‘You could just turn your phone off if you don’t want to be interrupted,’ Em had replied.
‘If I don’t have a phone then I don’t have to turn it off,’ said Rach, using typically implacable Rach Logic.
You can see that Rach was, like me, somewhat unusual but that’s one of the reasons why Em and I liked her. Em, on the other hand, wouldn’t have minded if her mobile had been implanted in her, she couldn’t bear to be separated from it as it was. As for me and mobile phones I fell somewhere between the two of them, which is perhaps another reason the three of us got on so well. We over-lapped. We weren’t so much the same that our friendship could ever become competitive.
Em texted back on her and Rach’s behalf, almost before I’d sent my own message. ‘Remind yr olds its hols. C u @ pool 2morow then. B thr!’
I dislike text language and hardly ever use it unless I’m in a huge hurry or the message is getting too long. So I wrote back: ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’
Swimming pool blues
I missed going to the pool. I’ll tell you what happened, not that it’s hard to guess.
Apart from the straining sounds of Harry wresting with his straitjacket the house was preternaturally still. As I’ve said, Mum was at work and Dad, I
soon discovered, had gone underground. I had washed my togs (Southern Hemisphere for ‘swimming costume’) first thing in the morning
and later on gone back to the laundry to get them out of the machine to put in the drier, when I saw that the freezer (our super-sized laundry can accommodate many large objects) had been shifted and the access cover in the floor beneath it lifted up.
The cool, musty, never-seen-the-sun smell of the earth underneath the house wafted up as I peered into the hole. The distance between the floorboards and the earth itself wasn’t very great and imagining Dad crawling under the house in that confined space gave me the same sort of creepy, closed-in feeling that seeing Harry swathed in his straitjacket did. (And this sentence, I have to say, prefigures the darker places into which my story progresses. I would have preferred it to be a light and frothy concoction free from all DEEP THOUGHTS but, hey, a writer has to follow where her story leads. Right?)
I was about to call out to Dad to make sure he was okay and not wedged beneath a floor joist or something equally horrible, when I spotted the circle of light that was his torch playing up, down and around quite happily. I decided, therefore, not to say anything in case I frightened him into
banging his head on the joists. He would not have been a happy chappie if that happened.
I transferred my (non-shrink) togs to the drier, set the temperature on low and left that very handy machine to do its work. I had plenty of time to get my other stuff ready before heading poolside. Then, as I turned to leave the laundry, I made the
mistake of glancing at, and then into, the tiny
mirror that hung on the wall beside the window. That’s when I saw them again, Laurie and Iris, if
indeed that was who the young couple was.
My first thought was very colloquial and unoriginal, if understandable. Shit!
This time they were sitting on a hillside. I could see their faces only from side on, Laurie (if it was him) at the front and Iris (if it was her) beside him but just a little forward of her man. Iris had shaded her forehead with her right hand so she and Laurie must have been looking into the sun. Laurie was wearing a floppy sort of sunhat that provided enough protection for him not to also have to raise his hand, even though he was squinting. He had little wrinkles radiating from the corners of his profiled eye, lines that made him look older as well as smiley.
I followed their gaze, which was in the direction of a beach below and a vista of the sea stretching beyond white sand into infinity - or at least in the approximate direction of Tierra del Fuego. A road ran between them and the beach and there was the shadow of a car at the corner of the picture. The mirror in the laundry was a minute one (that’s minute, not minit) but the image I saw could have been shrunk in order for it to fit the mirror. There was even a border around the picture, just like on an old-fashioned photo. I blinked and the picture was still there, unchanged. Only when I heard scrabbling sounds from under the house, which made me think the Kraken (mythical sea monster. Probably not the best metaphor to use unless our underfloor had flooded,
which it hadn’t. But Kraken is another evocative
word) was about to emerge from the depths (it was only Dad, of course), did I lose my concentration,
turning my head momentarily. When I looked back the faces and the scene they were gazing at
were gone.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Dad rising from the pit, smudged with grime and dirt and looking like a coalminer. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
Little did he know.
‘I had a fright, that’s all,’ I said, playing it down although it was perfectly true.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Dad, assuming I was blaming him for having startled me. ‘Interesting thought, isn’t it, how you sometimes have to go into a dark place to find the light. (A DEEP THOUGHT, not that I especially registered it then.) You know what, I’ve discovered the source of the problem with the chimney.’
Problem with the chimney? Had Dad mentioned this before? I couldn’t remember. We hadn’t used the chimney since we’d been here. Mum was against the pollution it would cause. Dad was hoping to one day install a City Council approved woodburner, assuming he got Mum’s approval as well. Now he’d have the perfect excuse.
‘The brickwork is infested with dry rot. The pipe leading to the hot water tank’s leaking. Probably has been for years. That’s what caused it. The ground around the concrete slab supporting the chimney is wet. I’m going to have to take the old chimney down, brick by brick.’
I wasn’t at all surprised by his happy enthusiasm. That was Dad all over.
