Subvision

by Andrew McEwan

  The grey man drove erratically, as if unsure of the road, or his precise direction, swerving across lanes. He left them each with a gift, for her a tin opener, for him a shoe horn, a razor without blades returned to the sack with a shake of the head and a gurgle of liquids.

  The service-station resembled any other. They took turns to wash and guard belongings, Moses returning to find a surly youth occupying his chair, spilling over it, Rosemary unconcerned by either his long, pungent cigarettes or his pot-bellied demeanour, afterward describing him as a friend of an enemy of a friend, a girl she'd known east of Clapham.

  The youth gone they talked. Rosemary had no tent and had been sleeping rough, when she did sleep, which was eight nights out of ten, once in a waste container full of paper cups and cardboard boxes and once in a candy-striped shelter workmen had erected round a manhole, her dreams the dreams of sewage and rats. Her many adventures were related cheerfully. She had no regrets about leaving London. Her father had died when she was five and her mother's boyfriend abused her as a teenager. She was twenty now, had stabbed her mother in one chubby arm with a fork and run away, abandoning her Sunday dinner. Hitting the road and not looking back, she discovered herself chasing a forgotten past she hoped one day to reassemble. She talked for hours.

  ‘What's your excuse, Moses? The Egyptians? Tell me.’

  They'd bought tea, a pot of it, and staked claim to a chipped Formica table.

  Moses was sleepy. They both were. A waitress nudged Rosemary. ‘Could you move a moment, dear, for the cleaner?’

  Moses came awake. ‘It's six o'clock,’ he said. ‘Time we were leaving.’

  She yawned, acknowledged the waitress, stood, said to him, ‘You can read the time?’

  He thought a moment. ‘I dreamt it…’

  ‘Okay - is the pot empty?’

  Outside was twilit and hungry. Lorry drivers rumbled out of cabs and junctions, slid into seats and traffic. Moses toted Rosemary's haversack, his own gear stashed in it, while she swung his tent round by its orange nylon carry-handle.

  Each of them stuck out a thumb. It worked like magic, eight times from ten.

  By six-fifteen they were mobile. By seven in love.

  5

  Benedict leaned over the wooden rail and gazed at his dim reflection in the muddy waters of the swamp. It was early and the flies had yet to rise. Nevertheless, Rebecca had sprayed the awnings, a smell like candle wax. She came up behind him now and put her arms round his waist. Newly risen from the shower, she was damp against his shirt. Her soapy cleanness enfolded him. Her long hair spilled on his shoulder.

  ‘Did you see something, Roy?’ she asked, holding tighter.

  ‘No. Just the trees, the water,’ he replied. ‘How did you sleep?’

  ‘Oh, fine.’ She disengaged, affirming the lie. ‘I closed my eyes and drifted like flotsam.’

  Benedict turned to face his wife, hands behind him gripping puffy wood. A lozenge of sunlight crept toward them along the veranda, colouring the slatted planks. The house was painted a vague blue. Draped with creepers, it mirrored shades of aquatic oblivion.

  ‘I heard noises in the dark,’ Rebecca said. ‘I thought at first it was you.’

  ‘Did they come from the water?’

  ‘No - they were inside; it was as if the entire house was moving on its stilts. Scary.’

  ‘Why didn't you wake me?’

  She folded her arms, creased her robe. ‘I listened,’ she said. ‘I put my ear to the floor in the kitchen and again in the bathroom. It sounded like a distant train. Or a boat maybe, an outboard motor. And then as I listened the sound grew more high pitched, like a scream.’

  ‘You should have woken me,’ Benedict said.

  Rebecca turned and walked back into the house, her footprints quick to dry in the burgeoning heat.

  6

  ‘There's money to be made out of this. You agree?’

  ‘You're not the first to suggest it, Tony. But yes, I agree.’

  Tony Molhenny peered from the eighteenth floor office window of his friend and business associate, Hugo Lupid.

  ‘You must know how many wild schemes are going around,’ Hugo said, feet on his antique desk. ‘Excursions, tours, fly-byes; that record deal Salami has supposed to have nailed. All kinds of scams. Most of them legal.’

