THE INNER WHEEL

by Keith Roberts

This is a rather grim story of compulsion—of one man trapped in a web of innocuous circumstances deliberately shaped by a mind not quite of this world, yet the world itself is exactly the same. Or is it?

* * * *

The voices are in a void. The void has no colour. Neither is it dark.

There are formless Shapes in the void. There are soundless Noises. There are swirlings and pressures, twistings and squeezings. The voices fill the gaps between nothingness. The voices are impatient. “Where? they ask “Where . . . ?”

“I told you where . ..”

“See for us and tell again. . . . Where is he . . . ?”

“Getting on a train....”

“Tell us what you see.... Where is the train ... ?”

“In a station, where do you think ... ?”

There are hammers and whips and pincers.

“Where is the train?”

“T-Tanbridge. Please, the station is tanbridge...”

There are flickerings. “Gently,” say the voices. “Gently, tell us what you see....”

“I ... there are roses. The platforms are covered with them. The ... train is green. The sky is very bright blue. Everything is quiet, nobody moving about. The coach stands in its bay. I see the sunlight lying across it and on the platforms. It lies in s-squares on the platforms, on the footbridge. There is a breeze now. A piece of paper blows and skips, the roses sway. I hear the little thorny sound of leaves scratching together. Please, no more....”

Somewhere there might be giggling. Somewhere there might be rage. “Tell us about him....”

A lens moves, seeing but unseen, examining textures of glass and wood and leaves. The station is haunted in the hot, still afternoon.

“He is ... sitting in the train. In the front seat just behind the driver’s cab. He is... tall. He is ... dark, his hair is dark and rather long. It hangs across one eye. His face is thin, his eyes are very blue. His hands look ... strong. Well-kept, bony. Square nails, white halfmoons where the cuticle is pushed back. He uses a good aftershave...”

The giggling again. “You like him ...”

“Leave me alone...”

Jostlings. “See ... we want to see. . . .” The not-colours swirl.

“No...”

“... despatched in accordance with your order of the twenty-third....”

“I’M TRYING TO WORK...”

“Gently...”

“Leave me then. Leave me, I’ll tell you....”

“Good,” say the voices. “Good. Tell us what you see....”

“He’s ... taking out his cigarettes. Lighting one. Flicking the match in the holder. The m-motorman is coming now. He gets in, starts the engines. Puts the ... handle thing on that works the brakes....”

“No,” say the voices. “No, no.... See for us, see deep....”

“No...”

Awfulness. The un-shapes scramble and pulse. “Deep,” say the voices. “See deep....”

“I shall ... be sick....”

“Deep!”

The camera, the lens, floating close and closer. Somewhere inside the train inside the man inside the eyes are other pictures for it, closed each within each like a nest of mirages. The pictures twinkle, fade and strengthen and fade again, reduce themselves to glimmering node-points, swell. ... Someone somewhere bites lips inside until they are salt. Only the voice is calm; it speaks from the grey place the other side of terror. It husks and limps, feeling shared pain.

“I ... see the rain. It bounces on pavements, pours along gutters. I see houses. Rows of houses. Their bricks are bright with the rain. I see a church, or a chapel.... All round ... oh it’s a chapel, chapel of a c-cemetery. The ... houses all round like a high grey wall in the rain.... The ... men walking, the thing they are pushing doesn’t make a noise because the trolley has rubber tyres.... The ... people are coming now. Their shoulders are bent in the rain. They say, “It always rains on days like this....” I see the f-flowers, the rain is on the flowers, on their petals. The earth is dark because of the rain. I see the ... coffin, going down into the grave...”

“Gently,” say the voices. And “Gently, gently...”

“I see the houses again. One house. The people are inside and the great whispering cars have gone.... The rain cries against the windows like a thing shut out wanting to get in, and the people don’t know what to say to each other, what to say to him...An old lady is making tea, there are sandwiches all ready, but he can’t eat, he knows the bread is full of flesh—please don’t make me see any more...”

“Enough,” say the voices. “Gently, enough.... We know he’s coming now, he’s nearly here. It’s enough....” And the camera, the eye, withdraws itself silently, folding in, closing, shutting away....

“... to our order number cee five, oh eight six....” The voices are in a void. The void has no colour. Neither is it dark....

* * * *

“In a fiercely mourning house in a crooked year....”

Jimmy Strong lay back in the seat, blew smoke, regarded the Hush Puppies that terminated his slimly trousered legs. The rhythm of the line of poetry pattered in his mind, stressed by the carriage wheels that rang now fiercely-mourn-fiercely-mourn over the rail joints. A great artist had strung those syllables together some time before he died of ... was it eighteen Scotches, in a New York bar? Jimmy shook his head slightly, eyes vague. Before, the words had just been angry, lovely sounds; now he knew what they meant.

Ahead the branch line stretched into sunhaze. A little halt swam into sight, platforms wreathed again with roses, standards and climbers that exploded like silent fireworks against the thick blue of the sky. He saw lampstandards wreathed to their tops with the brightness, fresh paintwork on railings and trellises, glowing flower beds edged with whitewashed stones. The train brakes came on in a series of diminishing whooshes, the coach breathed to a stop and the driver turned off his engines.

Jimmy stroked ash from his cigarette into the tray, sat feeling the sun strike through glass to burn his cheek. Footsteps ticked somewhere, faded into silence. Above the carriage a wooden bridge spanned the single track; in front the rails curved slightly to the right and vanished between low mounded hills. Somewhere out there a town Jimmy had never seen existed in four o’clock drowsiness. He asked himself, will it be any good? Will it be a place I can stay in for a while? He told himself, somehow it’s crazy, but you’re a man on the run. Can you stop running there?

Running. There are times when the mind balks, hits a fact it can’t take, throws up an equation that gives a batty answer. Then maybe the deep, the thinking part of you whimpers and arches back into stasis and after a time of that any course of action seems good. So you start to run. You’re not running to anywhere, just away from where you are. You’re an electric puppet; the impossibility rides there on your shoulder while your motor nerves twitch and your body takes you away and away....

A problem like an equation is made up of elements. You can take them singly, it’s trying to fit them all together that makes your skull sing. Jimmy remembered an element. The Studio, back in Town. Light filtering through inadequate windows, littered drawing boards, filing cabinets topheavy with drifts of paper and card. The yellowing fluorescents, their tubes flyblown; flexes, Sellotaped here and there to the edges of desks, that fed tired Anglepoise lamps from a Medusa confusion. It was a place where you could work and work and see your dreams give up and curl at the edges and realize the ad game was a machine, a bloody machine that sorted the heavyweight souls from the middleweight, and the middleweight from the lightweight. ... The man who sat at your elbow, painting in the shine on endless successions of bright green lawnmowers, had been a Prix de Rome. Maybe he’d had dreams too, once.....

An element, an aspect of existence. Farther back, buried deeper in the impossible matrix of Time, were others. His father.... Only the image of him was fading, losing itself under a rippling and a hotness, the glaring hopeful hopeless time people call adolescence. Strong rubbed his face. Adolescence is the time you want freedom. You take it, snatch it, eat it maybe before the folk round you grab it back. Nobody can help you. Not then. Least of all a tired old man trying to come to terms with life....

So he’d shucked his father off and gone to London to learn how to be a Great Artist with capital letters, and maybe there’d been times over the years when he’d thought the old devil wasn’t too bad after all, one day he’d just breeze back home and say Hi.... But the day had never come. Instead there was a telegram. It told him, the thing he’d planned on doing, it wouldn’t get done now. It told him he’d run out of tomorrows....

Jimmy stubbed the cigarette and lit another. A coach cleared the line ahead; a signal dropped its smoky-amber arm, the driver pulled back jerkily on the Deadman’s. The carriage began to gather speed. Moved out into the sunlight, nosed among the hills.

Jimmy told himself, the old man had had it good in those last years. Better than he’d ever realized. He’d made the grade, in his own way; even got his name up over the gate of the yard in faded swaggering letters. “John Strong, Scrap Dealer”. And underneath, a motto, a legend. “Everything has its price.” ...

Elements in a random equation. Strong nodded to himself bitterly, in the bright train. “Yeah,” he said. ‘Yeah....”

He tried to remember the rain, visualize the sky outside, the carriage grey, the windows streaked with spots. Suddenly, the exercise was impossible. Like remembering a pain, trying to work out after it had gone why you threshed and rolled and felt like dying. But that was a defence mechanism. Maybe this was as well. Dear God protect me from the dullness and the rain....

It had rained at the funeral. And afterwards. The morning after; Jimmy sitting in a little cluttered office, the man in front of him hemming and coughing and seeming as dusty and yellowed as the shelves of files that lined the walls. Jimmy listened to the voice again scratching its way from fact to monstrous fact while the rain pattered soft against the glass. Death duties of course, he understood a large amount would be lost. The affairs were confused, some little time would be needed.... But the money that had been left for him, the money he’d known nothing about ... yes, a fairly substantial amount by any standards. ...

Jimmy licked his lips, beginning to sense the sheer size of the problem his father had left him by dying alone like that. He said, “How much ... ?” He knew his voice was unsteady, knew too that whatever he said that would be misunderstood. And the stranger had steepled his fingers, winced to drive his glasses back up his nose, looked at him with eyes that held every expression and no expression.

“Immediately.... Well I would say, Mr. Strong ... in round figures you understand, in very broad figures ... Twelve thousand pounds....”

The driver touched a control and the train hooted; a long double note full somehow with the sensation of summer evenings, like the chuckle of water, the sound of a lawn-mower. Jimmy shook his head again. His father had been what he never would be; a businessman. They’d told him, one of the strangers had told him after the funeral, they thought old Strong had gone crazy when he bought that ancient halftrack. Old Kraut job it was, streaked with rust; they’d dug it out of some rotting stockpile down in the Channel Islands. Then John had bought another and another, snapping them up where he could find them, even bringing them in from the Continent. Forty quid here, fifty there, a hundred, two.... Bren carriers, ancient beaten-up scout cars, lorries, Command trucks; German, British, American.... If it was old, and smashed, and had fought in the war, John Strong would buy. Because everything, has a price...Light tanks, sidearms, steel helmets, badges, flamethrowers...And it had paid off. Jimmy succeeded. Twelve thousand; say a big outfit wants to make a film, say they need the props and you’re the only man they can come to. You can make that in a week.... You’ve got to know the ropes of course and get to the right boys and slip tenners to odd people for not being in such and such a place at such and such a time; but these things can be arranged....

He stubbed a cigarette and caught himself lighting another almost instantly. He asked himself, angrily, could I help being born the sort of person I am with the sort of mind I’ve got? Slow to hate, slower to love, the brain forges relationships like links of a chain, slow, slow ... but when the job’s done, when the links are made, they’re good for the only part of eternity that interests me, my lifetime.... He told himself, my father was like that. He was a West country man, he might forget, but he could never forgive. Ten years of silence while he made the money he couldn’t give me when I was young and silly and wanted to cut a dash. That’s what the wallet in my pocket says. That’s what the new chequebook is telling me. The world owes you a living, my son.... So out thee can go, and live like a rich little king....

He pushed his forehead against his clenched hands. I didn’t mean it he thought. We none of us mean what we do....

The hand was shaking his sleeve gently, insistently. He looked up startled. The old lady’s eyes searched his face, changing in quick shifts of focus and direction. “Are you all right?” she said. “Are you quite all right... ?”

“Er ... yeah. Thanks....” He made his mouth smile, “just maybe a little tired. Long journey.... Thanks for asking.”

“Ahh....” She sat back across the aisle, seeming relieved. Looked out through the window then back to him quickly, birdlike. Nodded, smiled, bobbed her silver head. “Ah yes.... And are you travelling to the end of the line?”

“Yes,” he said. “Place called Warwell-on-Starr.”

Sharply, “Then you don’t know Warwell?”

“No, I’ve ... never been there. I reckoned I might stay a while,” he said, “If I liked it....”

She simpered. “Oh, you will.... You’ll love Warwell, everybody does. It’s a nice town. Such a nice little town....”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy carefully. “Er ... yeah....”

He sat back trying to think. The image that had flickered across his mind just then; the river, the trees, the flint church tower nestling.... But he’d never seen the place he was going to, he knew nothing about it. He decided, it won’t be anything like that. There’ll be brutal acres of rail sidings, scrubby pink little Developments marching in all directions. Ten to one I shall loathe the dump....

Queer though, this feeling of unreality; a detached half-awareness, a dream state in which visions and imaginings could be as real as the touchable things round him. It was as if shapes jostled at the edges of his mind, brightnesses brighter than the sky, shadows that mocked at sunlight. He shrugged. These were effects of heightened perception, of jangling nerves that now mercifully were beginning to ease. For days past, life had been like a cine film shown on some huge screen. Too big, too close, too detailed. He’d wanted to pull back, get out from under, but he couldn’t....

