The Pretence

by Ramsey Campbell

  As Slater cancelled the order he saw his postcode vanish from the screen, and was disconcerted by how vulnerable this made him feel. He found himself taking hold of the phone in his pocket like some kind of talisman. A glance showed him it hadn't received any messages, which seemed reassuring enough to let him say "You'd have felt what my family did the other night."

  "Why," Allen said with an oddly guarded look, "what did they do?"

  "Nothing." The word seemed too bare, not to mention defensive. "They didn't do anything at all," Slater insisted. "I'm saying what they felt."

  "Which other night?"

  "Not the last one. The one before."

  "The last one." Perhaps the man was simply sampling the phrase. "Nonesday, you mean," Allen said. "You're telling me I know what they felt."

  "I'm assuming you must have felt it as well, knowing where you live."

  "Didn't you just blank that out? What are we meant to have felt?"

  "I'm told it was an earthquake."

  "I don't think I'd have felt one of those."

  Slater couldn't very well not ask "Why, what else was happening?"

  "I don't know what you'd call it. Maybe a bit of a seizure. First one I'd had in all my life."

  Though the man was visibly reluctant to talk about it, Slater felt compelled to learn "What did it do to you?"

  "Put me out like a light. I don't know how long I was. Next thing I knew it was starting to be the next day."

  Slater wasn't sure that he wanted to ask "Have you any idea what time it happened?"

  "I'd say about midnight." Some kind of resolution made the man add "No, midnight it is."

  "It sounds like what some of my family felt." Having said that, Slater was driven to add "Someone at my children's school was talking about it as well."

  "What did they say to you?"

  "I wasn't there. They were asking a teacher." Although he felt as if he'd already said too much, he told Allen 'Apparently the teacher didn't like it much and took them to see someone."

  "A doctor, would that be?"

  "I don't know." In a moment Slater blurted "Nobody seems to. That's what bothers me."

  "You needn't let it. They weren't one of yours by the sound of it."

  "I oughtn't to be concerned just with my family."

  "You want to watch what you let in your mind these days."

  Before Slater could enquire what this had to do with Allen or anyone outside the family, Shelley Blake said "When you're in the shop it should be on the shop."

  Slater had no idea how long she had been listening or even where she'd come from, though Allen looked unsurprised enough to suggest he'd been aware of her. "I think it is," Slater objected, "if I'm dealing with a customer."

  "I'd better stop pretending to be one then, hadn't I?" Allen took his leave by adding "Thanks for looking for me."

  Shelley kept her glaze on Slater, who said "I believe he's a neighbour of ours."

  She might almost have been giving him a minute's silence before she said "Some thoughts are best kept to yourself."

  "You don't mean that one."

  It wasn't much of a joke, and even less once it was out. As if he hadn't spoken Shelley said "A lot better if you don't have them at all."

  "Forgive me, what are we talking about?" When she gave him a stare as blank as the sky—it looked like a refusal to think—he said "I've never been a Finalist, if that's what you're getting at. I'm even less likely to be one now."

  He wouldn't have thought it possible for her eyes to grow blanker. "I wish you hadn't brought that up," she said. "Try keeping your mind on the job."

  When she moved away he turned his attention to the racks, and his awareness of her vanished like a breath, taking his rage at her admonition with it. Where had he been before he was interrupted? Best to start again at the beginning in order not to be distracted by the hours that were dancing in the air. Even if they were invisible, were they rendering time more substantial? He didn't quite know what he meant by that, especially since he'd forgotten whether they were elephants or hippopotami. Besides confusing him, this made him think he ought to recall something else. There was just his family, and a surreptitious glance at his mobile confirmed that they still hadn't sent him a message, although why should he feel reassured that there was no sign of them? Perhaps they were waiting for some word from him.

