Infinite Rooms: a gripping psychological thriller that follows one man's descent into madness (6 page)

8

C
lement’s eyes sprang open. A young mother was leaning toward him.

‘Would you be so kind?’ she asked, flicking her sight in the direction of the train window. Heating from below the carriage seats was becoming stifling.

‘Yes, of course.’

He stood and put fingers on the metal catch at the top of the smaller pane to open it.

‘Say thank you to the nice person, Emily,’ the woman said before clasping one of her children’s hands in her own.

The young girl’s large eyes, as blue as cornflowers, dominated her petite round face. With delicate fingers she had hold of her fish-shaped toy. She wriggled her nose and looked to dimpled knees then to the countryside speeding past.

Her younger brother clutched a stick. On the end of the stick was a brightly-coloured bird made of plastic. The boy put the tail of it to his lips and blew it as a whistle, a pleasant chirruping produced amidst the dull rapping of the wheels
along a dull landscape with its dull bushes, then a valley of dull pint pot houses and winter-ravaged trees.

Clement blinked slowly. If only we could wish to remain as we were in our early years, he thought. Instead, minds and bodies are contaminated, innocence stolen; victims of fate and time.

It was not the physical aspects of ageing he detested, more the forgetting of wholesome laughter, the purity and optimism. The ability to repel harmful rays without the need for tin foil. Children should be admired for these things – he reasoned – and we should be allowed a little envy.

Wondrous stories of what should be, the real dream, free from hatred and malice; learn to be pure with love. As is the powerful love for my Bernadette, he explained to the remembered psychiatrist.

Still the world appeared to Clement as if seen through dark glasses, rendered gloomy and dismal. Sooty-barked trees with limp leaves, grey parks strewn with rubbish and lakes like sores, pylons striding across a sombre landscape. Then a factory complex with its zig-zag roofed warehouses, walls of dun-toned corrugation surrounded by joists and piles of gravel. And forklift trucks moving here and there between canisters, looking like yellow beetles, nest-building. More sterile stretches of concrete, barren streets, anonymous houses with stark slips of unkempt garden.

Clattering of wheels on the track; tiredness, the oppressive heating…

The window tapped, perhaps with a metal object.

This mindroom is hazy. Not certain it should be active. It’s only with a forced effort that I’m able to see. Eyelids are somehow connected to a titanium mask fitted over face and scalp. And as my swollen eyes open they activate a vacuum. This tightens the mask giving me an acute pain. It seems to be making my brain ache – a pounding as though a heart pumping blood. Now I’m seeing properly: it’s Bernadette. Have to fumble for the key to open the car window. But she’s screaming at me.

‘Don’t open the window, open the damned door you drunken fool.’

Please Bernadette, change that line.

She is pushing me towards the passenger seat. I’ll have to climb over the gear stick. She’s out of the car again and opening a rear door, flung two shopping bags into the back. Lights from The Neptune Hotel are throwing a yellow stain over the forecourt. The sea is listening from the seafront behind the hotel.

Bernadette’s bottom lip quivers as she holds out her palm for the ignition key. Searching in my pockets, still drunk and having great difficulty in coordinating my actions. A halfwit here, I know. I’ll make it better next time.

You can be a wise night owl, doctor. Follow us.

The car is coughing, moving up the incline away from the town. Engine is roaring against the pull of gravity on this steep
country road. Bernadette changes down to second gear. She’s gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring ahead without a single blink. We’re at the zenith of the hill. The road has levelled out. This night is crowding us and becoming a weighted load. The headlights are cutting a white channel ahead. A segment of pastey moon casting weak illumination. Bernadette still silent. I’m trying to speak but my tongue is made of papier-mâché; lips have desiccated. Must close burning eyes but the seat is revolving fast. I’m strapped helplessly in it, like on a funfair ride. Feeling ill with drink and despair, and self-recrimination.

This mindroom needs much repair.

I turn to look at a pulsating Bernadette. This action makes a steel ball roll inside my cranium, already leaden, already too heavy for my neck to support. Bangs at my temples. A light is emanating from her, impregnable.

‘Let me explain,’ I’ve managed to say, sounding strangled and pathetic.

Still she stares impassively ahead, unreachable and resistant. Her hands have organically meshed with the steering wheel.

Buddhists chant for days to achieve a heightened state of being. But all I have to do is bend over the lavatory pan, hands on knees, and throw up. Feel the jerking contractions of diaphragm and burning in my gullet. Gasp in between spewing. Pull the flush. The vortex of water might as well be my mental state. I’ll have to swill.

Switch the controllers off.

‘Thank you very much. I was watching that film.’ She’s scowling. Never seen that expression from her before. The blank television screen crackles with static. Needs covering with tin foil. I’ll amend that.