Warwell. Why the Devil had he run here, anyway ? His father’s accountant had talked about the place, but he knew somehow the name had been in his mind before that. When? When had it started, what had triggered it? He’d wanted somewhere quiet, somewhere he could go to and be alone and think and chew at his problem, but why had one name seemed to stand out from every map he opened? Warwell, a place on a river he’d never seen....

* * * *

For a time the rails had been winding through the low hills; round the last of the bends the way straightened and Jimmy saw how the little bridges appeared each under each like images in two opposed mirrors. Beneath the last of them the coach stopped again and there were the lamp-standards once more, hidden to their tops by creepers that rioted the length of the diminutive station. The branch line was certainly damned pretty; somehow even the waywardness of it, the curving and wriggling of the tracks, soothed like a balm. As though a world was being shut away behind each grassy shoulder of the hills; as if ahead, islanded, was all that was sweet and real. Jimmy stubbed the cigarette half smoked. There can be, he told himself, no sense of homecoming. Not to a place you’ve never seen.... He glanced sideways at the old lady, expecting another comment, but she stayed quiet. She was sitting staring in front of her, half-smile fossilized on her face as though she could already see the nice town ahead.

Jimmy told himself, it could just be.... Could be I’ve met a whole series of nice, interesting, interested people one after the other. A ticket clerk, a porter at Tanbridge where I changed on to the branch; an old lady on a train. All interested to hear I was going to Warwell; all keen to tell me, it’s a nice little town. Sometimes life’s like that, pointless coincidences get themselves strung together like beads....

The coach was moving again. There was a river, curving away broad and silver through water meadows. The train wheels boomed on a bridge. Jimmy leaned forward again, frowning, grappling at something that refused to come out into the light... and sat quite still, feeling icy cold. Ahead, the town made itself. More hills closed off a vista of black and white houses, steep wavy roofs. There was the river, swinging back to cross in front of Warwell like a moat. There were trees. There was a church, flint-built and nestling.

The station was an amber box enclosing dim areas of platform. The coach glided into coolness, wheezed, stopped where the rails stopped as suddenly and startlingly as life. Strong lifted his bags, felt the sharp rectangle of the ticket dig into his right palm. Somehow he felt out of breath and stiff, as if he was ending some huge dangerous odyssey. He passed through the barrier, turned back to see the coach bulking against the light. Beside him a girl with good legs and burning-red hair spoke suddenly. “Heard you talking on the train,” she said cheekily. “Hope you enjoy your stay. It’s such a nice little town...” Turned while Jimmy was staring, and clicked away.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” He walked out of the station, into a sunlit square. He saw a garage, doors standing open; a taxi rank, a man lounging, reading a newspaper. A few yards away the river slid cool and green and hung with willows, filling the air with some cool suggestion of presence that was more subtle than scent. Across the street a towering ugly-pretty pile of waterside Gothic proclaimed itself the George Hotel. Jimmy walked towards it, swinging his grip, feeling the sun burn on the side of his neck. From the town beyond came a buzz of sound; cars, voices; somewhere a Wheel turned slow, unseen and unheard, its rim as big as a valley.

* * * *

Two

The voices chirrup in the deep coolness of night, while the river glides black past the houses and the church. “Wrong,” say the voices. “Wrong, all wrong.... He’s wrong for us, who brought him here ... ?”

“I ... I didn’t know....”

“Wrong,” say the voices. “Wrong, wrong....” There is anger, and a squirm of giggling. There are brightnesses like Barnes. They burn, but there is no heat. There are other things....

“PLEASE ... NO, PLEASE. ...”

Laughter. A chase, an airy game of tag. The Devil takes the hindmost. “Wrong,” shout the voices. “He is wrong, you were wrong....” There is a soundless sound of screaming. There is a writhing, a gasping, a wanting to die. There is a catching, a touching, a hating.... Then, suddenly, there is quiet. Dawn touches the river with a ghostly massiveness of light. The light has no colour. Bats hunt across the greyness like the shadows of dead leaves; island trees hang impossibly still in a world of water and air. The Starr is a mirror now a thousand miles deep, a quicksilver slash reaching to Earth’s core.

And part of Warwell sleeps. ...

* * * *

This is a nice town. Go ahead and ask anybody in the street, they’ll tell you straight out. It’s a nice town. Friendly, these people. And quiet. The town’s quiet. Nothing ever happens, not to Warwell-on-Starr. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.

It’s an old town. Built on a cross, so it has its North Street and its South, its West and East. East Street runs down to the river, because here that flows south and north. Bottom of East Street is the church. It looks over the traffic lights and the big curlicued lamp standard at the crossroads, towards the Town Hall. West Street runs up by the Town Hall, climbing into the hills. East and West Streets together make the shopping centre. There’s a Smiths and a Boots and a Timothy Whites on the corner and it’s all very homely. Very nice. There’s some industry here, not too much; in the main, Warwell is a Typical Market Town. There’s a little cinema that runs evenings, and they use the church hall sometimes as a theatre. And once a year the Steam Fair comes, in the meadows by the Starr. It’s a sort of local convention, the shopkeepers look forward to it. There’s a Chess Club and an Athletic Club, a Youth Club and a W.I. There’s an Archery Society (Bowmen of Starr) and a Cricket Club. They play matches summer evenings on a little ground with elm trees round it, back of the Bull Hotel on the outskirts of town, and there are stories about great bats lifting deliveries into the Starr, but nothing like that ever happens now. The traffic bypasses Warwell. There’s a little police station with a sergeant and a constable, there’s a vet and a couple of doctors and ... oh Hell, all sorts of stuff. It’s a nice town....

Jimmy lay on his back on the bed. Beside him on a chair was a saucer with ash and cigarette butts. One hand moved slowly, trailing smoke, from mouth to saucer and back. His knees were drawn up and he held a notebook resting against his legs. In the centre of the page, growing in curly lettering from a mass of doodles, was the motto: “This is a nice town.”

Jimmy sighed and shook his head very slowly, asked himself silently just what in Hell was the matter. Warwell hadn’t disappointed; quite to the contrary. He liked the place, it was a n... Go on, say it. It was a nice little town. After a while the niceness ate into the bone, decaying it maybe. He frowned. The dreams? They were nothing. Erotic symbolism, psychosomatic disorder ... maybe he’d got a complex because he’d never killed his brother. Never had a brother to kill...He shrugged, still lying prone. His state of mind must be attributable to his odd situation. Plenty of money, no ties, time to burn.... He was completely at rest; it seldom happened, and never to the young.

Maybe he’d dream again tonight. The dream was always the same. Always vague, impossible to grasp afterwards; a thing of sensation only, an affair of mounting pressures that rose and rose to wake him once nearly screaming. After that the pressures eased but he still knew of their existence the way you can know of something in a dream without seeing or hearing. The Wheel, as he thought of it, was the central part of the nightmare; and he himself was at the centre of the Wheel, on or in its hub, sensing it move, feeling the thunder of it in his long bones. The Wheel so massive that size itself seemed an indecent, foul thing. And somehow too the hub was Warwell, its houses and its church. But the Wheel was useless; it moved, it ground, but it ground nothing. Its turning was aimless, the threat of it was simply in its being....

He got off the bed. The room was small, stuck up under the decorated eaves of the George just below where a terracotta dragon glared down into Station Square. The bedsitter was all in one; at the far side in an alcove was a sink, beside it the tiny gas cooker. Facing them, the door to the toilet. A chair, a folding table; the bed took up most of the space that was left. But there had been no point in burning money, and the garret had a good view. Jimmy walked to the window, stood looking out absently. Below him was the long roof of the station, beyond it the river and the water meadows. Farther off again the hills, the distant blue cloth of trees.

He told himself, maybe you were wrong to come here and bury yourself away. Maybe you should have gone back to Town with your problem and your worry. Maybe he should have talked to Roley.

He nearly laughed. Ask Roley what to do with twelve thousand quid.... Roley would have told him. He could see him now, hear him almost. “Buy a Phantom One old boy, and half a dozen whores....” Yes, and kill yourself with an overdose of Mammon. On your father’s money.... Jimmy reached quietly for his cigarettes. Roley’s mouth would have mocked, but not his eyes, pale blue, warm-cold, watching out above a tangle of beard. Roley would have understood....

He told himself, Roley would love this town. All the niceness that’s loose here, it would be like a challenge to him. He’d get through it somehow to what really drives the place....

Drives ?

Funny idea. Nothing drives Warwell. Warwell has no drive, no reason for being. Warwell is, that’s all. It has its own inbuilt, bright sparrow-perkiness; the people come and go, sleep and wake up, eat and talk and laugh. They’re just born friendly, all of them. Why move, there’s everything here. You get bored, you can get a little job; some day you’ll have to anyway because the money will run low, any money runs low. But right here there’d be no problem. Here you’ve got friends, a lot of them. You’ve been here a month and it seems already you know half the town, it’s like you’d lived in Warwell all your life. But that’s the sort of place it is. Nice....

Jimmy stubbed the cigarette, gave in to himself angrily and lit it again. He felt like a detective trying to solve a crime that hasn’t been committed. There was everything for him in Warwell. The Wheel...

He told himself irritably, stop that for God’s sake. Your point of view comes from your strange circumstances, you feel floating, dissociated, because that’s just exactly what you are. No worries, no living to earn for a long, long while. He wondered, was he still being too selfish ? Should he form an association with somebody, anybody? Easy enough to do....

He went back and lay on the bed again, pillowing his head on one arm, watching up at the quiet blankness of the ceiling. He pulled his lip slowly with his teeth. One problem I can define, he thought. The twelve thousand. How to use it well? How make up for the years it took out of the old man’s life, the loneliness, the anger? He told himself, the answer’s here. Always here, where I am, because the problem rides with me. I tried running, wasn’t any good....

And Warwell? It’s crazy, but the town has a problem too. Maybe if I can find it, crack it, I’ll find it’s all tied up with me. So somewhere, someplace, I have to find the answer to some question, I don’t know what the question is, but when I see it I’ll recognize it, know what to do. See what? See the Wheel. The thing that drives this town....

You’re crazy, Strong. Take yourself off, let the tide surge you around some more....

A month in a strange town. Somewhere, in all the not-happenings, the men not there on all the stairs, is the key to a question I have to decode before I can even ask it. There is no wrongness here, just not-rightness. There’s a world of difference between them. There must be a question, and an answer to it. I must find question and answer before I go because somehow I know it’s important to me, to what I’ve become, to do that....

He gave himself up, angrily, to analysis. Covering ground well covered before, letting scenes and sights swim out of his subconscious, flare and drop back. Like the little bridges swimming into sight from the train, falling away behind. Calmly and quietly, the way life was lived in Warwell-on-Starr. But that goes for all life, any life. Life is a walking shadow, a poor player that flits and struts his— oh, go to Hell....

I can look up Warwell in a gazetteer, find it on a map. It’s here, it exists, it’s solid like any other town. Its buildings are stone and brick, its people are flesh and blood, they have shadows. I can read its population, six thousand. Read it’s a market town, no heavy industry, used to be a centre of the wool trade. It’s an urban district, returned a Conservative member at the last election....

But that doesn’t help me. It doesn’t stop the strangeness, doesn’t check the soundless noise of the Wheel....

Weren’t dreams symbols? Twisted maybe out of all recognition, but still shadows sprung from something heard, seen.... This was how the mind talked to itself, in imagery that clothed its own secret fears....

Then take an incident, any incident. Let’s start again.

The dog. Yes, she’d do. He was walking of an evening, following the slow course of the Starr. There’d been cabin cruisers tied up at the river bank, voices chuckling across the water. Night was coming, bluely; and it had crossed his mind that a man rambling alone like that could use a dog for company. No sooner the thought than the act; she’d come, flickering in the dusk, a long, slim hound, dark-eyed and fast. But she was no Were-thing, she’d come up close to let him touch her, she was real enough. He’d wondered about her, she was good blood and there was no name tag on her collar. She’d followed him a mile, two, circling and dancing, then she’d melted back into the dark. He hadn’t seen her before, or since....

Take the people at the Horseshoes. It was a strange pub to him; he’d gone into the bar, found the place deserted. He remembered standing and downing his pint and wishing more or less vaguely for talk, for friendliness, some conversation to stimulate. And they’d come. A dozen of them, ordinary enough blokes, but queerly fascinating, each in a different way. They’d talked; about the river and the town, about cars and dogs and the last war. The fighting in the Western Desert, and going up through Germany with the Eighth. Inconsequential stuff, but just what he needed. One of them had produced a pocket chess set later on, given him a startlingly good game. He’d turned down a couple of supper invites, with some difficulty. Who were those folk? Where were they? He’d never seen them again.

And then the Green Dragon affair. That was the best of all. Take that one through stage by stage, relive it. Because somewhere/somewhere, there just might be something you missed. Get it all, get the fine detail....

