King of the World

by Celia Fremlin

  And Norah, coward that she was, had said Yes, she did see, and never argued at all. Well, what was the point? It would only cause a lot of upset, especially if Mervyn came to hear of it. And spiders, after all, were only spiders.

  But Christopher’s delusion didn’t stop at spiders, or even at centipedes. In her heart, Norah had known it wouldn’t. She wasn’t prepared, though, for the genetically-engineered mouse, four times the size of a normal mouse, that turned up in her kitchen a few days later. Cowardly as she had now become, she congratulated Christopher on this remarkable success, and then, later, while he was at school, she bribed the rat into a corner with a piece of bacon, and then, protected by a stout pair of gardening gloves, she captured the creature and dropped it over the fence at the bottom of the garden onto a patch of waste land.

  “I’m so sorry, it seems to have run away,” she’d planned to lie to her son; but by the time he got home he had lost interest in the creature.

  “I’m into something much, much bigger!” he assured her, with a sinister note of glee in his voice, and went off upstairs “to prepare the blue-print” for his next venture. Pages and pages of it, including diagrams of weird and intricate machines, One of these, it turned out, was a machine designed for sewing free-range eggs together – a necessary preliminary, apparently, to the achieving of the Grand Design.

  All too soon, the nature of the Grand Design was revealed to her: nothing less than the genetic engineering of a complete human being. This, he explained to her, his blue eyes shining like warning lights with a terrifying triumph, had been his target all along.

  “You always have to start with animals for this kind of research,” he solemnly explained, and went off upstairs to put the final touches to the blue-print for the perfect human being.

  Had he actually been telling Diana all this? Had he showed her those pages of gobbledygook, and had she really been convinced by it? Though actually all she needed to be convinced about was that the cramped lines of handwriting and the weirdly complex diagrams would come out well on the TV screen. Probably they would. After all, no one was going to try and read them; they’d be flashed on and off the screen far too quickly. They did this routinely in serious science programmes, so why not?

  What else had he and Diana talked about? Norah had been relieved, of course, to find Christopher in one of his “good” moods on the afternoon of their arrival. He tended to be at his best, at his apparently sanest, when in the company of strangers. She recalled, now, that disastrous party to which he had invited half the neighbourhood without warning. She remembered his pleasant smile, his courteous bearing towards the guests as they converged, bewildered, on the unsuspecting household.

  That was just the way he’d behaved this afternoon. Norah had been thankful – naturally she had – that her son was presenting such an acceptable image to the visitors. The hideous embarrassments she’d dreaded simply had not occurred. Why, she might even have risked letting him make the tea. At the time, she had dreaded that he might add to the tea-bags some incongruous substance that suddenly caught his fancy; but she realised now that this probably wouldn’t have happened, so “good” was the mood he was in. His behaviour throughout the visit had been impeccable. No one would have guessed that there was something terribly wrong with him.

  There were moments when she couldn’t even believe it herself. Was she (as Mervyn kept assuring her) imagining things? Once again, she found herself in the grip of those doubts about her own sanity which are an occupational hazard for carers in her situation. To be in the presence of distorted thinking twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, takes its toll in the end. One picks up the distorted logic in just the same way as one picks up a foreign language when living abroad; it lodges in the brain effortlessly, and almost without conscious awareness.

  Was this what was happening to her? Was she gradually turning into a person to whom this could happen? What sort of person was she turning into, under the worsening stresses of her life?

  In a moment of near-panic, she scrambled off the bed, switched on the top light as well as the bedside lamp and headed for the wardrobe, which had a full-length mirror on the inside of the door.

  It was difficult to get the illumination quite right. She set the door open at this angle and at that angle: she moved the bedside light from here to there and back again, until at last adequate illumination fell upon her ravaged face.

  Yes, ravaged. That was the only word for it if you looked closely, really closely, as she was looking now, peering intently at every single line, following its course across the puckered brow, and from the base of the nose to the corners of the tightly-compressed mouth.

