Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  “But he’s so damn big, how do I get him to do what I want, he doesn’t really know me?” Miss Peacock looked at me over her glasses,

  “Are you deliberately stupid? she inquired,

  “Right, that’s it, enough already,” Ruth bounced up from her chair. “Rachael, you’re impossible when you’re in this sort of mood. Go. Put the kettle on or knit something useful. Glory and I will talk her through.”

  “I need to …”

  “Shush.” They glared at each other, identically shaped, obstinate jaws jutting, until Miss P the elder gave in and stalked off to the kitchen. Ruth swung diamond-patterned green tights back on to the foot-stool,

  “Where were we? Ah, Hamlet. Now, how do you think you might get him to do what you want?” she raised a humorous eyebrow. I gawped, “Naturally.” she said “How else?”I was not happy about that. Over the years I’d listened once or twice to animals but didn’t like it at all – they were so, well, so animally.

  “Nonsense.” Ruth had borrowed her sister’s voice and I felt like someone who’d flung themselves gratefully out of the frying pan into an even hotter predicament.

  “Go ahead,” she ordered, “Try.”

  Hamlet’s scent was hot, musty and doggy, a bit like a sweaty slipper. His mind was warm and full of smells, a world of odour, extending far out of the room we were in, each individual scent distinctive and meaningful. And hungry, Hamlet was hungry, although somehow I gathered Hamlet was almost always hungry, happy to eat at any time.

  “Get him to do something.” Ruth instructed. “No, no, no, it’s no use giving it to him in words silly girl, show what you want, show him.” I was at a loss, did she want me to get down on all fours and trot to the other side of the room? I looked at her, her face was impassive. Glory was still and silent as only she could be and Ed, who of course, did expressionless better than anyone was no help either. I looked helplessly at Hamlet who’d woken up. This was ridiculous. I shut my eyes and concentrated. Delighted I’d finally made some sort of sensible contact, Hamlet hauled himself up and ambled over to where I’d sent him. I suggested he pick up a cushion and bring it to me, he did. I got him to sit, to stand, to lie down, to collect a shoe from Ruth and give it to Glory and he did all I asked, until I could feel his attention beginning to wane.

  “Good girl.” Ruth was grinning, Glory was petting Hamlet’s head, he had his tongue lolling out and his eyes closed in pleasure – I felt much the same.

  “Right.” Now Glory took over. “Shut your eyes. I’m going to walk you through the part of the building you’ve never been in before.” And she did, so thoroughly I felt I could find my way blindfolded, which I suppose was more or less what Glory usually did.

  “When are we going in?” I had a horrible feeling I knew.

  “Tonight.”

  “But I haven’t heard the rest of what happened, after the thing with Peter.”

  “Ah” said Glory,

  “What does that mean – Ah?”

  “We were hoping not to cover that till later.” I waited, eyebrows raised, I didn’t know whether she was looking through anybody’s eyes at me, but she got the message. She and Ruth exchanged a thought faster than I could catch,

  “Go, phone home.” Ruth instructed “Then we’ll bring you as up to date as we can before it’s time to leave.”

  I dialled my mother from the phone which lived on the sideboard between a bust of Queen Victoria looking bored and a photograph of Glory and the Peacock girls. Ruth and Glory had their arms round each other and were laughing, Miss P had hers crossed and from the look on her face was telling the photographer to get a move on, I couldn’t see her foot, but I guessed it would have been tapping. My mother was more than delighted to hear from me. She sounded strained, they’d been going back and forward to the hospital. No change though in Grandma’s condition. She was also, needless to say, worried sick about me. How was I? Was I getting the answers to questions? What was it exactly they wanted me to do? When was I coming back?

