A Twist in Time

By Humphrey Muller

Destiny and time are the themes of this novel. Can we really alter time? Would we or could we change any details of our lives if we had the opportunity to go back in time? Michael Grant, who flirts with suicide, is given this opportunity. The ending may be surprising!

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 18, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462091119

Humphrey Muller

Humphrey Muller, once a professor of English in South Africa during the Apartheid years, moved to Scotland to devote more time to creative writing. He has since written a number of novels (A Twist in Time, the Cage and the Cross, Wheel of Fortune, Continental Drift), and with his wife Carolyn has co-authored two novels (Rapture at Sea and Spirit of Ecstasy by 'Carolyn Charles').

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All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Humphrey Muller

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ISBN: 0-595-09022-2

ISBN: 978-1-4620-9111-9 (eBook)

For Joanne

Contents

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

Epigraph

Maybe we plunder time

like petty thieves, each day

only a minor crime

we get away with—that’s,

till the last! The lime

pit waits; till then my hat’s

still in the shrinking ring

and, though we trek salt-flats,

my cup dips in your spring.

—Norman Buller: Hospital Visit

Chapter 1

Keswick, January 1999

Last night I read the advice of a successful novelist—a young woman still in her twenties! She said the main thing was to write about something you feel strongly about. Never mind what the market requires—what’s selling at the moment. Just write straight from the heart.

Well, that shook me. I don’t feel strongly about anything anymore—unless it’s about screwing, maybe, or masturbating, because that way I’m oblivious, for a time, about my own wretched existence. But I’ll tell you what really turns me on—sort of. It’s contemplating the best way to kill myself. No, that’s not as morbid as it sounds. You see, my biggest burden in life, most of the time, is consciousness—being aware of my existence, and therefore of the futility of keeping my healthy and still strong body alive. It’s a body that’s certainly served me well, and in a sense I’m quite sentimental about it—in the way one feels about a faithful vehicle, like a Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes or Jaguar, maybe, which has been very reliable but has now outlived it’s purpose. My body’s outlived it’s purpose since I’ve nowhere more to go. No worthwhile destination. Mind you, if I had loads of money—if I won the lottery, for instance—I guess I’d have somewhere to go again—for a while. But then I’d still be bored out of my skull. I’d just be bored in greater comfort. One could travel, even write and afford to publish one’s own work. But in the end, what’s the point? Death is merely unconsciousness, after all—like sleep without dreaming, or sleep without waking up. We all wind up in that state anyway. It’s the ultimate state, and the ultimate destination of the individual. So why delay it? I have to admit, some of my happiest and most peaceful moments have been strolling through a cemetery. All striving, there, has ceased. All suffering, all pain, forever extinguished.

My wife Mary says she can’t go on much longer because of the pain I give her. But I guess that goes both ways. Her pain comes out of her own loving and pious nature. Her pale, thin and drawn face is forever before me, telling me that whatever is done in secret will be made known, that Jesus is forever watching me. Christ! She’s like a gangly, clinging vine, and her tendrils are everywhere. She’s discovered one of my main means of escaping from reality, or from the burden of consciousness. So she’s become a sort of loving watchdog. She’s missed her real calling in life. She should have been a policewoman, or better still, an employee of the tax department. She would make an excellent devotee of the taxation system, since there’s no limit to her ardent snooping and investigative powers. In fact, she’s quite obsessive when it comes to petty snooping. She’ll find anything out, be it your most private and intimate thought. I suppose I had no idea, at the beginning, that that’s what marriage is about—being able to read your spouse like a book. There’s no place to hide from a loving partner’s meticulous surveillance. The effect, in reality, is suffocating. Again, in this respect, death would offer a form of release. She wouldn’t follow my every thought beyond the grave, would she? Could she? My thoughts would have terminated, anyhow. Thank goodness.

So, I walked along the A66 today, contemplating my favourite death fantasy. It’s the one which, to date, I feel closest to. It’s very simple. All I have to do is throw myself under the wheels of an advancing truck. You’ve no idea how fast they travel. There’s one stretch of the road that is downhill. Sometimes there are two or three trucks in convoy that come thundering down, their tyres screaming with speed. I particularly like the ones with heavy loads. Imagine falling in front of the leading truck! There’s no way the driver could possibly stop in time. And if the first truck didn’t crush me, there are still the others behind it. Every time I take this walk and contemplate the possibility of the fantasy, I wonder if, just possibly, this will be the time I do it!

