Frankie Styne & the Silver Man (2 page)

Hide and Seek

T
he early m
orning sun painted Onley Street bright, though by afternoon it would be swamped in shadow. If there had not been bollards sealing it at one end, the street would have been an ideal shortcut between two of the eight major roads which converged gradually until they reached the centre of town. Even so it was busy, filled morning and afternoon with a tide of schoolchildren, a steady procession of shoppers winding their way back home. Delivery vans eased around the sharp corners of its tributary streets; market researchers, postmen and leafleteers moved, heavy as summer bees, from door to door.

Frank's alarm was set for seven, and even having taken the pill he woke the usual two minutes before it sounded. He made himself espresso coffee with a specially imported Italian machine. He preferred to write by hand and to cook on a real flame, but otherwise he was drawn to gadgets, provided they worked; things automatic, cordless, remote-controlled; things which timed or cleaned themselves, had memories; the cunningly concealed, the multifunctional, the miniature . . .

A wad of mail slapped onto the floor. Apart from bills and the small blue envelopes that came occasionally from his dead mother's friends, now living in retirement homes, the bulk of it was professional. There was always a great deal of routine publishing correspondence, including at the end of every month a padded envelope of fan mail forwarded by Cougar Books. Periodically he would enter into correspondence with a willing academic or specialist of some kind. For research purposes, he subscribed to over a dozen journals, ranging from
The Lancet
and
Military Hardware
to
Modern Interiors.
He never neglected research and prided himself on the accuracy of his descriptive passages.

His current novel,
The Procreators,
had a suburban ­setting—a four-bedroomed house on a Barratt housing estate. One of the bedrooms was done out as a nursery: Beatrix Potter wallpaper and curtains, a cot with ruched linen, a changing table and associated paraphernalia, a cheerful mobile of ducks hanging from the ceiling, a baby bouncer—Frank had spent two whole mornings at the shops getting the stuff just so.

The living room was based on the careful examination of several show houses on luxury estates on the edge of town. It was carpeted wall-to-wall in a soft wool of a pale pinkish beige called Oyster. Framed prints—rural landscapes, vases of sweet peas on windowsills—hung on walls papered a slightly richer pink called Blush, and the suite was upholstered in a tapestry-like print which, in a lighter weight, had been used for the curtains and pelmets as well.

The small circular tables with tooled leather tops bore vases of flowers and magazines stacked neatly in piles. Light came from shell-like fittings mounted on each wall and from the large television, on without the sound . . . It was ghastly, truly revolting to one who preferred clean lines and simplicity, but Frank had described it without detectable rancour; a matter of taste, after all. A log effect gas fire had been set in an exposed brick fireplace, and in front of it lay a white fur rug. On this the action of the main scene was to take place.

He carried the bundle of mail to the kitchen and extracted a cream bond envelope from his agent, Katie Rumbold. The envelope was thick
—i
t must contain, he thought, at least two pages of 90-gramme bond paper. Katie Rumbold always addressed him as Dear John or even Dear
Jon
. This was how, at the age of eighteen, he had signed his first letter to her predecessor at the agency. Ever since he had used Frank and ever since she had refused to notice—not that he had actually told her how much it irritated him, because doing that might involve explaining
why.
How, for instance, a black and white photograph, framed in silver, used to stand on a small cabinet next to his mother's double bed. It showed a fair-skinned man whose face looked smooth and lean beneath his military cap, whose broad shoulders reached firmly out of the frame. A six-foot man with features often described as ‘chiselled' and eyes which could be no other colour but ice-blue. There would never, ever, be another like him, Frank's dead mother had often proclaimed: not on this earth. The photograph was gone, but sometimes a print of it appeared behind Frank's eyes—and soon after would follow the rest of the room: the pattern of roses on the walls, the thick maroon carpet, the white candlewick bedspread, the single light hanging from the dead centre of the room.

