The Doorkeepers Read online

  Frank Mordant’s flat had a separate front door at the side of the pub. It was painted maroon and it had no number on it, only a small bronze knocker in the shape of a grinning imp’s head. Frank Mordant gave it a rat-a-tat-tat and said, “Cornish piskie. It’s supposed to bring you luck.”

  Inside, there was a damp coconut mat and then a steep flight of stairs. Frank Mordant switched the light on and said, “Good exercise, stairs. Up and down here a few times a day and you won’t need to worry about jogging.”

  “I don’t jog, not any more. People used to stare so much.”

  “Yes, I suppose they would. Here – watch your step at the top here, the carpet’s loose.”

  At the top of the stairs there was a small brown-wallpapered landing with two doors leading off it. A damp-rippled reproduction of Damien Hirst’s Chinese Lady hung at an angle between them, and one of them bore a ceramic plaque saying The Smallest Room.

  Frank Mordant unlocked the other door and led the way into a narrow corridor. On the left there was a small kitchenette with a gas water-heater and fitted cupboards in lime-green Formica. It was obvious that he didn’t use the flat very often: there was a stuffy, sour, closed-in smell, and all of the dried herbs in the spice jars that hung on the wall had faded to pale yellow.

  “Needs a woman’s touch, really.”

  The sitting room was surprisingly large and light. It had a high ceiling and all the walls had been painted white and the light gray carpet wasn’t luxurious but it was fairly new. There was a plain couch covered in black cotton fabric and a large brown 1930s armchair. A large television stood in one corner of the room, as well as a video player and stacks of labeled videotapes. There was a video camera, too, tilted on top of a tripod.

  “A few pictures on the walls,” Frank Mordant suggested. “Scatter cushions, that kind of thing. You could really make it quite homey.”

  A plain white calico blind covered the window. Julia went over to it and tried to release it, but it was fastened to the window frame with thumbtacks. She lifted an edge of it and peeked out. It looked right over Chiswick High Road, still crowded with buses and cyclists and homegoing cars.

  “Want to see the bedroom?” asked Frank Mordant. “The bedroom’s nice. Only had it redecorated in September.”

  He opened the door that led to the bedroom. It was just large enough for a double bed covered with a pink candlewick bedspread, a wardrobe and a chair with a leatherette seat. The walls had been stippled with pale blue distemper. Over the bed hung a fan-shaped mirror with two picture postcards stuck in it, and on the pillow lay a defeated-looking golliwog.

  “Well …” said Julia. The flat wasn’t as seedy as she had expected it to be. Frank Mordant was right: one or two colorful pictures would make the whole place look much more welcoming, and she could cover that deadly black couch with the sunflower-patterned throw she had bought from Habitat. Living here would save her more than one pound a week on rent, and nearly as much as that again on bus fares.

  She came back into the living room. She found Frank Mordant tinkering with the video camera. He swiveled around like a floorwalker in a department store and wrung his hands together.

  “What do you think, then? It’s really quite cozy, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t get too noisy, does it, with the pub downstairs?”

  Frank Mordant shook his head. “I won’t lie to you, there is a bit of a racket at closing time. Car doors slamming, everybody saying goodnight, things like that. But it doesn’t last for long. And here’s the secret ingredient.” He knelt down and lifted up one corner of the carpet. “Underfelt, double-thick, almost completely soundproof. I had it laid so that I could play my music as loud as I liked. You could scream your head off in here and nobody would hear you.”

  Julia took another look around. “It’s interesting … I’d like to think it over, if I may.”

  “Of course. Take as long as you like. Before you go, though, there is one thing you might like to consider.”

  He went to the kitchenette. She didn’t know whether she was supposed to follow him or not, so she waited. She lifted the edge of the blind again, and looked down into the street. The road was noisier here than her terrace in Lavender Hill, but she didn’t really mind the background jostle of traffic.

  “Do you know which bus—?” she began; and then she was suddenly aware that Frank Mordant was standing right behind her. She hadn’t heard him, hadn’t even sensed him approaching.

