by Miles Gibson
Most of my victims have been women. I did not plan it this way. Women are natural victims. When a man is threatened with violence he will shrink back and prepare to defend himself. When a woman is threatened with violence she will stumble forward to embrace it. A man will snarl and lash out with his feet and fists. A woman will cover her face in her hands. Blood seeps sluggishly from men. Blood pours joyfully from women. I cannot fathom the reasons for this difference in the animal. But, it is true, women are natural victims. As I began to collect material for the history of conjuring I saw clearly how all the great magicians had always used women as victims in their most violent and dangerous feats. They had thrown knives and pointed pistols at them, set fire to them, drowned them and buried them alive, locked them up and knocked them down; while the women themselves stood smiling, smiling in their stockings and sequins patiently waiting for the applause. And although, I must admit, I was unable to bring my own female assistants back from the dead at the end of each performance, I liked to think of myself as part of a long and honourable tradition.
The history was already taking shape in my head. I worked a little each day, sifting through the material and making notes in a large red exercise book until the pages were crammed with paradox and phantasm. It was going to be a long history. Frank would be proud of me. I grew to love the smell of the old theatre programmes I had collected, the dusty, crumbling texture of the ancient conjurer’s encyclopedia, the spiral shavings as I cut my pencils with a penknife, the soft scratching sound of the pencils on paper and the loose, grey shape of each word as it squirmed free between my fingers. Sometimes I became so consumed by the simple physical pleasure of the work that I sat writing until dawn or fell asleep with my head in a book.
Nurse Jane phoned me at polite intervals and sometimes we would meet and go walking together along the Serpentine in Hyde Park. We sucked peanuts and held hands. Sprawled beside me in the grass she would ask questions about the history, clucking in sympathy or chuckling with admiration, depending upon my recent progress. Encouraged by her enthusiasm, I took my exercise book walking with me one afternoon and read passages aloud. When I asked her opinion, Nurse Jane laughed and kissed my mouth.
On the 2nd July – in memory of the Dusseldorf Vampire who met his executioners on that day – I went out and killed again. It wasn’t easy and I took some foolish risks. But I had woken that morning from the most provocative dream of the mighty Marlene and spent the day in a restless and intoxicated mood. I could not write and nothing could have prevented me from exercising my skill with the knives that night. I felt as mad as a Moonie.
I waited until about nine o’clock when dusk had fallen, before I set out with my bag of tricks. But while I was sneaking down the stairs I heard someone move in the shadows behind me and a hand touched my shoulder. I nearly screamed.
“Good evening,” said a familiar voice.
I turned to find Johnson Johnson standing on the stairs in his dressing gown. He was simpering and wringing his hands together.
“I wonder if you could help me,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s my mother,” he said, wiping his hands on his hair, “She’s running a fever and she needs some ice cream to cool her down. It’s nothing serious. But she says the ice cream helps damp down the pain.”
“Well, I don’t know …”
“Ah, I’m sorry – I thought you were going out somewhere,” he said archly. He was staring, without expression, at my bag of murder weapons.
“Yes, I was going for a drive,” I said as I tightened my grip on the bag.
“It wouldn’t take a moment to stop at a supermarket. She doesn’t like strawberry but any other flavour … no, she doesn’t like nuts … but any other flavour, except toffee. Strawberry, toffee and nuts.”
“But I might be gone for some time,” I protested.
Johnson Johnson smiled and wagged his hands. “That’s no problem. Whenever it suits you to come home. It’s a great kindness.”
“But the ice cream will melt.”
“Oh, no, the supermarket will wrap it in paper for you if you explain.”
“I don’t know if I have my wallet on me,” I whined in desperation.
But nothing could save me. Johnson Johnson stuffed money into my hand and smiled his hideous smile. I could have murdered him.
It isn’t difficult to find a late night ice cream – there are half a dozen different places within walking distance of the house – but it seemed impossible, that evening, to buy anything that wasn’t laced with strawberry sauce or sprinkled with nuts. I tried everywhere, ransacking freezers and interrogating checkout girls, but I might have been searching for candied larks’ tongues.
Finally I had to drive as far as the Edgware Road where I managed to buy a bucket of chocolate chip surprise in a little supermarket owned by a Turk with one eye. It took me some time to find it, scratching and prising my way down through the fish and the cats’ meat until I had reached the bottom of the freezer. And there, half frozen into the machine, was a single bucket of chocolate chip surprise waiting for me to take it home. It had been waiting there for a very long time because the Turk had to use a knife to hack it out of the ice. I was so happy when he finally broke the bucket free and gave it to me I could have kissed him. But I let him cheat on the price instead.
I found an old newspaper on the back seat of the car and wrapped the precious ice cream into a bundle. It was safe. I didn’t need to hurry home – the cargo would not thaw for hours – so I began to drive north towards Regents Park.
