Kaleidoscope

KALEIDOSCOPE

JP Wright

Copyright 2016 JP Wright

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Contents

Danse Macabre

A Foggy Night in London

A Difficult Day

Rehearsal

Rescue

Tightening the Screws

Her Father’s Daughter

The Sorceror

Angel of Light

Smoke and Mirrors

A Storm in a Teacup

Fix

Her Mother’s Daughter

English Psycho

Love Over Gold

A Storm at Sea

Shame

At Home With a Serial Killer

Some Mother’s Son

Empty City

Signposts and Misdirections

Mirror Mirror

A Narrow Place

Straight to Camera

Epilogue

Afterwords

dedication: this is my own rich substance

PART ONE: DANSE MACABRE

"A sinister influence has invaded my life. Hideous forebodings of some impending doom hang over me like black cloud shadows, which no friendly sunbeam can pierce."

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sandman

A FOGGY NIGHT IN LONDON

The night he first met her, he was far from knowing her, farther still from understanding what she really was and would mean to him. His soul fluttered on the brink of its first, its most dangerous, migration; a journey guided by a tenuous thread that might be snapped by any storm to leave him entirely lost in the world. This was a bad night to begin a journey. It was a night lit by fog, and obscured by fog. Any fugitive beam, thin strips slipping from window cracks, was dispersed in the hanging billows of droplets and trapped there to expend itself in a weary glow. The fog cared for nothing but itself, wrapping itself in a fond caress, shouldering damply up the lamp-posts and smothering all light between.

Imagine yourself lifted from the level of the street, like the passengers of the new basket balloon tethered in Albion Place to lure across the river early season money. Every so often you might make out the will o' the wisp of a lamp-boy bobbing between the pools of light, trailing life from one to the next like a bee bumbling along a row of tall, drooping flowers, the glow around his wick failing before it reaches his face and figure. The light alone can be said with assurance to be real: perhaps there is no boy, but only a pure vestal spirit offering service to the gas lamps, flickering in and out of existence as the fog forms and re-forms in its ghostly dance, blurring the boundary between reality and imagination.

Rising further – imagine the anchor has been slipped – the lights are lost and you see only a caul of smog smothering the city, and darkness all around it where fields still lie and villages sleep in the protection of gentle English hillsides, dreaming feverishly of the day they will be swallowed by the hungry city, their parishes will become streets, their country people will be made townspeople, and their pastures mowed to suburban lawns.

Higher still, and Britain herself seems a small, precious thing, perched a-top the globe, a green jewel still, despite her flaws, set in a ring of iron that binds the world. This is the year of Our Lord 1844, and London is the capital of the world.

And this is where we find our unlikely hero, Michael Beste-Chetwynde, walking alone in a city of two million souls, the wet air heavy on his skin, pressing against him under his macintosh, sliding into his lungs with each breath, as thick and yellow as tobacco smoke. He could taste London in it; its soot and sulphur, trains, breweries, slaughterhouses, dockyards, fish market, cesspools, and people upon people upon people. His other senses blunted by the fog, the assault on his taste was the only evidence that there existed a city around him. But for this familiar affront there might, this night, be nothing in creation beyond Michael himself. He was wrapped into a world that ended at the span of his arms; just beyond his fingertips might be the forest and bogs that had been swept from the land, or the steel dream of the future. Or there might, indeed, be no world beyond that arms-reach limit of his senses. Nothing could exist beyond his reach or knowledge, nothing lay outside what lay within his grasp. The infinity of existence was controlled and limited by his imagination.

Michael realised later that this must have been the night that his familiar demon came to join him. It had that ability, as fog has, to form and reform, hiding itself and obscuring the world simultaneously. Yes, he was certain of it: since that evening the world had been shown to him through a distorting lens. Or a corrective lens. The demon was not informative on this point. Strike a vesta in the darkness and it would peep coyly through the smoke, dance a shuffling caper, sing a coarse rhyme, distract him until the flame burned down to his fingers, and then disappear. Still, the demon's presence would become a comforting constancy through days in which all other certainties seemed to shift. Michael called him Nicklausse on his saintly days, Old Nick when he grew dark and persuasive in smoky corners. Nick surely was a sly dog. He surely was one for the ladies, with an unrivalled talent for spotting women who would be easy, queasy conquests for a few greasy coins. Despite the demon's un-asked-for assistance, on this point Michael would be adamant. There was only one lady for him.

