Other Worlds

Rain whirls round cloud-high buildings, splatters and spits from cracked gutters, drips from string courses, scours the red bricks of canted arches and sculptured reliefs. Escutcheons and Britannias, gryphons, twining flowers, vines, all designed in the exuberance of Victorian brick.  So confident a world, yet its foundations were already crumbling as scientific discoveries turned certainties into superstitions.

Umbrellas, lowered like shields, stabbed at my face and I staggered back into the Real World of the twentyfirst century.  Soggy newspaper slapped my ankles, chip wrappers disco-ed through the wind as cavalier as cannabis high teenagers.  Last night’s regurgitated Chinese slimed its way into gutters. 

Wet dismal London. Three hours before my train north.

Where do you go on such a day?

            Brit Mus.

            First choice the Assyrian reliefs, ancient inspiration for those nineteenth century architects.  A proclamation in tile and brick that Might is Right and the Kingdom, like its King, lasts for ever.  An exhibit in a London museum.

The riders’ curly hair, the lions’ tangled manes, the proudly prancing horses. I vanished into their universe of mighty hunters among  reed bounded rivers.

            ‘Hey Nigel.’

            Dragged back across three hundred centuries by a stranger’s voice.   Turning I recognised Glenn. 

‘What’re you doing. . .?’  ‘Thought you never left Sutton Cold. . . .’ we said together, laughing. His hand was flaccid, moist. His creased raincoat hung open, his suit collar was worn, his shirt grubby, his tie badly knotted.

‘Fifteen years?  No, sixteen since you were my best man.’ He grinned across the museum café table. ‘Too long.’

‘You’re looking well,’ I lied.

‘I’m very fit. Greyer of course.’  Had his eyes always been so sunken? So dull?

‘Older. Wiser. Aren’t we all?’

Lines guttered his thin cheeks where I remembered cheerful dimples. His jowls, rough shaven, sagged like a forlorn spaniel’s.

We compared family notes. My son now in his school second football team. His son playing rugby. Like their fathers, sporty. Like their fathers successful academically.

Glenn became brighter, more his old self.

Then I said, casually of course like someone who has put the past firmly behind him,  ‘How’s Liz?’

He collapsed like a hot air balloon on landing, exhausted, crumpled, abandoned. ‘I. . .we. . .don’t talk about my sister.’

            ‘She’s. . .?’

            ‘No, not dead.’

            ‘Sick?  I’m sorry.  So very sorry.’

            ‘Not sick.  No, not at all. Three years ago. . .’  He bit his under lip, became tight and secretive as a rusty bolt.

            I didn’t mention Liz to my wife. Merely said I’d met Glenn and he looked in a poor way.

            ‘Oh,’ she said.  She didn’t like him. Nor his sister. Obviously.

            Still I started a desultory correspondence with Glenn, not wishing to let our old friendship drift into silence again. And I was very troubled and curious about Liz.

A couple of summers later he came to Sutton Coldfield on business and took my wife and me out for dinner in our favourite restaurant.  We sat at a corner table embellished with a heavy silvered vase bearing roses among grey eucalyptus leaves. At first he seemed as dour as before, but he brightened up after a couple of glasses of wine. Occasionally he turned his face away from us not realising I could see his reflection in the restaurant mirror.  He looked stricken.

            Suddenly he glanced towards the mirror and saw me watching.  He leant across the table, grabbed my hand. ‘Seven years bad luck!’

            Puzzled, I pulled away.

            My wife said uneasily, ‘Broken mirrors?’

            He nodded, still staring into my eyes with manic intensity. I was mesmerised. I shivered, ‘Glenn, you’re not well. You should. . . .’

            He grabbed the vase and hurled it into the mirror.

            The restaurant buzz stopped dead as he picked up a shard of glass.  ‘Look in that.’ It trembled in his hand, there, in front of my face, my throat.  ‘If you dare.’

            I pulled my wife behind me as two waiters grabbed him.

            Of course I settled up on his behalf, poor guy. And I haven’t been back there since.  I rang his wife a few times.  She wasn’t forthcoming.  Mumbled on about broken mirrors and bad luck. ‘Just superstition,’ I reminded her. ‘Don’t get hung up on it.’  Because crazy obsessions rub off on people when they live with a guy whose mind is locked into another reality. 

Two more years passed and Glenn invited me to visit. I was a bit reluctant after the last episode, though I hadn’t heard anything untoward so I guessed the doctors kept him well drugged up. Besides, I needed to know about Liz. Madness? Accident causing terrible disfigurement to that lovely body?

His home was in one of those tall thin terrace houses with upstairs living rooms, underground kitchens and mountainous stairs. Built for the aspiring middle classes and now far out of the reach of anyone except millionaires. He’d lived there all his working life, seen the district gentrify, prices rise, the newly rich move in. 

