“Is this just a visit, my dear?” he asked her drily, “Or are you thinking of taking up residence here once more? It’s entirely up to you. I’m not pressing you, I’m not even advising you. As you know, I never give advice to my patients, that’s not my role. I just listen. So here I am, my dear. I am ready to listen. What have you to say?”
As he spoke he slowly, and somehow threateningly, lowered himself into one of the over-large, over-stuffed chairs. Once there, he placed the tips of his fingers together, and over this little parapet of knuckles and carefully-manicured nails, he watched his wife’s face. Was this his usual pose when treating a patient, Bridget wondered? And did it, in their case, encourage them to talk? Or did it, as in Norah’s case, make their faces twitch and grimace, and their words choke in their throats?
“Well, my dear,” he prompted, after nearly a minute. “I’m waiting to hear what you have to say. You have been away now for the best part of a fortnight, putting your family to great inconvenience, and indeed to some anxiety. Out of consideration for your state of mind, I have so far refrained from contacting the police; although your behaviour has been such as to arouse legitimate concern for your safety. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Norah by now seemed to have recovered the power of speech.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could think of at first; and then, as her husband’s enquiring gaze did not flicker, she went on: “I’m sorry, Mervyn, but I couldn’t bear it any more.”
“You couldn’t bear it any more,” he repeated consideringly – and Bridget remembered having read some where that this was part of the psychiatric technique – to repeat what the patient has just said. And indeed it seemed to work: “You couldn’t bear it any more?”
“No, I couldn’t!” Norah was speaking confidently now. “It’s Christopher, Mervyn! You know it is! The awful things he keeps doing. And he’s getting worse. I just can’t cope …”
“You just can’t cope,” Mervyn repeated, but the technique didn’t work this time. Sometimes it doesn’t. And so after a few seconds he was forced to go on: “What is it that you can’t cope with?”
Here he turned apologetically to the two visitors: “I’m sorry to be letting you in for this purely domestic discussion, but as you see, there is an important issue that has to be resolved between me and my wife. I hope you will forgive us.” Then, focussing once again upon Norah, he asked “What is it you can’t cope with?”
“I’ve told you! It’s Christopher! All these mad delusions and obsessions! Dead spiders in the fridge! Sewing free-range eggs together with a darning needle! That sort of thing. I can’t bear it. No one could bear it. Where is it going to end? Where is he right now? – He’s up to something awful, I know he is …”
She paused, and for a moment buried her face in her hands. Then, looking up once more: “Oh, Mervyn, where is he? Is he all right? We’ve been her since three o’clock and there’s been no sign of him. Where is he?”
It seemed to Bridget that the expression on Dr Payne’s face resembled nothing so much as that of a committed bridge-player who finds himself with such a hand of winning cards as exceeds all the laws of probability. He turned to the two visitors with an air of almost uncontrollable triumph.
“You see?” he exclaimed. “You see what’s going on in this family! A lad of eighteen, for God’s sake, and he can’t leave the house for as much as a couple of hours without his mother going into hysterics! This is mother-love gone mad! This is smother-love …” Then, turning to his wife:
“Well, never mind. Let’s leave it for now. We mustn’t inflict this sort of thing on our visitors. We’ve been through it all before, anyway, many, many times.”
He waited a moment; but when his wife said nothing, he continued; “Listen, my dear, you still haven’t answered my question: What have you come home for? And how long are you planning to stay? It would be convenient if I knew something of your plans.”
“I haven’t any plans. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve come back this weekend just to see if Christopher’s all right … I mean, without me here …”
Dr Payne smiled; and this time the cat with the cream would perhaps be a more apt simile.
“My dear Norah! ‘All right’, without you here! That’s the under-statement of the year. Of course he’s all right without you. He’s more than all right. When you’re not here he gets a chance to be his real self – all those quirks of behaviour, which you provoke, they completely disappear, and he behaves exactly like any other normal boy of his age. He comes and goes on his own. He goes about with his friends. I suppose I’d better tell you, since you’re interested, that he set off this morning on a camping trip with a couple of pals …”
“Where to? Which pals?” The words exploded from Norah’s lips uncontrollably, though she must have known what their effect would be.
“See what I mean?” her husband remarked drily, addressing himself to the visitors “A lad of eighteen, going off on a camping trip with friends, and his mother goes into paroxysms of alarm about him! What sort of a life is that for a boy on the verge of manhood? Hard though I know it must be for you, Norah dear, you really have to face the fact that … Oh, by the way, he left a note for you. Did you find it? I think I saw it on the hall table, but maybe … Excuse me …” He was out of the room and back again in seconds with a closely-written sheet of foolscap. Hand-written, the writing so small and so cramped as to be quite difficult to read.