  Tony returned his glass to the revolving art-deco table, wondering where Hugo bought such garish items. ‘Yeah,’ he answered, stroking the fronds of a particularly well-balanced yucca plant. Engineered by a lady in Belgium, imported by Lupid & Molhenny. ‘But has anybody yet produced an actual alien, in the flesh?’

  Hugo laughed. ‘What makes you think they have flesh, Tony? They could be anything. Balls of slime. Anything.’

  ‘My point exactly, Hugo. No-one knows for sure. It's my guess no-one's going to find out, either.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think you know what I'm thinking.’

  ‘The Loch Ness monster,’ said Hugo. ‘Yeti.’ He got to his feet with a groan of supple leather. The ridges fell out of his suit.

  ‘Live and kicking.’

  ‘Concessions, sponsorship, personal appearances, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Keep going, Hugo.’

  ‘All rights held by Pulchritude Promotions - that's you and me.’

  ‘The exclusive package.’

  Hugo paced before his desk, hands out in front of him. ‘Who do you have in mind, Tony?’

  ‘I've someone on tap who I think fits the bill.’

  ‘Reliable? Here, let me get you another.’

  ‘Sure - brandy. A big one.’

  ‘And you trust him to do the job?’

  ‘Implicitly.’

  ‘What about after the, eh, commission?’

  Tony accepted his drink. ‘Ah, Hugo,’ he said, grinning, ‘that part's easy.’

  7

  Doctor Mood answered the knock at his door. ‘Rosalin, come in. How's your mother?’

  ‘Fine, Doc, much better.’ She shook her head, smeared wet hair over her skull.

  ‘Raining?’ observed Mood belatedly. ‘I hadn't noticed.’

  Rosalin smiled. ‘Not more black magic, Doc. You should know better.’

  He ushered the girl into the kitchen, its clinical whiteness, single chest-high horizontal strip of marbled aqua blue, stacked dishes, and handed her a tea-towel, which she refused, guessing as to the reason behind her visit. He'd recently treated her mother. Where conventional medicine had failed to rid the woman of an embarrassing skin condition the doctor had succeeded, first in reducing the number and size of her cysts, then eradicating them altogether with a straightforward injection, three times a week when the sun was highest, of sea salt and petroleum, for which he had charged a triple zero sum. A bonus for the grateful patient was that she had been obliged to give up smoking, an extra for which, unusually, Doctor Mood had levied no fee.

  ‘Don't you ever wash up, Doc?’ Rosalin asked.

  ‘I've a housekeeper,’ he explained.

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosalin. ‘Is she sick?’

  Doctor Mood ignored the jibe, good-natured and innocent as it was, fixing his eyes on the girl. What was she, fifteen? Sixteen?

  ‘I need to ask a favour. I couldn't think of anyone else. It's kind of personal.’

  ‘I'm a qualified physician,’ he replied genially. ‘You can tell me.’

  Pregnant? A dose?

  ‘I've got this friend, Doc. He...’

  ‘Yes?’

  Self-mutilation? Drugs?

  Rosalin squirmed. ‘I mean I...’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I, well, you know, broke it.’ She shrugged. ‘There wasn't any blood or anything,’ she added. ‘It's just...’

  ‘You had a bit of an accident,’ the doctor provided. ‘A little too eager, aye?’

  Rosalin uncurled from her developing slouch. ‘Yeah! I knew you'd understand. Mother thinks you're wonderful.’
/>
  He wanted to laugh. As it was, she kissed him. On the lips, he thought, Jesus, those firm young breasts slotting rain-hardened nipples between his ribs.

  ‘Rosalin,’ Mood said, easing her away. ‘Is this the first boy you've slept with? It is, right?’ Sweat prickled his brow and the kitchen made him suddenly claustrophobic.

  She chewed her lip. ‘Aha. But I know all about safe sex and contraception and stuff.’

  ‘That's fine, Rosalin. But listen; was it dark?’

  ‘You mean when we did it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded.

  Her smile returned. ‘Totally.’ The word was imbued with power, like some schoolgirl mantra.