  I said I was fine and thought it best not to mention my hostess had just pushed me out of a first floor window. I said yes, I was finding out a great deal of stuff I’d always wanted to know and didn’t add that the ghastly nightmares of the unfortunate Peter would disturb my sleep well into the future – certainly far more than they’d ever now disturb his. And as for proposed activities, well – I’d be going, under cover of darkness, to a Medical Research Centre run by a lunatic doctor. I’d be taking with me the biggest damn dog you’ve ever seen and I’d be breaking and entering with the intention of kidnapping a small boy, who, if push came to shove, could kill me with a single thought. I crossed my fingers and said nothing much was happening this evening and no I wasn’t sure yet how long I’d be staying, but I really was learning a lot.

  I replaced the receiver carefully with a clear conscience and a lump in my throat. I’d given them too many worries through the years to add more now and what they didn’t know, couldn’t drive them round the bend. What I’d learned, over the last couple of days, had shown me the reality of how wonderfully well they’d coped all my life, evidenced by the fact I was never made to feel anything other than just a bit Strange. I reckoned I owed them the odd little white lie.

  *

  We sat down to supper and it was a measure of how I was feeling that I can honestly say I have no idea what we ate. Then we went to change into warmer clothes.

  “Dark stuff.” Miss Peacock instructed. If, I couldn’t help thinking, breaking and entering was on the agenda, it would have been a nice hostessy gesture to have mentioned it in the original invitation so one could have packed accordingly. But I needn’t have worried, on my bed were soft trousers, a grey T-shirt, a thick black jumper and a long waterproof jacket.

  When we re-congregated, Glory and Ruth were looking uncomfortably unlike themselves in items clearly allocated from the elder Peacock wardrobe. A long grey jumper swam on Glory’s thin frame, a dark brown one looked as if it was feeling the strain on Ruth’s. Glory had even left off the earrings.

  “We still have a bit of time,” Miss Peacock decreed as Ed, pottering in the kitchen, sent us four mugs of milky coffee and, each taking over smoothly from the other where relevant, the three women began to weave the rest of the story.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  After the unfortunate ‘Atkins incident’, as it came to be known, and as soon as Ruth and Rachael were able to reach Glory, they demanded she get out of there immediately. But it seemed, that for everyone, the stakes had changed.

  Glory stated categorically she couldn’t possibly leave however much she might want to, her conscience simply wouldn’t let her. No amount of ranting and raving on the part of the Peacocks – mental, telephonic and, when they eventually got to see her, face to face across a small iron table covered with scones and jam in an Oxford tea-shoppe, would change her mind. You had to hand it to her, when it came to ranting and raving there can’t have been many to rival the Peacock sisters in full and double flow.

  Things had changed too for the Doctor. Hard on the heels of Peter’s last stand, some Men from the Ministry had come hot-footing down from London. Glory, regaining consciousness only after a good forty-eight hours of Atkins-generated trauma, could vaguely remember them peering in at her in her room, ‘Like a flipping fish in a tank’, she said resentfully. Under the eagle eye of Mrs Millsop, she was being kept in for bed-rest and observation. One catatonic patient, Mrs Millsop paraphrased crisply, was sad, two could be considered careless.

  Mrs Millsop, empowered by having snatched Glory from the jaws of Peter’s fate, had in fact, become a rather unexpectedly solid tower of strength. When the Doctor wanted to start immediate tests, to ascertain whether Glory’s ability had been affected, Mrs Millsop put her size nine, sensibly rubber-soled foot down firmly. For the next few days, she stated, any tests would have to be done over her dead body, and as this would have proved a substantial obstacle to even the most determined, the Doctor gave in petulantly a
nd Glory was grateful for the breathing space.

  It was never quite clear from precisely which Government Department the Foundation’s funding flowed, although it was almost certainly MI something-or-other. In any event, Glory said, there’d been three visitors and looking through various eyes she saw identical dark suits, ties and sombre expressions. They were shown round by the Doctor who was all over them like an oil slick. It seemed though that it was this visit which moved things suddenly onto a different level altogether. Whilst they’d had enough faith in Dreck’s research to fund the Foundation in the first place and had been willing to set in motion the costly and ponderous wheels needed to create the social study cover, it had been purely on a, ‘Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes’, sort of basis. Indeed, this was just one of a number of seemingly wacky projects they underwrote during those desperate, pull-one-over on the Communists years, when the atmosphere between East and West was frosty to freezing point.