  As he brought their names into the destination window he wished his mother had a mobile too. Was Melanie keeping in touch with her parents? He assumed she must be, but he hadn't room for any more people in his mind just now; he was too busy thinking of a message. I'm all right, he typed and added so long as you are, holding the phone as low as he could reach. Every letter emitted a muted bleep that reminded him how electronic the communication was, and he couldn't help feeling spied upon, even though he wasn't visible in any of the security mirrors, at least not to himself. He launched the message and watched the icon blink to indicate that his words were on their way. The instant the symbol subsided he put away the mobile, and looked up to see a man and woman entering the shop.

  Though he didn't recall having seen them before, he knew they were security. They were so identically watchful that their expressions seemed to sum up the whole of them. He could easily have fancied that their vigilance had clenched their compact faces. He glanced about in search of a shoplifter or some other kind of criminal, but couldn't even see a customer. Those of his colleagues he could see were keeping their heads well down. He managed not to realise who the quarry was until the newcomers paced around either end of the music racks to close in on him.

  They were in uniform, twin outfits so thoroughly grey that they looked close to denying any colour. The woman's cropped hair was only slightly longer than the man's, and her eyebrows were even less defined than his, as though to compensate. Their lips and eyes were nearly as pale as their skin, which had all the smoothness of the sky. The woman opened her mouth, but it was her partner who said "Mr Derek."

  Slater did his best to feel misidentified. "That's not me."

  Their attention seemed to converge on his badge. "It's on the record, Mr Slater," the woman said.

  "I am, am I?" he said and felt as if his words were playing with him. "What's the trouble?"

  "You won't want to discuss it here," the man said.

  Slater wasn't far from panic. "Is it to do with my family?"

  "It doesn't have to be."

  He would have liked to hear more reassurance in the woman's voice. "You want somewhere private, do you?"

  "We think you may," the man told him.

  Though Slater didn't know why he should feel responsible or even if he should, he made for the staffroom. At the plaque the guards loomed on either side of him. "You know who I am," he muttered, "don't start pretending you don't," and dragged his name out from his chest to fit to the reader. The door gave, and the solid pallor of the staffroom closed around him. As he found a chair at the head of the table, which appeared to have been scrubbed completely featureless, the man sat on his left while the woman sat opposite her colleague, and Slater could have thought their faces were adding to the blankness of the room. "So," he said in an attempt to regain some sense of the situation, "what can I do for you?"

  "Better do it for yourself," the woman said.

  "And your family."

  "A bit of a task," Slater retorted, "if I don't know what I'm doing."

  They met this with a look that put him in mind of pincers gripping him. "We hear you've been having doubts," the man said.

  "Hear from whom?" When their eyes grew blank as a silence rendered visible, Slater said "Has someone here been talking about me?"

  "No need for that."

  He wasn't sure whether the man was rebuking him, even when the woman said "We've observations of our own."

  "You've been observing me, have you?" He felt as if their inexpressiveness was swallowing his rage without a trace. "And all you've found," he said, "is I've been having doubts."

>   "And disturbing other people," the woman said.

  "Which other people?" Slater had a disconcertingly undefined sense that he shouldn't have asked that, or indeed "Doubts about what?"

  "The state of things," the man said like a warning.

  "Since when haven't we been allowed to question that, whatever it is? I didn't think that was the kind of place I was living in."

  "Perhaps it's time it was," the woman said.

  "If it's for everyone's good."

  "My god, you sound like Finalists. They couldn't see beyond their own beliefs either."

  "No," the woman said, "we're the opposite."

  "And they're one thing you should forget about," the man said.

  Slater wasn't going to be told what he ought to remember. As incredulously as he could manage he said "Is this really all because I was asking about the earthquake?"

  Nobody spoke. Their eyes might even have been trying to deny that he had and to convince him of it as well. Anger indistinguishable from panic provoked him to blurt "Are you the same people who take children away for asking too much?"

  He didn't need their eyes to tell him that he had. They could hardly arrest him for it, and he demanded "What happens to them?"

  "They see the truth." Just as tonelessly the woman said "Exactly what do you think you're going to achieve?"

  "You're doing nobody any good," the man said, "least of all yourself."

