As I was driving around I began to see this vague shape of a head on my front seat. If my passenger was in the front seat with me I was all right. The thing that was clearest at first were the teeth, but I was sure it had to be Ron. I admit for a while I used to tell myself it was a trick of the light or some such but it didn’t wash. The thing that bothered me was that Ron never used to ride in the front seat; he was always in the back. I’d look in the rear view mirror sometimes, expecting to see him, but he wasn’t there.
Then the head became clearer. When I was driving someone I tried never to look at the front seat, but sometimes I couldn’t help myself. There it was, half turned towards me with this little smile on his face. Once he winked at me and I nearly went into the back of a white van.
It was lucky that he first started talking when there was nobody in the car, or I would have given myself away.
‘A bit Parkinson this evening, ain’t it?’
I said: ‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘A bit Parkinson Grimshaw,’ it said, and winked.
After that the head was always talking, and it was always rubbish. If I was driving someone I never answered back, but they must have heard him because people began to complain that I was talking to myself when I drove. I lost some regular customers like that.
My God, he talked rubbish. I can’t remember much of it; I don’t want to. Once I was asked to drive someone to Eton Place.
‘Eton Place,’ says the head. ‘I’ve eaten plaice. With chips. Ha! Ha! Eaten Plaice!’
‘Will you shut the fuck up?’ I said, breaking my rule of silence, and I had to apologise to the old lady in the back of my car. She was very nice about it.
It got so I was hardly driving people at all; I only did long haul deliveries and such. Once I remember, as I was going up to Manchester, the head was yammering at me all the way up the M1.
‘If you want to sell a picture it’s Provence you need,’ it said. ‘You can’t do it without Provence.’
‘Provenance, you moron!’ I shouted. ‘It’s bloody provenance!’
‘Hoity toity,’ said the head ‘who’s got out of the wrong side of his knickers in a twist this morning? Who made up your bed? Tracey Emin? You ought to be in a fur-lined padded cell, you ought. That might save your bacon. Now then! Now then! No need to go all twombly.’
I wanted to smack it round the chops but I couldn’t take my hands off the wheel. I was going too fast, and by the time I had stopped in a lay-by it had gone. Sometimes it would just chatter its teeth for hours on end. I tried changing cars but it was no good.
One day I had to go down to Cardiff to deliver some sort of special birthday present for a rich bloke. It was raining down in torrents and the windscreen wipers could barely cope. They seemed to get slower and slower as if they were tired out, and the rain fell like a waterfall until the road ahead was just a blur punctured by car headlights. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the head appeared on the front seat, chattering its teeth and gibbering.
‘Pull your trousers down,’ it kept saying. ‘Pull your trousers down, pull your trousers down!’
I wanted to punch it, but the idea of actually touching something which shouldn’t be there appalled me. I tried to ignore it and concentrated on my driving. I knew I was going too fast in all that rain, but I couldn’t help it.
‘Edward, Eddy, Ed,’ it said. ‘Hey, big ’ed. Pull your trousers down, pull your trousers down or I’ll snick your little nipper off with a bloody chopper!’
I balled my left hand into a fist and, without taking my eyes off the road, I struck out in the head’s direction. I hit something, mostly wet curly hair, I think, and a surface that cracked on impact like a soft boiled egg. Immediately I took my hand away and back to the wheel. I had skidded slightly so I slowed down. In my rear view mirror I could see through a curtain of rain that the lights of a lorry were bearing down on me, so I speeded up again, but the lights kept coming.
There was something else that I saw in the rear view mirror. At first I couldn’t be sure, and then I could. There was a man in the back of my car, a big man in a suit. There was no telling who it was because I couldn’t see his head. Where his head should have been there was nothing. Or rather there was something, but it was black darkness.
‘Pull your trousers down!’
