New Writings in SF 6 - [Anthology]

by Ed By John Carnell

  He pushed his forehead against his clenched hands. I didn’t mean it he thought. We none of us mean what we do....

  The hand was shaking his sleeve gently, insistently. He looked up startled. The old lady’s eyes searched his face, changing in quick shifts of focus and direction. “Are you all right?” she said. “Are you quite all right... ?”

  “Er ... yeah. Thanks....” He made his mouth smile, “just maybe a little tired. Long journey.... Thanks for asking.”

  “Ahh....” She sat back across the aisle, seeming relieved. Looked out through the window then back to him quickly, birdlike. Nodded, smiled, bobbed her silver head. “Ah yes.... And are you travelling to the end of the line?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Place called Warwell-on-Starr.”

  Sharply, “Then you don’t know Warwell?”

  “No, I’ve ... never been there. I reckoned I might stay a while,” he said, “If I liked it....”

  She simpered. “Oh, you will.... You’ll love Warwell, everybody does. It’s a nice town. Such a nice little town....”

  “Yeah,” said Jimmy carefully. “Er ... yeah....”

  He sat back trying to think. The image that had flickered across his mind just then; the river, the trees, the flint church tower nestling.... But he’d never seen the place he was going to, he knew nothing about it. He decided, it won’t be anything like that. There’ll be brutal acres of rail sidings, scrubby pink little Developments marching in all directions. Ten to one I shall loathe the dump....

  Queer though, this feeling of unreality; a detached half-awareness, a dream state in which visions and imaginings could be as real as the touchable things round him. It was as if shapes jostled at the edges of his mind, brightnesses brighter than the sky, shadows that mocked at sunlight. He shrugged. These were effects of heightened perception, of jangling nerves that now mercifully were beginning to ease. For days past, life had been like a cine film shown on some huge screen. Too big, too close, too detailed. He’d wanted to pull back, get out from under, but he couldn’t....

  Warwell. Why the Devil had he run here, anyway ? His father’s accountant had talked about the place, but he knew somehow the name had been in his mind before that. When? When had it started, what had triggered it? He’d wanted somewhere quiet, somewhere he could go to and be alone and think and chew at his problem, but why had one name seemed to stand out from every map he opened? Warwell, a place on a river he’d never seen....

  * * * *

  For a time the rails had been winding through the low hills; round the last of the bends the way straightened and Jimmy saw how the little bridges appeared each under each like images in two opposed mirrors. Beneath the last of them the coach stopped again and there were the lamp-standards once more, hidden to their tops by creepers that rioted the length of the diminutive station. The branch line was certainly damned pretty; somehow even the waywardness of it, the curving and wriggling of the tracks, soothed like a balm. As though a world was being shut away behind each grassy shoulder of the hills; as if ahead, islanded, was all that was sweet and real. Jimmy stubbed the cigarette half smoked. There can be, he told himself, no sense of homecoming. Not to a place you’ve never seen.... He glanced sideways at the old lady, expecting another comment, but she stayed quiet. She was sitting staring in front of her, half-smile fossilized on her face as though she could already see the nice town ahead.

  Jimmy told himself, it could just be.... Could be I’ve met a whole series of nice, interesting, interested people one after the other. A ticket clerk, a porter at Tanbridge where I changed on to the branch; an old lady on a train. All interested to hear I was going to Warwell; all keen to tell me, it’s a nice little town. Sometimes life’s like that, pointless coincidences get themselves strung together like beads....

  The coach was moving again. There was a river, curving away broad and silver through water meadows. The train wheels boomed on a bridge. Jimmy leaned forward again, frowning, grappling at something that refused to come out into the light... and sat quite still, feeling icy cold. Ahead, the town made itself. More hills closed off a vista of black and white houses, steep wavy roofs. There was the river, swinging back to cross in front of Warwell like a moat. There were trees. There was a church, flint-built and nestling.

