Science Fiction Discoveries

by Carol

  I forgot my own birthday, my fifty-first, for on the 13 of July we are in the middle of thorough house repair. Nobody has any idea of what these London workmen are like. They spend three-fourths of their time consulting how the work should be done, and in going in and out after beer. Even the chimneys at Number 5 Cheyne Row are being altered, and in 82 degrees heat, it is wild work, workmen or no. The builder promised to have it all done in six weeks, painting included; six months will be more like it. Meanwhile I run about in the great heat, carrying my furniture in my arms from one room to another, and sleep wherever I see a cleared space. I know I am needed to keep the workmen from falling into continual mistakes, but it puzzles me why my husband stays on. We are promising ourselves to travel to Germany when this is over, but when, when?

  Charles Kingsley came by today to tell me about his wife, “the adorablest wife a man ever had.” I went to sleep at eleven, fell asleep at three, then rose at six. Two plumbers were rushing about the kitchen with boiling lead; an additional carpenter was hammering for pleasure somewhere, bricklayers are measuring windows for stone sills, then rush out and are never seen on earth again. I was in the house all day, went out at ten to take a turn or two on Battersea Bridge and managed not to get my throat cut!

  To elude the evil smells of paint, Carlyle finally went to Scotland and I took a room in Hemus Terrace. I do insist, though, on coming home for breakfast, and this morning walked in thin silk shoes through a deluge of rain-no umbrella! I looked forward to my Fanny greeting me at my own kitchen fire ... I am still so dependent on the kindness of servants. They are always there for emergencies; it is the day-to-day petty arguments which wear me out. It usually results in no appetite, and I am a shocking guest, sometimes unable to eat a meal. But this morning Fanny did not open the door, but the cleaning person, a Mrs. Heywood. “Oh,” she said, “I am so glad you are come. Fanny is in such a way. The house has been broken into during the night and the police are in your kitchen!”

  And now I know the real cure for headaches. Mine vanished in a flash at this alarming intelligence.

  “What have they taken?” I asked fearfully.

  “Oh, Fanny's best things, a silver spoon and a tablecloth.”

  In the kitchen were two policemen and poor Fanny, but no coffee, no fire: everything had gone to distraction. The thieves had come in the larder window and had opened Fanny's trunk, taking her clothing and drinking the milk for my breakfast. Many little things were left; Fanny’s loss amounted to about four sovereigns, which I of course gave her. Dirty naked footprints all over the larder shelf! Policemen coming in and out for three days. Almost every night some house in the immediate neighborhood has been entered, and the police go about “with their fingers in their mouths.”

  Now I must of course stay here, paint smell or no, and Mr. Piper has given me a pair of pistols. Capital loaded ones they are, at my bedside table. Bars of iron will go on the larder windows, and I will go to Scotland Friday. The happiest moment of the whole shocking affair was when the painter said to Fanny, “Shouldn’t like to be a thief within twenty feet of your mistress with one of those pistols in her hand. She has such a devil of a straight eye!” The workmen know this eye too well; it has often proved their foot rules and leads in error.

  I shall of course not mention the matter to Carlyle, for it would disturb him greatly.

  Frome is without the wickedness of London, but it is a dull, dirty-looking place, full of plumbers. I chose the inn, the George, in which to stay. Cold lamb, dead and better off buried, bread and porter was two shillings sixpence! And one pound eight and sixpence for the train! But the landlord made me look at his fresh vegetables, saying “No agriculture like that in Piccadilly!”

  Back to London, house is as well as can be expected, burglars out of sight temporarily. At least we are over the funeral of the weary Duke of Wellington. I saw his lying-in-state, I being crushed by crowds for four hours. But I could not help crying. I had seen the Duke alive in Bath House and remember him so well.

  And it was then that Lady Ashburton died, shortly after the death of the Duke, and her husband displeased me with his offer of clothing ... I felt so sick and so like to cry that I am afraid I seemed quite stupid and ungrateful to him, but that cannot be helped. And best of all my husband has been writing touching letters about my dearness to him. This is my happiest pleasure now.

