The Sandman

by Miles Gibson

  Dorothy and Archie took me home and helped me arrange the funeral. Dorothy was brisk and cheerfully efficient but Archie seemed stricken with grief and could not be comforted. He borrowed misfortunes wherever he could find them and seemed to almost rejoice in them. He hardly knew the old lady and yet he wept as if she were his own sister.

  “It’s terrible news,” he said, shaking his great head miserably and holding my hand in his fists, “Terrible news. I still can’t believe it.”

  “It was a shock,” I admitted.

  “If only we had known,” he grieved, “If only we had known she was so sick we would have gone to visit her at Christmas. We could have taken her some turkey breasts.”

  “No one knew,” I said, “It was very sudden.”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself,” said Dorothy soothingly. She was looking at me but I think she was talking to Archie.

  The funeral was a simple affair. There were no flowers and Dorothy and Archie served as the only mourners. Dorothy looked beautiful in black stockings. She held my arm thoughout the service and whispered sympathies in my ear.

  It was a huge cemetery, full of carved Victorian virgins swooning over blocks of Italian marble. I remember thinking, the Victorians must have enjoyed their funerals. The sepulchral horses straining at the weight of the cut-glass hearse, the fluttering crepe, the muffled drums, the weepers pressed against the glittering sarcophagus. The Victorians knew exactly how to die in public. Mourners were two a penny and rented by the dozen. A good funeral was a life’s ambition and they slept with their burial money under their pillows. Now the cemetery was a wasteland, a forgotten city of ghosts. Gulls glided in the bright September sky. The earth smelt sour and damp.

  When it was finished and we turned to leave I thought I saw the tall, narrow figure of Uncle Eno standing in the shelter of an elm tree in a corner of the cemetery. But when I beckoned to him he smiled thinly and walked quickly away through the gates.

  I spent a few more days with Dorothy and Archie, watching television and eating slices of boiled ham. Archie was very pleased with his hams – they had appeared at some of the most distinguished funeral suppers in Europe – and he had spared no expense in honour of my mother. It was a magnificent measure of pig, spiked with cloves and glazed with molasses and juniper.

  I was sitting watching a factory fire on the early evening news when Archie produced the mighty meat. He sat it down before me as if he were offering the head of John the Baptist. Dorothy poured a jug of cold cider and, as we prepared the table, we began to talk again of the funeral.

  “She was very old,” said Archie, waving a carving knife over the ham. The knife had an intricate ivory handle trimmed with silver lace.

  I nodded and smiled and stared at the knife.

  “She was very feeble in the head,” said Dorothy kindly, holding a plate and watching the blade stroke the ham.

  “She deserved to be set free from those years of suffering,” said Archie, hooking the slice of ham on the tip of his blade and folding it onto the plate.

  “It was the best thing that could have happened,” said Dorothy, picking up the plate and rolling the ham between finger and thumb.

  “It was no life inside that hospital,” agreed Archie, “They made her live on sausage meat.”

  “I expect she was glad to be gone,” murmured Dorothy, pinching the flute between her fingers and pushing it slowly into my mouth.

  I chewed the ham gently, feeling it dissolve against my tongue.

  “I should like to have seen her before she died,” I said sadly.

  “She wouldn’t have recognised you, Mackerel,” said Dorothy.

  “She lived in a world of her own,” said Archie.

  We whispered and smiled and sucked at our fingers. Gradually, slice by slice, we cut away at the guilt and grief until there was nothing left of my mad, old mother but a gleaming ham bone on a blue china plate.

  We did not speak of my mother again. The next day we slept late and in the afternoon Archie insisted on escorting me around the grounds of the house. I thought it was an odd whim but I agreed to walk with him.

  At the back of the house was a vegetable patch. Dorothy was very proud of it, she pickled its fruits, bottled its vegetables and made wine from the remains. Everything seemed to grow in that vegetable patch. If you cared to sit quietly, with your back against the kitchen door and your legs folded neatly in front of you, you could hear the roots suck and pull at the scalp of the earth, potatoes creak and pumpkins explode with a wet roar. In the heart of the undergrowth, dark with shrubs and peppery with herbs, lay a stone pond of black water. If you threw a crust into it you might see an ancient goldfish the colour of marble rise slowly to the surface and stare at you sideways. I loved the garden. But Archie seemed to have no time for it and led me urgently away, over the lawns, to the far corner of the grounds. And there, in the shadow of the wall, he showed me a great blister in the turf.

  It was an old Second World War air raid shelter. A brick cellar covered by an immense cushion of earth. I had seen them in the past, covered in brambles and stinking of drains. But this shelter had been restored to its original glory, the pit had been excavated and a bright metal door had been fitted to the entrance. Archie stood before it and beamed at me.

  “It’s an air raid shelter,” I explained.

  “Yes.”

  “It must be something of an historical monument – it’s in very good condition,” I said to please him.

  “I’m rebuilding it,” he said.

  “What will you do with it when it’s finished?” I asked.

  He looked perplexed. “It’s obvious,” he said and cocked his head at me suspiciously, “When the war comes again we’ll live in here. I’m having it fully equipped for survival against nuclear blast, fire storms, radiation and looters.”

