The Extremes

by Christopher Priest

  * * * SENSH * * *

  A man with a foreign accent answered, and Shandy said, reasserting herself, ‘Is that Hossein? Hi, it’s Shan…Listen, I’m at the Plume of Feathers in Rupert Street. Know where I mean? I wondered if you’d got anything for me?’ A long silence followed, before Hossein said, ‘You call me back at ten. I work something out.’ Shandy said, ‘OK,’ and hung up. She went back to the counter, and wrote the time in her diary.

  Willem was still at the table, patiently waiting. Teresa decided to leave him there, and left the pub. She walked back down Rupert Street to where it joined Coventry Street.

  To one side was an open space bounded by large buildings, full of trees and pedestrians: Leicester Square, she dredged up from Shandy’s mind. In the other direction was Piccadilly Circus, which Teresa had not realized was so close. With all the curiosity of a tourist Teresa walked down that way, gawping at the sights. She stared at the statue of Eros for a few moments, then decided she would like to see where Shandy lived, so she walked across to the nearest entrance to the Underground station. She ran down the stairs, Shandy’s steel-tipped stiletto heels clattering on the metal steps. At the bottom of the stairs was a brick wall. Shandy stared at it for a moment, then returned to street level.

  Another entrance to the station was on the corner of Lower Regent Street and Piccadilly, so Shandy negotiated the crossing through the traffic, and tripped quickly down the steps. Another brick wall. Determined not to be beaten by this Teresa led the way back to the pub, where Willem was still waiting for her.

  * * * SENSH * * *

  She sat down next to him.

  ‘Tell me where you come from, Willem,’ she said. ‘How do you live? What is the name of the place where you were born?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, staring with habitual eyes at her cleavage. ‘I from Amstelveen, which is a little way from Amsterdam to the south, on the polder. You know polder? I have two sister, who are both more old as me. My mother and father—’

  ‘Excuse me, honey,’ said Shandy. ‘I got to go.’

  She left him there again, and returned to the street.

  London spread around her, noisy and crowded. How did they do this? Teresa wondered. We were making a lousy skin-flick, budget of zilch, and I walk through a door and out here is a whole imagined virtual city of millions of people, crammed with things going on and places to go.

  No Underground station, though. Maybe they didn’t get around to programming that.

  * * * SENSH * * *

  As she stood there a double-decker bus roared by, heading for Kilburn. It said so on the front: Kilburn High Road. Teresa thought, I could get on that bus, see what happens in Kilburn. People who have lives, share apartments, go bankrupt, fall in love, travel abroad, hold down jobs, get thrown into jail, make skin-flicks. Is this scenario unlimited? From Kilburn, another bus-ride to the edge of London, and from there into the country? What after that? Another blank wall at the edge of reality? Or the rest of England, out into Europe, then the world? The awareness of unlimited space dizzied her.

  She caught the next bus that came along (it said on the front it was going to Edgware), but for an hour it drove around the West End, repeatedly passing the same buildings and stopping in the same places.

  Willem was still waiting in the pub when she went back.

  ‘Did I get that drink for you?’ Shandy said.

  ‘No, but is OK. I wait OK.’

  She left Willem again, and returned to the street: the weather was as damp and cool as before, and the crowds continued to press past her. Shandy had a way of walking that made her skirt tighten against her thighs with every step. Admiring male glances were flashed at her from many quarters.

  * * * SENSH * * *

  ‘Doesn’t that drive you crazy, Shan?’ Teresa said on an impulse, thinking inwardly to her own mind.

  ‘Doesn’t what drive me crazy?’ Shandy replied, calmly. ‘The guys staring at my tits? That’s my job, love. One of them’s always the next meal ticket.’

  ‘Not that. The goddamn computer logo that appears every minute or two. And the electronic music that goes with it!’

  ‘You get used to it.’ Shandy mentally played the jingle at her.

  ‘Where’s it coming from?’

  ‘I think it’s Vic. He’s like that.’