  Yes, I believe in Death and now must also believe in birth. I have been asked to be a Godmother to the Simmonds child. There is one fatal objection—I do not belong to the Church of England, and my own Scotch church recognizes no Godfathers and Godmothers. The father takes on all obligation himself, and it serves him right! I am flattered at being asked, but how could I dream of binding myself to look after the spiritual welfare of any earthly baby? I, who have no confidence in my own spiritual welfare! How could I, in cold blood, go through with a ceremony in a church, to which neither the others nor myself attach a grain of veracity? It was a grand performance of the baby to get herself bom, so I send this brooch, a talisman for her. Mrs. Simmonds may remove the pin, as I do not advise running a long pin into the creature, and attach the thing to a string in form of a locket. ("But what is it? What does it do?” as a servant of mine once asked me in respect of a Lord.) It must be a potent charm against the devil, for it is an authentic memorial of early Christians.

  All things at once. I have also been to a wedding in Scotland. Our old rector, on being told by his wife I was afraid to go to church for the coldness of the place, ordered the fires to be kept up from Sunday over into Tuesday! How kind. I was much pressed afterward to acknowledge how superior the English way of marrying was, but I said my feelings were mixed. "Mixed?” asked the kind rector. "Mixed of what?”

  "Well,” I said, "it looked to me something betwixt a religious ceremony and a pantomime.” And so it all is.

  But to return to the one unmixed surety, Death: We were left two thousand pounds by the Ashburtons. Another example of the wished-for come too late.

  Money can do nothing for us now. Nevertheless we are off to St Leonards-on-Sea to find perhaps some surcease from my misery. My husband said my face, seen through the carriage window, was the most pathetic he ever saw. God help me. There is on earth no help.

  Part IV

  And now, what am I? A young and frighteningly beautiful woman with a face and body of almost unearthly perfection. A strange thing to say about one’s self, but understandable when one’s memories are of a different self entirely. In London I try to avoid Chelsea. Number 5 Cheyne Row is part of National Trust, now. It is not, I think, any part of the present me. I am suddenly and inexplicably newborn, a monster of nineteenth-century’s memories in a contemporary shell. This is not so unlike my own thought after seeing a revival of a film called Frankenstein. I do not think the film-makers were entirely faithful to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, any more than Percy Shelley was in his own fashion, but there was an episode that amused me and bemused me, both. It is a scene showing the Scientist’s dwarf servant rushing out to steal a brain for his master. Two brains are available (is this what happened to me?), and at first the servant steals the one that belonged to a Good Person. Unfortunately he drops it, and has to return for the other brain, which had belonged to a murderer. I could not pay close attention to the rest of the film for wondering what would have happened had the Good Brain not splattered. Would Frankenstein’s doll have turned out well, married, raised a little family? And what would happen to the filmmaker's sermon at the end: there are Things Men Should Not Meddle With, or something of the sort.

  I am something of the sort. But since my memories as Jane are beginning to fade, and my manners and speech and all of me are becoming accustomed to the latter part of the twentieth century, perhaps I shall one day have a film made about me, the story of the Good Little Brain Who Made It. My name is Anthea Evan and I have been to see a man about a job ...

  ". . . every reason to think that you will do well in this position,” conclude
d the managing director in his almost-sahib accent.

  Anthea smiled. There was no reason in the world to think she would do well at this position or why she had been summoned. But she was becoming used to grotesquery. When asked about her previous experience her first impulse was to talk about the re-copying of the History of the French Revolution that John Stuart Mills' maid had thrown into the fire by mistake; she realized this sounded quite unlike the usual twenty-five-year-old female background (“Well, two years working with an educational television show, and then I was a waitress, and then I did this part-time secretarial stuff”); nor was careful and pretty handwriting of many letters and journals a qualification to be offered in return for a high-paid post in Public Relations. Yet, even after she said nothing at all, she was given instructions to report for work a few days before the opening of the London Sun store in Piccadilly.

