The Parasite Person (5 page)

It was a hit-and-miss business at best; and more and more these days he found himself reluctant to expose himself to these dreary
perambulations with so uncertain a prospect of reward. It wasn’t even as if there was anywhere pleasant to walk. Helen’s flat, pretty and elegant enough inside, was nevertheless situated in a
peculiarly
dreary neighbourhood of tall converted houses and ill-kept front-gardens. There was no park or recreation-ground for miles: from this point of view he’d been much better off at home—at 16, Hadley Gardens, that is to say—and so now, when Martin took himself out at all it was as a prisoner in the exercise-yard, grim and joyless, the sole purpose being to prevent himself sinking into irreversible apathy, physical and mental.

*

While he ate his lunch—a double-decker cheese and bacon
sandwich
—Martin kept a close watch on the square of grey slanting rain framed by the window, fearful lest it should begin to lighten, or the cosy patter of raindrops ease against the glass. Provided it kept on like this, as the barometer had promised it would, then there would be no question of the bloody walk. He might have a little sleep instead, and really get down to work after tea. Yes, that would be the best plan. After tea was always a good time, with Helen home, pottering companionably in the kitchen and tiptoeing in every now and then to see if he wanted anything.

A little flurry of rain against the window sounded like a tiny burst of applause: his decision seemed to be meeting approval even from the elements. Settling himself on the sofa, with his feet up, he closed his eyes.

And then the telephone rang.

H
E TOOK FOR
granted it would be Helen. This was her hour—the school dinner-hour—for ringing him up to say she’d be home late. It was very unsettling, and it seemed to happen constantly: some wretched teacher being away with flu, or having to go to the dentist, the osteopath, the oculist—it sounded more like a
nursing-home
than a school, Martin would sometimes comment sourly. Or maybe the driver of the coach to and from the playing-fields hadn’t turned up; or the headmistress was entertaining an important visitor; whatever it was, however unconnected with her actual duties, it always somehow seemed to involve Helen; to involve her, furthermore, in some task so inane that it was impossible to conceive why they wanted it done at all, let alone why they needed a First Class history graduate to accomplish it. Waiting behind for some child’s father to turn up and take her to ballet class: sitting with someone else’s form while they did their French homework: attending an emergency staff meeting to decide what to do about girls who came to school in slit skirts. Such trivia! Such drivelling, pettifogging nonsense! Sometimes Martin was furious on Helen’s behalf, that they should so exploit her and misuse her talents; and sometimes, more disturbingly, he was ashamed of her for allowing it.

Anyway, what with one thing and another, Martin was relieved rather than disappointed when the voice down the phone turned out not to be Helen’s at all. It was a male voice, vaguely familiar, and though he couldn’t at first place it, he recognised immediately that it was the voice of somebody annoying. Somebody who had annoyed him before, who would continue annoying him in the
future, and was certainly about to annoy him now.

“Lockwood here. Who’s speaking?” he snapped, his voice already sharp with anticipatory irritation.

“Oh. Yes. It’s me,” came the idiotic reply; and immediately Martin recalled the idiotic face that belonged with it: round, cherubic, and adorned with a cheery, optimistic smile almost impossible to wipe off.

Walter. That’s who it was. Walter Cummings, the pink, grotesquely contented Psychology student who’d been allotted to Martin as Research Assistant for this project of his. “Just to assist with the donkey-work,” Martin’s supervisor had told him, a little apologetically, “I’m afraid he’s not really qualified yet to work on his own initiative.”

Or to work at all, if it came to that. The donkey would in many ways have been preferable. Donkeys at least can’t ring up in the middle of one’s afternoon siesta to bray at length about their reasons for not doing whatever it is they are supposed to be doing.

“So you’ve decided to let me down over the Timberley
interview
,” Martin barked, before Walter had managed to get any further than, “You see, the thing is, Mr Lockwood …” “That’s what it is, isn’t it? Don’t waste time explaining, let me guess. You’re ratting-out again, as always. Because of the weather, no doubt,” he added witheringly. “You’re planning to upset our whole schedule because you don’t like going out in the rain! You’re scared of getting wet! You make me sick, you students, you’re so feeble you don’t know you’re born …!”

