SYLVIE'S RIDDLE (5 page)

'If you must know ... ' God, he could see how much she hated the heart-rending tone this young man could always summon from the wells within, though it must have enchanted her once. ' ... I was helping a blind person get to the station.' She sighed even more heavily than before.

'You weren't helping a blind person get to the station really, were you Alasdair?' He stared at her, the practised look of hurt in his eyes, rehearsing once more the rubric of his own sincerity. 'I think you were helping a fully-sighted person get pissed. And the fully-sighted person you were helping to get pissed was you. That's what I think. I can smell the beer without even needing to kiss you. In fact, I don't want to kiss you anyway, now I come to think about it.'

His expression glazed, frigid with incomprehension at her lack of charity. How could she so misconstrue him? He reached a hand out gently and touched her arm, as one who might say, 'I have been mistook, but I forgive you, beloved.' She stared at the hand as though it were a massive white slug which had inexplicably materialised upon her sleeve. A vast milky slug with five legs, all covered in tiny hairs.

'At least put your expertise to some use then.' His lips curled down at the edges, trying to shape themselves into a question mark, as she stood up. 'Go buy some wine before they all turn up for lunch, and
I'll
meet you back at the house. Then we can all get pissed, can't we? And who knows, if you manage to pour enough of it down my throat as well as your own, your luck might change later on. Between the sheets. After you've finished doing the washing-up.'

He stood at the table and hesitated. 'The only thing is ... '
—
eyes screwed up, little boy caught short on his way to school
—
‘
... I don't have any money left, babe. Spent it all at the Albion.'

'Then you'd best get to the station quickly and mug that blind man before his train comes in, my darling. Or alternatively, find yourself another bed in which to try your luck tonight. Because I'm not giving you any more this week. I'd rather leave the whole effing lot to the RNIB.'

They went out, untouching. Were all human beings like this? He really couldn't remember. What they had just done with one another struck him as somehow ... realistic: a vivid representation of themselves. Back on the wall, he walked. He knew these buildings, he knew the houses. Finally he stopped again in sight of the disused warehouse. He knew that building very well, didn't he? All too well. He started to hear the cries in there, the cries of a young woman having her body taken from her; having her body turned inside out, and he turned away quickly, heading for home, unable to listen. They had put a title on that part of
Deva:
The Passion. Outside the house, he halted. A beautiful green car; a Morgan was parked in the street. He ran his hand along the bonnet. That metal so familiar. It was his, wasn't it? He was suddenly sure of it. He let himself into the house and opened the drawer in the hallway table. Keys. He knew those keys all right. He picked them up and walked back out to the car.

He didn't need to think about it. He soon had the engine turning over, then he realised it was sunny. He hadn't thought about it while he was walking, but it was a fine day, so he took the roof down on his convertible car. He would go driving. Where? It didn't matter. The car would find its own way. And it did. With each fresh mile the car reminded him how well they knew one another. It had its own memories, and was generously sharing them. He felt safe in the car; he knew there'd never been any screaming in here. No passion; no mystery play. The wind started to interview him blusteringly, and he answered its questions. He shouted his answers back above the windscreen: 'Speed is how we catch up with the world. If the speed of light is the only ultimate constant in the universe then the closer we can get to it, the closer we are to reality, surely. Why on earth stay still?' He had said all these words before, hadn't he, and to camera? He started laughing. He was in re-play mode. One hour later he arrived in Llandudno. Twenty minutes after that, Llandudno started replaying itself to him.

The straightened-out crescent of the promenade displayed the grand hotels, their bright pastel colours, their genteel imperial names and balconies like the busts of Victorian ladies in full sail. A great line of them stood proud on the shore and stared out to sea. Flags fluttered before the apron of the beach, white flecks of gulls scattered like flashes of limestone outcrop showing through the brown heather and gorse of the Orme. Piebald donkeys dutifully bore that week's children on their backs, and the pier stood above the waves on its cross-barred metal stilts. The cast-iron pavilion of the Grand Hotel had grown rotten and rusty in its ruin and now had the look of seaside archaeology about it. Ancient communal songs drifted over on the salty breeze, seemingly conjured from nowhere. On the pier, giant inflated Disney heads stared down in garish hilarity. A kiosk offered
Adult Novelties and Curiosities
and men in brightly coloured weather suits (no trust in the sun's longevity here) reeled in their lines one by one. Never was a single fish attached. The fishermen changed their sodden lugworms for drier ones, cast out again and stared down once more at the legs of the jetty, grown fanciful over the years with a ragged accrual of mussel-shells. He was staring at the town and watching a film at the same time.

The lens carried on panning. Now the images were black
-
and-white. Snug in their nest of cedars and beeches in the hills above town, flamboyantly gabled houses kept a wary eye on the latest cargo of grockles, disgorged by the coachload at their designated spots. A British resort hunting for its next patch of sunshine between lashings of rain. Pilgrims so often made for the beach and crouched in meditation inside their waterproof cowls as they stared out at the great grey god of the sea. Distant ships rode its wrinkled back like parasites on the skin of a rhino.

