Next day, breakfast time
Timothy told Beth, ‘You really must stop it. You can’t say things like that about Lisa Treadgold, you just can’t. I mean, your behaviour yesterday evening. Shouting and yelling!’
Beth took another piece of toast and said, ‘I will say just what I jolly well like and you can lump it. And please will you pass the marmalade, how kind of you. Anyhow, nobody even notices what I say, I mean I was screaming and yelling last night yet nobody took any notice. Anyhow, I’m not going to stop saying what I think.’
Timothy scratched his head and wrinkled his brow. Watching him, Beth was almost sorry for him. She knew he did not know how to answer her; and that he was disturbed and upset by her behaviour; and that he was fond of her. Well, so he should be, she told herself. After all, we are brother and sister.
Timothy looked up at her and said, ‘I took notice of what you said yesterday evening. You were attacking –’
Before he could finish, Beth pounced on him with, ‘What did I say, Tim? Can you remember any actual words I said?’
‘You were shouting and yelling …’ Timothy said, uncertainly. ‘The exact words don’t matter. You were attacking the Rollers and Lisa Treadgold.’
‘Yes, I was and I meant it and still mean it. Do you remember any of the – listen to me, don’t just fiddle with that spoon! – do you remember what words I used? What I actually said?’
She leaned forward, waiting for his answer. It was important to her. She had to know if he could hear her properly – if any of the grown-ups could; she needed to know just how deeply the hypnotic phrase ‘You remember me!’ dug itself into the minds of the people, more and more of them, that Lisa Treadgold controlled.
‘Well?’ Beth said.
Timothy’s face was still twisted in a puzzled frown. But he pulled himself together and answered Beth. ‘I don’t think you understand,’ he began, ‘just how important Lisa Treadgold and the Roller movement are to the future of this nation –’
‘What did I actually say?’ Beth shouted, reaching forward her thin hand to clutch Timothy’s arm. But he was not listening to her now. He seemed to be hearing an inner voice.
‘Without decency, discipline and dedication – without punishment that fits the crime – how can we make ourselves worthy to enter the Bright Gateway of the Future?’ Timothy recited. He no longer frowned. Now his head was up and his eyes were round and solemn.
And Beth no longer clutched his arm. Now she stared at her brother’s face with a look of horror. ‘What you said just then …’ she murmured, ‘those were the very words that Roller man on the telly said last night! His very words!’
‘We are all of us instruments,’ Timothy said, staring through and beyond Beth. ‘Instruments for good. Instruments of tempered steel – surgical instruments of bright steel that can cut away, ruthlessly, the rotten, diseased parts of our society!’
Beth, white-faced, silently got up and left the room. At the doorway, she looked back at her brother.
Now he was nodding his head in time with his words. ‘We must be prepared for the New Dawn,’ he said. ‘The New Dawn is coming.’
ANTIROLL
The Rollers marched down the High Street. In the town, in the village, the Rollers were marching, almost daily. The Gazette gave front-page coverage to every march.
Three boys and a girl, all seemingly about ten or eleven – but they were a long way away, Timothy could not see them properly – kept threading themselves in and out of the watching crowd lining the street. The children appeared and disappeared like diver ducks in a pond. ‘Berks!’ they yelled at the marchers. ‘Morons! Fools! Wake up!’
The crowd placidly ignored them. No one hindered them, even when they darted at the marchers, snatching at armbands and trying to knock off the newly issued forage caps. The armbands and cap-bands were embroidered with R.O.L. R.O.L. R.O.L.
Like the crowd, the Roller marchers took no notice of the children. They simply stepped out to the music of the boater-hatted Dixieland band. The boater hats’ ribbons read R.O.L. R.O.L. R.O.L.; so did the banners stretched across the street. Before, the band had been a six-piece. Now it was a ten-piece, better, brighter and brisker than ever. Timothy wrote in his reporter’s notebook: ‘To the stirring music of the band and the applause of the great crowd –’
He stopped writing and frowned. Those children were at it again. He saw that there were two groups of three, not just one group. The second group sprang out of the placid crowd just a few yards away from him. The children shouted, ‘Wake up, wake up! You’re hypnotized! Drugged! Wake up!’
