And then nothing until – raindrops on my face.
That's the next thing I remember. Fat wet baubles bursting on my parched skin. A cool zephyr traversing my arms and exposed breasts. More rain. And thunder, blessed deafening thunder as the promised storm finally broke above me…
'Miss Merrigan.'
An elderly woman with too-large teeth, upside down. Ari's wife, Maria. She was holding out a mug of tea. I tried to raise my head. I could hear the rain falling steadily. The air was cool. My mouth and throat were dry, too parched to speak. I gulped at the tea, scalding my tongue.
'How did – how did you get in?'
'The front door was wide open. We could smell something. We thought you'd gone away. Are you all right?'
'I – think so.' Ari was at the other end of the flat, opening the windows. Clouds of flies were resettling on the rotting bin-bags beside the sink. One thought passed through my disordered mind. I had to confront Midas in the company of Maria and Ari, to prove to someone that I was not mad, that I had not done this to myself. I pulled my shirt down overmy breasts, staggered to my feet and all but dragged them across the landing to his door.
'Are you sure you're all right?' Maria was asking, and Ari was saying something about getting me to a doctor when the door opened and there stood a small grey-haired man in a patterned cardigan and slippers. He had a pot-belly and rimless glasses. He looked like a retired accountant.
'Where's Midas?' I shouted. 'Is he in there?'
The little man shot a puzzled look at Maria, then back at me. 'What does she -?'
I was hysterical now. 'Where is Midas Blake?'
'I'm sorry, Mr Blake,' Ari was saying, 'she's not been well and she -'
'Young lady, I am – '
'Where the hell is he?'
' – I am Midas Blake. I don't believe we've met before.'
'You're lying, you're all lying!' I pushed past the little accountant. 'He must be in here!' But the apartment was completely different, floral wallpaper, cheap padded leatherette furniture, no plants at all. 'You know where he is,' I screamed, 'why are you protecting him?'
They're all in it, I thought, he's got to all of them. But he hadn't; I know that now. The grey-haired man in spectacles really was someone called Midas Blake, and he'd been living there for years. We'd never met. He'd only ever had one party, the one Ari had so enthusiastically attended. If I had gone as well I would have realised the truth, but we had never bumped into each other.
The man I had known as Midas was someone quite different. I suspect he has many other names. He is the stranger who comes to lead us into temptation, the one who can give us everything we need in return for blind allegiance. He may appear at a certain co-ordinate on the map, to a certain type of person, when the skies are strange and the time is right, and to many people, stronger people, he may never appear at all. An arid marriage, four years of loneliness, how ripe I had been for his attentions! There was no point in returning to Danielle Passmore and asking to see a photograph; his likeness would not be the same. He would never adopt the same guise twice.
One thing puzzled me. Why was I released from his power? Why did he allow the door to open, why did he not let me die? I can only assume he plans to come back for me. He thinks I am still weak enough to accept him. He is in for a surprise. Through the changing seasons I watch from my windows and calmly await his return, armed with a faith I never knew I had.
PERMANENT FIXTURE
No man is an island, but quite a few are peninsulas. I guess if you really hate people, it's easy to cut yourself off. You move into the countryside, never go to the cinema or a football match, avoid casual arrangements, lock yourself away. But it won't make you a happier person. A friend of mine called Margaret told me this story over lunch the other day, and I'm still not sure if all of it's true, although she swears it is.
In 1972 Margaret upset her entire family by marrying a man they all felt to be unsuitable for her. She was nineteen years old, an only child who had just moved to North London from the kind of small Hertfordshire village where everyone knows everyone else's business and doesn't approve of it. She knew nothing of city life and very little about men. Kenneth was her first boyfriend, and the courtship lasted just four months. They were married in a registry office in Islington, and no-one was allowed to throw confetti because of the litter laws. The ceremony was reluctantly attended by Margaret's father, who barely bothered to conceal his disappointment and left immediately after the photographs were taken. Margaret's mother telephoned during the reception to wish her well, but turned the call into a catalogue of complaints, and only spoke to her daughter on one further occasion before she died of a stroke seven months later.
Kenneth Stanford was thirty-one. He drove a Ford Corsair, collected Miles Davis and Buddy Rich recordings, worked in a town planning office and promised to love Margaret forever. He decided he had enough money saved to buy a house, and carefully chose where he wanted to live. The location he picked was in Avenell Road, Highbury, right opposite the gate of the Arsenal football ground. He had supported the Gunners since he was a kid, and had recently bought himself a seat there.
In typical London style the area hid its surprises well, for who would have thought that such an immense stadium could be tucked so invisibly behind the rows of little houses? In an equally odd arrangement, famous film stars and directors often visited the road to check on their feature prints at the nearby Metrocolor film processing labs, but the child who ventured to suggest that he just saw Mel Gibson passing the fish shop usually received a cuff about the head for lying.
So it was that Margaret moved into a damp Victorian two-floor terraced house in the shadow of a great stadium. She became pregnant twice in quick succession, and saw very little of her husband, who worked late, spent his nights drinking at Ronnie Scott's and his weekends attending football matches, with his mates. In accordance with the social etiquette of the day he never introduced his wife to his friends – the people he met at the jazz club to whom he wished to appear cool – or his mates – the people he met on the terraces to whom he wished to appear laddish.
Margaret had no interest in football. She regarded the red and white hordes who periodically trooped past her bay window as some kind of natural phenomenon, like a plague of frogs. She learned not to invite friends over for lunch on Saturday afternoons. She grew used to being segregated from fans in the Arsenal tube station, watching guiltily as they were herded into the separate tunnel of their rat-run. She became accustomed to the closed-off streets, the suspended parking bays, the colour co-ordinated families, the makeshift souvenir stalls selling booklets, flags, scarves, T-shirts and rattles, the neighbours who ran out into the road to collect the horse-droppings from the mounted police for their gardens, or who turned the fronts of their houses into tea and sandwich shops. The fans were just another vexatious and slightly mysterious part of life, like wondering why garages sell charcoal briquettes in winter or why Rolf Harris never gets any older.
So she lived with the sharp smell of frying onions and beefburgers, the nights being lit as bright as day, the packets of chips chucked over her gate, the cans of Special Brew lefton her front windowsill, the local supermarkets bumping up their prices on Saturdays, the Scots boys for whom her bedraggled front garden held eerie allure as a urinal, the spontaneous outbursts of singing, the great endless flow of generally good-natured people. She accepted it all as something that came with the house, a permanent fixture, like having a pylon in the garden.