by WALL, ALAN
Living on Air
Keep pushing on towards the headland. What had begun as inanition was now transmuting to energy inside her. It was true, everything Lady Pneuma had told her was true: food was an impurity, a bodily impurity for an impure spirit. With the spiritual cleansing came physical redemption too. She might need tiny fragments for now, morsels to assuage the wren of contamination still fluttering inside her. But even that would soon be over. Air and water would then suffice. The air, as Pneuma had predicted, now tasted like invisible gold. Never before had she known the taste of gold. All she had to do was find the hut and she could rest. She had made the right decision, she had no doubt about that. Back there, she had become what she had pretended to be. He had written the part for her, and she had given her soul to it, even though he had lied. The contaminated always lie. They live on lies; that's what they eat. The Delta Programme had established that all she now needed was to commit herself entirely to breathing divinity and thereby being sustained within it. In the little bothie, she shredded the wrappers from the Bounty bar to make a tiny fire. So insubstantial, its ashes. So little was needed for a flame either inside or out. Those wrappers were the last contact she would have with material food. The last clearing finally beckoned.
Once we lived on light and the anima inside us fed on nothing at all but air, and took its sufficiency from such elemental provender. Only the corruption of the spirit had led to the material distraction of food. Alex had decided to make her way back to that primordial state where we swallowed air as the glow-worm does, and the soul generates its own electricity, a little bulb gleaming inside the lampshade of the body. Lady Pneuma had done it now for ten years, and Alex had never seen a healthier looking human being. She needed nothing but air, not even water any more.
Soon her own exhausted body was lying on the makeshift bed. It was growing dark. The air was chilling. She focused entirely on air. Owen Treadle was an impurity, like food, the mind's soiled food, left entirely behind her. She was shedding the skin of her disastrous former life, and what she had been made to do inside it. She was being re-born, free now of the entanglement of dark matter.
*
As the disciple lay so far to the north eating air, the object of her devotion sat in her rooms in the Claymore Hotel staring out of the window, down at the traffic moving slowly along Piccadilly. Lady Pneuma, aka Rachel Askarli, had begun her spiritual journey twenty years before in Bermondsey, when she had noticed a coin outside a confectioner's shop. She had not picked up the coin, but had instead stood and watched for ten minutes as people walked over it. Many of them noticed it lying there, but not a single one bent down to pick it up, until she herself did. It was on the table now before her, encased in perspex, a monstrance holding its own demotic host. This coin of small denomination she had shown to her disciples many times: the currency of our civilisation, debased to the point where it could be discarded on the street and left there. Retrieved finally as a spiritual emblem, a memento of the dynamics of triviality.
Her studies had been long and arduous. She had needed to visit the sites of many traditions until the truth had broken through at last, ten years earlier on the first day of May in New York. She had been on the top floor of the Waldorf Hotel in Manhattan, listening to the unearthly siren of the elevator, when all had been made clear. She could never have formulated it herself. It was a gift.
We had let ourselves fall into the realm of dark matter. We had engrossed our spirits with materiality. We had corroded our souls with the food of animals and forgotten that our true realm was in fact the air, Ariel's dimension. We had come to imagine that what we once experienced as no more than a beastly degradation - the consumption of earthly food - was now a necessity. This was the real fall, the one true vertical descent from grace. Its itchy concomitant was all too evident: that the generation of new life required coition, another insalubrious address marked out in the neighbourhood of dark matter. The revelation came on Lady's Day, for that was how the patriarchs of meat had disguised the miracle of the goddess as their own feast, now another festival of the great male schedules of entry and subordination.
From that day on she dressed in blue, Mary's colour, and started to proclaim her philosophy, her revelation, her religion: air nutrition and parthenogenesis. We could live on the nutrients in the air itself and, once the spirit was sufficiently purified, generate life from within ourselves, through the self-intermingling of the spirit. She had written her testament, The One True Elemental. Or to speak more truthfully, she had transcribed it. It was published by The Delta Foundation, her movement, the world-wide movement that proclaimed her faith.
