by Miles Gibson
We met at the Academy box office, as arranged, and although she would not allow me to buy her ticket, she let me buy a bag of peppermints instead. She was wearing a white cotton dress and a pair of red shoes. The dress was printed with tiny bunches of red flowers. I noticed, for the first time, that her eyes were brown. A dark, river brown, speckled with brighter spots of rust. She wore no make-up, except perhaps for a little mascara so that the freckles shone through and made her look like a country girl.
As we walked to our seats she turned to smile, exposing her teeth, and I saw that some of the teeth were crooked, one overlapping the other in a friendly jumble. It was an observation that made me absurdly happy. She wasn’t beautiful. Men were never moved to whistle at her in the street or leer at her across restaurant tables. But there were moments, when she threw back her head to laugh or wrinkled her nose in concentration, when she seemed to me almost painfully beautiful and it made me love her more because her beauty was something she shared with the Mackerel alone and did not parade in the street.
She sat silently in the dark, staring up at the screen while I sucked peppermints beside her and wondered what she was thinking about. The film was a load of nonsense about fat men in heavy armour shouting at each other in dusty courtyards. It wasn’t too bad. When it was finished we had a hamburger and I drove her home.
She lived in two rooms in a house in Chelsea. She had a mother in Portsmouth and a brother, I think, who worked in Paris. She had only been working in London for eighteen months and most of that time had been spent with the walrus. We sat together in the car, talking, and she said she would like to see me again.
“Perhaps we could go and see another film?” I suggested boldly and wished, at once, that I had more imagination.
“Yes,” she said, as if it were a most original notion, “That would be fun. Do you have a favourite?”
“Well … that’s difficult,” I said doubtfully. “There are so many films to choose …”
“The Charlie Chaplin season starts next month,” she said, “Do you like Charlie Chaplin?”
Do I like him? For you, Nurse Jane, I’ll laugh like a hyena, cackle so I burst a vein, hoot until I’m sick. “Yes,” I said.
“Good,” she said, “It’s a date.”
“How shall I find you again?”
“Oh, phone the surgery. The receptionist will always take a message.”
We said goodnight and she kissed the corner of my mouth. And that was how it began. It was not until the next day that I discovered Charlie Chaplin would not arrive in town for another three weeks.
*
During March, to keep myself amused, I performed the Hammersmith Housewife Murders. I carried my equipment in a little suitcase and planned to walk from door to door like a brush salesman. It was a Monday morning and no one had the time or the curiosity to offer me a glance as I worked my way along the street.
In the first house I found a fat woman chopping carrots in a narrow kitchen full of steam and jangling music. Her hair was white and her eyes were red, as if she had lived in the steam for years and years and slowly cooked herself like a big, boiled codfish. I offered her some nonsense about the drains and demanded to look at her pipes.
“Pipes? There’s nothing wrong with my pipes,” she said cheerfully. “It’s my tubes that give me the trouble,” She tapped her chest with her fingers and gave a fruity cough. She seemed to think it was very comical.
“There have been complaints,” I said.
“Complaints?” she said sharply. “Who complained?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. “The office handles all the paperwork.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“The drains are too shallow, that’s the problem,” I explained. “Will you check the waste pipe under the sink?”
I pulled on my rubber gloves and watched her crawl on her hands and knees into the cupboard beneath the sink. She was wearing a blue cotton housecoat and a pair of threadbare slippers. I knelt down beside her and waited for her to emerge from the gloom. She smelt of soap and onions.
“Which one is the waste pipe?” she called out in exasperation. “There are lots of pipes down here and they’re scrambled together.”
“The waste pipe is the one shaped like a horseshoe,” I called out as I took up the carrot knife.
“I can’t find it,” she grumbled. “They’re all different shapes and sizes. This one feels a funny shape but I don’t think …”
When she sensed that I was not following her guided tour of the plumbing she began to crawl backwards into the daylight She was still on her knees when I kissed her ear and probed her brains with the knife. She groaned and fell sideways onto the floor. The blood began to percolate gently through her scalp and stained her hair. I watched the untidy white curls blush at their roots and darken until her hair had turned a warm and beautiful shade of geranium. It was a remarkable transformation. She looked like a young woman again.
