by Miles Gibson
“You need dope? My friend, I can help you. Allow me to make a phone call and I can put you out of your misery.”
“You don’t seem to understand. I’ve come to put an end to your misery,” I said.
“You’re making a mistake,” he smiled, “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“No,” I shook my head sadly.
“You’re crazy – I could give you anything,” he complained.
I tried to spear a truffle with my knife but he threw back his head and the blade did not settle. Before I could recover my balance he had leapt from the piano and scuttled across the room. He tried to hide behind the blackamoor. The sash of his dressing-gown had worked loose and was trailing around his ankles.
“You can’t kill me. I’m an old man,” he shouted as I walked towards him, the knife in my fat rubber hand. I made a grab for his neck but he swerved aside and caught the blade in his shoulder. It clung like a fork in a knuckle of pork. He pushed past me and returned to the piano, felt the knife in his dressing-gown and began to rub his fingers in the blood, holding his fingers under his nose and sniffing them suspiciously.
“Try and see it another way,” I suggested helpfully, “A neat hole behind your ear and you’re gone. It’s very peaceful. You’re an old man – you should understand these things. There are some terrible ways to die. You could drown. That’s horrible. Or smother in your pillows. That’s nasty.”
“Stop,” he bawled as I followed him across the room. “You’ll regret this tomorrow morning. Calm down and we’ll have a drink.”
I pulled another knife from my bag and tried again. But he was too fast for me and when I tried to puncture his neck the lizard swung away and took the blade in his chest.
“What would you like? Anything. Brandy? Champagne? Let’s talk about this over a long, cold drink,” he roared as he staggered from the stage towards a cocktail cabinet. He was beginning to resemble a pin cushion. I pulled another knife from the bag and followed him across the room.
“You wouldn’t want to be much older,” I said kindly, “Wetting the sheets and forgetting your name. Living on cabbage water and slops.”
But as I stalked him the lizard turned suddenly with a bottle of champagne in his fist. He raised the bottle like a club and, rather than wait for me to reach him, flung it at me with a shout. He was a poor marksman. The bottle spun past and hit the blackamoor full in the face, cracking off her nose and the greater part of her jaw. The old lizard roared in pain as the blackamoor was hit. He ran towards her, snatched up the broken jawbone and began to nurse it in his hands.
“What have you done?” he blubbered as he peered at the shattered face. He scratched the brittle plaster with his fingernails and tried to press the fragments back into place. But he was too confused to solve the jigsaw and threw the piece at me in frustration.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
But he ignored me. The injury received by his naked lamp bearer seemed to have unbalanced his mind. He staggered miserably around the room and then fell in a heap on the floor. For a moment I couldn’t move but at last I forced myself forward and tried to find the courage to use another knife. I was so upset by the violence my hands were trembling. Finally I speared a truffle and he left the land of the living with a grunt of pain and a whistling sigh of relief.
Men are full of offal. They’re crammed to bursting with pipes and tubes and entrails, heart, kidneys, liver and lights, tripe and chitterlings. When I was a child I used to think that my own body was like a butcher’s carcass, hollow and clean with the vital organs hanging on threads, like Christmas presents, from the bones of my shoulders. But the human body is just a balloon full of hot and bubbling mud. Puncture them and they leak all over the carpet.
There was blood everywhere. Blood splashed on the door. Blood sprinkled along the piano keys. He had not merely run about in his fright – he had smeared his way across the room, painting his possessions with the stuff as it leaked from him. Perhaps he had hoped to collect it in a sponge when I was gone and squeeze it into his mouth. A pity to waste it. Perhaps he was simply afraid of staining the precious carpet and preferred to wipe his hands on the walls. It was a gaudy spectacle. It suggested a violence far greater than anything I had inflicted and it upset me. I wanted to take a bucket of soapy water and wipe the room clean, tidy the cushions and polish the glass. But I decided to leave it alone, collected my bag and left the premises. Foolish to be arrested with a scrubbing brush in my hand.