One child shouted these words in the ear of an elderly woman. He tugged her sleeve and bellowed. The woman looked down at the frantic boy and nodded her head as if in agreement. Her face was mild and kind. She spoke. Timothy could read her lips. ‘That’s right, dear,’ she began – or something like that – then, quite certainly, she said, ‘Decency, Discipline, Dedication.’
She smiled down at the boy. He shook his head disbelievingly – gave up – and darted back into the crowd.
Timothy kept writing. The children did not matter. They were just stupid, minor interruptions to the big parade.
But the children had not finished. Here came a child, waving a big, untidy placard on a pole. The placard read:
ANTIROLL
Society
WAKE UP!
YOU ARE ALL HYPNOTIZED!
WAKE UP!
People smiled at the untidy placard, wobbling about on its shaky stick. Timothy smiled too. Then stopped smiling. The child holding the placard was a girl and the girl was his sister Beth.
He called her name, loudly and angrily. She did not hear. He shouted again, furiously, and she heard. She turned her head. He saw her face. She wore her crumpled blue canvas hat, her favourite hat with tin badges on it. Under the hat her face was small and young and defenceless. There were tears running down it, tears of rage, agony and frustration.
All at once, Timothy knew he had seen this face before, in another time, a time that surely had never happened. And yet – and yet it seemed so real, that time, it was like scenes from a film or TV programme running in his mind, running very fast, too fast for him to keep up with or understand: but too real and true and interesting to be just a story on a screen …
There had been an old lady in an armchair, the armchair in the living room at home. The chair under the standard lamp. Beth, almost crouching, her face a spiteful mask, faced this woman and spat words at her, words full of hate and menace. Timothy himself was there. So was Mac. But it was the old woman in the chair who mattered.
No, that was wrong: she was not an old lady at all. She was a darting, hump-backed silver rat – the clothes were a disguise, even her bones and flesh and face were just masks and costumes.
The silver rat – and Beth: her hatred and fury had been true and real. Now the silver rat was tearing the old lady to pieces and Beth was glad. And Mac was glad. And so was he, Timothy.
‘ROLLING along,’ the marchers shouted, ‘singing a song, SIDE BY SIDE!’ Timothy was back again in the High Street, back to reality, free from the sudden dream. Timothy the reporter! Timothy the serious, sensible, disciplined young man, notebook in hand, ballpoint busy, recording important events!
But no, wait – she was still there, right in front of him, his bad little sister! And still her tear-stained face was pointing at him like an accusing finger and her mouth was opening and closing. She was saying something to him, he could not hear her above the noise of the band and the singing and cheers of the marchers. It was a good thing he could not hear her, he did not want to hear.
‘SIDE … BY … SIDE!’ bellowed the band: the drummer added his final barra-BAM! It was the end of the tune.
In the silence that followed, he could not fail to hear what Beth was saying.
‘You do remember!’ she wailed. ‘You do! I know you do! You know, I know you know!’
The words pierced Timothy’s mind. He gap
ed at Beth and dropped his ballpoint. His thoughts and memories and emotions choked him.
He found himself nodding his head stupidly, agreeing with Beth, ashamed of agreeing, ashamed of even knowing this ragamuffin girl with her silly hat and stupid placard.
‘Yes!’ he found himself saying. ‘Yes, I know.’
RAT THING
Hours later, in Beth’s little room, they talked. Beth kept clutching at him with her spiky fingers – kept thrusting her vivid dark face at him – kept insisting that Timothy said words he hated saying.
‘Grinny,’ he muttered. ‘I remember Grinny.’
‘Go on,’ Beth insisted. ‘Tell me about Grinny.’
‘She was our great-aunt Emma. She came to the door, we took her in. She smiled all the time. We called her Grinny because she smiled. We didn’t know where she came from. She just came, and lived with us, and sat in her chair and smiled.’
‘And then, one evening,’ Beth prompted, ‘we did something to her, didn’t we? Because we’d found out about her. She was in her chair in the living room –’
‘The silver rat thing killed her!’ Timothy said. ‘We didn’t do it, did we? It was the silver rat.’ He rubbed his forehead; then said, his voice tired and uncertain, ‘What was the silver rat?’