‘Really,’ I said. But by now we had both
stopped listening to each other. Dad’s mind was
off solving the latest house crisis while mine was trying to deal with a different but equally real
crisis of my own. You may ask, why didn’t I come clean to Dad, persuade him to take notice, ask him to sort out my problem? Well then, short answer. Unless you were Harry, would you want to end up in a straitjacket? Speaking of the devil . . .
‘Is that Harry I hear?’ said Dad. ‘What does he want?’
I listened, too, pleased with the diversion, pleased for once with Harry. I needed an excuse to leave the laundry and the little mirror that had suddenly created a big problem, the sort of difficulty that not even Dad with all his skill at cutting out and restoring, could solve or resolve.
‘He probably wants someone to undo him again,’ I sighed, feeling undone myself. ‘I’ll go and sort him out.’
The ‘blame-Harry’ effect
The motivation for having a good time at the pool (even one as compelling as the probable presence of Troy) had suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke (and mirrors). All I could focus on was what I had seen.
So, just as on the day before, I ended up cancelling my prior engagement. To tell the truth I didn’t exactly cancel it. After helping Harry I just didn’t go. Against my usual policy of front-footedness I resolved to make my apologies later. I figured it would be easier this time to give an excuse after it was too late for anyone to try and change my mind. I figured the pressure on me
from Em and Rach to still go would have been a
lot more intense than yesterday’s mild acceptance of me abandoning the shopping expedition. But
no way could I have changed my mind and gone. All I could think about was that either I was being haunted (bad enough) or that I was going mad (far worse).
So I lent my aid to Harry. Initially I assumed that undoing a fiddly straitjacket would be a useful way of diverting, albeit briefly, my attention from what had just happened. In hindsight, going to the pool as planned would probably have been an even better diversionary
tactic, but who can know in advance how things will pan out?
Harry was in a sour mood, well, more sour than I’d experienced for quite some time. He was used to achieving what he set out to do and didn’t cope at all well when things didn’t work out. In some ways he was a worse (or maybe that should be better?) perfectionist than Dad.
‘Stupid straitjacket!’ he said after I finally had him out of it. (Well, he didn’t actually say ‘stupid’ but I figure you’d already worked that out for yourself.)
‘A bad worker blames his, or her, tools,’ I said, equally testily. It was a phrase we said to Dad when things didn’t go according to plan. Dad knew he wasn’t a bad artisan so he never took a rise out of it but Harry, surprisingly, given how often he had joined us in accusing Dad of the same thing, went ape.
Once again, I won’t repeat what he said to me. A writer should use bad language only sparingly
and for maximum effect. Harry’s bad language
was simply gratuitous and ill-considered. If I tell you that his every second or third word began with
the letter ‘f’ you will get the idea. I will admit that maybe I shouldn’t have risked upsetting his highness’ magical composure in the first place by making my comment, or that I should have lowered my own standards by calling him, immediately after he had finished his tirade, a name that also began with ‘f’ and ended with ‘wit’ but, much to my shame, I did.
We parted on a hostile footing.
Communication breakdown
I escaped to my room where I must have dozed off. The first I knew of it was waking up to the sound of the phones. Em had texted my mobile and then Rach rang our portable landline, which happened to have ended up in my room (it’s a well-travelled phone.) They were both trying to find out why I hadn’t turned up at the pool.
To Rach I said, ‘I’m so, sooo sorry,’ despising myself for sounding so sycophantic (don’t you just so love words? Look this one up if you want to know what it means) but knowing she was the sort of person who needed soft-soap placating. ‘I just couldn’t make it because I had to help Harry with one of his magic tricks.’
During our conversation I texted Em back (I’m quite good at multi-tasking), ‘Sorry, I was all tied up helping Harry with one of his magic tricks. He’s entering a talent quest.’
On both occasions there was a prolonged delay at the other end of the phone while this infor-
mation was being processed.
Rach eventually said, ‘You think a magic trick is more important than hanging out at the pool
with us and the all the cool-looking dudes?’ For a Luddite, Rach is surprisingly non-traditional and non-conservative when it comes to boys.
‘The talent quest is a pretty big thing,’ I mumbled. ‘Even you must have seen the ads for it on TV.’
‘I think I have,’ she admitted, ‘but the talent at the pool is far more interesting.’
‘But blood is thicker than water.’ (I can italicize with the best of them.)
‘And you must be thicker than either of them,’ Rach said tartly, which really hurt even if she said it as a friend and I happened to agree with her. But what could I have done? It was too late by then to turn back the tide. (Or, to paraphrase our maudlin clock: Soon, in passing on, you’ll find time gone).
In the middle of this conversation Em sent a second message that read, ‘Magic? Wot planet r u on?’
Immediately followed by a third. ‘Troy was asking after u.’
‘Was he?’ I asked Rach who, of course, had no idea what I meant but must have guessed I was texting Em while also talking to her. She hung up.
Not, I hasten to say, because I hadn’t done what I had promised and gone to the pool. No, she just couldn’t stand it when the person she was trying to talk to was distracted by texts arriving at the same time and getting muddled about who she was speaking to or texting. So much for multi-tasking. Anyway, at least her going meant I could focus on Em’s texts. They needed focusing on. They were
often hard to interpret.
