The Parasite Person (2 page)

I first met Celia Fremlin at the end of 1969. I was newly arrived in London, a recent graduate from Swansea University, working for a publisher and aspiring to be a writer. Celia was a leading light in the North West London Writers’ Group and the first meeting I attended was in her house in South Hill Park, Hampstead. (Already I had reason to be grateful to her, because she had judged a Mensa short-story competition and awarded me second prize.)

My first experience of Celia’s writing was, I think, her reading of the first chapter of
Appointment with Yesterday,
sometime during 1970. I was transfixed: certainly it was the most vivid thing I ever heard in my attendance at the group. Celia was writing about people who seemed completely real, whose experiences could happen to anyone. The shock of recognition was extreme. Here were women in their own homes, with noise and kindness and fear and desperation all astonishingly true to life. And there was wit – we always laughed when Celia read to us.

Four decades would pass before I could understand something of what was really happening in Celia’s life at the time we met. It was an unpublished memoir by her daughter Geraldine that finally enlightened me. But at those meetings there was never any mention – at least in my hearing – of Celia’s daughter Sylvia or her husband Elia, both of whom had died by their own hand the previous year. It was as if these were, understandably, taboo subjects. Celia’s son, Nick, lived in the same house, with his wife Fran and little son. Their second baby, Lancelot, was born during those years when we often met at South Hill Park. (In due course Nick would publish a novel of his own,
Tomorrow’s Silence
, in 1979.)

I have always resisted attempts to connect a writer’s life directly with his or her work: to do so can often diminish the power and value of the imagination. But in Celia’s case, I have always believed that her novel
With No Crying
would never have been written if Sylvia hadn’t died. The novel is, essentially, about the deprivation and grief that the wider family experiences when a child is lost. It is very well plotted – perhaps the best of all her work. The ‘message’ at the end is honest and wise and sad. It was not published until 1980, and – I believe – not written until a year or so before that, which was over ten years after the agonising events of 1968.

Celia’s short stories are perhaps more telling in some ways. They are certainly unforgettably good. Those in her first collection,
Don’t Go To Sleep in the Dark
, are the ones I especially remember. Many of her stories involve sunlit beaches, couples on holiday, people out in the open air. This contrasts with her novels, which are usually set indoors, often in the winter or at night. Darkness and light is a strong theme in all her work.

I was lavishly praised and encouraged by Celia in my early writing endeavours and I’m in no doubt that she was a real influence on me, if mostly subliminally. She was also very affectionate with my two baby boys, when they arrived in the mid-1970s. When we moved out of London, she came to visit us several times with her second husband, Leslie. She read my first published novel and wrote an endorsement for it. I last saw her in 1999, shortly before Leslie died.

I am highly delighted that Celia’s books are being reissued. Her ability to capture the combination of ordinariness and individuality in her characters and their relationships, which readers find so compelling, is something I have tried to emulate. I have no doubt that these books will find a large audience of new readers, who will wonder why they hadn’t heard of her before.

Rebecca Tope

Rebecca Tope is a crime novelist and journalist whose novels are published in the UK by Allison & Busby. Her official website is www.rebeccatope.com.

“I
T WAS
A
cry for help,” the young woman told him, nestling contentedly against her pillows. “Suicides nearly always are, aren’t they, and that’s what mine was. So come on. Help me.”

Martin raised his eyes from his notebook and looked at his subject uneasily. This wasn’t the idea at all.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not a social worker. I thought they’d explained to you? This is
research
that I’m doing. I’m working in the Department of Social Psychology on a research project about depression, and it would be of the most enormous help to us if you’d …”

“I don’t want to be of enormous help to you. Why should I?
I’m
the one who attempted suicide—right? And so
I’m
the one who ought to be helped. Not you.”

From the well-stocked fruit-bowl on her bedside locker, she selected a nice plump grape and popped it into her mouth, watching him the while beneath lowered lids. He fumbled with his papers, trying to find her record sheet.

Mogadon. That labelled it phoney, right from the start.
Everybody
knows—well, a psychology student, even a dropped-out one, certainly should—that it is virtually impossible actually to kill yourself with Mogadon. In fact, the whole thing was quite splendidly
typical, almost a text-book case. Typical age, typical restless life-style, typical choice of non-lethal drug. It should have been a marvellous interview, if only she’d be more co-operative. After so inauspicious a start, Martin wondered if it was worth while going on? If she was going to act up like this, expecting to have her answers wheedled out of her syllable by syllable, it might be better to scrap her here and now. Chalk her up among the “Don’t Knows” and be done with it?

“Well?” she said. Her pale, pointed little face, still yellowish from the overdose, was tilted challengingly in his direction, and with this small bit of encouragement Martin decided to plough on.

“Look,” he began, “Look … er …” (
What
was the damn girl’s name? Ruth. That was it.) “Look, Ruth, I don’t want to worry you if you’d rather be left alone; but if you
could
bring yourself to answer just one or two questions. Like—well … What actually was it that finally drove you to this … well … this very drastic …?”