He was walking up West Street on a Saturday night. Last Saturday, just under a week ago. He’d done a round of pubs, the Horseshoes, the Bell, the Royal Sovereign. He was just a little canned, and just a little melancholy. It was nine o’clock and turning dusk; most of the shopfronts were lit and the neon signs, cars parked on the grid outside the Town Hall, people strolling, alone like himself or arm in arm. The cinema doors were open and there was a little do on at the church hall, loads of cars. Down by the Starr the lamps on the bridge were reflecting long wobbling streaks into the water and there was a smell of some blossom on the air, jasmine he thought. He got to the Green Dragon on the waterfront, there was a dance. He went in, downed a couple of Scotches, saw the g...

Steady. Get an impression of the room, might be something there.

The dance floor was low-lit, the boards shining amber. There was a shuffling of feet, just audible under the band. Mirror bowl was working, making the brown people dancing look like animals caught undersea in a jewelled net. The girl was sitting on her own. Get the picture. Colour of hair. Its brownness, the way the light caught it, Little black dress. That little black dress.... The glass of Chartreuse in front of her. Colour? Clear light green. Like her eyes.

They danced, just a little. Then drove. She had a little MG. Model TF, colour maroon. Slight blow in exhaust, get all details right.... They circled the valley, as if running on the rim of a wheel. It was a fine night, cloudless and with a high moon. They stopped up in the hills to hear things chirring in the air, the calling of owls. He remembered the girl-smell of her. Not the scent. She had no scent, but something from her still filled the car, marking the cockpit as a special place.

The woods in the valley were like moonlit hessian. He watched down at them, mouth drying. Hearing her moving, little scraping sounds of fabric. “You can have me if you want,” she said. “I’m very good, and I do like you....” One breast was uncovered already and she was wriggling, trying to work the dress farther down....

He stubbed the cigarette and got up, prowled back to the window. He said “Oh, no.... Oh, no no no...” Too easy, the schoolboy’s dream of home. She’d been so ... nice about it, everybody was so bloody nice about everything, the world was just too smooth. He pulled a face at the distant view of hills. What was her name ? Liz, Liz Baron.... Like the dog, like the chess player, she’d just edged into his life when needed and he hadn’t seen her since. She came, she made herself bare for him, she slipped quietly away. No yelling, no recriminations. There was a flow, like the bridges flowing past the train....

He rubbed his hand across his face, in the high hotel room. One day, one hour, he’d crack the smooth skin of Warwell, see a little of the brightness that lay beneath. Something would happen, some time, some where, that wasn’t nice. And then he’d have his key, the first piece of the puzzle. He said to himself, this could be important. This could matter very much. He picked his jacket up, slung it across his shoulder and went out to find a bar.

* * * *

Three

Next day he bought a car.

She was blue and low and nearly new and he fell in love with the cobby line of her, and when he’d done he had exactly eleven thousand and sixty-five quid left to his name, but it was worth it. The insurance shocked and upset him, but he could afford it; he signed forms and wrote cheques, and by lunchtime the thing was done. He drove away from the showroom and circuited the town, then over the river bridge and up the dual carriageway beyond, pushing the ton, feeling the world was a sweet place. And back to the George to park the glitter temporarily in the hotel yard. (Virginia creeper hung down from the roofs, setting off the icy car beautifully, but there was no key there.) He thought, maybe if I keep piling perfection on perfection all the blacks will turn to white and positive to negative, there’ll be one whacking big imperfection to sink my teeth in, or one that’ll sink its teeth in me....

Imperfection....

He took the Triumph out of town that evening, up West Street and the hill beyond. The hill she flung away behind her, away and down. He drove across Sanford Common to Gallowridge, turned off through the little village there, left a crackle of exhaust behind him, climbing again to How Beacon. Five or six miles out from Warwell, on the rim of the Whee—shut up, dammit—was a little pub, the Goat and Compasses. (God Encompasseth Us ... we hope.) Sixteenth century, so old it was nothing to look at. Stone-flagged floors, great fireplace with the ingle-nooks set each side, fireback glinting with blacking, decorated with cast shelves of corn. No bars, just white-scrubbed tables set about and they bring the beer in from the kitchen, beer comes from the woo...Girl, running...Beer from the wood...

Foot clamped to brake pedal and the TR4 swinging and throwing up gravel, lane too narrow, hedges spinning past, she was running head down to meet him and he was moving too quick he couldn’t stop. God please...

The thud, solid and hard. Then quiet. His hands holding the wheel, vibrating with shock. Then letting go the rim, having to make himself let go. Finding the catch, opening the door, no sensation of metal under the fingers. Throat dry like a sandy tube, unswallowing. Wasn’t walking, it was just his feet. He floated.

She was kneeling in front of the bonnet holding her arm. Her hair was hanging and never was there such a still silent road, and her breath was scraping in the silence like a file on wood.

The car was nosed into the bank, there were scorings, grass and clods thrown up. He’d steered into the bank. No, his hands had steered into the bank. But he hadn’t hit her. He’d stopped just... so, an arm’s breadth. The thud hadn’t been ... her. He told himself, the bank. The bank not ... her....

He was trying to lift her, turn her wrist. Expecting gravel-rash, not what he saw. The skin furrowed, curling back at the elbow from startled sheet-white flesh that grew pinpoints of red. The brightness coalesced, ran together in thickening trickles; the arm wept blood silently, fast. She pulled it away like she was ashamed of it. Her knee was hurt too, grit sticking to the graze. He put his arm down to pull her up and she was wet. Thin jumper, wet across the back. “Running,” she said. “I ... sorry....”

“Here,” he said. “Here....” (Moment of seeing and knowing he’d killed her, sitting before his lazy foot would move, they called it r-e-a-c-t-i-o-n t-i-m-e....) The car engine was ticking as it cooled.

She was leaning on the bonnet and gasping, propping herself by her behind, blood ran across her leg and somehow he knew brilliantly just how she was feeling. Sort of dumb pain in the knee and stiffness spreading up to the shoulder from where she’d torn her elbow.. He was asking where he could take her and she was shaking her head, trying to push hair back from her eyes, No, no....

“You’re wet,” he said absurdly. “Look, all wet...here....” He was opening the car door. (Imperfection.... Who runs themselves wet on a still summer night... ?)

She tried to push away, brightness splashed his shoe. Jeeze, he thought, Jeeze, there just can’t be an Awkward Pause, not now.... The thought galvanized him, he made her sit in, slide across from the wheel. Awkwardly, everything awkward.... Was a towel, he’d shopped in the afternoon, hadn’t taken the things out of the car. Couple of shirts, hand towel. God, her arm.... Put the towel in her hand, helped her wrap loosely. “For your skirt,” he said. Skirt was a pretty little denim hipster, marked already.... He got in the car, started up, pulled the bonnet out of the muck. Moment of panic, something would clank down there and he wouldn’t be able to drive.... But the Triumph was OK.

Back the way he’d come, moving fast. He had to find a place to turn then he really motored with the girl lying, looking white. The hospital sign, he remembered seeing it.... Place was off the road, stood back a hundred yards behind trees. Little old house, new low wing built on, he’d have called it a cottage hospital, but it probably wasn’t called that now, probably was some Unit or other. He swung up to the front of it, ran round to lean on the porch bell. They were very good. Accident... yes, yes, of course, take her arm.... No it’s all right now, have a seat Mr. ... er....

“Strong,” he said. Croaked. And I hope to God there isn’t dirt on my nearside front.... No, she’s with me, it’s all right.... No, it didn’t happen on the road, she fell.... Why the need to cover for myself and her? Because he told himself with terrible clarity, because of the Wheel. Because then for a moment it showed itself, just the rim filthy and shrieking, shoving up out of the soil. Until it ground back into the quiet....

Twenty yards away from him through a pair of open doors six perky men were being given supper, cheeking at the nurse with the trolley. The scene was brightly lit, a vignette set against the softly blueing dusk of the corridor. When the lights came on he saw other vignettes. A tall vase of red flowers on an occasional table. A copper jug in an alcove. A stack of magazines, Field and Lady. The whole of experience was for him now a series of glowing unconnected pictures against a dark backdrop. Like the images he had always imagined filtering through the compound eye of an insect.

When they brought her back to him she was chalk-pale. Sister was lined and bucktoothed and very lovable right now. “Best take her straight home,” she said. “Straight home....” And Jimmy agreed. Yes, of course, tetanus, of course one couldn’t be too careful, she’d had a shot, now she must be taken straight home.... The arm was bandaged, neatly and whitely, the leg they hadn’t bothered with, it was just wiped. He put his arm round her waist. She was still wet, he could smell the sweat now mixed with the otherworld tang of the dressing. Leave it a couple of days he was told, and straight to her doctor if anything goes wrong...”Yes,” he said. “Yes. I’ll see to her, she’ll be all right. And thank you, Sister, very much indeed ... Yes, yes of course....” And finally he could drive away into the night.

She said, “I’m awfully sorry....” They were on the road, her hair was moving in the breeze, he was driving back to Warwell gently, mind busy. “I must have put you about,” she said. “It was very kind....”

He was just beginning to realize again that he hadn’t killed her. “I wasn’t going anywhere,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“... Anne Nielson.” First the pause, then she didn’t ask him his.

“What were you doing, Anne? You came so quick, I couldn’t do a thing....”

“I was running.” She shuddered. “You hit the bank, if you hadn’t hit the bank..

Leave it, leave it.... “Where do you live?”

“In Warwell.’

“I’ll take you home.”

“It doesn’t matter....”

“Oh, now really,” he said. “Please...”

She’s nearly blonde. Older than she looks. Running. Warwell. Six miles, seven.... Not from Warwell, couldn’t have run from Warwell. . . .

“Please,” she said. “Something silly. I’d like a drink....”

“What?”

She said “Nice long double Scotch. That’s all....” Her hand was on his sleeve.

He whipped the TR4 on to the hard standing outside the Dog and Badger. Nice little pub, he’d been there once before. “Anne,” he said. “This is all wrong.”

“Please. That is if you d-don’t mind. I’m all right now, it was just the shock.”

So women are tougher than men. He opened the door, helped her out. She flicked her hair. “God, I’m a mess....”

Conventional remarks the order of the day. The fear had gone, she was female again. Had been a frightened child. So had he.... He ordered the Scotch, with misgivings. Waited for her. She’d excused herself to get tidy. He thought, she’s tall. Taller than I realized. The saloon was empty, he stood looking at the sporting prints on the walls. The pub was quiet; once a car passed, moving fast, then there was silence again while she didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come.

He went to the side door, looked out. Lamp in the road showed him a wicket gate swinging. He walked back into the bar, closing the door behind him. Waited half an hour before he admitted he’d been taken for a sucker. He realized then the true direction of the misgivings and felt nearly happy. Obscurely, he seemed to be back on familiar ground. “Ah,” Roley used to say, “The thrust and parry of Sex; the feint, the quick riposte ... the posturings, the lunges. . . .” Jimmy knew all about sex. (He was seventeen and feeling the cold, she was all of twenty and the more she took off the fatter she got, get stripped she said, and he said I am stripped and she giggled and did something that made him screech, sex, pshaw....) He poured the Scotch into a potted palm. He simply wasn’t inventive enough; Dali once cut his finger on a glass and filled the glass with the blood and put in one real and one imitation cherry, set the apparatus on a table and asked everybody to watch it then stole quietly away, but all he could do with his Scotch was pour it into a potted palm. Jimmy recognized the fact that he was becoming too cynical, finished the beer, got into the TR4 and drove home.

He paced the little hotel room, from sink to bed and back. An hour, two, telling himself of all things she’s just twelve months too old to wear a hipster, but isn’t she sweet; then he became aware, oddly, of the quietness in the town, the one oblong of light showing from under the tall eaves. He put the light off, pulled collar and tie und...

Down in the square a car engine started, wound up high in second. He ran back to the window, saw the bulk of the motor and the white fan of headlights swinging out the top of Station Road. Listened to the noise fade in the night.

No connection, he told himself. None. He pulled collar and tie undone, lay on the bed, lit a cigarette. Watched the pink reflection of it on the ceiling. All problems were soluble, including the present one. And he had a name to work on, presuming the name was correct.

Don’t presume though. Not a thing. Work from the facts. Anne, running. Wet through. She hadn’t seen the car. Damn it to Hell, she hadn’t seen the road.... She was running or staggering along the road, head down. Where had she come from ? No way of telling. What was she running from? From nothing. Empty fields, sunlight.

He imagined himself lacing up and projecting a mental film. The last few seconds when he already thought he’d killed her, the action recorded dispassionately by the camera of eyes and brain. He saw himself straining to hold the car, the girl stumbling at the bonnet....

Two images melted. He’d been to a coursing meet, just once. Seen the hare hit the wire and bounce back squalling, right under the dogs. He remembered its movements. Disorganized, spastic almost. Anne, running. Yeah, something had been there. Something that could hurt her worse than her poor scraped arm....

Queer to be thinking like this, in terms of Anne. Her pain, her fright. Everything in terms of Anne. It was like she fitted into a gap already there in his consciousness. But that was crazy, he’d only seen her a few minutes, she’d been sweating, scared half to death. Scared of him, he told himself. Why?

Find her again then.