It was not a very good example of my work to offer the authorities – it lacked my usual lightness of touch. But it served the purpose. Within a week the poor cuckoo who thought he was the Butcher had been winkled out of prison and thrown back onto the streets. I had taken one life and saved another. No one thanked me.
*
The morning after the murder I woke up with the sun in my eyes and the jangle of bells in my ears. I staggered from the bedroom and fell over my tool bag as I reached for the phone.
“Good morning,” said Jane.
“I called you last night,” I mumbled absently.
“What time?”
“Oh, about nine o’clock,” I yawned. I was still hot and itching with sleep. I balanced on one leg, scratching my shin with my toes. My skin felt smothered in sand.
“I went out with a girlfriend,” she said crisply, “And where were you?”
“I was here.”
“Wrong.”
“Yes, of course I was here,” I insisted stubbornly.
“I phoned when we got home, around eleven.”
“I must have been asleep.”
“And you didn’t hear the phone.”
“That’s right. I must have been dead to the world.” I tried to laugh but my tongue felt swollen and glued to my teeth.
“How are you feeling today?” she inquired, and her voice went so cold I did not recognise her and felt suddenly frightened.
“Fine … I thought we might spend the evening together,” I said slowly.
There was a pause. The silence between us filled with crackle and the far away music of other conversations.
“All right,” she said at last, “I’ll come over to your place.”
“No. Let’s go out somewhere,” I said quickly. She had asked a dozen times but I couldn’t risk inviting her into my rooms, picking through my papers, my scrapbooks, my photographs and knives. I couldn’t risk it.
“Come here,” she said simply, without bothering to argue with me and again I heard the unfamiliar coldness in her voice that was so disturbing.
“What time?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“Jane?”
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
She rang off. I felt like I’d been hit with a telegraph pole. I went back to bed and tried to hide under the pillow. But I knew that it was finished. Gradually, perhaps without us even noticing the change, we had grown to depend on each other and if that dependence continued it was inevitable that, sooner or later, I would drag Jane into my secret world and force her to share my guilt. Something would go wrong. I was so anxious to disguise the truth that something, somehow, would go wrong. I couldn’t keep Jane at arm’s length for the rest of my life, forbid her to knock on my door or phone me whenever she wanted to talk.
When I managed at last to find the strength to get dressed I dragged myself into the bathroom and fed the razor with a new blade. I didn’t have the courage to end the affair, I could only wait for Jane to feel hurt and angry enough to finish it for me. And what kind of choice was that, Mackerel Burton? None. Exactly. I splashed my face with hot water and smeared a dollop of shaving cream on my chin.
I kept telling myself, over and over, you were content before you lost your tooth and found a lover and you will be content again. The pain will flare and die and you will be able to forget. But I didn’t believe it My brain was collapsing between my ears and I believed in nothing but my own cowardice. Th
e blade nicked my cheek and a bubble of soap filled with blood.
It was not just a question of losing a woman. If I wanted a woman I could take her by pointing a knife at her throat. At my command, women would run naked on their hands and knees, barking like dogs. I could paint lipstick targets on their backsides and throw eggs at them. Beneath the seductive influence of the knife a woman would bend over backwards, turn somersaults, to entertain me. But I did not want the tricks of some performing animal, smelling of hatred and fear. I wanted the only woman that the knives would not allow me and that was Nurse Jane. The bubble of blood fell from my cheek and made a splash against my collar.
I went down to Chelsea in the afternoon. The Thames was glossy as gravy and running high against the Embankment. Across the river Battersea Power Station was pumping smoke into an empty sky. I parked the car opposite Jane’s house and she appeared on the doorstep before I had a chance to ring the bell. She was wearing a dressing-gown and a turban knotted from towels. The weight of the turban had pushed her ears flat against her head. She looked pale and miserable. I reached forward to kiss her but she turned away and walked upstairs. I followed her in silence. When we reached her rooms she closed the door and escaped into the little kitchen.
