The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  ‘Well, my little fiancée, how have you been keeping?’ he asked.

  She could smell the brandy on his breath and feel his eyes on her bosom. She shifted as imperceptibly as she could to her side of the sofa. What had happened to the man?

  ‘Better than a Lady Hostess filet de boeuf en croute which has been sitting too long in the oven,’ she said.

  ‘Ha ha,’ he laughed. ‘I can tell you are feeling better.’

  ‘Some days better than others,’ she said.

  ‘But you are glad to see me,’ he persisted.

  Her poor father! He had been weak but he had not deserved what they had done to him. Of course, it had crossed her mind to wonder how much of what he had written was true and how much he had dreamt up as in a vision? It was all so disordered and nightmarish. Even the name of the castle was Cauchemar. She had heard from Mr Duckett what drugs can do – and hadn’t Coleridge created ‘Kubla Khan’ from the same inspiration? Even so, no matter what anyone might say, her duty was to not trust Middleburg and to go along with much, if not all, of what her father had written. That was why she was going to escape.

  ‘I cannot feel anything very strongly,’ she told him, ‘as you know.’

  It was a good answer.

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘But don’t you ever want to be … a wife?’ he asked.

  ‘A wife? But I am not a wife.’

  ‘But you will be. And some say one should … practise a little.’

  ‘I cannot practise being a wife until I am a wife,’ she said. ‘I cannot think of being a wife until I know what has happened to my daughter.’

  ‘Your daughter, as I have told you, Marie, is no longer with us.’

  ‘I know that. I want her to be with us.’

  ‘I meant, my dear, that your daughter did not survive. She was born dead. I believe the phrase is still-born.’

  ‘That cannot be right. I remember her little face. I called it her oo-face: her little lips were all puckered into that shape.’

  ‘It is a memory induced by your condition at the time. You were ill, Marie, and your memory is serving you up what you wanted there to be, but it was not. Let us hope you may be able to have a child when we are married.’

  She was not going to have this conversation. There was a word for it. What was it? ‘It is otiose to speak of it now,’ she said at last. ‘The wedding must be at some future time, if it happens at all.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so. Well, that is a matter I was coming to. I have made arrangements at the Registry Office here. We can be married next week.’

  ‘Next week?’ Oh God, she thought. Not before I have gone across the fence? I must not be married before then.

  ‘I suggest tomorrow week. That is, Saturday.’

  She was momentarily flooded with relief.

  ‘The ceremony will be held in the house on Saturday and some of our friends will be able to come. We will have a party. Mrs Holdsworth will order a dress for you …’

  There was a limit to what Marie could stand in this charade. ‘No, she won’t,’ she said. ‘I will order a dress.’

  ‘Very well. Mrs Holdsworth will help you order a dress.’

  They left it at that. Marie surreptitiously poured the rest of the Chartreuse into a huge silver tureen of lilies which Mr Holdsworth watered every morning. She did not believe little Lily was dead. She could see the oo-face quite clearly.

  ‘I need to go to bed now,’ she told him.

  ‘A wise move,’ he agreed judiciously. ‘You need to get your rest. It’s going to be a busy week. It’s going to be a busy life.’

  She could see he couldn’t wait to start playing husbands and wives. The amorous touch of those sugar-white hands would be like being stroked, very softly, by a mortician with a taste for Turkish delight. Soon she would be rid of all of them for she was now washed free from sin. Her blood was untainted. Her whole life had been wasted. What she had thought she was she had not been at all. She was like other people now.

  ***

  She woke in a panic in the night.

  What if the stranger didn’t come on Friday? She would be married and her father’s warning would come to nothing. Marriage would in some way give Mr Middleburg power over her and those mortician hands would be tying a cat’s cradle all around her – across her breasts, across her stomach – tying her down. There would be no more pretence of ‘would you like to?’, only ‘you will’. It would be a walking dungeon.