But then, as always, come the counter-thoughts. What if the great singing wheels should miss my body? After all, trucks have a greater ground clearance, don’t they? It’s the thought of surviving—of being maimed—that stops me. And then there’s the thought of what the repercussions might be. The lead driver would have it on his conscience for the rest of his life. Could I do that to him—a total stranger? He might even attempt to swerve and kill—or maim—himself. The thought of that possibility is intolerable. And other drivers (and passengers) might be killed or injured behind the lead truck. Who can tell the repercussions? Imagine it—a pile-up. At least one dead body—mine—would mean the police closing the road for hours. Tailbacks for miles, diversions, police croaking into crackling walkie-talkies, and then, eventually, the lone bunch of artificial flowers to mark the spot. No, I’m not that important. And then the police would have to break the news to Mary, and Mary would have to break the news to the ecclesia. No, there must be a less painful way out—for the sake of the others, at least.

When I return from each walk it’s with an immense sense of anticlimax. So I didn’t have the courage to do it that time. Maybe the next time. Is it a matter of courage, though, I wonder? I suspect nobody really has the courage to terminate one’s own life. It’s possibly just a matter of balancing two forces, and giving way to one of them. The two forces are fear of death, on the one hand, and despair on the other. Despair has to reach such a pitch that it overrides one’s natural instinct to preserve life, or one’s fear of death. Despair has to be strong enough to push one over the edge. I guess, in my case, despair just hasn’t reached strong enough proportions—yet. But I know it’s mounting.

Maybe it will take years. But the waves of despair I feel now (when the bouts are upon me) are certainly stronger than, say, four years ago; put differently, the troughs are deepening. In that lies my hope. Persevere, Mary. You’ll push me over the ledge yet, my dear.

Chapter 2

Well, it’s happened. I think the term for it is entropy. It’s when something shatters, like a fragile and beautiful vase. Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, Keats said. That’s all you need to know. But what if his Grecian Urn were dropped? Then its message wouldn’t be immortal, would it? The love, or beauty, of the figures it depicted would be irreversibly lost. Like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall. Smash, crash, and you’ve got a thousand pieces! And you can never put him—or the urn—together again.

Something shattered inside me. Something very important. Mary went through my private papers today. The papers in my desk, I mean. She probably doesn’t realise I know, or perhaps she doesn’t care. I found two credit-card accounts I had put there for safekeeping. Does she have to know how and where I spend every penny of my money? I guess she reckons it’s her money too, and that she’s entitled to know. Yeah, yeah, I know my argument is untenable and indefensible. Marriage is based on trust, and she’s begun to lose trust in me. I can see the sadness in her face when she looks at me. Her pathetic wheezing from asthma, her constant companion, is like a condemnation, accusing me of betrayal.

Well, now the trust has broken down in my head. I can see she’s still trying to save our marriage, to regain the high ground of love and trust  that—she thinks—existed before she first discovered the videos I’d been watching. But when I found she’d searched my desk, suddenly this entropy thing happened. My blood went cold. I know I had experimented with the bonds of marriage, straining against them, testing them. But it was only to discover the extent to which the tendrils of her mind and will—of her love, I suppose you’d say—have penetrated into every infinitesimal fissure of my brain. Can I tolerate such a complete surrender of my identity? They shall become one flesh, Genesis says. But surely not literally! The filaments and tendrils of an interpenetrating nervous system, binding brains and their thoughts together! Is that a romantic ideal, or a suffocating nightmare?

So the urn of great value shattered. Even if I could, I’ve lost the will to piece it together again. The shattering’s related to the continuum of time. And time moves only in one direction, doesn’t it? Once a cup shatters, you can’t go back in time to repair it. You can’t reverse time. It’s a case of entropy—a measure of the degradation or disorganisation of the universe.

So now I have no choice. I will kill myself.

Yet—if only! Oh, how futile it’s to say if only! But if only I could go back! If I could dip my cup in the spring of my youth!

