The Burnaby Experiments Read online

  For nearly nine years I did nothing about it. Occasionally I remembered it and felt vaguely guilty. Early in 1948 I got it out again and re-read it. It struck me that the reason I hadn’t been able to get it published was that publishers simply didn’t believe it, and were not prepared to put forward as a serious work something which they regarded as no more than fantasy. One course only remained open to me, to rewrite the book as a novel and send it out once more.

  Well, here it is. I have changed the names of all the characters. I would only add that none of those characters is fictitious, that all bear as lively a resemblance as I can give them to living persons, or to persons who were living during the period covered by the book.

  CHAPTER I

  MARCUS awoke very gradually. He was hardly conscious of wakening. He passed from one dream state to another, from night dreams to day dreams. The night dreams seemed real, but in the day dreams he could see a more ordinary world in the background—a tall mahogany wardrobe, faces in the wall-paper, the spray of flowers painted across the top left-hand corner of the mirror on the dressing-table. All these and the battered brass knobs on the big iron bed were only half familiar. For this was the spare room; he had been moved in here temporarily while the night nursery was being papered and painted.

  In the morning the nursery was brighter than this, with the early sun glowing warmly on the yellowish brown blinds. There were blinds in the spare room too, but it was on the opposite side of the house and did not get the sun until the evening.

  Marcus had soft, black, lustreless hair: it looked rather long and tousled on the white pillow. His cheeks were pale and fat. His eyes were a very dark blue. He had long black eyelashes and very black eyebrows. He was six.

  His eyes wandered round the room from the wardrobe to the marble-topped wash-stand, along the mantelpiece to the dressing-table and the windows. Was it nearly time to get up, he wondered. He had been told not to get up till Daddy called him. He listened; the house was silent.

  What if Grannie came now? No one would hear the bell: no one would go to the door. Grannie would wait a little. Then she would think they were all on their summer holidays and she would tell the cabman to drive away again.

  The more Marcus thought of this the more anxious he became. He thought of Grannie’s disappointment, and of how disappointed Mammy would be. Gradually he forgot the injunction about not getting up: the picture of Grannie on the doorstep became more and more vivid.

  He slipped out of bed, and without thinking of his dressing-gown or bedroom slippers opened the door on to the landing. On the landing it was much darker than in the bedroom, though not too dark to see. He glanced at the closed doors, the stairs leading up, the stairs leading down. . . . Everything had a hushed air. He tiptoed out and sticking his head through the banisters looked down at the hall. The carpet felt soft and pleasant to his bare feet. He could see only the back part of the hall with the step down to the kitchen door. He remembered the terrible scene last week, when Maggie, the house-parlourmaid, had tripped over the step and spilled the whole tray of breakfast things across the hall. Most of the china had been broken. Mammy had been very angry and Maggie had fainted. Marcus had seen it all from here by putting his head between the banisters just as he was doing now.

  Seeing it all over again made him forget Grannie for a little, but soon he remembered her and listened for the bell: it didn’t ring. He waited for a minute or two—for ages it seemed: perhaps the bell had gone out of order again. He stole down the stairs feeling a little frightened of the dark corners and of the quietness.

  In the hall he hesitated. The sun was pouring through the panes in the top part of the front door, but they were of frosted glass, and anyhow he wasn’t tall enough to be able to see through them. He was about to go into the drawing-room to look out from there when he remembered the letter-box, and skipping across to it he lifted up the flap. There was nobody there; the sun shone down through the trees on the glistening, dewy lawn. A solitary thrush tugged at a recalcitrant worm.

  Marcus watched till the worm had lost its battle. Then he let the flap down again and started back towards the stairs. In the first patch of sunlight he stopped to let the warmth soak up through the soles of his feet. When the first patch no longer felt warm he stepped to another. After he had stood for a little on all the patches of sunlight he began to feel cold and decided to return to bed.

  On the landing he ran straight into Cook. Cook wasn’t usually a tidy person. She was fat, with red hair, and big, coarse, freckled hands; but Marcus had never seen her like this. Her hair was down and her feet were bare. Her apron and her stockings hung over her left arm: in one hand were her shoes: in the other was the kitchen alarm clock, looking as if it had suffered a good deal from ingratitude. Cook was sleepy and cross: it was her morning for doing the range. She hated that range: she’d broken it once and she’d a good mind to break it again.

  “Mind where you’re going,” she said grumpily; and then, “Where’ve you bin? Ye’re cold as ice.”

  “I went to see if Grannie was there,” Marcus explained.

  “Yer Grannie?” Cook looked surprised. “Sure isn’t yer Grannie in Newcastle where she always is?”

  “She’s coming up today,” Marcus informed her.

  “Comin’ up today, is she?” Cook repeated angrily. “They could ’a’ told me, couldn’t they?—and I’d ’a’ had somethin’ for her. That’s the way: they never tell Cook anything, so they don’t.”

