Infinity Plus: Quintet

by Neil Williamson

  The silence stretched. The sound of her own breathing was horribly loud. Her hands clenched, and she realized she was holding something. When she looked down, her own name blazed up at her in yellow letters. It was her book, a copy of Moonlight Under the Mountain. With shaking fingers she opened it and began to read.

  Gradually the familiar words, the well-known story, Kayli's presence, all soothed her, and she was dreaming aloud, the audience forgotten. At the end of a chapter she looked up, pausing because her throat was dry, and was startled by the burst of applause.

  She thought it would be all right to leave then, but as she turned Victoria blocked her way. Her face was grim and Sheila backed away, feeling threatened.

  "I'm sure we all enjoyed that very much," said Victoria. "And now, perhaps you'll say a few words about how you came to write what you've just read us?"

  Sheila shook her head, incapable of speech.

  But Victoria seemed to have expected that, and scarcely paused. "Questions from the audience, then. Does anyone have a question they'd like to ask Sheila Stoller? No? Well, I'll start the old ball rolling, then. About the setting of your novel, Sheila ... what made you choose Byzantium?"

  "I didn't—I didn't choose it!"

  "It chose you?" The audience laughed at Victoria's inflection and Sheila felt herself blushing. Victoria said kindly, "I suppose it was a natural affinity. You felt a connection to this place and so you wrote about it. Writers do that all the time, turning their lives into fiction. And what about Kayli? What can you tell us about her? Is she based on someone real?"

  It went on, with Victoria asking questions Sheila could not answer, and then answering them herself. Sheila no longer knew if she agreed or disagreed with the things Victoria was saying; she hardly knew what she was talking about, whose book or life they were discussing.

  ~

  It ended, finally; not only the interrogation but the whole convention, and Sheila went with Victoria and Grace for lunch in the coffee shop. She was glad that they talked to each other and left her alone to eat, but when the meal was over she glanced at her watch and fidgeted, working up the courage to say, finally, "Isn't it getting kind of late?"

  "Late for what? Was there something on TV—you-know-who isn't on tonight, is he?"

  Sheila felt herself blushing. She wasn't going to talk about Damon; she would pretend she hadn't heard. "I just don't want to miss my plane," she said.

  Victoria stared in disbelief, and Sheila's certainty crumbled. "It ... is tonight, isn't it? Not tomorrow?" She couldn't spend another night with Victoria; another night and she might never get away, she thought.

  "What are you babbling about, Sheila?" said Victoria, as wearily as if this was an old, old question.

  Sheila dug in her bag for the ticket, praying that it had not been stolen, too. But there it was; she pulled it out, seeing the stiff blue folder enclosing the flimsy ticket, but when she looked at it more closely, she froze. It was a one-way ticket. There could be no mistake, yet she stared, willing herself to be wrong, reading it again and again. Had it changed in the same way and for the same occult reasons as she had herself? Why hadn't she noticed before? She was certain that she would not have left Los Angeles with only a one-way ticket in her hand—not a one-way ticket to Texas, and no money for her return.

  "I can't stay here," she said. "I have to go back."

  "Where would you go back?"

  "Home. Los Angeles."

  "That's not your home. What's in Los Angeles? Damon Greene? Your imaginary boyfriend? You really think he'll notice if you're in Los Angeles or in Texas?"

  "But I live there—I have an apartment and a job—"

  "You don't. You've been making things up again. People like you don't live in Hollywood. You wouldn't fit in. You're much better off here, where you belong. You can stay in my room, and I might even be able to wangle you a job at Eckard's. It's not a bad place to work. You'll have time to write. You'll settle down."

  She wanted to argue, but everything she thought she knew had slipped away. What could she give as proof? Damon? The apartment? The series of temporary jobs in glamorous locations? All those things felt unreal now, as if she had only seen them on television. "I won't stay here ... you can't make me."

  "How ungrateful!" said Grace, and Sheila looked at her, really for the first time since she had met her. She was shocked by the envy and hatred she saw on the fat, white face.

