Blood and Water and Other Stories

by Patrick Mcgrath

  It is not until a few hours later, then, that we get our first clear glimpse of Dr Cadwallader of Harley Street; and it comes as he rises naked midst billowing clouds of steam from his bathtub. Observe, first, the stoutness of the man. His chins and bellies are all pink and wobbly, and his great jowly buttocks dimple in the late sunlight as he gingerly lifts his hindparts and with enormous caution sets first one, then the other foot down upon the tiles. The head is large, bald save for a black mass of snaky curls about the ears, with small eyes set close together, a small bulbous nose, and a long drop from nose to lip. The bottom lip projects like the jaw of some cantankerous freshwater fish, and is flanked by overhanging flaps of flesh which pouch smoothly into the soft pink folds of the ample throat. As he lifts his towel from the back of a chair and stands upright to dry himself, his breasts compose themselves upon the first swells of his gut like deflated cushions, wide, soft-nippled tires of flesh which but for the baldness of the man and the little pink hose-end of a penis peeping out from below would certainly identify the body as female. In the corner of the room stands an off-white, life-size statue of Minerva, goddess of plumbing, one outstretched arm snapped off at the elbow and Cadwallader’s puce bathrobe draped over the stump. It is to this statue that the breasted physician now waddles, and taking up the bathrobe, he ties it loosely about his bulk. Pausing only to slip his feet into a pair of red Moroccan slippers, he tosses the damp towel onto his shoulder and steps into the corridor. As he does so, his air of scrubbed complacency is rudely jarred by a muffled explosion from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house; and a moment later he hears the distressed voice of an elderly woman cry: Oh, Christ, Norman, there goes the bloody boiler again.’

  Now, the landed gentry is hardly prospering at this precise point in history, so when Cadwallader hears the boiler blow he is only too aware what it means. The house, Phlange, is a stately Georgian pile, and the Percy family has been there for generations. The plumbing system, unfortunately, has also been there for generations, and though Phlange’s park of rolling meadowland is bisected by a branch of the River Kennett, its water supply is piped in from the reservoir at Newbury, some twenty miles away. The river is in fact used only for bathing, in the summertime, and skating in the winter; though skating has been forbidden since January 1928 when a small boy from the village fell through the ice and drowned. It was that same winter that the pipes froze, with the result that the following spring the cellars of Phlange were badly flooded.

  All this is only too evident to the master of Phlange. He is Sir Norman Percy, a short, stocky, bad-tempered Roman Catholic gentleman with a thatch of yellow hair and bristling black eyebrows that meet on the bridge of his nose. When the boiler goes he is still in his study, going over the books and quietly grinding his teeth; as the sound of the explosion reaches his ears his head snaps up, and a most peculiar thing happens: A vein in his left temple, the one which twists from eye-level to hairline, suddenly stands out vivid and purple against the reddish skin and begins perceptibly to throb. At the same time a glazed look comes over the man’s eye and he rises to his feet with fists clenched so tight that the knuckles whiten to livid bonelike knobs. The truth of the matter is, for some months now Sir Norman has been subject to periods of sudden and intense disorientation, and occasionally he has heard voices. There is some history of madness in the family, and in his lucid moments he realizes he should probably see someone. For various reasons he has not; now, as the boiler explodes, some critical psychological strut snaps, and though you would hardly guess it but for the throbbing vein in his temple, Sir Norman crosses the thin line which separates the insane from the rest of us. But as I say, it is barely noticeable, this crack-up, and after a moment the aroused vein – a phenomenon known to psychiatrists and bartenders alike as ‘the snake’ — subsides, and Sir Norman goes off to fix the boiler like the good householder he is.

  And what, finally, of his wife, of Lady Percy, the woman at the window? When the boiler goes, she, like Cadwallader, is emerging from a bathtub; but the profound depression that has been progressively enshrouding her mind is now such that the explosion causes barely a tremor to cross her unfurrowed white brow. She stands with her back to us upon the tiles and permits her maid to come forward and gently towel her pale body, the body which poses such problems for the men of Harley Street. She slips into her gown and then, like one entranced, moves across the bathroom and into her chamber, and her bathwater spins down the drain behind her with a swift, clear and noiseless motion. How different is the mood of the water in Cadwallader’s bath! For there we find a scurfy vortex which makes horrible sucking sounds as it devolves and carries in its sluggish but implacable downward spiral a few hairs, a few crumbs of flaking plaster, and a number of small English insects.

