The Collected Short Fiction

No Story in It (2000)

‘Grandad.’

Boswell turned from locking the front door to see Gemima running up the garden path cracked by the late September heat. Her mother April was at the tipsy gate, and April’s husband Rod was climbing out of their rusty crimson Nissan. ‘Oh, Dad,’ April cried, slapping her forehead hard enough to make him wince. ‘You’re off to London. How could we forget it was today, Rod?’

Rod pursed thick lips beneath a ginger moustache broader than his otherwise schoolboyish plump face. ‘We must have had other things on our mind. It looks as if I’m joining you, Jack.’

‘You’ll tell me how,’ Boswell said as Gemima’s small hot five-year-old hand found his grasp.

‘We’ve just learned I’m a cut-back.’

‘More of a set-back, will it be? I’m sure there’s a demand for teachers of your experience.’

‘I’m afraid you’re a bit out of touch with the present.’

Boswell saw his daughter willing him not to take the bait. ‘Can we save the discussion for my return?’ he said. ‘I’ve a bus and then a train to catch.’

‘We can run your father to the station, can’t we? We want to tell him our proposal.’ Rod bent the passenger seat forward. ‘Let’s keep the men together,’ he said.

As Boswell hauled the reluctant belt across himself he glanced up. Usually Gemima reminded him poignantly of her mother at her age - large brown eyes with high startled eyebrows, inquisitive nose, pale prim lips - but in the mirror April’s face looked not much less small, just more lined. The car jerked forward, grating its innards, and the radio announced ‘A renewed threat of war—’ before Rod switched it off. Once the car was past the worst of the potholes in the main road, Boswell said ‘So propose.’

‘We wondered how you were finding life on your own,’ Rod said. ‘We thought it mightn’t be the ideal situation for someone with your turn of mind.’

‘Rod. Dad—’

Her husband gave the mirror a look he might have aimed at a child who’d spoken out of turn in class. ‘Since we’ve all overextended ourselves, we think the solution is to pool our resources.’

‘Which are those?’

‘We wondered how the notion of our moving in with you might sound.’

‘Sounds fun,’ Gemima cried.

Rod’s ability to imagine living with Boswell for any length of time showed how desperate he, if not April, was. ‘What about your own house?’ Boswell said.

‘There are plenty of respectable couples eager to rent these days. We’d pay you rent, of course. Surely it makes sense for all of us.’

‘Can I give you a decision when I’m back from London?’ Boswell said, mostly to April’s hopeful reflection. ‘Maybe you won’t have to give up your house. Maybe soon I’ll be able to offer you financial help.’

‘Christ,’ Rod snarled, a sound like a gnashing of teeth.

To start with the noise the car made was hardly harsher. Boswell thought the rear bumper was dragging on the road until tenement blocks jerked up in the mirror as though to seize the vehicle, which ground loudly to a halt. ‘Out,’ Rod cried in a tone poised to pounce on nonsense.

‘Is this like one of your stories, Grandad?’ Gemima giggled as she followed Boswell out of the car.

‘No,’ her father said through his teeth and flung the boot open. ‘This is real.’

Boswell responded only by going to look. The suspension had collapsed, thrusting the wheels up through the rusty arches. April took Gemima’s hand, Boswell sensed not least to keep her quiet, and murmured ‘Oh, Rod.’

Boswell was staring at the tenements. Those not boarded up were tattooed with graffiti inside and out, and he saw watchers at as many broken as unbroken windows. He thought of the parcel a fan had once given him with instructions not to open it until he was home, the present that had been one of Jean’s excuses for divorcing him. ‘Come with me to the station,’ he urged, ‘and you can phone whoever you need to phone.’

When the Aireys failed to move immediately he stretched out a hand to them and saw his shadow printed next to theirs on a wall, either half demolished or never completed, in front of the tenements. A small child holding a woman’s hand, a man slouching beside them with a fist stuffed in his pocket, a second man gesturing empty-handed at them...The shadows seemed to blacken, the sunlight to brighten like inspiration, but that had taken no form when the approach of a taxi distracted him. His shadow roused itself as he dashed into the rubbly road to flag the taxi down. ‘I’ll pay,’ he told Rod.

