The Parasite Person

by Celia Fremlin

  Though, of course, if you were looking for headmasters of public schools or Peers of the Realm (A-class males) to complete your quota, you could scour the streets for days and never come across a single one: and this was where “Round the World Cruises” came in so useful. You got hold of a glossy mag, full of gossip about who was just off for a 3-month yachting trip, and down his name would go, among your over-50 As. The supervisor, patiently doing her rounds, would be confronted by the butler, who naturally could not be expected to know whether or not his master/mistress had recently been interviewed in the street about toothpaste or whatever; and by the time the said master/mistress returned from the jaunt, the whole thing would be ancient history, sunk without trace.

  What fun it had been! And how very nearly always it had worked!

  Somehow, it had never really seemed like cheating—more like winning in a game of skill and daring against opponents worthy of your mettle. Or, looked at in another way, it could seem like the improvising of a set of labour-saving devices conducive to higher productivity per man-hour: an outcome for which any sensible employer should surely be grateful?

  And, of course, way back of it all, there was the solid, reassuring fact that 50% of the stuff was genuine. The final results couldn’t be all that wildly out while this remained the case, and provided you calculated your proportions of “Yeses” and “Nos” correctly. Usually, this was simply a matter of doubling-up on your genuine figure in each category, even the biggest moron could hardly get it wrong.

  Also, working in a team helped. It was vitally important that they should all of them get approximately the same proportions—if you turned in results more than 10% or so different from your colleagues, then you really were on the carpet, and so the team took every precaution to ensure that this should not occur.

  And so, by and large, no real harm was done to anyone, certainly not to the advancement of human knowledge. Apart from anything else, the topics being researched were usually of such piddling idiocy—whether “Banana-flavoured ice-cream” was a phrase more appealing to the consumer than “The ice-cream with banana-flavouring”; or whether blue pictures on the packet sold detergent faster than pink ones—so that the concept of advancing (or, indeed, retarding) the march of science was simply laughable.

  *

  And this was where the whole difference lay. This was why Martin was both angry and worried. His concern about Ruth’s cheating in the very same ways that he himself had been accustomed to cheat wasn’t just a matter of the pot calling the kettle black; for this was something quite, quite different. This survey was an important, scientific survey: it was Martin Lockwood’s survey, and the results were of the most crucial importance not only to him, but to the whole future of research in this field. His theory of the Parasite Person (he had almost forgotten by now that the phrase was Ruth’s originally, but of course he would give her due credit for this in the preface)—this theory of his needed to be supported by a mass of evidence substantial enough to hold its own against the Establishment opposition it was bound to encounter. And it was substantial enough, more and more of it was flowing in, day after day, from the answers to the amended questionnaire as administered by Ruth.

  He picked up one of her latest interviews and glanced through it. An M 45 B, formerly a highly successful business man, whose depression had been growing steadily worse over a number of months, and the business was beginning to suffer. By now it would have been on the rocks altogether, he claimed, if it hadn’t been for his wife “turning up trumps” when the depression struck. Formerly a rather dim, ineffectual sort of woman, she had immediately summoned up reserves of energy such as he’d never dreamed she had in her.

  “She’s been marvellous—really marvellous! So cheerful, so patient, so full of courage! I don’t know what I’d have done without her!”

  You’d have got better, Mr M 45 B, that’s what you’d have done. Gleefully, Martin skimmed through the interview—which was a long one, and full of highly significant quotes. Definitely, he would use it, perhaps among the case-histories.

  And then he thought again about his recent doubts. Could Ruth really have made all this up? And would she? Whatever for? She wasn’t getting anything out of the thesis, not even a decent wage. Not a wage at all, in fact; and as he recollected this Martin felt a surge of reassurance. For surely this fact nullified any possible motive for cheating? Why on earth would she be working for him at all, except (as she herself had claimed) from a genuine interest in the project, a genuine wish to discover the truth?

