Toxine
He arrived early, knocking with inescapable persistence. I had been making breakfast in the kitchen behind the shop. Leaving Toxine staring uninterestedly at an array of toast and marmalade, and thinking I had but an intransigent milkman to attend to, I opened the door to a man-shape of monumental corpulence who filled the jambs with his bulk. The endomorph, oozing sweat from beneath his crombie, despite the sleet that rained upon his head, apologized for the disturbance. His bearing was dandified, correct; but there was something of the schoolboy about him, something stickily adolescent, that signified a threatening lubriciousness. ‘My daughter, Tina, I believe she works here?’
My shock-tightened vocal cords allowed only a choked negative; I would have to dissemble skilfully, or I would have to kill him.
‘May I come in? It’s rather wet . . .’ He affected a lisp. Inspecting the curios and bric-à-brac—all my father had sold during his declining years—as if, I thought, for clues, he waited patiently for my move; but I had had no time to deploy an adequate defence.
‘She’s gone,’ I ventured, ‘to Bournemouth.’
‘Bournemouth? Not her sort of place.’
‘I know she ran away from home. I used to tell her to write. She was here just three months. She left in September.’ He said nothing. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Those friends she had—in that squat.’ She had no friends, I wanted to say, except me. ‘They said she lived here.’
‘That’s right. She had a room upstairs. It was part of our agreement.’ He stared at me, long and unblinking, his Tweedledum looks infused with inquisitorial menace.
‘Was it an agreeable agreement?’ Your suspicions are misplaced, fat boy, I thought; I don’t much like human girls. And who are you to pontificate? Daddy Reaver, robber of maidenheads? Though half paralysed with dread, I began to prickle with rancour.
‘There was no small print.’
‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘desire!’ He loosened his coat and passed his hand over a Gallé vase, a Tiffany lamp and a Siamese Buddha: the only things of value in the shop. He picked up the Buddha. ‘Is this for sale?’
‘Everything’s for sale.’
He caressed the bronze and smiled. ‘There is but one thing more desirable than desire itself and that is the release from desire.’ What a clever boy he was; what a precious Bunter. He sat down upon an Empire-style chaise-longue, juggling the Lord of Compassion from hand to hand. ‘How much for the little yellow idol? No, don’t tell me; for the tourists, I suppose? But information about my daughter: is that for sale?’ He knew the value of nothing. ‘For pretty lady, many rupee.’
‘Everything is for sale,’ I said curtly, ‘except her.’
‘What’s this? A lovesick harlequin? A booby boy?’ His composure fractured. ‘Good God, she’s just a little girl. I went to the police. They said they couldn’t do anything. Over eighteen. Eighteen! She’s just a child, a little girl . . .’ He frowned. ‘If you’ve so much as—’
‘Desire,’ I said, ‘what do you know of desire?’
‘What do you know,’ he sneered, ‘of its consequences? The lake of blood. The pit. The spike. Me.’
‘I’m sorry—I’ve a lot to do.’ In the back room a kettle was howling like a banshee. He didn’t move. I looked for a weapon. The rings on his fingers—too many rings for a man—sparkled malignantly; his blubbery lips glistened with spit. I was dazzled. ‘Breakfast—I must have breakfast and open shop.’
‘Desire kills love,’ he said, looking at the floor, his face twisted; then he seemed to refit himself, once more the worldly courtier. ‘I digress. Forgive me. I have been under strain. I don’t mind her having boyfriends. But she needs looking after. Her legs . . . People can be so cruel. Please, why don’t you help?’
‘But I have helped. Helped her on her journey. To a better world than this.’
‘You are oblique. You are an oblique man. Your manner is oblique. Where is Tina? Tell me, please.’ His voice played forward, then back, then forward, plaything of a tape deck possessed: Tina, oblique, where, tell me, your manner, her legs, so cruel, oblique, Tina, where, where is, tell me, please, tell me, tell me. I stifled a hysterical laugh, my mind shouting at him: Oh but she’s changed! So different from when you last saw her! Matured! A princess! A real lady!
But ‘Bournemouth’ is all I said. ‘She’s gone to Bournemouth.’ Something pierced his hide and he collapsed.
‘I suspect,’ he said sulking, ‘that you are sincere.’ He replaced the Buddha, rose and moved to the door. I had survived. I came up for air. The enemy was moving on. ‘Daughters,’ he said blackly before he left, ‘don’t have daughters. Things of darkness and deceit. They seem so innocent, but I tell you they’re slink, pieces of slink . . .’
I suggested he contact the Salvation Army, check the hospitals, place an ad. I had triumphed. I resisted a smile and wished the swine luck. But even as, routed, he passed into the street, destiny outflanked me. The whirr of servos, the burr of gears, arrested him in mid-stride, and his head whiplashed to where the at once recognizable signature of porcelain feet upon floorboards emanated: the back room, hidden by a curtain partition; the room of dark secrets.
‘O you bloody, bloody man,’ he cried, ‘she’s here!’ He ran and tore aside the veil, then stepped back as the mystery in all her awful splendour smote him: Toxine, undead, immortal white goddess, clockwork madonna, glorious and pneumatic, was revealed. I took her in my arms as she fell.
‘Out of the way.’ Astonishment had taught him obedience and he retreated into the shop. How had she stirred? I laid her upon the chaise-longue, simultaneously running a hand beneath her clothes, flooding her veins with sleep. I closed her eyes.