* * * *

‘Here’s Jack Boswell, everyone,’ Quentin Sedgwick shouted. ‘Here’s our star author. Come and meet him.’

It was going to be worth it, Boswell thought. Publishing had changed since all his books were in print - indeed, since any were. Sedgwick, a tall thin young but balding man with wiry veins exposed by a singlet and shorts, had met him at Waterloo, pausing barely long enough to deliver an intense handshake before treating him to a headlong ten-minute march and a stream of enthusiasm for his work. The journey ended at a house in the midst of a crush of them resting their fronts on the pavement. At least the polished nameplate of Cassandra Press had to be visible to anyone who passed. Beyond it a hall that smelled of curried vegetables was occupied by a double-parked pair of bicycles and a steep staircase not much wider than their handlebars. ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Sedgwick declared. ‘It’s like one of your early things, being able to publish from home. Except in a story of yours the computers would take over and tell us what to write.’

‘I don’t remember writing that,’ Boswell said with some unsureness.

‘No, I just made it up. Not bad, was it?’ Sedgwick said, running upstairs. ‘Here’s Jack Boswell, everyone...’

A young woman with a small pinched studded face and glistening black hair spiky as an armoured fist emerged from somewhere on the ground floor as Sedgwick threw open doors to reveal two cramped rooms, each featuring a computer terminal, at one of which an even younger woman with blonde hair the length of her filmy flowered blouse was composing an advertisement. ‘Starts with C, ends with e,’ Sedgwick said of her, and of the studded woman ‘Bren, like the gun. Our troubleshooter.’

Boswell grinned, feeling someone should. ‘Just the three of you?’

‘Small is sneaky, I keep telling the girls. While the big houses are being dragged down by excess personnel, we move into the market they’re too cumbersome to handle. Carole, show him his page.’

The publicist saved her work twice before displaying the Cassandra Press catalogue. She scrolled past the colophon, a C with a P hooked on it, and a parade of authors: Ferdy Thorn, ex-marine turned ecological warrior; Germaine Gossett, feminist fantasy writer; Torin Bergman, Scandinavia’s leading magic realist...‘Forgive my ignorance,’ Boswell said, ‘but these are all new to me.’

‘They’re the future.’ Sedgwick cleared his throat and grabbed Boswell’s shoulder to lean him towards the computer. ‘Here’s someone we all know.’

BOSWELL’S BACK! the page announced in letters so large they left room only for a shout-line from, Boswell remembered, theObserver twenty years ago - ‘Britain’s best SF writer since Wyndham and Wells’ - and a scattering of titles: The Future Just Began, Tomorrow Was Yesterday, Wave Goodbye To Earth, Terra Spells Terror, Science Lies In Wait...‘It’ll look better when we have covers to reproduce,’ Carole said. ‘I couldn’t write much. I don’t know your work.’

‘That’s because I’ve been devouring it all over again, Jack. You thought you might have copies for my fair helpers, didn’t you?’

‘So I have,’ Boswell said, struggling to spring the catches of his aged briefcase.

‘See what you think when you’ve read these. Some for you as well, Bren,’ Sedgwick said, passing out Boswell’s last remaining hardcovers of several of his books. ‘Here’s a Hugo winner and look, this one got the Prix du FantastiqueÉcologique. Will you girls excuse us now? I hear the call of lunch.’

They were in sight of Waterloo Station again when he seized Boswell’s elbow to steer him into the Delphi, a tiny restaurant crammed with deserted tables spread with pink-and-white checked cloths. ‘This is what one of our greatest authors looks like, Nikos,’ Sedgwick announced. ‘Let’s have all we can eat and a litre of your red if that’s your style, Jack, to be going on with.’

The massive dark-skinned variously hairy proprietor brought them a carafe without a stopper and a brace of glasses Boswell would have expected to hold water. Sedgwick filled them with wine and dealt Boswell’s a vigorous clunk. ‘Here’s to us. Here’s to your legendary unpublished books.’

‘Not for much longer.’

