by Alison Moore
The Eliot Pierce incident was the first indication I’d had that there might have been a delayed effect, a result which could not be seen or measured at the time of the experiment. I got in touch with his mother, thinking that we could enlighten one another. I explained who I was, but Mrs Pierce was very unhelpful. I then googled the names of the other participants, in all three groups, but found no further relevant information, which meant that the car park jump was not statistically significant.
At that time, I was living in a house on Slash Lane, which I had converted into flats. The letting was dealt with by an agent – I did not want tenants knocking on my door complaining about blocked toilets or burst pipes. After the student in the ground-floor flat decided to move out, I acquired a new downstairs tenant, who I saw on occasion, when looking out of my front window. She had been in the house for a little while before I found myself going through her paperwork, looking at her name: Falls, Bonnie. As soon as I made the connection, I started to watch her. I observed her coming home from work at the same time every evening, disappearing into the passageway like Mr Hyde heading to his back door.
I made contact, and through Bonnie have had the opportunity of again meeting Mrs Falls, on whom I can see that my subliminal commands had no effect at all.
This reacquaintance with my old experimentees has also brought to mind my little brother’s friend, who proved to be a far more cooperative subject for hypnosis than my brother ever was. What I did not know back then is that some people are simply more suggestible than others: they have a suggestible personality, a “hypnotic susceptibility”. Hypnosis works “because the subject believes the process is effective” (Brown, Tricks of the Mind). On the other hand, you can hypnotise a chicken. I understand, though, that this is rather different: the chicken, sensing a threat, enters into a state of semi-paralysis and plays dead. Having failed to hypnotise my brother, and subsequently the cat, neither of them a willing subject, I had more success with my brother’s friend, dabbling with hypnosis, the inducement of trance-like states, and post-hypnotic suggestion. I have not thought of him in all this time and now find myself wondering how he is doing.
I have also, of course, had the chance to get to know Bonnie, who was not really a member of the group but who was there at the back of the room throughout the Group A session, doodling in her little book, drawing shapes like that of the television screen at which she kept looking.
At the age of 30, she is inclined to failure. She is drawn, even in her sleep, to windows and edges, and has been known to jump.
18
On Monday morning, Bonnie woke up later than she had intended to – it was after nine o’clock – but when she looked out of the front window, she saw that Sylvia was not yet there with the hire car.
Bonnie got dressed and was about to start packing when she realised that she did not have a suitcase. She emptied the dressing-up costumes out of the suitcase in the lounge and used that. She had left her mobile phone charging overnight, and she now unplugged it and put it into her shoulder bag so that she would not forget to take it.
In the middle of the morning, Sylvia pulled up at the kerb and got out of the car looking unusually flustered.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ said Sylvia. ‘I just had a few things to finish off.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Bonnie. ‘I’m not ready either.’ Most of the clothes that she had been planning on bringing were still hanging damp on the line in the yard. She packed them anyway and carried the costumes suitcase out to the car. Lifting it into the boot, she said, ‘Have I forgotten anything?’
‘If you have,’ said Sylvia, ‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’
‘Is that water?’ said Bonnie, spying the plastic containers that Sylvia had got in the boot, underneath her own suitcase.
‘Be prepared,’ said Sylvia, closing the boot. ‘We ought to get going.’
‘Oh wait!’ said Bonnie. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something. I’ll just be a minute. Come inside and sit down.’ Sylvia went with Bonnie back inside the flat, although she did not sit down or take off her jacket, but stood near the door while Bonnie spent a while digging out wellies and waterproof trousers and a waterproof coat. ‘You’re quite right,’ said Bonnie. ‘You never know what’s going to happen.’ Eventually, she set out to the car with her arms full of things that she would not need. Halfway down the passageway, she heard her phone ringing, her landline, or perhaps it was her neighbour’s phone. Either way, it soon stopped, and Bonnie had almost reached the car when half the things she was carrying fell into the gutter. With her hair falling into her face, she picked everything up again and put it in the car. Was that everything now? She returned to the house, saying, ‘I think I really have remembered everything now.’
