A Wrinkle in the Skin

by John Christopher

  Skiopos went back for the change of reels and subsequently returned to his seat. Matthew was tired, and the combination of cinema and brandy made him sleepy, but he stuck it out to the end of the film. Feeling some comment was called for, he said, “That was very good. I think I’ll get off to bed now.”

  Skiopos had already headed for the projection room, and made no answer. Matthew waited, expecting him to switch off and come back. The light did go on in the projection room, but not in the cinema itself. Then the machine began whirring again, and a title flashed on the screen: Like Crazy. Skiopos returned to his seat. He was laughing before he sat down.

  Matthew gave it five minutes. Then he said again that he was going to bed, and again got no reply. He had to pass in front of Skiopos to get out of the room. Skiopos shifted irritably in his chair as he did so, but a moment later was making a feeble joke to the comic on the screen. He did not turn round as Matthew went out.

  Matthew looked in on the boy, who was sleeping peacefully, and made his way to the next cabin. He wondered, but without much interest, how long Skiopos would go on with his private film show. He felt very tired; all he could think of was the clean softness of the bed.

  Billy woke him the following morning, and seeing the boy standing in the doorway of the cabin, seeing the polished wood and metal, the brightness of artificial light, Matthew had an instant of forgetting all that had happened, of imagining himself somewhere back in the pre-breakdown world, and wondering where. It did not last more than a moment, and with the realization he thought of Jane, and the pain was sharp again, as sharp as it had ever been.

  Hiding this, he smiled at Billy. “Hello, then. What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been awake quite a bit.”

  Matthew glanced at the porthole. “Suns up. I suppose we ought to see about getting ourselves some breakfast. Do you fancy that?”

  Billy nodded. “I saw the captain.”

  “Did you?”

  “I said good morning, but he didn’t answer me.”

  “He was probably thinking about something at the time. Throw me that shirt over, will you?”

  He washed and dressed, and together they headed for the galley. There was a sound of activity from inside, and opening the door, Matthew saw that Skiopos was down on his knees, scrubbing the floor. He called, “Good morning, Captain,” but Skiopos did not even look up. He went on with his scrubbing as though he were quite alone. The white drill trousers were looking grubby, and above the waist he was wearing a string vest through which fat bulged. There was a bald spot, Matthew noticed, just behind the crown of his head.

  As he had guessed, the man was a psychotic, probably predisposed to insanity anyway, the actual illness triggered off by the earthquake and the wave. That was why he had stayed when the ship’s company left, why he spent so much of his time tidying and cleaning. As for his earlier friendly reception of them, it could have been that he was in a manic phase then, a depressive one now. Or that he was capable of welcoming intrusions from the outside, but closed his mind when they threatened to disturb the fantasy by which he lived. The same tiling which made him generous with his supplies forbade any mention, any thought, of their running out.

  Mad, then, but apparently harmless. If he did not notice them when they spoke to him, presumably other activities would be nonexistent, too.

  Billy was looking puzzled and a bit scared.

  Matthew patted him on the shoulder and said, “We’ll make ourselves some breakfast. Are you any good at frying bacon, Billy?”

  They found bacon in the refrigerator and fried it along with slices of bread. Skiopos gave no sign of awareness of their presence. While they were eating, he finished scrubbing the floor, took his bucket and brushes to the sink to wash them, put them away in a cupboard, and went out.

  When the door had closed behind him, Billy said, “What’s wrong with the captain, Mr. Cotter?”

  “His mind’s sick.”

  “Like Mother Lutron?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But he didn’t even see us,” Billy said. “He looked at us as though we weren’t there.”

  “Yes.”

  The mania did not basically affect the situation—there had never been any question of their staying here long. But he had thought they might stay a few days, to rest and feed up. The idea did not seem as attractive as it had. And he felt a twinge of unease again at being enclosed.