‘What a scoop for Cassandra. I don’t know which I like best, Don’t Make Me Mad or Only We Are Left. Listen to this, Nikos. There are going to be so many mentally ill people they have to be given the vote and everyone’s made to have one as a lodger. And a father has to seduce his daughter or the human race dies out.’

‘Very nice.’

‘Ignore him, Jack. They couldn’t be anyone else but you.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way. You don’t think they’re a little too dark even for me?’

‘Not a shade, and certainly not for Cassandra. Wait till you read our other books.’

Here Nikos brought meze, an oval plate splattered with varieties of goo. Sedgwick waited until Boswell had transferred a sample of each to his plate and tested them with a piece of lukewarm bread. ‘Good?’

‘Most authentic,’ Boswell found it in himself to say.

Sedgwick emptied the carafe into their glasses and called for another. Blackened lamb chops arrived too, and prawns dried up by grilling, withered meatballs, slabs of smoked ham that could have been used to sole shoes...Boswell was working on a token mouthful of viciously spiced sausage when Sedgwick said ‘Know how you could delight us even more?’

Boswell swallowed and had to salve his mouth with half a glassful of wine. ‘Tell me,’ he said tearfully.

‘Have you enough unpublished stories for a collection?’

‘I’d have to write another to bring it up to length.’

‘Wait till I let the girls know. Don’t think they aren’t excited, they were just too overwhelmed by meeting you to show it. Can you call me as soon as you have an idea for the story or the cover?’

‘I think I may have both.’

‘You’re an example to us all. Can I hear?’

‘Shadows on a ruined wall. A man and woman and her child, and another man reaching out to them, I’d say in warning. Ruined tenements in the background. Everything overgrown. Even if the story isn’t called We Are Tomorrow, the book can be.’

‘Shall I give you a bit of advice? Go further than you ever have before. Imagine something you couldn’t believe anyone would pay you to write.’

Despite the meal, Boswell felt too elated to imagine that just now. His capacity for observation seemed to have shut down too, and only an increase in the frequency of passers-by outside the window roused it. ‘What time is it?’ he wondered, fumbling his watch upwards on his thin wrist.

‘Not much past five,’ Sedgwick said, emptying the carafe yet again. ‘Still lunchtime.’

‘Good God, if I miss my train I’ll have to pay double.’

‘Next time we’ll see about paying for your travel.’ Sedgwick gulped the last of che wine as he threw a credit card on the table to be collected later. ‘I wish you’d said you had to leave this early. I’ll have Bren send copies of our books to you,’ he promised as Boswell panted into Waterloo, and called after him down the steps into the Underground ‘Don’t forget, imagine the worst. That’s what we’re for.’

* * * *

For three hours the worst surrounded Boswell. SIX NATIONS CONTINUE REARMING ... CLIMATE CHANGES ACCELERATE, SAY SCIENTISTS ... SUPERSTITIOUS FANATICISM ON INCREASE ... WOMEN’S GROUPS CHALLENGE ANTI-GUN RULING ... RALLY AGAINST COMPUTER CHIPS IN CRIMINALS ENDS IN VIOLENCE: THREE DEAD, MANY INJURED .. . Far more commuters weren’t reading the news than were: many wore headphones that leaked percussion like distant discos in the night, while the sole book to be seen was Page Turner, the latest Turner adventure from Midas Paperbacks, bound in either gold or silver depending, Boswell supposed, on the reader’s standards. Sometimes drinking helped him create, but just now a bottle of wine from the buffet to stave off a hangover only froze in his mind the image of the present in ruins and overgrown by the future, of the shapes of a family and a figure poised to intervene printed on the remains of a wall by a flare of painful light. He had to move on from thinking of them as the Aireys and himself, or had he? One reason Jean had left him was that she’d found traces of themselves and April in nearly all his work, even where none was intended; she’d become convinced he was wishing the worst for her and her child when he’d only meant a warning, by no means mostly aimed at them. His attempts to invent characters wholly unlike them had never convinced her and hadn’t improved his work either. He needn’t consider her feelings now, he thought sadly. He had to write whatever felt true - the best story he had in him.