  Without a word he clamped a thick white cloth over her nose and mouth, as thick as a muslin diaper. It reeked with a pungent, chemical smell – a smell that seared her nostrils and burned her eyes. She gave a panicky snuffle and breathed it in. She staggered against him, tried to struggle, and managed to snatch at his wristwatch. But he kept the cloth pressed firmly against her face, and as she tried to pull away from him the room tilted on its end and the floor came toward her like a dark, silently slamming door.

  Two

  Julia was woken up by a penetrating white light shining in her eyes. Gradually she opened her eyes a little wider, but the light dazzled her so much that she closed them again. Her head was throbbing and there was a biting, astringent taste in her mouth. She felt chilled, and weak, as if she had the ‘flu, and she was conscious of something harsh encircling her neck.

  “Ah, coming round,” said Frank Mordant’s voice. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

  She opened her eyes again. She was lying on a prickly woolen blanket on the floor and Frank Mordant was looking down at her with a grin. Somebody else was looking down at her, too – a suntanned man with very white hair.

  “Got us a beauty this time, Frank,” said the suntanned man. “Done yourself proud.”

  Frank Mordant knelt down beside Julia and helped her up into a sitting position. She felt sick and the floor was slowly rising up and down like the deck of a car ferry. She put her head down between her knees and it was only then that she realized that she was naked.

  She looked up, woozy but startled. Frank Mordant was still grinning at her as if she were the victim of a huge practical joke.

  “What have you done? What have you done to me?” Covering her breasts with her arm, she tried to get up, but she lost her balance and fell sideways. As she fell, the harsh thing around her neck almost choked her and she reached up to pull it free. Except that it wouldn’t come free. It was a thick rope, tied around her neck in a noose.

  She tried again to climb to her feet, and this time she managed to get herself into a kneeling position. “What’s happening?” she gasped. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  Frank Mordant took hold of the loose end of the rope and pulled it. Immediately, it tightened around Julia’s neck, and she looked up. The rope ran through a large hook fixed in the center of the ceiling.

  She stared at Frank Mordant in disbelief. Apart from him and the white-haired man with the suntan, there were three other men there, standing in the far corner by the television. They were all middle-aged, wearing respectable suits. A dark-skinned, languid-looking man with a hooked nose. A heavily built man with bushy gray hair. A smaller bespectacled man, who must have been Thai or Malay.

  Three spotlights had been arranged around the room so that they shone directly on Julia. And the video camera was now tilted on its tripod so that it was facing toward her, too. There was a smell of hot light bulbs and alcoholic breath, and a taut, expectant atmosphere. Yours in anticipation, Frank Mordant.

  Julia’s head was completely clear now, and she looked at the men and the spotlights and the video camera with increasing horror. She felt almost absurdly weak, and completely defenseless, and she was so frightened that her lower lip was juddering and she couldn’t speak clearly.

  Frank Mordant and the suntanned man took an arm each and tried to lift her on to her feet. Immediately her knees buckled, but Frank Mordant pulled the rope until it was tight around her neck again, and then she was forced to stand up.

  “You’re ch
oking me,” she pleaded. “Please don’t choke me. I can’t stand anything round my neck.”

  “Well, there’s one way to relieve that choking feeling,” smiled Frank Mordant, “and that’s to slacken the rope. Here, Tun,” he beckoned the Malay-looking man. “Do us a favor and bring us over that little stepladder, please.”

  The Malay carried over a small wooden stepladder and set it down right in front of Julia. He paused for a moment, and scrutinized her through his bright shining glasses. His eyes were dark brown and deeply curious, as if he were looking at an exhibit in a natural history museum. He stared into her eyes and then down at her naked body.

  Frank Mordant gave the rope another sharp tug. “If you climb the stepladder, Julia, the rope will be slacker. The higher you go, the slacker it will get.”

  “You can’t do this,” Julia protested. “You just can’t do this.”

  “And who’s to say that we can’t?”

  “The law! This is assault!”

