Frankie Styne & the Silver Man (6 page)

And so, bewitched, desire slumbered endlessly in the fetid and crumbling castle of his body. A good thing really. Even then it had seemed that the present was tolerable, even good, compared to what had been and what might be.

But soon everything was sex. Pictures of naked bodies replaced Frank as a source of breaktime entertainment. He didn't want to look; they frightened him. He lost his power. The others might want to know if he said that he fucked corpses or raw liver, or donkeys, or old men, but it would scarcely make him popular or powerful and in any case it was a subject he needed to avoid. Perhaps there was some line—to do with telling some kind of truth, however twistedly, somewhere—and he wouldn't cross it. There was self-exaggeration, which protected, and self-fabrication, which would hurt.

He had discovered Cougar books. The first books he'd ever liked. In them were sewer-dwellers, terrible diseases, intestines, charnel houses, pits of snakes and psychic death traps. A book, he felt, was a curious and miraculous thing, just words on a page written by someone named but unknown, and safely invisible. It was not personal, like standing up and saying, ‘Do you want to know?' By the time you'd bought a book, you already did want to know. He began to write his own books at break time and he illustrated them in Art. Teachers seemed to let him do what he liked. He gave himself an official pen name for signing the pictures and the books: Frank Styne. He left off the ‘ie' to make it sound more mature. The third novel was accepted by Cougar when he was seventeen. Things had been quite good, again, for years.

Some odd angle, a break in the routine of dressing could still bring him down. Chance encounters were worse than mirrors, which could be sought out sober and prepared. But by and large being brave had worked.

Frank sighed. Yes, he thought, sometimes I am lonely. But mostly I'm content with the way things are . . . It is my life. Who does Katie Rumbold think she is? She makes the present hurt. She's spoiling what I've made.

He knew her words would be very hard to fight—the black on the white, laser-etched. What could you do to revenge yourself on a person of such a kind? Someone who could dictate a gush of words that would leave someone else—him—reeling? Blind her with hot irons? Remove vital organs (liver, skin, bowel) whilst conscious? Bury her alive? Saw off limbs? Suck out her brain through a small, drilled hole? Force her to eat her own flesh raw, or cooked in a barbecue?

All these dreadful fates had befallen characters in his books. And all of them had happened, somewhere, at some time, were maybe even happening, now in some other place—but none of them seemed achievable, by him . . . 

The morning had gone. The coffee had worn itself away, leaving him exhausted. The gulf between the written and the lived world ached, huge. He felt so
weak.

The Silent Zone

‘
Definite improvement, not having a gate,' Liz muttered to Jim as she set everything down and locked the front door—it must have been about two o'clock—‘too much faffing.' When she heard the brisk click of heels she knew without turning that it must be Alice from next door. She picked up her bags.

‘Hello,' Alice said, coming to a staccato halt. She smelled strongly of the hairdresser's. She smiled and gestured at the bags of washing. ‘Yours broken?'

‘Haven't got one.' Liz twisted the two black plastic bags around her wrists then let them spin. The bags, Jim in his sling at the front; it was odd to feel so many weights at once.

‘Pop it in mine. I've got a drier too. Won't take half an hour.' Alice gestured at her front door with its big brass number plate, 129, and letterbox to match. Liz twisted the bags around her wrists again.

‘Thanks. But I've got to go to the shops anyway,' she said slowly. All morning she had been thinking about talking. It could almost be a programme on TV: how people had got talking wrong. You needed to express things, somehow­ needed the words to make your thoughts come alive. But on another planet they knew that really people should only talk on their own. Humans weren't strong enough for it yet, or they'd started off on the wrong foot or got diverted. They talked to each other and lost the thread. It was a gift, but the humans had squandered it . . . Now she was very aware of her own words, as if they were something solid in her mouth.

‘Jump in the car. I'll give you a lift. Come on.' Alice grasped the bags, scratching one of Liz's hands with her fingernails as she did so, but not noticing. She hurried to the red car parked askew outside number 129. Liz followed
.
It wasn't worth arguing. The reason she'd chosen this particular time to do her washing was in order to avoid Purvis's visit at 3:15. Alice glanced over her shoulder as if to reassure herself that Liz hadn't vanished. Then she laughed, heaving the bags onto the back seat.

Maybe, Liz thought as she climbed in silently beside them,
there was one thing every person had to say to themselves, once in a lifetime, and that's what it was all for. It might be the same thing for everyone or it might be something special for every person. You couldn't know, because when it had been said the person moved over to the other planet. A higher plane. The Silent Zone, that's what it would be called.

‘Oh! Of course. We don't have a car-seat,' Alice said as she got into the car.

‘It's okay,' Liz told her.

