Slime

by John Halkin

  Go into the skid, don’t fight it, he told himself. It seemed against all reason, yet he knew he had to do it.

  But before he had a chance to do anything, a large jellyfish slapped across his face, blinding him. The 500cc bucked like an angry horse and threw him off, sending him sprawling across the roadway. Above the rush of the sea came Marilyn’s voice screaming at him.

  ‘Pete! Oh, Pete, what is it? Pete!’

  Marilyn… bloody Marilyn who’d got him into this… didn’t even like her that much…

  Long, thin needles probed his cheeks, pushing in behind his eyes, inserting themselves agonisingly into his gums until he moaned and squealed in muffled terror. His lungs were bursting, but with that thing across his mouth, closing up his nostrils… oh, Jesus!’

  It cut into his lips. It burned his eyes, etching the sight out of them, and he would never see again.

  That was Marilyn screaming – oh yes, he could still hear. But she’d no need to have done that to him. Why had she done it?

  A wave drove him reeling across the roadway once more, then sucked him back. Marilyn was holding on to his leg: it had to be Marilyn, silly cow. Dazzling lights shot through his blind eyes; his head was a bundle of tiny pins all pressing into him. But the sea would put everything right. It gathered him in. Soothing. Taking it all away.

  ‘Bloody hell, the poor sod!’

  ‘What we gonna do, Jock?’ Meg had looked on, terrified, as both Marilyn and Pete were swept out to sea. ‘Ought we to tell somebody, d’you think?’

  ‘Like who? Did you see that thing on his face, like seaweed or something?’

  ‘We should tell a copper.’

  ‘S’ppose so. It was his own fault, after all. I mean, I said it was too dangerous. You heard me say that.’

  ‘Yeah, we warned him.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Over on the east coast not far from Clacton heavy seas had broken through, flooding several houses. In one, an eighty-year-old widow lived alone. She was an independent soul, said neighbours, always ready with a cheerful word when they met her, although none of them had ever been invited inside.

  The morning after the storm, while everyone was mopping up, the local postman mentioned that she still had her curtains drawn and had anyone checked if she was all right? One of the neighbours – a Mr Williams, according to the newspaper – went over to investigate.

  He rang the bell, but heard nothing, so then he knocked at the door.

  No reply.

  The windows, both back and front, were firmly closed. So were the curtains downstairs, and in one room upstairs. It was obvious from the filth in the garden and around the doorstep that this house had suffered from flooding as much as the others, although the water had gone down again.

  Mr Williams phoned the police himself, but the whole district had been affected by the storm and it was likely to be some time before they got there. Meanwhile, what if the old lady was lying there injured? Or sick? He talked it over with a Mrs Harrison who lived in the next house along, and they decided the only sensible course would be to break in without waiting for the police.

  He fetched his tool-kit and eased open one of the downstairs windows. Once inside, he opened the front door for Mrs Harrison and together they searched the house. It smelled musty and very damp, he reported afterwards. The carpets were soaked, but on the whole the house gave the impression of having been well cared for. The bed had been used, the blankets thrown back, and there were clothes draped over the back of a chair.

  It was not until they were downstairs again that he realised what he had taken to be a broom cupboard door in fact led down to a cellar. Probably this was the only house in the whole of that road which had a cellar, but then it was also the oldest.

  The electricity was off over the whole area, but he had a torch in his tool-kit. He went down the steps to take a look. Almost immediately he was back, his face ashen.

  ‘We’d best wait for the police, I think.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Mrs Harrison guessed. She had thought as much all along. They didn’t last for ever, these old folk.

  It was not until later that he felt up to describing what he had seen. In the cellar he had found a foot or more of water, some of which had obviously come through a broken skylight: they discovered afterwards it opened just above ground level at the side of the house, next to the lean-to coal bunker. The old lady was lying in the water in her nightdress, spreadeagled. Two large jellyfish were feeding on her, one covering her throat and chest, the other over a leg. The side of her face had already been eaten.

