The alarm had to make several efforts to waken her. Since the staff at Bassinet Press started work later than she did, her tardiness hardly mattered. She reached the office at least a minute before the switchboards were due to open, but Bertha frowned hard enough to darken her sunless face. "We'd given up on you. Are you better?"
"Getting there."
"We didn't think it was like you to have to stay off with a case of the girlies."
"Maybe I'm becoming a woman," Lisette said, and closed herself in with her headphones, ignoring the looks Vi and Doris exchanged. She dealt with inquiries until Bertha waddled off to relieve herself and remake her makeup, at which point Lisette suffered the next call to carry on twitching its light on her board while she rang Bassinet Press. "Will you put me through to William Bantam's editor, please."
"May I have a name?"
"Someone they'll want to speak to."
Quite soon a deeper female voice said "Mel Daunton."
"Are you the editor Mr Bantam has to talk to?"
"I'm the one he does. Sorry, can I ask who's calling?"
"You ought to be sorry. You should know who I am. He talked to you about me."
"You'll forgive me if I don't—"
"You and his agent and him got together to talk about what I could imagine before he wrote his new book."
"I don't know where you could have got that impression, Miss, Mrs—"
"He said it in front of witnesses at the bookshop here in town, so don't bother trying to tell me it isn't true. You can't take advantage of me any more than he can. Do you know what he wanted me to believe when I saw him yesterday? That the description of me in his books isn't me."
"I did hear something about that. If I can—"
"I'll bet he didn't tell you he said he was me. Even I haven't got the imagination to believe that."
"I'm glad to hear it. Can I ask what you actually—"
"I want compensation for the way he used me and then said he never did. I'm not talking about money. As long as you and his agent tell him what to write, I want us all to agree how he can put me in his next book."
"That might take some arranging. Give me your number and I'll call you back."
"It doesn't matter when we all have to meet, I'll come," said Lisette, ignoring Vi and Doris, both of whom were staring at her. It wasn't until they turned to gaze past her that she realized what was wrong, not that she cared. A glance over her shoulder revealed Bertha in the doorway, hands on hips. "I'll call you tomorrow," Lisette said into the mouthpiece.
"I may not be here then, so if you could give me your—"
"I know what you're up to. Never mind trying to send someone to shut me up. I'll be there when you're discussing his next book," Lisette said, and cut her off.
She waited for Bertha to move into her view. The supervisor looked so unhappy and reluctant to speak that Lisette stood up at once. "You needn't say it. I'm fired," she cried, flinging the earphones at the switchboard. "Don't worry, I'm going to a better place," she said, snatching her coat off its hook, and stamped on whatever Bertha attempted to say to her back.
She was out of the only job she'd ever had, and already forgetting it. She knew who she really was, and before long everybody would. On her way home she parked in a side street she would previously have found too unpatrolled to brave and bought a tape recorder in a pawnbroker's. One of several men who were huddled under sacks in the doorway of a derelict pub erected his bottle at her for lack of anything more manageable. "I'll have worse in me than that," she told him.
It was almost noon, but it might as well have been dusk. Swollen lumps of light hovered above the pavements, thick glowing veils hung before the shops. The world had grown soft and remote from her, and the interior of her house seemed as distant: the closing of the garage, the climbing of the stairs, the crossing of the room full of redundant books. Only her bedroom was alive for her, and once she was naked she pressed herself against the wall that was papered with samples of Willy Bantam. She ran her fingertips around the screaming lips, she licked the pages of Ravage!. The faint taste of ink seemed more nourishing than any meal. When she felt entirely ready she switched on the tape recorder and held in her hand the pen he'd touched, and widened her legs on the bed.
"Willy? Willy Bantam? I know you're going to hear this. I'm not angry with you any more. I can't be angry when we're going to collaborate. This is how I'll die in your next book. You won't be able to resist me. Are you listening?"
When she saw the flare of red that indicated the machine was, she closed her eyes. "Lisette pulled the cap off the famous horror writer's pen. No protection for her. She traced the contours of her full breasts with the tip, she ran it over her flat trim stomach and up and down her long slim thighs, oh, and then she thrust it deep, ah..."
