His heart thudding in his ears, Cushing dialled with a forefinger he prayed was steady. The wheel turned anticlockwise with the return mechanism, waiting for the second ‘9’.
The cold had infiltrated and he felt it on his blue-lined skin as he stared at the long-haired man framed in his front doorway against the February night and the other did the same in return. Neither man dared give his adversary the satisfaction of breaking eye contact first. Gledhill hung onto the door frame, meaty hands left and right. Passingly, Cushing thought of Christopher Lee in his big coat as the creature in Curse. But all that monstrousness on the outside, for all to see.
He dialled a second time, straight-backed, not wanting to show the stranger he was afraid, but he was afraid. Of course he was afraid. He wasn’t a young, athletic man any more, sword-fencing beside Louis Hayward or leaping across tables. Far from it. If this man chose to, cocky, powerful and threatened, he could stride right in and beat him to a pulp, or worse. There was no guarantee that a man prone to other acts, despicable acts, would be pacified by a threat of recrimination at a later date. Or a mere phone call. Criminals did not think of consequences. That was one of the things that defined them as criminals. There was nothing, literally nothing, to stop his unwelcome guest killing him, if he decided to.
For the third time he placed his index finger in the hole next to the number ‘9’ and took it round the circumference of the dial.
“All right,” Gledhill said. “All right. I’ll say this, then I’m going. There’s nothing going on here, okay? It’s as simple as that. Nothing for you to be involved in. Nothing. Okay?”
Emergency. Which service do you require?
Cushing stared. Gledhill stared back.
Emergency. Hello?
Gledhill laughed with a combination of utter sadness and utter contempt. “Jesus Christ. You’re as loopy as he is. You’re losing your fucking marbles, old man.”
Hello?
Then Gledhill left, slamming the door after him and the hall shook, or seemed to shake, like the walls of a rickety set at Bray, and Cushing did not blink and did not breathe until he was gone, and his after-image—the halo of redness—departed with him. Cut!
Hello?
“I’m most awfully sorry,” he whispered into the receiver. “I thought I had an intruder. I can see now that’s not the case.” He tried to cover the tremor he knew was in his voice, and tried to make it light and chirpy. “I’m perfectly safe. Thank you.”
Cushing hung up, re-knotted the cord of his dressing gown, hurried into the sitting room and parted the drawn curtains with his fingers, a few inches only, to see—nobody. Even the last fragment of light and colour had faded from the sky. It was now uniformly black and devoid of stars.
The dryness in Cushing’s throat gave him the sudden compulsion to breathe, which he thought a very good idea indeed but strangely an effort. It was as if he had done a ten mile run, or heavy swim. Not only was his chest still thumping like a kettledrum, he could not get air into his lungs fast enough, and lurched, quite light-headedly, needing to prop himself on the arm of a chair in case he should fall. Sweat broke on his brow. He undid the buttons at his throat but they were already undone. He opened more, but his fingers were frozen and useless, fumbling and befuddled and half-dead.
This man who makes horrible, sadistic films about cruelty and sex and torture…
Someone who’s never had any children of his own, they tell me… Someone who adores other peoples’ children…
This old man and this innocent little boy…
Liquid surging up his gullet, he gagged and stumbled from the room to the little lavatory under the stairs, pressing his handkerchief to his mouth, but gagging nonetheless.
After he had vomited on and off for half an hour he half-sat, half-lay in the dark, drained and pathetic, too weak to move. What was the point of moving? He was clean here. He was untouched, though his fingers tingled from the bleach he had thrown liberally down the pan and the acid of it almost made him retch all over again. At least here, huddled on the cold linoleum, he could imagine the Domestos coursing through his veins, ridding him of the foul accusation that had contaminated his home. Here he could bury himself away from vile possibilities, horrid dangers, unspeakable acts and, yes, responsibility to others. What did others want of him anyway? He despaired.
What did his conscience want of him? To go to the police—with what? The fantasy of a backward child? A child with a vivid imagination, or psychiatric problems, or both? And what would that do but cause trouble, of the most horrifying nature, not least for himself? An old man talking to a young boy, he’d been accused of being by the boyfriend. The insinuation turned his stomach anew. What was wrong with that? How dare people misinterpret—but misinterpret they would: they wanted to misinterpret, that was the vile thing. Then again, what if he himself was misinterpreting? He could see it now, in a flash-forward, a dissolve: “Famous actor unhinged by grief.” If he stepped forward and spoke up, he’d be just as likely the one arrested. Sent to prison. Shamed. His picture all over the newspapers. If he was pathetic now, how much more pathetic would he be behind bars, or even in the witness box? But what churned in his belly more than all of that was the terrible thought that his failure to act would suit the true offender down to the ground. The creature would be free to continue his cynical, sordid depredations to his heart’s content. And that poor boy…
God…
He shut his eyes. He felt like the terrified Fordyce, the bank manager he played in Cash on Demand. Mopping perspiration from his brow. Prissy, emasculated, threatened. Affronted by the taunts of his nemesis. Goaded. His psychological flaws exposed. But that didn’t help. What could he do? He wanted, wanted so desperately for someone to tell him. But who was there?
Aching and chilled, he clawed himself to his feet, clambered to the kitchen, poured himself lukewarm water from the tap, and drank. He needed Helen, his bedrock. Now more than ever.
He realised he felt so weak and ineffectual, not just now, but always. He remembered the spectacle of breaking down in tears in front of Laurence Olivier, thinking then, as he thought now: Am I strong enough? Am I strong enough for this?
Yes you are, Helen had reassured him. If you want to be. You’re worth ten of them, Peter. You’re strong enough for anything…
Back then, she’d nursed him through a nervous breakdown that had lasted a good six months. Dear Heaven, is that something this odious man could use against him now? His doctor’s records of psychological unbalance? He felt the terrifying possibility like another blow to his physical being. The awful likelihood of the dim past regurgitated, raked over in mere spite and venom. It would bring with it dark clouds, as it had done then.
Six months of misery it had been, for him and for Helen too, without a doubt. God only knew how she’d endured it, but she had. And he had endured it too, thanks to her, and her alone. How could it be, he’d wondered, that he, the husband, was supposed to protect her, and there she was, sacrificing everything completely selflessly so that he, this worthless actor, of all things, could pull through?
Then he could hear her voice again, even clearer this time:
Peter, you are completely unaware of your own value. I expect that’s why I love you, and so do so many of your friends and colleagues. Can you not see? You must think more of yourself, darling, as we do. You do not need the backbiting and jealousy of the court of King Olivier. Your heart is not suited to it, and I know your enormous talent will out… You just need the right opportunity to come along, and it will… You must believe that too…