I am not a disagreeable man. If we were introduced I hope you would think me a gentleman. I am not a monster. There is nothing extraordinary in my manner or approach. We may have already sat together on a train or passed each other in the street. You would not remember. But if we were introduced and you could bring yourself to accept the facts of my singular passion, we might become friends. I am an honest and dependable friend. The business of the ice cream, however, had prodded a raw nerve. I hated Johnson Johnson and his wretched mother. They had a trick of trapping me whenever I set out deliberately to avoid them.
Driving slowly through the quiet streets, I tried to restore my good humour and turned my thoughts again to murder. If I was lucky I could manage a quick one before the ice cream melted. It was a hot, moonlit night and the air was filled with flying insects. They rattled against the windscreen of the car as I drove and fell at my feet when I walked. I broke into a house in Primrose Hill and finished two old ladies. They died sweetly and without a struggle. When they saw me standing in the room they did not seem surprised. They looked as if they had been expecting me and, trembling, tried to rise from their chairs. Their hands were dry as dead leaves. Their faces were ancient and whiskery.
“Are you the doctor?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” I said, “Please, sit down and make yourselves comfortable.”
“You don’t look like the doctor,” one of them said confidentially.
“I’ve been sick,” I said. I dumped my bag on the floor and rummaged through it, searching for the sharpest knives. “How long does ice cream take to melt?”
“An hour?” asked the first old lady.
“Two hours?” inquired the second old lady.
“I don’t know,” I said. There were several cats in the room watching me with their crafty, luminous eyes. I wondered idly if I could catch them.
“Do you want some ice cream?”
“No, thank you,” I said as I gently administered the blades.
When I was finished with the ladies I set out to explore the house. There were photographs everywhere, on the walls, on the tables and cupboards and shelves. The pictures were so old they had turned brown and faded at the edges. The portraits were no more than rust-coloured ghosts in silver frames. Hundreds of dead faces staring at me from every direction. I suppose some of the photographs must have included the old women as children but I could not have r
ecognised them. And there was a peculiar smell in the house. Carpets rotted with dust. Woodwork riddled with worm. Cats. Newspapers. I don’t know. But I found I could not blow the smell from my nostrils. It seemed to cling to my clothes and hair.
It was while I was climbing the stairs that a terrible thought came to me. I went cold. What if she didn’t like chocolate? If she didn’t like toffee there was every chance she wouldn’t like chocolate chip surprise. Perhaps I should search for some orange or vanilla on the way home?
In one of the bedrooms I found a bowl of irises. I took a knife and cut the heads from the stems. In another bedroom I discovered a canary in a bamboo cage but when I opened the little door and put in my hands the bird flew against the bars, shrieking and shedding feathers, and I could not catch it. Finally, I emptied the cage through the bedroom window and let the bird fly out to feed on the soft-bellied insects of the night.
I took a Polaroid of the old ladies as they sat quietly slumped in their chairs. Marlene, in death, had appeared to be sleeping. This strange pair of maids looked as alert in death as they had in life. They were so old that the distance between life and death was too narrow to be measured. As I waited patiently for the print to dry, a telephone began to ring. It was a strange sound in the land of the dead and I did not answer it.
I decided against going in search of orange or vanilla but I had to leave the premises for the sake of the chocolate and I drove home as fast as I dared under the circumstances. When I reached Warwick Square I retrieved the newspaper bundle from the back seat. The newspaper was sodden and peeled away in limp shreds. I held the bucket in my hands and gave it an experimental shake. There was a heavy splashing sound and to my dismay, when I prised up the lid, it threw a brown fleck of sludge over my fingers. The ice cream was ruined!
As I locked the car I glanced nervously at my watch. It was past midnight. If I was lucky, Johnson Johnson would be asleep. I liked to think of him curled up like a gnome in the arms of his mother, a thumb to plug his mouth and a ribbon for his hair. Gently, without a sound, I placed the little bucket of brown slops outside his door and tiptoed upstairs to safety.
“Goodnight,” whispered Johnson Johnson as I fumbled with my key in the door, “And thank you.”
*
The morning after the murders I slept late. I crawled from the sheets with my eyes full of glue when the telephone rang. I managed to pick it up and wheeze heavily into the receiver. But before I could say a word an angry voice was snapping at my ear.
“I called you last night.”
“Oh, I’m sorry …” The alarm bells were deafening. I began mentally to hose the blood from the walls, drag corpses into cupboards and throw knives into buckets of soapy water. Clean and empty. No fingerprints. But where had I gone last night? Why hadn’t I heard the telephone? I fell asleep in the bath. No, that wasn’t an answer. I had a headache and took a dose of pain-killers. Dorothy suddenly cartwheeled into my thoughts. When life gets difficult fall down and play dead. No. It was too complicated. There was Johnson Johnson and the ice cream. Yes. But who goes shopping for ice cream in the dead of night?
“I phoned three times. I was worried,” Jane complained.
“Yes, … I went out for some fresh air.”
“Until past midnight?”
“Yes, it was late,” I confessed.
