"Don't be ridiculous," Irma said. "I sleep eight hours a night, I maintain a full schedule, and we have an active sex life."
"All between. Between phone calls. We haven't had twenty minutes together awake in years—"
"Really?" she said. "How about last Monday?"
Martin tried hard to think of last Monday. It was hard to isolate the day in memory; time kind of flowed. Of course, that was a characteristic of mid-life. He had read that in books.
The phone rang.
Irma picked it up. "Oh," she said, "hello. Hello."
"Good-bye," Martin mumbled. He stood, left the bedroom, stalked into the living room. Behind him he could hear Irma with appalling brightness talking to someone called "Dorothy" about "plans" for a "bruncheon." Martin brooded. The voice from the bedroom rose and fell. The conversation ended; he heard the faint clang of the receiver being replaced. The phone rang again.
Martin closed his eyes, sat at attention in a bright red chair. The new conversation was relatively brief. The receiver clattered. There was a pause. He heard the sound of Irma dialing.
Martin sighed. He stood, shuffled back into the bedroom, looked at his wife as she talked. Her voice was blissful, her eyes lustrous, her skin gleamed with the force and innocence of youth. The telephone did marvelous things for her complexion. As we live so we will die, Martin thought. Irma was immortal. How could you die in the act of returning a phone call?
"You're ridiculous," Irma said nervously when he finally was able to bring up this thought safely after midnight. "You're a strained man, Martin, you're spending too much time hanging around the house. It's never been the same since you free-lanced accounts. Get out into the world, look for a job, see your accounts, go to the racetrack. Try golf. I mean, that's really bizarre thinking."
"What? That you think you can cheat death by that damned phone?"
"I want to go to sleep," Irma said. She pushed the phone away and lay with her back toward him.
He reached—but found that she really did.
Maybe she was right, he thought later. Other interests. Get out of the house. Cease to brood. Martin got up in the shadows of another dawn and drove to the local public golf course, waited outside the gates, rented a set of clubs, went out in the mists alone, swinging wildly. He had not played golf in a decade, didn't even watch the sport. Inhaling great drafts of polluted air, looking at factory smokestacks from the south cheerfully pumping out their industrial filth, Martin plodded through nine holes, trying earnestly to break a hundred. By the fourth hole, however, his internal attention had left the course and shifted to the figure of a man.
A man. Who? Where? Martin could not identify him, but it was definitely a man and he had a picture: the man was in bed with Irma. Right now. An affair. Just like in the works of John Cheever. Skulking through the rooms of desire, the shadow lover while the husband, all ignorance and bouncy cheer, is out at sport. What else? What else!
She had sent him out, hadn't she? It had been her idea! And the incessant phone, the whispered arrangements—the man who had called her a couple of days ago. Jim Jacobs? No. Not quite. Jack. Jack Jacobs. That was it. Martin tore out a divot.
He understood everything.
Martin stumbled through a twelve-stroke ninth, tossed his clubs into the cart, plunged through the pro shop cursing. In his head Jacobs and Irma tinkled ice cubes in post-coital cocktails, discussed Martin's sexual inadequacies. The phone, he thought. The phone did this to me. I'll kill him. No, I won't. I'll be civilized. Maybe it wasn't the phone, he thought; maybe it was Jacobs who was keeping her young.
He drove home. No strange car in front of his house. Still, there wouldn't be, would there? He knew how it was; what you did was park the car blocks away, sometimes miles, and speed fleeting through the neighborhood to land panting with desire at the side door. I'm no fool, Martin thought, I know about this stuff too. It isn't all bills of lading and statutory unemployment funds here; there's educational television and the Literary Guild. I read and think. He came up his steps briskly, opened the door soundlessly, took off his shoes and went up the stairs toward the bedroom to the open door. Shameless! I won't kill him, Martin thought, I'll be civil, offer him a drink. Then I'll kill him.
He heard Irma's voice.
Inside, she sat on the bed, her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette, the telephone cupped to her ear, talking with intensity. "Friday," she said. "Friday is good, Emily. Of course I'll have to call Rona and Harriet to make sure—"
Something within Martin Green broke.
He plunged toward his wife, seized the phone, ripped it away and flung it against the wall. "I am not merely an accountant!" he screamed. "I suffer!" She stared at him incomprehendingly. "I can't stand it anymore!" he said piteously. Her eyes were luminous. He went to the closet, seized an overnight bag, stuffed clothing indiscriminately. "I've got to get out of here!" he said. "I don't even have the dignity of being cuckolded by a man!"
He fled down the stairs swinging the bag, got into his car and drove away.
Later, he found it hard to recall the details.
Twelve hours and five hundred miles later, however, Martin awoke to find himself in a small motel on the outskirts of Erie, Pennsylvania. The air was, if possible, worse here than on the golf course. He belched uncomfortably, the residue of many drinks, a bad dinner, remorse. Shame lifted him toward the cashier, self-pity paid the check, self-loathing carried him from the dining room and to the elevator, the elevator carried him up one flight and shame, doing double duty, took him into his bleak room. He locked the door, tossed aside a tissue box and a Bible, picked up the phone and gave the switchboard his home number.
