The Pretence

by Ramsey Campbell

  "British." With a surge of the irritation that had seized the protester in the queue Slater said "Can't you tell?"

  "Date of expiry."

  "Not for a long time yet, I hope." This went unappreciated too. "The passport, you mean," he said. "I'm not really sure without looking. Since when were we expected to be?"

  If there was any answer in the unwavering pale gaze, it was just an admonition. "Wait a minute," Slater said with no idea of what he was preventing. "It's, don't tell me, no, I see you wouldn't. It's, hold on now, yes, it's next, next March."

  The man shut the passport without another glance. "You are advised to leave sufficient time for the renewal."

  As Slater took hold of the passport he said "Do you mind if I ask what you're looking for?"

  "Why should you want to know that?"

  "I don't suppose I need to. In fact I'm sure I don't." Slater was about to risk tugging at the passport—the man's grasp felt like a confirmation of the warning in his eyes—when he found he was alone in holding it. "Thank you for," he said and couldn't leave the word dangling. "Thank you for your time."

  He expected to find a door behind the partition on the far side of the booths, but there was just a blank wall. The partition must cut off any sounds; he couldn't even hear the interrogation that would be following his. The arrivals hall was deserted, and the shops were blanked out by metal shutters. As he hurried to the exit the high roof seemed to shrink his footsteps until they were no more substantial than their echoes. His reflection was growing on the glass doors when they parted with a gasp like the last of a breath.

  Above the lamps that glared down on the car park the sky could almost have been a roof they were set in. No doubt they were helping to render it so black. The multitude of cars appeared to be forgetting their own colours, and if he hadn't memorised the location of the Astra—section E for Eroica and for the key of the symphony as well, third row like the number of the symphony—he might have panicked. He had to rouse it with the key fob before he was sure that the grey car was his gold one. He rested a hand on its hollow metal pate while he gazed at the sky until he succeeded in conjuring forth a star attended by three other intermittently visible gleams. He found them oddly reassuring, and so were the headlamps once he switched them on, and the dashboard lights that Tom and Amy used to pretend were the lights on the control panel in a cockpit. Some if not all of this felt like a promise of the lights of home.

  The barrier raised its arm to point at the sky. Along the empty four-lane road that led away from the airport, the branches of thin trees netted scraps of the blackness. Single-storey blocks of grey corrugated metal flanked the road, and Slater hadn't previously realised how little the route offered for the mind to grasp. Miles later he came to the first houses, in which every window was as black as the sky. Beyond the houses ranks of headstones stretched away on both sides of the road into the dark, and he couldn't recall ever having taken so long to leave the cemetery behind. At last the road widened, and soon the grassy strip between the pairs of deserted lanes was as broad as a road itself. The elongated grove that stood on it, and the fields that kept interrupting the parade of unlit houses, had begun to feel as if the land was reminiscing about itself. No doubt the night was giving Slater thoughts like these, along with a sense of isolation.

  As he turned along St Peter Street he couldn't immediately see the house; the trees standing in square plots on the pavements blocked his view. He was nearly home by the time he saw that the windows were full of the sky, like mirrors with nothing to show. He parked beside Melanie's Viva on the drive and carried his suitcase to the front door rather than risk disturbing anyone with the sound of the wheels. He was finding his keys when the four panes in the door lit up as though he'd triggered an alarm.

  He saw Melanie's silhouette descend into the hall with a flickering movement reminiscent of an old film. Her shape was snagging on the frosted panes, which made her look intermittently atomised. She must mean not to waken the children, since he couldn't hear her footsteps. The glass tried to recompose her features as she opened the door, and then her large generous face seemed to brighten the night with a smile. She stood on the threshold and hugged him with all her strength, whispering "Is it really you at last, Paul?"

  "I can't imagine who else it's likely to be," Slater murmured. She was in just her dressing-gown, which fluttered as a chill wind reminded him of the hour. "Let's get you inside," he said. "I don't want to lose you, do I?"

  She tilted her head back without letting go of him, and her glossy black hair trailed over her shoulders as her oval brown eyes seemed to deepen with a question. "How are you going to do that?"