  Slater had a grotesque sense of listening to parents. He'd found nothing to say when an electronic clank resounded through the room. "Better see what you have," the woman said.

  The phone clanked again as he took hold of it, and once more as he fumbled it out of his pocket. "Take your time," the male guard said.

  This infuriated Slater almost too much to let him finger the keys. We are, he saw at last, and then We are and We are. Of course that didn't mean the senders were together. Tom and Amy might be, and presumably Melanie felt able to speak for them all. "It's my family," he said.

  "Are they as they ought to be?"

  Before Slater could respond to her question the woman's partner said "Best concentrate on keeping them that way."

  Slater was on the brink of enquiring what kind of threat this was meant to be, but only said "How do you suggest I should do that?"

  "You might try responding to them." the woman said.

  He barely held back from retorting that he didn't need this kind of advice. How much did she think she knew about him and his family? How closely could they have been observed? He did his best to think he was saving them as he replied Then we all are. He looked up to find the guards were gazing in the vague direction of the subdued music, Bach tramping eternally uphill. "Are you giving us that?" the woman said.

  Had they even watched him choose the disc? Slater couldn't quite ask but said "It's part of my job."

  "We'll let you get back to the rest," the man said.

  Slater couldn't risk believing they'd finished with him until they stood up in unison. They stood aside to let him touch his badge to the inner plaque, and then they led or at any rate accompanied him to the music section, where they lingered to watch him start putting the Adams albums in sequence. "That's more like it," the man said. "Order keeps the world in shape."

  "That's what you should be about, Mr Paul."

  "Mr Slater," the man added or amended.

  While resenting their praise Slater was disgusted to find that it came as a relief, all of which he kept to himself in the hope they would leave him alone. He concentrated on his task until he realised they'd gone away, and then he did his utmost to forget them and whatever they represented. He couldn't afford any more distractions; he had to finish before it was time to leave for the concert. The clatter of plastic reminded him of tiles in a gambling game, and he was struggling to focus only on the names when he became aware that Shelley Blake was watching him. "Don't let me take your mind off it," she said.

  "I'm afraid our visitors did." Having managed to recall that she hadn't been responsible for them, Slater said "Sorry if they bothered you."

  "They shouldn't bother anyone."

  "They rather did me. If you're wondering—"

  "I'm not, Paul. I don't want to know, and nobody else does. So long as they're happy, that's all that matters."

  "I'd say at least a few more people do."

  "Nobody's saying you shouldn't keep them in mind."

  The conversation had begun to feel as indefinite as a discussion in a dream, and he went back to rearranging names. He hadn't time for lunch, and he could do without dealing with customers too, not that he was aware of any. The light of the sky seemed as artificially constant as the glow of the fluorescents overhead, all of which robbed him of any sense of the passing of time. When he became aware of Shelley Blake once more he could have thought she had never moved away, but his watch showed him he'd come to the end of his shift. "Well, Paul," she said.

  This sounded no less neutral than the sky looked, and he strained to find some meaning in it. "I think I'm finished for the day," he said.

  "Is it as it should be?"

  Someone else had said the like of that recently, but he couldn't recall any more. "It is for now. I'll come back to it next time."

  "Tomorrow."

  "Not tomorrow." Her word felt altogether too possessive, and he had to reclaim the day. "Sunday," he said. "I'm with my family tomorrow. I should be with them now."

  "I must have forgotten you weren't here." With a look that seemed to want to hold him where he stood she said "We will be."

  He would have supposed so without being told, and he didn't understand her emphasis. Outside the shop the parked cars seemed more faded than ever. No doubt the daylight was too muffled to dispel the frost, which helped to give them an abandoned look. The yip with which the Astra greeted him sounded enfeebled, surely because so many vehicles were in the way; he needn't panic over thinking the electronics had run down. He started the engine and set off the wipers to bring the world back into some kind of focus. While it wasn't yet time for the concert, he couldn't help growing nervous while he waited for the windows to clear.

