"I'll give you publicity," the receptionist said, which struck Lisette as a generous offer until another voice announced "Publicity."

"Are you w.i.l.l.y Bantam's girl?"

"Mr Bantam's publicist is on the road with him. Can she call you next week?"

"What road are they on? Where is he tonight?"

"Nowhere, I believe. May I ask who's calling?"

"I'm an old friend he used in one of his books. Where's he on next?"

"I think he's reading at a library tomorrow afternoon."

"Have you got the address? I want to surprise him."

There was a pause that might have denoted reluctance, so that Lisette was searching the depths of herself for some further persuasiveness when her informant returned with the address, followed by a question: "Can I just take your-"

"Don't spoil the surprise," Lisette said as she saw Bertha returning from her customary five-minute visit to the toilet. "Thank you for calling," she added, she hoped not too suspiciously loud.

She had apparently fooled the supervisor, but perhaps not Vi or Doris. She didn't say a word to any of her colleagues until she'd had lunch amid the tinny clattering of the bas.e.m.e.nt canteen, followed by several strolls around the car park in pursuit of her clouds of breath to use up the rest of her lunch break. As soon as she was back at her desk, releasing Vi from hers, she said to Bertha "I know it's short notice, but could I have tomorrow afternoon off?"

Bertha turned from adjusting the blind, an irregularity of which had dared to admit a sc.r.a.p of m.u.f.fled sunlight. "Is it an emergency?"

Lisette grew aware that Doris was idle and listening. "It wouldn't seem like one to everybody, but-"

"Then we can't treat it as one, can we?" Bertha said with what might even have been a hint of genuine regret. "You know the rules as well as anyone. Forty-eight hours notice of leave except in cases of absolute emergency."

This had never made sense to Lisette'it wasn't as though a subst.i.tute worker would be brought in. "I know you wouldn't want to be made an exception of and cause bad feeling," Bertha said, at which Doris gave a nod of agreement so meaningful it might well have contained a threat of telling tales.

Lisette pressed her headphones to her ears as an inquiry summoned her. Her professional voice sounded detached from her, entering her head from outside, but that wasn't new. A worse impression was, however'a sense that instead of being the role she played in order to afford her real life, this empty unfulfilled automaton serving a faceless public would soon be the whole of herself. It wouldn't be while she had any imagination left, she vowed, and remembered w.i.l.l.y Bantam's novels waiting on her bed. Her imagination wouldn't let her down so long as she refrained from wasting it on trying to concoct excuses she didn't need.

She'd hardly reached her bedroom and thrown off her coat when she opened Ravage! on her lap, its hard rounded spine digging into her crotch. From her bag she took the pen w.i.l.l.y Bantam had held. It felt cold, but grew warmer as she ran a finger up and down it while she used it to cross out the name that had supplanted hers in Ravage! Once she had written her own name everywhere it belonged she found the description of her in Writhe! and made it hers too, then she hugged the books to her and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed.

That night her sleep was uninterrupted, even by dreams. The clock had to repeat its squeak to rouse her. She dressed at her leisure and strolled to the phone box at the end of the road, where she told Doris she was too ill to go to work. Back home she sat on her bed and stroked the w.i.l.l.y Bantam books until it was time to go to him.

She would have left earlier except for not wanting to be conspicuous when she arrived, but the two hours she gave herself proved not to be enough. Winds like tastes of a blizzard threw her car about the motorway and thwarted her even approaching the speed she would have risked. When at last she found the library, she was twenty minutes late.

It was one of several concrete segments surrounding a circular parking area, a plate that might have held a cake the segments had been part of. Besides the library there was a church, a police station, a fraud investigation office. Though the plate was several hundred yards around, it was almost covered with cars, so that Lisette was growing sweaty with desperation when she saw a s.p.a.ce outside the library. It was reserved for the Disability Advis.e.m.e.nt Executive, but Lisette felt her need was greater. She parked as straight as she had time for and dashed into the library, where a notice board tried to confuse her with a list of the day's events: a sale of videoca.s.settes, a meeting of a writers' group, a demonstration of origami, a seminar for teenage parents, a course called "The Koran Can Be Fun"... The guest of the writers' group was William Bantam. Far better, the girl at Ba.s.sinet Press had misinformed Lisette. He wasn't due to start for five minutes.