But this talk of conquest is taking us ahead of our story: at this moment, Michael was aware of his subtle accomplice only as one of many damp chills creeping under his collar. Every so often the fog would fray to disclose a detail – a doorway, an arch, a raised kerb – too small to tell him whether he had strayed from his way. In this part of London, south of the river, the dark and sullen sister of the dignified City of banks and businesses, the streets were narrow and jumbled, the lamps few, the stories of attacks and robberies many. Lacking the weighty influence of bankers and lords, victims here must be brought down sensationally in order to attract the notice of the press. The passing of a common man is of little interest, if there be not some salacious or gruesome particulars. Considerate of the needs of the press and the pleasures of the gentle readers, the local ruffians exercised their imaginations as enthusiastically as they exercised their muscles, but despite their efforts, assaults, abductions and grisly murders were not so common as the general dread of them would suggest.

But still, a timid voice in Michael's heart insisted, for the victim, once is enough. Losing confidence in his purpose, fumbling to find his way and in growing fear for his safety, he became so alert to the echo of his own footsteps that his gait became a sort of twisted shuffle, with his right arm upraised, straining back into the murk, his left arm extended to wave a way through the damp drapery before him. The fog gave back to him the shush of his wet shoes against the cobbles, and the rasp of his breath. The pulse in the close chambers of his ears played a counterpoint to his footsteps, so that he continually flinched a glance back over his shoulder expecting a swirl of mist to solidify into an onrushing attacker. A rush of footsteps, and a rush of blood. The dense atmosphere denied him any warning of the uncertain hazards beyond the unresisting walls that retreated before his discouraged step and closed behind his heels.

Suddenly, a kerb caught his ankle, he grabbed at nothing but a handful of dew and staggered, falling hard against a rail that quarter-staffed his ribcage. The shock of air he gasped in brought a sour tang, and between the thuds of his pulses he heard the silty slurp of the river. The painfully twisted iron rail chewed across his side, but it supported him just above the point of balance which would have tipped him over into the slow darkness.

Michael lay in his contorted posture for two short breaths, then he reached around, gripped the rail with both hands and pushed himself upright. His face tingled with a sudden sweat that sprang out to lose itself amongst the mist droplets. Coughing, blinking across the river, he was able to make out a solid outline within the shifting darkness, arcing into space above the Thames, its far end lost. Southwark bridge. The Ironbridge. Two great feet thrust down into the mud, shoulders braced on either bank as if prepared to hold apart forever the City and its southern shadow. Michael could feel its weight from where he stood. The bridge for him was a symbol of endurance and a serious solidity that seemed to be slipping away in these modern times. How spindly in contrast, the new suspended footbridge up the river at Hungerford, cast out across the water like a spider's hopeful thread. On duty for The Recorder, Michael had written a pious piece about the triumph of modern engineering, but had not yet set foot upon the new bridge himself. The waiting tension unsettled him. Stress and counter-stress: it is the modern way.

Now at least he knew where he was. He coughed again, and spat at the river (how rapidly we adapt to our environment, how readily adopt the manners of the society in which we find ourselves), then turned to step cautiously down the kerb, to cross over and start a halting progress along Bridge Street, with his demon sliding shyly behind. By kicking the kerb every few steps – one crossing, two, turn onto Castle Street – he arrived with a scuffed shoe but increased confidence at the corner of Worcester Street. The fog was beginning to shred as he drew away from the river, but it clung stubbornly at this corner. Michael fingered the slick stone edge of the wall, and slid his hand up to find at the limit of his limited reach the mossy snout and blunted teeth of the gargoyle, which for generations the children of the street had called 'Grinny', and which is now gone. Grinny spat at him and the water ran down his arm, but he grinned back, knowing that now he was but a few steps away from the Sign of the Ram. In daylight he would have been able to see the wooden cut-out of a ram, shorn of paint but still abundantly fleeced, hanging a few yards down the street. On a clear night he would have heard the rising and falling murmur and roar of money handed over and drinks gulped down, deals struck to be regretted in the sharp morning light, and on most nights raised voices confident that the peelers would not be stepping across the river to keep the peace.

Tonight the thick air swallowed all sound.

The wrought iron gate of the Sign of the Ram stood half-open, funnelling Michael into the brick gullet that fed into the inn's yard. The wooden inner gate was closed to horse and cart traffic, but the cut-out door was chocked open to welcome any pedestrian willing to simultaneously stoop and step over the knee-high sill. Michael's present awkward gait suited him well to the manoeuvre. Nicklausse came through after him: squat and round-bellied though he was, there was no needle's eye too fine for the demon to thread.

