The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  She was often aware of his suffering: twinges of pain or grief deep within him, almost concealed. She tried to comfort him without betraying her glimpses. Perhaps one day she would write about him, but now she couldn't stand back far enough to observe him; nor did she want to.

  And the people he knew! There was the folk group who sang in more languages than Betty could recognize. They sang in a pub, and the barman joined in; in the intervals he told her the history of the songs, while his casually skillful hands served drinks. There was the commune—at least, it was more like a commune than anything else—trying to live in a seventeenth-century cottage in a seventeenth-century way: six young people and an older man, one of what seemed to be a group of obsessed local historians and conservationists. There was the painter who taught in the evenings, a terrifying woman whose eyes shone constantly; all her pupils painted landscapes which, when stared at, began to vibrate and become mystical symbols.

  Betty enjoyed meeting them all, even the unnervingly intense painter. She felt invulnerable within James' calm. But she wasn't sure how much use these meetings would be. Sometimes when she thought of her book, she felt irritable, frustrated; it was changing form, she could no longer perceive it clearly, couldn't grasp it. Surely its new form would be clear to her soon; meanwhile she avoided touching it, as if it were a raw wound in her mind. Instead, she enjoyed the calm.

  Sex with James was a deeper calm. She learned that the first time he had to calm her down. He'd taken her to a meeting of the British Movement, addressed by a man who looked like a large peevish red-faced schoolboy, and who spoke in generalizations and second-hand anecdotes. A few of the audience asked most of the questions; later these people gathered in someone's front room, where Betty and James had managed to accompany them. They proved to be British Supremacists. Some were young, and shouted at Betty's disagreements; some were old—their old eyes glanced slyly, suspiciously at her notebook, at her. They examined her as if she were a misguided child. Didn't she believe in her country? in tradition? in helping to make things the way they used to be? Just what did she think she was doing? Eventually, mute with fury, she strode out.

  James followed her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I thought it would be worth your meeting them." She nodded tight-lipped, not caring whether he realized she didn't blame him. When they reached her flat she still felt coiled tight, wound into a hard lump in her stomach.

  She tried to make coffee. She spilled hot drips over her hand, and dropped the cup. "Bloody fucking shit!" she screamed, and kicked the fragments against the skirting-board, ground their fragments smaller with her toes.

  James put his arm about her shoulders. He stroked her hair, her back, massaging her. "Don't get yourself into a state," he said. "I don't want you like that." She nestled more snugly against him; her shaking slowed, eased. He stroked the small of her back, her buttocks, her legs; his hand slid upward, lifting her skirt, slowly and gently baring her. She felt enormously safe. She opened moistly.

  He switched off the light as she guided him to her bed. Shortly she felt him naked beside her; warm, gentle, surrounding her with calm. In fact he seemed almost too calm, as though he were an observer, detached. Was he doing this simply to soothe her? But his penis felt hard and ready. Her body jerked eagerly.

  He held himself back from her. I'm ready, ready now! she pleaded with him, gasping, but he was still fondling more pleasure into her, until it was almost pain. She tried to quicken him: his penis tasted salty, much more so than her first boyfriend's, the only boy (she'd vowed) her father would ever lose her.

  Eventually James raised her knees leisurely and slipped into her: thick, heavily knobbed, unyielding yet smooth. The growing ripples of her pleasure were waves at once; they overwhelmed her; all of her gasped uncontrollably. She didn't feel him dwindle. As she lay slack he kissed her forehead. In a minute she was alone.

  That was the only thing she disliked: the way he left her as if he were late for an appointment. Once or twice she asked him to stay, but he shook his head sadly. Perhaps he had to return to his home, however poor, so as not to admit he was ashamed of it. She feared to plead, in case that troubled his calm. But alone in her flat at night, she felt uneasy.

  She was disturbed by what she had seen looking in at her. A dream, of course: a pale form the size of a head that was never really there in the gap between the curtains when she sat up, frightened by her own cry. She'd seen it several times, at the edge of sleep: an impatient dream, tugging at her while she was awake. But once, when she'd sat up, she had seen it dimly, nodding back from the window. She'd seen something—a bird, a flight of waste paper, the glancing of a headlight. Or a hallucination.

