The Dumb House (23 page)

I worked carefully, yet I finished much sooner than I had expected. The vocal cords were fine and easily severed; after that, I experienced a wave of satisfaction and relief, and the suturing was fairly straightforward. I had a difficult moment when the child moved suddenly, just as I was putting the last stitches in, and I was afraid she would regain full consciousness before I could finish. I realised I hadn't thought this part of the operation through in full; I'd been too busy thinking about the incisions and the care needed to sever the vocal cords without inflicting too much damage. I had made sure I knew where everything was: the layrnx, the vocal cords, the major arteries. I had studied the problems of after-care: the possible breathing problems, the trauma, the need to protect against infection. When, at last, I had completed my work, and B showed no signs of waking, I carried her into the spare room and placed her in my old cot. Then, exhausted, I got cleaned up, went down to the kitchen, and made myself a pot of coffee. I must have fallen asleep in my chair; when I woke it felt as if a few minutes had passed, at most, but, when I glanced up at the window, I saw that it was dark outside. I ran upstairs to the
spare room. B was awake. When I switched on the light she moved her head a little, but she did not look at me. She looked at the light bulb for a few seconds, then she turned her face to the wall. She was expressionless. She didn't cry, she didn't even seem to be in pain. She was remote, uninvolved, like some animal in the zoo that refuses to acknowledge the existence of its observers. I checked to see if the dressing was clean and intact. I had considered the danger of her putting her hands to her throat and opening the wound anew, but everything looked fine. Feeling more reassured, I fetched the portable CD player from the study, put on Tallis'
Spem in Alium
, and set it to repeat track 1, so there would be music there for her all night. Then I switched off the light and went downstairs, to see how A was.

My plan had been to bring the twins together when B's injuries had healed. I was hoping for a fairly speedy recovery, in physical terms – I had expected to reunite them after about a week – but B made no real progress that I could detect. She would not eat. She rarely moved. Sometimes she seemed to be sleeping, sometimes her eyes were open, but I had no idea what she was experiencing, whether she was in pain, whether she had the will to get better. I knew that was the key to her recovery. If she wanted to live, she would – and yet, from the very start, I felt she had sustained too great an insult to the system to survive. It wasn't so much that she had lost some blood, or experienced the usual trauma – I couldn't fully put it into words, but there had been a moment, just as I was concluding the operation, when I had become aware of the spaces inside the body, how the tissue isn't as tightly packed as I had imagined, how there are small, vital gaps everywhere. I had been aware of this in animals, but for some reason, I hadn't been prepared for that in
a human body. Yet it was those spaces that seemed important, as I stitched B up and dressed the wound; it was those spaces that seemed most vulnerable, most sensitive. That tiny space in the larynx, that space I had violated, would never be the same again, and I think B knew that, at some level. I could have waited for a full recovery, but I was afraid she would simply give up, and I wanted to see what happened, when I brought the twins together.

So it was that, two days later, I carried B into the basement room and set her down in the pen next to her brother. Neither child made a sound. I waited several minutes, but it was evident that they had no intention of attempting to communicate while I was there. They didn't even move: they sat side by side in the pen, gazing at one another, waiting for me to go. The expression on their faces was identical: a look of infinite grief, a profound hurt that seemed to affect A at least as much, perhaps more than B. I stepped outside and locked the door behind me. By the time I reached the observation window, they had already moved together, and were holding on to one another, rocking slightly, the way monkeys do when they are hurt or frightened. I watched for a while, then I withdrew. At that moment, I knew for certain that it was hopeless to continue. By performing the laryngotomy on B, I had damaged both twins irreparably. The resilience I had taken for granted in B had been illusory. I didn't know if it was the operation, or the brief, yet for them, interminable period of separation that had broken their spirit, but all I had left were two injured children, turned in upon their own special world, from which I was exiled forever.

