Consider Her Ways

by John Wyndham

  There were few people around. Two talking in a corner, three napping, two more reading papers; none taking any notice of me. I went over to the periodicals table, and brought back the New Statesman, dated 22 January 1954. The front page leader was advocating the nationalization of transport as a first step towards putting the means of production into the hands of the people and so ending unemployment. There was a wave of nostalgia about that. I turned on, glancing at articles which baffled me for lack of context. I was glad to find Critic present, and I noticed that among the things that were currently causing him concern was some experimental work going on in Germany. His misgivings were, it seemed, shared by several eminent scientists, for, while there was little doubt now that nuclear fission was a theoretical possibility, the proposed methods of control were inadequate. There could well be a chain reaction resulting in a disaster of cosmic proportions. A consortium which included names famous in the Arts as well as many illustrious in the sciences was being formed to call upon the League of Nations to protest to the German government in the name of humanity against reckless research …

  Well, well … !

  With returning confidence in myself I sat and pondered.

  Gradually, and faintly at first, something began to glimmer … Not anything about the how, or the why – I still have no useful theories about those – but about what could conceivably have happened.

  It was vague – set off, perhaps, by the thought of that random neutron which I knew in one set of circumstances to have been captured by a uranium atom, but which, in another set of circumstances, apparently had not …

  And there, of course, one was brought up against Einstein and relativity which, as you know, denies the possibility of determining motion absolutely and consequently leads into the idea of the four-dimensional space-time continuum. Well, then, since you cannot determine the motions of the factors in the continuum, any pattern of motion must be illusory, and there cannot be any determinable consequences. Nevertheless, where the factors are closely similar – are composed of similar atoms in roughly the same relation to the continuum, so to speak – you may quite well get similar consequences. They can never be identical, of course, or determination of motion would be possible. But they could be very similar, and capable of consideration in terms of Einstein’s Special Theory, and they could be determined further by a set of closely similar factors. In other words although the infinite point which we may call a moment in 1954 must occur throughout the continuum, it exists only in relation to each observer, and appears to have similar existence in relation to certain close groups of observers. However, since no two observers can be identical – that is, the same observer – each must perceive a different past, present, and future from that perceived by any other; consequently, what he perceives arises only from the factors of his relationship to the continuum, and exists only for him.

  Therefore I began to understand that what had happened must be this: in some way – which I cannot begin to grasp – I had somehow been translated to the position of a different observer – one whose angle of view was in some respects very close to my own, and yet different enough to have relationships, and therefore realities, unperceived by me. In other words, he must have lived in a world real only to him, just as I had lived in a world real only to me – until this very peculiar transposition had occurred to put me in the position of observing his world, with, of course, its relevant past and future, instead of the one I was accustomed to.

  Mind you, simple as it is when you consider it, I certainly did not grasp the form of it all at once, but I did argue my way close enough to the observer-existence relationship to decide that whatever might have gone amiss, my own mind was more or less all right. The trouble really seemed to be that it was in the wrong place, and getting messages not intended for me; a receiver somehow hooked into the wrong circuit.

  Well, that’s not good, in fact, it’s bad; but it’s still a lot better than a faulty receiver. And it braced me a bit to realize that.

  I sat there quite a time trying to get it clear, and wondering what I should do, until I came to the end of my packet of ‘Mariner’ cigarettes. Then I went to the telephone.

  First I dialled Electro-Physical Industries. Nothing happened. I looked them up in the book. It was quite a different number, on a different exchange. So I dialled that.

  ‘Extension one three three,’ I told the girl on the desk, and then, on second thoughts, named my own department.

  ‘Oh. You want Extension five nine,’ she told me.

  Somebody answered. I said:

  ‘I’d like to speak to Mr Colin Trafford.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We’ve no one of that name in this department,’ the voice told me.

  Back to the desk. Then a longish pause.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the girl. ‘I can’t find that name on our staff list.’

  I hung up. So, evidently, I was not employed by E.P.I. I thought a moment, and then dialled my Hampstead number. It answered promptly. ‘Transcendental Belts and Corsets,’ it announced brightly. I put down the receiver.

  It occurred to me to look myself up in the book. I was there, all right: ‘Trafford, Colin W., 54 Hogarth Court, Duchess Gardens, SW7. SLOane 67021.’ So I tried that. The phone at the other end rang … and went on ringing …

  I came out of the box wondering what to do next. It was an extremely odd feeling to be bereft of orientation, rather as if one had been dropped abruptly into a foreign city without even a hotel room for a base – and somehow made worse by the city being foreign only in minor and personal details.

  After further reflection I decided that the best protective colouration would come from doing what this Colin Trafford might reasonably be expected to do. If he had no work to do at E.P.I., he did at least have a home to go to …

  A nice block of flats, Hogarth Court, springy carpet and illuminated floral arrangement in the hall, that sort of thing, but, at the moment no porter in view, so I went straight to the lift. The place did not look big enough to contain fifty-four flats, so I took a chance on the five meaning the fifth floor, and sure enough I stepped out to find 54 on the door facing me. I took out my bunch of keys, tried the most likely one, and it fitted.

