Ventriloquists (49 page)

He also asked himself a question; a question that he hoped Phyllie was asking of herself as well.
Why is his telling us this?
It was not as though Benny seemed contrite, and there was no feel of the deathbed confession about his words.

‘Conscience? Not in
this
lifetime. No, mate. What goes on in a man’s conscience is between that man and his conscience. An overrated stimulus anyway, if you want my opinion. Those tinker toy psychology programmes they force you onto in prison… either of you been inside?’

Vig and Phyllie shook their heads.

‘Good job. Stay out as long as you can: that’s my motto. And do you know how I achieve this? By control and manipulation. Control plus manipulation equals distance. There are people with a dotted-line connection to me, in terms of management structure, who
don’t even know my name
. And that’s just the way I like it… But what was I saying?

‘Oh yeah, conscience. When you’re inside, in a rec room with fifteen other overweight fuckwits whose
names
you don’t want to learn, let alone what crimes they committed, and you’ve got some underpaid do-gooder asking you
to think about your crime
and
think about your victim
– how do you think your victim
feels? –
and half the time what you’re
really
thinking is
get me out of here
and
the wanker feels nothing –
he’s dead – that’s when you learn what a useless thing a conscience actually is. It’s unnecessary. Actually, it’s a hindrance - stops a man doing his work, I reckon. Easily removed. Like the appendix. What good’s a conscience if it can be bought and sold? Anything – this is a theory I’ve developed, see what you think – anything that can be bought and sold is essentially worthless. Worthless in the literal sense of without value.

‘No. My retirement from violence was essentially a financial decision. You’d be surprised at how little you actually
earn
in organised bodywork. All the money stays at the top. So you’re scarring a man’s torso for what? For thirty
quid?
Stroll on! I made myself a wealthy man by selling what didn’t belong to me. And I’m good.’

‘…You’re a fence,’ said Phyllie.

Benny wrinkled his nose. ‘Never cared for that term,’ he replied. ‘I prefer a transferral executive. But yeah, essentially, you’ve got the right idea. I only dip me toes into actual violence rarely… and it’s rarely about money. I need people for my intra-rationalist work. Sometimes they don’t wanna volunteer.’ He smiled fondly at a memory. ‘Oh, and the grass who put me in the nick that time, of course. I had to tell
that
prick his fortune… Do you know what we did? The prick was into amateur dramatics, right – on the side? Straight up. Loved a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan and that game. And when it comes to revenge, your best bet’s to hurt what’s gonna hurt worst. Now with me fresh out of prison, he’s gonna be thinking:
That Benny won’t risk anything straight away. People’ll be watching him
. So that’s when you strike. You double bluff em. The
last
person he’ll expect is me
in person
. Wouldn’t even cross his mind I’d take the chance.

‘So my choice was this. The prick likes singing and dancing in Gilbert and Sullivan. Fair enough, each to his own. So what would hurt worst? Never singing again or never dancing again? I couldn’t decide. So I made him gargle with a corrosive compound. And then I set fire to his feet.’

The comment caused much concerted tea-drinking… until Phyllie asked, ‘And will
that
particular story appear in your book as well?’

‘Phyllie…’ Vig warned.

‘He’s talking crap, Vig. Living out a wish fulfilment fantasy in his dotage. No offence, Benny.’

But Benny was still in a state of amusement; umbrage was the furthest emotion from his mind, it seemed. He waved the very notion from the air.

‘Come on, Vig – we’re leaving.’

‘I seriously doubt that, my dear,’ Benny replied. ‘It’s one of me favourites – a concoction I’m especially proud of. Made with me own ingenuity and instinct.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Vig wanted to know.

‘The poison you’ve been drinking in your tea. It works from the feet up. You don’t feel a thing until you try to walk.’

Phyllie snorted. ‘Well let’s put that theory to the test, shall we?’ And she stood up.

Her legs were not strong enough to support her. Her knees buckled and she fell back onto her chair.

‘Now the first thing to mention,’ Benny continued, ‘is the worse you’ll encounter is a bad headache. The poison works on your muscles – the brain’s last on his journey.’

Vig made a move – an atavistic response to the threat. He did not raise himself to his full height, however: the sense of weakness in his feet and shins was emphatic. Suddenly he felt too weak even to curse.