I tidied her up, opened her coat and closed her eyes. She was wearing a heavy corset spun from pink rubber cobwebs and elastic bandage, held together by steel rivets. She made a lovely picture.
I despatched three housewives in the same morning, rang their doorbells and charmed my way into their hearts. I told them I had been instructed to inspect their drains and they seemed happy enough with my excuses. I fled home exhausted and on the edge of collapse. I took a bath and ate a small lunch. I pinned my Polaroids to the frame of the bedroom mirror and then went to bed. I had taken such risks that morning – anything might have gone wrong! I might have been disturbed by neighbours. I might have walked into a Tupperware party. It was a wild madness to offer murder door-to-door in broad daylight. Yet I had never been so excited or so terrified, I had never before known such exhilaration from the knives.
The murders were reported on the late news the same day and Hammersmith became a fortress for the rest of the year. Women carried whistles and pepper-pots in their handbags. Men mounted patrols in the streets at night. But I never went to Hammersmith again.
If I am caught I’ll tell them that God made me use the blades. I can’t confess that I killed purely for pleasure. They wouldn’t believe me. They couldn’t understand. I’ll tell them that I felt it was my duty by God. That’s what they will tell the soldiers before they are driven away and fed into the mouths of the nuclear cannon. I know they would prefer to think of me as a madman. So I shall tell them that God phoned me and gave me instructions. They’ll breathe a sigh of relief and say, this poor man is a victim of some violent madness, take him away and wash out his brains. They’ll offer me a hospital bed instead of a prison cell. It happens. It works. They’ll tap my head and measure my skull, watch me through the keyhole for five or ten years and finally turn me out on the street. I know it’s crazy but I have to tell them what they want to believe.
The weather improved. The cold and blustering rains retreated beneath the glare of a brilliant sun. The crowds in Victoria Station were flecked with splashes of summer colour, the men wore their jackets over their arms and the women walked briskly, exposing pale legs under cotton skirts.
Charlie Chaplin came to town and I took Jane to see him twice, driving her safely to her door in Chelsea at the end of each evening. We exchanged phone numbers and began calling each other at odd times, talking about nothing in particular. I found myself collecting snippets of gossip and using them as excuses to call and talk. When I went walking I caught myself searching for her in the streets, although I knew she would be busy at work with the walrus. And then, on the first hot Saturday in April, I packed the car with a picnic and drove Nurse Jane into the country.
We drove for about an hour, until the industrial sprawl ran into suburbs and the suburbs ran into open fields, woodland and sky. As we left the city behind, Nurse Jane began to grow happier, whistling like a schoolboy and feeding me slices of apple which she cut with a penknife.
“I hate
the city,” she said cheerfully.
“It’s not so bad,” I said, “We could have had our picnic in Hyde Park.”
“And share it with thousands of other people,” she scoffed.
I turned off the road and we bounced some distance up an old can track to the brow of a thickly wooded hill. When I switched off the engine there was nothing to be heard but the sound of the wind in the trees. The branches formed a vaulted ceiling of green and sepia shadow. The earth was black beneath our feet. We left the car and carried the picnic into the sunlight. We opened a bottle of wine and attacked a great turkey pie with the knife.
When we were finished we sprawled on the ground and stared at the sky. Jane was wearing an old shirt and a baggy pair of corduroy trousers which were gathered and tied by a leather belt. As she felt the sun begin to warm her face she conducted an elaborate undressing. She rolled her shirt sleeves, unbuttoned her collar, unbuckled the belt and pulled her trouser-legs over her knees. She kicked off her shoes and wriggled her toes in the long grass. Finally she threw back her head, narrowed her eyes and invited the sun to paint her freckles.
“When I was a little girl,” she said presently, “there was a pond at the back of the house – in an old meadow – and we used to go down there after school and lie on our stomachs and peer into the water and look for fish. We used to believe that a monster pike lived in the pond and we dared each other to trail our fingers among the weeds …”
“Did you ever see it?”
