The Heirloom Page 14

  ‘I’ll tell you about that chair…’ said Sam Jessop. ‘Before I bought that chair I used to be a man of nothing more than moderate means. We lived in Leucadia in those days, in a beach house that wasn’t worth more than three or four hundred thousand. I liked to collect fine things, though… always did… always had good taste for fine things…’

  ‘I used to know the man who owned the chair before you,’ put in David. ‘He was an English banker, wasn’t he? A man called Williams.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Sam Jessop nodded. ‘I met him at an auction at Sotheby’s, in London, and we went for a bottle of wine afterwards, and talked furniture. I always liked good furniture. My daddy was a cabinet-maker, and his father before him was a cabinet-maker. I guess I was only rebelling when I went into aeronautics, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t. But it’s kind of late to worry about that now.’

  ‘Did Williams offer you the chair?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, he did. He said I could buy it for two thousand pounds.’

  ‘That wasn’t too much, considering its history.’

  ‘It depends whether you think its history is a good history or a bad history.’

  ‘What do you think it is?’ David asked him.

  Old man Jessop shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘There are those who can handle the forces, and those who can’t. But even for those who can, there’s usually a price to pay.’

  ‘You’re being very unspecific,’ I said. I was growing impatient. ‘When you talk about forces, what forces exactly do you mean? Is there any way of controlling them?’

  Sam Jessop sniffed, a dry thump in the back of his nasal cavity. ‘Boy,’ he told me, raising one bony finger for emphasis, but still clutching on to the arm of his chair. ‘Boy, do you think for one moment that a human being, no matter how strong, could have shoved a stopper into Mount St Helen’s?’

  ‘So the forces are pretty powerful. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Pretty powerful? You just think of that one volcano! And then you think of all the power that the Devil can muster, which is a hundred hundred times more devastating. That chair you’re talking about… that chair that’s worrying you so much… that chair is the throne of this world’s aggregated wrongfulness! Do you understand what I mean, Mr Delatolla? The force which that chair was designed and built to raise up out of the darkest reaches of the universe – the force which that chair can summon into being, is cataclysmic! And horrifying, too, beyond belief!’

  I leaned forward. ‘Do you really mean the chair can raise the Devil? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  Sam Jessop cupped his hand over his ear. ‘I can’t hear you. What did you say? Devil?’

  ‘You said Devil!’ I shouted. ‘Do you really mean Satan? That chair can raise Satan?’

  The old man sat back. ‘Oh, come on now. Satan! You young people don’t even know what the world is all about. When I say Devil, I don’t mean a fellow with horns and a tail and a toasting-fork. That kind of imagery – that’s for scaring children into eating their cream-of-wheat. When I say Devil… I mean the psychic epicentre of all those cold, negative, hostile, and malevolent influences which exist in our universe. The Devil, if you want to describe exactly what He is, is like a Black Hole, only He’s moral and spiritual as well as physical. As you approach Him… you are drawn into Him by total gravity, total attraction, and there isn’t any means of escape.’

  ‘He hasn’t attracted me yet,’ I said. ‘Not physically, not any way at all.’

  Sam Jessop wiped spittle from his lips with a large handkerchief. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re probably a contented man. Difficult to tempt. But I might as well tell you that if you continue to keep that chair around, it will get you in the end. One day, you’ll want something from it, and then it’ll get you.’

  ‘Did it get you?’ I asked him.

  He looked away. The firelight sparkled in his eyes, giving him a spurious appearance of brightness and life.

  ‘I’m a very sick man, Mr Delatolla,’ he said. ‘I’ve had my share of the Devil’s bounty.’

  Mrs Jessop stood up. ‘I think you gentlemen have asked my husband enough, thank you.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘I have to know some details.’

  ‘Details?’ asked old man Jessop. ‘The details are even more sordid than the grand design.’