‘I’ve got your bag,’ said Sylvia, coming through from the lounge into the kitchen.
‘Oh yes,’ said Bonnie, ‘thank you.’ She took her bag from Sylvia, glanced cursorily through its contents, and stepped outside, with Sylvia right behind her. As Bonnie turned to lock the door behind them, the house phone started ringing and Bonnie paused with her key in the lock.
‘Leave it,’ said Sylvia. ‘We’re on holiday now.’
‘Yes,’ said Bonnie, locking the door. ‘You’re right.’ They walked through the passageway to the car. They could still hear the phone ringing, but barely, and, when they got into the car and closed the doors, not at all.
Sylvia drove. She did not hold her hands at ten to two on the steering wheel; she held them both at the top, at noon, or midnight, which looked like a dicey way to steer, and Bonnie wondered if she was safe. She also noticed that Sylvia’s hands, which had always looked manicured, now looked somewhat scaly. Sylvia picked at the skin on the backs of her hands as she drove, scratching off loose, transparent flakes, and Bonnie saw that it was only glue, dried glue, as if Sylvia had been doing some craftwork, something like papier mâché.
They drove towards the motorway, and when they were nearly at the junction, Sylvia noted that they were passing the site of what had once been a nightclub called The Sea Around Us. The nightclub was now long gone. ‘It always seemed like a strange name for a place in the landlocked Midlands,’ she said, ‘but of course the sea is all around us, wherever we are, especially on a small island.’ And here and there it was inching closer. Bonnie had seen the information on the Internet about coastal erosion, the predictions for the next twenty and fifty and one hundred years, the places where the cliffs and dunes and beaches were disappearing at the rate of a metre or two or three or more every year.
At the junction, they crossed over the roundabout, going straight past the sign for the M1, ‘The SOUTH’, where Bonnie had expected to turn off. ‘Is that not our exit?’ asked Bonnie, turning her head to look back at the signpost for the south, for London.
‘No,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s not the way we’re going.’
They left the roundabout again. ‘I always wanted to go down to Margate,’ said Bonnie. ‘I wanted to go to Dreamland, but it closed down years ago.’
‘The amusement park?’ said Sylvia. ‘Wasn’t it reopened recently?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Bonnie. ‘It’s been closed for ten years.’
‘I believe it’s been refurbished though, and reopened as a “Re-imagined Dreamland”.’
‘I’d like to go there one day,’ said Bonnie. And she thought of going to Butlin’s too, although she could hardly believe it still existed beyond the pre-war world of that picture postcard, as if trying to go there would be like trying to get to the Land of Oz.
They got onto a different stretch of road, an A road that turned into a motorway, and Bonnie decided to look these destinations up on her phone, to see if they really did exist and if she could go there. She opened her bag and searched through it. Eventually, she looked up again and said, ‘I can’t find my phone,’ and at the same moment she saw a sign at the side
of the road showing the silhouette of an old-fashioned telephone receiver, like the one by her bed, and like the one on a toy phone that she used to have, a phone on wheels, a phone with a face. The silhouette had no cord though, as if the line had been cut through by an intruder. Underneath the disembodied receiver, it said ‘SOS’. Half a mile on, she saw another one: ‘SOS’. And then another one.
Bonnie felt terribly excited, as if she were Scott of the Antarctic setting out on an expedition, as they drove south-west on the M5 – south, with the force of gravity pulling them down, and underneath, thought Bonnie, is everything we don’t know and are afraid of knowing; and west, go west, young man, which meant to explore, to seek out new opportunities, but wasn’t it also a euphemism for death? ‘The South West’, said the blue signs, ‘The SOUTH WEST’, and Bonnie felt like a character in an Alan Sillitoe story she had read, who ‘felt like one of those sailors in the olden days who, about to set off west, wasn’t sure he would ever get back again’.