It was remaining stubbornly unformed when the train stammered into the terminus. A minibus strewn with drunks and defiant smokers deposited him at the end of his street. He assumed his house felt empty because of Rod’s proposal. Jean had taken much of the furniture they hadn’t passed on to April, but Boswell still had seats where he needed to sit and folding canvas chairs for visitors, and nearly all his books. He was in the kitchen, brewing coffee while he tore open the day’s belated mail, when the phone rang.

He took the handful of bills and the airmail letter he’d saved for last into his workroom, where he sat on the chair April had loved spinning and picked up the receiver. ‘Jack Boswell.’

‘Jack? They’re asleep.’

Presumably this explained why Rod’s voice was low. ‘Is that an event?’ Boswell said.

‘It is for April at the moment. She’s been out all day looking for work, any work. She didn’t want to tell you in case you already had too much on your mind.’

‘But now you have.’

‘I was hoping things had gone well for you today.’

‘I think you can do more than that.’

‘Believe me, I’m looking as hard as she is.’

‘No, I mean you can assure her when she wakes that not only do I have a publisher for my two novels and eventually a good chunk of my backlist, but they’ve asked me to put together a new collection too.’

‘Do you mind if I ask for her sake how much they’re advancing you?’

‘No pounds and no shillings or pence.’

‘You’re saying they’ll pay you in euros?’

‘I’m saying they don’t pay an advance to me or any of their authors, but they pay royalties every three months.’

‘I take it your agent has approved the deal.’

‘It’s a long time since I’ve had one of those, and now I’ll be ten per cent better off. Do remember I’ve plenty of experience.’

‘I could say the same. Unfortunately it isn’t always enough.’

Boswell felt his son-in-law was trying to render him as insignificant as Rod believed science fiction writers ought to be. He tore open the airmail envelope with the little finger of the hand holding the receiver. ‘What’s that?’ Rod demanded.

‘No panic. I’m not destroying any of my work,’ Boswell told him, and smoothed out the letter to read it again. ‘Well, this is timely. The Saskatchewan Conference on Prophetic Literature is giving me the Wendigo Award for a career devoted to envisioning the future.’

‘Congratulations. Will it help?’

‘It certainly should, and so will the story I’m going to write. Maybe even you will be impressed. Tell April not to let things pull her down,’ Boswell said as he rang off, and ‘Such as you’ only after he had.

* * * *

Boswell wakened with a hangover and an uneasy sense of some act left unperformed. The image wakened with him: small child holding woman’s hand, man beside them, second man gesturing. He groped for the mug of water by the bed, only to find he’d drained it during the night. He stumbled to the bathroom and emptied himself while the cold tap filled the mug. In time he felt equal to yet another breakfast of the kind his doctor had warned him to be content with. Of course, he thought as the sound of chewed bran filled his skull, he should have called Sedgwick last night about the Wendigo Award. How early could he call? Best to wait until he’d worked on the new story. He tried as he washed up the breakfast things and the rest of the plates and utensils in the sink, but his mind seemed as paralysed as the shadows on the wall it kept showing him. Having sat at his desk for a while in front of the wordless screen, he dialled Cassandra Press.

‘Hello? Yes?’

‘Is that Carole?’ Since that earned him no reply, he tried ‘Bren?’

‘It’s Carole. Who is this?’

‘Jack Boswell. I just wanted you to know—’

‘You’ll want to speak to Q. Q, it’s your sci-fi man.’

Sedgwick came on almost immediately, preceded by a creak of bedsprings. ‘Jack, you’re never going to tell me you’ve written your story already.’

‘Indeed I’m not. Best to take time to get it right, don’t you think? I’m calling to report they’ve given me the Wendigo Award.’

‘About time, and never more deserved. Who is it gives those again? Carole, you’ll need to scribble this down. Bren, where’s something to scribble with?’

‘By the phone,’ Bren said very close, and the springs creaked.

‘Reel it off, Jack.’

As Boswell heard Sedgwick relay the information he grasped that he was meant to realise how close the Cassandra Press personnel were to one another. ‘That’s capital, Jack,’ Sedgwick told him. ‘Bren will be lumping some books to the mail for you, and I think I can say Carole’s going to have good news for you.’

