He remembered, of course. Very well. He could bring back the taste of his panic; the feel of the iron band around his head. And there was a residue of fear there; of the dark, of being alone.
But then, wasn't everyone afraid to be alone? To be utterly alone.
Steve had another fear now, far more difficult to pin down.
Quaid.
In a drunken revelation session he had told Quaid about his childhood, about the deafness, about the night terrors.
Quaid knew about his weakness: the clear route into the heart of Steve's dread. He had a weapon, a stick to beat Steve with, should it ever come to that. Maybe that was why he chose not to speak to Cheryl (warn her, was that what he wanted to do?) and certainly that was why he avoided Quaid.
The man had a look, in certain moods, of malice. Nothing more or less. He looked like a man with malice deep, deep in him.
Maybe those four months of watching people with the sound turned down had sensitized Steve to the tiny glances, sneers and smiles that flit across people's faces. He knew Quaid's life was a labyrinth; a map of its complexities was etched on his face in a thousand tiny expressions.
The next phase of Steve's initiation into Quaid's secret world didn't come for almost three and a half months. The university broke for the summer recess, and the students went their ways. Steve took his usual vacation job at his father's printing works; it was long hours, and physically exhausting, but an undeniable relief for him. Academe had overstuffed his mind, he felt force-fed with words and ideas. The print work sweated all of that out of him rapidly, sorting out the jumble in his mind.
It was a good time: he scarcely thought of Quaid at all.
He returned to campus in the late September. The students were still thin on the ground. Most of the courses didn't start for another week; and there was a melancholy air about the place without its usual melee of complaining, flirting, arguing kids.
Steve was in the library, cornering a few important books before others on his course had their hands on them. Books were pure gold at the beginning of term, with reading lists to be checked off, and the university book shop forever claiming the necessary titles were on order. They would invariably arrive, those vital books, two days after the seminar in which the author was to be discussed. This final year Steve was determined to be ahead of the rush for the few copies of seminal works the library possessed.
The familiar voice spoke.
'Early to work.'
Steve looked up to meet Quaid's pin-prick eyes.
'I'm impressed, Steve.'
'What with?'
'Your enthusiasm for the job.'
'Oh.'
Quaid smiled. 'What are you looking for?'
'Something on Bentham.'
'I've got ‘Principles of Morals and Legislation'. Will that do?'
It was a trap. No: that was absurd. He was offering a book; how could that simple gesture be construed as a trap?
'Come to think of it,' the smile broadened, 'I think it's the library copy I've got. I'll give it to you.'
'Thanks.'
'Good holiday?'
'Yes. Thank you. You?'
'very rewarding.'
The smile had decayed into a thin line beneath his —'You've grown a moustache.'
It was an unhealthy example of the species. Thin, patchy, and dirty-blond, it wandered back and forth under Quaid's nose as if looking for a way off his face. Quaid looked faintly embarrassed.
'Was it for Cheryl?'
He was definitely embarrassed now.
'Well...'
'Sounds like you had a good vacation.'
The embarrassment was surmounted by something else.
'I've got some wonderful photographs,' Quaid said.
'What of?'
'Holiday snaps.'
Steve couldn't believe his ears. Had C. Fromm tamed the Quaid? Holiday snaps?
'You won't believe some of them.'
There was something of the Arab selling dirty postcards about Quaid's manner. What the hell were these photographs? Split beaver shots of Cheryl, caught reading Kant?
'I don't think of you as being a photographer.'
'It's become a passion of mine.'
He grinned as he said ‘passion'. There was a barely-suppressed excitement in his manner. He was positively gleaming with pleasure.
'You've got to come and see them.'
'I—'
'Tonight. And pick up the Bentham at the same time.'
'Thanks.'
'I've got a house for myself these days. Round the corner from the Maternity Hospital, in Pilgrim Street. Number sixty-four. Some time after nine?'
'Right. Thanks. Pilgrim Street.' Quaid nodded.
'I didn't know there were any habitable houses in Pilgrim Street.'
'Number sixty-four.'
Pilgrim Street was on its knees. Most of the houses were already rubble. A few were in the process of being knocked down. Their inside walls were unnaturally exposed; pink and pale green wallpapers, fireplaces on upper storeys hanging over chasms of smoking brick. Stairs leading from nowhere to nowhere, and back again.
Number sixty-four stood on its own. The houses in the terrace to either side had been demolished and bull- dozed away, leaving a desert of impacted brick-dust which a few hardy, and fool-hardy, weeds had tried to populate.
A three-legged white dog was patrolling its territory along the side of sixty-four, leaving little piss-marks at regular intervals as signs of its ownership.
Quaid's house, though scarcely palatial, was more welcoming than the surrounding wasteland.
They drank some bad red wine together, which Steve had brought with him, and they smoked some grass. Quaid was far more mellow than Steve had ever seen him before, quite happy to talk trivia instead of dread; laughing occasionally; even telling a dirty joke. The interior of the house was bare to the point of being spartan. No pictures on the walls; no decoration of any kind. Quaid's books, and there were literally hundreds of them, were piled on the floor in no particular sequence that Steve could make out. The kitchen and bathroom were primitive. The whole atmosphere was almost monastic.
After a couple of easy hours, Steve's curiosity got the better of him.
'Where's the holiday snaps, then?' he said, aware that he was slurring his words a little, and no longer giving a shit.
'Oh yes. My experiment.'
'Experiment?'
'Tell you the truth, Steve, I'm not so sure I should show them to you.'
'Why not?'
'I'm into serious stuff, Steve.'
'And I'm not ready for serious stuff, is that what you're saying?'
