‘Actually, Jack, can I just slow you down a moment?’
‘Sorry. I’m babbling. That’s what a happy author sounds like. You understand why.’
‘I hope I do, but would you mind - I didn’t quite catch what you thought I said.’
‘Three hundred—’
‘Can I stop you there? That’s the total, or just under. As you say, publishing has changed. I expect a lot of the bigger houses are doing no better with some of their books.’
Boswell’s innards grew hollow, then his skull. He felt his mouth drag itself into some kind of a grin as he said, ‘Is that three hundred, sorry, nearly three hundred per title?’
‘Overall, I’m afraid. We’ve still a few little independent shops to call, and sometimes they can surprise you.’
Boswell doubted he could cope with any more surprises, but heard himself say, unbelievably, hopefully ‘Did you mention We Are
Tomorrow?’
‘How could we have forgotten it?’ Sedgwick’s enthusiasm relented at last as he said ‘I see what you’re asking. Yes, the total is for all three of your books. Don’t forget we’ve still the backlist to come, though,’ he added with renewed vigour.
‘Good luck to it.’ Boswell had no idea how much bitterness was audible in that, nor in ‘I’d best be getting back to work.’
‘We all can’t wait for the new story, can we?’
Boswell had no more of an answer than he heard from anyone else. Having replaced the receiver as if it had turned to heavy metal, he stared at the uninscribed slab of the computer screen. When he’d had enough of that he trudged to stare into the open rectangular hole of the Cassandra carton. Seized by an inspiration he would have preferred not to experience, he dashed upstairs to drag on yesterday’s clothes and marched unshaven out of the house.
Though the library was less than ten minutes’ walk away through sunbleached streets whose desert was relieved only by patches of scrub, he’d hardly visited it for the several years he had been too depressed to enter bookshops. The library was almost worse: it lacked not just his books but practically everyone’s, except for paperbacks with injured spines. Some of the tables in the large white high-windowed room were occupied by newspaper readers. MIDDLE EAST WAR DEADLINE EXPIRES ... ONE IN TWO FAMILIES WILL BE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE, STUDY SHOWS ... FAMINES IMMINENT IN EUROPE ... NO MEDICINE FOR FATAL VIRUSES...Most of the tables held Internet terminals, from one of which a youth whose face was red with more than pimples was being evicted by a librarian for calling up some text that had offended the black woman at the next screen. Boswell paid for an hour at the terminal and began his search.
The only listings of any kind for Torin Bergman were the publication details of the Cassandra Press books, and the same was true of Ferdy Thorn and Germaine Gossett. When the screen told him his time was up and began to flash like lightning to alert the staff, the message and the repeated explosion of light and the headlines around him seemed to merge into a single inspiration he couldn’t grasp. Only a hand laid on his shoulder made him jump up and lurch between the reluctantly automatic doors.
The sunlight took up the throbbing of the screen, or his head did. He remembered nothing of his tramp home other than that it tasted like bone. As he fumbled to unlock the front door the light grew audible, or the phone began to shrill. He managed not to snap the key and ran to snatch up the receiver. ‘What now?’
‘It’s only me, Dad. I didn’t mean to bother you.’
‘You never could,’ Boswell said, though she just had by sounding close to tears. ‘How are you, April? How are things?’
‘Not too wonderful.’
‘Things aren’t, you mean. I’d never say you weren’t.’
‘Both.’ Yet more tonelessly she said ‘I went looking for computer jobs. Didn’t want all the time mummy spent showing me how things worked to go to waste. Only I didn’t realise how much more there is to them now, and I even forgot what she taught me. So then I thought I’d go on a computer course to catch up.’
‘I’m sure that’s a sound idea.’
‘It wasn’t really. I forgot where I was going. I nearly forgot our number when I had to ring Rod to come and find me when he hasn’t even got the car and leave Gemima all on her own.’
Boswell was reaching deep into himself for a response when she said ‘Mummy’s dead, isn’t she?’