  Mood briefly pondered its significance. Then, ‘And after?’ he prompted.

  ‘He was okay, I think.’

  ‘Undamaged?’

  ‘Yes. It happened later. In the morning. We were messing about and I yanked it; a bit too hard, I think.’

  ‘I see.’ He scratched his nose, strangely raw. ‘Was he in pain at all?’

  ‘He must have been,’ said Rosalin with certainty. ‘I mean he yelped. And then I went down to kiss it. But when I saw what I'd done he went quiet. Had to be macho. He's outside in his car now. He didn't want to come but I persuaded him. Shall I tell him to come in?’

  Mood regarded the girl with what he hoped was sympathy touched with humour and not vice versa. How could he tell her her boyfriend wouldn't be waiting, that it was highly unlikely she would ever see him again?

  ‘Rosalin.’

  ‘Doc?’

  ‘Can I show you some pictures?’

  ‘What kind of pictures?’ she asked, suspicious. Had her mother warned her against such advances? But I'm a doctor, he told himself, this is a purely professional matter. It had just come out wrong.

  ‘Rosalin.’

  ‘Doc?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  She didn't answer verbally. It would have been yes ten minutes ago, he realized. He was out of practice.

  ‘Rosalin.’

  ‘Doc?’

  ‘Will you talk to your mother about this?’

  She shuffled. Toward the door? ‘I don't know. Why? Should I fetch Dave?’

  He gave up. ‘Yes, yes, bring him in. We'll sort this out. Don't you worry.’

  Poor bastard, Mood joked when she'd gone, not to return, as he'd presumed, that must be a significant angle you have there. He wiped his brow on the tea-towel and pulled a bottle of whisky from a drawer.

  8

  He allowed the boat to ride the current, its slowness appealing, drifting him beneath a variety of languid trees, colourful blossoms, creepers. The late afternoon gently stretched their shadows. He drank from a bottle, its former contents swirling in his head like the oars in the water, free of his control, beyond his physical self in a world of their own. His brain hurt, a hooked fish. He tossed the empty bottle into the sluggish water and watched it sink, rise, sink, rise once more. He tried to imagine what lay under the surface, what might cause the bottle to do that, rise and sink, in mockery of its weight and the weight of the water that had replaced the air that had replaced the spirit inside it. He'd slept a while earlier, smeared in unguents to keep the insects at bay, stretched out in the boat like a dead man. He wished he was asleep now; but he could never completely lose himself. Even abandoning his fate to the turgid water was hopeless. There was no escape from Rebecca, her death, the time and moment of it, no way of scaling that overhanging face. How hard and soft it was, changeable in every detail like a liquid jewel cut and cut again, flawed by one irrevocable fact. He had tried to kill himself. Failed. Something always went wrong. The gun would jam or the pills turn out to be iron tablets. The rope would snap…

  He had yet to attempt drowning, though. But, ‘Accept it, Roy, you don't want to die. Even the river knows it. See that bottle? That bottle's a sign. It won't sink to the bottom and neither will you. Your lungs might fill and your heart thunder, but you won't die, you'll bob right back up, spraying water, spraying blood, alive.’

  He could only drift, it seemed.

  ‘Aren't there crocodiles, Roy?’

  ‘No - it's not Africa. Far from it.’

  ‘Alligators then.’

  ‘I told you,’ he remonstrated, ‘it's perfectly safe. Just a few flies. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘What kind of flies?’ She trembled. ‘I hate insects.’

  ‘Flies aren't insects,’ Benedict argued. He leaned across to the fridge and pulled a banana-shaped magnet off the glossy white door, which he next pretended to peel.

  ‘What are they then?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Flies, Roy! Stop prevaricating.’

  ‘Okay,’ he admitted. ‘So they're insects. But they are not dangerous, I promise. There are all kinds of sprays and creams, so they won't bother you. You'll hardly notice.’

  ‘I'll bet.’

  He flung the magnet at the fridge, chipping enamel. ‘This is a big opportunity for me, Becky. You don't seem to recognize that.’

  ‘I do. It's just...’

