I awoke again last night with the feeling of extreme claustrophobia. There was an active crowd surrounding my bed, groping at my bare ankles that I had kicked from the covers. The room was silent but my head was filled with the monotonous drone of importune. I pushed back the bed sheets and heaved my tired body up and through the thick fog that was memory. They haunted my sleep most nights. They were no longer disturbing or a nuisance, in fact, they had become a part of my nightly routine, almost as a comforting reminder that I needed to get up to urinate, and top of my glass of water.
As I dozed back into a restless sleep I envisioned a young woman stooped over the foot of my bed with thick blonde hair tide loosely back. She stood forward from the others who were all immersed in darkness, with her arms outstretched and her hands clasped together. She mumbled an inaudible drone, of which I do not recall understanding but to which I do remember replying with some sort of incomprehensible and lazy ‘shoo’, and despite this, I continued to see her every time I opened my eyes to dart them deliriously in the dark. She remained here, brandishing her married fists in desperation until I turned on my front and fell into a deep sleep, one filled with silent moving pictures of weddings that never took place, and faceless children that were never born; images more disturbing to me than ghosts disguised as solid human figures at a deadly hour of night, pleading for me, but only gaining my ignorance.
They did not disturb me again for the remainder of the night, and I woke the next morning to an empty room, occupied only by myself and now the welcome presence of April sunshine, shot through the curtains in thick beams. I swallowed, only to find that I couldn’t. My dry throat was swollen almost to closing, and my eyes felt too big to roll with ease in their sockets. My third cold this month.
***
I set out two teacups with their matching saucers that I had only used once previously, and some wafers that I’m fond of dunking. I remembered I had an opened packet of Rich Tea in the cupboard above the kettle, so I spent some time arranging them into a spiral pattern on a side plate that closely resembled the look of my teacup and saucer set, and placed that down by the wafers. He sounded like a young lad on the phone, couldn’t have been much older than the lad across the street, so it occurred to me he wouldn’t want much to do with wafers and Rich Tea, so I found a packet of ready salted crisps that I knew the young lad across the street was accustomed to, emptied them into a patterned bowl, and placed them along side the wafers, after some rearranging.
He was twenty five minutes late, the young lad, so after getting up to peer through the net curtains, then setting myself back onto the edge of my corner chair, I decided I had may as well go ahead and turn on the television set to catch the end of Countdown But would you have it, the second she got warmed up and the picture was clear enough to make out Carol reaching for another consonant please, there was a loud rap at my door, loud enough to be the tax man.
The boy was young, as I had thought, and he dressed as though he shared a wardrobe with the young lad across the street. For a newspaper reporter he did not make the effort that was expected to be met in my interviewing hay day. His hair was cropped neatly short, and his face was cleanly shaven (that’s if there was hair to be shaven in the first place), but is neck is where my satisfaction in his appearance ended. I am not entirely sure when this boy had donned his current attire, but it seemed to me he has slept in it, ate in it, been for a jog in the rain in it and then found his way to my address to rap loudly on my door in it. But, he wore an enthusiastic grin so I let him in.
I took note that James (he said earlier on the telephone that his name was James) noticed my tea try of aurderves and had paused mid sentence and stood quite motionless for a few seconds as his eyes passed over the spread. To my slight regret he quickly dismissed the refreshments and proceeded to land himself in the centre of my three-seater, producing some hi-tech recording equipment from his rucksack. The interview was due to start half an hour ago, yet the boy made no apologies for his late arrival. Last time I was interviewed for a magazine, I was flown to the Plaza Hotel in New York City where I was greeted with champagne and a silver tray carrying eight little squares of Melba toast topped with trout pâté and asparagus marmalade (they were awful even washed down with champagne but I ate them anyway). I had my photograph taken by Jaen Li Darlrough which made front cover of Manhattan Today. I doubt James brought a camera. I noticed at the door he didn’t have a photographer in toe. The boy had stressed to me on several occasions that the interview was for his college magazine and would not be distributed further than the campus. Still, I had expected him to wear a tie.
I confirmed for the Dictaphone that my name was Cyril B. Bandachoke, that I was eighty one years of age and that I was currently living in a bottom cottage flat in South Manchester. The boy inquired as the whereabouts of my wife or children, and I told him I lived alone, and the only person that visited was a teenage care assistant named Sally, who did some shopping for me once a week and cleaned out my bath. The rest I could do myself. A ripple of pity skimmed over the boys face, but he thought better of it, changed his position slightly and moved onto his next question.
