"Well now," he said when Berry raised the subject of the books. "What about another drink?" Berry was glad to stand up, to feel the floor stable underfoot, for the drinkers at the edge of his vision had seemed to be swaying extravagantly.
"I'm not happy with the way my mob are promoting the books," Peeples admitted. "They seem to be letting them just lie there." Berry's response might have been more forceful if he hadn't been distracted by the chair that someone was rocking back and forth with a steady rhythmic creaking.
When Berry had finished making offers Peeples said "That doesn't sound bad. Still, I ought to tell you that several other people are interested." Berry wondered angrily whether he was simply touring publishers in search of free meals. The pub felt damp, the dimness appeared to be glistening. No doubt it was very humid.
Though the street was crowded, he was glad to emerge. "I'll be in touch," Peeples promised grudgingly, but at that moment Berry didn't care, for on the opposite pavement the old man's voice was crying "James!" It was only a newspaper-seller naming his wares, which didn't sound much like James. Surely a drain must have overflowed where the wet patch had been, for there was a stagnant smell.
Editors meeting 3 pddm.: he scarcely had time to gulp a mug of coffee beforehand, almost scalding his throat. Why did they have to schedule two meetings in one day? When there were silences in which people expected him to speak, he managed to say things that sounded positive and convincing. Nevertheless he heard little except for the waves of traffic, advancing and withdrawing, and the desperate cries in the street. What was that crossing the intersection, a long pale shape bearing objects like poles? It had gone before he could jerk his head round, and his colleagues were staring only at him.
It didn't matter. If any of these glimpses weren't hallucinations, surely they couldn't harm him. Otherwise, why hadn't he been harmed that night in Parkgate? It was rather a question of what he could do to the glimpses. "Yes, that's right," he said to a silence. "Of course it is." Once he'd slept he would be better able to cope with everything. Tomorrow he would consult the expert. After the meeting he slumped at the desk, trying to find the energy to gather books together and head for home.
His secretary woke him. "Okay," he mumbled, "you go on." He'd follow her in a moment, when he was more awake. It occurred to him that if he hadn't dozed off in Parkgate, his uncle might have been safe. That was another reason to try to do something. He'd get up in a few moments. It wasn't dark yet.
When he woke again, it was.
He had to struggle to raise his head. His elbows had shoved piles of books to the edge of the desk. Outside, the street was quiet except for the whisper of an occasional car. Sodium lamps craned their necks towards his window. Beyond the frosted glass of his office cubicle, the maze of the open-plan office looked even more crowded with darkness than the space around his desk. When he switched on his desk-lamp, it showed him a blurred reflection of himself trapped in a small pool of brightness. Hurriedly he switched on the cubicle's main light.
Though he was by no means awake, he didn't intend to wait. He wanted to be out of the building, away from the locked drawer. Insomnia had left him feeling vulnerable, on edge. He swept a handful of books into the briefcase— God, they were becoming a bad joke—and emerged from his cubicle.
He felt uncomfortably isolated. The long angular room was lifeless; none of the desks seemed to retain any sense of the person who sat there. The desertion must be swallowing his sounds, which seemed not only dwarfed but robbed of resonance, as though surrounded by an emptiness that was very large.
His perceptions must be playing tricks. Underfoot the floor felt less stable than it ought to. At the edge of his vision the shadows of desks and cabinets appeared to be swaying, and he couldn't convince himself that the lights were still. He mustn't let any of this distract him. Time enough to think when he was home.
It took him far too long to cross the office, for he kept teetering against desks. Perhaps he should have taken time to waken fully, after all. When eventually he reached the lifts, he couldn't bring himself to use one; at least the stairs were open, though they were very dark. He groped, swaying, for the light-switch. Before he'd found it, he recoiled. The wall he had touched felt as though it were streaming with water.
A stagnant stench welled up out of the dark. When he grabbed the banister for support, that felt wet too. He mustn't panic: a door or window was open somewhere in the building, that was all he could hear creaking; its draught was making things feel cold—not wet—and was swinging the lights back and forth. Yes, he could feel the draught blustering at him, and smell what must be a drain.
