The Ringmaster's Daughter Part 6

Hamilton recalled all the moves from his game with the Duke of Argyll, and for safety's sake he wrote them down, so that he could carefully study how he'd been beaten. He could often be seen in the garden reliving the game move by move on the marble slabs. On these occasions Mary Ann would sometimes sit on a chair by the fish-pond and talk to him.

For a while enthusiastic gossip circulated about Midsummer's Eve at Hamilton's house, and no one begrudged Mary Ann her final revenge for Iain's many years of depravity. But if good spirits and guardian angels had watched over Hamilton's garden that night, ogres and demons took a hand in its sequel. Not long after, there was a series of dreadful murders in the district and after the third, Chief Constable MacLachlan noted that all of the victims had occupied a place on Hamilton's marble slabs some weeks earlier.

Hamilton's butler got in touch with the chief constable after the fifth murder to tell him that the deceased had also all been killed in precisely the same order as the laird's guests had been knocked off the chessboard. These were two p.a.w.ns, two bishops and a knight.

There was only one exception to this sequence: the very first who'd run out into the garden that Midsummer's Eve - Mary Ann MacKenzie. MacLachlan, who'd never forgotten the ethereal Mary Ann, noted the fact with interest. He had no difficulty guessing why this brutal serial killer had spared the charming young woman.

Quite the reverse, he thought, it wasn't difficult to hazard that the motive for all the murders was that the murderer - or murderers - wished to eliminate all possible compet.i.tion and have the beautiful G.o.ddess completely to themselves. This, in turn, meant that there were a great many suspects to be considered.

The sixth and seventh murders were committed, continuing the macabre replay of the fatal chess game. The police now knew at any given time who would be the next victim, and gave the threatened individual a certain degree of protection, but they were still unable to prevent the murders from taking place.

The victims were nearly always done to death outdoors in forest or farmland, and always with a sharp butcher's knife. Soon, almost half the guests from Hamilton's fancy dress ball had been killed, and the serial killer began to get closer to the laird and the duke, not to mention the chief constable. He knew very well that he'd been the sixteenth piece to be taken on the board.

Naturally enough, one of the first suspects was Iain MacKenzie who'd been so irrevocably humiliated by his wife that fateful night, and had now lost her for good. Apart from the laird and the duke, MacKenzie was the last piece left standing on the chessboard and, in theory at least, he might have been able to remember every move in the game. But when the thirteenth and fourteenth murders took place while MacKenzie was in police custody, he was set free with a pat on the shoulder.

The laird himself was questioned by the police. It was he who had lost the game, not without a little disgruntlement, and he was also one of the few who knew the game move by move. The police also wanted to ask the laird why he had organised such a bizarre masquerade in the first place.

When the butler was brought in for questioning at the police station, they raked over certain inconsistencies between his own statements and the laird's, but he was never on the list of suspects.

He was, however, able to tell the police that, both before and after that calamitous Midsummer's Eve, he'd been concerned about Hamilton's mental health.

The farmer and his wife who'd cried off only a few days before the party were also brought in and eliminated from the enquiry.

She was finally caught red-handed after gaining entry to MacIver's barn and stabbing the farmer in the chest with a butcher's knife.

It had been easy enough for Mary Ann to gain entry to the local farms, lawyers' offices and large estates. Nor had she found any difficulty in enticing the women and men of the place out into forests and moors.

Chief Constable MacLachlan was an experienced police officer, but even he had to ask Mary Ann what her motive for the most brutal series of killings in Scotland's history could have been.

The bewitchingly beautiful Mary Ann told him it was shame.

It had been an enchanted evening, and she clearly recalled all the lips she'd kissed and all the pa.s.sionate embraces she, with tenderness and desire, had allowed herself to be swept up in, but subsequently she had felt ashamed of her immorality. She could have elected to take her own life, but that wouldn't have made things any better. Mary Ann couldn't bear the thought that any of the laird's guests should go on living with the recollection of her chasing about the hedges ofHamilton's garden giving herself to half of Scotland.

