by Tom Grieves
Joe had just stabbed Emma in the hand with a protractor when the phone finally rang and a quiet, unprepossessing voice invited her to a meeting at the Company. Emma was screaming and shoving her hand in Carrie’s face to examine ‘the damage’, while Joe himself was howling about something inexplicable. Carrie silenced them, took down the caller’s details, hung up, then soothed her children’s hysterics while a new excitement swelled inside her. She was in.
A week later, Carrie returned to the very room in the same offices where she had first been interviewed. She sat there with a glass of water and expected the elegant old man to come in and begin things again. But when the door opened, a younger man entered. Much younger, early twenties she guessed. He wore a simple dark-blue suit and white shirt without a tie. His hair was short and neat, in fact everything about him was tidy and earnest. He peered through the door at her.
‘Carrie?’
She nodded and stood up.
‘Hello, I’m David.’ He walked over and gave her a formal handshake, not really meeting her eye. He carried two large files under one arm which he placed carefully on the table. ‘I’m sorry about how long it’s taken to get you in. Sit down, sit down, please.’
The room had a long central table, and David ushered her to one side then sat facing her on the other.
‘So. What can I tell you? What do you want to know?’
She was thrown by the openness of the question. ‘Er, well, anything. Everything.’
‘Everything? God, I don’t know if I’m qualified to go into all that!’
He seemed to think that this was rather funny. He had an uneasy laugh. It was as though the noise was somehow embarrassing and needed to be shut down as quickly as possible. He looked small in his suit, uncomfortable in his own skin. She watched his shoulders twitch and his hands move uneasily from knees to table to knees. She could tell that he dressed to make himself look important but he was really only an apprentice. Carrie tried to hide her irritation.
‘Well, what can you tell me?’
‘About what?’
‘About the progress of the project, about where things are going. All the stuff they told me when I first signed up. I know it’s part of an experiment, but there are things that don’t add up, somehow. Like what Ben did at night, where he went. No one told me what happened then.’
‘Right.’ He frowned and stared at the table. Then he opened one of the files, looked at it for a second and shut it again. He looked up at her and scratched the back of his neck. ‘Shall we start with Ben? Are you still interested in him at all?’
Interested? She nodded as casually as she could. ‘Sure.’
‘Well, he was hugely useful, a really ground-breaking case study. Changed the way we think about so much. There will be books about him one day, I bet.’ A thought struck him and he hurriedly scrawled something inside one of the files. Carrie waited as patiently as she could. When he looked up at her, his face was blank.
‘Oh,’ he said, as though he’d completely forgotten she was there. ‘Sorry, something popped into my head, wanted to get it down. Where were we? Ben. Yes. So, he was great and thank you from everyone here. I should have said that at the top. Sorry, I’m not so good with people.’ He tapped his head as though this explained everything. ‘Bit of a boffin, that’s what everyone calls me. Anyway …’
He shoved one file to his right and opened the second.
‘Well, now he’s gone, we thought you might be interested in a new case. Same sort of work. You’d move in with the subject, they’d consider you their significant other, you’d record and observe, just as before. But obviously, no case is the same and I doubt very much that they’ll last as long as that last one. First one’s a pilot. Commercial jets, mainly long-haul. Second one would be more intense. A surgeon. He’s suffering from exhaustion. What do you think?’
‘They sound different.’
‘Yes, they do. A bit posher, both of them, but that shouldn’t be any trouble for you.’
‘I meant, they’re very different from Ben. They don’t seem damaged like him. What’s the point of them?’
He frowned as though he didn’t understand.
‘What’s wrong with them?’ she pressed. ‘The point of the project was to help people, I thought. So how are we helping them?’
‘Oh, right.’ He looked a bit bored now. He flicked through the file without much enthusiasm. ‘Here we go. The pilot’s having nightmares about crashing the planes he flies. He thinks he really might do it, is struggling to tell whether he’s awake or asleep sometimes. There’s some interesting research we want to do here, about sleep therapy, about the way professionals cope under stress. And the other guy, he’s got knife issues, it’s all a bit bloody – but you’d be perfectly safe, really.’ He snapped the file shut again.
‘And I would just observe?’
‘Sure.’
‘And they would … what will happen to them?’
‘Who knows? We never know at the start, do we?’ He smiled as though that was that.
‘Would they be taken away in the night as well?’
He didn’t reply to this. He folded his hands on his lap, looked at her with a little more confidence than before.
‘Maybe.’
Maybe he wasn’t the boffin he was pretending to be.
‘Can I ask you something else?’ she asked.
‘Please.’
‘You said he was gone, Ben. What have you done with him?’
‘Done? You make it sound like we’ve killed him,’ he said with a laugh. Carrie forced a smile to join in.
‘Would it matter, though?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘If he was dead?’ He still had his hands on his lap but Carrie felt that cool confidence in him again.
‘I just found him interesting,’ she lied. ‘It would feel like a waste.’
No one said anything for a while. She noticed a harassed young woman hurry by the door, laden down by a stack of grey, cardboard files.