“Do you want a drink?” she called through the clatter of the bead curtain.
“Thank you,” I said.
She returned with a half bottle of vodka and a carton of orange juice which she placed on the table beside me. Her neck appeared painfully brittle beneath the great volume of towels she carried on her head. She stood at the table and stared at the bottle for two or three seconds and then went in search of glasses. The seal on the vodka hadn’t been broken and she must have bought it as an anaesthetic especially for the occasion.
“What’s wrong?” I pleaded as she fiddled with the spout on the orange juice.
“You disappear – I phone you and you’ve disappeared,” she said and thumped the carton on the table.
“I was asleep.”
“I’m not talking about last night,” she continued, turning to confront me at last. “I’m talking about all the other nights when I’ve phoned and you didn’t answer.”
“It’s not true,” I wailed.
“What is it that’s so terrible you can’t speak about it?” she begged.
“Nothing. Nothing,” I shouted, shaking my head and slicing at the air with my fingers.
“There’s another woman,” she declared. Her voice was suddenly small and calm.
“No,” I said. Yes, I thought, that is the only sensible explanation. I am married to a woman called death and she is a fierce and jealous mistress. Her eyes are full of opium and her kisses taste of blood.
“William,” she said slowly, “You’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“I’m married,” I said softly, hardly daring to pronounce the words.
“What?”
“I’m married. Her name is Doris. We…we’re not living together exactly but I think…”
“I don’t believe it,” she said. She shook her head and the turban began to unravel, toppled forward and fell in her eyes. She clawed at the towels and pulled them away. There were tears in her eyes and she wrenched at the smallest towel, rubbing it quickly over her face.
“I’m sorry…I can’t help it,” I whined.
“I don’t believe it,” she repeated. She sniffed ferociously and scratched at her scalp. Her hair was still wet and clung to her head in tight, glossy curls.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. This was a deliberate act of murder, but far more terrible than anything I had ever committed in the past, for this murder created living corpses, victims who would walk away and continue to feel the wound itching and burning without rest.
“Are there any children?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I can’t talk about it.”
“William, tell me the truth. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I’m not married. Her name is Doris. We’re going to live together as soon as we find a place.”
“When the hell did you meet this woman?” she asked amazed. She had managed to make woman sound like an unknown species, a grotesque animal.
“Three years ago.”
“So you knew – all the time – you knew that this wasn’t going to mean a damn thing to you.”
“Jane…” The floor between us was stretching at an alarming rate, pulling us apart so that even as I pushed out my hand to touch her I knew I could never reach across the distance. She was shrinking from me, her face growing hard and remote.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed.
I sat down at the table and hid my face in my hands. My eyes burned. I couldn’t see across the room.
“I’m sorry.”
“Where does she live?”
“What difference does it make?” I groaned.
“I want to know.”
“Hammersmith.” No, not Hammersmith! That’s a killing ground, try somewhere else, use your imagination.
“Hammersmith?” she echoed. It even sounded strange to Jane.
“I went there a few times – that’s how we met,” I said. I was building a phantom lover from the skin and bones of the dead, inventing a lovers’ lane in a graveyard. It was horrible.
“Were you sleeping together?”
“I love you,” I blubbered.
“Were you sleeping together?”
“Yes.”
“Bastard.”
“I love you,” I sobbed.
“Leave me alone! Go to hell!” she snapped. She broke open the anaesthetic and poured herself a slug, draining the glass and coughing into the towel. The dressing-gown had fallen open and she fumbled with the belt.
If my story had been true I might have begged to be forgiven, slashed my wrists, abandoned the one called Doris and married Jane. If any of it had been true there might have been some hope of repairing the damage. But I was trying to save her from the Sandman and I could only hold my silence and pray that she would not ask any more difficult questions. If I hesitated, even for a moment, I would weaken and confess the terrible truth.