And this was the only book which Alex had taken with her to the bothie. She was staring at its pages now as a bad wind headed over from the hills towards her. The Claymore was warm; the bothie very cold. Alex was pale with inanition; Lady Pneuma was bronzed and almost plump from feasting on her unearthly nutrients.
Through the Lens
Owen woke with a blister forming on the skin of his mind. He saw the note propped up against the mirror. Try to remember who you are, love.
He washed; he dressed; he went to St. Clare's and walked swiftly down the corridor to Alfred's room. His companion was sitting on the bed with the Bible open on his lap.
'You put a lie inside my mind.'
'No, Owen, I put a truth back inside your mind. You would like to replace that truth with a lie, I think. The replacement would be what most people call forgetting. You're a specialist at that. You've done it before, you know. Usually it was just women. Women you weren't married to. They came and went. This time there's something that can't be forgotten. A woman again. But something different.'
'Why should I believe you?'
'Because I gave you the proof. You put it in your greatcoat pocket. Why aren't you wearing your greatcoat today?' Owen hesitated.
'It's in the cellar.'
'That's where the truth is then, Owen. Back down in the cellar. You've put the truth in the cellar again. Better make sure you don't go down there for a while, until you've fitted the plastic cover back on your memory. The one that keeps the dust out.'
Owen left without another word. He walked along the city walls. He knew these walls, didn't he? He'd walked them many times, once as a writer, once as someone re-arranging reality, and once as a lover. One of those for whom the world is made new. He couldn't be sure. He went down the steps and found a bar. He didn't want any alcohol. He could still taste the bitterness of Alfred's whisky from two days before, and it was a bad taste. A bad taste that left its traces in the mind. He asked for a mineral water and sat down at the table. Had he already been here? He felt as though he'd been everywhere before. He stared at the woman at the next table. Blonde, mid-thirties, maybe older, looking at her watch and grimacing. She was evidently waiting. He wondered if she knew she kept sighing. Then he arrived finally, the awaited one, all waving arms and sandy hair in his eyes. Younger than her, a lot younger. Not her son though; he could tell that immediately.
'Finally turned up, have you? Good of you to come.'
'If you must know ... ' God, he could see how much she hated the heart-rending tone this young man could always summon from the wells within, though it must have enchanted her once. ' ... I was helping a blind person get to the station.' She sighed even more heavily than before.
'You weren't helping a blind person get to the station really, were you Alasdair?' He stared at her, the practised look of hurt in his eyes, rehearsing once more the rubric of his own sincerity. 'I think you were helping a fully-sighted person get pissed. And the fully-sighted person you were helping to get pissed was you. That's what I think. I can smell the beer without even needing to kiss you. In fact, I don't want to kiss you anyway, now I come to think about it.'
His expression glazed, frigid with incomprehension at her lack of charity. How could she so misconstrue him? He reached a hand out gently and touched her arm, as one who might say, 'I have been mistook, but I forgive y
ou, beloved.' She stared at the hand as though it were a massive white slug which had inexplicably materialised upon her sleeve. A vast milky slug with five legs, all covered in tiny hairs.
'At least put your expertise to some use then.' His lips curled down at the edges, trying to shape themselves into a question mark, as she stood up. 'Go buy some wine before they all turn up for lunch, and I'll meet you back at the house. Then we can all get pissed, can't we? And who knows, if you manage to pour enough of it down my throat as well as your own, your luck might change later on. Between the sheets. After you've finished doing the washing-up.'
He stood at the table and hesitated. 'The only thing is ... ' —eyes screwed up, little boy caught short on his way to school— ‘ ... I don't have any money left, babe. Spent it all at the Albion.'
'Then you'd best get to the station quickly and mug that blind man before his train comes in, my darling. Or alternatively, find yourself another bed in which to try your luck tonight. Because I'm not giving you any more this week. I'd rather leave the whole effing lot to the RNIB.'
