The Silent Speakers
Arthur Sellings
CHAPTER ONE
“Let’s face it, the theatre this year of grace 1975 is dead. Registering as a live actor is just an excuse for drawing dole without the ultimate indignity of being offered a job. We might as well register as galley slaves.”
“Speak for yourself, pal. A dozen theatres in London—you call that dead?”
“One dozen theatres equals one corpse, laid out, embalmed and powdered. All the actors do is press buttons and—twitch—the old corpse lifts an arm or shakes a withered leg. You know what we are? Necrophiles.”
“Never. Just wait till I find an angel for my peripheral theatre. I put the audience in the middle—with the programme notes of course. The actors will impinge from outside and—”
“Peripheral! With a name like that you’re doomed from the start.”
“It’s the inevitable name, because it’s the inevitable development, the absolute in realism. First the proscenium, then theatre in the round, now—”
Arnold sprawled awkwardly in a helical plastic cradle, sipping a drink, listening to the chatter and wondering how the hell he ever got asked to parties like this.
“It’s all one big racket. You can talk till you’re blue in the face about economics and balance of power and statesmanship. The fact is that everybody in power today—from the big boys down to the third vice-consul in Timbuktu or the commissar in charge of paper clip production in Vladivostok—has got a vested interest in maintaining tension.”
“Don’t you think you’re being rather insulting?”
“Of course, I forgot, you’re on a government board or something yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure Francis means to his theories, not his job, don’t you, Francis?”
That was Gwen Ellis, the hostess. She was fat, fiftyish and something in the music tape business. Arnold knew she hadn’t the slightest interest in politics or world affairs.
“Of course. A student of political theory has to be above personal considerations. Now, as I was saying—”
Jostled by the random pressures of parties the discussion moved away into a corner and was overlaid by others.
“So I said to this so-called tycoon, so it’ll cost a million. What’s a million? And do you know—hey, do you mind? That’s my drink.”
“I’ve been saying it for years—now it’s really in, the Arabic factor in jazz. What? I know it’s bastardized. Where can you look for pure roots today?You tell me.”
“Please not here. Oh, now see what you’ve done! All over my jacket.”
“Vy did not the Herr Baron gift me better hands?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Baron. Frank N. Stein. All right, dear, don’t let it drag you.”
Arnold saw that his glass was empty and realized that he was drinking too quickly. He always drank too quickly at parties. He also realized that it was time he satisfied his minimal social obligations by mingling. One of those obligations, he thought dully, was choosing a girl for the rest of the evening, and possibly for the night. Though nothing of consequence ever came from chance hookups at parties like this. Something must be wrong with him—or with women. Perhaps he expected too much. There was never any real contact. But the pattern had to be satisfied. He unscrewed himself from the helix and picked his way to the bar.
He poured himself a vodka and looked around. Most of the women were linked with men, singly or in groups. One unattached girl caught his eye at the moment that he caught hers. He had been with her once, and he waved now more in a gesture of farewell than greeting, wincing at the memory. She was in advertising, too, but somewhere along the line she had been really brainwashed. She breathed in statistics and breathed out jingles. He was sure that, when he had left her the morning after, she had filled him in as an integer on a consumer’s survey chart.
As he turned away he bumped into another girl. She held an empty glass in her hand.
“Let me get one for you,” he said, smiling, taking the glass. “It’s murder up there.” He looked around for a place to set his own glass and, failing, gave it to her to hold. “What will you have?”
“A red wine, please.”
He came back with her drink. “Beaujolais. All right?” She nodded. They gravitated to a quiet corner.
“My name’s Ash—Arnold Ash.”
“Claire Bergen,” she responded.
She was dark and not quite good looking. Big, serious eyes, attractive in themselves, slightly marred the balance, for one thing. No, he decided, not good looking, and too individual to be called pretty. Her black hair, straight and cut to a fringe, was not in fashion. Nor was her straight dress, orange and unrelieved by ornament. He had a vague feeling he had seen her before.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.
“Are you?”
He shrugged. “You know.”
She laughed slightly. “Parties, the grand universal communal aspirin.”
“It’s a break from the easel, I suppose,” he said, not really thinking.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Why, do you paint?”
“I? No.”
She looked at him oddly. “A metaphor? Like back to the drawing board?” She surveyed her hands. “Or have I got paint under my fingernails?”
“But you do paint, don’t you?”
“Yes, but who told you? I haven’t shown yet.”
He felt an odd disturbance in him. It was something like the sense of déjà vu, of having been here before. But it wasn’t a matter of recurring events. It was just that he had the feeling, far more strongly now, that he knew her. But he didn’t, he could swear.
“Why shouldn’t people know you paint?” he said, trying to cover his unease.
“I’m not ready.” She sounded annoyed. As if conscious of it, she added in explanation. “Painting’s a solitary art. It doesn’t depend on other people, like music or acting or writing.”
“You actually think that painting’s not an act of communication?”
