The Parasite Person

by Celia Fremlin

  Myths. There must be hundreds of myths illustrating his theme … thousands of them. Why spend hours—days—weeks—poring over those weighty historical tomes that filled shelf after shelf after shelf of the Humanities Wing of the library? One myth is as good as another. Anyone can make up a myth. Slipping a new sheet into the typewriter, he found his fingers almost doing it for him:

  “There is a story”—(well, there is now)—“of two bullocks who broke loose from the abattoir and went careering round the town, to the terror of the populace. No one dared try and catch them, everyone rushed inside and bolted and barred their doors.

  “Within half an hour, both bullocks were back at the abattoir, lowing to be allowed in …”

  Where will I say this story comes from? Hell, why should I say anything? A story like that wouldn’t be copyright, even if it was genuine. If they lean on me about it, I’ll say Venezuela. Who wants to go to Venezuela? It’s delectable places, like Yugoslavia, that you have to be careful about, where proving you wrong can be combined with a delightful holiday, sea-bathing and scuba-diving and the rest.

  Of course, for the thesis itself he’d have to provide references, footnotes about sources, and so forth. Readers’ Roundabout might not be too bothered, but the learned journals would, and if the name of Martin Lockwood was to be honoured in both fields, in the Groves of Academe as well as in the bestseller lists, then he must watch his references.

  References … references … Were they really such a stumbling-block? Even on the learned journals, do the editor and his staff really check on every last one of your references? Especially if these references happen to come from a fairly out-of date number of a small and now-defunct journal …?

  Next afternoon—and it was an afternoon well-spent—Martin was once again to be found in the Humanities Section of the library making a list of the journals which had folded up within the last ten years or so.

  There seemed to be dozens of them! Delightedly, he copied out the titles; and then turned his attention to authors. What sort of names did the authors of obscure psychological articles tend to have? Looking through the still-extant journals he found—again to his delight—that an incredible number of the names in this field were not only foreign, but virtually unpronounceable and unspellable as well—Odajnyk, Wicsniowiecki, and such. Who would have the nerve to bandy names like that with him at his Viva, or across an editorial desk …?

  He almost crowed aloud in his quiet alcove among the library shelves. Anyone could invent names like that, and he defied anyone—anyone at all, no matter how expert—to prove that such a character didn’t exist, and that it hadn’t, some time in the sixties, written such-and-such an article for such-and-such a now defunct journal?

  He’d guessed it would be easy, but even he hadn’t guessed it would be this easy. That evening, the quotes flowed from his fingers as if in a dream, and it was fun, real rip-roaring fun, matching the right unpronounceable name to the right type of quote. So engrossed was he in this fascinating task that when the phone went, and Helen answered it (as of course she almost always did, these days), he was barely aware of it. But after a while, something in her voice caught his attention, and he found himself listening.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she was saying: and then, “Oh, about six or seven weeks ago, I should think…. Yes, he came to interview them. Yes…. yes….”

  And then came a pause, quite a long one. Then:

  “Oh dear! Oh, I am sorry! Yes…. Yes, I suppose so, it is a mercy in a way, she’d have been so absolutely lost without him….”

  Then, after another long pause, and in a slightly different tone:

  “Oh! Oh … well…. Just a moment….”

  Here Helen turned from the phone.

  “Sorry to interrupt you, darling,” she said, “but it’s about the Timberleys…. Some rather sad news. Mr Timberley had a heart attack, and—”

  Martin was impatient. He’d already heard all about it.

  “Yes, yes,” he interrupted. “Ruth told me. She says that Mrs T …”

  “Only survived him by a few hours,” finished Helen. “Of course, in a way, it was a mercy, because—”

  She’d got it all wrong, muddled it somehow, or else this woman she was talking to had; but what the hell? He was itching to get back to his work.

  “And so …?” he enquired, in that tone which shuts people up with minimum delay.