  ‘What? Your family? Are they hassling you?’

  ‘My condition,’ Rebecca stated flatly, her eyes shut, one hand on her chest.

  Benedict lay his hands flat on the cool table, outlining fine coronae of perspiration. ‘Don't call it that,’ he told her.

  ‘What should I call it?’ Tears began rolling down her cheeks, stinging his heart.

  ‘It'll be okay,’ he said. ‘I can look after you there. We can be alone, away from everybody. It'll be just you and me. Doesn't that sound good?’

  ‘But we'll be coming back?’

  ‘Of course - six months, that's all. Think of it as a holiday.’

  He dragged his fingers in the tepid water. The sun had dropped tree high, pausing in its descent upon this world of darkening greens, rising blackness, generating colour in the sky. It was Benedict's favourite time of day; everything still and quiet. Beautiful.

  Suddenly birds exploded from the trees like in a Tarzan movie, filling the heavens with spangled wings and raucous sound. Benedict, startled, made a grab for the oars, lost one, started paddling frantically upriver with the remainder, kneeling like an Eskimo in a kayak.

  He was drifting no longer.

  Greeted by lamplight, Rebecca in her rocking-chair glimpsed through the screen doors.

  ‘Rebecca?’

  9

  Rosemary lay picking her navel. What was that, semen? Moses was still asleep, breathing steady. She wondered about him, where he came from, his dogged reluctance to discuss his past. He behaved as if he'd been on the road all his life, like that was all he'd ever known, a life outside time, hemmed perhaps by fear of an unknowable kind, headed wherever his companion of the moment, male or female, young or old, was headed. Maybe never getting there, disappearing in the night and linking up with another, one whose direction was different. Maybe. Did he only exist for other people? Himself the companion, a semi-mystical guide? She dressed quietly and emerged into a light drizzle, a haze of fine water particles suspended in the wake of an earlier storm that had sagged the tent and made her skin clammy. They were camped near a road bridge by a river, traffic and current equally paced, unseen, harmonious, the bridge appearing to extend between the trees on either bank. Cast iron, stone arches. The trees wood, promising leaves and fruit. There was a swan on the water, quietly watching, sailing a survival course, negotiating rocks and branches, fishing-line and the half sunken remains of domestic appliances. Newcastle was eight miles downstream, this a tributary of the Tyne.

  10

  No matter how many times they explained it Scherzo failed to understand. They told him he was seriously ill, dying. He didn't believe them, felt okay, better than ever; but they persisted. ‘Could go any moment,’ they said, arms folded over double-breasted jackets. ‘Night or day. There's no way of telling exactly, but you'll know.’

  To the perfect blackness of th
e submerged elevator Scherzo Trepan had been refused admission. Hell and the incinerator plant were closed to him. He received a cheque each Thursday amounting to three quarters of his original wage, cashed this at the post office and was frowned upon in general. He still saw Ruth, if at a distance. It was as if she was frightened to come near him, held away by some invisible force. This intrigued Scherzo. He found significance in the stretches of grass and grids of paving she kept between them. He wondered if hers was a fear of contamination. But who was he kidding? Perhaps, he imagined, she was under Special Instruction.

  He put his shoes on, ran from the house to the leaning ash trees, burst into sunlight. Two months had passed since the aliens' splash. Spring. The media was full of arrivals, what some termed invasions. Tulips and bug-eyed monsters dominated the news. In Glasgow a tulip had eaten a chocolate vending machine, a kiosk selling among other things cannabis resin and amphetamines, and an American tourist before being run-over by an underground train eyewitnesses described as long and orange, the bent-spine colour of some novels. Those people were sick, thought Scherzo. There were nuclear submarines patrolling the oceans, swimming to the North Pole.

  Disappointingly, the alien vessel just sat in frigid water, quiet and inscrutable like a Japanese in a whale's belly among the ice and penguins, saying nothing, making no aggressive moves toward the protectorates of Norway and Britain, each with an eye on the haddock. They may have tried, the many navies, to provoke the unhuman, but any attempt, documented or falsified, had been unsuccessful.