Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  For the young Miss M however, the total inability to grasp anything other than the literal, coloured if not corrupted her development, certainly nurtured her deep suspicion of others. She was aware, always, of an undercurrent to most conversations to which other people responded automatically, whilst she simply didn’t know how. It was choice that directed her toward a scientific career, chance that assigned her to assist the Doctor when he first came to work in England. And only because he inspired devotion in her hitherto unmolested heart, had she become involved in this telepathy business, a branch of research which couldn’t have been further from ideal for someone of her temperament. For her to be working with yet another hidden current into which she stood no chance of tapping, was more than ironic, it was adding insult to injury, rubbing salt in the wound and twisting the knife. In truth, she nursed a deep repugnance for the entire concept, sublimating this almost completely in order to do her damndest to help the Doctor achieve his aims.

  She was more than highly suspicious of Glory and her ilk, cherishing a conviction, and she wasn’t wrong was she, that there was far more to them than met the eye. She reasoned, if Glory was able to spot psi abilities from afar, she must be able to hear far more than she let on and the thought of that made her skin crawl. She was horrified at the thought of someone rifling through her mind, where there were areas into which even she didn’t go. She’d constructed for herself, quite cleverly, considering she was working in the dark, a rudimentary shielding of a chanted nursery rhyme which although not effective with someone like Glory, would have thrown off other milder talents.

  But if Miss Merry’s faith in her own suspicion was strong, the doctor’s in the accuracy of his tests was stronger and he pointed out frequently, if Glory was able to do more than she admitted, it would certainly have come to light long before now. As far from intuitive as anyone could be, but not a stupid woman by a long chalk, Miss Merry remained unconvinced and her antipathy grew, in direct proportion to the hours they spent together.

  “And it was around about then,” Glory aimed a nod in my direction, “That you came on the scene and that really put the cat among the pigeons!

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “There was something about you that got Miss Merry’s whiskers twitching right from the start. It didn’t help that my timing was out that day. I knew what you were before you even got off the coach, but there were another couple of kids I wanted to check out. With you, there wasn’t need for checking, you stuck out like a handful of sore thumbs. But by the time I got back to you, you were already wading through those tests like a bull in a china shop and scoring stupidly high marks.” I was moved to register a protest in my own defence,

  “How was I to know?”

  “By the time I shut you up, word had already gone out and Dreck and Merry couldn’t believe their luck. But then, when you were taken in to see them I’d blocked you off and they were completely thrown.” She giggled, “It was rather funny really, Dr D was busy trying to send you all sorts of messages and images to which you normally couldn’t have helped respond, but he was hitting a brick wall. It had never happened before. In most cases those who were warned, were alerted well before the tests and were careful how they scored and those who didn’t want to be careful, responded in all the right ways once they were with the Doctor. He knew something was up, but couldn’t work out what and he didn’t have to be telepathic to see you were as baffled as he was. Then, when they hauled you off to the booths, you muddled things even more.” I sat forward, indignant,

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m telling you, you did.”

  “Girls,” Ruth frowned, on peace-making alert even when not strictly necessary, I presumed she must have a lot of practise. Glory shook her head, “You were so obviously scared to death in there and then you kept muttering, no matter how many times I told you not to talk – frankly you were a pain in the arse.” I was silent, thinking back, actually she wasn’t wrong.

  “And then, when I was finally able to get you on your own, it took ages to get the necessary info across – all you did was ask questions.

  “Well excuse me for being interested.”

  “Did you know Miss M had her ear against the door, the whole time?” I hadn’t, and it gave me pause for thought and a chill.

  “She didn’t hear much, just the occasional mutter and squeak, but enough to keep her suspicious.”

  “That’s when she took me upstairs and shot those awful baby pictures at me?”

  “Uh huh, you managed OK, but not well enough to put her off the scent.”

  “And then the dice?”

  “I’d forgotten about that – talk about cocky. My God, Stella, I don’t know what you thought you were doing.”

  “Red herrings?”

  “Well they certainly looked pretty damn fishy to Miss Merry. Couldn’t you just sit still and look stupid – that would have been the clever thing to do.”

  “Glory.” Ruth reproved.

  “Sorry,” Glory sighed and sat back, “I was so aggravated, I could have bashed your brains in with my stick.” I grinned back,

  “Not your favourite person then?”

  “You’d better believe it. By the time I was called in to check out the room, Miss Merry was as hopping mad as I’ve ever seen her, grinding her teeth so hard you could actually hear. She suspected, no, more than suspected, was certain you were behind what was going on, wanted it desperately to be you. It was killing her that she just couldn’t find a way of proving it and time was running out. She thought you were something special. I swore blind you weren’t. I think though there was more to it than that, it was a personality thing, you simply got right up her nose – with me it was always my clothes, her reaction to them was like a bull spotting a red rag. With you I think it was your stupid sense of humour, you never know when to keep quiet do you?”