  Skiopos, he presumed, had gone off on his morning walk. He wondered what would happen when reality broke in on this self-contained and cozy universe. When the generator died, and the lights went out. Would Skiopos stay on, making do, staring perhaps at an empty screen in a dark room and peopling it with phantoms? Until the food went, too, and he began to starve. Even then, Matthew doubted if he would leave the ship. Preserving the fantasy mattered more, probably, than preserving life.

  He and Billy made things tidy in the galley. Even if they did not exist for Skiopos now, he felt this was the minimum return for hospitality.

  Billy said, “Are we going?” He seemed eager to be off now.

  Matthew said, “As soon as we’re ready. I thought we’d pack a few things extra. Some of that bread, and butter.”

  “The captain won’t mind, will he?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. He doesn’t seem to mind our eating it here, and it’s cheaper than keeping us on as nonpaying guests.”

  “Do you think he’d mind if I had some ice cream, too? Before we go, I mean.”

  Matthew grinned. “It will have to be before we go. You can’t take it with you, or not far.”

  Skiopos was in the middle of his bread-making operations.

  He had mixed the dough and set it out in tins to rise; the actual baking was probably scheduled to take place on his return from his walk. There was a full loaf and a little over half of one in the larder, and Matthew, after some thought, took the former. He cut pieces off the ham, also, and took a wedge of cheese, half a dozen wrapped chocolate biscuits, and a small pot of strawberry jam. It would see them through a couple of days—three with some care—as an extension to their usual depressing diet.

  They tidied up the cabins in which they had slept, though doubtless Skiopos would go over them again more thoroughly. Matthew took his pack and Billy’s to the galley. The fresh provisions went in, and there was room for more. Matthew went to the refrigerator again. The two roast chickens were still there, and presumably Skiopos had others in his deepfreeze. In the end he cut a carcass in halves with a kitchen knife, put one half in his pack and the other back in the refrigerator.

  He said to Billy, “O.K., then. Were ready.”

  At least, it was not raining. As they came out on deck, Matthew saw that the sky was a pearly gray, with a patch of light golden haze which showed where the sun was. The air was mild and damp and the breeze had almost entirely dropped. The water in the swimming pool was still and dark-blue, unrippled. This looked like being one of the afternoons on which Skiopos sat out and took the sun, now and then diving into the placid waters to cool himself. With a can of beer, probably, at his elbow. A lotus-eating life, while it lasted. And how long would it last? Another month—two?

  Matthew was anxious to be off the ship and on their way, now that they had made a start. He had an idea that Billy felt the same; he was quieter than usual and seemed nervous. His boots clanged on the steel deck, and a sea gull—probably the one they had seen the previous day—rose from the rail and flapped away mewling across the sky. He came to the rail, and looked down. The view of the seabed from this height made him giddy. It would get no better with looking. He was preparing to swing himself over the side when he saw something moving among the rocks. Sldopos. He was marching toward the foot of the ladder, looking neither left nor right.

  He was still twenty or thirty yards away, which meant that Matthew could be on the ladder before he was. Matthew decided, nevertheless, not to claim his right of way—if Skiopos was still blanking them out
of his universe, an awkward situation might arise on the way down. He motioned to Billy, and they stood by the rail, watching. Skiopos came up in a steady even climb. Eventually he reached the deck level and pulled himself inboard. He was breathing heavily and sweating to some extent. He did not look at Matthew and the boy, although they were standing only a few feet from him.

  Matthew said, “Were going, Captain. Thank you for the hospitality. We’ve left things as tidy as we could/’

  Skiopos walked away from them, across the deck in the direction of the tower. He gave no sign of having heard anything.

  Matthew called after him, in a slightly louder voice, “We’ve taken a few things—I hope that’s all right.”

  Skiopos stopped abruptly and turned round; his movements had the jerkiness of a mechanical doll running down. He stared at Matthew, his eyes peering, as though trying to see something just beyond the range of vision.

  Matthew said, “Nothing very much. A loaf of bread, a bit of cheese and ham and so on. And half a chicken.”

  Skiopos took a step forward, and halted. He said, “You must put them back. All. You understand? All.”