‘It was Grinny!’ Beth shouted. ‘The thing inside her that made her work! Because she wasn’t real, only the rat was real!’
Timothy shook his head protestingly. Beth would not let him go. She said, ‘Listen, Timothy: was Grinny good or bad?’
‘Bad. She was bad, I suppose. Because she was sent here to test us out. To find out if we could be invaded. Our world was to be invaded by them. And Grinny was the advance guard, we were her experiment. But it didn’t work because we beat her –’
‘We won!’ Beth said. ‘And now we’ve got to do it all again.’
Timothy shifted in his chair. ‘I don’t see …’ he began. ‘It can’t be true, it just can’t be … About Lisa Treadgold, I mean. Lisa Treadgold is good. The Rollers are good. Decency, Discipline, Dedication …’
Beth had to shake him by the shoulders, as if he were drugged or drunk. ‘Who is Lisa Treadgold?’ she hissed.
Timothy tried to fight off the question but Beth was too strong. His head rolled as she shook him. ‘Tell me! Say it!’
At last he obeyed.
‘Lisa Treadgold is Grinny,’ he said. ‘Grinny come again. But Grinny died! … didn’t she?’
‘Of course she did. But now there’s Lisa. Who is Lisa?’
‘Grinny come again …’ He was talking like a sleepy child.
‘So – come on, come on! – What are we going to do?’
‘Fight her. Stop her. Whatever you say.’
‘Yes, we’re going to fight her. Stop her. Kill her.’ She let go of his shoulders and stood back to look at her brother. What she saw – the drowsy, listless, dull-faced figure – made her despair. ‘Oh, Tim!’ she said, ‘Tim, please! Please come back! Oh Tim …’
She began to cry angry, despairing tears that spurted out from between her black lashes. He stared at her, his mouth half open, dull-eyed. Lisa Treadgold still owned more than half of his mind. ‘You remember me!’ Lisa Treadgold had said: and most of his brain was still locked to Lisa by that phrase. Yet –
‘Your hat!’ Timothy said, suddenly. Now his face was half alive.
Through her tears, Beth said, ‘Never mind my stupid hat! Oh, Tim, please come back!’
Timothy looked at the hat on her battered and stained bedside table. He picked it up, gazed at it and touched one of the fading tin badges. ‘This afternoon,’ he said, ‘you wore it then.’
He took the hat in both hands; approached Beth; and, as if it were a coronation ceremony, carefully placed the blue hat on her head.
‘Real,’ he said. He sounded amazed. His face was beginning to come alive. ‘You, in your hat!’ he said, as if making a great discovery. He adjusted the hat to exactly the right angle; then, for a long time, studied the effect.
‘YOU were crying then, too,’ he said at last. Beth nodded so hard that tears flew from her cheeks. Still Timothy studied her. Now his face was alive.
‘Listen, Beth,’ he said, ‘I’ve worked it all out! About Lisa Treadgold and the Rollers!’
‘Go on,’ Beth whispered.
‘Do you know what I think?’ Timothy said excitedly. ‘Lisa is just Grinny! Grinny back in another form!’
‘Go on!’ Beth repeated.
‘But, Beth, don’t you see, she’s deadly! We’ve got to do something! We got rid of Grinny all right, but this time it’s different – different and much worse! I mean, Lisa T has got the Rollers, the media, TV, everything! And people are queuing up to join her! – just begging to be allowed to line up for their own destruction! This time it’s not just one family, it’s the whole nation! We’ve got to stop her, Beth!’
‘Go on, go on!’ Beth said. She leaned forward, nodding at him, her eyes bright. But no longer with tears.
Beth’s diary, two days later
… I just don’t know, some of the time I think Tim’s himself again and quite all right and the rest of the time he’s rubbing his forehead and is gone all dopy again I wish I knew. It was so terrific when he snapped out of it – that was only 2 days ago & he was his old self again and it was lovely but it didn’t last, next day it was all Lisa T. and D-D-D I could kill that woman I will kill her but how can I do it alone? If only Tim would come back to me properly & be the real Tim.
