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‘Sorry,’ I muttered. I looked for Robin, scanning the room for the red glow of her hair. I saw her, back with Andy, who sat on the floor while she straddled his shoulders from the bed above, leaning over him occasionally for a kiss, her hair falling in strings down his chest, his fingers clutching at them, possessively. I felt sick, overwhelmingly sick, and looked down at the space between my knees, where the lines of the carpet curved and swelled like the roll of the sea.
‘Do you want some water or something?’ I’d forgotten I was being watched. I turned to him, slowly, feeling my neck and jaw tense, tongue thick in my throat.
‘Please.’ I felt both brimming with life, and horribly close to death. ‘It’s so hot,’ I said, as he handed me a plastic cup filled with dirty, bruised ice.
‘Sip it,’ he said, not letting go of the cup. ‘Don’t gulp it, or you’ll throw up.’
‘Okay,’ I said. The syllables sounded wrong, almost like a sing-song. ‘Okay, okay, okay,’ I said, impressed by the cadence of the letters. He laughed, took a step back, as though unsure of himself; then paused for a moment, and sat back down, slowly sipping his drink. I felt a swell, another flush of love for the people around me, and, in the moment, this stranger, who had come to me with iced water and kind words. ‘Thank you,’ I said, with what I hoped was a smile.
‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Would some fresh air help?’
‘I’m not … I’m not going anywhere near that window.’ I heard the words slur a little as I spoke, returning with a perfect echo.
‘Oh god, no. You’re absolutely not going near any windows, or sharp edges, or anywhere without childproofing.’
‘I’m not—’
‘I don’t mean that,’ he said, catching my meaning before I could finish my sentence. ‘I just mean you don’t need to worry. You can’t get in much more trouble than you already are.’
He extended a hand, and pulled me up towards him. Grateful to escape, I stumbled with him into the corridor, where the bright lights and lurid posters swam kaleidoscopic above the stained tan carpets and beaten, grey walls. Stumbling down the stairs, I felt the glow of the fluorescent lights, switching on and off rhythmically as though time had slowed to accommodate their usual invisible flicker.
The words on the posters followed me down the stairs – Dance Society Meet next week, Mason Hall, 5pm; Basketball Tryouts Tuesday – shorties need not apply!; Kafka’s Metamorphosis :: Auditions Monday!!! Occasionally I felt a rumble of doubt, the same hot sweat rising from the soles of my feet to my chest, but the feeling disappeared as soon as I had identified it, the memory delirious and fleeting.
As we reached the ground floor, the rhythm of the music echoing from above seemed still as loud as it had been in the dorm room. I put my hands over my ears, my head aching; Tom stopped as we rounded the corner, and put my hands back by my sides. ‘Act normal,’ he whispered, and walked me past the security guard (though the caution was unnecessary, he now absorbed in a tattered paperback with no interest in the activities of the students who occasionally disturbed his reading). I thought of Robin as we left the building. She’ll be fine, I told myself. And then, a little bitterly, she said she’d stay with me, and she didn’t, so it doesn’t matter anyway.
There is something enchanting about fresh air when intoxicated; though remaining steady in it is a skill I have yet to master, even now, when the mood of a long night strikes and I wander these old streets, unseen and unheard, after a night at home sipping a rich wine and, on occasion, taking some strange combination of powders and pills. Nowadays, of course, these are more likely to be opiates or sedatives prescribed by my friendly and dutifully sympathetic family doctor; still, that feeling always reminds me of this night, when the air was hazy and alive with a kind of magic.
Outside, the sky had cleared to black. As I looked up, he steered me around the slick of washing powder and soap thrown from the floor above, and we walked in silence towards the lake, around which student halls were arranged. With hindsight, ‘lake’ is, perhaps, a little too grand: the light of day would reveal it to be little more than a large pond, surrounded by concrete walls on all sides. As we approached, a flock of birds burst into flight, disappearing into the infinite darkness above.
He tucked his hands into his pockets; took them out, as though caught.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ he said. I felt a sort of pity for him, a painful identification; I didn’t know what to do either.
I shrugged. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
He said nothing; turned and sat on the graffitied park bench behind. I joined him, wondering what I was doing; why I was so eager to follow this stranger into the dark night.
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. ‘How old are you?’
‘Seventeen,’ I lied, feeling ashamed the moment the word left my lips. What was I trying to achieve?