‘Any clue what kind?’

‘Wait and see, Jack, and we’ll wait and see what your new story’s about.’

Boswell spent half an hour trying to write an opening line that would trick him into having started the tale, but had to acknowledge that the technique no longer worked for him. He was near to being blocked by fearing he had lost all ability to write, and so he opened the carton of books the local paper had sent him to review. Sci-Fi On The Net, Create Your Own Star Wars™ Character, 1000 Best Sci-Fi Videos, Sci-Fi From Lucas To Spielberg, Star Wars™: The Bluffer’s Guide...There wasn’t a book he would have taken off a shelf, nor any appropriate to the history of science fiction in which he intended to incorporate a selection from his decades of reviews. Just now writing something other than his story might well be a trap. He donned sandals and shorts and unbuttoned his shirt as he ventured out beneath a sun that looked as fierce as the rim of a total eclipse.

All the seats of a dusty bus were occupied by pensioners, some of whom looked as bewildered as the young woman who spent the journey searching the pockets of the combat outfit she wore beneath a stained fur coat and muttering that everyone needed to be ready for the enemy. Boswell had to push his way off the bus past three grim scrawny youths bare from the waist up, who boarded the vehicle as if they planned to hijack it. He was at the end of the road where the wall had inspired him - but he hadn’t reached the wall when he saw Rod’s car.

It was identifiable solely by the charred number plate. The car itself was a blackened windowless hulk. He would have stalked away to call the Aireys if the vandalism hadn’t made writing the new story more urgent than ever, and so he stared at the incomplete wall with a fierceness designed to revive his mind. When he no longer knew if he was staring at the bricks until the story formed or the shadows did, he turned quickly away. The shadows weren’t simply cast on the wall, he thought; they were embedded in it, just as the image was embedded in his head.

He had to walk a mile homewards before the same bus showed up. Trudging the last yards to his house left him parched. He drank several glassfuls of water, and opened the drawer of his desk to gaze for reassurance or perhaps inspiration at his secret present from a fan before he dialled the Aireys’ number.

‘Hello?’

If it was April, something had driven her voice high. ‘It’s only me,’ Boswell tentatively said.

‘Grandad. Are you coming to see us?’

‘Soon, I hope.’

‘Oh.’ Having done her best to hide her disappointment, she added ‘Good.’

‘What have you been doing today?’

‘Reading. Dad says I have to get a head start.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Boswell said, though she didn’t sound as if she wanted him to be. ‘Is Mummy there?’

‘Just Dad.’

After an interval Boswell tried ‘Rod?’

‘It’s just me, right enough.’

‘I’m sure she didn’t mean - I don’t know if you’ve seen your car.’

‘I’m seeing nothing but. We still have to pay to have it scrapped.’

‘No other developments?’

‘Jobs, are you trying to say? Not unless April’s so dumbstruck with good fortune she can’t phone. I was meaning to call you, though. I wasn’t clear last night what plans you had with regard to us.’

Rod sounded so reluctant to risk hoping that Boswell said ‘There’s a good chance I’ll have a loan in me.’

‘I won’t ask how much.’ After a pause presumably calculated to entice an answer Rod added ‘I don’t need to tell you how grateful we are. How’s your new story developing?’

This unique display of interest in his work only increased the pressure inside Boswell’s uninspired skull. ‘I’m hard at work on it,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell April,’ Rod promised, and left Boswell with that - with hours before the screen and not a word of a tale, just shadows in searing light: child holding woman’s hand, man beside, another gesturing...He fell asleep at his desk and jerked awake in a panic, afraid to know why his inspiration refused to take shape.

He seemed hardly to have slept in his bed when he was roused by a pounding of the front-door knocker and an incessant shrilling of the doorbell. As he staggered downstairs he imagined a raid, the country having turned overnight into a dictatorship that had set the authorities the task of arresting all subversives, not least those who saw no cause for optimism. The man on the doorstep was uniformed and gloomy about his job, but brandished a clipboard and had a carton at his feet. ‘Consignment for Boswell,’ he grumbled.

