The Parasite Person (18 page)

H
E’D ALWAYS KNOWN
he would love being on television. It had been his secret dream for as long as he could remember, and now the dream was about to be fulfilled.

He’d arrived at the studios ridiculously early, so nervous had he been lest he should arrive late, and had sat in the entrance hall for more than an hour watching the celebrities making their way in and out, and hugging to himself the thought that now, at last, he was one of them. Or nearly. Or would be, anyway, before the evening was over.

Of course, they might not
all
be celebrities, these vaguely impressive passers-by. Some of them might be electricians and messengers and things. But somehow it made little difference. Here they all were, anyway, at the glittering hub of things, and he, Martin Lockwood, was among them.

This was the place where he belonged: had always belonged. He was coming into his heritage.

They were all charming to him. With bright, welcoming smiles they looked him up on their lists, showed him where to wait, brought him coffee in a plastic beaker. Well, he hadn’t expected it to be a golden goblet, had he? And indeed it had no need to be, for it was like the nectar of the gods anyway. This was
Television,
was it not, and this was himself, Martin Lockwood, taking his place among the mighty. It would take more than a plastic cup of warmed-up coffee with blobs of powdered milk floating in it to destroy the glory of it all.

The make-up room was wonderful, too. He’d been startled, at first, by the notion that a bronzed upstanding he-man like himself
shoud require such adornment; but the make-up girl, like everyone else, had been charming.

“That’s what they all say,” she assured him. “But you’ll be surprised how natural it looks on camera. Your friends will all tell you—and you’ll be able to see for yourself, I daresay, if they do a repeat of you. I expect they will.”

She laughed a little, amiably, as she proceeded deftly with her task, and Martin felt his heart swelling with a mixture of nervousness and pride. “I expect they will,” she’d said—was she just being polite, or did she actually know something? It couldn’t be her business, exactly, but no doubt there was a busy grapevine here just like everywhere else, and he had, after all, been introduced to her by name.

His face, in the mirror, seemed to glow with a new confidence, a new assurance that had nothing to do with the make-up. Already, he looked like a celebrity, and he wondered if the girl had noticed?

Never mind. She would next time. “You mean
the
Martin Lockwood?” she would say with bated breath next time they were introduced.

*

The studio was so full of lights and wires and hurrying young men that at first Martin found it quite difficult to orientate himself. He was introduced to his fellow-members on the panel—the two of them who had already arrived, that is. One was a professor of psychology from some Northern university, the other a stout white-haired lady in a scarlet trouser-suit who had written a book about something or other, he couldn’t gather what, but it didn’t matter, he smiled enthusiastically and said. “How interesting!” and then the three of them chatted, rather stiltedly, “getting to know one another” until the fourth member of the panel arrived and was ushered into their midst.

At first, he didn’t recognise her. In a slinky, silvery evening dress and with her greasy elf-locks done up in the glittering coils on top of her head, Ruth Ledbetter looked like a total stranger, and a most distinguished one at that. By the time he took in who she was, she was already in her seat, two places away from him, and chatting
easily with her neighbour, the Northern professor, as if this sort of thing was all in the day’s work to her.

The little devil! He couldn’t help admiring it. How on earth had she wangled herself on to the programme? Cheek, of course, sheer, brazen cheek—it could get you anywhere, especially if you were a beautiful young girl. He’d never thought of Ruth Ledbetter as beautiful before—rather the reverse—but tonight, in this get-up, perfectly groomed, and with that unwonted air of aristocratic elegance—beautiful was the only word. Her eyes, which he’d never really noticed before, were green as a cat’s under the arc lights.

