Arcanum

 

A post-midnight pall lay heavy on Shaftesbury Avenue as the curfew tightened its grip upon London, until the only living creatures that moved below were rats embarking on private missions of their own.

 

The roof of the abandoned Apollo Theatre provided a sweet and private venue for soliloquising, V mused, and it was only a tragedy – he nodded gently to acknowledge the irony inherent - that Chancellor Sutler’s perpetual dimness of view had turned, in time, to Thalia’s hallowed art.  In his time and in some less restrictive existence, he would have stridden and strutted like a peacock across such stages, to be sure.

 

V draped one insouciant leg over the very edge of the parapet and raised black eyes to the sky, readying himself before the shrouding clouds, they being the only audience he would have to enlighten tonight, and in whispered words at that.  No matter.  Some words, some erudition, did not need the least part of volume or insistence to carry across a space or to move a heart and mind.  Drawing a dagger from his belt, he gestured with comic hauteur at the sky, at the panorama of the watchful city, and declaimed in the softest of voices.

 

“I am he whom you sold and dishonoured.  I am he whose betrothed you prostituted. I am he upon whom you trampled that you might raise yourself to fortune.”  Leaping to his feet now, V straddled the very edge, his toes resting upon empty air and his chest outthrust.  Almost without volition, the dagger described a complex rune in the air before him.  He swept his cloak across his shoulder, fully absorbed in shades of vengeance.

 

A spontaneous grand jeté took him across the flat roof to land in a flamboyant two-footed skid, the cool autumn wind stirring his wig and snatching at his cloak.  He sheathed the dagger, tossed his head defiantly at the whole of the world and continued.

 

“I am he whose father you condemned to die of hunger.  I am he whom you also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven.  I am…”

 

Speech faltered and died as V swung around, as sharp and silent as a witch’s familiar, in response to the scrape of wood behind him.  Long-gestated reflex would have had him carry out one of two reactions; either attack or flee, either without pause for analysis, and thus it was only sheer force of surprise that held him in check long enough to study the one who had been the source of this interruption.

 

The door to the attic was ajar, and in that shaded gap, an eye and a section of face gazed owlishly at him.  Fingerman?  No.  Not even a man of any kind.  A soft round cheek belied the stranger’s sex and, even if it hadn’t, the voice would have been irrevocable proof – a high and girlish voice, ever so faintly at odds with a mature woman’s form despite its broken-glass East End intonation.

 

“You’re an actor?” she said, only the tiniest lift at the end of that sentence betraying it in any way to be intended as a question at all.  Realising that curiosity could safely supplant caution, at least for the time being, V swept his hat from his head and bowed, drawing an elaborate, descending sine wave with one arm whilst the other remained behind his back.

 

“Mademoiselle,” he fluted, behaving with nothing less proper than perfect propriety and gentlemanly manner in the presence of a lady. “I must beg your pardon if my meagre rehearsal has distracted you from some task or other.  May I introduce myself, for my name is Edmond Dantès.”

 

The door squealed as it was pushed open further still, and the woman stepped out into the soft yellow lights of the West End skyline.  She was somewhere around thirty, clad in a Romany ragtag of ill-matched clothing, her auburn hair unbound and winding around her neck and shoulders.

 

“No it ain’t,” she remarked, offhand, a small smile dimpling her cheek. “Might I suggest, mate, that if you’re gonna ponce about under a fake name, you make one up yerself?”  The woman’s words chided, but her manner belied them, and implied only gentle amusement with the situation.  V decided that whatever else he might have to treat with restraint; he would at least not have to practice any duplicity with this woman.  In fact, he was quickly beginning to suspect that it might be fruitless to try.

 

“I regret my clumsy attempt at obfuscation, mademoiselle; it was not intended to cause insult.  My name is V, and might I inquire as to your good self?”  The woman gave the slightest of laughs through parted lips, and curtseyed with a trace of affectation.

 

“I’m Cleo.  Charmed, I’m sure….V.” she replied, one eyebrow flicking.  “Well,” she continued, “since I’m stuck ‘ere for the night, bein’ out past curfew an’ all, would you like to come inside for a bit?  I could do with some company, if you must know.”

 

Without waiting for either agreement or refusal, Cleo swept back through the door and down the stairs to the attic.  At a momentary loss, for the first time in many years, V supposed he had little to do but follow her.