  Matthew said, “Be reasonable. If we’d stayed on here, we’d have eaten a lot more than that.”

  Skiopos had begun to shake with emotion—rage or distress or both. He said in a strained voice, “Ship’s supplies … do you understand? They are not to be taken away. You got to give them back. You’re a bloody thief. Come on, now—you got to give them back.”

  The shotgun was strapped on top of the pack on Matthew’s back, but only loosely. He could quite easily reach a hand round behind him and pull it out. Skiopos, whether or not he had weapons on the ship, had none with him at the moment. There was no way in which he could enforce his lunacy.

  Matthew put his hand back and touched the stock of the gun, but did not withdraw it. If Skiopos allowed himself to be intimidated, and backed down—what then? They had a fifty-foot climb down a swaying rope ladder to face, with the madman up here on deck. It was too much of a risk. Even if he forced Skiopos to go down first, a risk still existed. He might pick up a loose rock at the bottom; one could not cover a man with a gun and descend a rope ladder at the same time.

  And it was possible that Skiopos was mad enough not to be intimidated, anyway. If he attacked, forced Matthew to pull the trigger … He thought about what a gunshot wound, at close range, would look like. If he and the boy were starving, it would be different; but their stomachs were filled and they had food in their packs. It made no sense.

  Matthew eased the pack off his shoulders. Skiopos, watching him, was still shaking but came no nearer and said nothing. Matthew opened the pack and brought out the small packages. As he laid them on the deck, Skiopos came forward. He squatted, opening and examining them. When he was satisfied, he picked them up, bundling them in his arms, and walked away toward the tower. Halfway there, he dropped one of the packages and scrabbled to retrieve it. He did not look back and a few seconds later disappeared through the door into the ship’s interior.

  Matthew did his pack up again and put it on. He said to Billy, “I’ll go first. You come after me. O.K.?”

  On the way down, he had a few bad moments. Apart from the ordinary fears, it occurred to him that there was nothing to stop Skiopos from returning, and shooting at them or throwing things down on them. Ships supplies must not leave the ship, and they were carrying some away in their stomachs. The clothes, too. He was very much relieved to step onto firm ground and to see the boy follow him.

  They walked away at a good pace and saw the great stranded ark diminish behind them. But they were heading downhill again, and a couple of hours later it still bulked large on the horizon.

  Matthew said, “Time for a break, I think.”

  Billy had been silent at first, but was cheerful now, chattering as usual. But he had not said anything about Skiopos, or the ship.

  Matthew said, “Like something to eat?”

  He shook his head. Tm not hungry.”

  Matthew fished in his pack. He brought out one of the chocolate biscuits—he had kept them back from the rest—and saw Billy’s face widen with surprise and pleasure. It had been worth the bad moments on the swaying ladder, he thought.

  10

  THE SUN CAME OUT and scorched through the afternoon. They went on across sand and rock, heading roughly north, and camped for the night on a patch of sand surrounded by an oddly symmetrical circle of boulders. The discomfort was the more unpleasant after the bunks on the tanker, and they slept fitfully and woke up cramped and a bit miserable. But the night had not been too cold, and the sun came up and warmed them. They opened a tin of corned beef, and Matthew tried not to let his mind dwell on bread.

  It was very hot again, and about midday they encountered more mud flats, at first broken up by bars of shingle but later continuous, a gray-brown plain stretching on and on, almost completely featureless. Unlike the earlier mud, this had dried hard—there were occasional soft spots, but they were no more than inches deep. They could walk on it easily; more easily, in fact, than had been possible at any other time since they left the old land level. What was disturbing was the impression of endlessness. The horizon of sand and shingle and rocky spurs was lost behind them in the interminable dark waste, which ran, it seemed, forever, ahead and on either side. The place depressed with its suggestion of infinity. Their feet kicked up spurts of brown dust, which hung in the air. Matthew found himself sweating hard, and Billy was hot and exhausted. He gave him water from the plastic container, which he had refilled on the tanker. It had a cleaner, slightly sweeter taste than the water they had found on Alderney. Matthew drank some himself. If Skiopos had known they had taken it, he would probably have insisted on their putting that back, too.

