I kept in my bedroom. I picked up a bottle of whisky, too, and then came down to her: I knew that I could not do what I really wanted until I was quite drunk. I led her down into the basement without putting on the light, but a few rays from the lamp in the hall penetrated the gloom and seemed to cluster around the outline of the sealed door. I took her across to it and, propping her against the wall, began to take off my clothes. Then I undressed her, and poured whisky over her breasts before licking it off greedily.

'Mind my tits,' she said. 'Don't leave any marks.' But she gave a little yell of delight as I bit deeply into her.

This must have been the corner where Daniel and my father performed their own rituals and, as I grew rougher with Mary, I knew that it had been used for the same purpose in much earlier times; it was a strong house of sex, and we were its latest inhabitants. I do not know how long we remained in that basement, but while we stayed there I felt I was not in the world at alclass="underline" there was no reality beyond this pleasure given and this pleasure received. There were no ordinary laws of behaviour, no responsibilities, no beliefs, no cause and no effect; I understood, too, that with such fury and excitement anything could be conjured into existence. Mary lay on the floor, bruised, dirty, stinking of the whisky I had poured over her. 'When my father made me,' I said, 'he made me strong.'

I think I was spitting at her. 'Not in my eyes,' she said. 'Be careful of my eyes.'

Then I thought I heard another voice whispering to me. 'Why did you call me?' I left her and, wiping my mouth with my hand, climbed the stairs. I managed to find my own bathroom, and washed myself as quickly as I could before putting on some clothes. When I returned to the basement, she was gone. I was now so drunk that I could hardly remember what had happened, and I staggered out of the house in search of someone else — some other woman, or girl, to continue the ritual I had begun. Everything had changed, and the houses towered above me as if I were lying down on the road. I found myself in various places without knowing how I had reached them, and I held conversations with people who seemed to disappear without warning. I was inside a pub, or night-club, leaning against a video game which spun and danced before my eyes. Then I found myself crouched in a urinal with the piss running down my legs. There was an old man there. He leaned across me, and put part of me in his mouth. I lay back, and laughed. Enough. It was complete. This was the night when I discovered the truth about my father.

*

I was lying in my own bed the following morning. I do not know how I had reached it, and could remember nothing of the previous night except moments preserved in the ambergris of shock or surprise; yet I felt curiously peaceful, as if I had rested for a long time. Then, as I turned to sleep again, I knew that there was someone lying on the bed beside me. There was a figure there, breathing softly in the light. I thought for a moment that it was Mary, somehow still inside the house, but it was my father. He was smiling at me. I groaned deeply, and he was gone. When I woke up I was lying, fully clothed, upon the stairs. The door was open and somehow, in my drunkenness, I had found my way back to the old house. But now the place disgusted me, and I could hardly bring myself to climb the stairs to my room.

I knew then that it was time to visit my mother; it was time to explain to her what I had discovered from Daniel, although I suspected that she had always been aware of her husband's clandestine life. But how was it that I had never noticed her distress, or ever thought of comforting her? The prospect of taking her in my arms disturbed me, even now, more than I cared to admit.

There are times, after heavy drinking, when all customary perceptions are destroyed and the world seems very clear. That was why I could now see my mother so simply. I suppose that I had never really looked after her, because I had never looked at her properly. I had never tried to understand her life, and so she had remained for me the same cut-out, throw-away character to whom I responded in the same casual way. I had never recognized the pain within her life, or cared to understand the nature of the long marriage which had formed her; but, more importantly, I had never bothered to love her. No doubt that was why, over the years, she had become so brisk and distant with me. It was a way of defending herself against my indifference.