  "She doesn't mean to be rude," said Victoria. "She just doesn't understand."

  "Oh, yes I do," said Sheila, although she didn't. "I'm not stupid, I can see what you're doing to me. Changing me, confusing me, trapping me. All right, you've got me now, but not forever. Maybe I can't afford to leave now, with twenty dollars in my purse, but it won't take me long to get out of here. I'm not like you. I got away once before. It's not just dreaming. I had another life—the life I wanted. A life you'll never know. I wrote a book and had it published."

  "You think that makes you special?"

  "I know it does. I'm different from you."

  Victoria adjusted her glasses, checked the top button on her blouse, and moistened her lips. "You may be different," she said in her thin, colorless voice, "but you need us. Don't blame us for that. We didn't trick you into coming here; nobody forced you to use that ticket. You wanted to come back, so we helped you. Hollywood was no good for you. You couldn't measure up, and you couldn't write anymore. You wanted to escape but you didn't know where or how. So we helped you. You're safe here, and you can stay just as long as you like." She looked down at her empty plate, wiped her mouth with a folded napkin, and said, "I think we might as well go home now, don't you?"

  Not my home, thought Sheila, but she followed them out to the car. During the dark, familiar drive back to Byzantium she was thinking furiously, planning her escape.

  Money was the most important thing, so she would get a job, even if it meant working in a drugstore with Victoria. She didn't have to pay attention to her. And she would go on a diet and start exercising to lose this flab; get a facial scrub and do something about her hair, buy herself some more clothes, and when she was herself again she'd fly back to Los Angeles and take up her real life.

  Sheila leaned back against the seat, feeling something inside her unknot. With all that out of the way, she could think about something more interesting. It was as easy as dreaming.

  Kayli was under the mountain again, although Sheila wasn't sure exactly why. Kayli didn't know, either. Her mind was cloudy with drugs, and someone had tied her hands behind her and left her in this dark turning of one of the tunnels. She didn't know where she was or what she had to do, but she would triumph. Despite her confusion, despite the constraints, her will was unbroken. All through the night she planned her escape.

  Arrhythmia

  Neil Williamson

  – and the music floods in, sluicing away the dreams of silence. It's the percussive chink of dishes, the rustle and snap of Dad's newspaper, the excited kettle, the burbling wireless…and from the street outside the window, the muted, muttered march of the workforce heading out to the Factory.

  Steve's eyes shutter open like aluminium blinds.

  "Work, work, work," the workers drone. Their insistent rhythm heaves Steve out from the clingy embrace of the nylon sheets. "Work, work, work." He scratches the seam of his y-fronts, scritch, scritch, scritch, and hates that he did it in time with the song.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks.

  "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he sings in the bathroom as he pisses, flushes, splashes his face with water.

  "What's that, Son?" growls his dad from the kitchen. "Better get a shift on or you'll be late."

  "Just humming a song," Steve mumbles as he dresses, wondering why his dad always says that. He's never late. He leaves half an hour earlier than his old dears for a start and, even if he didn't, no-one's ever late for the Factory.

  Mum beams at him through a cloud of ironing-board steam. "Sit down, Son," she trills. "It's on the pl
ate."

  Two eggs, a pair of frazzled rashers and a chubby sausage arranged in a greasy face smile up at him, the latest in the daily parade of fixed breakfast grins. He slices through one yolky eye, but any satisfaction it might have given him is nullified by the scrape of the unyielding crockery behind the façade.

  Steve chews his food, punctuating with grunts his dad's judgement on the contents of the paper, which amounts to little more than parroting the Governor's pronouncements on everything from efficiency and productivity to popular culture. He eats slowly, not because he's savouring the taste but because when he swallows, everything – the music, the chatter – sort of equals out. He's almost able to pretend it's real silence.

  From within the music, there's a squeal of electric guitar feedback, and a cup clatters. A spill of milky tea spreads across the formica.

  "Who does she think she is?" Dad baritones. His face is redder than the tabloid masthead scrunched in his fist. "Jumped up little strumpet." He brandishes the paper. A grainy photograph of the miniskirted singer from last night's Top Of The Pops is the evident object of this outburst. "Thinks she's better than the rest of us? Tarty little crumpet."

