The Pretence

by Ramsey Campbell

  The children shut their books at once. The blank pages Slater glimpsed were the flyleaves, of course. He poured drinks—lemonade for the children, wine for him and Melanie—while she loaded everybody's dishes, and then he remembered a question he'd wanted to ask. "Who's going to tell me about the earthquake?"

  Melanie frowned, and Amy produced a smaller but fiercer version. "Which one?" she said before her mother could speak.

  "How many have there been?"

  "None at all that I'm aware of," Melanie said. "Now why doesn't everyone—"

  "I believe there was a bit of one, wasn't there? Tom said you had it while I was on my way home."

  "Tom would," Amy said.

  "You must have felt it too," the boy protested. "You woke up like me."

  With all the loftiness her extra years had conferred upon her Amy told him "That wasn't an earthquake."

  "What was it, then?"

  "I don't know what woke me." As their mother made to intervene Amy said "I went all shivery. It was like having ripples in my tummy and my head."

  "That's the same thing. It wasn't just us, it was—"

  "You were worried about your father being late, that's all," Melanie said. "You can forget all about it now. Don't go getting yourselves worked up when you have your big day tomorrow."

  The children looked frustrated if not more thoroughly dissatisfied, and Slater did his best to divert them. "That's enough earthquakes for one day," he said, and when their faces stayed stubbornly baffled "Your mother's excelled herself today, hasn't she? I can't remember when it tasted so good."

  He was confusing himself if not them. Melanie hadn't made the lasagne today, and he couldn't even recall which of the two of them had been the cook. Soon enough everyone's plates looked as if they mightn't have held food at all, and the children left the table. "Don't go far," Melanie said and seemed to wonder why she had.

  "We're only going to watch," Amy said.

  As Slater passed Melanie items to put in the dishwasher he couldn't hear the television in the next room. When he and Melanie left the kitchen he heard sounds too rapid to identify, and the flat screen in the living-room met him with a series of random images like frames in a chaotic film. Tom was switching channels, only to complain "There's nothing on."

  "It looks as if there's far too much," Melanie said.

  "Let's have the control, please," Slater said.

  He lingered on some of the channels long enough to be sure what they were offering, but in no case was it much. The fragments of news seemed bland and overly familiar—predictions of prosperity, forecasts of employment, prognoses of technological developments, assurances of better times in store. Slater hoped all this would come true for Tom and Amy, but he saw it wasn't reaching them just now. Otherwise there were cartoons—"Seen it," Tom and then Amy announced—and quiz shows—"Seen it," the children chorused—and episodes of comedies— "Seen it" in every case. "Well then," Melanie said with impatience that Slater thought wasn't too far from nervousness, "what do you want to see?

  "The film with all the music in," Tom said, very nearly at once.

  "The one that's made of music," Amy seemed to deduce he had in mind.

  "I'm sure you know which that is, Paul."

  He could have thought the family was imitating one of the quiz shows. If Melanie knew the title, why couldn't she say? It must be quite a few years since they'd all seen the film. No wonder the children couldn't put a name to it, and as the title came to mind at last he saw the disc where it should be, under F on the shelf. ''Fantasia," he said for anyone who needed to know. Thumbing the disc out of its case, he slipped it into the player.

  The screen grew blank, unless it had already been, as the player engaged with the monitor. In a few moments a star described an arc like the skeleton of a rainbow on the screen. While the image was familiar— the Disney logo—Just now it seemed more like an omen of unnatural light. At least the disc menu lent Slater some control, and he started the film.

  He remembered it well enough, and he saw that the family did. A master of ceremonies introduced the conductor and the orchestra, whose instruments began to glow as they performed a reworking of Bach. As Slater recalled, the children had been captivated, but now the transformation of the music into an extra sense unsettled him, especially once the orchestra was reduced to abstract patterns that were supposed to represent the music. They reminded him how it was composed of electronic impulses translated by the system, and how his perception of it consisted of electronic disturbances in his brain; all his perceptions did—even the thought itself, not to mention the self that was having it. Although music often sent him into a reverie, he didn't care much for this one. Since trying to make his mind blank offered no reassurance, he did his best to confine his awareness to the patterns on the screen and in his head.

