The Sandman

by Miles Gibson

  “You’ve stabbed me,” she wheezed.

  I stared at her in the shocking silence. She did not look angry. She looked as if nothing unusual had happened. Her hands were folded gently over her belly. But her hair was tangled and she had lost a slipper. I stared at the naked foot. There were traces of cracked nail varnish on her toes. I thought it was blood.

  I knelt down beside her and stared, at the knife for a long time. It had not been an ugly death. She looked as if she had fainted. Her mouth was hanging open and her eyes were closed. Her hair had dried into string. Death had not transformed her into a beauty but she certainly looked less dangerous than she had looked that afternoon in the Empire Stores. The face was peaceful and loose.

  Then the doorbell rang. At first I refused to believe it. Please God, the noise must be something shaken loose in my ear. But the doorbell rang again and would not stop. I tried not to panic. I took a deep breath, stood up slowly and tottered to the bedroom window, waiting for the sound of footsteps retreating to the street on the stairs outside. But the bell would not stop. I thought it was an angry neighbour. I thought it was the police. I ran back to the bed and pulled the second knife from my Harrods bag. The handle was fat and cold in my hand as I tried to make my fingers grip. Should I cut and slash my way to freedom or stretch out my arm and surrender the blade?

  I scuttled to the door, flung it open with a shout and glared into the darkness. A girl was standing on the step. She was wearing a long black dress and nursed a bottle of cheap red wine in her arms. The dress was absurdly decorated with artificial flowers, starched cotton petals stitched in bunches at the throat and wrists. They shook their heads hopelessly whenever she moved.

  “Sorry,” she said breathlessly, “I’ve disturbed you.”

  “What?” I said in a vague manner.

  “I’ve disturbed you,” she pointed at the knife clutched feebly in my rubber fist.

  “You’re cooking.” When she smiled she bared her teeth.

  I nodded helplessly. The girl walked into the apartment and presented me with the bottle of wine. It was then that she noticed I was wearing a raincoat. She frowned when I closed the door.

  “Where’s Doris?”

  “She’s in the bedroom,” I said.

  “Is she sick?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl walked past me and paused at the bedroom door. She had thin yellow hair and smelled of cinnamon. I swung the bottle and brought it down against her head. Her skull sang with the clarity of a glass bell. The bottle did not break. I threw it across the room and it bounced on the carpet. The girl fell down against the bed. She was moaning and rolling her eyes. The flowers settled in a wreath around her neck. I dragged at the blanket, trying to wrap her into a parcel. It was terrible. She began to struggle and I pulled the blanket tighter against her face. She made a horrible, muffled roar and started to sneeze. When at last she stopped fighting I couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead. She was very quiet. But I was too frightened to unwrap her and inspect the damage.

  While I was watching the blanket Doris stood up to leave the room. She paused at the door and squinted at me. She ignored the handle of the knife protruding from her chest. But she kept wiping the naked foot against the carpet as if baffled by the loss of her slipper.

  “Where are you going?” I whispered.

  “I’m thirsty,” she wheezed and shuffled away.

  I followed her into the kitchen. She drank a cup of water, laid the cup down on the table, sank to her knees and finally died.

  I stared at Doris. I stared at the table. I couldn’t believe it. The table had been laid for supper. It was a supper for five people and three of the guests had not yet arrived! I kept counting the chairs that crowded round the little table, counted and counted again, as if by counting I might reduce their number. And then the doorbell rang again.

  This time I did not hesitate. I marched to the door. I had made a mess of everything. The evening had been a dreadful mistake. I was a desperate man.

  There was a figure in a crumpled suit and a striped green shirt standing outside. He was alone. A huge bottle of cheap red wine was swinging gently in his fist.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said cheerfully.

  I opened my mouth but no words came out. I felt as limp as Nectarine Summers.

  “You look like you’ve just arrived yourself,” he said, nodding at my raincoat.

  “What?”