"And make it collect," he said.
He entered a long tunnel of possibility. The phone purred in his ear. That it was not busy was in itself further inducement to remorse, more fodder for self-loathing. Perhaps he had misunderstood her. Or perhaps she was out with Jack Jacobs.
Irma answered the phone. The switchboard said that it was a collect call. There was a long pause. "I'll take it," Irma said shakily. "Martin—"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Martin—"
"I am," he said, "I am sorry." He said other things. He talked for a long time. He would not let her say much; he said it all himself. To her credit, Irma had a wonderful telephone manner. She listened. He told her that he had been a fool. Unstable. Recriminatory, immature. Hateful. Suspicious. And selfish. The selfishness had driven her to the telephone for companionship. "It won't happen again," he said. "I'm coming home. I can't stand Erie, Pennsylvania!" he added desperately.
"It's too late, Martin," Irma said.
"There is someone else, then. Is it—"
"No," she said, "it isn't that." There was a sickening pause. "It's too late, Martin," she said, "too late for any of this. I accepted the call."
"You accepted the call? Of course you accepted—"
"Postage due," she said sadly. She hung up.
Martin clutched the phone and stared at the Bible. Well then? he asked it. What now?
III
Irma walked from the telephone, her gait hobbling and cautious. Inside she felt the crumbling, the organs caving into dust, but she would not collapse. Nor would she cry. Not then, not ever. It was the pact, that was all. You accept the conditions; you accept the risks.
She went into the bathroom, supporting herself on the door, wobbling on the tile, grasping at the wall for balance as she came before the mirror. Her heart thudded to a thicker, older rhythm. She stared at her face in the mirror.
The crevices and hollows of that ruined face looked back at her, the mouth of the old woman opened and closed.
Irma whimpered.
"Vanity of vanities," her visitor said behind her softly.
"You're here to collect," Irma said weakly.
"You accepted the charges," Jacobs said reasonably.
* * *
Ramsey Campbell is a Shadows regular, and with good reason: fe
w writers in the field have the deft touch that Campbell manages in all his stories, fewer still who understand the difference between shock and true fear. Ramsey Campbell's newest books are New Terrors (as editor), and two new novels, The Parasite and The Nameless. And while you're waiting . . .
* * *
HEARING IS BELIEVING by Ramsey Campbell
Suddenly he wasn't on the bus home after a frustrating day at work, but in Greece, in a taverna by the sea. The sky was a block of solid blue; over the plucking of bouzoukis he heard people smashing their empty glasses. Now sunset was turning the sea into lava, and someone like Anthony Quinn was dancing, arms outstretched, at the edge of the taverna, where waves lapped the stones.
Wells emerged from the daydream several streets nearer home. If he couldn't recall having passed through them, that was hardly surprising; beyond the streaming windows of the bus all the streets looked half-erased by rain, smudges and blotches of dull color. Around him people coughed and sputtered with February chills. No wonder he preferred to anticipate his trip to Greece, the Greece of a film in which a tycoon married an American president's widow.
He ran home as though he were trying to butt the rain aside. The pavements were quivering mirrors of slate. At the top of the hill, rain scrambled over the ruin of the factory. Last week he'd seen the hundred-foot chimney standing for an instant on an explosion of dust before buckling, keeling over, taking with it two hundred jobs.
His house sounded hollow. Except for his bedroom and the living room, most of it was uncarpeted. Bare scruffy plaster overlooked the stairs, littered the boards of the spare room. That was the way his father had left the house, which was still preferable to Wells's old flat—more of an investment, for one thing. Soon Wells must get on with decorating.
But not tonight: he'd already done enough work for one day, if not for several. When he'd eaten dinner the living-room fire was blazing; flames snatched at the fur of soot on the back of the chimney. Most of his furniture was crowded into the room, including the Yamaha stereo system, the most expensive item in the house.
He sat with a large scotch while something by Delius wandered, gentle and vague as the firelight. The coughs of the audience were so far back in the stereo arc that they seemed embedded in the wall. At the end of the music, the applause made the room sound huge and deep. He could almost see the flock of hands fly up clapping.
A soprano began singing German, which Wells neither understood nor found evocative. He imagined the conductor's black and white plumage, his gestures at the singer as part of an elaborate mating ritual. Eventually Wells got up and fiddled with the dial. Here was a police call, here was a burst of Chinese, here was a message from a ship out on the Irish Sea. And here was someone whispering beside him, so close that he started back, and the rain came pouring in through the roof.
The voice had a background of rain, that was all. There were two voices, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the downpour. He couldn't understand what they were saying; even the sound of the language was unfamiliar—not Eastern European, not an Oriental language. Yet he was so impressed by the vividness of the stereo that he sat down to listen.
The two men were in a street, for he could hear the gurgle of roadside drains. It must be dark, for the men were picking their way very hesitantly. Sometimes they slipped—rubble clinked underfoot—and he didn't need to understand the language to know they were cursing.
For a while he listened to the street sounds: the shrill incessant hiss of rain on stone, rain splashing jerkily from broken gutters, dripping on fragments of windows in the houses which loomed close on both sides. It was better than sitting before the fire and listening to a storm outside—or at least it would have been, except that he wished he knew why the men were afraid.