‘You mean he noticed I wasn’t there?!’ I texted back.
Emma replied somewhat enigmatically, ‘B thr nxt tme. K?’
I went off into a brief romantic daze. With the revelation that Troy had noted my absence even the mirrors were fleetingly forgotten.
And then Em went silent as well. She can’t stand not getting instant replies.
Strange things happen
As well as missing the company of my best friends two days in a row (I wished I could have told them about the mirrors but how could I?) I suddenly began to pine for a sight or sound of Troy. Had he really asked about me or had Em just concocted a story to make sure I’d didn’t stand them up next time?
If it were true, then what did it mean? Was Troy really interested in me or was this just Em’s fancy? Maybe he had been asking after me but only out of polite interest. He would have seen us together - our trio was often together - unless he had a vision impairment as well as a speech impediment (speaking some words backwards, I mean,
although I understood this was by choice, not design.) On the other hand maybe he’d asked about my absence (if he’d asked) because he was keen on Em and was using me as an excuse to talk to her. After all, she was far better looking than me.
This was getting way too complicated so I told myself to forget about it. For now at least. I had a
far more complicated, and at least equally com-pelling, thing to think about - the pictures I’d seen in the mirrors (remember them?). They had created
more than enough complexity in my life to be going on with.
After a while, my mobile rang again. Who was it this time?
Greeks bearing gifts
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Snehta taht si, yeh?’
‘What!’
‘Snehta taht si, dias I.’
‘Pervert,’ I screamed into the phone before hanging up. That was the last straw. I contem-plated telling Dad what had just happened. Perhaps he’d ring the police and get them to track the call. Then the phone rang again.
‘Don’t hang up again. It’s only me, Troy.’
My first thought was that the weirdness of
this - Troy ringing me - was almost enough to prove that séances and magic mirrors were for real.
Be calm, I told myself. Rationalise. ‘Oh, Troy, hi!’
My second thought . . . how the hell did Troy know I’d hung up on the previous caller? Unless Troy had been said previous caller!
‘Was that you before?’
‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘What on earth were you saying? It sounded . . . well . . . it sounded Greek to me.’
‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m not a pervert, honestly.’
My face went as red as Harry’s had done during
his struggle with the straitjacket. ‘I didn’t know it was you . . . tell me what were you saying? . . . and
why are you ringing me? How did you get my
number?’
‘I said, “Hey, is that Athens?” And then I said, “I said, is that Athens?” I said it backwards. I sometimes do that.’
‘So I heard,’ I admitted. ‘Why?’
‘Just for fun,’ Troy said. (Definitely not an impairment, then.) ‘And because I can. It’s not very easy for most people you know.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No, usually you have to stop and think about it. Write it down, even. I don’t have to do either. It seems to come naturally.’
‘Right,’ I said, thinking that this conversation was getting more surreal by the second.
‘Yadot pu wohs t’ndid uoy?’
‘Huh?’ It was most unlike me to be lost for words. Conversing in reverse??? How bizarre was that?
‘See, it’s not easy. Otherwise you’d already have worked out what I said.’
‘Please, just tell me?’
Troy sighed, sounding hurt. I wished I could have taken him seriously (I mean, not only had my dream phone c
all come true - Troy had rung me; Troy had rung me - and now I had his number captive on my phone) but, honestly, I had far more serious things on my mind than the pros and cons of backwards conversation.
‘You didn’t show up today. At the pool. Em and Rach didn’t know, weren’t sure, you know . . . they felt a bit deirrow . . . I mean, worried. Thought if I gave you a call, you might say what
was really . . . I mean . . .’
‘You mean they thought I was holding out on
them. Lying to them about why I wasn’t there.’
‘Like I said, they were deir . . . worried. Said it wasn’t like you not to turn up as agreed.’
‘Who are the liars?' I said, more to myself than to Troy.
‘Tahw?’
I didn’t wait for a translation. ‘Did you ask after me or not?’ I said.
‘When?’
‘At the pool?’
‘No,’ said Troy. ‘Why should I have?’
‘Em said you did.’
‘I didn’t. Why would she have said that?’
‘You’re either extremely duplicitous or very stupid,’ I said. ‘Obviously so I’d spill the beans to you when you rang. When they got you to ring. So you could pass on whatever was supposedly wrong with me to my friends who think I’m a liar.’
While I was working up a sweat about the situation another part of me - the rationalising part - was reminding me, well, you didn’t exactly tell your bestest friends the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, did you Athens? Can you blame them for roping in an innocent bystander (named Troy) into trying to find out the truth for them? On the other hand, Em had lied through her teeth to me, homing in on my greatest vulnerability. My romantic dream-life shattered, much as I would have liked to shatter all of Laurie and Iris’s damnable mirrors! And my name, my unfortunate name Athens, had just received another battering. In backwards language it had become Snehta!
The Houdini Effect Page 7