I spent the afternoon working in the garden. It was still warm, and the borders were in bloom. I pottered about for some time, dead-heading the roses, pulling up weeds. For the first time, I
allowed myself to fully recognise that the experiment had failed. There was no way of deciding whether the twins' singing was a language in itself, or whether they were simply singing for the fun of it. Perhaps their song really had been nothing more than a celebration of their own being, their likeness, the sense they had of themselves and of one another. Perhaps it was the running commentary of two perplexed souls, unable to make any sense of their world, but delighting in it, nevertheless. All of a sudden it occurred to me that they had existed all their lives in a state, not of innocence, but of grace – which is to say, awareness, playfulness in the purest sense, a special mix of detachment and interest that made them appear, at times, superior to me in their manner of being in the world. That was it. These children, singing to one another in the confines of a blank laboratory room, possessed something I could not begin to imagine. They had passed beyond the limits of my language and ended up beyond my control, outside the scope, even, of my observation. It was a sobering thought. Nevertheless, there were lessons to be learned. Next time, I told myself, I would set things up differently. I would obtain a new child and keep it in total isolation. It would be a simple matter to find another homeless woman. I could start again. In the meantime, I would make the best of a bad job with the twins. It was evident that A would not sing any longer: he must have known that B could not reply. In other words, there was an imbalance between them. If that imbalance were righted, there was a chance that they might attempt to find some new way of communicating. Perhaps I had allowed them to rely on their singing for too long, and they would be unable to find an alternative. Still, it was worth a try. I would perform one more laryngotomy and, if that failed, I would scrap the experiment and start again.

The second operation was as successful as the first. I found
it pleasurable, once again, to linger over the tiny gaps, to see the intricacy and beauty of the flesh in close detail. However, A's response on recovery was even worse than B's. He was more listless – less willing, I think, to recover. He developed a fever, and symptoms of infection which, with no worthwhile antibiotics, there was little I could have done to combat. I placed him back in the pen with his sister, and they lay together, gazing at one another, disconsolate, spent. I was relieved, in a way, to be spared their constant singing, but I now understood that I would have to take steps to close this experiment down and make ready for another. Perhaps I felt guilty, too, for taking things so far; either way, I could no longer bear to have them in the house. The experiment was over: it had ended in failure, more or less, and the twins were a constant reminder of how badly it had gone. Besides, it was obvious that they were unhappy, and I realised that it would be a mercy to simply end their lives. I had already sketched out my plans, working out a strategy for finding a new homeless woman, deciding where I would keep her, thinking through all the possibilities. I would have to be careful, but once I had found an appropriate person, once I had managed to get her back to the house, I could keep her in the basement, out of sight and mind. I thought of the girls I had seen in London, hopeless, desperate for food and shelter and a sense of safety. They soon became suspicious and self-aware after a few months on the streets, but how easy it would be to find a young runaway on her first or second night: someone inexperienced, someone vulnerable. I'd read about men who wandered around the stations and backstreets at night, hunting down such girls. If they could do it, I could. How much better for the girl if I found her, rather than someone like Jimmy. Even if she wasn't a willing partner, even if she didn't understand what was happening, or what her true purpose was, she would be comfortable and well
looked after, for a time at least. Most importantly, she would be engaged in something worthwhile.

Meanwhile, I had to be rid of the twins. I considered several methods of disposal. Drowning occurred to me, but I dismissed it as involving too much direct contact with the children. The truth was, I felt squeamish. The same problem arose with smothering or asphyxiation. I had a good supply of valium and a variety of drugs Mother had been prescribed over the course of her illness, but I felt they might be useful in my attempts to procure a homeless woman. Other possibilities included alcohol and carbon monoxide poisoning, or the simple withdrawal of food and drink. In the end, however, I lighted upon the perfect answer.

