Christopher Priest - The Extremes

John Gray – Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

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Date: 07 September 2002

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01. A.J Quinnell - Man on Fire

02. Clive Cussler - Vixen 03

03. Nick Hornby - How to be Good

04. Locks Picks & Clicks

05. Jeffrey Deaver – The Empty Chair

06. Kim Stanley Robinson – The Years of Rice and Salt

07. John Gray – Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

08. Jeffrey Deaver – The Stone Monkey

09 Christopher Priest – The Extremes

10 David Morrell - Double Image

11 Stephen Leather - Tango One

CHAPTER 1

Her name is Teresa Ann Gravatt and she is seven years old. She has a mirror through which

she can see into another world.

The real world is for Teresa a small and unexciting one, but she dreams of better things, of a

world beyond the one she knows. She lives with her parents on a US Air Force base near

Liverpool, in the northwest of England. Her father is a serving officer in the USAF; her

mother is British, a local girl from Birkenhead. One day the family will move back to the

USA when her father's tour of European duty is through. They will probably go to

Richmond, Virginia, where Bob Gravatt originated, and where his own father has a franchise

for distributing industrial paints. Bob often talks about what he will do when he leaves the Air

Force, but it's plain to everyone that the Cold War is going to continue for many years to

come, and that US military preparedness is not going to be relaxed.

Teresa has long curls of palebrown hair, gradually darkening from the baby fairness that

made her daddy call her his princess. Her mommy likes to brush it for her, although she

doesn't seem to realize when the tangles get caught. Teresa can now read books by herself,

write and draw by herself, play by herself She is used to being alone, but likes playing with

the other kids on the base. She rides her bicycle every day in the safety of the park near the

living quarters, and it's then she plays with some of her friends. She's currently the only one

with an English mother, but no

one seems to notice. Every weekday her daddy drives her to and from the other side of the

base, where the children of the serving men attend school.

Teresa looks and acts like a happy little girl; she is loved by her parents and liked by her

friends at school. Nothing seems wrong in Teresa's life, because those who know her best live

in the same secure world of the US Air Force. Her friends also lack a permanent home, and

are moved at the will of the Defense Department from one Air Force camp to another. They

too know the long weeks when their fathers are away on exercises, or training. They also

understand the sudden disruption to their lives that follows when a posting comes through: to

West Germany, to the Philippines, to Central America, to japan.

Although she has never yet crossed the Atlantic, Teresa has spent almost all of her life on

American territory, those pockets carved out of other people's countries that the US

Government takes for its own bases. Teresa was born an American citizen, she is being

educated in the American way, and in a few years' time, when her father finishes his military

service, she will live out the rest of her life in the United States. Teresa knows none of this at

the moment, and if she did she would probably not care. To her, the world she knows is one

place, and the world she imagines is another. Daddy's world ends at the perimeter fence; hers

goes on for ever.

Sometimes, when it rains, which in this part of England it seems to do almost every day, or

when she most wants the company of other kids, or when she just feels like it, Teresa plays a

game in her parents' bedroom that she has made up by herself

Like all the best games it has been growing and changing for some time, and goes on getting

more complicated week by week, but right from the start it has been built around the

wooden door frame that stands at the midpoint of the bedroom wall. No actual door has

apparently ever hung in the frame; perhaps no door was intended for it, for there is no sign in

the smooth wood of where hinges might once have been.

Long ago, Teresa noticed that the window of the, living room beyond is the same size, shape

and appearance as the window of the bedroom, and that identical orange curtains hang in

both. If she arranges these curtains Just so, and then stands in a certain position a foot or two

away from the door frame, and does not look to either side, it is possible for her to imagine

that she is looking not through an open doorway but into a mirror. Then, what she sees ahead

of her, through the frame, is no longer a part of the next room but actually a reflected view

back into the room behind her.

