The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

  The hall below was lit, and it was crowded. She saw at least eight policemen, their uniforms black around Don, and beyond them a group of people who made her feel she mightn't after all have wakened, or that the family was on "Candid Camera." Then Marshall, who was gripping the wooden bulb which brought a full stop to the last line of banister, looked up at her, and several policemen did. From their expressions she could see that whatever was taking place, it was no joke.

  She felt the banisters shake as she swung herself around them, felt the stairs tremble as she ran down faster than she was sure she could control. Everyone was watching her, and from the group of people nearest the front door a movie camera trained its lens on her. She put one hand on Marshall's shoulder so as to sidle past him rather than spend time persuading him to relinquish his white-knuckled grip on the wooden bulb, and the policeman who had been confronting Don took three heavy steps toward her.

  He had thin pale lips and a sharp nose with nostrils pinker than the rest of his wide face, and startlingly black eyebrows which appeared to be underlining the wrinkles incised in his forehead. "You are Susanne Travis?"

  Being addressed by name gave her a more immediate sense of herself—enough of one that she pinched her robe shut against the gaze of the crowd in the hall and tied the cord tighter, constricting her waist. "Who else would I be?"

  His lips parted again, producing a spider-thread of saliva which vanished into their left corner. "I have to inform you that I have just served your husband with a warrant to search these premises."

  "You've..." It wasn't only the invasion of her house which made her feel backed into a corner and all but undressed by the intruders, it was her being scrutinised by the camera, whose attention felt like the chill of the hour rendered harsher. "Better show it to me."

  The policeman unfurled the fingers of one hand toward her, then poked them inside his jacket. "You are involved."

  "Damn right I am. We both own this house." Susanne peered at the thick sheet of paper he unfolded in front of her, then she took hold of it in case that helped the mass of legal jargon communicate its sense to her. When he didn't let go of the page she felt as though his blunt grasp was somehow preventing the meaning from reaching her. She glanced at Don, who responded with a dull nod which sent a surge of helpless anger through her. "Would you mind closing that door?" she asked the people nearest to it, and was infuriated by her own politeness. "Who the—who the Gehenna are you anyway?"

  Don smiled so wryly it looked as though a stroke had affected one side of his face. "They're filming a documentary about police work."

  "What police work?" She heard herself sounding angry with him, and shook her head at him and turned on the policeman with the pressed lips. "What are you supposed to be looking for?"

  "I think you know that, Mrs. Travis."

  "Then you think a whole lot," she retorted, which didn't sound at all like her intended meaning. "It's a mistake, isn't it, Don? Can they do this? Do we get to make a phone call?"

  "I don't know who we'd call this early."

  "Of course, sure, that's the way it's meant to work." She became aware of Marshall, and reached to stroke his hand on the banister. "It's okay, honey. They're the police. They aren't going to do anything bad to us, are you?"

  The officer in charge gave her a look so blank it was menacing. "We'll start on the ground floor if we may."

  That was addressed largely to his forces, who separated into three groups and went into the front room and dining room and kitchen. Maybe they were searching for illegal dinner plates, Susanne thought wildly, or forbidden vintages of wine, or prohibited cutlery, or banned ingredients: maybe you weren't allowed to have a full jar of nutmeg in Britain. Then she knew what they were after, just as one young policeman called "Inspector" from the front room.

  As Susanne launched herself in that direction the camera swooped after her, and only grabbing her own wrist prevented her from clapping a hand over the lens. She wasn't going to be made to appear to have something to hide, and they couldn't screen any of this footage without her and Don's permission, could they? She experienced some satisfaction as the pale-lipped inspector collided with the cameraman behind her in the doorway, but then she saw the policeman holding up a videocassette, his plump scrubbed face so triumphant that he might have been imagining the boost he'd just given his career. "I spit on your grave, Inspector."

  Susanne hadn't time to laugh at how he sounded. "That belongs—"

  "Yes, Mrs. Travis?"