  Steve looks at the picture and remembers the spiky flaming hair, the pvc boots, the screaming, the attitude, and the mercifully brief snippet of something that bore scant resemblance to music.

  Arrhythmia. Jimmy Jensen had called her that when he'd introduced the band, before the TV was occluded by Dad's fat arse and that 'music' was abrupted by the click of the dial.

  "Sub-vers-ive, that's what they're calling it." Dad throws the newspaper down on the table. "It's not subversive, it's obscene!"

  "Subversive?" Mum looks perplexed. "I don't follow. What does that word mean?"

  "It means..." Dad's face goes even redder because he doesn't know, not really. "It means..." The old boy's voice wavers as he casts angrily around the kitchen for something to vent his anger on.

  Recognising trouble, Steve pushes his plate away, downs his tea and stands. "God save the Queen!"

  Jerked out of his aimless rage, his father also stumbles to his feet, and his mother at her ironing board straightens herself smartly. "God save the Queen!" they intone together.

  Mum's habitual, "And God bless us, every one," follows Steve through to the hall where he throws his donkey jacket over his overalls and grabs his satchel. "Have a lovely day at work, Son." The front door clatters shut behind him.

  There are eight paving slabs between the door and the gate. The path exactly bisects the lawn and is bordered by roses. The plants are budding, but will not blossom until the first of May, signalling the start of summer. Their garden, and their neighbours', and all the gardens in the street, in the town. An orchestrated unfolding of colour. Steve hates summer because that's when the music quickens its pace, making the endless routine of work, eat, play, sleep, even harder to bear.

  "Work, work, work." There are still workers filing past the gate, heading for the bus stop at the end of the street. As soon as Steve joins them, his feet fall into step. There is no escaping the compulsion to walk in time with the rest, to chant their morning mantra.

  "Work, work, work," they all sing, but in Steve's mind the words are: fuck, fuck, fuck.

  A gargantuan, multi-storied bus, red as a dragon in its Factory livery, lumbers away as he approaches the stop, but that doesn't matter because there will be another soon enough. There's always another bus for the Factory. A small crowd is already gathering and, while they wait, a portly man decides its time for a song. He climbs up onto a low wall, sticks his thumbs under the bib of his overalls, and tenors: "Every morning at the count of eight, my friends and I all congregate, at our old street corner where we stand and wait for the daily ride to The Factory." It's an old music hall song, but it's eternally popular. People start to clap in time; a few hum along, encouraging the man to continue with the second verse.

  "Well, we all pile in 'fore the toot at nine, and I takes my place on the production line, and consider it my fortune fine, to make my living at The Factory. But there's something on my mind all day. That I value more'n my penny's pay."

  "I..." Some of the crowd join in, swelling the protracted note and beneath their voices the music too gathers for the chorus. "Work, work, work with all my might. So I can munch, munch, munch with my fork and knife. And then I'll dance, dance, dance to my heart's delight, before I sleep, sleep, sleep a peaceful night."

  Since the bus has still not made an appearance, the man rolls on with the next verse and by the time the chorus comes around again most of the crowd appear to be in the singing mood.

  "I'll work, work, work my natural life. So I can munch, munch, munch on gravy pie. And then I'll dance, dance, dance with my neighbour's wife, and only sleep, sleep, sleep when it gets light."

  It's a song of optimistic fantasy whose many verses become progressively more ridiculous, developing from a hymn to duty and hard graft to claims of the kind of hedonism that none of these people have encountered outside of saucy postcards and the Lenny Harris show on TV. One reason that Steve leaves for work earlier than his parents is that he cringes at the gusto with which his father sings this song. And wants to die when his mum joins in with the actions.

  "I work, work, work my blasted life. So I can munch, munch, munch til I split my sides. And then I'll dance, dance, dance throughout the night, before I sleep, sleep, sleep with my neighbour's wife."