He forced himself to step onto the stairs. Even the darkness was preferable to groping for the light-switch, when he no longer knew what he might touch. Nevertheless, by the time he reached the half-landing he was wishing for light. His vertigo seemed to have worsened, for he was reeling from side to side of the staircase. Was the creaking closer? He mustn't pause, plenty of time to feel ill once he was outside in a taxi; he ought to be able to hold off panic so long as he didn't glimpse the ship again—
He halted so abruptly that he almost fell. Without warning he'd remembered his uncle's monologue. Berry had been as dopey then as he was now, but one point was all at once terribly clear. Your first glimpse of the ship meant only that you would see it again. The second time, it came for you.
He hadn't seen it again. Surely he still had a chance. There were two exits from the building; the creaking and the growing stench would tell him which exit to avoid. He was stumbling downstairs because that was the alternative to falling. His mind was a grey void that hardly even registered the wetness of the banisters. The foyer was in sight now at the foot of the stairs, its linoleum gleaming; less than a flight of stairs now, less than a minute's stumbling—
But it was no linoleum. The floorboards were bare, when there ought not even to be boards, only concrete. Shadows swayed on them, cast by objects that, though out of sight for the moment, seemed to have bloated limbs. Water sloshed from side to side of the boards, which were the planks of a deck.
He almost let himself fall, in despair. Then he began to drag himself frantically up the stairs, which perhaps were swaying, after all. Through the windows he thought he saw the cityscape rising and falling. There seemed to be no refuge upstairs, for the stagnant stench was everywhere—but refuge was not what he was seeking.
He reeled across the office, which he'd darkened when leaving, into his cubicle. Perhaps papers were falling from desks only because he had staggered against them. His key felt ready to snap in half before the drawer opened.
He snatched out the bottle, in which something rattled insectlike, and stumbled to the window. Yes, he had been meant to find the bottle—but by whom, or by what? Wrenching open the lock of the window, he flung the bottle into the night. He heard it smash a moment later. Whatever was inside it must certainly have smashed too. At once everything felt stable, so abruptly that he grew dizzier. He felt as though he'd just stepped onto land after a stormy voyage.
There was silence except for the murmur of the city, which sounded quite normal—or perhaps there was another sound, faint and receding fast. It might have been a gust of wind, but he thought it resembled a chorus of cries of relief so profound it was appalling. Was one of them his uncle's voice?
Berry slumped against the window, which felt like ice against his forehead. There was no reason to flee now, nor did he think he would be capable of moving for some time. Perhaps they would find him here in the morning. It hardly mattered, if he could get some sleep.
All at once he tried to hold himself absolutely still, in order to listen. Surely he needn't be nervous any longer, just because the ship in the bottle had been deserted, surely that didn't mean—But his legs were trembling, and infected the rest of his body until he couldn't even strain his ears. By then, however, he could hear far better than he would have liked.
Perhaps he had destroyed the ship, and set free its c
aptives; but if it had had a captain, what else might Berry have set loose? The smell had grown worse than stagnant—and up the stairs, and now across the dark office, irregular but purposeful footsteps were sloshing.
Early next morning several people reported glimpses of a light, supposedly moving out from the Thames into the open sea. Some claimed the light had been accompanied by sounds like singing. One old man tried to insist that the light had contained the outline of a ship. The reports seemed little different from tales of objects in the skies, and were quickly dismissed, for London had a more spectacular mystery to solve: how a publisher's editor could be found in a first-floor office, not merely dead but drowned.
Eye Of Childhood (1982)
The teacher gazed at Mary's painting, at the hair like a blue rag and the lopsided splotchy mouth, the right leg longer than the other. Behind her Donna had grown tired of being a model, and was making faces. At the back of the class Tommy was whining, "Please Miss, please Miss." Beyond the windows the tenements blazed like the seaside beneath floating ice-cream clouds.