‘Books from my publishers.’

‘Wouldn’t know. Just need your autograph.’

Boswell scrawled a signature rendered illegible by decades of autographs, then bore the carton to the kitchen table, where he slit its layers of tape to reveal the first Cassandra Press books he’d seen. All the covers were black as coal in a closed pit except for bony white lettering not quite askew enough for the effect to be unquestionably intentional. GERMAINE GOSSETT, Women Are The Wave. TORIN BERGMAN, Oracles Arise! FERDY THORN, Fight Them Fisheries...Directly inside each was the title page, and on the back of that the copyright opposite the first page of text. Ecological frugality was fine, but not if it looked unprofessional, even in uncorrected proof copies. Proofreading should take care of the multitude of printer’s errors, but what of the prose? Every book, not just Torin Bergman’s, read like the work of a single apprentice translator.

He abandoned a paragraph of Ferdy Thorn’s blunt chunky style and sprinted to his workroom to answer the phone. ‘Boswell,’ he panted.

‘Jack. How are you today?’

‘I’ve been worse, Quentin.’

‘You’ll be a lot better before you know. Did the books land?’

‘The review copies, you mean.’

‘We’d be delighted if you reviewed them. That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, if Jack reviewed the books?’ When this received no audible answer he said ‘Only you mustn’t be kind just because they’re ours, Jack. We’re all in the truth business.’

‘Let me read them and then we’ll see what’s best. What I meant, though, these aren’t finished books.’

‘They certainly should be. Sneak a glance at the last pages if you don’t mind knowing the end.’

‘Finished in the sense of the state that’ll be on sale in the shops.’

‘Well, yes. They’re trade paperbacks. That’s the book of the future.’

‘I know what trade paperbacks are. These—’

‘Don’t worry, Jack, they’re just our first attempts. Wait till you see the covers Carole’s done for you. Nothing grabs the eye like naive art, especially with messages like ours.’

‘So,’ Boswell said in some desperation, ‘have I heard why you called?’

‘You don’t think we’d interrupt you at work without some real news.’

‘How real?’

‘We’ve got the figures for the advance orders of your books. All the girls had to do was phone with your name and the new titles till the batteries went flat, and I don’t mind telling you you’re our top seller.’

‘What are the figures?’ Boswell said, and took a deep breath.

‘Nearly three hundred. Congratulations once again.’

‘Three hundred thousand. It’s I who should be congratulating you and your team. I only ever had one book up there before. Shows publishing needs people like yourselves to shake it up.’ He became aware of speaking fast so that he could tell the Aireys his - no, their - good fortune, but he had to clarify one point before letting euphoria overtake him. ‘Or is that, don’t think for a second I’m complaining if it is, but is that the total for both titles or each?’

‘Actually, Jack, can I just slow you down a moment?’

‘Sorry. I’m babbling. That’s what a happy author sounds like. You understand why.’

‘I hope I do, but would you mind - I didn’t quite catch what you thought I said.’

‘Three hundred—’

‘Can I stop you there? That’s the total, or just under. As you say, publishing has changed. I expect a lot of the bigger houses are doing no better with some of their books.’

Boswell’s innards grew hollow, then his skull. He felt his mouth drag itself into some kind of a grin as he said, ‘Is that three hundred, sorry, nearly three hundred per title?’

‘Overall, I’m afraid. We’ve still a few little independent shops to call, and sometimes they can surprise you.’

Boswell doubted he could cope with any more surprises, but heard himself say, unbelievably, hopefully ‘Did you mention We Are

Tomorrow?’

‘How could we have forgotten it?’ Sedgwick’s enthusiasm relented at last as he said ‘I see what you’re asking. Yes, the total is for all three of your books. Don’t forget we’ve still the backlist to come, though,’ he added with renewed vigour.

‘Good luck to it.’ Boswell had no idea how much bitterness was audible in that, nor in ‘I’d best be getting back to work.’

‘We all can’t wait for the new story, can we?’