  “Are you coming or going?” he demanded.

  “I was going to leave.”

  “Where’s Doris?” he said, straining his neck to stare over my shoulder.

  “She’s in the kitchen,” I said. “Can I take your wine?”

  “Thanks,” he said absently. He pushed the bottle into my hands and stepped inside. He swaggered into the kitchen and stared at Doris on the floor.

  “Jesus Christ,” he shouted. He did a little tap-dance of horror.

  The bottle was very slippery in my rubber fists. I managed to swing it over my head and bring it down against his left ear. The raincoat rattled as the glass bomb exploded. I was covered in droplets of bright red wine and brilliant splinters of glass.

  The man in the crumpled suit tumbled against the table. A plate did a somersault in surprise. The table lurched wildly and fell among the chairs. He rolled into the tablecloth and fell on the floor with the cloth wrapped around his head.

  When it was finished I hurried into the bedroom, pulled off the raincoat and stuffed it into the Harrods bag. I ran towards the front door, praying that I could reach it before the bell rang again. I burst through the door, clattered up the stone stairs and emerged on the street. No one saw me leave the premises. I peeled off the rubber gloves as I stood there and poked them into the bag. I had escaped. I had escaped.

  I wanted to run, run from the wailing sirens and the snarling dogs but the street was empty and I could barely balance on my buckling legs. It was a cool night. I hobbled home through Kilburn, along the Edgware Road, across Marble Arch and down Park Lane. It was a long, punishing walk but every step helped restore my courage and clear my head. When I got home it was still early. I did not want to sleep so I sat down and watched television. A cinema had caught fire in a little French town and killed twenty people.

  *

  The following day it was as if the murders had never happened. It was a peculiar flat feeling. I had killed them, yes, but they had not gone for they continued to live in my head. I carried them around with me and it was impossible to believe that they had been removed from the world. There was a dull ache behind my eyes. I felt tired and disappointed, as if I had woken up to discover my lover fled from the bed and nothing left but a shallow grave beside me in the warm sheets. It was finished. The weeks of gleeful speculation and the agony of waiting, the fear and the horror were gone. The brilliant clarity with which I had seen everything had faded into the dull monochrome of another unremarkable morning, so that I might have been emerging from a fantastic dream.

  The fever had left me and I half believed that if I dared pay a visit to the Empire Stores I would see Doris miraculously restored and standing behind her counter again.

  I washed and shaved and then unpacked the Harrods bag, stuffed overnight in the wardrobe. When I slipped my hand inside the bag it sank to the wrist in a cold, congealed mess of rubber and blood. It was horrible. A filthy tripe that I drew from the bag and threw in the bath. In the excitement of killing I had not seen the blood. The knowledge that I had carried it home from Kilburn made me shiver in disgust. I ran the water and watched the blood and the clothes begin to separate, the blood thinning, the rubber swelling, until the raincoat and the gloves were washed clean. Then I washed the Harrods bag and the bath, the floor beside the bath, the tiles along the wall. It was an hour or more before I finally washed my hands of the whole damned mess.

  In the afternoon I walked into the station and bought a newspaper. It was obvious, at a glance, that I had not turned myself into front-page news, an
overnight sensation. I felt disappointed. But a careful search uncovered a brief mention of the murders in one of the centre pages. It was just a paragraph but I thought it worth saving. I had worked hard enough for it. So I bought a scrapbook from Woolworth, went home and pasted the clipping into the book.

  “Police are today investigating the deaths of two young women and a man whose bodies were discovered in a Kilburn basement late last night. The police are treating the deaths as murder.”

  I read the paragraph many times that evening. There was no fear of capture. It was not worth considering the risk. Who would want to force their way into a neglected Kilburn basement and kill the inhabitants? What reason was there for such a curious slaughter? It was senseless. Exactly. The police would chase motives that did not exist. It would drive them crazy. I fried some potatoes and rashers of bacon and ate them in front of the television. They were still digging corpses from the smouldering wreckage of the cinema.