Many attended and wept bitterly when Mary Ann was hanged at Glasgow a few months later.

That September I began to study history. Sometimes I invited a girl student home for cheese and wine or omelettes and lager. I could grill steaks as well, and I could make stew, fish soup and pickled herring.

I was just waiting for Maria to come and tell me that she'd got the job she'd applied for in Stockholm. Then she rang one evening and asked if she could come round. When she turned up, she was carrying a large bunch of yellow roses.

They were for me. It seemed strange. I didn't know what she wanted, but I knew that something was up.

We sat leaning across the kitchen table holding hands. I'd switched off all the lights. Only a single lighted candle stood on the table between us. We'd drunk a bottle of cheap red wine.

I was glad to have Maria back, but I wanted her to get to the point. First, she told me she'd got the job in Stockholm and that she'd be moving in December. I thought that I could learn to live in Sweden too, but before I was able to speak Maria said something that shut the idea of Stockholm out for ever.

She looked into my eyes and said that she had a favour to ask of me. It was something that would last our entire life- time, she said.

I felt a tremor pa.s.s through my body. For the first time I'd been able to embrace the notion of something that might last my whole life. I liked the sound of the word 'last', it was a beautiful word.

'I want to take a child to Stockholm with me,' she said.

Once more I felt that Maria was the only woman I'd ever met whom I didn't always understand. It was what I liked so much about her. It's impossible to love anyone you always understand completely.

'I want you to give me a child, Petter,' she said.

I didn't grasp the significance of what she was saying. I was still thinking about what it would be like to move to Stockholm. Should I sell the Oslo flat? Or simply let it out?

But then Maria said that she didn't want to spend her entire life with one man. She was just like me, she said.

Maria knew me intimately, I'd told her about all my female visitors. I felt I was seeing myself in a mirror.

Maria wanted to have a child by me. She said I was the only man she could contemplate as a father to her child, she'd known that since we first met at Ullevlseter, but she couldn't tie herself to me. She asked me to make her pregnant. She asked me to inseminate her.

I laughed. I thought it was a rather neat idea, and one so absolutely in my spirit. Procreation without commitment was right up my street.

We sat there a long time talking the matter over, but not at all in an earnest way. We were laughing and joking. Maria wanted us to sleep together again, and the idea was alluring.

We could sleep together until Maria got pregnant. Then she'd have to leave for Stockholm.

Despite all this, I wasn't ready to father a child. I wonder if I ever have been. The mere thought of looking into my own child's eyes struck me as awful. I hadn't liked having my head patted and I hadn't enjoyed having my cheek pinched. So how would I manage being the one doing the patting?

I mulled over these aspects as well. I didn't want a child, but I could help Maria. The more we talked, the more convinced I became that her idea was a brilliant one. She stipulated that we had to make a pact. She said we had to promise not to try to find one another after she'd moved to Stockholm. We would never be able to meet again. I wasn't even to have her address. And, most importantly, we were to swear that even the child's paternity was to be a secret between the two of us. All I was to be told was whether it was a boy or a girl.

I was so fascinated by this scheme that I felt the blood begin to pound in my veins. Maria was not just my equal, I felt she excelled me in talent and audacity.

Giving a woman a child that wasn't to be mine suited me perfectly. I'd always liked spreading myself, emptying myself, but I'd never been much interested in what I might call copyright. I'd never had any need to be applauded for what I did or initiated, not even when I was little. I received no ovation for the taxis I ordered. Ordering taxis had been a wonderful idea, but no one had thanked me for it after- wards.

Now we'd be able to meet often in the days to come.

That alone was a great inducement. I've never found it easy to look more than a few days into the future. I've looked backwards and to the sides, but I've never taken much account of the days to come. I told Maria that I accepted her conditions. It would be an honour to make her pregnant, I said. It would give me such enormous pleasure. We had a long laugh at that. We guffawed. We got randier and randier.