He turned and looked at me, doubtfully. From the tower, a firework sparked and burst, leaving a yellow trail through the sky. I watched as it spiralled, dwindling down, the casing landing with a splash in the dark water. He drew breath beside me, and paused.
‘My girlfriend …’ he began. I felt a pang of loss at expectations I hadn’t realized, or at least admitted, I was harbouring: some midnight kiss, a childish imagining of romance. ‘She’s at Cambridge.’
I looked at him, unsure if I was imagining the note of apology in his voice. ‘How’d you meet?’ I said, the words ringing false, cheerful. We were amateurs reading lines, failing to perform.
‘The usual. Same school, same friends … You know.’ I nodded, solemnly, though I, of course, had no idea. ‘I think she’s probably met someone else, though,’ he sighed.
I gave a non-committal murmur, and he continued, though now – the chill of the night gnawing at my skin, the memory of Robin now an ache – I wanted to go back. I waited as he went on – a lack of letters, calls returned late or not at all – and, finally, gave a dramatic shudder. ‘I’m cold.’
He said nothing for a moment, as though surprised at the interruption; surprised, it seemed, to find me there at all. He blinked, and stood, and I followed. Occasionally he would pause to examine a discarded beer bottle on the ground or one of the dolls I now noticed had been hung from the sparse branches of the trees, which creaked and groaned in the wind. Every time I looked back, he smiled, and I mirrored him, unsure how else to respond. It was as though we were playing a game, the rules of which I – in my intoxicated state, at least – felt myself unable to grasp.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Robin hissed as we entered the reception area, where she sat perched on the security guard’s desk, he now a little put out, realizing he was no longer of use. She jumped off the desk and moved so close it seemed her breath was mingling with mine. Her pupils were wide and deep, and it looked as though she had been crying, her eyes wet, shards of mascara littered underneath. I saw Nicky, lurking behind, watching with interest; I waved, dimly, and she smiled, disappearing up the stairs.
‘She’s fine,’ Tom said, wearily. ‘She just needed some fresh air.’
‘Really?’ Robin said, her tone arch. She turned to me. ‘Fresh air?’
I nodded. I felt oddly ashamed, a swell of guilt rising as I tried to recall my reasons for leaving her behind.
‘Wanna go home?’ Robin said, after a pause. I felt the world lurch forwards, and another wave of nausea struck me like a punch to the gut.
‘Home sounds good.’
‘Okay,’ Robin said. She turned again to Tom, who was already walking back towards the stairs. ‘Thanks for looking after her,’ she said, though I thought I heard a note of sarcasm in her voice.
‘Any time,’ he replied, without looking. His footsteps echoed up the steps as we left the tower, and stepped out once again into the night. The brief moment of warmth in the reception hall served only to heighten the cold outside, which now felt biting and cruel. We walked in silence, down the hill towards the edge of campus, through a dark passage lined with chicken-wire fences and overhanging trees fused into a tangled canopy above.
‘I’m sorry for leaving,’ I said, a little relieved at the sound of my voice which, for the first time in hours, sounded like my own.
‘It’s fine,’ Robin said, a few paces ahead. We walked a little longer in silence, before she added, ‘I had a fight with Andy. I think we’re over.’
I felt a rush of relief at this, the implication that perhaps her tears were not on my account, but his. ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad,’ I offered, awkwardly.
‘How would you know?’ She turned to me, eyes flashing anger.
‘I don’t, obviously,’ I said. ‘What I mean is …’ I clawed for some non-committal phrase, something to appease her. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be better in the morning. You probably just need to sleep on it.’
She sighed. ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ she said, slowly. ‘But what experience do you have, exactly, that puts you in a pos-ition to be doling out relationship advice?’ Her eyes were dark in the orange glow of the street lamps, her shadow long and distorted up ahead. I felt my cheeks burn red hot, and, grateful for the cover of night, I looked down at my feet, watching the fabric of my shoes flash and listening to the tap of the pavement as we walked.
