The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  He returned to his reverie. ‘It was all going to be different,’ he mused. ‘It was a new start. The young were going to cut out all the dead wood, all the crap, all the laws that hung around us like spiders’ webs. We were free spirits. It was like the rule of the saints. But, oh yes, there was danger.’

  He took another long pull at his joint and fell silent again.

  ‘What sort of danger?’ Marie asked him at last.

  ‘There was danger from without and within. Like the preacher man said. He was crazy of course, and no advertisement for religion after what he did with a girl we called Two Hats.’

  ‘Two Hats?’ said Ivo. ‘Just the two?’

  ‘She never wore much else. That was all she had. Two Hats. And what the preacher gave her. The danger within was some filly who didn’t know where to stop. It was part of the rules of the time. There was no stopping. Do what you like ’cos if you wanted to do it, it had to be natural. But no stopping got some of them into trouble. In the end, the rules are made by your own golden body. That’s what they couldn’t figure out. There were golden boys who went blind looking at the sun, high as a sputnik on LSD. There were golden addicts with hepatitis and syphilis and funny diseases no one ever heard of. And there were winds that just blew out like candles on stuff even I never got to know about. Oh, man…’

  Here he fell silent once more, waiting for speech and thought to catch up with one another.

  Marie forced herself to ask the question. ‘What about the dangers from outside?’

  ‘Outside?’

  ‘Outside.’

  He half rose to his feet, imagining that she was referring to something in the street.

  ‘You said there were dangers within and without,’ she explained.

  ‘Ah.’ He sank back onto the springless sofa and took another drag.

  ‘Dangers from without. Well … where the innocent gather, you can be sure there’ll be wolves. Oh, some of them were just crazy. I knew of one guy who used to have a thing about women. He used to rape girls and then circumcise them. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? But it happened. Circumcise.’

  ‘Dad,’ protested Chrissie, coming in from the kitchen.

  ‘She asked,’ he replied mildly, ‘I’m telling. One should always beware of people with fixed beliefs. Then, of course, there were anarchists who thought that any outrage – bombing, murdering the innocent, corrupting the youth – was OK so long as it rocked society. Then there were the racketeers. They didn’t want to change society. They just liked to make money. Drugs, mainly. Music … prostitution … organs … There was danger all right. The police could run you in, beat the shit out of you – even top you in your cell. There were funny religions that would take you over, turn you inside out, brainwash you and spit you out again. There were group orgies, group killings … and then of course, there was Castle Perilous. That’s what they called it. The end of the road.’

  Ah, thought Marie, here it is, this is the one.

  ‘I never went up to that part of the Sierras. You didn’t if you knew what was good for you. There were rumours of alchemy, black magic. It turned us on. We heard the stories. It was said to be a beautiful place. But it didn’t do to go up there. Funny thing was, that was a genuine old French Château some millionaire way back had brought over, stone by stone. It was supposed to have been owned by the original Bluebeard. Talk about history repeating itself. People were saying there was another one. Oh man … the tales that went around. People disappearing … boys and girls…’

  Marie listened with growing unease. At any moment he was going to mention what for her was unmentionable.

  ‘How did he get away with it?’ asked Ivo.

  ‘There was just this drifting population. Nobody knew where anyone was.’

  ‘It’s nearly time for dinner,’ said his daughter, finally. ‘At least I know where you are. Let’s open some champagne and talk about something else. You’ve frightened Marie with all that rubbish. She’s gone quite pale. Sure you’re OK, love?’

  ‘I’m all right, thank you,’ said Marie.

  She wanted desperately to tell them the truth but she couldn’t. The daughter of the monster would hardly be welcome at their feast. Ivo smiled at her and gave her a glass of champagne. She took a despairing sip, trying to ignore thoughts of the baby inside her. The choir of King’s College, Cambridge warbled on from Chrissie’s cassette player:

  ‘Herod the King, in his raging,

  Charged he hath this day,

  His men of might in his own right,

  All young children to slay.’

  The goose was carved, the sprouts were served with chestnuts, the roast potatoes had just the optimum quality of golden crackliness, the glasses twinkled in the candlelight, even the crackers provided an unexpected bonus of trinkets you might actually want and bad jokes you hadn’t heard before: Q Who do the mermaids get to look after their pianos? A The tuna fish… The Christmas pudding with its sprig of holly flamed merrily instead of the usual blue spatter and yielded to each one of them a little silver sixpence.

  Everyone talked at once, and Marie joined in as best she could. They thought she was being quiet only because her baby made her feel that way, but afterwards – after the final joke had been cracked and the last garnet bead of Burgundy had been drained – in bed with Ivo, she suddenly gave way to tears.

  ‘What is it, Marie?’ he said to her in the half-darkness. ‘Is it the baby? Why don’t you let me marry you?’

  She clung to him but she could say nothing. Slowly the sobs subsided and at length Ivo drifted into sleep as she lay staring at a patch of stained ceiling that assumed strange enigmatic expressions in the light from the street, wobbled by the curtains in the Christmas wind.