  No one – absolutely no one, looking at her now – would guess that Norah was only a little over forty. She could easily be sixty. And worse than that – far worse – she wasn’t herself any more. She could still remember herself quite well – a happy, outgoing young girl who went in for tap-dancing. A girl with bright eyes and a ready smile, making new friends wherever she went. Even Mervyn had been proud of her in those days; he’d loved to take her to the various social functions at the hospital, and she had been able to hear the pride in his voice when he introduced her to colleagues as his wife. “This is my wife, Norah …” She was an asset to him in those days. He loved her.

  This shouldn’t have happened to me, she raged silently, staring into the worn and defeated face. I wasn’t the right kind of person to be struck by tragedy. I was a cheerful, carefree sort of person, who should have had a cheerful, carefree sort of life. A person enjoying her daily round, and enhancing the enjoyment of those around her by her light-hearted gaiety. That was the person I was meant to be, that was my inborn nature. That was myself. This person; this one in the mirror, shattered and dulled by the tragedy of having a schizophrenic son, – it just isn’t me. It can’t be.

  It is, though. This is how it happens. This light-hearted person who is simply not suited to tragedy – when tragedy does strike, it changes her, slowly and inexorably, into a person who is suited to tragedy. It may take months, it may take years, but it will happen.

  It has happened. To me.

  With a surge of revulsion, Norah slammed the wardrobe door shut, blotted out the unnatural creature in the mirror and flung her selfback onto the bed to sob the night away.

  Or some of it, anyway. One always goes to sleep in the end. This, at least, was one thing she had learned.

  Chapter 14

  Bridget heard the wardrobe door slam shut. Indeed, it had shaken the whole flat, as well as the table on which she was working, but it had not occurred to her to go and find out if anything was wrong. She was busy, making notes on an article on the Polish gas industry which she was going to have to translate from the French tomorrow. She needed to be familiar with the relevant technical terms in both languages before going into the Conference hall tomorrow, and so the banging of the door was no more than an annoying interruption.

  It was annoying, though; and it had interrupted her. It had made her feel irritable, all over again, about this tiresome new flatmate of theirs. Her original objections to giving house-room to this unhappy lady had been, she felt, amply vindicated. Further and further complications seemed to be accumulating round the bothersome little creature, and this was affecting everyone. Already, Bridget and Diana had been lured into spending an entire Saturday afternoon on Norah’s problems. Well, no, that wasn’t quite fair. It hadn’t been Norah’s urging that had made them accompany her on the expedition, it was Diana who had been so keen – not to say hell-bent – on exploiting Norah’s traumatic situation for the “Heart to Heart” programmes.

  There was nothing wrong with that, in itself. It was her job, after all, to track down photogenic disasters, especially in family situations. “Exploiting” wasn’t quite fair either, because Norah had seemed greatly relieved at the prospect of having company on a distinctly frightening expedition. After all, the oppressive husband might have been there, and it had been Diana
who had undertaken, quite inventively, to eliminate that risk.

  But now, it seemed, a repeat performance was planned for tomorrow. They would be driving down there again, this time in Diana’s car, and Diana would once again be interviewing the crazy boy presumably in greater detail this time, and with a heavy slant towards action-bites. “We want to avoid talking heads as much as we possibly can,” she’d explained recently, and so she would be setting Christopher up to do – well, what? What did you get a schizophrenic to do which would illustrate his schizophrenia to a sufficiently titillating degree, without offending against the increasingly complex and panicky rules about invasion of privacy which, according to Diana, were proliferating in her trade to a frustrating degree.

  And how – why – had Bridget allowed herself to be drawn into this second adventure? This was the really annoying thing, and it was this, really, that had made that slamming door as annoying as it was.

  The worst part of it was that Bridget had only herself to blame. She could have said “No”. Even more galling was the fact that her Sunday was still empty of engagements. So there was no way she could say, “Sorry, I’ve got to do so-and-so”. Everyone knew that the cancelled visit to her parents had left her day totally and uncharacteristically free.