 

The attic was bare of anything much, having been stripped during a fairly random purge of objectionable material.  Scripts, scenery, props, all looted and burned by Norsefire’s latter-day Philistine legions.

 

“You’d think so, wouldn’tcha,” Cleo replied, when V commented upon this, “but those wankers spent just one day in ‘ere.  I worked in this theatre for three years.  No contest,” she laughed pleasantly, and probed a finger into a cracked hole in the plaster of the nearest wall.  Some antique mechanism reacted, and the wall swung outward at one section.

 

“See,” Cleo continued, ducking under the door and lighting a small battery lamp, “nobody’s gonna notice that the attic’s seven or eight feet narrower than the rest of this fleapit, not unless they’re lookin’ for it.  And who’d look for it?  So ‘ere we are,” she finished, “my little paradise.  Whatcha think?”

 

V took in a long breath, even through the mustiness of the air, which he scarcely heeded anyway.  The recess was indeed narrow, but lengthy, and to the eye of one such as himself, ever eager to fill the gaps in his dramatis persona, what little he saw in the lamp’s circle of light was enough to set his blood thumping.  Here on the floor, a box of playbills and scripts; his passing eye picked out “Coriolanus” and “Much Ado About Nothing”.  There an unpainted hat stand, hung with the chapeaus of authority in gilded aluminium and bright glass jewels.  He caught sight of an ass’s head; what else, but for Bottom to wear during his seduction by the fair, bewitched Titania?

 

“You concealed all of this yourself?” V asked, his gaze still roaming around the cluttered crawlspace.  Cleo nodded curtly.  “Yep.  I could see what was coming, even if nobody else could.  Took me nearly eight months to shift all this up ‘ere, bit by bit, and I ‘ad to nick quite a lot from a few other theatres as well.  Then they came through ‘ere like a dose o’ salts and shut the whole place up for good.”

 

V stepped aside as Cleo turned and stepped out into the attic proper, and followed her out as she pushed the artfully concealed door closed once more.  Turning the lamp up a notch, she set it down on a nearby table and pulled out the two chairs that stood on either side.  “Sit yourself down, mate.  I’ll get us a brew,” she told him, and reached under the table for a second for a flask and one single cup.  Fascinated by her unstudied acceptance of this peculiar situation, V seated himself and cocked his head at her as she proffered him a cup of black tea.

 

“I am afraid that I do not drink…tea,” he said, levelly.  Cleo let out a short laugh.

 

“You’re quite a one for the literary references, Mister V, I must say.  That’s bloody rare these days in a world full o’ thick ‘eaded book-burners.  Here’s mud in your eye,” she added, sipping from the cup herself and taking space in the other chair.  “By the way, what’s with the Guy Fawkes get-up?”

 

The question had come hurtling out of nowhere, and V had to pause to reel himself in a little.  Remembering his earlier suspicion that most of everything in the world was the height of transparency to this woman, he opted for a foreshortened version of the literal truth.

 

“There was a fire; it was a long time ago, but as you know, reconstructive surgery is very much a thing of the distant past in this brave new world where vanity is a vice instead of the vestige of a virtue, and so,” he passed a gloved hand over his mask to illustrate the point, “one does the best one can with the tools available.”  Cleo angled her head, her face forming a decent picture not of sympathy but rather of some unidentifiable empathy, and then smiled once more to break the stillness between them.

 

“Well, V, what a pair we make,” she commented, apropos of nothing much.  “There’s not much you can do now that won’t get you on the wrong side of the fuzz, except perhaps breathing in an’ out, and even then, who the fuck knows ‘ow long for?  Take me, for example,” she said, extracting enough time, during a pause, to refill her teacup and pull out a packet of cigarettes, “Mortal sin of bloody witchcraft!”

 

“Witchcraft?” V repeated, intrigued.  The word had an echo of archaism that delighted his tongue.  “I must say, dear Cleo, that when I set out, I hadn’t anticipated anything as novel as a rendezvous with a witch!”  Cleo’s brows dipped, her eyes gleaming rabbit-bright for a moment in the lamplight.

 

“Are you takin’ the piss?” she asked.  V declined his head in apology.  “Not at all, my lady,” he spoke up, “but the vaudevillian mummer in my blood and bone must perforce make some light of every other eventuality.  I meant no offence.”  He watched Cleo settle down again and light her cigarette with a paper match, sending a spiral of smoke into the darkness beyond their circle.

