The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  This morning she did not drink the steaming cup of English tea that Mrs Holdsworth brought every morning to her bedside, but poured it down the basin instead. It was, or could be, one of the ways they induced the listless euphoria which had characterised her stay in Beverly Hills. There was to be no more of that.

  After breakfast, everyone had something to attend to. The fax machine pattered away as ever while Mr Middleburg was in residence, but now it seemed to have overdrive attached and Holdsworth had to be in constant attendance, with furrowed brow and hovering finger. Felix wandered in and out to deal with whatever the matter in question might be: now shuffling digits, shifting money around – cooking a cash omelette as Mrs Holdsworth put it – and now answering questions from suppliers about parking facilities and vegetarian alternatives to the menu. He was a tower of strength; the driver of this whole machine.

  ‘I am a cousin of your father’s,’ he had confided, ‘not so close as to be consanguinous but near enough to understand the family and what it has gone through. It was one of the great families once. On a par with the Courtneys and the Cavendishes but French, you understand. The Laval-Lohéacs were Marcher lords, originally, with lands on the border of Anjou and Brittany.’

  ‘So how did you come to be a Middleburg?’ she had asked him.

  ‘My mother married Antoine Middelbourg of Alsace. He was an Alsatian.’

  Marie had barely stifled a laugh. She imagined Middleburg being suckled like Romulus and Remus by a wolf. And then she thought of the full moon. Did he prowl the corridors to see if he could look in sometime? There was, in spite of all the smoothness and the gloss of wealth, something feral about the man, something of Pan perhaps or, more likely, old Silenus.

  ‘I made the family my passion and my goal,’ he told her. ‘I could not stand aside and see its fortune wasted and its name traduced.’

  And so, she thought, you decided to take it from my father and from me – but by marrying me, Middleburg, wolf-man of Alsace, you are not paying back your dues, you are making your position perfect.

  Marie made her way among the many people who were coming and going across the lawn, some for the house and kitchen, others straight to the marquee, which stretched across almost the entire length of the garden, almost up the to the wax-leaf privet hedge. The electronic gates were slowly opening and shutting, and she might have escaped there and then if anyone had been waiting to collect her. It gave her a notion about the electric gates as an alternative to the ladder. The interesting thing about the gates as they closed was that – if something like a truck wanted to come in – they paused awhile as if in contemplation before they opened again, giving several minutes’ opportunity for escape before pursuit could be undertaken. Her ladder idea seemed precarious to her now, especially climbed at speed … and then what? A swallow dive into the arms of the ill-nourished, Spanish-looking man? She could see herself lying concussed on the tarmac with the Spanish-looking man unconscious beneath her.

  Her rescuer would not be there until noon so there was no point in making an immediate, unplanned dash. Some would say it was crazy to trust a stranger but he was, after all, her father’s messenger. He would at least arrive. He would not let her down. She went in to the wax-leaf privet tunnel, found her plastic bag and distributed the contents around her person. She knew she looked a little ungainly, maybe lumpen, but in all the throng and press, no one was really going to notice.

  She walked up to the verandah and found a seat where she perched, looking down at the general activity. Felix appeared and stood at her shoulder.

  ‘You looked flushed,’ he said. ‘I hope you have been taking your medication. There is something different about you today.’

  ‘I only feel strange when people ask me how I am feeling,’ she said.

  A tall, lean, hard man was standing just behind Felix. He had long, bony fingers with hair on them, hard as a nutcracker.

  ‘This is Crosbee,’ he said. ‘I have asked him to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Hello, Crosbee,’ she said.

  It wasn’t Crosbee at all. It was Fist, she was sure of it. She said nothing. Where is my daughter, Fist?

  ‘Hi, Marie.’

  It was Fist, with an American accent and a crew cut. She decided to let him think she had not recognised him and to keep calling him Crosbee to his face.

  ‘Why?’ she asked Middleburg in alarm. ‘Why Crosbee?’

  ‘You know how dizzy you can be. I am busy today and Holdsworth is tied up, we all are, so I thought it would be good to have another all-seeing eye.’

  ‘I don’t want an all-seeing eye. He frightens me.’

  Felix did not have a saving measure of absurdity like the Holdsworths.

  ‘Don’t excite yourself, dear. I know you better than you know yourself.’

  Had he noticed the pages of foolscap tucked around her stomach and lodged around her kidneys? He moved away but he kept glancing at her as he hovered about, checking the arrangements. It was quarter to twelve. How was she going to approach the fence and leap to freedom if Fist were watching her all the time and Holdsworth was on her tail? At thirteen minutes to twelve the fax alarm went and Holdsworth had to go in. At eight to twelve he came out. At four minutes to twelve, the fax blinked its red light of warning and in he went again. Marie saw an opportunity to evade Fist and darted into the wax-leaf privet tunnel at the top end. She ran down to the bottom where the garden’s front fence started and peered out to see Fist looking around, perplexed, and moving into the house. At twelve, the man who had known her father in prison arrived with a ladder. She called him. She had a new plan. Wait till the gates were in the first stages of being about to close then climb the ladder, concussion or no concussion.

