Free Frankie Styne & the Silver Man by Kathy Page Page B

hypnotist, you see.’
    There was something in the pit of Liz’s stomach trying to get out. A monster that had been living there. It bucked and heaved, stretched her skin, squashed her kidneys, stamped on her liver, twisted the intestines around and around . . . She’d seen one like it on a programme called Alien, bursting out with a scream. And it had been like that in the hospital too, but there she was on her back and it went on longer, and he came out between her legs. There was a strange smell, blood and pepper and strawberries all mixed, and the scream. The baby, a streaked thing that couldn’t see, was placed on her chest.
    â€˜A boy,’ someone said, and various masked people gathered round.
    â€˜Poor kid,’ she’d heared someone say. ‘Didn’t go to any classes. Nothing. Doesn’t know what’s hit her.’ I can get out now, she had thought as she closed her eyes.
    â€˜What are you having for your tea?’ Alice asked. The washing went around and around, the whites and the coloureds. The water was purple in one; something had bled.
    â€˜Hypnotic,’ Alice said. ‘Perhaps I should just come here, instead of paying Mr Mandell forty pounds an hour . . .’
    In unison, the two machines began to vibrate, drowning her laugh, sucking the water away, hurling the clothes around. Buttons and studs clattered on the metal drum then everything stuck to the sides. Then they all fell down.
    Outside it was beginning to grow dark. Hang on, Liz told herself, to the Silver Linings.
    In fading light, Frank hesitated outside the shop. It had blacked-out windows. He caught a weak reflection of himself: the sloped shoulders, the folds of skin at the neck, the thin wisps of hair, the ghostly image staring back—from behind, he thought, it would make quite a dramatic shot. Because of Katie Rumbold’s letter he had caught himself seeing himself like this all day, as if he were in some dreadful documentary on television. A commentary, spoken in a nasal, slightly sarcastic tone of voice was following him around as well, audible in snatches, when he paused in the day’s activities.
    â€˜Despite the fantastic nature of his work,’ it was saying now, ‘Styne’s method is one of dogged realism. Although his plots are simple and basically similar—some kind of monster intruding into some kind of real situation and wreaking havoc—he prides himself on making them believable, and this he achieves largely by means of the sheer conviction with which he describes ordinary things. It’s a simple but effective tactic: belief runs over, as he puts it, into the unreal things, covering the seams. Here we see him on one of his research trips, about to . . .’
    Frank had seen such programmes, and found them excruciating even when they were about other people. If he was to have fame, it would be of a different kind: one day someone would make a film of one of his books. Dear Frank, Katie Rumbold’s letter would begin, I have some very good news  . . . Someone would buy the rights—he had absolutely no desire to write the thing—and while he got on with his life they would make it, spending millions on special effects . . . Not that financial reward drew him to film, nor any particular positive feeling for the medium, which in fact he tended to despise. No—it was the idea of himself sitting there in the munching crowd of men, women and children, watching the picture—his picture—just like everyone else, anonymous, unnoticed; the same in the dark.
    He didn’t want to be the subject. He wanted to be on the other side, in the audience, watching a made-up story, with his name, Frank Styne, in red letters at the beginning or the end. A story, not his real life . . . Keep on the move, Frank thought, picking up his carrier bag of groceries and pushing through the door.
    It