A humpback clock ticked quietly. A dressing table was set in the window bay. It had two drawers either side and a space between for his mother's knees, if she ever had time, between him and her book-keeping job at the garage, to sit at the stool. The dressing table blocked the netted light and made the room uncomfortably dark, but still its mirrors
—
one huge expanse of glass, arched at the top, with two smaller panels, hinged, on either side—absorbed enough light to shine. It was the only mirror in the house and in it Frank, then John, had seen himself for the first time, one afternoon long before he went to school. He had pushed open her bedroom door, which stuck slightly on the carpet and made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, and walked carefully across, avoiding the mirror's eye until he was right in front of it.

There were the lace mats, the cut-glass jar containing face powder and a smell, and the white china dish made to look like a basket, containing two crumpled hairnets. There were the lipsticks in scratched gold holders, the hairbrush, an atomiser of perfume, and the cake mascara with its clogged brush—all finely coated in pinkish powder-dust, all standing there in the silence and looking just like themselves. Behind was a hugeness of wallpaper, like some kind of patterned sky. Between the table and the wallpaper sky was him: a thick-necked child, with a large crimson birthmark spreading across his right cheek and dipping into the socket of his eye. Like a magnet, it affected everything else: the eyes seemed to be different sizes, the brows to be at cross purposes; the forehead hung; his lips, just licked, reminded him of worms. Frank, then John, gripped the edge of the dressing table. There he was, his mother's own and only. He wanted to believe that it was some kind of mistake. But everything else was copied perfectly.

Of course, the ugly duckling became a swan. But the ugly sisters envied and were punished twice over; he had seen it on the stage. Mirrors on the wall always told the truth.

He turned away from the mirror, realising the worst thing of all: that this discovery could not be kept secret, because everyone else already knew.
She
already knew. As he pushed her bedroom door softly to, it was this that made him want to cry—and remembering it could, too—and once started it would lead on to more as well, one memory dragging out the next like a conjuror's handkerchiefs.

Katie Rumbold wasn't the kind of person to do something without knowing why. ‘But why, John, why?' she would ask, all smiles. Just thinking about explaining it all he could feel the past's sharp edges pressing cruelly at the tolerableness of the present . . . No. He couldn't. He just signed his letters Frank, and hoped that one day she would notice. He set her letter flat on the table next to his cup.

Dear John,

I'm writing with some very good news—do you remember me mentioning the Hanslett Award when we met before Christmas?

Christmas? No, he didn't. These days her letters were typed by a machine that made them look virtually published. The clear black type, absolutely even, made it difficult to believe that anything she wrote was less than definite or could ever be wrong. Misspelled words had an authority which made them unsettling and difficult to challenge with any confidence. Frank abandoned the letter and went to replenish his cup of coffee, standing by the machine while the dark liquid leaked fitfully out. He adjusted the kitchen blind to make the light softer. The blind was very pale yellow and made from extremely narrow slats, with a rod at the side. It was the best you could get. Frank had a special attachment for cleaning it. In his mother's day the window had been covered with a plastic gingham curtain. She said it was practical, but in fact it had attracted mildew at the bottom, and it felt dreadful to the touch, damp and smooth, like a sick person's skin.

He had waited for eighteen months after her death. Then he had gutted the house. The floral wallpapers were replaced with simple stripes, pinstripe-fine; the textured ceilings were plastered smooth. He had spotlights and wall lights and dimmer switches, integral shelving; he installed a new kitchen, heating, a shower, the blinds. He stayed with his mother's friend Marjorie while it was done, and came back to find the place unrecognisable, as he had hoped. He had lived it out day by day and he had been loyal to the end—what choice, after her faithfulness? But after, he had wanted to forget; and to be only, and thoroughly, Frank Styne.

Returning to his chair he forced himself to read on:

It's a new and substantial prize, likely to carry a great deal of publicity. The prospectus says it is intended for

The type slipped effortlessly into italics.

—
daring and experimental work at the cutting edge of contemporary fiction.