            His wife opened the door into a hallway lit by an ugly low watt energy saving bulb. We hadn’t met since their wedding and I was appalled by the change from sparkling bride to nondescript person with badly cut hair.  Even so, her clothes were smart and expensive, like a well-paid housekeeper’s. Her eyes never met mine. Shifty, I thought, and then, no, shy, fearful.

            ‘It’s quiet here now the nest’s empty,’ she complained as she took my coat.

            ‘I know what you mean. My lad’s at Hull University.’  But our house still felt like a home.

            Her hesitant smile encouraged me.  ‘How’s Liz these days?’

            She startled like a rabbit in car headlights. ‘No, no. Please Nigel.  Don’t ever mention her.  It sends him. . .’  She grabbed my sleeve and whispered, ‘It crazes him.’

            ‘Is she in hospital?’ I whispered back, putting a comforting hand on hers.

            ‘Of course not.  She’s here. Here. And he can’t bear to see her like that.’

            I felt her trembling increase, but she withdrew her hand and climbed softly up a flight of stairs with worn carpeting. Had I known what would ensue I would have fled the house, but I followed, nervously desiring yet fearing to meet Liz again.

She opened the living room door and said with a vain attempt at brightness, ‘He’s come, dear. I’ll bring tea up straight away. Just as you like it,’ and she hurried back downstairs.

The tall room extended the width of the house and windows at both front and back were double glazed so the constant traffic was reduced to a soothing hum. The proportions were pleasing but the place smelt unaired and stuffy.

            Glenn sat alone at a roll top desk.  He pushed something into one of its pigeon holes as he stood to greet me.  His hand was firm.

            ‘You’re looking well,’ I said, pleased I didn’t need to lie this time. He’d lost that cadaverous look, cheeks filled out, eyes more alert, grooves beside his mouth shallower.

            ‘While you’re looking older.’   He indicated a chintzy easy chair. Her choice of material, not his, I guessed.  Old, worn, comfortable.

            ‘I’m fine.  Very fit.’ But my knees shook as I sat down. Something in his eyes, the way he stood over me.

            His wife tapped at the door and placed a laden tray on a low mahogany table, panting a little after her climb from the kitchen basement.  Then she trotted away and the door slammed behind her.

            ‘If I’ve told her once. . .’ Glenn grumbled.

            He poured tea in both cups, forgot to pass one to me. Instead he strode over to one of several glass fronted bookcases and pulled out an ancient book, handing it to me. The leather was shabby and rough from use.  It opened easily at one section where the delicate pages were grubby from sweaty fingers.

            ‘That’s the page,’ Glenn said, eyes sparkling.  ‘Strange that it should open at the right place.  As if it was expecting you.’

            ‘As if it had often been opened just here,’ I corrected him.  Books expecting people indeed!  I read the heading with amusement. ‘Looking Glass Incantations!  What on earth’s this rubbish?’

            ‘Read it.’ He was eager as a boy who’s just unearthed instructions on building one’s own space rocket.

            Utter mumbo jumbo. I said as politely as possible, ‘It doesn’t make sense, Glenn.  Old superstitions, magic charms against malice of witches.’

            He came behind me and I looked up nervously but not yet fully alarmed.

            ‘Not that page.’  He bent over me, turning the flimsy leaves. ‘Read that.’

            ‘To Enter Looking Glass, first break it.  . . . . Really Glenn!  Alice is a fable.’

            ‘Read the fly leaf.’

            ‘Ex Libris. Charles Lutwidge Dodson.1858.’

            ‘He knew.’  He knelt down by my chair and stared hypnotically into my eyes as he had done in the restaurant two years ago. ‘What if I tell you it works?’

            ‘Come on!’

            ‘Liz broke the glass.  Looked into it.  Entered its world.’

            I muttered, ‘Garn.’

            Jumping up so hastily that he knocked the table, spilling our cold tea, he reopened the desk and reached into its pigeon hole.  Hiding some item in his hands he returned to me.

            He ordered, ‘Read “Return from Looking Glass.”’

            ‘After seven years. . .’ I paused, counting in my head,  ‘. . . return may be accomplished in the following manner.  Crush mandrake picked at midnight under full moon. . .’

            ‘Yes, it’s full moon tonight.  I can’t manage alone.  You’re the only person I can trust. Together we’ll bring her back.’

            I stood up. ‘No Glenn.  It’s crazy.’  I backed towards the door.

He opened his hands.  A shard of broken mirror.  ‘She’s here. Every day begging me to free her.  I can’t hear her but I see her tears.’ His voice threatened,  ‘You will help me, Nigel.’

            The splinter was close to my face, my throat.

            I swallowed, saying calmly as possible, ‘Let me see her.’

            I sighed my relief as he handed me the fragment.

I stared into it.

A piece of ancient mirror, spotted with age. A clouded image. Myself?  Or a woman weeping?