  “And so,” Helen repeated, in the dry tone she sometimes used when she thought he was being a bit heartless, “And so Mrs Hobbs—the neighbour—she wants to know what to do about the budgerigar? There doesn’t seem to be any family, you see, and she’s ringing us because your card, Martin, was the only clue she had to anybody who might have known them. But the thing is—the immediate thing—this budgerigar. She can’t take it herself, she says, because she has two cats, and so just wonders—if you don’t mind, that is—if we’d take it for the time being? I could fetch it after school tomorrow, it would be no trouble. It would be nice, don’t you think, to feel that there’s something we can do for the poor souls …?”

  Martin couldn’t see that it would be nice at all. And he didn’t believe Helen when she said that the bird would be no trouble. Pets were always a trouble, and it was just silly to pretend otherwise.

  “His name is Tweetie,” Helen pleaded, just as if this made any difference to the problem; but when he looked up to protest, and met her eager, anxious gaze, he changed his mind. After all that fuss about Ruth and the typing, only so recently resolved, he didn’t want another fuss, this time about a budgerigar, for God’s sake.

  “I’ll clean the cage myself—and feed him—and everything,” Helen was pleading; and on this understanding, Martin permitted himself a grudging nod of acquiescence.

  And the next time the telephone went, it was as if God himself was ringing up to reward Martin’s generosity and forebearance.

  It was Television. They wanted to do a programme about the Parasite Person, with him, Martin Lockwood, for the centre-piece.

  It had happened! This was the moment towards which his whole life had been leading. He had arrived!

  CHAPTER XXIII

  RUTH, WHEN SHE arrived on Monday morning, wasn’t quite as thrilled by the news as he’d expected her to be. In fact, she sulked a bit, just at first.

  “I want to be on it,” she said, “It’s not fair! It was my idea. I’m the one who’s done practically all the work!”

  She sounded so like a small child done out of a treat that Martin could not help smiling.

  “But of course, Ruth! You’ve been a most wonderful help to me, and of course I’m going to give you credit for it, all the credit in the world! You’re going to be in my preface, practically in letters of gold! You’ll be the star! But this television thing—you must see, Ruth, dear, this is a bit different. I have no control over it, you see; who they put in the programme and who they don’t. It’s a terrific thing for me that they’ve asked me at all: I can’t—not at this stage—start asking favours, now can I? Not this first time,” he hastened to add, seeing her expression. “But another time … later on … when I’m in a position to pull strings, perhaps….”

  The vagueness of these promises was all too evident. He laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “Now, come on, Ruth! Snap out of it! The more of a success I am this time, the sooner I’ll be a man of influence, able to swing things for you! So come on, let’s get going. I want to get this stuff in some sort of order. I have to be ready, you see, for anything they may be going to ask me…. I want to know exactly where we’re at….”

  Whether it was his adoption of one of her own favourite slang expressions, or whether it was the general tenor of his conciliatory little speech, Martin could not tell, but anyway, she brightened up, and quite quickly became her usual enthusiastic self.

  “Dreams…. You must try and get them to ask you about dreams, Prof, because we’ve got some jolly good ones…. Remember that one about the rats …? Tha
t woman who kept on about how supportive and wonderful her husband was being, and then, every night, she had this dream about rats being in the bed with her, gnawing at her flesh? Here—here we are—F 55 C….” All the while she’d been speaking, Ruth’s deft fingers had been sorting through the piles of interviews—quite a few of them still awaiting typing. As he’d predicted, without Helen the typing was getting sadly in arrears. Still, they were fairly legible, and Ruth quickly found what she was looking for: some more dreams of this nature. Not quite so super as the rat one, perhaps, but of similar import. She gathered them into a small pile, separate from the rest.

