Clive Barker
Books of Blood Vol 2
Every body is a book of blood;
Wherever We're opened, We're red.
DREAD
THERE IS NO delight the equal of dread. If it were possible to sit, invisible, between two people on any train, in any waiting room or office, the conversation overheard would time and again circle on that subject. Certainly the debate might appear to be about something entirely different; the state of the nation, idle chat about death on the roads, the rising price of dental care; but strip away the metaphor, the innuendo, and there, nestling at the heart of the discourse, is dread. While the nature of God, and the possibility of eternal life go undiscussed, we happily chew over the minutiae of misery. The syndrome recognizes no boundaries; in bath- house and seminar-room alike, the same ritual is repeated. With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.
While he was still at university, and afraid to speak, Stephen Grace was taught to speak of why he was afraid. In fact not simply to talk about it, but to analyze and dissect his every nerve ending, looking for tiny terrors.
In this investigation, he had a teacher: Quaid.
It was an age of gurus; it was their season. In universities up and down England young men and women were looking east and west for people to follow like lambs; Steve Grace was just one of many. It was his bad luck that Quaid was the Messiah he found.
They'd met in the Student Common Room.
'The name's Quaid,' said the man at Steve's elbow at the bar.
'Oh.'
'You're —?'
'Steve Grace.'
'Yes. You're in the Ethics class, right?'
'Right.'
'I don't see you in any of the other Philosophy seminars or lectures.'
'It's my extra subject for the year. I'm on the English Literature course. I just couldn't bear the idea of a year in the Old Norse classes.'
'So you plumped for Ethics.'
'Yes.'
Quaid ordered a double brandy. He didn't look that well off, and a double brandy would have just about crippled Steve's finances for the next week. Quaid downed it quickly, and ordered another.
'What are you having?'
Steve was nursing half a pint of luke-warm lager, determined to make it last an hour.
'Nothing for me.'
'Yes you will.'
'I'm fine.'
'Another brandy and a pint of lager for my friend.'
Steve didn't resist Quaid's generosity. A pint and a half of lager in his unfed system would help no end in dulling the tedium of his oncoming seminars on ‘Charles Dickens as a Social Analyst'. He yawned just to think of it.
'Somebody ought to write a thesis on drinking as a social activity.'
Quaid studied his brandy a moment, then downed it.
'Or as oblivion,' he said.
Steve looked at the man. Perhaps five years older than Steve's twenty. The mixture of clothes he wore was confusing. Tattered running shoes, cords, a grey-white shirt that had seen better days: and over it a very expensive black leather jacket that hung badly on his tall, thin frame. The face was long and unremarkable; the eyes milky-blue, and so pale that the colour seemed to seep into the whites, leaving just the pin-pricks of his irises visible behind his heavy glasses. Lips full, like a Jagger, but pale, dry and un-sensual. Hair, a dirty blond.
Quaid, Steve decided, could have passed for a Dutch dope-pusher.
He wore no badges. They were the common currency of a student's obsessions, and Quaid looked naked without something to imply how he took his pleasures. Was he a gay, feminist, save-the-whale campaigner; or a fascist vegetarian? What was he into, for God's sake?
'You should have been doing Old Norse,' said Quaid.
'Why?'
'They don't even bother to mark the papers on that course,' said Quaid.
Steve hadn't heard about this. Quaid droned on.
'They just throw them all up into the air. Face up, an A. Face down, a B.'
Oh, it was a joke. Quaid was being witty. Steve attempted a laugh, but Quaid's face remained unmoved by his own attempt at humour.
'You should be in Old Norse,' he said again. 'Who needs Bishop Berkeley anyhow. Or Plato. Or —'
'Or?'
'It's all shit.'
'Yes.'
'I've watched you, in the Philosophy Class —'
Steve began to wonder about Quaid.
'— You never take notes do you?'
'No.'
'I thought you were either sublimely confident, or you simply couldn't care less.'
'Neither. I'm just completely lost.'
Quaid grunted, and pulled out a pack of cheap cigarettes. Again, that was not the done thing. You either smoked Gauloises, Camel or nothing at all.
'It's not true philosophy they teach you here,' said Quaid, with unmistakable contempt.
'Oh?'
'We get spoon-fed a bit of Plato, or a bit of Bentham —no real analysis. It's got all the right markings of course. It looks like the beast: it even smells a bit like the beast to the uninitiated.'
'What beast?'
'Philosophy. True Philosophy. It's a beast, Stephen. Don't you think?'
