The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

grow closer.
    Peter returned. “I emptied it in Harty’s bin,” he told the girls. “Old bugger thinks he owns the place.” He displayed the empty kitchen bin to Cathy, like a hunter’s prize.
    “ Jim says he can get some good Canadian acid,” Anne told him. “Purple Pyramid — it takes you right out of your head.”
    “ Great. I can keep a tab for summer.”
    Sue dawdled in, coughing as she smoked the joint down to the cardboard tip and lit another from it. “I hope you know how lucky you are, leaving the libraries,” she told Peter. “We couldn’t get through the day without a joint.”
    Cathy grimaced, sharing her thoughts with the stove. The only time she’d worked with them, the girls had sat stoned and giggling at the desk for most of the afternoon. When the flat across the landing had fallen vacant Peter had told them at once, though Cathy had wanted it for Ben and Celia. Would her friends have split up if she’d been close enough to mediate?
    “ Craig was after me to turn the records down. Christ, his flat isn’t even under ours.”
    “ It couldn’t have been our records,” Sue said. “We were out last night.”
    “ He complained to us once, though. Isn’t he oily?” Anne squirmed and grinned, as though at a disgusting joke. “And the way he tries to be sort of stiff, as though if he lets go he’ll flop all over the floor. We told him to piss off.”
    “ I don’t mind him,” Cathy said.
    All of them stared at her. “Sure, he’s a very warm and wonderful human being,” Peter remarked in a spurious American accent.
    That joke had become a cliché in itself. If she heard it just once more — They were wandering more slowly and aimlessly; they made her kitchen feel crowded and untidy. The girls gazed at the wall-charts of recipes; they might have been in an art gallery. “Pass me the garam masala, please,” Cathy said.
    Sue stared as if she were talking a foreign language; Anne turned to the spice rack, but stood looking bewildered. Peter began laughing. “Never mind,” Cathy said irritably. “All of you go in the other room.”
    As they did so, someone else knocked at the door. Bloody hell! She made for the door; she wouldn’t put it past them to answer it while smoking. But Peter was already there. It was Fanny from downstairs.
    “ Hello, Peter. Oh, there you are, Cathy.” She advanced, stretching out her hands, which were multicoloured as a palette. “I’m sorry to come pillaging. Could you spare any sugar? Oh buttocksbumanarse I, forgot to bring a cup.”
    “ I might have half a grain to spare.” Cathy filled a mug from the tin. “What are you painting?”
    “ I’ve just finished. Come and see.” When Cathy hesitated, she added wistfully “You can tell me if it’s any good.”
    Fanny’s flat looked as though a living-room, a bedroom, a newspaper cutting service and a studio were battling to occupy the room. An easel stood on a wad of paper thick as a carpet; a drawing-board was folded behind the couch, which at night spread its arms and became a bed. Faces clipped from publications gathered everywhere; a mug of coffee defended its island on the crowded table. The walls brandished spotlights. “That’s it,” Fanny said with an uneasy laugh, and gestured at the easel.
    The painting teemed with babies. Some sat in prams, some lay in cartons, on yellowed newspapers, on earth. They laughed, cried, dreamed, played with the air or with themselves, looked bewildered, delighted, abandoned. They were many colours. Some were vivid yet false as photographs in a housewives’ magazine, others were drawn in crayon or marker pen and had a child’s truth about them. Some were fat as tyres, some were skeletally thin. A few were bruised or worse.
    “ Yes, it’s good,” Cathy said. “It’s really good. You’ve put a lot into it.” Her words seemed inadequate. She wondered what features a baby of hers would have: Peter’s teeny leftover of a nose, her eyebrows that met in