Lisette hurried to the end of a corridor papered with posters for counseling services and found herself a seat in the midst of the large loud audience. She squeezed her bag of books between her thighs as a murmur of appreciation greeted the appearance of their author. He wasn't even bothering to look for her: he must believe she was either satisfied with his autograph or overcome by his trick. Then he rounded the table at the end of the room and saw her.

His jaw didn't quite drop, but his lips parted audibly before they snapped together. He poured himself a gla.s.s of water and downed half of it, then he set about reading from _The Smallest Trace of Fear.__ He read the scene in which a willowy brunette became obsessed with the idea that she was being followed by the same car with different licsense plates and was pitifully grateful to be picked up by her new boyfriend until she heard the rattle of several metal rectangles from behind her seat..."Dot dot dot is about the size of it," Lisette muttered, convinced he'd selected the chapter as a gibe at her. "Drip drip drip, more like." That everyone else present seemed impressed struck her as not merely a joke but a bad influence on him. She listened while people praised his subtlety and restraint and went on about his technique, all of them presumably writers so unsuccessful they had nothing better to do than sit at his new clay feet. Soon she was waving her hand, but Bantam and the librarian who was choosing questioners ignored her. As the author finished telling a woman that he didn't think publishers were biased against her or her cla.s.s or her gender, Lisette sprang to her feet. "Can I speak now?"

Dozens of heads turned to find her wanting. "Are you a writer?" a long-faced shaky bald man demanded on behalf of all of them.

"Yes I am, and I wouldn't be except for w.i.l.l.y Bantam."

Bantam was searching for somebody else to recognize, but all the hands except hers had gone down. "What's your question?" the librarian said.

"I want to read you how it ought to be." Lisette pulled out the book: not her favourite-she was keeping that all for herself-but Writhe! "Lisette had been dreaming Frank was still alive," she read, raising her voice as people who could see the book began to murmur. "When she felt her calf being stroked she thought he had come back, and in a way he had. As the caress pa.s.sed over her knee she parted her thighs. The long soft object squirmed between them, and that was when she knew something was wrong. But the worm that had crawled into her bed had stiffened, and as she gasped it thrust deep into her, spattering her with graveyard earth..."

The murmur of the audience had grown louder and more defined-tuts, throat-clearings, embarra.s.sed coughs-and at this point it produced a voice. "You should save that kind of thing for reading when you're by yourself."

A girl brandished a copy of Writhe! "That's Mr Bantam's story, only she's not called that in it."

"She should be," Lisette said.

The girl gaped at her. "Is she supposed to be you?"

"Do you need to ask when you've read the book?"

The girl looked away, and so did everyone else. Lisette might have borne that much disbelief, but then she heard a m.u.f.fled t.i.tter. "She's me all right. She always was," Lisette declared. "w.i.l.l.y put me in even if he didn't know he did. You heard him say he doesn't know where some of his ideas come from. You can't deny it's me when everyone can see me, w.i.l.l.y Bantam."

The bald man, shaking more than ever, broke the silence. "Did you have anyone in mind as your victim, Mr Bantam?"

"I'm glad you asked me that. There's only one person an author ever really writes about, and that's himself."

"That's stupid. How can he make out any of the girls are him?" Lisette protested, attempting to provoke a laugh with hers. "He's a w.i.l.l.y, not a Connie. Not a c.u.n.ty. Not a p.u.s.s.y," she said, louderas the librarian gestured urgently at a uniformed guard. "Don't bother, I'm going," she said, grinning at the pairs of knees that flinched out of her way as she made for the aisle. "Just you remember everybody here knows I was in your books when you were w.i.l.l.y Bantam. I'll always be in them now."

She'd marched only a few yards out of the room when she heard hoots of incredulous laughter. What was he saying about her? She might have gone back to find out if the guard hadn't been following her, his face a doleful warning. She strode away, hugging her bagful of books so tightly they seemed to throb in time with her heart, to be transforming themselves into her flesh.

Long before she arrived home the fog was beckoning the night. The lights in her garage and upstairs were harsher than she was expecting. The one in her bedroom spotlighted her on the bed, naked except for Ravage! between her legs. "I'm there now, w.i.l.l.y Bantam," she murmured, and rubbed herself against the book as she crouched forward to read her scene. She didn't know how many times she read it before she had to acknowledge it was no use. He'd intervened between her and the book-his smug indifferent face and his words in public had, and the jeering of his audience.

