Frankie Styne & the Silver Man (17 page)

‘What have I done to deserve you?' She set him in the bouncer and unlaced her boots. Putting them by the door, she saw the envelope. It was from Purvis.

‘Oh God, no,' she said aloud.

Dear Liz,

I am terribly sorry not to have been in touch sooner, and that there seems to have been some misunderstanding about the telephone. I'm a little worried that you haven't contacted me either; also, I understand you have missed an appointment at the clinic. Recently I have had to take some time off sick, and our meeting is now well behind schedule. I shall visit next Thursday at 10:00 am and we can have a good long chat.

Annie Purvis.

Liz sat on the floor, and leaned back against the wall. She breathed deeply, in and out. Okay, Silly, she thought at him hard; we could piss off for the day, but that means she'll try again, so there's really only two choices. Listen, Silly, and tell me which: we piss off for good, or we try and face it out, and somehow
hide
at the same time as being here.

Which, Silly-boy? Which? She went on breathing, in and out, repeating the thought, waiting. But nothing happened. The two possibilities hung there, equal. Jim twisted his head to look at the window. A thin worm of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth and hung in the air beneath his chin. I'm on my own with this, she thought.

‘Are you hungry?' she asked aloud. She stood again, feeling very heavy, just as she had when she emerged from the pool. Then she picked up the boots and hurled them one after the other at the opposite wall.

The Unimaginable Real

‘Styne here.'

As Frank switched off the answering machine and answered his telephone for the first time in weeks, he realised that since that last evening at the Three Compasses he had spoken to no one, other than Dr Davidson and people in shops. The days and hours had seemed to fold themselves on top of each other silently and seamlessly. He had purchased a replica pistol, with which to ensure Katie Rumbold's co-operation. He had experimented with washing line and two types of sash cord, deciding on the latter, unwaxed, which was rougher and easier to tie. He had practised on his own ankles several times, cutting himself free with the knife. He had obtained an ample supply of sleeping pills for afterwards. He was waiting only for the call from the hospital which would enable him to complete the final scene of
The Procreators
in good time.

He needed to see a Caesarean section or a forceps delivery and had made an unofficial arrangement with the maternity unit at the local hospital. The person he'd dealt with wouldn't give his name, and had made him swear secrecy. The first donation was to be made as a sign of goodwill, then, in due course, he would be contacted by phone. Following his attendance at the procedure he would make the second donation. His cheques were to go towards the eventual purchase of an ultrasound scanner. His name would go on a plaque but they certainly didn't want to be thanked in the front of
The Procreators.

There was to be no further contact following the first payment, and absolutely none afterwards. When they did eventually call, he had almost given up on them.

‘A suitable case has arisen, Mr Styne. Please hurry.'

Frank stepped from his taxi and followed the signs at a brisk walking pace. The hospital was vast and only recently completed. It looked rather like a housing estate except for the abundance of direction signs, the uniforms, and the quantity of people being pushed in wheelchairs or carried on stretchers. Hundreds of windows gleamed and outside, small plants bristled in newly set out beds and borders. Immured in his house these past weeks, he had forgotten how interesting the world was… But if—when—he won, he would see no more of it.

He followed his escort, a balding man of about his own age, along a series of windowed walkways to the operating theatre. There he was asked to change into mask, hat, gloves and robe so that only his eyes and a thin segment of his forehead showed. The uniform made him feel invisible; for once he looked the same as anyone else. And the others in the theatre all looked the same as each other too, men and women virtually indistinguishable—the only obvious woman being the one lying down. She had no idea who he was; of her he knew only that she was single and alone, the absence of concerned relatives making it easier for him to be smuggled in.

The woman on the bed looked nothing like his Sandra. It was hard to judge her age. Her face was ashen, her exposed belly huge. Her breasts swelled beneath the cloth that had been draped over them, but her collarbone jutted and her wrists were thin. She had been given something that stopped her feeling pain, though she was still in some way awake, her glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling, flickering occasionally from one part of it to another. A screen arranged across her ribs cut out her view of what was happening below.

Protracted labour was as near as you got to hell on earth, Frank's mother had told him. She was a small woman, not five feet three, with huge eyes and brittle bones. She shrank even smaller as she grew older. He came from inside her, but eventually weighed three or four times as much as she ever did. It was unimaginable, but here he would see it for real.