How? Population of Warwell was six thousand, nearer seven with the new estates. And she didn’t live in Warwell, something told him she’d lied there, the answer had come too pat. Work in Warwell then maybe? What as, clerk, typist, shopgirl? Get a classified, start ringing the firms. “Excuse me, but do you have a Miss Nielson working for you?” Oh, go to Hell, and pick a few needles from haystacks on the way.... His mind turned slowly, tiring itself with thinking. The car that had passed the Dog and Badger. He knew it had picked her up, a hundred yards or so down the road. Just how in Hell had she fixed that runout? No answer. Never would be, till he found her again. The Wheel, the thing that ran this town. It wasn’t going to give itself away. It was too big, it was too subtle.... Above all look how it covered itself, it was too scared....

He found he was sweating in the dark. He wondered if he was going crazy. He’d always been a little mad, it was the artist in him. All artists were mad, everybody knew that. So most of them went mad quietly to fit the image, at heart they were conformists.

The car that had taken Anne away. The same car had circled back, mysterious and quiet, sat humped in Station Square watching up at his light...

Strong, you’re rambling. There’s no proof of that, not even a basis for assumption. Your nerves are shot, you’re getting the jumps. All this talk of a Wheel. Hallucination, vision ... more like simple nuttiness. He told himself nobody has robbed a bank, nobody has done a murder, gunned their pal down in the street. All they’ve done is run a clean, quiet, friendly little town. And maybe make a girl bolt across a field....

They? Who were they? The people who’d hunted Anne maybe, the people in the car....

It was no use. They were there and the Wheel, grinding in his subconscious. He could feel it, it was almost like the building shook with it. What would it do, now he’d seen it move ? The Wheel was for grinding, grinding....

Anne....

He slept; and the dream came.

Not like any dream he’d ever had. Not like the dreams of the Wheel. Their horror lay in their vagueness; this one was clear and bright and pitilessly precise. He was standing on a station platform. He looked round slowly, recognized Tanbridge. The little wooden footway over the tracks, the banks of roses. But the tracks were rusty now, they gleamed in the stark light orange-pink and shocking as dissected veins; and the roses were dying, they thrust out from their trellises like black spiky skeletons. The sun was shining, but it held no warmth, it was like the pale orb of a half eclipse. And the light was fading slowly from the sky.

He became aware by degrees of a huge sense of desolation. It swamped him, bore down till it felt like a weight across his back. He could barely force his feet to move. He dragged himself across the platform, over the bridge. Wood broke and crumbled under his heels. He touched the flowers and they crumbled too, dropped into flakes that a wind picked up, tossed into the sky like black snow. There was a railbus waiting, and a ... sort of motorman. He made himself get aboard, fighting revulsion at every step; and the car was so old, the seats of it were blackened and brittle, its wood was dull, splotched over with mildew. Even the mirrors had grown continents of green and ginger spots. He heard the buzzer and the answer from the cab; he thought the coach would never move, but it did, creaking and moaning. Out past a dead signalbox, into the hopeless light.

On the road the little bridges had fallen, they shoved up stumps like decayed teeth. The train cried, but there was nothing pleasant in the sound, the hoarseness of it whirled up and away like the last noise on a dying planet. There were people by the track, first ones and twos then more than a great dim crowd of them pushing forward, jostling, holding out their arms. He saw folk he knew. His parents, people from Town, old Roley; but the faces were transformed, the skulls seemed to glow and smirk through the flesh. They shouted and mouthed, but the carriage couldn’t stop; and it seemed that as it moved darkness followed it, pulled like a skirt to swallow the throng. The coach reached Warwell with a final bang and groan; Jimmy touched the door, it crumbled sickeningly in his hands. He walked through what was left of the barrier. Dust blew in swirls, and ancient brown leaves of paper. He looked back, but it seemed already centuries had passed, the train had rotted on the rails, spread rust round it and out along the tracks like the stain of a haemorrhage. A glower of light showed behind it, horizon burning silver, zenith of the sky dark, dark...

He tried to hurry into the square. Roofs and houses had fallen, trees stood stark, the river had gone, left the bare cracked mud of its bed. He thought he was the only living creature on earth, but he was wrong, there was Anne. She stood on the steps of the George Hotel, in her jumper and denim skirt. The wind gusted round her, lifted her hair; when it blew from the building the old dying stench of the place came with it, like Victorian sweat. He was walking, pushing with feet made of lead, but now the square was a mile across and there was no sense of progress. She cried to him, high and piping, a gull-noise shredded by the wind. Tried to move, stumbled and fell on the path. And his car was there, the bright TR4, standing by the kerb. As he stared the rust ran along her like a wave, a dark shadow visible to the eye. Burst through the bright skin in patches that joined and spread like fingers. She sagged, tyres wheezing; her axles broke, she came down on her sump and sagged again. Gear clusters rolled, the box walls no longer able to hold them; the little wheels ran flashing, browning as they went, fizzing away to dust, to nothingness, to blow along the wind. He gasped, fighting for breath. Three steps more, another yard.... He could nearly reach Anne, he was on his knees stretching his arms. Their fingers met, gripped ... and the Change, the huge Age that was romping through the world, caught her. He saw her shrinking, fullness sagging, clothes loosening round old limbs that were withering, twisting.... He was screaming, but there was no sound. Crying, feeling the tears on his face burned by the desiccating wind. She was a rag, a hank of hair.... Then cloth and flesh fell away, bone showed, browned, blackened, crumbled.... He scrambled forward madly, clutching, tatters flew in the sky, the wind yowled and mooed; skeletons of hounds coursed the brown wound of the river, their bone-voices boomed into dark and there was nothing, the buildings empty shells, no Anne, just dust, dust, dust, dust....

He sat up on the bed wet and shivering with shock. His throat was full; he staggered to the basin, retched. Then again and again till there was nothing left to come, but still his stomach churned and the stink was in his nose, sweet like old flesh, ancient bone. His vision sparked in darkness, he slipped, landed on his knees, weaved his head from side to side. The sickness passed enough to let him get up, sprawl across the bed. Then the bed moved. There was a roaring in his ears; it was the Wheel, churning ... he tried to scream again and there was no sound, just Power, Power, more Power than he could have dreamed...

The noise faded and he was still. A last thought stirred in his mind. This was why she ran. . . .

* * * *

Four

The lorries woke him, clattering in Station Square in the early dawn. He mumbled and rolled over, lay for a time trying not to remember. Then he got up and padded to the window, stared down, rubbing his face. The drags stood rattling, cab doors ajar; there was shouting, blue diesel fumes jetted from the exhaust stacks. Each vehicle was pulling a road train of trailers, their loads bulky under lashed-down tarpaulins. It took Jimmy a minute or longer to realize what was happening. The steam fair was arriving.

He leaned on the sill. He’d been looking forward to the fair. He’d intended buying some sketching gear, turning back into an artist for a few days before he moved out of Warwell. But the night before had changed all that. The flavour of the dream persisted; images came in front of his eyes, he saw skeletons riding Gallopers and Switchbacks, swaying on the cakewalks, jiggling to the noise of a calliope. He rubbed his face again violently and the pictures faded. The lorries moved off, but he couldn’t sleep any more.

He sat on the edge of the bed and smoked till he’d finished the packet. Then he shaved, changed out of his rumpled clothes. Spent a couple of hours walking by the river where he could see the town in the distance, the clustering of the houses. His head throbbed, his eyes felt heavy. The air was clear and keen, but didn’t it carry some faint tang ? Just a hint, an evanescent suggestion, but it was enough. To Jimmy it seemed the very wind blew from some place of corruption and oldness.

He ate no breakfast. The black mood persisted; he found himself hating Warwell and its inhabitants, everything about the place. He went to the car, meaning to drive out somewhere, clear his head with speed. He couldn’t touch her; some part of his mind knew if he lifted the bonnet the rust would be there, a red well of it, waiting to strike through and burn.... On the front seat was a smudge of dried blood. He set his face and turned away, walking aimlessly.

Watching the skeletons. Talking and laughing, shopping, eating. Drinking coffee in the Tudor Room and the Buttery, cleaning windows, driving cars, sitting in buses, pushing prams. Other skeletons lay in the perambulators, little gristly things that mewed and writhed.... He sat on a seat outside the Town Hall, wiped his forehead, saw sweat on his hand. He clenched his fists; he was trembling, he asked himself what’s the matter with me, have I flipped my lid, gone crazy ... ? It was all he could do to stop himself yelling, telling the people didn’t they realize, didn’t they know they were all bone and slime, they were getting older, they were dying.... He put his face in his hands, tried to stop the shaking. Feeling the traffic grind and grind like one great Wheel, seeing the fish eyes roll, hearing the bird-gabble of skulls, tongues clacking inside the bone.... He felt he was going to pass out again, or vomit on the path.

God, he’d never felt like this, not since ... when? His mind groped for a parallel, looking for a reason in a swirl of insanity. Warwell, the river and the valley, church spire and Town Hall cupola thrust up from a writhing of goblins and demons, a mediaeval maggot-heap.... Away from the Starr he knew the world was good, there were grass and trees and high quiet roads. He had to get away.... He was halfway to his hotel, scurrying to pack his bags and pay his bill, when he realized. Knew suddenly and with complete sureness that he wasn’t going crazy.

He leaned on a wall, gasping. Shoppers stared, edged past. He wasn’t conscious of them. Nature imitates art, he thought. Subject for a college thesis. Nature imitates art....

SEE THE FILM OF MOULIN ROUGE. THEN RIDE BACK TO YOUR DIGS ON A LONDON TRANSPORT BUS. SEE THE WOMEN AND MEN, THE TURN OF A WRIST, TILT OF A NOSE JUST SO. . . . LAUTREC FOLK, ALL OF THEM. YOU’RE SOAKED IN A WAY OF SEEING, YOU LOOK THROUGH SOMEBODY ELSE’S EYES. . . .

Quick now, think. For God’s sake, think.... The skulls, the bones, the flaring light.... Something Germanic, Die Brücker, the Blue Riders? No, older than that, farther back.... Holbein? No, not Holbein at all, Bosch....

By God, that is it. Old Hieronymus, the Adamite. The Millennium. Incarnation of all evil, writhing and pallid ... he’d studied it once for a holiday task, reached the stage where he could look through the painter’s eyes, see the world and its people as the master had seen it all those years ago. Now he was seeing it again....

A chain of logic had completed itself without his direction. The fantasies that had swamped him, rose bowers that had glowed, sweet organic nestling of river against town; these things he had been shown, as now he was seeing their obverse. Somebody, something, had tried to lull him with women and talk and drink and beauty, bright canvases all of them dangled in front of his face; and it hadn’t worked, he’d gone on searching and prodding and peering as maybe an artist will, as Roley would have done, and he’d touched the makers of the dreams and they were frightened. He’d touched them through Anne.

Crazy, his brain yelled at him, crazy, crazy.... But it was too late. He could feel now the strange will pushing, insisting, making a living canvas out of Warwell. And the rage came, dulling his mind to impressed thought. He told himself, they were doing this. The people who’d taken Anne away, the people who ran this town, made horror and impossible beauty and used them like weapons. Whoever they were, they’d half killed him last night.- And worse; they’d destroyed Anne, stripped her to the bone, rotted every cell and tendon of her. Shown him, mercilessly, the things no man should see. And now, they’d given themselves away....

The noise that had swamped him receded. He straightened up with an effort, stared round the bright town. Saw the shops, sunlight, the four crossing roads. Valley cupping streets and houses like a grassy hand. The town was finite; so was the enemy within. And it was a child he told himself, that fears a painted devil....

He started to walk. It was like wading against a hot river that pressed relentlessly. Suddenly he was very tired; there were weights on his back, on his legs and arms, he couldn’t drag himself another yard, not another step.... He countered the fresh attack with the image of Anne. Anne alive, full of blood and electricity, with a woman’s body that could make sweat and tears and milk. He told himself, Anne was not dead. Convinced himself somehow that if ... they could drive him out then she would die, in his mind, and that death would be final. He moved against the pressure, holding the thought and the picture of Anne, wanting Anne and holding the rage. Peering into shops, offices, into garages, through walls that seemed half transparent. Not feeling the sun, not hearing the gabbling. Somewhere was the enemy, impossible but real. Keep sending, he thought. Keep sending till I come...They responded, stepping up their force.

If you’re real, if you’re human, pray for yourself. Because when I find you I’ll break your bones, I’ll pull you joint from joint....

Laughter echoing, the little town ringing with it, the noise vaunting up like cracked bells in the sky....

SHOW YOURSELVES. ...

Searching and circling endlessly. Every house, every street. Walking, staring, feeling. No sense of time; in dreams time ceases to matter. Find them, he told himself. Because they’re here.... Odd times he thought what he was hunting had stopped bothering to hide itself; it made a shape ahead of him in the air, it was a pressure, a noise, a hotness and coldness joined. He saw the Town Hall through a golden haze, and the river and the church. He said to the sky, show yourselves ... but it was hopeless. They were in the town, owning it and exulting, but they had no focus. Never would have, until they chose. He asked himself. How many of the people here, the vacant faces playing chess and making love, felt what I felt and were drawn and then lulled and fed like cows? Lunchtime came and passed, offices emptied and refilled. Vacant and harmless, he told himself. Like cows. And the sun moved. The wind played in the trees. The river flowed.

