by Peter Benson
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I think they sent each other to sleep.’
The nurse laughed, looked at some notes she was holding, said, ‘Well, goodbye,’ and hurried to an important case.
We wheeled Marjorie down the corridor that led to the lift. We met a cleaner who was shaking her head over some patches of straw. ‘I’ve seen it all now,’ she muttered. ‘What a place.’ She went to fetch a vacuum cleaner.
The lift was empty. The reception area was deserted, but I was glad to get outside where the night was dark and the stars and moon obscured by clouds.
‘Stay here,’ I said to Sadie. ‘I’ll fetch the car.’
Marjorie said, ‘What’s happening?’ Her head lolled and the hat fell off. I picked it up and slapped it back on her head.
‘He’s getting the car,’ said Sadie.
‘Where is it?’
‘Over there.’
‘And you are…’
‘Sadie.’
I ran to the car-park, underneath the blue and red trellissing that fenced the walkways. Landscaped shrubberies were lit by electric lamps in goldfish bowls. Through the hospital windows, I could see nurses bending over beds, and doctors huddled in offices. The boiler house hummed gently behind me, and steam rose into the air.
As I drove up to the reception, I could see a nurse hurrying down the stairs from the first floor wards. Sadie hadn’t seen her - she waved at me. I parked badly, jumped out, ran round and opened the door. We were lifting Marjorie out of the wheelchair when the nurse ran past me and down to the car-park, where she was met by a man who kissed her and opened a car door for her.
Sadie was touched by my love for Marjorie. Marjorie mirrored the dead, fucked Dorset landscape. I drove slowly, as if the Alfa was a hearse. Say goodbye, barley corn and rock ‘n’ roll.
16
Marjorie and I had four visitors the next day. Clouds had gathered over the forest, and a few spots of rain blew against the windows. The cats were glad to be let in and fed. I fetched some logs, and was piling them up by the Rayburn when the first visitor arrived.
It was Dr Thubron. He’d come as soon as his surgery was finished. He was wearing odd socks. I took him upstairs, and we stood at the foot of Marjorie’s bed.
‘That stunt’, he said to me, ‘could have landed you in a lot of trouble.’
‘Not while I’m alive,’ she said. I had sat her up in bed, given her some juice and a light breakfast, but she wasn’t as incapable as she looked or felt.
‘You’d be much better off in hospital,’ Thubron said.
‘Why? How?’
He couldn’t answer that.
‘Show the doctor out, would you, Gregory?’
‘OK.’
Downstairs, he held his arms up in mock surrender and said, ‘I give in.’ I opened the front door for him. ‘But for God’s sake call if you have to.’ He fished in his bag and gave me a bottle of pills. ‘These might help,’ he said, and tried to describe what I knew to expect. I mentioned my parents. He mumbled about peas in a pod and left to attend a pregnant woman in Lyme.
I went for a walk in the forest because the second visitor arrived. He was Mr Kelman, a solicitor from Lyme. He had a grave face, a briefcase, a Saab 900, ginger hair, a dark pin-striped suit and black lace-up shoes with tiny, superficial spots punched into the toes. He introduced himself to me, and when Marjorie told me to go for a walk I did as I was told because half dead she was more alive than anyone else I knew. ‘Get out and get some fresh air!’ she groaned. ‘Shake up your kidneys.’
It had begun to drizzle, but it was dry under the trees. Some primroses were growing on a bank between the edge of the wood and the fields below. Through the branches I could see a few sheep and the drizzle as it blew in curtains across the sky. The wind rustled the tree tops, but the wet silenced the birds. I tried to walk as softly as I could. I took slow, deliberate steps, rolling my feet on to the ground from heel to toe like a Red Indian.
Red Indians had an ancient and deliberate way of looking at nature. They never treated animals as ‘game’, or cut down trees unnecessarily. I tried not to stick out like a sore thumb, and followed a track through a plantation of sitkas until I reached a spinney of hazel that dipped into a hollow. This place had been a quarry once, but was disused and overgrown now. I sat down to eat some sandwiches and drink a can of beer.
