Dr. Yes (4 page)

    'And
. . . could she not . . . have?' I asked tentatively, although obviously not
tentatively enough, judging by the look Alison gave me.

    'No,
absolutely not.'

    He
would have left it at that, but I persevered.

    'You're
sure? Women are unpredictable, they change with the

    Alison
snorted.

    'Do
you know how I know?' Augustine asked. 'I know she didn't
just disappear
because of the last words she said to me in our final phone call.'

    He
dropped in that pause again. He was definitely good at the dramatics.

    'Yes?'
Alison asked, unable to contain herself.

    I was
expecting something dark and suspicious, some prescient hint that things were
not as they seemed.

    'She
said, "I love you, honey bun.'"

    And
just like that, he drew Alison into the trap, and like a fool, I followed.

    I
phoned Alison at three a.m. Obviously, I wasn't sleeping. She answered
groggily. 'Brian?'

    In
days gone by, the presumption that it was her ex-husband might have driven me
insaner with jealousy, but I was now well used to her wicked ways. She was like
Bennett Marco in Richard Condon's
The Manchurian Candidate,
perfectly
normal for ninety-nine per cent of the time, but secretly brainwashed to say
something cutting and nasty at a subconscious trigger, in this case her bedside
telephone ringing.

    She
said, 'What? Who is this?'

    'Who
do you think?'

    'Oh.
Sorry. Asleep. What?'

    'I
just wanted to say .. .'

    And having
learned the art of the dramatic pause from a master, I gave her exactly that.

    'What?'

    And
kept it going.

    'What?'

    And
kept it going.

    'Oh
for fuck—''

    'I just
wanted to say, if you think we're calling our son Caspar, you've another think
coming.'

    And
then I hung up.

    Sometimes
it's the little things that give the greatest pleasure.

    I
never truly sleep, but I do occasionally venture into the half-awake Land of
Nod, where I have timeshare. But this night I endured a nightmare about Mother.
I had finally consigned her to a pre-funeral home several weeks previously
because since her stroke she was just
too much trouble,
but now as I
twisted and turned I imagined that she was back in her bedroom at the top of
the house. I heard the clump of her footsteps on the floor above, their creak
on the stairs as she descended, and then heavy breathing outside my door. I
screamed at her to leave me alone, that I hadn't been bad, but I was sorry and
would be a better boy. I buried myself under the quilt and prayed for her to go
away, and eventually drifted off.

    I was
up at the first light of dawn, angry for foolishly terrifying myself when I
knew all along that the sounds were not born of a feverish nightmare, but were
very real, and belonged to the gaunt, red-eyed and destitute author Alison had
invited to sleep in my big, empty house without so much as a by-your-leave and
who was already sitting at my breakfast table, gorging himself on Rice
Krispies. She was so wrong about my house. You're never alone with a
personality disorder. And sometimes it's preferable to having an actual,
real-life guest, one whose emaciated chest is exposed by a barely tied borrowed
dressing gown last worn by my incarcerated mother and who is happily slobbering
down the last of the skimmed milk.

    I
knew why Alison had done it, and I could understand her reasoning. She wanted
to help this heartbroken man, and I had the space. In a way I liked the idea of
him being there, because I could pump him for information about his writing,
and I could engage him in conversation while quietly passing him copies of his
exceedingly rare books to sign. But the reality was different. He was barely
through the door before he was ordering pizza, and I had to pay for it when it
arrived, an outrageous price considering the size of it, the thinness of it,
and the fact that everything he had chosen to top it with was liable to set off
my allergies. And also, he wolfed it without offering me
any.
He washed
it down with Mother's sherry. He must have had two pints of it. In pint
glasses. One might argue that he was drowning his sorrows. But he held his
drink with the expertise of a professional mourner. When I tried to talk to him
about his work, he never quite managed to answer any question I put to him,
opting instead to launch into a preamble, then transferring to a tangent before
settling on something
completely
irrelevant. I had some very detailed
questions to ask about his
Barbed-Wire Love
trilogy. In fact one
question alone took me fifteen minutes to deliver. He ought to have been
flattered that I was so interested in his work, but he chose instead to roll
his eyes, puff on his cigar, which he lit safe in the knowledge that Alison was
no longer present, gulp his sherry and then say at the very end, I'm sorry,
could you repeat the question? Even my attempts to get him to sign his own
books were thwarted. When I produced the box, he marvelled at their pristine
condition and then proceeded to bend their spines as he began to read them as
if he had never seen them before. I literally had to prise them loose from his
fingers and put them away for safe keeping. I was just trying to do some
business, and he was being a nightmare. My plan to quadruple my investment
disappeared as fast as the pizza.

    Only
late on, when he was very drunk, did he finally start talking about his lovely
Arabella again. He grew tearful. He raged. He accused and pointed the finger of
blame. I listened and nodded - that was all he wanted. He was in no mood to
discuss the evidence, or lack of it, or for me to dissect his delusions, which
is what they undoubtedly were.