Not go back to yesterday, or the day before, or even the year before—for that would be merely to regain the illusion of happiness. No, I’d need to go back to a time before I met Mary, to prevent our meeting from ever happening. Then she’d be spared the misery I’ve given her—for I’ve failed to live up to her pious ideals. I could never become—or could ever have become—so totally perfect, in the terms which she demands. Imperfection is in my nature. She can alter my destiny, but never make me wholly hers. I am, after all, a man. My father before me was a man. We both partake—partook—of imperfect male nature. And nature will out. You can bottle it up for a time, and believe in a romantic ideal for a time, forsaking all others, as the marriage vows have it. But the male impulse will out. And when it does, our visionary ideal crumbles, inevitably. Blood will out. Our blood will betray the fragile niceties of civilisation.

So just what the fuck is my problem, you say!

Maybe it’s just boredom. The lifestyle I have with Mary offers no excitement, no challenge. On the wrong side of fifty, I’m now well into male menopause. Sure, we have our own business and it’s a good one. We run a small hotel in the Lake District, and it brings in sufficient cashflow to keep us going smoothly enough. The guests are pleasant enough, on the whole, though I’m sick to death of the petty complaints some of them throw at me, especially the Americans. They can be so neurotic. They complain about the stairs being too steep, the car-park being too small, or the shower not working (because they haven’t pulled the cord that switches it on). I’m sick and tired of bowing and scraping to them, smiling insincerely, pretending to be pleased to see them. Mary gets on with them a great deal better, in spite of her innate shyness, her asthma and nervous disposition. She’ll laugh at their flimsy jokes, making her wasted breasts shake with apparent bonhomie. But she can also stand up to them. She can go into landlady-mode at the merest hint of a complaint, hands on bony hips, mouth set in a challenging grimace. She can be quite formidable, really, in her stick-insect way. She’s a very effective buffer between me and the guests. I’ve heard her threaten a guest with the police—a brawny Dutchman who refused to pay a supplement. He said he wouldn’t pay an en-suite supplement since he hadn’t asked for an en-suite bedroom. But all our bedrooms are en-suite! Right or wrong, he caved in and had to pay!

Mary’s given me an ultimatum. But when she challenges me, it’s with love, not with pursed-lipped scorn. That’s what makes it so hard to bear. I can see how much her love for me pains her. She looks tired. Her dull black hair hangs lifelessly, and her eyes are moist with sadness.

She’s going to watch me from now on, she says. Before now she said she always trusted me. But now she’s going to watch me. She’s going to make sure I don’t watch any more of those sex videos. God, she’s got a nose for them! It’s crazy, but when I hide one, she finds it every time! I suppose I’m like an alcoholic hiding bottles of booze, for secret consumption later on. I’ve heard of alcoholics who even hide bottles in the garden, under the flower bed. But a pious and loving wife will dig them up! Her watchful eyes will know the signs! Well, Mary’s like that. And when she finds one, she’ll play it in my presence.

‘We’ll just watch this, shall we?’ (Sweetly, as though wanting to share a new film release with me.)

But of course, the heaving nude bodies fill the screen—and my shame’s intense. I think she enjoys my shame, in a vindictive, masochistic sort of way.

‘Why do you watch this stuff, Michael?’ she asks with pained expression. ‘What is it I’m not doing to make you want to watch this filth?’

‘I don’t know.’ (Head hung in shame.) ‘I guess I’m just inquisitive.’

‘But it’s so out of character. It’s just not like you. Yet it’s been going on now for years.’

I shrug my shoulders and study the pattern of the curtains. It’s a repeated theme of interlinking chains and crescents, but in my mind they take on the shapes of a hundred screaming faces.

She wheezes asthmatically and switches off the video. ‘If I catch you again at it, Michael, you’re going to have to seek help. There’s an organisation for people like you. And I shall contact Relate.’