  The person interviewing her wore a badge that read Mr. Sutherland. Anthea stared at it and felt completely lost. The whole idea of the interview had been so upsetting to her that she'd had a whiskey for her breakfast; it did relax her somewhat, but as she was about to leave she felt giddy when she stood up.

  She wanted to be in control of the situation, not at the mercy of her own confusion, so suddenly she offered her hand and said in her most authoritative voice.

  “Thank you so very much, Mr. Gentleman, you are a Sutherland and a squalor.”

  Later, when she felt a bit more coordinated, she was thankful that Mr. Sutherland was probably left in no smaller state of confusion than herself. She found that she was happy about the new job. On the way to the lift she looked into a long mirror. She stared with unbelieving pleasure. Surely, although a cosmic mistake had occurred and unreality had taken over, this face and body were the best ever born. If in fact, they had been ever bom at all.

  Part V

  The day before the store opening, John Sun had been invited to visit one of the English management team (Wanger called any two people a team), who lived in a little suburb near Brighton. The train ride was one of the things John enjoyed most. He waved to trainmen on the tracks, he waved to people on other trains, and to children in fields. He said very little during his visit because he was looking forward so much to the return trip. And a wonderful thing happened as the train was nearing the station: signs appeared, printed in large clear letters that John could read easily: BEWARE OF TRAINS.

  “Beware of trains, beware of trains,” he said, over and over. Wanger squinted. What did the cagy lunatic have on his mind now? Was it a cleverly disguised warning to Wanger? Did it have something to do with consecutive thought-patterns?

  Wanger had bought cheap tickets, intending to deduct the money for first-class, of course, and they were sharing their compartment with a clean-scrubbed boy in blue jeans. John asked the boy his name, and told him that his own name was John.

  “... bruhcawdit,” said the boy. A few tries revealed that his brother was also called John.

  “Have you been to Bath?” asked the boy in the singing way that John liked in English people; it made questions sound so pleasant.

  “No. Perhaps we shall go,” said John nicely. “Is it near?

  The boy gave directions and added, “... and if you go to Bath; be sure to get scrumpy.”

  Wanger looked furious. He disliked clean young people; they were disavowing their image. Damned if he'd ask what that meant.

  “It’s a kind of cider,” said the boy, who had obviously been intending all the while to explain it. “Very strong, too. I mean, you think it’s a sort of fruit juice, but it really has a kick to it, as you say.”

  As I say, thought Wanger furiously, what the hell does he know about what 1 say. I don't say anything of the kind.

  John felt very good. He had learned a new word, scrumpy, and he could read an entire sign by himself. Beware of trains, beware of trains.

  As for his other first impressions of a foreign land, he was only confused by the plane trip, the waiting, the ride from the airport, the dressed-up clerks in the hotel and the wine they made him drink. It seemed silly to be thousands of miles away when London, in its sunshiny streets, looked so much like the parts of New York with which he felt familiar.

  An American model, whose picture appeared everywhere in the world, had been asked to be hostess at the opening of the Sun store in Piccadilly. The London press had been rather unkind to the Emporium, as it was called: children had wandered in and became lost in the deep carpeting, vandals kept breaking the plate glass windows and stealing silver ornaments; but Kirbye Farmer, the six-foot model with a face more familiar than anybody's own daughter, laughed it all off when she spoke to the reporters in her hotel suite:

  “I dread the idea of giving the wrong impression," she had said, with a disarming grin. “Heck, my face isn't perfect—one eye is slightly higher than the other and my mouth is crooked. See? But I'm supposed to be beautiful, so here I am, representing something that is truly beautiful: an American dream come true. This store. Like it's the sharing of loveliness with another comer of the world. I discussed it with my analyst, and he said that if I hadn't been so well-oriented and essentially liberated, it would damage my psyche to be the surrogate of something so important; yet I feel that like the President has his job and the Queen has her job, I must be integrated, really willing to represent this dream."