  Newspapers differed in their reports concerning the size of the killer jellyfish: a foot to eighteen inches in diameter was the general view, although a couple said the larger ones were at least two feet. One paper gave some space to a rumour that Fleetwood fishermen had spotted half a dozen which were at least a yard and a half across. They were speckled pink and red, and swimming just below the surface.

  The story which really caught the headlines came from the Isle of Wight, and the jellyfish in that case was no bigger than a small frisbee. About eight inches, the police said.

  The victim was seven-year-old Andrew who had slipped out of the house early one morning and gone down to the paddling pool to meet his friends. His mother was not too sure how long he’d been out: she’d been busy with the baby and hadn’t noticed him leaving. When she did discover he was no longer in the house, she sent his older sister to look for him.

  No, she’d not been too worried. Everyone knew him in the neighbourhood and it wasn’t likely he’d gone far.

  The storm the previous night had been particularly severe and caused a great deal of damage. Deckchairs had broken loose from the rope holding them stacked against a wall; windows had smashed; tiles had crashed down from the rooftops; shop blinds were ripped; and the whole length of the promenade was covered in debris which the sea had thrown up – plastic containers, polythene wrappings, fragments of timber, dabs of tar, ice cream tubs, and seaweed.

  In the paddling pool, too.

  Andrew must have wondered why it was so filthy that morning, although it did not stop him going in. He wore his wellingtons – his mother said she’d warned him several times about broken glass – although he must have stooped down to splash the water, or perhaps to play with the wooden deckchair spar which was still floating there after he was discovered.

  His friends, twin brothers who were in his class at school, found him already dead, drifting on his back in the shallow water. They were still gazing at him nervously when his sister arrived.

  ‘I knew he was dead ’cos o’ the way his eyes stared at me,’ she explained afterwards. ‘I mean, they were really dead eyes like you see on the horror videos, an’ this jellyfish was on his neck, an’ it was just like the videos.’

  The jellyfish remained cosily attached to the boy’s neck even after police had rescued his body from the paddling pool and laid it out on the paving stones of the promenade. One of the beach refuse collectors eventually took it off and put it in the incinerator.

  ‘Well, why not?’ he said defensively when they questioned him about it afterwards. ‘Once these things get a taste for human blood, what else can you do with ’em? You wouldn’t throw ’em back in the sea – or would you?’

  11

  Bleary-eyed, Tim opened the fridge door and peered inside. No milk. All that had happened over the past few days had left him too shattered even to swear. The thought of making do with black coffee floated through his mind, but he rejected it. His stomach felt queasy and his mouth tasted foul. He pulled on his old jeans and a sweater, then wandered down to the shops at the end of the road.

  Most of the night he’d spent lying awake, going over it all in his mind, still unable to grasp it. OK, he’d known their marriage had been going wrong, and he’d not been exactly faithful himself, but he couldn’t get over what she’d told him. Quite calmly, too. No histrionics; no recriminations.

  ‘I want a divorce,’ s
he said in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. She might have been ordering a taxi, the way she said it. ‘Don’t argue, please, Tim. You know it’s the sensible thing.’

  ‘Do I hell!’he’d exploded.

  Why she’d chosen that moment to tell him, he just couldn’t understand. They’d lost each other over the past weeks and months, he admitted it; they’d become like strangers. He’d noticed it with their phone calls too: at one time they’d been bursting with things to say, but that had given way to long silences as they tried to make conversation. Then there were the subjects he skirted around, knowing his opinions only offended her – at least since she’d got herself involved with that crowd at Totnes. It hadn’t always been like that.

  The trouble was, she’d convinced him it could all be put right again. From the moment she’d picked him up at the station and driven him to that Devon holiday flat, she’d seemed to be taking their marriage in hand. They’d made love the way they always used to after a period apart. Not only once either; once had never been enough. They were coming back to each other, he’d imagined. That was the impression she’d given; it was what he’d wanted, too.

  ‘One of those quickie divorces would be best,’ she’d stated coolly, always practical. ‘No need to drag it out contesting anything – agreed?’

