“Christ,” he grumbled. “They hide the road signs here better than they do in Fife.”
His car sped up the ill kept dirt track, twigs akimbo, and gradually the Moore’s ramshackle house slid into view. He had forgotten how big and crumbly it was and slowed to a more respectful pace. That house had swallowed his only friends, years ago, and he had never gotten them back.
“Didn’t they film The Shining in you?” he remarked, while the gloomy wooden giant was still out of earshot.
He parked his old BMW at the end of the drive, where deserted gravel wrestled free from the fouled undergrowth. He strolled to the front door and pulled warily at the big wooden bell handle, but it didn’t make the vulture squawk he half expected. Instead he heard a muted jangle deep in the interior of the house.
There was a long silence. R.D. fixed his tie and straightened out his black suit. He whistled a snatch from Peter and the Wolf. Then, glancing around, he gave a squeak of glee.
On the baked ground, partly hidden by a tangle of briars, was Brighton Rock!
-36-
Brighton Rock was a weird and wonderful geological aberration R.D. and Justin had stumbled across near Dripping Springs, when their own relationship was just forming. It was a stone half the size of R.D.’s head and, on the outside, looked just as solid. But, when you flipped it over, a million years of freak erosion had sculpted it completely hollow.
R.D. had spotted the scientific applications of such a discovery right away.
“I could hide my front door key in that.” he enthused, tossing the secretive boulder to Justin.
“Sure, Scotty. Reckon it won’t look out of place on the landing outside your apartment, huh?” His friend stroked the stone slyly. “Me? I got a garden. You could visit whenever you wanted.”
He winked.
“Besides you aint exactly security conscious. You keep your spare car key in the glove compartment.”
So Brighton Rock had gone home with Justin.
Now here it was again, another old buddy turned up out of the blue. R.D. rolled it over and saw the Moore’s latch key was inside.
Good. One never knew when information like that could come in useful.
Hearing a noise, he dropped the rock and straightened quickly. The door flew open and Clancy stood in half darkness, nervously tucking a comb into her pocket. Her mouth was set in a grim line and her eyes lacked lustre. R.D. had a sudden suspicion that this evening was not going to go down on his list of happy social gatherings.
“Are you O.K.?” he inquired tentatively. “You remembered I was coming?”
“I’ve thought of nothing else,” Clancy replied.
“Then lead me to the chips and dip, ma’am!” R.D. presented his hostess with a bottle of Hardy’s Shiraz and a burst of false enthusiasm. “Ah’m here tae party!”
Clancy seemed to brighten a little, but R.D. got the feeling it was just to save him embarrassment. She ushered him into the hall with a small curtsey, then quickly grew serious again.
“I’ve got a sort of pre-chip n dip thing I’d like to show you first,” she said, taking his arm. “In Justin’s study.”
“You’ve got new wallpaper and you’d like my opinion.”
Clancy gave a wry grin.
“Well... it is on the walls.” Walking him down the hall she seemed subtly amused. “And the ceiling. And everywhere else. Look for yourself.”
They had reached the study and Clancy pushed open the door.
-37-
The room was like nothing R.D. had ever seen. Cables of all sizes, some as thick as his wrist, overlaid every scrap of space. Covering them was a mesh of filament wires. Thousands of wires. Hundreds of thousands of wires. He was staring through a mist of metal and chrome. He was entering the stomach of a great silver fish.
And, from those steel innards, dripped bastardized televisions, toasters, radios, microwaves, stereos and other unrecognizable appliances - raped electrical corpses swaying on umbilical cords of copper and plastic.
R.D. recalled a scientific article he had once flicked through. It said that people whose houses nestled under giant electrical pylons were prone to depression and more vulnerable to every kind of illness. There was something of that feeling lurking in the room.
He was flabbergasted. The very magnitude of this creation smacked of obsession. He turned to Clancy, careful not to betray his misgivings.
“It’s great.”