  The inspector's question allowed her time to rethink what she'd almost blurted out. "It belongs to a group of films I'm studying with my students."

  "I'm afraid that won't help you under the circumstances."

  Susanne planted her hands on her hipbones. "What circumstances?"

  He turned a look of weary disbelief on her, then his gaze drifted to the policemen who were peering behind furniture and overturning cushions on the chairs. "Nothing else in here, Inspector," one said for all of them.

  "Keep hold of that tape, Desmond. You should be aware, Mrs. Travis, that the film has been banned as a video nasty since 1984."

  For a moment she heard only the date, which seemed so appropriate that she wondered anew if the entire situation could be someone's idea of an elaborate joke. The other policemen were returning along the hall, followed by Don, who had been keeping an eye on them. "Nothing, Inspector."

  "I suspect we'll have more joy at the top of the house."

  Susanne felt her mouth open and dry up. Someone who'd been in the building was responsible for the raid—had contacted the police and told them exactly where to look—and the faces of everyone at the party raced in a distorted jumble through her mind. The police were marching upstairs in single file, the camera panning with them, and as Marshall dodged out of their way his eyes met hers. She remembered his saying in court that the cassettes were kept on the top floor, and saw him remember, and went to hug him. "Never mind, honey," she said, feeling awkward and inadequate and more furious than ever with the invasion of the home, and grabbed Don. "What are we supposed to have done?" she whispered. "Clement said he checked it was legal to show those movies as part of a course."

  Don shrugged as though trying to heave a burden off his shoulders, and beyond him she saw the director and cameraman exchange glances. They knew. Policemen were opening doors on the floor above while most of the intruders trooped to the top, and she felt them spreading like a mass of blackness through her house. "Go ahead," she urged, pushing Don and Marshall toward the stairs. "We don't want them where we can't see them."

  She was trying not to conclude that she and the family were the intruders, strangers in a country where they'd learned the rules too late. Policemen were in her and Don's room and in Marshall's, opening wardrobes and pulling out drawers and groping under beds. She saw Marshall's face go awry, and he ran to his room, then hesitated, unsure whether he was allowed to be there. Her rage at how he was being made to feel could have lashed out in any direction, but she focused her attention on the director, an overweight man in his thirties with nearly all of a moustache and fewer hairs on top of his head than there were purple veins on his round face. "You tell me," she demanded, only inches from him. "What don't we know?"

  His eyes flickered, and she saw he was deciding whether answering would help his film. He glanced down at the inspector, who had remained at the foot of the stairs, presumably in case any of the family made a bid for freedom. "One of your students," the director murmured, and seemed about to leave it at that, but instead lowered his voice further, "has been selling copies of banned videos."

  "What has that to do with us?"

  He blinked slowly at her as though he was squeezing the disbelief out of his eyes, and Susanne thought that if any of the unwelcome visitors gave her one more look she didn't care for—"Read a lot, do you, son?" an avuncular officer was saying, which enraged her too. Then the policeman with the plump scrubbed face leaned over the highest banister. "We've foun
d them, Inspector."

  Susanne felt her legs sending her upstairs as if they were thinking for her. The inspector appeared to be in no hurry to climb, and so she had time to tone down her rage at the spectacle of policemen removing dozens of cassettes from the shelves. As soon as he reached the top landing she said, "I want you to know that none of these videos has ever been out of our control."

  "Is that so, Mrs. Travis?"

  "I'm trying to tell you I've played them on a machine at the University to show them to my students, and on the player downstairs, and that's all."

  "I'll note you said so."

  "You can't copy these tapes into your British standard from either player. The signal can only be picked up by a suitable monitor, otherwise all you get is garbage."

  "Really."

  His very expressionlessness was infuriating, and so was the sight of the police pretending not to listen as they denuded the shelves. "Do you intend to leave me any tapes at all?" she said.