  She felt dispirited next day, and slow. They must have slipped an extra dose of Lethe into her bedside water. Felix was out all day for a meeting downtown. She got out her easel and sat in the garden painting Felix in his meeting with a number of faceless men. Holdsworth came round and looked at the picture over her shoulder – a thing she always hated.

  ‘Why have the other people round the table with Mr Middleburg not got any faces?’ he asked at length.

  At least he had recognised Mr Middleburg.

  ‘They are faceless men,’ she told him. ‘They do what is expected of them, they say what is expected of them. There is no health in them.’

  ‘I hardly think Mr Middleburg would approve of your delineation of his colleagues.’

  ‘That is how he likes them,’ Marie told him.

  Holdsworth would have continued the conversation but there was a loud buzzing from the bell indicating Fax Message Pending and he hurried away inside. The fax machine was a god that required his constant attention in case its sudden outpourings, like the ravings of the sibyl, might at any moment be cut short and lost.

  ‘The faceless men are the ones who do what Mr Middleburg tells them to do without knowing what it is that they are doing,’ Marie said out loud, as though the words had been put into her mouth like dabs of paint on a landscape.

  She took the opportunity provided by the fax machine to dive back into the wax-leaf privet and read her father’s papers again. They gave her the strength she needed. Felix came back late from his meeting, which had turned into dinner in town, and put Mrs Holdsworth – who had cooked a special Lady Hostess venison roast for him – into a dreadful state of tension between ill-humour and subservience. She took the ill-humour out on Marie and Holdsworth and saved the subservience for the master. She served him a Rémy Martin with an eerie, almost ominous, degree of obsequiousness and summoned Marie to attend the master. Felix, after his dinner, seemed keen to practise husbands and wives again, but after some embarrassments, Marie escaped to her room pleading a headache.

  His eyes rested on her as she left the room, his expression dark and pensive.

  ***

  The choosing of the wedding dress meant a great deal to Mrs Holdsworth, strange for such a sour woman but perhaps, Marie concluded, her sourness concealed a longing for something more; perhaps it was Holdsworth who held her back, or possibly Felix himself, who seemed to have a hold over everyone. Marie allowed these thoughts to cross her mind as she stood in her bra and knickers waiting for the various helpings of silk and tulle and froth to be poured over her.

  Mrs Holdsworth did not allow Felix to come and join them, saying it was bad luck, although the thought of Marie in her underwear was making him eager to have an undress rehearsal of some kind. It was not her that he wanted, she knew that; it was the power he poured over her like tulle.

  A small, rugged assistant from Bridal Reverie had arrived with box after box of textile froufrou which she now proceeded to unleash with small, encouraging gushing sounds. Marie tried them all on obligingly, since she knew she was not going to be married at all on Saturday, and Mrs Holdsworth positively twittered with pre-nuptial girliness, tweaking the dresses and running her hands over Marie as though she were going to marry her herself. Perhaps that was what she wanted, thought Marie. In which case she too was going to be out of luck. Finally a dress with sewn-on roses was selected, which made Marie look like a cherry trying to get out of a knickerbocker glory, but it seemed to make everyone happy.

  When it
was all finally over, champagne and a cold collation were served. A hot luncheon was out of the question since Mrs Holdsworth had been otherwise engaged, but the Holdsworths were invited to join Mr Middleburg and his fiancée. Felix was back in high humour and listened to the Holdsworths’ suggestions for a list of guests that she had never heard of.

  ‘We will have to invite Helmut,’ he said. ‘And the Garfisches.’

  ‘The Garfisches?’ Holdsworth murmured. ‘Is that absolutely wise, Mr Middleburg? You know what happened last time they came over.’

  ‘Indeed I do. They quarrelled and she threw him into the rose pond,’ replied Felix, eyeing Marie. ‘Maybe she can teach you a thing or two, my dear.’ It was meant to be seen as a joke, but nothing Felix did or said was totally innocent.