  ‘Who’s Vic?’ said Teresa. ‘Is that the director? Mister Bad Breath and Zero Personality?’

  ‘No, Vic! You know Vic, don’t you? He’s the mate of Luke’s who does the script, right? Luke’s the one who—’

  ‘I know Luke. Carry on about Vic. I’m interested.’

  ‘Vic does the script. He’s one of those computer geeks with a weirdo sense of humour. Thinks everything he does is funny. That’s how Luke gets in, you see. He likes being in the movies, but he isn’t, you know, like Willem. Willie with the big willie.’

  ‘I know who you mean.’

  * * * SENSH * * *

  ‘Course you do. Well, Luke likes a bit of the physical stuff with me, and I never mind, so Vic writes him in before the action starts. Always a small part, a warm-up for the punters. Luke’s been in all the videos I’ve done for Vic, and he enjoys a good old grope, but he can’t, you know, get it up enough. He’s a mate of mine, really. We always have a bit of a laugh about it. You’ve got an American accent. Is that where you’re from?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Teresa.

  ‘So’s Vic. I don’t know what he’s doing in England, but he’s into computers and that.’

  ‘So how does he do all this?’

  ‘Do all what?’

  Teresa gestured with Shandy’s hand.

  ‘London! All these people! The noise, the rain, the crowds.’

  ‘I dunno. You’d have to ask him. You can get cities for computers now, can’t you?’

  ‘Cities? What do you mean, you get them for computers?’

  * * * SENSH * * *

  ‘On disk, I think. Or you can download them, if you know how to do it. You get the whole thing, and just use it. Add it on, somehow. I mean, Vic’s got all sorts of places he uses as locations. He’s into cowboys and that, and so a lot of the programs he does take place out there in the West. You know that set we were just filming in? Well, if you go out the other way, the door at the back, it isn’t London at all! It’s somewhere in America…you know, you’ve seen it on the movies. Where they filmed all those westerns. A lot of desert, and all them rocky mountains with flat tops sticking straight up.’

  ‘Not Monument Valley?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ said Shandy. ‘Arizona, someplace. He’s barmy, is Vic. He just bolts on bits of software as he feels like it. Like, there’s one he’s got which is Finland. I mean, the whole of Finland! I play an air hostess on an aircraft, and me and the guy get down to it in a row of seats. Not very comfortable, but we put the arm-rests up. Anyway, if you look out of the window there’s hundreds of miles of trees and lakes. You can make the plane go anywhere you like, but it’s always flying over Finland. Can’t see the point, myself, because the people who come in, they just want to join in with the shagging, and they’re not interested in where we’re doing it, right? But Vic must have bootlegged the software from somewhere, so that’s what he uses. There’s another one he’s got, in—’

  * * * SENSH * * *

  ‘Shandy, do you mind if we go somewhere to talk?’ They had been walking along Coventry Street, weaving their way through the crowds, but even in this state of acknowledged unreality, Teresa was acutely conscious of the way she must appear to be talking to herself. ‘Could we go to your apartment?’

  ‘No, can’t do that.’ Teresa felt an awkward resistance rising in the young woman’s mind. ‘I’m only supposed to be in the West End, and that.’

  ‘But you must go home sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then can’t we go now?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  Shandy started fretting with the strap of her shoulder-bag.

  Teres
a realized that there must be a limiting wall in Shandy’s mind, like one at the bottom of a flight of steps that should lead to the Underground.

  ‘Is there somewhere else we could go?’

  ‘No, we have to stay around here. Or we could go back to where we were filming. Would you like to go back to the studio and see Monument Valley? I’ll take you for a drive. That’s another of my jobs. We go to some great places—’

  * * * SENSH * * *

  ‘Where’s the studio from here?’

  ‘Back there.’ Shandy indicated a narrow sidestreet called Shaver’s Place.

  ‘And that’s all there is?’ Teresa asked.