  She couldn’t have cheated, she just couldn’t. Looking through the last batch of interviews, so detailed and so thorough, with verbatim replies so natural and convincing, Martin felt quite ashamed of himself for ever having doubted his capable and zealous assistant.

  All the same, he must have a word with her about those two names in the Deaths Column. She mustn’t be allowed to get away with it, even though she probably wasn’t cheating in any important sense. He could guess exactly what had happened, because it had often enough happened to him in his interviewing days.

  The way it went was this. You would get a marvellous and perfectly genuine interview off someone, by scrupulously honest means, and then, at the very end, when the whole thing was virtually in the bag, they’d turn around and refuse to give their name and address: sudden cold feet, perhaps, or they were illegal immigrants, or something. When this happened, what you were supposed to do was to scrap the whole interview; an absurd procedure, in Martin’s view. Apart from the awful waste of labour involved, the practice could be held to be actually distorting the sample by introducing a bias against the type of people who like to remain anonymous. And so, a name and address on the form being a sine qua non, it was only common sense (or so it had always seemed to Martin) to provide one.

  Yes, this was what must have happened to Ruth. Thrilled as she obviously was about how well the survey was going, and having in her hands two honestly-obtained interviews that so superbly vindicated the hypothesis, she just couldn’t bear to scrap them for the sake of a mere formality like the obtaining of names and addresses. And so (just as he would have done in her place) she’d resorted to the time-honoured device of picking someone of appropriate age and sex out of the Death Column….

  But all so unnecessary! The silly girl! Did she really think he was the sort of boss who would tear strips off her for turning in an anonymous interview now and again? He must tell her that next time this happened, all she had to do was write “name and address withheld” at the top, and he would accept it unconditionally. As soon as she came in—which should be quite soon now, it was gone three—he’d raise the subject with her: quite amicably, of course, even laughing a bit, making it clear that he wasn’t accusing her of cheating.

  Softly, softly catehee monkey!

  *

  The monkey wasn’t quite so easily caught.

  “What Death Column? What do you mean?” she demanded; and when Martin explained—very gently, and smiling all the time to show her how lightly he took the whole matter—she proceeded, with one of those awful twists of feminine logic, to turn the tables on him, and put him on the defensive.

  Who says? Which bloody paper? Well, go on, show me!—and of course he couldn’t show her, because Helen had taken the paper back to school with her so as to return it to the colleague from whom she had purloined it.

  “Helen!” She made the name sound like a new swear-word. “I might have known that it was Miss Bloody Nosey-Parker at the bottom of all this! She’s been out to get me right from the start! Listen, Prof, I will not have this goddam whore of yours interfering with my work! I’ll kill her if she does it again! Get it? Fuck her all you like, I don’t care, but if she ever again gets her bloody claws on to any of my interviews, then I’m off! Finished! Vamoosed!—and you can do the rest of your effing interviews yourself. Right? There’s at least forty of them still to do,” she added spitefully, to frighten him; and it did; and she saw that it did. Sh
e lowered herself on to the couch, the short skirt riding up above her knees as usual, the thin mottled legs sticking out in front of her almost like weapons.

  “Get it?” she repeated, eyes fixed on his face. “That bloody woman’s not typing my interviews any more, is that understood? Not one more word of any of them. Ever again. Okay?”

  Martin agreed at once, because he couldn’t for the moment think of anything else to do. Then he began to consider what he had let himself in for.

  “You mean I’m to type them? Myself?” he asked, horrified; and Ruth, sitting there like a small, newly-crowned empress on her throne, revelling in her sudden power to say “Off with his head” whenever she liked, nodded.

  “Who else? I can’t type. I told you, we had this careers mistress at school, and she was always saying, ‘Whatever you do, girls, don’t ever learn to type, else that’s what you’ll have to do.’”

  That’s what you have to do anyway, Martin could have told her, whether, you’ve learnt or not; but this didn’t seem to be quite the moment.

