Enchantment Read online

  Tim wrote a note to Monk, care of C.P. Games, protesting, ‘Not Fair!’, because some of the disguised Blch’s possessions had been entrusted to the Black Monk’s care. ‘Now I don’t know if I’ve still got ’em. What are you playing at?’

  He also wrote to whoever was playing Grue, to discuss some technical matters connected with the poisoned-draught capacity of a mummy’s skull. Grue did not reply – probably an illiterate twelve-year-old – but Necrotic, alias Black Monk, wrote back fairly soon: ‘Wot am I playing at? I’m playing the game, aren’t U? My name is DeAth. Trust me.’ That could mean ‘Don’t trust me’ in fantasy game strategy.

  Tim wrote back. Necrotic’s name was H. V. Trotman, and the address at the top of his small, cramped postcard was – amazing! The forces of fate were at work – a small town only about ten miles away.

  ‘We might run into each other some time,’ Tim wrote. ‘Who knows?’ It would be interesting to discuss fantasy affairs, and, with any luck, H. V. Trotman might turn out to have a decent games group, more reasonable than Gareth and Co.

  Fired up by letter writing, Tim bought a new pad of paper and a green Biro in Webster’s Stationery at employees’ discount, and risked a letter to the BBC to Mary Gordon, who, though obviously not over the hill, sometimes captured hints of his mother’s comfortable reassurances, as when she promised him ‘alovely (she always said it as one word) sunny day’. He wanted to write to her, ‘You are the sister I would like to have.’

  He wrote carefully, with some curlicues on the capital letters to please her eye. ‘May I ask for a picture of yourself? I enclose stamps.’

  This was his lucky month, this chill and windswept March, when the cold blasted you outside Webster’s staff entrance, howling down the alley, and even Mary Gordon could not promise lovely days. She sent him a photograph with a printed signature. It was amazing. She did look like someone’s sister, with undemanding hair and a smile that turned up more at one side than the other.

  It was quite a little picture. Poor Mary. She was probably being exploited on a small salary. Tim put it in his wallet, but took it out the next day in case he was run over in the street, and put it into the drawer with his fantasy books and games material. The drawer was locked, in case Brian or Jack came up to the flat.

  Brian did come up one evening when Tim was working through a Willard Freeman book in his pyjamas and navy dressing-gown. He had the grace to knock instead of using his key, so Tim had time to put the book and dice and bowl of sugared popcorn away. Was there time to put his clothes back on? A second knock and a friendly shout sent him to open the door.

  Brian had a piece of treacle tart on a plate.

  ‘This was so good, we thought you should have some.’

  ‘Thanks – I mean, thanks, it’s–’

  Must he invite him in? Brian did not look surprised at the dressing-gown and pyjama legs, but he did raise an eyebrow and say, ‘Bit cold for bare feet,’ before he turned and went nippily down the outside staircase with his knees turned out.

  Tim’s feet were long and pale, with good straight toes, because his mother had heard of children whose toes had been deformed by ill-fitting shoes, and even of a mythical character who had developed a club foot from wearing shrunken socks.

  Tim guessed and cheated his way to the end of Abominable Pestman: Another Fantastic Freeman Fantasy. Caught up in the adventure, he could not bother with all the rules. If he learned that leeches had sucked out every last drop of his body fluids, or that his limbs had been torn off his torso by two mastodons galloping in different directions, he resuscitated himself with an illegal roll of the dice. Back among the devilish intrigues of Willard’s mind and his intricate baroque illustrations, Tim achieved, with a muffled shout, the paragraph that cried, ‘Marvellous you! Abominable One is vanquished, and Our Hero lives to triumph again in another Fantastic Freeman Fantasy (see inside back cover for titles).’

  Closing the book with a sigh, Tim got out the pad and green Biro, and wrote to Willard Freeman, at the publisher’s address, for a photograph. He would start a collection. People did this. They stuck the pictures in albums that were sold for thousands of pounds after their death.