I swerved across the road and the head rolled off the seat next to me and into my lap. The face side was in my crotch. It began biting me. It bit me in the crotch. The rain was pouring down and I tried to slow but the lights of the lorry were on me. The head bit me again on the prick with its gnashers and I yelled. I was going too fast because in my anger I had jammed my foot down on the gas. I took one hand off the wheel to tear the head out of my legs but I must have lost control because the pain was terrible. I swerved again, this time off the road, down an embankment and into the big black torso of a tree.
When the ambulance came, they had to cut me out. They found most of me, but there was no sign of Ron’s head. At least they didn’t say they’d found anything like that in the car. I was too sharp to ask anything like: ‘Have you found a head?’ I expect it just rolled away somewhere.
So here I am in hospital, and likely to stay till Kingdom Come. I’m paralysed from the neck down, but they’ve given me a thing attached to my head, so I can use my laptop and finish the story I started. It’s taken me a long time. God! As long as an unhappy holiday, and then some. But I’ve got time on my heads. Sometimes in the dark the head still speaks. The head in my head I like to call it now. I’m living in the dark, he says, but you, my friend, are with me. Dear boy. Take this grey corridor and walk with me down its eternity. Something gleams somewhere. It is a mirror at the end. Do you see it far off? And what does it reflect? Nothing. Or is there just a hint of a mouth and some teeth glinting and gaping in the greylight? I can still gnash, he says. I can still gnash my gnashers. Ha, ha!
Our food is dust. The dust is thick on the doors which are too heavy for us to lift or shift. No sound but the flutter of dry, dead leaves that blow in from a nowhere that we do not see. But there are some things with us. I see their signs scribbled in the dust. Somethings that bite and gnaw us in the dark where no daylight dims the blackness. But in the greylight we can sometimes see their shadows crawl, or fidget uneasily in the draughty passages. Here we are shut up in dust. Leave me alone! No. Don’t! Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me!
I think I’ve woken up, but it’s still dark. Hospital dark, thank Christ. I think. Go away! Don’t leave me. Let me feel your scribble on my face, because only my face can feel. I seem to have twombled into a tunnel which is a hole in the ground. A holy tunnel. But Darkness has his trousers on, and will follow me down the hole.
TAWNY
‘Champagne, Madam?’
‘Thank you. And it is too. The real thing, Your sister’s done us proud, Julia.’
‘Frankly, Vicky, I’d settle for sparkling Chardonnay any day of the week, but nothing but the best will do for our Davina.’
‘Not to mention the new Son and Heir.’
‘Well, exactly.’
‘And what a do this is. Your sister seems to have invited the whole of Dorset. The noise! I can barely hear myself think.’
‘These large parties do have their advantages.’
‘Where is the S and H, by the way?’
‘Upstairs in the old nursery, and sleeping like a—well, appropriately enough, a baby.’
‘They rarely do in my experience.’
‘Well, my nephew Oliver is different. He does everything perfectly, according to Davina. And I must say, he did behave impeccably at the font.’
‘To be honest, darling, I’m a little surprised to see Davina going in for the full christening bit. She used to be such a wild child. I thought she was into crystals and dancing round the Cerne Abbas Giant at midnight.’
‘Oh, those days are long gone, believe me. Well, since . . . Anyway, she wanted to have the party here at Ma and Pa’s hou
se, and, as St Stephen’s is just a hop and a skip away, it seemed inevitable. And our vicar is an absolute sweetie.’
‘It all sounds positively feudal. Has marriage changed Davina very much?’
‘I don’t think so really. Dave always was a go-getting little brat; it’s just taken a different form these days. Mmm! These canapés are delish.’
‘I haven’t really met the husband. Shook hands with him at the wedding reception and that’s about it. I can never remember the name. Isn’t it Derek, or something?’
‘I’m afraid it is. He’s a solicitor.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘When Davina first brought him here to meet the parents, after he’d gone Pa made an absolutely typical Pa remark. Promise you won’t repeat.’
‘Girl Guides’ honour.’
‘He said: “Well, I suppose he’ll do for Davina, but I think he’s a dam’ dull dog”.’
‘ “Dam’ dull dog”! I love it! Davina didn’t used to go in for dull dogs, did she?’