‘What I’m interested in – obsessed you might say – is the evolution of the group mind. Down below our feet I keep thirty-odd waifs and strays in a state of suspended animation. Injections. Administered by the lovely Eva and some other members of my team. And what I’ve
found
– to my surprise – is for want of a better expression, their dreamworlds have started to overlap.’

Phyllie had not caught Vig’s temporary speechlessness. ‘You’re a madman,’ she breathed; for all her cool, irate demeanour, however, she felt hot. Sweat prickled on her brow and in her oxters.

‘They’re not really unconscious, you see. It’s like they’re talking in their sleep. The funny thing being, some of em talk
to each other
. They talk about this place they’ve gone to. Jung might have had something of the kind in mind when he wrote about the collective unconscious. I wouldn’t know, never read the cunt. Just like the term – collective unconscious. Certain ring to it.’

There must be something we can do, Vig thought. But how would he get over to the other side of the room, without the use of his legs? Even if he crawled… what then?

‘What will it cost us for the antidote?’ he asked.

‘The antidote? You’ll have to work for it, mate. How do you normally earn anything?’

‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ said Phyllie. ‘You didn’t know we’d be coming here…’

Once more, Benny waved the suggestion away like a wasp.

‘Oh there’re visitors all the time,’ he said. ‘I welcome them all. Some are suitable; some aren’t. Most of my subjects I collect from various properties in the general area.’

‘So what do you want from us?’ Vig asked.

‘
Vig!
I’m not going to be his puppet! I’m not a plaything! I’m pregnant for Christ’s sake!’

Benny’s face brightened further. ‘Are you? That’ll be a new one – never had a
foetus
to work with. I’ve had a
dog.
Always felt bad about that dog. See: I arranged an explosion and a flood in a house I rent out in Edlesborough. I made sure the tenants wouldn’t be home – they were at a funeral – and I arranged for a couple of expendable guys to get into the blast. I wanted to see how water might influence what they thought about when they were back here. Some
extremely
interesting observations.’

‘Oh
sod
your fucking observations!’ Phyllie shouted. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I won’t do it, whatever you want me to do. I’ll drag myself out by my fingernails if I have to.’

‘Be my guest. I only need your husband,’ said Benny, ‘though I’d prefer you both, I must admit. I wanna see if someone who
knows what’s going on
influences the balance of the world they’ve created for themselves.’

‘But we
don’t
know what’s gong on,’ Vig argued. ‘The bit about the dog…?’

‘Ah. An unfortunate soldier of circumstances, that dog. I don’t like unnecessary harm to any creature, which you might find ironic.’

Vig was sweating as well now. But he wanted to know more; indeed, he imagined that his only chance lay in learning.

‘When the water smashed the house up, there was a neighbour’s dog there. The poor thing drowned. I tried me best. The funny thing was, one of the burglars – the one that didn’t die, obviously – thought the dog had gone across the threshold with him. It made for some interesting pillow talk, I can tell you.’

‘Vig, I’m frightened,’ Phyllie said. ‘If this harms the baby…’ With which she tried again to stand up. The effort was no more competent than the first attempt. Before she could scream or shout, she burst into a torrent of impotent tears.

Perhaps it was this squall that reminded Vig of when he’d used to teach German: it had the temperature and ferocity of an adolescent tantrum over the incorrect usage of the accusative case. Though Vig said nothing to soothe Phyllie’s panic, he was pleased to note that the crying had given him an idea. And he owed it all to his experiences with stroppy teens.

‘What’s in it for me?’ he asked. A bead of sweat trickled into his left eye and he squinted; Benny must have misconstrued something menacing from this because his own expression hardened.

‘Are you
bargaining
with me?’ Benny demanded.

‘Are you bargaining with him?’ Phyllie also wanted to know.

‘I am. What do
I
get out of this? You want us to visit this place they’ve created – but I already know it won’t be real… even if I find it. So I don’t even have the prospect of an adventure; so I’ll ask again. What’s in it for me?’

Benny paused. Then he said, ‘I’ve got money – you can see that. Name a price. Name a
fee
.’

‘I’m a Lottery winner, mate. I’ve
got
money. I own the place where Don Bridges worked.’

‘Then what? What do you want?’

‘I’m a teacher, Benny. I’m an educator.’

‘You wanna teach people when you get there? Be my guest. Fill your boots. You’ll be a prophet there, son!’

‘No,’ said Vig. ‘I want to teach people
about
what you’ve discovered – or created, depending on how you view it.’