‘Well… It is only a two-minute drive. But maybe you should put the belt on,' she added ‘between you and the sling?' Liz ignored this.
‘Steering's jammed,' muttered Alice. It meant nothing to Liz, who couldn't drive. The air inside the car was heavy with Alice's hairspray and her jasmine perfume. But beneath them Liz thought she could smell something else, bitter, the faintest whiff of sweat, not hers and not Jim's.

‘Do you want some gum?' Alice asked. Liz shook her head.
There wasn't enough room for her legs. She could hear Alice's breathing, the rustle of her clothes as she wrestled with the wheel. She knew that if she raised her own eyes, Alice's would be waiting for them in the mirror. She wound down the window and looked determinedly out of it.

Their houses were very different. Hers, 127, was the last of the small terraces, just wide enough for a window and a door. But theirs, though it shared a party wall, marked the beginning of the older, bigger houses, almost double the width, with an extra floor, and a loft conversion as well. The windows of 129 had been replaced with hand-crafted replicas of the Georgian originals, whereas Liz's had knock-together frames with tiny lights at the top. Their brickwork had been
cleaned to a mellow glow, whereas Liz's had been rendered with pebbledash which was beginning to attract algae. Both front gardens were the same mean depth, but Alice and Tom's sported a neat square of almost fluorescent green laced with smart yellow tulips and tiny cypress trees; they had a wrought-iron fence and gate painted white. Liz's garden resembled the back of a piece of embroidery: all loose ends, knots and crossed threads. The border and lawn were indistinguishable, the path nearly lost, the abandoned gate already sinking beneath the sodden grass. Liz considered it all. It's just different, she thought.
Special.

‘I've just been to the hypnotist!' Alice announced brightly, letting out the clutch. The red car's engine was whisper-quiet. It was years since Liz had been inside a normal car, unless she counted police vans and the ambulance that took her to the hospital and then moved her and her things when she came from the bed and breakfast to here. She settled herself warily, mistrusting the softness of the maroon upholstery.

‘We're both going, separately,' Alice continued. ‘I hope it works.' She took a left turn so fast that Liz had to put out her arm and push her hand into the seat to stop herself toppling over. She braced herself with her forearms and bent so that she could see Jim's face when he woke . . . The people from the Silent Zone, she thought, wanted to help. They had to communicate with humans, to let them know that they were on the wrong track. But, of course, it couldn't be with words. That was the problem. ‘Maybe you're already there,' she thought at Jim, ‘and you've come to fetch me.'

‘Lovely baby. I'm very jealous. I really want one,' Alice said. ‘Should be easy enough to park. Might as well come in with you. Years since I've been in a launderette.' She made it sound like some kind of treat.

Liz stood and watched as Alice loaded two washing machines with her and Jim's sheets, pants, socks and underwear, methodically dividing things into light and dark. She held a pale pink babygrow up by its arms, the flat shape of two months old.

‘Did you set your mind on one or the other?' she said coyly. Liz shook her head. Basically, she hadn't wanted one at all. ‘I want a boy, Tom wants a girl,' Alice said as she loaded the dispenser with coins from her own purse. ‘It's okay. Can't stand having too much change,' she assured Liz. ‘Expect you have to count the pennies. Be a while before you can get out to work. You look so young. Babies age some women dreadfully.

‘Does she take after her father?' She sat down and gestured at Liz to do the same. ‘Smoke? I know I shouldn't and I don't often, but I always buy some duty free to offer around.

‘Of course, Tom and I
would
want the opposite! We're always arguing at the moment. Didn't used to be like that. You see, Tom's had an affair—lasted two years. I had no idea until the end.' She smiled brightly. ‘It's over now, but I find I can't forget about it for long. What I can't do is understand. I mean, at the time, we were at it twice a day. What more can you do? I keep myself in shape—well, don't you think?'

A
shape, yes, Liz thought, slipping back into the morning's observant alien; humans do vary enormously . . . The emerald-green covering seems to be made of something very soft, and the big buckled belt seems very tight but has no obvious practical function . . . The hair is very curly and bounces as she talks—investigate possibility of some kind of transmission system . . .

‘Then I find out he's still been dropping in on this other cow—excuse me—on the way home from work. Well it's really all over now, but the slightest thing sets me off. Then that makes him feel guilty. A few nights ago he said to me: “Alice, I've hurt you so much and I still am. I think I should just clear out and you'd be happier on your own.” He was crying. I felt dreadful. But then I thought, you just want me to make it easy . . .' Alice exhaled, staring at the blur of washing opposite. Liz didn't think she could tell her to save her breath because she already knew. Instead she made to reach for her carrier bags.

Alice grasped her wrist. Again the nails bit home. ‘Look—I wanted to ask you something . . . I wanted to say—you would tell me, wouldn't you, if you saw him—saw him with someone else?' For the first time, she stopped talking and waited for a reply. It was like kidnapping. No—hijack. At wordpoint. The woman could hire herself out to terrorist groups and slip onto a plane without any suspicion at all . . . Liz had watched a programme about hijacking, ages ago. You couldn't so much as cough or move your arm without someone poking a gun in your face. One of the passengers became hysterical, just suddenly stood up and waved her arms then tried to run down the plane. They shot her in the leg. Hijackers wanted you alive until they decided different, or lost their cool.

