She had a key. Long before the day when there was the explosion or the one when she’d heard the screams, she had wanted to see inside his laboratory. The loud noise had at first scared her off from the idea of trespassing, and then reinforced her initial desire: to go in and take a look around – make sure everything was all right up there. The screams too, at first frightening, had made her eager to see, to know; for a few moments she had been convinced that there were real people up there. Not that Edgar would be carrying out any experiment that would cause pain to someone, but – she didn’t really know what she thought about it all.
The way he locked the door before he came downstairs; the way he locked up as soon as he entered the lab and shut the door behind him, shooting the bolt across: it made her nervous. If there was nothing inside that could harm her, it was an insult to keep her out. On the other hand, if there was something dangerous up there, did she dare go in and find out about it?
The key was one of the extras from the Mexican bowl that had been shoved over to the end of a workbench in the cellar. The bowl was filled with old keys. Helen had looked through the whole collection when they had moved in; she’d assumed that they came from other houses or even from workplaces long vanished. There were about fifty keys, some large, long and rusted, like the sort of thing that might be needed for a garden gate or a toolshed. After the screams, when her frustration and curiosity about the lab had reached a sudden peak, she’d remembered the bowl of keys. Some could be discounted straight away, but about a dozen were possible.
The one that fitted was an ordinary brass key. She’d unlocked the door, pushed it open slowly, peeked in and locked up again. She hadn’t stepped over the threshold. Now, standing in the middle of her living-room rug, she wondered why she hadn’t gone in and had a thorough look at everything. She seemed to recall that what was in the room had been fairly uninteresting: tables, benches, racks of test tubes, a microscope, a couple of bunsen burners, two sinks, a bookcase against the wall. Never mind: this time she’d go through the place carefully.
She got the key and started up the stairs, moving fast. She had the door open before there was time to think about it.
The room looked slightly different from when she’d last seen it, and more crowded. There were more bottles, jars and test tubes. Standing racks had been added at the far end, where the empty steamer trunks used to be. She also remembered a rather nice sofa; more like a chaise longue. Edgar had occasionally stayed up in the lab overnight, working while she’d watched the late movie downstairs, or read a detective story. She’d always thought the sofa was too good to leave up in the attic, but Edgar had insisted that he needed it. Now she couldn’t see it. But, as she moved forward, she noticed with surprise that a bathtub had been added to the collection of sinks and troughs; it was an old, high-standing type. She couldn’t imagine how Edgar had managed to get it in there. He’d have had to hire people. Out of the van and to the front door, she was thinking; up the stairs. She began to worry about the weight. Even though the house was well-built and strong, and most of the heavy equipment stood around the sides, it wasn’t a good idea to fill up a place with too many heavy objects. Edgar had undoubtedly gone into the question of beam-stress and calculated the risks; he’d have found out all about the subject. Of course, every once in a while, he was wrong.
She looked into the first alcove: empty. She turned into the second, bigger one. There was the sofa. And there was a bundle of something thrown on top of it, wrapped in a sheet. She was about to pass by when she saw a hand protruding from one of the bottom folds of the sheet.
She let out a gurgled little shriek that scared her. She looked away and then back again. Propped against the edge of the sofa’s armrest was a leg, from the knee down. Next to it lay an open shoebox containing fingers. She began to feel that her breathing wasn’t right. She wanted to get out, but there was still the question of what was under the sheet. She had to know that. If she ran out without looking, she’d never summon the courage to use the key again.
She counted to ten, wiped her hands down the sides of her skirt and told herself that whatever the thing was, it couldn’t be worse than what they were liable to show you nowadays on television, even in the news programmes. She reached out and pulled down the edge of the sheet.
It was pretty bad: a head with the face laid bare. The muscles, tendons and other bits across the face were mainly red or pink, a few of them darker than she’d imagined things like that were supposed to be. But they weren’t wet; there was no blood. She bent her knees and looked more closely. From inside the still open skull she caught the glint of metal. There were lots of small wheels and bolts and tubes inside, like the interior of a watch or a radio.
She straightened up, rearranged the sheet and gently put out a hand towards the half leg. She felt the skin below the place where the joint should have been attached to some knuckly part of a knee.
A chill ran over her scalp. The skin, though unwarmed, was creamy, smooth, soft and silky, uncannily delicious to the touch. She pulled back her hand. For about five minutes she stood just staring at the wall. Then, she understood. The body wasn’t real. Naturally, it couldn’t be real: a dead body would have to be refrigerated. Therefore, that thing there on the sofa in pieces was not a corpse Edgar had taken from the pathology morgue; it was a body he had built himself out of other materials. Why on earth he’d want to do such a thing was beyond her.
She left everything in place, closed the door behind her and locked it with her key. Later in the day the answer came to her: her husband must be pioneering research on victims of road accidents. She had read an article several years before, about a medical school that simulated injuries by strapping life-sized replicas of people into cars; after smashing them up, they studied the damaged parts. The project had been funded by an insurance company. No doubt Edgar was working on something similar, although greatly in advance of anything she’d heard about. That skin, for example, was fantastic. And all the intricate bands of muscle and everything – the thing was very complicated. She still didn’t understand what the clockwork mechanism in the head would be for, but maybe that would have something to do with a remote-control guidance system. The whole business was explainable. She stopped feeling scared. Nevertheless, she was thankful that the eyelids had been closed.