  “That's a right knotty one," murmured a representative of a London newspaper to his friend as Kirbye paused to yawn. His friend agreed.

  The day of the actual opening was rainy and damp and confused. Kirbye Farmer tried to greet as many customers as possible (“Try to smell of heather, can't you?" urged a director. “Anyway, smell English.”) but Kirbye looked only squinty due to the three downers she had taken.

  Anthea was developing a strange sense of dissociation. Just before noon, when a tremendous luncheon was scheduled at the Churchill, she crept into her own office to sit down for a moment and try to collect her thoughts.

  Someone else was there, sitting in her chair,

  * * *

  Alice Bloover had sent Anthea reams of material about the store personnel, the American directors, and John Sun. But it was hardly possible for a press release to describe John.

  Anthea stared at him. John got up.

  “I think I’m lost,” he said. “I was supposed to be somewhere else, but the directions weren’t straight and I kept missing so much and so much . . .”

  (But he wasn’t a fat, white woman whom nobody loved, thought Anthea. He was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen, and a familiar-looking young man, at that.)

  “You look like me,” said John, staring at her. “You’re smaller, but you look just the same.” He pulled her over to a mirror. “See?”

  Anthea saw. She turned to him. “What about missing the luncheon,” she asked.

  “Say it slower. Say it in American,” said John.

  Anthea laughed, and repeated it.

  They went to a little place where a lot of people were crowded around a bar. There were some round tables near the bar. “There’s room here,” said Anthea, pointing to an empty one. “We’ll creep into the corner and—oh, I’m not hungry. There’s the waitress. Let’s have some sherry or something.”

  John could not speak when the waitress came over, so Anthea ordered. Then she smiled and shrugged. “You’re the store president,” she said, “aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said John. “I wish I was somewhere else.”

  “Who doesn’t! How long are you going to be in London?”

  “I don’t know. They’ll tell me when it’s time to go home.”

  Anthea was wearing dark glasses, mostly to avoid people in the new store that morning and hide her own feelings.

  ‘Take off your glasses,” said John. “I want to see your eyes.”

  Anthea smiled and took the glasses off. She fluttered her eyelashes and opened her eyes wide.

  "Well. What color are they?” she said.

  John looked. Then
he said simply, “The same.”

  . . . and I really don’t know why I particularly want this job, or if I want it at all. I’m all in favor of being an independent woman; I must work and not have to rely on someone else for things. Although I hate the idea of not being sweet to a man. I mean, I think I want it both ways. Most women really do, I should imagine. A lot depends on the man, of course ...” Anthea was chattering (occasionally alarming herself at the unbridled soliloquy she was providing) and John was listening gravely, not understanding a word.

  The three empty chairs at their table were suddenly filled.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Augustus Wanger. “Look who’s here.” He was with Martin Branch and Kirbye Farmer. ‘We thought we’d ditch the big deal at the Churchill—there’s nothing more to be done here, just a lot of merchandise people talking shop ... what about that? Hey, isn’t that Miss Evan?”

  Martin Branch told a long, involved joke. Kirbye Farmer looked at Anthea and wondered if that bastard Wanger had arranged the whole thing to make Kirbye feel insecure, for Anthea’s looks were wonderfully symmetrical and not one thing on her face or body was flawed. “Stupid bitch,” mumbled Kirbye. “Probably makes half what I do ...”

  “We’re all finished,” said Anthea. “So we’ll leave you the entire table. Come along, John.”

  “I haven’t had my—” John began, but then he understood that Anthea didn’t want to sit with Wanger and Branch and Miss Farmer. He smiled delightedly. “Goodbye,” he said loudly. “We’re all finished. Goodbye!”

  At a dinner that evening at the Ritz for the store personnel, John and Anthea sat together and kept quite still. John had been listening to a man on his left going on about wines, something about "second growth” and "bouquet.” There were many wine glasses in front of him.