I had forgotten that every garden is an apothecary's shop. It contains narcotics, emetics, astringents, love potions, hallucinogens. A few years before I had begun the experiment with the twins, I had studied the effects of plant substances, especially hallucinogens and poisons. Now it all came back to me: the effects of yew and cherry laurel, laburnum, deadly nightshade, bryony, various fungi. It pleased me to think that the most powerful drugs could be found within a mile's walk of any home, especially in autumn, when the woods are full of toadstools. Every park, every stretch of waste ground, every local woodland offered the kinds of plants that could destroy a man's inner organs in a matter of days, or tear his mind open in a few hours. I had read of cases where children had swallowed only a few berries of
Atropa belladonna
, the deadly nightshade, and had begun to hallucinate vividly, the hallucinations becoming more and more intense as the poison worked, until finally they died – not from the poison that cause the visions, but from another, quite distinct substance. During my earlier researches, I had prepared several extracts of these substances: atropa, foxglove,
monkshood, without really knowing what I intended to do with them. Now, all of a sudden, I had my answer.

I was working at the far end of the garden, by the wall, where Mother had trained a pillar of Albertine up a trellis. I was enjoying the scent, the warmth of the afternoon sun, the quiet of the place. The singing in my ears had stopped and, for the first time in months, I was at peace. I'm not sure when, but it was some time in the long heat of the afternoon, the way it sometimes happens, when you've been outside, in a closed space, alone for a while. I had my back to the house and, all of a sudden, I felt someone was there, standing at the door, watching me. I turned around quickly. It sounds absurd, but I half-expected to see Mother there, standing at the door, calling me to come in for some tea. I could see her in my mind's eye, in her blue and red summer dress and her straw hat. She was as beautiful as ever. But when I looked, nobody was there. I saw nothing but the holly trees by the path, the back door, the study window. The sensation only lasted a moment, but it was beguiling, as if I'd been touched, like one of the children in the books Mother used to read me, by the cool hand of some otherworldly presence. It didn't occur to me that my intruder of two years before had returned: after all, how could he? He was long dead, I thought.

Nevertheless, when I reached the house, the evidence that someone had been there was undeniable. He must have been watching me for some time. It reminded me of the time before, when I'd found Jimmy's traces in the garden, but it was a ridiculously long time before I actually realised that this was the same individual who had come before, the same all-seeing person, returning to haunt me. In other words, I had killed Jimmy for nothing. That would have explained his behaviour
in the churchyard. Now, I suddenly realised, I would have to put all my plans on hold. I would have to delay finding a girl, I would have to get rid of the twins quickly, and clear the basement, in case anyone came prowling. Worst of all, if my intruder returned, I would have to go through the process I had gone through with Jimmy, with its attendant risks, all over again.

That evening, I bought the local paper. It wasn't something I usually did; I suppose I wanted to check to see if anything out of the ordinary had happened, if there was some new information about Jimmy's death, or Lillian's disappearance, or some new evidence that had come to light. I nicked through quickly, looking for anything that might indicate cause for concern, but, to be honest, I was hardly aware of what I was reading. It all seemed so absurd, that mixture of road traffic accidents and advertisements for bridal wear, of births and deaths and recipes for lemon meringue pie. I'm not even sure, looking back, if I was conscious of having noticed the feature story on the cover, but I suppose I must have done. When I began reading, it was the picture that first caught my attention. I recognised Jeremy Olerud right away, though he looked clean and tidy, in a collar and tie, with his shock of yellow hair brushed back, and he looked different – less enraged, almost happy. The story was rather thin. It said the boy had been found drowned in the boating lake at Weston Park. The local police were asking for anyone who had seen the child, or who might have any information about the circumstances of his death, to come forward. It was obvious that they suspected foul play. The story went on to say that Karen Olerud, the mother of the drowned boy, had gone missing in mysterious circumstances. The police were appealing
to anyone who knew her whereabouts to come forward. I was surprised at the amateurish quality of the writing, even for a local newspaper. They actually used terms like
mysterious circumstances.
The report concluded with a summary of Jeremy's school career and behavioural problems.