    'You
need more Rice Krispies,' he said.

    He didn't
need to say. The box was on its side, the remaining dust spilled across the
kitchen counter, only some of it drowned by the trail of milk he had left,
leading from the counter across the floor to the table.

    As I
sat opposite him, having Lo-Lo'd a sliver of wholemeal, he crammed another
overflowing spoonful into his mouth and spluttered out, 'He has testicles
everywhere.'

    'Excuse
me? Who has testicles . . . ?'

    He
swallowed down. 'Tentacles, he has tentacles everywhere.'

    'Oh.
Right. Who? Mr Kellogg?'

    'Dr
Yes.'

    I
just went, 'Mmmmm,' and continued eating. I didn't want to go over the same old
accusations again. I was already going to have to repeat them to Alison as soon
as she arrived. She hadn't been able to join us last night because of a hair
appointment.

    A
hair appointment.

    A
hairdo
.

    They
are such contradictions.

    It
was the only time she could go, because of work.

    
I
ask you
.

    She
let slip that it cost £75.

    I
bloody ask
you
.

    Like taking
food out of Caspar's mouth.

    Shit!

    She
was now brainwashing
me.
Her original suggestion of Rory was bad enough.
No child of mine would
ever
be called Caspar.

    If
indeed he was a child of mine.

    I
didn't respond to Augustine's tentacles assertion until about an hour later,
when he finally emerged from my shower, having used all of the hot water, and
came downstairs, still wearing Mother's dressing gown, fruitlessly searching
for something to eat while he got dressed. As he picked his way through the
fridge, Alison arrived through the back door and greeted him enthusiastically.
She had brought three Starbucks frappuccinos with her, which was a nice
thought, and out of character.

    As
Augustine shuffled off clutching his, Alison raised an expectant eyebrow.
Actually,
all
of her was expectant. When I didn't respond she said,
'Well?'

    'Well
what?'

    'The
hair?'

    'Did
you not get it done?'

    'You're
funny.'

    'No,
seriously. It doesn't look any different.'

    'It's
a different colour.'

    'I
think not.'

    'It
was blonde, and now it's honey blonde.'

    'If
you say so.'

    'And
it's half the length!'

    'Are
you sure?'

    'Yes!
I needed something more manageable.'

    'Like
me?'

    'You're
funny.'

    'So's
your face.'

    'Just
... oh! I don't know why I bother.' She sat down at the kitchen table and
opened her Starbucks. I joined her. I gave her a long look.

    'Seventy-five
quid? I don't think I've spent that much on a haircut in my entire life.'

    'I
rest my case.'

    I
could have told her the truth, that Mother had been cutting my hair for the
past thirty years. It was a simple process, involving a cereal bowl and a
flamethrower. Or I could have explained that my father used to take me to his barber,
as fathers do, but at the age of twelve, when my interest in mystery fiction
was just starting to take over my life, I stumbled across an ancient reprint of
an old penny blood serial called
The String of Pearls
, featuring that
urban legend Sweeney Todd, and I refused point blank to go to a barber's after
that in case he cut my throat. I was a sensitive kid. Luckily, I grew out of
it. Could have told the truth, chose not to.

    Alison
said, 'So, what's he been saying?'

    'Tentacles.'

    'As
in . . . ?'

    'Dr
Yeschenkov, his tentacles reach everywhere, apparently, the police especially,
which is why they tend to side with him over lovely Arabella. They think she's
run off too. They say her credit card was used at a cashpoint in Dublin a week
after she checked herself out of her hotel.'

    'It
could have been stolen.'

    'That's
what I said. Apparently the police brought Augustine in and showed him CCTV
footage the Garda sent up, taken from the bank's camera above the cashpoint, of
her taking the money out.'

    'What'd
he say to that?'

    'He
said it looked like her, but it wasn't her.'

    'But
he hadn't seen the new-look Arabella.'

    'Exactly.
But he's convinced.'

    'So
they told him to bugger off.'

    'Yep.
He went to the newspapers, weren't interested. He stormed the clinic, mad
drunk, thinking that would get the press interested, but all it got him was a
night in the clink. He took to standing outside shouting at anyone going in or
out. They took out an injunction. Court told him he couldn't go within half a
mile of it. So he stands half a mile away, with a megaphone. He's been
bombarding them with phone calls and e-mails and ordering coal for them, and
pizza, and wreaths and all sorts of shit, generally just being really
annoying.'

    'And
all he wants Dr Yes to do is stand up and admit to killing his wife?'

    'That's
all.'

    'And
he has no hard physical evidence at all?'

    'He's
seen her medical records. The only thing he can say is that she was allergic to
penicillin, but it doesn't show on her consent forms.'

    'And
they say to that?'

    'They
say it does on the original, and they sent over poor photocopies; they
rectified it and sent better copies.'