It wasn't until the binding gave an injured creak that she observed she was about to rip the book in half. Instead she closed it slowly as though it, or some thought it was capable of prompting, would tell her how to proceed. The notion kept her company in bed, and as the night settled into the depths of itself she saw what she must do.

The alarm had to make several efforts to waken her. Since the staff at Ba.s.sinet Press started work later than she did, her tardiness hardly mattered. She reached the office at least a minute before the switchboards were due to open, but Bertha frowned hard enough to darken her sunless face. "We'd given up on you. Are you better?"

"Getting there."

"We didn't think it was like you to have to stay off with a case of the girlies."

"Maybe I'm becoming a woman," Lisette said, and closed herself in with her headphones, ignoring the looks Vi and Doris exchanged. She dealt with inquiries until Bertha waddled off to relieve herself and remake her makeup, at which point Lisette suffered the next call to carry on twitching its light on her board while she rang Ba.s.sinet Press. "Will you put me through to William Bantam's editor, please."

"May I have a name?"

"Someone they'll want to speak to."

Quite soon a deeper female voice said "Mel Daunton."

"Are you the editor Mr Bantam has to talk to?"

"I'm the one he does. Sorry, can I ask who's calling?"

"You ought to be sorry. You should know who I am. He talked to you about me."

"You'll forgive me if I don't-"

"You and his agent and him got together to talk about what I could imagine before he wrote his new book."

"I don't know where you could have got that impression, Miss, Mrs-"

"He said it in front of witnesses at the bookshop here in town, so don't bother trying to tell me it isn't true. You can't take advantage of me any more than he can. Do you know what he wanted me to believe when I saw him yesterday? That the description of me in his books isn't me."

"I did hear something about that. If I can-"

"I'll bet he didn't tell you he said he was me. Even I haven't got the imagination to believe that."

"I'm glad to hear it. Can I ask what you actually-"

"I want compensation for the way he used me and then said he never did. I'm not talking about money. As long as you and his agent tell him what to write, I want us all to agree how he can put me in his next book."

"That might take some arranging. Give me your number and I'll call you back."

"It doesn't matter when we all have to meet, I'll come," said Lisette, ignoring Vi and Doris, both of whom were staring at her. It wasn't until they turned to gaze past her that she realized what was wrong, not that she cared. A glance over her shoulder revealed Bertha in the doorway, hands on hips. "I'll call you tomorrow," Lisette said into the mouthpiece.

"I may not be here then, so if you could give me your-"

"I know what you're up to. Never mind trying to send someone to shut me up. I'll be there when you're discussing his next book," Lisette said, and cut her off.

She waited for Bertha to move into her view. The supervisor looked so unhappy and reluctant to speak that Lisette stood up at once. "You needn't say it. I'm fired," she cried, flinging the earphones at the switchboard. "Don't worry, I'm going to a better place," she said, s.n.a.t.c.hing her coat off its hook, and stamped on whatever Bertha attempted to say to her back.

She was out of the only job she'd ever had, and already forgetting it. She knew who she really was, and before long everybody would. On her way home she parked in a side street she would previously have found too unpatrolled to brave and bought a tape recorder in a p.a.w.nbroker's. One of several men who were huddled under sacks in the doorway of a derelict pub erected his bottle at her for lack of anything more manageable. "I'll have worse in me than that," she told him.

It was almost noon, but it might as well have been dusk. Swollen lumps of light hovered above the pavements, thick glowing veils hung before the shops. The world had grown soft and remote from her, and the interior of her house seemed as distant: the closing of the garage, the climbing of the stairs, the crossing of the room full of redundant books. Only her bedroom was alive for her, and once she was naked she pressed herself against the wall that was papered with samples of w.i.l.l.y Bantam. She ran her fingertips around the screaming lips, she licked the pages of Ravage!. The faint taste of ink seemed more nourishing than any meal. When she felt entirely ready she switched on the tape recorder and held in her hand the pen he'd touched, and widened her legs on the bed.

"w.i.l.l.y? w.i.l.l.y Bantam? I know you're going to hear this. I'm not angry with you any more. I can't be angry when we're going to collaborate. This is how I'll die in your next book. You won't be able to resist me. Are you listening?"