Rage at everything, not least April’s state, made his answer harsh. ‘Shot by the same freedom fighters she’d given the last of her money to in a country I’d never even heard of. She went off telling me one of us had to make a difference to the world.’
‘Was it years ago?’
‘Not long after you were married,’ Boswell told her, swallowing grief.
‘Oh.’ She seemed to have nothing else to say but ‘Rod.’
Boswell heard him murmuring at length before his voice attacked the phone. ‘Why is April upset?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Forgive me. Were you about to give her some good news?’
‘If only.’
‘You will soon, surely, once your books are selling. You know I’m no admirer of the kind of thing you write, but I’ll be happy to hear of your success.’
‘You don’t know what I write, since you’ve never read any of it.’ Aloud Boswell said only ‘You won’t.’
‘I don’t think I caught that.’
‘Yes you did. This publisher prints as many books as there are orders, which turns out to be under three hundred.’
‘Maybe you should try and write the kind of thing people will pay to read.’
Boswell placed the receiver with painfully controlled gentleness on the hook, then lifted it to redial. The distant bell had started to sound more like an alarm to him when it was interrupted. ‘Quentin Sedgwick.’
‘And Torin Bergman.’
‘Jack.’
‘As one fictioneer to another, are you Ferdy Thorn as well?’
Sedgwick attempted a laugh, but it didn’t lighten his tone much. ‘Germaine Gossett too, if you must know.’
‘So you’re nearly all of Cassandra Press.’
‘Not any longer.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Out,’ Sedgwick said with gloomy humour. ‘I am. The girls had all the money, and now they’ve seen our sales figures they’ve gone off to set up a gay romance publisher.’
‘What lets them do that?’ Boswell heard himself protest.
‘Trust.’
Boswell could have made plenty of that, but was able to say merely ‘So my books...’
‘Must be somewhere in the future. Don’t be more of a pessimist than you have to be, Jack. If I manage to revive Cassandra you know you’ll be the first writer I’m in touch with,’ Sedgwick said, and had the grace to leave close to a minute’s silence unbroken before ringing off. Boswell had no sense of how much the receiver weighed as he lowered it, no sense of anything except some rearrangement that was aching to occur inside his head. He had to know why the news about Cassandra Press felt like a completion so imminent the throbbing of light all but blinded him.
* * * *
It came to him in the night, slowly. He had been unable to develop the new story because he’d understood instinctively there wasn’t one. His sense of the future was sounder than ever: he’d foreseen the collapse of Cassandra Press without admitting it to himself. Ever since his last sight of the Aireys the point had been to save them - he simply hadn’t understood how. Living together would only have delayed their fate. He’d needed time to interpret his vision of the shadows on the wall.
He was sure the light in the house was swifter and more intense than dawn used to be. He pushed himself away from the desk and worked aches out of his body before making his way to the bathroom. All the actions he performed there felt like stages of a purifying ritual. In the mid-morning sunlight the phone on his desk looked close to bursting into flame. He winced at the heat of it before, having grown cool in his hand, it ventured to mutter, ‘He
llo?’
‘Good morning.’
‘Dad? You sound happier. Are you?’
‘As never. Is everyone up? Can we meet?’
‘What’s the occasion?’
‘I want to fix an idea I had last time we met. I’ll bring a camera if you can all meet me in the same place in let’s say half an hour.’
‘We could except we haven’t got a car.’
‘Take a cab. I’ll reimburse you. It’ll be worth it, I promise.’
He was on his way almost as soon as he rang off. Tenements reared above his solitary march, but couldn’t hinder the sun in its climb towards unbearable brightness. He watched his shadow shrink in front of him like a stain on the dusty littered concrete, and heard footsteps attempting stealth not too far behind him. Someone must have seen the camera slung from his neck. A backwards glance as he crossed a deserted potholed junction showed him a youth as thin as a puppet, who halted twitching until Boswell turned away, then came after him.