The mirror world is where her private reality begins. Through there it is possible for her to run

for ever, a place that is free of military bases, free of perimeter fences, a land where her

dreams might come true.

That place begins with the identical room that stands on the other side of the frame. And in

that room she sees another little girl, one who looks exactly like her.

A few weeks ago, while she stood before her makebelieve mirror, Teresa had raised a hand,

reaching out towards the little girl she could so easily imagine standing beyond her, in the

next room, in the mirror world. Magically, the imagined friend raised her hand too, copying

her every movement.

The little girl's name was Megan, and she became Teresa's opposite in every way. She was her

identical twin, but also her reverse, her opposite.

Now whenever Teresa is left alone, or when her parents are busy elsewhere in the house, she

comes to the mirror and plays her harmless fantasy games with Megan.

First she smiles and tweaks at her dress, then inclines her head. In the mirror the Meganfriend

smiles and lifts the hem of her dress and lowers her head shyly. Hands stretch out, fingertips

brush clumsily where the mirror glass would be. Teresa dances away, laughing back over her

shoulder as Megan mirrors her movements. Everything the girls do has a reflection, an exact

replica.

Sometimes the two little girls settle on the floor at the base of the mirror and whisper about

the world they each inhabit. Should an outsider ever be able to overhear what they are

saying, it would not make sense in adult terms. lt is a strange, erratic fantasy, endlessly

absorbing and plausible to the children, but it would seem shapeless and random to an adult

mind, because they make it up as they go along. For the two little girls, the nature of this

contact is the rationale. Their lives and fantasies fit seamlessly together, because each is the

complement to the other. They are so uncannily alike, so instinctively in touch, but their

worlds are filled with diffierent names.

So the pleasant dreams of childhood spin happily away. Days, weeks, months go by, and

Teresa and Megan live out their innocent daydreams of other lands and deeds. lt is a period of

certainty and stability in their lives. They both have a constant friend, and they completely

trust and understand each other.

Because Megan is always there, looking back at her from the other side of their mirror, Teresa

draws strength from the friendship and begins to develop more ideas about herself and the

world she lives in. She feels better able to seewhat's going on around her and live with what

she finds, to understand what her dad is doing, and why he and her mommy had married,

and what their lives would mean for her. Even her mother detects a difference in her, and

often remarks that her little girl is growing up at last. Everyone can sense the growth.

In the mirror, Megan is changing too.

One day her mommy says to Teresa, 'Do you remember that I said we would be going to live

in America?'

'Yes, 1 do.'

'It's going to happen soon. Really soon. Maybe in a couple of weeks or so. Would that make

you happy?'

'Win Daddy be there with us?'

'He's the reason we're going.'

'And Megan?'

Her mother holds her against her chest more tightly.

'Of course Megan win be with us. Did you think we would leave her behind?'

'I guess not,' says Teresa, looking back over her mother's shoulder at the doorway, where the

mirror usually stands. She can't see Megan from this angle, but knows she must be there,

somewhere out of sight.

One day, while her parents are in another part of the apartment talking about the trip back

to America, how close it's getting, all the things they have to do before they fly back, Teresa is

alone in the bedroom. She has her toys spread out on the carpet, but she's bored with them.

She looks across to the doorway, and sees that Megan is there, waiting for her. Her friend

looks as cross and bored as she feels, and both little girls seem to realize that for once their

shared fantasy world is not going to' distract them from reality.

While Megan turns away, Teresa crosses the room to her parents' double bed, where the

lightly padded quilt her mommy made last Christmas holiday lies in a show of muted colours

across the sheets and blankets. Out of sight of Megan she bounces up and down a few times,

but even this familiar physical activity is not enough to cheer her up. She's beginning to

wonder if Megan really will be there, in the new house in America.

Teresa looks across at what she can see of the mirror, but

because the bed is not visible she knows that Megan cannot be seen either. Already, her little

world feels as if it is narrowing, that the perimeter fences are drawing in around her.