  He raised his eyebrows slightly, producing another line in his forehead. "Refusing to cooperate won't help your case."

  "I'd like to know how you define cooperation," she said, and saw plump Desmond turning a cassette of Casablanca over in his hands. "I don't suppose you'll be impounding Bogey, will you? I guess even the British appreciate a weep."

  "It doesn't have a British censor's certificate, Inspector."

  "Better add it to the pile."

  Susanne felt as if darkness was invading the room, clinging to the light-bulb and the inside of her cranium. "You have to be kidding."

  "It is illegal to sell or rent or exhibit any videocassette in this country which has not been given a British censor's certificate," the inspector said.

  "In that case you may as well save yourselves a whole lot of trouble and take all of them," Susanne said, reflecting that the police would look pretty stupid if they tried to bring Singin' in the Rain and all the Astaire-Rogers musicals into court. The notion that a sense of absurdity might catch up with them in time to persuade them to drop the case was beginning to appeal to her when Marshall trailed upstairs after Don and the policeman who had been in Marshall's room. "That's mine," the boy protested.

  The policeman whose plumpness and eagerness increasingly reminded Susanne of a schoolboy—the kind of teacher's pet all his classmates would loathe—was examining Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. "The PG rating on this isn't British, Inspector."

  "Good work, Desmond."

  Susanne saw Marshall's teeth squeeze his closed lips together as the policeman dropped the cassette on top of the nearest pile. "You call that good work, do you," she demanded, "taking away a child's entertainment?"

  "Perhaps he'll turn to something healthier. I don't care what certificate it has," the inspector said, "I wouldn't let my ten-year-old watch that kind of violence."

  "I'm twelve," Marshall said, his mouth twisting.

  "Ten or twelve, it makes no odds. If there were a few more responsible parents there'd be a few less young thugs for us to have to deal with."

  "If we're discussing responsibility," Don said in a thin voice, "maybe you ought to remember my wife uses these tapes to educate people in criticising what they watch."

  "I'm not here to argue with you, Mr. Travis."

  "Then I suggest you keep your eructating opinions to yourself."

  The inspector's lips stiffened, perhaps because he didn't understand the adjective, and then Marshall intervened. "Never mind, dad, mom. Pippy can tape it for me next time it's on satellite."

  The inspector looked as though he might object to that too. Susanne was waiting for him to interfere, and saying, "Don't worry, honey, things can't be as bad as they seem," when a policeman came in from the study. "Inspector, this could be something."

  He'd found a printout of the defence of her course which Clement had asked Susanne to write. No doubt her opening sentence had caught his eye: "Recent developments in electronic media have rendered the concept of local film censorship redundant." The inspector seemed pleased as soon as he began reading; she could almost see his face grow heavier. "I should like to take a copy of this, Mrs. Travis."

  "Go ahead, take that one. It's meant for dissemination."

  He appeared to suspect that of being a dirty word too, and she didn't suppose that, or his feeling patronised by their vocabulary, was going to improve the situation. Her awareness of the film crew jabbed her, and she rounded on them. "Maybe I should read it to the camera."

  The cameraman grimaced. She mustn't be reacting as he thought the subject of a police raid should react, or perhaps her movement had undermined the image he was filming. If she could do nothing else for the moment, she could do her best to ensure that he took away no more footage that the director would want to use. She was walking toward the lens, and saying, "Let's consider how an image is constructed" in a voice which she struggled to render conversational, when plump scrubbed Desmond said, "I think that's everything, Inspector."

  Susanne stepped closer to the camera so as to block more of its view as she turned her back on it. Every single cassette was piled on the floor "You aren't kidding," she said, higher and less controllably than ever.

  "I'll bring up some boxes, shall I?" another of the mass of policemen said.

  "If you're seriously proposing to take all those away," Susanne said, her tone sharper than she would ever have used to a student, "you'll need to store them horizontally. Stacking tapes vertically can ruin the soundtrack."

