Blue Shifting (12 page)

As the truck raced along the desert road and into the hills, Bartholomew clung to the great rusting frame and gazed into the radiance at its centre, its veined depths reflecting in his bright blue eyes. We lurched over pot-holes and the frame rocked back and forth. Bartholomew stared at me, mute appeal in his eyes. "It's going!" he called out. "I'm losing it!"

I stared into the swirling cobalt glow. As I watched, the marmoreal threads of white luminance began to fade. I could only assume that these threads were the physical manifestation of Bartholomew's sick, psychic contribution to the piece, the phenomena I had experienced as tortured flesh and acute mental anguish. Over a period of minutes the white light dissolved and the bright glow waned to sky blue, and Bartholomew simply closed his eyes as he had at the plight of his daughter.

Before we arrived at the scene of the accident, the truck turned off the road and backed up to the great slab in which Elegy was imprisoned. We halted a metre from the face of the rock and Bartholomew, like a man in a trance, extended the blue beam into the boulder.

Then we jumped from the truck and climbed up the hillside. We gathered around the crevice, peering down to judge how near the beam was to the girl. I stood beside Bartholomew as he stared at his daughter, and at his expression of compassion tempered by terrible regret I felt an inexpressible pity for the man.

"We'll have you out in no time!" I called down to her.

She was staring up at us, blinking bravely. We were not so far off with the beam. It penetrated the rock one metre beyond her; all that was required was for someone to shift the frame a little closer to the girl.

When I looked up, Ralph, Roberts and the chauffeur were no longer with us. I assumed they had returned to the truck. I took Bartholomew's arm in reassurance and turned my attention to the girl.

I stared down into the crevice, expecting to see the beam move closer to the girl and encompass her in its radiance. Instead, the beam remained where it was...

I thought at first that my eyesight was at fault: I seemed to be looking through Elegy's crimson dress, through her round brown face and appealing eyes. As I watched, the girl became ever more indistinct, insubstantial – she seemed to be dematerialising before our very eyes. And then, along with all the blood, her image flickered briefly like a defective fluorescent and winked out of existence.

I had seen an identical vanishing act somewhere before – in Ralph's studio, just yesterday...

I looked at Bartholomew, and saw his face register at first shock, and then sudden understanding.

He stood and turned. "Standish..." he cried, more in despair than rage at the deception. "Standish!"

But by this time Ralph, along with the other flesh-and-blood actors in his little drama, had taken the Mercedes and were speeding along the road towards Sapphire Oasis.

Which was not quite the end of the affair.

~

I drove Bartholomew back in the truck, and we unloaded the continuum-frame and set it among the other works of art on the concourse. Evidently word had got back that something had happened in the desert: a crowd had gathered, and artists watched from the balconies of the domes overlooking the concourse.

Bartholomew noticed nothing. He busied himself with the keyboard set into the frame. "There still might be something in there I can salvage," he told me. "Something I can build on..."

I just smiled at him and began to walk away.

I was stopped in my tracks by a cry from a nearby dome.

"Daddy!"

Bartholomew turned and stared. Elegy Perpetuum, radiant in a bright blue dress and ribbons, walked quickly across the concourse towards her father, as upright as a little soldier. She ran the rest of the way and launched herself into his arms, and Bartholomew lifted her off the ground and hugged her to his chest.

She was followed by a tall, olive-skinned woman in a red trouser-suit. I recognised her face from a hundred art programmes and magazines – the burning eyes, the strong Berber features: Electra Perpetuum.

I was aware of someone at my side.

"Ralph!" I hissed. "How the hell did she get here?"

"I invited her, of course – to judge the contest." He smiled at me. "I've told her about everything that happened out there."

Electra paused at the centre of the concourse, an arm's length from Bartholomew. He lowered his daughter to the ground and stared at his wife.

"I know what you did, Perry," Electra said in a voice choked with emotion. "But what I want to know is, do you think you made the right decision?"

I realised, as I watched Perry Bartholomew regard Electra and his daughter for what seemed like minutes, that what Ralph Standish had created before us was either the last act of a drama in the finest of romantic traditions – or a tragedy.