  Frank Mordant thought about that, and then he said, “Yes, you’re right. It is assault. But I don’t think that the law is going to be able to help you, do you?”

  “Let me go!” she screamed at him. “You’re sick! You’re totally sick! If you don’t let me go right now, mister …!”

  “You’ll what?” said Frank Mordant, and the slowest smile broke over his face as he watched her remember what he said about the underlay.

  “Let me go,” she breathed. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anybody what happened here.”

  Frank Mordant tugged on the rope again. She reached up and tried to force her fingers between the noose and her neck, but it was far too tight.

  “Please don’t do this. Please let me go. I’ll do anything you want me to do. Please.”

  “You’re already doing what I want you to do. Now, why don’t you take a step up the ladder and give yourself a little slack?”

  He pulled the rope harder and in spite of herself she let out a horrible, high-pitched cackle. He pulled again and she felt as if she was going to choke. She reached out with her right foot and found the bottom rung of the stepladder and climbed on to it: and then, with her left foot, the second rung. The rope relaxed, and she was able to gasp in three or four mouthfuls of air.

  “Mr Mordant, I don’t know why you’re doing this …”

  “My dear, you don’t have to know. All you have to do is to play your part.”

  “Is this personal? Is there something I’ve done to upset you? If there is, I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry, and I swear to God that I’ll make it up to you.”

  Frank Mordant looked at her with those hooded blue eyes and she thought for a moment that she saw the slightest hint of compassion.

  “Mr Mordant, if I did anything wrong, anything, I’ll put it right. I have people back home who are going to be worried about me. My mother, my father. My brother. They’re good people, Mr Mordant, you can do what you like to me but don’t make them suffer.”

  The suntanned man with the white hair turned to the others and spread his hands wide in mock bewilderment. “Why do they always do this? Why do they always get so sentimental? You’d think they’d eff and blind and kick their legs about, wouldn’t you? I mean, that’s what I’d do, if somebody was doing it to me.”

  The Malay didn’t take his eyes off Julia, but he said, with a slight smile, “That’s because you’re afraid of dying, Roy. You know what the next world has in store for you.”

  Julia had made a mistake. What she had seen in Frank Mordant’s eyes wasn’t compassion at all. If it was anything, it was simply a predatory flicker, like a snake refocusing before it strikes. Frank Mordant wound the rope around his arm and took up all of the slack that Julia had given herself by climbing up the stepladder. “Don’t,” she gargled. “Please don’t.”

  The dark-skinned man with the hooked nose looked impatiently at his wristwatch. In the middle of her terror, Julia realized that he was bored. The thought of that was so awful that her eyes filled with tears. She was naked, utterly humiliated, choking, and he was bored.

  “Let me go!” she screamed. “I can’t stand this any longer! Let me go!”

  Frank Mordant yanked the rope hard. “You can’t stand it any longer? Then take another step up. Go on! That’s the only way you’ll get any slack!”

  She tried to shake her head and say no, but he wrenched the rope again and this time she saw stars winking in front of her eyes. She climbed up another step, and then another, and now she was only one step from the top.

  “You won’t get away with this,” she whispered. “I swear to God that you won’t get away with this.”

  Frank Mordant pulled the rope one more time. “You wanted to be in television, didn’t you?” he asked. He didn’t sound sarcastic, or triumphalist. He simply sounded pleased for her. “You wanted to be famous? Well, believe it or not, your wish is about to come true. You’re going to be seen by thousands of very appreciative viewers, for years to come! Who knows, you’re probably going to be a television classic!”

  She took the last step on to the top of the ladder. Her head was only about six inches from the ceiling, but the rope was utterly taut. Frank Mordant knelt down, lifted the black cover on the couch, and tied the other end of the rope around it. He did it so deftly that Julia could tell he had done it before.

  For a long moment they all stood in a strange tableau: Julia on top of the stepladder and the four men watching her. The noose was so tight around her neck that she could hardly swallow, and her breath came in thin, distinct whines. She reached up with both hands and clung tightly to the rope, terrified that Frank Mordant would take the stepladder away.