  “Well … okay,” he conceded reluctantly, and counting on it all blowing over before long, “But it’s a bit rough, you know, at this stage. I’ve always relied on Helen to—”

  “Of course you’ve relied on her! Of course you’ve leaned on her … told me how marvellous she is … the whole can’t-do-without-her bit! Recognise it?—‘Can’t-do-without-her?’ That’s the victim talking about his Parasite Person …!

  “And you know, Prof, it figures. Why do you think you’ve been so depressed ever since you moved in here? Why do you think leaving your wife didn’t make you feel any better? It’s because Beatrice wasn’t your Parasite Person, she was merely beastly to you, and that’s different. As soon as I’d talked to her for a bit I realized that she wasn’t a Parasite Person, but merely a beastly person. Whereas Helen, bloody Saint Helen …”

  Martin was irritated rather than upset by this tirade. Women were like that: once get two of them into your life, on however innocent a basis, and sooner or later the jealous scenes start, and the tantrums. The thing to do was to keep your head down and make no promises.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, carefully not specifying what it was, precisely, that was, or was about to be, okay. “Calm down. No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want.”

  Sensing that Ruth’s anger, meeting no opposition, was already losing impetus, he decided that the moment was ripe to change the subject, and at the same time to re-establish his role as boss.

  “That Timberley interview, Ruth. Did you do the call-back there, as I asked you to?”

  It worked. At once she looked less like the Red Queen and more like a young research assistant—a very young one, indeed.

  “Oh, Prof, I meant to tell you at once, the moment I got in, and I would have if you hadn’t gone for me like that. It’s great, it really is, the Timberley scene! It bears out everything we’ve been trying to prove, it’s the case-history to end case-histories! The way it is, it’s like this: old Mr T has had a heart attack—lugging that old lump around, I suppose—and has been whisked off to hospital. And the old lump?—what did I tell you? She was on her feet within hours of the ambulance fetching him away, and by the next day she was cleaning up the place, going to the shops, chatting with the neighbours. It was like magic, one of them said, to see her like that … see her changed into a normal ordinary woman after all those months.

  “And I got a super interview out of her, Prof. The time you did her, it sounded like she never spoke at all but she speaks now all right—and how! She told me all about how her depression started, how it coincided with Mr T’s retirement, him being home all day kind of thing. She hates him, she says. She only realised she hated him when she saw him driving away in the ambulance, and then it suddenly swept over her how terrified she’d been of him all these years. Such revelations! You’ve never heard anything like it—the archetypal Parasite Person he must have been! Just listen to this …!”

  CHAPTER XXII

  DESPITE MARTIN’S PRUDENT policy of keeping his head down when jealous women were fighting over him, it still seemed to take the best part of a week before the thing began properly to subside.

  In a way, it was more Helen’s fault than Ruth’s, Martin reluctantly decided, for though Ruth had blown her top (as she would have put it), had shouted and stormed and said horrible things about Helen, it wasn’t as if Helen knew anything about it, and so it seemed a little unfair of her to be just as upset as if she had known.

  Martin had gone about the whole business as kindly and tactfully as he knew how. He hadn’t been such a fool as to tell Helen it was Ruth’s idea that she should stop typing the interviews. He presented it, on the contrary, as his own idea, framed entirely with Helen’s welfare in mind.

  “It doesn’t seem fair on you, darling, when you have such an awful lot to do anyway—running the flat, cooking marvellous meals for me, and a full-time job as well. It’s not right.”

  A charming speech: but so much solicitude, so suddenly, naturally took Helen by surprise.

  “But Martin, darling, I love doing your typing for you, you know I do! I’ve told you: I love the feeling of being involved in your work. And, you know, the exams are over now, there’s only another week and a bit to the holidays … things are beginning to let up all round. I’ve got heaps of time now, truly I have.”

  So Martin had to start again.