  ‘And what about the Pfizers and the Stumpfs?’

  ‘A lovely man, Mr Stumpf, sir,’ said Holdsworth. ‘So caring to his old mother.’

  ‘A shame he got into that trouble with his talks at the children’s home.’

  ‘I’m sure if he did anything, he meant it kindly,’ said Mrs Holdsworth. The champagne, coupled with the earlier bridal dressing, seemed to have evoked something very much like the milk of human kindness in her bosom, though it would no doubt curdle when she returned to the Holdsworths’ quarters.

  ‘Then I suppose I should invite some of the other directors,’ Felix said, casting a sidelong glance at Marie.

  That did indeed interest her. But why the glance? Marie felt sure it meant something. Who were the directors? And directors of what?

  ‘They’re sure to come if you ask them, sir,’ said Holdsworth. ‘After all, you hold the strings.’

  Had Felix always been like that, Marie wondered? Playing with his marionettes as a child? Playing cat’s-cradle as a baby?

  ‘They’re not a bad lot – loyal enough, though Grindlay’s a chancer. Goes to the Merrymaids Club, I hear.’

  Marie’s ears pricked up. This at least was something she knew about. Of course, there was bound to be one in LA. The information was useful. Mrs Holdsworth made a sour prune-sucking noise at the mention of Merrymaids; it was clear she didn’t hold with such things. Or perhaps she secretly yearned to be one of their number…

  ‘Why men have to go to such places I do not know,’ she said to Marie in a horribly sisterly way.

  ‘Oh come, Mrs H. The female form is a lovely thing. It has inspired artists down the ages,’ said Middleburg.

  ‘And dirty old men down the corridor.’

  That stopped them in their tracks. Mrs Holdsworth had made a joke. It seemed to Marie a good moment to retire. ‘I think I’ll take my rest now,’ she said. ‘The morning has been quite taxing.’

  ‘Of course, it has,’ said Felix. ‘You go up and I’ll look in later.’

  ‘No really,’ protested Marie. ‘I cannot rest if people look in.’

  ‘Not even your fiancé?’ asked Felix, archly. ‘Surely he’s not “people”.’

  Mrs Holdsworth looked at her like a mediaeval villager crowding into a bedchamber to celebrate a marital deflowering.

  ‘Not a fiancé,’ repeated Mrs Holdsworth, simpering. ‘He’s not “people”.’

  ‘Not even a fiancé,’ Marie told them, and left them to it.

  Felix’s left eyebrow raised very slightly which was the nearest he ever got to incredulity, but Mrs Holdsworth was having none of it.

  ‘First night nerves,’ she said. ‘I well remember how I felt when Holdsworth swept me off my feet.’

  ***

  Next morning, the day before her planned departure, Marie started to feel almost guilty as the food, drink and chairs began to roll in and preparations for the party took shape on every side. Too bad she was going to spoil the fun. She felt sorry for all the people wasting their time: the girl wreathing foliage so prettily, so pensively, around the entrance to the marquee; the pastry chef, wherever he was, piping out his choux; the violin section polishing their medleys from The Merry Widow.

  Marie loitered at the fence watching vans and trucks arrive and the electric gates that led on to the road slowly opening and closing like a sea-monster’s mouth, accepting and regurgitating marquees and long trestle tables, damask tablecloths and silverware, bowls for the roses, champagne flutes, great silver buckets for the bottles, chairs in gold with rococo mouldings, napery and drapery, ashtrays and cuspidors, music stands and chairs for the band, a baby grand piano all in white, sound equipment, cherubs with trumpets, cherubs without trumpets, cornucopia of every kind and silver-plated finger bowls, while in and around them all, with a long list in her hand like a chatelaine, floated the strangely affable form of Mrs Holdsworth, transmuted from the bitter woman who nursed a viper in her bosom, into something approaching an attendant of the goddess Hymen.