Later, after a meal, she returns to the bed, still worried and alarmed. Her daddy has been

saying he will be flying out to Florida the day after tomorrow, and that she and Mommy will

follow within a few days. At the mirror Megan is as unhappy as she is, fearing a final

separation, and they soon move back from each other.

There's a low table beside the bed on her daddy's side, and facing into the room there's a

shallow drawer which, once, long ago, her daddy had warned her never to open. Teresa has

always known what lies inside, but until now she has never felt sufficiently curious to look.

Now she does, and lays her hand on the gun that lies within. She touches it once or twice,

feeling the shape of it with her fingertips, then uses both hands to lift the weapon out. She

knows how it should be held, because her daddy once showed her, but now she actually has a

hold of it in her tiny hands her main preoccupation is how heavy the thing is. She can barely

carry it before her.

It's the most exciting thing she has ever held, and the most frightening.

In the centre of the room, facing the mirror, she lays the gun on the seat of a chair, and looks

across at Megan. She is standing there beside her own chair, still with the melancholy

expression they have both been wearing for the last day or two.

There is no gun on Megan's chair.

'Look what I've got,' says Teresa, and as Megan strains to see she lifts it up and holds it out.

She points it at her twin, across the narrow space that divides them. She is aware of

movement in the room, a sudden intrusion, an adult size,

and she moves swiftly in alarm. In that moment there is a shattering explosion, the gun flies

out of Teresa's hands, twisting her wrists, and in the other part of the room, beyond the

make-believe mirror, a small life of dreams has suddenly ended.

Thirtyfive years pass.

Eight years after the family's return to the USA, Bob Gravatt, Teresa's father, dies in an

automobile accident on Interstate 24 close to a USAF base in Kentucky. After the accident

Teresa's mother Abigail moves to Richmond, Virginia, to stay with Bob's parents. lt is an

arrangement forced on them all, and it is difficult to make it work. Abigail starts drinking

heavily, runs up debts, has a series of rows with Bob's parents, and eventually remarries.

Teresa now has two new stepbrothers and a stepsister, but no one likes anyone. It's not a

happy situation for Teresa, or even, finally, for her mother. The remainder of Teresa's teenage

years are hard on everyone around her, and things do not look good for her.

As she grows into an adult, Teresa's emotional upheavals continue. She goes through

heartbreaks, failed romances, relocations, alienation from her mother, also from her father's

family; there's a long livein relationship with a man who develops steadily into an alcoholic

brimming with denial and violent repression; there is a short period living alone, then a longer

one of sharing an apartment with another young woman, then finally arrives the good

fortune of discovering a city scheme that funds mature students to take a degree course.

Here her adult life begins at last. After four years of intensive academic work, supporting

herself with secretarial jobs, Teresa earns her BA in information studies, and with this lands a

prize job with the federal government, in the Department of Justice.

Within a couple of years she is married to a fellow worker named Andy Simons, and it is on

the whole a successful marriage. Andy and Teresa live contentedly together for several years,

with few upsets. The marriage is childless, because they are both dedicated to their careers

and sublimating all their energies into them, but it's the life they want to lead. With two

government incomes they gradually become well off, take expensive foreign vacations, start

collecting antiques and pictures, buy several cars, throw numerous parties, and wind up

buying a large house in Woodbridge, Virginia, overlooking the Potomac river. Then one hot

June day, while on an assignment in a small town in the Texas panhandle, Andy is shot dead

by a gunman, and Teresa's happiness abruptly ends.

Eight months later, life is still in limbo. She knows only the misery of sudden widowhood,

made infinitely worse by a deep resentment about the circumstances in which Andy was

killed, and a lasting frustration at the failure of the Department of justice to give her any

substantive information about how his death occurred.