  ‘I have borrowed some wheels,’ he told her. ‘It’s over there.’

  He seemed to be waving towards an ancient Chevrolet, its colour and number plate almost obscured by dust, parked next to a large, blue van.

  ‘Put the ladder over the fence,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s not heavy.’

  He pushed it up and over. It was very light aluminium and had a rope attached to it.

  ‘We must wait,’ she told him, ‘until the next truck comes in the gates and they close. Then they won’t be able to get out and chase us.’

  ‘You think good,’ he said. ‘Like Papa.’

  ‘Great,’ she said.

  After a few minutes, a truck arrived and passed through. The gates began to close.

  ‘Now! I’m going to climb to the top and jump over.’

  He looked nervous. ‘Throw the rope over first,’ he said. ‘Then I pull it over when you’ve jumped.’

  ‘You have to catch me.’

  ‘I’m no good at catching. They drop me from the prison team.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said. She wobbled at the top of the fence, seven and a half feet up, spread out her arms and flew. ‘Catch,’ she called.

  She landed in a heap on top of him and they both fell onto the road, laughing.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked him.

  ‘Only my dignity. Now I introduce. I am Felipe.’ He offered his hand, which she took.

  ‘Well, come on then, Felipe.’

  There were cries from the garden as Fist spotted what had happened. Felix appeared as if summoned by fax.

  ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘Grab that ladder.’

  There was just time to snatch it back before Crosbee arrived. He leapt at the fence, trying to climb it, but it was a good fence. It had been built just for the purpose of keeping someone in. n.

  Marie was making for the Chevy’s door, but Felipe indicated a pair of bicycles standing against railings on its further side.

  ‘Wheels?’ she asked

  ‘All I could do,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

  They leapt on the bikes and peddled away furiously, Felipe leading them down a pedestrian-only path which he had previously reconnoitred. ‘No car can follow,’ he cried.

  Behind th
em she heard the gates clang shut behind the van that had entered the grounds, restricting all other egress for a few precious moments. Even so, she could see Felix’s Bentley speeding down from the garage, hooting its horn. Too bad it couldn’t get out just yet.

  ‘Won’t they catch us up?’ she panted.

  ‘We are using the paths,’ said Felipe. ‘I was in prison with a getaway driver. He teach me these tricks.’

  ‘Do you know where we’re going?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  The path ended suddenly and they had to cross a road to get to a further path on the other side. As they emerged to cycle across the road, they were almost run over by the same delivery van that had bought them their moments of time. Fist had managed to get the keys for the parked van and, as soon as the gates reopened, had driven after them.

  ‘Look out!’ Felipe called out as Fist crammed on the brakes, stalling the engine, and leapt from the cab. He spread his arms wide and Marie was barely able to swerve and evade the bony fingers.

  Coming up from the bottom of the hill was Felix and the Bentley, driving straight at the bicycles, but Felipe and Marie were away down the other path. There was no way Felix or Fist could follow them in their vehicles. Felix pummelled the Bentley’s horn in an ecstasy of frustration.

  Felipe andMarie,pedallingstrongly, took the scenic route for home down the walkways, grassy places and gated roads Felipe had recced over the previous weeks. Only when they neared home, which turned out to be not far geographically, but seemingly light years away from downtown LA, did they venture onto streets that the visitor never sees. There were a number of people hanging around, most of them Latino like Felipe, with an admixture of black.

  ‘Welcome to Echo Park,’ said Felipe. ‘Not the best address in LA, but it has a good lake.’

  They reached Felipe’s place in five minutes, parked the bikes in a friendly garage run by a Mexican friend of Felipe’s and walked through passageways and alleys for a further five minutes to throw off any further pursuit. There was an ugly moment when Marie thought she saw the big, black Bentley saloon nosing round a corner and they shrank into an alleyway, but there was still no sign of Fist.

  ‘LA is full of big black saloons,’ said Felipe, and so it seemed.

  Marie had escaped. She was appalled and exhilarated at what she had done – had she really managed to outwit the man who had taken her father for all he had and punished him for letting him do it? How great his rage would be now under that smooth, grey surface, how that vein of his would throb at his temple! What would he do next? He wouldn’t let it go; he was that kind of person – always plotting the next move. But this time he would not be one step ahead.

  ***

  There were certain practical problems to think of that Marie had not yet raised with Felipe. Where, for instance, was she going to spend the night? Felipe’s room was not so much a room as a long cupboard. There was just about enough space for a single bed against the wall by the window. There was a sink and a gas ring where Felipe made coffee. There was a shower and toilet room, which was a cupboard within a cupboard.

  Marie looked round with some dismay. She felt exhausted by the efforts of the day and could not face looking for lodgings that evening, but equally she wasn’t going to share a room with Felipe, however much he had done for her. Luckily he had thought of that.

  ‘I ask my landlord if he had another room, and he say yes.’

  ‘But I have no money.’

  ‘We will think of something.’

  ‘I could pawn my ring,’ she said, looking at the ruby with the insignia of Laval which she had come to love, ‘if there were a pawn shop around.’ It would be a wrench but she needed money, at least in the short term before she thought of some other course.