When she saw the flare of red that indicated the machine was, she closed her eyes. "Lisette pulled the cap off the famous horror writer's pen. No protection for her. She traced the contours of her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s with the tip, she ran it over her flat trim stomach and up and down her long slim thighs, oh, and then she thrust it deep, ah..."

Before too long she was able to form words again, and meanwhile her other sounds kept the tape recorder working. "She felt it penetrate her virginity," she gasped, and steadied her voice. "She felt the ink that was his essence flow into her, tingling through her body. She felt herself starting to imagine like him, see into the depths of him, see things he would never have dared to see by himself. Now if she could just... just put them into words..."

"That's as much as she managed to say," the policeman said, and switched off the tape. "By the sound of it she pa.s.sed out shortly after."

"And then..." Bantam prompted.

"And then she lay there for weeks before anyone found her. She hadn't any friends or family, just books."

"I hope n.o.body's going to blame me for that."

"Most of them weren't yours," said the policeman, and paused long enough for his gaze to become heavily ambiguous. "We shouldn't need to trouble you further. n.o.body can say you encouraged her."

"They better hadn't try." For an instant the author saw the woman as the sound of her taped voice had conjured her up'an unwelcome presence in the midst of his audience, at least middle-aged and already grey, flat-chested, thick-limbed, less than five feet tall and almost half as broad. "I wish someone else had," he said.

The policeman pushed himself out of the only chair and held up the tape recorder. "Will you want this when we've finished with it?"

"For what? No thanks."

"You won't be doing what she wanted."

"Writing about her? Too many of the papers already have."

"I can see you wouldn't want to get yourself a worse reputation," the policeman said.

Bantam saw him out of the apartment and out of his mind. He'd survived remarks more pointed than that in the course of his career. The woman on the tape was harder to forget, but a large gla.s.s of brandy helped, and put him in a working mood. Working cured anything. He sat on the bed with his lap-top word processor and reached out to turn towards him the photograph of his ex-wife, faded by years of sunlight and dust. He could almost feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s filling his hands, feel her slim waist, long slim legs. "b.i.t.c.h," he said almost affectionately, and began to write.

Never To Be Heard (1998).

As the coach swung into the drive that led to the Church of the Blessed Trinity, Fergal jumped up. He would have reached Brother c.o.x before the coach gasped to a halt except for tripping over lanky Kilfoyle's ankles in the aisle. Boys of all sizes crowded to the doors ahead of him, waving their hands in exaggerated disgust and denying they'd farted and blaming red-faced O'Hagan as usual, so that by the time Fergal struggled down onto the gravel Brother c.o.x was playing doorman outside the arched stone porch, ushering in each of his favourite choirboys with a pat in the small of the back. 'Sir?' Fergal said.

The choirmaster gave him a dignified frown, rather spoiled by an April wind that, having ruffled the trees around the church, disordered the wreath of red hair that encircled his bald freckled scalp. 'Shea, is it, now? O'Shea?'

'Shaw, sir. Sir, is it true Harry's mum and dad won't let him sing at the concert?'

'I believe that may turn out to be the truth of it, Shaw, yes.'

Fergal found his eyes wanting to roll up, away from the choirmaster's inability to talk to him straight that was bad even by the standards of most adults, even of most teachers. If he looked above him he would see the pointed arch that reminded him uncomfortably of the naked women in the magazines making the rounds of the dormitory. 'Sir, so if they're stopping him-'

'I'm not about to discuss the rights or otherwise of their decision with a choirboy, Shaw.'

Fergal didn't care about their decision, let alone their objections to the music. 'No, sir, what I meant was we'll be a tenor short, won't we? Sir, can I be him? My voice keeps-'

'Don't be so eager to lose your purity.' Brother c.o.x was no longer speaking just to Fergal, who felt as though he'd been made to stand up in front of the whole of the choir. 'You'll grow up soon enough,' said the choirmaster with a blink of disapproval at the single hair Fergal's chin was boasting. 'Sing high and sweet while you can.'

'But sir, I keep not being-'

'March yourself along now. You're holding up half my flock.'