“Can’t you say ‘Suicide’? You suffer from a lisp, or something? ‘Suicide, suicide, suicide!’ Go on,
say
it! That’s why you’re
here,
for Chrissake, because I’m a suicide! That’s the only reason why you’re talking to me at all. It’s a bit late in the day to be pretending you’ve never heard of the word!”

Frowning slightly, Martin took it all down verbatim. There was no way this was going to fit into any of his categories, but at least she was talking, that was the main thing. He set himself to probe further, using the method proper in a depth-interview, which is to follow along the lines which the subject himself had opened up.

“‘Suicide’, then. You’re quite right, we should be talking frankly to each other. Your suicide attempt, okay? Would you say it was a sudden decision—a sudden uncontrollable impulse? Or had you been depressed for some time …?”

“Depressed? Who’s talking about being depressed? I wasn’t depressed in the least. I was just into suicide, that’s all.”

Martin frowned yet more deeply, but he kept his cool—his scientific detachment, as he liked to regard it.

“Into suicide,” he repeated, in the correct depth-interview manner, quoting her own words back at her in a neutral,
non-judgemental
sort of tone. “And what was it, would you say, that
got you ‘into suicide’ in the first place?”

“Oh.” She pondered for a moment. “I think I mostly wanted to get into something that there wasn’t an Evening Class in. It’s not so easy these days. They’ve got Tarot cards already, you know, at the Houndsditch Institute, and I’m told they’re starting Levitation in September. You have to go so far to be way-out these days that over the edge is where it’s at.”

“‘Over the edge is where it’s at,’” Martin repeated gravely, scribbling away in his notebook while he spoke; and then, the non-judgemental stance cracking for a moment, he found himself protesting: “But you know, Ruth, you can’t go in for suicide like you go in for yoga. It’s—well—it’s too final.”

“Too final for who? Look, Prof, if I’m into suicide I’m into finality, aren’t I? I tell you, I’m hooked on finality like it was Valium, they can’t get me off it. And like they said, don’t mix it with alcohol. And so I did mix it with alcohol, and did I take off! Wow! That was
something
!
It really was! Eeeee … eeeeee …!”

These last sounds, with their shrill, long-drawn-out note of glee, were impossible to transcribe in shorthand, and so Martin left a space for them, hoping that he would remember, when the time came, what the space stood for. In the days when he’d done his own typing, this sort of thing hadn’t mattered so much; but now that he had moved in with Helen, who loved him so passionately, and who strove so earnestly to be the sort of help to him in his career that his wife had never been, it was a little bit more complicated. Adorably, she had taken over the typing-up of his interviews as her own special chore, and so anxious was she to get everything exactly right that it was really quite an embarrassment at times.

“Is this ‘perverted’ or ‘parental’?” she would worriedly enquire, and for the life of him he could hardly ever tell. Nor could he bring himself to explain to her—so conscientious was she, and so full of faith in him—that honestly it didn’t matter a damn, either would do, an interview was an interview, and the important thing was to have sixty-four of them in the bag before May 4th.

May 4th. Barely three months away now, and already he was badly behind schedule. Less than a dozen interviews completed so far and more than fifty still to come.

Concentrate, Martin, concentrate, get the damn thing
done.
One more is one more….

“‘Finality’,” he repeated, picking up her key word in the approved manner. “Even the finality of death, would you say? Your own death?”

“Look, Prof, Death is the in-thing, didn’t you know? Don’t they tell you these things up there among the brain-freaks? Death is
in
, brother! Death is the Now-thing. Up-to-the-minute, fat-free,
problem
-enriched Death. Watch out for it on the Commercials: Death Dyes Whiter. ‘Well, they
said
anything could happen,’ remarks the blonde in the bikini when she finds herself standing before the Throne of God….”

Martin hadn’t got half of this down. It was always harder when they went off the beaten track like this. His shorthand speeds, acquired rather late in life, were better adapted to those interviews where the subject answered as he was expected to answer, the sentiments falling easily and naturally into one or other of Martin’s five carefully-thought-out categories.

Not that he
wanted
all his subjects to give the expected answer, not really. On the contrary, like any other social scientist, he lived in hopes of turning up results so startling, so unprecedented, as to turn establishment assumptions right on their head. Perhaps he would even end up on television, putting some revered celebrity or other firmly in place in front of millions of viewers….

Or at least (less ambitiously) he hoped that
something
a little bit new might turn up; something which might—just
might
—open up some area of research which hadn’t already been picked clean by hordes of predecessors in the field.

So, “Just a minute,” he said, and scribbled ferociously to catch up. Now he came to write it down, he was beginning to realise that she hadn’t really told him anything at all. Despite all this
self-display
, she had in fact revealed nothing of her problems. She had answered none of his questions, and had thrown no light
whatsoever
on the real motives for her suicide attempt. And as for depression, which was what the whole survey was supposed to be about, she had simply denied it.

Oh well, never mind. At least there were some good quotes here.
Good quotes can always be dragged in somehow, somewhere.