‘Talking to me, are you?’ I had to say it.

‘You were dribbling my name and sulking. What was the point?’

‘Give me a break, I drank a bit too much. Really am sorry, alright? Finally been sick so I feel clearer.’

‘Suppose I’m meant to forgive you.’ No, Bernadette, you say something different. ‘You knew you had to pick me up at half past seven. I think you must be brain-dead sometimes.’

Just seen for the first time this evening the pads of puffed skin beneath her eyes. She must have been crying.

This significant event must be stopped. I’ll think on other subjects. Lock this catastrophe of a mindroom and place a heavy barrier until I can repair properly.

Whales once had hind legs. How remarkable that would have been. They have rudimentary bones in those massive carcasses, corresponding to hind limbs and a pelvic girdle.

Stop…

‘How could you, Donald. I was getting scared, waiting outside of the mall at night. And all you did was get out of your head.’ She’s on her feet.

‘Not fair.’ I’ve made Bernadette draw in breath. ‘Let me explain, there’s daylight until nine.’

‘Oh I see. Alright to leave me waiting because the moon hadn’t come out.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

Stop, stop.

‘Anyway, thanks. I only had to carry the shopping two miles while you were snoring.’

‘Two miles? Not that far. Still, I don’t understand why you didn’t catch a bus or a taxi home.’

‘Didn’t have any money left. And I couldn’t phone, could I, you with your stupid decision to throw the mobile away.’ I know the reason, Bernadette. It’s the infrared, it can damage. ‘Anyhow, what do you mean catch a bus? You were going to pick me up, remember?’

Lock this room, stop us from arguing, stop the sentences from ever being formed; they ring in my ears before I speak but I’m powerless to keep them from evacuating.

‘Won’t happen again, alright? Just belt up. Anyway, are you so damned perfect?’

These sharp words have pricked her truculent bubble. She’s dissolved into tears. She’s walking back and forth, wringing her hands. Stop her from doing that, doctor, I can’t seem to.

It’s done, finished, over. Delete the argument.

This filmic, it should be as easily manipulated as celluloid to edit, ideally to have it erased. This version isn’t valid. Can’t you see? Could be the beginning of the end if I can’t alter it.

Bernadette has plunged her face into a settee cushion to drown her sobbing. And I’m still ranting in front of her, one
sentence demanding another to counteract it, frightened to stop gabbling because this would leave a chasm of silence between us.

It’s not as though I’m unaware of any impending disaster. I’m only too aware of destroying her image of me. I know I’m rubbing away with a rough sandpaper on our shining relationship. I can sense it’s the first domino to topple onto the line of others. Yet I’m still raging – stop, where are my barriers? How can these bleak memories have the power to hide them?

9

‘
S
top, whoa.’ Bernadette attempting to pull the wine glass away. How did you manage to open one of my mindrooms, doctor? I’m impressed.

‘Are you trying to get my daughter tipsy?’ That’s Bernadette’s father talking.

Here’s her mother, Elizabeth, about to add a comment from the living room. ‘Harold, she doesn’t have a birthday every day.’

Bernadette, leaning back on her metal chair by our patio table, pressing the bridge of her sunglasses. Now smiling gently while sipping her white wine. The high afternoon sun is sparkling within the glass. I will make it incandesce the more, like a fireworks sparkler. I’ll take sugar cubes from their bowl on the table to make the shape of steps. Now it’s a sugar whale. Aromatic smoke dispersing from Harold’s pipe. A lawnmower snores from somewhere.

Elizabeth has stepped out onto the sun-washed patio carrying a cake. It’s holding twenty-two flame-twitching
candles. ‘Happy birthday, dear daughter.’

Bernadette is delighted. We’ll pull the wine glasses from the table for the cake to sit there.

Elizabeth tuts. ‘I’ve forgotten a knife.’

Bernadette’s sister: ‘I’ll get it.’

A starling is stepping jauntily across the lawn despite the oppressive heat, that purposeful pressure draining the day.

Elizabeth begins humming the traditional birthday ditty. We join in, the last line supplemented by Marianne as she returns from the kitchen with the cake knife.

Another waft of pipe smoke. A baby from over the neighbour’s fence is making the pram squeak while paddling its legs. The infant is gurgling and spluttering, vocalizing to the sun.

Elizabeth has cut wedges of the cake.

‘No, really,’ I have to say.

‘Don’t be a fuss-pot,’ Bernadette tells me.

The pipe-call of a cuckoo. A bumble-bee drones over to the geraniums.

‘Delicious,’ Marianne has remarked. ‘You’ll have to give me the recipe.’

‘Yes, I will, dear. Harold, eat your cake.’