  "I'm saying I'm not. You aren't dressed for out here, that's all."

  She shook her head, presumably at herself, as they retreated into the hall, and he was managing to shut the door without a sound when Amy called "Is that dad?"

  "Is it, mummy?" Tom contributed at once.

  As he appeared at the top of the stairs Amy joined him. They looked like sleepy versions of their images that lined the hall and climbed beside the stairs, framed photographs of the family holidaying in half a dozen European countries. Yet again Slater found himself thinking how his and Melanie's features had been displaced: the nine-year-old boy made his mother's face male with hair cropped almost as short as he would like, while Amy's extra pair of years hadn't altered her resemblance to her father—blue eyes set wide, rounded face except for the prominent chin, small mouth. "Now you've seen him you can both go back to sleep," Melanie said. "You've school and rehearsals as well."

  "Can't we stay up? It's nearly time to go."

  "Nowhere near, Tom," Slater said before he saw what time the pincers of the hour and minute hands were closing on. "We aren't even close to four," he said.

  "Can't we wait anyway? I don't feel like going to sleep."

  "And I don't," his sister declared.

  "There's nothing to keep you awake, is there? I'm sorry if I did, but it's not my fault I was held up. It's your last rehearsal today and we want to be proud of you both. I'm sure you want that as well."

  "You know we both are," Melanie said.

  "That's right," Slater said, which seemed inadequate. "Just remember you two and your mother are all I need in my life. You can think about that while you go to sleep."

  As he hefted the suitcase Melanie switched out the hall light, and he saw the children's eyes grow dark. When Tom lingered beside the highest photograph Slater felt he had to ask "What were you saying you wanted to wait for?"

  "The sun." With some defiance the boy said "It won't be today till it comes up."

  "You mean it won't stop being yesterday," Amy said.

  While Slater thought she was doing her best to scoff, he was uncertain whether she secretly shared the idea. "Come on, you two," he said. "Don't tell me you're still bothered by that nonsense. I didn't think you ever were."

  Was that too rough? They seemed less than reassured. "If you were worried because I wasn't here when—

  "Can we leave it, Paul? This isn't the time for it, especially if you want anyone to sleep."

  "All I'm saying," Slater said, "is we're all here and it's the day after, and that shows there was no reason to worry in the first place."

  "Well, you've said it now, and it's time everyone was in bed."

  When the children headed for their rooms as if they were competing to mime reluctance Slater said "If the sun doesn't wake you we'll tell you when it's here."

  He followed Melanie into their bedroom to leave his suitcase by the bed, and felt her watching him all the way out of the room. In the bathroom the electronic buzz of the toothbrush filled his skull while his reflection grimaced at him. He had the odd notion that the sight and its monotonous two-note chord—the high whine of the motor, the low drone of bristles against teeth—had a message for him, but he was too aware of the series of meaningless expressions his mouth was adopting. He used the toilet and found his face with soap and wate
r and a towel, and then he hurried to the bedroom.

  Melanie lay facing the door, and stretched a hand across the white cloudscape of the quilt to him. As soon as he'd eased the door shut she murmured "You were a long time."

  "I didn't think I was." In fact he couldn't tell, and so he said "I didn't mean to be."

  "Then don't be any longer."

  She turned on her back to watch him undress and leave his clothes on the chair beside the window, beyond which the trees were as still as the streetlamps that drained them of colour. When he joined her beneath the quilt she gave him a soft lingering kiss and captured his hand to draw his arm around her as she nestled her back against him. As he reached for the light-cord she intertwined their fingers, the way she did on planes when they were taking off or about to land. He could almost have fancied that she was bracing herself, which made him feel oddly apprehensive. He yanked at the cord, and as the dark fell on them she clasped his hand tighter. "You aren't going away again, are you?"

  "Not that I'm aware of." When her grasp didn't relax he said "No reason to think I am."

  "I wish it were the weekend."

  "The concert will be done and we can all unwind, you mean."

  "Don't give me any more to fret about, Paul. I meant we'll be together, the four of us."

