The Sandman

by Miles Gibson

  “You won’t remember me,” Dorothy crooned. “I helped your aunt look after you when your father died. It was a long time ago. You were only a child.”

  I had forgotten nothing. “How is my aunt?” I asked with a smile.

  “She’s dead,” said the husband.

  I stopped smiling.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dorothy. They both looked as if they expected me to panic and piddle on my shoes.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” I inquired after a long pause.

  They nodded their heads and followed me into the kitchen.

  “Where’s your mother?” asked Dorothy as she unbuttoned her coat.

  “She went mad,” I said cheerfully and filled the kettle.

  “I’m sorry,” said the husband. He looked tragic, as if he held himself personally responsible for all the unhappiness in the world. He sat down exhausted at the table while Dorothy helped me make the tea.

  It was the saddest feeling to see her again. Did she remember our antics in the great wardrobe? It was impossible that she could have forgotten – she had invented the game. Yet she gave me no sign. She gazed at me with the placid eyes of a smug young wife. She was not distant but she was far from flirtatious. Everything about her was cool and measured. She expressed sympathy for me and concern for my mother, a polite interest in the fate of the hotel and a general interest in the weather. There was nothing in her attitude to suggest that we had once washed each other with our tongues and promised to die in each other’s arms.

  The husband, however, was soon talking to me as if we were the most intimate friends. His name was Archie and he owned a string of butchers’ shops. He pulled off his Burberry, dropped it on the floor and spoke at great length about the mysteries of meat. It was an education. I found a bottle of wine and encouraged him to talk about his art. After he had drunk most of the bottle he became so excited that he made me go tramping with him through the town in search of steak which we carried home to fry.

  Archie laid the steak out on the kitchen table to watch it bleed. I stood behind him with a frying pan in my hands while Dorothy sat and merely smiled.

  “Meat is life,” Archie said gravely. “Life is meat.”

  He stretched out one hand and gave the meat a prod with a blunt finger. The frying pan was swinging softly in my hands.

  “We are born and we are eaten,” Archie continued. “This is known as a natural cycle. There is no waste involved in a natural cycle.” He was very drunk. I think he was reciting the butcher’s prayer.

  He picked up the meat, held it away from the table and we stared at the puddle of blood. The blood began to roll towards the floor. The frying pan began to rise towards the meat.

  “Blood thickens gravy,” said Archie. “Gravy thickens meat. There’s an end to it.” He folded the meat carefully into the metal pan and moved away to fry it.

  We drank more wine and ate the meat with our fingers, according to his instructions. Even Dorothy seemed to relax a little and laughed and smeared her chin with blood. Afterwards they asked me more about my mother and I told them the whole story. Dorothy clucked and shook her head. Archie was so impressed he insisted that we visit the hospital the following day. So I asked them to be my guests for the night.

  I found fresh sheets and blankets and led them to their room. Archie sat on the end of the bed, waved me goodnight and looked for his feet. Dorothy smiled and closed the door.

  As soon as I thought they were asleep I crept downstairs and retrieved Nectarine Summers from her hiding place. We sat together in the kitchen and I told her of my visitors. She thought them a strange couple, he with his big, slow hands and bovine face and she with her manners and sharp, little teeth. But I told her of the wardrobe days and Dorothy’s erotic cruelty. It was natural, I explained, that she should marry a man who also loved corpses, a man who softened his hands in pigs’ entrails and could be moved to tears by the succulent beauty of a raw kidney. Well, Nectarine Summers took some convincing but, in the end, she agreed with me. We sat in the dark and speculated gleefully on the unspeakable rituals of their marriage bed.

  Archie drove us to the hospital late the following morning. It was a large country house in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and rough lawn. It was a handsome building with an atmosphere of picturesque decay. It might have been a school or a small museum.