  “Good idea,” said Martin, watching her approvingly. “We’ll sort them into categories according to highlights, regardless of age and sex … and mark with a star, Ruth, the really good quotes. Here—have a look at this one! The accountant chappie—remember?—who was hell-bent on convincing you that his mother actually enjoyed being depressed! Listen—how about this for a quote?—

  “‘It’s my opinion that people in general want to be miserable. They seek for unhappiness as for a crock of gold which, once found, will absolve them from all further effort. Unhappiness is Life’s big, cushiony armchair—once sit down in it, and no one will ever be able to get you to exert yourself again. It’s the place below which you can’t fall, it’s the possession you never need fear losing …’

  “See if you can find some others, Ruth, on these lines. This is something I’ll need to go into in a big way—the Parasite Person trying to convince himself that he’s doing his victim a favour … trying to assuage his guilt feelings while continuing his meal….”

  Between them, they found several to illustrate this theme: and then they moved on to examples—and there were many—of the victims themselves feeling abject gratitude towards their persecutors: the “I don’t-know-what-I’d-do-without-him” Brigade, as Ruth labelled them.

  It was fascinating. The two of them worked together like professional tennis players, in perfect rapport, backing each other up, anticipating each other’s every move.

  Once again, Martin had that feeling of something almost supernatural being at work. Everything he tried to make fit, did fit … it wasn’t just those sub-atomic physicists and their particles after all; it was the Martin Lockwood Project too, the whole universe was going along with it, he was swimming with the tide of things. How else could the facts—quotes—everything—be falling into place like this, exactly as he wanted them? It was as if they came running at his command, gathering round like well-trained dogs at the sound of the master’s whistle. His mind seemed to have grown an extra dimension, it felt choked with light.

  Some of the material, he knew, was still very hypothetical, and yet he did not feel that by presenting it as established fact he was giving way to temptation: rather that by following his instincts in preference to cold reason he had come out on the royal road to truth, with every step he took bringing him nearer and nearer to the goal.

  When at last they paused for a bread-and-cheese lunch, Martin poured them each a stiff drink.

  “We deserve it!” he said, and they raised glasses.

  “To your bestseller, with my name on it in gold letters!” cried Ruth, and added:

  “What d’you bet, Prof, that within a year Action Man will have been ousted from all the toy-shops, and been replaced by Parasite Person?

  “And the Gift Departments will be piled high with Parasite Mugs, and Parasite Place-Mats …!”

  They laughed exultantly, they clinked glasses: and now, joining exuberantly in the celebration, there came a shrill voice from the kitchen:

  “Pretty Tweetie!” it yelled, “Pretty Tweetie, Pretty Tweetie!”

  Tweetie was loving his new life, full of clear sounds, bright daylight, and life surging all around him. He’d never known anything like it:

  “Pretty Tweetie! Pretty Tweetie! Pretty Tweetie!”

  “What’s that?” said Ruth sharply, setting her glass down almost with a bang, so that it slopped over a bit on to the polished table. For some reason, it didn’t occur to Martin to tell a lie.

  “Oh, that’s the Timberley budgie,” he said carelessly. “Helen brought it over.”

  “Helen brought it? Why did she do that?” and now Martin did begin to sense that he had put a foot wrong.

  “Well, because …”

  He stopped, not so much from nervousness—though by now he was indeed nervous—as because he truly couldn’t remember. Some terribly boring reason it had been, concerning a neighbour and somebody’s two cats: not at all the sort of thing he was in the habit of listening to, let alone remembering. By now, the only thing he could recall about the wretched bird was that he’d been agin-it, and that Helen had coaxed him into acquiescing.

  “Well …” he began again, still wondering how he was going to go on: but luckily Ruth didn’t press her question. Quietly, she walked out into the kitchen, and stood staring at the creature for long minutes, her eyes so wide, so dark, that Martin wondered momentarily if she suffered from bird-phobia. There was such a thing, he knew, but somehow Ruth didn’t seem the sort of person who’d suffer from it.

  And nor she was. Hardly had the possibility crossed his mind than she gave a short laugh.

  “How very peculiar of her!” she commented. “Whatever did she want it for?”

  Martin missed the veiled threat in the question.

  “Oh, well, there was no one to look after it, you see,” he explained easily. “With the Timberleys both being dead, she thought …”

  “Dead?”

