The Eliot Pierce incident was the first indication I’d had that there might have been a delayed effect, a result which could not be seen or measured at the time of the experiment. I got in touch with his mother, thinking that we could enlighten one another. I explained who I was, but Mrs Pierce was very unhelpful. I then googled the names of the other participants, in all three groups, but found no further relevant information, which meant that the car park jump was not statistically significant.
At that time, I was living in a house on Slash Lane, which I had converted into flats. The letting was dealt with by an agent — I did not want tenants knocking on my door complaining about blocked toilets or burst pipes. After the student in the ground-floor flat decided to move out, I acquired a new downstairs tenant, who I saw on occasion, when looking out of my front window. She had been in the house for a little while before I found myself going through her paperwork, looking at her name: Falls, Bonnie. As soon as I made the connection, I started to watch her. I observed her coming home from work at the same time every evening, disappearing into the passageway like Mr Hyde heading to his back door.
I made contact, and through Bonnie have had the opportunity of again meeting Mrs Falls, on whom I can see that my subliminal commands had no effect at all.
This reacquaintance with my old experimentees has also brought to mind my little brother’s friend, who proved to be a far more cooperative subject for hypnosis than my brother ever was. What I did not know back then is that some people are simply more suggestible than others: they have a suggestible personality, a “hypnotic susceptibility”. Hypnosis works “because the subject believes the process is effective” (Brown, Tricks of the Mind). On the other hand, you can hypnotise a chicken. I understand, though, that this is rather different: the chicken, sensing a threat, enters into a state of semi-paralysis and plays dead. Having failed to hypnotise my brother, and subsequently the cat, neither of them a willing subject, I had more success with my brother’s friend, dabbling with hypnosis, the inducement of trance-like states, and post-hypnotic suggestion. I have not thought of him in all this time and now find myself wondering how he is doing.
I have also, of course, had the chance to get to know Bonnie, who was not really a member of the group but who was there at the back of the room throughout the Group A session, doodling in her little book, drawing shapes like that of the television screen at which she kept looking.
At the age of 30, she is inclined to failure. She is drawn, even in her sleep, to windows and edges, and has been known to jump.
18
On Monday morning, Bonnie woke up later than she had intended to — it was after nine o’clock — but when she looked out of the front window, she saw that Sylvia was not yet there with the hire car.
Bonnie got dressed and was about to start packing when she realised that she did not have a suitcase. She emptied the dressing-up costumes out of the suitcase in the lounge and used that. She had left her mobile phone charging overnight, and she now unplugged it and put it into her shoulder bag so that she would not forget to take it.
In the middle of the morning, Sylvia pulled up at the kerb and got out of the car looking unusually flustered.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ said Sylvia. ‘I just had a few things to finish off.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Bonnie. ‘I’m not ready either.’ Most of the clothes that she had been planning on bringing were still hanging damp on the line in the yard. She packed them anyway and carried the costumes suitcase out to the car. Lifting it into the boot, she said, ‘Have I forgotten anything?’
‘If you have,’ said Sylvia, ‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’
‘Is that water?’ said Bonnie, spying the plastic containers that Sylvia had got in the boot, underneath her own suitcase.
‘Be prepared,’ said Sylvia, closing the boot. ‘We ought to get going.’
‘Oh wait!’ said Bonnie. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something. I’ll just be a minute. Come inside and sit down.’ Sylvia went with Bonnie back inside the flat, although she did not sit down or take off her jacket, but stood near the door while Bonnie spent a while digging out wellies and waterproof trousers and a waterproof coat. ‘You’re quite right,’ said Bonnie. ‘You never know what’s going to happen.’ Eventually, she set out to the car with her arms full of things that she would not need. Halfway down the passageway, she heard her phone ringing, her landline, or perhaps it was her neighbour’s phone. Either way, it soon stopped, and Bonnie had almost reached the car when half the things she was carrying fell into the gutter. With her hair falling into her face, she picked everything up again and put it in the car. Was that everything now? She returned to the house, saying, ‘I think I really have remembered everything now.’
‘I’ve got your bag,’ said Sylvia, coming through from the lounge into the kitchen.
‘Oh yes,’ said Bonnie, ‘thank you.’ She took her bag from Sylvia, glanced cursorily through its contents, and stepped outside, with Sylvia right behind her. As Bonnie turned to lock the door behind them, the house phone started ringing and Bonnie paused with her key in the lock.
‘Leave it,’ said Sylvia. ‘We’re on holiday now.’
‘Yes,’ said Bonnie, locking the door. ‘You’re right.’ They walked through the passageway to the car. They could still hear the phone ringing, but barely, and, when they got into the car and closed the doors, not at all.
Sylvia drove. She did not hold her hands at ten to two on the steering wheel; she held them both at the top, at noon, or midnight, which looked like a dicey way to steer, and Bonnie wondered if she was safe. She also noticed that Sylvia’s hands, which had always looked manicured, now looked somewhat scaly. Sylvia picked at the skin on the backs of her hands as she drove, scratching off loose, transparent flakes, and Bonnie saw that it was only glue, dried glue, as if Sylvia had been doing some craftwork, something like papier mâché.
They drove towards the motorway, and when they were nearly at the junction, Sylvia noted that they were passing the site of what had once been a nightclub called The Sea Around Us. The nightclub was now long gone. ‘It always seemed like a strange name for a place in the landlocked Midlands,’ she said, ‘but of course the sea is all around us, wherever we are, especially on a small island.’ And here and there it was inching closer. Bonnie had seen the information on the Internet about coastal erosion, the predictions for the next twenty and fifty and one hundred years, the places where the cliffs and dunes and beaches were disappearing at the rate of a metre or two or three or more every year.
At the junction, they crossed over the roundabout, going straight past the sign for the M1, ‘The SOUTH’, where Bonnie had expected to turn off. ‘Is that not our exit?’ asked Bonnie, turning her head to look back at the signpost for the south, for London.
‘No,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s not the way we’re going.’
They left the roundabout again. ‘I always wanted to go down to Margate,’ said Bonnie. ‘I wanted to go to Dreamland, but it closed down years ago.’