  No one greeted us at the door so we crept inside and began to search the corridors for a doctor or nurse. But no one came to our rescue and we finally reached a recreation room full of televisions and yellow newspapers. There were three or four truculent girls sitting at a table rolling cigarettes. They sneered at us when we passed but said nothing. One of them crossed herself and tapped the table.

  I found my mother sitting alone in a corner of the room. She was wearing several cardigans and a pair of old trousers. She did not recognise me. I knelt down beside her and held her hand. She looked at me with mild suspicion but did not pull her hand away.

  “Is that your mother?” whispered Archie amazed.

  “Yes,” I said, “I recognise her cardigans.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to talk to you,” whispered Dorothy doubtfully.

  “I expect she’s waiting for my father,” I said.

  Then Dorothy presented my mother with a big bunch of flowers. Red and white carnations in a damp paper cone. My mother accepted them with a strange smile. She held them in both hands and pushed her nose into them. She began to eat them. She bit off their heads and ate them. The red ones seemed to be her favourite.

  I sat and watched my mother eat while Dorothy and Archie went in search of a doctor. When they eventually found one he was reluctant to voice an opinion about the state of my mother’s brains. He had an arrogant tilt to his chin and kept cocking his head as we talked to him. Beneath his white coat he sported an expensive suit and a brand new pair of suede shoes. You can’t trust a man who wears suede shoes. When I asked him when I could take the old lady home he looked surprised.

  “She’s one of our favourites,” he said, “We’d be sorry to see her leave.”

  “Yes, but when can we take her home?” insisted Archie.

  “She wouldn’t be happy outside,” the doctor declared with a brief smile.

  “But she can’t be happy here,” snapped Dorothy.

  The doctor turned upon Dorothy, cocked his head this way and that to inspect her from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. He had his hands in his pockets. He began to jangle some coins with his fingers.

  “I find that a very offensive remark, young lady. Our patients are kept under the strictest medical supervision. We pride ourselves on our standards of discipline and hygiene. We’re a family. Doctors and patients together,” he said coldly.

  “She doesn’t need another family,” said Archie stubbornly. “We want to take her home.”

  The doctor sighed, pulled a hand from his pocket and glanced at his wristwatch.

  “Perhaps you’d better come into my office,” he said, “Follow me.”

  He led us down a maze of gloomy corridors and unlocked a heavy panelled door. The office was large and comfortable, Indian carpets on the floor, Victorian watercolours on the walls, several narrow wooden chairs, and one huge leather chair behind a polished oak desk. The doctor arranged himself behind the desk and invited us to sit before him. He picked up a fountain pen and began to roll it between his fingers. It was some moments before he spoke.

  “This hospital cares for depressed and confused people,” he said carefully. “It’s not a prison for the violent and the raving. We think of it as a shelter, a special place where people can come and rest and sort themselves out.”

  “You can’t lock people up forever just because they’re depressed,” said Dorothy, “I get depressed. He gets depressed,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “It’s a very depressing world.”

  The doctor continued rolling the pen in his hand. He was not impressed by Dorothy’s outburst.

&n
bsp; “There are no locks or bars in this hospital. As I’ve tried to explain, it’s not a prison.”

  “Then we’d like to take the old lady home,” said Archie.

  The doctor threw the butcher a withering glance and the butcher cracked his knuckles loudly. He wasn’t going to be bullied by a man who wore suede shoes.

  “You don’t seem to understand me,” said the doctor. “The patient – my patient – is receiving a complicated drug therapy treatment. It would be dangerous to remove her from here for at least twelve months. Perhaps longer …”

  “Poking drugs down her throat won’t make the world any less depressing,” muttered Archie. Dorothy gave him a long, hard stare.

  “You mentioned that you suffered from depressive anxiety,” the doctor said softly.

  “Who?” I said, looking up in alarm. “No, I don’t think I said that …”

  “Was your father an anxious man?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said with a frown.

  “His father is dead,” explained Dorothy.

  “Have you had treatment for any depressive illness in the past?” inquired the doctor, tapping his pen against the desk.