The interviewer, a good-looking young man who could not be more than thirty, was as charming as everyone else had been, if possible more so. The programme started with him talking to Martin easily, and with genuine interest, about the nature of this fascinating new project; drawing him out, encouraging him, and asking exactly the questions that he had hoped to be asked. Under this expert and sympathetic guidance, Martin found himself answering fluently, easily. All his nervousness had gone, now that the programme had actually begun, and he suddenly realised, with a little leap of the heart, that he was a “natural” for this kind of thing. Secretly, he had always known he would be, but how wonderful to have it confirmed, in front of all the world! All his friends would be watching, all his colleagues, all those people who’d got ahead of him in the academic rat-race—
this
would show them!
This
would make them sit up and take notice of him at last! These moments of
absolute triumph, of total
unqualified
success, were moments of such happiness as he had never known.

It couldn’t go
on for ever, obviously. Other members of the panel had to be given their turn. Smiling and suave as ever, the
interviewer
turned to Ruth.

“And now, Miss Ledbetter, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about
your
share in this exciting enterprise? I understand that you’ve been working as Mr Lockwood’s assistant for some time now—collecting information for him, and generally helping with the great work?”

There was a tiny pause. Ruth had been looking down into her
lap as he addressed her. Now she raised her head and looked her questioner full in the face.

“No, I haven’t collected any information for him,” she replied, “There’s been no need. He makes it all up, you see. Every single interview—all the case-histories, everything—they’re all
completely
phoney. He’s made the whole lot up to fit this crazy hypothesis of his. The whole thing is a swindle from beginning to end, a complete and utter con….”

*

What happened next, how they set about cutting-off the programme, Martin would never know. The moment was so appalling, so shocking, so totally unendurable, that he blacked out on it completely. He retained only a sharp little cameo-portrait of that pleasant smiling face grown icy with shock … of a stunned silence … and then of a cold voice saying, “I’m afraid, Mr Lockwood, this goes beyond apologies…. This is a kind of let-down we’ve never experienced before….”

After that came the endless corridors … walking, walking, as if in a nightmare … and now, somehow, here he was in this taxi, with the street lights flicking past like all the years of his life, and somehow, beside him in the vehicle, Ruth too was seated.

She was saying something. What it was he neither heard nor cared. For all he knew, she might be saying she was sorry.

“Shut up!” he hissed. “I don’t want to hear a word from you ever again. I just want to get home to Helen.”

Helen. Somehow, Helen would find a way of diminishing the agony. She would have heard of someone else that this sort of thing had happened to, making him feel that he was not utterly alone in his disgrace.
No,
she would say, of course he hadn’t ruined his whole life! No life is ruined by one single disaster—in fact a disaster can sometimes be a springboard into something new and
wonderful
, in some totally unexpected way.

Everyone makes mistakes, she would say, even frightful
mistakes
, but a brave man can go forward and live them down. And Martin
was
a brave man, she would assure him; and hearing the words spoken in her loving voice, he would be able to believe them.

A laughing-stock among his colleagues for the rest of his life?—
Listen, darling, do you remember that famous actress we heard on the radio, who was asked what was the most important thing she’d learned in all her long career? And do you remember her answer:
“Everybody
forgets
everything
!”

His scientific reputation in ruins? Not necessarily, she would say, her grey eyes earnest and thoughtful. Sometimes it can be the false hypotheses just as much as the true ones which help science on its way. Look at Semelweiss, propounding the theory that it was the devils rising from the corpses which were causing puerperal fever in the maternity ward adjoining the mortuary. The
hypothesis
had been absolutely wrong, of course, quite ridiculous really, and yet it had paved the way to the bacterial theory of infections, and all the fantastic medical advances which have followed …

Yes, these were the sort of things Helen would say. In a few minutes she would be saying them, making them real for him in her sweet voice, with her arms around him, her love and loyalty unshaken.

*

“Helen? But she won’t be there.” Ruth sounded slightly surprised. “I’ve killed her, you see.”

She waited a moment, and when Martin did not answer, she went on, slightly aggrieved:

“I told you I would. I told you I’d kill her if she interfered again—and she
did
interfere. She’d found my Timberley interview you see, and she stood there saying it was all lies, and wouldn’t give it back to me. I wanted my other interviews too, the ones in my own handwriting that might be recognised, but she just stood there, blocking my way, and tried to stop me getting at your desk.