  Inside was a small hall. Nothing distinctive – white paint, lightly patterned paper, close maroon carpet, occasional table with telephone and a few flowers in a vase, with a nice gilt-framed mirror above, the hard occasional chair, a passage off, lots of doors. I paused.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said, experimentally. Then a little louder: ‘Hullo! Anyone at home?’

  Neither voice nor sound responded. I closed the door behind me. What now? Well – well, hang it, I was – am – Colin Trafford! I took off my overcoat. Nowhere to put it. Second try revealed the coat closet … Several other coats already in there. Male and female, a woman’s overshoes, too … I added mine.

  I decided to get the geography of the place, and see what home was really like …

  Well, you won’t want an inventory, but it was a nice flat. Larger than I had thought at first. Well furnished and arranged; not with extravagance, but not with stint, either. It showed taste, too; though not my taste – but what is taste? Either feeling for period, or refined selection from a fashion. I could feel that this was the latter, but the fashion was strange to me, and therefore lacked attraction …

  The kitchen was interesting. A fridge, no washer, single-sink, no plate racks, no laminated tops, old-fashioned-looking electric cooker, packet of soap powder, no synthetic detergents, curious lighting panel about three feet square in the ceiling, no mixer …

  The sitting-room was airy, chairs comfortable. Nothing spindly. A large radiogram, rather ornate, no F.M. on its scale. Lighting again by ceiling panels, and square things like glass cake-boxes on stands. No television.

  I prowled round the whole place. Bedroom feminine, but not fussy. Twin beds. Bathroom tiled, white. Spare bedroom, small double-bed. And so on. But it was a room at the end of the passage th
at interested me most. A sort of study. One wall all bookshelves, some of the books familiar – the older ones – others not. An easy-chair, a lighter chair. In front of the window a broad, leather-topped desk, with a view across the bare-branched trees in the Gardens, roofs beyond, plenty of sky. On the desk a covered typewriter, adjustable lamp, several folders with sheets of paper untidily projecting, cigarette box, metal ash-tray, clean and empty, and a photograph in a leather frame.

  I looked at the photograph carefully. A charming study. She’d be perhaps twenty-four – twenty-five? Intelligent, happy-looking, somebody one would like to know – but not anyone I did know …

  There was a cupboard on the left of the desk, and, on it, a glass-fronted case with eight books in it; the rest was empty. The books were all in bright paper jackets, looking as new. The one on the right-hand end was the same that I had seen in Hatchard’s that morning – Life’s Young Day; all the rest, too, bore the name Colin Trafford. I sat down in the swivel chair at the desk and pondered them for some moments. Then, with a curious, schizoid feeling I pulled out Life’s Young Day, and opened it.

  It was, perhaps, half an hour, or more, later that I caught the sound of a key in the outer door. I laid down the book, and thought rapidly. I decided that, on the whole, it would be better to disclose myself than wait to be discovered. So I opened the door. Along at the end of the passage a figure in a three-quarter length grey suède coat which showed a tweed skirt beneath was dumping parcels on to the hall table. At the sound of my door she turned her head. It was the original of the photograph, all right; but not in the mood of the photograph. As I approached, she looked at me with an expression of surprise, mixed with other feelings that I could not identify; but certainly it was not an adoring-wife-greets-devoted-husband look.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re in. What happened?’

  ‘Happened?’ I repeated, feeling for a lead.

  ‘Well, I understood you had one of those so-important meetings with Dickie at the B.B.C. fixed for this afternoon,’ she said, a little curtly I thought.

  ‘Oh. Oh, that, yes. Yes, he had to put it off,’ I replied, clumsily.

  She stopped still, and inspected me carefully. A little oddly, too, I thought. I stood looking at her, wondering what to do, and wishing I had had the sense to think up some kind of plan for this inevitable meeting instead of wasting my time over Life’s Young Day. I hadn’t even had the sense to find out her name. It was clear that I’d got away wrong somehow the moment I opened my mouth. Besides, there was a quality about her that upset my balance altogether … It hit me in a way I’d not known for years, and more shrewdly than it had then … Somehow, when you are thirty-three you don’t expect these things to happen – well, not to happen quite like that, any more … Not with a great surge in your heart, and everything coming suddenly bright and alive as if she had just switched it all into existence …

  So we stood looking at one another; she with a half-frown, I trying to cope with a turmoil of elation and confusion, unable to say a word.

  She glanced down, and began to unbutton her coat. She, too, seemed uncertain.

  ‘If –’ she began. But at that moment the telephone rang.

  With an air of welcoming the interruption, she picked up the receiver. In the quiet of the hall I could hear a woman’s voice ask for Colin.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s here.’ And she held the receiver out to me, with a very curious look.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Colin here.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ replied the voice, ‘and why, may I ask?’

  ‘Er – I don’t quite –’ I began, but she cut me short.

  ‘Now, look here, Colin, I’ve already wasted an hour waiting for you, thinking that if you couldn’t come you might at least have had the decency to ring me up and tell me. Now I find you’re just sitting at home. Not quite good enough, Colin.’