  So she had said “Yes” when she ought to have said “No”. Actually, Diana had been very pressing: she was nervous about the trip, that was obvious. Twice she had asked Norah, in a studiedly offhand manner, whether there was any risk of Christopher turning violent. She had clearly been rendered uneasy by Norah’s slightly evasive assurances. So she welcomed the idea of an extended body-guard on the premises. Diana was good at her job, with a knack for establishing an intimate rapport with her subjects; but even for her the initial approach must sometimes present difficulties. Sheer brazen cheek was sometimes required to initiate these exchanges; to surmount that fraught moment of getting across to a total stranger the idea that their personal disaster was going to be fun to watch. Not in those words, of course; and, as Diana often pointed out, some victims liked it. Some found that it lifted them up and out of their miseries like a powerful euphoric drug.

  But some didn’t. And if it turned out tomorrow that Christopher was one of these, what might he not do, unbalanced as he was. The fact that yesterday he’d liked the idea of being on television was no guarantee that he’d like it again tomorrow.

  Bridget could have kicked herself for being so feeble, for letting herself get involved. But she secretly knew that she’d have kicked herself even harder if she’d kept aloof from it all, and had missed out on the whole adventure.

  Chapter 15

  The drive down to Medfield, with Diana at the wheel, was a good deal pleasanter than the previous day’s. The weather was pleasanter, too. The wind had dropped, the rain-clouds had been blown away, leaving one of those winter skies of magical blueness, out of which the low sun sent a slanting light across the stubble fields and newly-ploughed furrows. They were passing now through that meagre stretch of real country that lay between London and their destination, and Bridget found herself able to enjoy the scene, in a mild way, now that it was not overlaid by the tensions inseparable from Alistair’s show-off driving style. Perhaps the whole afternoon was going to prove mildly enjoyable after all? She was beginning to be quite glad she had come.

  Norah had a key, of course, so when Christopher did not answer her ring on the bell, she opened the door and ushered her companions into the hall. The fact that he hadn’t answered the bell was beginning to twang at her nerves, already taut with apprehension. What was he doing? Was he so obsessively absorbed in something that he hadn’t heard the bell? Or had he chosen not to answer it?

  Tremulously, from the foot of the stairs, Norah called her son’s name. “Christopher!” she quavered, almost sotto voce, as if she didn’t really want him to hear her; and then, visibly pulling herself together, she called again, a lot louder, her voice almost a scream: “Christopher! Where are you? We’re here! Come on down!” and already, as the echoes rose and died away round the bend of the stairs, she knew he wasn’t there. The others knew it too. There is something unmistakable about an absence. Everyone is aware of it, always.

  This did not, of course, prevent them (it never does) from thoroughly exploring the place, opening every door. They even tried the door of Mervyn’s study, but of course it was locked, as it always was when he was not there.

  Back in the entrance hall, the three looked at each other.

  “It’s not that we’re too early,” Diana volunteered, looking at her watch. “Three o’clock was the time he specially asked me to come, and it’s a quarter past already.”

  She, and Bridget likewise, now looked at Norah. The next move was up to her. This was her home. Her son.

  “He – he must have gone out,” she murmured – a remark so obvious, so inane, that she was not surprised that it drew upon her one of Bridget’s impatient put-downs. “Really? And what else can we deduce from the fact that he’s not in?” she enquired drily; but added, almost immediately, and remorsefully: “I’m sorry, Norah, I do see that you must be worried …”

  Worried, yes indeed. Though of course Bridget couldn’t have known about the thoughts that were darting like silver-fish through Norah’s over-active mind: “He’s out! He’s out by himself! What is he up to? Is he upsetting the neighbours? What have his voices told him to do – and to whom?” Or had he, perhaps – and despite her fears, this quite commonly happened – had he gone off on some perfectly sensible errand? Shopping, perhaps? or to call on a friend?