It seemed that everyone in the Oasis was willing Bartholomew to give the right reply. Beside me, Ralph clenched his fist and cursed him under his breath.

Bartholomew stared at Electra, seemingly seeing through her, as he considered his past and contemplated his future...

And then, with a dignity and courage I never expect to witness again, Perry Bartholomew stepped forward, took the hands of his wife and daughter and, between Electra and Elegy, moved from the concourse and left behind him the destitute monument of his continuum-frame.

Song of Summer

It was long ago and far away, that last summer by the coast, and it seemed impossible that I might ever return. As I packed an overnight bag and drove from the city, I wondered if it was the ghost of Philomena in my memory, calling me back from down the years.

Philomena was my first love, though I did not call it love at the time. Love was the word that adults used to codify and categorise something magical, and so make manageable that wild, abandoned impulse of the heart. I had not been in love with the small, sun-browned girl in the red dress. I had been enchanted by her, possessed by her; I had been infected with a strange malaise that made me physically sick when she was not by my side, and then ecstatically light-headed when we were together.

As I turned down the empty coast road, heading south, I did not know what strange compulsion was compelling my return. The poets say never go back, but my present was a time of pain, my future uncertain, and it seemed that back was the only way to go.

I stopped for the night in the township situated a hundred miles north of my childhood home. I felt that I needed to pause before I immersed myself in the deep waters of the past, a diver on the brink of a turbulent ocean. The metaphor was not inappropriate. As I was repacking my bag the following morning I was surprised, but not shocked, to find that I had brought along a pistol, sufficient tablets to have me sleeping for all eternity, and a rope – as if my subconscious doubted my capacity to carry out what my conscious self had threatened more than once.

At dawn I set out on the last leg of the journey. This section of the road was a loop that followed the long curve of the cape. At a sequestered location along the coast, my father and mother had built a ten-roomed, weatherboard hotel, closed in winter but open for the long summer months, to cater for the halt and lame who came to worship, in hope of miracles, at the cave on the promontory.

I had quite forgotten the existence of the natural shrine until I saw the dilapidated signpost pointing to the beach. I slowed down and leaned from the car, the summer wind warm in my face. 'St Genevieve's Grotto' read the sign, and the memories came flooding back. I considered it some indication of the power of the mind that already my heart was racing at the recollection, forgotten or suppressed, of Philomena and her parent's daily pilgrimage to the cave.

I continued along the coast road. There were no tourists now, even though it was mid-summer. The road had the frayed and patched appearance of state neglect, and the condition of the sign had indicated that the shrine was hardly visited these days. In the naivety of my youth, before I came to realise that human beings are weak and the need of an opiate is legitimate, I had often scorned the believers who sought solace in the cathedral of rock. Now I found it sad that time had passed it by, as if the stamping ground of my childhood, once so vital, had ceased to be of interest to anyone.

I came to the turning, the track along which stood the hotel, hidden now behind square fields of sunflower, linseed and rape. I pulled into the side of the road and climbed out to stretch my legs, or rather to delay my confrontation with the past. I was aware of my heartbeat, ticking away the seconds to the inevitable. On the other side of the road, the sea seemed to climb, flashing sunlight, to the horizon. As I stood, the morning telemass vector streaked across the horizon like marshalled lightning – five hundred-plus demolecularised passengers riding the beam to Earth.

I climbed back into the car and took the turning, the phalanx of sunflowers on my right slashing a margin of shadow along the track before me.

The track became a gravelled drive and opened out, and the gaunt, three-storey timber hotel came into view, its gothic gables austere against the blue sky. I had intended to book into the hotel if it still functioned as one, but the place had long since closed down and gone the way of the road and the signpost. Shutters hung awry and the windows were smashed; the paintwork had peeled and hung in scrolls. I climbed from the car and walked towards the broken front porch, retracing the steps I had taken thousands of times before.