‘Would you?'

‘Oh, sure,' Liz said, in much the same way as she'd answered that other talker, Purvis—because it was easiest. But at the same time it was difficult . . . She leaned back into the vinyl chair, breathing out and trying to think of snow, acres of it, undisturbed. It often calmed her down, but was hard to do in a sweltering launderette beset by a swarm of words, just when she was wondering whether they were necessary at all. Well, she calculated, I've missed Purvis. That's a Silver Lining, or almost. Jim's nose was running badly. She shifted herself, searching for a tissue. Beaming, Alice held one out.

‘Now,' she was saying, bright and very matter of fact, ‘it turns out that she's pregnant! She sent a letter to his work. I found it in his lunchbox, but he said he was going to show me anyway. So maybe that's why; he's always wanted a baby but we've never had any luck. But he says not. So I said, maybe it's not yours. So he said, yes, he thought that too and he'd tell her he wouldn't have anything to do with it. Do you think he'll stick to that though? It just isn't fair. We've been trying for years, particularly the last two. We've had some tests—there's nothing wrong. So maybe it's psychological. That's why the hypnotist, you see.'

There was something in the pit of Liz's stomach trying to get out. A monster that had been living there. It bucked and heaved, stretched her skin, squashed her kidneys, stamped on her liver, twisted the intestines around and around . . . She'd seen one like it on a programme called
Alien,
bursting out with a scream. And it had been like that in the hospital too, but there she was on her back and it went on longer, and he came out between her legs. There was a strange smell, blood and pepper and strawberries all mixed, and the scream. The baby, a streaked thing that couldn't see, was placed on her chest.

‘A boy,' someone said, and various masked people gathered round.

‘Poor kid,' she'd heared someone say. ‘Didn't go to any classes. Nothing. Doesn't know what's hit her.' I can get out now, she had thought as she closed her eyes.

‘What are you having for your tea?' Alice asked. The washing went around and around, the whites and the coloureds. The water was purple in one; something had bled.

‘Hypnotic,' Alice said. ‘Perhaps I should just come here, instead of paying Mr Mandell forty pounds an hour . . .'

In unison, the two machines began to vibrate, drowning her laugh, sucking the water away, hurling the clothes around. Buttons and studs clattered on the metal drum then everything stuck to the sides. Then they all fell down.

Outside it was beginning to grow dark. Hang on, Liz told herself, to the Silver Linings.

In fading light, Frank hesitated outside the shop. It had blacked-out windows. He caught a weak reflection of himself: the sloped shoulders, the folds of skin at the neck, the thin wisps of hair, the ghostly image staring back—from behind, he thought, it would make quite a dramatic shot. Because of Katie Rumbold's letter he had caught himself seeing himself like this all day, as if he were in some dreadful documentary on television. A commentary, spoken in a nasal, slightly sarcastic tone of voice was following him around as well, audible in snatches, when he paused in the day's activities.

‘Despite the fantastic nature of his work,' it was saying now, ‘Styne's method is one of dogged realism. Although his plots are simple and basically similar—some kind of monster intruding into some kind of real situation and wreaking havoc—he prides himself on making them believable, and this he achieves largely by means of the sheer conviction with which he describes ordinary things. It's a simple but effective tactic: belief runs over, as he puts it, into the unreal things, covering the seams. Here we see him on one of his research trips, about to . . .'

Frank had seen such programmes, and found them excruciating even when they were about other people. If he was to have fame, it would be of a different kind: one day someone would make a film of one of his books.
Dear Frank,
Katie Rumbold's letter would begin,
I have some very good news
 . . . Someone would buy the rights—he had absolutely no desire to write the thing—and while he got on with his life they would make it, spending millions on special effects . . . Not that financial reward drew him to film, nor any particular positive feeling for the medium, which in fact he tended to despise. No—it was the idea of himself sitting there in the munching crowd of men, women and children, watching the picture—his picture—just like everyone else, anonymous, unnoticed; the same in the dark.

He didn't want to be the subject. He wanted to be on the other side, in the audience, watching a made-up story, with his name, Frank Styne, in red letters at the beginning or the end. A story, not his real life . . . Keep on the move, Frank thought, picking up his carrier bag of groceries and pushing through the door.

It was, he told himself bravely, a voyage of discovery. A challenge. A subject he had long neglected and avoided. Certain facts had thrust themselves upon him—the existence of contraception, how much everyone thought about sex—but beyond that his knowledge had scarcely improved since his schooldays. And now the time had come, as Pete Magee had said.