"I'm disappointed in you, Mary," the teacher said.
Mary's legs drew up beneath her seat as though she had a stomach-ache. "We all know you've got plenty of imagination," the teacher said, "but I told you to paint Donna, not what's inside your head."
"But Miss—"
"Pardon?"
Mary flinched visibly. "But Mrs. Tweedle," she said, and the teacher glared at the class to suppress any outbursts of giggles like farting. She acted like an old woman sometimes, though she wasn't quite—probably no older than thirty. "Miss Dix said we shouldn't listen to what people said was right," Mary said, "only paint until we liked what we'd done."
"I'm not in the least interested. This is my classroom now, not hers." She returned to Mary's painting. "Just think about what you're doing. Can you imagine someone who looked like that actually walking about? How do you think they would look?"
"Like Mr. Waddicar."
Again the teacher glared about to head off giggles. "You aren't nearly as clever as you think you are, Mary. Just try to put your cleverness to some use."
She hardly glanced at Karen's picture. "Maybe your glasses need changing," she said sarcastically. When she moved on, Karen thought Mary was trembling. Mary had rather deserved to be told off, for thinking herself so superior—but it was partly the teacher's fault for making Mary her favorite. On the whole Karen felt sorrier for Mary than the others did. Someone had to sit next to her, after all.
"Oh no," the teacher said angrily behind her. Tommy, forgetting that she refused to answer to Miss, had concluded that she wouldn't let him leave the room. "Well, don't look at me, I can't do anything," she cried. "Go and clean yourself up and get a mop."
He was hobbling out when the bell rang. Donna jumped up with a loud sigh of relief. Mary was gazing wistfully at her picture. "Can't we put them up?"
"You can do whatever you like with them. Go out as soon as you've finished." The teacher hurried away to her lunch, leaving them to climb on chairs.
When they'd stuck up the paintings, which made the room less like a chalky concrete box, they ran downstairs. Mr. Waddicar the caretaker was hobbling across the landing, like an old lollipop man frustrating traffic. They tried not to giggle as they remembered Mary's remark.
The yard was full of interweaving independent games. A few panting children defended a narrow strip of shade beside the school. Cloud-shadows tried to creep the length of the street, but were swept away by the sun. The four-story tenements, layer on layer of them dwindling toward the horizon, had swallowed their own shadows and looked thirsty for more.
A man was pacing outside the bars, having helped Miss Floyd to chase away a gang of four-year-olds who had been throwing things into the yard. "That's Mr. Tweedle," Mary said.
Several of the others broke into a chorus of "Tweedle Tweedle" until giggling choked them. "Well, it isn't, see," Donna said. "He's just a man. My mam says she used to be married to someone, that's why she's a Mrs."
Just then the teacher emerged from the school, her large earrings glinting like thin bangles. They could smell her dry perfume from yards away. Mary ran over. "Mrs. Tweedle!"
The teacher pulled her hand away, frowning at a smear of paint. Though Mary's smile wavered, she blurted, "Is he your husband?"
"Don't you dare speak to me like that, child. Just remember who you're talking to." With that she stalked out of the yard.
Karen had to say "Sallright," for Mary was trembling again. Perhaps more than the rebuff had upset her: she seemed always to need to seize people's names at once, perhaps for reassurance, just as she'd grabbed the teacher's hand. But she didn't want Karen's reassurance now, for she turned her back, furious that anyone had seen her upset.
The teacher didn't help. All afternoon, as the chalk-dust grew steeped in perfume, Mary kept taking her stories up to her for praise. Miss Dix wouldn't have minded; she'd used to let anyone cling to her, as though she was their mother. The more impatient the teacher became, the more Mary pestered her. Karen didn't see what the teacher had to be impatient about, for she was only crunching peppermints to hide the smell of beer and looking at a big book of paintings, just splodges of color, no drawing at all.
Eventually she said, "Look, Mary, you aren't the only child here. In the time you waste bringing this to me you could be thinking up something new."