  No, he did not bloody agree. He was hurt, bewildered, unsure how to handle the situation. If this was what she’d intended, why had she led him on that evening?

  That bloody jellyfish must be at the root of it, he felt sure. Probably she was still suffering from shock. First the cat, terrifying enough, and then that poor woman in the shop who’d died on the way to hospital. That session at the police station afterwards hadn’t helped, either, when they’d had to explain to a suspicious detective-sergeant why they had put the jellyfish in their bucket in the first place. She’d made no accusations, either then or later, but it was obvious she blamed him for it all.

  But no, she rejected that explanation and insisted she’d been planning to tell him all along.

  ‘Tell me what, for Chrissake?’

  ‘I want a divorce, Tim,’ she’d repeated gently. ‘Don’t make it worse for yourself. Please.’

  ‘I love you,’ he’d tried, meaning it.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s not enough.’

  At the corner grocer’s Tim collected a carton of long-life milk – it was all they had – and a fresh Vienna loaf. He’d buy a paper, he decided as he emerged into the street again. Whatever happened about Sue and the divorce, he had to make some attempt at normality. Go through the motions.

  ‘I’ll take one of each,’ he informed the woman behind the counter, and produced a crumpled five pound note.

  ‘It’s all jellyfish today,’ she commented tartly. She totted up the prices, then counted out his change. ‘Can’t be much real news if they fill the papers with jellyfish.’

  ‘They are killers,’ he pointed out. His hand grumbled again beneath the bandages, reminding him.

  ‘So is the car,’ she retorted. ‘I see no headlines about that.’

  Back at the flat he dropped the papers on the sofa and went over to the phone. It was still early, shortly after nine; Sue was bound to be at home. He dialled her number, aching to talk to her.

  No answer.

  He let it ring for some time, thinking maybe she was still in bed, or in the bathroom, on the loo even, anything rather than admit to himself that she’d probably not been back to her own flat all night. Here were people being slaughtered by these jellyfish, he thought resentfully – irrationally, he knew – and there was no one he could talk it over with. He put the phone down, hating the sight of it.

  Ring Jane, perhaps?

  But Jane was only interested in whether or not she sold her story. What else mattered to her?

  No, it was Sue’s voice he wanted to hear, no one else’s. He’d tried the theatre the day before, but they’d said she was rehearsing. Deliberate, of course. She was refusing to speak to him.

  It was Gulliver’s fault their relationship had broken up. If only he’d never taken that part.

  Oh, fuck Gulliver!

  The company had insisted on his showing his injured hand to their own doctor.

  ‘Lot o’ money tied up in you, hope you realise,’ the executive producer had boomed down the phone at him. ‘Have to watch our investment, don’t you know? Pop into the office once you’ve seen him. I’ll buy you lunch.’

  Beer and a sandwich, thought Tim gloomily; he’d experienced Jackson Philips’s lunches before.

  The consulting room was fashionably uncluttered, elegant, and equipped with all the latest medical hardware, including a micro-computer on the desk. A far cry from his own GP’s shabby back room with its roll-top desk and worn carpet. Tidying the shelves of a glass-fronted cabinet was a strikingly beautiful nurse with skin the colour of chocolate. As for the doctor himself, he was a youngish man of clean, athletic appearance, probably not yet forty, and plenty of muscle. No casting director could have made a better choice.

  ‘Jellyfish, eh?’ The doctor watched as the nurse removed Tim’s bandage. ‘Didn’t believe it at first, not till I saw the papers.’

  He worked briskly, examining the raw wounds on Tim’s hand and wrist, checking his blood pressure, heart, temperature… He was a keen sailor himself, he said, and had come across quite a few jellyfish in his time. Nothing like this, of course, not unless one counted the Portuguese man-of-war he’d met in the Caribbean. Didn’t quite fit the same description, did it?

  ‘No,’ said Tim.