Not in the least offended, Walter laughed the tolerant little laugh that he kept for his fuddy-duddy elders when they seemed to be getting themselves worked-up. If Martin could have smashed his idiot face in, here and now, by putting his fist through the phone, he would have done so.

“Oh,
no,
Mr Lockwood, you’ve got me wrong, you positively have. It’s not the rain—well, not in any direct sense, if you see what I mean. It’s like this, Mr Lockwood: what’s happened, the little old bus won’t seem to start this afternoon. It’s the electrics again, I think, the wet’s got into the electrics somehow. I mean, weather like this, it hasn’t let up all day, has it, and the little old bus, she
can’t take it. It’s not like she had a garage over her head, is it, she spends her nights on the streets does my little old bus, not like
your
swanky young …”

Martin gripped the receiver till his knuckles whitened. It was the ghastly, unshakable bonhomie of the little monster that maddened him most. Idle, irresponsible and incapable students were, of course, no novelty to Martin; but never before had he had to deal with one so sublimely unaware of his own worthlessness. Hidden away under Walter’s plump, self-satisfied exterior lurked a plump, self-satisfied ego of terrifying dimensions; an ego so bloated with inner security as to be quite beyond the reach of ordinary reproofs and put-downs. Even two years in the Psychology Department had made no dent in it: Freud and Jung and all the other purveyors of guilt and self-doubt had simply bounced off it, like so many tennis-balls.

“Well, toodle-ooo, Mr Lockwood,” Walter concluded, quite unabashed; and as a crowning insult managed to hang up on Martin just before Martin had succeeded in slamming the phone down with such force as to set the little reptile’s eardrums ringing. If only they’d still been there. And if reptiles do in fact have eardrums? Oh, what the hell! Damn, damn, damn!

So what to do now? Martin’s first impulse was to get Walter’s Director of Studies on the phone, and urge him to have the lad horse-whipped, or sent down, or something: but of course he could see for himself how useless it would be, in this present day and age. Nothing would happen to Walter, while on him, Martin, the whole thing would rebound with hideous force. Before the week was out, he’d find himself saddled with a reputation for being authoritarian, upper class, right wing, non-egalitarian and all that sort of thing. And then where would his career prospects be?

Besides, even if, by some miracle, Walter’s Director of Studies
did
pay any attention to the complaint, it still wouldn’t solve the immediate problem. Satisfying though it might be to learn that Master Cummings was to be hanged at dawn and his head nailed up above the supermarket check-out, it still wouldn’t get this Timberley woman interviewed as arranged, at three o’clock this afternoon.

He’d have to do it himself. That was the grim conclusion towards which everything pointed. There went his afternoon nap. There went his cosy tea with Helen, chatting about this and that. There, too, in all probability, went his evening session of work. His nerves would be in shreds after all this frustration and annoyance, on top of the effort of being compassionate and caring towards this damn Timberley woman. That was the trouble with depression. It might be a good subject to write about, but it was liable to land you with the most bloody awful interviewees. It could be like getting speech out of a hibernating tortoise.

Inwardly fuming, Martin flicked open the street-map and
studied
the route. Seven miles at least, right through the centre of town. Allowing for getting lost, and for traffic blocks, and for all the other obstacles that Fate so loves to scatter in the path of those who are already behind schedule, he ought to be starting just about right now.

Scribbling a note for Helen, warning her that he might be late—what a relief it was that she wasn’t the sort of woman to make a fuss about it, as Beatrice would have done!—he collected his Timberley file, his notebook and his briefcase, and set out into the rain.

*

It was still raining quite heavily when he drew up outside the small, prim terrace house in which this Mrs Timberley lived with her depression. He had already made some notes on the bare facts of her case—that she was fifty-four years old, married, and that the depression had grown upon her gradually over a number of years. He also had notes on the various drugs and treatments that had been tried out on her during this period, none of them apparently, having halted by the smallest degree the relentless progress of her malady from “mild” to “moderate” to “severe”. Over the years, she had had spells in hospitals, spells out of hospital, spells
attending
psychiatric out-patients. At the moment, she was out of hospital and “under Domicilliary Care”, though who was doing the caring was not, from the notes, at all clear.