  “No.”

  “Were you depressed or anxious when you learned that your mother would need hospital treatment?”

  “Yes, of course, it was very sad,” I said.

  “And that’s why you’re here today?” he asked gently.

  “Yes.”

  The doctor nodded his head and began to roll the pen once more between his fingers. He smiled. “Perhaps we should make an appointment for you to visit us again …”

  “Why?” I said.

  “I’d like to talk to you. I think I could help you,” said the doctor cryptically.

  “Come on, Mackerel. Let’s go home,” snorted Dorothy in great disgust.

  We stood up and marched from the office. The doctor did nothing to block our retreat. We marched away through the maze of corridors, losing our way, retracing our steps, swearing and kicking at doors. We drove home in silence. It was very depressing.

  After Dorothy’s brief visit to the hotel I felt lonely and suffocated in the dusty shadows of my room. I felt that, somehow, I had been left behind. Dorothy had sprouted into the world and even penetrated the mysteries of marriage while I remained at home, a pale and curious dwarf of a man. The empty hotel began to depress me and I took to walking the cliffs each evening in an effort to think about myself and escape the brooding ghost of my mother. I left Nectarine Summers in our favourite kitchen chair and went walking for hours with nothing but the sound of the sea washing around inside my head.

  It was time to make something of my life. I wanted to invent some new and daring feat of magic that would baffle audiences across the world. I saw myself alone on a spotlit stage holding thousands enchanted with the William Burton Blazing Wardrobe or the Burton Pyramid of Nails.

  Beyond the promenade and a narrow stretch of beach the cliffs reared into a huge rollercoaster of rock. There were narrow footpaths cut along the very edge of these cliffs, which were so high that when I walked them it was like walking in the sky with nothing but the moon to guide my feet. I walked with the wind scratching my face and gulped at the clean, sharp air. I walked and waited for an inspiration that would help me make sense of my life.

  One evening, as I was struggling towards the highest ledge, I saw a figure moving towards me. At first it was no more than a small, black exclamation mark bobbing against the slate of the sky. But as it drew closer it developed legs and an overcoat. I stopped walking and watched it approach. There was something familiar about the tilt of the head and the thrust of the shoulders but it was not until the figure was almost upon me that I recognised him.

  It was Percy Pig. There was no mistake. It was Percy fighting his way along the track with his hands in his pockets and his face pushed into his coat. Stray rings of hair flopped damply around his collar. I stepped aside to let him pass and, as he drew level with me, he glanced up and sneered. Did he recognise me or was it the force of the wind in his face that made him pull back his lips to reveal that mouthful of broken teeth? Had he forgiven Figg and been told of my assault on her prostrate person? Or did he mourn her loss even now, and exercise his grief at night upon these cliffs? It was a mystery. I turned towards him but he moved away.

  And then it happened. I wanted to say something to him. I wanted to reach out and touch him. But when I stretched out my hand and caught his collar he seemed to twist upon his heel. He threw out his arms. His feet did a mad little dance. He danced sideways off the edge of the cliff and disappeared. I edged my way to the brink of the cliff and stared into the boiling sea beneath me. Percy was gone. I couldn’t believe it had happened. It had been so quick. I stood blinking into the water as if he might surface and offer me a cheerful wave of his hand. But Percy Pig had vanished.

  I ran home to Nectarine Summers and told her what had happened. But, for the first time in her life, she had nothing to say for herself. Her mouth was stitched shut and there were no words of comfort. She stared at me like a bundle of old rags. It was as if my magic was suddenly too potent for the dainty manipulation of dolls. I had discovered, in those few brief moments on the cliff, the magic of life and death, the ultimate disappearing trick, the ability to snuff out lives like candles. And now, the hands that had first tickled life into Nectarine Summers seemed to draw that life from her again. She was dead. She was nothing but an armful of feathers and dust. I dumped her on the kitchen table and searched the cupboards for brandy. My fingers were trembling and cold. When I tried to pour the brandy into a cup I splashed my wrists. It was hopeless. I plugged the bottle into my mouth, threw back my head and let the brandy pour down my throat. I was waiting for the police to arrive and arrest me. Once the brandy had warmed me I went upstairs, took a bath and changed into my best suit.