  "Corrupts it, does it?" the inspector said with an air of having proved himself a master of wordplay. "Count them if you would, Desmond, and make out a receipt."

  "You'll need to do more than count any you propose to remove," Don said at once. "We'll want them listed by title."

  "Don..."

  "That way there can't be any disagreement about which tapes are ours."

  There shouldn't be in any case, since the Travises marked with a T the label of every cassette they bought, and she was about to try again to dissuade him from making unnecessary difficulties when she recalled that I Spit on Your Grave wouldn't be so marked. A dormant headache which had apparently been waiting for her to realise this darted twin spikes behind her eyes. She wheeled a chair to the doorway of the study and sat watching while policemen brought cartons which they filled with the cassettes Desmond, resembling a schoolboy kept in after class now, had to list on a sheaf of receipts he rested on Susanne's copy of How to Read a Film. She felt emotionless as a camera. The sun was crawling above the roofs by the time the last cassette was stuffed into a carton and the inspector laid the receipts on the study desk. "If you'll read through these and sign them."

  The movies were only movies, Susanne told herself, and it was surely inconceivable that most of them wouldn't be returned. Her gaze tumbled down the protracted flights of steps that were the titles, until it snagged painfully on two listings of Scarface, both versions of which she'd been planning to run for her students that week. The question of what she could show them began to throb behind her eyes as she signed the receipts. The inspector examined her signature and then, as though some quality of her handwriting had prompted the query, said, "Are you British citizens?"

  "That's one aspect of your hospitality we haven't enjoyed."

  Several new lines sketched themselves on his forehead, and she wondered if he might seize her passport for the crime of sarcasm, or obstructing the police, or whatever he might call it. He only said, "You aren't planning to leave the country in the near future, are you, Mrs. Travis?"

  "What reason could I have?"

  He tore off copies of the receipts and spread them like an unbeatable hand of cards across the desk, and stooped so close to her that she could smell his mouthwash and see half an inch of a chest hair poking through the middle buttonhole of his shirt. "Please inform us if you intend to leave the area."

  "Am I supposed to get dressed now?"

  He looked almost amused, and she clenched her fists. "Am I supposed to acco
mpany you?"

  "You'll be hearing from us in due course."

  His troops were bearing their cartons of booty downstairs, and he turned to follow them. The cameraman panned from them to the empty shelves and then switched off the camera, and Susanne's anger flew out of her mouth. "You've finished with us, have you? Got everything you wanted?"

  "Susanne, I don't think it's their—"

  "Their business, were you going to say, Don? Or their problem, how they're going to make us look?" She saw the cameraman's hand creep toward the switch, and lurched at him. "Go ahead, switch it on and I'll give you something real to film."

  The inspector was lingering at the top of the stairs. Maybe he would arrest her for threatening behaviour, for disturbing the peace in her own house. In that case she would give him a reason, and she opened her fists into claws and went for the cameraman faster than he was backing away. She heard Marshall suck in a breath, and was dismayed by the way her rage had blotted out her awareness of him. "All right," she said, her hands dropping. "That's all, folks. Please leave."

  She grabbed a jar of aspirin from the bathroom cabinet and swallowed two with a handful of water as she followed the police and the film crew downstairs. She watched from the front door while the cartons were loaded into the police cars beneath streetlamps which stayed doggedly alight against the brightening sky. Were any of the neighbours observing her from their lit houses or from those which stayed suspiciously dark?

  Though the notion made her stance in the doorway feel staged and self-conscious, she didn't move until the cars veered away around the corner of the street, reddening their brake lights. Unsure when he had come to stand beside her, she let go of Don's waist and blundered past him to sit on the stairs with her eyes shut. He closed the door so gently that it almost didn't hurt and said, "I'll make us some coffee, shall I, and then maybe I'll think I'm awake. How about you, Marshall?"