I thought about this one for a moment, partly about my answer (not that I needed to think about it too much as I had been asked so often before), and partly because I thought I had detected a flicker of a smirk as he said it. I leaned forward, picked up the patterned bowl of ready salted and offered them to him, in an attempt to lure him under the pretences that we were on the same level: I feed the boy teenager food, he keeps a straight face. I was pleased to see he took a crisp. In fact, he delved his digits in past some of the smaller broken bits and headed straight for a big oval shaped one; a good choice, lightly browned with no black dots or broken edges. He held it in his thumb and forefinger, and rested the back of his wrist on his knee, as though the morsel he had taken was not for eating. This behaviour distracted me further, until the boy urged me on, indicating his rolling tape. So I began.
My mother had been curious of my peculiar strengths and weaknesses as a child. On my tenth birthday, my parents had arranged a street party with balloons, linen table covers and lemonade. Most of the neighbours turned out with sugary cakes and sweet foods, the kind one would expect to find at a child’s party, and I, being the over-indulged only child that I was, grossly over-indulged in the fruit buns and iced pastries until it became difficult to breath and until the lively colours of the party slowly faded to white and grey sleepy crisps.
I stopped here at my mistake, but no shame overcame me as it usually would when in the company of the guest, as I was engrossed in the boy’s ability to fit the entire crisp into his wide open mouth and close his lips around it without so much as a hint to its breakage. I felt I could not go on until I was satisfied that he had chewed and swallowed the fragment, but his facial muscles remained motionless as he stared in my direction awaiting my speech, so I pushed through the awkwardness and continued.
While in my state of sickly satisfaction I slumped back in the garden chair that had been placed at the top end of the series of tables by my mother that morning, I held my aching belly and took in deep breaths (a common routine, as I often subjected myself to this addictive torture as a child), yet something that was not so common was the sound of a woman’s voice floating bodiless around my head. I remember not all of it was understandable. Some words overlapped others as though the one voice was talking twice in parallel, and the volume and intonation of it continually changed dramatically. In my bloated stupor it was difficult to see the majority of my party guests, but there was no mistaking the ten metre radius of empty space that surrounded my top-table chair, and no mistaking that this voice was coming from somewhere within that empty space.
But this new phenomenon was nothing in comparison to this young lad taking his right hand to his mouth and removing an entire oval shaped ready salted crisp without a single breakage, birthing it through the rim of his loosely closed lips, so as to remove all the salty flavouring, and then returning his wrist to its original position on the right knee, now proudly showcasing the erect, no doubt warm and slightly soggy, slice of fried potato. He did not appear to notice my incredulity at his regurgitating of entire pieces of food in my presence, but rather continued, unaware, to lick the remainder of flavouring from the surface of the crisp, before once again allowing the whole thing into his mouth and shutting it back into the dark.
This was all too much. Never before had I seen such unearthly mannerisms in a young man, a man who did not appear to be purposefully trying to insult me, but who seemed blissfully unaware that his actions were causing me great anguish. Fortunately, the ritual of this (what I can assume to be) teenage eating habit, was crunched into its final throws as the satisfying sound of molars meeting in the dance of digestion filled my ears. I took a breath of relief and poured out two cups of tea before I continued.
After a few weeks of hearing these homeless voices wondering lost and finding shelter under my more than ample size, I began to hear them at all hours of the day, and not just after demolishing a family sized meal. I was a smart child; I read a lot, so it wasn’t difficult to recognize these as the thoughts of people around me. It didn’t worry me then, even when I unconsciously channelled into thoughts of adultery, divorce, and robbery, and that’s how I knew I was special, just as my mother had always said. I dunked a wafer, and was mightily satisfied to see that James did the same. I hadn’t told the story of my lifetime of success to another person for at least twenty years, but the historical, factual and fictional stories were all readily available in libraries and across the world web wide, and Sally told me the figurines were still being sold in Japan. I still practiced the story though, perched on the end of my bed, looking into my mirror. I’d get a little over-excited at times and make parts up, so it’s difficult to remember what actually happened and what didn’t.
Manhattan Today labelled me ‘Mr Cognitive’ and that’s how it stuck. The doctors were baffled. They put my psychic ability down as a ‘super’ sense and when word got out I was seen as some sort of ‘super’ man, and then as a ‘super’ hero once the government got wind. I could be put in a room with a suspected criminal and have answers to questions even he didn’t know. I could unlock the door to everyone’s unconscious within a twenty metre radius. I worked for eighteen months for the government as a human lie detector, a human crime detector and the most accurate psychiatrist the world will ever know. Work was coming in thick and fast, and for the most part I thought I was having the time of my life, until I was advised to find myself an agent, and then Toni walked through the double doors.
