After that came the endless corridors … walking, walking, as if in a nightmare … and now, somehow, here he was in this taxi, with the street lights flicking past like all the years of his life, and somehow, beside him in the vehicle, Ruth too was seated.
She was saying something. What it was he neither heard nor cared. For all he knew, she might be saying she was sorry.
“Shut up!” he hissed. “I don’t want to hear a word from you ever again. I just want to get home to Helen.”
Helen. Somehow, Helen would find a way of diminishing the agony. She would have heard of someone else that this sort of thing had happened to, making him feel that he was not utterly alone in his disgrace. No, she would say, of course he hadn’t ruined his whole life! No life is ruined by one single disaster—in fact a disaster can sometimes be a springboard into something new and wonderful, in some totally unexpected way.
Everyone makes mistakes, she would say, even frightful mistakes, but a brave man can go forward and live them down. And Martin was a brave man, she would assure him; and hearing the words spoken in her loving voice, he would be able to believe them.
A laughing-stock among his colleagues for the rest of his life?—Listen, darling, do you remember that famous actress we heard on the radio, who was asked what was the most important thing she’d learned in all her long career? And do you remember her answer: “Everybody forgets everything!”
His scientific reputation in ruins? Not necessarily, she would say, her grey eyes earnest and thoughtful. Sometimes it can be the false hypotheses just as much as the true ones which help science on its way. Look at Semelweiss, propounding the theory that it was the devils rising from the corpses which were causing puerperal fever in the maternity ward adjoining the mortuary. The hypothesis had been absolutely wrong, of course, quite ridiculous really, and yet it had paved the way to the bacterial theory of infections, and all the fantastic medical advances which have followed …
Yes, these were the sort of things Helen would say. In a few minutes she would be saying them, making them real for him in her sweet voice, with her arms around him, her love and loyalty unshaken.
*
“Helen? But she won’t be there.” Ruth sounded slightly surprised. “I’ve killed her, you see.”
She waited a moment, and when Martin did not answer, she went on, slightly aggrieved:
“I told you I would. I told you I’d kill her if she interfered again—and she did interfere. She’d found my Timberley interview you see, and she stood there saying it was all lies, and wouldn’t give it back to me. I wanted my other interviews too, the ones in my own handwriting that might be recognised, but she just stood there, blocking my way, and tried to stop me getting at your desk.
“I warned her. I warned her twice. ‘Let me get at that desk!’ I said. I told her I’d got a knife: and I had. I told her that if she didn’t get out of my way I’d kill her: and I did.
“That was fair, wasn’t it? She’d been warned.”
In the wavering light of the taxi she turned towards Martin as if for assent to this proposition: and when he neither moved nor spoke, she went on:
“All right, be like that! But don’t start imagining you’ll get anywhere by setting the police on me, because you won’t. Like I told you, I’m only a kid, and when they hear how I’ve been seduced and then heartlessly abandoned by a man more than twice my age…. And don’t waste breath pointing out that you didn’t seduce me, because who’s going to believe it? I shall stick to it that you did, and what with me being an inexperienced young girl and you being a hardened lecher who within a few weeks has betrayed three women in quick succession, starting with your wife…. Well, what do you expect everyone to think? Can you wonder that my innocent little heart is broken? That I’m beside myself with uncontrollable jealousy?
“A crime passionnel, that’s what it’ll be, Prof: and what with me being so touchingly young, hardly more than a child, I’ll bet you anything I don’t get a prison sentence at all: just the Welfare and all that jazz; and believe me, I know how to make rings round them all right.
“Honestly, Prof, teenage is a wonderful age to be! Maybe you remember? You are at the very peak of your powers, mental and physical, and yet nothing you do is your fault! It’s the archetypal eat-your-cake-and-have-it bonanza of all time, and am I making the most of it while I can! Suicide—fraud—blackmail—and now murder! I shall get away with the lot of it—just you watch!”
In the dark interior of the taxi she fairly bounced about on the seat with glee, and the swiftly-passing lights flickered across her pointed face like goblin fire.
