Incarnate by Ramsey Campbell Page B

eleven years. She didn’t know his name, she told herself. She didn’t know… . She had only dreamed that it was Danny Swain.

10
    D ANNY hadn’t realized it was so far to Chelsea. By the time he reached Sloane Square he was already late. Birds exploded from crusts of bread on the spattered pavement under the plane trees as he ran across the square. Danny’s shirt was sticking to his armpits, the trousers of the suit he hadn’t worn for thirteen years were squeezing his stomach like corsets, but he didn’t care. He was sure that he was going to get the job.
    A girl who wore a dress composed of veils ran ahead of him on King’s Road, smelling like spring. A silver car that he thought was a Rolls-Royce waited outside an antique shop where a tall woman was examining mirrors, and he wondered where the chauffeur was. Everyone on the street and in the boutiques looked bright and young and full of life, not at all like the noisy young people and grumpy old folk who Came to the Hercules. They made him feel sure of himself. Perhaps he’d dreamed he would get the job, perhaps he could still have those dreams after all.
    He almost ran past the side street where the Royal was. By now he was ten minutes late by the Mickey Mouse clock that he glimpsed in a boutique. It didn’t matter, the manager could be interviewing whoever else had applied for the job. Danny was sure they wouldn’t have as much experience as he had. His thirteen years at the Hercules were worth something after all.
    He stood and admired the Royal before he went in. A red carpet held by polished golden bars led up steps that looked like marble, past posters for a week of Fred Astaire. That was the kind of films his parents liked, and they would be able to get in here free if they didn’t mind traveling so far. Perhaps he and his parents could move to Chelsea to help his mother get well. He would certainly be earning more than Mr. Pettigrew paid him at the Hercules.
    The small foyer smelled of metal polish and carpet cleaner. Life-size stills of Chaplin and Bogart faced each other across the thick red carpet beneath a whispering chandelier. A young woman in dungarees was cleaning the window of the paybox. When he told her he was a projectionist, she said, “Go straight up to the manager’s office.”
    The carpet was so thick he couldn’t feel the stairs. He was climbing the black mirrors of the walls in the suit that he’d worn when Mr. Pettigrew had interviewed him. This time his mother wasn’t with him, he would be able to speak for himself. He knocked at the manager’s door. “Come,” a voice said.
    The only person in the room was a woman. She wore a black suit and white blouse, and was sitting behind a heavy desk. She was about his mother’s age. For a moment he felt tricked and nervous, but why should he care? She must be seeing how smart he was as she glanced at him through the glittery frame of her spectacles, not how his head was too small for his neck or how his moustache would never grow properly. “Mr. Swain?” she said.
    “Yes.” He closed the door quickly—a blue suit with a brooch on the jacket swung back and forth on the hook— and sat down at once. “Yes,” he said again in case he hadn’t said it loud enough, remembering his mother’s admonition: “Go on, Danny, speak up for yourself.”
    “I’m Miss Astaire.” He was almost sure that was what the manageress said as she lifted bags of money into the safe. He thought of making a joke in case she had said Mrs. Tare but decided not to. She closed the safe and spun the wheel before she turned to him. “Did you have much trouble finding us?”
    “No.” His voice seemed very loud in the small room, but better too loud than too low. “Just walk along King’s Road like you said,” he added to show that he had taken notice.
    “I asked you that because you really should have been here half an hour ago.”
    “Not half an hour.” It couldn’t have been twenty minutes since