The Grotesque (20 page)

“Of course she did! That’s precisely what she meant! And anyway, Daddy does know what’s going on. He understands everything.”

“Cleo, dear”—a sharp note, here—“the doctors were quite clear about this. Hugo is not aware of what is happening around him.”

“But he is, I tell you!”

“Darling, he’s not. We’ve had the best neurologists in the country do extensive testing, and they’re absolutely certain about this: Hugo is massively brain-damaged; he has no real consciousness of the world. He cannot think.”

“He can.”

“Cleo, you’re making me angry. Do you suppose it was easy for me to accept? Do you think I didn’t hold out every hope? Darling, I hate to have to tell you all over again, but these are the facts—Daddy’s not able to think.”

“He is.”

“You’re being silly, Cleo. You’re imagining things. Why do you say this?”

“I just know.”

“But how, darling?”

“I can tell by his eyes.”

“Oh dear.” Harriet sighed.

“And sometimes he cries.”

“I daresay he does, darling, but crying doesn’t mean anything. Daddy cried in hospital; it’s an autonomous reaction, the doctors said—it’s a cleansing process.”

“I don’t care. I know he knows everything that’s happening.”

“I don’t wish to discuss this with you any further. These are fantasies, darling. I know you love Daddy, but you must accept what’s happened. I’ve had to, and God knows it’s not been easy for me, either. Now would you please go and help Mrs. Fledge in the kitchen.”

Cleo slowly got to her feet and left the room, casting one long, warm glance in my direction. “See you later, Daddy,” she said. When the door had closed behind her Harriet sighed deeply and did something she did very rarely: she took a cigarette from the box on the mantelpiece and smoked it by the window, gazing out at the pond in front of the house. From time to time I could feel her looking over at me in a faintly quizzical manner; then, after tossing the butt in the fireplace, she left the room, and I was alone. But her words seemed to echo in my skull, and as I sat there staring at the chimneypiece, at the coat-of-arms and the motto, I could hear her insisting, on best authority, that I was unable to think. If I couldn’t think, what then is all this? A figment of Cleo’s imagination?

T
he next morning there came another shock. I had not as yet had an opportunity to assimilate the events of the afternoon— and there was much to assimilate, with regard not only to George, but also to myself. For though there was no logical reason why Harriet’s insistence upon my inability to think should disturb me —it’s self-evident, after all, that I can—yet all the same I was shaken by it, shaken to the core. As though my identity were merely a reflection, or construct, of the opinion of others. I found myself reeling, very much on the defensive, forced to assert my own self to myself and thus confirm that I was, still, in effect, viable. Can you understand that? It was, then, in this very shaky state, this state of ontological instability, so to speak, that I was forced to cope with the implications of both Mrs. Giblet’s visit and an attempted metamorphosis on the part of Fledge.

Yes, a metamorphosis. For, apparently with Harriet’s consent (perhaps, it now occurs to me, at her instigation?) he had relinquished his morning suit, traditional uniform of the butler, and adopted, instead, a tweed jacket and twill trousers. He had gone up to London in propria persona, a butler, and returned disguised as a gentleman. I’m afraid I got these two events—the Giblet visit and Fledge’s new clothes—rather muddled, and lost track of causation, agency, and empirical precision.

Probably I should begin by describing in closer detail what the man looked like when I saw him in the kitchen that morning. The jacket was, as I say, tweed, and not unlike my own. That is, it was slightly hairy, greenish-brown in color, with a fine herringbone pattern, leather patches on the elbows, and leather edgings on the cuffs. With wide lapels and square shoulders, it tapered to the waist then flared over the hips, and had two vents at the back. The buttons were leather-covered, and there were flaps on the pockets. The trousers were of a beige cavalry twill, sharply creased and with turnups that broke nicely on the insteps of a pair of highly polished, squeaky brown brogues. A well-tailored sports shirt with a quiet check, and a dark brown tie with a narrow yellow diagonal stripe; and thus Fledge, sleek and elegant, as he entered the kitchen for Harriet’s breakfast tray. He was, as I say, pretending to be a gentleman; and it took a gentleman’s nose, like mine, to detect the imposture.