It unnerved him. Had they fled into this area to hide? Surely they would be more conspicuous amid the derelict streets, unless everywhere was like this. Or were they searching for something of which they were afraid? They had lowered their voices; they were certainly afraid that something would hear them, even through the clamor of rain. Wells found himself listening uneasily for some hint that it was near, listening so intently that at first he didn't realize that the men had fallen silent and were listening too.
For a while he could hear only the babble of rain and drains and rubble. The other sound was so similar that at first he couldn't be sure it was there. But yes, there was another sound: in the distance a great deal of rubble was shifting. If something was pushing it out of the way, that something was unhurried and very large. Surely the sound that accompanied it must be a quirk of the storm—surely it couldn't be breathing.
The men had heard it now. He could tell from their voices that they knew what it was—but why was he so much on edge because he couldn't understand? They dodged to the left, gasping as they stumbled over rubble. Now they were struggling with a door that scraped reluctantly back and forth in a heap of fallen masonry. At last rusty hinges gave way, and the door fell.
What use was it to take refuge here, when they'd made so much noise? Perhaps they were hoping to hide as they fled desperately from room to room. Now that they were in the house they sounded closer to him; everything did—the splat, splat of rain on linoleum in one large room, the dull plump of a drip on carpet in another. There must be very little left on the roof.
Now the men were running upstairs, their feet squelching on the stair carpet. They ran the length of a room that sounded enormous; he heard them splashing heedlessly through puddles. Now they were cowering in the corners to his left, where the light of his fire couldn't reach. He would have switched on the overhead light, except that would have been absurd.
In any case, there was no time. Something had hurled the front door aside and squeezed through the doorway into the house. It started upstairs at once, its sides wallowing against the staircase walls; three or four stairs creaked simultaneously. The breathing of the men began to shudder.
When it reached the top of the stairs it halted. Was it peering into the room? Wells could hear its breathing clearly now, thick and slow and composed of more than one sound, as if it came from several mouths. In the corners beyond the firelight the men were straining not to breathe.
A moment later they were screaming. Though nothing had squeezed through the doorway, Wells heard them dragged onto the landing. Their screams went downstairs as the creaking did, and out of the house. Had their captor's arms been able to reach the length of the room?
Wells sat listening reluctantly for something else to happen. Rain shrilled monotonously outside the house, dripped quicker and quicker on linoleum, sodden carpets, bare boards. That was all, but it went on and on, seemingly for half an hour. How much longer, for God's sake? As long as he was fool enough to leave it on, perhaps. He switched off the stereo and went to bed, only to lie there imagining unlit streets where some of the dim heaps weren't rubble. He couldn't switch off the rain outside his house.
Next morning he was glad to reach the office, where he could revive his imagination with the Greek travel poster above his desk, and joke with his colleagues until it was time to let the queue in out of the drizzle. Many of the waiting faces were depressingly familiar. Those who meant to plead more social security out of him were far easier to cope with than the growing number of young people who were sure he could find them a job. He hadn't grown used to seeing hope die in their eyes.
One of them was reading "the novel that proves there is life after death." Perhaps she'd grown so hopeless that she would believe anything that seemed to offer hope. He'd heard his colleagues seriously wondering whether God had been an astronaut, he'd seen them gasping at books "more hideously frightening than The Exorcist because everything actually happened." It seemed that any nonsense could find believers these days.
The bus home was full of tobacco smoke, another stale solution. The faces of the riders looked dispirited, apathetic, tired of working to keep up with inflation and taxes. A Jewish shop daubed with a swastika s
ailed by; the bus was plastered with National Front slogans, no doubt by the same people responsible for the swastika. If that could seem acceptable to some people, what solutions could be found in a worse world?
As soon as he reached home he switched on the tuner. Music would make the house sound more welcoming. He'd left the dial tuned to the station he had listened to last night, and the speakers greeted him with a rush of static. He had begun to alter the tuning when he realized what was wrong. The sound wasn't static, but rain.
There was no mistaking it once he heard its sounds on floorboards and linoleum; he could even hear plaster falling in the derelict house. Who on earth could be broadcasting this? He didn't care if he never found out who or why. He had to turn the knob some way before he lost the station.
That night he listened to records, since static kept seeping into the broadcasts he wanted to hear. Did the music sound thinner than it used to sound at the flat? A dripping tap made the house seem emptier. Perhaps the acoustics would improve once he improved the house. When he went upstairs to bed, remembering the months he'd lived here after his mother had died, during which he'd given up trying to persuade his father to let him redecorate—"Leave that, I like it as it is."—the dripping tap, whichever it had been, had stopped.
In the morning he felt robbed of sleep. Either a dream or the unnatural cold had kept waking him. Perhaps there was a draught that he would have to trace; he wasn't yet familiar with the house. Still, there were places where his life would seem luxurious.
One of his colleagues was reading a novel about an African state where all the workers were zombies. "That's what we need here," he grumbled. "No more strikes, no more unemployment, no more inflation."
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