The Experimentalist Read online

  Not that she felt self-sufficient. She knew that what she needed was Harriet back alive again. She built Harriet up into something even Harriet had never been.

  She wanted someone to love her. Not that grubby love that little groups of girls snickered over when the nuns weren’t about, but love how deep, how broad, how far; the marriage of true minds; a love that would excuse, and unify and transcend. But if she could not have that cake, she certainly could not bear to survive on callow bread. Meanwhile she painted, and waited for school to end.

  The holidays passed in the same way. Solitary excursions with her easel, or painting in the studio that she had been allowed to set up in the attic over her bedroom or reading art history in the library. This drew no adverse criticism from the Aunts who had their own troubles to contend with. Claire was going deaf and Bertha’s hip was seizing up. It was inevitable that their control would slacken, but it gave way completely when Bertha had a heart attack after Marie’s sixteenth-birthday lunch, which they held in July on her return from school for the summer holidays.

  Bertha had always tended to indulge in the pleasures of the table. The doctor had indicated to her that she was badly overweight, which was putting extra strain on her hips, but the heart attack was unexpected and, as it turned out, fatal. Bertha lingered for a few days then died without regaining consciousness.

  There was a funeral in the castle chapel to which various retainers and a few local dignitaries came. Marie did not feel any great sense of loss at the departure of the hard old woman.

  ‘You must be brave,’ said an old general who lived nearby. ‘Chin up, chest out. Don’t be upset.’

  She was so surprised at being addressed by anybody but the immediate household that she committed an indiscretion.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m not upset at all, thank you,’ she said.

  The general looked at her oddly. Later she heard him telling someone of the exchange.

  ‘Extraordinary girl,’ said the general. ‘But you have to look at the family. She’s a Lavell, you know. The shame…’

  Marie was familiar with shame. She knew it as she knew the particular cold, stony, rainy smell of the castle. It was always there. But Lavell was another matter. She had overheard the name in her aunts’ conversations but hadn’t known it referred to her.

  One of the guests was the thin-faced lawyer, Hubert Brickville, who always cropped up on matters of family importance. He spent some time afterwards with Aunt Claire and went away in a black car. Aunt Claire sent for her that evening. Sitting in the drawing room, dressed in black, she seemed to have put on some of the authority that Bertha had wielded. She was also eating chocolate, non-stop.

  ‘Sit down, child,’ she said, ‘and listen. I can’t hear what you say so there’s no point in talking. Now your Aunt Bertha’s gone, I suppose I should be the one to hedge you round and see you don’t get into trouble. But I’m no good at that sort of thing. I’m not bossy and I can’t learn to be at my age. I know that Bertha might have seemed a trifle harsh to you. She was, for that matter, more than a trifle harsh to me. But she cared for the family, d’you see? Indeed, it could be said she held us together by sheer will, my dear, in the days of our disgrace.’

  ‘What disgrace, Aunt?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. I can’t hear.’ Aunt Claire ran a finger round her teeth to get out a piece of one of the stickier chocolates. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Disgrace.’

  ‘It’s the name. Your name.’

  ‘Marie?’

  ‘No, of course not. Your other name.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s not really Sinclair. We used that because we are Sinclairs and it was easier for you to be too. But you are really Lavell. Your father was Lavell. A great name. But now … unsuitable.’

  ‘Unsuitable?’

  ‘I mean that Lavell is not well thought of at the moment, but it will pass. Everything passes.’

  ‘Is your name well thought of? Sinclair?’

  ‘Yes, I should think so.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care if they don’t think well of Lavell. That’s their problem. I couldn’t care less. I shall be Lavell.’

  ‘Your Aunt Bertha felt the shame very keenly. I felt it keenly too, but I never had the stamina. It all seems a long time ago. You will learn about it, child, but don’t be in a hurry. When you are eighteen, that is what Bertha said. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself. You are young and in health. Attend to your studies. You have some talent at painting, I believe. I envy that. I never had any talent whatsoever, unless it was for chocolates. Bertha was unsympathetic on that score. You may kiss me. Hand me that box of Suchard before you go.’ Later, in Nanny’s sitting room, Marie asked what her aunt had been talking about.

  ‘Come on, Nanny. You must know.’

  But Nanny shook her head. ‘It’s something I promised your aunt,’ she said. ‘And especially now she’s dead. I couldn’t go back on it. It’s a family matter. Nothing you’ve done, my precious. Don’t bother your head about it now. When you’re eighteen. That’s when she said. I say, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. And you are a rose, a lovely rose, my darling.’

  Nanny was looking older too. There was a greyness about her skin, though the eyes were still as bright as ever. As Marie looked at her, a shadow seemed to pass across her face and she noticed the work-worn hands clench a little.

  ‘You’re all right, aren’t you, Nanny?’

  ‘’Course I am. A little tired, that’s all. It’s just you and your questions. When you’re eighteen. Time enough till then.’

  Marie prayed for Nanny that night, although she knew she was really praying for herself as well.