Before too long she was able to form words again, and meanwhile her other sounds kept the tape recorder working. "She felt it penetrate her virginity," she gasped, and steadied her voice. "She felt the ink that was his essence flow into her, tingling through her body. She felt herself starting to imagine like him, see into the depths of him, see things he would never have dared to see by himself. Now if she could just... just put them into words..."
"That's as much as she managed to say," the policeman said, and switched off the tape. "By the sound of it she passed out shortly after."
"And then..." Bantam prompted.
"And then she lay there for weeks before anyone found her. She hadn't any friends or family, just books."
"I hope nobody's going to blame me for that."
"Most of them weren't yours," said the policeman, and paused long enough for his gaze to become heavily ambiguous. "We shouldn't need to trouble you further. Nobody can say you encouraged her."
"They better hadn't try." For an instant the author saw the woman as the sound of her taped voice had conjured her up'an unwelcome presence in the midst of his audience, at least middle-aged and already grey, flat-chested, thick-limbed, less than five feet tall and almost half as broad. "I wish someone else had," he said.
The policeman pushed himself out of the only chair and held up the tape recorder. "Will you want this when we've finished with it?"
"For what? No thanks."
"You won't be doing what she wanted."
"Writing about her? Too many of the papers already have."
"I can see you wouldn't want to get yourself a worse reputation," the policeman said.
Bantam saw him out of the apartment and out of his mind. He'd survived remarks more pointed than that in the course of his career. The woman on the tape was harder to forget, but a large glass of brandy helped, and put him in a working mood. Working cured anything. He sat on the bed with his lap-top word processor and reached out to turn towards him the photograph of his ex-wife, faded by years of sunlight and dust. He could almost feel her breasts filling his hands, feel her slim waist, long slim legs. "Bitch," he said almost affectionately, and began to write.
Never To Be Heard (1998)
As the coach swung into the drive that led to the Church of the Blessed Trinity, Fergal jumped up. He would have reached Brother Cox before the coach gasped to a halt except for tripping over lanky Kilfoyle's ankles in the aisle. Boys of all sizes crowded to the doors ahead of him, waving their hands in exaggerated disgust and denying they'd farted and blaming red-faced O'Hagan as usual, so that by the time Fergal struggled down onto the gravel Brother Cox was playing doorman outside the arched stone porch, ushering in each of his favourite choirboys with a pat in the small of the back. 'Sir?' Fergal said.
The choirmaster gave him a dignified frown, rather spoiled by an April wind that, having ruffled the trees around the church, disordered the wreath of red hair that encircled his bald freckled scalp. 'Shea, is it, now? O'Shea?'
'Shaw, sir. Sir, is it true Harry's mum and dad won't let him sing at the concert?'
'I believe that may turn out to be the truth of it, Shaw, yes.'
Fergal found his eyes wanti
ng to roll up, away from the choirmaster's inability to talk to him straight that was bad even by the standards of most adults, even of most teachers. If he looked above him he would see the pointed arch that reminded him uncomfortably of the naked women in the magazines making the rounds of the dormitory. 'Sir, so if they're stopping him—'
'I'm not about to discuss the rights or otherwise of their decision with a choirboy, Shaw.'
Fergal didn't care about their decision, let alone their objections to the music. 'No, sir, what I meant was we'll be a tenor short, won't we? Sir, can I be him? My voice keeps—'
'Don't be so eager to lose your purity.' Brother Cox was no longer speaking just to Fergal, who felt as though he'd been made to stand up in front of the whole of the choir. 'You'll grow up soon enough,' said the choirmaster with a blink of disapproval at the single hair Fergal's chin was boasting. 'Sing high and sweet while you can.'
'But sir, I keep not being—'
'March yourself along now. You're holding up half my flock.'
Fergal bent sideways in case the choirmaster found his back worth patting, and dodged into the church. More than one window was a picture of Christ in his nightie, a notion Fergal wouldn't have dared admit to his mind until recently for fear of dying on the spot. Not only was the building full of pointed arches to inflame Fergal's thoughts, the broad stone aisle was an avenue of fat cylindrical pillars altogether too reminiscent of the part of himself that seemed determined to play tricks on him whenever and wherever it felt inclined. Choirboys were streaming down the aisle as their echoes searched for a way out through the roof. In front of the choirstalls on either side of the altar, a conductor was pointing his wand at members of an orchestra to conjure a note from them. Between him and the orchestra a woman was typing on a computer keyboard, and Fergal's interest nearly roused itself until he remembered why she was there - the stupidest aspect of the entire boring exercise. The computer was going to produce sounds nobody could hear.