I sat with my back to a bramble thicket; in my fatigues I blended well. After a while, the forest was weighed with enough water to start dripping. The beer was warm and the sandwiches cheese and tomato. I ate slowly. I had a mouthful when a deer walked into the hollow below me, sniffed the air and began to graze.
At first I thought it must have escaped from a zoo. Then I sat absolutely still and watched.
It heard something: it froze, tilted its head towards the noise but then went back to the grass.
It was a beautiful caramel-brown animal with a head like a greyhound’s. Its ears seemed close enough to touch. They looked like little pockets. It had a stubby tail that stuck straight up, and perfect legs. Bambi.
Bambi was about thirty feet away. My mouth was full of cheese and tomato sandwich. The drips of rain came faster, and I felt myself about to gag. I slowly moved my hand to my mouth, and had got most of the bread out when I couldn’t stop myself coughing - Bambi looked at me for a second before bolting for cover. His eyes were full of fear. I didn’t mean to scare him. However hard I looked, I never saw Bambi again.
Colonel Franklyn was our third visitor. He sat in the kitchen with a far-away look in his eyes and said, ‘I’m proud of you!’ He clapped my knee. ‘Initiative,’ he said. ‘That’s the spirit! If more people were like you I don’t think we’d be in such a mess.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said.
‘And modesty!’
Marjorie laughed. The Colonel fished in his pocket for his pipe, tapped it, topped it up, lit it and filled the room with clouds of acrid smoke that collected in shrouds that hung a foot above the floor. I thought about saying something about smoke following him like sheep, but Marjorie said, ‘Yes. He’s a very good boy,’ as if I wasn’t there, so I didn’t bother.
The Colonel began to talk about D-Day. I sat and listened for a few minutes. He’d been involved in undercover operations. When he asked Marjorie if she remembered anything from those times, she nodded but didn’t say anything.
Our fourth visitor arrived in the evening. After a short sleep and some fresh orange juice, Marjorie felt well enough to get up and sit in the kitchen. She had two of the cats on her lap. I was reading to her - ‘A Psychological Experiment’, a short story by Richard Marsh (1847–1915). I had her on the edge of her seat -
The stranger dashed the knife he held into his own breast, or he seemed to. He cut the oilskin open from top to bottom. And there gushed forth, not his heart’s blood, but an amazing mass of hissing, struggling, twisting serpents. They fell, all sorts and sizes, in a confused, furious, frenzied heap, upon the floor. In a moment the room seemed to be alive with snakes. They dashed hither and thither, in and out, round and round, in search either of refuge or revenge. And, as the snakes came on, the efts, the newts, the lizards, and the other creeping things, in their desire to escape them, crawled up the curtains, and the doors, and the walls.
Mr Howitt gave utterance to a sort of strangled exclamation…
Someone knocked on the door.
‘Good God,’ Marjorie said. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Shall I get it?’
‘If you have to.’ She huffed. ‘But there’d better be a reason.’
It was Nicky. As soon as I let the door off the latch, he pushed it open and burst into the lodge, yelling, ‘You won’t get away with it! You won’t! You’ll regret ever coming down here.’ He put his hand out to push me, but I backed off.
‘What are you on about?’1 said.
‘You know what!’ He pointed at me. His face was red. His hair was untidy.
‘I’m trying to think,’ I said, mo
ckingly.
‘Sadie! That’s what!’ he shouted. ‘We had a date last night; now I hear she was off with you on some wild goose chase!’
‘So what?’
‘So—’
‘She’s free to do as she pleases, isn’t she? It was an emergency, I asked her, she—’
‘She’s mine,’ he whined.
‘Oh, yeah? Like that heap you’ve got parked out there?’
‘That heap could run your old bat’s car off the road any day,’ he said.