  ‘Dear Gentle Jesus. Make Nanny be all right. Let me die before Nanny does. Let me know what the secret is. Don’t let me have spots or unsightly blemishes…’

  ***

  As it happened time passed, and the last two items of her prayer were answered.

  She did not have spots. Indeed her complexion seemed to grow ever more blemishless, and her mirror indicated to her that her general appearance was at least satisfactory.

  She stood naked in front of the mirror in the castle one morning and examined herself – something the nuns at school had expressly warned the girls against. They were even made to bath in their bathing knickers – the girls as well as the nuns.

  ‘Love of self is unclean,’ said Sister Bridget. ‘Filthy thoughts can come jumping out of a mirror. Leave your body to the eye of Heaven.’

  But Marie liked showing herself to herself. It was as if, just for a moment, she had that loving counterpart she so longed for.

  So here she was again, she thought, loving counterpart with such shiny, bright hair and bright pale-blue irises; slim waist, flat tummy, long legs joined at the top with a little sealing of hair; breasts a little too big for the slender frame; anemone-pink nipples that stiffened a little as she looked at them as though they had a life of their own and might trap a passing plankton. She ran her hands over herself, touching her secretness, anticipating the lover but on the look-out for devils.

  I’ll paint myself, she thought. Self-portrait. Nude. That’d show the Mother Superior.

  After breakfast, she lugged an old full-length mirror from one of the attics into the studio, locked the door and took off her clothes. It was a sunny day. The studio was pleasantly warm. She pirouetted in front of the mirror.

  She felt unspeakably wicked. Devils were popping out of the glass like squibs from a bonfire. She adjusted the easel and started sketching. Around mid-morning there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Marie? Marie. What are you doing?’

  Her heart turned a cartwheel in her mouth. Had she locked the door? Yes, the handle was turning vainly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she shouted, struggling into her dress. ‘It’s a secret. Coming!’

  She turned her sketches over on their faces and substituted on the easel a self-portrait she’d put aside, of
her face only.

  Nanny was reproachful. ‘Locking me out like that. Whatever next.’

  ‘It’s a surprise, Nanny. Your birthday’s coming up, remember?’

  She felt guilty about deceiving her old friend.

  ‘You shouldn’t be wasting your time on presents for me. You should be out in the sunshine. Get some fresh air in your lungs. It’s springtime. You shouldn’t waste the spring. When you’re as old as me you’ll realise how few there are.’

  ‘There’s plenty more for you, Nanny. But all right. I’ll stop. Only if you’ll come with me, though.’

  ‘I … won’t, my dear, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a touch of indigestion. It’s nothing really. But you go. It’ll do me good to think of you cutting your capers. Off you go now.’

  Marie left the castle grounds and walked down by the river, through a wood, underneath eaves of sweet chestnut blossom. The sun was so strong that she lay down beside a pond in a clearing, kicked off her shoes, and studied her reflection in the water.

  ‘Loving counterparts,’ she said, ‘you who know me so well, now come out of the water and embrace me upon the grassy bank.’

  Sister Bridget had not specified as to whether devils might come out of rivers as well as looking glasses, but, whatever the origin, Marie was startled by a pleasant voice that now spoke from somewhere very nearby.

  ‘I’m not sure that I qualify for the first part of your invocation. I will study to become so. But I should certainly like to take you up on the last section,’

  Marie sprang up, more in confusion than alarm – the voice, which had an American accent, had sounded so good-natured. At the same time, she could not help laughing.

  She turned in astonishment and saw a young man watching her from the shelter of a willow tree. He had his back against it and his legs were crossed and his arms folded as if he had been there for some time. She sprang to her feet, blushing.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Have you been there long? How dare you spy on me? Why have you come all the way from America?’

  ‘One question at a time,’ the boy laughed.

  He had a cheerful, roundish face with a fine, straight nose, reddish hair and browny-green eyes. Although she put on a stern face, she could not altogether feel angry with him.

  ‘My name,’ he went on, after a charitable pause which allowed her to catch her breath and compose herself, ‘my name is The Great Collapso. When I appear, people go weak at the knees. Who are you?’

  ‘I am Impervious,’ she said. ‘Now answer the second question.’

  ‘I was there just ten seconds,’ he replied.

  She knew he wasn’t lying, and felt better about it. Five minutes of being observed would have been shaming. He had looked so settled under that tree. He read the relief in her face and was encouraged to give her the third answer.

  ‘And I dared spy on you because I thought you were quite the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.’

  No one had said anything like that to her before. It was true, a girl at school – one of the new girls, fattish with glasses and no friends – had, when Marie had shown some kindly interest, developed a crush on her and told her she was beautiful; and the gardener’s boy had taken to mooning around with his wheelbarrow early in the morning, gazing at the window of her bedroom, but this was something altogether different.

  She blushed again, felt like looking down, but instead gazed upon the youth intently.

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You are Mephistopheles. Don’t try to deny it. You’ve jumped out of Dr Faustus.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s just who I am. And I have come all the way from America just to see you. Now you have conjured me up. What is your wish?’