On, then, to Question 5. Few of them could resist this one, even if they’d been a bit sticky earlier on:

“Like who?” She looked at him guardedly. “What are you getting at?”

What indeed? Martin played for time, scribbling energetically. “Well: what I really meant was, isn’t there anyone among your friends who …?”

“
Friends
!
Oh, you’re talking about
friends.
You didn’t say. Look, Professor, I got friends like you got dandruff—just for brushing-off, kind of thing.”

Had
he got dandruff? Nervously, Martin tried to glimpse the shoulders of his dark suit, swivelling his eyes round so far that he felt as if he’d sprained them.

He couldn’t see a thing. He’d have to examine the suit later.

“Just one or two more questions, Ruth, and then we’ll be through. I don’t want to tire you, my dear, or pry into areas of your life that may be painful; but have you—how shall I put it?—have you a partner? A sex partner—a boyfriend?”

“Like I told you. Dandruff. You suffering from amnesia, or something?”

“I’m sorry …” Martin’s eyes swept uneasily over the final three questions, all of which presumed some kind of affirmative reply to Question Six. Did you confide in him? Do you feel that he could have helped you more than he did? Do you feel that he let you down in any way?

Mostly, they opened up like flowers in springtime to these sort of questions, pouring forth griefs, resentments, hang-ups that could be dealt out like a pack of cards under his prescribed headings. Guilt, Hostility, Self-Justification, Revenge—there was a slot for everything.

But no slot for Dandruff. The computer wouldn’t be able to
handle it. Martin sucked the end of his biro, and decided to bring the thing to a conclusion.

“Now, Ruth,” he said, putting a sort of penultimate note into his voice to show her that the end was near, “I’m very grateful to you indeed for answering all these questions.” (Actually she hadn’t answered a single one of them, but let that pass.) “It’s been most interesting. Now, before we finish, is there anything
you
would like to ask
me
?”
A cunning one, this. It was surprising how often it released not a question, but a whole new batch of confidences.

But not this time. The girl looked him up and down warily, then took up the challenge.

“Tell me how you got me?” she demanded. “I mean, so okay, you’re out collecting suicides like a kid collecting conkers. But why
me
?
We’re all death-freaks in this ward, you know, we’ve all had a go. So what made you pick on me in particular?”

Because you’re a C-class female, under twenty-five. Because you’ve been under treatment for depression at least once during the past two years. Because this hospital you’re in doesn’t take me too far out of my way. Because the psychiatrist who runs the Thursday clinic happens to be an old acquaintance of mine and so he lets me have the odd peek at his confidential records …

“It’s a special technique known as Random Sampling,” Martin explained blandly. “It’s a bit too technical, I’m afraid, for the ordinary layman, but …” He let his voice tail away, and began shuffling his papers together, indicating that the interview was at an end.

“Well, goodbye, Ruth,” he said, standing up with an air of finality and holding out his hand. “It’s been a great pleasure meeting you, and I’m most grateful for all your help. I expect you’ll be out of here in a day or two, eh?”

She should have taken his outstretched hand by now, and be murmuring words to the effect that
she
was the one to be grateful … a chance to get it off her chest … feeling better already … that sort of thing. The big, hearty smile with which he had started his little speech was drying on his face; and still she made no move.

“
Why
do you expect I’ll be out of here in a day or two?” she enquired. “You don’t know anything about it. For all you know,
my liver might start playing up again.” It sounded like a threat.

“Ah. Well.” Martin was at a loss for a suitable reply. What
do
you say about a liver that is playing up again? Or—even more difficult—one that merely
might
be playing up again?

It was all very tricky. Besides, it was already gone six, and in not much over an hour Helen would have one of her delicious dinners ready for him—a three-course dinner, starting with soup. His wife had never bothered with soup unless there were visitors, and even then it was only out of a tin. Happening to mention this fact to Helen, quite casually, during one of their long, cosy talks about Beatrice’s inadequacies, Martin had been amazed and delighted by the immediate and unprecedented consequences. Soup for starters, at every meal cooked by Helen, ever since. Home-made soup, too. Every Friday she would bring back great knobbly parcels of bones from the butcher and stew them up over the weekend to make the basis of a wonderful variety of luscious soups for every evening of the week. Lentil soup it would probably be tonight, with a delicate sprinkling of freshly-chopped mint. He’d noticed the lentils left to soak in a bowl first thing this morning. Clever girl!

“If my liver
did
play up—” the small insistent voice broke in upon his mouth-watering reverie “—if my liver did play up, would you come and ask me some more questions?”

Like hell he would! The interview was too long already, as well as practically useless. She only wanted to show off some more, buggering up the computer with her pretentious wisecracks.

“Well, no, Ruth, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said, dropping his outstretched hand at last and taking a step back from the bed. “I’ve got other interviews lined up, you see,” (God, if only that were true!) “and in this sort of work we have to keep to a very strict schedule. Otherwise …” He groped for some plausible get-out: “Otherwise … well …
bias
, you know. We have to be very careful to eliminate bias….”