Norah took the note with shaking hands, and peered at it, bewildered. Then, setting it aside for a moment, she scrabbled briefly in her handbag.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed, “My reading glasses!” she delved again in the bag, and continued: “I wonder if I left them in the car? You remember, Diana, I was looking at the map for you just after we turned off the motorway. And we left the car right at the top of the road, didn’t we … Oh dear …”
She was scared, Bridget could tell, of walking alone up the dark road to the corner by the park; and though, in general, Bridget despised such timidity, she felt pity as much as scorn for Norah. The poor woman was having a dreadful time, no doubt about it.
“Don’t worry, Norah, I’ll get them for you,” she volunteered. I know just where they are, I saw them on the front ledge. Let’s have the keys, Diana; I shan’t be two minutes.”
More like five, probably, but never mind. Clutching the car keys in her left hand, Bridget hurried through the lighted hall and out into the dark.
Chapter 16
Night had long fallen, and with eyes not yet dark-adapted after leaving the house, Bridget picked her way cautiously down the front garden path, bordered by wet, overgrown foliage. Only when she reached the gate did she notice a tall, silent figure standing under the adjacent street-lamp. The pale hair shone like gold under the lamplight, and the slender, gracefully-poised figure was so still that it could have been the statue of some long-dead mythical hero.
For a moment Bridget stood collecting her thoughts. Then:
“Good evening, Christopher,” she said brightly, recovering from her first tiny moment of shock. When he still did not speak or move, she went on: “Are you just coming in, then?” He shook his head, and smiled. Was this the smile that Norah had once described as his “queer, unreal smile”, the prelude to some fresh bout of bizarre behaviour?
“No, I’m not coming in, not yet,” he answered her. “Actually, I was waiting for you to come out. I knew you would, at just this time.”
“How do you mean, you knew I would? How could you? I only knew it myself a minute ago …”
“Of course you only knew it a minute ago. I was the one who knew it all along. I programmed you to do it. You see, you are one of my creatures, I genetically engineered you. You can only do the things that I’ve programmed you to do, and I programmed you to come out of the house at just this time. And you did come out of the house. You see? It works! You have to do whatever I programme you to do.”
To her secret shame, Bridget felt
a quiver of alarm. She hastily crushed it. He was only a poor loony.
Still, she didn’t believe in humouring people, not even poor loonies.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she retorted sturdily. “And now, if you’ll excuse me …” She turned away, and set off briskly in the direction of their parked car, only to be brought to a halt by a mocking chuckle just behind her.
“You see? I’ve programmed you to walk up the road towards the park, and so that’s what you have to do. You have no choice.”
“I have bloody got a choice! Up the road towards the park is where I happen to want to go,” Bridget snapped, and set off again at a brisk pace – indeed, almost a run.
With his long, light strides he kept up with her easily, laughing softly as he kept alongside.
“Would you like me to tell you what I’ve programmed you to do at the top of the road?” he enquired pleasantly. “You are going to come to a standstill at a certain parked car, a Ford Escort, Registration number G 566 XPA. You are going to insert a key in the driver’s door …”
“Of course I am. It’s my friend’s car, and she’s asked me to get something out of it.”
How does he know the make and number of our car, thought Bridget. He must have been lurking around when we arrived. Not that it matters. No sense in asking questions and thus prolonging his irksome presence.
She edged away from him, stepping from the pavement onto the road and quickening her pace. “And now, please, will you leave me alone? I’m in a hurry, I want to get back quickly.”
“Of course you do. I made you that way. Here – listen –” and taking a strong grip on her shoulder he pulled her to a standstill. “Listen. I made you. You didn’t exist until I genetically engineered you, complete with all your memories. I am the world expert in the genetic engineering of human beings. While the scientific pundits with their government research grants have been messing about with cancer cells and onco-mice and such trivia, I have been researching the genetic engineering of human beings. I started with centipedes, but of course they had too many legs, so I turned to spiders. I reduced the number of legs until there were only two; and then – and then, after a prolonged period of trial and error, I perfected the method. A secret method of my own. It involves the manipulation of hitherto unknown growth enzymes … Oh, it’s too complicated to explain to you. I didn’t engineer you a brain that could grasp this kind of thing. I didn’t need to. You don’t need much of a brain at all really, since the only movements you can ever make, the only thoughts you can ever think, are the ones I’ve built into you. Here –”
By now they had reached the car, and he gave a thin little squeal of triump. “There! Didn’t I tell you? A Ford Escort, just as I said! And now I’m going to make you unlock it; I am going to make you lean inside … Yes. yes, you have picked up a spectacle case from the front ledge, that’s exactly what I programmed you to do! And now – you are programmed to start walking again. Back down the road the way you came. It’s all fixed for you – you can’t do anything else!”
Can’t I indeed! She looked at the opposite direction, across the intersecting road, beyond which lay the park with its shadowy trees and bushes looming darkly behind faintly gleaming railings. Suppose, just for the hell of it, she was to put paid to all his nonsense by walking in this direction instead of down the road?
What on earth would be the point? You couldn’t reason with a person whose reasoning faculties are so grossly impaired. Besides, she was in a hurry to get back. But no sooner had she taken a single step in the “programmed” direction than a mad, triumphant chortle from her companion roused in her such a surge of defiance as overwhelmed common-sense, and almost before she knew it, her body had swung round on its heel and raced across the road ahead, taking her with it.
