Steve hadn’t been planning to tell his story anyway, even if there had been time left for a second one, but he realized immediately that he was going to have to remember a great deal more, and organize it far more comprehensively, before he could even begin to think about taking the floor in Amelia Rockham’s front room. Even if Jim’s performance wasn’t typical, it had certainly set a standard. Steve wasn’t the kind of person to obsess about the possibility of falling below an established standard, but he felt obliged to make some effort to uphold the honor of the teaching profession, science, and youth.
The group was not only scrupulously polite, Steve observed, but exceedingly stubborn in maintaining its supportive appearances. When Walter Wainwright invited questions and comments, the gist of the opening remarks was that Jim’s experience must have been unusually disturbing, and that he was obviously coping with it extremely well, not only emotionally but intellectually and imaginatively.
Jim, who had obviously been slightly worried about the kind of reception he might get, even though he had scouted out the group before diving in head-first, blossomed in the warmth of the praise. He admitted that he was, indeed, coping very well, not only emotionally but intellectually and imaginatively, and that he was a fortunate man to be able to pass on the legacy of his experience to such understanding people.
Steve was mildly surprised that nobody even ventured to hint, let alone to suggest forthrightly, that Jim might have fallen asleep at the wheel and hallucinated the whole experience—or the ideative seed that he had since nurtured and brought to maturity by careful confabulation—in the split second before or after he hit the deer. Nor did anyone imply, by the merest word or gesture, that he might simply be telling a tall tale. Indeed, it seemed to Steve that some of the private glances exchanged between the group members were signaling that Jim’s story had made even more sense to them than it had to its teller, not just because it dovetailed with their own experiences but because their own experiences cast some light on its murkier elements. Steve was tempted, just for a moment, to throw a spanner into the works by making some slyly snide remark, but he didn’t have to make an effort to suppress the temptation; it withered and died of its own accord.
“That wasn’t quite what I expected,” he whispered in Janine’s ear.
“Nor me,” she replied. She was looking across the room at Milly, who was nodding sagely and making murmurous approving noises along with everyone else, and who seemed to have identified as forcefully with the narrator as anyone else had. Neither of the women who sat to either side of Milly, one of whom looked to be in her thirties and the other in her forties, could match her robust figure, but they didn’t seem at all frail: there was color in their cheeks and a marked liveliness in their manner a they fed on one another’s fascination and good will.
None of which signifies, Steve thought, that they’re anything but completely crazy, intoxicated by the chance to pool their craziness. Such was the atmosphere of the meeting, however, that Steve felt ashamed of the judgment as soon as he’d formulated it. He decided, on due reflection, that it didn’t matter whether he believed Jim’s story or not, or whether anyone else really believed it, or even whether Jim believed it himself. It was the kind of story that had to be treated earnestly and represented as actual experience in order to take full effect. If it were only to be reckoned a traveler’s tale, like a mariner’s account of singing mermaids, a salesman’s account of some farmer’s daughter or a scaremonger’s account of a brief encounter with a maniac serial killer, it had to be treated exactly as the members of AlAbAn were treating it in order to generate its particular frisson—and that frisson was something to be valued in itself, as a kind of intoxication far more delicate than alcohol or ecstasy could produce. As someone who prided himself on being a connoisseur of delicacy, Steve thought, he ought to be wholeheartedly in favor of that kind of thrill.
Amelia Rockham made a second huge pot of tea, although many of her guests politely refused, and began to drift away in ones and twos. Steve and Janine waited politely until Milly signaled that she was ready to depart, and then they bid farewell to their hostess and Walter Wainwright before making their way back to the Citroen.
“Is it always like that?” Janine asked Milly, as they got into the car.
“The group, yes,” Milly said. “The story wasn’t typical, by any means. Most are closer to the stereotype: little aliens in saucer-shaped spaceships, with operating tables and bright lights, with or without lengthy dialogues in which one of the aliens explains the reason for the whole enterprise, usually involving the imminent extinction of the human race by virtue of nuclear war or ecocatastrophe, or both.”
“Is that the sort of thing that happened to you?” Steve asked, tilting his head so that he could see Milly’s face in the mirror.
“Yes and no,” she replied, shortly, blushing.
“Have you told your story to the group yet?” Janine asked, as Steve switched the engine on.
“No,” Milly said. “Nobody hassles you to tell, if you’re not ready, I think Walter might worry about me, a little—he makes paternal comments occasionally—but the others have the patience of saints.”
“I’ve seen that kind of paternal interest before,” Steve said. “Some teachers are the same way—the kind who used to be always patting the kids on the head or the knee, before all physical contact was outlawed. It’s usually harmless, of course—the ones who fantasize about taking it further don’t last long in the profession—but it’s still slightly suspect.”
“Walter’s not like that,” Milly replied, with conviction. “He’s absolutely sincere.”
“That’s the salesman’s motto, isn’t it?” Steve said, as he headed off towards Alderbury. “Sincerity is the key—once you can fake that, you’re made. Did you say that he was an insurance salesman, in his working days?”
