Still, it has to be said that I stood in the hall of my house for a moment and felt the intensity of silence around me, the still air taking on the soupy quality of someone else being with me. Mystics and mountaineers have talked of sensing the presence of The Other. Perhaps that was the trip I was on. If not, why did I call out “Hello?” Then, feeling idiotic and slightly insecure, “Adrian?” It felt like there was someone in the house.
I knew he’d left for work, as always, at about half past eight. The mug was in the muesli bowl above the dishwasher, an arrogant little assumption that I would put it in because he had a formal, contractual start-time of nine and my commitments varied. It was 10.15, I remember, and I was just back from taking the duty matins and binning correspondence in the Chapter House.
Whatever it was, my issue wasn’t with the ground floor. I was calling upwards, towards the study and bedrooms, where a classical radio station was playing softly. We never listened to classical radio.
I started upstairs as if I was in a cheap movie horror scene, not exactly scared, but moving briskly and wearing a bewildered expression to assure anyone I found, or if no one then myself, that the atmosphere was normal. On the landing, silence again. I must have known I was alone, but still pushed the door of the study open as if I was intruding. The desk light was on and I remember the door hitting the bookcase-end behind it. There was no one behind the door but, childlike, I still looked.
The desktop computer was on, its fan turning a little whirlwind of dust in the morning shafts from the window. That must in some way have been playing into the stillness of the house, changing its mood, as if there was someone still here after they’d departed. I’d have muttered some sort of dissatisfied expletive as I turned the lamp out and shook the mouse to shut down the screen. Adrian’s email from his server connection at the office shone out and I reduced it. Behind it was another page, a deep red background, a primitive masthead stamped across the top with “dotcum.com”, a small screen to the right streaming a loop of some monstrous organ penetrating an anus like a Victorian mill piston. I let out an abrupt little grunt and scrolled down. Lots of doll-like painted faces with improbable names under them, improper nouns like Summer and Lolly. I shut the site and went to Recycle Bin. Nothing. To Tools and History. A gruesome litany of babes and bangs and sluts between the codes and forward-slashes. This time, I was surprised at how calm I was, how I moved the cursor around the screen like I was shopping or looking for directions. I clicked on a couple at random, black screens started to download, little wheel-clocks rotating to show that moving images were being downloaded. I shrank them to the bar at the bottom of the screen, like foul genies going back in their bottle. I carried on clicking, bent towards the screen as if an invisible, incompetent child was occupying the chair.
Then up came some apparently random coding, and after a blank white screen for a moment, the machine matter-of-factly delivered the image that made me exhale as if punched, the air drawn in a short gasp, knocking my ribcage upright, my hand over the bottom half of my face as if holding the living breath in, so that nothing could escape from me, not a cry, not a word in response to the scene in front of me. If I made a sound, it would be a response. That would mean I’d engaged and I could not. The eyes. The insane bewilderment of the grin. The plaits in the hair.
Then I had to get it away, out of the room, out of sight and out of mind, out of me. The hand that reached for the mouse wasn’t calm any more; it had that robotic, anticipative shake of someone traumatised. I knocked it down, but didn’t delete, scrolled down the history. There were many pages from the same site. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, open them, as a vague notion of self-protection returned – this was my session now and it would record my choices. Could I explain that? I wondered what planetpuck might be, or sodasiphon or icescream.
I shrank the history to the base bar and threw the mouse behind the phone as if it had stung me. My God, my prints were on it. Don’t be silly, it was my computer, our computer, why shouldn’t I have touched it? My hands were at my side, not covering my face or anything. I was suddenly interested in my calm. The initial shock was gone. I could do what I wanted. I picked the mouse up and placed it carefully on its mat. I turned and left it as it was, like I was abandoning a failed tumble dryer. Downstairs I felt safe, the atmosphere had returned to something approaching normal, the exaggerated clatter of my movements in the kitchen affirming I was functional and human, making some coffee, the teacher who had cleaned up the messy child, the nurse who had changed the dressing on the wound. I can do anything, I told myself again.
I assessed the legality of having the computer upstairs with active downloads. They had been opened by me. But the log-in was Adrian’s. What was running was evidence of a crime. To that extent, I was helping police with their inquiries. These were material consequences. Elsewhere in my consciousness I was recognising incrementally that nothing would or could ever be