“I didn’t say that. In fact, a painting is something more complete—of itself—than a novel or a symphony.”
“Only because of… what? Yes, the time element. To the extent that a novel takes time to read and a symphony to listen through, whereas a painting is in space. But—”
“That’s not the important point. Which is that a painter doesn’t have to have people to perform his work and he doesn’t necessarily have to paint people, even. And I certainly don’t need other people’s judgment of my work. When I’m ready to show, I’ll show.”
“But how can you get your work in perspective without showing?” He found himself wondering how he had been drawn into such an argument. “Who was it? Welch? Yes, Denton Welch; he said, ‘I must never be afraid of my own foolishness, only of pretension. Whatever I have I must use, not proudly think it’s not good enough’.”
“Welch,” she said scornfully. “He was a romantic, a minor one at that.”
“Unlike Klee, I suppose?”
“What has Klee to do with it?”
“Klee was a romantic. And you’ve been influenced by him; haven’t you? You must have, the way you paint, the way you—”
He stopped short, as surprised by what he was saying as by the girl’s reaction. Her big eyes were looking straight into his. Her lips were parted, but she seemed to have stopped breathing. But when she spoke her words were deliberately calm.
“And just how do I paint?”
Somebody had put on tapes. People paired off for dancing.
“Well?”
Arnold turned away from her gaze, then turned back. “I don’t know. I see crystals and plants, skeletal sea creatures, cacti—�
�� He faltered.
Then it came on him like a wave. There had been that first vague feeling of recognition, then a second, stronger, sensation of contact, of somehow touching something in this girl’s mind. No, those had been the waves—this now was like a breaker that crashed upon both of them, shocking them, bearing them off to a quiet region where the noise of the party dropped away to a sound that was no more than the soft breaking of surf.
Here they were alone, beyond time and space, trembling from the shock, but oddly calm. Calm and naked. Stripped of words and misinterpretations. He was a part of her universe and she of his—no, they shared the same universe, one which until now had not existed. It was frightening, but the transformation seemed to yield the strength to face it. It was a world of strange forces, but they were real forces. It was like waking into the world after a long night of dreams.
Or like being turned mentally inside out—the persona of years buried, as rudimentary a part of one’s equipment as ribs; the self turned out like a new face. But the face was not his alone—it was this girl’s as well.
Ten minutes ago they had not known each other; now they stood in a relationship such as he had never known before and was sure nobody else ever had. It was not that he knew her thoughts. In some way he seemed to have absorbed some knowledge of her at first meeting, but now this identity, if that were a thought, was the only thought in her or him. Yet he felt that if he wanted to—or… no, and… if she wanted to—he could know her thoughts, and she his. It was as if they were standing together, their minds in silence, but a silence that could be broken at a signal from either of them. He could speak to her mind if only—
Then he felt fear and was not sure in which of them it arose, so close were they. But it was enough to disturb the contact. He was conscious of a face or two looking at them curiously and whirling on—
—And they were back in a crowded, overheated room, loud with music, dancers jerking past them. Gwen Ellis grinned over her partner’s shoulder at him and grimaced meaningly. But that was all. He knew that the contact could have only lasted a few seconds, that nobody had noticed anything strange, that it had only been interpreted as—well, Gwen’s expression summed that up.
And what had it been? He looked at her and she at him. She was pale and trembling slightly. For a moment she stood there, then she turned away.
“Excuse me,” she said. The words sounded ludicrously formal after what had just happened—whatever it had been.
It was fully two minutes before he realized that she might not have just gone to comb her hair or reapply lipstick or one or other of the things that women did when they were agitated.
He pushed through the crowd and out into the April evening. The house was at the head of a cul-de-sac, the road from it a long straight ribbon in the moonlight down the slope of Camden Hill. Of the girl there was no sign.
He wondered frantically whether he should go back into the house. But the conviction that she had gone was too strong. He ran off down the road.
He came to a corner. The side street was empty. Had she gone down here? Certainly she could not have reached the end of the long road in time to be out of his sight. If she had fled from him she would have taken this first turning, surely. So he, too, ran down it. It turned abruptly right in the shadow of tall houses.
Just before he reached the corner, panting, he remembered something and cursed himself for an idiot. She might easily have taken a cab and been away before he had even got out of the house.
But a lonely figure was walking quickly away in the distance. For a moment he thought it was not her, because the image was white, not orange, in the moonlight. Then he realized that she must have thrown a coat on. And there was no mistaking the helmet of black hair as the figure passed under a street lamp.
“Claire,” he shouted, and ran after her, his steps echoing in that quite neighbourhood. “Claire,” he shouted again. This time she stopped, as if recognizing that there was no hope of trying to escape from him.
He caught up with her.
“Are you all right?” he asked breathlessly.
“Of course. Thank you.”
“I thought perhaps, after that… I mean—”
She smiled slightly, surprisingly. “I know. But, please, I’m all right. Believe me.”