  ‘Don’t tire yourself any more, Sam,’ Mrs Jessop pleaded.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘If Mr Delatolla wants details, I can give him details. If Mr Delatolla doesn’t mind frightening absurdities, and things that might attack him in the night… then, who am I to say that he shouldn’t be introduced to them?’

  While Mrs Jessop watched me unforgivingly, I asked Sam Jessop, ‘Tell me something – when you first bought the chair from Mr Sears’s friend – how did you get it away from him?’

  Sam Jessop frowned. ‘By van, if I remember, and then by steamer.’

  ‘You didn’t have any trouble with it? It didn’t try to go back to Mr Williams by itself?’

  He shook his head.

  I turned to David. ‘I thought you said there had to be some kind of runic transaction. Some special ritual of sale.’

  ‘That’s only what I heard,’ said David.

  Sam Jessop said carefully, ‘You’re partly correct. If you’re going to pass the chair on to somebody else… then certain conditions have to be fulfilled.’

  ‘Like what? What conditions? Please, I have to know.’

  ‘Sam,’ said Mrs Jessop, in a warning voice.

  Sam Jessop looked uncomfortable. ‘Well…’ he said, turning his head this way and that, ‘they vary… the conditions vary…’

  ‘How do they vary? I mean, how did you manage to pass the chair on to Henry Grant, and then on to me? What did you actually do? Specifically?’

  Mrs Jessop said coldly, ‘He can’t tell you.’

  ‘Can’t he speak for himself?’ I retorted.

  ‘He’s a sick man. He has acute glomureonephritis. He has to rest, and keep warm, and avoid unnecessary excitement.’

  ‘Mrs Jessop, I’m quite aware of that,’ I said, controlling myself as tightly as I could. ‘But my son is lying in a coma that could be fatal, and unless I know how to get rid of that damned chair, he’s probably going to die. He’s six years old! Six! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

  Mrs Jessop pursed her lips. ‘I’m sorry about your son,’ she said, very quietly. ‘If I thought that Sam could help you, then I would gladly let him speak. But when he told you that the conditions of sale always vary, he was quite right. The chair itself is the only authority when it comes to deciding where it shall go next, and how. You must wait and see what signs you get from the chair. What Sam had to do… well, I expect it will be different for you. I’m sure it will.’

  David uncrossed his legs and unfolded his arms. I’d learned enough about his English mannerisms to know that this meant he was getting serious.

  ‘As a matter of record,’ he asked, sharply, ‘what did Sam have to do?’

  Sam Jessop lowered his head on to his chest. His breathing was difficult and laboured.

  Mrs Jessop said, ‘I’m afraid it’s private.’

  ‘Did he sell his soul?’ asked David.

  ‘Don’t be facetious,’ snapped Mrs Jessop.

  ‘Did he sell his collection of Impressionists?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,’ said Mrs Jessop, and tugged at the braided bell-pull beside the fireplace.

  ‘Did he sell his Picasso?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Mrs Jessop shouted at him, in her throaty voice.

  David stood up. He looked suddenly very grave. ‘Yes,’ he said to Mrs Jessop, ‘for God’s sake. We all hope, for God’s sake, that you haven’t prevented your husband from saying something vital to my friend here which might have saved the life of his son.’

  The Mexican manservant appeared in the doorway, his face as impassive as a Mayan mask.

  ‘Good night, gentleme
n,’ said Mrs Jessop.

  ‘Martin,’ mumbled old Sam Jessop. ‘My poor Martin.’

  I looked at him, and then interrogatively at Mrs Jessop.

  ‘Martin’s our son,’ said Mrs Jessop. ‘He’s away in Europe right now, and I’m afraid that Sam misses him.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘I guess we all have our problems.’

  We left Sam Jessop by his flickering log fire, and followed the sullen manservant back through the hall. Then we were outside again, in the warmth of an Escondido evening, and still no nearer to solving the frightening mystery of the chair.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked David, as we crossed the gravel.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he mused. ‘I get the feeling that old Jessop has an urge to confess something, or at the very least to explain himself. But whatever he’s done to get rid of that chair, it’s pretty drastic. You notice how prickly Mrs Jessop got when I started pressing him to say what it was.’