Someone beckoned and led him to a chair by the woman's side. Someone, the anaesthetist, it turned out, was already seated on the other side. Perhaps the person who seated him knew who he was, or perhaps, uninformed as to the nature of his visit, they thought that he must be the father. As indicated, Frank took the woman's hand. It was damp, limp and very small; her dark brown eyes glittered and fixed themselves on him when he did so. He adjusted the place of the chair slightly to ensure a good view around the edge of the screen.

‘The baby,' he was informed in a hurried whisper, ‘is lying with its back to the neck of the womb.' Her body had been willing it out, but to no avail and it was thoroughly stuck. Apparently they had waited some hours trying to get it to turn. The woman's face was unnaturally still, motionless but for a slight movement about her lips. She stared at him, unwavering and unnerving. It was almost as if she knew he wasn't supposed to be there. The hand that held hers grew damp inside its glove.

He leaned back slightly, so as to better see around the screen. Two gloved and masked figures were bent over the woman's swollen abdomen, but he couldn't see what they were doing. He let go of the woman's hand and stood, just as the scalpel bit into the skin above her pubic hair. The incision was about five inches long, but it gaped, red-edged, then filled with a gush of fluid which ran over the body onto the table. The sides of the cut were pinned open, stretching it to more than double its size. One of the doctors reached in until the gloved fingers of both hands were inside the woman's body. Well, there was something in there. Lumps and bumps and blood… Bile rose in Frank's throat and his legs felt weak. Suppose the anaesthetic stops working, he thought, looking back at the woman, whose eyes were still fixed on him. He sat down quickly, took her hand again, and at that moment he felt, or imagined, her hand twitch in his. It was as if something dead had suddenly moved. Suppose she was just paralysed, a device he'd used in his very first book? Suppose she was in agony, trying to communicate, trying to tell him, begging for help? Suddenly everything seemed far too quiet and too controlled—this quietness was not calm, it was the very opposite, because in it he could imagine the most heart-rending scream, and behind those eyes he could imagine any nightmare he chose, brightly lit and searingly painful—

As if aware of his thoughts, the masked figures standing at the other end of the woman looked briefly up and then back again. They were easing her baby out, pulling it whole from her stomach. Its skin glistened with bloody fluids. Its eyes were closed. It was very thin. Was the baby even alive? Suppose–– The room spun. Frank wanted to run away—out of the room and out of the hospital, but he was held there by the woman's hand, which seemed to burn in his. She turned to look at the baby, held up so that she could see. At the same time, behind the screen, one doctor removed a huge liver-like thing from the woman's womb, while another mopped her insides with sponges and cloths. Then, at last, someone was sewing her up.

‘Come on now, please . . .' Without saying goodbye, Frank placed the woman's hand carefully on the sheet, and was ushered quickly from the theatre. Divested of his gloves, mask and robe, he made his way slowly towards the exit. After the muffled closeness of the theatre, he was very aware of the outside air, brushing against his skin, and how all around him the sounds people made leapt suddenly into being, then died.

As he stood at the gates waiting for his taxi, new words began to write themselves in his head. Even though time was converging to the final point, he now knew that he was going to have to make a radical change that would necessitate an almost complete rewriting of
The Procreators:
it must be the husband, not Sandra, who would become pregnant and have to be locked in the upstairs room with something growing bigger and bigger inside him, day after day. It must be the husband who was forced to give birth.

It would be far more shocking, far more original, far more difficult to do—it was very risky, given the way the days seemed to run after and into each other until now there were only a few left. But the idea of it had started to grow inside him, putting on flesh and developing a will of its own. He would race the clock, write and rewrite until he caught himself up.

The answering machine was broadcasting Pete Magee's world-weary voice when he arrived home: ‘Just thought I'd let you know, old chap—there's some sort of fuss about
TTS.
A group of women, feminists or loony lesbians or something, protesting outside WH Smith. All to the good, I say.'