  Perhaps it was the last of the drug. She'd thought it had worn off after the footsteps in the alley; surely it had caused them. But it might still be able to touch her near her sleep. She couldn't tell James about the business with Alastair; she didn't know where to start. That helped her to accept that James was entitled to his own unspoken secret, but at the same time her muteness seemed to refuse the reassurance of his calm, to leave her vulnerable there.

  Then one day she saw her chance to be reassured. It was evening; they were walking back to her flat. He had introduced her to an antique dealer whose house was his shop, and who lived somewhere among rooms that were mazes of bookcases. James talked about books now as they strolled: for some he'd had to search for years. Did James keep them all in his mysterious home, she wondered? Houses sauntered by. The cottage where Alastair's mother lived was approaching.

  Betty tried not to be uneasy. Nothing could happen, she was with James. The sky steamed slowly, white and thick, low above the roofs; it pressed down the quiet, oppressively, until their footsteps sounded like the insistence of relentless hollow clocks. It held down the flat thin light of the streets. The terraces between Betty and the cottage were full of the mouths of alleys. Any of them might propel a figure into her path.

  Abruptly the terrace halted. A railing led to open gates; between the bars grass glowed, headstones and a church shone dull white. All at once it occurred to Betty that she still wasn't sure whether Alastair was dead. Wouldn't he be buried here, if anywhere? She was sure any truth would be a relief. "Let's go in here," she said.

  The evening had darkened before she found the stone; it was darker still beneath the trees. The new smooth marble gleamed between stains of the shadows of branches. She had to kneel on the grave before she could read anything. At last she made out ALASTAIR, and the date his letter had arrived.

  "Who was he?" James said as she rose.

  She thought she heard jealousy, a secret pain. "Oh, nobody," she said.

  "He must have been somebody to you."

  There was no mistaking the sound of hurt now. "Nobody worth bothering about," she said. "I wouldn't have bothered with him if I'd known you."

  She held him tight and thrust his lips open. One of his hands clasped her buttocks hard. She was still kissing him when she felt his other hand at work between their bodies. He freed his penis; she could barely see it, a darker shadow, gleaming. "Oh no, James," she gasped. "Somebody might see."

  "There's nobody else about. Besides, it's dark." He didn't bother to conceal his pain. He sounded rejected, as though she were refusing him for fear of offending Alastair. She dug her nails into his shoulders, confused. When he began to strip her beneath her skirt and caress her, she protested only silently.

  As he entered her, her back thumped against a tree. His glans stretched her again and again, like a fist, as he thrust. Sections of her mind seemed to part, to watch each other. She saw herself proving she was free of Alastair, to herself and to James. It was as though this were a chapter she was writing, an almost absurdly symbolic chapter.

  But she could just see James' face, calm, uninvolved. She wanted him to feel something this time, to let go of his calm. Couldn't he feel her giving herself? She strained her body down on his, she wrapped her thighs about his hips, squeezing; the treetrunk rubbed her buttocks
raw through her skirt. But when she'd exploded herself into limpness he took himself out of her at once.

  She lay on the grass, regaining her breath. The red flashes her lids had pressed into her eyes were fading. Above her something pale nodded forward, peering down from the tree. A bird, only a bird. Before she could make herself look up it had withdrawn into the darkness, rustling.

  She must satisfy him. That goal became clearer every time she met him. She loved his calm, but he shouldn't be calm during sex: it made her feel rejected, observed, though she knew that was irrational. Once she seemed almost to reach him, but felt his unspoken pain holding him back. She felt obscurely that he didn't enjoy sex in her flat, that for him there was something missing. If only he would invite her home! Whatever it was like she wouldn't mind. All she wanted was to feel his orgasm.

  Ironically—perhaps because she had been too preoccupied with Alastair to worry about it—her book was taking shape. Now she could see it properly, it excited her: an answer to her first novel, a book about the character of Brichester, about its strangenesses.