  The station was an amber box enclosing dim areas of platform. The coach glided into coolness, wheezed, stopped where the rails stopped as suddenly and startlingly as life. Strong lifted his bags, felt the sharp rectangle of the ticket dig into his right palm. Somehow he felt out of breath and stiff, as if he was ending some huge dangerous odyssey. He passed through the barrier, turned back to see the coach bulking against the light. Beside him a girl with good legs and burning-red hair spoke suddenly. “Heard you talking on the train,” she said cheekily. “Hope you enjoy your stay. It’s such a nice little town...” Turned while Jimmy was staring, and clicked away.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” He walked out of the station, into a sunlit square. He saw a garage, doors standing open; a taxi rank, a man lounging, reading a newspaper. A few yards away the river slid cool and green and hung with willows, filling the air with some cool suggestion of presence that was more subtle than scent. Across the street a towering ugly-pretty pile of waterside Gothic proclaimed itself the George Hotel. Jimmy walked towards it, swinging his grip, feeling the sun burn on the side of his neck. From the town beyond came a buzz of sound; cars, voices; somewhere a Wheel turned slow, unseen and unheard, its rim as big as a valley.

  * * * *

  Two

  The voices chirrup in the deep coolness of night, while the river glides black past the houses and the church. “Wrong,” say the voices. “Wrong, all wrong.... He’s wrong for us, who brought him here ... ?”

  “I ... I didn’t know....”

  “Wrong,” say the voices. “Wrong, wrong....” There is anger, and a squirm of giggling. There are brightnesses like Barnes. They burn, but there is no heat. There are other things....

  “PLEASE ... NO, PLEASE. ...”

  Laughter. A chase, an airy game of tag. The Devil takes the hindmost. “Wrong,” shout the voices. “He is wrong, you were wrong....” There is a soundless sound of screaming. There is a writhing, a gasping, a wanting to die. There is a catching, a touching, a hating.... Then, suddenly, there is quiet. Dawn touches the river with a ghostly massiveness of light. The light has no colour. Bats hunt across the greyness like the shadows of dead leaves; island trees hang impossibly still in a world of water and air. The Starr is a mirror now a thousand miles deep, a quicksilver slash reaching to Earth’s core.

  And part of Warwell sleeps. ...

  * * * *

  This is a nice town. Go ahead and ask anybody in the street, they’ll tell you straight out. It’s a nice town. Friendly, these people. And quiet. The town’s quiet. Nothing ever happens, not to Warwell-on-Starr. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.

  It’s an old town. Built on a cross, so it has its North Street and its South, its West and East. East Street runs down to the river, because here that flows south and north. Bottom of East Street is the church. It looks over the traffic lights and the big curlicued lamp standard at the crossroads, towards the Town Hall. West Street runs up by the Town Hall, climbing into the hills. East and West Streets together make the shopping centre. There’s a Smiths and a Boots and a Timothy Whites on the corner and it’s all very homely. Very nice. There’s some industry here, not too much; in the main, Warwell is a Typical Market Town. There’s a little cinema that runs evenings, and they use the church hall sometimes as a theatre. And once a year the Steam Fair comes, in the meadows by the Starr. It’s a sort of local convention, the shopkeepers look forward to it. There’s a Chess Club and an Athletic Club, a Youth Club and a W.I. There’s an Archery Society (Bowmen of Starr) and a Cricket Club. They play matches summer evenings on a little ground with elm trees round it, back of the Bull Hotel on the outskirts of town, and there are stories about great bats lifting deliveries into the Starr, bu
t nothing like that ever happens now. The traffic bypasses Warwell. There’s a little police station with a sergeant and a constable, there’s a vet and a couple of doctors and ... oh Hell, all sorts of stuff. It’s a nice town....

  Jimmy lay on his back on the bed. Beside him on a chair was a saucer with ash and cigarette butts. One hand moved slowly, trailing smoke, from mouth to saucer and back. His knees were drawn up and he held a notebook resting against his legs. In the centre of the page, growing in curly lettering from a mass of doodles, was the motto: “This is a nice town.”