He took her arm. “I wish I was. We—let’s walk into Holland Park. It’s only just over there.”
She nodded. They walked in silence into the park. They sat down on a bench.
He felt nervous. He fumbled in his pockets.
“Cigarette?”
“No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”
He lit up and drew deeply. He forced himself to the question.
“Just who are you?”
“I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me everything. You couldn’t have.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“Then what happened to us in there?”
“I—I don’t know. Do you?”
“No.” He had a thought. “It wasn’t—just a matter of sudden attraction, was it? I mean, you never know what other people experience. It’s like reading about what it’s like to kill somebody, even first hand from the more literate murderers—” he cursed the pedantic flippancy that nervousness provoked—“but how do you know what it’s really like?”
“It certainly wasn’t that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“For one thing, we’d only just met.”
“Would that matter?”
She shrugged the thought away vehemently. “For heaven’s sake let’s not get maudlin about it.”
“I’m sorry. I’m only trying to reassure myself.”
“All right, but I’m just not made like that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man just because of the way he looked or smiled.” Her voice was sharp. “I don’t accept anything at face value. In my work I look for the integral nature of things. I—dammit, why am I talking about my work again? Let’s just say that what happened in there wasn’t emotional. It wasn’t an ordinary experience at all. You knew things about me. I did about you, too.”
“You did? Yes, you must have. But—I didn’t read your thoughts. I mean, I wasn’t consciously intruding. I just seemed to know.”
She laughed. “That’s funny! You apologize for something unheard of by saying it was something else unheard of. Sorry, Mrs. Witherspoon, I didn’t fly through your window—I only levitated.”
He laughed too, but tersely. The situation had its funny side, no doubt, but he was in no mood for laughter. He sensed that she was on the defensive, that joking was only a reflex action to keep out the unknown. But it had to be admitted, examined.
“What are we going to do about it?” he prompted.
She did not answer for a long moment. A breeze went sighing through the tall trees above them. Finally she said, “You saw what I intend doing.”
The answer was so brief and conclusive that it took a moment for him to grasp what she meant. “What! But you can’t just turn your back on it. I thought you ran away because you were upset.”
“I was, and I can’t let myself be upset any more by it. I’ve got to forget it. Perhaps years in the future my grandchildren will ask me if I ever had any psychic experiences. I’ll say no, I never had a psychic experience, except one evening back in 1975 I met a man at a party and for a few seconds we fell into each other’s minds.” She laughed nervously. “No, I don’t think I would. They wouldn’t believe me. Things don’t happen like that.”
“That’s just the point, they don’t. But this did happen. And I can’t think of it as being psychic. For me that word spells—well, just that, spells. Ritual. Mumbo-jumbo. This happened in the middle of a party. No ritual, no magic words. Neither of us sought it or could have expected it. At least, I didn’t.”
“Do you think I did?”
“I don’t know. In any case, it was so clear. With psychic things there’s always some doubt even among people such things happ
en to.”
She got up from the seat. “With me there’s never going to be any doubt. A few weeks, months, I’ll know. I’ll simply know that it didn’t happen.”
“How about your grandchildren?”
“Perhaps by that time I’ll be able to think about it. I won’t have any grandchildren, anyway. Artists don’t have grandchildren; And that, Mr Ash, is that.”
She started to walk away down the gravel path.
“But, Claire, Miss Bergen,” Arnold called out. He hurried after her. “How can you leave it like that? I know you resent my intrusion, but I can’t help it, any more than I—we—can help what happened at the party.” The words came blurting out. “I don’t want us to get emotionally involved, believe me. I just have to find out what it was and how it happened.”
She quickened her pace. “I’m sorry. But I’ve got my work to get on with. I can’t afford to be deflected by this—or anything.”
He winced as he realized how tactless he had been. He remembered words that he had uttered to her before it had happened, words like foolishness, pretension.
“I’m sorry, I had no right to comment on your work the way I did. It was only party talk.”
“It’s irrelevant what you said about my work.” She stopped walking and turned to face him momentarily. “Now please stop pestering me.” And she walked on.
Arnold faltered and stopped. He was conscious of a face, an old man’s face, peering at him suspiciously from the shadows, summing him up for what he was—a man molesting a girl. To hell with that! He had to follow her, find out where she lived.
But now she was passing out of the shadows of the parkside into the lights of the High Street. Crowds were turning out of the stereo theatre across the road.
He started after her, then stopped hopelessly as she was swallowed up in the crowd. Her white coat re-emerged only to disappear again, into a taxi.
A frantic image of himself hailing another one and yelling, “Follow that cab,” like a character out of a gangster stereo, withered and died.
She was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
He got up, several minutes after the waker had first jangled and rotated the window louvers to the daylight, feeling the pointlessness of ever having gone to bed. He had slept, finally, but his sleep had been disturbed by mad, fitful dreams. It had been, he thought now, as if his dreams had recognized their inadequacy against the living dream, however short, of the night before.
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