The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they mean much to you, eh? I expect you don’t remember those years when rags were used instead of disposable wipes.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  All this talk of wipes and products was stirring something in her mind. Something rather important. What was it? Ah yes. She’d missed her period. Her period was two days late. She’d never missed her period, not once since the first time. She suddenly sat bolt upright. The import of the realisation scattering the mists of aniseed.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘No. You never.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right man. I can keep you in hygienic surfaces for life.’

  The offer was so ridiculous that Marie couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

  ‘There you go,’ said Harvey. ‘Overwhelmed, that’s what you are. It was a generous offer. But there’s no need to take on.’

  ‘I’m not laughing, I’m crying. I mean, I’m…’

  It made her laugh all the more until she found herself crying uncontrollably. She was dimly aware of being half-carried to a taxi – she knew it was a taxi because of the bobbly noise the engine made – and then she passed out.

  ***

  She woke with a headache in somebody else’s bed, in a room with drawn shutters and the smell of drains.

  It was the worst awakening she had ever known; and as full awareness flooded back, she pushed (as the French say) a little cry of distress. Things couldn’t be this bad. They simply couldn’t. David must have made some mistake. She couldn’t be the daughter of a monster – she with her gentle tendencies and her art – it simply wasn’t possible. She would have to talk to Nanny. Nanny would say it wasn’t true. David would come back as soon as he knew that there had been a mistake. Someone else with her father’s name, that must have been the thing, simple as that. But the more she reassured herself, the more the black toad in her stomach gave her the lie. It is true, said the toad. You must suffer. Those poor children died in agony and shame because of something in you. You are guilty too.

  It made it all the more imperative, if she were indeed pregnant, that she should not bear the toad. What she was thinking was unthinkable to herself as a Roman Catholic – but as a human, surely, she had a duty not to extend the bloodline? Meanwhile, the only good thing about pregnancy was that, whatever had passed in this bed, it would not end up with her having the appalling Harvey’s baby.

  What had passed in the bed though? She explored herself gingerly, finding that though her dress had been taken off, her bra and pants had been left apparently undisturbed. She didn’t like the thought of the salesman peering at her underwear but it was better than a cold ravish any day.

  She groaned again. Far from home, lost, quite possibly pregnant, short of money, no friends and – worst of all – condemned to remaining friendless. All those whispers about bad blood now came back to her; the Aunts in the garden, the Abbess, the nuns at school, the strange behaviour of Harriet’s mother who wouldn’t let her go to New York, Mrs McGarrigle, the Prelatis … everyone had known except her. They had viewed her, all of them, as some kind of freak. It explained so much of her loneliness and puzzlement over her life. How dare she feel so condescending towards Harvey? She was lucky to have Harvey. If Harvey had ravished her until her fillings fell out, she could have no cause to feel anything other than gratitude for some human attention.

  She groaned once more – a groan not so much of self-pity as of self-disgust. She got up and looked at herself in the mirror, stepped out of her pants, undid her bra, and examined herself minutely to locate the mark of the beast. The smell of drains was like incense to her. She was steeped in vileness.

  At that moment, Harvey came in. If Harvey had dreams of delight – and it is not in a salesman’s brief to have dreams of any kind – but if he had, it would have been to come into his bedroom and find a pretty girl looking at her naked body in the wardrobe mirror.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Do you want to fuck?’

  Harvey, as it happened, ridiculously, was rather a good lover, which was just as well because, apart from her night under the stars with David, her experience was strictly limited.

  He drew her to him and ran his nails down her back, down between her buttocks and up again which made her suddenly shiver with … no, not with pleasure, with – there was a word for it – lust. Lust was for the damned.

  He stroke her breasts and ran his tongue like a little red Hoover up and down over her nipples. She could feel the dampness begin to gather in her loins. So this was what the girls at school snickered about! It was worth more than a giggle.

  He knelt down in front of her, in front of the mirror and began to lick her as though she was the most delectable fountain of fruit, of … what was that ridiculous fruit called? A kumquat! As though I were a kumquat, she thought. Monstrous, of course. A Monstrous Kumquat. Oh yes Harvey, happy salesman. I am not going to forgive you for this. You will be condemned to … Oh yes.

  She stood there looking down at him as he licked – she would draw him like this – she ran her hands over herself, over Harvey’s mouth and over her own. She came with a great groan – it was groaning day – and Harvey looked up at her, smiling wetly like a pleased dog – and pushed her slowly back onto the bed.

  ***

  The next few days passed in a bizarre fugue of drinking sessions and loving. They hardly went outside the apartment which was just as well because Harvey’s little place up in the hills faced on to a corrugated workshop for tractors and industrial vehicles.

  It was true, if you craned over to the right, that you could catch a glimpse of the distant sea, and over to the left a distant vision of a church atop a walled village, but mostly it was tractors. However, had it been a vision of the Celestial City itself, it would not have made the blindest bit of difference to her. In fact, quite the reverse; the Celestial City would have tormented her with its promise of benefits and peace. Hell’s fire would have brought her out, because there she belonged.