The motorway carved through the countryside, and Bonnie saw a lorry full of lambs, and another lorry with ‘EAT BRITISH CHICKEN’ printed on the back, and another with ‘EAT MORE CHIPS’ printed on the side, as she and Sylvia sped past. She saw the turn-off for Weston-super-Mare and a brown sign for the Grand Pier. They drove on.
They stopped for a late lunch at Sedgemoor services. Out of the air-conditioned car, they could feel the mid-July heat. ‘You wouldn’t know we were in England,’ said Bonnie. ‘We could be abroad.’
They bought sandwiches and giant cups of tea and sat down. Bonnie rummaged around in her shoulder bag. ‘I still can’t find my phone,’ she said.
‘Maybe you left it at home,’ said Sylvia.
‘I remember putting it in my bag,’ said Bonnie. ‘I’m sure I did . . .’
‘The mind can play tricks,’ said Sylvia.
They ate their sandwiches, though Bonnie left her crusts.
‘You should eat your crusts,’ said Sylvia. ‘They’re good for you.’
‘I’m going to give them to the birds,’ said Bonnie.
Outside, while she smoked a cigarette, she scattered the crusts for the car-park pigeons, and then Bonnie and Sylvia returned to the car and the M5. Bonnie, in the passenger seat, was rooting around again in the bag on her lap. ‘What on earth have I done with my phone?’ she muttered.
‘Forget about your phone,’ said Sylvia. ‘We’re on holiday.’
‘I’ll need to phone my mum when we arrive,’ said Bonnie, ‘to let her know I’m safe.’
‘I would lend you my phone,’ said Sylvia, ‘if I had one. They’re bound to have a phone in the pub though. I’m sure you’ll be able to use that.’
Sylvia put on one of her CDs, her film music, and Bonnie watched the landscape scrolling by, within the frame of the passenger-seat window.
They were less than an hour from Seaton when they turned off the motorway and onto A roads that wound through the villages. At one junction, they took a wrong turning – someone had tampered with the signpost, turning the arm to point the wrong way, like a comic-book jape. They got onto a B road, which would take them all the way down to the sea. Poppies growing in the verge made Bonnie think of Dorothy en route to the Emerald City, watched by the Wicked Witch of the West through her crystal ball, Dorothy fast asleep in a field of poppies, in which she might sleep forever. The poppies looked as if they were made of red tissue paper or crepe paper.
It was all downhill as they neared the sea, and the car picked up speed. They crossed the River Axe and entered Seaton on the Harbour Road.
‘I’m really looking forward to this,’ said Sylvia, reaching over to the passenger seat and gripping Bonnie’s forearm, and her skinny, sharp-nailed fingers made Bonnie think of those stories of seagulls trying to fly off with cats and small dogs. Then Sylvia returned her hand to its worrying position on the steering wheel, braking gently as they approached the corner. ‘Here we are,’ she said, although their view was obscured by a derelict block of flats, and then they turned the final bend, and Bonnie saw the sea.
Sylvia slowed, and stopped, and backed into a tight space between two parked cars, with the pounding sea on one side and the Hook and Parrot on the other.
‘So here it is,’ said Sylvia. ‘This is where your story takes place.’
‘It’s a long time since I’ve been here,’ said Bonnie, peering through the passenger window.
‘Come on,’ said Sylvia, reaching across and unbuckling Bonnie’s seat belt. Sylvia climbed out from behind the steering wheel and went around to the passenger side to open Bonnie’s door, shepherding her out of the car.
Bonnie noticed the pay and display sign that was screwed to the wall. Reading it, she said to Sylvia, ‘You can’t park here for more than four hours.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’ll move it later.’
Bonnie went round to the boot to get their suitcases out.
‘Leave the suitcases for now,’ said Sylvia. ‘We can do that later.’
Bonnie looked at the Hook and Parrot’s facade. ‘It’s not how I remember it,’ she said. She turned to face the ancient sea, and took a deep breath of sea air.
‘We’ll go for a little walk first,’ said Sylvia, ‘and then we’ll go inside.’