“I don’t know,” Milly said. “I think someone mentioned once that he used to work for the Prudential, but I’ve no idea what his job was.”
Steve couldn’t suppress a brief smirk. Walter Wainwright, the man from the Pru, he thought. Back in the days when the outfit prided itself on the individual attention it gave its customers, always sending its agents round to collect premiums, long before England became the Empire of the Financial Advisers. Aloud, he said “Is there something going on between him and Amelia Rockham?”
“I doubt it, at their age” Milly said, dryly. “They’ve known one another for years—since they were our age, at least, and probably since their schooldays. Amelia told me once that they knew one another before they married their respective spouses, and there might have been a wistful note in her voice, but I’d hesitate to drawn any conclusions from that. They’re both widowed now, though, and they seem to be close—they certainly see one another outside the meetings, although I doubt that it involves any hot sex. I’d like to think our friendship would last as long as that, wouldn’t you, Jan?”
“Yes, I would,” Janine replied, “Although it’s bound to be difficult once people start pairing off and getting married.”
“I’ve got no plans,” Milly said, “and Alison seems to specialize in dating men who are already married nowadays. How about you?”
Steve glanced sideways, knowing that it would be Janine’s turn to blush. She didn’t reply to Milly’s provocative question.
“It needn’t matter, anyway,” Milly said, as soon as it became clear that Janine had no comment to make. “None of us would marry the kind of husband who’d monopolize us, would we? We’d carry on being friends no matter what.”
“We ought to get together with Ali next week,” Janine said. “It’s been too long.”
“Absolutely,” Milly said. “She’s bound to have some tales to tell. She’s well on her way to becoming the Town Hall tart. Have you met Alison, Steve?”
“No,” Janine answered for him. “I’ve explained that boy-friends aren’t allowed on our girls’ nights out.”
“We could arrange somet
hing more decorous that he wouldn’t find quite as shocking,” Milly suggested. “A weekend excursion to the coast, maybe.”
“Steve plays cricket,” Janine said. “Saturdays and Sundays, most weeks.”
“Well, no one’s perfect,” Milly said. “At least he’s remembered his abduction experience, even if it did need hypnotherapy to help him remember it. You should try that, Jan—dredge up your own experience. Everybody’s had at least one, you know.”
“I’ll leave mine safely buried for the time being,” Janine replied. “I’m sure it won’t be as lurid as yours.”
“We really must try to get Ali along to the next meeting,” Milly countered. “Hers is bound to involve alien sex. I’d love to see the expression on Walter’s face while he listened to one of Ali’s adventures. Amelia would just nod her head maternally, though, and sympathize. She’s imperturbable.”
While this exchange continued between the two girls, Steve kept his eyes on the road, looking out for stray deer and wishing that the unlit stretch connecting West Grimstead to Alderbury didn’t look quite so much like a road that wasn’t really a road at all, mysteriously heading directly to nowhere. On the other hand, he thought, how wonderful would it be to belong to a world in which intelligence was everywhere, and in which the only fundamental political philosophy was creationism?
Janine and Milly’s private discussion petered out as they reached Alderbury. “Shall we stop off for something to eat?” Steve asked, as he turned on to the A36. “I didn’t get away from school until half past five, so I haven’t had a chance.”
“I’m okay,” Milly said. “I had a snack before I came out.”
“We can stop off at the Chinese takeaway on the corner of my street after we drop Milly off, if you like,” Janine said. “We can eat at my place.”
“Good idea.” Steve said.
“You will be going to go to the next meeting, won’t you?” Milly put in, quickly.
Janine tried to save Steve from the necessity of answering by saying “I don’t know,” and would probably have gone on to say that she could let Milly know when they got together the following week, but Steve had already decided that he didn’t need saving.
“We can pick you up at the same time, if you like,” he said. “I’ll give it one more go, at least. It’s free, after all—and anything’s better than watching TV.”
“Thanks,” Milly said. “I appreciate it. The bus is awful, and I don’t like begging lifts from the others, even though a couple of them drive through Salisbury on their way further west.”
“Warminster used to get a lot of UFO activity, didn’t it?” Steve said. “Cley Hill was quite famous back in the fifties and sixties, so I hear.”
“Some of the long-term members remember it fondly,” Milly said. “The whole of Salisbury Plain was said to be a hot spot. That’s probably why Wiltshire has its own branch of AlAbAn—most of the others are in big cities, although I think there’s one in Devon.”
“They used to get a lot of crop circles in the Pewsey area,” Janine said, “but I think the fashion’s passed. Maybe the aliens are attracted to Stonehenge—they probably built it, along with the pyramids.”
“The armed services have a long tradition of using the plain for military exercises,” Steve pointed out. “Lots of helicopters ferrying men back and forth—and all that empty airspace higher up for testing new aircraft.”