  Meanwhile, Harvey’s bed and the bottle were the nearest fires she could find, and she stoked them with a will. If she was condemned, she had to accept the role and not shiver in the wings. It gave her a sense of wonder to see the effect she had on the man. They would put the negro out of business, she thought. She could practically make Harvey ejaculate just by looking at him.

  On the fifth day, Harvey – who had been reduced by pleasure to a white-faced, red-eyed relic of his former bouncy self – a mere Hologram Man held together by his moustache – apologetically announced that he would have to be getting back home.

  ‘What?’ Momentarily shocked, she sat bolt upright in bed, her breasts still making him gasp with delight.

  ‘I’ve got a job, you know,’ he said.

  Of course he had. The world was out there, forcing decisions again.

  ‘O disposable man,’ she said sadly.

  ‘It’s all very well for you but I’ve a wife and nappies to support.’

  She was not surprised. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marie. Honest. I didn’t want to spoil things.’

  It didn’t make the slightest bit of difference as far as she was concerned. He could have wives and mistresses all over Pinner or wherever it was he lived. She deserved no better, but it would have been nice to have been told.

  ‘Don’t worry, Harvey. Can’t be helped.’

  ‘You’re a good sort, Marie.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m a bad sort.’

  ‘You’re good in bed.’

  ‘That’s bad in my book.’

  ‘It’s been the best week of my life.’

  Poor man, she thought. There have to be better things for him than drunken fornicating. The Abbess would say it is the devil’s work, substituting the great uncleanness for the good, but she didn’t argue with him; there were other practical problems which he never voiced.

  ‘What will yo
u do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t worry about me.’

  She had never spoken about her background. It was the last thing she wanted to discuss. When Harvey had touched on the subject, she had deflected him with other touches. Similarly she had not questioned him about his own life though she suspected that there might be little of interest or improvement to be garnered from it. The pub, the wife, the sales target.

  ‘Is there nothing I can do?’ asked Harvey, putting on his trousers regretfully.

  She looked at her bag and counted her money: 800 francs and £50. Whatever she did now, she was not going back to Le Bavolet.

  ‘You could lend me enough for a ticket to Edinburgh,’ she said.

  The only tie she felt in the world was Nanny. She had to see her.

  ‘I’ll give it to you.’

  ‘Lend,’ she said. ‘Not give.’ She felt she wasn’t worth a gift.

  ‘Have it your own way. I’ll call the airport now.’

  ***

  She bought a few more clothes and some make-up in a Prix Unique at Cagnes-sur-Mer – she didn’t want to go through Cannes itself again for fear of meeting Mr Brickville or some other member of the party – and she said goodbye to Harvey whose plane for London left first.

  There were tears in his eyes as he kissed her. She had the guilty feeling that life would never be the same for him again.

  ‘I shall never forget you,’ he said.

  ‘You must never forget I owe you £150,’ she replied.

  She had taken his business address so the money, when it arrived, wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his wife.

  ‘I’ve forgotten that already; it’s you I can’t get rid of. “And I shall love thee still, my girl, till all the seas run dry.”’

  What a change had come in the brash Harvey since first they’d met! Instead of the ejaculating negro, he was spouting Burns. What would the Abbess make of that?

  ‘Forget me, Harvey. It was a good fuck, that’s all.’

  ‘Shhh.’ He was almost prim. But the shock of the words had the desired effect. You couldn’t harbour romance for a girl who said fuck so loudly in public. Home and the kitchen surfaces and Multifab were calling, to say nothing of the fractured syllables of the flight announcer.

  He kissed her more restrainedly and was gone. Suddenly she felt terribly alone. She had little experience of travel, and the airport seemed large, noisy and frightening. She was hungry and thirsty but she didn’t like to approach the forbidding-looking bars. Everyone seemed to know exactly who they were, what they were doing, where they were going. Only she, the outcast, was a drifter. And nowhere does the drifter feel more vulnerable than in a French airport.

  She finally found a table and ate half a croissant that someone had left on a saucer, under the resentful eye of an Algerian cleaner. When her flight was finally called, she was feeling as low as it is humanly possible to feel without sinking through the earth like an out-of-control graphite reactor core. An inertia, a passivity, had settled over her again. It was not to be dispelled for many months.

  She had done what she could, she had been what she might, but the forces of fate had been too strong for her. She was not what she had supposed herself to be. With one stroke, David’s letter had accomplished what secret police interrogators and wise psychiatrists endeavour to undertake in days, weeks and years. It had taken her apart. The suppositions about herself, the limestone-like drippings and accretions which go to make up the stalagmites of personality, had been broken off at a stroke. She was nothing again, a fragment on the end of a drip of time; the child of a monster, blood not on her hands, but in her very veins. How many people had suffered as a result of that bad blood of hers!