  A door opened and Daddy came out. He was sleepy-looking too. He had on a hairy dressing-gown and hairy bedroom slippers. “What’s all this about?” he demanded.

  Cook reddened. “It’s me corns, sir,” she answered. “They’re that throublesome in the mornin’ it’s murther to draw on me shoes.”

  “And what are you doing, Marcus?”

  “I went to see if Grannie was here yet.”

  “Grannie!”

  Mr. Brownlow knew as little about Grannie’s coming as Cook. However he didn’t ask many questions. He wished Cook “Good morning” and hustled Marcus back to bed. “Now stay there,” he ordered, “and don’t get up till I tell you.”

  Daddy returned to his room. Mrs. Brownlow had fallen asleep again, but in climbing into bed he managed to awaken her. “You didn’t tell me your mother was coming,” he grumbled.

  “She’s not,” Mrs. Brownlow replied. “At least it’s the first I’ve heard of it, and I didn’t ask her.”

  “Marcus seems to know all about it,” Mr. Brownlow said.

  Mrs. Brownlow yawned. “The child’s full of notions. He dreamt it, I suppose.”

  Mr. Brownlow felt a little aggrieved, particularly as he wasn’t certain if he had anything to be aggrieved at. He pulled the sheet over his head and wondered if he would be able to get to sleep again before it was time to get up.

  Marcus of course had dreamt it. Nevertheless he was right about Grannie. She was just in time for dinner.

  CHAPTER II

  WHEN Marcus was nine he was sent to a preparatory school in Cheshire. He was probably as happy as most small boys at boarding-schools, but at times he was extremely homesick.

  During his first term he slept in what was called “The Kids’ Dorm” with four other boys of about the same age as himself. They went to bed at half-past six and at seven Matron turned out the lights. Talking after lights-out was forbidden, but as soon as the sound of Matron’s footsteps had died away in the passage conversation would break out as if no one had had a chance to say anything all day. Usually after this burst of conversation had subsided someone would tell a story. At first they took it in turns, but soon Marcus became the recognized storyteller of the dormitory. One by one the others would fall asleep. Then Marcus would stop, and lying quite still with his eyes shut he would pretend he was back in his own bed at home.<
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  But sometimes this pretence would be unsuccessful. Sounds from the real world would force themselves upon him and destroy the illusion he was trying to build up: he would hear a bus roaring along the Chester road, or the scraping of a tree against the window-panes, or the stamping feet of the twelve-year-olds as they clattered upstairs to bed. . . .

  One night, after all these things had happened, he gave up trying. He had had an unsatisfactory day: in the afternoon he had had a row with Leather minor, and he had received two “Impots” for talking in class. He couldn’t even think of home, though he particularly wanted to. He opened his eyes and listened. All the others were asleep, he thought. In a low voice he called their names, “Compton? Dawson? Parsons? Frame? Is anyone awake?” Nobody was, nobody else in the dormitory. He turned over on his other side and huddled close to the wall.

  For a moment he lay there, sorry for himself, homesick. . . . The next moment he was floating in the air with the school far below him. He saw the lights of Liverpool in the distance and went to them: he followed the Mersey to its mouth and crossed the dark friendly sea. He came home. It was home as it always was, with his own room and his own bed just where they always were. His bed was not ready for him. The sheets had disappeared and the pillow-case. The mattress was there and some blankets. He nestled down among them and put his head on the naked striped pillow. It was his own, his own bed, his own old bed at home. . . .

  In the hurry of the next morning he remembered nothing of this excursion, but that night when he was in bed once more, it all came back to him. It had been a dream, he realized, and at once he wanted to go to sleep in the same way, and dream the same dream. Surely that had been far better than just pretending: it had been the same as going home in a way: perhaps, even, he had really been home.

  Suddenly, just at the very instant he was wishing for it to happen, it did begin again. He found himself above the school. He floated towards the city, down the course of the river, and across the sea. . . . But this time he didn’t go home: he was carried on, past home, past Belfast, towards Derry and the Foyle: and there was somebody with him, somebody he couldn’t see, somebody who like himself had left his body behind.

  They didn’t stop at Derry. They went on over mountains, and lonely lakes and bogs. At last Marcus saw the sea again, a dim, empty sea battering on a rocky shore. Near the shore was a big house with a tower like a castle. Some of the windows were dark, from others came a yellow glow of lamplight. Outside everything was indistinct, the sea, the black, smudgy mountains, the white line of foam where the waves were breaking against the rocks. . . .

  Marcus and his companion entered the house. The porch was square and nearly as big as the drawing-room at home. From this they came into a huge hall, dimly lit by a smouldering turf fire, and an oil lamp turned low. The lamp was on an oval oak table near the fire. The far end of the hall was in darkness, so that Marcus received only a vague impression of its extent. A large, grey dog rose from in front of the fire wagging its stumpy tail. It was like an old English sheepdog, with silvery grey hair covering its eyes; but it was a mongrel.