When we reached the mermaid, Robin leaned in and gave me a stiff peck on the cheek, gripping the hair at the nape of my neck with a clutch that felt just a little tense, her squeeze a little too tight. Without a word, she turned and walked away, her figure casting a long shadow as she disappeared into the night. I walked home in a stunned trance, remembering as I reached my front door that I had told my mum I’d be staying at Robin’s (her house a cover for a party expected to go on until dawn). I climbed the stairs and nervously crawled into bed, my mind uselessly grasping for answers as I tumbled into a cold, dreamless sleep.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_863d676e-b623-5d41-a1a5-7e7fc7ee7132)
Robin chewed her pencil, turning it about in the gap between her teeth with a hollow click. I rose from my seat, ostensibly to sharpen my own pencil. In fact, I was bereft of ideas and looking for something to steal. Annabel’s cryptic prompt: ‘Destination’. The air was milky, tinged pink, the windows draped in gauze and tulle. A faint smell of slowly rotting flowers mingled with clay and turpentine on the air. Annabel – whose cheekbones pressed up against her wrinkled skin in smooth points, and whose white hair hung down her spine in thick, loose rings – liked to change the studio weekly, following some unspoken theme. Sometimes spartan, white and clean and sometimes moonlit, the sky blocked by starry batiks and luminescent, the effect was one of perpetual change: our ways of seeing challenged, time and again.
Annabel hadn’t spoken to me directly for several weeks. Hadn’t even looked at me, in fact, though occasionally I’d feel as though I was being watched, sitting in the studio trying to untangle the threads of a lecture, or a prompt. But whenever I looked at her, she seemed to be absorbed in a book while chewing thoughtfully at a hangnail, or scrawling furiously in a paint-flecked notebook, as though none of us were there at all.
Muddled sketches of airports and cars; pastel beaches and sunbathers, both realist and cartoonish, idealized or grotesque: my fellow students had responded to the prompt as unimaginatively as I had, though with varying degrees of success. Except, that is, for Robin. Hers was a dark, gloomy charcoal sketch, black dust lining her fingers and smudged at her wrists: a wood of trees curving claw-like above a rocky path. Emerging from the light at the end, two figures stood in silhouette, limbs monstrously thin, the backs of their hands barely touching, brushing against one another.
Hers was the only work Annabel would peer at from above, as she made cursory circuits of the class (usually only as the Headmaster passed, his passion for ‘active teaching’ being taken rather literally, for Annabel, at least). I watched the other girls watch Robin with an envy that disappeared in an instant, a shadow only seen in the corner of the eye, a weakness for Annabel’s attentions none of us would willingly admit. But I felt it – the dim awareness of it was its own kind of shame – though when she passed I leaned farther forward, arms wrapped around my work, embarrassed at the childish scratch and scrawl.
Annabel looked up as though about to speak, interrupted by the shuddering bell, the shuffle of students awakened from the silence. ‘Complete these for next session and we’ll discuss,’ she shouted over the noise, ‘and try not to be too vapid, if you can possibly manage it!’ She paused, and turned to me. ‘Violet – a word, if I may.’
I froze. Robin turned to me and grinned, stuffing the drawing carelessly into her bag. She shuffled past, mouthing ‘See you later.’ I smiled, weakly, my stomach churning with fear.
As the studio emptied, Annabel rifled through a mass of papers, not looking up. I stood, nervously mute, as the plastic clock ticked a full minute above. ‘Here we are,’ she said at last, handing me a crumpled sheet of paper. ‘You wrote this?’ I felt a knot of shame, sensing what was coming next. It was a belligerent, thoughtlessly thrown together admissions essay, drafted in the hope my application might be rejected, before I’d been tempted by the photos of ancient archways, the sun blooming behind the Campanile. Though I’d succeeded in impressing Annabel so far – or, at least, had avoided the cold glare of her attention – I’d known, somehow, that it would come back to haunt me.
‘“The purpose of art”,’ she said, reading my words, ‘“is to horrify the idiots who say they have taste. Taste means nothing. Fuck taste. The idea itself is a relic of a version of history that doesn’t apply to me, or anyone not closer to being buried than being born.”’ She looked up at me, eyebrow sharply raised. ‘You wrote this?’
‘Yes, Miss,’ I said, staring down at the page.
‘And you believe it?’ I looked up. She stared at me, eyes cold, rolling a silver pen between her fingers.
‘I … Well, kind of.’
The rolling stopped. ‘Kind of?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, kind of, or yes, you mean it?’
‘Yes, I mean it,’ I said, finally, though in truth I wasn’t sure – the words then had seemed a little much, and now, absurd. It was a guess, a leap: grasping for the answer she wanted to hear.
‘Good,’ she said, softly. ‘Very good. Violet, I hold advanced classes for those students I think have promise.’ An endless pause; I looked away, unable to hold her stare. ‘I’d like to invite you to join our little study group, if you’re interested.’