He grunts a reply while still sucking on his pipe. He has turned to me. ‘What are your plans for the garden, Donald?’ He’s aiming the pipe stem to it.

‘Well, the grass has settled in nicely; the circular lawn was Bernadette’s idea. Fruit bushes along there. I want to start a
vegetable patch down by those shrubs.’ I’m waving an arm in that direction. ‘You know, lettuce, onions, that sort.’

Marianne is talking excitedly with her sister. They are both giggling. She’s admiring one of Bernadette’s presents. The pearl earrings sleep in their bed of cotton wool.

A bluebottle has flown lazily onto the back of a chair. I see, doctor, you’ve made it a wasp. You’re getting the hang of this.

‘You’ve missed this one,’ Marianne says, pointing to a wrapped box on the patio table.

Bernadette is removing her sunglasses and like an impatient junior snatches at the present. She picks at the tape, cooing eagerly; her long hair has fallen about her beautifully-proportioned face as she tears away the paper and flips open the box.

‘Thank you, Donald.’

Standing behind my chair, bending to kiss me on the cheek. She has taken the oval locket from the box and handed it to her sister.

‘Really nice, Binny. Isn’t it, mum?’

Marianne is holding up the locket by the gold chain and it revolves and catches the light. Spinning fast, seeming to show both sides at the same time. And there – faster still, beginning to blend.

Can’t be; how has this conjuring trick come about? The locket has vanished and in its place is an enamelled pendant, round and green, tarnished and encrusted, as though it were a centuries-old coin from the bottom of an ocean. This is
making me shake with rage. Get rid of this disgusting materialisation!

Marianne is attaching the chain about Bernadette’s neck and there’s the gold locket hanging only. I can’t regard it in case the vile transformation takes place again.

‘Clumsy.’

Wasn’t watching where I was putting my big feet. I really must stop putting glasses of wine on the floor. Marianne is running to the kitchen to fetch a sponge.

‘Sis, don’t worry. It’s an old carpet anyway.’ Marianne has already returned and is on her knees, sponging at the liquid seeping into the pile.

Harold says, ‘We’ll think about buying you a new carpet.’

‘No,’ Bernadette and I have replied in unison. ‘Really,’ she continues. ‘Donald is getting a raise soon.’

‘Going well if you’re getting a pay rise.’

I’ll sit next to him on the settee. The three women are chatting. ‘To be honest, the work isn’t satisfying enough. Day in, day out, reading copy from somebody else’s pen; I wish I’d become a scriptwriter. Still, these mindroom scripts are becoming easier to influence.’

Harold is nodding though I don’t think he understands. ‘Listen, a good job is scarce nowadays. You must be grateful at having one at all.’

Bernadette interrupts. ‘Let’s go somewhere.’

‘I’m tired, dear.’ Elizabeth has fluttered her eyelids as if to
underline her comment. ‘You go on. I’ll catch forty winks.’

Bernadette is holding her hands. ‘Come with us, mum – we’ll show you the pier again, you’ll like it.’

‘No, really. Go without me.’

10

I
’ve handed Marianne her candy floss. Pinkness glows from it, creating a sticky tint to smear the clouds and adhere onto beach pebbles and sand, spreading pink over the promenade.

Can’t keep my sight from straying to the locket hanging from its chain about Bernadette’s neck. It’s taunting me. As I regard it, quickly it changes to green. I must rip the chain from her and throw the locket as hard as I’m able.

Flashing in the pink sky from gold to green then to gold again until it plops into the pinky sea.

‘Going to put a picture in there?’ Marianne asks.

Distant cries of seagulls as they circle the roofs of The Neptune Hotel. See the row of white and cream-fronted hotels, arcades of souvenir shops and amusements, the cluster of antiques stalls. Laughter of children making sandcastles on the beach or the occasional shriek from one of the holidaymakers playing ball in the waves. The stretches of sand are broken by rocky clumps, like scabs. Sunbathers expose their chalky flesh to the mighty sun. Up near the west end of
the promenade, a golf course lines the top of the cliffs. Tiny flags are waving from the greens. And there, on an outcrop running far into the gleaming sea is a little finger of a lighthouse.

A maze of backstreets run up and away from the seafront. The whitewashed walls and red tiles are vivid in the afternoon rays. Above the hotels and shops stands Milsley Castle, houses scattered below the crumbling buttresses as though its subjects. Gentle waves are breaking over the beaches.

‘Catch up, Donald.’ They’ve walked through an arch – a filigree mass of ironwork – onto the pier. A sound like hissing pistons.

‘Do you love me?’

‘Donald, stop it, please. I married you, didn’t I?’ I have got hold of her hand while we wait for her sister and father to come out of the souvenir shop.