“I warned her. I warned her twice. ‘Let me get at that desk!’ I said. I told her I’d got a knife: and I had. I told her that if she didn’t get out of my way I’d kill her: and I did.

“That was fair, wasn’t it? She’d been warned.”

In the wavering light of the taxi she turned towards Martin as if for assent to this proposition: and when he neither moved nor spoke, she went on:

“All right,
be
like that! But don’t start imagining you’ll get anywhere by setting the police on me, because you won’t. Like I
told you, I’m only a kid, and when they hear how I’ve been seduced and then heartlessly abandoned by a man more than twice my age…. And don’t waste breath pointing out that you
didn’t
seduce me, because who’s going to believe it?
I
shall stick to it that you did, and what with me being an inexperienced young girl and you being a hardened lecher who within a few weeks has betrayed three women in quick succession, starting with your wife…. Well, what do you
expect
everyone to think? Can you wonder that my innocent little heart is broken? That I’m beside myself with uncontrollable jealousy?

“A
crime
passionnel,
that’s what it’ll be, Prof: and what with me being so touchingly young, hardly more than a child, I’ll bet you anything I don’t get a prison sentence at all: just the Welfare and all that jazz; and believe me, I know how to make rings round
them
all right.

“Honestly, Prof, teenage is a wonderful age to be! Maybe you remember? You are at the very peak of your powers, mental and physical, and yet nothing you do is your fault! It’s the archetypal eat-your-cake-and-have-it bonanza of all time, and am I making the most of it while I can! Suicide—fraud—blackmail—and now murder! I shall get away with the lot of it—just you watch!”

In the dark interior of the taxi she fairly bounced about on the seat with glee, and the swiftly-passing lights flickered across her pointed face like goblin fire.

*

Presently, they were outside the flat. The taxi had come to a halt, and money—presumably Martin’s, though he had no recollection of having taken out his wallet—had been passed through the window to the driver. Already the vehicle was on its way again, apparently with the murderess still inside, for now he found himself standing alone on the dark wet pavement outside the house. His keys, by some automatic process of which he could recollect nothing, were already in his hand.

The front door closed behind him, and step by step, in heavy darkness, and with awful slowness, his feet mounted the stairs towards the flat.

Helen is dead. The words came slowly, one-two-three, in time
with his footfalls, and they meant nothing.

Up he went, up and up, in the darkness and the silence, and the words went with him, round and round the bends of the staircase, and still they meant nothing.

“Pretty Tweetie! Pretty Tweetie! Pretty Tweetie!”

The shrill little voice made him miss a step, and he clung to the banisters, shaking. That damn bird, he thought, Helen will really have to …

But Helen was dead. She would do nothing about the bird, ever again. Whatever the tiresome problems were, they would be Martin’s problems.

He was on the landing now, fumbling with his keys like an old man. It took him ages to get the door open.

*

What
did
you have to do when someone was dead? Helen would know, or would soon find out. She was good at finding things out for him. She would find out who to phone, what to say to them.

But it was Helen who was dead. She would find out nothing for him, ever again.

He couldn’t take it in, the shock was too great. I need a stiff drink, darling, I’ve just had a most terrible shock: and sitting there in the darkness, he waited for her to bring it to him.

She would never bring him a drink again. She would never bring him anything.

Helen is dead, he told himself yet again, but it still seemed to be beyond his understanding. She would have to explain it to him, in simple words, so that he could grasp it. She would have to comfort him.

Stretched out on the couch, face downwards, he lay in the dark waiting for her arms to come round him.

*

It had been past midnight when Martin had arrived at the hospital, and they’d told him straight away that she just might survive, though the danger was still great. The stab wound had been perilously near the heart, and she had lost a fearful amount of blood, which was why she might not survive the operation, which was in itself (they assured him) a relatively straightforward one.