  Next came Tchaikovsky, and the children still giggled at the balletic vegetation. Slater could have thought their amusement was a little nervous, and the sight of flowers and mushrooms dancing as though they had faces and brains had lost its appeal for him. It seemed to suggest that music could bring the mindless to some kind of life—that other forms of electronic activity might as well. The music that followed took the shape of a mouse but also formed itself into a broom that executed a prancing march and multiplied into countless replicas of itself, enough to people a world. Slater might have imagined the world had collapsed from the artificiality of the situation, because now the images turned primordial, depicting chaos before they showed the birth and death of all life—no, just the prehistoric kind, too distant to be remembered. Why couldn't he stop thinking? What would happen if he did? The thought felt even more unwelcome, not least because it appeared to turn the monitor blank. The film had reached the intermission. "Have we had enough?" he said.

  The children only stared at him. but Melanie said "Why, have you?"

  Or was she asking why? Slater couldn't own up to the truth when he didn't know what it was. "Not unless you have," he said.

  He wasn't even sure if this was a plea. As he reached for the control Melanie said "It's something we're doing together."

  The orchestra returned before he would have been able to head them off, and then the master of ceremonies coaxed the soundtrack onstage. The sight of the unstable line creeping out of the side of the screen to cavort in time with various instruments roused all Slater's unwelcome thoughts. Eventually Beethoven drove it back into hiding, but the symphony felt like a recent memory Slater was trying to recapture, and not too accurately either. In the past he and Melanie might have exchanged winces at all the inappropriate portamento and pointed out the conductor's eccentricities to the children, but now the slithering of the violins from note to note seemed inseparable from the sinuous movements of the mythical creatures onscreen. They weren't memories, even ancient ones, but concepts that had never really existed, a thought that he found less than reassuring. A thunderstorm flung down by Zeus was sent packing by the sun, but soon the night was drawn over the land, an event rather too reminiscent of the sky outside the window, where the featureless expanse had turned black at some point Slater couldn't recall. Now what point was the film making about time? Hours didn't dance, and they certainly didn't take the form of ostriches or hippopotami. He felt as if the spectacle was undermining his grasp of the nature of time, but closing his eyes only made him nervous of what he might see when he opened them. Suppose there was nothing to see? He had to make himself hear the music in his head, and once he recalled what shapes it would be taking now—elephants and alligators—he was able to look. Another night was still to come, bringing a gigantic demon that reached down from a mountain to toy with its resurrected victims. Slater wanted to remember that it was conquered by daylight, but that didn't happen; a procession of vague figures carried feeble lights across an uncertain terrain where even the trees were indistinct, and at last the procession merged with an obscure pale radiance. "Well," Slater said and was anxious to find more to say. "I hope that li
ved up to our memories."

  "It was a bit different," Tom said.

  Since nobody else spoke, Slater couldn't avoid asking "How?"

  Tom seemed to wish he'd kept quiet, and glanced at his mother and sister as though for some kind of support. It was Amy who said "I thought the sun came back at the end."

  "Don't you think it does?" Melanie said, less like a question than a bid for reassurance.

  "That isn't the sun," Tom objected.

  "Maybe it was better," Slater tried suggesting while he wondered if they were talking just about the film. "I tell you what," he said. "If we don't see the sun tomorrow we'll go and try and find it at the weekend."

  Melanie pressed her lips together as if she might have liked him to have kept the notion to himself. "Why won't we see it tomorrow?" Tom protested.

  "I'm not saying we won't. There aren't any prophets here. I only meant if it carries on like this."

  Tom glanced at the window, where the gap between the curtains was apparently too thin to admit even a hint of light from the street. "For ever?"