  “It’s very fine,” I said.

  “Yes. It’s a fortress. We can live in here for weeks and weeks when the time comes.”

  “And what will you do when the war is finished?” I asked him.

  “Why, we’ll come out again,” he said with a laugh.

  “Yes, but what will you do after a nuclear war?”

  He cocked his head again and frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said slowly.

  “Well, there’ll be nothing left,” I said, waving my arm in the general direction of the rest of the world.

  Archie shrugged. “Survival,” he said, “That’s the important thing. We have to survive.”

  I didn’t argue with him. He seemed so proud of his brick burial mound. Poor Archie. Life in the slaughter houses had made him unreasonably afraid of death. He had coined a fortune from butchering life and here he was investing that fortune in a Pharoah’s tomb, a man in search of eternal life.

  “Can you handle a rifle?” he said casually as we walked back to the house.

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s a pity,” he said thoughtfully and I knew he had decided against inviting me to share his bunker.

  I drove back to London, happy to return to the noise of the city. But when I reached Victoria I was reluctant to climb the stairs and unlock the door to my rooms. I was surprised by my own apprehension. I did not expect to find the police waiting for me behind an upturned table, or threatening letters on the doormat. No. I expected to find the Sandman. I had left him waiting there while I went to attend my mother’s funeral and I expected to confront him again when I walked through the door. He would be there in the faint but clinging smell of blood, the sinister shape of knives.

  But there was nothing to suggest that I had returned to the killer’s nest. The rooms were neat and warm and silent. The Sandman had left the Mackerel. When I bought the newspapers I found that even they had discovered new heroes and villains to thrill their readers. Some mad African dictator had crushed an insurgence by decapitating the rebel leader and eating him in public. The French had killed a thousand people with poisoned rice sent to Bangladesh as famine relief. The Ch
inese had found a cure for cancer that was so potent it killed those it cured. The murder hunt had been almost forgotten.

  It would have been easy to kill again. It was the perfect moment. But I was lethargic. I was not anxious to shake the Sandman from his slumber. The knowledge that I alone possessed the power to wake this strange figure and set him loose in the London streets gave me a particular pleasure. And while this pleasure lasted, it was not necessary to kill again.

  I spent my time in the Charing Cross Road, searching for conjuring books. In the evenings I brought out my scrapbook and studied my collection of Polaroids.

  I wrote to Dorothy and thanked her for all the help she had given me but I did not receive a reply. It surprised me. She had been unusually silent during my visit and, although it might have been the funeral that had upset and depressed her, I wondered if I might have offended her without knowing it. I cannot pretend to understand women. The oddest things upset them.

  I should have understood the warning. I should have done something. But, at the time, I dismissed it. I could not guess, I could not know, that I would never see her again.

  *

  I had not woken up long enough to make myself coffee when there was a knocking on the door. When I opened it I found Johnson Johnson standing there in a scarlet quilted dressing-gown and black leather slippers. He looked terrible. His face was scrubbed raw and his wet hair pasted thinly across his scalp. His eyes were still yellow with sleep.

  “Good morning, Mr Burton,” he said with a smile.

  “What’s the problem, Johnson – is your mother complaining again?” I asked impatiently.

  Johnson Johnson looked hurt. “My mother is fine, thank you,” he said and flared his nostrils at me.

  “Oh.”

  “Her liver is bad, but she’s not in pain,” he corrected quickly, anxious not to give me the impression that she had made any miraculous recovery.

  “Good,” I said, nodding my head and frowning in a concerned manner.

  Johnson Johnson was encouraged by my interest. “She’s not a strong woman,” he confided, “I dread to think what would happen if I wasn’t here to look after her…if I broke a leg or caught something infectious…”

  “There are some very good nursing homes,” I ventured.

  “Good God, it would be criminal to send her away. It would be murder. She wouldn’t survive a week in one of those places,” he gasped.

  “Yes, I expect you’re right,” I mumbled in apology.

  There was an uncomfortable silence until Johnson Johnson held out his hand,

  “It’s a letter for you,” he explained, “It came through our door by mistake…the address is very badly written.”

  “Thank you,” I said in surprise. I took the envelope and turned it over in my fingers. It was small, square and very crumpled.

  “It’s nothing,” said Johnson Johnson with another smile, “We’ve always thought of you as more of a friend than a neighbour.” It was plainly nonsense and yet, glancing at him, I could see he was sincere. I felt slightly ashamed of myself.

  “I hope it’s not bad news,” he said.

  “No, I don’t think it’s anything important,” I said, pinching the envelope in an effort to feel the contents. I could not recognise the handwriting or the postmark. It was a mystery.

  “Ah, good,” said Johnson Johnson without moving, “Good.” He was waiting for me to open it and read it aloud.

  “Well, thanks again,” I said and gently closed the door on him.

  “It was no trouble,” he called as he loitered outside on the stairs.

  I carried the envelope into the kitchen and laid it on the table where I could watch it while I made the coffee. When I finally tore it open I was shocked to discover it was a letter from Wendy Figg. A single pink page of thin handwriting. I don’t know how she managed to find my address and I couldn’t decide if my shock was pleasure or fright. As soon as I glanced at the spidery signature at the foot of the page my first thought, even after so many years, was that she had decided to try and prosecute me for assault.