Fergal bent sideways in case the choirmaster found his back worth patting, and dodged into the church. More than one window was a picture of Christ in his nightie, a notion Fergal wouldn't have dared admit to his mind until recently for fear of dying on the spot. Not only was the building full of pointed arches to inflame Fergal's thoughts, the broad stone aisle was an avenue of fat cylindrical pillars altogether too reminiscent of the part of himself that seemed determined to play tricks on him whenever and wherever it felt inclined. Choirboys were streaming down the aisle as their echoes searched for a way out through the roof. In front of the choirstalls on either side of the altar, a conductor was pointing his wand at members of an orchestra to conjure a note from them. Between him and the orchestra a woman was typing on a computer keyboard, and Fergal's interest nearly roused itself until he remembered why she was there - the stupidest aspect of the entire boring exercise. The computer was going to produce sounds n.o.body could hear.

When the Reverend Simon Clay had written the music there had been no computers: no way of creating the baser than base line he wanted for the final movement. The score had been lost for almost a century and rediscovered just over a year ago, not by any means to Fergal's delight. Even its t.i.tle - The Balance of the Spheres: A Symphony for Chorus and Large Orchestra - was, like the music, too long to endure. Last year, when the choir had won a choral compet.i.tion, some of the boys had sneaked away afterwards for a night in Soho, but now that Fergal felt old enough to join them, everyone was confined to quarters overnight and too far out of London to risk disobeying. He'd given up on that - he only wished he were anywhere else, listening to Unlikely Orifices or some other favourite band - but all he could do was take his place among the choirboys with hairless baby chins and wait for the orchestra to be ready. At last, though not to his relief, it was time to rehea.r.s.e.

Brother c.o.x insisted on announcing the t.i.tle of each movement, no matter how high the conductor raised his eyebrows. 'The Voice of the Face That Speaks,' said the choirmaster, all but miming the capital letters, as the stout radiators along the walls hissed and gurgled to themselves, and the choir had to sing a whole page of the Bible while the orchestra did its best to sound like chaos and very gradually decided that it knew some music after all. 'The Voice of the Face That Dreams,' Brother c.o.x declared at last, after he and the conductor had made the choir and orchestra repeat various bits that had only sounded worse to Fergal. Now the choir was required to compete with the orchestra by yelling about seals - not the sort that ate fish, but some kind only an angel was supposed to be able to open. The row calmed down as the number of seals increased, and once the seventh had been sung about the bra.s.s section had the music to itself. The trumpeting faded away into a silence that didn't feel quite like silence, and Fergal realized the computer had been switched on. 'We shall carry on,' the conductor said in an Eastern European accent almost as hard to grasp as his name.

'Best take it in stages, Mr . . .' said Brother c.o.x, and left addressing him at that. 'This is the hardest movement for my boys. Quite a challenge, singing in tongues.'

Fergal had already had enough. Even if he'd wanted to sing, his voice kept letting him down an octave, and singing in the language the Revolting Clay had apparently made up struck him as yet another of the stupid unjustifiable things adults expected him to do. Brother c.o.x had acknowledged how unreasonable it was by giving each choirboy a page with the words of the Voice of the Face That Will Awaken to use at the rehearsal. Whenever Fergal's voice had threatened to subside during the first two movements he'd resorted to mouthing, and he was tempted to treat all of the Reverend's babble that way rather than feel even stupider.

It looked as though that was how he was going to feel whatever he did. Keeping a straight face at the sight of Brother c.o.x as he opened and closed his mouth like a fish gobbling the gibberish was hard enough. The choir commenced singing what appeared to have been every kind of church music the Reverend could think of, the orchestra performed a search of its own, and Fergal was unable to concentrate for straining to hear a sound he couldn't quite hear.

He felt as though it was trying to invade everything around him. Whenever the choir and orchestra commenced another round, more than their echoes seemed to gather above them -perhaps the wind that flapped around the church and fumbled at the trees. Shadows of branches laden with foliage trailed across the windows, dragging at the stained-gla.s.s outlines, blurring them with gloom. Once Fergal thought the figure of Christ above the choirstalls opposite had turned its head to gaze at him, but of course it was already facing him. His momentary inattention earned him a scowl from Brother c.o.x. Then the choir climbed a series of notes so tiny it felt like forever before they arrived at the highest they could reach, while the orchestra contented itself with a single sustained chord and the computer carried on with whatever it was doing. Well before the top note Fergal did nothing but keep his mouth open. The conductor trembled his stick and his free hand at them all, and when at last there came a silence that appeared to quell the trees outside, he let the baton sink and wiped his eyes. 'I believe we have done it, Brother,' he murmured.

'If you say so.'