  It was important to create the right impression when they came knocking at the door. I did not want them to think I was a criminal. So I shaved carefully and sucked a peppermint to sweeten my breath. Then I staggered into the breakfast room where I hid behind the curtains and watched the street. It was raining and the town was deserted. The silence was so deep that I wondered again if I had really met Percy Pig on that lonely clifftop track or merely imagined him. Perhaps I was to be cursed with the ghost of Percy as my mother was haunted by the ghost of my father. Had he been no more than a vivid memory given shape for a moment by the twisted rocks and the flight of the wind? He had not been flesh and bone. I had not thrown him into the sea. I stood beside the window for hours, denying any knowledge of our fatal encounter until eventually I fell asleep.

  When I woke up I found myself on the floor beneath the curtains! I continued to hide there all morning and in the afternoon crept out to buy a newspaper to read of Percy’s death. I expected to see his photograph on the front page but he was nowhere to be found. I picked my way through the newspaper, inch by inch, but there was no mention of the corpse. Perhaps poor Percy had been swept out to sea and was floating peacefully for America. I felt a little more optimistic about the interview with the police. It might take weeks for Percy to make the return voyage and, by then, he would never be recognised. But if the police finally seized me I would confess everything. I was prepared for their interrogation.

  Yes, I was walking along the cliffs on that particular night. No, the dead man was a stranger to me. Yes, I saw him leap from the ledge and disappear into the sea. No, I did not run for assistance because I did not believe the evidence of my own eyes. Yes, I had been drinking and depressed because of my mother’s failing state of health. I want to confess that at the time I was considering my own suicide.

  I rehearsed these answers with an expression of startled innocence. I was shocked by their questions and concerned for the relatives of the deceased. I had no good reason to throw Percy Pig into the sea. And without a motive there could be no crime. I knew I would be just another name on a long sheet of names that the police would in
vestigate. And I could give them no reason for suspicion or alarm.

  It was a week before Percy made his final appearance. He was washed onto the beach and the newspaper described it as a misadventure. No one thought it remarkable that a man should fall from the cliffs and drown. When I read the news I felt almost disappointed. They say that your first murder is the most important moment in your life. The first murder is the one that usually kills you with guilt or grief. Most men follow murder with suicide. Yet I cannot say that I was tormented in the knowledge that I had killed Percy. On reflection, it could hardly be described as a murder.

  But it was a beginning. I had discovered the secret of a new and terrible conjuring trick. And, in the manner of all magicians, I wanted to master it. When I next walked through the town I found myself selecting suitable victims, following them down the street and choosing my moment to reveal an imaginary revolver or knife. Blades sprang from the tips of my shoes. Acid spat from my buttonhole. My thumbs were loaded pistols. I slaughtered men and women at random and watched them roll in the gutter, their mouths were full of blood and their faces were white with amazement. It was a macabre game for a bright young man. But in these rehearsals it was not William Mackerel Burton, but the Sandman himself walking down the street, throwing the dust of sleep in the face of the crowd. Do you understand? It wasn’t murder. It was magic.

  The Sandman sat in the empty hotel and prepared himself for his life’s work. The body of Nectarine Summers had fallen under the kitchen table and my first task was to give her a decent burial. I wrapped the corpse in a black chiffon scarf, a gift to my mother from Uncle Eno, and carried her down to the basement boiler. The fire was very low but the ashes were hot. I kissed her one last time and pushed her carefully into the ashes. The scarf shrank into a luminous cinder and floated away. I waited until the smoke was curling from her seams and I knew that the biggest buttocks in toyland were ready to explode. I quickly closed the boiler door. Nectarine Summers was gone.