“I never meant to hurt you,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer but stood, exhausted, staring vacantly at the floor.
“Please,” she whispered finally, “Please go away.”
I stood up and wiped my face. I walked from the room, down the stairs and into the street, closing the door behind me.
*
I am the Sandman. I am the Butcher in soft rubber gloves. I am the acrobat called death. I am the fear in the dark. I am the gift of sleep. Psychiatrists write pompous papers on the significance of my crimes. Clairvoyants search for my face in their dreams. Schoolboys speculate on the tortures I am rumoured to inflict upon women. And yet I am a stranger. I am celebrated and I am unknown. I am hunted by everyone and visited by no one. When I sit in cafés the waiters ignore me. When I walk in the market the matrons jostle me. When I stand in the street the traffic sweeps past me.
While the newspapers cried for my blood I sat alone in my room and cried for Jane. I stayed at home for more than a week. Frank came to lend me a book and I tried to make him welcome, offer him tea and cakes, but I felt depressed and did not have the energy to talk to him.
“Have you seen the newspapers today?” he inquired cheerfully, spitting tea and crumbs at me.
“No…”
“A woman in Manchester claims she knows the name of the Butcher. God gave it to her in a dream and she wants to broadcast it on television.”
“I’ll watch out for it,” I mumbled.
“I feel sorry for him,” Frank continued.
“Why?” I said. “He’s a killer.”
“Yes, but now he’s a hunted man. It’s becoming a national sport. Hunt the Butcher. Imagine how it must feel to be so mad and so alone.”
“It will soon be finished,” I said without conviction.
“Yes, I think you’re right. They’ll either catch him or he’ll kil
l himself.”
It was almost too much for me. There was nothing left to be said and I finished my tea in complete silence. Frank lingered for nearly half an hour, then took some books from my shelves and crept away.
There was something about Frank that fascinated me. He was an educated man. He spoke several languages and had travelled around the world. He knew so much about people and yet, despite his knowledge, he was prepared to forgive them anything. He could forgive them their cruelty and stupidity as if they were just boisterous children in a nursery school. He loved them. He made excuses for them. It’s hard to believe but Frank always managed to find something good in people.
Sometimes, when he stared at me with his strange bright eyes, I thought he must be able to stare clean through me and see everything. There was a wrinkle at the corner of his mouth that gave him a vague and weary smile as if he were amused at what he saw. A glimpse of that smile made me nervous and I would turn away from him, pretend to search for a book or a packet of biscuits. But now I wanted to discard the old deceit and tell him the truth about myself.
I wanted to call him back and confess everything. I wanted to share my secret. I thought, he will sit in the chair beside the window and we will discuss the Sandman as if we were discussing a favourite book. He will nod his head from time to time to let me know he understands. We’ll share a bottle of wine and the pain in my head will dissolve and be gone. He will not shrink from me in disgust. He is an educated man. He will accept the facts of death in my life. But I knew my confession would only lead to his murder and I kept my mouth pressed shut.
It was during the worst days of this loneliness that my mother died. The hospital sent me a telegram. She died suddenly and with a great deal of shouting early one morning while a nurse was feeding her breakfast. She had always hated hospital food and I think, towards the end, she had grown tired of searching for my father. She was old and bitter and full of venom.
Her death marked a most dismal episode in my life. I was an intimate friend of death, but nonetheless, when it dragged away my mother, struggling and shouting abuse, it also took a part of me. It cut away my family and my history and left me with nothing but myself. I found myself remembering, with painful clarity, the years I had spent in the old hotel. I remembered again my attic kingdom, the bed with its shallow wooden walls to prevent me from falling out of my dreams and the giant dolls my mother had sewn from rags. I remembered the smell of breakfast in my mother’s cardigans and the shape of her face, plump as a speckled egg. I wept for these memories and found that I was not merely mourning the death of my mother but the death of myself as a child.