A rocking chair occupied one corner of the porch. In panic I half expected my father to be seated in it, rocking back and forth with that deliberate steady motion that presaged a bout of rage. Then I saw that the chair was not my father's at all, but one much smaller and frailer, incapable of bearing his weight. I reached for the door-handle, and it disintegrated in my grip. I pushed the peeling paintwork with my finger-tips, and the door swung slowly open. After the heat of the day, the hall was cool, shadowed and inimical. Although subsequent owners had decorated it to their taste, the cavernous design of the hall and corridor imposed a funereal atmosphere I recalled so well.

I climbed the stairs to the first floor and turned right along the landing. Before me was the door to the bedroom my father and mother had shared. To the left ran the corridor to the west wing, at the end of which stood the single room my father had taken after my mother's death. The other rooms on this floor had been for the guests, not that they were ever full at any one time. My own room was on the third floor.

I climbed the narrow, twisting stairs. A large section of the roof was missing, and sunlight poured into the attic room. I stood in the middle of the floor and tried to discern one thread of emotion from the many that wove through my head. This was my sanctuary after beatings, the place where for days I hibernated after my mother's funeral, the base from which I struck out on many adventures via the sensorama deck that made those lonely years almost bearable.

But chief among the many thoughts and feelings that flooded through me then was the knowledge that it was from this room, from the very window to my right, that I first saw Philomena.

Now I moved to the window, and I was fifteen once again.

~

She swept into my life aboard a big open-top roadster as bright red as the dress she always wore. At first I noticed only her parents as they climbed from the car, pale, nondescript off-worlders who seemed ancient to me but were probably in their fifties. They collected their luggage from the boot and met my father before the porch. He was, as always in the company of paying guests, an actor playing a role at odds with reality: charming, courteous, even witty. As he ushered them inside, I could see him calculating the woman and her disability – she looked ill, and limped as she climbed the steps: would she be a long-term guest with faith in St Genevieve's reputed healing powers, or would she lack conviction when miracles failed to happen in the first week, and leave soon after?

Only then did I notice the girl. She bounded from the back seat of the roadster, a hyperactive twist of colour, and then stood quite still – the transition from movement to rest suggestive of some bright, darting bird. She was small and slim, her tanned limbs and short, jet hair contrasting with her scarlet dress. I calculated that she was perhaps thirteen or fourteen. With her legs planted apart and her hands on her hips, she seemed confident and proud, even imperious.

Then, as I watched, she did a very unusual thing. She looked up and saw me, raised a hand and wiped a casual wave in the air.

I was not accustomed to being noticed by people – other than by my father whose attention was often belligerent, at best brusque. I was taught via interactive satellite by teachers whose classes numbered in their thousands. The world of sensorama was a programmed fantasy for inadequate adolescents like myself, and had taught me nothing about the protocol of social interaction. The guests were always elderly or middle-aged – I had never before known a child to stay – and for the most part I was ignored, or briefly patronised, and instructed by my father to be neither seen nor heard.

For a second or two I was taken aback by her effrontery. She was staring up at me, and I chose to interpret the quizzical expression on her face as one of challenge. To my surprise, I found myself lifting my arm and returning her wave.

Then her father called her inside and in an instant she was gone.

That night, as I lay in bed and stared out at the full moon, I was disturbed by my reaction; it was an aberration for which I felt ashamed. I resolved to keep to myself for the duration of their stay, and to avoid the girl at all costs. I did not analyse my motives at the time, and only later came to realise that I feared having my failings revealed to someone other than myself.

In the morning I heard their car sweep away from the hotel, and reached the window in time to see the girl seated primly in the back of the roadster as it carried her down the track between the fields of sunflowers. I dressed and went downstairs to help my father with the chores around the place.

The morning went well; that is, I achieved noon and lunchtime without a reprimand. He was silent all the while we fixed the garden fence, withdrawn, as if deep in thought. My mood took wing at this. I always knew I was in for a bad day if he initiated conversation: it would end in questions I could not answer, and then chastisement for duties done with insufficient expertise or care. From the vantage point of middle-age I can see that my father resented me and picked fault with whatever I did, but at the time I began to believe that truly, in every respect, I was incompetent.