Boswell had no more of an answer than he heard from anyone else. Having replaced the receiver as if it had turned to heavy metal, he stared at the uninscribed slab of the computer screen. When he’d had enough of that he trudged to stare into the open rectangular hole of the Cassandra carton. Seized by an inspiration he would have preferred not to experience, he dashed upstairs to drag on yesterday’s clothes and marched unshaven out of the house.

Though the library was less than ten minutes’ walk away through sunbleached streets whose desert was relieved only by patches of scrub, he’d hardly visited it for the several years he had been too depressed to enter bookshops. The library was almost worse: it lacked not just his books but practically everyone’s, except for paperbacks with injured spines. Some of the tables in the large white high-windowed room were occupied by newspaper readers. MIDDLE EAST WAR DEADLINE EXPIRES ... ONE IN TWO FAMILIES WILL BE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE, STUDY SHOWS ... FAMINES IMMINENT IN EUROPE ... NO MEDICINE FOR FATAL VIRUSES...Most of the tables held Internet terminals, from one of which a youth whose face was red with more than pimples was being evicted by a librarian for calling up some text that had offended the black woman at the next screen. Boswell paid for an hour at the terminal and began his search.

The only listings of any kind for Torin Bergman were the publication details of the Cassandra Press books, and the same was true of Ferdy Thorn and Germaine Gossett. When the screen told him his time was up and began to flash like lightning to alert the staff, the message and the repeated explosion of light and the headlines around him seemed to merge into a single inspiration he couldn’t grasp. Only a hand laid on his shoulder made him jump up and lurch between the reluctantly automatic doors.

The sunlight took up the throbbing of the screen, or his head did. He remembered nothing of his tramp home other than that it tasted like bone. As he fumbled to unlock the front door the light grew audible, or the phone began to shrill. He managed not to snap the key and ran to snatch up the receiver. ‘What now?’

‘It’s only me, Dad. I didn’t mean to bother you.’

‘You never could,’ Boswell said, though she just had by sounding close to tears. ‘How are you, April? How are things?’

‘Not too wonderful.’

‘Things aren’t, you mean. I’d never say you weren’t.’

‘Both.’ Yet more tonelessly she said ‘I went looking for computer jobs. Didn’t want all the time mummy spent showing me how things worked to go to waste. Only I didn’t realise how much more there is to them now, and I even forgot what she taught me. So then I thought I’d go on a computer course to catch up.’

‘I’m sure that’s a sound idea.’

‘It wasn’t really. I forgot where I was going. I nearly forgot our number when I had to ring Rod to come and find me when he hasn’t even got the car and leave Gemima all on her own.’

Boswell was reaching deep into himself for a response when she said ‘Mummy’s dead, isn’t she?’

Rage at everything, not least April’s state, made his answer harsh. ‘Shot by the same freedom fighters she’d given the last of her money to in a country I’d never even heard of. She went off telling me one of us had to make a difference to the world.’

‘Was it years ago?’

‘Not long after you were married,’ Boswell told her, swallowing grief.

‘Oh.’ She seemed to have nothing else to say but ‘Rod.’

Boswell heard him murmuring at length before his voice attacked the phone. ‘Why is April upset?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Forgive me. Were you about to give her some good news?’

‘If only.’

‘You will soon, surely, once your books are selling. You know I’m no admirer of the kind of thing you write, but I’ll be happy to hear of your success.’

‘You don’t know what I write, since you’ve never read any of it.’ Aloud Boswell said only ‘You won’t.’

‘I don’t think I caught that.’

‘Yes you did. This publisher prints as many books as there are orders, which turns out to be under three hundred.’

‘Maybe you should try and write the kind of thing people will pay to read.’

Boswell placed the receiver with painfully controlled gentleness on the hook, then lifted it to redial. The distant bell had started to sound more like an alarm to him when it was interrupted. ‘Quentin Sedgwick.’

‘And Torin Bergman.’

‘Jack.’

‘As one fictioneer to another, are you Ferdy Thorn as well?’

Sedgwick attempted a laugh, but it didn’t lighten his tone much. ‘Germaine Gossett too, if you must know.’

‘So you’re nearly all of Cassandra Press.’

‘Not any longer.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Out,’ Sedgwick said with gloomy humour. ‘I am. The girls had all the money, and now they’ve seen our sales figures they’ve gone off to set up a gay romance publisher.’