She is now fortythree. A third of a century has slipped by since the day Megan died, and in

the cold light of hindsight the years telescope into what feels like a summary of a life, a

prologue to something else she does not want. Everything that happened led only to the

moment of bereavement. Teresa is left with the generous payouts from Andy's insurance

policies, their three jointly owned cars, a large house echoing with unwanted acquisitions and

treasured memories, and a career from which she has been granted the opportunity to take

temporary leave on compassionate grounds.

In the dark of a February evening, Teresa finally takes up her section chief s offer of leave.

She drives to john Foster Dulles Airport in Washington DC, deposits her car in the

longstay parking garage, and flies American Airways on the overnight plane to Britain

As she looks eagerly from the window, while the aircraft circles down towards London

Gatwick in the morning light, Teresa thinks the English countryside looks dark and

rainsodden. She doesn't know what she had been expecting, but the reality depresses her. As

the plane touches down her view of the airport is briefly obscured by the flying spray thrown

up from the runway by the wheels and the engine exhausts. February in England is not as

cold as February in Washington, but as she crosses the airport's concrete concourse in search

of her rental car, the weather feels to Teresa more damp and discouraging than she wanted or

expected.

She drives away into England, fighting back these initial feelings of disappointment. She is

nervous of the twitchy handling of the small car, a Ford Escort, uncomfortable too with the

impatient speed with which the rest of the traffic moves, and the erratic and apparently

illogical way the intersections have to be negotiated.

As she becomes more familiar with the car, she casts quick glances away from the traffic and

round at the countryside, looking with intense interest at the low hills, the winter~ bare trees,

the small houses and the muddy fields. This is her first trip back to England since she left as a

child, and in spite of everything it begins at last to charm her.

She imagines a smaller, older, more tightly constructed place, different from the one she

knows, spreading out, not in endless stretches of featureless country, as in the US, but in

concentrated time: history reaching behind her, the future extending before her, meeting at

this moment of the present. She's tired from the long flight, the lack of sleep, the wait at the

UK Immigration desk, and so she's open to fanciful thoughts.

She stops in a small town somewhere, to walk around and look at the shops, but afterwards

returns to the car and naps for a while in the cramped position behind the steering wheel. She

wakes up suddenly, momentarily unsure of where she is, thinking desperately of Andy, how

much she wishes he could see this with her. She came here to try to forget him, but in many

ways she had been doing better so long as she stayed at home. She wants him here. She cries

in the car, wondering whether to go back to Gatwick and take the first flight home, but in the

end she knows she has to see this through.

The short afternoon is ending as she drives on south towards the Sussex coast, looking for a

small seaside town called Bulverton. She keeps thinking, This is England, this is where 1 come

from, this is what 1 really know. But she has no remaining family in Britain, no friends. She is

in every way a stranger here. A year ago, eight months ago, what was for her a lifetime ago,

she had never even heard of Bulverton on Sea.

Teresa arrives in Bulverton after night has fallen. The streets are narrow, the buildings are

dark, the traffic pours through on the coastal road. She finds her hotel but sits outside in the

car for a few minutes, bracing herself At last, she collects together some of her stuff and

climbs out.

A brilliant white light suddenly surrounds her.

CHAPTER 2

a

Her name was Amy Colwyn and she had a story to tell about what had happened to her one

day last June. Like so many other people in Bulverton, she had no one to tell it to. No one

around her could bear to hear it any more, and even Amy herself no longer wanted to say the

words. How many times can you express grief, guilt, missed companionship, regrets,

remembered love, lost chances? But failing to say the words did nothing to make them not

thought.

Tonight, as so often, she sat alone behind the bar at the White Dragon with nothing much to

distract her, and the story played maddeningly in her mind. lt was always there, like music

you can't get out of your mind.

'I'll be in the bar if you want me,' Nick Surtees had said to her earlier. He was the owner of

the hotel, someone else perhaps with a story to tell.

'All right,' she said, because every evening he told her he was going into the bar, and every

evening she replied that it would be all right.

'Are we expecting any visitors tonight?'

