‘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.