  The last time I had seen Figg she had been sprawled on the bed with her nightdress thrown over her head, more dead than alive, waiting for me to plunder her fat and secret places. But she made no mention of it in her letter. Her memories were carefully chosen and mostly concerned with my mother. She had heard of the old lady’s death through the local newspaper and was anxious to send me her sympathies.

  There was a paragraph or two about her own life and times. It didn’t amount to very much – but she had never expected to become the Queen of Persia. She had married a television repair man and settled down to live in the house next to her mother. She was raising a family. The boy was called Burma and the girl, Bermuda. Fancy names for dull children. She said she was happy and there was no reason to doubt it.

  As I sat and drank the coffee I tried to conjure her up in my head. She had always been the size of a sofa but she would be even bigger now, of course, than when I had last tried to peep between the buttons of her nylon coat. She would be swollen fit to burst her seams. The yellow bunches of hair would be cut and curled into some more sensible fashion for the kitchen. Ah, but she could never lose that brittle, porcelain face, the puckered mouth and surprised stare. Sweet Figg.

  I was so excited by her letter that I wanted to drive down to the coast without delay and visit her at home. I wanted to hide in the bushes of her little garden and peer through her windows as she sliced bread and wiped noses, boiled cabbage and scrubbed floors. More. I would creep into her bed under cover of darkness and fire again my childhood passion. No, that was an idle fantasy. The bed would be crowded with husband and children. I would drive down and kidnap my Figg, bind her by the hands and feet and carry her back to the safety of the apartment. A blindfold for the eyes and something to stifle her mouth. Figg wrapped into a living parcel and my address stamped on it. She would live in handcuffs at the end of my bed and I would feed her dainty morsels with a silver fork. No, it was too complicated. Swifter and neater to visit her at home, allow the knives to whisper sweet nothings into her ears and let the Polaroid kidnap her for me.

  Yes, the camera could capture the living body of Figg where I would certainly fail. A hundred perfect photographs mounted in a leather album. The book of Figg. A magic picture book where she might dwell forever ripe and naked, beyond the withering touch of disease and old age. Figg had been the true inspiration for my first murder and she should be the inspiration for the last murder. There was poetry in it, I could see that quite clearly.

  Well, all these thoughts amused me for a time but my elation gradually turned sour. Despite all her erotic magnetism, Figg reminded me of the hotel and the innocence of those early days. I thought again of my mother and found myself weeping. But not for several days did I learn how much more had been stolen from me.

  *

  The days before the storm were tranquil days, the mornings made mysterious by river mists and the afternoons warmed by the sanguine autumn light that fired the spires and rooftops of the city, burnt the tops of the trees in Hyde Park and washed down the broad, empty streets. For a brief season the city seemed to recapture something of its old imperial beauty. Victoria Station became a palace fit for a brace of princes and even Woolworth had a handsome glow, an oddly royal emporium.

  I remember every movement I made in those last few days. Wednesday I went down to Oxford Street for a new pair of shoes. I had lunch in a little Indian restaurant behind Selfridges. In the afternoon I strolled along the Charing Cross Road and poked about in the bookshops but I did not buy anything. In the evening I watched television.

  Thursday I walked along Vauxhall Bridge Road and stopped at Tachbrook’s Tropical Fish Shop. I have often spent whole mornings just staring at their aquariums, it’s one of my favourite haunts. You wouldn’t believe the extraordinary kinds of life that can be found in a block of warm and bubbling water. There are fish like brilliant blue needles that move mysteriously
in shoals, jerking back and forth as if they are stitching some invisible embroidery. There are invisible fish, delicate glass balloons so transparent you can see the twitching of their hearts and count their bones. Anyway, I stayed in Tachbrook’s until the man behind the counter began to give me suspicious looks and then I walked as far as the Embankment and went into the Tate Gallery for coffee.

  Friday I went to the market for vegetables and bought my groceries in Safeway. There was a clinging, grey mist creeping across from the Thames and I didn’t stray far from home.

  Saturday afternoon I went to the cinema to idle away a couple of hours. I watched a film about an orgy in a medieval nunnery. It began in an enormous wooden bathtub full of naked nuns and spilled over into the convent garden where a gardener was cutting cucumbers. The film was scratched to ribbons and the cinema, which was almost deserted, smelt of disinfectant and balding carpets. I was getting ready to leave, but while the leading lady was engaged in her unspeakable pursuit I realised that I recognised her face. There was no mistake. I had seen her somewhere in the past. That strange, bloated expression, the sly button eyes and the great dimpled buttocks: it was Nectarine Summers. They looked identical. I hadn’t thought about my doll for years. It was an omen and I felt uneasy with the memory. I left before the film was finished and went back to the television.

  Sunday I woke early and slipped out for newspapers. It had been raining and the streets were wet. I hurried back to the apartment, made some coffee and took the newspapers to bed. And it was there, sprawled in a warm bed with my head propped by pillows, that I learned the terrible news that Dorothy had been killed.