I have to admit, I don’t know why I’m so addicted to watching the videos myself. At the end of the day, they’re so stereotyped. Is it the variety of lovely women they present, or the possibility if being presented with a delicious bevy of beauties, charms uncovered? More than often they’re disappointingly plain, fuzzy because of poor film quality, and you hardly see them. It’s great when they undress and their tits spring out of restraining bras. But before you can properly appreciate them, they’re churning in a sex act with some male stud—and you don’t really see anything, anyway. First there’s the cunt-sucking bit. Usually this is the best part since you get to see something of the girl’s jiggling tits while she squirms in pleasure, the man’s head buried between her sumptuous thighs. But inevitably the camera zooms to her pain-stretched face. It’s her hysterical yelping and groaning that’s supposed to turn you on, I suppose, but this does little for me with only her pained face filling the screen. The next sequence is the worst—the cock-sucking part. This goes on interminably—and is the most boring. You see nothing of the girl. All you see is the bloke’s ugly mug, eyes pinched in pseudo-ecstasy you know he’s only pretending to feel. Something a heterosexual male doesn’t want to see is the ugly mug of another male, which fills the screen forever. At this point you may as well go and make yourself a cup of tea, or surf the TV channels for something better. Come back in about five minutes. Right. Now they’re into the next sequence, at last—the fucking from behind. But you don’t get to see much in this part either. The best is perhaps seeing a bit of swinging or quivering tit from the side, but inevitably the camera zooms again—from one pained face to the other, a sort of parallel montage. Plenty of piteous yelping and screaming from the girl, of course—probably acted or faked, anyhow. Then the prolonged agony of the man’s face as it fills the screen, fighting (no, not straining for) the orgasm. Sigh! May as well have another cup of tea. Then, if you’re lucky, you get a bit of sequence where she sits on him. This is good in that you get to see a good view of her jiggling, bouncing tits, in conjunction with her face. If her face is really lovely, really glamorous with the possibility of eye-contact, then you can get a really good high. But this sequence is usually short or not included. The next sequence is the best, of course—the last bit, when she lies on her back with her knees drawn up. Now he fucks her with a will. If his body doesn’t cover her and conceal her, you at least get to see something here—tits quaking sumptuously (if they don’t actually melt back or slip down under her armpits). Again, the flowing, rolling tits in conjunction with a pretty face, eyes melting with liquid abandon, presents the climax, the bit that’s worth waiting for. But then zoom goes the camera, just as you’re getting a high! Her face fills the screen, momentarily, and then disappears, and it’s his ugly mug back again, warts and all, and you’re supposed to enjoy seeing him strain towards his orgasm. Which, of course, he achieves, with much shuddering and eye-pinching ecstasy. Big deal!

I suppose I watch the stuff in the hope of seeing something better. For some reason, I’ve grouped the videos into two categories, one labelled ‘Jane,’ the other ‘Samantha.’ Why? Well, I don’t know why. They just happen to represent two different types of women I enjoy watching. One is sweet, small and athletic with tiny pointed tits, the other red-haired, curvaceous with sumptuous, liquid tits. But they’re all the same, in the end. Besides, the interminable, boring and flimsy plots are insufferable. (At least one can fast-forward through those bits.) But the point is, the video-watching is a symptom of something else. I don’t really think it’s an addiction, like you get with drugs. It’s a means of escape, of course. The symptom of an unbearable ennui. I might as well try alcohol, or drugs, I suppose. But what’s the point? In the end I just want to suppress my consciousness, escape from this inane, monotonous awareness of a pointless existence—and above all, from Mary’s sterile piety.

And then there’s the additional awareness of Mary’s pain. And of her watching me. It’s like living with a VAT inspector. Even screwing Mary has lost its fun. It’s like screwing a desiccated VAT inspector.

Oh, what the hell! I think I’ll take a walk again. I’ll make it a long walk this time, next to the trunk road that flows along the valley into Keswick. Who knows—perhaps there’ll be a train of trucks with thundering big wheels. Perhaps I’ll have the courage, this time. Who knows?

I can’t turn the clock back, and I’m running out of time. But at least I can get rid of the burden of time, can’t I? I can get rid of the awareness of the past and of the present before it becomes the past. I wonder, where’s the past go when it’s no longer the present? Well, so long as I don’t exist, neither past nor present will exist. Not for me, anyway.