Once in the park, picking her way through the tangled darkness, with black masses of looming vegetation shaking drops of water over her at every step, Bridget realised how silly she had been. And what a waste of time the whole thing had been, too – hadn’t she assured her friends that she’d only be a couple of minutes? Swiftly, she turned to retrace her steps; and even as she did so, she heard the squeak of the park gate.
Was it Christopher? Or some stranger? Whichever it was, she was determined not to be frightened – she, who so despised women who were scared to go out and about by themselves after dark. But she knew that if you want to hang onto the luxury of despising other people for this sort of thing, you have to be very sure of your own credentials.
Bridget was very sure. She had long ago learned (in the primary school playground, as a matter of fact) that there were three ways of overcoming fear. First, you straightened your shoulders like a soldier on parade, and took two deep breaths. Second, you walked towards whatever seems to be menacing you – never away: and, third, whatever it was, whoever it was, you took the initiative. It was essential to speak first; make the first move.
All of which she did on this occasion.
“Good evening,” she said to the dim oval of a human face which she could now just distinguish, like a great white fruit hanging from the dark branches to her left. At her words, the dim face seemed to attach itself to a tall dim body emerging from the bushes and blocking the path ahead.
Christopher, of course, still following her, still checking on her every movement in order to dove-tail it into his fantasy.
“This is where you will learn a lesson,” he said. “This is where my early experiments in human engineering have to live because they are imperfect, and very, very dangerous. They have to keep out of sight. They are going to hate you because you are a perfect specimen and they are not. The one who hates you most is the one whose brain somehow got tangled in the mechanism and came out all wrong. He hates you, hates you, hates you, because your brain has come out right. By that time, I’d identified the fault, but too late to help him. He resents it all the more because, physically, he is so perfect. He is tall, and slim, and strong, and a lock of his yellow hair falls across his forehead as he moves. He has beautiful blue eyes, too. The eyes are the windows of the soul. One day, he let me look through those windows – only in the mirror, of course, he was afraid to let me come any nearer. I looked through these blue windows, right through to the distorted brain behind them. I saw it, just that once, in all its horror, and I’ve never looked again. He is somewhere here, right now, among the bushes; I know it, I can feel it. You are going to meet him any minute now, and when you do, you must run, and run, and run.”
For a moment, the pale face came within inches of her own, it streamed and glittered with the sweat of some violent emotion, and the lock of hair fell damply across the forehead.
“You must run, and run, and run!” – and with a thin, high-pitched laugh, the figure whirled around and disappeared round the bend of the path. Once again, she heard the clicking of the iron gate.
Only a few yards to go, really, but it seemed like a long, long walk. Never since early childhood had Bridget experienced this sensation of not daring to run because the very act of running can turn manageable fear into unmanageable panic. Not until she reached the car did the the thudding of her heart slow down and her breathing return to normal.
Christopher was there, waiting for her, and as she approached he gave another of his high-pitched laughs.
“You see? You see? I can make you do things! And now – watch – I’m going to make you walk down the road, back to the house.”
This time, she wasn’t going to argue. She had wasted too much time already. It was a nuisance, a humiliating nuisance, that her knees were trembling so that she could hardly walk, but she set off all the same in her chosen direction.
He was delighted. His little cry of triumph quivered in the air of the quiet, deserted street.
“You see? You see?” he kept repeating, as he paced alongside in his soft shoes. “You are walking back along the road! You have to do everything that I make you do. Soon, I am going to make you commit a murder. Yes, murder. One day, ve
ry very soon, you will be covered with blood – your hands, your face, your clothes – everything – and you will realise then that what I’ve told you is true. On that day, the truth will be staring you in the face; on that day, you will wish that you had believed me; but it will be too late … You will be in my power. I am the King of the World.”
His long strides were keeping up with hers as she walked faster, and yet faster, finally breaking into a run.
“I’ve programmed you to run, and run, and run!” he almost shrieked as their two shadows leaped in unison from street-lamp to street-lamp along the empty pavement.
“In a minute,” he cried, “I shall make you wrench open our garden gate, I shall make you race up our garden path, and I shall make you hammer, hammer, on the door, hoping they will let you in!”
Chapter 17
“Whatever happened to you? Is the car all right?” Diana asked anxiously; and Bridget, having reassured her on this point, and apologising vaguely for having been so long, subsided into one of the big chairs to consider what, if anything, to reveal about her recent adventures. It seemed wiser, just for the moment, to keep quiet about it. It could only trigger off another spasm of Norah’s maternal anxieties, and might well be disastrous if Mervyn were to come back in the middle of it, as he well might do. Besides, she needed time to concoct a slightly modified version of events which would not reveal her own panic. For she was the strong one, was she not? She was the no-nonsense one who would never panic about anything, and she preferred it to stay that way.
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