  • • •

  When the dinner gong sounds Sir Norman is under the boiler in his shirtsleeves and beside him is Tinkler, the estate handyman. They are deep in the cellars of Phlange, those drear crypts which still bear the malodorous and fungoid scars of the floods of’28. Dimly illuminated by a single naked bulb, the boiler room itself is a low-ceilinged vault of dank air and deep shadows, and dominating it like some great plated deity rears the cylindrical tank wherein the inner waters of Phlange are brought to boiling point and then forced to the upper regions by denser, colder water descending. The damage is less catastrophic than might have been imagined from the explosion; as usual, a matter of bad pipes, bad gas, and a moment of combustion vastly amplified by the emptied boiler. The thing can be patched up, of course, but clearly Sir Norman will soon have to have the professionals in, and extensive work will be necessary. The drain on his bank account – a leaky vessel generally as empty as this great rusting hulk of a water tank – is not to be thought of without deep dismay.

  Eventually Sir Norman crawls out, closely followed by Tinkler, and the two men stand flaked with rust before the boiler. For a moment it seems, in its bulky rotting obsolescence, symbolic somehow of the end of all things, a great tinny membrane housing only a void; but no sooner has this thought occurred than Sir Norman dismisses it with a snort, and dropping a weighty spanner with a dull clang into Tinkler’s toolbox, leads his man out of the barren and shadowy domain and into the light above.

  • • •

  Poached trout was on the menu that evening, but without Sir Norman at the head of the table the company lacked its binding agent, and things tended to fall apart. The Percy teenagers, Edgar, Gavin, and Charlotte, drank too much and squabbled loudly; Tarquin and Vanessa, the grown-up twins of Sir Norman’s younger brother, the Honourable ‘Mad George’ Percy, communicated only with each other, and in whispers. Roland Crub, a dissipated scion of the Northumberland Crubs, read a book; and Lady Percy, fresh and sweet-smelling from her bath, sat silent and motionless at the foot of the table and ate nothing. Cadwallader, on her left, and Mrs Crub, her mother, on her right, were so exclusively occupied with their food that little in the way of creative or exploratory discourse was to be had from either of them.

  When the ladies had retired, along with all the young men, and the decanter of port had settled semipermanently in front of the solitary Cadwallader, Sir Norman finally appeared, wiping his hands on a damp gray rag and cursing fitfully under his breath. Cadwallader watched him impassively, his little eyes betraying not a flicker of expression. Tossing the towel onto a sideboard, Sir Norman took his place at the head of the table and poured himself a large glass of claret.

  ‘Well,’ he said, having drunk, ‘have you thought about it?’

  ‘Sir Norman,’ said the doctor, spreading his palms upon the table, ‘your wife is a very depressed woman. She must never be left on her own.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ snapped Sir Norman. ‘She’s quiet, that’s all. Always been quiet.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ murmured the doctor. ‘By all accounts she used to be a quite vivacious woman, until this curious deformity -’

  ‘Never mind her deformity, Cadwallader,’ said Sir Norman sharpl
y. ‘The point is, I absolutely forbid you to trumpet her condition to the world,’

  ‘I scientific monograph in the Lancet is hardly that, Sir Norman.’

  ‘I repeat, Cadwallader, I will not have her exposed to the idle gaze of strangers. That is final!’

  From the depths of his great body the doctor produced a small sigh, and his long wet lower lip pursed briefly with irritation. While Sir Norman was being served his fish, Cadwallader had the opportunity to reflect that though he was used to dealing with the upper classes, used to their innate distrust of professionals and their obsessive need for privacy, he had never met resistance so nearly verging on the pathological as this man’s. ‘I wish,’ he said, when the butler had withdrawn, ‘merely to provoke scientific interest in her condition. It is, after all, a rather unusual case of clitoral tumefaction -’

  ‘Enough!’ cried Sir Norman, and for the first time since the boiler exploded the snake was visible. ‘Hold your tongue, Cadwallader.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Sir Norman,’ said the fat man. ‘Medical science -’

  ‘Medical science be damned!’ continued the testy host, throwing down his napkin and rising from his chair. ‘You’re the fourth bloody quack I’ve had down here, and instead of helping my wife all you can do is bleat about her suicidal tendencies while you further your own career at her expense!’