The young lad stopped me here to turn over his tape and was about to dunk another wafer when I got up and told him I’d better make a fresh pot of tea so as to not spoil the condiments . Over the hush of the boiling kettle the young lad shouted to me from the sitting room, offering up some information about the course he was studying at college, and what his plans were for the following year. He seemed pleasant enough, but I couldn’t help but fantasize about running an iron over his shirt, and a putting a few stitches in all those tears he had up and down his jeans. What must his mother of been thinking allowing a lad with such passion for his school work to be let out in such a sorry state of glad rags? He probably could do with a bath too, and a hot meal wouldn’t go a miss. I took out a Cornish pasty from the fridge and popped it in the microwave for a minute while the tea brewed. The boy seemed to brighten right up when I took it in on a matching patterned side-plate and placed it down next to the Rich Tea (I noticed he had helped himself to a few of these while my back was turned), he nodded in excited appreciation and took up the plate from the coffee table and balanced it on his knees while lapping up his fresh brew of tea, forgetting the wafer altogether. As he gnawed away at his pasty it occurred to me that he and Sally would get on a treat, and if James was here Sally might stay a little longer, rather than running in the door with the musical ear plugs in with the bag of milk and potatoes, swilling a damp cloth around the bath and running back out again, briefly mentioning being late for a ‘gig’ as she flew through. Sally only came for ten minutes every Thursday evening, but she was like family.
The boy gave a quiet burp after he had drained the last few dregs of his tea, and I immediately rose to fill his cup again. There was no rush to get his tape recorded with questions and answers; I had all the time in the world, but he proceeded nonetheless, and began fiddling with the equipment, no doubt in a rush to bring himself to one of these ‘giggy’ things that are so popular with young people. James hit the button, and I went back to my story.
Toni was the best celebrity agent America had to offer, and although I wouldn’t have labelled myself as a celebrity, I soon would be, and an A-lister at that. She knew the ins and outs of show business, she got right down to the nitty-gritty and still came out wearing silk gloves and a sequin beret. She told me that I didn’t need to work with the real criminals for the fame of being a super-hero, I needed to work with the audience. It was all a west-end show, and I was the main attraction. A costume was made, and I know you’ll laugh now James, because in my day of being Mr Cognitive I wore a green and white, neck to toe, elasticated rubber suite, topped with a rubber mask, and a to-the-floor white flowing cape. I must clear it up now that I could fly as much as a brick wall could, and I didn’t need the suite to disguise my identity, as my face had already been splashed across the media, but Toni said it was a show, and a show we had to give.
She took care of all the letters and calls that came through constantly from scientists wanting to experiment, and small-time news papers wanting to run stories. She grabbed my hand with a crushing grip and we reached for the big time, and it wasn’t long before me and my rubber suite made it onto the television (the suite only came out in black and white back then, mind), and she was right about not having to work with real criminals, because the producers at the television show had arranged their very own criminal to come in, dressed in a comedy bandit’s outfit. They gave me a sheet of lines to learn that went something like ‘This man is thinking terrible things. He plans to steal money from your purse’, and this is where I would point right into the camera, then wrestle the criminal to the ground (who fell like a wet fish) and call out ‘Officer, arrest this man!’ The entire world bought it, and soon I wasn’t doing any work for the government and not even for the local police station on Sundays like I used to, when they’d tied themselves up in knots over legal work.
James suddenly remembered the rejected wafer and dipped it into his cup, as he sat quite comfortably in the centre of the settee, ankles crossed, and jaw slightly ajar. He asked another question, one that I presumed wasn’t on his list, but rather one that simply slipped out in his idleness. I told him I had met many famous people, or rather many famous people had met Mr Cognitive. He had his photo taken with the likes of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and President Nixon, (I’d done a few jobs for Nixon before Toni came along). James asked another question which made my teacup stop abruptly en-route to my awaiting mouth. No interviewer had ever asked me that before, in fact, I couldn’t recall anyone asking me that before. I was Mr Cognitive and the way I was needed no alterations, and I certainly didn’t need any baggage. No, I had never fallen in love. I regret that now. I got up slowly, as my knees would no longer allow the usual pace of standing, and crossed over to the window. I wish I had a story to tell about how I met my wife, or the birth of my first child, but they never came along. I just hope that this is how life was meant to be panned out for me, I hope I was meant to live alone, rather than her being out there and I had just walked straight past.