Immediately inside the doorway was a species of toll booth, heavily wooden, fronted by a grille of iron bars. A ragged grey screen strung across the angle blocked Michael's view of the yard beyond, but he could hear a raucous band playing. It was hard to imagine what combination of wood, catgut and skin was being tortured to squeeze out that noise. Behind the grille was kept safe, or kept captive, a crook-necked girl, who sat with a storm lantern and a strong box. Michael considered demanding free entrance, on the strength of his status here as a representative of The Recorder, but immediately dismissed the idea, preferring not to engage with the poor crippled girl. She stared up at him, tilting her head back against the brace that curled around her neck, as he clattered a pocketful of coins across the counter under the grille, and reached to scrape up the couple she pushed back at him. She halted the coins on her side of the bar, forcing him to reach under it, and as he did so, staring down at the counter, he felt the cold tips of her fingers touch his, and jerked back his hand. He caught his knuckles on the rough underside of the bar, but he did not look at the girl. Resentful of her attempt to force this contact, he turned sharply away. Out of sight, the girl pulled on the cable that tugged aside the screen, and Michael stepped past, relieved when it fell behind him.

The yard was dubiously lit by lamps hanging around the walls at intervals that left deep shadows where their trembling reach failed, and by lanterns at the centres of three round tables. One table stood to Michael's right, nearest to the bar, at the far end of which crouched a brazier whence jumped flames to cast a rusty shadow-play onto the brick wall. To his left, confronting the stage, the other two tables completed an uneven triangle. The stage itself was a waist-high wooden platform fronted by a threadbare curtain. Light, pale and green, was thrown up onto the curtain by three gas lamps set evenly across the front of the stage. Michael could read in embroidered text once brave and golden, now shabby, Professor Spalanzani's Renowned Freakshow Balley.

In front of the curtain, cramped onto the far corner of the stage, the band madly played. There was a fat accordionist who seemed to be trying to wrap his bellows about his belly as he pumped the apparatus in and out. The eyes and the cheeks of the cor anglais man bulged out, reddened. The fiddle player crooked his neck to press his instrument under his chin, clawing with his left hand at the strings, face greasy and pale. Behind them a drummer flailed arms that seemed all elbow and, teetering on the edge of the stage, counter-balanced by his battered partner, the bass player slapped and sawed at her recklessly. His eyelids fluttered in some kind of ecstasy as he matched the drummer's furious tempo.

The tables at the bar and to stage right were occupied by figures outlined in darkness, lit to reveal only momentary details – of a beer-clutching hand, a flushed face and red eyes, a flicker of hair and clatter of cheap jewellery, teeth like a horse's teeth in a succulently red-painted mouth. Other imprecise figures leant in the darkness against the walls, waiting. The disposition of the rough furniture and the odd admixture of social classes, not to mention the savours of fog-damped bacchanal and unattached ill-intent in search of a target, were reminiscent of a cellar night-club. The moisture rising from the breath and heat of the audience and lamps and brazier lifted the fog to a claustrophobic ceiling. In London, with its crowded, cluttered streets and dense atmosphere, one is never really outside anyway.

Instead of crossing the yard Michael skirted its wall, passing the bar, which was really no more than a wide window-sill across which the landlord could serve his impatient customers whilst avoiding the damp air. Against the end of the bar was propped a grey-faced man, dressed soldierly but looking sickly, whose hands shook as he lit a French cigarette with a taper twitched precariously from the fire. Buttons were missing from his long, tattered overcoat, but those that remained shone brassily. Michael had to pass him to gain the one unoccupied table. He observed the man's scuffed knuckles and avoided his eyes.

