Free Universal Carnal Knowledge Pt. 01

I

"Drink it"

Those more innocent times seem impossibly remote now that they have gone for ever. It astonishes me to reflect that it was actually less than a year ago that a sudden loud knocking heralded the unexpected late-night appearance of a policeman on my doorstep. This is an event that would terrify me if it happened today, but in those days I was still the epitome (errors and omissions excepted) of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-England respectability. My conscience was entirely clear, at least as regards the law, and my reaction was one not of fear but rather of puzzlement and curiosity, overlaid by a strong sense of relief that at last something had intervened to ease the unbearable strain that had been building up all evening.

It was not that my wife and I had been arguing. A blazing row would have been far preferable to the unrelenting silent glare that expressed her anger and disappointment more eloquently than words ever could. She was standing behind me as I opened the front door, but I could still sense her hostile gaze boring into the back of my skull as I asked the policeman what the trouble was.

"Mr James Walker?" he inquired. "Are you the nephew of Dr Albert Walker, of, er --" He consulted his notebook and read out my uncle's home address.

I confirmed my identity and asked again how I could help. To tell the truth, I rather expected to be told that some unfortunate young woman had found my uncle's unwanted attentions so oppressive that she had succeeded in having him arrested.

"Well, sir," said the policeman gravely, "I'm afraid I have some bad news. Your uncle is in hospital after a road accident. He's in a very bad way. He's asking for you, sir," he concluded, gesturing to the waiting police car.

I hurriedly collected my coat and other essentials and asked my wife whether she wanted to accompany me.

"I'd really rather not," she replied frostily. "Your Uncle Albert always gives me the creeps. I'm sorry he's been hurt, but he's always been a terrible old lech."

This was a common and understandable female reaction to Uncle Albert. Though now approaching seventy, he had always had an eye -- a bloodshot, leering eye -- for what he called "young ladies", by which he usually meant pneumatic women between, say, eighteen and twenty-four. His contempt for the social graces meant that any woman with the ill luck to attract his attention could hardly fail to be aware of the lascivious stare that followed her around; while his age, shabby attire, straggly white hair, bad teeth, and indifferent personal hygiene, to say nothing of his foul temper and complete lack of decorum, guaranteed that his interest would not be reciprocated.

"Well, I know what you mean," I agreed. "All right, I'll ring you from the hospital."

The policeman, probably unsure whether my lack of reaction indicated indifference or profound grief, kept silent as we drove through the dark north London streets. I was glad, for the silence allowed me to reflect on this news. How did I feel?

Uncle Albert had been part of my life for as far back as I could remember. It was not that my memories of him were exactly fond ones, since the role of benevolent and kindly uncle was alien to him, and even when I was a small child he had been short-tempered and dismissive at our infrequent meetings. Although I was now rapidly approaching fifty, nothing much had changed over the intervening decades. He regarded me (along with most of the rest of the human race) with an indifferent disdain he could not be bothered to conceal, while his furious energy and restless intelligence, undimmed by advancing years, caused me to think of him as more like some untamable force of nature than a blood relative.

As the years went by he had become increasingly isolated and bitter. Despite his age, he still worked all the hours God sent in the research laboratory of a famous biotechnology company. He had told me, a few years before, about the company's half-hearted efforts to get him to retire. His bosses had soon backed down in the face of his hints about possible great discoveries on the horizon, interspersed with veiled threats to spill their secrets to the competition. I suspect they were not all that sorry to see him stay on, since for all his secretiveness, irascibility, and eccentricity he was undeniably one of the world's leading geneticists and biochemists and the company raked in millions from many products he had developed.

And another thing: he never went after them for a share of the proceeds. Being his only close relative, I deplored this self-denial as much as the company must have appreciated it. But on the one and only occasion I had ventured to suggest that he ought to hold out for more of the action, my reward had been a furious tirade in which he accused me of sordid personal financial motives (of course he was quite right) and gave me very firmly to understand that all he wanted, from the company and everyone else, was to be left alone to do his own work in his own way.

My reverie was interrupted by our arrival at the hospital. The policeman hurried me through to intensive care, where a white-coated doctor greeted me.

The doctor did not beat about the bush. "Mr Walker," he told me solemnly, "your uncle is very badly hurt. To be honest, I'm surprised he's lasted this long. He's refused to be sedated and he's been demanding to see you. Please go in, but prepare yourself for a shock."