  ‘Well…there’s the whole of London! You can do a lot in London. I could take you to the clubs I know. I do a live show in one of them. You could help me out in that, now you know what to do. One of the guys is a bit…you know, but the other’s a real good mate of mine. He’s better at it than Willem, not as big, but he really knows how to get me going! And there’s another girl, Janey. You’d like Janey. I do a lesbian act with her. She went to America last year on her holiday, and told me all about it.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Teresa retreated from the forefront of Shandy’s mind, allowing the young woman to assert her own life, so to speak. Shandy promptly changed direction, and walked back towards the pub where they had left Willem. She said hello to several men they passed in the street. She seemed to know everyone around here.

  Teresa decided to retreat again, further, abort the scenario at last, but before she did so she reached up awkwardly and felt the back of Shandy’s neck. As she expected, there was no ExEx valve in place.

  This was 1990. ExEx hadn’t been available. There was only software set in that period. Teresa recalled the LIVER mnemonic.

  * * *

  You have been flying SENSH Y’ALL

  * * *

  * * *

  Fanta—

  She snapped it off before she had to listen to the music again.

  Later, as she checked out at the ExEx reception desk, Teresa was presented with a charge to her credit card that was so huge it momentarily dazed her. She was about to protest, when she noticed that her real-time usage had been carefully logged. She glanced at the clock on the wall. She had spent nearly the whole day in virtual reality, and as a result had been charged for six and a half hours of premium time. Night had fallen while she was there.

  Teresa signed, thinking of the slug of insurance money she had received after Andy’s death, which had remained more or less untouched until her trip to Britain. Her phone calls to the credit-card hotlines in the US had sorted out her billing problems, and increased the credit limit at the same time, but even so she made a mental resolve to use her ExEx time more carefully.

  Walking back down through Bulverton’s rows of postwar council-built houses, Teresa kept her gaze low, avoiding the dreary sights around her. The dazzle of ExEx was her preferred reality.

  She was remembering the way she had experienced Shandy’s walk, with her tiny leather mini-skirt constraining her thighs and her stiletto heels clacking dismissively on the paving. Teresa put her hands in her coat pocket, and dragged the garment round her, tightening it in front of her legs to make a tiny reminder of how it had felt to wear that skirt.

  She thought about being young and pretty again, of having the sort of legs men admired in the street, the kind of high, prominent breasts that looked good no matter what she wore, and for which wearing a bra was an option. She relished the memory of how Shandy’s body had felt from the inside: supple and agile and much used to pleasure. She even loved Shandy’s attitude to everyone around her; it was years since she had felt free not to care what other people thought.

  In the cold winter’s evening, with the sea wind moist in her face and the lights of the depressing housing estate glinting around her, Teresa could not help fantasizing about lovemaking. She imagined she was in a large airliner, flying slow and low, the engines a subdued roar. She would stretch with her lover across the cushions of a row of seats, the armrests raised erect to make room; she would be sating her body, naked and languorous, dreaming of buttes in Arizona, while below her the unending lakes and forests of Finland would be slipping deliriously by.

  CHAPTER 28

  Teresa was in a car, parked on the seafront at Bulverton. Brilliant sunlight poured in on her from the direction of the sea. She was tightening the hot-wired connection she had made earlier beneath the dash, stretching forward with her hands, her cheek pressed against the boss of the steering wheel.

  A figure stopped beside the car, shading the flood of sunlight. Without looking up at him Teresa straightened and wound down the window.

  ‘You Gerry?’ the man said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The man outside pushed his hand through, palm up. Teresa laid six ten-pound notes on the hand, and watched as he crumpled them up and withdrew. Moments later, a small plastic bag was thrown in; it flew past her face, bounced on the passenger seat beside her and ended up on the floor.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said automatically, and reached over to pick up the bag. The man was already moving quickly away, weaving through the cars parked along the front. He was tall and thin, and his long black hair was tied back in a pony-tail. He wore a dirty pale-brown jacket and faded jeans. He hurried across the main road without looking back, then disappeared down a sidestreet.