They went out, untouching. Were all human beings like this? He really couldn't remember. What they had just done with one another struck him as somehow ... realistic: a vivid representation of themselves. Back on the wall, he walked. He knew these buildings, he knew the houses. Finally he stopped again in sight of the disused warehouse. He knew that building very well, didn't he? All too well. He started to hear the cries in there, the cries of a young woman having her body taken from her; having her body turned inside out, and he turned away quickly, heading for home, unable to listen. They had put a title on that part of Deva: The Passion. Outside the house, he halted. A beautiful green car; a Morgan was parked in the street. He ran his hand along the bonnet. That metal so familiar. It was his, wasn't it? He was suddenly sure of it. He let himself into the house and opened the drawer in the hallway table. Keys. He knew those keys all right. He picked them up and walked back out to the car.
He didn't need to think about it. He soon had the engine turning over, then he realised it was sunny. He hadn't thought about it while he was walking, but it was a fine day, so he took the roof down on his convertible car. He would go driving. Where? It didn't matter. The car would find its own way. And it did. With each fresh mile the car reminded him how well they knew one another. It had its own memories, and was generously sharing them. He felt safe in the car; he knew there'd never been any screaming in here. No passion; no mystery play. The wind started to interview him blusteringly, and he answered its questions. He shouted his answers back above the windscreen: 'Speed is how we catch up with the world. If the speed of light is the only ultimate constant in the universe then the closer we can get to it, the closer we are to reality, surely. Why on earth stay still?' He had said all these words before, hadn't he, and to camera? He started laughing. He was in re-play mode. One hour later he arrived in Llandudno. Twenty minutes after that, Llandudno started replaying itself to him.
The straightened-out crescent of the promenade displayed the grand hotels, their bright pastel colours, their genteel imperial names and balconies like the busts of Victorian ladies in full sail. A great line of them stood proud on the shore and stared out to sea. Flags fluttered before the apron of the beach, white flecks of gulls scattered like flashes of limestone outcrop showing through the brown heather and gorse of the Orme. Piebald donkeys dutifully bore that week's children on their backs, and the pier stood above the waves on its cross-barred metal stilts. The cast-iron pavilion of the Grand Hotel had grown rotten and rusty in its ruin and now had the look of seaside archaeology about it. Ancient communal songs drifted over on the salty breeze, seemingly conjured from nowhere. On the pier, giant inflated Disney heads stared down in garish hilarity. A kiosk offered Adult Novelties and Curiosities and men in brightly coloured weather suits (no trust in the sun's longevity here) reeled in their lines one by one. Never was a single fish attached. The fishermen changed their sodden lugworms for drier ones, cast out again and stared down once more at the legs of the jetty, grown fanciful over the years with a ragged accrual of mussel-shells. He was staring at the town and watching a film at the same time.
The lens carried on panning. Now the images were black-and-white. Snug in their nest of cedars and beeches in the hills above town, flamboyantly gabled houses kept a wary eye on the latest cargo of grockles, disgorged by the coachload at their designated spots. A British resort hunting for its next patch of sunshine between lashings of rain. Pilgrims so often made for the beach and crouched in meditation inside their waterproof cowls as they stared out at the great grey god of the sea. Distant ships rode its wrinkled back like parasites on the skin of a rhino.
The lens closed its eye momentarily and it was dawn. In a small hotel by the slanted tramway a woman woke suddenly. She leapt from the bed in answer to the rapping at the door. Only as she stood in her flimsy shift with the sound still in her ears did she realise that it was the harsh regularity of soldiers marching. She went back to the bed and lay still on her back. Such a short honeymoon. Small resort. Small hotel. Small man, but a good one. God, let him come back alive. Finally she sank into sleep, as the herring-gulls start shrieking a few feet from her half-opened window. How he had loved that body, that face, the little oval of moonflesh. Her husband had gone, already gone, one of the brave boys leaving with the British Expeditionary Forces. The tangled sheets still seemed pungent with his absence. This was all film now. Owen knew this, because all these images moving through his head were black-and-white. He had invented this. He had invented the woman, though he had needed a real one to do it. And he knew where to find the hotel too. Ten minutes later he stood in the reception area.