Barely registering the news, Frank went straight to his manuscript. Sandra, attentive, efficient, concerned, would wind washing line around her husband's rib cage, under the table, back again. There would be no anaesthetic. The incision would be made with a kitchen knife. Strangled sounds would emerge through the gag. The kitchen table would jerk, making a noise like blackboard chalk on the kitchen tiles. The kitchen would be spattered with blood. It was huge, what had grown there and stuck; stuck inside and it didn't want to come out, not at all. Sandra would be pushing with all her might, whilst Dr Villarossa, gloved in blood, would pull . . .

What You Wanted

It was Wednesday, the night before Purvis's visit. Liz sat, cross-legged, with the light on and the gas fire blazing. Her Indian-print skirt was stretched tight across her knees, the excess tucked beneath her, forming a taut surface to serve as a table from which to eat her paper of chips. She sat with her back to where the television set would have been. Jim was strapped in his bouncer. She blew on a chip and held it out, but he ignored it. One day, she told him. Food of the gods. She was ravenous from swimming again. Even though the usual woman hadn't been there she'd managed to get someone else to look after Silly and she'd done fifteen lengths. She was aiming for twenty by the end of the month, and as well as that, a class for mothers and babies was starting up in three weeks' time. ‘Our names are already on the list,' she told Jim. ‘They say babies can swim naturally. It's impossible for them to breathe in water, because until about a year old they have this reflex that protects them, and of course they tend to float anyway. There was this picture…' It was hard to describe, but she tried: the turquoise-blue water, the huge head of the smiling baby, its blue eyes wide open, a stream of bubbles emerging from its nose. The little arms paddling away. Blissful was the word that came to mind. ‘All underwater!' she said, and just then, a man shouted outside, an urgent sound, all the more compelling in a street normally so quiet.

She stood, and taking the chips with her, looked out through her front window. In the house opposite an upstairs window had been flung open, showing the shape of a figure against the yellow light. Below, in the shadow of the hedge in front of the house, some kind of fight was taking place. It was hard to see, but there were two men, both elderly. What on earth could that be about? Filling her mouth with chips, and peering through the unwashed glass, she recognised one of the men as the owner of the house opposite, who Alice had told her was called Captain Stevenson, though she wasn't sure if he really was one, or if, being so straight-backed that he looked as if he was standing to permanent attention, he just looked like one. Captain Stevenson had some kind of stick or truncheon and was swinging it repeatedly at the other old man, who sprouted an unruly beard and wore a coat and boots that were clearly too big for him. ‘Get off! Get off me!' he yelled as he tried to dodge or ward off Stevenson's blows.

Some kind of elderly love triangle, perhaps? It ought to have been almost as good as TV, but Liz could not help but feel sorry for the old man with the beard. She'd met plenty like him. She had even sat around the fire with one or two and heard how they started out like her, running away from trouble at home, then never settled down again, never left the road… How she should go home and make things up with her parents while she still could,
et cetera
. It was not advice she was going to take but you could tell they were sincere and meant well, and you could see how every bit of them––back, feet, hands, head, skin––every bit of them hurt, down to the pores. And now, as she watched, Captain Stevenson kicked at the other old man's legs, legs that already hurt him, and thrust him to the ground. ‘No!' the old man yelled, ‘Please!' It was not a good situation to get mixed up in but at the same time it was just too much.

‘Silly!' Liz said. ‘Sorry. I've got to go. She dropped the chips, pushed through the front door, and strode across the street.

By the time she arrived, the whole scene was frozen, a tableau. The bearded old man knelt on the pavement; Captain Stevenson stood behind him, the stick held across his captive's neck. Both were breathing hard; the kneeling man moaned faintly, almost mechanically.

‘They said they're coming!' Captain Stevenson's wife called from the upstairs window, her voice halfway between terror and excitement.

‘What happened?' Liz asked. The kneeling man, so far unaware of her, groaned. Captain Stevenson tightened the stick.

‘Been prowling around the area all week,' he said, breathing heavily. ‘Scaring people out of their wits. Caught him trying to get in through my window.'

‘Only knocking—' the kneeling man managed to spit out. His filthy coat was torn in several places. Liz bent to see his face. It was shrunken and wrinkled, the right temple freshly grazed. He looked ill, and hungry. His bloodshot eyes darted about in the dark, as if still hoping for escape. It seemed like some grotesque acting of fear—or fear coupled with a terrifying sense of the absurd. What next? What else will rain down on me? There was a smell of spirits and very old clothes.