I mentioned earlier that Fledge had an indefinable quality to him, a facet, I suggested, of his guarded and secretive nature. I said that he could be “anything,” and that only the presence of Doris at his side served to situate and define the man. I was wrong. Watching him organizing Harriet’s breakfast tray I realized that Fledge was no chameleon, a change of costume did not transform him, as he so clearly intended it to, into a gentleman. Something essential was lacking, a certain facial creasing, I think, that would denote affable skepticism and the expectation of deference—for such things show in a gentleman’s face. Fledge looked like a steward, or a bailiff, one who almost straddles the chasm, but not quite. An interstitial man. An in-between man. He did not look ridiculous, but he did look indeterminate, as though he did not know his place.

Pondering the new Fledge I constructed a hypothesis. I imagined how, as he dressed himself each morning, in Harriet’s bedroom, in the gloom of dawn, he must have resented assuming the garb of servility that the morning suit represented. For in Harriet’s bed (from which he would have just arisen) a place of grace was available to him; in Harriet’s bed he was an essential sexual man, whereas the moment he donned that morning suit he became once more the servant; this, clearly, was what lay behind the sudden, drastic transformation. Transformation I say; to me, then, it was experienced as a transgression, as a gross disturbance in the order of things, and this sense of disorder somehow fed into the turmoil I was experiencing as a result of Mrs. Giblet’s visit, and intensified to the point of volcanic snorting my rage that George’s dire predicament, my own increasingly wobbly grasp of things— the entire constellation of disturbances, in short—had their source and origin in the silent, ruthless, and violent ambition of this vulpine intruder. I was convulsed with mute fury and had to have my back thumped hard.

It rained all day—we had much rain at around this time—and the atmosphere in the kitchen was dark and subdued. Nobody mentioned Fledge’s new clothes. Cleo looked awful; she had great black rings around her eyes, and I was sure she had not slept at all. Poor child, her coming so spiritedly to my defense, and then what she had suffered at the hands of the two older women—all this had clearly sapped her strength. I can’t begin to say how touched I was that she would stand up for me so staunchly, my brave little elf; like George she had a core of integrity that was unshakeable and incorruptible; like him she maintained toward me a fierce protective loyalty now that I could no longer fight my own battles. After lunch, when Doris had finished washing the dishes and gone upstairs to “do out” Harriet’s bedroom, the girl sat beside me at the kitchen table and began to speak. It was not immediately clear to me what, or rather who, she was talking about; she spoke of his being “very angry” with her; and though she did not use his name, I realized after a moment or two that she was referring to Sidney. I then understood why she thought he was angry with her—it was because she had used his name yesterday. This, apparently, was forbidden.

Poor, dear, haunted Cleo. She was so desperately alone, and I could only sit there, staring straight ahead, stiff as a plank of wood, and grinning. The rain came drizzling down into the back yard, drizzling down from a leaden sky in which the clouds hung oppressively low and heavy. She sat beside me, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and the tears rolled down her face as she mumbled on about Sidney, who was no longer, it seems, the pale and faintly sweet-smelling ghoulish creature she had conjured in a fit of hysterical weeping that night in February. His features were unrecognizable now, she said, owing to the copious discharge of a yellowy, viscous substance that oozed from his flesh. His eyes and ears and mouth were crawling with worms, she said. These were appalling nightmares for the child to experience, and I grew very angry with Harriet, that in her infatuation with Fledge she could permit her daughter to suffer like this, and I’m afraid I began to snort yet again. This at least served to rouse Cleo from her morbid and incoherent mumblings; she had to get up and pound me on the back, as she’d seen Doris doing on more than one occasion, until I could breathe properly once more.

A little later Doris herself came back downstairs and began to prepare tea, and Cleo relapsed into silence. When Fledge came in for the tray I noticed that three cups and saucers, and three plates, had been set out upon it. Were we to have visitors again? Was old Giblet coming back for more? As he picked up the tray, Fledge murmured to his wife that I was to be brought down to the drawing room. Cleo rose wearily from the kitchen table—she had been sitting there since after lunch—and followed him down the hallway. I came rumbling along in the rear, pushed by Doris, and in the gloom of that damp and miserable afternoon I could see, up front, the steam that issued from the spout of the teapot as it drifted up to the ceiling in little wispy puffs. There was a fire burning in the drawing room, and I was placed in my usual position, against the wall directly opposite. Cleo sank into her usual armchair, and Harriet sat at the tea table, as she always did, and poured. I was still puzzled as to who would get the third cup. I was not kept in suspense for very long; after Cleo had been given hers, Fledge took a cup and, having stirred in two spoons of sugar, sat down opposite Harriet and began to make conversation to her in low, inaudible tones. Cleo took in this development with barely a glance; for me, however, it demonstrated with shocking clarity just how absurd the entire situation was becoming. What sort of a house was this, that a homicidal butler who no longer wore his morning suit should sit down and drink tea with the mistress?