  "Of course not for ever. Nothing lasts that long." Once again Slater thought he'd said too much, and now not enough. "Apart from us," he felt compelled to add.

  Amy seemed not to know where to look. "Just us?"

  "Now I said I'm not a prophet. They've all gone away till next time."

  "Which time, dad?"

  That was Tom, but Slater suspected the boy wasn't alone in wondering. "Whenever some other crowd thinks we're all due to come to an end," he said and saw this didn't appeal much to anyone. "But there are more like us who don't, aren't there? And we won."

  "How did we?" Amy said.

  He might have liked them simply to accept the notion, but perhaps he could hold it together. "By believing," he said and felt unexpectedly inspired. "That's all we have to do, and that answers your other question as well. Believe in whatever matters to you and it'll stay with you for ever."

  He hoped that made sense or at least felt as if it should, but he didn't need any more questions. "Now I'm for an early night," he said as he shut the system down, having extracted the disc, "and I shouldn't think it would do the rest of us any harm."

  Presumably they agreed, since they followed him. He could have thought they meant to queue outside the bathroom, extending the procession of family images that climbed out of the past and up the stairs. Instead they disappeared into the bedrooms as he shut the door, and he felt as if he was bursting into or at least venturing into song on their behalf, because he'd remembered a few more words to do with Barbara Allen. "All in the merry month of May, when green buds they were swelling... " It was a surely a promise that life would always revive and an explanation of why the trees were keeping back their leaves until then. Otherwise he made do with the melody, interrupted by brushing his teeth, which let him retrieve another line: "Young man, I think you're dying." He was too old for it to relate to him, and Tom was certainly too young, but as soon as it was uttered he regretted having loosed it. He sang louder without bothering with lyrics, as if deedledum and doodledum could make retrospective nonsense of the line. He was playing the concerned father, not reverting to a state before he'd acquired language, and fell silent as he made for bed.

  He might have inadvertently started an audition. While Melanie watched him undress and slip under the quilt they heard Amy recommence the song, though without any words that Slater could distinguish. Tom was next and just as apparently wordless, followed by his mother. As Slater listened to her contribution with his eyes shut he could have thought the family were signalling to one another, establishing where they were. He must be close to dreaming, and he fought to be aware when Melanie came to bed.

  The melody she was murmuring trailed off as she returned to him. He couldn't recall turning out the light, but he must have, given the dark. As she nestled against him and captured his arm she whispered "Don't let it be like last night."

  Her voice was so muted that he might have fancied he was hearing it just in his head. He didn't even know whether she had been speaking to him, but he said "Like what?"

  "We'll be able to sleep now you're home," Melanie said, taking a firmer hold on his arm.

  Did she mean them or the children as well, or perhaps not him at all? How could she know whether he'd slept on the plane? The flight and in particular the lurch it had suffered seemed to be his most vivid memory just now, which made him feel as though it might be repeated if he fell asleep—the lurch, at any rate. His awareness of hugging Melanie began to dissipate, consumed by the dark, and he felt threatened by sleep, but why should he feel that? Melanie was asleep—her breaths were as regular as her pulse, keeping time with it and his own—and she wasn't going anywhere so long as he kept hold of her, any more than he was. His consciousness lapsed for a moment, unless it was much longer, since as he struggled back to sentience he had to recall that he was holding Melanie. Singing under his breath might help him stay vigilant, but it was singing in his sleep that wakened him, although the man's voice didn't sound quite like his, however close it was. The words it seemed to have been finding weren't altogether accurate: not Allen but panic, and had he really heard "Young man, I think you're flying"? Perhaps the young man could be Tom after all, an idea that roused Slater to brave the vague dark, having left Melanie a hug he hoped would linger on his behalf. The boy was safe in bed; Slater was sure of it once he'd inched the quilt back from the dormant shape to reveal the dim still face. He mustn't stoop any closer—by the time he was near enough to feel Tom's breath, his own might wake the sleeper—and he contented himself with murmuring a scrap of the song like a lullaby; perhaps he'd heard it used that way somewhere. On his way back to Melanie he was dismayed to think he'd left someone out, a thought that felt like being seized by the dark, and he was in Amy's room so fast that he was afraid of waking her. When he succeeded in making out her face it was as peaceful as her brother's, and once he'd whispered the lullaby Slater retreated to his bed.