‘What lets them do that?’ Boswell heard himself protest.

‘Trust.’

Boswell could have made plenty of that, but was able to say merely ‘So my books...’

‘Must be somewhere in the future. Don’t be more of a pessimist than you have to be, Jack. If I manage to revive Cassandra you know you’ll be the first writer I’m in touch with,’ Sedgwick said, and had the grace to leave close to a minute’s silence unbroken before ringing off. Boswell had no sense of how much the receiver weighed as he lowered it, no sense of anything except some rearrangement that was aching to occur inside his head. He had to know why the news about Cassandra Press felt like a completion so imminent the throbbing of light all but blinded him.

* * * *

It came to him in the night, slowly. He had been unable to develop the new story because he’d understood instinctively there wasn’t one. His sense of the future was sounder than ever: he’d foreseen the collapse of Cassandra Press without admitting it to himself. Ever since his last sight of the Aireys the point had been to save them - he simply hadn’t understood how. Living together would only have delayed their fate. He’d needed time to interpret his vision of the shadows on the wall.

He was sure the light in the house was swifter and more intense than dawn used to be. He pushed himself away from the desk and worked aches out of his body before making his way to the bathroom. All the actions he performed there felt like stages of a purifying ritual. In the mid-morning sunlight the phone on his desk looked close to bursting into flame. He winced at the heat of it before, having grown cool in his hand, it ventured to mutter, ‘Hello?’

‘Good morning.’

‘Dad? You sound happier. Are you?’

‘As never. Is everyone up? Can we meet?’

‘What’s the occasion?’

‘I want to fix an idea I had last time we met. I’ll bring a camera if you can all meet me in the same place in let’s say half an hour.’

‘We could except we haven’t got a car.’

‘Take a cab. I’ll reimburse you. It’ll be worth it, I promise.’

He was on his way almost as soon as he rang off. Tenements reared above his solitary march, but couldn’t hinder the sun in its climb towards unbearable brightness. He watched his shadow shrink in front of him like a stain on the dusty littered concrete, and heard footsteps attempting stealth not too far behind him. Someone must have seen the camera slung from his neck. A backwards glance as he crossed a deserted potholed junction showed him a youth as thin as a puppet, who halted twitching until Boswell turned away, then came after him.

A taxi sped past Boswell as he reached the street he was bound for. The Aireys were in front of the wall, close to the sooty smudge like a lingering shadow that was the only trace of their car. Gemima clung to her mother’s hand while Rod stood a little apart, one fist in his hip pocket. They looked posed and uncertain why. Before anything had time to change, Boswell held up his palm to keep them still and confronted the youth who was swaggering towards him while attempting to seem aimless. Boswell lifted the camera strap over his tingling scalp. ‘Will you take us?’ he said.

The youth faltered barely long enough to conceal an incredulous grin. He hung the camera on himself and snapped the carrying case open as Boswell moved into position, hand outstretched towards the Aireys. ‘Use the flash,’ Boswell said, suddenly afraid that otherwise there would be no shadows under the sun at the zenith - that the future might let him down after all. He’d hardly spoken when the flash went off, almost blinding its subjects to the spectacle of the youth fleeing with the camera.

Boswell had predicted this, and even that Gemima would step out a pace from beside her mother. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, unbuttoning his jacket, ‘there’s no film in it,’ and passed the gun across himself into the hand that had been waiting to be filled. Gemima was first, then April, and Rod took just another second. Boswell’s peace deepened threefold as peace came to them. Nevertheless he preferred not to look at their faces as he arranged them against the bricks. He had only seen shadows before, after all.

Though the youth had vanished, they were being watched. Perhaps now the world could see the future Boswell had always seen. He clawed chunks out of the wall until wedging his arm into the gap supported him. He heard sirens beginning to howl, and wondered if the war had started. ‘The end,’ he said as best he could for the metal in his mouth. The last thing he saw was an explosion of brightness so intense he was sure it was printing their shadows on the bricks for as long as the wall stood. He even thought he smelled how green it would grow to be.