The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  ‘She’s awake.’

  ‘What? She can’t be.’ The sister hurried over, saw the open eyes.

  ‘Well, it’s almost a miracle.’

  ‘…guilty,’ said Nanny with a little groan, squeezing her hand very tight and sinking back with her eyes open.

  ‘That’s it, I’m afraid,’ said the sister, going through the rituals and finally closing the eyes. ‘So glad you could make it. They like to go on their way with a loved one near.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Marie. ‘How do you know, how could you possibly know how they feel?’

  The Sister was astonished and displeased. ‘It stands to reason, doesn’t it? And now, if you don’t mind, we have some tidying up to do.’

  ‘You’ll die one day,’ sobbed Marie, tears streaming down, and well out of control, ‘and then we’ll see who likes it.’

  ‘Now there’s no need to talk like that. You’d better be on your way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marie, ‘and no loved one near either.’

  ***

  What had Nanny been trying to say? Did she feel guilty about keeping the father’s crime secret from his daughter although she had done so for the best of reasons? Or was Marie not to feel guilty because her father had been a monster? It all amounted to the same thing, she thought, as she switched off the light of her cheap hotel bedroom – cheap because she had changed her French francs and now had only £120 in the world. There was now nothing for it but to lose herself somewhere, to go away where she was not known, anything rather than return to the castle and the chilly jurisdictions of Mr Brickville. She fell asleep and dreamt of being chased by Mr Brickville across every possible terrain and circumstance as he turned from wolf to snake to pterodactyl and back again into Brickville.

  In the morning, looking out at Edinburgh’s cheerless brown battlements, the urge to shed her associations with everything that she had known and everyone who knew her was stronger than ever. The notion of killing herself had subsided as a result of the previous evening. She felt that what Nanny was trying to say had made it impossible. She must live with her degradation.

  The problem now was money. Even the lowest of the low needed up-keep. Had she no training for anything at all? In the lobby of the hotel, she asked the aged receptionist if there were any papers. She was handed the London Evening Standard of the day before.

  ‘Someone left this,’ the crone said. ‘Ye can have it for free if it’s any guid tae ye.’

  She took it out with her to read over a coffee and, thumbing through the small ads, as she wondered what it cost to rent a flat in London, she came across a notice ringed by the previous owner in red ink: ‘Personable girls wanted to train as croupiers and hostesses for London’s most exclusive new casino.’ She jotted down the number and rang it from a callbox.

  ‘Merrymaid Agencies. Can I help you?’

  ‘I should like to train as a hostess, please.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. Vi, someone here to train as a hostess. Oh. Right. Hello, caller. What is your name?’

  ‘Er. Marie er…Sinclair.’

  No point in giving anything away.

  ‘Right, Marie. Can you come on over?’

  ‘I’m in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Edinburgh? Goodness me.’ There was a silence.

  Marie sensed a hand over the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said.

  The voice re-emerged. It was a London voice. ‘D’you want to come in, then? Or what?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Marie.

  ‘Right, then, dear. Here’s the address. Ask for Madeleine.’

  Marie took the train and turned up next day in her best Prix Unique dress at Beauregard House, an undistinguished pudding-faced building near Victoria.

  ***

  ‘Is this where the casino is?’ she asked the purple-haired receptionist.

  ‘Good gracious, no. That’s in Mayfair. This is personnel, publicity and administration. Take a seat. Madeleine won’t be a minute.’

  Madeleine was half an hour, during which Marie had ample time to take stock of the drab street outside, the unprepossessing reception room with its uncomfortable purple-padded (purple, she learned, was the Merrymaid house colour) circular seats and curved white cubicles and the receptionist who surreptitiously ate her bogies when she felt you weren’t looking,

  Finally Madeleine arrived. She was a breathless redhead, majestically built, in a white blouse and green tartan skirt. ‘Sorry to keep you,’ she exhaled. ‘Emily, isn’t it?’

  ‘Marie.’

  ‘Ah yes. All at sixes and sevens today. We’ve got the Americans in.’

  ‘The Americans?’

  ‘Parent company.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Would you like to come to the interview room?’

  ‘Right.’

  She followed the girl down a corridor to a small white room containing two white, purple-padded seats. The far wall was taken up by a single pane of mirrored glass.

  As far as Marie could tell, the interview went satisfactorily. She gave her age and the address of the bedsit she had found that morning near the shabby hotel in King’s Cross where she’d spent the night. Madeleine started asking questions about her health, her height, her measurements and her weight.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘Now I always ask candidates if they mind taking their clothes off. It is part of our standard routine just to make sure everything’s in order. We have bizarre cases. There was the one-legged lass, and of course there have been one or two sad instances of handicap. We can’t afford to take chances. Our Merrymaid motto is, once you’re in, you’re on. We look after you very well, I think you’ll find. So, Marie, I ask you now: would you mind stripping off for us as the final stage of your interview? An interview that I may say has been, so far, most satisfactory.’

  Marie shrugged. If the woman wanted to check that she had two legs and two breasts that was all right with her. Who was she, Marie, to object to that? A blood test might have been something else. That was where her deformity was. Compared with the badness in her blood and in her bones, she couldn’t help thinking that a breastless mono-ped would have passed the Merrymaid test with a rating of summa cum laude.