  I was silent, again she wasn’t wrong. I was well aware my mouth often worked ahead of and sometimes completely independently of my brain, with results which might keep me endlessly amused but had led to trouble in the past. I could see very clearly now, just how dangerously close I’d sailed to the wind at the Foundation. I had more to be grateful to Glory for than I’d fully appreciated. I put out my hand without thought and squeezed hers. Miss Peacock sniffed,

  “Next time, think before you put yourself and others in danger.” Trust her to enhance the moment.

  “What happened after I left?” I asked, Glory frowned,

  “It was as if a rather dangerous line had been crossed, she was more deeply suspicious than ever and determined to trip me up. I decided I needed to get the pill-swap done, sooner rather than later, and get the hell out of there while I still could. It suddenly became very clear to me I couldn’t carry on the way I had been. I was tired and pretty drained – being on guard the whole time was exhausting – and the more like that I felt, the more likely I was to make a slip. Problem with the pill thing was I obviously had to do it alone and of course that meant working blind.

  In fact, I’d spent a great deal of time memorising the geography of the Doctor’s office every time I went in there with someone, and I thought I could find my way around comfortably enough. There was a large cupboard he used as a drugs cabinet and this seemed to be where the drug, in pill format was stored. It was obviously kept locked and as far as I knew there were only two keys, Miss Merry’s and the Doctor’s, kept on them at all times. I spent a lot of time practising with Ed, long distance.

  “Ed?”

  “For the lock. You either have a knack for that sort of thing, or you don’t. I don’t! So I took lessons. I was going to have to take my chances as regards timing and Ed couldn’t wait around indefinitely and do it for me. Anyway, as it so happened, a couple of weeks after you’d been there, Dreck was entertaining a French scientist who was writing a paper on his own work with children and wanted to confer. I knew they were going out for dinner and taking Merry.

  I waited till around 10.00. Late
enough for there not to be lots of people around, not too late for it to look odd if I was spotted. It took me a good few dicey minutes to open the cabinet. Ed says it’s a question of simply slipping your mind inside it and using that as the key.” I looked across at Ed in astonishment, I couldn’t imagine him saying that much at any one time.

  “But obviously my mind’s not as key shaped as his.” Glory flashed him a smile, “It took me far longer than I could afford – I could’ve cried with relief when I finally heard that click.

  There were twelve bottles whose shape I immediately recognised. I had the substitutes with me and had taken the precaution of wearing one of the lab coats, which have huge pockets. I took the pill bottles over to the desk, two at a time, emptied them into my one of my pockets and re-filled them with the substitutes from the other.

  I was terrified of spilling any pills on the floor – I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of finding them again, so I had to go slowly. Eventually, I screwed the final cap back on, wiped all the bottles thoroughly in case there were powdery traces and blew like crazy on the desk to get rid of anything on there. And then the door opened and someone clicked the light switch.” Glory stopped and reached for her cup, I didn’t think I could bear to wait for another leisurely swallow.

  “Who?” I hissed.

  “Mrs Millsop, and she had as much of a fright as I did, nearly shot out of her skin. Her heart was going nineteen to the dozen, mind you mine was doing a few extra beats to the bar too. But you had to hand it to her when it came to reaction time. She didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know I was doing something I shouldn’t, but she liked me and she knew something I didn’t; Dr Doolittle and Miss Bloody Merry, who were supposed to have been out for the whole evening, had finished early and were, at that moment on their way to the office to go over the day’s reports. She valued and needed her job, but she didn’t stop to think, just acted purely instinctively.

  She grabbed me by both arms, threw me behind the examination screen and whilst it was still rocking on its wheels and I was struggling to keep my balance, they were through the door. They were both thoroughly peeved. The French scientist had had way too much to drink and had turned contentious, holding forth on flaws he’d spotted in some of the Newcombe testing methods. And then, in the taxi back to his hotel, he’d put his hand on Miss Merry’s knee, proving not only that he was very drunk but also, in matters of judgement, an idiot. Dr Dreck was offended by the opinions of a colleague with whom he’d hoped to have a fruitful collaboration and Miss Merry was mortified that the Doctor had pretended not to see the hand on her knee. Not what you’d call a good night out.

  Thankfully, they didn’t hang around, although it seemed like hours. I daren’t move and knew if they looked down, they could clearly see my feet below the screen. By the time they left, I don’t know which of us was in a worse state, me or Mrs Millsop. And I still had to re-lock the cabinet. Mrs Millsop stood and watched me grimly and didn’t turn a hair when she too heard the click – I suppose she’d seen enough over the last few months not to be surprised at anything. Still without a single word being exchanged, she hurried me back to my room and if she noted my bulging pockets she didn’t say anything, she really didn’t want to know what I’d been doing.”