  Even before Ruth’s interjection, Martin had realised his mistake; but it was too late.

  “So that’s what she told you, was it?” Ruth exploded. “That they were both dead? She’s been spying on me, hasn’t she, that whore of yours? She’s been checking-up on my interviews! And you’ve been putting her up to it, you must have done!”

  “I have not!” Martin’s outrage was genuine: never would he have employed Helen in such a role. “I wouldn’t dream of it! When have I ever checked on any of your interviews? As a matter of fact, I thought your Timberley interview was superb—I told you so at the time. It never crossed my mind to question it, you know that very well. As to Helen—she got the wrong end of the stick, that’s all … listening to idle gossip … a garbled story from some garrulous neighbour …. she’s not trained for this kind of work the way you and I are….”

  Noting that Ruth seemed slightly mollified by the implied compliment, Martin set himself to follow up this small success by further blandishments. He assured her, over and over again, that his confidence in her integrity was absolute; and he attempted, too, to convince her that Helen’s visit to the Timberleys had been entirely innocent, a simple errand of mercy born of a misconception.

  “She didn’t even know you’d done any interviewing there,” he affirmed, hoping against hope that this was true—since the interview in question had been lying about on his desk for days, there could be no certainty about it—“so do please stop worrying about it, my dear.”

  Whether Ruth had indeed stopped worrying about it was hard to tell, but at least she stopped talking about it: a big improvement from Martin’s point of view, and one which enabled them to get back to work, and to spend the rest of the afternoon in a reasonably profitable manner.

  After Ruth had gone, Martin still worked on, through the evening and far into the night. The glory of inspiration was still upon him, and when all possible preparations for the TV interview were completed, he threw himself into finishing Chapter I of his bestseller. This, together with the now completed synopsis, was to go this week to the lucky, lucky publisher he’d selected from the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. It was a somewhat different synopsis from the one he’d submitted to his supervisor, but what the hell? He no longer cared a damn what his supervisor thought or didn’t think, for Fame was already within his grasp, thesis or no thesis. He was on his way.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  AFTER THE UNFORT
UNATE contretemps about the Timberleys, Martin had been afraid that Ruth would turn up in a bad mood the next morning, and that he would have to devote valuable time to bringing her round. So he was greatly relieved when she walked in looking quite her old self.

  “I’ve come to blackmail you,” she said. “I want £55,000.”

  Martin stared. She was joking, of course.

  “Otherwise,” she continued, settling herself comfortably in her usual corner of the settee, “otherwise, I’ll tell them. The whole bloody bunch of them. Your supervisor—your publisher—all those editors—I’ll tell them that the whole thing’s a fraud. That you’ve cooked your evidence … that your interviews are all fakes….”

  Too dazed to take in the full implications of what she was saying, Martin pounced on the one thing which could be clearly challenged.

  “Fakes? What do you mean, they’re all fakes? Hell, you did them yourself, nearly all of them …!”

  “Yes. That’s how I know,” she explained, pleased with her own logic. “I made them all up, you see, every single last one of them. That’s why I can say with such absolute authority that they are fakes….”

  “But … Hell …!” Martin reeled, struggling for words. “In that case, it’s yourself you’re condemning …!”

  “Not so, Prof, and you know it! It’s your job to see that your assistants don’t cheat, not theirs! You should have checked up on me. You should have done call-backs. You know quite well you should; then none of this could have happened.”

  The self-righteous note in her voice as she administered this reproof was insufferable. Martin stood speechless, dumb with shock, unable to collect his wits. She was joking. She must be joking.

  “All those faked sources, too,” she continued, in the same quite pleasant tone. “You think I didn’t know? You think a poor dumb drop-out like me wouldn’t be able to figure it out? Believe me, Prof, I’ve done enough grubbing in libraries to know that you couldn’t have tracked down that much in a single afternoon—and from a dozen different disciplines, too! It would take half a year. Even a dumb second-year drop-out knows the score to that extent.