  It was a week after the Kilburn killings that Dorothy and Archie appeared again. It was Archie’s birthday and Dorothy had persuaded him to spend a few days in London. They phoned me from an hotel in South Kensington but within an hour I had them safely installed in my apartment.

  I was happy and flustered by their sudden arrival; we had exchanged a few brief letters since my move to the city but I had not expected to see them. And now here they sat on my sofa, grinning like alligators and complaining about the hotel.

  “I hate hotels,” said Dorothy. “I can’t sleep in their beds. They never give you enough pillows.”

  I sympathised but scolded them for not warning me of their visit.

  “There’s no reason to use a hotel – you’re always welcome to stay with me. I’ve got lots of room.”

  They thanked me kindly and tried to look surprised by the invitation but Archie gave Dorothy a guilty glance and blushed.

  “We thought you might have established a little harem for yourself,” grinned Dorothy. “It must be lonely here.”

  “I enjoy the solitude.”

  “I couldn’t live in London,” complained Dorothy, “It frightens me.”

  “It’s a violent city,” I said.

  “That doesn’t worry me,” grunted Archie as he admired his fists. “If anyone tried to interfere with me I’d skin ’em alive.”

  I believed him.

  “So what do you do with yourself?” persisted Dorothy.

  “Oh, I pass the time,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “I couldn’t live without my work,” said Archie, “Some men are born to be butchers.”

  “I hate it,” said Dorothy, “Your clothes smell of blood.” She shivered at the thought and smoothed her skirt against her knees.

  “Blood thickens gravy,” sighed Archie serenely.

  During the following days we made a grand tour of the city. We took a boat along the Thames and counted the bridges. Dorothy stood with her face turned into the wind, staring along the Embankment while Archie sprawled over the side of the boat, trailing his hands in the purple water.

  “They find a hundred bodies in the Thames every year,” I told him.

  Archie looked impressed. He pulled his hand from the water and sniffed his fingers.

  “They’re mostly accidents and suicides,” I added wistfully.

  The next day we took a bus to the Zoo and considered the giraffes. Archie told me he had once met a man who had tasted giraffe meat but Dorothy said it wasn’t true. On the third day she demanded to be shown the museums in Exhibition Road and spent hours peering at prehistoric bones. But Archie grew bored and complained, so we left to inspect the meat in Harrod’s Food Hall. He carried an Instamatic on a cord around his neck and had a curious way of holding it briefly against his eye and then dropping it again as if he were squinting at the world through a monocle. He took several pictures of the salmon in the mermaid’s grotto but was not impressed by the sight of the sausage and ham. When he was finished we cut through Knightsbridge Green and walked down Rotten Row to Hyde Park Corner where we risked our lives to reach Green Park.

  The last time I had seen Dorothy she had been careful to maintain a little distance between us but now, as we kicked through the leaves towards Buckingham Palace, she took hold of my arm and clung to it gleefully.

  I smiled at myself, amazed. It was hard to believe that this mild and happy man was the same creature who had spent the previous week on his hands and knees peering with murderous intent into some grubby basement. It had been nothing but a bad dream, a nocturnal raving, and now the grey afternoon light dissipated its force and left me doubting that it had ever happened. While Dorothy clung to my arm I could not remember what strange appetite had possessed me to murder but I was resolved that it should not possess me again. I was free and I was content I had performed the most dangerous of all conjuring tricks and it would be foolish to risk another performance. It was finished. Yet, at the same time, it remained difficult to imagine that Doris Forest was altogether dead for she continued to inhabit some dark corner of my head and lived there in rude good health.

  We reached home that evening exhausted. They had arranged to leave the following day and reluctantly began to pack their luggage. But despite everything Dorothy had not quite finished celebrating Archie’s birthday. While he sat slumped in a chair she produced a bottle of champagne and a sheaf of smoked salmon and laid out a picnic on the carpet at his feet. I found brandy for the champagne, brown bread for the salmon, and we feasted and talked together.