'Want the same room as usual, Mr Treadle?'
'I'll have the same room, yes.'
'By yourself this time, are you? I'll just check you in and then get you the key.' Same lenses in her spectacles as the woman in the cafe; same underwater look to the jellyfish eyes. I'm ringing another bell, he thought. Wherever I go I ring bells. Owen the campanologist.
Once inside the room, lying on the bed, clutching at memories he knew were still there, despite the fresh linen, he recognised the woman in the film. First they had made love here, hadn't they, he and the woman – not on film, that part – then they had filmed her there, lamenting the passing of a mythical man. A mythical man representing so many real ones. And where was she now? Where was Alex now? He knew that fact and yet he didn't know it; he both knew it and blanked it out at the same time. A self-cancelling memory then. Something it might be better to keep in the cellar with your greatcoat. He slept. How long for? When he woke he searched his pockets for the mobile, but it wasn't there. He did have one somewhere, didn't he, but he didn't know where. He needed to talk to Sylvie. He left the hotel and walked down the street until he found a telephone booth. She picked up the phone after five tones.
'Where are you, Owen?'
'Llandudno.'
'Revisiting all your memories in a hurry, it seems.'
'I made a film here.' There was a pause. This time he put the question-mark in. 'Didn't I make a film here?'
'Yes, Owen, you made Time's Widow there, remember. You don't actually make the films, love; you write them, though Johnny says your scripting is so specific that it's often you who has decided exactly where the camera will be pointing at any particular moment. He used to mind but he doesn't seem to bother much any more, since the pair of you have won so many prizes. So many shining prizes. He phoned half an hour ago, by the way, to see how you were.'
'Johnny.'
John Tamworth. The director you collaborated with. On all your classic television features.'
'Was there one about speed? Did I talk in it once, driving a car?'
'Catching Up With The Earth. It's here on the shelf, next to City of Dreams'
'What was the last one I did?'
'Deva.'
'Deva.'
'But that one hasn't been released. That's the one that see
ms to have cost you your memory again. It's not out yet, but Johnny will be turning up with a DVD any day now. I think that must have been the one that made a widow of time's lonely widow. So young to be a widow, too. Poor little mite. Poor little Alex. Are you coming back, Owen?'
'Not tonight, no. I need to find something out.'
'You need to find a lot of things out, Owen, I don't doubt that, but I'm not sure you'll do any of it in a hotel in Llandudno. Not during one night. Are you alone, out of interest?'
'Not sure.'
'Have a look behind you then. Close your eyes and hold out your hands. See if there's any flesh within groping distance that doesn't feel like yours.'
'There's no one here, physically. That doesn't mean I'm alone though, does it, Sylvie?'
'Sounds like a line from one of your scripts. I daresay it will be before long.' Ten seconds of silence. 'You're not coming back tonight then?'
'Not tonight, no.'
'Have a nice time.' And she hung up.
The Riverside Gallery
Sylvie stared for a moment at the phone. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of dry white wine from the fridge. Chardonnay, its flavour always a little too insistent without food to counter it, but she didn't feel like eating. After one sip, she went over to the cellar door, opened it and walked down the steps. Something cold and unwelcoming about that cellar; she'd rather not go down there at all. Always a damp feeling to the stone. The light had gone years before, and no one had ever bothered to fix it. She stopped at the bottom and stared at Owen's greatcoat. The tip of the tabloid newspaper stuck out of the pocket. No, she'd had enough of this. None of it was her doing, was it, so how come Owen had abandoned the memory and left it to her, like some dark inheritance she was meant to sort out? Down here in the cellar of their lives. Was she the archivist of his memory, then? Bloody Owen. Came back here to her bed for one night, as though she were some sort of service station, then off down the road on his memory-recovery programme.