Of course, no one knows what that means, especially first time around! But I must confess that although I've long felt your work to be underestimated, it never occurred to me to press Cougar to enter
To the Slaughter
for the Hanslett! I have it from P. Magee, however, that a member of the judging panel is a great fan of yours and has called for
TTS
to be considered. And of course the kind of post-modern, ironic horror you are so well known for is certainly at the “cutting edge”!

Cougar are delighted, though not sure quite what's hit them. Naturally, if you win, it may in the end mean some kind of deal with a more literary house. The shortlist (rumour has it that you are on it) will emerge this week—coinciding almost exactly with publication of
TTS—
and the result comes out in early May. Even at this stage I think there could be
considerable
interest from the press. I'm sure you'll be as delighted as I am. I may well be able to give you further information when we meet for lunch next Wednesday, 3 April. Fingers crossed!

He'd never much cared for the loose generosity—or was it arrogance?—of the way Katie Rumbold could fill any available space with her signature, and now, suddenly, he detested it. He had never, ever, thought of—let alone wanted to win—a literary prize. Postmodern? Ironic? I don't even want to be in the running, he thought. I write
pulp
. The plot of
The Procreators,
for instance, was nothing but, though it did differ in one respect from his previous work. His editor at Cougar, Pete Magee, had recently told him that it was time he included detailed sex scenes in his books. Times were changing. Television was to blame. It was, he had said, virtually obligatory nowadays to include some sexual action, and he expressed his complete confidence that Frank could take it on. But if not, perhaps just an outline, and someone in the office could do it, and slip it in? Frank could just tidy it up and make it blend . . . ‘Only trying to make things easy for you, old chap,' he said when Frank asked him why didn't he dispense with authors altogether. ‘Just so long as you get it in, I don't care how, that's all.'

As a result of this discussion Frank had roughed out
The
Procreators.
The Barratt-house husband's desperate and humiliating attempts to produce viable sperm—spurred on by his belief that his beautiful wife Sandra was already unfaithful and staying with him only for material reasons—had culminated in a visit to a Dr Villarossa. From her he had learned that his infertility was the result of hiding his true nature. For too long he'd suppressed the virile part, the beast in himself, walking on soft carpets, bringing his wife flowers, busying himself with home improvements and gardening. Dr Villarossa had given him a series of injections to change all this. He would, she said, become what he truly was, and then a child would be conceived.

As a result of the injections, Mr Barratt-Homes began to change physically. His shoulders broadened, his skin became greasy and then flaky. He perspired constantly; his sweat had a terrible odour like cat's breath and left dark, ineradicable stains on his clothes. Sandra—at first concerned—had grown utterly repelled and rejected him. He had suffered terrible physical pain and grown even more miserable than before but Dr Villarossa had reassured him that everything was as it should be.

Eventually he had taken to one of the spare bedrooms and locked the door. Finally, he emerged, creeping up on his wife in the sitting room while she watched TV and drank Martinis.

Frank had already described this: his Barratt-Homes husband was man-shaped for the most part, but had grown unevenly, his buttocks, shoulders and feet huge, his arms long, his legs short. His jaw had grown larger, his forehead receded. Where a human skin would be soft—the lips and fingertips, the palms of the hands, the insides of the thighs—so his was scaled and hard, and elsewhere covered in a terrible eczema, a crust of flakes concealing the soft putrescence underneath, like pastry on a pie. They would have sex on the rug. Pete Magee was pleased.

This is what I do, Frank thought. Pulp. Junk. I do it well. It's not daring or experimental but I want to go on doing it
in peace.
No publicity. No people coming around and wanting to find out about the real me or what it all means deep down . . . But it was there, in his hand, typed: the future, the shortlist, the result in early May . . . Publicity, which meant, of course, television. It was as if a skewer had slipped through his flesh.

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, John,' his mother had said, returning with custard creams and gold-top milk. The next day she had bought him the snow-storm paperweight. She found a wooden box so that he could stand next to her in the kitchen as she worked. But glass truth was truer than mother truth. The mirror had nothing to gain and nothing to lose. ‘Being bad is far worse than being ugly,' she also said. But when school came—playtime—they had all run away.