The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

Please. Madame Gioconda will start blackmail soon. She is desperate.

       Must sing again. Could arrange make-believe programme in research studios. Closed circuit.

      Alto folded the note carefully, left the dictaphone on the staircase and walked slowly back to the window.

      ‘This blackmail. Are you absolutely sure? Who, though, do you know?’ Mangon nodded, but looked away. ‘Okay, I won’t press you. LeGrande, probably, eh?’ Mangon turned round in surprise, then gave an elaborate parody of a shrug.

      ‘Hector LeGrande. Obvious guess. But there are no secrets there, it’s all on open file. I suppose she’s just threatening to make enough of an exhibition of herself to block his governorship.’ Alto pursed his lips. He loathed LeGrande, not merely for having bribed him into a way of life he could never renounce, but also because, once having exploited his weakness, LeGrande never hesitated to remind Alto of it, treating him and his music with contempt. If Madame Gioconda’s blackmail had the slightest hope of success he would have been only too happy, but he knew LeGrande would destroy her, probably take Mangon too.

      Suddenly he felt a paradoxical sense of loyalty for Madame Gioconda. He looked at Mangon, waiting patiently, big spaniel eyes wide with hope.

      ‘The idea of a closed circuit programme is insane. Even if we went to all the trouble of staging it she wouldn’t be satisfied. She doesn’t want to sing, she wants to be a star. It’s the trappings of stardom she misses – the cheering galleries, the piles of bouquets, the green room parties. I could arrange a half-hour session on closed circuit with some trainee technicians – a few straight selections from Tosca and Butterfly, say, with even a sonic piano accompaniment, I’d be glad to play it myself – but I can’t provide the gossip columns and theatre reviews. What would happen when she found out?’

       She wants to SING.

      Alto reached out and patted Mangon on the shoulder. ‘Good for you. All right, then, I’ll think about it. God knows how we’d arrange it. We’d have to tell her that she’ll be making a surprise guest appearance on one of the big shows – that’ll explain the absence of any programme announcement and we’ll be able to keep her in an isolated studio. Stress the importance of surprise, to prevent her from contacting the newspapers … Where are you going?’

      Mangon reached the staircase, picked up the dictaphone and returned to Alto with it. He grinned happily, his jaw working wildly as he struggled to speak. Strangled sounds quavered in his throat.

      Touched, Alto turned away from him and sat down. ‘Okay, Mangon,’ he snapped brusquely, ‘you can get on with your job. Remember, I haven’t promised anything.’ He flicked on the dictaphone, then began: ‘Memo 11: Ray …’

      THREE

      It was just after four o’clock when Mangon braked the sound truck in the alley behind the derelict station. Overhead the traffic hammered along the flyover, dinning down on to the cobbled walls. He had been trying to finish his rounds early enough to bring Madame Gioconda the big news before her headaches began. He had swept out the Oratory in an hour, whirled through a couple of movie theatres, the Museum of Abstract Art, and a dozen private calls in half his usual time, driven by his almost overwhelming joy at having won a promise of help from Ray Alto.

      He ran through the foyer, already fumbling at his wrist-pad. For the first time in many years he really regretted his muteness, his inability to tell Madame Gioconda orally of his triumph that morning.

      Studio 2 was in darkness, the rows of seats and litter of old programmes and ice-cream cartons reflected dimly in the single light masked by the tall flats. His feet slipped in some shattered plaster fallen from the ceiling and he was out of breath when he clambered up on to the stage and swung round the nearest flat.

      Madame Gioconda had gone!

      The stage was deserted, the couch a rumpled mess, a clutter of cold saucepans on the stove. The wardrobe door was open, dresses wrenched outwards off their hangers.

      For a moment Mangon panicked, unable to visualize why she should have left, immediately assuming that she had discovered his plot with Alto.

      Then he realized that never before had he visited the studio until midnight at the earliest, and that Madame Gioconda had merely gone out to the supermarket. He smiled at his own stupidity and sat down on the couch to wait for her, sighing with relief.

      As vivid as if they had been daubed in letters ten feet deep, the words leapt out from the walls, nearly deafening him with their force.

      ‘You grotesque old witch, you must be insane! You ever threaten me again and I’ll have you destroyed! LISTEN, you pathetic –’

      Mangon spun round helplessly, trying to screen his ears. The words must have been hurled out in a paroxysm of abuse, they were only an hour old, vicious sonic scars slashed across the immaculately swept walls.

      His first thought was to rush out for the sonovac and sweep the walls clear before Madame Gioconda returned. Then it dawned on him that she had already heard the original of the echoes – in the background he could just detect the muffled rhythms and intonations of her voice.

      All too exactly, he could identify the man’s voice.

      He had heard it many times before, raging in the same ruthless tirades, when deputizing for one of the sound-sweeps, he had swept out the main boardroom at Video City.

      Hector LeGrande! So Madame Gioconda had been more desperate than he thought.

      The bottom drawer of the dressing table lay on the floor, its contents upended. Propped against the mirror was an old silver portrait frame, dull and verdigrised, some cotton wool and a tin of cleansing fluid next to it. The photograph was one of LeGrande, taken twenty years earlier. She must have known LeGrande was coming and had searched out the old portrait, probably regretting the threat of blackmail.

      But the sentiment had not been shared.

      Mangon walked round the stage, his heart knotting with rage, filling his ears with LeGrande’s taunts. He picked up the portrait, pressed it between his palms, and suddenly smashed it across the edge of the dressing table.

       ‘Mangon!’

      The cry riveted him to the air. He dropped what was left of the frame, saw Madame Gioconda step quietly from behind one of the flats.

      ‘Mangon, please,’ she protested gently. ‘You frighten me.’ She sidled past him towards the bed, dismantling an enormous purple hat. ‘And do clean up all that glass, or I shall cut my feet.’

      She spoke drowsily and moved in a relaxed, sluggish way that Mangon first assumed indicated acute shock. Then she drew from her handbag six white vials and lined them up carefully on the bedside table. These were her favourite confectionery – so LeGrande had sweetened the pill with another cheque. Mangon began to scoop the glass together with his feet, at the same time trying to collect his wits. The sounds of LeGrande’s abuse dinned the air, and he broke away and ran off to fetch the sonovac.

      Madame Gioconda was sitting on the edge of the bed when he returned, dreamily dusting a small bottle of bourbon which had followed the cocaine vials out of the handbag. She hummed to herself melodically and stroked one of the feathers in her hat.

      ‘Mangon,’ she called when he had almost finished. ‘Come here.’

      Mangon put down the sonovac and went across to her.

      She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly very steady. ‘Mangon, why did you break Hector’s picture?’ She held up a piece of the frame. ‘Tell me.’

      Mangon hesitated, then scribbled on his pad:

       I am sorry. I adore you very much. He said such foul things to you.

      Madame Gioconda glanced at the note, then