Edgar worked hard up in the attic for several days. She thought she’d give him a week and then go up and check on the progress he’d made. In the meantime, she looked into the possibilities of new adult education schools. She had lunch with Gina, who was worried about her daughter’s weight problem and who poured out a long story to her about psychologists, behaviourists, weight-watchers and doctors. Helen listened sympathetically; she was glad to have such a convoluted narrative to concentrate on – there was no room for temptation to talk about what was troubling her: Edgar and the activity he was engaged in up in the attic.
Two days later, Mr Murdock from the old oil painting classes asked her to tea with Pat and Babs. The three of them cheered her up. Mr Murdock had already left the new classes they’d joined; the other two were going to, but for the moment they were sticking it out in order to be able to report back all the latest stories about the odious Miss Bindale. Miss Bindale was driving everyone away: she might end by causing the teacher to resign, too. It was a shame, they all said: one person could spoil everything. Mr Murdock recommended a language school he’d gone to for French. The place wasn’t so much fun as their adult education school – it was more serious, the classes were mostly for businessmen and unless you applied for the weekend, everything was in the evening. Pat said, ‘It’d be a really good way to meet men. If you don’t want the address, I’ll keep it myself.’
‘You’ll never get anywhere if it’s a language,’ Babs told her. ‘Car maintenance, that’s the one. There aren’t any other women at all.’
‘Or karate,’ Helen said.
‘I wouldn’t try it. You pick the wrong type there – they’ll throw you
against the wall and say it was an accident because they forgot to leave out some basic move. No thanks.’
Pat said that a friend of hers, named Shirley, had gone to a couple of other adult education places and had given her the addresses; four different ones. ‘I liked the first one, so I never tried the others, but I can send you the addresses. I’ll take a good look around, see where I put that piece of paper.’
Edgar spent the whole of the weekend up in the lab: Saturday night and Sunday too. He came down for meals. On Friday he’d brought her flowers, given her a talk about why the work was going to be necessary; when, where and how he’d expect his meals during the period; and how he appreciated her cooperation. She said, ‘Yes, dear,’ to everything, put his red roses in a vase, took it into the living-room and told him they looked lovely. She preferred daffodils, chrysanthemums, tulips, daisies, stocks, sweet peas, asters: almost anything. And if they had to be roses, any colour other than red.
He stayed in the bedroom Friday night, making sure that she didn’t feel neglected. He wanted her to be satisfied with the arrangements. She was not only satisfied; she was surprised.
She carried out her appointed cooking tasks with grim cheerfulness. She could hardly wait until Monday, when he’d be out of the house and she could go look at what he’d been doing.
On Sunday she knew that he’d achieved some kind of breakthrough in the work. He was transformed, radiant. He looked tired, but serene. Whatever it was, was finished. However, he didn’t say anything about coming downstairs. He stayed up in the attic that night.
The next morning she waited a while after he’d gone. She was going to give him enough time to get all the way to work, and more: in case he’d forgotten something and had to come back for it. She wanted to be able to look at everything and not feel rushed. Whatever he’d completed was still up in the attic – all he’d taken with him was his briefcase.
She did the dishes, made the bed, checked her watch. She looked out of the window, although she didn’t need to: it was one of those unnecessary things people do when they’re anxious about something. She got the key.
The attic workroom looked the same, as far as she could see. She stepped in, closing the door lightly, so that it touched the jamb but didn’t click into the frame. She walked forward. Her eyes jumped from place to place.
She peered into the first alcove: nothing. She hurried to the second; there was the sofa. And on it lay a young and beautiful woman: the creamy skin was as it had been before. The face had been fitted with its outer coating; everything there was in place: the lilac-tinted eyelids with long, dark lashes, the cupid’s-bow mouth, the small, pert nose.
The face lay in the centre of a cloudlike nest of twirly blonde ringlets. A blue ribbon peeped out from a bunch of them at the back. The dress she wore was pink and cut like some sort of ballerina costume: the bodice like a bathing-suit top, the skirt standing out with layers of net and lace and stiffening. Her feet and legs were bare. The toe-nails, like the nails on the fingers, had been painted red.
Helen reached out towards the left leg. She ran her hand over it, stopped, and then quickly pulled back. The skin was warm. She moved along the side of the sofa, to where she could be near the head. ‘Wake up,’ she ordered. There was no response. Naturally: this wasn’t a person – it was some kind of doll. It was so lifelike that it was almost impossible to believe that; nevertheless, her husband had built it.
As she stood there, trying to imagine why Edgar should have made a doll so detailed in that particular way, with painted nails and a blue satin bow and everything, she began to wonder how lifelike the rest of the body was. That was an important question.
If she hadn’t seen the thing in its partly assembled state the week before, she wouldn’t have known this was a replica, a machine. But having seen it complete, there was – all at once – no doubt in her mind that her husband had invented it for his own private purposes: otherwise, why make it so definitely non-utilitarian?