  “You should get married,” declared Archie as he gulped at his champagne. “London must be full of girls who would appreciate a bright young sprat like you.”

  “A city can be a very lonely place,” corrected Dorothy. “It’s not easy to make friends.”

  “I’m sure Mackerel doesn’t have any trouble,” said the butcher.

  Dorothy wrapped a shred of smoked salmon around her finger and poked it into her mouth. She glanced across at me, waiting for me to make some reply.

  “I’ve made one or two friends,” I said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Exactly,” boomed the butcher cheerfully. “Fill up your bed and keep out the draughts. That’s my advice. You’ll be married before you know it. And then it’s too late.”

  “Archie,” scolded Dorothy, “You make marriage sound like a prison sentence.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a happy man. I believe in marriage. That’s why I’m trying to persuade Mackerel to find himself a good woman.”

  Dorothy was not satisfied with his explanation. “You’re trying to persuade him to sleep with everyone he meets,” she said as she filled his glass.

  “Well, you have to look around. I’m lucky. We’re happy. But he’ll have to go a long way to find someone like you,” he crooned.

  It was past midnight when we finally hauled ourselves to our beds.

  But I had hardly managed to pull on my pyjamas when there was a faint scratching at the door. When I went to investigate the noise I found Dorothy standing outside my room. She was wearing a dressing-gown of post-card blue silk.

  “Can I get you anything?” I whispered.

  Dorothy smiled. “No, I just wanted to come and say goodnight.” She stepped into the room and looked around.

  “Where’s Archie?” I whispered, pulling my pyjamas together with a casual brush of my hand.

  “Asleep.”

  “I’m sorry you’re leaving tomorrow,” I said as I followed her across the room.

  “Are you, Mackerel?” she asked, turning around and staring at me for a moment.

  “Yes,” I said and frowned.

  “Do you remember the time when you stayed with your aunt and we played together?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I remember that time.”

  “And do you remember the game?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I said softly.

  She had washed away her make-up and the greyhound had returned to her face. The mouth was dark and when
she smiled she bared her sharp little teeth. She was standing too close to me and I stepped back nervously.

  “You have such lovely eyes,” she said gently.

  “Thank you.”

  “They’re such a beautiful colour – like stained emeralds,” she continued. She was standing so close against me I could feel the warmth of her skin through her dressing-gown.

  “Thank you,” I whispered again.

  “It’s the first thing I noticed about you when we met for the first time. Those big, gentle eyes,” she murmured as she stared into my face. Her breath smelt of toothpaste and came in short, warm gusts.

  “What will happen if Archie wakes up and finds us together?” I asked nervously.

  “Don’t worry. He won’t wake up. I’ve given him a sleeping tablet.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, I’ve got hundreds of them,” she said carelessly. “All different shapes and sizes.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  She slipped into the bathroom and returned with a washbag full of bottles of sleeping tablets. She poked her fingers into the bag, rattling the bottles together.

  “Isn’t it dangerous?” I enquired.

  “No, I do it all the time,” she scoffed.

  “Why?”

  “Oh, he gets difficult sometimes,” she sighed and laid down the bag beside the bed.

  I was desperate to know what kind of difficulties Dorothy experienced at the hands of the butcher, but I was too shy to ask the question.

  There was a heavy silence. It was the kind of silence in which a woman waits, patiently, stubbornly, for something to happen. I understood the signal but I didn’t know what to do about it.

  The old wardrobe contained the full sexual history of William Mackerel Burton. My brief assault on Figg had taught me nothing and, since that time, I had devoted myself and all my energies to learning my craft. I might fall to the floor and feign death but I suspected that Dorothy was expecting more of me than a warm corpse. I knew the basic attitudes and gestures that lovers are expected to assume, of course, but I didn’t know where to begin.