  A few days after he had gone to the theatre with Helen Brown, a letter from the great Willard Freeman was on the doormat when he came home from work. Tim was hardly surprised. Luck came in peaks and chasms, and his was soaring. There was no photograph. ‘A pic? No, you don’t catch me, mate. I stalk among mankind unknown.’ The letter was short and breezy and Tim folded it carefully and carried it to work next day in his inside jacket pocket.

  ‘Good luck, chum,’ it ended. ‘All the best, Bill.’ Hospital staff would be quite impressed to read that, if Tim was run over.

  The potency of it sent him up the stairs to the second floor at a run, instead of leaning against the wall of the lift, and carried him lightly over the heavy duty carpet, as he approached the department office by his traditional route of marching and countermarching between the rows of cutting tables, slapping their cool formica tops to a military rhythm.

  ‘Take off that face,’ Fred said. ‘It’s only Tuesday.’

  ‘My good news day.’ Tim grinned.

  Fred grumbled at him, as they went into the office for Mr D. to inspect them: hair, shave, and the clothes brush handed silently for application to The Suit.

  ‘Good luck, chum. All the best.’

  The folded letter in Tim’s pocket kept him happy and untroubled through the morning. When his lunch hour came, he took a piece of paper and an envelope and a stamp from Mr D.’s office, and wrote another fan letter to Willard Freeman while he was eating sausages in the canteen.

  ‘Ever your faithful admirer, Tim W. Kendall.’

  After posting it in the street outside, he went up in the lift, and traversed the second floor enigmatically, easing himself round display racks and draped dummies and turgid customers: invisible man. ‘I stalk among mankind unseen.’

  By the end of the afternoon, the pleasures of hero-worship and daydreams had begun to seep away like a rain puddle soaking into the earth. It was always like this. The waters of fantasy ebbed and flowed. Sometimes he was quite fanatically absorbed, and then the whole thing would start to seem silly and childish, and he bundled all the games and books into the drawer, and was bored and lonely again.

  Back in the flat, he opened a tin and ate a whole steamed pudding, cold, because he was too hungry to wait for it to heat up, and lay on the floor to digest it and examine his life.

  Where are you going?

  Last summer, they had done Godspell at the Boathouse Theatre. ‘Where are you going? Where are you going? Can you take me with you? For my hand is cold and needs warmth. Where are you going?’

  He was good enough at his job to be department manager one day, but Mr D. would not retire for ten or fifteen years. The best Tim could hope for was that Lilian got pregnant, and Tim could spend six months or so in her place as assistant manager, with a larger plastic label to accommodate name and rank.

  Why would Tim, the youngest, be chosen over Gail or Fred? Because Gail was a rebellious girl who threatened every week to drop out and pursue her real career in fashion design, and Fred was getting past it, to say the least. He knew his fabrics, and could add up and multiply to make your head reel, without using a calculator, but his lips and teeth were slack, and over the backs of his hands, very evident in this line of work (Tim’s were too small, but you could call them deft and artistic), crawled knotty veins and scaly patches.

  ‘Our boy is dangerously quiet this evening,’ Brian said to Cindy. ‘I haven’t heard the radio or the telly since he came in, and none of that condemned cell pacing.’

  ‘I hope he hasn’t overdosed.’ Cindy was stretched out in the most comfortable armchair, wiggling her large toes and liking the feel of her 10-denier tights. ‘I’m afraid he’s rather lonely. Do you think we should invite him down here, or take him out for a meal?’

  ‘With you dressed like that?�
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  ‘Why not? I pass, don’t I – arms shaved and tits level?’

  ‘Now listen, Jack.’ Brian was getting angry; his eyes narrowed and almost disappeared. ‘When we bought this house together, you swore you’d never take any chances outside. Enough’s enough.’

  ‘For you, it is. What about me? Why can’t I go public? Cross-dressing’s not illegal.’

  ‘Unless someone spots you and complains. Then you’re up for Conduct Leading to Breach of the Peace.’

  ‘I’m going out for a walk tonight.’

  ‘And get killed by the local rapist.’

  Jack sighed. ‘It’s always the woman that pays.’

  ‘You want a divorce?’ They were off into their game. ‘I get the house, though, remember that. You can have the children.’

  ‘What would the children say?’

  ‘Ask them.’

  ‘We never had any.’

