“I am not a student.”
“Namepad.”
“Gabriel Crome, Top C 13, Queensway Village, West 2.”
“So, angel. What do you do on a good day?”
“Teach a raven to get drunk at the Albert Memorial.”
The jump wand touched him, and a further shot of high voltage plucked at his nerves and muscles. Gabriel bit his tongue. It didn’t do any good. He still roared with pain.
“Now tell us about the bad days, little one.”
“I — I’m a book sculptor.” The wand moved. He gazed at it with some apprehension, then added quickly: “I make sculpture out of books — models, figures, every damn thing.”
“Francis,” said Proc One to his companion, “I’m bored. Do we hit these infants or don’t we?”
“Good cue,” responded the other proctor. He seemed uncertain for a moment or two, then he said: “We don’t. While we play with the funnies, goddam students probably lifting the dome off St. Paul’s.” He turned to Camilla and Gabriel. “Pray for us, children. This is your lucky evening… And, darling, draw a veil over those lovely boobs. The scene is disturbing for all virtuous citizens. Further, go home. You should both know that darkness brings out the big bad boys.”
“Thank you, officer,” said Camilla gently.
“Thank you, officer,” said Gabriel, wishing that he had a flamethrower.
The proctor mounted their sled. The air-cushion lifted it clear of the pedway. It hurtled across the bridge towards the West End.
“Did it hurt much?” asked Camilla.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
“Not entirely. It serves me right for not jumping. Now, you really had better dress — and don’t say another word about procs. I’ve had my quota for one day. A short time ago, I was nicely stoned. Now I’m sober enough to want to smash the human race.”
Camilla began to do interesting and womanly things, all of which conspired to rapidly cover the warm, dusky beauty of her torso. “Will you come home with me?” she asked. “I mean, I’m lonely and there are the cats to feed, and Eustace isn’t going to be there any more, and I want to talk to someone because I don’t know what to do.”
“I will come home with you,” said Gabriel, eying her with approval, “because I am also lonely, and though I have no cats to feed and no Eustace to miss, I still don’t know what to do.”
“You shall listen,” said Camilla almost gaily. “And I will tell you about Eustace and the dread disease. Then you shall help me feed the cats… I hope you won’t mind the smell.”
“Who knows?” said Gabriel. “There may be compensations.”
CHAPTER THREE
They fed the cats. But before they did so, Gabriel received one or two interesting surprises.
1735, Babscastle Boulevard, was not an apartment as he had imagined. It was a large, detached house, mid-twentieth century rococo, standing in its own grounds surrounded by high walls. It must have cost the late Professor Eustace Greylaw a stack to buy or even rent the place. Maybe he’d been a forger, or a Member of Parliament, or even a bounty hunter.
Camilla led the way up the drive and placed her thumb in the id ring. The front door opened.
There, waiting to greet her, was a Bengal tiger. To Gabriel, it suddenly seemed as if suicide was no longer a matter of serious decision-making. Camilla, however, remained unagitated.
So did the tiger. A grey squirrel sat calmly on its back, cracking a hazel nut.
“Hi, Diddums,” said Camilla. “You missed me, didn’t you, fat old pussy? Say hello to the nice gentleman who snatched me from the Thames.”
The squirrel cracked the hazel nut. The tiger purred and held out its paw.
“Diddums likes you,” said Camilla.
“I like Diddums,” croaked Gabriel, the sweat pouring down his face. He had read somewhere — probably in an old book he had been sculpting — that animals could smell fear.
With supreme courage, he put out his hands and shook the extended paw. The tiger opened his mouth and yawned. Gabriel fainted. When next he returned to consciousness, cushions had been placed under his head and Camilla was trying to get him to drink something.
He held the attention of an admiring audience. One tiger, one squirrel, one lion, one lamb, one panther and one fat white rabbit. He tried to faint again, but without success.
“I should have told you,” said Camilla. “How stupid of me. I should have told you. But I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“It was a surprise,” admitted Gabriel. “Yes, there was definitely the element of surprise.”
He recovered sufficiently to sit up.
Camilla looked at the ring of animals. “Go away! Shoo! Shoo! The gentleman and I want to talk to each other without being interrupted by silly creatures like you. Go on, all of you, back to the basement.”
She drove the animals from the room. The lamb bleated, one of the cats sneezed with subdued thunder. Then there was the sound of a closing door.
Gabriel got to this feet and looked around. He was in what had once been a rather splendidly furnished room. But there were tooth marks on the grand piano and rabbit droppings on the unchewed sections of the Indian carpet. The long tapestry curtains by the french windows hung in tattered rags. The settee and easy chairs also had not been greatly improved by the frolicking of the big cats; and the squirrel, evidently, had chosen to secrete various hoards of nuts in the most improbable places.
Camilla returned. “I have left the garden door open so they can get a bit of exercise… Now, we’ll have a drink and a talk. You will help me to feed them, won’t you? I simply don’t like handling lumps of raw meat.”
“Whether I help you or not really depends on how convincing your story is. At the moment, as an ex-suicide I just feel very lucky to be still alive.”
“The procs introduced us, so I shall call you Gabriel and you shall call me Camilla. They are rather nice names. We should have met about two years ago, before I knew Eustace. Will you stay with me tonight? Do you drink whisky? Oh, and what is a book sculptor? It sounds dreadfully clever.”
“Do you always fire questions in salvoes?”
She laughed. “I’m sorry. Eustace used to say that I reminded him of Marilyn Monroe with a black thatch.”
“Eustace couldn’t have been that old.”
“He was, nearly. I mean he was about fifty years older than me. That’s why he married me -
because I reminded him of Marilyn Monroe. He had tapes of all those quaint old movies I think they worked on him like an aphrodisiac or something because he always — what did you say about the drink?”
“I drink anything. And frequently. At the moment, I feel most regrettably sober. Probably the result of trauma.” He watched her unlock an antique cocktail cabinet, the mahogany panels of which had not entirely been destroyed by playful wildlife, and pour the drinks. Big ones.
Looking at her, he decided that Camilla Greylaw was somewhat like the ancient sex goddess of the flicks — not so much in form, though there was enough of that to substantiate the claim, but more in manner. She had the same kind of impossible, wide-eyed, outrageous innocence — the childlike spirit imprisoned in a delicious instrument of orgasm. He liked her. It was quite possible that Fate or Kismet or that Great Computer in the Sky had rigged the rendezvous so that Camilla Greylaw and Gabriel Come might together stamp a few wild footprints in the sand.
She gave him the drink.
“Yes, I will stay the night,” said Gabriel. “It’s already late enough for students and bounties to take more than a passing interest in a lone traveller, hopefully once more pissed. Book sculptors, incidentally, make sculpture from books. Logical, creative, even useful. Who reads books any more? They only take up space, collect dust and feed bugs.”