“No, but sometimes a boy called Harris would jump from the bushes with his willy hanging out and that would make us scream.”
“What happened to him?”
“He grew up,” she said with a shrug.
“That’s a pity.”
“And then there was a secret place we called the Witch Stone where the blackberries grew as fat as plums and we’d gorge ourselves on them until our fingers and faces were stained red and blue.”
“Weren’t you sick?”
“All the time,” she said, “The blackberries were full of worms.”
A crow tumbled in the sky above our heads.
“Don’t you miss it?” I said.
“What?”
“Everything .. the pike … the pond.”
“Oh, that’s all gone. They filled in the pond and built houses on the meadow. Everything’s gone.” Her hair fell into her eyes and she scooped it back with her hand.
“And the Witch Stone?”
“Oh yes, the Witch Stone is still there – but now they call it the Happy Hamburger.”
She made the past seem like a threadbare carpet which was being rolled up behind her, as she used it, day by day. Every stick or stone in her childhood seemed to have been destroyed as soon as she had touched it. Perhaps that’s why she was so interested in the preservation of teeth.
Later, when the wine had muddled our heads and carried us to the edges of sleep I spoke about the sea and my mother’s hotel. I told her that on winters’ nights there were violent storms that flung fish against the hotel windows and in the mornings I was made to collect them and fry them for breakfast. But she would not believe me. I confessed that my secret name was Mackerel but she only wrinkled her nose and looked doubtful.
“Why did they call you Mackerel?”
“Because my eyes were so big and my mouth was always open.”
“They’re lovely eyes,” she said.
Beneath our feet the hill rolled away into small fields marked by hedges, beyond the fields a blue smudge of forest against the sky. A tractor knitted its way across one corner of a field, followed closely by a squadron of gulls.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m happy,” she said in surprise. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know – it’s important – I want you to be happy,” I said, hoping to disguise my blush beneath a frown.
“You’re such a lovely, gentle person,” she said. She took my hand and kissed the fingers, one by one. “Sweet William.”
I wanted to gather her into my arms and cradle her against me, I wanted to stretch forward and smother her mouth with kisses. But I did nothing. I chewed my lip and counted her freckles.
*
I killed only once during April and May. It was a warm, acid-blue Sunday morning and Nurse Jane was in Portsmouth to visit her mother. I had been exploring the streets around Earl’s Court and was strolling back towards the VW when a figure lurched from a shop doorway and clutched at my arm. It was such an unexpected assault that I almost shouted in alarm and fled. I was carrying my equipment in a little leather shopping bag and I could not afford to run any risks in the street. But when I turned to confront my assailant I discovered that I was being mauled by nothing more fearsome than a big Australian girl in a damp and crumpled party frock. She was very drunk and looked as if she had spent the night sheltering in a doorway. She was shivering and her hair was tangled.
“Good morning,” I said.
The girl peered at me for some moments and then took her fingers out of my arm.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Yeah, you can take me home,” she mumbled in a queasy voice, “I don’t feel strong enough to walk it alone.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Where do you live?”
“Nevern Square – it’s just around the corner,” she said, nodding her head in the general direction.
“It’s a beautiful morning,” I suggested.
“It was a terrible party,” she croaked.
We searched around in the doorway for her handbag and then I escorted her slowly into Nevern Square. It took several minutes because she hobbled like an old woman and moaned and wiped her face and generally complained. She finally staggered up the steps of a dirty apartment block and wrenched the key from her handbag. I helped her open the heavy front door and she invited me into her room.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” I said.
“It’s no trouble,” she said, “And you deserve a beer for helping me.”
I accepted with a smile, moving with dainty steps, careful not to smudge the furniture with a careless fingerprint. As soon as she had entered the safety of her room she seemed to recover her strength. She brushed her hair with her hand and yawned.
“Jesus, I’m hungry,” she announced. “Will you have a sandwich?”
“Thank you,” I said, “I’d like that.”
She gave me a beer and began to search through a cupboard for bread. She told me she was Marlene from New South Wales and worked as a receptionist in Piccadilly. I sat and watched her in silence while she stood at a little table and hacked at the loaf with a long knife.