 

“They call it witchcraft.  Load o’ rubbish, really, I wouldn’t be caught dead prancing about in the nuddy like that.  But I read cards for people.  I’ve done it since I was a kid, long before it ended up illegal thanks to Adam bloody Sutler and ‘is band o’ Christian soldiers,” she added, these last few words marinated in a thick glue of sarcasm.

 

“Tarot cards,” said V, nodding.  “I possess one or two decks of my own.  They are contraband, of course, but as you have so sagely observed, there remains little these days that isn’t.”  He shifted, and brought his ever-smiling visage a little further into the light.  “It is a curiosity, is it not, that the Sibylline arts only find truly fertile ground where there is a field of either complete authority or complete discord to sow them in?”

 

“How’d you say?” she inquired.

 

“I merely imply, Cleo, that your craft represents, if you will pardon the execrable pun, a comfortable medium between the polar extremes of chaos and harrowed order.  In times of dire uncertainty, divination provides us with the assumption of control over our destinies.  In times of rigid authoritarian certainty, such as these, it adds a light seasoning of mystery to our daily lives.”

 

A silken silence fell over the windowless attic for a while, as Cleo’s cigarette grew shorter and the air around them thicker for it, and they both raised their heads just once, like startled deer, as a police siren droned past in the road outside and faded away somewhere to the south.  After a time, Cleo spat carelessly on the end of her cigarette and flicked it into an obscure corner.  She turned back and fixed V with a penetrating stare, almost as if he were unmasked before her.

 

“I meant to ask.  How’d you get up ‘ere anyway?  I’ve been in the theatre since midday, and there’s only one way in and out these days.”

 

By way of reply, V hitched aside his cloak and lifted up the thin, coiled rope at his hip, displaying the folding grapnel secured at the end of it.  Cleo smirked.  “Now that’d be a sight worth seein’.  What are you - Batman?”

 

“A darker knight even than he,” was the gnomic reply, but Cleo seemed satisfied enough with it.

 

Reaching under the table once more, she pulled out a small wooden box and placed it on the table between them.  “Bear with me, will ya?” was her only comment, as she flipped it open and took out a well-used pack of Tarot cards.  The backs were black, with some curlicued sigil in a white centre circle.  With a deftness born of long practice, Cleo flicked thirteen cards across the table one by one, forming a cryptic pattern that, while it resembled the Celtic cross, was at best a distant relative of the same.

 

“What is this?” asked V, eventually, as Cleo paused, one fingernail tap-tapping on the back of the card nearest to herself.

 

“If you’re looking for a big grand answer, matey boy, you’re outta luck,” she said, that wry grin surfacing again.  “I told you, right now I’m bored and I’m curious, not a very good combination for you to find me in, so I’m sorry about that.”

 

“Heavens above, no apology is required, my lady, but I fear you may find that I will be your one unfortunate failure in the sight of but we two.” V said, with every good humour shading his voice.  All that this elicited from his companion was a knowing glance, and then she overturned the cards, one by one by one and without comment on any one of them.

 

The Five of Swords.  Justice.  The Tower.  The Magician.  The Hierophant.  The Hermit.  The Devil.  The Four of Swords.  The High Priestess.  The Emperor.  The Hanged Man.  The Chariot.  Death.

 

Cleo half-turned away from the revealed cards, then back again, her eyes slitted.  Lighting up another cigarette, she dropped her chin into her palm and regarded V very, very carefully across the space between them, almost as a psychiatric nurse might regard a patient on the edge of hazardous distress and breakdown.

 

“Is something amiss?” he asked, despite not really needing to.  Without lifting her head, she wedged the cigarette into the corner of her mouth and said, “You could say that, yeah.  This isn’t a reading, it’s a complete and utter balls-up.  None of it makes the slightest bit o’ sense, but…” she paused, battling for the right words to put shape around her firing instincts, “…it’s still a story of sorts.  A logical progression.  Know what I mean?”