‘Old bat?’ I said. ‘Who are you talking about?’ I moved towards him. He stood his ground.
‘You know.’ He grinned. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’
‘You’re the matter.’
‘Big talk.’ He took a deep breath and expanded his chest. He bent towards me. ‘I haven’t heard,’ he said.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Is she dead yet?’
‘No,’ said Marjorie. She appeared from the kitchen and pointed her shotgun at Nicky. ‘The old bat’s not.’ The gun waved about, but she was steady on her feet. The butt was crooked under her good arm, with a good finger on the trigger. I moved towards her. She pointed a bad finger at me. ‘Stay there,’ she said.
I didn’t move.
She reminded me of the climactic scene in True Grit. John Wayne, with one (cancerous) lung, gallops across a plain with a rifle under each arm, shooting the bastards. Marjorie was wearing a nightie, dressing gown, socks and lambswool slippers.
Nicky froze. The colour drained from his face and I noticed a slight dip develop in his knees, like he had lost three inches in height.
Marjorie dealt with him very quickly. She said, ‘I’m going to be a dead old bat in a week’s time, so life for shooting you wouldn’t mean very much, would it?’
Nicky shook his head.
‘And my reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Gregory will tell you that.’ I nodded. ‘My fingers’ll just start twitching for no reason at all. At any time at all.’ She smiled. ‘A moment’s notice.’ I nodded again.
‘Oh.’
‘So maybe you should leave…’
Nicky backed off.
‘…and not come back. We were enjoying a very exciting story until you turned up. What was it called, Gregory?’ She turned towards me, but kept the gun on Nicky. She was expert with it.
‘ “A Psychological Experiment”,’ I said.
Marjorie laughed. ‘Maybe we could perform one on you.’
‘A what?’
‘A psychological experiment,’ she said.
I was expressionless.
Nicky fumbled for the door handle.
I moved towards him and opened it. I could see his Capri parked at the bottom of the drive. The forest was rustling, but I couldn’t see beyond the first two ranks of trees.
‘I—’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Marjorie.
His mouth dropped open.
‘And don’t try threatening my friend again,’ Marjorie said. ‘He’s a desperate man.’
Nicky nodded, winced, looked at me and then back at Marjorie. I held the door wide open.
‘Because if you do I’ll have to put a curse on
you. Maybe I’ll do that anyway.’ She grinned, madly. ‘You’ve heard of my powers? They’re not lies.’
Nicky’s eyes narrowed. He was caught between belief and being mocked, and wasn’t used to the feeling. He nodded again.
‘Good,’ said Marjorie.
I smiled.
Nicky backed out of the door and across the gravel, until he disappeared into the gloom. I closed the door.
Marjorie was standing in the kitchen with the gun pointing at the ceiling. She smiled and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked against the empty chamber. I made a cup of tea and finished reading ‘A Psychological Experiment’ to her.
As the stranger put them from him, Mr Howitt’s head fell, face foremost, on to the table. His partner, lifting it up, gazed down at him.
Had the creature actually been what it was intended to represent it could not have worked more summary execution. The look which was on the dead man’s face as his partner turned it upwards was terrible to see.
When I closed the book, Marjorie clapped her hands and said, ‘Marvellous! A bit dated, but still marvellous!’
17
A month before Mum died, she said, ‘I want to talk to you about Bruce.’ The dog had just eaten a light supper of diced liver and was resting at her feet.
‘What about him?’ I said.
‘What’s going to happen to him when I’m gone?’
‘I don’t know; we’ll sort something out.’
I put an advert in the paper.
FREE TO GOOD HOME
Well-behaved Bull Terrier dog
The enquiries taught me a few things about human nature. We had some calls from people who insulted me. ‘A dog’s for life, not just for Christmas’ was the idea.
One evening I answered the phone, and before I got the chance to say anything a woman’s voice screamed, ‘If you can’t look after the poor animal it’s you who should be put down, not him!’
‘We’re not talking about putting him down,’ I said.