  They traveled on. Matthew had the notion that they were stopping to rest more often, but for shorter periods. Although their progress was enervating, the halts—sitting or lying on the baked mud—were not refreshing. After quite a short time the predominant feeling was restlessness, a need to get on even though nothing changed.

  Any features that did stand out above the flatness were that much more conspicuous; the eye saw them a long way off and traveled to them. There were not many. An occasional length of timber, the shattered mud-caked wreck of a small coaster, once a tangle of rusty girders whose origin Matthew could not guess at. The last thing that day was the submarine. It was half buried by the tail, its bows pointing at an oblique angle toward the sky. It lay west of them, and the sun was going down behind it; it was outlined in the golden-reddish light. It looked too crude and small to be recent. A relic of the First War, Matthew thought. Their course took them within a hundred yards of it, but they did not bother to investigate more closely. They were both tired, and it was important, Matthew felt, to press on as far as they could while the light lasted.

  Despite the sense of being defenseless, in the open without shelter, they slept better that night. The stars were very bright in a clear sky, and later on the moon came up, in its first quarter. Matthew woke at one point and lay awake for perhaps half an hour, staring up at the heavens. In the past he had thought the night sky a meaningless jumble of points of light, immensity dwarfed by incomprehensibility. Now it had significance, the allusion of familiarity if nothing else. All the world had changed, but not the constellations. He fell asleep again, contemplating them.

  All the next day and part of the day after they were on the flats. Clouds came up from the south, covering the sun, but there was no rain. Once birds flew overhead, a wedge of wild ducks. It was the wrong time of year for them; they should have completed their migration long before the breakdown. Perhaps all the changes that had taken place had thrown them out of their pattern. Or perhaps the seasons themselves might be changing? But that was silly, Matthew told himself. This was summer, all right, a typical, rather better than average summer over the British Isles. But isles no longer.

  They came to the end of the flats at last, and thei
r spirits rose with the change of scene. There was a lot of shingle, occasional rocks, outcrops of chalk. There was also a dead whale, its carcass largely rotted—the stink heralded its presence for half a mile before they caught sight of it. Living creatures were feeding on it: two or three gulls and a carrion crow. Seeing the last gave Matthew hope of being not too far from the sight of the mainland.

  Which they achieved at last. On the fourth afternoon after leaving the tanker, Billy pointed toward the horizon. “Mr. Cotter! I don’t think its a cloud. Is it land, do you think?”

  There had been some sun in the morning, nothing but heavy cloud for the last few hours. But there had been few detours necessary, and he had been confident that they were on course. And yet only rocks and shingle showed in front of them; the higher smudge in the sky which Billy had pointed out was away on their left—west of them, he would have said.

  He studied it for a long time. Field glasses would have resolved the question right away, of course. One might as well, he thought wryly, wish for a good stretch of road and a Jaguar.

  He could not be sure, but Billy’s eyes were younger and probably saw things more clearly.

  Matthew said, “Do you think it’s land?”

  “I think so. I m not sure.”

  “We’ll have a go at it, then.”

  They altered course, and plodded on. At one spot they found two walls of a beach hut, tossed here and still standing. A sign along the front said: TEAS, PICNIC BASKET, ICE CR. Swept out by the wave, Matthew supposed. He looked up again, and in a moment of clarity saw that there was no doubt about it! The outline was sharper, more positive. They were heading for the mainland.

  The explanation of its position came as they got nearer and the land took on a shape that he recognized. There had been a flowing tide when he had last seen it, a spanking wind filling a sail above his head, and the smell of sausages coming up from the tiny galley of the friend’s boat on which Felicity and he were spending the weekend. All that was gone, but he knew he was looking at the entrance to Poole Harbor. Their first course had been correct, and if they had not turned from it they would now have been in sight of Bournemouth. Or the place where Bournemouth had been.