  This so plainly confirmed how he'd suspected she was feeling that he said under his breath "That rubbish about yesterday got to you, didn't it."

  He'd meant to speak too low for Melanie to hear, but she said "It was being on my own that did."

  "You aren't now, so it can stop." He wasn't going to apologise for having had to reassure his mother, even though Melanie was gripping his hand as if to keep him there. "I wonder what they can be thinking now," he said, "the Finalists."

  "I'd rather not."

  "Maybe it's better to think than feel sometimes," Slater retorted, but with less than a breath on her neck. "Then don't," he said more audibly. "Just sleep."

  Since she was unwilling to release his hand, he used hers as well to rub her stomach. She'd liked him to stroke it when she was pregnant, and this was still a way of bringing her some calm. She thought it was related to meditation—the diaphragm was—but it felt as though he was moulding her to him as she settled more closely against him. Soon he couldn't distinguish her body or her breathing from his own, presumably because he'd gone to sleep.

  The inclination of the seat helped. It had reclined all the way to horizontal. His breaths had grown so even that they were indistinguishable from the unwavering note of the Jetstream, which sounded like the voice of the featureless dark outside the window. Some detail seemed capable of troubling him, and eventually he remembered that he'd dumped his luggage in the aisle beside him rather than stowing it overhead. Surely it wasn't worth waking up for when there appeared to be no cabin crew to stumble over it, but he was jerked awake by an urgent bleeping and a voice that identified it as an alarm.

  Why was she saying there was no cause for it when it was so nervously insistent? He felt as if the violent jolt had dislocated his ability to grasp language—as if he'd left too much of his intelligence behind in the dream. The incessant repetition of the note seemed capable of driving every other sense out of his mind, and he had no idea how long he took to grow aware that Melanie was still clasping his hand. It allowed him to recognise that he'd heard her saying "Now there's the alarm."

  How could it still be dark at this hour? If it wasn't, where had his sight gone? Perhaps some of his perceptions needed to catch up with him, but he had to grip Melanie's hand more fiercely than she was holding his before he felt able to risk opening his eyes. She was lying on her back, waiting to meet his gaze. "What were you thinking?" she said.

  It might have been a gentle accusation, and he wasn't going to admit that he'd been unaware of her. "I can't with this," he said and stretched out his hand to shut off the racket, which had begun to put him in mind of a very young child at a keyboard. The abrupt hush let him notice how flat the light appeared to be, but he managed to recall his promise. "I'll tell them the sun's up."

  "We both will."

  Why might he have a problem in reaching the door? Because he could fall over his suitcase, of course, which was where he remembered leaving it. On the door his and Melanie's dressing-gowns looked shrunken by emptiness, or at least they would if he let them. He gave Melanie a vigorous hug once he'd shoved his fists through the synthetic silk sleeves and tied the slippery cord. As she crossed the landing to waken Amy he made for Tom's room.

  The curtains framed a sky so featurelessly white that it could have been last night's in negative. Its muffled pallid light showed him the familiar chaos of the boy's room, clothes and books and computer games strewn on and around the desk overlooked by football posters. While the bed was thoroughly rumpled, it was unoccupied. Not seeing Tom filled him with a panic that he heard in Melanie's voice as well. "Amy?" she was pleading.

  Slater twisted around to see that the girl's bedroom was deserted too. As his mind seized on the extravagant disorder she'd left behind and posters for pop stars stared back at him, he might have been making a desperate bid to cling to some sense of his daughter. She and her brother amounted to far more than that, and as Slater told himself so he heard Amy call "We're here."

  "We've had our breakfast," Tom shouted.

  "You can't have had much," their mother said.

  There was certainly no smell of breakfast, which might have wakened Slater. "Who's going in the bathroom?" Melanie asked him.

  "Why don't we both?"

  They hadn't often shared it since Amy was born, but he wondered if he'd been alone in wanting to do so now. "Wash up if you've finished," Melanie called down the stairs, "and then these rooms are overdue for tidying if you're ready for school."