It was indeed a shock. However little there was in the way of family affection between my uncle and me, I was deeply moved to see a man of such brilliance and energy laid low like this. His head was heavily bandaged and he was covered in sensors and drips and surrounded by all the flashing, bleeping paraphernalia of modern medicine. He was so still that I thought at first he was unconscious or even dead but an eye opened as he heard the door and he fixed me with a stare in which all his seething energy was somehow focused.

"Where have you been?" he gasped. "I must talk to you."

"Uncle, I came as soon as I heard. Don't try to talk; you must let them treat you."

"Rubbish! These quacks can't do anything for me. I'll be dead by morning; I know it. And all my life's work will be for nothing, unless you do as I tell you, you lucky little bastard. Will you do it?"

I had been accustomed since childhood to name-calling from Uncle Albert, but I did not see what "lucky" had to do with it. And I was loth to make such an open-ended promise even to a dying uncle. "Uh ... I ...."

"Swear! You must swear to me, you bastard!"

To the obvious alarm of the medical staff, his body convulsed in pain as he wheezed out these words; and then, as I still hesitated, came a word I had never heard from him before. "Swear to me .... please ...!"

Everyone in the room -- the doctors and nurses, and most of all Uncle Albert himself -- was looking at me. Long moments passed. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall; it seemed unnaturally loud and slow.

"Please ...." he gasped again.

A dying man was begging me. What else could I say? "Uncle, I swear. I'll do what you want."

He seemed to relax. After a long pause, with his only free hand he feebly gestured for me to come closer. I leant over him. He drew a painful breath.

"Free Universal Carnal Knowledge", he whispered.

"What? I don't understand."

He made another weak gesture at the medical staff. "Get rid of these charlatans."

I motioned them to leave. Hesitantly, they complied.

When we were alone, he gasped out again, "Free Universal Carnal Knowledge".

I sensed the urgency in his voice. There was something he was desperate to tell me, and he knew he had very little time to say it. I still had no idea what the old man meant, but the significance of the initials had not escaped me; a very Uncle Albert-like joke. "Yes, Uncle, but what does it mean?"

And in a low faint voice, gasping for air, but marshalling his thoughts in a way that showed that within his shattered body his mind was still intact, he told me.

He explained that he had been working secretly for nearly forty years on a new product for which he had devised the working title F.U.C.K.. No one else knew anything about it, not even the name. The company had a nebulous idea that he was trying to come up with something to enhance sexual potency, a kind of super-Viagra, but they had no real expectation that anything would come of it. Uncle Albert had been doing the most crucial work secretly at home, working every weekend and far into the night using rare and expensive chemicals and natural and synthetic hormones that he had ordered at work and smuggled out. He had drawn on all his knowledge of genetics, neurology, and biochemistry and now his work was finished.

After working all last night he had finally been able to distil a dose of his serum and he had left it to gently heat for the necessary sixteen hours while he went to work as usual. And then, with an anti-climax that would have been absurd were it not so tragic, on his way home he fell victim to a combination of pent-up excitement, lack of sleep, and the fact that the local council had recently reorganised the one-way traffic system near his house. Crossing the street, he looked the wrong way and walked straight in front of a double-decker bus.

"You must go there, now," he gasped. "Don't let the serum cook too long. And you must never tell anyone about this. I meant it for me, not for the company. But now, you must have it."

"But Uncle, what do you want me to do with it?"

"Why, DRINK IT, you idiot!"

His attempt to shout at me racked his body with pain. He lay back gasping. "You swore," he managed to say.

"Yes, but Uncle, how can I drink some chemical potion that's never been tested? I don't know what it will do to me. In fact," I added, "I don't even know what it's supposed to do to me."

Despite his pain he let out a low, lecherous chuckle. "You know all those young ladies I've lusted after all these years. They've despised me, laughed at me. Well, FUCK was going to give me the last laugh. Listen ..."

His voice was fainter than ever now. I leant nearer to catch his words. But suddenly, he moaned and lay back quite still. Some piece of medical equipment sounded an alarm and doctors and nurses rushed in. They struggled to revive him but I knew it was futile. I left them to it and waited outside for the bad news.

By the time they emerged and delivered it, I had decided what to do. I asked for Uncle Albert's belongings and, going through the pockets of his bloodstained coat, I found his house keys. I then went outside and called a cab.

