Blue Shifting (16 page)

I reached up to cast the rope around the bough, and was stopped by the song of a bird. The notes were high, and regular, and I knew then that it was not bird song.

A strange heat passed through my head, and I felt weakened. I staggered to the gnarled bole of the tree and attempted to locate the source of the chime.

It came to me after long, shocked seconds that she had left me something, that after all she
had
thought of me...

I found Philomena's pendant in a hollow between bough and trunk, scabbed over with moss so that I had to dig to get it out. The pendant was tarnished, its chain rusted, but the small metal oval still tingled in my grip.

A piece of sunset seemed to detach itself from the sky and dance on the grass before me. My eyes focused and I saw, projected into the air, the holographic image of Philomena Duval.

I dropped to my knees and like this we faced each other across the years. She blurred in my vision. I wiped away my tears. My imagination had done nothing to exaggerate her beauty. She was as I remembered her. She was even crying, as she had been on the very last occasion we had met.

From the pendant in my hand came her voice, synchronised to the movements of the phantom's lips. The sound of her little girl's contralto was almost more than I could bear.

"... so much to tell you and so little time to tell it in. Oh, I don't know where to begin!" She raised a hand and pushed it through her short hair in exasperation. The gesture released a flood of memories, and I think I even moaned aloud in pain.

"First of all, I must apologise for yesterday. I'm sorry I shouted like that. I wanted to explain, but I couldn't bring myself to tell you. Not face to face. Like this, it's different, easier. Please say you don't hate me..."

She paused then, biting her lips against the tears, her eyes downcast. "When you said..." she began again, "when you said that you wanted to come with me – oh, you don't know how wonderful and how terrible those words sounded! I love you so much and you've made my life so much better than it ever was." Her chin on her chest, eyes closed, she cried.

"I... I wanted to tell you that you could come with me, more than anything I wanted that. But I couldn't allow you to do that, for your sake. It wouldn't be fair."

The ghost of Philomena looked quickly over her shoulder, and then faced forwards again, her face twisted in an anguished grimace. "That was Daddy, calling me. We're almost ready to go. I wanted to come and see you working in the field, but your father stopped me. He knows, you see. He's only trying to protect you..." She paused, staring down at her entwined fingers, then gathered herself and managed, "So... this will have to do. I'll leave it where you're sure to find it."

She turned and called, "Okay, I'm coming. Just one minute!" Then she faced me and I could see that she was fighting to present a brave face.

I had a terrible presentiment of what she was about to say, what she had said to me all those years ago, and I cried out for it not to be true.

"I couldn't bring myself to tell you," she whispered. "You thought all along that my Mother was ill, and how could I tell you that it wasn't my mother? I've had all the treatment that money can buy, and they brought me to the shrine as a last resort. But it... it doesn't seem to be doing any good." She looked straight at me and smiled brightly. "But my father's heard about a clinic on Mars. They claim they can help cases like mine. We're heading there now."

She was silent for a while, then said, "Please don't hate me for leaving like this. Please don't. I love you," she said, "and if I can, I'll come back for you. Whatever it takes, however far and however much it costs, I will. I'll come back for you. Okay?" And she forced a smile then and reached out, too quickly, in order to cut the recording before she broke down completely. I held out my arms to her, and Philomena faded against the sunset and was gone.

~

I sat on grass as the sun sank over the horizon and the stars brightened overhead. I picked out Vega and smiled through the tears. I remained in the overgrown garden for the long hours of the night, physically in the present but really reliving another life in my head, sorting out the complications, the subtleties of motive, I had been unable to discern as a boy. More than once I replayed the hologram that Philomena had left for me. As she faded for the final time, I even told her that I loved her.

When morning came I stood and stared about me like someone emerging from a dream. I saw the ghosts of a boy and a girl, and I heard our laughter. I thought of the callow youth I had been, in love and without a care in the world, and I thought of Philomena and what our love must have meant to her, and the terrible secret she had kept from me for so long.