‘But you would if nobody gives him a home! Do you know how many dogs the RSPCA puts down every week?’
‘No.’
The woman told me.
I was impressed. I said, ‘Do you know how many people die of cancer every week?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
I told her. I explained why we were looking for a good home for Bruce. I stressed the ‘good’. There was silence on the other end of the line.
I asked the woman if she’d like to leave her number, so I could phone her and upset her. She didn’t say anything, so I said, ‘Fuck you,’ and hung up.
Eventually, I found Bruce a good home, and though he had to put up with tinned food and bowls of water, the head of the household was a keen gardener. She had an allotment up the road and used to wheelbarrow her tools up there every other day. Bruce would trot alongside, barking at the barrow’s wheel, and at the allotment would guard the tools and dream about diced liver.
One morning Marjorie said, ‘I want to talk about the cats.’ She was lying on the kitchen sofa with a glass of whisky on her lap. It was raining.
‘What about them?’ I was washing up.
‘What’s going to happen to them when I’m dead?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Sadie would have them.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ she said, and stroked the nearest.
I scrubbed a saucepan. ‘Marjorie?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you afraid of dying?’
‘If you don’t know the answer to that one by now,’ she said, ‘you’re not a very observant boy.’
‘I’m not a boy,’ I said.
‘How old are you?
I reminded her.
‘You’re a boy,’ she said, ‘and you’ll go on being one if you keep asking questions like that.’ She laughed, finished her whisky and asked me to pour another.
I went to a lot of trouble and spent enough money to sleep with Sadie in comfort. Asking her about having the cats was a footnote to the trouble. I booked a room in a bed and breakfast house in Lyme. There was a view of the harbour from the window, and stiff towels in the en suite bathroom.
I was full of lies. I told the woman in charge that we were on holiday, maybe even looking for a holiday cottage. I don’t think she believed me, but I paid in advance, in cash. It was midday. We had one bag between us. I’d told Marjorie I was shopping in Axminster. Sadie told her father she would be back for milking. I closed the curtains. I could hear other people in the house, cleaning bathrooms and changing sheets.
As we were taking our clothes off, I said, ‘Marjorie is very worried about her cats.’
‘What’s the matter with them?’
I hung my trousers over the end of the bed. ‘It’s not them. She’s worried that th
ey won’t have anywhere to live when she’s dead.’
‘We’ll have them,’ she said.
I unhooked her bra. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.
‘You’re not bad yourself.’ She took her socks off, rolled them into a ball and threw them in my face. I punched them away, like Gordon Banks.
Her skin looked and felt like quality writing paper. Mine looked like bald chicken flesh. She nipped my ears. I reached down and pinched her behind her knees and we fell on to the bed.
I had a condom. I said, ‘They were Hoovering them in the chemist’s.’
‘What?’
‘The condoms. I laughed at the woman - she thought it was funny too, but said, “We’re very clean here.”’
I’d left a crack in the curtains, and the window was open. I could hear the waves crashing along the shore, and they got louder and louder as we made love.
The bed squeaked and boinged. We shifted into a dozen different positions. Each was shadowed by a different noise. When we didn’t move we could hear someone polishing a sink in another room. We laughed.
‘Have you ever done it in the rain?’ I said, at one point. She looked over her shoulder and said, ‘No. Have you?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s!’
‘OK.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘How?’
‘Hey!’
‘What?’
‘Do that again!’
‘What?’
‘What you did just then.’
This?’
‘Yeah! How do you do that?’
‘I don’t know. You want it again?’
‘Go on, then…’
A slight breeze blew the curtains in.
The plumbing in the house was old.
The room smelt of old Brillo pads.
The sheets were stiff.
When we left, we had to walk through the kitchen.
The people that owned the place were having a cup of tea. They had the radio on, and were listening to a play about a chocolate manufacturer. There’d been a fire at the factory, but it hadn’t done serious damage. The radio was one of those old ones, with a huge illuminated dial.