  ***

  Two weeks later, coming back to the house from Time Out of Mind on a rainy Tuesday night, she was surprised to see, as she negotiated the boards blocking the passageway beside the house, that there was no welcome light shining from the Duckett living room. And when she tried to put the key in the door, she found that it had been blocked up. It was odd. They hadn’t said anything to her about going out or changing the lock.

  ‘Chrissie,’ she said softly, then called it out loud, banging at the door. There was no reply.

  She began to get worried. Chrissie’s baby would normally have been in bed by now. What could have happened to them all?

  A sound from the shadows in the yard made her heart and hand fly to her mouth.

  ‘Who’s there?’ She called. ‘Is anybody there?’

  ‘It’s not pissy Chrissie,’ said a man’s voice, unpleasantly.

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was as unwelcome to her as if it had been a mugger.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to return the compliment? Who are you?’

  ‘I live here,’ said Marie, fear making her squeaky. ‘My things are in there.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the voice, ‘but you are wrong. You don’t live there. Nobody lives there. That house is owned by the Council and it is scheduled for demolition. QED, you do not live there. You did live there perhaps, but no longer. In any case, you were trespassing. You are trespassing now. So if you would kindly accompany us, we will escort you down to the station.’

  Two large men in grey trousers and tweed jackets now emerged from the shadows. Marie started to scream.

  ‘There’s no call for that,’ said the spokesman of the two. ‘You can raise the roof off for all I care. You can lift the very clouds from the firmament, but bugger all good it’ll do you. This your case with your belongings? I should hate it to burst open in the mud.’

  Marie stopped screaming and made as if to follow the two men round to the road, but just as the second one was negotiating the boards, she doubled back and crept through the Duckett’s emergency exit – a hole in the wall behind the broken-down shed, which led out on to the little park.

  ‘Oi,’ she could hear b
ehind her. ‘You, come ’ere!’

  She let them go charging away into the darkness while she sneaked back into the yard and made her way towards the front of the house again. Halfway there, she discovered an added bonus. They had left her case on the ground in the eagerness of their pursuit, so she picked it up and ran down to the Archway Road where she took a bus back to the shop. She could feel the baby, excited by the chase, bundling around inside her like a Russian doll.

  All the way to Time Out of Mind, she had been praying that Ivo would be in. She knew he sometimes made late collections or deliveries if clocks were old or delicate. He hadn’t said anything about it tonight but there was always the chance. However, her luck was in. There was a light shining in the flat above the shop and, when she rang, she heard footsteps flying down the stairs.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said with some relief. ‘Come in, come in. There’ve been some funny people around. The telephone’s rung but there’s no one there when I answer it, and once or twice the doorbell’s gone. There have been shadows at the window, whispers … I was beginning to think I was incubating paranoia. What brings you? You are, as you know, welcome. You have brought your case, I see. Excuse me while I master my delight.’

  In spite of his jokey way of talking – he always did that when he was trying to show he was not too ridiculously pleased to see her – she could tell that something had bothered him. He led the way upstairs, carrying her case, pushed up a chair for her and put the kettle on for tea.

  ‘The Ducketts have gone,’ she told him. ‘They didn’t even leave a note. Or maybe they did, and the policemen took it. Will the police know I’m here? I think I resisted arrest.’

  ‘They won’t know if the Ducketts don’t tell them. They’ll have looked in your case, of course, so they’ll know your name. But they won’t know where you are.’

  ‘They didn’t seem to like me very much.’

  ‘The police don’t like anyone very much. They can’t help it. It’s part of their vocation. I’m so glad you’re staying. It’s time you thought about where you’re going to have the child. You should’ve seen a doctor long ago. Long, long ago.’

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ she lied; she couldn’t bear the thought of another doctor poking her about. You read about schoolgirls having babies in the toilet. Why couldn’t she just slip it out somewhere quietly? She didn’t want the world involving itself in her own private affairs or finding out that the baby had Bluebeard as its grandfather. They might not love it as it should be loved, poor thing.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ Ivo asked presently.

  She thought about it again. He was kind; perhaps she could grow to love him. But would she have to tell him who she was? ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps later.’

  She smiled at him to show she was pleased he had asked.

  ***

  The next few days were happy ones for Ivo.

  He spent some time discreetly searching for the new whereabouts of the Ducketts – it was decided that Marie should not return to the house in case the police were still interested in it – but there was no sign either of the Ducketts or the Law. On his third visit, he saw demolition equipment parked in the road. On his fourth, the room where he had slept with Marie was shockingly exposed to the street with a hole through its side. On his fifth, the place was a heap of rubble.

  ‘It’s as if the Ducketts had been uncreated,’ he told Marie. ‘Are you sure we ever slept there? Did we know them? Who are the Ducketts? They are figments.’

  ‘They would have left a message if they could.’

  ‘They were gypsies. They are not like other people. Their home is a punctuation between movements. Remember what he said? A drifting population? He’s still doing it.’