As he swooped across the wet pavement, shoulders hunched against the downpour, Martin experienced a small lifting of the
spirit, akin to that of the hunter who has successfully cornered his prey, though it still has to be dispatched. At least he’d arrived at the damn place; the worst, in a way, was already over. With a faint feeling of accomplishment, he pressed the bell, and listened to the sweet chimes from within playing their quaint background music to this Mrs Timberley’s dark night of the soul.

“Y
ES
, S
IR
,
PLEASED
to meet you, Sir, won’t you come in, Sir?” enthused the rosy-faced old man who opened the door to Martin. “Come along in out of the wet. Terrible, innit, this weather we been having? Still, mustn’t grumble,” he amended, as he helped Martin divest himself of his raincoat in the narrow passage. “Spring’s around the corner, only a month away now, innit? That’s what I been saying to my Magsy”—here he dropped his voice, and gestured significantly up the dark little stairway—“Perk up, me dear, I been saying, keep your pecker up, gel, Spring’s only just around the corner! That’s right, innit? Just around the
corner
….”

So narrow was the passage-way, and so dark now that the front door was closed, that getting Martin’s wet raincoat hung on a peg was quite a business, a sort of ill-choreographed little ballet, with the two men sidling around and across each other, trying to get out of one another’s way; and all the while, Mr Timberley—for this, presumably, was the elderly husband—kept up his flow of effusive and slightly servile welcome. “So good of you to come, Sir, so kind! My Magsy, she’ll be that pleased to see you! My goodness, you should ’a’ seen her, she’s been that excited all morning, there’s been no holding her! And now, Sir, if you’ll just step up this way …?”

The upstairs room into which Martin was ushered was small and dark, and very hot. A two-bar electric fire glared and hummed among the shadows, and there must have been some kind of central heating on as well, so completely had the wintry outside
temperature
been cancelled out and obliterated. The windows, small and
meanly-proportioned in the first place, were so cluttered up with lace curtains, net curtains, and heavily-draped velvet curtains that only dim vestiges of the damp grey daylight were able to penetrate the room, and at first Martin found it quite difficult to locate his subject.

“… that excited all morning, there’s been no holding her!” Mr Timberley had informed him fondly; and Martin peered around the small room, stuffed with furniture and dusty ornaments, trying to accustom his eyes to the dimness.

Then he saw her. Lolling like a great cushion in a high-backed easy-chair, she had made no move to greet him; but she wasn’t asleep, either. He found himself staring into a grey, swollen face from which a pair of tiny, unblinking eyes stared back
malevolently
. Or seemed to do so. It was impossible, really, to guess whether this unnerving fixity of gaze betokened active hostility, or merely an indifference to his presence so total as to be quite scarey; a relic of the primeval void before Creation was begun, and darkness was upon the face of the earth.

“Mild”, “Moderate”, or “Severe”? Tilting his record card
towards
the cracks of light from the window, Martin checked the category.

“Severe”. Yes. They could say that again. He gritted his teeth, preparing for the ordeal. Ugh!

Still, here he was. It had taken nearly an hour to get here, and even if all the answers turned out to be mumblings and “don’t knows”, it would still count as an interview for his series. Well, sort of. He damn well intended to count it, anyway: social researchers thirty interviews behind schedule can’t be choosers.

With the effort of a removal-man shifting a piano, he summoned up his bedside manner, and turned, all teeth and smiles, to his subject.

“Well, good afternoon, Mrs Timberley!” he began, in that bright, slightly over-loud voice which always seems so appropriate in addressing people a lot less fortunate than oneself: “How are you today? Feeling a bit better, eh? That’s fine, that’s just fine! Now, I wonder if you’d mind …?”

Still the eyes stared into his, expressionlessly—unless maybe it
was with hatred, who could tell?—and Martin found his technique floundering. But he was into it now, there was no turning back, especially with the doting, anxious husband hovering over him, tense with hope, waiting for something to happen, like a child at the Zoo. Martin pulled himself together. Averting his eyes, and fastening them on the comforting familiarity of his notebook, he proceeded with his formula:

“… if you wouldn’t mind answering just a few questions? Now, first of all, if you don’t mind telling me, how long have you been feeling—well—like this? Kind of low-spirited, I mean? Not too happy? How long, roughly?”