She thought she’d better know what she was up against. She examined the doll thoroughly, taking off the pink dress first, and then the black lace bra and underpants. She started to lose her sense of danger. She was getting mad. Who else, other than Edgar himself, could have chosen the pink dress and black underwear? He couldn’t walk into a dress shop in her company without becoming flustered, yet she could picture him standing at a counter somewhere and asking for the clothes, saying in his argument-winning voice, ‘Black lace, please, with a ribbon right about here.’ He’d known the right size, too – but of course he’d known that. The doll had been built to specification: his specifications. Oh, Helen thought, the swine.
And the thing was so real-looking. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa and fiddling around with the doll’s head, investigating the way the hair grew, when she felt her finger push down on what must have been a button behind the left ear.
The doll’s eyelids rose, revealing a pair of enormous blue eyes. The lips parted in a dazzling smile, the torso began to breathe.
‘Oh,’ Helen said. ‘Oh, dear.’
‘Oh, dear,’ the doll repeated gently. ‘What can the matter be?’
Helen thought she might be going crazy. She asked – automatically and politely – ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ the doll told her. ‘How are you?’
‘Not how. Who?’
The doll smiled lovingly and relapsed into an expression of joyful delight. The eyelids blinked every once in a while. Helen watched. The action had evidently been programmed to be slightly irregular, to avoid an impression of the mechanical. Still, there was something hypnotic about it. The lips were silent. The voice too must be on a computer: the doll would only answer if you spoke to it. The voice-tape scanner didn’t seem to be quite perfect yet, either.
She was trying to push the button again, to turn off the eyelids, when she hit a nearby second button instead and sent the machine into overdrive. The lids drooped, the arms went up and out, the knees flew apart, the hips began to gyrate in an unmistakable manner, and the lips spoke.
Helen shot to her feet, stumbled back a few steps and crashed against the wall. She folded her arms and stayed where she was, staring with mesmerized intensity while the doll went through the cycle it had begun. Probably there were many other things it could do – this would be merely one of the variations. Out of the rosebud mouth came a mixture of babytalk and obscenity, of crude slang and sentimentality.
She gripped the sides of her arms and waited sternly until the exercise appeared to be over, though the doll was still begging in sweetly tremulous whispers for more. She stepped forward and slapped it across the face. ‘Darling,’ it murmured. She scrabbled among the golden curls, grabbed the ear and pushed every button she could see. There were five, all very small. They looked like pinheads. There were also two tiny switches she decided to leave alone. She’d seen enough. She was quivering with rage, shame and the need for revenge.
When she thought about wearing herself out doing the shopping and cooking and scrubbing, she prickled all over with a sense of grievance. She’d been slaving away for years, just so he could run up to the attic every evening and keep his secrets. And the boys were turning into the same kind as their father: what they wanted too was someone menial to provide services for them. And then they could spend their lives playing.
She saw herself as a lone, victimized woman beleaguered by selfish men. Her anger gave her a courage she wouldn’t otherwise have had.
She ran out and across the hall to the other side of the attic – the side that wasn’t locked. There were the trunks and suitcases, including the nice big one with wheels. There too was the chest full of spare blankets and quilts. She pulled out two of the blankets and took them into the lab. Then she carried the suitcase downstairs to the front hall.
She went up to the attic again, dressed the doll in its clothes, rolled it into the blankets and dragged them across the floor and down the stairs. She unzipped the suitcase, dumped t
he doll inside, folded the legs and arms and began to pack it tight, zipping the outside as she stuffed the pink skirt away.
She went up to the attic one more time, to put the blankets back and to shut the door of the lab.
She got her coat and handbag. The suitcase was easy to manage until she had to lift it into the back of the car. That wasn’t so easy. Edgar was the one with the big car. Still, she could do it. All she’d have to worry about would be steps. The doll seemed to weigh exactly the same as a real woman of equivalent height and size.
There were three choices: the airport, the bus depot and the train station. The train station was large and nearer than the airport. She’d try it first.
Everything went well. She found a parking space straight away and was able to wheel the suitcase across the road, on to the sidewalk and through the doors, up an escalator and across several waiting rooms, to the locker halls. There was a whole bank of extra-large lockers; she heaved the case into one of them, put in enough money to release the key, and went to get some more coins. She ended up having to buy a paperback book, but the woman at the cash register agreed to let her have two big handfuls of change. She fed the money meticulously into the slot. The suitcase would be paid up for over two weeks.
*
Ron was getting out of his car when he saw the woman slam her car door and start to wheel the suitcase across the parking lot. She looked possible: the case seemed heavy.
He followed, walking casually. He had a repertoire of walks calculated to throw off suspicion. He hadn’t had to learn any of them – they came naturally, like all his other athletic talents. That was what he was always telling Sid down at the gym: I got natural talent. I don’t need nobody teaching me nothing. He still couldn’t understand how Sid had knocked him out in the third round. He hadn’t given up the idea that something had been slipped into his Coke. Sometimes there was a lot of heavy betting going on, even when you were just sparring.
Mrs Caliban and other stories Page 33