No, wait, I have a plan, we will somehow go to Lisa T., and I will somehow make Tim see her as she really is. A trick, like the tricks we played on Grinny. Grinny could not stand electricity, that is how we got her in the end, frightening her with electricity. We will try that on Lisa T.
No wait none of this is any good because Mac is not with us, I tried and tried, argued and argued but he does not hear he just looks STUPID & literally does not hear.
Never mind, we will get into Lisa T.’s house somehow again, and I will think of something I will play it by Ear. But how do we get in her house? HOW? I will think and think & write down all the ways to try, we MUST get in her house …
AMAZER-LASER
Early September
Had Beth only known, getting into Lisa’s house was to be the easiest thing in the world: for Lisa had already invited the Gazette to visit her. The Gazette included Timothy. And where Timothy went, Beth could easily find an excuse to accompany him …
Bunny delivered the note of invitation. ‘I have the beginnings of a news item for Miss Bishop,’ the note ran. ‘Nothing important – but the Gazette has been so helpful in the past that I’m sure you won’t mind …’
‘Mind!’ Fanny Bishop said. Her face was nun-like as she stared at the precious letter. For Fanny, like Len Sturgeon and almost everyone else, was completely converted to Lisa Treadgold and the Rollers.
‘I’m coming too!’ Timothy shouted. ‘She must mean me to come too!’
‘She doesn’t say so,’ Fanny said, jealously holding the invitation. She wanted the Lisa interview all to herself.
‘Well, she must have meant to! I’ll ask Bunny, she’ll tell you I’m right, I’m invited too!’
‘Bunny’s already left,’ Fanny said smugly. ‘At least five minutes ago!’
‘Well, I’ll run after her and sort it out!’ Timothy said. He rushed out of the Gazette office, flung his leg over his bike and pedalled off at full speed in the direction he knew Bunny must have taken: straight along the High Street, then turn left, then straight on through the country roads to Lisa’s house.
He never caught up with Bunny. She seemed to have vanished.
Instead, he met Mac, on his bicycle. Timothy said, ‘Look, I’m chasing after Bunny, she must have come this way, have you seen her?’
Mac stared at Timothy strangely. ‘Seen her?’ he said. ‘You bet I’ve seen her! It was weird, really weird!’
‘What do you mean, weird? Where is she? I’ve got something important to sa
y to her –’
‘I don’t think she’d hear you, the state she was in!’ Mac replied.
Now Timothy stared. ‘What’s been happening?’ he said.
Mac said, ‘I was going along the High Street. I needed a thirteen-amp fuse so I turned off down Water Lane to go to Lectronic. Bunny was there. She was standing outside the shop.’
‘So?’ Timothy said. ‘What about it?’ He pictured Lectronic in his mind. A small shop in a street of small shops. None of them lasted long. Lectronic was typical – cheap hi-fi stuff, disco lighting sets, all kinds of electrical bits and pieces but never the one you needed.
They’d got this window display: flashing disco lights and what they called AMAZER-LASER. Rods of light like laser beams, all different colours. For parties.
Mac said, ‘She was standing there with her mouth half open. She looked funny. Funny-peculiar. She just stood there, like a soldier, with her bike blocking half the pavement.’
Timothy said, ‘What do you mean, like a soldier?’
‘All rigid. Standing to attention. Not moving at all. Staring straight ahead of herself.’
‘Staring at what?’
Mac said, ‘She was staring into the shop window. She looked sort of shocked. Her eyes were wide open, sort of bulging and her face was all shiny. And she was talking to herself. It was weird.’
‘What was she saying?’
‘Well, that’s the funny thing. She was saying what she said before, that day at Lisa T.’s when she fainted. She kept saying, “I didn’t see that! I couldn’t have done!” And then she said, “No, no, they’re not real. I don’t see them at all, they don’t exist!” She said things like that. She was barely moving her lips, it really was weird.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I tried to snap her out of it. I said, “Bunny! Bunny! It’s me, Mac, how are you?” Things like that. But she kept muttering. Then I saw what she was staring at. It was the Amazer-Laser display, you know, those rods of light.
Grinny Page 14