  ‘That’s what’s been wrong with our marriage from the start.’

  ‘And who’s at fault?’ Cindy sat up and pointed a finger with a carved jadeite ring on it.

  ‘You.’

  ‘You, Bri. My sperm count’s as high as yours.’

  Brian dismembered the wooden chair that came apart easily, and brandished a leg over his head.

  ‘Go ahead.’ Cindy turned up her square-jawed face for the blow. ‘Open the curtains and let all those people out there in their cars see the spectacle of a battered wife.’

  Chapter Four

  C.P. Games did not communicate again for long time, but another tiny postcard did turn up from H. V. Black Monk Trotman.

  ‘Oo knows indeed?’ he wrote. ‘DeAth might look U up.’

  ‘Jack!’ Brian called up the stairs. ‘Look out of the back window.’

  Jack was in his room, changing out of his walking kit. He was sitting on the bed in a velvet housecoat, wondering whether it was worth bothering with the bra and suspender belt for what was left of Sunday evening.

  ‘Quick. There’s a strange man going up the stairs to the flat.’

  ‘A man?’ As Jack, he would have been more interested in a woman, but in his complex Cindy guise, he was supposed to be mad for men.

  By standing at the side of his bedroom window, he could see the underside of Tim’s outside staircase without being seen. Feet were treading up, large feet in swollen trainers that looked as if they had been blown up with a bicycle pump. Above them, wide brown corduroys and a pneumatic green jacket.

  At the top, the platform cut the man off from Jack’s view. Downstairs, Brian heard the bell, and saw Tim’s door open, and the man step slowly inside.

  Cindy came down in the long burgundy housecoat, her feet in feathered mules.

  ‘Tim’s boy friend,’ they told each other. It was no fun at all to guess that it was family, or a friend, or a man trying to sell insurance. ‘We saw Tim’s boy friend.’

  H. V. Trotman’s name was Harold.

  ‘A fine royal name,’ Tim said, in the mood of the medieval adventure games which were their common bond.

  Surprisingly, Harold Trotman, such a craftily involved player in Domain of the Undead, did not want to talk about the games. He sat down at Tim’s table, with his broad arms resting on the top and his hands turned down like paws, and waited for Tim to bring him a Coca-Cola. He looked like a beer drinker, but he wouldn’t have a beer. Tim brought two cans, went back for mats, because he was fussy about his table top, went back for two packets of prawn-flavoured crisps, went back for salt and vinegar crisps because Harold didn’t like prawn, went back for a saucer, which was all he had for an ashtray.

  Harold smoked as if it were a career, taking long, careful drags, tapping the ash off with his forefinger, moving the cigarette about round the side of the saucer for best effect, picking it up purposefully for another intensive draw.

  He did not look at Tim, so Tim was able to look at him. He had hair cut quite short over a large football of a head, growing low over his ears and forehead and quite far down the back of his neck, like fur. His face was blunt and stubbled. He had a long, weighty torso and short, thick limbs.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me writing to you,’ Tim said. ‘I wasn’t trying to say you were cheating.’

  Oh, that’s all right.

  Harold didn’t say that, so Tim had to consider it said, in the pause.

  ‘It was just that your metamorphosis into the Monk – it was very, don’t get me wrong, brilliant, in fact.’

  Thank you.

  ‘But it was a bit of a dirty trick, you must admit, because it took away a lot of my points that I’d worked to build up over a long time.’

  ‘That right?’ Harold said, as if Tim had not already discussed this in his letters, and at some length with Kevin, Games Master at C.P., who made the rulings.

  ‘Yes. I wish I knew where your next moves were going. But – er, but of course, if you told me, I’d counter them.’

  Harold shrugged. ‘Don’t keep on about all that stuff.’

  He occupied himself with lighting another cigarette. Tim took a pull at his drink. But if they were not going to talk about the games, what could they talk about?

  They sat in silence for a while. The only good thing about Harold smoking so much (his clothes and body reeked like a public bar) was that he did not keep reaching into the crisps, so Tim ate them all. Harold had come knocking on his door just as Tim’s jaws were open wide to close on a giant sandwich of liver sausage and pickles and cheese, and he had to shove it into the refrigerator and wipe his slavering mouth with a tea towel.