  * * *

  The rest of the dream Marcus could never afterwards remember very clearly. Indeed it was only in scraps that it came back to him at all. In the days that followed he had half-memories of stone-paved corridors, stone stairs and whitewashed walls. . . . He knew that they belonged to his dream, but he couldn’t fit them together and remember what he had done after the first few moments in the hall.

  He knew that it was real, this house by the sea—real in the sense that if he came back to it in another dream everything would be exactly the same: the porch and the hall would be the same size and the same shape: there would be the same passages, the same tower and the same worn, winding stairs. But he didn’t know if the house existed outside his dream. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted it to. He felt that he had come in for a secret inheritance and only for so long as it remained locked up in his mind would it be impregnable.

  It was very much in his mind. He would have liked to go there every night as soon as he shut his eyes, and remain there till he was summoned back to school by the first bell in the morning. Often he suspected that he did return to it: yet morning after morning he awoke without any certain knowledge that he had actually been there. For a long time he could only be sure of his first visit. That had taken place, he knew, but if there were further visits, by morning they had always been buried by a mass of subsequent dreams. In spite of this Marcus found that he was getting to know more and more about the house, the shape of the rooms, the pictures in the hall and the library.

  At last, one morning at the beginning of the summer term, Marcus awoke with the whole scene fresh before his eyes, and the sound of waves in his ears. This time he had not actually been in the house itself, but outside in the grounds. He had been standing on a stretch of rough grass near the hall door, slowly scratching an old, grey donkey on the head. He had been looking at the house, white and sleepy in the morning light. For a moment it was all quite clear, the sad, patient donkey, the dew on the buttercups and grass, the house itself. . . .

  The voice that awoke him was shrill, startling, and unwelcome. “Get up, you fool, get up. You’ll make me late too. The others have all gone—we’re the last. Come on for goodness’ sake.” It was Compton, who slept in the next bed. For a moment Marcus gazed at him stupidly. He still saw the dark mountains behind the house, the clear, bright sky above them. . . .

  A moment later he was out of bed, searching frantically for his towel. Mr. Cartwright had promised to take them all for a bathe before breakfast. The others would be in the water before him. It might even be time to get out before he arrived. He and Compton tore down the stairs and out across the playing-fields after Mr. Cartwright and the rest of “The Kids’ Dorm”. They overtook them just at the entrance to the baths.

  “I couldn’t wake him up, sir,” Compton panted. “He was like what do you call him—Rip Van Winkle.”

  Marcus blinked at them sleepily. Half of him was still in Donegal. If Compton hadn’t wakened him, he might never have known. It didn’t prove that he went there every night, but it showed that he very likely did—and it had seemed familiar, as if he were accustomed to being there all the time.

  As he stood naked on the edge of the pool poised for his dive another memory of it came back to him. He saw for an instant the sun shining with a reddish glow on the sea far out.

  Then he dived. He was first in after all. It was cool, delicious and exciting. “It’s boiling,” he yelled to Compton. “It’s boiling hot, I tell you.”

  CHAPTER III

  AFTER this Marcus took more interest in his dreams than ever. He became slightly odd, but many small boys are odd, and Marcus’s idiosyncrasies did not make him unpopular. He spent four reasonably happy years at his preparatory school: then he went on to Shellborough.

  He had come to collect dreams almost as some boys collected stamps, or cigarette cards, or autographs: they were his hobby. He pondered over them when he should have been doing other things, and tried to complete those which he had nearly forgotten. Every day there was a new supply, and the more he thought about them the more he was able to remember.

  After he went to Shellborough he formed the habit of waking ten minutes or so before the getting-up bell was due to ring so that he might lie in bed and try to recall the dreams of the past night. He discovered that if he worked backwards, taking them one by one, he could often disinter buried dreams which otherwise he would have forgotten completely. But it was only occasionally that he was able to recollect dreams about the white house with the tower. When he did he would feel that something important had happened and think about that dream for the rest of the day. The other boys called him Screwey: it was not an unfriendly nickname and he didn’t dislike it.

  One morning early in the Christmas term a
t the beginning of his second year at Shellborough, Marcus awoke as usual before the bell had rung. The two dreams which he remembered first didn’t interest him very much: the third did.

  He was sitting in a classroom at Shellborough: in front of him was a blackboard, on which, written in white chalk, were a number of questions. Marcus recognized the handwriting as that of Mr. Butcher, the junior “Maths” master. These were the questions:

  (1) What is the compound interest on:

  (a) £186 17s. 0d. in 9 years at 2½ per cent.

  (b) £167 18s. 0d. in 14 years at 4½ per cent?

  (2) The population of a town is 22,491. Two years ago it was 20,400. Assuming the same annual rate of increase, find the population of the town three years hence.

  (3) Find what sums of money invested at compound interest will provide:

  (a) £525 in 12 years at 3½ per cent.