  ‘I – um – Who is it? Who’s speaking?’ was the only temporizing move I could think of. I was acutely conscious that the young woman beside me was frozen stock-still in the act of taking off her coat.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said the voice, exasperated. ‘What silly game is this? Who do you think it is?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a clown, Colin. If it’s because Ottilie’s still there – and I bet she is – you’re just being stupid. She answered the phone herself, so she knows it’s me.’

  ‘Then perhaps I’d better ask her who you are,’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh – you must be tight as an owl. Go and sleep it off,’ she snapped, and the phone went dead.

  I put the receiver back in the rest. The young woman was looking at me with an expression of genuine bewilderment. In the quietness of the hall she must have been able to hear the other voice almost as clearly as I had. She turned away, and busied herself with taking her coat off and putting it on a hanger in the closet. When she’d carefully done that she turned back.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You aren’t tight, are you? What’s it all about? What has dear Dickie done?’

  ‘Dickie?’ I inquired. The slight furrow between her brows deepened.

  ‘Oh, really, Colin. If you think I don’t know Dickie’s voice on the telephone by this time …’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. A bloomer of a peculiarly cardinal kind, that. In fact, it is hard to think of a more unlikely mistake than that a man should confuse the gender of his friends. Unless I wanted to be thought quite potty, I must take steps to clarify the situation.

  ‘Look, can’t we go into the sitting-room. There’s something I want to tell you,’ I suggested.

  She watched me thoughtfully.

  ‘I think perhaps I’d rather not hear it, Colin.’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘It’s important. It really is …’

  She hesitated, and then consented, reluctantly.

  ‘Oh, very well, if you must …’

  We went in. She switched on the heater, and sat down. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  I took the chair opposite, and wondered how to begin. Even if I had been clear in my own mind about what had happened, it would have been difficult enough. But how to convey that though the physical form was Colin Trafford’s, and I myself was Colin Trafford, yet I was not that Colin Trafford; not the one who writes books and was married to her, but a kind of alternative Colin Trafford astray from an alternative world? What seemed to be wanted was some kind of approach which would not immediately suggest a call for an alienist – and it wasn’t easy to perceive.

  ‘Well?’ she repeated.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ I temporized, but truthfully enough.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ she replied, without encouragement, and added: ‘Would it perhaps be easier if you didn’t look at me like that? I’d prefer it, too.’

  ‘Something very odd has happened to me,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh dear, again?’ she said. ‘Do you want my sympathy, or something?’

  I was taken aback, and a little confused.

  ‘Do you mean it’s happened to him before?’ I asked.

  She looked at me hard.

  ‘Him? Who’s him? I thought you were talking about you. And what I mean is last time it happened it was Dickie, and the time before that it was Frances, and before that it was Lucy … And now you’ve given Dickie a most peculiar kind of brush-off … Am I supposed to be surprised …?’

  I was learning about my alter ego quite fast, but we were off the track. I tried:

  ‘No, you don’t understand. This is something quite different.’

  ‘Of course not. Wives never do, do they? And it’s always different. Well, if that’s all that’s so important …’ She began to get up.

  ‘No, please …’ I said anxiously.

  She checked herself, looking very carefully at me again. The half-frown came back.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think I do understand. At least, I – I hope not …’ And she went o
n examining me, with something like growing uncertainty, I thought.

  When you plead for understanding you can scarcely keep it on an impersonal basis, but when you don’t know whether the best address would be ‘my dear,’ or ‘darling,’ or some more intimate variant, nor whether it should be prefaced by first name, nickname, or pet name, the way ahead becomes thorny indeed. Besides, there was this persistent misunderstanding on the wrong level.

  ‘Ottilie, darling,’ I tried – and that was clearly no usual form, for, momentarily, her eyes almost goggled, but I ploughed on: ‘It isn’t at all what you’re thinking – nothing a bit like that. It’s – well, it’s that in a way I’m not the same person …’

  She was back in charge of herself.

  ‘Oddly enough, I’ve been aware of that for some time,’ she said. ‘And I could remind you that you’ve said something like that before, more than once. All right then, let me go on for you; so you’re not the same person I married, so you’d like a divorce – or is it that you’re afraid Dickie’s husband is going to cite you this time? Oh, God! How sick I am of all this …’

  ‘No, no,’ I protested desperately. ‘It’s not that sort of thing at all. Do please be patient. It’s a thing that’s terribly difficult to explain …’ I paused, looking at her. That did not make it any easier. Indeed, it was far from helping the rational processes. She sat looking back at me, still with that half-frown, but now it was a little more uneasy than displeased.

  ‘Something has happened to you …’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you about,’ I told her, but I doubt whether she heard it. Her eyes grew wider as she looked. Suddenly they avoided mine.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘Oh, no!’ She looked as if she were about to cry, and wound her fingers tightly together in her lap. She half-whispered: ‘Oh, no! … Oh, please God, no! … Not again … Haven’t I been hurt enough? … I won’t … I won’t … !’

  Then she jumped up, and, before I was half-way out of my chair, she was out of the room …