  The butler reappeared and was brusquely waved away; Cadwallader, meanwhile, was visibly angered. His bulk stiffened and his lip trembled wetly. ‘How dare you impugn my integrity, sir!’ he hissed. ‘If it were not for my patient’s precarious mental state, I would leave your house this very minute.’

  Sir Norman’s snake was now raging furiously. ‘Damn you, Cadwallader, and all your festering brood!’ he shouted. ‘Leeches and parasites, the lot of you! I’ll tell you something, Cadwallader’ — by this time he was standing across from the doctor, leaning forward on his arms, palms down on the table, his eyes blazing madly at the pale Cadwallader – ‘you’ll not have your way with her! She’ll not go under your knife – not under any of your knives! Never, do you hear me, Cadwallader?’

  With enormous effort the doctor gathered his dignity and rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘I must presume you are in liquor, sir,’ he said faintly. ‘I shall attempt to excise this unfortunate interview from my mind.’ And with that he fled, Sir Norman shaking his fist after him from the foot of the table, and roaring: ‘You’ll not excise a damn thing in my house, Cadwallader, not a damn thing!’ And then he slumped into a chair, breathing heavily, while the snake throbbed on like a wild thing in his temple.

  • • •

  In the police records of the case, the movements of every member of the house party over the next twenty-four hours are recorded in detail, along with all corroborating evidence. Cadwallader, it seems, spent most of his last day on earth dozing in a deckchair and sporadically working at the Times crossword. Old Mrs Crub attended a harvest festival in the village, and awarded prizes for outstanding summer vegetables. Later, she took out one of Sir Norman’s chestnut mares, and had a fine canter across the Downs. Her daughter spent the day in her chamber, apparently doing nothing till late in the afternoon, when a furious summer shower forced Cadwallader in from the garden to examine her; he found her condition essentially unchanged, and prescribed a powerful antidepressant. The twins, Tarquin and Vanessa, were extremely vague about their whereabouts, and would say only that they’d been picking flowers in the woods. This did not satisfy the police, but by that time the outcome was clear, and the two were not questioned further. Roland Crub had motored into Newbury and spent some hours in a hotel room with a companion listening to a BBC broadcast of the Berlin Olympics. Sir Norman himself managed with Tinkler’s help to get the boiler functioning, after a fashion, then gave his man the rest of the weekend off, but had him leave his toolbox in case further problems arose. He retired to his study, where, he said, he continued doing the books for a while, and then started to drink brandy. He drank steadily for the rest of the day, and on into the evening. He did not mention to the police that when the rainfall began he had seen a vision of his wife radiant in glory in the evening sky.

  It seems that we can reconstruct the following sequence of events, beginning at or around 7:15 of that fateful Saturday night: Sir Norman, apparently normal but in fact profoundly intoxicated, makes his way to the east wing of the house with Tinkler’s toolbox and slips unnoticed into Cadwallader’s bathroom. He conceals himself in the linen closet and waits silently in the darkness as the doctor, sticky with perspiration after his day in the sun, enters and runs a bath.

  We well know what Cadwallader looks like when he is at his ablutions. He is fat, and pink; and thanks to the recent efforts of Sir Norman and Tinkler he is once again privileged to wallow in hot water. The summer shower is over, and shafts of late sunlight slice through the steam, lending to the whole scene a rather spectral and fantastic appearance. Then the door of the linen closet slowly opens, and into this misty realm, this Avalon, this isle of the dead, slips the flaxen-haired knight. Gripped in his fist is a large spanner, and it glints in the sunlight as he advances unseen upon the back of his foe. Cadwallader, lost to the pleasures of immersion, sees nothing, hears nothing; Sir Norman lifts high the great steel tool, thin edge downward, and dispatches his man with one huge thump. Cadwallader doubles forward in the tub, then slips onto his side like some great vessel floundering in heavy seas, and the blood of his wound oozes out into the bathwater. Sir Norman does not pause to savor the joy of the kill, however; instead, he drags the toolbox to the bathtub and selects from it a fine-toothed fretsaw. Pausing only to roll up his sleeves, he goes to work.