I escaped after lunch and decided to reward myself with an exploration of the rocky northern headland. As if to compensate for my austere life at home, I had an imagination as vivid as any sensorama programme. I was reading the romantic poets at the time, and I delighted in reliving plots, romantic assignations, and duels on the ancient promon tory of the cove.

The red roadster braked before the porch just as I emerged. I ran past it, eyes averted, and took a secret shortcut to the coast through the rearing sunflowers.

I fashioned a laser from a length of broken fence-post and I was Commander Kirkpatrick, starship captain, the winner of worlds, poet and dashing paramour. By the time I reached the dunes overlooking the beach, I had fought my way through hordes of hostile aliens. I stood in the warm wind, raised my laser to the heavens and proclaimed to the world at large: "I've seen the Rings of Lyra/ The Aurora on Deneb Five/ But none compare/ None are so..." I stopped, then. I had the peculiar sense, honed from spending so much time alone, of being watched.

From the corner of my eye I glimpsed a flash of scarlet. The girl darted From her place of concealment among the sunflowers and stopped, regarding me. The way she braced her slim legs in the sliding sand of the dune gave her body a defiant twist, the torque of a turned brushstroke in Japanese art – still, yet containing enormous, bound vitality.

She was squinting at me. "You like the Romantics?"

I felt a rage building within me. Not only had she violated my secret pathway through the crop, but she had eavesdropped on my daydreams.

Unable to think of a suitable verbal riposte, I turned and stormed off through the dunes. I was sweating and trembling and my face, I know, was burning red.

She gave chase, as quick as the tropical bird her movements most resembled. As I descended into the trough of a dune, she emerged upon the summit behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see her slim silhouette against the skyline, the summer wind tugging at her dress. I climbed the avalanching side of the next dune and already she was sliding, crouched, down the one behind. At last I gave up. I stopped atop the knoll of a dune overlooking the coast road and turned as she approached.

"What do you want?" I yelled.

She flinched, as if my words were blows. "I heard you reciting. Kirkpatrick, wasn't it?" She smiled, taking heart from the fact that I had not continued my ranting. "I liked the Romantics once, but I prefer the Modernists now."

I, too, have come to cherish the harsh insights of the Modernists, the Bards of Despair as they are known. But then I had never heard of them, not that I was able, or willing, to tell her that.

"You know – Kaminski, Marley, Ostergaart?" Head on one side, one eye closed against the sun, she regarded me.

She emanated an almost palpable aura of being, of
presence
. Adults, too, gave off a similar personal charge – unlike the ghosts of sensorama that masqueraded as real people – but I had never experienced a presence as strong as hers.

I felt that if I moved too close I might burn up in her fire.

I wanted to tell her that, although I liked Kirkpatrick, his work was not my favourite. I opened my mouth, but the words would not pass the swollen stopper of my tongue.

In frustration at myself, and rage at her for making me confront my inadequacies, I turned and slid down the dune. I ran across the road and stopped when I came to the beach.

I hoped that she would see that I needed to be alone, and return to the hotel.

She was at my side again in seconds.

"Do you live here with no-one but your father?"

I set off at a furious pace. She skipped to match my strides. "You must be lonely."

The remarkable thing was that, until she said those words, I had not realised that I was, indeed, lonely.

Her accent was strange – clipped, quick and confident. A part of me wanted to ask from which colony world she came.

I realised that I had been walking along by myself for some time. When I turned she was a tiny figure, waving. "We'll talk again tomorrow, okay?"

I marched on, shoulders hunched in defiance.

That evening it was dark by the time I returned home. My father and his guests were eating in the dining room. I grabbed food from the kitchen, pausing to peer through the door. The girl was sitting with her back to me. Her sandalled feet hung inches shy of the carpet. I found it hard to accept that someone so young was familiar with a movements of poets of whom I had never even heard.

The woman, ill and old-looking in her dowdy, flowered dress, smiled a ghastly smile across at my father. "Philomena tells me she was speaking to your son today. He doesn't join you for meals?"

"Madame Duval..." My father refilled his brandy glass. His eyes were glazed with inebriation. "My son," he said, very deliberately, "prefers to eat in his room."