  She found herself thinking inadvertently of her father. "How can you write such stuff?" he'd demanded. "Oh well, if you _have__ to get known that way," he'd greeted the reviews of her novel. They had had a row; she had fled its viciousness, for she'd seen that it could be an excuse to leave him—him and his possessiveness, his cold glum moralizing, his attempts to mold her into a substitute for her dead mother. And now she was contradicting her novel, admitting it was false. She saw her father standing back from his bedroom window where he thought she couldn't see, mouth slack, eyes blindly bright with tears—She didn't need to remember these things. James would be here soon.

  He seemed to have run out of people to introduce her to; he was showing her places now. Today's was a church, St. Joseph's in the Wood. They climbed Mercy Hill, which was tiered with terraces. Huge dark stains uncurled sluggishly over the sky. The church stood beyond the top of the slope, deep in trees.

  Betty walked around it, taking notes: thirteenth-century; some signs of the Knights Templar had been partially erased; Victorians had slipped stained glass into the windows. The trees surrounded it with quiet. The foliage was almost as dark as the clouds, and moved like them; above her everything shifted darkly, ponderously. In the silence dim vague shadows crawled over the church, merging. She hurried back to the porch, to James. "Shall we go in?" he said.

  It was quieter within, and dim. Though small, the church was spacious; their footsteps clattered softly, echoed rattling among the pews. Unstable dark shapes swayed over the windows, plucking at saints' faces. Betty walked slowly, disliking to stay too far ahead of James. But while she stayed close she could feel he was excited, eager. Had he planned a surprise? She turned, but his face was calm.

  The stone void rang with their echoes. She stood in the aisle, gazing at the arch before the altar: a pointed arch, veined with cracks but unshaken. On either side of the altar stood a slim window; amber-like, each glass held a saint. She leaned over the altar-rail to peer. She felt James' hands about her waist. Then one was pushing the small of her back; the other was lifting her skirt.

  At once she knew why he had been excited. Perhaps that was why he had brought her here. "Not here!" she cried.

  His hands stopped, resting where they were. She glanced back at his face. For the first time she saw unconcealed pain there. He needed to make love to her here, she realized; he'd admitted it to her, and she'd recoiled from it—the means to his satisfaction.

  "Oh, James." She couldn't help sounding sad and bewildered. Part of her was pleading: anywhere but here. But that was how her father would moralize, she thought. His moralizing had turned her against her childhood religion long ago. If James needed it to be here then that was natural, that was life. Nobody would see them, nobody would come here on a day like this. She turned her face away from him, letting her body go loose. She closed her eyes and gripped the rail.

  She felt him baring her buttocks; the cool air of the church touched them. Now he was parting them; her sphincter twitched nervously. Why didn't he turn her? What was he—He stretched her buttocks wide and at once was huge and snug within her. That had never been done to her before. Her shocked cry, an explosion of emotions she couldn't grasp, fled echoing around the church, like a trapped bird.

  It was all right. She had reached her goal at last. It was experience, she might write about it sometime, write about how she felt. But she suppressed her gasps; the church mustn't hear. God, would he need this every time? She felt him thumping within her, the sounds of her body were strident amid the quiet. Shadows threshed toward her from the altar; the church frowned darkly, hugely. Someone stood at the window on the left of the altar, watching her.

  Only the stained glass. But the figure of the saint seemed to fill, to become solid, as if someone were standing within the outline. He pressed against the glass, dim and unstable as the shadows, gazing at her with the saint's face. The glass cleared at once, but with a wordless cry she thrust her hands behind her, throwing James out of her. Her buttocks smacked shut.

  She ran down the aisle, sobbing dryly. When she heard James pursuing she ran faster; she didn't know what to say to him. She stumbled out of the church. Which way had they come? The darkness stooped enormously toward her, creaking; shadows splashed over the grass, thick and slow. Was that the avenue, or that one? She heard the church door open, and ran between the trees.