  Hadn't he undertaken something else for them? Yes, he'd promised them the sun. Though he needn't alert them when it came up, he wouldn't mind seeing it do so. He regained his hold on Melanie and remembered to caress her midriff while he waited for the night to begin to grow paler. His caresses found the rhythm of the breaths he could think he was sharing with her, and perhaps his brainwaves were adopting that pulse as well, because for an instant he seemed to feel everything merge before he felt nothing at all.

  The implosion of his consciousness wrenched him awake, and he clutched at the arms of the seat to save himself from plunging into whatever void awaited him. He found no arms, only a soft flatness that he couldn't even grasp. No, he was lying on his back, not flying after all. He was home in bed—alone in bed. His eyes flickered open to be met by darkness so apparently total that they winced shut at once. He was attempting to breathe when he heard Melanie say "Don't go off again, Paul. We're waiting for you."

  They were at the end of the bed. Although he felt he'd only blinked, it was daylight now, the same version as yesterday's. The children were wearing their St Dunstan's outfits, and Melanie was in her business uniform. "Stay awake, dad," Amy urged.

  "Then we can have breakfast," Tom said with enthusiasm.

  Slater had to laugh, affectionately enough. Surely nothing could be wrong if the most vital issue was breakfast. "Give me a chance to breathe," he said.

  As he heard their footsteps like a succession of heartbeats on the stairs he made for the bathroom. He did his best to sing in there, though the lyrics of the ballad kept eluding him. How was his reflection dealing with the few lines he brought to mind? In reverse or in some other kind of transformation? Obviously it was voiceless, but the sight made him feel threatened with the same lack, so that he went downstairs as soon as he could.

  Three slices of toast sprang up to greet him, and Tom brought them for Amy and himself to butter while Melanie poured coffee. Slater might have protested that he could do all this, or was the routine imp
ortant to the children? Perhaps it was helping them not to be nervous—about tonight's concert, of course. "Did everyone have a good night?" he said.

  The pause might have implied they knew his answer would be no. After somewhat more than a moment Amy admitted "It was better."

  "We heard you singing," Tom informed him.

  Slater couldn't tell if this was meant to support Amy's observation. "I'm glad we're all musical," Melanie said. "Whatever can bring us together."

  Surely he could take this at face value. He was working on his breakfast, though the muffled crunching in his skull sounded rather too much like some kind of collapse, when Tom said "What's that on you, dad?"

  Had he seen an insect or a blemish? Slater swallowed his abruptly dry mouthful as an aid to saying "What do you have in mind?"

  "The words you're putting in our heads."

  Slater supposed he ought to laugh, having realised Tom was thinking of the quotation on his Texts shirt. "Maybe they were there already, Tom. They're from a famous poem."

  "It's not famous to me," Tom said and gazed a challenge at his sister.

  "I don't know them either. Do you, mummy?"

  "Had we but world enough and time— " Melanie hesitated and then said "Had we but world enough and time... "

  "You're just being an echo," Tom protested. "We can see those."

  "I'm trying to think what should come next." With a reproachful look at Slater she confessed "Well, I can't."

  "You know it really, though," he was anxious to remind her.

  "If you say so, Derek. Now can we try and concentrate on what's important?"

  Using his old name had to be a rebuke for telling her what she ought to recall, but it made him feel misperceived. Tom giggled at it, though not as if he understood, and Amy said "Who's Derek?"

  "Just who I was when I was both your ages. As your mother says, it's not important. Not worth remembering at all."

  "So what's the rest, dad?" Tom said. "You have to know."