The lens closed its eye momentarily and it was dawn. In a small hotel by the slanted tramway a woman woke suddenly. She leapt from the bed in answer to the rapping at the door. Only as she stood in her flimsy shift with the sound still in her ears did she realise that it was the harsh regularity of soldiers marching. She went back to the bed and lay still on her back. Such a short
honey
moon
. Small resort. Small hotel. Small man, but a good one. God, let him come back alive. Finally she sank into sleep, as the herring-gulls start shrieking a few feet from her half-opened window. How he had loved that body, that face, the little oval of moonflesh. Her husband had gone, already gone, one of t
he brave boys leaving with the
British Expeditionary Forces. The tangled sheets still seemed pungent with his absence. This was all film now. Owen knew this, because all these images moving through his head were black-and-white. He had invented this. He had invented the woman, though he had needed a real one to do it. And he knew where to find the hotel too. Ten minutes later he stood in the reception area.

'Want the same room as usual, Mr Treadle?'

'I'll have the same room, yes.'

'By yourself this time, are you?
I'll
just check you in and then get you the key.' Same lenses in her spectacles as the woman in the cafe; same underwater look to the jellyfish eyes. I'm ringing another bell, he thought. Wherever I go I ring bells. Owen the campanologist.

Once inside the room, lying on the bed, clutching at memories he knew were still there, despite the fresh linen, he recognised the woman in the film. First they had made love here, hadn't they, he and the woman
–
not on film, that part
–
then they had filmed her there, lamenting the passing of a mythical man. A mythical man representing so many real ones. And where was she now? Where was Alex now? He knew that fact and yet he didn't know it; he both knew it and blanked it out at the same time. A self-cancelling memory then. Something it might be better to keep in the cellar with your greatcoat. He slept. How long for? When he woke he searched his pockets for the mobile, but it wasn't there. He did have one somewhere, didn't he, but he didn't know where. He needed to talk to Sylvie. He left the hotel and walked down the street until he found a telephone booth. She picked up the phone after five tones.

'Where are you, Owen?'

'Llandudno.'

'Revisiting all your memories in a hurry, it seems.'

'I made a film here.' There was a pause. This time he put the question-mark in. 'Didn't I make a film here?'

'Yes, Owen, you made
Time's Widow
there, remember. You don't actually make the films, love; you write them, though Johnny says your scripting is so specific that it's often you who has decided exactly where the camera will be pointing at any particular moment. He used to mind but he doesn't seem to bother much any more, since the pair of you have won so many prizes. So many shining prizes. He phoned half an hour ago, by the way, to see how you were.'

'
Johnny
.'

John Tamworth. The director you collaborated with. On all your classic television features.'

'Was there one about speed? Did I talk in it once, driving a car?'

'Catching Up With The Earth.
It's here on the shelf, next to
City of Dreams'

'What was the last one I did?'

'Deva.'

'Deva.'

'But that one hasn't been released. That's the one that seems to have cost you your memory again. It's not out yet, but Johnny will be turning up with a DVD any day now. I think that must have been the one that made a widow of time's lonely widow. So young to be a widow, too. Poor little mite. Poor little Alex. Are you coming back, Owen?'

'Not tonight, no. I need to find something out.'

'You need to find a lot of things out, Owen, I don't doubt that, but I'm not sure you'll do any of it in a hotel in Llandudno. Not during one night. Are you alone, out of interest?'

'Not sure.'

'Have a look behind you then
. Close your eyes and hold out
your hands. See if there's any flesh within groping distance that doesn't feel like yours.'

'There's no one here, physically. That doesn't mean I'm alone though, does it, Sylvie?'

'Sounds like a line from one of your scripts. I daresay it will be before long.' Ten seconds of silence. 'You're not coming back tonight then?'

'Not tonight, no.'

'Have a nice time.' And she hung up.

The Riverside Gallery

Sylvie stared for a moment at the phone. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of dry white wine from the fridge. Chardonnay, its flavour always a little too insistent without food to counter it, but she didn't feel like eating. After one sip, she went over to the cellar door, opened it and walked down the steps. Something cold and unwelcoming about that cellar; she'd rather not go down there at all. Always a damp feeling to the stone. The light had gone years before, and no one had ever bothered to fix it. She stopped at the bottom and stared at Owen's greatcoat. The tip of the tabloid newspaper stuck out of the pocket. No, she'd had enough of this. None of it was her doing, was it, so how come Owen had abandoned the memory and left it to her, like some dark inheritance she was meant to sort out? Down here in the cellar of their lives. Was she the archivist of his memory, then? Bloody Owen. Came back here to her bed for one night, as though she were some sort of service station, then off down the road on his memory-recovery programme.

She walked quickly back up the stairs, slammed the cellar door, walked into the kitchen, downed the glass of wine in one gulp and then poured herself another. She went over to the phone, picked it up and dialled a number. She didn't need to look it up. After a few rings, the voice came on, cultured, slow and warm. Henry.

'The Riverside Gallery. How may I help you?'

'It's me.'

'So how is he?'

'In fucking Llandudno, recovering his memories, almost certainly the wrong ones, I should think, knowing Owen. I'm mighty sick of most of mine at the moment, I can tell you. Particularly the ones containing the word Owen. Be more than happy to dump the lot.'

'Want to come over?' She hesitated. 'Is it all right?'