Chapter 3

Aberystwyth, January 1966

Michael Grant had a restless night. He dreamt that his bedroom in the hotel was on top of a great abyss. Between him and the abyss was a flimsy floor. It had served him as a secure resting place for years, yet all the time he never knew he was so close to annihilation. He awoke with alarm and uncurled himself from his foetal sleeping position and crawled outside. He saw that he was no longer in the hotel but in the garden, and that he had been asleep in a lean-to shelter. He gained some higher ground and saw with horror that just below the floor on which he had been asleep was an opening to the abyss. A dark hole gaped, revealing an opening to a bottomless pit. The hotel was in a shambles around him, as if collapsed by a shuddering earthquake. He watched, transfixed with horror, as a giant boulder dislodged itself and rolled into the dark opening. He heard the sound of falling earth as it struck the sides of the pit, yet there was no resounding thud or echo from its fall, so deep was the abyss. He turned his attention to his hotel which was in disarray, floors and walls at crazy angles and in danger of slipping down the cliff on which the building was perched. Some of the rooms had already given way, having plunged into the waves that crashed and foamed on the rocks below.

‘Wake up, bach!’

Michael opened his eyes and stared stupidly at the matronly woman who bent over him. Then memory dawned on him, seeing her generous bosom that quivered beneath her tunic. Her frowzy red hair cascaded down the side of her neck and gave her the look of a blowsy barmaid.

‘It’s time you were perpendicular, look you, bach!’ She shook him again. Perpendicular was her favourite word and her Welsh accent always seemed to stress the third syllable. ‘It’s been an hour your breakfast’s been waiting, see you. I haven’t got all day now! Get you perpendicular and dress sharply, if you don’t want rubbery eggs!’ The white traces of condensation puffed in front of her upper lip which was fuzzed with a downy moustache. She waited, hands on her broad hips, while Michael lifted himself unsteadily onto his elbows. He smiled weakly and nodded. Then she swung round and he heard the stairs creak as she descended back to the kitchen.

He felt confused. He sat up gingerly, careful not to touch the hot metal surface of the Belling bedwarmer that still nestled next to him. He had fallen asleep, as was his custom, wrapped round it, touching it only through his pyjamas. The instructions warned him to remove the bed-warmer from the bed before he got in, but he didn’t care. It was just too cold to even contemplate sleeping without its comfort. He had smuggled it in without Mrs Williams’s knowledge. She would be certain to object, since she was careful to count every penny and watched her student lodgers like a hawk to ensure they didn’t add to her financial burden. But he was quite content that she wouldn’t notice the extra electricity on her bill. The advertisement had said, after all, that it cost less than a penny a night to run. Good thing she didn’t notice the bed-warmer, he thought as he got out of bed unsteadily, still befuddled from his dream. He carefully unplugged the bedwarmer and packed it away in a suitcase he kept under his bed. The morning air in the room was freezing and his breath condensed in white puffs as he dressed. He removed the newspaper that was wrapped round his feet, kept in place by the socks he wore. Then he took out his trousers from under the mattress, pressed neatly, though slightly creased, by his own weight. It was a tip he had picked up from a Graham Greene novel.

At length he crept into the cramped kitchenette where the small plastic radio was, as usual, pounding out one of the latest hit tunes.’These boots are made for walking!’ came the muffled but strident voice of Nancy Sinatra.’And they’re gonna walk right over you!’ Tra la la went the tune, sliding down into flat beats as Michael poured himself a cup of tea. Breakfast was his favourite time of the day since it was provided by Mrs Williams as part of the accommodation costs his parents were paying on his behalf. He had to find his own lunch and supper, and Mrs Williams didn’t allow the importation of takeaways into the bedroom lest the crumbs attracted mice. (‘I’ve never had mice, bach, and I won’t be having them now!’) Most of the time he felt hungry and at night got into bed looking forward to breakfast. His 22-year-old frame was lean and gaunt, and when he took his shirt off at nights his ribs showed.

Mrs Williams bent over him, her scolding voice softened by the obvious enjoyment with which Michael attacked his eggs and toast. (Bacon was not part of the fare.) ‘You’ll need an alarm, look you, bach!’ Her strident voice knew no modulation, but she meant her advice kindly as she leant over him, pouring more tea which steamed as it filled his cup. He glanced up with an acknowledging smile, seeing the flabby flesh of her upper arms and once again the swing of her breasts as they filled her tunic. It produced in him a strange sense of pain and deja vu, as though stirring a painful memory. Mrs Williams’s name was Mary, he recalled, and that seemed to