‘Far from. Gerry may have been doglike in many ways, but a dull one, he most certainly wasn’t.’
‘My God! I’d almost forgotten about Gerry. Peter and I were in South Africa when that happened.’
‘Well, nowadays the name Gerry is not mentioned in this household, for many obvious reasons. I shouldn’t have brought it up really.’
‘And then Davina getting hitched to this Derek character so soon after. Were the two things connected?’
‘You mean did Gerry do it because Davina was leaving him for Derek? Well, she says emphatically not.’
‘Yes, but she would say that, wouldn’t she?’
‘I know my little sister can be a bloody liar sometimes, but on this occasion I think I believe her. Gerry blowing out what brains he had left with a twelve bore was as much a shock to Davina as to everyone else. When it happened I think she barely knew Derek.’
‘In that case it must have been a whirlwind romance.’
‘Whirlwind is not a word one associates with Derek.’
‘But I mean, they were walking down the aisle within three months, weren’t they? I remember. I was there, in my best hat.’
‘I know, Vicky, I know. There was a certain indecent haste about it. All Dorset was agog. But there may have been a reason.’
‘The sprog?’
‘Six months after the nuptials. My sister is a fast worker, but not that fast.’
‘Yes, but hang on a mo! That must mean she was seeing Derek before Gerry . . .’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘Keep the volume down, Vicky.’
‘You mean if the sprog is not Derek’s?’
‘It may be too early to tell, I know, but young Oliver is very blonde. Unlike Derek.’
‘And like—’
‘The one we don’t mention.’
‘And what does Derek have to say about it all?’
‘Derek is a solicitor. He’s used to keeping family secrets.’
‘He’d have to be a bloody good solicitor to want to keep this one.’
‘I think it’s what they call a marriage of convenience.’
‘Did you find Gerry attractive?’
‘Not my type at all, but I think I know what Davina saw in him.’
‘All those raging hormones. Did you know? He and I very nearly had a sort of thing. This was long before Davina.’
‘But you settled for Peter instead.’
‘Peter has other qualities, bless him.’
‘I didn’t go for the animal magnetism, myself, or all the yellow hair, for that matter.’
‘Tawny.’
‘Eh?’
‘It wasn’t yellow, it was tawny. Like a lion’s mane.’
‘If you say so.’
‘And eyes the same colour.’
‘Tawny?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I don’t fancy long hair in men, tawny or otherwise. And there was something about him, something—’
‘Farouche.’
‘My God, Vicky. You are a one for the words today. What’s “farouche” when it’s at home?’
‘Sort of wild and savage.’
‘Yes, he could be that, and a half. He was a moody brute.’
‘Is it true he left everything to Davina in his will?’
‘Shh! Keep your voice down. Yes, I believe so. What was left of his family money after he’d gambled and pissed most of it away. Davina has been very cagey about it all. I believe Derek was Gerry’s solicitor and that’s how Davina got to know him.’
‘Ye gods! That could explain a lot.’
‘Never underestimate Davina’s cunning. Remember that business I told you about with Great Aunt Maud’s Georgian spoons?’
‘Will I ever forget? You and Dave didn’t speak for months.’
‘All is now forgiven and forgotten. But I have to admit I couldn’t resist giving Oliver a silver spoon as a christening present.’
‘Nice one, Julia!’
‘But I don’t hold grudges.’
‘I say, do look at that animal over there.’
‘Where?’
‘There! The huge dog in the hall. Just walked in. Bold as brass.’
‘God, yes! What is it? Sort of wolfhound type of thing, isn’t it?’
‘I take it it isn’t your sister’s.’
‘Good God, no! Dave goes for the small and yappy, and my parents have always had Springers. Funny hair it’s got. Sort of shaggy and yellowish.’
‘Tawny.’
‘There you go again. It’s not a Lurcher, is it?’
‘I’ve never seen one that colour. Lurchers are usually greyish.’
‘Who in hell does it belong to?’