As the sun climbed, warming me, I thought back to the day between Philomena's departure and my father's death – the very last day I had spent at the hotel. Had I ventured into the back garden then, and stood beneath the apple tree, how might I have reacted to the knowledge that the girl I loved was dying?

It came to me now that it was perhaps right that her farewell message had been delayed for so long.

At last I moved myself to leave the garden. I walked around the house, leaving forever the place where I had spent the happiest, and also the saddest, days of my life. I climbed into my car and drove down the track between the gently swaying sunflowers. I turned right along the coast road, the sunlight brilliant on the vast ocean. When I came to the greensward I slowed and pulled into the side of the road. I stared across the clifftops for a long, long time, towards the rocks where my father had taken his life, and experienced all the emotions I had been unable to summon as a boy.

Then I set off, Philomena's pendant on the passenger seat beside me, and drove north towards the city.

Eye of the Beholder

Miller sat at his desk and stared through the window at the gentle contours of Hampstead Heath. He considered the fact of the city beyond, the teeming millions packed into so little space. There had been a time, not so long ago, when the population of the capital, the sheer press of humanity, had filled him with claustrophobia. He smiled to himself now at the irony of the notion.

He picked up his pen and completed the entry in his journal. "So I have no rational explanation for what is happening to me. It has crossed my mind more than once that I am going mad – or maybe that I am already mad."

He paused there, staring out at the playground that abutted the heath. Swings described precise arcs against a background of tarmac and daffodils. The roundabout turned slowly, as if moved by the wind.

"And yet," he wrote, "I cannot accept this. Madness is no explanation. What has befallen me is not, I am sure, the result of some unique mental aberration, some dysfunction on a neurological level. What is happening
must
have an external cause. It is the world out there that has gone mad, not me." He paused again, then added: "But isn't that what all madmen claim?"

He closed his journal. Beside him on the desk, the screen of his PC glowed a multi-coloured invitation to start work. He had two chapters of a children's novel to complete before the weekend, four days away. He told himself that he could do the five thousand words in a day. He would begin tomorrow, take today off. In six months he had completed three short novels – losing himself in the fantasy worlds of his creation as if in a desperate bid to deny what was happening out there in the real world.

Despite the dangers of venturing out during the daylight hours, Miller decided that this morning he would go for a walk. The alternative, to remain inside and either read or watch a film, reminding himself of the world as it had once been, did not appeal to him. He would only brood if he remained at home – at least outdoors, even though he would be surrounded by reminders of the phenomenon, he would be able to gain satisfaction from the catharsis of exercise.

He found his dark glasses and moved into the hall. From the umbrella stand by the door he pulled his white stick. He opened the door and stepped outside, met by the fragrance of roses. He left the house and moved carefully down the street, staring straight ahead and tapping his cane on the pavement before him. He would call in at the newsagents for a paper, the deli for rye bread and cheese, and then circle around to the heath and walk for a mile or two to give himself an appetite for lunch.

He kept to the centre of the pavement, moving slowly and continually steeling himself for the impact. The danger was not so much one of other people's bumping into him, but of his colliding into them. At least, with this disguise, he had a ready excuse.

He had often wondered, before the catastrophe had befallen him, what it might be like to be blind. He had considered writing a novel from the point of view of a young blind boy – but something had stopped him, some notion that he was trespassing on territory he did not fully understand and therefore could not convincingly portray. Now he thought he understood the affliction a little better.

Although he was not technically blind, there were certain things that he could not see. Did that qualify him to enter the land of the blind, or at least write on their behalf? He smiled to himself... He remembered the adage that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man was king. Did that make him, with two perfectly good eyes, an uncrowned monarch? Could he write a novel about his singular blindness? Would he be believed?

He stopped, staring along the deserted street, feeling angry with himself. No! No, it was not a blindness, he told himself, it was not something wrong with
him
– but something terribly askew with the world.

He bought a copy of the
Times
, then walked with exaggerated care to the delicatessen. He stood by the counter, waited until he heard the girl's bright, "Can I help you?" before he asked for a loaf of rye and a quarter each of Stilton and Gorgonzola. To maintain his guise, he had to be careful and ignore the impulse to fetch for himself the items he could see.

