Imajica. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ in a sky rife with stars. As ever, Oscar took beauty where he could find it, and before setting off, halted to admire the spectacle.

      ‘Isn’t it stupendous, Giles?’

      ‘It is indeed!’ Bloxham replied. ‘It makes my head spin.’

      ‘All those worlds.’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Bloxham replied. ‘We’ll make sure it never happens.’

      Confounded by this reply, Oscar looked across at the other man to see that he wasn’t looking at the stars at all, but was still busying himself with the body. It was the thought of the coming purge he found stupendous.

      ‘That should do it,’ Bloxham said, slamming the boot and offering his hand for shaking.

      Glad that he had the shadows to conceal his distaste, Oscar shook it, and bid the boor goodnight. Very soon, he knew, he would have to choose sides, and despite the success of tonight’s endeavour, and the security he’d won with it, he was by no means sure that he belonged amongst the ranks of the purgers, even though they were certain to carry the day. But then if his place was not there, where was his place? This was a puzzlement, and he was glad he had the soothing spectacle of Midnight Mass to distract him from it.

      Twenty-five minutes later, as he climbed the steps of St Martin’s-in-the-Field, he found himself offering up a little prayer, its sentiments not so very different from those of the carols this congregation would presently be singing. He prayed that hope was somewhere out there in the city tonight, and that it might come into his heart, and scour him of his doubts and confusions; a light that would not only burn in him, but would spread throughout the Dominions, and illuminate the Imajica from one end to the other. But if such a divinity was near, he prayed that the songs had it wrong, because sweet as tales of Nativity were, time was short, and if hope was only a babe tonight then by the time it had reached redeeming age the worlds it had come to save would be dead.

CHAPTER TWELVE

      1

      Taylor Briggs had once told Judith that he measured out his life in summers. When his span came to an end, he said, it would be the summers he remembered, and counting them, count himself blessed amongst them. From the romances of his youth to the days of the last great orgies in the back rooms and bath-houses of New York and San Francisco, he could recall his career in love by sniffing the sweat from his armpits. Judith had envied him at the time. Like Gentle, she had difficulty remembering more than ten years of her past. She had no recollection of her adolescence whatsoever, nor her childhood; could not picture her parents, nor even name them. This inability to hold on to history didn’t much concern her (she knew no other), until she encountered somebody like Taylor, who took such satisfaction from memory. She hoped he still did; it was one of the few pleasures left to him.

      She’d first heard news of his sickness the previous July, from his lover Clem. Despite the fact that he and Taylor had lived the same high life together, the plague had passed Clem by, and Jude had spent several nights with him talking through the guilt he felt at what he saw as an undeserved escape. Their paths had diverged through the autumn months, however, and she was surprised to find an invitation to their Christmas party awaiting her when she got back from New York. Still feeling delicate after all that had happened, she’d rung up to decline, only to have Clem quietly tell her that Taylor was not expected to see another spring, never mind another summer. Would she not come, for his sake? She of course accepted. If any of her circle could make good times of bad it was Taylor and Clem, and she owed them both her best efforts in that endeavour. Was it perhaps because she’d had so many difficulties with the heterosexual males in her life that she relaxed in the company of men for whom her sex were not contested terrain?

      At a little after eight in the evening of Christmas Day, Clem opened the door and ushered her in, claiming a kiss beneath the sprig of mistletoe in the hallway before, as he put it, the barbarians were upon her. The house had been decorated as it might have been a century earlier, tinsel, fake snow and fairy lights forsaken in favour of evergreen, hung in such abundance around the walls and mantelpieces that the rooms were half-forested. Clem, whose youth had outrun the toll of years for so long, was not such a healthy sight. Five months before he’d looked a fleshy thirty in a flattering light. Now he looked ten years older at least, his bright welcome and flattery unable to conceal his fatigue.

      ‘You wore green,’ he said as he escorted her into the lounge. ‘I told Taylor you’d do that. Green eyes, green dress.’

      ‘Do you approve?’

      ‘Of course! We’re having a pagan Christmas this year. Dies Natalis Solis Invictus.’ ‘What’s that?’

      ‘The Birth of the Unconquered Sun,’ he said. The Light of the World. We need a little of that right now.’

      ‘Do I know many people here?’ she said, before they stepped into the hub of the party.

      ‘Everybody knows you, darling,’ he said fondly. ‘Even the people who’ve never met you.’

      There were many faces she knew awaiting them, and it took her five minutes to get across to where Taylor was sitting, lord of all he surveyed, in a well-cushioned chair close to the roaring fire. She tried not to register the shock she felt at the sight of him. He’d lost almost all of what had once been a leonine head of hair, and every spare ounce of substance from the face beneath. His eyes, which had always been his most penetrating feature (one of the many things they’d had in common), seemed enormous now, as though to devour in the time he had left the sights his demise would deny him. He opened his arms to her.

      ‘Oh, my sweet,’ he said. ‘Give me a hug. Excuse me if I don’t get up.’

      She bent and hugged him. He was skin and bone; and cold, despite the fire close by.

      ‘Has Clem got you some punch?’ he asked.

      ‘I’m on my way,’ Clem said.

      ‘Get me another vodka while you’re at it,’ Taylor said, imperious as ever.

      ‘I thought we’d agreed-’ Clem said.

      ‘I know it’s bad for me. But staying sober’s worse.’

      ‘It’s your funeral,’ Clem said, with a bluntness Jude found shocking. But he and Taylor eyed each other with a kind of adoring ferocity, and she saw in the look how Clem’s cruelty was part of their mechanism for dealing with this tragedy.

      ‘You wish,’ Taylor said. ‘I’ll have an orange juice. No, make that a Virgin Mary. Let’s be seasonal about it.’

      ‘I thought you were having a pagan celebration,’ Jude said as Clem headed away to fetch the drinks.

      ‘I don’t see why the Christians should have the Holy Mother,’ Taylor said. They don’t know what to do with her when they’ve got her. Pull up a chair, sweetie. I heard a rumour you were in foreign dimes.’

      ‘I was. But I came back at the last minute. I had some problems in New York.’

      ‘Whose heart did you break this time?’

      ‘It wasn’t that kind of problem.’

      ‘Well?’ СКАЧАТЬ