  True, a certain waspishness emerged when it was discovered the caterer had sent the wrong napkins, but this was just a dash of vinegar to offset the general balm. Whenever she glimpsed Marie, she would smile knowingly and give little laughs and oeillades as if to indicate her knowledge of what was to go on ere long between the sheets. Marie wondered whether she was mad – whether all of them were mad – and were keeping her prisoner not because Felix and his cronies were stealing her money but to stop the world learning of their difficulty.

  Marie drifted about, looking at all the activity which was ostensibly just for her, remembering a man who cared for clocks whom she would have married happily, a boy by the sea whom she would have married deliciously. Did they really think they could replace them with a grey man who had stolen her father’s money? And yet, there was a strange feeling in her stomach as though the life she had known, that she had accepted along with any number of relaxing Quaaludes, or whatever it was they were giving her, was going to be substituted for something altogether more precarious.

  And here was Mrs Holdsworth again, walking beside her, coquettishly, her angular frame ill-suited to the playful role of best friend and confidante.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really liked your painting. I wanted to say that. We have been instructed not to enthuse. Mr Middleburg says it is bad for you to become excited about your talents for they will lead to nothing and only disappoint you.’

  Marie nearly burst out laughing but contained herself. Was it possible, she wondered, that Mr Holdsworth had never made love to Mrs Holdsworth, or penetrated her in the way of men? Did he even have such an organ? It might explain her swings of mood and the excitement she displayed at the prospect of matrimony in the house. How would Mrs Holdsworth fare when she learnt of her protegée’s defection? To have softened from her hardness and have to grow hard again would undo her. Still, Marie thought, Mrs Holdsworth hadn’t been brought up from her earliest years with the sense of shame and self-worthlessness she herself had. Someone would have coaxed her and stroked her and told her that she was a lovely little Martha (for that was Mrs Holdsworth’s name) with not an apothecary’s scruple of bad blood throughout her infant frame. Besides, thought Marie, she has been a willing collaborator in my systematic incarceration, though I am someone who has never done her any harm. Sorry, Mrs Holdsworth, got to go. Over the fence and far way.

  That evening she excused herself after dinner, pleading nerves and exhaustion again, which was in fact not far from the truth. The excitement of escape was upon her. She could hardly imagine that she could actually do it, or what it would be like when she did. Her apology was reluctantly accepted by Felix who would have liked some conversation about money and signatures and the responsibilities that come with marriage.

  ‘Could we not delay that until we actually are married?’ she asked him. ‘There will be time enough. My head aches.’

  ‘Of course, my dear. Time and money. The two most important currencies in the world. And law, of course. Time and money and law. Good night.’

  ‘Time and money and law, Three things garnish our way…’

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘Your three curren
cies reminded me of something.’

  Marie’s dreams that night were full of steps, secret doors, soaring ladders, nameless possibilities fringed with alarm and someone chanting secrets.

  Time and money and law,

  Nothing is stronger than they,

  Until death closes the door.

  ***

  The next day dawned bright and fair as mornings always do in Beverly Hills, which rather robs them of their wonderfulness. Marie woke up in the bed in which she’d spent so many unprofitable nights, wondering what on earth she could take with her as she fled across the fence from safety into danger. She needed both hands free and no encumbrance for, if there were a ladder, she would have to climb it fast. Felix liked her to wear frocks but today she needed something that lent itself to climbing ladders. She chose some navy shorts and a light blue shirt. She came to the conclusion that if she wore two pairs of knickers it would give her a spare. She would have to wrap the envelope with her father’s letters around her stomach or even put it down the back of her knickers, even if it gave her a flat bottom. She would have to do that in the wax-leaf privet tunnel. That was all the luggage she could afford and it pleased her to think that she was leaving the old life behind; that not even a shirt or a scarf would remind her of the comfortable profitless past. It did cross her mind that she had no money, but that was something that could be resolved. Escape was the order of the day.