  Lady Percy, meanwhile, is in a state of nervous and spiritual exhaustion after being examined by the doctor, and she does not go down for dinner. She dismisses her maid, and then alone in her room in the west wing sits at her dressing table with a vase of blue columbines before her, compulsively arranging and rearranging the blooms. The hinged side mirrors of the dresser are set in such a fashion that the image of the woman and the flowers is reflected from one glass to the other and back again, and so on to infinity; and it is this movement of regression that first catches the eye of Sir Norman as he enters the chamber. In one hand he holds the spanner, and in the other a load wrapped in the black towel. Lady Percy sees him in her mirror and turns, rising to her feet with a small cry, and moves to the center of the bedroom. Her long white fingers are pressed against her lips, and her eyes are wide. Sir Norman stands stock still with his back to the door, and the two stare at each other across the wide chamber. His eyes burn with a manic fury; hers are vacant and ethereal. From the freighted black towel a quantity of blood drips suddenly onto the fine Turkish carpet. ‘Show yourself to me,’ whispers Sir Norman, crouching quickly to lay down his tool and his bloody load, his eyes never leaving her face. Lady Percy’s hands move slowly from her lips to the clasp at the neck of her gown, and she deftly unfastens it. Behind her stands her four-poster bed, spread with a fine-woven coverlet of medieval design. Beyond the bed are the windows, and beyond the windows, arcing over the chestnut trees on the brow of the distant hills, a perfect rainbow has formed against the sky. Lady Percy drops her gown and stands before her husband, who falls to one knee. Her silver-blond hair is tied in a tight bun at the nape of her long white neck; her slim arms hang by her side; her skin is pale as ivory and her hips are narrow; and from the hairless pubis at the base of her flat belly sprouts a small, soft penis, plump and pinkly wrinkled, lying upon a delicate betesticled sac which hangs against her closed thighs like a raindrop. Framed against the shimmering sky she stands there straight and pale and slender, and Sir Norman takes her hand and, lowering his head, presses her fingers to his lips. When he looks up, a flame of triumph glows in his fervent eyes. He opens out the oozing black towel and reveals the severed head of Gordon Cadwallader, its eyes yet open and blood dripping thickly from the ragged and truncated vessels of the neck. Now he snatches up the head by its blac
k curls and raises it aloft before his wife’s face; but the lady turns with a horrified shriek and flees to her bathroom, locking the door behind her.

  Sir Norman, in deep psychotic territory at this point, becomes fascinated by the eyes of his enemy and, forgetting his wife, seats himself before the bloody head set between the mirrors on the dresser and there gazes into its infinite deadness. He is not aware of the water running in the bathroom; indeed he does not emerge from his gruesome reverie until he notices the bathwater which has come slithering, reddish and steaming, under the door and across the bedroom carpet like a serpent. His own snake is now quiet, and with a cry of anguish he dashes to the bathroom door and, finding it secured, batters open the lock with his spanner. When he finally bursts into the steam-filled bathroom, it is as he feared; his wife lies in an overflowing bath, her head lolling on the edge of the tub and her left wrist slit open with one of his own well-honed safety razors. Her blood drifts in misty swirls within the moving water, and Sir Norman, dropping his spanner, darts to the taps and turns them off with both hands. And then he lifts the pale dead hermaphrodite dripping from the water, and with a heavy step carries her into the chamber, and lays her on the bed. Gently he closes the eyes and, with the tears now rolling down his face, places her right arm by her side. The other he lets fall over the side of the bed and, careless of the blood still pumping softly from the wrist, presses the wound to his lips. It is then that some delicate atmospheric shift occurs in the air outside, and Sir Norman raises his head and sees, framed by the rainbow, a vast shimmering figure of light who slowly opens her arms and fills the sky with her radiance; and for a moment he is transfigured, and himself appears vividly aflame within her dazzling splendor. But only for a moment; and then the image dissolves, and darkness returns, and Sir Norman drops his head and presses his lips to the wound on the wrist of the corpse. And thus we leave him, as the gloom of twilight steals upon the chamber and the flies begin to gather on the doctor’s eyes.