  Teresa weighed the bag in her hand; it felt about right, but she had probably been undersold, as always. She could see the white powder through the polythene, and it ground with the right feeling when she squeezed it lightly between her fingers. She slipped the bag into her jacket pocket.

  As she drove away she saw Fraser Johnson hanging around outside the amusements arcade. He waved to her urgently, but she drove on. She owed Fraser a bit of cash, not a lot, but because of the deal she had just done she wasn’t going to be able to settle up with him for a while. Anyway, she would probably see him that evening, and by then things would be different.

  She drove towards home, thinking about Debra, the titless bitch, the bleeding bitch with the spotty fucking face, and that lad called Mark who’d turned up with her from somewhere and crashed at her place the night before. In fact, all of them had been at her place overnight, because Mark’s mates came along too. They’d gone through her stuff, looking at her lists, asking her stupid bloody questions about what she wrote down.

  Because of this she was ready for more aggravation from them, but halfway up the long hill of Hyde Avenue the engine coughed and she pulled over to the side. She left the car where it stopped, the driver’s door open. It was a pile of crap, anyway. It took her ten minutes to walk up to the house where she was staying, the one the Housing Benefit woman had found her a couple of weeks back. The lads had gone. She looked for food, but if there had been any they had stolen it. She did a line of the coke, then put away the rest for later.

  She walked round the damaged interior of the house, angry with everything and everyone. Someone had had a piss on her stuff. Why did people always do this to her? There was another broken window downstairs; it must have happened during the night, because the bits of broken glass were still lying around on the floorboards. There was one of the lads, a kid from Eastbourne called Darren, who’d really wound her up over that window. She couldn’t remember why, now. Probably something to do with Debra, because he was the one who’d run off with her that morning, wasn’t it? She couldn’t remember exactly. Her fingernails curled into the palms of her hands, and she wished she’d smacked him in the fucking face, like he deserved.

  Outside, she saw another mate of hers, Steve Ripon, driving down towards the front, and she grabbed a ride with him. Steve dropped her outside the Bulver Arms, saying he might call in for a pint later. She didn’t want to know. Steve usually got on her nerves. She saw a couple of the lads in the bar, playing pool, so she hung around with them for a while, hoping for a game. They pretended they hadn’t seen her, and made jokes abo
ut her as if she wasn’t there, the sort she’d heard before. Fuckers. One of them said he’d buy her a pint but in the end didn’t, and made the others laugh at her again, and she had to buy her own. She was hungry, but didn’t fancy any of the food. Couldn’t afford it.

  ‘I’m going home,’ she said, but they didn’t seem to hear.

  She set off in the direction of Hastings, but it meant walking along the seafront and there was no shade from the sun. She was already feeling light in the head, and the sun only made it worse. She turned off the coast road at the first big junction, and started walking up Battle Road.

  Steve Ripon drove past again, and slowed down. She didn’t want another lift from him, so she pretended not to notice.

  Through the driver’s window, Steve shouted, ‘Oi, Gerry! That Debra of yours told Darren all about you.’

  ‘Piss off, Steve!’ she yelled back.

  ‘She reckons you can’t get it up. That right?’

  ‘Piss off,’ she said again, but under her breath. She cut away down an alley, where Steve couldn’t follow. After a hundred yards she came out in Fearley Road, which she knew well. A mate of hers had turned over the off-licence there a couple of years ago, and got done with community service. She was getting fed up with all this walking about and feeling dizzy, so now she was keeping a sharp eye open for something she could drive away in.

  On an impulse she went up to the car park built on the flat roof of the AllNights Market, and started trying the car doors. She wanted a car that was fairly new, not an old heap, but most of the really new cars were difficult to hot-wire, unless you knew what you were doing. The last car she was going to try before giving up turned out to be the easiest one to take: a dark red J-reg Austin Montego. There was a wallet in the glove compartment (with forty quid and a Barclaycard), a stereo system and a full tank of petrol. Two minutes later she was driving up Battle Road with music playing, heading back to the house.