by Peter Benson
They sat at a corner table, and he ordered Earl Grey and a plate of rich cakes. After five minutes of weather talk, he leant towards her and said he was doing some independent research, research the college knew nothing about. He trusted her and hoped, even believed, that she trusted him. In return for a modest increase in salary and her total discretion, would she be interested in helping him with this work?
She was speechless. “Interested?” she said.
“Yes.”
She looked into his eyes and searched for a trick, a mistake, a lie, but saw nothing like that, nothing dangerous or malignant at all. Just intelligence, perceptiveness and conviction. She believed him completely, and when she said “Why me?” he reached across the table and said, “Because you’re the most gifted assistant I’ve ever had.” She believed him again, believed him like flood comes to a river or the rain to earth, and his words seeped beneath her skin. She felt a flush in her blood, a blush in her cheeks and she looked away. He leant towards her and touched her hand. His fingers were ice-cold, but she did not shiver. She knew as he knew, and when he pulled his hand away and sat back, she was already with him, willing and honoured to work for the most brilliant man she had ever met.
Before the Professor introduced her to his mysterious research, he suggested she take a holiday, so she travelled home to Charmouth for a week. She walked along the beach, climbed the cliffs and wandered into the fields behind the village. She climbed the ramparts of the old hill fort where Egbert the Great had received emissaries from East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria, and she remembered the stories she had been taught at school. The cruel Danes had ravaged the north and east of the country, and were threatening to land their ships at Charmouth. The King had called a council of war. For the first time in history, the kingdoms of England joined together to fight a common enemy. A common enemy, a field of blood, ships as far as the eye could see. Isabel sat with a view of the village and the sea, ate an apple and thought about her future.
She thought carefully, made a decision, and when she was sure she was doing the right thing, she went home to sit with her grandmother. The old lady sat in a huge armchair, stared at her granddaughter and told her that Isabel was such a lovely girl, with her huge eyes and her curly brown hair. “She is always visiting, and if you stay for a while, maybe you will meet her. You cannot miss Isabel Carter. She will be smiling and will tell you about the ichthyosaur bones she found a few years ago. Or maybe she will have her head in a book and you must not disturb her. Not when she is studying. Ssh. You must be quiet in the room.”
Ten months before I met her, Isabel left Charmouth, moved back to Cambridge and started work on Professor Hunt’s new research. She took her old rooms on Emmanuel Street, but after a couple of weeks Hunt said it was ridiculous: he had more than enough room in his own house, and would be happy to let her live in the empty servants’ quarters. “Would it be proper?” she said, and when he said, “I don’t know why not,” she moved in. And at that time, as autumn collapsed over the city and she stared from her window at the overgrown garden below, she thought she knew satisfaction and purpose and all the things she had promised her grandmother were waiting for her.
She sat at the table with her back to the window, and I sat opposite. The sun was sinking through the trees, and the sound of laughing children drifted from Highbury Fields.
“What happened to you?”
“Professor Hunt.” She stared at her fingers. “He happened to me.”
“How?”
She shrugged, as if nothing could have prevented the inevitable. Dreams, nightmares – they did not exist for her any more. She shrugged again and ran her fingers over the top of her head. She rubbed a scale, rolled her eyes and said “Because I thought…” but her voice dropped away, like a stone falling into a well. I waited for her to finish what she was going to say, but when she did not, I leant across the table and said, “Why did you let him do it?”
“I didn’t!” She glared now, her eyes bulged, and little spots of spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t let him do anything! This isn’t my fault! I had no idea…”
“I’m sorry…”
“So am I.”
“And… and it is snakeskin?”
“Yes.”
“Really snakeskin?”
“Yes.”
“It’s difficult to believe.”
“Oh, you can believe,” she said, and she held up her hand. “It’s from the fox snake.”
“The fox…”
“Snake.”
“Snake…”
“They live in the Americas.”
“And it’s yours, not just grafted or…”
“This is my skin.”
“God.”
“Mine.”
“How did he do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“No?”
“I have my own ideas, but I can’t be sure they have anything to do with what really happened.”
“So he wasn’t working on a cure that would benefit all mankind?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. He lied to me,” she said. “I believed him once, but now…”
“What?”
“I thought he was a genius. Really. Not just a clever man, someone more than that.”
I nodded.
“It’s difficult to explain, but he had discovered a way of fooling human cells into thinking they were doing one thing when they were actually doing something else. It’s a form of metastasis. A corrupt form, but nevertheless…” She sipped some water. Her lips were covered in the finest yellow scales, and when she touched the glass to them, she squinted.