When the Reverend Simon Clay had written the music there had been no computers: no way of creating the baser than base line he wanted for the final movement. The score had been lost for almost a century and rediscovered just over a year ago, not by any means to Fergal's delight. Even its title -
The Balance of the Spheres: A Symphony for Chorus and Large Orchestra - was, like the music, too long to endure. Last year, when the choir had won a choral competition, some of the boys had sneaked away afterwards for a night in Soho, but now that Fergal felt old enough to join them, everyone was confined to quarters overnight and too far out of London to risk disobeying. He'd given up on that - he only wished he were anywhere else, listening to Unlikely Orifices or some other favourite band - but all he could do was take his place among the choirboys with hairless baby chins and wait for the orchestra to be ready. At last, though not to his relief, it was time to rehearse.
Brother Cox insisted on announcing the title of each movement, no matter how high the conductor raised his eyebrows. 'The Voice of the Face That Speaks,' said the choirmaster, all but miming the capital letters, as the stout radiators along the walls hissed and gurgled to themselves, and the choir had to sing a whole page of the Bible while the orchestra did its best to sound like chaos and very gradually decided that it knew some music after all. 'The Voice of the Face That Dreams,' Brother Cox declared at last, after he and the conductor had made the choir and orchestra repeat various bits that had only sounded worse to Fergal. Now the choir was required to compete with the orchestra by yelling about seals - not the sort that ate fish, but some kind only an angel was supposed to be able to open. The row calmed down as the number of seals increased, and once the seventh had been sung about the brass section had the music to itself. The trumpeting faded away into a silence that didn't feel quite like silence, and Fergal realized the computer had been switched on. 'We shall carry on,' the conductor said in an Eastern European accent almost as hard to grasp as his name.
'Best take it in stages, Mr . . .' said Brother Cox, and left addressing him at that. 'This is the hardest movement for my boys. Quite a challenge, singing in tongues.'
Fergal had already had enough. Even if he'd wanted to sing, his voice kept letting him down an octave, and singing in the language the Revolting Clay had apparently made up struck him as yet another of the stupid unjustifiable things adults expected him to do. Brother Cox had acknowledged how unreasonable it was by giving each choirboy a page with the words of the Voice of the Face That Will Awaken to use at the rehearsal. Whenever Fergal's voice had threatened to subside during the first two movements he'd resorted to mouthing, and he was tempted to treat all of the Reverend's babble that way rather than feel even stupider.
It looked as though that was how he was going to feel whatever he did. Keeping a straight face at the sight of Brother Cox as he opened and closed his mouth like a fish gobbling the gibberish was hard enough. The choir commenced singing what appeared to have been every kind of church music the Reverend could think of, the orchestra performed a search of its own, and Fergal was unable to concentrate for straining to hear a sound he couldn't quite hear.
He felt as though it was trying to invade everything around him. Whenever the choir and orchestra commenced another round, more than their echoes seemed to gather above them -perhaps the wind that flapped around the church and fumbled at the trees. Shadows of branches laden with foliage trailed across the windows, dragging at the stained-glass outlines, blurring them with gloom. Once Fergal thought the figure of Christ above the choirstalls opposite had turned its head to gaze at him, but of course it was already facing him. His momentary inattention earned him a scowl from Brother Cox. Then the choir climbed a series of notes so tiny it felt like forever before they arrived at the highest they could reach, while the orchestra contented itself with a single sustained chord and the computer carried on with whatever it was doing. Well before the top note Fergal did nothing but keep his mouth open. The conductor trembled his stick and his free hand at them all, and when at last there came a silence that appeared to quell the trees outside, he let the baton sink and wiped his eyes. 'I believe we have done it, Brother,' he murmured.
'If you say so.'
Either the choirmaster objected to being addressed like a comrade or resented not having had his wellnigh incomparably straightforward name pronounced. His dissatisfaction was plain as he gestured boys out of the stalls row by row. Fergal was among the last to be marched past the amused orchestra, who were within earshot when Brother Cox caught up with him. 'O'Shea,' the choirmaster demanded, and even louder 'Shea.'