Still the baleful eyes watched him, narrow with idiocy and the mindless wariness of dark forests, long ago. He sat, biro poised, expecting, almost, some ancient pre-hominid language to come jerking from her lips, all labials and gutturals, no T’s or D’s at all. She still did not stir, but a trace of spittle appeared at the corners of her mouth, as if she might be licking the insides of her lips; and at this sign of some sort of life, the old husband’s face lit up as if he was watching the sun itself rising in all its glory.

“That’s it, Magsy girl!” he cried. “That’s my Magsy! Din’ I tell you, Sir, how she’d perk up once she got talking to you! Now, come on, me darling, tell the gentleman! He wants to know how long you bin poorly. Ten years, innit? Ten years come Christmas, that’s about the size of it, innit?” He turned to Martin: “She’s a bit nervous, you see, just a bit nervous. We don’t have that many people come and visit us these days, not that many we don’t, and so she’s a bit nervous, just at first. Just keep talking to her, Sir, will you? She’ll soon get used to you, won’t you, Magsy, love, you’ll soon get used to the gentleman.” Then, to Martin, “You’ll soon have her chattering away nineteen to the dozen, just you see….”

By now, the old man was sitting on the arm of his wife’s chair, his arm protectively around her humped shoulders.

“Ten years,” he repeated, encouraging her, “Ten years, near enough, tell the gentleman, Magsy….”

In default of any sign of life from his actual subject, Martin was getting all this down instead. It might come in useful somewhere—Attitude of Close Relatives, or something, you never knew—and at
least it would pad out the interview to a decent length. He continued his questions, pretending as best he could to be
addressing
that lump of lard.

And how exactly, Mrs Timberley, did the whole thing start? Did it come on gradually …? Or was there some shock …? A bereavement, perhaps …? Some sort of family trouble …?

Family trouble. That nearly always got them. Mr Timberley’s skinny behind fairly bounced up and down on its precarious perch as he chirruped excitedly to his spouse, cheering her on as if she’d been a football team.

“Come on, Magsy! That’s the girl! That’s my Magsy!
There’s
a question for you, eh? Right up your street, eh, Magsy darling? She’s got plenty she can tell you about
that,
Sir, and no mistake! Come on Mags, tell the gentleman! Tell him how it was that Christmas, eh, with both your Aunties here together, your Aunty Nell and your Aunty Vi, both here in the house together, my goodness, a proper to-do that was! Though mind you, Sir, I’m not saying a word against ’em, not either of ’em, we wouldn’t, would we, Mags, God rest their souls. No, it was That Gwenda what started all the trouble. Wasn’t it Mags? That Gwenda! It wouldn’t none of it have happened, without she’d poked her nose in! All that fried food, too, it wasn’t doing her no good. I told her at the time, I told her straight. Gwenda, I said, that fried food what you bring in, it’s not doing her no good. Fried in cheap oil, too, you know the kind of stuff, Sir, cheap … nasty … wasn’t it, Mags? Rancid, half the time….”

There was a non-sequitur somewhere: maybe it would sort itself out when he went through his notes properly. Not that it mattered. “Breakdown of Extended Family Network” was obviously the category, and whether the story ended in Aunty Nell and Aunty Vi leaving all their money to That Gwenda, or merely with the more long-drawnout drama of nervous breakdowns, Valium all round, and nobody speaking to anybody else ever again, really, it didn’t make a blind bit of difference.

Besides, there were all these other questions to be worked through somehow; he didn’t want to be here all night. And so, as quickly as was compatible (just) with common politeness, he
hurried the old man through this section, on to the next one, until he got to the last and (in this case) most bizarre question of all:

“I wonder, Mrs Timberley, if you could give me some idea of how you mostly spend your time? Any hobbies …? Any special interests …?” In order even to enunciate so grotesquely
inappropriate
a question, Martin had to avert his eyes as he
continued
: “What, actually, do you do all day?”

The small eyes did not even blink in their piggy sockets, and once again it was left to the old man, still frantic to display his treasure at her best, to launch into a reply.