His frown melting, Benny said, ‘That’s exactly what
I
want. At my time of life. I want the scientific community to sit up and take notice. To give me credit.’

‘For which I’ll want fifty per cent of all future sales.’

‘…What
sales?
’ Benny demanded.

‘Whether we market it as… I don’t know… a holiday opportunity… or training conditions for the military, for example,’ said Vig.

‘Now wait a minute…’

‘You’re talking about psychic phenomena and yet…’ Vig’s mouth was as arid as a camel’s hoof. ‘…and yet you’ve got all your subjects
in one place
. What’ll happen when you’ve got centres in Vladivostock and Cairo, all talking together across the seas. You’re
thinking too small
, Benny.’

‘I am not!’

‘And that’s why the scientific community takes you as seriously as Norman Wisdom.’

Benny protested. ‘I’m a one-man band, son.’

‘Not now you’re not.’

Phyllie retched and some of the spiked tea dribbled down her chin. Her face had lost colour; her skin was the shade of a Greek column. When she tried to say Vig’s name once again she lost consciousness. Her passing-out sigh fluttered like a swift.

‘We’re business partners, Benny. Fifty-fifty.’

‘Or what?’ Benny argued, the old resilience leaping back into life, almost as if it had supped nourishment from Phyllie’s departure. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I happen to be holding all the tools. You’ve nothing to work with, son.’

Vig managed one final conscious smile. ‘I’ll tear the fucking thing to pieces from inside,’ he said. And then he closed his eyes. The smile did not evaporate from his lips.

Children of the Overlap

1.

‘Mummy? Mummy, wake up!’

Phyllie gasped; snored; tried to settle.

‘
Mummy!
’

And she opened her eyes… to see the little girl kneeling to the left of her head. The girl was four or five; her expression was pained and worried.

‘We have to wake up,’ the girl explained.

I’m not your Mummy,
Phyllie wanted to say, but she sat up anyway. The indistinct scenery around her read her mind; it tried to copy her thoughts. However, the blue sky was pale and indecisive; so Phyllie thought harder – projected harder – knowing that this was all in her skull.

The little girl stood up and took a few steps away from her mother. She kept looking left and right; she was nervous. Someone was pursuing them, perhaps.

Examining her own clothing and finding it to be intact (and as she remembered it), Phyllie climbed to her feet.

They were inside a building that did not have a roof. Water had damaged everything… there would be no more lessons taught here. She was back at school. She was in her former classroom, back when she was twelve, despite the physical evidence of Phyllie’s fully-matured womanhood.

She felt her stomach, punched by panic. No baby breathed inside her skin. Then she relaxed. Of course not: her baby was now four years old, and was urging her to go somewhere else. Her baby was guiding her. Her baby –

‘Claire?’

The girl’s head stopped in one place for a few seconds; her eyes were Phyllie’s own, the mother realised – years before the embarrassments at school that would eventually lead to a diagnosis of myopia, to spectacles, and later to contact lenses.

Phyllie and Roger had settled on Claire if it was a girl; Vincent if it was a boy. The second option had been rendered redundant.

‘Where are we going, sweetheart?’

‘Mummy,
please…
’ The girl was at the classroom door, which was warped on its hinges (it looked like a cow’s tongue).

Firmer now: ‘Where, darling?’

‘To the
Overlap
,’ the child whined, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. And perhaps it was… in
this
world at least.

Wondering where Vig had been taken, Phyllie followed Claire out into the corridor… How long had the school been abandoned? she wondered. Beneath the pale blue sky, the damage to the building was well enough lit. The corridor was slippery in a porridge of dirty and filthy paperwork; textbooks spread-eagled, ruined and trampled, posters and staff announcements, pleas for club enrolments, Sports Day achievements… Phyllie saw a picture of Ben Nevis that she’d painted in Art at the age of eleven, it lay in some crumbled plaster and the remains of a bird’s nest. She remembered the gold star that she’d earned with that painting, how her teacher, Mr Madden, had urged on a talent that Phyllie had not only jettisoned but until now had forgotten ever existed.