  The dimness roared about her, open-throated. The heavy darkness tossed overhead, thickening. She lost the avenue. Dim pillars surrounded her with exits beyond exits, leading deeper into the roaring dark; their tangled archways rocked above her, thrashing loudly. Someone was following her, rapid and vague. She wasn't sure it was James.

  The trees moved apart ahead. The wider gap led to little but dimness, but it was an avenue. She ran out from beneath the trees. Foliage hissed wildly on both sides of the avenue, darkness rushed over the grass, but her way was clear ahead. She ran faster, gasping. The avenue led to an edge full of nothing but sky; that must be the top of Mercy Hill. The avenue was wide and empty, except for a long dim sapling in the middle of her path. A crack rolled open briefly between the clouds, spilling gray light. She was running headlong toward the sapling, which was not a sapling at all: it was a dreadfully thin figure, nodding toward her, arms stretched wide. She screamed and threw herself aside, toward the trees; a root caught her foot; she fell.

  As soon as they reached her flat, James left her.

  When she'd recovered from the shock of her fall she had seen him bending down to her. He had helped her to her feet, had guided her through the hectic darkness, without speaking. There was no sapling on the path. His silence rebuked her for fleeing.

  He left her at her gate. "Don't leave me now," she pleaded, but he was striding away into the dark.

  He was being childish. Had he no idea why she'd fled? Most women wouldn't have let him get so far. She'd tried to understand him, yet the first time she needed understanding he refused to try. She slammed her door angrily. Let him be childish if he enjoyed it. But her anger only delayed her fear of being alone. She hurried through the flat, making sure the windows were locked.

  Days passed. She tried to work, but the thought of the nights distracted her; she couldn't stand the flat at night, the patient mocking stillness. She drifted toward the young people she'd interviewed. They knew she was a writer, they showed her off to friends or told her stories; they were comfortingly dull. Occasionally boys would invite her home, but she refused them—even though often as she lay in bed something moved at the window. If she drew the curtains tight, they moved as if it had got in.

  Each morning she went to the park. Flights of ducks applauded her visits, squawking, before they plunged into their washes on the lake. The trees filled with pink, with white. There was never anyone about: never James.

  One night a shadow appeared on her bedroom wall. She lay staring at it. It was taller than the ceiling; its head fol
ded in half at the top of the wall. Its outline trembled and shifted like steam. It was only a man, waiting for someone outside beneath the lamp. It dwindled to a man's size; it ceased to be a menacing giant. Suddenly she realized that the dwindling meant he had come to the window—he was staring in, and his head still seemed oddly dislocated. She buried her face in the pillow, shaking. It seemed hours before she could look to see that the shadow had gone.

  The next day James was in the park.

  She saw him as she neared the gate. He was standing at the edge of the lake, against the shattering light. She blinked; her eyes were hot with sleeplessness. Then she began to pace stealthily toward him, like a hunter. He mustn't escape again.

  No, that was silly. He wouldn't like her playing tricks on him. She strode loudly; her heels squeaked on the gravel. But he gazed at the sunlight scattered on the water, until she wondered if he meant to ignore her. Only when she was close enough to touch did he turn.

  His face was full of the unspoken: the memory or anticipation of pain. "I'm sorry," she said, though she hadn't meant to be so direct. "Please come back."

  After a while, when his face showed nothing but calm, he nodded. "I'll come to you tonight," he said. "Do you want me to stay?"

  "If you like." She didn't want to dismay him by seeming too eager. But at once she saw the shadow in her room. "Please. Please stay," she said.

  He gazed; she thought he wasn't sure whether she wanted him. He mustn't wonder about that. She would tell him all about Alastair. "I'll tell you some things I haven't told you," she said. "I'll tell you tonight. Then you'll understand me better."

  He smiled slightly. "I've something to tell you, too." He moved away alongside the lake. "Until tonight," he said.

  She ran home smiling. At last she dared think they might have more than half of a relationship. She would cook him meals instead of paying discreetly in restaurants. She could work without slowing to wonder whether she would see him today. She would be safe. Her smile carried her across the park.