‘He's just a tramp,' Liz told Captain Stevenson. Though at least in his sixties, the captain was a fit-looking, broad­shouldered man.

‘Mrs Nelson saw him in the passageway.'

‘You're—mad,' the tramp spat out, struggling to turn his head, trying to cough against the stick. ‘You're ab-solute-ly mad!' The stick tightened again.

‘He doesn't look dangerous,' Liz said. Her heart was pounding, but she felt calm. Solid. She knew what she was talking about. ‘He isn't. Look, I'm not scared of him.'

‘He should go back where he came from.'

‘Can't, can he, like that?' Liz said.

‘Let me go, you bastard! I'll bite your hand—' the tramp's choked voice rose then stopped dead. He began to growl, like a dog. ‘I've got a disease.'

‘Let him go!' shrieked the woman upstairs. Captain Stevenson glanced up at her, then kicked the tramp twice in the back, released him and stood, stick at the ready, as the tramp picked himself slowly up. A second later he was running, the loose soles of his shoes slapping unevenly on the pavement like a pair of extra feet.

‘Go back where you came from!' Captain Stevenson shouted, brandishing the stick.

‘And she should do the same!' the voice from upstairs hissed. ‘Stan, don't you see? It's that girl from opposite! Don't live much better than a tramp yourself, do you! Ever heard of curtains? That tip of a garden ruins the whole street!'

‘You've no right to beat people up,' Liz said.

‘I've every right to defend my family. Get off this pavement.' Captain Stevenson raised the stick another inch or so. Light from the window showed the sweat on his face, his bulging eyes. There was no point in contesting his dominion over the pavement. In fact, Liz thought, he was welcome to it. She turned and walked back towards her house.

The blotched-faced man had his blinds down. Alice and Tom's curtains were closed, too. But she could see right into her own front room, where Jim, suspended in his bouncer, faced the fierce glow of the gas fire, his diminutive chair set on the dusty floor. She saw the pine cones on the mantelpiece, the pile of cushions, the dusty floor which she must clean before Purvis saw it tomorrow. As soon as she got in, she turned out the light and the fire and took Jim in her arms.

The remaining chips were cold, but her appetite had gone.

‘That was a stupid, vicious old man,' she muttered into Jim's hair. She could feel her heart pumping. Next door, Alice and Tom were watching TV. No one else had seen what happened. I'm not going to cry, she thought. What would be the point?

‘TV without sound is OK,' she said conversationally in the dark, ‘but TV without pictures does nothing for you.'

There was classical music playing on the other side.

‘You know, we could still go on the road,' she said. But she went on sitting there, unable to move at all. ‘Catch up to Mr Tramp and have some company for a mile or so . . . Even now. I still could. We'd wrap up warm and just take the essentials. A sleeping bag, knife, camping stove and such. A lot of the time you can sleep right out under the stars. Though I must say it would be a good idea for you to be potty-trained. You don't see many people on the road carting around giant bags of disposables . . . I guess I should have learned to drive . . .

‘We
could
do it, if it wasn't for
Purvis,'
she said eventually. ‘She'd call the police. They'd look harder now, and two of us would be easier to spot. She's coming tomorrow.

‘I would lie low if I were you, Silly. Sleep through it.' She replaced the cold chip she had been going to eat and pushed the package a little further away. Jim's face was slack: you'd almost think he was bored. On the newspaper wrapping under the waxed paper bag of chips her eyes slid over the racing results, across the photograph of a jockey falling from a pale-coloured horse to the column of racing results and the last-minute news to the left of the page: Toxic Waste Found on Beach; Hospital Closed Despite Appeal; Mysterious Fire on Barracks Road; Woman Cautioned; Lorry Overturns; Man Pleads Not Guilty to Murder of Wife.

‘There's no point in drawing her attention. Might zap us with her ray gun,' she said as she screwed the chips into the newspaper and threw them into the corner of the room.

Annie Purvis lay on her front, her head twisted to the side, one arm thrust under the pillow. It was 2:00
am
.

‘Annie,' Sim said, shaking her shoulder. She heard him as from the far end of a tunnel stuffed with wool. Her mind answered, but her lips and limbs wouldn't move. ‘Annie—wake up!' Slowly she propped herself on one side.