 

“I believe I do.”, V responded in a velvety tone. “There are no coincidences in this life, and no defeating our allotted pattern.  Why should I scoff at your revelations?  They are as good as anyone else’s prediction of what lies ahead, whether that prediction is the product of a deck of cards, a crystal ball, a seemingly prophetic dream or, as it is in the most case, simply a ‘hunch’”

 

“I want to check something.  Are you just humouring me here?” asked Cleo, her face a mask of polite query.  V shook his head, smiling behind the mask even though this was invisible.  “Good,” she continued, “because if you think I’m barking, I’d like to remind you that only one of us shins up the side of dodgy old theatres to quote “The Count of Monte Cristo” on the bleedin’ roof in the middle of the night, and it ain’t me.”

 

Once again, V saw the overlay of the woman, and that mismatch between her words and the twinkle in her eye.  It was something he saw only rarely – he only rarely saw other human beings, in any case – and it was something he had no facility for himself, behind a sterile mask.  He had learned to carry his communications upon the back of word and verse and gesture, much in the manner of a Noh performer, whereas Cleo could, it seemed, speak quite eloquently with one single lift of the brow.

 

“Do you not have anyone who would be concerned for your safety at this late hour?” he put forth, tilting his head.  Cleo gave the slightest shake of her head in response.  “Nope.  I’ve got a big sister, if that’s what yer after, but she’s a bloody Bible-basher and she wouldn’t give a toss if I got black-bagged tomorrow.  I ‘aven’t spoken to her in ages.  Our mum and dad died a long time ago, before all this crap got started.”

 

“My sympathies are yours, Cleo,”

 

“Thanks.  It was a coach crash.  They were on their way home from the seaside.  At least they went out together and never saw ‘ow it all worked out in this country.  My mum would turn in her grave, she would.  They’re both down in Manor Park, but I ‘aven’t been able to get back there in a long time.  You know how it is round there now.  Not worth the risk, eh?”

 

“Indeed not.  Gravestones belong only to this earth, and they are at best a welcoming from one resident to another.  To put the security of the living in jeopardy for the memorials of the dead would be folly of all sorts.”

 

Cleo scraped up the cards on the table, delivering them back to their box and snapping it closed.  Her mouth formed a thin line as she stowed it away in her cloth bag and then, finishing up her tea, she stood and cocked her head over her shoulder.

 

“Want to ‘ave a look downstairs?” she asked.

 

Reaching the auditorium involved negotiating well-matured staircases that sighed with incipient dry rot, and thick red carpet that had melted away to the boards in places.  Even the lamp, which Cleo held low enough to illuminate the way ahead, was of uncertain assistance.  Passing the dressing rooms, she stumbled, and V caught her by the hand to steady her.  They remained for a second, his glove against her skin, and then she smiled in thanks, moving off again down a passage decorated with gritty, abandoned spider webs.

 

The passage ended in the wings, and V, with a splash of amazement, looked out across a stage lit by fat, flat candles bobbing in a low trough of water.  “Footlights?” he said, stepping forward out of the wings to examine them at closer quarters. “I never dreamed that anyone still remembered these, let alone employed them.”

 

“You can’t ‘ave theatre without footlights, V.  Wherever would we be if we forgot that?”

 

“You…perform?  Here?”

 

“Sometimes.  Only sometimes,” she said, from behind his shoulder.  “Just so there’s still a tribute.  I don’t think I’m tellin’ you anythin’ you don’t know.”

 

The footlights were not all.  At some point, and goodness alone knew how long it had taken to assemble the multitude, the orchestra pit had been filled with thousands of silk flowers.  No particular attempt had been made to combine particular colours, or to arrange them just so, or even to find attractive receptacles for them; many were placed in steel buckets and, in one case, wedged in the top of a yellow traffic cone that had been hacked off for the purpose.  Nevertheless, V was flooded with admiration for the showmanship of it all.

 

Crossing to the middle of the stage, he turned to take in the sight of the auditorium, and backed off in wonder.  It was not a full house, by any means, and he imagined that Cleo had done what she could, but like himself, it was clear that she, like he, understood that a performance without an audience was a criminal waste of breath.

 

Here and there, in pairs or threes, shop dummies occupied the seating.  Not all of them were clothed, and those that were had a certain individuality that hinted at the use of whatever garments had been to hand at the time; he even spied one clad in a black plastic sack.  Most lacked wigs, although here and there, Cleo had compensated for this deficiency by supplying the others with spectacles.  Conventional ones, for the most part, although – and here he stepped back, a fine, loud laugh escaping him – one dummy in the very front row wore a pair of joke-shop spectacles with a bulbous red nose, black moustache and bulging eyes.  The fact that this particular dummy was a female one only added a freshly-whetted edge to his laughter.