Phyllie took charge and gripped Claire’s hand. Together they negotiated the corridors, Phyllie quickly learning to reduce the length of her stride in order to accommodate her child’s less certain movements. As they approached, step by step, the building’s rear entrance (leading on to the playground, as Phyllie well recalled), Phyllie saw artefacts from her childhood and from later on. This abandoned school was where her memories had been deposited, it seemed. A photo of her first boyfriend, Dean, hung by one corner from a waterlogged notice board, the image’s smile reminding Phyllie of why she’d slept with him at the age of fourteen. As the memory returned that Dean had died in a car crash at the age of twenty-two, the image in the photo grew a blonde beard in seconds, grew gentle laugh-lines around the eyes, stopped smiling and lowered its eyelids. He was gone. She had mourned him. Along with other former school friends she had taken a train south from her university town to attend his funeral.

In this new existence, Phyllie wondered, was Dean still alive?

She tried to recall what Benny had told her and Vig. Only while so attempting did she acknowledge the fuzziness in her skull. The long-left-behind was as clear as day; the more-recent needed extra time to sleep… or so it seemed.

It occurred to Phyllie that Vig might be somewhere in the building, perhaps hurt; that by exiting, she and Claire would not be permitted to re-enter. Although the little girl was adamant that they must be on their way to the Overlap (whatever
that
might be), it bit Phyllie’s heart to imagine she might be leaving Vig here, and in pain. Perhaps if she could understand the child’s urgency she would be better positioned to make a reasoned decision.

They stepped out onto a path that led to a playground. Taking in the unexpectedly diminished dimensions, Phyllie stopped in her tracks. The girl walked on, like a dog at the end of its leash, she felt a restraining tug (they were still joined hand to hand), and she turned to her mother with a quizzical expression on her face.

Phyllie didn’t notice it. True as it might be that there was nothing to see in the playground, the littleness of where they’d played – where they’d shouted, where they’d sulked – had grasped hold of her breath. In a trance she saw a parade of boys from the lower years, walking in file around the perimeter, ghostly, dead soldiers now, perhaps, chanting
Who wants to play… war-ore!
Always the word
war
in two syllables: the rhythm of their mantra. Playtime after playtime, the line of willing conscripts growing, but never enough time to actually
play
. The collection was everything… Skipping ropes flicked the summer-hot asphalt. Johnny Hodgins fell from the climbing frame one lunchtime – not even from its summit – and broke his left arm. Phyllie had witnessed the accident; terrified and heavy-bladdered, she’d been summoned to Mrs Barter’s office to provide an eye-witness account, and now Phyllie saw Johnny fall again and again, in a loop, from the frame that she had always been too scared to scale herself.

‘Mummy?’

‘Just a second, Claire.’

More and more children filled the playground as Phyllie kept watch; children whose names were now buried under strata of other memories, but whose faces were familiar. The Gillis Twins, who had frightened everyone; that poor girl Jeanette, an old face on a young girl, born with a hole in her heart, not long to live while Phyllie had known her.

‘Mummy, we have to…’

‘Claire,
be quiet
,’ Phyllie snapped, squeezing her daughter’s hand too hard (a bone clicked, hers or Claire’s?). When the child started crying, Phyllie stared still at the playground for a second, seeing girls bobbing on a hopscotch grid, little boys with twigs for rifles, shooting bullets of air.

Phyllie decided that this was a place of fears; this was where she had once been frightened. And remembering (a little) what Benny had taught, she knew that it could not harm her now. If it had lacked the power and the will to harm her
then
, it most certainly had no evil charms to freeze her blood if she was an adult.

But
Claire
could be damaged, she understood.

The notion made her drop down into a crouch. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll kiss it better…’ It was what her own mother would have done to her in a similar situation.

The ghosts in the playground stopped playing; whispers passed on a breeze; and such was the suddenness of the games’ cessation that the absence of energy caused a pulling sensation on Phyllie’s skin. Tension rippled in the air, the atmosphere was off balance, shaky.

If nothing moved in the playground, why had butterflies appeared in Phyllie’s stomach? Partly she was nervous on Claire’s behalf, for the girl had tensed from temple to toe, the squeezed hand forgotten. The girl was watching for someone… or something.

‘Claire. What’s the Overlap?’ Phyllie wanted to know.

The girl did not respond. Any signs of positivity had been snatched from her; she jumped when a screeching sound reached their ears – something metallic.

Calm. For the sake of the girl, calm.

‘Claire-darling… Claire, look at me.’ Phyllie smiled. The girl looked at her. ‘Thank you. Do you know what’s happening?’

Was the question more useful or less so, worded in such a vague fashion?

The little girl nodded her head.