  He would have expected to find more people heading home on the main road. Where he turned towards the school the dilapidated shops looked grey as ash and hardly more substantial, as if they might collapse before his eyes. In the cemetery the trees were propping up the sky, and he couldn't make out a single inscription; the stones might as well have been blank. An open space showed him St Dunstan's ahead. The mass of railings edged apart, letting the long blocks of the school regain their shape, and he saw a solitary figure in the yard.

  It was Melanie. He parked behind her car in the line of frozen vehicles alongside the featureless slabs of the pavement and hurried into the schoolyard. "Am I late?" he called.

  "You just aren't," Melanie said, already heading for the main entrance.

  Beyond the doors, which were as silent as they were imposing, a corridor that apparently had no time for colours led towards the blurred murmur of an audience. A stretch of the left-hand wall was occupied by overcoats unnecessarily reminiscent of abandoned wings. As Slater hastened after Melanie the tuneless mass of voices kept any identifiable words to itself, and he had an odd sense of overhearing a rehearsal. The murmur rose as though to greet him when he opened the door to the assembly hall, where the sight of hundreds of backs of heads seemed to render the dialogue even more secretive. As he hurried ahead of Melanie in search of unoccupied seats he felt no less anxious than he had in the car park. He didn't think he'd breathed for a while by the time he located a pair of empty seats near the middle of the third row from the bare stage. "Excuse me," he called above the blur of voices, "are those anyone's?"

  Every face between him and the spaces turned to gaze at him. Of course only their movements were identical. "They'll be yours," someone said.

  All the watchers faced the stage and stood up in unison to make way for Melanie, and Slater was reminded of illustrations popping u
p from a book he'd owned as a child. They stayed on their feet until he passed along the row, keeping Melanie in sight, which meant the series of faces on the edge of his vision lost any individuality they had. As he sat down, the line of figures did, but he couldn't hear the folding seats for the omnipresent murmur, which had begun to seem as indistinct as the sky that was the entire content of the high windows. He found the murmur breathlessly oppressive, and was struggling to think of some conversation when it faded into silence as though a volume control had been turned down. The headmistress had taken the stage. "Welcome to St Dunstan's," she said.

  He was thrown by her resemblance to Shelley Blake, though he was unable to recall how else he might have expected her to look. Her fingers were loosely intertwined like a reminiscence of a prayer, which made him feel guilty, singled out at school. He and Melanie had professed enough of a belief to have the children enrolled at St Dunstan's, but only because of its musical reputation. At least their lack of a belief was strong enough to fend off the likes of the Finalists, he told himself as the headmistress said "You know how much time we've spent getting ready for you and I know you'll agree it has been worthwhile."

  She had more to say while some of the pupils carried music stands and chairs onstage, to be followed by the orchestra with their instruments. Slater wondered why all this had been left so late, although he hadn't realised when he'd seen the stage was bare. The muted activity seemed to merge into an undifferentiated blur that distracted him from the speech, but he managed to hear the headmistress say "You've come for the music, not to hear me. Here's some I'm sure you know."

  Slater did before the orchestra had played five notes. It was the Pastoral, and performed a good deal more to his taste than in the film or at the shop. The cartoon images seemed to be leaving him alone, and he found himself waiting for the hymn after the storm. It wasn't actually a hymn; Beethoven hadn't been naive enough to think it would bring back the sun, and it couldn't hold off the night either. Slater was reminded of the Finalists; suppose their belief had been the strongest in the world, however briefly? They had certainly managed to convey it to everyone he could bring to mind. It might have been too powerful to have gone away, in which case what had happened to it? Of course it was irrational, but then so were its adherents, and mightn't that add to its power for them? Where had they all gone? There was no point in glancing at his neighbours—that wouldn't show him whether they were among the faithful—but the line of faces dwindling towards the walls troubled him, especially the faces at the far end, where he could have thought they were merging with the pale blurred surface. At last the symphony disintegrated into an explosion of applause, and as Slater stopped clapping the headmistress said "Now it's time for voices."