‘Could it be your uncle Ralph?’
‘Oh, no. Strictly Labrador, our Ralph.’
‘Look! Now it’s going up stairs. It seems to know its way around. Do you think we should tell someone?’
‘Oh, no. Can’t come to any harm. Grab that dish from over there, will you? Those little smoked salmon thingys look a bit of all right.’
‘Hullo! Hullo! Hullo! Well, if it ain’t Vicky and my favourite niece Julia!’
‘Hello, Ralph.’
‘You girls been gassing away like crazy?’
‘That’s right, Ralph darling. We poor women have nothing better to do than gossip, gossip, gossip the livelong day.’
‘Aha! Thought as much!’
‘Ralph, you don’t happen to own a wolfhoundy type animal.’
‘Wolfhound? Not me. I’m strictly a Labrador man.’
‘I told you so, Vicky.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, Vicky and I just saw this weird dog walk in: it’s shaggy, yellowish—’
‘Tawny.’
‘Shut up, you. Vicky’s got “tawny” on the brain. Then it went up stairs.’
‘I know nothing about it. My Labs are black, and they’re safely locked up in the back of the Landrover.’
‘Well, it’s a mystery, that’s all.’
‘So. What do you girls think of the bonny bouncing baby?’
‘Oh, sweet!’
‘Yes. Seems to have the correct complement of limbs and other accoutrements.’
‘Very nicely put, Ralph.’
‘Being a godfather, one has a duty to check up on these things. But have you spotted the eyes?’
‘Can’t say I have, uncle.’
‘I got a good look at them when I was up at the font with him. You know, I was under the impression that all babies’ eyes were blue.’
‘They are.’
‘Not this one. They’re a sort of pale brown. Very odd.’
‘Tawny.’
‘Eh?’
‘Ignore her. My God, there it is again!’
‘Look, Ralph, coming down the stairs as if it owns the place.’
‘See what you mean. What an animal! Never seen a hound like that before.’
‘And
you a dog man.’
‘Owned and bred them all my life. Man and boy. Can’t say I like the look of it.’
‘There it goes. Out the front door.’
‘Up to no good, I’ll be bound. Licking its chops.’
‘It wouldn’t belong to the people up at Watson’s Farm, would it?’
‘No, no! They’ve got Jack Russells for the rats. This one looks as if it’s escaped from a zoo or a circus, or something.’
‘Tell us, Ralphy. How well did you know Gerry?’
‘Hello, where did that one spring from? Oh, I see! That’s who you two were in a huddle about just now. I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about Gerry.’
‘Pa told me you knew him quite well.’
‘Depends what you mean by well. We used to shoot together. Once or twice I fished with him on that stretch of the Kennet his family owned. Yes, I knocked around with him quite a bit, but did I know him? Frankly, I don’t think anybody did.’
‘Except Davina.’
‘Ah, well, Davina. Now, that’s another story, as you well know, Julia. I’m not getting into that subject. But I will tell you one thing about Gerry. Odd thing. One evening about two years ago, I was over at his place having a drink. Davina wasn’t around. She often wasn’t, you know. Well, he’d got this scheme for hiring out some land in Scotland belonging to a chum of his and doing a bit of deer stalking on it, and he wanted me to come in with him on the venture. Well, I wasn’t too keen. Bagging stags is not really my line of country. Anyway, we were having a perfectly amiable discussion about it over a couple of fairly substantial tumblers of Famous Grouse; then Gerry goes over to the window and looks out. The sun’s gone down but there’s a full moon. I think he must have seen something—I don’t know—but suddenly his mood totally changes. He makes this strange noise in his throat—“Aoo”, like that—sort of like a suppressed yelp, then he begins to say I must go now. Won’t even let me finish my whisky. He’s practically pushing me out of the front door and making all sorts of peculiar noises, like growls almost. Well, I go, and it’s quite some time before I see old Gerry again, but when I do, do you know, I don’t think he remembered a thing about it?’
The Ballet of Dr Caligari Page 5