“And this is the result.”
“As simple as that?”
“Simple,” she said, “is not a word I would use. Think. You take a group of cells, introduce them to an environment designed to reject invasion and expect the cells to survive. It sounds impossible, is impossible, but if you…”
“Stop!” I stood up, drank a glass of water, gulped it, drank another and sat down again. “Stop!”
She dropped her head and sniffed. “Why? You asked the question.”
“I’m lost already.”
“Lost?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m books. Literature. I was useless at science.”
She sipped some more water. “I love the sciences…”
“How long have you been…”
“How long have I been what?”
I pointed at her face. “Like this.”
“Six months.”
“Why? Why did he do it?”
“I have no idea. I think he’d been ridiculed and wanted revenge. He’d written about his ideas, but no one would publish them. His colleagues thought he was mad, so he decided to prove them wrong.”
“God.”
“Hell. And why you?”
She shrugged. “There was a time when he could have done whatever he wanted with me. I’d have walked on hot coals, put needles in my eyes, anything…”
“You were in love with him?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Once, in a strange way…” and she reached up and ran her right hand down her left arm. “A very strange way…”
I drank some more water, ran my finger around the rim of the glass and said, “What does it feel like?”
She turned her head. The scales around her eyes caught the light and shimmered. “Heavy. Heavy and smooth inside. I don’t feel where my old skin was. Or is. I get cold. If it’s not hot I freeze.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Not if I take this.” She reached into her case, took out a phial of milky liquid and held it up to the light.
“What is it?”
She shrugged. “Hunt’s potion.”
“And what’s in it?”
“I’ve no idea, but it keeps me stable.”
“And when you fail to take it?”
She shook her head and showed me a syringe. “It feels like my real skin’s crawling
to get out, as if I’m on fire. You’ve heard me.”
“So why were you in Somerset?”
“He needed isolation. Once he’d made the skin grow, he decided it was best to get out of Cambridge. That house, the one you came to, used to belong to his mother. I think she left it to him…”
“Once he had got it to grow?”
“Yes. Then he had to keep me alive.”
I shook my head.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“It’s mad.”
“Apart from Hunt, you’re the only person who’s seen me.”
“Seen you?”
“Since it happened.”
“So why didn’t he show you to his colleagues? If he wanted to prove his ideas…”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe he thought they’d be horrified, or the authorities would take him in.” She stared at me and her eyes dilated. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Horrified?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“At what he has done to you… it is…”
“But me? What I look like…”
“I’m looking at you, but I don’t think I am. I have to fool myself into thinking that I’m seeing you like you were before, and I’m doing that because otherwise I’d go mad.”
“That’s it,” she said, “precisely. It’s how I’ve learnt to think. When I see myself in a mirror, I have to force myself to remember how I used to be, how my skin was. How smooth and pink it was. But I suppose… I suppose that’s over. Now… now I’m this.”
“And what was going to happen to you? If I hadn’t met you, if you’d stayed in Somerset, what was he going to do with you?”
“I’m not sure. Some experiments fail, others succeed. Maybe I’d have become his stolen masterpiece.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, the stolen painting that’s so famous the new owner doesn’t dare show it to anyone. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because the pleasure’s in the owning, the keeping, never the display. Maybe I was all about possession. Possession and proof.”
“Proof?”
“That his theories were possible.”
“Mad,” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said, “quite mad. But careful with it.”
I went to the window, looked at the back of the houses and the trees in the gardens, and I watched a jay clicking and chattering through the branches. It was trying to scare a blackbird, but the blackbird was brave and would not fly away. It sang its song as though its heart would burst. I took a bottle of sherry down and said, “Can you drink?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes,” she said, “I think I do.”
I fetched a couple of glasses, poured, drank, watched her sip and asked about her parents.
“I have written to them, once. It was difficult, but I didn’t want them to worry. My mother especially – she’s a great worrier.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said I was in Scotland, working on an important experiment I couldn’t say anything about.”
“Do you want to write now?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “When I’m ready.”
“We might not have time,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because someone else did see you.”
“Who?”
“Miss Watson.”
“Who’s Miss Watson?”
“At Belmont. The house I was working in. She saw us leave. The first thing Hunt will do is ask her where I live. And if she doesn’t tell him, someone will. Maybe the solicitor…”
“What solicitor?”
“Mr Prior-Stewart. He visited Miss Watson about Belmont.”
Isabel held up her glass and said, “This feels very nice.”
“Good.” I swilled my own glass, drank, swallowed and said, “We could call the authorities.”
“The authorities?” Now she laughed. “What good would that do?”