They walked along the concrete esplanade, passing a woman whose face was made up like an actor’s, like a chorus girl’s; her make-up was heavy enough to show up under stage lights.
‘Look,’ said Sylvia, pointing to the ground, ‘Here’s one of the signs you put into your story.’ The letters painted onto the concrete said ‘NO CYCLING’. They walked on, and Sylvia pointed out the other signs that said ‘Dogs not allowed’ and, next to a picture of a seagull, ‘PLEASE DON’T FEED ME’.
When they reached the storm gates in between the esplanade and the beach, Bonnie said, ‘Let’s go back now.’
‘We’ll go to the pub and have something to eat,’ said Sylvia. ‘Then we’ll go up to our rooms, and maybe actually being there will help you find the ending to your story.’
The front of the Hook and Parrot was white, or almost white, white with a hint of purple, or white with an old layer of purple underneath, almost showing through. Or perhaps it was just the light; perhaps it was just white.
It was the strangest thing, to walk inside the Hook. It was like walking into a story, although, at the same time, it wasn’t. Bonnie looked around at the interior, which was nothing like in her story. She had never actually been inside the Hook; she had only used the name and apart from that had made it up entirely.
‘I’ll get us some drinks and menus,’ said Sylvia, ‘while you go and sit down.’
‘A lemonade for me, please,’ said Bonnie.
‘Diet?’ said Sylvia.
‘All right,’ said Bonnie. ‘Thanks.’
Bonnie went over to a window seat, facing the bar and a display of peanuts. She fancied some peanuts. Just next to the bar, there was a row of gumball machines. She liked gumball machines; putting a coin into a gumball machine was like playing a slot machine but winning every time.
There was hardly anyone else in the pub, only a trio of men at the bar, whose conversation she could hear. Two of the men, who had each bought a round, while the third man had not, were joking about this other man having short arms. ‘My arms are short,’ said the man. ‘And so are my dad’s, and so were his dad’s. I swear to you,’ he said, ‘I am evidence of a Victorian breeding programme designed to breed children with short arms so that they couldn’t touch their privates at night. You know how they were always tucked very tight into their beds so they wouldn’t play with themselves? Well, in this case, the Victorians were, instead, engineering shorter arms to put a stop to the fiddling.’ The other men laughed, and the man with the short arms shook his head. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘look at me,’ and he reached out with his short arm for his pint.
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br /> ‘Here we are,’ said Sylvia, coming over to the window seat with two drinks and a menu. Both the drinks looked the same, and Bonnie put her hand out for one. ‘Not that one,’ said Sylvia. ‘It’s got vodka in it,’ she added, pushing the other glass towards Bonnie, who could not tell the difference by looking. ‘This one’s yours.’ Bonnie took her diet lemonade, which was fizzing fast, like speeded-up film.
They sipped their drinks and looked at the menu. ‘I think I’ll have the Lyme Bay Crab Salad,’ said Sylvia. Bonnie had seen crabs being caught by the holidaymakers in Lyme Regis: surprisingly tiny crabs, babies, put into buckets of sun-warming water lined up on the harbour wall. She had wanted to tip them back into the sea. She worried about them being put into car boots and forgotten about until they started to smell of death.
‘I’ll have the Cheesy Chips,’ said Bonnie.
‘They’ve got desserts as well, if you want one,’ said Sylvia. ‘Various things with custard.’
‘I don’t like custard,’ said Bonnie. She had not been able to eat it since she ate a bowl of custard in the garden when she was little, and swallowed what felt like glass. ‘Grass?’ said her mother, when Bonnie ran into the kitchen to tell her. ‘Glass,’ said Bonnie. ‘It won’t have been glass,’ said her mother. ‘Perhaps it was an insect. It won’t hurt you.’ And as Bonnie got older, she too thought: It can’t have been glass, even though such things did happen, such things did get into food; but still, she thought, it was probably a blade of grass, which can cut like paper, or else an insect with a sting. She could still not eat a bowl of custard though. She was generally wary of food that she had not prepared herself, even though she was no cook.