The blinds whipped furiously in the breeze. ‘Yes, Miss. I mean, Annabel. Sorry.’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it,’ she said, rising from her chair and walking towards the window. ‘Though I would ask that you keep this between us. It is strictly invitation only. Off the books, as it were.’ She slammed the window shut. ‘Do you know Miss Adams?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Robin,’ she said, turning to me. ‘The red-haired girl. I saw you admiring her work. She’s very talented.’
I blushed. ‘She is.’
‘She’ll meet you before class and bring you along.’ She sat down at the desk and picked up the pen, hand hovering over the page. I stood, waiting for some kind of detail – a time, a day even – but she said nothing. After a moment, she looked up, as though surprised to see me there. ‘That’s all then, Violet.’
In the corridor outside, the cool, fresh air made the studio seem suddenly stifling, my lungs thick with turpentine and paint, eyes adjusting to the light of day. A short, round-faced girl with a shadow of hair above her lip stood waiting, eyeing me nervously. I looked at her, ashamed for us both, and hurried away, though where to, I wasn’t sure.
The soles of my shoes clapped against the marble floor, heart thudding in my chest. I was alone, the place deserted, silent but for the infrared hum of the scanners below. I peered over the rim of the mezzanine that circled the entrance hall, all Doric columns and gold railings, mahogany cases behind housing grinning taxidermied voles, death masks, and candied jewels.
I had been reading some fiendishly dull (yet still to this day widely read) textbook on the history of realist art and – lulled by the numbing warmth of the old radiators and seams of afternoon sunlight that filled the top floor – had fallen asleep at my desk. When I woke, I found a sky-blue paper bird folded on top of my book, a precise, delicate little thing. I unfolded it, gingerly, and stared down at the words. ‘Welcome to the club. Campanile, 6 o’clock sharp. Brace yourself. R.’ I looked out of the window, and saw the clock’s black hands click on – 5:50pm – threw my books into my bag, and ran.
I heard footsteps behind, a mumbled curse. The Dean of Students was balancing a teetering stack of books on one arm as he stumbled across the mezzanine opposite. ‘Violet,’ he said, catching my eye. ‘What on earth are you doing here so late?’ His voice echoed across the hall. Loath to shout back (my own voice reedy, thin), I waited until we’d met in the middle, by the stairwell, to answer.
‘I was studying, sir. I lost track of time.’
‘Evidently.’ He chuckled. ‘You know, the library closes to students at four, except for around finals.’
‘I didn’t realize,’ I said. ‘I’ll get out of your way.’
He drew breath, as though about to speak – then paused, resting the books on the ledge. Their spines, leather-bound in different, faded colours, each read of a similar topic: The Persecution of Witches, a History; Demons and Darkness, a Study of the Occult; Contemporary Theories of Magick. I imagined the crash as they fell, willed it a little, to interrupt the conversation I was about to endure.
‘Violet,’ he began, rocking his neck back and forth. (I imagined his muscles loosening, imagined the words: trapezioid, splenius, levator scapulae …) ‘If you’re having trouble making friends …’ He reached a hand for my shoulder, fingers clubbed and nicked with cuts.
‘I’m not,’ I said, abruptly, stepping back.
His hand hung suspended for a moment; then, seeming to remember himself, he slipped it back into his pocket, fingers toying with something underneath. ‘It’s just … Well, you’re here so late. Not that we don’t encourage commitment to one’s studies, but …’
‘I’m friends with Robin. And Grace, and Alex,’ I said, a slight wobble in my voice that could have related to either the intimation that I was friendless and alone or my frustration at being waylaid. I caught a brief flicker cross his face, a shadow of doubt.
‘Well, that’s good,’ he said at last. ‘But do make sure to keep making friends in other groups, too. You don’t want to get tied into a clique, now, do you?’
‘No, sir,’ I lied. I could think of nothing I wanted more.
‘Good, good. I’d better be getting on,’ he said, smile fixed wide as he slid the books into his arms. ‘Help me open this door now, would you?’
I waited until the door closed behind him, and ran down the stairs, catching myself as I tripped once on the third floor, and again on the first. I pushed the heavy main doors open, air bracingly cool, and ran towards the Campanile.
The first bell rang as I stepped under the arch, the noise deafening, vibrating in the air and through the ground beneath my feet. Robin wasn’t there.