  “They’ll see this all over the world, Julia. Germany, the Germans love this kind of thing, although they won’t admit it. Holland, very broad-minded, we always get excellent sales figures in Holland. Japan … well, you know what the Japs are like. They’d pay to see a slug being stepped on. And America, of course. Huge market in America. Perhaps someone will recognize you, you never know.”

  “Please” Julia begged him. Then she couldn’t hold it together any longer, and she wet herself. Frank Mordant stepped back a little way and said nothing.

  Julia tried to think about her mother and father. She tried to picture their faces, if only to say goodbye to them. She tried to think about her brother Josh. She tried to see the house, and the verandah, and the dogs running out to meet her. But all she could see was the ceiling of Frank Mordant’s flat, and all she could think about was choking.

  “Please, don’t do this. Please.”

  Frank Mordant approached her and tugged away the step-ladder. Her toes curled, reaching for it – and then, when she realized that it had gone, her legs frantically pedaled in mid-air.

  “Acchhh” was all she could manage to say. She held on to the rope but her arms were aching already and she was so close to hysteria that it seemed as if her last remaining strength were ebbing out of her, as if her fingers couldn’t grip anything any more.

  Her hands slipped down the rope an inch. She managed to cling on a few seconds more and then they slipped another inch. The noose was now so tight around her neck that she couldn’t even manage a choking sound. If she could only lift herself up a few more inches. If she could only reach the hook. But she knew it was hopeless. She knew that she was slowly suffocating and there was nothing she could do to save herself.

  Frank Mordant and his companions remained quite still, although their eyes were wide and their faces were transfigured by an undisguised hunger, so that they looked more like gargoyles than men. The dark-skinned man repeatedly licked his lips, no longer bored. The Malay had his hand in his pants pocket and his fly was moving rhythmically up and down. The heavily built man had broken out into a glittering sweat.

  Only Frank Mordant seemed unmoved, watching Julia spin slowly around on her rope, her legs swimming through the air.

  Julia’s right hand slipped from the rope above her head. She tried to raise it
again, but she didn’t have the strength. Almost immediately afterward, her left hand slid another inch down the rope, burning her fingers. Then another inch. She couldn’t hold on any longer, and somehow she didn’t even want to try. She said God forgive me inside of her head, and then she let go.

  The last thing she thought of was a daisy that she had once tried to pick, when she was only two years old. She could see it quite clearly, right in front of her. She reached out for it, but before she could touch it the petals flew away, and disappeared for ever into the darkness.

  Three

  Josh was having an unexpectedly busy morning. After he had cured Mrs Delorme’s pedigree Pekinese of its bouts of hysteria last month, word of his healing abilities seemed to have spread from Mill Valley to Corte Madera and Sausalito and even into San Francisco.

  Waiting on the verandah outside his kitchen were five assorted people with five assorted dogs and cats, a woman with a cloth-covered birdcage, and a small boy with something in a cardboard box. It was a hot, airless day, and one of his clients was fanning her Siamese cat with a rolled-up copy of the National Enquirer.

  At the moment Josh was dealing with a mournful black Labrador called Valentino, whose sight was failing. Valentino was sitting on Josh’s breakfast table while his mistress stroked him and petted him and chain-fed him with Reese’s Pieces. His mistress was a short round woman with greasy iron-gray hair fixed in a bun. She wore dangly hooped earrings, enormous red and yellow shorts and Birkenstocks.

  Josh remarked, “You really shouldn’t keep on feeding him candy. Dogs get dehydrated by chocolate. Apart from that, you’re totally screwing up his reward system. If he gets continuous candy, just for sitting around, how’s he going to know when he’s done something good?”

  “He’s like me. He’s so much like me. We both need constant reassurance.”

  “I see,” Josh nodded. He didn’t argue. So far as he was concerned, dogs were exactly the same as humans. In fact, he thought that all animals were exactly the same as humans, and that was part of the secret of his success. Unlike most veterinarians, he understood that all animals wanted out of life was fun, sleep and food, with an occasional flurry of irresponsible sexual activity.