This time Mary didn't begin shaking. She sat quietly and drew in her exercise book, though they weren't what Karen would have called drawings: spirals that wound tightly inward until they merged into lumps of black, jagged lines that came scratching outward. Wherever Mary was gazing, it wasn't at the page.
But she'd thought of something new. When they left the school she said, "Let's follow her."
The teacher was walking beside the tenements with the man who wasn't her husband. It might be fun to hear what they were saying. Karen ran after Mary into the nearest tenement entry, and upstairs.
Crushed beer-cans huddled in the corners of steps. The children raced past them, onto the balcony. Front doors gleamed like plastic, identical windows glared out over the concrete wall. Figures stood beneath gathered net curtains: glass animals, a wooden toreador. Graffiti made stairwells resemble bad porous skin, tattooed. Their running feet sounded like a downpour within the close walls, until Mary hushed her.
"Look at this place," the teacher was saying. "It's no wonder they don't want to learn. That has to be the reason, hasn't it? Ten years old—eleven, some of them— and already their heads are full of cotton wool and last night's telly."
Mary looked tempted to reply, but the teacher was chattering on. "Why do they build places like this? I thought they must all have been pulled down yonks ago. I just can't understand why the authority sent me here. My teaching practice was at a lovely school, with lovely kids and all the aids you could think of. I felt I was doing something. But here half of them can't do arithmetic, some of them can hardly read. I have to repeat things over and over, and I can't stand that. And even when—"
After a pause, perhaps amazed that he could get a word in, the man said, "What's the matter?"
"Don't start that again." She sounded as angry as Mary had been when she'd let her feelings show. "My nerves are perfectly all right now, I've told you."
"Perhaps working here doesn't agree with you."
"Perhaps you're right, but that's just tough tit. I'm going to do my year here, otherwise they'll say I wasn't able to keep the job." Irritably she said, "I'm all right. I just thought for a moment that we were being watched."
Karen froze, choking down a gasp. Mary didn't move, except for a smile that crept across her mouth. "Nothing excites them," the teacher was complaining, "not even art. I spent half yesterday showing them how to sketch and paint, and what do they give me today? The same old chimpanzee pictures. There's one girl, Mary, who really frustrated me. She wasn't trying, that's what I can't stand. None of them— Jesus!"
There came a rush of
scampering. Karen risked a glance over the balcony wall. The gang of four-year-olds had pounced from an entry and were running away, yelling and making faces. Their faces already looked like masks, made up with dirt and paint and food.
"See what I mean," the teacher said tightly. "They're all the same. They'll grow up just like the class I have to teach."
When she moved out of earshot, Mary didn't follow. She was squatting in a corner of the balcony, knees drawn up to her chest, as though clutching to herself the things she'd heard the teacher say. Her smile grew wider, and less like a smile. "I know something we can do," she said.
Karen didn't like her smile, nor her eyes, which were blank as the eyes of a painting. Nevertheless she had to follow, ducking beneath washing like breathless sails, since Mary's was on her way home. Mary was silent. If she spoke, perhaps her smile would crack.
Like the rest of the flats, Mary's had a view like a mirror maze. Beyond the window, a screen whose net curtains looked poised to fall, Karen heard voices. Beyond the front door which blazed like a brake-light and the inevitable hall the size of a telephone kiosk, a bicycle bent almost double under the stairs.
When Mary saw the bicycle, her face pinched like an old woman's. Then she remembered what she planned to do, or that she mustn't let Karen see her feelings. Snubbing the bicycle, she crept to a cupboard beneath the stairs.
She had just opened the cupboard when her mother called, "Is that you, Mary? Uncle Ron's here."
"Oh, all right." Her face pinched again as she rummaged in the cupboard, which was full of library books whose labels had been torn out. She was struggling with a large black book which was the foundation of two stacks. As she dragged it free—its unhinged covers staggering, scattering loose pages which displayed lists like recipes and a picture of a woman in a pointed hat surrounded by small lumpy creatures—the living-room door was snatched open. "What are you hanging about here for?" a man said.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 74