  ‘Who told you about the runic business?’ I asked him, slamming the wagon door shut.

  ‘That was in a paper I read in the British Museum. There was a very short passage about the Earl of Beckenham’s chair, and it said that it could only be successfully sold by an agreement that involved the writing of certain runes.’

  ‘That was all?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Was your friend Williams in good health when he sold the chair to Jessop?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Does your client know how difficult it’s going to be for you to get the chair?’

  David said nothing.

  ‘What’s he going to do if you can’t get it?’ I asked.

  David turned away from me. ‘Ricky,’ he said. ‘I really can’t discuss it. It’s confidential.’

  ‘How can anything involving you and me and this damned chair be confidential? Jonathan’s unconscious, and all of a sudden you’re worried about your professional ethics.’

  ‘The identity of my client has no bearing on Jonathan at all. If you knew who it was, it still wouldn’t make the slightest difference.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to trust you?’ I said, as I piloted the wagon down the steep driveway in the dark.

  ‘Whether you trust me or not is entirely up to you,’ said David.

  ‘Well, I don’t trust you,’ I told him. ‘But the miserable fact is that you’re all I’ve got.’

  ‘Charmed,’ said David, and pressed in the cigarette-lighter on the dashboard so that he could smoke.

  *

  The outside lights under the eaves of my house were all shining when we drew up in the driveway. They were controlled by a time-switch, and automatically came on at dusk. The windows, however, were all dark, and the house had a strangely abandoned appearance, as if it were no longer a home, but merely a stage-setting for some unfathomable California nightmare.

  I climbed out of the car. It was colder now, and there was a faint wind breathing through the bare branches of the eucalyptus trees. David and I walked to the front door, and he stood watching me expressionlessly as I took out my keys and unlocked it.

  ‘What are you going to do if it’s here?’ he asked me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. And the truth was that I didn’t. I was worn out, and dispirited, and just about ready to give up.

  We entered the house, and walked along the corridor to the living-room.

  ‘Well, it’s not in here,’ said David.

  ‘If it’s anywhere, it’s in the library,’ I told him. I went to the library door, and opened it. I switched on the lights.

  To my surprise, the chair wasn’t there. I peered cautiously around the door. I even went over and prodded the velvet drapes. But apart from my own desk, my antique globe, and my own two chairs, the library was empty.

  David appeared in the doorway. ‘Not here either?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t understand it. If it didn’t come back here after it vanished out of your car… then where did it go?’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t let that worry you,’ said David. ‘As long as it’s gone, it’s gone.’

  ‘But its influence hasn’t gone. It’s still keeping Jonathan in a coma. And it’s still turning my life upside-down. So wherever it is, it can’t be that far away.’

  I went across to my desk and dialled the hospital on the telephone. After a whole array of buzzes and clicks, I was connected with Sara. She sounded as tired as I felt.

  ‘Where are you now?’ she asked me.

  ‘At home. I’m checking to see if the chair came back here.’

  ‘Did you have any luck with old man Jessop?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He said one or two things… kind of generalised comments… and I’m still trying to work them out.’

  ‘Jonathan’s still the same.’

  ‘I guessed he was. Has Dr Gopher had the results of his tests yet?’

  ‘One or two of them,’ she said. ‘There’s no pressure on the brain, and the spinal fluid is clear. They’re still trying to analyse his electro-cardiograph records to see if he’s suffered some sort of trauma. So all we can do is pray.’

  ‘I know.’

  There was a momentary pause, and then Sara said, ‘Is the chair… did it come back home?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it so far. But I haven’t checked upstairs.’

  ‘What if it isn’t there?’

  ‘It must be someplace nearby. It wants something from us, right? And that means it must be staying in the area. Maybe not here, in the house. But close.’