Nicklausse had arrived at the table ahead of Michael. The demon swung himself up onto a stool, miraculously without spilling the brimming pint pot wrapped in one disproportionately large hand. His fingers were like sausages, seamless and sickening. He nodded jovially at Michael, who ignored him. Rather, chose to be ignorant of him, as he recovered his confidence and remembered his purpose here. He was a journalist. That is, a reliable, impartial witness to the plain reality of the time and place. He was an explorer, not of the dark outer limits of the empire, but of the shady well at the empire's source. Here, in the yard of a low inn, he would shine his lamp on life and capture its reflection on a page. It was not the same pure light of creative art that he had followed to the city, but it was bright enough to keep him there, not in comfort but in conditions sufficiently bearable that he was not too tempted to make a prodigal return to the family home; in sufficient ease to prevent him taking the risk of an attempt at literary achievement. And for his family, it was a compromise that afforded them the shame of owning him an artisan, rather than the disgrace of confessing to an artist. To Michael, clarity and veracity were not so noble as an act of creation, yet he was sincere enough in his intent – to report the truth faithfully. His Editor, a rather distant and severe man whom Michael nevertheless regarded with some degree of filial affection, had inspired this much ambition in him: perhaps diligent reporting might yet become sufficiently respected to satisfy his self-regard.

In his reverie, Michael was oblivious to the growing crowd in the inn's yard until the band crashed to a halt and the green-stained curtain twitched, caught, then jerked aside, unveiling a man, tall and very stout, standing with arms out-flung. Dramatically lit from below, the fellow's belly spilled over the top of a wide belt, stretching the worn bulge of his waistcoat. Up his chest frothed the front of his shirt to break against a gaudy cravat, and tight around his wrists were cuffs of yellowed lace.

Laydeez an' gennermen he hooted, glaring down at the yard. There was a collective expectant breath and Michael started, aware all at once of the press of bodies around him. Men and women had condensed out of the shadows, from the damp brickwork and the densities between the lamps, and they crowded forward to fill the space around the tables. The temperature seemed to rise from breath to breath, and the ceiling of smog lowered. The demon Nicklausse vaulted up onto the table, planting wide bare feet firmly, the better to see the stage.

Welcome to ve Worwld Re-naan' Professoray Spalanzani's Travellin' Freakshaaa ... Balley. The man's double chin kissed greasily against his collar as he shouted. The green light picked out from below strands of hair exploring his upper lip from the dark of his nostrils, like plant roots seeking there the fine moisture of perspiration. A tuft of hair sprouted too as a garrison on the tip of his nose; a staging post to the secure fortification of his single brow.

Laydeez an gennermen again "oi yam thata verry same Professoray, none ovver than as travawld over the 'ole conteenent ov yeropa, to awla the great ci'ies from London to Rome, via Dublin, by his accent only fora de plesurr t' bring t' you de finest ov de strangest ov de ooneekist of ve freakest he trumpeted his rhyme triumphantly ov arteests ever gavered in a-wun playca."

The band coughed a short chord; the crowd drew breath together, pressed forward together, and Michael's stool was tipped, trapping him against the table. He stood rigid, with an elbow in his ribs and breath of beer and onions on the back of his neck.

"An' tonight oi yam praad t' presenta t' you, my-a friends, the smallest sensayshun, de most celebra'ed lil'w star, a angewl droppéd among uz, a min-ee-a-chur perfecshun, a dimoonitiv confecshun another crash from the drums an' this taan'sa sensashun." Nothing for that one. The big man was a circus in himself, a travelling exhibit of linguistic curiosities, juggling phonemes with a festive disregard for consistency. Michael began to ponder the best way to approach this singular oratory style in his planned piece as the pitch built towards its climax.

She is non ovver, Laydz an' gen'men, than ... And here a pause for a deep breath that threatened to finally break the determined grip of the antique waistcoat buttons; and again the out-flung butcher's arms. The One and Only …

Michael reached into his overcoat pocket for notebook and pencil, but brushed the hand, surprisingly soft, of a woman pressed tight to his right side. He drew back his hand, and did not glance at her. He could smell her - hers were the beer and onions. His was the prickling skin, and sweat running down from the small of his back. The One and Only ... and in that moment of panic he had missed the name.

Before Michael could gather himself, the band blurted out a fanfare and with a flourish of one ring-bound hand, the barker bowed himself sideways off the stage. A boy crouching in the shadow before the platform exchanged filters and turned up the gas, the light lifted, and the fanfare lurched into a waltz-time travesty. Once again the crowd leaned forward, and Michael had to lean with them, as from around the curtain stepped a tall man and a tiny woman. The dark crown of her head was level with her partner's cummerbund. Both of her ballet-slippered feet resting on one of his shoes, both her hands hidden within his bony right hand, she leaned outward as he waltzed her around two measures to reach the centre of the stage. There the band paused and she dismounted to stand by his side. He bowed; she curtseyed to the floor. The crowd broke its hush with applause, whistles and laughter. Michael concentrated on keeping his balance and tried