A taxi sped past Boswell as he reached the street he was bound for. The Aireys were in front of the wall, close to the sooty smudge like a lingering shadow that was the only trace of their car. Gemima clung to her mother’s hand while Rod stood a little apart, one fist in his hip pocket. They looked posed and uncertain why. Before anything had time to change, Boswell held up his palm to keep them still and confronted the youth who was swaggering towards him while attempting to seem aimless. Boswell lifted the camera strap over his tingling scalp. ‘Will you take us?’ he said.
The youth faltered barely long enough to conceal an incredulous grin. He hung the camera on himself and snapped the carrying case open as Boswell moved into position, hand outstretched towards the Aireys. ‘Use the flash,’ Boswell said, suddenly afraid that otherwise there would be no shadows under the sun at the zenith - that the future might let him down after all. He’d hardly spoken when the flash went off, almost blinding its subjects to the spectacle of the youth fleeing with the camera.
Boswell had predicted this, and even that Gemima would step out a pace from beside her mother. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, unbuttoning his jacket, ‘there’s no film in it,’ and passed the gun across himself into the hand that had been waiting to be filled. Gemima was first, then April, and Rod took just another second. Boswell’s peace deepened threefold as peace came to them. Nevertheless he preferred not to look at their faces as he arranged them against the bricks. He had only seen shadows before, after all.
Though the youth had vanished, they were being watched. Perhaps now the world could see the future Boswell had always seen. He clawed chunks out of the wall until wedging his arm into the gap supported him. He heard sirens beginning to howl, and wondered if the war had started. ‘The end,’ he said as best he could for the metal in his mouth. The last thing he saw was an explosion of brightness so intense he was sure it was printing their shadows on the bricks for as long as the wall stood. He even thought he smelled how green it would grow to be.
All For Sale (2001)
Once they were outside the Mediterranean Nights Barry could hear the girl's every word, starting with 'What were you trying to tell me about a plane?'
'Just I, you know, noticed you on it.'
'As I said if you heard, I saw you.'
'I know. I mean, I did hear, just about.' While he gazed at rather than into her dark moonlit eyes that might be glinting with eagerness for him to risk more, he made himself blurt 'I hoped I'd see you again.'
'Well, now you have.' She raised her small face an inch closer to his and formed her pink lips into a prominent smile he couldn't quite take as an invitation to a kiss. Not long after his silence grew intolerable, unrelieved by the hushing of the waves that failed to distract him from the way the huge blurred scarcely muffled rhythm of the disco seemed determined to keep his heartbeat up to speed, she said 'So you're called Baz.'
'That's only what my friends call me, the guys I was with, I mean. I don't know if you saw them on the plane as well.'
'I told you, I saw you.'
Her gentle emphasis on the last word encouraged him to admit 'I'm Barry really.'
'Hello, Barry really,' she said and held out a hand. 'I'm Janet.'
He wiped his hand on his trousers, but they were as clammy from dancing. Her grasp proved to be cool and firm. 'So are you staying as long as us?' she said, having let go of him.
'Two weeks. It's our first time abroad.'
'There must be worse places to get experience,' she said and caught most of a yawn behind her hand as she stretched, pointing her breasts at him through her short thin black dress. 'Well, I'm danced out. This girl's for bed.'
He could think of plenty of responses, but none he dared utter. He was turning his attention to the jittering of neon on the water when Janet said 'You could walk me back if you liked.'
As her escort, should he take her hand or at least her arm or even slip his around her slim waist? He didn't feel confident enough along the seafront, where the signs of the clubs turned the faces of the noisy crowds outside into lurid unstable carnival masks. 'We're up here,' Janet eventually said.
The narrow crooked street also led uphill to his and Paul's and Derek's apartment. Once the pulsating neon and the throbbing competitive rhythms of the discos fell behind, Janet began resting her fingers on his bare arm at each erratically canted bend. He thought of laying a hand over hers, but suspected that would only make her aware of his feverish heat fuelled by alcohol. He became conscious of tasting of it, and was wondering what he could possibly offer her when she clutched at his wrist. 'What's that?' she whispered.