  Sara said, ‘You sound tired.’

  ‘No more than you.’

  ‘I’m going to get some sleep in a minute. One of the nurses has found me a spare room. Why don’t you stay at the house until the morning? There isn’t going to be any news tonight.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Dr Gopher told me. He said there wasn’t any expectation of Jonathan waking up yet. They’re going to try some more electrical stimulus tomorrow.’

  I washed my face with my hand. ‘I could use some sleep. You promise to call me, though, the minute anything happens?’

  ‘You know I will.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘Sleep well. And remember I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too.’

  David had gone through to the living-room, and when I walked in he was squatting in front of the fire, clearing the ashes.

  ‘If we’re staying,’ he said, ‘I thought a blaze might be cheerful.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked him.

  ‘Scotch, if you have it. Neat.’

  ‘Neat?’

  ‘Sorry. Straight up, in American.’

  I poured him a couple of fingers of Cutty Sark, and opened a Billy beer for myself. One of my friends who knew that I had gravitated away from the Republicans towards the Democrats had bought me a whole case of Billy Carter’s special brew as a mocking gift.

  ‘Have you seen what’s happened to my paintings?’ I asked David.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come take a look,’ I said.

  David got up from the hearth and followed me to the opposite wall, where the Copley shark painting hung. I couldn’t be certain, but it looked to me as if the shark was even nearer to the floundering mariner than last time, and the boatload of rescuers was even further away.

  ‘That’s extraordinary,’ David breathed.

  ‘It’s more than extraordinary,’ I said. ‘It’s grotesque. Can you imagine what’s going to happen inside of that picture unless I manage to get rid of the chair? That man’s going to be ripped apart.’

  I took David’s arm and led him across to the Gilbert Stuart. Now, the hooded beast in the thicket had become even more distinct than ever, and there was no question about its sinister intentions. It appeared to me that the black-suited colonial gentleman in the picture had sensed what was happening behind him, and had slightly turned. His eyes, too, seemed to have widened, as if he were experiencin
g the first creeping suspicions of fear. ‘Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread…’

  ‘Well?’ I asked David.

  He gave the Gilbert Stuart one last look and then turned away. ‘It seems to me that what’s happening to those pictures is that they’re being affected by the Devil. The Devil as Sam Jessop defined Him… the psychic epicentre of everything cold, evil, and negative. These paintings are turning into the very reverse of themselves… Instead of the mariner being saved, he is lost… and instead of that colonial gentleman being the king of his local sandbox, he is being threatened by some kind of sinister and frightening manifestation.’

  He went back to the fire, and stacked on a pyramid of split logs.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re up against something monstrously powerful,’ he said, without looking at me. ‘And I’m afraid we’re going to have to face it on our own.’

  I poured out the drinks while David lit up the fire, and we sat for an hour or two talking about furniture and business. Every now and then I found myself glancing up at the two large paintings on the wall, just in case the shark had started to savage the mariner, or the hooded beast had crept closer to Gilbert Stuart’s colonial gentleman, but the pictures stayed as they were, and short of destroying them, there was nothing I could do to alter the slow and hideous destinies which were unfolding in front of my eyes.

  The force of the Devil was at work, and as old man Jessop had said, what human being could stopper up Mount St Helen’s?

  At a few minutes after eleven, we went up to bed. I showed David through to the guest room, with its rose-patterned wallpaper and its faux-bamboo bed, and then I tiredly went along to our own bedroom two doors down the corridor. I was yawning as I opened the door and switched on the lights.

  Then I froze. I thought that I had cried out loud for a moment, but I realised almost immediately afterwards that I hadn’t. The only sound that had come from my throat was a gasp of strangled breath.

  The chair was standing at the end of my bed. Tall, polished, and dark. And the face of the man-serpent was looking at me with a new expression – an expression of evil relish, as if it knew that it would soon be getting what it wanted.

  ‘David,’ I called, in a voice that was far too hushed for him to hear.