How long can you keep a rage in concert tune? Not for ever, the effort would kill. And they know that. I’m burning, bleeding off strength, but I have to keep on now. If I give in the skeletons will come back and all the rest and I’ll forget I’m watching somebody else’s pictures and then God help me, God help me indeed....

They were laughing again now, tickling and prodding, squeezing out the last of the anger. He stood blinking and seeing the Town Hall clock. The hands marked a quarter after five. He knew suddenly he was through. His legs ached, his feet felt like they were blistered raw and he’d found nothing, no Anne; the ghosts still babbled, the skeletons walked mantled with flesh as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.... But no praying please, there is nothing to listen. Move ghost, ghost yourself, in our little shadow world of the river and the town here in old Warwell. Soon, you’ll leave....

He turned away, helplessly; and they were with him again, skipping and taunting. Why give up so soon? Here, along this street here ... or that one over there, perhaps what you’re looking for is there....

He moved dumbly, mind blocked with fatigue, not able now to raise even the image of Anne. He’d forgotten what she looked like. The Pied Piper drew him gently, away from town centre where the offices were emptying at the end of the day, the buses pulling in and drawing off....

He turned back into Hell and noise. Dragons burned on rooftops, streets shone bright with blood. He was swearing at himself for a fool. He’d been led round and about all day long, they had let him use himself up. Now for just a little while he had to swim against the tide, go where they didn’t want him to be, he’d forgotten why.

He saw her through fire and din, glimpsed the white scut of the bandage. She was boarding a bus outside the Town Hall. He started to run back to the George to get his car. The car was rust, would fall to bits under his hands.... Yes, he said impatiently, he knew that. He got in the Triumph still knowing it, started up and gunned her across the yard and under the arch. She didn’t come apart.

He caught the bus as it slowed for the brow of West Hill. Steady now he told himself, steady. Hang back, stay in sight, sooner or later she has to get off.... The air round the car seemed nearly thick with rage, but they couldn’t touch him now.

The lane opened on the left, there were houses set back a couple of hundred yards. He saw her leave the bus and slammed the Triumph forward, terrified now of losing her. Must take her by speed, he knew she’d run.... He raised dust skidding into the lane. She was fifty yards away, looking back already. He accelerated, hit the anchors, came over the top of the door. She was scampering now and he was running head down, the houses were close and he’d never moved so fast, but the gap wasn’t narrowing. He was back in nightmare; the enemy were throwing everything they had, he felt his flesh pierce in holes and boil away, the wind bite among his bones. And every step was a century long and he’d touch her and she’d shrivel like in the dream and he couldn’t take that again, not again....

She was down on the verge, he nearly fell across her. Shoe in her hand swinging, spike heel coming at his face; he ducked and got her wrist and she was strong, she rolled over and back and arched her body, hissing like a cat. He banged her arm at the bank and again harder, her fingers uncurled, the shoe rolled in the ditch. Then he was kneeling, still holding her wrist, breath coming harsh and her hair across his face, she was panting and the wind and terror had gone. He wanted to tell her she hadn’t shrivelled, hadn’t died, that she had blood and sweat, but there were no words. “In the dream,” he said thickly. “Dream....”

She stared and he saw the tears coming, then, “I know.... It’s all right....” and impossibly she was in his arms, he was holding her and she was holding him back and moving against him, texture of wool and hair and smell of being close, he was rubbing her hair and damn it to Hell she wasn’t even pretty, lines across her cheeks from not getting enough sleep and the hair over ears nearly starting to be grey. “Anne,” he said, “Anne....” Damn it to Hell and gone, he’d thought he was chasing a bit of tinsel, but that wasn’t Anne....

He pushed away. He said, “Your shoe went in the ditch....” And “Here....” Finding a handkerchief. “You’ve got a snotty nose....”

Trying to laugh. “I . . . sorry,” she said. “Thank . . .”

“Keep still. . ..” He’d reached the shoe out of the ditch, she was standing, he was holding her ankle. Just the start of her, at the foot, was wonderful. “They gave up,” he said. “Went away....”

“No....” She was shaking her head, she nearly wasn’t wearing any makeup, her eyes were grey and sea-wet. “They’re waiting,” she said. “It’s you that has to go.”

His hand was holding her waist, steering her. Not to lose her again.... He listened to his voice make words. “They sent me a girl Elizabeth. But I didn’t want her....”

“You mustn’t s...”

“When you’re an artist,” he said. “Crossgrained by nature, just can’t take what’s ... given. Mind.... Have to make your own shapes from what you see. ...”

“You’re not making sense I don’t know what you mean....”

But you’re walking. Towards the car, I’m making you do that, I’m stronger than they are.... He’d done a hundred hours thinking in the last few minutes. He said, “I know about them, you see. Isn’t secret, not any more.”

“You’re a ... liar....”

“Anne,” he said. “Anne, I know....” Firmly, nearly believing it himself. Knowing if he frightened her now she’d run again and this time he wouldn’t catch her. “I know about them. And you. Anne, don’t you want to break out of this stinking town, don’t you want a life of your own any more?”

“The shoe,” she said. “It wasn’t... I didn’t mean ...”

Keep pushing. The fragments come, and they make a sort of sense. He hugged her gently, trying to stop her wanting to run away. He said, “I’ll show you how much I know. They ... heard me. A long way away. They wanted me here. But afterwards ... I wasn’t right. They sent the girl and the dog and the man who played chess. Maybe they made everything, they ... made the car be where I should see it. But it wasn’t any good. So they sent ... last night...”

“No...”

He went way out on a crazy limb. “I lost a father,” he said. “I thought my mind was going to explode. What happened to you, Anne, how did they hear you...”

She started to panic again. She was trying to fight him. “Go away,” she said. “Go away go away go away...”

He shook her, having to shout. “I can’t. I’m in too deep...”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Oh, God,” she said, she was crying badly, trying to hide her face. “Oh, God...”

He was sitting with her in the car, his arm was round her shoulders. He gave her a cigarette, “Listen,” he said, dry-mouthed. “I found you again, didn’t I ? When they didn’t want me to?”

She nodded dumbly. He took her hand, rubbed the knuckles. “Then trust me. I know what I want, I’m crazy, have a wonderful life....”

“They’ll kill you...”

“Then I’ll rise on the third day, Anne, I believe. People, us ... I believe in ... oh, Hell, everything, they can’t stop us. Don’t you want to get free again, not even try?”

“Can’t.” She banged the car dash miserably. “Can’t, can’t...”

“Not by running,” he said. Still the crazy pattern, fitting. ... He said, “You can’t run from them. That’s what they like, isn’t it ? For you to try to run. You were running last night...”

“No...”

“Anne,” he said. “I’ve got to meet them.”

“No!” She choked on the word that time, made a noise like a bad gearchange. Puffed at the cigarette, hand shaking. “It’ll be Paul,” she said. “Next time, it’ll be Paul...Last night was only Albert, he has the sort of ... Gothic sense....”

“What does Paul do?”

Shuddering. “He makes ... things....”

“Were they why you were running?”

She nodded mutely. Cat had got her tongue.

“They can’t hurt you.”

The nodding again, furiously.

“What can they do to you ?”

“Things,” she said. “Things . . .”

Don’t let the rage start, not again. A man in a rage can’t think. And you need to think, by God how you need to think.... Two names, he told himself. Paul, Albert. He nearly knew what he was fighting. “Anne,” he said. “Can you shut them out?”

“S-sometimes. ...”

“Tonight’s a special time,” he said. “Please, Anne, be ordinary. I want to take you out, I’ve got a lot of talking to do....” This was the only way, soon he could draw them into the open. Then he would ... see what he had to do. He said, “It’s about this pub....”

“Pub....”

“Down in the West Country,” he said. “Long way off from here.”

Crazy how a problem can drag on for years then unsnarl itself in an instant of time. He’d said to himself once, I find an answer to Warwell I find an answer to everything else. He’d been right. He asked himself, what if my father didn’t hate at all? Then all the long years would be an act of faith, a blessing, not a curse. “To thine own self be true....” Aloud he said, “Anne, if you’re the ... person I think you are, you’ll understand this. There was an old man once, wanted his son in business with him. Wanted to put ‘and Son’ over the gate, was all. I said something that ... cut him apart. Afterwards, the money, I ... didn’t understand. I’d turned into a smart little Townie, I didn’t understand. ...”

“I never stood up to anything,” he said. “Not till today. Just ducked out and thought I was being smart. Dad knew that. Just wanted me to wake up, that was all....” A pause; then, “He’d have liked you,” he said. “Very much....”

“Jimmy, the pub...”

“Oh,” he said. “That.... It all worked itself out, sort of came clear. But you have to be married or they won’t give you a li...”

“What?”

“Married,” he said. “Oh, I am being patient. For a start I kept thinking it was crazy, love at first sight and all that mush, but it isn’t love of course, you live through that pretty early on. Need’s a different thing, rotten business, can’t do much about it. I’m sorry for your friends, they don’t stand much of a chance...”

“What?” she said, “What?” and he thought, Christ, it’ll be the shoe again, but that won’t be too bad this time because it’ll only be her rage driving it. “I can see you now,” he said. “Standing back of the bar cheeking the locals....”

“Jimmy....”

It sank in, second time. “Oh,” he said, “She knows the fellow’s name all along. Nice little espionage service they have down here, not bad for the sticks. Congratulations, my dear, now it’s a hard life but very rewarding...”

“What...”

“The pub, gosh, I shall have to spell it out for you. Up with the lark and all that and scrubbing the loos before you can have your supper, but it’s very rewarding, human contact you know, invaluable to the artist, write a book about it. Seven days a week, but you get the afternoons free and we’ll have a glass roof in the snug for the pigeons to land on...”

“Jimmy, please...”

“Geraniums,” he said. “Now my maternal G-Granny was a great one for geraniums, you keep the soil loosened round the roots or you have to be careful not to loosen the soil round the roots or something like that, but they’re great for outside the pub. Windowboxes, very fetching, snap up the tourist trade. And there’s Roley of course, did I tell you about Roley?”

“A...”

“Guy I used to work with,” he said. “Prix de Rome. We had a pact. First one to get a pub gives the other a month’s free beer. Now Roley can smell free beer from about a hundred and fifty miles, so that’ll be OK, but I can send him a letter poste restante just in case. You’ll like him, he’s great, he’ll turn up in something twenty feet long with rivets down the bonnet and the first thing he’ll do is ask you to go to bed with him, but not to worry, he says that to all the g...”

“You’re ... mad,” she said, struggling. He kissed her on the mouth; he nearly couldn’t help it, she was whipping her head about, turned straight into it. Then he couldn’t stop, he had to kiss her eyes, her hair ...

She lay still, like a toy with a busted spring. Eyes shut in pain, tears still squeezing out under the lids. The tears were salt, he could taste them. “Anne,” he said, “I know I’m mad. But not as mad ... as this town.” He lifted the hem of her skirt, gently. Her legs were straight and smooth and there was no mark, no sign of a graze. “They saved you from the car,” he said. “But they threw you too hard, they had to do it hard.....” He touched the bandage on her arm. He asked, “Did you have to keep wearing it? Was there somebody might have noticed?”

No answer.

“Why did they mend you?” he said. “Were you bothering them?” He shook her suddenly, trying to make her react. “Don’t you see I can’t stop now ... ?” He swallowed. “Anne, will you trust me?”

Again the silence. “I can’t leave you here,” he said. “For ... them to perform ... indignities ... on your body.” Then very quietly, “Do I make myself clear?”

She spoke bitterly, not opening her eyes. “Dignity, indignity. ... Do you understand about dignity, Jimmy? Do you think you do?”

He tidied her skirt. “Darling,” he said. “Last night they ... opened your grave, I don’t know how else to say it. I ... didn’t know about them, Anne. Like you said, I was lying. But I know this. For what they did ... I’ll choke them....”

Her voice sounded suddenly remote. “I had a twin sister,” she said. “The thing that killed her, they could cure it now.” She licked her mouth. “I guess,” she said, “I guess I shouted pretty loud. Afterwards ... I couldn’t get away. My parents don’t know where I am. I changed my name.”

“We’ll go see them,” he said. “Soon, now....”

She looked at him, finally. Deep tiredness in her eyes. She said “I’ll take that drink I missed out on. Were you very mad... ?”

He drove her home. A whole hundred yards.

* * * *

Five

They weren’t by the river. They weren’t out on the roads. They weren’t anywhere, no place he drove. Anne sat beside him tensed up and waiting, he hadn’t fooled her, she knew what he was doing. There was something in this town, something he loathed, and she was his key to it. He felt crazy, now. He’d driven up the hill that afternoon, come back down with a wife; it was a prodigy, against the natural ordering of things. He waited for other miracles. They didn’t come.