  The song continues as the bus jostles them through the city's ordered streets of identical red brick walls and postage stamp lawns, picking up more passengers, more singers of the song, until the enormous vehicle is full and it heads straight for the centre of town, for the towering stacks of The Factory.

  "I'll work, work, work my neighbour's wife. And I'll munch, munch, munch on her gravy pie."

  The last chorus resounds around Steve as the bus rumbles through the imposing gates.

  "And then I'll dance, dance, dance til I'm beserk, and I'll sleep, sleep, sleep when it's time to...work."

  The workers spill out of the bus in good humour, traipsing up the steps and following the colour coded corridors towards their assigned hall of the day. The music blends seamlessly with the pounding of the engines of production. Inside the Factory, the two are inextricable.

  Steve is a blue, and today his route is a long meandering one that leads him down to a sublevel of the west wing that he is unfamiliar with. He half hopes that today will bring an interesting, even comprehensible assignment, but he's been at the Factory long enough to know how likely that is, so he contents himself with the fervent hope of agreeable companions for the day's toil.

  His thoughts circle around one particularly agreeable companion. Half a hope, half a fear. He knows exactly what his mother's response would be if he told her that he'd been stationed next to Sandra McReady three times this month. Governor's got his matchmaking hat on, son, she'd say. Is she pretty? I bet she's pretty. In Steve's view, Sandra is in fact very pretty, but he doesn't see what business it is of anyone else's. Especially not the Governor's.

  People like Steve's mum believe that everything that happens in life from birth to death – how well you do at school, what grade you'll rise to in the Factory, who you'll marry, and all points in between – are decided by the Governor. Steve can't think of anything more horrible and tells himself that such notions are for the weak-willed, the sheep who have never had an original thought in their lives.

  Today's manufactory is a long room. There are narrow windows high on one wall, their light striping the face of the huge clock that hangs from the ceiling, and falling on the spaghetti nest of rubberised conveyor belts below. When Steve finds his assigned place in the assembly line he can't believe his luck, because there she is, already at her station. The trim, blonde figure of Sandra McReady.

  She's reading the day's instructions, hazel eyes flicking over the numbered pictures as she memorises the steps. Steve watches her for a few extra seconds as he hangs his jacket on the peg behin
d his stool, before climbing up beside her. Sandra, he notices, is smiling. A small private smile. A deep, glossy, red smile. The kind of smile you'd expect to see dazzling the boys at a Friday social. Although, that lipstick – There's an off-pitch squeal that might be some misalignment in the factory's machinery, but which really sounds like someone badly abusing a guitar. The sound lingers, fades only reluctantly.

  Sandra glances up and catches him staring. Her smile gets wider.

  Then the hands of the clock tick on to the hour and the whistles pierce the air. The pulse of the Factory intensifies and the conveyors jerk into life. Steve has barely enough time to adjust the height of his stool and glance at his own instructions before Sandra is placing the first of her finished pieces back on the belt and it's Steve's turn. The module is a lump of grey plastic with moulded apertures, a few already plugged by components, looking like the surviving teeth in a centenarian's mouth. Sandra's contribution is a cream-coloured bakelite plug, Steve's is to twist into place two smoky glass bulbs that resemble the valves that glow orange in the back of the television set. His other neighbour will add a further contribution, and so on. What happens to the module once it is completed is none of their concern.

  It isn't difficult work. It requires speed and dexterity, but it is easy enough once you get into the rhythm. And in the Factory, the music is at its most compelling. On the huge booming one of the great engines, the squeaking conveyor delivers a new module and Steve grabs a handful of components. On the two and three and four, he inserts-twists, inserts-twists his bulbs, and then the belt rolls forward again carrying the finished module on, and delivering a new one on the down beat of the next bar. Around the manufactory hall bodies move in time: reaching, tooling, assembling with the beat; breathing on the off-beat. At some point a bell will chime, the belts will still and the workers will be permitted to drink water or visit the toilet, but absorbed as they are by their tasks, compelled as they are by the music, no-one thinks about that until it happens. For now they work, and while they work, they sing.