  Glory sat back. Miss Peacock, looked at her watch, informed us we needed to get moving shortly and got on briskly with the rest of the story.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Having once achieved what she’d made up her mind to do in relation to the L/24 supply, Glory knew the end was in sight. She’d set herself a target, shot a bulls-eye, survived a near miss and now conceded gratefully, if not graciously, time was up. Operation ‘Glory Out’, immediately swept into action. Miss Peacock phoned the Doctor to say she and her sister would, if it were possible, appreciate just a very few moments of his valuable time and sure enough, the following day brought the two to Oxford, one thin and darkly dressed the other plumply disconcerting in polka-dot pink.

  They were, they said, grateful beyond words, not only for the medical care lavished on Glory, but for the opportunities she’d been given to assist the Doctor in a small way with his amazing work and to learn so much. However, they felt the time had arrived – and here the voice of Miss Peacock the elder faltered with an excess of emotion – when it was safe to hope Glory’s disturbed times were behind her. This was, of course, entirely due to the wonderful work of the good Doctor, his excellent methods and his professional team. They felt, they said, exchanging a fondly moist glance, she should now resume her place at home with them and – most exciting of all – they’d obtained for her, a place at teacher training college, which would enable her not only to improve her Braille, but qualify her to teach others. An excellent career path, did not the Doctor agree?

  The Doctor did not agree. The Doctor wasn’t happy at all. He was seeing psi ability slip through his fingers like sand. He’d known he couldn’t hang on to Glory forever and was lucky the arrangement had lasted so long, but he didn’t want to lose her now. The Misses Peacock, heads cocked fetchingly to one side in feminine deference to the opinions of the great man were however, frustratingly steely in their determination not to be talked out of their plans. After all, she was coming up for twenty years old now and foundations for the future had to be laid, didn’t they dear, enquired one Miss Peacock of the other.

  And no matter what objections the Doctor raised – Glory’s continued depression, reliance on familiar surroundings, valuable work in which she was participating, experience she was gaining – one or other of the sisters was ready with an answer almost before he’d finished. And as his agitation grew, his peculiarly opaque mind became more readable and they saw all too clearly, this was a train that was, perhaps not immediately but definitely in the foreseeable future, coming right off the rails. Of course, if the Doctor had been in any way aware of even a fraction of the combined psi abilities of the two wittery women smiling brightly at him, he’d probably, and who’d have blamed him, blown a gasket there and then. After twenty minutes of polite and intractable discussion, the Misses Peacock gathered their bags and rose to their feet, fluttery yet unyielding. They would, they said, be taking Glory with them right away, giving her just enough time to pack and say her goodbyes.

  *

  Ruth, Rachael and Glory all fully admitted afterwards, they’d got it wrong. Misread the signals. Perhaps they were lulled by the thought that they were so close to closing a chapter. Perhaps there was a false sense of security because the three of them were physically nearer to each other than they’d been for some time – Glory packing her suitcase, the Peacock sisters flicking through magazines in the consulting room reception area. Whatever the reason, they’d gravely underestimated the determination of the Doctor and he had calmed himself down by that stage. So, when he knocked politely on Glory’s door to say his farewells, she really didn’t have any idea as he walked towards her, hand outstretched, what was in it.

  She felt the needle slide cold into her wrist and thought she sent something out to the Peacocks, but was unconscious in almost the same breath. In the waiting room they both felt her for an instant and then nothing. Five minutes later Miss Merry came to find them, her face grim – not that you could have told the difference – could they come quickly, poor Glory had suffered some sort of attack, Doctor and matron were with her now.

  Following Miss Merry’s smooth progress up two flights of stairs, along a corridor and into the clinic area of the building where they’d never been, but knew so well from Glory’s descriptions, the two women didn’t waste time blaming themselves, that could come later. Whether it was a measure of the Doctor’s immense conceit, his increasingly slippery grip on reality or his conviction he was dealing with a couple of old fools that had prompted this somewhat transparent move, things weren’t looking good.

  Glory was deeply unconscious; they probed, but could find nothing. Some kind of a fit the Doctor suggested, her wrist between his thumb and forefinger – m
ore a fit up thought the sisters grimly. They reviewed their options which didn’t take long, there weren’t many. They were quite capable of course, at that point in time and without any undue effort, of knocking out the Doctor, Miss Merry, Mrs Millsop and whoever else happened to be around and taking Glory. However, the decimation of a clinic full of people might require a fair old bit of explaining and keeping a low profile was a tried and tested policy of theirs. It had stood them in good stead in the past and they saw no reason to change things now.

  They were in reluctant agreement, they should bide their time, watch and wait. They read Mrs Millsop’s deep concern – she was aware the doctor hadn’t wanted Glory to leave but couldn’t believe he’d be so addle-pated as to pull a stunt like this. They saw that Miss Merry was still in two minds, if not more, about the situation. They also observed that the Doctor, having made his move was, like others of his slightly dodgy mind-set, so convinced of his own brilliance that he couldn’t believe anybody would suspect anything. He did though, feel it might be advisable to bring forward his plans for the operation on Glory, which he’d temporarily put on the back burner – get it out of the way, sooner rather than later.