There was a temptation to run, just turn the nose of the car at the open road and shove the throttle. But it was no good; whatever this thing was, it was too big to hide from. He knew that instinctively. He looked across at Anne. How much did he know about her, truly? Everything, he told himself. Everything and nothing. She’d come to Warwell, settled in a shared room over a country pub, got herself a job as secretary to a firm that marketed radio spares. That was all she’d told him and he knew she’d say no more. She couldn’t, because she was involved more deeply than he. She was part of the thing that had hounded him.

She was sitting stiffly, hair blowing out. She was wearing a sweet summer dress. She held the bandaged arm blatantly somehow, like a badge. They had done that to her, and worse. Run her wet, ridden her like a horse. Jimmy gripped the wheel, tried to squeeze the impression of his hate into metal.

They were waiting at the Dog and Badger.

He saw the lights of the pub showing ahead against the evening blue of the sky, felt Anne tense as soon as the place came in sight. A car was parked in the little pull-in; he drove alongside, sat and looked it over. Jaguar, XK150. Saloon, black. He remembered the howl of an engine the night before. And the car that had wound up passing the George. The big car. XK? Could be....

He set the brake, turned his engine off, walked to the passenger door. Anne got out, stood pressing herself against him and vibrating. He didn’t need to ask. They were inside.

He walked towards the saloon door, stopped. Said quietly, “All of them?”

“No....” Shivering. “Two. ..”

He smiled. “Let’s go in then. We came for a drink, remember ?”

“Jimmy, listen....”

“It’s OK, Anne,” he said. His fingers found her damp ones, curled round them. “It’s OK....”

“The Little One,” she said. “Mind the Little One, she throws things...”

“Interesting. Got a temper on her, has she?”

“No!” Violently. “No, she throws things....”

The bar was quiet, just like the night before. The sporting prints hung on the walls, the counter glassware shone. He stopped just inside the door, and stared. They stared back. The two of them. She was small and cute. Little skirt pulled far too high, curly short hair, eyes of baby blue. Red horseshoe of mouth, smiling. He was dark, hair black and wavy, oiled till it glinted. Wide-set strange eyes, flat, hot-brown. No expression there at all.

Anne walked in behind Strong, hesitated. A pause; then the Little One lifted her arm. Snapped her fingers.

The girl moved past Jimmy like a sleepwalker. Stopped beside them, stood and turned. The three faces watched and somehow they were the same. God, they were the same....

He got her wrist roughly, pulled. Anything to break that trilogy.... She came to him and he could hear her panting in the quiet room. He rang the bar bell for service, someone came. He didn’t see who. He opened his mouth, but it was the Little One who spoke. “A large beer,” she said sweetly. “And a Scotch. Double. The one the lady didn’t have last night.”

He paid for the drinks. He couldn’t take his eyes off them. “Anne,” he said. “Who are your friends?”

“Hazel...” She was swaying, he was scared she was going to fall. “Hazel, Johnny....”

“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding. “Hazel, Johnny....” He made himself look back to her. “Drink your drink, poppet. Then go sit in the car. My car....”

She didn’t move.

There was danger here, he could feel it shift and coil and raise his back hair. He could fight what he could see, but he wanted her out again first. “Anne,” he said sharply. “Do as you’re told....” She picked the glass up, lips pale. Swallowed jerkily, coughed, touched her mouth, looked at him in pain, walked out. He heard the door close behind her then the click of the latch on the Triumph. His ears seemed preternaturally sharp. He took a breath. “Hazel,” he said quietly. “It’s rude to snap fingers. Nobody ever told you ?

No answer. Just the staring, innocent and intense. And the smile curving, curving, it would touch her ears. The cat was looking at the cream....

He drank his beer, eyes watching over the rim of the tankard. What would they do, pull a knife, a gun ...? Nothing, you fool, nothing like that. Nothing you could understand.... He finished the pint, walked forward, stepping carefully on his toes. His body felt light, balanced. He leaned on the table in front of them, resting his knuckles. And still there was the smile, same smile now on two heads. The rage was back, furring his throat; he made himself be calm. “We came in,” he said. “We had our drinks, nobody stopped us. Nobody did a thing. Now we’re leaving. Anybody going to object?”

Silence. The smiling silence.

“Don’t click fingers,” he said. “Not at Anne. I don’t like it.” He picked the Little One’s hand up from where it lay on bright Formica. Was an ordinary little hand, nails bitten down. He twined his fingers and twisted, slowly closed his grip. He’d always had powerful wrists. Hazel rose slightly in the chair, arcing her body, smiling still. “Do you want to be broken?” he said. “Or you Johnny, do you want to be pulled apart? No? Then get off my back. Get right, right off. As of now....” He stepped away, sidled to the door. “That was a promise,” he said. “Not a threat. I don’t threaten.” He closed the door on the smiles. Got into the TR4 and found he was shaking. He reached across, took Anne’s wrist, pressed. “It was all right,” he said. “Don’t worry, it was all right....”

* * * *

It was late that night before he dropped the girl at her lodgings. He drove back down to Warwell feeling better than he had in weeks, stopped in the carpark in the middle of town. It was past midnight, the yard gates at the George would be shut; he’d been with his Anne a long time, talking and dreaming and watching the moon. He got out of the car. He’d leave her where she was, she’d come to no harm. He pulled the cover across the cockpit, clicked the studs in place, fastened the zip. Then he straightened up, looked round. The town was utterly quiet; the moon was still high, riding a clear sky. The central area of the carpark was brightly lit, round it the pointed shadows of buildings were inky black. He started to walk across the open space, heading for the gates.

He stopped. The noise.... It had sounded loud in the silence. A shuffling, scraping. Not a footstep. He looked behind him and to each side. Nothing. He felt the hair prickle again on his neck. Wished he’d brought his car torch with him, but it was back at the George. The sound came again.

Very deliberately, he took his handkerchief from his pocket. He wound it into a ball, gripped it in his fist. In the mob the boys had used pullthrough weights, but the hankie would have to serve. He pushed pennies between the knuckles, wadding them against the cloth. He looked round him again, slowly.... And there was the noise, in front and to his right.

He turned back and stared. About twenty yards away, lying in the moonlight, was a plank. Three or four feet long, six inches broad by a couple thick. A moment before, it hadn’t been there.

He extended one foot carefully. Felt the toes touch the ground, took a step. As he moved so did the plank. It rose on end, hung swaying slightly. It was between him and the gate.

“Uh-huh,” said Strong. “Yeah....” And started to walk.

A long time back when he was a tiny kid there was a dog he had to pass on the way from school. He remembered now how he’d edge by the place where the thing lived, walking on the opposite side of the road. Sometimes the dog would come, with a pattering rush. Sometimes not. But always as he walked he could sense without looking the open garden gate. Feel the presence of it like a hot breeze against the skin. The sensation was there now. He kept his eyes ahead, stepped past where the plank hung and rocked in moonlight.

He felt it move. Saw the quick flash of it from the tail of his eye, ducked. The wind from it lifted his hair. It spun back; he jinked, started to run. Wasn’t quick enough. The end of the wood thudded into his chest, it felt like the blow had stopped his heart.

The Little One.... The Little One throws things....

He doubled again knowing he couldn’t win. Couldn’t fight ... this. A blow across the back fetched him to his knees. It came again, over the base of the spine. And again, bang, into his ribs.

Bang....

Bang, bang....

His breath was sobbing. There was a huge sickness, there were stars, flashings, Anne, please.... Car was close now, he was fumbling at the cockpit cover. Something sailed past. A clang on metal; he grabbed, there was a wrenching, his palm tore agonizingly. He was in the car fighting with the ignition, key wouldn’t fit, wouldn’t turn, wrong key. ... He saw the missile swooping end-on, jerked his head back behind the screen, flung his hands up ... the last blow blotted out the carpark and the moon.

* * * *

A paleness, filtering between his eyelids. He opened them fractionally, felt how his brain, photo-sensitive, reacted to light with pain. He lay still while the throbbing eased. Then he sat up. The pain came back, exploding downward into his body. Ribs, hips.... He groaned, put a hand to his face. A scraping, and more pain. He saw dimly the flesh on the palm was ragged, splinters were showing. He shut his eyes again, squeezed, opened them, waited while gliding images fused. The roofs of buildings showed in dawn light, the tall hogs-back of the cinema. White ice glitter in front of him was the broken edge of the windshield, glass was strewn across the bonnet of the car, in her cockpit. He swore uselessly and looked round. No sign of the plank.

His jaw felt nearly broken. He fumbled with the rear view mirror, turned it till he could see. Cheek and chin were grazed; the plank would have smashed his face, it had missed when he jerked his head. Blood had run down his neck in an untidy stripe, spread a brown finger-shaped stain into the collar of his shirt. He put his head in his hands, sat still awhile. Felt a little steadier, groped for his cigarettes.

The man was standing beside him before he realized. He felt the aura, half turned, saw the dark blue of the uniform, froze, still holding the match. He tried to speak. His mouth felt like it was full of felt. “I...” he said. “I ... a stone. Afterwards ... didn’t feel so good....”

“I see, sir....” The policeman had his thumbs hooked in his pocket flaps, he was rocking gently on his heels. “This your car, sir?”

“I ... yes....”

“Made a bit of a mess of it haven’t you? Got your licence with you by any chance?”

He stared up, trapped, and saw the eyes. Long somehow, like the eyes of a cat. Almond-shaped and hazel. His throat worked as he swallowed. The eyes, and the face.... He’d seen the face before. Three times. He licked his mouth. “I’ll ... go,” he said. “Go. I ... had enough, officer. Don’t want any more....”

He’d done the right thing. The man stepped away, strange eyes dancing. “Yes, sir, I should if I were you. I’m just walking round the block now. When I get back ... don’t be here, will you ?” He turned on his heel and moved off.

The cigarette smoke tasted bitter. Jimmy threw the cigarette away, switched on the ignition. His hand shook when he touched the key. He revved the engine, brushed remnants of glass from the windscreen edge, drove out of the park. His mind was blank.

The town was still sleeping and quiet. He turned left at the traffic lights, crossed the Starr. Saw the fairground way off, rides jacketed with green tarpaulins. He reached the dual carriageway and opened up a little, heading for Midhampton ten miles away.

The airblast from the broken screen cleared his head; when he reached the town he could think again. He found a carpark with toilets open, washed his face, picked the worst of the splinters from his hand. There was a sweater in the car, he put it on. It had a polo neck that hid the marks on his shirt. He went back to the washroom mirror. His face was pale and the grazes showed brightly, but it was the best he could do. He went looking for a garage.

He’d been anticipating trouble of some sort, he was carrying fifty quid in his wallet for emergencies. He found a Standard-Triumph agency, hung round till they opened, told them a tale and left them working on the TR4. He got himself breakfast; he didn’t feel like food, but he thought he ought to eat. They had trouble locating a spare screen, it was mid-afternoon before they were through. He filled his tank, paid them and took the car out on to the road. Turned the bonnet north for Warwell.

It was like the dream repeating again. Same lane, winding between tall hedges; the same girl moving along it. She was walking listlessly, head down, jacket over her shoulder and handbag swinging. He’d pulled the car out of sight in a gateway, she was abreast of it before she saw him. She stopped and put a hand to her throat. Her mouth opened and shut but right then she was bad at making noises.

“Yeah,” he said. “And on the third day, he rose again. Only I couldn’t wait. Sorry, Anne....”

She tried to run then, but he was too quick, he’d been expecting that. He caught her wrist, spun; she thumped on the grass bank, her hair flew across her face. “You know,” he said, “I must like this sort of life. Great when the pain goes off....”

She was wriggling. “Please, Jimmy ... hurting ...”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know....”

“They let you ... let you g-get away....”

“But now they want me. They know, don’t they, they know I’m back, you just told them....”

“Jimmy....”

“Didn’t you?” He was bending her wrist. “Didn’t you tell them, Anne?”

“Hurting,” she said “Please.... Hurting, please....” She was trying to squirm round her arm.

“I’ll break it...”

“I can’t stop them....” She was nearly screaming. “They’re ... inside, all the time ... they ... make me walk, talk, do ... things ... can’t ... hold them out, I can’t....”

“Who are they:...”

She started to whimper.

“It’s OK,” he said. “Anne don’t, it’s OK, please don’t, it’s OK....” He let her go and she rolled away from him, lay curled up with her shoulders working. “They ... want you,” she said. “I’ve got to tell you.”

He lifted her, gently. “Anne,” he said. “Who are they?”

She hung her head and panted. “They’re ... everybody. Paul, and John T-Taverner from the Bull ... And David, Johnny, the Round Table ... Hazel, Maureen, they’re in the Inner Wheel...” She looked up, eyes tear-bright. “You were best with the women,” she said. “You knew about them all the time....”