  As Marie stepped out of her bra and pants, Madeleine looked at her expertly. ‘Just walk up to the mirror, dear, and turn around. Oh, yes, very nice. Smile at the mirror. Head up. Let’s see those breasts. Our Merrymaids are renowned for their generous charms. Thank you, dear. You may get dressed. That’s more than satisfactory.’

  ‘You mean I’ve passed?’ asked Marie, covering her generous charms with Prix Unique synthetic lace.

  ‘Just a formality now,’ said Madeleine. ‘Mr Ledbrow.’

  There was a pause and a tall, heavy man with a serious expression entered the room followed by an even taller, heavier, more serious American – at least Marie judged him to be American from her acquaintance with Messrs Prelati, Durstine and Snell. When he spoke she was proved right.

  ‘Say “hello Mr Merriman” to Mr Merriman. You’re in luck. It’s Mr Merriman himself.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Merriman,’ said Marie.

  ‘Ve-ery nice,’ he observed. ‘I congratulate you, Marie. You have made Merrymaid. There are girls who’d give their eye-teeth for what you got. And men who’d give a lot of something else. Know what I mean, Madeleine?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Merriman,’ said Madeleine, archly, looking as if she might add a ‘fie’ at any moment.

  ‘Give Marie ten days training, and send her down to Pilgrim’s Piece for the weekend after next. All right, Marie?’

  ‘You’re a privileged person, you know that?’ Madeleine whispered to her as she helped her into her coat.

  ‘She can start on eight grand plus dress allowance and service. This one I like. I’m going to take a personal interest in you, Marie. You’ve got class.’

  It was true, Marie thought, she had got class – only Mr Merriman didn’t know what sort of class it was.

  ***

  The normal
course for a Merrymaid hostess was three weeks, but as Marie had many of the qualifications already – table manners, dress sense, social poise, aptitude, conversation, information, cleanliness ‘above and below’, these being the course mandatories – it was cut to ten days in her case.

  ‘I have a rule,’ said Madeleine, who turned out to be the course supervisor, ‘never to ask my girls why they want to be a Merrymaid. I ask them everything else: boyfriends, sex life, religion, aversions, but the fact that they want to be a Merrymaid is enough. The course itself weeds out any unsuitables. But in this instance I am curious. Why have you, a girl with many options, settled on this particular career?’

  Marie thought for a bit. They had just been through a particularly gruelling session of first-base croupiering. ‘I just want to,’ she said finally. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Of course it is. I stand reproved. Now, would you like to tell me about your sex life?’

  Marie told her what she seemed to want to know, and Madeleine told her about Pilgrim’s Piece.

  ‘It’s very old, you know,’ she said, ‘Jacobean at least. Set in the rolling Sussex countryside. I never know why countryside has to roll but there it is. I’d rather have my countryside standing still. I was caught in an earthquake once near LA. Talk about rolling countryside, it was jumping all over the place. You’ll go to California if you play your cards right. Anyway, back to Pilgrim’s Piece. Forty acres, parkland, tennis courts. You play tennis? Good. We can cut that lesson too. Heated swimming pool, sauna, jacuzzi, you name it. Own projection theatre, squash court. You play squash? Never mind. We’ve had three cardiacs on the squash court, so you’re well out of it. What else? Fishing, Clay pigeon shooting, horseback riding … you like horseback riding? Good…’

  ‘But what exactly do they do there?’ asked Marie.

  ‘I ride in the park with Mr Merriman sometimes,’ said Madeleine. ‘The new casino is going to make the others look like cheap paste and cardboard. I am in love with Mr Merriman.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marie. ‘Ah.’

  ‘I know it’s hopeless but what can I do?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose,’ said Marie.

  ‘You suppose right, Marie. I can do nothing. But I can dream. Would you like me to tell you about my sex life?’

  ‘Er, well,’ said Marie.

  ‘You’re right. It would overstep the delicate boundary between pupil and tutor. All I will tell you is that, in my fantasies, I am in his arms every night.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Marie. She was finding it a useful syllable.

  ‘Where were we?’ asked Madeleine, her red cheeks extra flushed.

  ‘I was asking what exactly they do at Pilgrim’s Piece. Who goes there apart from Mr Merriman?’

  ‘Well,’ said Madeleine, calming herself, ‘there are business associates, VIPs…’

  ‘VIPs?’

  ‘It’s sort of public relations, you know. We ask people we think may be helpful to the organisation. Peers, politicians, industrialists, top journalists, merchant bankers, academics…’

  ‘And do they come?’

  ‘Some of them.’

  ‘And where do the hostesses come in?’

  ‘We are there to see the guests have everything they want.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘What you do in the way of personal hospitality to the guests is entirely up to you. But, in the relaxed country atmosphere, Merrymaids have been known to lose their heads. Romance is in the air.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You’ll love it. Everybody does. The cuisine is A1, and some of the people you meet, well, you’d never have thought it. We had a bishop last year. Had the party in stitches!’