He'd thought the trestle table propped against the rough white wall of one of the rudimentary houses that constricted the dim street was heaped with refuse until the heap lifted itself on one arm. Apparently the table served as a bed for an undernourished man wearing not even very many rags. He clawed his long hair aside to display a face rather too close to the skull beneath and thrust out the other hand. 'He just wants money,' Barry guessed aloud, and in case Janet assumed that was intended as a cue to her, declared 'I've got some.'
He didn't think he had much. Bony fingers snatched the notes and coins spider-like. At once, too fast for Barry to distinguish how, the man huddled back into resembling waste. 'You didn't have to give him all that,' Janet murmured as they hurried to the next bend. 'You'll be seeing more like him.'
Barry feared she thought he'd been trying to impress her with his generosity, which he supposed he might have been. 'We like to share what we've got, don't we, us Yorkshire folk.'
Before he'd finished speaking he saw that she could think he was making a crude play for her along with emphasizing her trace of an accent more than she might like. Her silence gave his thoughts time to grow hot and arid as the night while he trudged beside her up a steep few hundred yards - indeed, overtook her before she said 'This is as far as I go.'
She was opening her small black spangled handbag outside a door lit by a plastic rectangle that might as well have been a sliver of the moon. 'I'm just up the road,' he told her.
Did that sound like yet another unintentional suggestion? All she said was 'Maybe I'll see you in the market.'
'Which one's that?'
She gazed so long into the depths of her bag that he was starting to feel she thought his ignorance unworthy of an answer when she said 'What are you going to think of me now.'
He had to treat it as a question. 'Well, I know we've only—'
'Denise and San have got the keys. I didn't realize I'd drunk that much. Back we go.'
She was at the first corner before he'd finished saying 'Shall I come with you?'
'No need.'
'I will, though.'
'Suit yourself,' she said and quickened her pace.
He felt virtuous for not abandoning her to pass the man on the table by herself. In fact that stretch was as deserted as the rest of the slippery uneven variously sloping route. The seafront was still crowded, and she had to struggle past a
haphazard queue outside the Mediterranean Nights. 'I won't be long,' she told him.
She was. Once he felt he'd waited longer than enough he tried to follow her, but the swarthy doorman who'd been happy to readmit her showed no such enthusiasm on Barry's behalf. Even if he'd had the money, Barry told himself, he wouldn't have paid to get back in. He supposed he could have said that Paul and Derek would vouch for him - that was assuming they weren't in an especially humorous mood - but he couldn't be bothered arguing with the doorman. If Janet's friends had persuaded her to have another drink or two, or she'd met someone else, that had to be fine with him.
He did his best to look content as he tramped back along the seafront, and was trudging uphill before he indulged in muttering to himself. He fell silent as he passed Janet's lodgings, the Summer Breeze Apartments, on the way to swaying around several jagged unlit bends that hindered his arrival at his own quarters. Some amusement was to be derived from coaxing the key to find the lock of the street door and from reeling up the concrete stairs, two steps up, one back down. Further drunken fumbling was involved in admitting himself to the apartment, where most of the contents of his and Paul's and Derek's cases had yet to fight for space in the wardrobe and the bathroom. At the end of an interlude in the latter, more protracted than conclusive, he lurched through the room containing his friends' beds to the couch in the kitchen area. Without too many curses he succeeded in unfolding the couch and, having fallen over and onto it, dragging a sheet across himself.
Perhaps all he could hear in the street below the window were clubbers returning to their apartments, but they sounded more like a stealthy crowd that wasn't about to go away. He was thinking, if no more than that, of making for the balcony to look when the slam of the street door sent Paul's and Derek's voices up from the muted hubbub. Soon his friends fell into their room, switching on lights at random. 'He's here. He's in bed,' Paul announced.
'Thought you'd pulled some babe,' Derek protested.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 136