  She thought for a moment. Then she surprised herself. ‘I should like you to fall in love with me.’

  But the young man was not in the least surprised. ‘Nothing simpler,’ he said. ‘There. It is done. I love you with every fibre of my being.’

  She looked at him closely. Was he teasing her? ‘Do you worship the ground I tread on?’ she enquired.

  He looked at her feet. A daisy had somehow contrived to peep up between her toes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

  ‘Excellent.’ She clapped her hands. ‘And now, Mephistopheles. I should like you to conjure a picnic so we can take refreshment here beside the pool, and you can teach me the language of butterflies.’

  He bowed solemnly. ‘Your wish is my command.’ Turning, he ran off lightly between the trees.

  She closed her eyes and felt the breeze play with her hair and the sun with her skin. In what seemed a moment, the boy was back with a fishing-basket.

  ‘See,’ he said. ‘Refreshment as ordered. French bread, tomatoes, cheese, cucumber, oranges and wine. Oh, and chocolate biscuits.’

  It was too extraordinary that he should have produced such a feast. She began half to believe that he really was some kind of supernatural agent. Well-stocked baskets didn’t materialise just like that.

  He spread a rug on the daisies and they sat down. He opened the bottle of wine and gave her a mug.

  ‘Meursault,’ he said. ‘Only the best. There’ll be the devil to pay if they find out I’ve taken it.’

  Again she couldn’t tell if he was being serious. She wasn’t very used to wine, but she knew that this was the best. It was absolutely delicious.

  ‘It is nectar,’ she said.

  ‘We call it something different where I come from.’

  ‘Devil’s brew?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. French bread?’

  She wanted to ask him where he really came from, and what an American was doing in Fife. But she didn’t want to spoil the magic by saying something too down to earth.

  They drank, they ate, they watched the butterflies, they spoke to the butterflies who seemed to understand perfectly, she told him something of her life, and they talked energetically about what afterwards seemed nothing but at the time seemed the most interesting things in the world. It became very hot and she began to feel drowsy.

  A fat fish flopped in the water. A little dust-devil of midges swirled about among the shadows of the bushes at the water’s edge. A sun-drunk peacock butterfly, freshly awakened, flapped lop-sidedly over a bank of periwinkles to her left. She closed her eyes again and felt the sun burnishing her hair.

  He was indeed like some spirit, she thought, only not a bad one. Nothing so beautiful could be possibly be bad. She hadn’t told her aunt that she would be out to lunch but these days no one seemed to care what she did. Aunt Claire would lunch alone reading her Lives of the Saints; she would read them anyway whether Marie were there or not.

  When she opened her eyes, he was standing there still looking at her. She smiled and closed her eyes again. She must have slept for some time because, when she awoke, the sun had swung across the glade and the shadows had crept out of the other edge of the lakeside underwood. The midges had disappeared. And so had the young man. She sat up in a panic.

  ‘Mephistopheles,’ she called, feeling slightly ridiculous because that couldn’t possibly be his real name, but she didn’t know any other.

  ‘Mephistopheles.’

  But there was no answer. A feeling of absolute despair swept over her as she realised she might never see him again. She rushed to the edge of the trees and called to him once more. He wasn’t there. He had vanished into thin air, leaving only the tartan rug on which she had slept. That at least was a comfort. Devils didn’t leave their rugs and nor did young men who intended to disappear for ever.

  As she walked back towards it, however, she saw something white lying on it that she had missed in her distraction. It was a note. She picked it up feverishly, squinting her eyes to read in the brilliant sunlight.

  It said: ‘Didn’t like to wake you. Had to go. Meet me next Sunday, same time, same place! Love, Mephistopheles. P.S. Bring the rug.’

  She walked back full of the most unaccustomed happiness. The
first thing she proposed to do was to go up and tell Nanny about the strange encounter in the wood, but, arriving home, she found the house in turmoil.

  ***

  Aunt Claire, during her solitary lunch, had choked on a piece of steak and had expired at the table, alone, in the middle of the life of St Rosa of Lima. She had been found dead by the gardener’s wife who helped out at mealtimes. The doctor and the ambulance had come and taken her away. Now the gardener’s wife was weeping and Nanny was in a bate.

  ‘Really, Marie,’ she said, ‘going off like that. You should have told us. There’s a pretty pickle here. Your poor aunt was quite vexed at having to eat alone. I don’t say it brought on a choking fit but it may have made her snatch at her food. And if you’d been there you could’ve thumped her on the back or something. It’s too bad!’

  Nanny wasn’t looking too good herself. Her face was yellowish under the powder she’d hurriedly dabbed on, and her eyes were red, like little cherries in a cupcake, thought Marie. She didn’t feel all that upset at Aunt Claire’s demise – they had not been close and there was something slightly repulsive about her greed – but she did regret not having been there to help her. It was bad luck on the old girl. She was much more worried about Nanny. She couldn’t manage without Nanny.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nanny. But honestly she never seemed to notice much if I was there or not. Anyway, you look awful. You shouldn’t have got up.’