All I had in mind at this stage was to go to Uncle Albert's house and turn off the heating device he had mentioned and generally make sure that all was in order and that he had not left any other experiments running. Despite my promise, I had no intention of taking any potion.

The house was a terrible mess, with old newspapers everywhere, and scientific periodicals, and the remains of TV dinners and takeaways. But the most striking feature was pile upon pile of porn magazines, all featuring the kind of women Uncle Albert had liked: young and fulsome, especially in the chest and the backside area. Many of the magazines had had pictures neatly cut out, obviously of specimens that found particular favour; and many, too, showed clear signs of Uncle's having relieved his sexual frustrations. This, apart from being disgusting in itself, was a matter of regret because otherwise I should not have minded thumbing through them, given that my own taste in women is not dissimilar. (It was my habit of buying this sort of publication, or rather her discovery at the weekend of my secret stash of them, that had caused the recent unpleasantness with Wendy my wife.)

Uncle Albert's home laboratory, a converted spare bedroom, by contrast with the rest of the house was spotlessly clean. On a hotplate on the workbench there was a flask of clear liquid with a slight bluish tinge. It was not boiling. I cautiously put my finger near the surface of the hotplate, then on it. It was very warm to the touch, but not so hot that I had to remove my finger; I should describe it as shaving-water temperature. I turned off the hotplate and examined the liquid. A cautious sniff revealed it to be both pungent and wholly unappetising: imagine if you will a mix of methylated spirit and some very musky perfume. "Sorry, Uncle," I said, "but no way." But all the same, I felt sad about it. After all, I was looking at a man's life work, and I had promised him on his deathbed that I would use it as he intended.

Drinking the liquid was out of the question, but I could not think what else to do with it. Uncle Albert had been very clear he did not want his employer to have it, and the obvious alternative of simply tipping it away seemed wrong and disrespectful. As I stood there debating what to do, I gradually became more aware of my surroundings.

Although the laboratory was immaculate, the walls were covered with photographs of naked young women, obviously culled from the magazines. At first I assumed that Uncle Albert had merely wanted some female company while he worked, but then I noticed that the photographs were marked with delicate lines drawn as if to define precisely the women's body shapes, with tiny numbers labelling them like contour lines on a map. I was leaning forward to examine these markings, fascinated, when my cellphone suddenly rang and I stood up with such a start that I nearly lost my balance. As I put out my hand to steady myself, I knocked the flask and instinctively caught it by the neck to stop it from falling. Meanwhile with my other hand I found the phone and accepted the call.

It was Wendy, of course, demanding to know why I had not called her: what was going on, and did I know what time it was? I was surprised to see it was one in the morning. I explained that Uncle Albert had died, that I had lost track of time, that I had had to go to his house, and that I should be home soon.

"Well," she said, "I can't say I liked Albert but I'm sorry he's died. But," she went on ominously, "while you've been gone I've been thinking about Albert and how similar you are, with your dirty books and the way you leer at girls."

This was most unfair. I do not leer at girls. I have a keen appreciation for female beauty, I admit it, but I do not see why I should be blamed for what is surely a natural and healthy instinct in an adult male; and I am certainly never guilty of anything resembling the blatant ogling that Albert would inflict on any attractive woman that crossed his line of sight.

I had just opened my mouth to defend myself in these terms when Wendy, determined to deliver a speech she had clearly been rehearsing, completely floored me. "I'm sorry if this is a bad time to say it," she continued bitterly, "but I don't see why I should put up with it any more. We're finished. I've made up the spare bed for you. Please try not to disturb me when you come in, and we'll talk about the practicalities tomorrow." And the line went dead before I could reply.

I am not sure how long I stood there, rooted to the spot. I felt utterly dejected. From deep within me there welled up a terrible choking feeling of loneliness and loss. I had long known that I was not everything Wendy wanted in a husband and she had occasionally talked about divorce, but I never thought she would go through with it. And, despite all our problems, I also knew that I loved her dearly. True, I sometimes lusted after other women, but that was a purely carnal instinct and it had never gone beyond the lusting stage. Wendy was my wife, and I had built my life around my relationship with her. And now, abruptly, everything I had depended upon seemed to have been snatched away and in its place there was only a black pit of hopelessness ready to swallow me up.

Eventually I pulled myself together sufficiently to put the phone away, and realised to my surprise that the flask was still in my left hand.

I looked at it. I felt at absolutely rock bottom. I had nothing to live for. I did not care.

I drank.