But this isn’t right. She’s there at the end of the pier, entering the small white chalet…

Here again holding my hand while we stand by a lifebelt attached to the iron railings. Her soft hand, perfect and smooth. Made to fit exactly into mine.

‘What did you get? Let me see.’

‘Binny, it’s on my head,’ laughs her sister. A sea-breeze plays with the ribbons on Marianne’s sunhat. ‘What do you think, Donald?’ She’s striking a model’s pose.

‘Very snazzy.’

I am leaning on the railings; I’ve looked away and down. There’s a disturbance from under the sea’s surface. Bubbles are coming up and joining with scummy broth, and the seaweed wrapped around the legs of the pier. A whirlpool has started, spinning faster as I look, forming a liquid hollow in its centre. The hollow is growing at a surprising rate. Seagulls are flying in circles as though to imitate this whirl of water. Sunbathers have picked up their towels, running to the promenade while seabathers are blown to the beach, each one riding a wave like a surfer. Brilliant cracks striate the dominating arc of sky; gathering smoke-grey clouds are illuminated for seconds before smothering the sun. A ghostly whistling, coming from the gaps in the gangplanks, join forces with the wind moaning like a lament. Flags and pennants along the length of the pier are flapping furiously and their ropes hum. Then without premonition or expectation the waves about the whirlpool are erupting as if there’s a volcano underneath. Those sheets of water are being flung into this day-turned-to-night. And it’s raining down upon us, drenching me in seconds, nearly washing me off my feet into the turbulent pink waves. There’s a roar and so loud it’s drowned other sounds. It has raced over to the cliffs in the east and the cliffs has sent a duplicate back. Pedestrians have flung themselves into the arcades, cowering in confused fright. From out of the swirling waters is being thrust the three prongs of a trident, each prong the height of a man. The shaft is following, a seemingly never-ending dynamic barrel of metal. And
gripping it is a massive hand. The same hue as coral, larger than a bull elephant. I’ll have to hold tightly onto the railings. My fingers are frozen there; sobs are choking my throat; everyone else has been swept overboard. The rest of this titanic phenomenon is bursting forth with such power as to send high waves crashing over the promenade and flooding the roads. Cars are being swept into shop windows. Swells are being sent far off to the horizon. And here before me, like a dream, is Neptune, rising one hundred feet or more. His skin is alive with fish and crabs. His beard and hair are made of seaweed; his crown is coral with jewels from the ocean’s vaults. Those whale-like lips are as purple as amethyst, the gigantic eyes as pale blue and opalescent like topaz. You have to see somehow, Dr Leibkov: Neptune pushing his way through the raging currents as easily as if it were the shallow end of a swimming pool. He’s reached the end of the pier, no more than a bench to him. He has plucked the white chalet from it and holding it on his outstretched, limpet-encrusted palm. I imagine a miniature man kicking open the door of the pathetic structure, Aaron running out, not onto hard planks but the spongy, olive flesh of that giant hand. With an easy motion the fingers of Neptune have tightened about the chalet. It’s disintegrating into matchsticks and pittering the choppy surface of pinkish sea.

‘Looking good.’ The girls are running excitedly along the gangplanks to the funfair. ‘See you later.’ That was Bernadette
shouting back.

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

Harold’s puffing on his pipe and nodding.

I doubt you need a drink, doctor. Anyhow, I’m not sure you deserve one. I’m repairing my past future but you’re not helping enough yet.

An announcement telling passengers to change trains broke Clement’s dream-like state. Clement stepped off the train and joined the crowded platform. He looked up to the sawtooth slats along the platform canopy then to the ornate brackets holding it but still not really seeing.

Or feeling: he had become a sensationless rind with his insides stone, cold and heavy. And mind adequately clouded. Cloaked in mystery, he estimated. He liked the idea of that. Then wrapped in enigma and covered with barriers. Yet why should they be failing, he asked himself. Had Dr Leibkov’s insidious claptrap begun to have an effect and if so, how long before he was damaged?

A shrill whistling: a guard with a whistle still to his lips and a flag held to the wintry air. Clement was bewildered; he turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The other passengers had boarded the train that stood on the opposite side of the platform, save one. She ran past the guard. ‘Quickly,’ he urged.

The girl was wearing brown leather shoes and black diamond-patterned tights (or stockings, Clement considered in an instant) with an elaborately embroidered cape about her
and a salmon pink dress. Her hair was held up with a tortoiseshell hair clip. Fine wisps and a white neck below her bunned hair as she stepped up. Her profile was to him. Unplucked eyebrow, the high cheekbone and pouting mouth: he saw these in a handful of seconds. Clement ran to the same train carriage she had entered, brushing past the guard as he went, his sight never leaving the young woman.

It was Bernadette.