‘You know the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona? The cathedral?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I’ve seen pictures.’
‘It’s a never-ending project. Men work on it knowing they will die before it’s completed. That was the norm in medieval times, but to see it happening today, it’s an incredible act of faith, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t really follow.’
‘We’re a bit like that. Our work. Always watching, checking, monitoring.’ He sounded excited as he continued. ‘Billions of pounds, dollars, yen, euros. Everything analysed and considered. Tiny jigsaw pieces which will one day give us answers about the human mind. We’ll all be dead too before the final answer comes, I’m sure. So – Ben, a waste? Hardly. He’s just another step forward.’
‘You’re saying he’s alive but in a different experiment?’
He leaned in. ‘I’m saying that you are making a mistake if you think that we ever stop working, looking and watching. You have a mind too, Carrie.’
‘My mind doesn’t feel like it’s going to teach anyone anything,’ she said.
‘Is that really what you think?’ David’s eyes were locked on her. He sat taller in his chair now. ‘After all, you’re so inquisitive.’
This didn’t feel like a compliment.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ he asked, and she was thrown by this sudden change of direction. ‘We’ve got one of those instant things where you can choose your type. They’re actually quite decent.’
He sprang to his feet and marched over to the coffee machine.
‘I’m fine with water, thank you.’
‘Yes, you had three coffees before you came out, didn’t you?’
They really were watching her. The machine dribbled a thin line of brown liquid into his cup. He stared at it, letting his last comment settle.
‘Do you know what a panopticon prison is?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘The panopticon is a type of prison designed by
an English philosopher called Jeremy Bentham, in, I think, 1780-something … 1785. It’s brilliantly simple, basically a circular building, but the point is it’s designed so that the guards can see the prisoners at all times, but the prisoners can’t see the guards. And when you’re a prisoner in a panopticon prison and you’re never sure if you’re being watched or not, then your behaviour begins to alter – in case you are, you see? – until you behave properly at all times. And yet there might be no guards at all. It’s genius, isn’t it?’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Yeah, really, surprisingly good.’
‘Why are you telling me about this?’
He didn’t reply for a moment. His expression was so cold. And then he was smiling again.
‘How about a latte?’
She nodded, but only because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She wanted to run away from there. As the machine delivered its goods, he turned to her.
‘You asked what we do, Carrie. We watch. That’s the nature of our work. And it operates best when everyone is pushing in the same direction.’
‘And Ben?’ Her mouth was bone-dry, but his name forced itself onto her lips. ‘Is he gone forever?’
‘Why do you care?’ He held the coffee cup, but he didn’t bring it over to her. ‘Carrie, the work you did was successful because you dealt with it in an objective manner. A scientific approach. You make it sound as though you felt …’ He looked at her again, as though she were now more interesting but also more disappointing than before. ‘Love?’
Carrie couldn’t find the strength to deny it.
‘God, once love gets into the mix, everything’s fucked.’ He spat out the last word. You didn’t fall in love with the test, did you?’
‘You’ve been watching me all this time. You know the answer to that.’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘We do.’
He didn’t move. Carrie felt naked under his gaze. This silly little man now terrified her. Then he snapped out of it and brought the coffee over. ‘Honestly, if this was in one of those big mugs at Starbucks you’d have to pay three quid.’
She drank the coffee and joked about it tasting of piss and laughed at his mock-disappointment. But inside, her emotions spun and screeched. She had received his message clearly enough. She had been stupid to come here and wave her arms in front of them. They were watching her more closely now. She was part of the experiment. And there was no escape from its clutches.
When she returned home she didn’t know whether it was safer to lock the door or not.
FOURTEEN
I leave the car in the town next to the B&B – I’ll take the bus from here, over the hills, back to the B&B. Tomorrow I’ll get the bus again and come back, pick up the car and move it once more, returning it in two days’ time. If I return it early, then they might notice me.
It’s nearly midnight now. I bought a small rucksack on the way with money I found at Jacko’s and it’s weighed down with the papers and files I took. The straps dig into my shoulders as I trudge along the dark streets. I can hear the sea and it is a familiar, reassuring sound now.
As I head towards the B&B I notice a light flicker inside a car. I stop and see two men sitting inside. One of them is using a lighter for his cigarette. In a second, it’s extinguished. I watch the men as they sit there. I can’t make them out in the darkness. They could just be waiting for a mate. Or they could be cops, interested in someone else entirely. Or they could be for me.
I turn and walk back, my head down, my hands stuffed deep into my coat pockets, hunched against the wall. If I do a big circle, come down through the back of the church, I can get back to the B&B without them seeing me. But if they’re here, then they must know where I live. I stop. But if they know where I live, then why wait out here? But if … I go through a thousand possibilities in my head and get cross with myself. I get spooked too easily. I stop and take ten long slow breaths. In and out, in and out. Okay. Get back, be careful, move on tomorrow.