  How anxious was she to restore a domestic routine? Sharing the bathroom wasn't quite as Slater thought it used to be. Although they kept touching and following that with a smile, Melanie seemed distracted by listening for the children, wherever they were in the house. Slater felt compelled to strain his ears and saw her relax when they were rewarded with domestic sounds offstage. As he and Melanie returned to the bedroom Amy called "Hurry down, we want you."

  "We're making you toast," Tom shouted.

  Now that he'd said it Slater could smell it. No doubt the steam that had turned the bathroom mirror as blank as the sky had prevented him. "Save your voices. Remember the concert," he told the children.

  Melanie was straightening hastily up from the dressing-table mirror. She was in one of her business outfits—metallic grey suit, polo-necked blouse. He'd never known her to dress so fast, which seemed to urge him to be at least as quick, especially since she lingered at the top of the stairs while he did his best. She kept him in sight but started downstairs before he emerged from the room. "Here come your customers," she called.

  Amy was wielding tongs to pass Tom slices out of the toaster. He was diligently buttering them—at least, applying a synthetic substitute—all the way to every corner, as if they were outlines he had to fill in. He and his sister were wearing their St Dunstan's uniforms, the green of which had been putting Slater in mind of spring for weeks. He should have known the children would have made coffee too, and the white mugs on the equally colourless table were exuding steam like their own substance rendered vague. He sat opposite Melanie and heard her crunch a piece of toast, delicately echoing the sound inside his head. "Compliments to the kitchen," he said once his speech was clear.

  "And the people in it," Melanie said as if this needed establishing. "Are you two ready to go when we've finished?"

  Slater glanced at the clock on the cooker to see the matchstick puzzle of the digits adopt a new shape. "I'll run them to school," he said.

  "We both can."

  Surely Melanie's first job of the day wouldn't take her in that direction, and he thought of reminding her until he glimpsed determination in her eyes. If she had to deal with some anxiety, he was sure that she was st
rong enough to do so by herself—she was clearly not inviting discussion, especially in front of the children—and so he said "Who's travelling with whom?"

  "I will with mummy," Amy said at once.

  "The men will lead the trek, shall we?" This aimed to be more of a joke than it seemed to end up, and he confined himself to the sounds inside his head until he and Melanie had cleared their plates. "Let's see what the day has in store," he said.

  It seemed to have little enough for the moment. All along the street the trees were as motionless as the pallid slab of the sky, which turned the windows of the houses into blank rectangles that might almost have been waiting to be written on. Presumably the neighbours who went to work had already gone or were yet to emerge. The cars yipped like electronic puppies at each other, and as the children climbed in Tom called to his sister "See you at school."

  His voice sounded not just dwarfed by the silence but muffled, as if the sky had shut it in. The doors shut with four hollow thuds, and Slater swung the Astra out of the drive. Beyond St Peter Street the houses grew taller while the spaces between them demonstrated how low the sky had grown. Soon a park seemed to bring it even closer, and Slater saw how bare the trees still were, as if the leaves had found too little light to coax them forth. As he glanced in the mirror to remind himself where Melanie and Amy were, Tom said "Did you miss the earthquake, dad?"

  Was this another reason for Slater's mother to be worried? It reminded him that he had to call her. "On the island, do you mean?" he said. "When did that happen?"

  "It woke me up when we were waiting for you to come home. Everything was shaking. Me as well."

  "I'm sorry I wasn't there." Slater wasn't sure if he was apologising or just regretted not having shared the experience. "Did anything break?"

  "I don't know." The idea seemed to take the boy unawares. "I didn't see."

  "Then I expect it didn't. I haven't noticed anything," Slater said, only to wonder if he should. "Did Amy or your mother?"

  "It wasn't just me. It was everything."

  Slater had to work out the question Tom thought he'd asked. If the rest of the family had been unaware of any tremor, perhaps the boy had dreamed it but was determined not to think so. The road had brought them to an even wider one that was flanked and divided by trees, and it led to a profusion of green—not leaves but the uniforms of children trooping into St Dunstan's. Slater watched Tom and Amy until they were lost in the uniformed crowd, and then he noticed Melanie waving at him in the mirror—how insistently before he'd realised, he couldn't say. "Stay in touch," she mouthed.