  Jimmy sighed and shook his head very slowly, asked himself silently just what in Hell was the matter. Warwell hadn’t disappointed; quite to the contrary. He liked the place, it was a n... Go on, say it. It was a nice little town. After a while the niceness ate into the bone, decaying it maybe. He frowned. The dreams? They were nothing. Erotic symbolism, psychosomatic disorder ... maybe he’d got a complex because he’d never killed his brother. Never had a brother to kill...He shrugged, still lying prone. His state of mind must be attributable to his odd situation. Plenty of money, no ties, time to burn.... He was completely at rest; it seldom happened, and never to the young.

  Maybe he’d dream again tonight. The dream was always the same. Always vague, impossible to grasp afterwards; a thing of sensation only, an affair of mounting pressures that rose and rose to wake him once nearly screaming. After that the pressures eased but he still knew of their existence the way you can know of something in a dream without seeing or hearing. The Wheel, as he thought of it, was the central part of the nightmare; and he himself was at the centre of the Wheel, on or in its hub, sensing it move, feeling the thunder of it in his long bones. The Wheel so massive that size itself seemed an indecent, foul thing. And somehow too the hub was Warwell, its houses and its church. But the Wheel was useless; it moved, it ground, but it ground nothing. Its turning was aimless, the threat of it was simply in its being....

  He got off the bed. The room was small, stuck up under the decorated eaves of the George just below where a terracotta dragon glared down into Station Square. The bedsitter was all in one; at the far side in an alcove was a sink, beside it the tiny gas cooker. Facing them, the door to the toilet. A chair, a folding table; the bed took up most of the space that was left. But there had been no point in burning money, and the garret had a good view. Jimmy walked to the window, stood looking out absently. Below him was the long roof of the station, beyond it the river and the water meadows. Farther off again the hills, the distant blue cloth of trees.

  He told himself, maybe you were wrong to come here and bury yourself away. Maybe you should have gone back to Town with your problem and your worry. Maybe he should have talked to Roley.

  He nearly laughed. Ask Roley what to do with twelve thousand quid.... Roley would have told him. He could see him now, hear him almost. “Buy a Phantom One old boy, and half a dozen whores....” Yes, and kill yourself with an overdose of Mammon. On your father’s money.... Jimmy reached quietly for his cigarettes. Roley’s mouth would have mocked, but not his eyes, pale blue, warm-cold, watching out above a tangle of beard. Roley would have understood....

  He told himself, Roley would love this town. All the niceness that’s loose here, it would be like a challenge to him. He’d get through it somehow to what really drives the place....

  Drives ?

  Funny idea. Nothing drives Warwell. Warwell has no drive, no reason for being. Warwell is, that’s all. It has its own inbuilt, bright sparrow-perkiness; the people come and go, sleep and wake up, eat and talk and laugh. They’re just born friendly, all of them. Why move, there’s everything here. You get bored, you can get a little job; some day you’ll have to anyway because the money will run low, any money runs low. But right here there’d be no problem. Here you’ve got friends, a lot of them. You’ve been here a month and it seems already you know half the town, it’s like you’d lived in Warwell all your life. But that’s the sort of place it is. Nice....

  Jimmy stubbed the cigarette, gave in to himself angrily and lit it again. He felt like a detective trying to solve a crime that hasn’t been committed. There was everything for him in Warwell. The Wheel...

  He told himself irritably, stop that for God’s sake. Your point of view comes from your strange circumstances, you feel floating, dissociated, because that’s just exactly what you are. No worries, no living to earn for a long, long while. He wondered, was he still being too selfish ? Should he form an association with somebody, anybody? Easy enough to do....

  He went back and lay on the bed again, pillowing his head on one arm, watching up at the quiet blankness of the ceiling. He pulled his lip slowly with his teeth. One problem I can define, he thought. The twelve thousand. How to use it well? How make up for the years it took out of the old man’s life, the loneliness, the anger? He told himself, the answer’s here. Always here, where I am, because the problem rides with me. I tried running, wasn’t any good....