“Do? Why, my goodness, we’re busy as bees, aren’t we, Magsy? On the go all the time, you could say … Oh, you know … meals and that. And then it takes her a bit of time to get dressed of a morning, don’t it, Magsy, these days? She likes to take a bit of trouble, you know, to look nice, make the best of herself, like all the ladies do … ha ha … they’re all the same, aren’t they, Sir, when it comes to prettying themselves up, and we wouldn’t have them different, would we?” He laughed again, happily, thinking, perhaps, of his Magsy looking her best. “And then there’s lunch, of course: we get our bit of lunch, and then clearing it away and that … one thing and another. Do we get out a lot? Well, of course, it’s winter just now, isn’t it, Sir, and winter’s never been my Magsy’s best time, has it, me darling? Well, it isn’t anyone’s best time is it, not when you think about it. Yes, well, we do stay indoors a good bit winter time, and that’s the truth. But come the summer, my goodness, we’ll be all over the place! You should just see us … out and about … here, there and everywhere, aren’t we, Magsy! She really brightens up, come the summer, does my Magsy! Well, don’t we all? It’s only natural …”

Outside, dusk was falling, and by the time the interview was nearing its end, Martin could scarcely see what he was writing. Still, he persevered. There were some good quotes here, authentic lower class stuff, and this always made a favourable impression on the examiners. He listened patiently, anxious to get the
ill-educated
, cliché-ridden turns of phrase exactly right.

At last it was all over, and he prepared to take his leave. His formal “Thank you’s” as he put away his papers and got to his feet
were quite drowned-out by Mr Timberley’s rival expressions of gratitude, effusive and irrepressible:

“Oh, but it’s been such a pleasure, Sir, I can’t tell you! Such a very great pleasure, wasn’t it, Magsy? You’ve really enjoyed it, haven’t you, love? She’s really enjoyed it, Sir, chatting with you like this…. It’s not often she gets the chance of a real good chat, is it me darling? Somehow, people don’t seem to chat with her like they used to do…. Still mustn’t grumble. Anyhows, Sir, it’s been a real treat for her, this afternoon, hasn’t it, Magsy? She’s got a lot off her chest, talking like this, heart to heart, you might say, it’s helped a lot, hasn’t it, dear? All her worries, all what she’s been bottling-up all this time…. Bringing them out into the open, like, it’s done her a power of good, hasn’t it, Magsy? So come on, me darling, say goodbye to the gentleman nicely, and thank him for coming. If you just step a little nearer, Sir … just a little bit … that’s right … she’ll shake hands with you, won’t you Magsy …?”

The thought of taking one of those grey, motionless hands into his own filled Martin with horror. He could imagine the damp limpness of it against his palm. It reminded him of that awful party game they’d played as children, all sitting round in a circle, in the dark, while some unknown horrible thing—a raw sausage, perhaps, or a cold poached egg—was passed from hand to hand, while a voice out of the darkness intoned some appropriately horrific and well-timed story about severed fingers and dead men’s eyeballs….

With a small gulp of uncontrollable revulsion, Martin edged backwards, evading the ordeal with grunts and mumblings of apology, all the while sidling towards the door. At last he was through it, and out on the landing, now pitch dark.

“Mind out, Sir! Mind out for them stairs!” Mr Timberley, close on his heels, switched on the light in the nick of time to reveal the short steep flight of steps only a few inches ahead.

And at that exact moment, there came from the room behind them a thin, exultant shriek; and then another, and another, so shrill, so empty of meaning that it was unlike any human voice that Martin had ever heard. He whirled round, sick with shock and incredulity, to stare back into the room, now flooded with light.

The slumped creature in the chair had not stirred. She lolled there, exactly as before, eyes fixed and vacant, responding by not so much as a flicker to the sudden blaze of light.

But other eyes had responded; unnoticed, hitherto, in the dim clutter of the room.

“Tweetie! Who’s a good boy, then?” cooed the old man to the budgerigar which, from its cage by the window, screeched again in its joy in the sudden coming of the light.

“Tweet! Tweet!” it yelled; and “Tweetie! Tweetie!” the old man chortled in reply. Thus the conversation between man and bird continued joyously, while the great sagging doll lay motionless in its chair, and Martin, all the science drained out of him, thundered down the stairs, his feet stumbling and clattering on the narrow, awkward treads.