‘Was there a noise?' she tensed, listening.

‘No,' said Sim. ‘I just want to talk.'

‘Now?'

‘I'll wait until you're awake.'

‘Don't put the light on,' she said, struggling to a sitting position. ‘Well . . .?' she said after a minute or two.

‘Annie—I think of things going on forever and ever like this and I just can't stand it.' His voice seemed to fight with itself—it broke like a boy's, recovered itself, became over-strong. She was afraid of what was to come, but so was he. There was nothing to do but listen.

‘Day in, day out, what we do—it's somehow become all wrong. Like being here, in this flat, jumping every time a bottle breaks. Going to school every day. Being sarcastic. Hating people because I'm not where I want to be and they're part of it. Sitting behind a mound of marking at home. Waiting. Waiting for things to mysteriously improve. I don't like any of it. You and your work, the way it sucks you away—'

‘But—'

‘It's an addiction. You swear off for a bit and then you're back, inching up again. It's all about other people's lives—'

‘I've got to have something—'

‘You haven't got anything!' He was shouting now, and she wanted to stop him anyway, but even more in case someone heard. When had Sim ever shouted before? Ever? If so, she couldn't remember it, not like this: ‘Nothing! It's all other people's lives!

‘Sorry,' he said after a few moments. She felt how she imagined she might feel if he had ever hit her: a cold, unforgiving sting, then nothing. Shock, she supposed—a barrier against the guilt that would follow. That he felt so terrible, and had to tell her like this…She looked straight ahead at the window and the darks shapes of the flats beyond. None of the windows were lit. She turned back to look at Sim again but he too was looking out.

‘I'm sorry, but what you do or don't do about the way you work,' he said calmly, softly rubbing the stubble on his chin, ‘well, right now it's my business because we are married. If we weren't it wouldn't be. What I want to do about my situation is to change it. Drastically. That is your business, again because we are married; again, if we weren't it wouldn't be.

‘It's been like this a long time,' he said. ‘I wanted to wait before saying it. I wanted to wait until you were completely over what happened with Jackie. Until it was all settled. And perhaps I was hoping that then you'd be glad to get out of the world you're in. But I'm thinking now—there isn't an edge or an end to what happened, and there isn't a getting over it. It's endless and ongoing. That was an extra big wave in a choppy sea. And I just can't stand it anyway.'

‘What is it,' she said, still searching the blind windows opposite, ‘that you are saying?' Sim reached across. Her shoulder itched and she pulled her hand away from under his to scratch it with, although she could have used the other one. She could feel him willing her to look at him, and in the end she did. Her eyes had adjusted and she could see the hollows and planes of his face, the faint glint of his eyes.

‘I am saying that in six months' time I want to be somewhere else or on the way there. Not just want. I will be. Together, or on my own, I will be somewhere else. But I really want it to be with you.' He stroked her back.

‘I see,' said Annie woodenly. His face was a moonscape of shadow, a strange thing. ‘Well, that's clear.'

‘I'm sorry to be handing out an ultimatum. But there's time,' Sim said, ‘to think about it all and talk things over. Six months. I'm sorry, but this, now, just isn't what I want. It can't go on.'

‘The baby was enormous and even heavier than it looked,' Frank Styne wrote. He adjusted the Anglepoise lamp, which didn't seem bright enough even in daylight, rubbed his hand over the four days' growth on his chin. Exhausted cups of espresso stood on the table in a row, their dregs dried to thin crusts. He pressed his pen hard on the paper as he moved in to describe the delivery. His gorge rose and he felt waves of pain cross and re-cross his lower abdomen. He could only write a little at a time. ‘It was a small hard man they cut out of him, covered in hide-like skin. It had been growing for twenty-two months and could already stand and speak . . .'

The husband felt weak and soft, without edges. He looked at the baby and was afraid. It was hideous. It was his. He was its. He couldn't move.

‘“Hungry,” it said, grasping at his leg. Its hooded eyes glared at him, angry and needful. “Feed me on something soft and solid, something fine and warm, raw.”

The husband looked helplessly at Dr Villarossa, who looked back at him, then at Sandra. Her expression was one of patient concern, forehead furrowed, the ghost of a smile on her lips. She pushed the child towards him. The husband's stomach heaved.