  “That’s sweet of you darling. I do appreciate it, and don’t think I’m not grateful for all the marvellous amount of work you’ve done for me already. But you see, the thing is, darling …”

  What on earth he was going to go on to say, Martin would never know: he had vaguely hoped that the sentence would finish itself somehow. But it never did. Helen was too quick for it.

  “You mean Ruth doesn’t like me typing her interviews! That’s it, isn’t it? She’s asked you to stop me doing it …”

  The speed of a woman’s mind! More terrifying than any guided missile!

  “Well …” Martin looked this way, looked that way, anywhere except at his beloved, and fumbled for words.

  “Well, okay, Martin. If that’s how you want it,” and though she spoke quietly, he knew that she was bitterly hurt. “The only thing is, though, who is going to type them? They’re coming in fast now, you know, you’ll never have time to do them all yourself.”

  “Oh, Ruth will do them,” Martin intervened eagerly, full of relief that the problem seemed to be changing from an emotional to a merely practical one. “She says she can do them herself, as she goes along. She says it will be easier that way….”

  “But I thought you told me she couldn’t type?”

  Helen seemed genuinely puzzled, and Martin found himself cursing, not for the first time, the concerned and loving attention that Helen paid to every single thing he told her. It left no loopholes anywhere.

  In the end, of course, it all blew over. Helen wasn’t one to bear grudges, and soon she had settled into her new no-typing routine quite happily. Really, there was plenty for her to do, what with running the flat and protecting him from visitors, telephone calls, or anything else tiresome that might disrupt the flow of his creativity.

  *

  It was going marvellously well, really marvellous. “Interesting,” his supervisor had cautiously pronounced, pulling at his moustache uneasily and trying to hide (lest the cat should jump the wrong way) that he was really quite impressed.

  By this time, however, Martin was less bothered by his supervisor’s opinion than he could ever have imagined possible: because by this time all sorts of other things were beginning to happen. He had written, at top speed, and in a state bordering on panic lest someone else should get in ahead of him with the same idea, a short summary of his findings for one of the learned journals, and it had been accepted almost at once, with a nice letter from the Editor thrown in, predicting that his readers would find Martin’s ideas “stimulating and provocative”.

  And
this was not all, Somehow, the Press had got on to it, and two reporters, one of them on a national paper, had rung him up and asked for an interview. In the event, neither of them had actually turned up, despite Martin’s alacrity in accepting: but no doubt the Press were like that, he hadn’t had any dealings with them before; and anyway, it was still very exciting. Even to be stood-up by a top-ranking journalist is quite an experience for one whose whole life has been lived so far in tantalising obscurity.

  The local paper had done him proud.

  “Is THERE A PARASITE PERSON IN YOUR MIDST?” had been the headline, and a not-too-inaccurate summary of his theory had followed, together with a very flattering picture of him sitting at his desk, finger-tips together, and with an enigmatic smile on his lips. It wasn’t often that photographs came out just right like this, both flattering and exactly like you. Martin sat and looked at it for hours.

  At least, he would have done, if the pressures hadn’t been building up the way they were. As he had predicted at the beginning, the concept of a Parasite Person draining away your talents and energies, gorging itself on your remarkable gifts and undoubted genius, touched a chord in all kinds of people. There was something in it for everybody, and there, at the top of the pile, turning out corroborative evidence like a factory turning out tins of cat-food, sat Martin Lockwood.

  Keeping up the pace: that was the problem now. The heady joys of success—the euphoria, the incredulous joy—were all that he had ever dreamed. What he hadn’t quite envisaged was the way you had to keep at it to fulfil the ever-mounting, ever-flattering demands to which, in his jubilation, he kept saying “yes” … and “yes” … and again “yes”. Already he was committed to an article on “Parapsychology and the Parasite Person”; and another, for a business magazine, on “Parasite Persons in Management”. Most urgent of all, there was a piece for Readers’ Roundabout on “The Parasite Person in Myth and Legend”. They were actually going to pay him for it, and in his headlong delight he’d said that he could produce it by the weekend.