  However, quite a lot of testing sessions at the Foundation had been cine filmed and delivered to an anonymous office in Piccadilly, creating something of a stir. The film provided the Men from whichever Ministry, with irrefutable evidence of what did actually exist, if only they could get their hands on some of it. Running through their minds during their visit, as they looked at the wreck that was Peter and the slightly less wrecked Glory, were the unlimited uses to which such talents could be applied – espionage, international and industrial, warfare defensive and aggressive – the list was endless. They also knew the Americans were doing very similar testing across the Atlantic, were desperate to score first and at Newcombe, could suddenly see in the distance something that might be success.

  They got very excited in a mutedly undercover sort of way, and exchanged a lot of expressionless looks, although each knew exactly what the others were thinking – as indeed did Glory. The Doctor, who’d spent a good many years fighting for recognition, determined to prove the worth of his project, suddenly found it proven. He was now, however, under intense pressure to deliver.

  If in the first few days following the Atkins incident, Mrs Millsop, Glory and the rest of the staff were extremely distressed by what had happened to Peter, Doctor Dreck was distraught, one might almost say demented with grief. What infernal bloody bad luck, what a stinking blow from fate’s unfeeling fist, to have stumbled across a talent such as Peter’s only to have it snatched away. It might of course have been pointed out, that when it came to luck, Peter’s wasn’t exactly running high either. Also worth mentioning, might have been the fact, that had the Doctor not been dishing out L/24 pills like Smarties, such a catastrophe might never have occurred in the first place. But his complete inability to see things from anything other than his own viewpoint, was indicative of the not so sane way his mind was working and of the increasingly erratic paths it might follow in the future. It was, as Glory said, enough to send a shiver and a half down your spine.

  Of course nobody gave up on Peter right away and for several weeks different neurological experts from various parts of the country came to consult and confer. Peter was given brain scans, 24-hour intensive nursing care and ministered to by a rotating team of physiotherapists. It reminded her, said Glory, of Christopher Robin having wheezles and sneezles – you know, when all sorts of physicians on lots of conditions came hurrying round at a run. But lip after lip was pursed, head after head shaken, they could find no brain activity whatsoever – poor kid, the prognosis was bleak. Dr Dreck thanked them for their professional opinion, shaking his head mournfully too, although he’d far rather have banged it violently against the nearest wall in frustration. L/24 was never mentioned to or by anyone, which only goes to show, said Ruth, you can get away with murder if you do it right. A massive stroke was the verdict, unusual but certainly not unknown in one so young and it was, undoubtedly, only the heroic attempts to save him that had ensured he survived at all.

  The awful thing, Mrs Millsop told Glory afterwards, was that when his mother was told, and it fell to Mrs Millsop to do the telling, she took it remarkably calmly,

  “‘Orrible, really,” Mrs Millsop had recounted, forgetting careful diction and professional restraint in her distress. “Done up like a bleeding dog’s dinner she was when she arrived, drove down from London with some chap in a big car, all sobbing and shaking and crocodile tears and didn’t stay in the room with the boy more than a minute. Mind you, she soon perked up and put her hanky away when Miss Merry started talking about insurance pay-outs.” Mrs Millsop had sniffed in disdain, in all honesty she hadn’t liked the little blighter either, but you had to feel sorry didn’t you?

  Peter’s incapacity, together with the surge of interest from the Men with the Money, was not good news for Glory – as far as the Doctor was concerned she was, for the moment, the only game in town. Still shaken from how close she’d come to disaster, nevertheless determined against all Ruth and Rachael’s strenuous objections, to stay on a bit longer at the Foundation, Glory knew she couldn’t possibly warn everyone. But perhaps she’d become as obsessed in her way as the Doctor had in his. She also had a plan.