Several glorious weeks followed, and even now they feel like the only weeks of my life when I've been truly alive.

We termed our special relations.h.i.+p an ad hoc romance.

We couldn't stay in bed making children all day, but we spent the entire twenty-four hours together. We went for long walks in the city and in the forest, and I narrated some of my zaniest stories. Maria had a particular penchant for an involved tale about a jeweller who committed a posthumous and thoroughly premeditated triple murder. I actually told the story I'd sold to the author in Club 7, too. After all, Maria was leaving the country.

I had to tell some of the stories twice or three times. Maria said she wanted to try to learn them by heart. The only problem was that I was never able to tell a story exactly the same way twice. At times like these Maria would leap in and prompt me. She couldn't understand how she could be better at remembering what I'd said and the exact way I'd expressed it. I explained that the only real skill I possessed was improvisation.

Soon came the day we'd both been waiting for, Maria with joy and I with sorrow. Her pregnancy test was positive and Maria opened her arms wide and rejoiced. Jokingly she said that I'd be a 'marvellous daddy'. We cackled loudly at that as well.

Maria remained in Oslo a couple of months more before moving to Stockholm. We saw less of each other again. She sometimes phoned and asked me over to the campus to tell her a story, and I never made excuses, but it was odd to think that a part of me had already taken root in her body.

Then Maria went. She rang before she left. I didn't go with her to the station.

I was the right man to give a woman a child he wasn't to share. Why shouldn't I let Maria have the child she wanted?

It was easy. It was free. It cost me nothing. I reckoned it was I who should be grateful. But everything has two sides. I never imagined I'd have to pay so dearly for it. I wasn't allowed to see Maria again.

However, it took several years before our solemn pact came into full force. She came to Oslo with her daughter four times in all. Maria simply called her 'Poppet', but she'd obviously given her another name as well. I imagined that Maria used a pet name just to keep her real one from me. At our final meeting, the child was almost three. That was when the pact was renewed and it had to be the very last time I saw her. Maria's idea was that the little girl mustn't form any impression of her father. And for that matter I wasn't to form any real image of her either, as I wasn't a proper father.

She was a sweet little girl. I didn't think she took after Maria or me, but I could see a clear resemblance to my mother; she had the same high cheekbones and the same widely s.p.a.ced eyes. I felt my mother was reborn, and that it was I who'd given her a new chance. I realised, of course, that I was fantasising.

The last time I met Maria and the little girl was on a warm June evening in 1975. We only had a few hours together, and we spent them by Lake Sognsvann. We'd brought along prawns, French bread and white wine. Maria and I sat chatting about the old days while the little girl splashed about at the water's edge with an inflatable swan. When she ran up from the water for her juice and biscuits, both mother and daughter permitted me to wrap her in a bath towel and dry her. I helped her with her dress too, it was the least I could do. Maria had once said that I'd make a 'marvellous daddy'.

Poppet sat down on the towel between us, and I began to tell her a long fairy tale, or a saga as I called it. She was laughing even before I really got going. I don't know if she understood what I said, and perhaps that was why she was laughing, but I tried to use some Swedish words to make things easier for her.

I told of a small girl about her own age, who was called Panina Manina and whose father was the ringmaster of the finest circus in the whole, wide world. The circus came from a faraway land, but once upon a time, long ago, it was on its way to Stockholm where, by invitation of the King and Queen of Sweden, it was to set up its big top in a park right in the middle of the Swedish capital. All the circus trailers drove up through Sweden in one long line, and in the procession were elephants and sea-lions, bears and giraffes, horses and camels, dogs and monkeys. The trailers also contained clowns and jugglers, fakirs and tight-rope walkers, animal tamers and bare-back riders, magicians and musicians. The only child in this whole great caravan was Panina Manina. She was treated like a little princess because she was the ringmaster's daughter, and it was said that destiny had decreed that she would become a tamous circus artiste.