  And Warwell? It’s crazy, but the town has a problem too. Maybe if I can find it, crack it, I’ll find it’s all tied up with me. So somewhere, someplace, I have to find the answer to some question, I don’t know what the question is, but when I see it I’ll recognize it, know what to do. See what? See the Wheel. The thing that drives this town....

  You’re crazy, Strong. Take yourself off, let the tide surge you around some more....

  A month in a strange town. Somewhere, in all the not-happenings, the men not there on all the stairs, is the key to a question I have to decode before I can even ask it. There is no wrongness here, just not-rightness. There’s a world of difference between them. There must be a question, and an answer to it. I must find question and answer before I go because somehow I know it’s important to me, to what I’ve become, to do that....

  He gave himself up, angrily, to analysis. Covering ground well covered before, letting scenes and sights swim out of his subconscious, flare and drop back. Like the little bridges swimming into sight from the train, falling away behind. Calmly and quietly, the way life was lived in Warwell-on-Starr. But that goes for all life, any life. Life is a walking shadow, a poor player that flits and struts his— oh, go to Hell....

  I can look up Warwell in a gazetteer, find it on a map. It’s here, it exists, it’s solid like any other town. Its buildings are stone and brick, its people are flesh and blood, they have shadows. I can read its population, six thousand. Read it’s a market town, no heavy industry, used to be a centre of the wool trade. It’s an urban district, returned a Conservative member at the last election....

  But that doesn’t help me. It doesn’t stop the strangeness, doesn’t check the soundless noise of the Wheel....

  Weren’t dreams symbols? Twisted maybe out of all recognition, but still shadows sprung from something heard, seen.... This was how the mind talked to itself, in imagery that clothed its own secret fears....

  Then take an incident, any incident. Let’s start again.

  The dog. Yes, she’d do. He was walking of an evening, following the slow course of the Starr. There’d been cabin cruisers tied up at the river bank, voices chuckling across the water. Night was coming, bluely; and it had crossed his mind that a man rambling alone like that could use a dog for company. No sooner the thought than the act; she’d come, flickering in the dusk, a long, slim hound, dark-eyed and fast. But she was no Were-thing, she’d come up close to let him touch her, she was real enough. He’d wondered about her, she was good blood and there was no name tag on her collar. She’d followed him a mile, two, circling and dancing, then she’d melted back into the dark. He hadn’t seen her before, or since....

  Take the people at the Horseshoes. It was a strange pub to him; he’d gone into the bar, found the place deserted. He remembered standing and downing his pint and wishing more or less vaguely for talk, for friendliness, some conversation to stimulate. And they’d come. A dozen of them, ordinary enough blokes, but queerly fascinating, each in a different way. They’d talked; about the river
and the town, about cars and dogs and the last war. The fighting in the Western Desert, and going up through Germany with the Eighth. Inconsequential stuff, but just what he needed. One of them had produced a pocket chess set later on, given him a startlingly good game. He’d turned down a couple of supper invites, with some difficulty. Who were those folk? Where were they? He’d never seen them again.

  And then the Green Dragon affair. That was the best of all. Take that one through stage by stage, relive it. Because somewhere/somewhere, there just might be something you missed. Get it all, get the fine detail....

  He was walking up West Street on a Saturday night. Last Saturday, just under a week ago. He’d done a round of pubs, the Horseshoes, the Bell, the Royal Sovereign. He was just a little canned, and just a little melancholy. It was nine o’clock and turning dusk; most of the shopfronts were lit and the neon signs, cars parked on the grid outside the Town Hall, people strolling, alone like himself or arm in arm. The cinema doors were open and there was a little do on at the church hall, loads of cars. Down by the Starr the lamps on the bridge were reflecting long wobbling streaks into the water and there was a smell of some blossom on the air, jasmine he thought. He got to the Green Dragon on the waterfront, there was a dance. He went in, downed a couple of Scotches, saw the g...