It was an exquisite moment. It was the moment when I knew I had again been offered the power of life and death. I could sit in the chair with the Sunday sunlight warm on the dusty carpet and wait for my sandwich. I could sip at the beer and watch her legs move beneath the stained party frock. I could eat the sandwich, brush the crumbs from my lap, stand up and leave the room. I could stroll back to the VW and drive home. Or I could pull on my faithful rubber gloves so neatly concealed in the shopping bag at my feet, stand up and slip my hand around the broad satin waist, taking her wrist with my other hand, guiding the knife against her neck. I could press myself against her rump and pull the blade towards me.
“What will you have in your sandwich?” she said as she bent down and pushed her face in the fridge. “I’ve got cheese, corned beef, sardines and apricots.”
“Apricots?”
“Yeah, tinned apricots. They taste great in a sandwich.” She kicked shut the fridge door and returned to the table with a dozen wrinkled apricots floating in a bowl of syrup. She fished a couple out and placed them on the bread board.
I stood up and stepped forward. I held my breath. I sneaked my hand around her waist and cradled her stomach.
“Listen,” she said, as she smeared the bread with butter. “I’m grateful tha
t you helped me home but the sandwich is all you get from me. Jesus, you poms are always on heat.” She did not seem alarmed by the sudden embrace and did not care enough to push me away. I took her hand in my fist and tightened her fingers around the knife.
She wriggled like a pig but she was so drunk she did not have the strength to resist. The bread turned scarlet. She fell gurgling against the table and slowly capsized. I could not lift her into a chair so I left her on the floor. I tidied her hair and arranged her hands. She made a lovely picture in her party frock.
While I knelt there and admired the fallen Marlene, I had a sudden desire to reach out and touch her breasts. Her dress had been torn from one shoulder and was left hanging by a thread, leaving one breast exposed. It was a heavy, luminous globe that I wanted to cradle and weigh in my rubber hands. I crawled closer and hesitated before the object of my temptation. I had rarely experienced such an erotic melancholy and the sensation frightened me. I drew my eyes away from the breast and stared at her neck. Ah, the sight of her breast had made me tremble with lust but when I stared at her neck I turned faint at the sight of blood. It was the most beautiful colour, bright and clear as wine. I leaned forward and pressed my mouth against her neck, tasted her blood on my tongue. I could not resist I was overcome by desire. I wanted to plant a single kiss, the kiss of death, against her skin. The blood tasted warm and dark in my mouth.
It was dangerous to linger so long in her room, I knew I must gather my wits and escape, but Marlene held a deadly fascination. She reminded me of Wendy Figg and, for that reason alone, I wanted to take her home. There was a fresh pack of film in the Polaroid and I decided to use it I was in a fever of excitement. I rushed to the cupboard where Marlene had taken the knife and rummaged there until I found a pair of scissors. Then I knelt beside the sleeping beauty and cut away her party frock. I worked down its entire length and peeled it away from her body.
She was magnificent. A fat and gleaming dolphin stranded on the dusty carpet. She rumbled, deep in her throat, as she cooled and it set her dimpled belly aquiver. The rumble rose and popped her mouth, escaping in a gentle sigh. I took another photograph and then considered moving her into a more dignified pose. She was nearly as big as Figg but I managed to drag her against the wall and prop her into a sitting position. I placed her hands in her lap and then reached for the camera. But as I raised the Polaroid to my eye I saw her collapse and topple forward, hiding her face between her hands. She collapsed from the shoulder to the thigh in a series of thick creases until she looked like a ruined pile of pastry. So I pulled her upright, found some pillows and propped her among them. I wanted her to look beautiful. I twisted and tweaked the pillows until she was comfortable, her shoulders square and her belly balanced on her knees. On the table, beside the scarlet bread, stood a pot of flowers. I picked one of the flowers and poked it gently behind her ear. Then I placed her hands on her hips and shot the film. There are many women in my collection but Marlene looked the most handsome in death. She was smiling. The blood glittered in a necklace at her throat.