  ‘It does sound merry,’ said Marie. It didn’t sound the sort of place Mr Brickville would come to at any rate.

  ‘Merry is the word,’ said Madeleine. ‘You’ll see. Come, come. Time to learn our cocktails.’

  Madeleine drove Marie down to Pilgrim’s Piece in her new Mini Cooper. She was very proud of it.

  ‘A company car,’ she said. It had a Merrymaid sticker in the back. ‘Come make Merry,’ it said. Somebody had written ‘Who’s Merry?’ on it.

  She took her mini through the ranks of Mercs, Jags and Porsches, and parked it discreetly around the back near the kitchens. A van was unloading crates of champagne.

  ‘Merrymaids use the back door unless accompanying guests,’ she told Marie.

  Inside she led her into a sort of servants’ hall next door to the housekeeper’s office. There were six other girls sitting there smoking and reading magazines. They looked up when Madeleine and Marie entered.

  ‘This is Marie,’ said Madeleine. ‘And this is Wendy, Louise, Tracy, Stephanie, Julie and Margot.’

  ‘Hi, Marie,’ said Margot, a small girl with brown hair, sharp features, a Merrymaid bosom and quick blue eyes. ‘You the new kid? Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’

  ‘Now, Margot. What sort of talk is that?’ said Madeleine. ‘Margot’s a great one for jest. We encourage a quick wit … up to a point, don’t we, Margot?’

  ‘Oh, we do, we do,’ said Margot.

  All the girls were in their Merrymaid outfits already: a country wench effect in cream and purple with short skirt and exceedingly low-cut, though high-propped, bosom. The bosom was the hallmark of Merrymaids just as the leg or the buttock was the forte of some of the rival organisations. Merrymaid bosoms trembled on the edge of total revelation like golf balls on the tee in a very high wind.

  ‘Better go and change now,’ said Madeleine. ‘Margot will show you your cubicle.’

  Margot took Marie up some back stairs to a long, low room at the back of the building overlooking the rubbish bins. It was divided by thin wooden partitions into a dozen little sleeping booths. Each booth had a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair, a hanging-cupboard and a bible.

  ‘It’s no great shakes, I’m afraid,’ said Margot, looking out at the bins. ‘In fact, the great sheikhs have the best rooms. Doubtless you’ll see them all in good time.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Marie.

  ‘You’re a funny kid. You don’t seem to show anything.’

  ‘Show?’

  ‘No emotion. You just let it happen.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Don’t you mind? This place? All these silly old farts pretending to be important people, and just dirty old men when it comes down to it?’

  ‘No,’ said Marie. She didn’t mind. It was no more than she deserved.

  ‘Well, you’re lucky. I mind. I was a dancer but I broke my ankle. It didn’t heal properly – like I can’t dance any more. So I dance attendance instead. Oh yes, Mr Ledbrow. Oh certainly, Mr Akropolis. Sit on your face, Sheikh Addad? The pleasure is mine.’

  ‘Girls.’ They could hear Madeleine calling nearby.

  ‘Hurry up and get into the tart’s costume, Marie,’ said Margot imitating Madeleine. ‘Best tit forward.’

  Marie unpacked the two regulation Merrymaid uniforms she’d had fitted in London, and changed under the watchful eye of the other girl.

  ‘You’ll be very popular, dear. That’s right, you won’t need a bra. The words Merrymaid and brassière should never be used in the same sentence.’ Margot was imitating again.

  It was true, the Merrymaids costume made any other support unnecessary. Marie could feel herself wobbling precariously near the very limit of exposure.

  ‘Mind how you lean forward,’ Margot advised. ‘It isn’t done to lose a breast overboard. Suggestion is everything but it walks only a millimetre ahead of indignity.’

  Marie had heard the phrase employed more than once back at the pudding-faced building in Victoria. She had learned to walk leaning slightly backwards, a couple of millimetres ahead of falling over.

  ‘Ready? We’ve got to go now. We’re to have a pep talk from Old Merriman himself.’

  ***

  The girls piled into a study decorated in a free interpretation of the Victorian manner. The walls were lined wit
h books, most of them leather-bound volumes that had not been opened for many years. In between the book were pictures, hunting prints on one side, Rowlandson scenes of huge-bottomed girls sitting upon old scholars’ knees on the other. There was a log fire crackling in the grate with an intricate ornamental clock upon the chimneypiece surmounted by a gilt Cupid. There was a great globe, yellow with age, standing in a corner with little purple flags on it representing the spread of the Merrymaid empire. There was a purple leather pouffe and there was a table with a great book on it, bound in purple leather, open, with what looked like photographs of Merrymaids inside it. There were two huge leather armchairs with purple cushions. On one of them, asleep, was a large wolfhound with a purple leather collar. There was a great mahogany desk covered with tooled purple leather which held a purple leather blotter and silver milk churns, which served as purple pen-holders.

  Behind the desk sat Mr Merriman. Mr Merriman was wearing a purple dinner jacket and a face the colour of thunder. He didn’t waste any time on pleasantries or how d’you do’s.

  ‘Which one of you is Margot?’ he barked.

  Margot raised an arm carefully so as not to dislodge anything.