 

“Wonderful!  This is all wonderful!” he cried, pacing back to the wings and taking Cleo’s hands in his, his actions driven my mad, adolescent impulse.  “It’s been so long,” he sighed, “so long since I found any place that so completely aroused my senses.  Should we favour this house with a brief human performance, you and I?”  Cleo moved closer, tilting her head up to his, and though he knew that this was all theatrics, he admired her sense of artistry nonetheless.

 

“What’ll it be?”

 

“What else,” he said in return, “but Romeo and Juliet?”  This said, V drew Cleo out across the stage, and grasped her hands with passion.

 

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”  Cleo blushed – he swore that she did – and continued.

 

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this, for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

 

The absurdity of the battered plastic audience was lost now, if indeed it had ever existed in the first place.

 

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?” declared V.

 

“Aye, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

 

“O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray.  Grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

 

“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

 

“Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.” V whispered, and bent, pressing the cold, smooth mouth of his mask to Cleo’s warm and velvet lips.  He heard a tiny gasp of surprise, but then nothing more; until he released her hands and stepped back, a little wary now, guarding against her reaction.  Her eyes opened again, after a short second that seemed much longer, and she focused on him.

 

“Er,” she began, then swallowed deeply and tried to speak further, “that was supposed to ‘appen, wasn’t it?” she asked for his confirmation, as gingerly as someone picking their way around a minefield.  V turned to the audience momentarily, and then back, concurring.

 

“It was, but nonetheless, I am apologetic.  I presumed too far, and must seek your forgiveness for my impetuous act.”  Cleo shrugged, “Nah,” she put forth.  “I don’t reckon you ‘ave to do that, and for a few reasons.  One, you’ve apologised to me a few times tonight, an’ you need a break for this.  Two, it was just a part o’ the play.  Three, I didn’t mind.  In a mask you might be, but it’s been a long time since I kissed anyone.”

 

The silent auditorium was, suddenly, too much to bear.  V spread his arms dramatically, and then clapped, filling the space between them with applause.

 

“Then let me congratulate you, my lady,” he declaimed, “on a performance worthy of splendid note.  An impromptu but, nevertheless, magical rendition, upon which the Bard himself would have passed fair praise.”

 

“Cheers yourself, Romeo,” she countered, and then hesitated.  V sensed that she would have been avoiding his gaze if she were a much weaker woman, but that coyness of that nature didn’t become her before now and would not come to her aid here either.  She framed her mouth and said, “So, what is your real name?”

 

“Would you believe the simple truth; that I cannot tell you that because I do not know for myself?”

 

The pause that greeted this query was occupied by a distant flickering as some small bird or, possibly, a bat took momentary flight in the caverns of the ceiling.

 

“I s’pose I would, after tonight.  I tell you, V, I’ve seen some funny things in me time, but in the last couple of hours I’ve found out that normality is whatcha make of it, and I don’t reckon I’ll ever meet anyone as normal as you ever again, not in this world.”

 

Taking Cleo’s arm and linking it with his, V escorted her back into the wings and, together, they returned to the roof.  Chivalry urged him to swathe her in a fold of his cloak as an unexpectedly cold breeze assaulted them, and to his gratitude, she accepted the gesture without comment.  Close against one another, they examined the city beneath them, and spoke without taking their eyes from it.

 

“Where will you go?” she asked the air.

 

“In my time, I shall go everywhere,” was the tender reply.

 

“Will I ever see you again?”

 

“Do not doubt it,” came that gentle voice once more.

 

“Do you have to leave now?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Cleo closed her eyes as the warm cloak slipped from around her, kept them closed as a smooth leather glove was pressed once against her cheek, and only reacted once more at the clank of steel on stone and a strident flap of cloth in the wind.  She blinked, stepped to the parapet and looked down but, given the realisation of how he moved like the shadow of a cat, she was not at all surprised to see no trace of him.

 

As she drifted back through the door to the attic, she felt a tear collect in the corner of one eye, but she blinked it back.  He didn’t deserve that.  She remembered the cards, and their insistent prophecy.  She remembered his assurance of return.  And now, fitting the two together, she understood that her world, with all its horrors both great and petty, was about to be ripped asunder.

 

“See you around, V,” she whispered and, smiling beatifically, closed the door.

 

The End

 

Main Page