He stayed quiet, letting the words sink in. The imagery of the dreams, the thing his brain had tried to tell him. Phrases heard or seen, cast back as monstrous parables.... He swore, very softly. “God,” he said. “Isn’t there a thing in this town that’s clean ... ?” Then he picked her up the rest of the way and started leading her towards the car. “Anne, I think you’d better tell me now. Everything you know....”

* * * *

Six

The house looked upstream from the tip of a little wooded island; he’d seen it many times on evening walks, a bone face peering along the Starr. The sun was setting now in a blaze of orange, sheets of colour flooding across the river. The house was silhouetted; lights burned in some of the windows, they shone pale against the glow. On the far bank the steam fair rumbled, organ sounds drifted across the river and the scents of electricity and crushed grass. A metalled drive wound to the bank. There was an open space, cars were parked. Among them a black XK.

There was a spidery bridge. He walked across it holding Anne by the wrist. Their footsteps sounded loud in the quiet. The door of the house was unlatched; the girl opened it and stepped inside. He followed her into a cool hall. White and blue tiles covered the floor, there was a carved Swiss umbrella stand, a bowl of flowers. A faint lavender scent pervaded the place.

He felt hollow now, somewhere inside him anger and fear were mixed. He climbed a stairway; a stag’s head watched down mournfully from the landing. Anne stopped outside a door. From inside Strong heard a hum of voices; and there was something else, a tenseness, a strangeness that touched him like a warm breeze prickling his scalp. The questing power of their minds....

The girl was swallowing, twisting her hands. He squeezed her elbow and opened the door. She walked through and he followed her, stood while the door closed itself behind him. He saw a white room, tall windows burning with the sunset light. Grouped chairs, a polished table. Faces watched him; and there was quiet.

These were no Rotarians. He saw Johnny at the back there and the Little One, next to them a man who’d served him petrol at the Central. The landlord of the Bull, the policeman who had checked him that morning. A porter, a little old lady; a girl with good legs and burning-red hair....

He knew them all from what she’d told him. In the timeless time while he stared and they watched back he heard her voice again, hurt and stumbling, as she sat in the car.

“Paul’s the ... leader, if there is a leader. Paul owns the house, the big house on the island. It’s Paul that makes the ... the things, the things that run. ...”

“It’s all right,” he had said. “Go on.”

“He’s an ... accountant, he’s quite well off. They’re all ... different, they all do different things. Don’s a policeman and there’s Albert, he’s Albrecht really, he’s half German, he works in a b-bank, he’s the one who can make things ... rot, die, he makes the dreams.... And Gerry sends them, Gerry and Maureen. Gerry’s an electrician, Maureen works in the t-telephone exchange....”

“Then you’re all telepaths,” he said.

“We’re all ... different.” She was still crying, not wiping at the tears. They fell steadily, splashing her wrists, running down her throat. Somehow it was like watching somebody bleed. “Different?” he said.

“Yes.... The Little One, Hazel, she’s the ... hands....”

“She hates me.”

“No....”

“Tried to kill me. She wants me dead....”

“No,” she said. “She ... doesn’t care what happens to you, Jimmy. As long as it’s funny....”

“Johnny runs a television shop, he helps her....” She started to pant again. “Jimmy, I was ... seeing for them. In the carpark. I couldn’t help it, they’d got hold of me, all of them...”

“In the carpark,” he said. “It’s all right now, stop....”

“I’m their ... eyes,” she said. “Oh, can’t you see how useless it is Jimmy, they won’t let me go. They can’t....”

“Softly,” he said. “Anne, how did they all come here? How could it have happened?”

“I ... don’t know. I know about you and me, but the others.... It’s a sort of drift, one comes and another and ... we can just tell....”

“You thought I was one, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “No...oh, I don’t know . .. Paul said to ... give you things, anything. Make you happy. Afterwards, when we couldn’t ... speak to you. He said it was best. But it didn’t work....”

“Paul’s a smart cookie,” he said. “Give a man everything, that’s the way to stop him thinking. It rots him ... I’m just too crossgrained, old Roley would have been the same. Still a few of us about.”

“It knew you knew about it,” she said. “It was watching you, all the time....”

“It?”

“There aren’t any words,” she said desperately. “Not to ... say what it’s like. It, us, the whole thing....”

“The Gestalt,” he said. “The Wheel. I was dreaming about a Wheel.”

“Yes....” Biting her lip, hands fluttering. “Like a ... person, eyes and brain and ... legs and arms, the whole lot sort of adding up like an Indian statue.... You could feel it, Jimmy, I knew you could, I knew it wouldn’t work when they tried to ... make you like everybody else, I t-tried to say ... Jimmy that’s what’s so important, it’s like ... well an animal somehow, I mean it isn’t people, not just us....”

“I know,” he said softly. “It’s all right Anne, don’t cry any more. I know. It’s the Wheel....”

He walked forward across the carpet. It seemed it was time for an extravagant gesture, something crazy. This was a thing you read about, laughed over, a thing that could never happen. It was the impossible, walking and talking. It had happened, here.

He smiled and clicked his heels, bowed stiffly from the waist. He said “Homo Superior, I presume....”

The river glided, the sky turned from orange to summer night blue. Bats moved over the island, a heron came in to land, stood for a while by the bank like an old stone imitation of a bird. Jimmy Strong talked. He described his life, and the chain of events that had brought him to Warwell. They listened, and watched. They fetched him whisky, a bottle of smooth Glen Grant, and a glass, and everything was very civilized. “Go on,” said the man called Paul time and again. “Go on....”

Paul. Lined pink tortoise-face below wavy silver hair, well-cut suit in a brown pinstripe. Paul had dignity. When Jimmy finally ended he leaned back and pulled at his chin, nodding. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see....”

A long wait. Then the accountant started to speak again, musingly. “There have been others like you,” he said. “Sometimes I think our ... skills are latent in every thinking brain.” He smiled thinly, not in humour. “A few have managed to integrate themselves with us. As you can see. The rest.... We have managed to make them content.”

“Great,” said Strong brutally. “Keep a man on the nest till his knees start to bend, feed him beer till it comes out of his ears.... I just love,” he said, “your public spirit....”

From somewhere, a giggle.

Jimmy felt the quick choking rise of rage, kept his eyes from the corner where the Little One sat watching him blue and rapturous. Fought the impulse he had to take her by the throat and squeeze and watch the eyes change at last with the knowledge of death.

Paul shook his head. “No,” he said carefully. “That has not been our way. It mustn’t be yours.” On the table in front of him was a bone paperknife; he picked it up and toyed with it, turning it in his fingers. “Mr. Strong,” he said, “you will not be appeased. Yet you are not one of us. What are we to do with you?”

Jimmy looked across to where Anne was sitting mute, hands gripped between her knees and eyes on the carpet. He said coldly, “You’ll do nothing with me. You have nothing to do with me.” He reached his proposition. “Miss Nielson. She’s had enough. I want to buy her out.”

A silence that deepened. Then, “I see,” said Paul again blandly. He steepled his finger and peered at Jimmy. There was no reading his eyes. “Mr. Strong, your ... manner has at least the virtue of honesty. I must try to match your forthrightness.” For an instant his tongue touched and moistened his lips. “How much is she worth to you?”

Useless to barter. Jimmy knew in this room his brain was clear glass; the answer that had formed there had already been read. He listened to his own voice speaking steadily. It said, “All I’ve got.”

Still the charade. “How much is that?”

Sharp intake of breath from Anne. Jimmy swallowed. “Eleven thousand,” he said. “And the car. Call it eleven five.” He asked himself, Pop, have I done it right? Is this a good way to spend your life? The quietness inside him was its own answer. The words were out now, and he still didn’t care....

The snigger came again. Paul glanced behind him and the noise stopped. He turned back to Jimmy. He said vaguely, “How payable?”

“Any charity you care to name. Come gentlemen, you own the bloody town. These things can be arranged....”

“Eleven thousand pounds,” said Paul. His eyes focused, he shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She belongs with us.”

“But she hates your guts....”

“An over-dramatization, I think,” said the accountant mildly. “Anne?”

No answer.

“Anne!”

She jumped like she’d been stung. “Paul I... yes....”

Jimmy was on his feet and glaring. “Whatever you did,” he said gently, “Don’t do it again. . . .”

Silence.

Anne said miserably “I can’t be b-bargained for Jimmy. I’m not a horse.”

“What were you doing to her?” asked Strong. “The night I nearly killed her?” The Little One spoke up chirpily. “We wanted to do a little job,” she said. “Johnny and me. But she was naughty....”

The rage in Jimmy was misting his sight. “So you sicked Big Brother on her,” he said. “Because she wouldn’t help you stir dirt.” He rounded on Paul. “Call that belonging?”

“Mr. Strong....”

“Paul,” he said. “You’re an intelligent man. So ask yourself, to keep an ... organism alive, does a grown man have to crawl? To that. . .?” He pointed. His voice rose, riding the other down. “There’s something you haven’t realized,” he said. “Any of you. Something I’ll tell you right now. You’re sick, you know that ?” He stared round the circle of faces. “The brain is sick. Sick with this ... rubbish jolting into it. You’re divided against yourselves. And you know what that means to a mind? They call it schizophrenia. Yeah, that’s what you’ve got. The first Gestalt brain in the history of the world is going round the bloody twist...”

Surging. The rage, the roar of the Wheel, threats, of oldness and death and things worse. He closed his eyes, rocked. Anne had her face in her hands. “That’s enough,” said Paul sharply. “All of you, that’s enough....”

Silence, through all dimensions.

The older man got up and walked round to Jimmy. Put a hand on his shoulder, steered him away from the table and across the room. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand. In what we do, we have no choice. Mr. Strong, if I laid a pocket knife on the table there and put eleven thousand pounds in your hand, would you allow me to pick out your eyes?”

Jimmy was silent.

“We have done nothing wrong,” said the accountant. “Understand that. We do nothing but exist. Now think what that means. Try to imagine yourself the only one of your species. Perhaps there has never been another unit like ours, or ever will be again. Mr. Strong, we did not ask to be born. Yet we ... came into being, in an environment that was never meant for us. A hostile world.”

“Don’t chop logic,” said Jimmy viciously. “You own this town. You drive it, you shape it...”

Paul shook his head, and he was sweating. “We own nothing. We ... direct certain aspects of life in Warwell. We have to. And believe me, for us it is very simple. We could do much more. Warwell is our ... home, our shell if you can think of it in that way. And I swear to you, nothing but good has come from that domination....”

Jimmy was staring out the window, seeing and not seeing the distant lights of the fair. The noise of the rides reached the house thinly. He said tonelessly “There’s blood on your hands.”

“No, Mr. Strong. Not yet...”

He brushed the man’s arm away, turned to stare into the faded blue eyes. “Paul,” he said. “This I believe. You’re a good man. Or maybe you were once before this ... thing got hold of you. I’m sorry for you, because you’re in deadly trouble.” He raised his voice to include the others in the room. “Give in,” he said. “Get to a ... hospital, somewhere they could understand you, help you. You’re needed; there’s no power like yours in the world.”

He read their answer in the silence.

“OK,” he said. “Now I’ll tell you this. I don’t hate easily; but I hate for a long, long time. And I’m defying you. Get off my back. Go to Hell where you belong, get out of my way...” He shoved past Paul, went to Anne. Said simply, “You coming?”

She lifted a ravaged face. Shook her head wordlessly.

“Uh-huh,” said Strong. “OK....” He walked across the room, opened the door, looked back at Paul. “You know what you’re doing,” he said. “I don’t have to spell it out for you. And I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m taking that girl out of this. I don’t know how. I don’t care. But I’m taking her if I have to break all these bastards down one by one. You’re not a corrupt man,” he said. “Not yet. But you will be. Because evil is a stain that spreads.” He turned away. “I’ll talk to you when you’ve cleaned your house....”

The doorhandle was snatched out of his hand. The door smashed shut; he pulled at it briefly and knew no force he could raise would open it.

Across the room, Paul’s face looked grey. Behind him the Little One smiled a blue china smile. Anne had turned away, she was covering her face again. Suddenly his body needed her, but he couldn’t move. A barrier seemed to have built itself in front of him; he could feel the heat and nearness of it, though there was nothing he could see.

Paul walked back to the table, stood leaning on his knuckles. “I don’t think you fully understand your position,” he said. His voice shook slightly; he moistened his lips again with the tip of his tongue. “As I said, we exist; and Warwell is the ... fortress we have built for ourselves. What our true function may be we don’t know. Perhaps we are a random particle in a random universe, and have no purpose. But we wait, and we hope. Sometimes, we pray.

“Mr. Strong, we are a living organism. Like any other breathing creature we defend ourselves if attacked. We fear mutilation, we fear death. You must not threaten us....

“There is no blood on our hands. Your somewhat theatrical phrase can have no meaning for us. We are neither good nor evil. We exist, we endure. If you force us, we shall kill....”

Silence in the room, total and absolute. The light, the bright threat spreading from face to face now the thing was finally said. In the quiet, a ride at the fairground hooted. Whup ... whup-whup-whup....