I opened the little bird in my palm (now mangled, since I’d been unable to put it back together) and read the words again. 6 o’clock sharp. I peered back through the arches, but the Quad was deserted, silent but for the rustle of leaves between each of the bell’s long tolls. After a moment, I stepped back into the shadows and looked up into the tower’s golden underbelly, then around; following a carved serpent knotted around the grille, I saw it. Another folded note, tucked between the bars. Another bird, this time a deep crimson colour, and more complex than the last. I reached in and plucked it from the grate, and as the last bell fell silent a key fell to the ground with a sharp ring. I scooped it up, and tried the lock.
A crack, a rattle, and the grille slid open, the void black within. I stepped inside, and felt the air begin to sour as the inner door slammed shut, darkness stony and absolute.
‘Hello?’ I whispered, my voice ringing back. I reached around, scraped my knuckles on the stone walls, slammed palms mutely on the door behind. Silence crawled into every space, into the cracks between the bricks, the knots in the wooden door. I plugged the keyhole with my finger, gripped the handle tight, and stood until the air stilled, panic settling heavy around me. I took a deep breath. Was this some kind of initiation? Or – I thought, guts turning over and again – was it simply a cruel joke?
And if so … how long would she leave me here? An hour? Or all night? I felt my heartbeat quicken further as I turned back into the narrow chamber, finding a recess to my right. I took a step towards it, pawing at my pockets for a lighter with one hand (smoking still an affectation more than a habit, an excuse to lurk where the girls might be) and holding my other arm in front, pressed against the damp, creeping walls. In a ridiculous moment of vanity – pretentious, thinking myself some out-of-century bohemian – I’d bought matches, instead. I struck two out, missing the strip in the darkness, before the third caught and the room burst into a brief, warm light.
‘If this were a horror movie, you’d be about to die,’ Robin said, breath hot against my cheek.
‘You bitch,’ I said, my heart thudding, as she bent double, gulping with laughter. ‘What was that for?’ The match burned out, singeing my fingers, and we stood, again, in the dark. She clicked a switch, and a torch lit the chamber in a bright, full beam.
Seeing me again, she leaned against the wall and resumed her hysterics.
‘Sorry,’ she said, as I began to laugh too (though perhaps with relief, rather than any sense of humour about the situation). ‘I just couldn’t resist.’
‘Well, thanks a lot. That’s at least a decade taken off the end of my life.’
‘See! That’s the spirit. I did you a favour. Die young, leave a beautiful corpse, blah blah blah.’ She looked me up and down, a split-second glance that made me immediately aware of my body, filling the narrow space. ‘Come on. Follow me.’ She paused. ‘Lift’s out of order, so we’ve got to walk.’
She swung the torch around to reveal a flight of steps leading upwards, some strange language etched on the ceiling and walls in faded, white chalk. Up we went, the darkness warped and flickering behind Robin’s silhouette, distorted by the light. After two flights, the floor beneath turned from stone to wood; our footsteps echoed loud and hollow, the occasional board wobbling or creaking underfoot in warning. Robin quickly disappeared ahead, her footsteps heavy above, leaving me feeling my way in the dark. I felt my way through turns in the stone staircase, keeping my balance with the wall; lit another match and looked up to see another five or six floors, the light fleeting in the draught that blew it swiftly out.
‘Violet?’ Robin’s voice rebounded sing-song down each flight, passing me by and continuing into the darkness below.
‘Yeah?’ I shouted back, taking a moment to steady my breath.
‘Come on, fat arse. Pick up the pace a bit.’ I winced, ashamed, and duly hurried, grateful that the darkness disguised my blush.
By the time I reached the top, I was giddy and breathless, all too aware of the altitude and my own horrifying lack of balance, the stairs having lost their railings two floors earlier. There was a horrifying void in the centre of the tower, down into the darkness of what I would later realize was the old elevator shaft, a fall into which one would be unlikely to survive.
In my exhaustion I stood for a moment, listening to the hiss and scratch of rats several floors below (and, I would soon discover, the flutter of bats in the belfry above). I steadied myself against the wall – a fortunate move, as the door swung open with a crack, a rush of warm air rushing into the cool stairwell.
‘Woman, get a move on,’ Robin said, grinning. She extended a hand, and I took it, feeling unsteady with vertigo as the darkness loomed below.
I stepped forward into the wide room, struck by the brightness from within. The moon was streaming silver through the four huge, white clock faces, each of which took up the best part of every wall. I heard my own gasp echo from the walls like a dull chant; above, the bells hummed as a gust of wind brushed by.