  And at 30,000 feet over the Massif Central, eating compressed pâté aux pistaches and drinking a large glass of Côtes du Rousillon, though the outcast felt better in herself, she only found her mind wandering more freely. She could not cry. The situation was too serious for that. Perhaps it would be better if she killed herself.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice next to her. ‘It may never happen. Scared of flying?’

  She looked around at a fit-looking, donnish man in his early fifties. He had greying salt-and-pepper hair and amused, very pale, blue eyes that gazed steadily at her from behind gold-rimmed lenses, taking her in at his leisure.

  She shook her head. She would be quite happy if the 727 nose-dived into the extinct volcanic cap of the Puy de Dôme far below, but she didn’t like to say so.

  ‘Trouble, then?’ asked the man. ‘Want to talk about it?’ she shook her head again. He had a cultured American accent, pleasing after the boisterous Prelatis.

  ‘Perhaps you would allow me to buy you some champagne? I have found it the only reliable antidote to trouble.’

  In her passive state, she found this direct offer easier to accept. And it was true, the Piper-Heidsieck did lend a certain swirliness to her black cloud. She had feared the American might want to talk but he merely smiled, raised his glass and read his paper.

  Just as they were nearing Edinburgh and the seat-belt sign had come on, he spoke to her again. ‘In case you ever need help,’ he said. ‘Do call.’

  She looked at the card he handed her. It said: Felix Middleburg, The Other Judas Inc., and gave addresses and telephone numbers both in London and New York. She put it in her bag and gave him a polite smile. The unaccustomed action of the facial muscles made her realise it was the first time she had smiled for some time.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I shall look forward to hearing from you. Au revoir.’

  ***

  The hospital was deathly warm, and the sister was full of concern about Nanny whom she called Miss Henderson.

  ‘Such a shame. Miss Henderson is heavily sedated. If only you’d come a couple of days sooner.’

  ‘Will she … wake up again?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Doctors say Miss Henderson only has a few hours.’

  Poor Nanny, Marie thought. She must have felt lonely in this place.

  ‘Did she have any other visitors?’

  ‘There was an older man last week. Quite distinguished he was. Friend of the family. Very kind. He brought Miss Henderson such lovely Californian grapes. Pity she couldn’t eat them but Mrs McIlwraith in the next room enjoyed them so much.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘You must be very quiet when you go in.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘mousy quiet.’ That was what Nanny used to say.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Sister. ‘You bought some flowers? What beauties! But she mustn’t have flowers in her room. It’s gone to the lungs, you see. But Mrs McIlwraith will be over the moon.’

  Marie wanted to tell her that her father had killed thirty young boys after sexually abusing them. There was something about the Sister’s comfortable white starch that invited such a shocking disclosure; but she’d probably take even that in her stride. Everything would have its pigeon-hole in Sister’s scheme of things, each waiting for its inevitable docket.

  Nanny was lying, looking as white as Sister’s apron, on a narrow bed with various tubes stuck in her. Her eyes were closed. Even her face was shut up as if Nanny, tidy as ever, had put away all the pens and papers of thought and expression, folded neatly against Judgement Day.

  ‘Nanny.’

  There was no response, not a flicker of an eye or a stirring of a wrinkle. Marie advanced and took her by the hand.

  ‘Careful,’ adjured the Sister, leaving the room. ‘I’ll be just outside if you need me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Marie stood holding Nanny’s hand while the tears rolled down her face. She was weeping, not for herself but for the quiet, good, lovely little life that was being extinguished in front of her, and for the bright cheerless public manner of its ending, with strange people pushing tubes up her nose and no one to visit her but a gentleman with grapes she couldn’t eat, the purpose of whose visit she would be too polite even to e
nquire about.

  ‘Sorry, Nanny,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The fact that she had been with Harvey, in bed, surrounded by the smell of drains, while she could have been here giving comfort to the poor old thing did nothing to improve her feeling of guilt. Everywhere she turned these days, guilt and more guilt and still more guilt surrounded her, grimacing and louring and leering at her like the gargoyles of Notre Dame.

  Suddenly she was aware of a tiny movement deep down in the wizened body; almost, as it seemed, a flicker inside the brain.

  ‘Nanny. It’s me … Marie.’

  The eyes opened. Sea-pool eyes, little red-rimmed wells of sadness and wisdom and pain that had looked on death and would do so again, presently.

  ‘Ma…’ She had so little breath in her wasted lungs that she couldn’t manage the full name.

  ‘Shh, Nanny. It’s me. I love you, Nanny.’

  A single tear, all that the desiccated frame could furnish, squeezed out and hung just below the corner of the eye. The lips formed, the throat strained to speak. The effort was too great and Nanny sank back. Marie felt a tiny answering pressure of her hand. She was thanking her for coming.

  ‘I know, Nanny. I’m sorry I didn’t come before. I was in France with Mr Brickville. I didn’t realise you were … like this … I’ve been so selfish.’

  ‘Not…’ The old woman finally got the word out.

  ‘Not? Not what, Nanny?’

  The sister came in. ‘Time’s up I’m afraid. Miss Henderson is so tired.’