  ‘But they were so … there. Chrissie and the baby. Mrs Duckett with her sunlamp … I feel as if I’ve lost … myself. I must find them again.’

  Ivo began to sing a ballad Nanny had sung long ago in her castle room before lights out, and for a moment Marie was back in the old place.

  ‘Three gypsies came to the castle gate,

  They sang so high, they sang so low.

  The lady sat in her chamber late,

  Her heart it melted away like snow…’

  ‘Do you think the gypsies will come for me, Nanny?’

  ‘Not while I’m around.’

  ‘I’d like my heart to melt away like snow.’

  She was suddenly homesick and wished she could be a child again. Ivo sang her the rest of the ‘Raggle-taggle Gypsy’, but she was not easily consoled. There had been a homely quality about the Duckett establishment and now it was a heap of stones and smoking timbers. It seemed to her now like an image of her whole life – one minute substantial, safe and orderly; the next dust and shards of broken mirrors.

  ***

  The shop was not busy in the after-Christmas weeks. It allowed Ivo to go out and collect some of the clocks that had been waiting for this slacker season. While he was away, Marie busied herself upstairs in the little flat making some order out of the bachelor chaos. It was going to be a squeeze for two. As for three – there seemed nowhere for a cot to go except in the clothes cupboard.

  She was just assessing whether the clothes might not, after all, be kept downstairs at the back, when she heard the doorbell go. Walking to the front of the shop, she saw the muffled figure of a man standing at the counter.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you have the time?’ said the figure.

  It was a cold day. His scarf was tight up against his face almost to his mouth and his hat was pulled down over his eyes, but she would have recognised Brickville’s voice anywhere.

  ‘Do you have the time?’ he said again.

  She had almost managed to put him from her mind, consigning him to the smoke along with the rest of her memories, but his tones woke the old fear in her.

  ‘Go … go away,’ she said to him. ‘Now. Go away.’

  ‘Come, come, Marie. That’s not very nice. I’ve come to take you home.’

  ‘No … no.’ A panic seized her. She retreated back into the shop, pushing the fear away with her hands. ‘No … no!’

  ‘Come, come, Marie,’ he kept repeating and started to advance towards her.

  She stumbled back down the passage. If only Ivo were here. Why couldn’t he come back now, just open the door and walk in?

  ‘Just a little of your time,’ said Brickville, stepping past the counter.

  She backed into the workroom where Ivo kept his instruments – a hallowed place. She upset a tray of cogs and winders, which went spinning along the floor, crunching under her feet as she retreated.

  ‘Go away,’ she mumbled. ‘Private here. Not allowed. Over eighteen.’

  ‘I’m coming for you, Marie. We have lots of legal business to discuss. I’ve come to take you home.’

  Behind her she suddenly felt her hands close on a long round object, Ivo’s glass paperweight for his invoices. There was nowhere for her to retreat to now; her back was pressed against the desk.

  ‘Don’t be silly now, Marie. We’ve got your room ready for you. You’ll be much more comfortable there.’

  ‘Don’t come any nearer,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to have to use force,’ he said. ‘But I shan’t hesitate. You know it makes sense to come with me.’

  He crouched a little as he approached – his arms out, his face still muffled, his hat firmly down over his eyes, his greatcoat buttoned to the top like a scarecrow’s. There was a moment’s doubt in her mind as to whether this nightmarish figure could really be the dry-stick guardian she remembered, but of course it was he; she’d know that dry-as-brick voice anywhere. How had he found her?

  ‘Come along, now. Don’t keep me waiting. I don’t have all the time in the world, you know.’

  He was almost on her now. Once he grabbed her, she knew she’d be lost. He made one more step towards her.

  ‘Come, Marie. There’s…’

&
nbsp; She held the paperweight firmly and hit him very hard on the head as he learnt forward. He went down with a look of the greatest surprise on his face, the words still coming out of him like blood.

  ‘…no time … to be … lost…’ He slumped sideways, his eyes still staring up at her, his hat knocked askew, still on his head.

  She wanted to scream but she could not. She had the dreadful feeling that, though he was dead, he would get up and follow her.

  ‘Do you have the time…?’

  Running back into the passageway, she grabbed her coat and fled out into the street. There was no one around. In the distance, she saw a bus coming, ran up the road to the bus stop and climbed on board. As the bus pulled away, she looked back towards the shop. No one came out. She found herself shivering violently.

  ***

  When Ivo returned, he found his shop open but no sign of Marie. Hurrying inside, he took a quick look over the tall pine cupboard, which acted as a screen to the back of the shop, saw nothing, dashed upstairs, ran down again, closed the shop and sat for some time by the counter with his head in his hands. Something told him that she had gone for good.

  The thought of Marie’s absence, life without her, overwhelmed him. There was something terribly final about the way she had left the shop open. She had been frightened, of course. She had always seemed to be dreading that something would catch up with her. What was he to do? Call the police? She had always been so reluctant to have dealings with the Law. Perhaps he should wait a little to see what happened.