The Victoria Vanishes(43)
And yet . . .
He found himself staring at a man who was behaving most strangely. He had taken off his shoes and donned a pair of red tartan carpet slippers, and had sat back to read the top volume of a pile of magazines, just as if he were at home. But he was, in fact, assessing the young women who passed his table, surreptitiously studying their legs and buttocks until they moved out of sight.
The longer he watched the behaviour of strangers in the Old Bell, the more Jack Renfield began to think that there might be something to the PCU’s methodology after all.
20
* * *
IRRATIONALITY
‘Own up to being afraid,’ said a thin ginger-headed man at the podium. ‘It’s the first step to acknowledging that you have a problem.’ He pointed a plastic ruler at the top page on the board behind him, upon which a variety of phobias were spelled out. ‘These are the fears of our current and past members. If yours is not listed here, I’d like you to step up now and add it to the list.’
April looked for agoraphobia among more obscure irrationalities: aichmophobia, fear of pointed objects; ailurophobia, fear of cats; alektorophobia, fear of chickens; alliumphobia, fear of garlic; anthrophobia, fear of flowers; antlophobia, fear of floods – and those were just the As. Presumably the young man’s easel held twenty-six pages of terrors.
The group was seated upstairs at the Ship and Shovell pub behind the Strand, which Naomi Curtis, the second victim, had visited in an attempt to cure her claustrophobia. It was the only pub in London that existed in two separate halves, each piece a red-painted mirror image of the other, set on either side of a sloping passageway that led down to the Thames. ‘Shovell’ was spelled with a double ‘L’ because it had been the original owner’s name.
For a bunch of people who lived in irrational fear of ordinary things – computers, snow, being touched – they seemed remarkably chatty and cheerful. The ginger man’s talk lasted half an hour, after which there were questions, then everyone went to the bar except one woman, who was apparently perturbed by the sight of spilled beer.
‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ asked the speaker. ‘I haven’t seen you before. You didn’t come up to the board.’
‘I was agoraphobic, but it seems to be retreating now,’ April explained. ‘I’ve had various other phobias in the past – I was bothered by dirt and untidiness. I have a bit of a neatness fetish.’
‘I suppose your doctor said you were spending too much time indoors, and developed other fears because you were looking to reduce your world still further. It’s quite common. I’m Alex, by the way.’
‘April.’
She held out her hand, but he shook his head. ‘Can’t do it, I’m afraid. Germs. Sadly, recognizing one’s phobias doesn’t necessarily lead to their cure.’
‘And yet we’re in an old pub where there are probably a couple of hundred years’ worth of microbes festering in the carpets.’
‘You know as well as I do that a phobia has no respect for reason.’ They took their drinks to a corner of the room.
‘I’m here on a mission,’ April finally admitted. ‘Did you ever meet a woman called Naomi Curtis?’
‘Don’t know. Hang on.’ Alex fetched a diary from the table by the door and checked it. ‘Some only come to the society once or twice. We try to keep a record of names, but it’s rather hit and miss. Claustrophobic, wasn’t she? She attended a few times. We usually met outside. It was a little too cramped for her at the bar.’
‘I can understand that. Did she have many friends here?’
‘I think she came with another woman, someone from work. People don’t like to visit by themselves. They think they’re going to get some kind of sales pitch, but we’re just a self-funding help group. Once they understand that, they relax more.’
‘Do you ever cure anyone?’
‘Sometimes. But fears have a habit of mutating. They’ll vanish, only to reappear in a different form. We’ve managed to keep the group going for six years now, even though we have to keep changing pubs.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The landlords don’t like primal-scream therapy. And once I accidentally released ants all over the saloon floor, and we had a tarantula go missing behind the bar. Never did find it. We had a disastrous meeting in the Queen’s Head and Artichoke last year, when three old ladies got locked in the lavatory. They went in as autophobics – afraid of being alone – and came out as claustrophobics. Why did you ask about Miss Curtis – do you know her?’