“Eh?” The pale woman looked incredulous.
“I like it! It’s got real power.” R.D. put his hands on his hips. “Of course, I’ve got to think about what it means.”
“It’s not a sculpture, you dope,” Clancy scolded. “Justin built it.”
“What did he do that for?” The psychologist was even more confused.
“Oh, I think he’ll want to tell you himself.” Clancy shut the door quietly, as if she were leaving a church. She beckoned to her stupefied dinner guest and they stole down the long corridor towards the living room.
R.D. remembered the living room as Clancy’s domain, fairy-tale French windows opening onto an immaculately kept garden. No flowers or fancy borders had cluttered the vista, just perfectly tended grass. It looked like some giant billiard table had wandered over and collapsed in front of the patio. The only ornaments on the lawn had been a single Pecan tree for shade and a simple stone sundial.
The living room itself had housed Clancy’s ‘Gallery’. One wall was covered in reproductions of her favourite artists. Up there, Van Gogh, Soutine, Modigliani, Utrillo and Dix jostled like circus jugglers to catch passing glances. On the opposite wall, probably at Justin’s insistence, his wife displayed her own works - swirling helixes of paint that swan-dived longingly into one other.
Clancy reached the living-room door with R.D. in tow. She hurried in, pulling him along. The expectant smile faded from his face.
On his last visit the left wall had hosted roughly twenty of Clancy’s pictures in a carnal furnace, barely contained by their frames. Now they were all gone, nothing remaining but lifeless squares of unfurnished emulsion. The reproductions on the opposite wall looked jaded and heavy with guilt. The whole room seemed spiritless and unbalanced.
Another door, another shock. R.D. glanced at Clancy for an explanation, but her eyes were scurrying from side to side, looking for some unaffected area she didn’t have to avoid. Through the window he could see the emerald grass had grown straggled and parched.
“Have a seat,” Clancy said, tightly. And she slipped, swiftly from the scene of the crime.
R.D. waited. Five minutes went by. Then ten. Where the hell were the Moores?
He sat apprehensively on the couch, hands clasped across his knees. When his friends still didn’t appear he did what he figured he was supposed to do. He was an analyst, after all. So he analysed the room.
Either Clancy was selling her art faster than she could produce it, or she had stopped painting altogether. The first hypothesis would indicate that the Moores were trying desperately to raise money. And desperation wouldn’t be too strong a word. Justin had always been inordinately reluctant to part with Clancy’s creations, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of any bit of his wife belonging to someone else. Though they once fetched a fair price in Louisiana galleries, Clancy had always painted much more than she sold. But, like R.D., her popularity had waned with time.
It seemed reasonable that the Moores would be in financial trouble. It must cost a lot to keep a big house like this ticking over, especially when neither occupant had a steady source of income. He couldn’t picture Justin working in MacDonalds. Besides, they were in the middle of nowhere.
R.D. nodded to himself sagely.
Hypothesis two. Clancy had stopped painting.
She was awful serious about her art, not that she personally read much into her creations. She was happy to let others ascribe them whatever pretentious meaning they wished. It was just that she loved to paint. If Clancy had given up, it might be another signif
ier that her mental state was suffering. Yet, even in the Northland State Home, before R.D. had ‘cured’ her, Clancy had always carried a sketch pad.
He lit a cigarette and stared at the mysterious presence of a vanished past.
The blank wall stared blankly back.
-38-
A mosquito of misplaced light jinked across R.D’s peripheral vision, a warning that something was behind him. Bouncing round on the couch he found his sight blocked by a shapeless mass hovering inches from his face. His body jerked in involuntary self-defence, away from the sinister, bulbous eyes leering over him. With a yelp of fear, R.D. back-pedalled like a frantic puppet across the Assam rug.
This extra distance allowed proper perspective and the malign floating orbs resolved into Justin Moore’s tortoiseshell glasses. R.D.’s old friend lurked, frozen behind the couch, one hand outstretched in a spurned gesture of friendship.
