The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

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      Helen looked at me. ‘Well, what do you usually pay for the drinks? We’ll only have a couple.’

      ‘We’re going to the pub, are we?’

      ‘Darling, are you all right?’ She came over to me. ‘You look all strangled. Is that shirt too tight?’

      ‘Helen,’ I said, getting up. ‘I’ve got to try to explain something to you. I don’t know why it’s happening, it’s something to do with these billows of gas the sun’s releasing.’

      Helen was watching me with her mouth open.

      ‘Harry,’ she started to say nervously. ‘What’s the matter?’

      ‘I’m quite all right,’ I assured her. ‘It’s just that everything is happening very rapidly and I don’t think there’s much time left.’

      I kept on glancing at the clock and Helen followed my eyes to it and went over to the mantelpiece. Watching me she moved it round and I heard the pendulum jangle.

      ‘No, no,’ I shouted. I grabbed it and pushed it back against the wall.

      We jumped back to 9.07.

      Helen was in the bedroom. I had exactly a minute left.

      ‘Harry,’ she called. ‘Darling, do you want to, or don’t you?’

      I was by the lounge window, muttering something.

      I was out of touch with what my real self was doing in the normal time channel. The Helen talking to me now was a phantom.

      It was I, not Helen and everybody else, who was riding the merry-go-round.

      Jump.

      9.07-15.

      Helen was standing in the doorway.

      ‘… down to the … the …’ I was saying.

      Helen watched me, frozen. A fraction of a minute left.

      I started to walk over to her.

      to walk over to her

      ver to her

      er

      I came out of it like a man catapulted from a revolving door. I was stretched out flat on the sofa, a hard aching pain running from the top of my head down past my right ear into my neck.

      I looked at the time. 9.45. I could hear Helen moving around in the dining room. I lay there, steadying the room round me, and in a few minutes she came in carrying a tray and a couple of glasses.

      ‘How do you feel?’ she asked, making up an alka-seltzer.

      I let it fizzle down and drank it.

      ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Did I collapse?’

      ‘Not exactly. You were watching the play. I thought you looked rather seedy so I suggested we go out for a drink. You went into a sort of convulsion.’

      I stood up slowly and rubbed my neck. ‘God, I didn’t dream all that! I couldn’t have done.’

      ‘What was it about?’

      ‘A sort of crazy merry-go-round –’ The pain grabbed at my neck when I spoke. I went over to the set and switched it on. ‘Hard to explain coherently. Time was –’ I flinched as the pain bit in again.

      ‘Sit down and rest,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll come and join you. Like a drink?’

      ‘Thanks. A big scotch.’

      I looked at the set. On Channel 1 there was a breakdown sign, a cabaret on 2, a flood-lit stadium on 5, and a variety show on 9. No sign anywhere of either Diller’s play or the panel game.

      Helen brought the drink in and sat down on the sofa with me.

      ‘It started off when we were watching the play,’ I explained, massaging my neck.

      ‘Sh, don’t bother now. Just relax.’

      I put my head on Helen’s shoulder and looked up at the ceiling, listening to the sound coming from the variety show. I thought back through each turn of the round-about, wondering whether I could have dreamt it all.

      Ten minutes later Helen said, ‘Well, I didn’t think much of that. And they’re doing an encore. Good heavens.’

      ‘Who are?’ I asked. I watched the light from the screen flicker across her face.

      ‘That team of acrobats. The something Brothers. One of them even slipped. How do you feel?’

      ‘Fine.’ I turned my head round and looked at the screen.

      Three or four acrobats with huge v-torsos and skin briefs were doing simple handstands on to each other’s arms. They finished the act and went into a more involved routine, throwing around a girl in leopard skin panties. The applause was deafening. I thought they were moderately good.

      Two of them began to give what seemed to be a demonstration of dynamic tension, straining against each other like a pair of catatonic bulls, their necks and legs locked, until one of them was levered slowly off the ground.

      ‘Why do they keep on doing that?’ Helen said. ‘They’ve done it twice already.’

      ‘I don’t think they have,’ I said. ‘This is a slightly different act.’

      The pivot man tremored, one of his huge banks of muscles collapsed, and the whole act toppled and then sprung apart.

      ‘They slipped there the last time,’ Helen said.

      ‘No, no,’ I pointed out quickly. ‘That one was a headstand. Here they were stretched out horizontally.’

      ‘You weren’t watching,’ Helen told me. She leant forward. ‘Well, what are they playing at? They’re repeating the whole thing for the third time.’

      It was an entirely new act to me, but I didn’t try to argue.

      I sat up and looked at the clock.

      10.05.

      ‘Darling,’ I said, putting my arm round her. ‘Hold tight.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘This is the merry-go-round. And you’re driving.’

       1956

       THE CONCENTRATION CITY

      Noon talk on Millionth Street:

      ‘Sorry, these are the West Millions. СКАЧАТЬ