  Except, of course, that he hadn’t any friends. An acquaintance, then? He might, just possibly, be next door at Louise’s. Once, long ago, it had been almost a second home to him, when he and Louise’s Peter, as small boys, had been in and out of each other’s houses quite a lot. Was it possible that, magically, this old closeness had somehow been revived? It was a wild hypothesis, considering the rift which had developed between the two families in recent years. Still, there could be no harm in asking. She and Louise were still on speaking terms, though the old intimacy had long cooled into mere politeness. However, on this occasion mere politeness would be enough. “Yes” or “No” would be all that Louise needed to say.

  “I think I’ll just pop in next door,” she explained to her companions, “They may know …” and before she had decided how to finish the sentence she was out through the front door.

  Louise was surprised to see her, naturally – well, they’d hardly spoken for weeks. She even seemed cautiously pleased. When all else has failed in a relationship, curiosity can still keep it going after a fashion, and Louise was clearly curious to know what had been happening to her neighbour all this time; in particular, she was curious to hear the reason for Norah’s recent disappearance. Had her marriage finally broken up, like so many in the street?

  But Norah, anxious and in a hurry, was not very forthcoming: which was a pity, because this was a moment when the old friendship might have been restored. She refused Louise’s invitation to come in for a cup of tea, and instead stood hovering on the doorstep, radiating unease. She’d only dropped in for a moment, she explained, to ask if Louise had any idea where Christopher might be this afternoon?

  But Louise, disappointed at this rebuff to her tentative overtures, knew nothing.

  “We haven’t seen anything of any of you, for weeks,” she pointed out, not unreasonably. “No, I haven’t the faintest idea what Christopher is doing. How would I? He never comes in here any more. He and Peter don’t hit it off any more, do they?” Distant. Aggrieved. The moment for rapprochement was over, and Norah retreated, apologising as she went.

  Her companions had by now succeeded in making themselves cups of tea in the unfamiliar kitchen, and were now seated in the sitting-room, heads together, talking. About her, Norah found herself instantly suspecting; but instantly rejected the thought. It wouldn’t do for her to become paranoic as well, now would it?

  Four o’clock now.
A full hour after the appointed time, and still no Christopher.

  “Well, I suppose we might as well be going,” Diana was beginning, her usually up-beat tone flat with disappointment. “I do think though, after coming all this way …”

  What she had thought was never to be revealed, for at that moment the front door opened. They all heard it: they all felt the quiver of outside air passing through the house before the door was slammed shut and footsteps sounded in the hall.

  “Christopher!” Diana exclaimed. “He’s back!” She sounded alert, relieved, once more on the job.

  But it wasn’t Christopher. The tall and strikingly handsome man who now strode confidently into his own sitting-room was middle-aged and with greying hair still thick and abundant. His clean-cut features were not only outstandingly regular, they betokened a firmness of purpose, an unassailable self-confidence, that were somewhat intimidating to – outsiders, that is, reflected Bridget. To his patients, with their tremulous, mismanaged egos, he might well have come across as a tower of strength, a bulwark against unmanageable fear. His likeness to his son was minimal, Bridget noted, during those moments of embarrassed silence which succeeded his unexpected entrance. His complexion was dark where Christopher’s was fair, his build sturdy and muscular where Christopher was slender and willowy. All the same, there was a likeness: something indefinable about the eyes. Although the father’s eyes were grey and those of the son a clear and lucent blue, they both gleamed with the same sharp and wary intelligence. Yes, intelligence: however distorted it might be in the boy, it was still there behind the scenes, inextinguishable.

  The silence stretched intolerably as the seconds mounted. Dr Payne was the first to speak.

  “Well, my dear,” he said, addressing his wife, “So you have decided to return home. How very sensible! Aren’t you going to introduce your friends to me …?” – and then, when his wife remained paralysed – by shock? – alarm? – embarrassment? – guilt? – whatever it was – he gave an apologetic little bow first to Diana and then to Bridget as they introduced themselves. Then Mervyn turned back, with a sort of controlled menace, towards his wife. Well, of course he was angry with her. What husband wouldn’t be?