“Hell… I know it’s been a long time, Scotty,” Justin coughed. “But you don’t have to throw an epileptic fit the first time you set your sights on me, huh?”
R.D. let out a shudder of chagrined mirth.
“Jesus, Justin, you scared my fucking pants off!” Fear had loosened his tongue and his original Scots dialect bounded heavily out. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Sorry. You were way off somewheres.” The scientist pointed appreciatively. “Hey! You look good. Thinner.”
“Ditto. You haven’t changed a bit.”
R.D. studied his former partner as he rounded the couch. He was still tall and gangly, Texan as ever, with his button down Oxford shirt, Wranglers and Luchesse boots. The smoothly combed hair had remained thick and black, almost a mop-top, and his trademark horn-rimmed spectacles winked merrily on a freckled snub nose.
Justin dropped his bony arms and they hung, gunfighter fashion, at his sides. R.D. didn’t know whether to shake hands, land his former friend a buddy punch or just draw. He shuffled ham-fistedly on the spot.
The researcher, decisive as ever, solved the dilemma by stepping forward, taking his ex-partner’s shoulders and giving him a kiss on the cheek.
A typical Scotsman, R.D. reacted to the oddly intimate gesture with embarrassment. He pulled away, gave a perfunctory smile and speedily sat down. Rummaging in his suit pockets he raised and lowered his eyebrows, trying to give every part of his body something to do.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said in a gruff voice. Digging out his cigarettes the psychologist placed the pack on his knee where he could easily reach for the contents. The sight of his forgotten confidant had sharply aroused a sense of flat years gone by.
He felt awed by the moment. He suddenly wanted to beg forgiveness again, for being Daler’s man on the inside. To have one more go at explaining what had really happened.
R.D. opened his mouth, but different words came out.
“Clancy’s paintings are gone”. He indicated pockmarked gaps on the wall.
“Sold em all, Scotty.” Justin replied matter-of-factly. “Times are pretty hard and she aint been painting any new ones. You wanna beer or something?”
Both hypotheses were correct, then. R.D. very much wanted a beer. He wanted five beers.
He nodded assent.
“Any particular kind?”
“A big one.”
Justin grinned. He tapped his forehead knowingly and vanished into the hallway.
The room was lonely again. R.D. leaned his chin dolefully on the back of the couch, scenting an unexpected tang of dust mingling with the Jute weave. He felt happy and excited, but the sensation was tinged with unease. He wished that the awkwardness between himself and Justin was mere re-acquaintance.
But he knew it was residue from the sticky end they’d come to years ago.
Justin batted open the door with his thigh, a frosted amber tumbler in each hand.
“There you go Scotty. It’s hotter than hell in here, huh? The air conditioning aint been seen to in a while.”
“I noticed.” R.D. pressed the wintry tube of glass against his cheek and the instant chill derailed his train of thought. Good. It was using up too much emotional fuel.
He moved onto a different track.
“Look. Can I ask you about Clancy, just quick, before she comes back?”
“You won’t have to worry about her hearing anything.” Justin placed a slim hand on the back of the couch and sipped his own drink.
“How come?” Hopefully she had nipped out to order King Po Chicken from the nearest takeaway. R.D. had only had one roll for lunch. But that was fairly unlikely, since they were in the arse end of nowhere.
“I took her to the boathouse.” Justin said. “It’s an old building we got down the back driveway, on the lake.”
“You took her? She doesn’t know the way to your own boathouse?”
“Her memory aint what it was.” The scientist’s mouth was set in a grim line. “It’s complicated.”
“She doesn’t want to hang out with us?” R.D. couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice.
“She hides herself away in there most of the time. Hardly ever sets foot in the house. Not unless she has to.” Justin’s face was expressionless. “And I made a promise that I’d stay out of her domain.”