❖

The weather continued miserably damp. Though I saw the man every day, I could not accustom myself to Fledge’s new clothes, nor to his new role in Crook, which I found impossible to define. In some respects he still behaved as a servant, in others as some sort of a house guest. And though I no longer ate in the dining room, I came to suspect that he now occupied my chair at the head of the table during lunch and dinner.

Harriet was clearly happy with the new arrangements. In the evening she would drink a glass of brandy with him in the drawing room, and offer him one of my cigars. She herself was smoking several cigarettes a day at this time. I can see it now so clearly, and what a cloying little drama they always made of it. Harriet would take a cigarette from the proffered box, then sit forward on the edge of her armchair, frowning, the cigarette between her slightly trembling fingers, as the tall sleek man in the herringbone tweed jacket bent stiffly forward from the waist with his thumb deflecting the cap of the lighter; a slender flame sprang up like a tiny golden spearhead, and Harriet’s eyes would flicker upwards to his. (The pair of them are framed against the fireplace for this touching little tableau.) She prolongs the operation for an instant longer than is strictly necessary; then, inexpertly expelling a lungful of smoke, she murmurs: “Thank you, Fledge,” and sits back in her armchair, picking up her brandy glass and swirling its contents about in a manner entirely unfamiliar to me.

❖

Did I mention how dearly I should have liked to go out to the barn and commune for a while with Phlegmosaurus? I missed the old scoundrel, frankly, and often wondered how he was. Well, one afternoon during this period Cleo apparently read my mind, for quite spontaneously she suggested to Doris that they do that very thing—that is, that the pair of them take me out to the barn. “Just for a little outing,” said Cleo. “I’m sure he misses his bones, aren’t you, Mrs. Fledge?”

It was raining again. Harriet had driven into Ceck, and Fledge was off somewhere by himself, probably in his pantry. There was thus nobody present to prohibit the expedition. Cleo procured raincoats and umbrellas, while Doris tucked me up warmly in the wheelchair. Fortunately there was a key to the barn hanging on a nail in the back kitchen.

We went out through the back door and across the yard to the gate that gave onto the driveway. Doris was pushing the wheelchair and Cleo was holding the umbrella. We bumped and scrunched across the gravel, in the rain, and Cleo kept up a cheery stream of chatter. It was months since I had seen the barn, and gazing at it now, as Cleo fiddled with the padlock, I felt a tremor of anxiety as to what I would find within. The door swung open, the wheelchair lurched over the threshold, and for the moment or two that Cleo hunted for the switch I beheld the familiar looming form, and felt the familiar surge of pride and awe, despite the stink of rotten hay and damp sacking that choked the barn. But then the lights flickered to life overhead, and I was able to see the toll the elements had taken in my absence. It was as I had feared; my dinosaur was overrun with fungus.

Damp was the problem. Nobody had thought to cover the bones, and the rain had been dripping through the roof for weeks. Everywhere the greenish mold endemic to this part of the county was in evidence. It clustered in spongy masses in the hollows of the bones, and licked outward in thin, blotchy fingers, and dripped from the jaws, and the long-clawed fingers, and the pelvis of the beast, in delicate lacy clumps. I was shocked at how quickly and how extensively Phlegmosaurus had been infested, and it was not difficult to imagine what a few more months of dampness and darkness would do to him: transform him into a huge living hulk of mold, the bones within merely the frame or scaffold of a voracious fungus. It depressed me acutely to observe all this, and I sat there in a state of bitter mortification as Cleo, apparently fascinated, wandered around the thing. I was happy when Doris suggested we go back to the house lest I catch cold.