A plastic bag appeared on the counter before him, and he held out a five pound note. He watched it disappear from his fingers, to be replaced seconds later by a few coins. The transaction successfully accomplished, he left the shop and walked to the heath.

He was squeezing through the narrow iron swing gate when his stick came up against something. He had been moving with unaccustomed alacrity, eager to reach the heath, and could not stop himself in time. He hit someone, staggered and fell to his knees.

"Oh! I am sorry! Please... Forgive me – miles away." He heard a woman's voice, the vowels rounded with home counties enunciation.

He climbed to his feet. "I'm fine, really. It's okay – a little fall."

She touched his elbow, and he was aware of her fragrance, and the heady rush of it almost brought tears to his eyes.
Mystique
...

He turned and hurried away. As he paced from the heath he heard the woman's concerned enquiry. "I'm so very sorry. Are you sure you are all right?"

He made his way home, all thoughts of a walk forgotten as a consequence of the encounter. The mock Tudor facade of his detached house offered blessed sanctuary.

Once inside he deposited the bag, threw off his glasses and collapsed into a chair by the window overlooking the back garden and the orderly rows of vegetables.

He wondered what it was about the encounter that had caused him such distress: the touch of the woman's soft hand, or the smell of her perfume?

If he were honest with himself, he knew it was the
Mystique
, and the memories it evoked.

Six years ago, at the age of thirty-two, Miller had had his first real relationship with a woman – 'real' in that it not only involved sex, itself a traumatic first-time experience for him, but also called for a reciprocation of emotions like care and concern, which he found even harder to come to terms with.

He had met Laura at a small party to celebrate the BBC production of one of his books. She had worked in the design department of his publishers, Flynn and Moran, and they had been introduced by his editor as the party was winding down. Miller had wanted nothing more than to get away from the chattering crowd, and the thought of having to amuse this small, rather attractive but painfully shy woman had not appealed. He recalled talking at length, about himself, while getting steadily more pissed on the bottle of cheap white wine he had liberated for his own consumption. He had no recollection of saying goodbye or of getting home. A situation, he told himself next morning, par for the course on the few occasions that he did venture out.

Laura had phoned a few days later, murmuring – she had always seemed to murmur, as if to speak aloud might offend – that she had enjoyed his latest book, enjoyed talking to him and perhaps... well, maybe they could meet for a drink some time – if it was convenient for him, of course...?

He had often since wondered what had made him say, "Why, yes. Yes, that would be nice."

He had had one other abortive relationship, in his early twenties, and the degree of emotional commitment required of him, the paradoxical desire and at the same time loathing he had felt for the woman, had made him eschew even the thought of ever becoming involved again.

He had lost himself in his work, seen a couple of friends once a month, and told himself that he was reasonably content.

He had long since reconciled himself to the life of a bachelor. He gave thanks that his sex drive was inordinately low, so that his enforced celibacy did not provoke urges that might have been seen as perverse. He had got on with his life of work, the occasional talk at a school and trips to the theatre.

Perhaps in acceding to Laura's invitation, some buried part of him had wished for something more, something better, than the cloistered existence he had come to accept.

They had seen each other for almost a year. At first he was attracted to the idea of being seen with this young, pretty girl, enamoured with the notion of being in love. But as he came to know her, to understand that beneath the prettiness cowered someone with all the emotional maturity of a schoolgirl, he came to realise that he felt nothing at all for this lost soul. It was an indication of his own immaturity that he had been unable to bring himself to hurt her by telling her that their affair was over.

As the months passed, and her emotional dependence on him conversely matched his increasing detachment from her, he found himself loathing Laura and himself in equal measure. He realised that to relate to another human being was to hold a mirror up to your soul, a mirror that reflected back at you all your emotional shortcomings, personal foibles and faults of character. He wished to end the affair, draw a dark veil over the mirror.

He avoided her. He would not call at her flat for weeks, would not answer when she phoned. He even pretended to be out when she came round to his house and rang the door-bell for hours on end.