The metallic screech again, laden and more insistent. Although Claire said nothing, she raised her right arm and pointed a finger… at the climbing frame from which Johnny Hodgins had once fallen and broken his arm.

It was domelike in shape, constructed of curved metal bars: radically upscaled, it was something like a large vessel to strain vegetables, set on its base. The objective for the braver kids was to climb to the top of this spindly crown – and then to climb down again, mission accomplished. And Phyllie had always felt anxious beside it, back then. The climbing frame (years before the term Jungle Gym existed in the UK) had often put her in mind of a giant spider. No - a giant cranefly – a daddy-long-legs. When the wind had puffed up and lashed one of those rare winter rainstorms across the yard, the child that Phyllie had once been had fancied that she’d seen the metal monstrosity twitch.

A trick of the light, at the time; a weirdness reasoned away from childish shadows by retrospective logic, by adult luminescence. No?

No.

Apparently no, at any rate: the construction was moving right now, or attempting to. A pet tethered, it was tugging at the bars buried in the asphalt. It wanted to escape.

No.

Again, no.

Not a pet tethered - a daddy-long-legs trapped under an inverted pint glass. One or more limbs tightly secured.

Pulling.

2.

Unlike Phyllie, Vig did not wake up in a new place, pining for a return to the old. Indeed, it took a morning of his going through his ordinary business, while plagued by flashes that he couldn’t decipher – images, sounds and smells that seemed no more than dreamlike – before Vig even remembered that there
was
an old from which he’d been snatched, and by then he was German again.

You know you’ve mastered a language,
someone had once told him (a philosopher? a professor?)
when you start to dream in that language.
Which was all well and good… but where did it leave Hartvig Klossen, whose lessons in English were only a term old? Hartvig, who was now in a forest.

There were children all around him, boys and girls, all determined to find something among the trees. What was the treasure? For a moment he could not remember; snatches of the English language would sneak into his skull, transmitted from he didn’t know where. His cranium had become an aerial.

Was he ill?

A boy ran past him, beaming, and calling, ‘
Ich habe der ____ gefunden!’
Face all smiles, triumphant; a winner. But Hartvig had not caught the missing word. ‘I have the [SOMETHING] found,’ his brain translated into English… but why was he translating
anything
into English.
I have found the [SOMETHING].
What were he and his friends searching for? No. Not friends. Classmates; schoolkids. What were he and his classmates searching for in the forest? On this field trip. This Geography field trip.

You’re searching for me,
Vig remembered, his adult consciousness casting a tarp of awareness over the scene. The boy who had just run past, he had run to collect help. It hadn’t been smiles on his face: that was horror.
He was the one who found me.
He had not seen Vig on the forest path; he had seen a little boy, little Hartvig, and unconsciously he had assumed the worst scenario, for the missing word was
Körper
.

Ich habe der Körper gefunden.

I have found the body.

Not:
I have found the missing boy.
Not:
I have found him.

‘I have found the body.’

Comprehending which, Vig sensed his adult world take on solidity and greater amassed form. He thought of Benny. And not only that, he was
grateful
to think of Benny, for if the scene with Benny had occurred, the little boy Hartvig could not have perished in the forest on that field trip. He had slipped down a long and treacherous slope, true enough, but he hadn’t died; he had knocked himself unconscious and lost two pints of blood. But that kid from one of the other schools had found him…

‘Carlos.’

Although Vig said the word with no great volume, more with the snap of something dug up from a deep mental place, the boy who had passed him stopped running away. As he skidded to a halt he kicked up twigs and dirt on the path.

The young Carlos and the adult Vig, they walked towards one another, both more than a little cautious. At a distance apart deemed respectable by both parties they stopped.

‘I don’t know if you can hear me,’ Vig began.

‘
Bitte?
’

Vig repeated what he’d said, this time in German. The boy replied that he could hear him fine. Was Vig one of the search party? he asked.

‘I don’t know if you can hear me as an adult,’ Vig went on.

The boy cocked his head to one side, confused.

‘But I never said thank you. For finding me… For saving me. I might have bled to death but you found me and they lifted me to the mountain clinic. I didn’t say thank you. From the bottom of my heart… Carlos. Thank you.’

3.

Five metres high, a skeletal dome-shaped nightmare, the cranefly yanked the first of its eight legs from the playground’s asphalt, the bolt-and-screw combination that had held it springing free with a noise like a bullpeen hammer on an anvil.