  The Peacocks dismissed it out of hand, said it was the most ridiculous thing they’d ever heard and far too risky, but she was determined and they were genuinely worried about her state of mind. After discussing it at length, they felt perhaps if she accomplished what she wanted, they stood a better chance of persuading her to leave and the sooner that happened the easier they’d all sleep at night. What the three of them however had overlooked in all this major decision-making was that when it came to the crunch, Dreck might not be so happy to wave bye bye to Glory, in all senses of the word!

  What she had in mind to do, before she shook the dust of the Foundation from her heels – and even she had the grace to admit, it was a bit of a hare-brained long shot – was to substitute something harmless for the large supply of L/24 the Doctor was preparing to dole out to whichever talented person next had the misfortune to cross his path. It was of course, only a short-term measure, but perhaps consistent failure of the drug would convince him to give up, or better still convince the money men to turn off the tap.

  The Peacocks, still with grave reservations, contacted their research scientist friend and, calling in all sorts of favours, asked could he duplicate the appearance of the sample pills Glory had originally smuggled out. Could he produce something that looked identical but contained nothing harmful. Friend scientist was less than thrilled, but squared his conscience with the fact it wasn’t the other way round – substituting dodgy for harmless. In due course he reported back with an air-tight container full of duplicates which were, even under the most anxious and intense scrutiny, pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing. These were duly passed to Glory on one of their tea outings.

  As might have been expected, as soon as Mrs Millsop took her gimlet eye off the ball, the Doctor was in like Flynn, subjecting Glory to an ever more intensive programme. He was again convinced that improving her skills was merely a matter of time, patience and training. He’d also resolved if that didn’t work pretty damn quick, he might just try a more positive move. There was a procedure he’d read about in the New England Medical Journal. Pioneered at Baltmore’s Johns Hopkins, it was an experimental and high risk method of dealing with tumours and involved stimulating areas of the brain during surgery. What intrigued him was that some patients, post-operatively, had developed vastly enhanced memory and mathematical skills. The Doctor had immediately seen interesting applications – if some abilities could be thus stimulated, why not others? The fact that to do this he’d have to open up Glory’s head and perform a life-threatening, relatively untried operation – added to which, he wasn’t even a brain surgeon – didn’t seem to bother him unduly. It certainly gave Glory a turn though when she saw what he was thinking.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  To speed Glory’s progress in the ability stakes, Miss Merry was delegated to spend extra time working with her. Thrust ever more freque
ntly into that chilly presence, at the same time as trying to ignore the Doctor, who’d developed an unpleasant habit of mentally drawing incision lines on her skull, was, Glory found, something of a strain.

  The Merry mind was a complex one, convoluted and folded in on itself. It was unusual and somewhat alarming that often one part of the mind didn’t seem to be all that aware of, or indeed much bothered by what was going on in other parts. There was though, one section interminably occupied, one might almost say pre-occupied, with the doings of the Doctor. What was he thinking, what was he saying? What was someone else saying to him? What might he be needing? What was he going to do next? This background cadence was such a constant, that the woman herself was hardly aware of it and it certainly didn’t stop her performing her job in a ferociously efficient manner.

  It troubled Miss Merry somewhat that there was a large area of human communication that for some reason, she simply didn’t get. It had always been thus, even as a child, a sense of humour was ostensibly absent. She was, quite literally, humourless and that was no laughing matter. This lack had governed her childhood, making of her, if not a complete outcast then a fringe member of every group she’d ever been with, including her parents and two siblings. They were a normal enough family, older sister, younger brother. Father a civil servant both by profession and nature, mother involved in any voluntary organisation that didn’t involve something depressing. They had a quiet, not unhappy home life and were in truth no great comedians themselves, nevertheless they were able to appreciate a joke with a smile if not a belly laugh and equipped to do their share of joshing at a friendly gathering.