A thick silence suffocated the room until the comforting tinkling sound drained it away when the boy put down his empty cup into the saucer. He looked down onto his sheet of questions and asked another one, changing the mood altogether. I turned on my heel and moved back to my chair.
Mr Cognitive was a huge hit. When Toni was around he was the celebrity with shiny teeth and greased-back hair, and keeping up appearances was his only care. But Toni wouldn’t always be there, pulling the strings to this man-size puppet dressed as a rubber glove. Sometimes it was just be, Cyril, and sometimes I couldn’t block the voices, and they came in hard. I would lie in my bed at night, and no matter how hard I pressed the pillow to my ears the wailing of children’s whines would enter, crying for more sugared almonds or cocoa. I could hear the neighbour’s prayers for lottery wins and for a younger, thinner wife. The worst moments were when I channelled into a dream. I couldn’t sift through easily; my head would be filled with the most horrific of goblin-type creatures that were perched on top of pink candy-floss clouds. Nothing made sense, and it would leave me feeling groggy and in ill-health.
On a Monday morning, in the middle of a particularly hot summer, I awoke to the muffled sound of a bird’s song through the window, and the voices were gone. The best way to describe it is like taking off a tight elastic band from around your head after twelve years of it being there. I could even breathe easier and see everything clearer, almost as though by senses had been blurred since that fateful day on my tenth birthday. Well my career was over. I could have gone on pretending and reading from scripts like I had been doing but my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to be alone, now that I had peace. It occurred to me that after twelve years of listening to the thoughts, prayers, wants and desires of everyone surrounding me, I couldn’t remember ever having a thought of my own, not a substantial one anyway. I relapsed, hid from the world of show business, and then eventually hid from the world.
James took a breath and whistled. It sounded eccentric but to be alone with only one set of thoughts was like how I would imagine lying on a picnic blanket with your loved one, looking out on miles of silent scenery, and to arrive here you would have had to travel through years of hectic traffic.
Oh, I spend most of my time now pottering around. Pottering is what I’ve done for the past twenty years or so. The novelty of lying on the picnic blanket hasn’t worn away yet so I don’t get lonely. My mind is highly cosmopolitan after its years of interaction with so many millions, and sometimes I feel it managed to store a lot of those thoughts into my head’s empty spaces. I imagine the inside of my head to be like my mother’s kitchen, and hidden in biscuit barrels, and sewing boxes are the thoughts of others that touched me a little. James took up his Dictaphone in his hands and inquired further.
When Mr Cognitive was around I would often stay in hotels where my head would be rife with the hustle of screaming thoughts from all directions. Most of the rooms in the business hotels I stayed in were occupied with one lonely inhabitant, and they had no choice but to talk to themselves, which consequently meant they were all talking to me. One rainy night in October I was pressing a pillow to my head as usual, when one woman’s voice came booming through clearer than the rest, casting them all into bumbling shadow. She was in a room not far from mine but she was thinking about her husband, who became lost in France during the war. She spoke to him about her day, and then would imagine his reply. In her head they were dancing, and whispering about their future, about their children and about what colour to paint the picket fence in the summer. That lady’s daydream has remained with me up until this very day, and sometimes during my dreams her voice solidifies into what I imagined her to look like.
The quiet buzz that was shyly emitting from the tape recorder suddenly came to a halt, and James made his apologies for not having a spare. He slapped his knees in finality, and stood to sling his rucksack over his shoulder. He assured me that he would be in touch soon to discuss an appropriate photo, which warmed me.
I suggested he popped round to meet Sally, and they could go ‘gig’ together, which he appeared positive about, and then I suggested he popped round again next week because I had a few more Cornish pasties, and I even had a leg of lamb in the freezer which would be a shame not to share. He politely agreed.
***
I awoke again in the night with my nose and mouth filled with the smell of that elasticated rubber costume that was the trade-mark of Mr Cognitive. I sat up with the speed and ease of a youth and relished in the memory of my long-lived fifteen minutes. Perhaps it was 1949, and I was back in New York City, an ample-bosomed makeup girl tending to my facial imperfections. Then my red rubber hot water bottle came into view below my pillow and I was back in my cottage flat in South Manchester, needing to urinate and top up my water.
katrinadoherty