“You cannot fight us,” said the accountant. “We could break your bones where you stand, we could burst your heart. You cannot warn others of our existence; to try would be to fail, and we should know.” He looked back towards the window. His lips were set; he was the judge pronouncing sentence. “You must not stay,” he said finally. “You have till the fair leaves at the end of the week. You will not be molested. Should you remain beyond that time you will be destroyed.”

Jimmy tried to make his brain work. “Anne,” he said. “Anne. . . .”

She quivered but she wouldn’t look at him.

“No,” said Paul. “No more. Leave now, please. I’m sorry....”

The door opened for him. He stepped through and down the darkened stairs. He carried with him one last impression. A pair of bright blue eyes, the smiling red horseshoe of a mouth.

* * * *

Seven

Strong wiped his face, felt the sweat on his forehead mingle with the rain. Looked up at the blind grey sky. He was unshaven, eyes dark rimmed from lack of sleep. The drizzle soaked the shoulders of his mac, ran down inside the collar. He didn’t notice it.

Round him were the massive rides of the fair. Water beaded painted woods, spread dark fingers across tight-stretched sheets of tarpaulin. He reached the Switchback, leaned his hands on the curved wall of the machine. Above him, over the chin-high tarps, gargoyle faces peered. Golden cats and cockerels, motionless in the dead light, eyes bright and painted, blue like the eyes of china dolls. The rain made a faint hissing, nearly inaudible; and it was Saturday morning.

He hung his head. Paul, he thought for the thousandth time, Paul.... Can you ask a man to gouge his eyes out, cut off his hands ? Can you expect him to do it ... ? Now they’ll punish Anne, he thought. As they punished her before. ... They’ll hunt her again, send unspeakable things to hop across the fields, snuggle in her bed.... Paul doesn’t understand, he thought. Paul’s detached, remote. And then, Paul does understand. But how can you ask a man to cut off his hands....

Saturday morning. He groaned, hanging his head, wanting Anne, the warmth of her, her young-old face. His time was nearly out. At midnight, with the chiming of the church clock, the fair lights would snap off, the rides run down in darkness. Then they would come for him. Not Paul; but Johnny and the Little One, they’d come. And afterwards, they’d make his Anne dance to a tune. Afterwards? No, before. They’d start tonight, they’d show him what they could do.

He saw Paul’s face again in his mind, old tortoise eyes wary, mouth pursed saying no, no.... The Gestalt was not evil, but it was sick. Sick of a pair of china eyes, a horseshoe smile....

“Gestalt,” he said, and banged his fists on wood. “Gestalt, Gestalt....” His life was tied now to Anne, the brain was his enemy. Unbreakable, undefeatable. How to fight it.... For every perfection a fault, he told himself. For every strength, a weakness. Find the flaw. Use Gestalt against itself, somehow there’s a way. Kill the brain, poison it maybe. Poison it ? How, with what....

He lifted his head, wet hair dangling. Round the sides of the great ride, baroque cowboys galloped; under his hands, an Indian was plunging from his horse. The head was thrown back impossibly, a round hole in the forehead spewed a thin stream of blood. The face was contorted, mouth stretched with pain....

Jimmy’s eyes widened, slowly. He stood and stared a very long time, hands now slack at his sides. Then he turned and walked rapidly away, purposive now that he knew what he had to do.

* * * *

East Street, on a fine June night. The rain cleared away, the air warm. Turquoise streaks still showing in the western sky, silhouetting the church. Solitary balloon floating a quarter mile up, somebody stabbing at it with the silver finger of a searchlight. Shopfronts blazing in town, crowds jostling down and back from the river. Noise of the fair coming across the water, hootings and the music of the rides.

Strong pushed along crowded paths seeing the traffic, saloons balked and bad-tempered, open cars moving with their toploads of youngsters or cruising slow, hunting for pickups. Seeing the endless people, kids with faces candyfloss-sticky cradling coconuts and dolls, girls in blouses and skirts and tight jeans and summer frocks, faces laughing, kiss-me-quick hats perched on their heads and papier-mâché sombreros, the boyos with their plaid shirts and jeans, leather jackets, Norton and Matchless studded across the shoulders and crossed bones and skulls, the ton-up Joes....

Searching all the time, hunting till he saw her. Boyo on either side of her and she arm in arm, the pickups laughing and burly, sporting black cock-combs of hair, she in step, body wriggling and being a whore’s body, only the eyes desperate, bolting like the eyes of the hare.... She saw him and there was pain, but she couldn’t stop. She passed on down the street, throwing her head back, laughter peeling from her, heigh-ho come to the fair....

He huddled in the doorway of a shop, brain spinning. Watching the crowd that seemed now to surge forward and back dizzyingly, faces like foam flecks on a sea. They were close, he knew they were close. They were in her body controlling it, pulling the wires that made the marionette step and prance. The punishment, the fun, had started....

He saw them. Johnny cutting a dash in fawn tapered slacks, white shirt framing Gigolo-darkness. Turning and laughing now, showing his teeth and braying. The Little One in a froth of summer dress, hanging on his arm and smiling, always she must smile.... He stepped into the crush behind her praying she wouldn’t turn then knowing she wouldn’t turn. Knowing incredulously that she’d nearly forgotten him already. She doesn’t care what happens to you, Jimmy ... as long as it’s funny....

His hands made themselves into balls of bone. He said through his teeth, “It’ll be funny....”

The Green Dragon was nearly deserted, the serious drinking hadn’t started yet. The river terrace nestling by the bridge arch was empty. Water chuckled against stone piers, the noise of the fair came loud across the Starr. Jimmy edged forward, keeping to shadows. They were standing together by the steps down to the landing stage. She holding his arm and looking out across the river, smiling he knew, smiling....

He said quietly, “Johnny....”

He whirled, and Strong hit him. All the rage, all the hate exploding from a point and that point in his fist, at the end of an arm that swung, cracked....

Perfect timing. No sense of impact, but the body flung itself back, thudded against the bridge. Then the rock spun at Jimmy’s head, missed, half numbed his shoulder. Iron chair rose from the terrace and whirled at him, he knocked it aside and ducked knowing others would come and stones and bricks, converging on him as a centre. Watch the Little One, she throws things....

He reached her in two strides and she tried to bolt, but she wasn’t quick enough, it was one ... two ... for himself, for the beating, for Anne. Her body wrapped itself round the blows, “Ip,” she said, “Ip....” And he’d got Johnny’s arm, he was twisting it high behind his back, hauling him up by the wrist. “Where is she... ?” said Strong. “Where is she ... ?”

“Eeehh . . . Yeehh. ...”

“C’mon boy, where ... ?”

Raspberry dribble on the chin and spilling down the shirt, teeth bared, thin high noise coming between them. Strong twisted again and the Little One started to scream.

“Fair . . .” said Johnny. Gritted. “Fair. . . .”

“Where, in the fair ... ?”

“Bastard....”

Twist, and feel the bones flex.... “Where ...?”

“Gallopers.... The b-big ride....”

“Good boy, what’s she doing ... ?”

“With the ... boys...”

“What happens, Johnny? What happens now?”

“Fun....” He was wheezing. “Then afterwards ... the real fun....”

It was possible to see red, everything in bright flat sheets of colour. “Johnny,” said Strong, “You’re going to have a very bad night....” He heaved his victim at the flight of steps. And as he shoved, pulled ...

Sharp high cracking of bones and the body crashing, arm flying out loose. Then there were two of them down there both holding an arm, both rolling and shrieking. Gestalt...

Jimmy ran across the bridge, flung himself into the traffic. A skidding, close noise of a hooter.... He fended off a bonnet with his hands and there was a crash, a grinding. Good, he thought good, confuse the issue.... Then the fair was ahead, the brightness and noise. Floating haze of faces orange-lit, jostling and shoving, hands grabbing. Thunder from the Switchback and the Scenics, rich din of organs, smack and clang of shooting galleries, shrieks of Laughing Sailors. Somebody yelled at Jimmy, punched his back. He ducked, swerved, saw Anne. She was reeling, holding her arm. He reached her and clung. People were staring, he shoved his way through them. She was gritting her teeth and moaning. “Jimmy, what... what’d you d-do... ?”

“Broke all your good right arms,” he said. His breath was sobbing, the lights were spinning in front of his eyes. “I ... sorry,” she said. “Pass out....” He yelled at her, “You can’t....” Then, “Just a little way.... Just a little way Anne, come on....”

They were clear of the fair. He had the car parked close, he bundled her into it, started up, bucked his way across rough grass. Out back of the fair was a lane, he burst the paling by it and the hedge, wallowed, got away. Anne was clinging to the dash one-handed, the other arm lay in her lap uselessly. Halfway to Midhampton she was still whimpering. God, he thought, what range does this thing have.... He was in the outskirts of town and swinging round the first rotary when she sat up and yelped with relief. He shouted to her, “What happened ... ?”

“They put him out....” Her eyes were wide now, terrified. “Jimmy, they’ll take us. You can’t get away. . . .”

“Great,” he said. “Hold them out, Anne, you must...”

“Trying ...” She was rocking in the seat again, there was sweat on her face. “The car,” she said. “Don.... The police will stop the car, he’ll make them....”

“Damn the bloody car....” There was the main line station ahead, he swung across the forecourt, braked with a squeal, jumped the door.

“Jimmy...”

He slapped her bottom. “Move, Anne, run....”

“You can’t...”

He yelled at her. “I know. I can’t win. I can never bloody win, I’m used to it....” He grabbed her wrist. He was panting again. “Knew it would happen.... They’d send you to the fair....”

“How... ?”

“Heard them make their minds up,” he said. “It was starting, after all that. It was in me, it grows....”

“But you c-could ... be a part. Jimmy, you could...”

“Of that... ?” He bellowed at her. “That... ?”

She was shuddering. “You hurt the Little One. She’ll kill you....”

“Paul won’t let her. Anne, we’ve got to try....” Hammering on the ticket office window. “West Coast Pullman,” he said. “Got it all worked out. Ten minutes....” But this was British Railways, the train would be late. The trains were always late. It was part of a pattern of craziness.

Anne was stamping like a hound. “Hurry,” she said. “Please....”

“Been rung in,” he said. “Six minutes.... Anne, it’s OK, we’ll make our own Gestalt.” They’d told him platform ten; there was a tunnel, he took the steps at a run still holding her arm. The suitcases in his hand were bumping his knee, “Jimmy,” she said. “What...”

“What?”

“Cases....”

He gasped. “Luggage. For the hotel. Keep your hand in your pocket, you haven’t got a ring....”

“Jimmy....”

“No more. Hurry....”

Cool here, under the tracks. The tunnel stretching ahead, their footsteps clattering. Long lines of lamps glowing yellow, looms of dirty cable on the painted brick walls. She was running, trusting him, eyes screwed shut. They’d make it, they’d ma...

She wrenched away. He clutched at her, she swerved. Moving fast, throwing her legs out, running the way women don’t run. She passed the last flight of platform steps. He followed her but she was too quick. There was a barrier, waist high. He took it on the run and the top bar cocked up as he jumped, caught his foot, sent him smashing down, rolling over and over. Contact, he thought, contact. Anne....

The Little One raging, using Anne’s eyes at last, holding her body, making it run. He staggered up. He was in a loading area, dim-lit. Goods lifts to one side, piles of parcels. A flight of steps. He leaped up them into the open air.

A siding. Acres of rail, shining. Ahead he saw a white moth still running. He forced his legs to move again, heart hammering. Across the tracks skidding and slipping, barking his shins on steel.

Station buildings were behind him now, he could see the lit face of the clock tower. He staggered on again seeing signal eyes glaring miles off, reflecting green and red streaks down the rails. He glimpsed Anne again and the train, the lit numberplate on the loco sailing out of the night. He heard the noise of it, the long double scream of the horns, then it was passing, blowing him back from its hugeness. Thunder-rhythm of the waggons, wrench-bang wrench-bang wrench-bang wrench-bang loud then softer, the red lamp on the guards van receding, swaying away down the line...

“Anne!”

She was lying huddled, wind moving her dress.

“Anne!”

He reached her. Her arms.... Wrists clamped to the sleepers, a foot from the steel. The wrists had hands on them....

He took his jacket off, put it round her, lifted her inside it. She was shaking, she held her hands out in front of her. “That far,” she said. “That far. Not on the rails....”

“Anne....”

She looked at him. Tear marks showed on her face. “Jimmy,” she said. “They’ve gone ...”

He started to walk back down the tracks, holding her, not letting her stumble, feeling a wonder grow inside him. The Wheel, the thing that ran a town; somehow at last it had stemmed its own sickness. It was brooding now, thinking, searching for purpose and sanity. Some day, some place, he knew it would send for him again. He felt a huge thanksgiving and a hope in the presence of the Thing that for a need had blinded itself. No, it wasn’t human, not the Gestalt brain; for in the end, when it had found itself, it had chosen mercy....

When it called, he hoped he would be ready.