Milly didn’t object to the injection of skepticism. When they dropped her off at her flat, she seemed to be in a very good mood. She thanked Steve profusely for the lift, and told Janine that she would call her to firm up arrangements for the following week.
“Milly doesn’t seem the AlAbAn type, somehow,” Steve said, as he drove away in the direction of Old Sarum, where Janine had a bedsit in a triply divided terraced house. “How did she get involved in it?”
“I’m not sure,” Janine replied. “I think it was someone she knew from her old support group who got her involved.”
“But she really does believe that she was abducted by aliens?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known her to be reluctant to talk about. She’s always urging Ali and me to go with her to meetings, but she won’t tell us what supposedly happened to her. Now I’ve seen the group, though, I can see why she likes the atmosphere, and the etiquette. You don’t get a lot of feedback when you spend all day handing out parking tickets. She’s been threatened with violence on many an occasion—one white van man told her in great detail exactly what he was going to do when he raped her. She took a bit of the color out of his cheeks by telling him exactly what she was going to do by way of reprisal, but it shook her up just the same. She can strike an intimidating attitude, but she’s not as strong as she looks. She can be very moody—but you saw how tonight cheered her up. I know it seems a bit silly, but I think the group does her good, and probably does its other members good too. It’s harmless, at least. I was surprised that you were so quick to offer her another lift, though. Fancy her, do you?”
“I thought it would be interesting to take another look,” Steve said. “At the meeting, not Milly. I’d like to see if the other stories they tell are as enterprising as that one. If they are...well, it’ll be much better than television, and it’s only once a fortnight.”
He found a parking-spot not far from the house where Janine had a top floor flat. The house wasn’t dissimilar to the one in which his own flat was located, but he had a ground floor apartment which, though slightly smaller than its own upper-level companion, was considerably more spacious than Janine’s garret. It was only a short walk to the Chinese restaurant. While they waited for their order to be cooked and boxed, Janine said: “Do you think going to the meetings might help you remember more of your own nightmare?”
“Maybe,” Steve said.
“And that’s what you want to do?”
“Maybe,” Steve repeated. “I honestly don’t know. Part of me thinks that getting deeper into this will only make me crazier than I already am, part of me thinks that Sylvia might actually be right, and that I might learn something useful—from the group as well as from the nightmare. It’s the uncertainty as much as anything else that makes me think I ought to go back at least once. I can stop at any time, can’t I?”
“So you’re taking it seriously—the alien abduction thing?”
“It depends what you mean by seriously,” he parried.
“What do you mean by seriously?” Janine pressed on.
Steve shrugged his shoulders. “What Sylvia Joyce would mean, I guess. Even if the stories can’t be taken literally, they might still be revealing in psychological terms—generally as well as personally. In a sense, the stories might be more interesting as dreams to be interpreted than mere accidents of happenstance.”
“You never did tell me exactly why you went to see the hypnotherapist in the first place,” Janine reminded him. “What is this phobia you have?”
Steve looked away, as if to study the menu posted on the restaurant wall. “Like your friend Milly,” he said, although he knew full well that he was merely procrastinating, “I’m not quite ready to tell you everything yet. A mystery or two helps keep a relationship interesting, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps it does,” she countered, “but only in the sense that it provides a target to aim at. Am I supposed to winkle it out of you by guesswork and experiment?”
“No,” Steve said. “Just let me work up to it for a while. To change to subject, the advice Jim’s time-traveler gave him was pretty sound. If the ecocatastrophe does accelerate, survival skills might be a good thing to have. There’s a course starting at the old technical college next week, still open for enrolments. It’s ten weeks in the classroom—Wednesday evenings, so it won’t clash with AlAbAn— then a field trip in December, with two nights sleeping rough on the plain. We could do it, if you like.”
“Why not?” Janine replied. “It’s always good to know how to catch, sk
in and cook a rabbit—and as you say, anything’s better than having to watch television. I’m not moving to Antarctica, though, no matter how hot the weather gets.”
* * * *
When Steve saw Sylvia Joyce for a second time on the following Tuesday, the therapist was almost as glad to hear that Steve had gone to AlAbAn as Rhodri Jenkins had been to hear that Steve had gone to Sylvia Joyce. When Steve added Milly’s gratitude for the forging of an extra link between herself and Janine and the convenience of regular lifts of East Grimstead into the equation, he seemed to be delighting a great many people—which made a pleasant change from all the alienating he’d done as a result of the Tracy/Jill fiasco.
“How’s the relaxation going?” Sylvia asked.
“Too soon to tell,” Steve reported. “I made the CD, as you suggested, last Friday night, and I’ve been playing it to myself regularly. I’ve only spent two days in the classroom since, so I can’t tell yet whether it’ll have a lasting effect on my stress level at work. We were playing away on Sunday and I had to cross the Test, so I tried to go through the process while I was on the bridge. Maybe I felt slightly less queasy than usual—I’ll need a lot more experiments before I can be sure.”
Alien Abduction - The Wiltshire Revelations Page 6