  ‘Now I’ll not beat about the bush. I’m going to give you an injection, just to be on the safe side. Normally I’d advise you to take it easy for a week or two, but I understand the company is anxious to resume filming as early as possible. Question of schedules, whatever that means. I can’t honestly tell them you’re not up to working. Wouldn’t be true.’

  ‘So – no time off?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  The beautiful nurse administered the injection with unerring aim, straight into his left buttock; meanwhile, the doctor tapped away at his micro-computer. When Tim had hoisted his clothes up again, she helped him with his belt, her long fingers threading it deftly. No smile: just the professional touch. If only life were always like that, he thought.

  The doctor accompanied him to the door.

  ‘Don’t overdo it, will you? Any problem, just give me a call. Day or night.’

  Tim accepted the doctor’s card, slipping it into his breast pocket without reading it. They must be paying him a fortune, he thought. Try ringing his own GP in the middle of the night. You’d be lucky if you got an answering machine.

  All this opulence made him sour. Sue was right, he told himself bitterly as he went along the plush corridor towards the lifts. He had betrayed something they both believed in. Acting meant a dedication to the truth. That was a view they had shared so instinctively, they had hardly needed to discuss it.

  Naïve, perhaps. And he wished he could still believe in it the way Sue did. Of course, actors had always been social outcasts, which had made the truth possible: no need to compromise.

  That was the betrayal.

  Here he was now: a servant of the company and the nearest thing to ‘corporation man’ an actor could become. Treated by the suave, expensive doctor at the company’s bidding, treading the deep-pile carpets of the corridors of power on his way to see Jackson Philips who occupied a higher rung on the ladder and must therefore be approached with deference.

  Tim brooded over it as he went down in the lift. He’d been swallowed by the company, body and soul. He was their property, marketed by them like the latest bio-detergent. Oh yes, Sue was certainly right. He’d lost his way in this commercial maw; no wonder she’d turned her back on him. Yet even as he thought about it, he knew he’d no wish to go back to that draughty top flat with the peeling wallpaper and to those long days of waiting for the phone to ring, eager to accept anything – one line, a spit and a coug
h; a face in a crowd; an unpaid part in some lunchtime fringe play – anything.

  Gulliver was a trap, he admitted it. A plush trap.

  He left the building by the main entrance and paused at the edge of the wide pavement to wait for a gap in the traffic before dashing across the road to the company’s studios on the other side. They were housed in a multistorey structure of green glass which reflected the life of the street and the sky’s billowing clouds with startling clarity. The design was typical of television, he thought as he went up the broad steps to the revolving doors; towards the main road was the public face – smooth, rich and confident, not a wrinkle in sight; but to the rear, hidden from view, were the scene docks, carpentry and paint shops, the grimy yard with its lorries, patches of spilled oil and garbage skips.

  ‘Morning, Mr Ewing!’ The uniformed commissionaire wore three rows of medal ribbons, but was mainly celebrated in the company for his racing tips. ‘Sorry to hear about that nasty do you had.’

  Tim turned on the charm. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘I’d an aunt stung by a jellyfish once,’ the commissionaire confided. ‘Didn’t improve her temper, though. Think it’s true they can kill?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Hardly credit it, would you? Jellyfish, eh?’

  Jackson Philips was in the outer office talking to his secretary when Tim arrived on the fifth floor. In most ways he was typical of his generation of television producers. Recruited directly from university – in his case, Cambridge – they had been given their heads in the intoxicating atmosphere of the raving sixties. They produced programmes which were watched throughout the length and breadth of the land. Some of the public loved them, others hated them – but everyone watched them.

  Now, almost twenty years later, several of these whizz kids were in films or the theatre; others had turned up in Fleet Street and one was a cabinet minister. A few – among them Jackson Philips himself – had become top administrators in television where they were known for their toughness, if not actual duplicity. Their waist-lines had expanded, their faces filled out to show the first signs of developing double chins and heavy jowls, but they still – on salaries in excess of £40,000 a year – tended to regard themselves as radical critics of the establishment.