  ‘My name is Harold Vincent Trotman,’ H. V. suddenly began, and launched into his life story in a steady monotone, as if he were giving evidence.

  That solved the conversation problem, but it was quite boring. Tim sat back with his feet on the bar of the table and listened and nodded and went, ‘Ah-ha’ and ‘Mh-hm’ when Harold said things like, ‘Sixty, seventy bricks at a time, you won’t find a man to carry more, and where does it get me?’

  He fixed his gaze on Tim. There was some red in the white of the eyes, and a bit of a bulge.

  ‘Superhod, the brickies call me. But will they put their money where their mouth is?’

  ‘Er-no?’

  ‘It’s all part of the system, see. The way they got this country set up, you don’t get a chance.’

  The tale was ended. Should Tim tell his life story now? He opened his mouth, but Harold said, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and got up, slapping himself for cigarettes. ‘Got any?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Shan’t be a sec, then.’ Harold put on his puffy jacket again and went off, tripping and swearing on the loose step of the staircase.

  He never came back. Tim waited ten minutes, and then dived for the sandwich and jammed it into his mouth, pickle juice running down his chin.

  The next time Harold the hod carrier came, Tim was at work. Harold left one of his small cards under the door: ‘See U Sunday, then,’ as if it had been arranged.

  Tim was supposed to be going to his parents’, but he made an excuse, because he did not want to miss Harold. A strange, rather disturbing man, but they had Domain of the Undead in common, even if Harold would not discuss it. Was it a friendship? Tim had only one or two people he might call friends. He hardly ever saw them.

  Harold did not come until four o’clock, so Tim could have gone for lunch at 23 The Avenue, Rawley. Fed up, he was sitting on the window-sill where he sometimes played at being a sniper at night, when he saw a white car pull into the gateway and stop in front of Brian’s garage. Harold eased his broad frame out of it with some difficulty, like taking off a tight shoe, and lumbered towards the outside staircase. Tim waited until he rang the bell, and then counted seven seconds before he opened the door, so as not to look as if he had been spying down on him.

  Harold had brought his own brand of soda, a six-pack of something called Cheerio. He offered Tim a taste, but it was spiced and syrupy, like fizzy cough mixture. Tim put
out the doughnuts he had bought with the Sunday paper, and made tea, but Harold would drink only his sickly soda.

  He was quite friendly, but rather suspicious. He wanted to know where Tim worked, why he lived up here (‘like a chicken coop’), who lived downstairs, why Tim had written to him in the first place.

  ‘Why me? Why pick on me?’

  ‘I told you. I wanted to know more about the Black Monk. Players often write to each other.’

  ‘Not to me they don’t, they better not.’

  ‘Why did you answer, then?’

  ‘Ah.’ Harold dropped his cigarette through the triangular hole in the top of his Cheerio can; it died in the dregs with a small sigh. ‘I had to find out who you were.’

  ‘Ah,’ Tim echoed. He wanted to ask, ‘And who was I?’, but it might come out like a joke, and Harold was looking up at him seriously from a ducked head, while he lit his next cigarette.

  ‘You can’t be too careful, see,’ Harold told him.

  ‘I know.’ Tim felt this himself.

  ‘They after you too?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Anybody.’ Harold looked over his shoulder at the window that faced the road.

  Tim got up and pulled down the blind. ‘You on the – I mean, don’t get me wrong, and it doesn’t matter if you are –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘On the –’ Tim paused, and then said gently, like a question, to defuse it, ‘the run?’

  Harold leaned his weight back and laughed. The chair creaked and stood back dangerously on its inadequate hind legs.

  ‘They haven’t got me yet, son.’ Harold banged the front legs down again and pounded the table with both fists. Good thing Brian and Jack were still out. ‘No. You’ve got to be one step ahead.’

  ‘That’s right.’ They were having a conversation, even though Tim was not sure what it was about.

  ‘If they mess me about’ – Harold took a great drag on his cigarette and swallowed the smoke, apparently for good, because it didn’t come out – ‘they know what to expect.’