'It's Shaw, sir.'
'Never mind that now. You've little enough reason to want anyone knowing who you are when you can't keep your eyes where you're told. Maybe you were dreaming you'll be singing low tomorrow, so let me tell you a boy from this very church will be taking Harty's place. A prize soloist, so don't you go thinking you're the equal of him.'
On the coach he renewed his disapproval. 'I want every boy's eye on me tomorrow from the instant he opens his_ mouth. There'll be no sheets for you to be consulting. After your dinners we'll spend all the time that's needed till every single one of you is letter perfect.'
The choir groaned as much as they dared, and some of the boys who'd heard Fergal being told off glared at him as if he'd brought this further burden on them. The coach wound its way through the narrow Surrey lanes to the school where the choir was suffering a second night. The boys who ordinarily put up with it had gone home for Easter, but the monks they'd got away from had remained, prowling the stony corridors with their hands muffled in their black sleeves while they spied out sinful boys or boys about to sin or capable of thinking of it. The choir had hardly taken refuge in the dormitories when they were summoned to dinner, a plateful each of lumps of stringy mutton that several mounds of almost indistinguishable vegetables applied themselves to hiding. The lucky vegetarians were served the same without the lumps but with the gravy. Some of the resident monks waved loaded forks to encour
age their guests to eat, and the oldest monk emitted sounds of what must have passed in his case for pleasure. After the meal, even the prospect of rehearsal came as almost a relief.
Brother Cox made the choir sit on benches in the draughty bare school hall and repeat the stream of nonsense Simon Clay deserved to be cursed for, and then he collected the pages with the words on and mimed trying to lift an invisible object with the palms of his hands to urge the choir to chant the whole thing again, and yet again. He mustn't have believed they could have learned it so perfectly, because he tried requiring each boy to speak it by himself. When it came to Fergal's turn the boy felt as though all the echoes of the repetitions were swooping about inside his head, describing the patterns of the absent music, and he only had to let them become audible through his mouth. 'Nac rofup taif gnicam tuss snid...' He didn't even realize he'd finished until Brother Cox gave him a curt nod.
By the time Brother Cox dismissed the choir they were so exhausted that hardly anyone could be bothered with horseplay in the communal bathroom. As Fergal crawled under the blankets of the hard narrow bed halfway down the dormitory, a long room with dark green glossy walls as naked as its light bulbs, he wondered if anyone else was continuing to hear the echoes of the last rehearsal.
There was only one kind of dream he wanted to have in the intimate warmth of the blankets, but the echoes wouldn't let it begin to take shape. They seemed to gather themselves as he sank into sleep - seemed to focus into just three voices, one to either side of him and one ahead. That in front of him began to lead him forwards while the others were left behind. Soon he was outside time and deep in a dream.
He was trudging towards a mountain range across a white desert that felt more like salt than sand. He'd been in the wilderness, his instincts told him, for three times thirteen days. He was bound for the highest mountain, a peak so lofty that the river which rushed down its glittering sheer slopes appeared to be streaming out of the bright clouds that crowned it. He thought he might never reach the water that would quench his thirst and lead him to the mystery veiled by the shining clouds, but in a breath the dream brought him to the river. It darkened as he drank from it and bathed in it, because he was following it downwards through a cavern he knew was the mountain turned inside out and upside down. Surely it was only in a dream that a river could run to the centre of the world, which would show him the centre of the universe, the revelation he'd journeyed so far and fasted so long to reach. Now, at the end of a descent too prolonged and frightful to remember, he was there, and the blackness was glowing with an illumination only his eyes could see. Around him the walls of the cavern were fretted like jaws piled on jaws, ridged as if the rock might be the skeleton of the world. Ahead was a pool so deep and dark he knew it was no longer water - knew the river was feeding a hole so black it could swallow the universe. A figure was rising from it, robed in rock that flowed like water. Was the universe creating it just as it had created the universe? Its eyes glinted at him, more than twice too many of them, and he struggled to awaken, to avoid seeing more. But he could hear its voices too, and didn't know whether his mind was translating them or trying to fend them off. In its image, he found himself repeating, in its image—
The Collected Short Fiction Page 126