There was a pause.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“Yes, of course, I just needed to get some fresh air. I feel trapped sometimes,” I said.
“Why didn’t you call me? We could have done something together.”
“I wasn’t feeling very happy. I didn’t want to bore you with my problems.”
“What are you talking about, William? What problems?”
“No problems, Jane. I just felt restless.”
“Are you sure everything is all right?” she asked again.
Yes, of course everything is all right. Everything is fine. I just slipped out for a few hours and butchered a couple of old women the other side of town. Cut out their liver and fed it, hot and twitching, into my mouth. It happens all the time. It’s nothing to worry about. I’ve never felt better in my life.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said.
“I called to invite you over for supper tomorrow night – unless of course you’d prefer to be alone,” she added with lingering resentment.
“Supper would be lovely,” I said, “Thank you.”
“Nine o’clock. The house will be empty …”
“Can I bring anything?”
“A bottle of wine?”
“Yes. Anything else?”
“A toothbrush,” she said and rang off.
I had been caught! Despite all the artistry and caution I had exercised in my brilliant career, I had been caught by Nurse Jane. I was no longer free to take my knives on midnight walks. Nurse Jane was watching! But it was the prospect of taking my toothbrush to supper that really alarmed me. I had learned to master some extraordinary tricks in my time – Dorothy had helped me rehearse them – but the simple, most natural task that Jane would expect from me had never been performed. I could go and ask Frank to explain but he wouldn’t believe me and, anyway, I did not want to share Jane with him. I would have to manage alone.
The following afternoon I went out and bought a bottle of champagne and a new toothbrush. I sat in the bath and scrubbed my skin to a shine. I shaved twice and polished my nails. It took hours to prepare myself. I wanted everything to be perfect. It’s an important moment in a man’s life.
At eight-thirty I drove down to Chelsea and parked on a corner of the street. I sat there for a little while, trying to compose myself and raise my courage by sketching lewd portraits of a naked Nurse Jane in my head. Nurse Jane among the pillows, wearing nothing but freckles and a satisfied smile. But, somehow, everything between her shoulders and her knees was beyond my imagination. I was too frightened to take off her frock. I tried to reassure myself with the memory of Dorothy, rolled into a ball and tied with knots. But the memory only led to a view of myself, naked and struggling, under the ropes and it failed to lend me confidence. Finally, prepared if necessary to tell Jane that I had forgotten the toothbrush and couldn’t stay the night, I swung the bottle of champagne under my arm and strolled towards the house.
As soon as I had reached the front door it swung open and Jane was standing there, smiling and reaching for my arm.
“I was watching from the window,” she said as she led me up the stairs to her rooms. She was wearing a white shirt and a grey pleated skirt. The skirt opened and closed in a fan as she walked.
“Sit down,” she said.
The room was small and immensely cluttered. There were two chairs with ragbag cushions, an old table with carved legs, a TV set on a wooden stool, a bench supporting fifty kinds of potted plant, a standard lamp, an electric fire and shelves of books, bowls of dried flowers, boxes of sea shells, more books, a child’s stuffed bear with no ears, framed photographs, more books, and finally, across the far side of this crowded obstacle course, a beaded curtain hid a little kitchen.
The kitchen was no bigger than a wardrobe, yet Jane had managed to prepare steaks as big as dinner plates, green salad, scarlet salad, baked potatoes and hot fruit puddings.
“I hope you’re hungry,” she said.
I opened the champagne, which was warm and foamed over my shoes. We ate supper with the slow, deliberate movements of strangers, smiling often but speaking seldom. My palms were damp and my throat felt so tight I could barely swallow. My blood was sizzling like sherbet.
When we had finished we sat in our chairs and covered the distance between us with words.
“I’m sorry if I sounded angry on the phone yesterday,” she said. She crossed her legs and the skirt that she wore slid away from her knee.
“It was more like an interrogation than an invitation,” I said.
“It was silly – but I was worried. I thought something terrible might have happened t
o you.”
“What?”
“Well – I don’t know – anything.” She stroked her knee, running her hand down the length of her calf and scratching at her ankle. She was barefoot and the toes seemed very long and white.
“I know … I’m sorry,” I said. There had been one night, not so long ago, when I had tried to telephone Jane and found the line engaged for hours and grew jealous and afraid that she might have another lover and so, when she finally answered, I could not speak but rang off as soon as I heard her voice.
“If I didn’t care about you …” she said and her voice trailed away. She uncrossed her legs and pulled at the skirt, fanning the pleats with her fingers, revealing a lazy glimpse of her thigh. The movement of the skirt stirred a warm and perfumed draught around the room.
“Thank you for supper,” I said gently.
“Thank you for the champagne,” she said, smiling and wiping the hair from her face. “It was very extravagant.”
And then there was silence while we both struggled to find more conversation and I wanted to stretch out and touch her but did not have the courage. I should not have been so eager to thank her for the evening. It might have sounded as if I was ready to leave without so much as a kiss goodnight.