  ‘There is one,’ said Felipe, ‘just down the alley. I show you later. Come, now I show you your room.’

  He took her upstairs to a slightly larger place than his own with its own kitchenette and shower room. A small, dark man appeared, Jaime the Mexican, friend of Felipe, owner of the house. Introductions were made. She looked around. The tap in the kitchen dripped. There were sheets on the bed. The place didn’t smell too bad. There was a window looking out on a yard and a dusty tree.

  ‘You like?’ asked the Mexican.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said. At least it looked clean. She was in no position to be choosy.

  ‘You fix details with Felipe,’ said Jaime. ‘I go now.’ He smiled, and scuttled down the stairs.

  ‘Jaime always busy,’ Felipe told her, ‘he run shop, he run house, he run taxi. He run for Congress soon.’

  ‘He seems very nice. He even made the bed.’

  ‘I make the bed for you,’ Felipe corrected her. ‘One small thing I do for my friend’s daughter.’

  ‘Thank you, Felipe. And for everything.’

  ‘It is no more than he do for me. Indeed, it is much less.’

  ‘What is Jaime going to charge for the room?’

  ‘For a friend, not much, and he can wait for money for a day or two. Now, maybe you move in here now, the shower works, the water is good and later we find a diner and get something to eat. You must be tired. Tomorrow we talk and I show you a little more of your father’s writing; nothing much, but it will add to your understanding.’

  ‘I need to buy clothes,’ she told him, ‘when I have raised some money at the pawnshop. All I have is what I wear. And also, I need to pay you back for all your time and research and expenses.’

  ‘What I have done needs nothing,’ he told her earnestly. ‘I do it for your father who help me when I am down and teach me English and many things and books to read.’

  ‘You are very kind, Felipe, but I must pay you for any outlay, like the bicycles, and food tonight if we go out. I have known what it is like to be not rich.’

  She did not like to call him poor but he was very evidently short of funds.

  ‘That is good of you,’ he said. ‘We can talk about it tomorrow too. I will come and tap at your door in forty minutes.’

  He left her alone in her new home with a packet of tea, milk, sugar, a towel, a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap, even a hairbrush which he had bought the day before in preparation for her arrival. She was touched by his consideration and the generosity of such a poor man and she kissed him on the cheek as he left. Then she shut the door and sat in the saggy excuse for a chair (quite comfortable, actually) and let the day’s events filter through her mind. In the space of a few hours, her life had changed completely. It gave her a wonderful sensation, the old feeling of freedom. Even though she was physically exhausted, she felt transfused as if the old, tired, drugged blood had been taken out and filled with the altogether good stuff. Anything was possible now. She sat like this for half an hour until she looked at her watch and sprang up. Felipe would be here in ten minutes.

  The shower actually worked – it had looked as though it wouldn’t – and the water was approaching hot. She felt much better as she stepped out, towelled herself dry and put on clean pants before stepping back into her shorts. Still, this was an adventure. She had had comfort without hope for too long.

  Felipe tactfully gave her ten minutes longer than he had said and then he knocked, poking his head round the door.

  ‘We go to a diner just round the block,’ he told her. ‘I think we have enough exercise for one day.’

  On the way, he showed her where the pawnshop was, just across the street.

  ‘He’s not bad man, old Pfeffer,’ he told her. ‘He can seem mean at first. You just have to work your magic on him.’

  The diner was a far cry from Mrs Holdsworth’s dining room, but the food was homemade and home-cooked. They ordered beer and meatloaf and fries. It all rather reminded her of the days in King’s Cross and the occasional extravagances she had enjoyed in the poverty of the squat. The meatloaf was excellent and so was the beer.

  ‘How do you live?’ she asked him.

  ‘Very little,’ was his repl
y.

  ‘But how?’

  He scraped a living out of running errands and walking dogs. He had even taken up baby-sitting but it really wasn’t for him. Sometimes Jaime would let him drive a taxi. Sometimes he was employed to drop fliers through letter boxes. Employment was difficult for an ex-convict. He seemed such a nice man, the mystery was, why had he ended up in prison? In the end, as they spoke of this and that, and he descanted on the life of the poor in LA, which you don’t hear much about, Marie asked him.

  ‘I killed a man who was beating a woman in the street. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. But his friends didn’t like it.’

  ‘Did you know the woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that was in Mexico?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long were you in prison?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘And why was my father in prison in Mexico?’

  ‘He escape from California over the border. The Mexicans arrested him. The police here ask for him back, but the Mexicans say one of the victims is Mexican, so they keep him in Mexico. He was a prize, you know, your father, although he never hurt anyone. They were proud to have him though they treat him like shit. Tomorrow I show you more letter.’

  Tomorrow, she thought, that was when reality would kick in. Tomorrow she would find money at the pawnshop and, once she had some decent clothes to wear, she would find work. And then, having solved the pressing problem of survival, she would find an answer to the overriding problem of her life: her father, and the mystery of her upbringing. For the moment, the food and the beer had made her sleepy. Even Felipe was yawning. He paid for the meal out of a clutter of small change in his pocket and they were soon back at the flat. He left her at her door and said good night.