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Women. No more women in my life, he thought, remembering the wife who had left him, the child she would not allow him to see. He asked himself why he had refused to let her into his heart, questioned the path that had finally brought him here. How, he asked himself, did I ever come to be so alone?
And when he raised his head at the noise, he found them all looking at him, Mr Satardoo, Mr Mack, Mrs Opie and the General himself, their faces a mixture of pity, kindness and infinite patience.
'I assume you understand now?' Mr Mack gently asked. Mrs Opie appeared by his side and wiped his eyes with a white linen handkerchief.
'I… I'm not sure.'
'These suites are only for those who are sure,' said Mr Mack as the others quietly left the room, pulling the doors shut behind them. 'They are reserved for guests who have definitely decided. Perhaps you have decided, and don't realise it yet. You are all alone in the world, aren't you? Try to tell me how you feel.'
Malcolm tried to marshal his thoughts. 'I'm tired,' he said finally.
'Then you have come to the right place,' smiled Mr Mack. 'Our lives begin in such high spirits, but once we see the world for what it is, it fatigues us. Disappointment is a tiring emotion, Malcolm. Where we had hoped for understanding, we find only cynicism, where there once was love is only selfishness. Our lives empty out with the passing years, until sometimes there is nothing left but our corporeal form. It is in this state that our special guests arrive, and here find final peace. Just as you shall.'
He walked around to the side of the bed and pressed a switch recessed in the headboard. His voice was a monotone as soothing as a calm sea. 'It is important for you to relax, Malcolm, to find serenity at the end, just as the Archduke will when he is ready, just as hundreds of others have.'
He's right, thought Malcolm, his eyes welling with tears. He felt the pinpricks brush his skin, and his body began to lose its tension. From the ten holes on either side of the bed, and the six in the headboard, the steel filaments had snaked out, piercing his clothes and entering the flesh of his neck, his arms, his torso, his legs, nipping into his veins, pumping fluid in, draining away his fears and doubts, filling his head with visions of tranquillity.
'No more unhappiness, Malcolm, no more uncertainty, and you have the General to thank. He wanted to provide a haven for those who wished to end their lives. He is shocked by the sordid, disordered way too many people reach their final moments. You come into this world in peace and warmth and love. Why is there no provision for leaving it in the same ma
Malcolm was numb. His mind was alert, but all panic had ceased. He realised that from the moment he had lain on the bed, the very air above him had changed. Tiny jets had been triggered by the pressure of his body on the mattress. He remembered his childhood, ru
His memories faded into sleep, and the sleep deepened into death.
Mr Mack studied the departed biographer with a sad sigh. He walked to the telephone and rang Mrs Opie. 'Tell the Archduke we're still cleaning his room,' he said, his voice filled with reverence for the departed. 'Have Mr Bridger's bill made up and lose it in the Archduke's dining expenses. And see what you can get for his luggage from the usual source.'
'One hundred and fifty rooms, of which forty-seven are themed suites of unrivalled opulence' reads the new brochure for the Imperial Rex. 'So many guests have found peace with us.'
MIDAS TOUCH
(Author's Note: In the process of developing the character of Judy Merrigan for a new multiple-plot novel called 'Soho Black', I wrote her part out as a short story. If you're pla
Everyone knows about the Midas touch, right? Those M's are among the few pieces of mythology one still remembers; the Medusa, the Minotaur and Midas – the man with the golden touch. I should have been warned by his name.
My name is Judy Merrigan, another M and no myth, just an ordinary Mrs. I was thirty-two when I moved from Arizona to England to be with my husband for the four inglorious years our marriage lasted. Michael and I met in Phoenix, where he taught classical history at the university. He took me out to di
I had given up a successful career as a graphic artist to do this. There was no way I could keep my clients from my new overseas base, and I couldn't start afresh without contacts. Besides, Michael didn't like me working. We separated because he wanted more children, and I wasn't crazy about the ones he already had.
I had no intention of returning to Phoenix and subjecting myself to my father's barbed remarks about the failure-rate of modern marriages; I decided to stay on in England so long as I could move to London. My divorce papers came through and suddenly I was on my own in a city I hardly knew. Most people would have been thrilled at the prospect of independence, but I was scared. Michael had spent four years bullying the confidence out of me. As I walked down an impossibly crowded Regent Street, I realised just how much I had distanced myself from the world outside.
When my mother died she left me a little money, and as there wasn't much forthcoming from the divorce settlement, I used her bequest to fulfil a dream. I bought my own property. Not the kind of place Michael or my father would ever have approved of – that was part of the charm – a town apartment, cosmopolitan and chic and central to everything. The third floor of a renovated two-hundred-year-old building with polished hardwood floors and large airy rooms, in Great Titchfield Street, part of the area they call Fitzrovia (I loved those names), where the sidewalk cafes and corner pubs and late night stores steeped with trays of exotic vegetables make it the closest you can get in Central London to a New York neighbourhood.
This was the first time I had a place I could truly call my own, and I spent every last pe
There were others in the building; a woman in the apartment below, and an old Greek couple in the first-floor flat with its ground-level grocery. There was one more apartment, opposite mine, separated by a small dark landing. The brass sign on the door read Midas Blake, but I never saw him. Maria, the Greek lady, told me he was strange. 'What kind of strange?' I asked her.