To her eternal credit, and his own debit on the scale of personal decency, it was Laura who had had the courage to end the affair.

She must have followed him home from the city, for as he was closing the door she burst in and confronted him in the twilight of the hall.

"You bastard!" she wept, and both the epithet and the volume of the cry shamed Miller.

"Shall we have a coffee?" he said.

"I don't want a coffee! I want... I thought – I thought we were... I was so happy with you. Don't you understand that? What went wrong? What did I do?"

And he had tried to calm her, assure her that the fault was not hers, that he was wholly to blame. He opened up, for the first time since he had known her, and told her that he had never, in all his life, felt affection for another human being. He recalled a line he used, which caused him to redden in shame even now, "The closest I've ever come to understanding and feeling for another human is in one of my books."

They had talked for over an hour, shuttling the same old, worn out and repeated dialogue back and forth, Miller trying to come to some ultimate distillation of meaning through repetition and rephrasing, much as he might rewrite a line of fiction a dozen times before getting it right.

Laura went through periods of lucidity, when she detailed her emotions, laid herself bare for his inspection: pleading for his love, if not his love then his affection, even his friendship and company. When this elicited little response from him, she would weep and plead, and then yell with a rage that was shocking to behold.

At last, in silence, they faced each other.

Laura shook her head. "I thought I loved you. I really did. But I was mistaken." She was speaking
sotto voce
, her natural mode of delivery. She was herself again. "I could never love anyone as cold and unfeeling as you. You're empty, you're cold and unfeeling and
empty
..." She had turned and opened the door, pausing on the threshold to look back at him. "I've never met anyone who doesn't need other people... and then I met you."

And she had walked from the house, walked from his life, and following the initial sense of release – the realisation that no longer would he have to confront Laura and so admit to the failings she had so accurately catalogued – he experienced a despair at the fact of who he was, and how he had become like this.

That had been six years ago, and for that long he had managed to insulate himself, to forget the woman who had made him admit to the emptiness at the core of his being.

Then today he encountered the woman on the heath, experienced her soft touch and the scent of
Mystique
, Laura's perfume.

~

Miller noticed, on the far side of the room, the winking red light of the answer phone. He crossed to it and stabbed the play button. "Miller, m'dear!" the megaphone baritone of Selwyn Rees, his agent, set up a vibration in the plastic housing of the device. "I'm ringing at eleven-thirty – why the hell aren't you pounding away on that bloody machine of yours! Look, something's come up. You've been bloody hard to catch of late, so be a pal and meet me at Harrington's at one, okay? See you then."

Miller walked to the window and stared out. For six months he had avoided all his usual contacts, putting off meeting Selwyn and his editors and conducting business by phone. Now the thought of meeting Selwyn for lunch appealed to him; oddly, Miller liked his agent's larger-than-life, back-slapping
joie de vivre
. It would be the first time since
it
had happened that he had met any of his old acquaintances: he would have to think up some story to excuse his 'blindness'.

He phoned for a taxi and fifteen minutes later found his glasses and stick and stepped out into the street.

This was the first occasion in six months that he had travelled further afield than his own street and the heath. As the taxi carried him through the deserted streets of Highgate and Belsize Park, Miller thought back to the morning of that first fateful day.

He had awoken at seven, as usual, showered, dressed and breakfasted while half-listening to the news on Radio Four. He had thought nothing of the fact that there was no sign of the usual procession of commuters on the street outside his house – only later did it occur to him that he should have noticed the onset of the phenomenon then.

He had climbed to the second floor and his study, meaning to get down to work on the latest book. His usual working method was to compose his thoughts while staring through the window for half an hour before putting fingers to keyboard.

This morning, as he stared out, he became increasingly aware that something was very wrong.

The paths that traversed the heath were deserted – which was perhaps not so unusual at this hour. But the playground, usually busy with children during the school holidays, and bored
au pairs
with push-chairs, was also deserted.

Then Miller noticed that there were indeed a couple of push-chairs parked on the gravel path that surrounded the playground, and he felt a stab of alarm that they seemed to be unattended.