“I don’t know, but we could get him locked up.”
She shrugged. “Call them if you want, but I won’t talk to them.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” she said, and she ran her hands up her arms across her shoulders and over her chest, “because I’d be taken away.” She sat back and finished her drink, closed her eyes and made a rattling sound in her throat. “And I don’t want that.” She looked around the kitchen. “I want this…”
“So…”
“So?”
“So we spend tonight here, but we’ll have to leave tomorrow. I’m owed some time. I have to visit the office for an hour, but then we’ll go.”
“Go where?”
“I know a place.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
“And what will happen then?” Her voice went up. “What will happen to me?”
“Isabel… I don’t know,” I said, but then I could not say any more, and poured myself another glass of sherry.
When it was dark she went to the window and said she wanted to go outside. We were half drunk. I looked at her and tried to see her as she should have been, with human skin and curly brown hair and nice clothes. She slurred her words, flapped her arms and said I reminded her of someone she knew in Cambridge. It was my nose and something to do with the way I talked. Or my eyes.
“You want to go for a walk?” I said.
“Yes.”
“But people will see you.”
“I don’t care.”
“I think you do.”
“I…” she jabbed a finger at me, “do not.”
“Then we go out.”
“We go out…”
“And what do you want to do?”
“Let’s see.” She finished her drink, got up, staggered and steadied herself against the wall. She reached for her coat, pulled it on, and asked if she could borrow a scarf. I found one; she wrapped it around her face so only her eyes were showing, pulled the cowl up and said, “What do you think?”
“You look mysterious.”
“I am,” she said, “infinitely. And now I’m going to take the night air.” And she was out of the door before I had time to grab my wallet.
I ran to catch up with her and joined her on the pavement. We crossed the road to the Fields, and then she shouted and dashed away, running from tree to tree. “Yes!” she yelled, and when I caught up with her she said, “Do you remember the first time you saw me?”
“How could I forget?”
“Never forget!” she said, and she ran off again.
When I caught up with her, she jumped from behind a tree, grabbed my hand and, as we headed towards Upper Street, she said, “Where are we?”
“Highbury.”
“I think I like Highbury.”
“So do I. Have you been here before?”
“No. But Hunt has a house in Kew. Is that close?”
“No.”
“I was there for a night before we moved to Somerset. You can see the palm house from the top floor. Do you know the palm house?”
“Yes,” I said, and before I could tell her about the hours I had spent in Kew Gardens, she ran away from me again and hid behind another tree.
She jumped out again, laughed and said, “You don’t know how much you miss people until you can’t see them any more. Strangers… strangers and lights. Street lights, shop lights, the traffic,” and as we crossed the road she was suddenly transfixed by an omnibus. I had to pull her out of the way as the driver yelled, “Dozy cow!” – and as she laughed back, the scarf slipped from her face. The driver saw her scales and his face went white before we were back on the pavement. I stopped her in a doorway and said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Of course it is. Why shouldn’t it be?”
I reached up, adjusted her scarf and said, “No
reason. No reason at all,” and we walked on, my arm around her shoulders and her head tight against me. When we passed a public house, she stopped and said, “I want to go inside.”
“Not tonight. They’re closing.”
“But I want to.” She looked at me and said, “Just for a moment. I want to remember what it was like. It’s been so long. Please?”
Her eyes pleaded, and it was impossible to refuse her, so I opened the door and guided her through the saloon bar to the snug. There I found a corner table, and while she settled herself, I went to order our drinks.
I fetched a pint of mild for myself and a glass of sherry for her, placed them on the table and sat beside her. We chinked our glasses, sipped, and she moved as close to me as she could and whispered in my ear, “Do I scare you? Do I make your skin crawl?”
“No.”
“Did I ever?”
“When I first saw you I think I was more amazed than anything else. Maybe a little scared.”
“I never meant to.”
“I want to see beyond it,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I think…”
“Because you think what?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, though maybe even then, even though I had only known her for two days, I was.
The beer was not the best, but it did its work, and as we drank, the conversation turned to sweethearts. She said she could not understand why I did not have one, and I mumbled something about someone I met in Edinburgh, and how it had failed for no discernible reason.
“What do you mean?”
I felt myself redden. “You must know,” I said, “how it is.”
“No,” she said. “Explain. What was her name?”
“Grace,” I said, and as I pronounced the name, I felt a well open in my body, and all my emotions began to trickle over its edge and tumble down. I shook my head. “I’ll tell you all about her one day, when we know each other better.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” I said, and I picked up my glass and stared into my drink and thought about Edinburgh and how, maybe, things could have been different.