Something was terribly wrong with this relationship and R.D. got the feeling it wasn’t all down to Clancy’s ailment. Fumbling around in his pocket, the psychologist found his lighter. The tip of a Marlboro Light glowed grey and red.
Time to get professional.
“All right, bud,” he exhaled through atoms of smoke. “What the hell is happening, eh? What are these memory lapses Clancy claims to be suffering? You must have a theory.”
The scientist looked his old friend in the eye, glasses bright, round and knowing as an owl.
“There’s plenty wrong with Clancy, Scotty. But I’m the one causing it.”
He tugged at his ear and gave an embarrassed smile.
“Get this… I really do make people forget me.”
-39-
R.D. waited for a Disney Dormouse to pop from a teapot in some overlooked corner of this unhappy white room. Justin weathered the look of astonishment breaking over his friend’s face. Even seemed slightly amused.
R.D. raced through the possibilities. Justin was joking… No. Justin was lying… No.
Justin was a raving lunatic.
There was a thought.
And suddenly things became far more complex.
He had been invited out here, not just because there was something wrong with Clancy, but because there was also something wrong with her husband. This was certainly one for his memoirs! No Chinese carry-out after all. But Justin and Clancy still needed his help.
Well, well. R.D. scratched his head thoughtfully. OK, he’d rise to the occasion. Here was a chance to heal old wounds. An opportunity to show his worth. He’d stroll right into this emotional conflagration and emerge from the smoke with a grateful Moore over each shoulder.
He’d get his friends back.
A wily grin puckered his face. He played along.
“You… make people forget you?”
Justin headed for the French windows and yanked them open, hanging over the destroyed lawn and basking angrily in the boiling air. Then he whirled back to R.D., beads of sweat sailing from his forehead and landing on the panes.
“I know how it seems! Sure I do. Sounds like I aint playing with the full deck, don’t it?”
“It sounds like you’re completely round the bend, if you want the truth.” R.D. crossed his legs, calm and rational, in control of the situation. “Still, I’m curious. How exactly do you, eh… do this forgetting thing?”
“Remember Moore’s Cocktail? Shoot, sorry. What am I talking about? You named the damned thing. Well I never got to tell you what happened to it, after I left.”
“I heard the whole project shut down.” R.D. leaned forward, indicating for Justin to continue. “That’s all I know.”
“I wanted to
get in touch about that, sure I did. But… eh… I was pretty mad at you. For stealing money from the Daler project. From my project.”
“I know you’re never going to believe me,” the psychologist began. “But I swear I didn’t do that.”
“It don’t matter. You weren’t the one messing with the test results. That’s the important part.” Justin stuck thin hands in his pockets. “Sides, I never explained what I found out about the drug.”
“That you were right, after all?” R.D. ventured hopefully. “That Daler screwed with your results? Wanted the Cocktail project abandoned at any cost.”
“Not at any cost.” Justin cast his mind back. “They wanted the project ended, sure. But they didn’t want a scandal. Fortunately for Daler, you handed them all the ammo they needed to get rid of me and keep my mouth shut.”
“Aw… Justin.”
“Look. Let’s suppose I was wrong about you.” Justin held up his hand, silencing R.D.’s budding protest. “What really concerned me were the errors cropping up in my research. I told you, a long time ago, the findings showed a lot of the animals we gave the drug to had begun dying.”
“If Daler messed with the results, that might not even have been be true.”
“That’s what I reckoned… at first. I still had faith in the Cocktail. Thought I’d been set up.”
“I still think that.”
“No. When I checked, there really were massive errors in the recorded results. It couldn’t have been deliberate unless my whole staff was in Daler’s pocket.”
Knowing his father-in-law’s influence, R.D. wouldn’t have ruled out that option. But he kept quiet.
“Suddenly, my career was over and my reputation shot.” Justin stared up at the ceiling. “No other pharmaceutical company would touch me.” The bitterness in his voice was almost painful to hear.
“Talk about a rock and a hard place,” R.D. said sympathetically.
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