The diversion adds about twenty minutes to the walk, but it calms me down a little. I’m less manic as I slip over the church’s low walls and head for the other side. It’s dark here and the crosses and graves are a bit creepy. But then I bloody well slip over and everything falls out of the bag onto the mossy paving stones. If I was scared before, I’m bloody furious now and I’m scraping everything back into the bag as fast as I can, but the wind’s pushing papers all over the place. I can’t let any of it go. It might be the one sheet that tells me about Sarah or something else. And it might be the one piece of paper that tells them that I’m here. I scrabble about on the ground for ages. And then, when I think I’ve got them all, I sit there on my knees and shake my head. This is all so fucking ridiculous.
I’m about to stand up when I realise I’ve been looking at a grave without any interest, but the words on it have finally hit through. ‘Martine Groves, faithful and loving wife, 1941–1989’. To the right and the left are smaller graves – Tabitha Groves and Thomas Groves – both dead on the same date. Both just children when it happened. Edward’s family. Buried here.
They did not leave him. His family won’t be coming back. They are dead and he’s been lying to me.
I push the crushed papers firmly down into the bag and tighten the straps so they can’t get out again. And then I look at the graves again, just to be sure. Why has he been lying to me? Why not tell me the truth? Why make up a story? Why did he let me in when he won’t talk to anyone else?
I walk back, and I’m more scared and more angry with each step.
I enter the house and it’s quiet, baking hot – Edward’s gone mad with the heating again. There’s something wrong with the thermostat, but he won’t let anyone in to fix it. Doesn’t trust workmen, he drunkenly told me, although he never explained why. He never explains anything properly. I drop the bag on the bed and pop open the top so the papers slide out again. I look at some of them but they’re just bills, just details of a dead stranger’s life. A link to my past, snapped out.
I walk through the empty B&B but it takes me a while before I find Edward. He’s dozing in the kitchen, the obligatory bottle and glass of whisky in front of him. I pour myself a measure and stand over him. I’m topped up with nerves and aggression. He wakes and when he sees me, he stiffens.
‘Hi,’ I say.
He nods, trying to look calm, but his flicking tongue betrays his nerves. Is he nervous because of how I’m standing, how I can be, or because of something else, something that’s about to happen?
‘You found your man?’
‘I did.’
‘And you talked to him, did you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re awfully cagey.’
‘He killed himself.’
He looks at me, cautious and quiet as he takes this in. ‘Why did he do that?’
‘I tried to talk him out of it.’
‘I see. Poor fellow.’
‘Yeah.’ I find I’m pouring myself another drink, my glass already empty. ‘Can we talk about something else?’
It’s so quiet. No one ever rings, there’s no post, no one visits. How can that be?
‘So …’ his fingers tap against his knees. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘What did you do today?’
‘Me? Are you serious? Burnt some food, drank some booze. Are we really going to talk about me?’
‘No one called?’
‘No one calls.’
‘No. Is the phone even connected?’
‘Of course it’s bloody connected.’
‘So that your family can reach you, right?’
He doesn’t reply, just swills the booze around his glass. Then he reaches over and pours more into mine. He’s doping me.
‘When did they last call, Edward?’
He’s silent, then the voice that replies is quiet and tight. ‘No one calls.’
How does a place like this exist? Ninety-degrees hot, every light on in the house, no calls, no neighbours, no let
ters, no cold calls. Nothing.
I watch him rubbing his thumb distractedly over his wrinkled, curled hands. I watch his eyes flick from me to the glass, then to his hands and then repeat the checklist over and over – me, booze, him. Until now I’ve always considered him a quirky eccentric. I felt guilty when I scared him before. But now my lungs are tight and his sweet old face betrays a wariness and cunning that I’ve never noticed before.
‘How do you afford to live here?’
‘You seem very interested in me tonight, Ben.’
‘That’s not my name.’
This shuts him up. He looks at me, his face creased with confusion.
‘So … who are you then?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You said Ben isn’t your name. You said it with some certainty. So … who are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must do.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Why? What happened today? Why are you being like this?’
I don’t reply. The kitchen’s so bloody hot. I can see growing sweat marks under the armpits of his dark shirt.
‘If your name isn’t Ben …’ he says, pursuing my riddle with an uncomfortable smile.
‘What do you think?’
‘You want me to guess a name? Out of thin air?’
‘Do I look like a Ben?’
‘What does a Ben look like?’
I knock back the whisky. If tonight’s going the way my twitching heart suspects, then I’m going to need a few glasses more.
‘Well?’ he says, almost pleading.
I just grunt back. Pour a glass for him.
‘How come you never watch the TV?’ I ask.
‘I’m sorry?’
I just look hard at him. You heard.
‘I don’t like TV. It’s all shit. Game shows and stupid presenters with flashy suits and big teeth. Not my thing.’
‘But you don’t listen to the radio either.’
‘I don’t understand, Ben—’
‘I told you—’
‘Whatever your bloody name is, listen son, I’m not scared of you. You sit there, you sit there all tough and hard, but I’ve done worse than you so cut out the attitude, you hear?’