*
Presently, they were outside the flat. The taxi had come to a halt, and money—presumably Martin’s, though he had no recollection of having taken out his wallet—had been passed through the window to the driver. Already the vehicle was on its way again, apparently with the murderess still inside, for now he found himself standing alone on the dark wet pavement outside the house. His keys, by some automatic process of which he could recollect nothing, were already in his hand.
The front door closed behind him, and step by step, in heavy darkness, and with awful slowness, his feet mounted the stairs towards the flat.
Helen is dead. The words came slowly, one-two-three, in time with his footfalls, and they meant nothing.
Up he went, up and up, in the darkness and the silence, and the words went with him, round and round the bends of the staircase, and still they meant nothing.
“Pretty Tweetie! Pretty Tweetie! Pretty Tweetie!”
The shrill little voice made him miss a step, and he clung to the banisters, shaking. That damn bird, he thought, Helen will really have to …
But Helen was dead. She would do nothing about the bird, ever again. Whatever the tiresome problems were, they would be Martin’s problems.
He was on the landing now, fumbling with his keys like an old man. It took him ages to get the door open.
*
What did you have to do when someone was dead? Helen would know, or would soon find out. She was good at finding things out for him. She would find out who to phone, what to say to them.
But it was Helen who was dead. She would find out nothing for him, ever again.
He couldn’t take it in, the shock was too great. I need a stiff drink, darling, I’ve just had a most terrible shock: and sitting there in the darkness, he waited for her to bring it to him.
She would never bring him a drink again. She would never bring him anything.
Helen is dead, he told himself yet again, but it still seemed to be beyond his understanding. She would have to explain it to him, in simple words, so that he could grasp it. She would have to comfort him.
Stretched out on the couch, face downwards, he lay in the dark waiting for her arms to come round him.
*
It had been past midnight when Martin had arrived at the hospital, and they’d told him straight away that she just might survive, though the danger was still great. The stab wound had been perilously near the heart, and she had lost a fearful amount of blood, which was why she might not survive the operation, which was in itself (they assured him) a relatively straightforward one.
“Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?” the tired young Registrar suggested. “We’ll send for you immediately if—if there’s any news.”
Martin had heard the hesitation. “If we see she is dying,” he had been going to say, but had corrected himself just in time.
“Everything’s being done that can be done,” the young doctor continued, “Really, Mr Lockwood, it would be best if you were to go home now, it really would. We could arrange a car …”
But Martin just sat there. This small, bare waiting-room, where he had first been told the news, seemed, now, like the only home he had ever known. He could not bring himself to go elsewhere. Two or three people, in the course of the long night, came in to urge him to go and get some sleep, but still he sat on.
Hel
en might be dead. It was a long time, now, since anyone had come to tell him anything, and this time, the words did have meaning. The merciful anaesthesia of shock was wearing off, and he knew, now, exactly what it was that might be coming to him.
Grief. Bereavement. Love. He’d heard these words many a time, and had used them, too, of course. Had used them easily, confidently and in appropriate contexts, all his life long, as a blind man uses verbs of seeing. Now, for the first time, he knew what these words actually stood for.
“You may come now, Mr Lockwood,” said Sister, solid and foursquare in the doorway. “This way, please,” and she led the way along corridors, past closed doors, in and out of lifts.
She was taking him to Helen: and there were only two reasons why she would be doing such a thing in the deep dark before dawn. One, that the operation had been successful, and that Helen was recovering consciousness, perhaps asking for him; two, that she was dying, and he was to be allowed to say goodbye.
The cubicle at the far end of the ward was closely curtained: Sister stood, one hand on the edge of the curtain, waiting for him to catch up with her.
Which was it to be? Joy and comfort unspeakable, or grief beyond all comprehending?
But one thing was certain: whichever it was, he would be experiencing it to its ultimate, overwhelming limit: for somehow, during these last hours, he had changed into a person who could feel things: just as other people had been all along.
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Celia Fremlin, 1982
Biographical Sketch © Chris Simmons, 2014
Preface © Rebecca Tope, 2014
The right of Celia Fremlin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31287–0
The Parasite Person Page 19