'I don't think so. Someone might turn up, 1 suppose.'

'I'll leave that to you, then. If no one checks in, would you mind coming in and helping out

behind the bar?'

'No, Nick.'

Amy Colwyn was one of the many leftover victims of the massacre that had taken place in

Bulverton the previous summer. She had not been in physical danger herself, but

her life had been blighted none the less by the event. The horror of that day lived on. Business

at the hotel was usually slow, allowing her too much time to dwell on what had happened to

others, and what might have been her life now if the disaster had not happened.

Nick Surtees, another indirect victim of the shootings, was one of the matters of regret on

which she frequently dwelt. There had been a time, not so long ago, when it would never

have occurred to her that she would see Nick again, let alone be working, living and sleeping

with him. Yet that had happened and they were all still happening, and she wasn't entirely

sure how. Nick and she had found comfort in each other, and were still there holding on

when that need had begun to retreat.

Bulverton was situated on the hilly edge of the Pevensey Levels between Bexhill and

Eastbourne. Fifty years ago it had been a holiday resort, the type of seaside town traditionally

preferred by families with young children. With the conning of cheap foreign holidays

Bulverton had gone into rapid decline as a resort; most of the seafront hotels had been

converted into blocks of flats or retirement homes. For the last two decades Bulverton had in a

manner of speaking turned its back on the sea, and had concentrated on promoting the

charms of its Old Town. This was a small network of attractive terraces and gardens, covering

part of the river valley and one of the hills rising up beside it. If Bulverton could be said to

have an industry now, it was in the shops that sold antiques or secondhand books, in a

number of nursing homes in the high part of the town known as the Ridge, and in providing

homes for the people who commuted to their jobs in Brighton, Eastbourne or Tunbridge

Wells.

lt was because of Nick that the White Dragon could not seem to make up its mind whether to

be a pub or a seaside hotel. Keeping it as a pub suited him, because he spent most

evenings in the saloon bar downstairs, drinking with a few of his pals.

The marginally more profitable hotel side, the bed and breakfast and the occasional

halfboard for a weekend, was Amy's domain, mainly through Nick's own lack of interest. in

the days and weeks immediately after the shootings, when Bulverton was crammed with

journalists and film crews, the hotel had been full. The work had offered itself as a welcome

distraction from her own preoccupations, and she had thrown herself into it. Business had

inevitably declined as the first shock of the catastrophe began to fade, and media interest

receded; by the middle of July it was back to what Amy now knew was its normal level. So

long as there were never too many people arriving at the same time, Amy, working alone,

could comfortably keep the rooms clean and have the beds made up, provision the tiny

restaurant with a reasonable choice of meals, and even keep the financial records up to date.

None of these jobs interested Nick.

Amy often thought back to the times when she and some of her old schoolfriends would

move across to Eastbourne every summer, from July to September, when there were always

two or three major conferences taking place: trade unions, political parties, business or

professional organizations. lt had never been hard finding shortterm but comparatively well

paid Jobs: chambermaids and bar staff were always needed in the big hotels. It had been a

laugh as well, lots of young men on the loose, all with money to bum and no one taking too

much notice of what was going on. She had met Jase then, also working the conference

business, but as a wine waiter. That had been another laugh, because Jase, who was a roofer

in real life, knew less about wine than did even Amy.

What Amy hadn't told Nick about was the feeling of letdown that had been growing in her

all that day. lt concerned a reservation made two weeks before from America. Amy had not

mentioned the booking to Nick at the time lt was made, and she had quietly slipped the

deposit for the room into the bank. A woman called Teresa Simons had written to ask if she

might reserve a room with en suite bathroom on an openended basis; she said she was

making a long visit to Bulverton, and needed a base.

A pleasant daydream then swept over Amy, a vision of having one of the rooms permanently

occupied throughout the slow months of late winter: it was a potentially lucrative booking,

with meals and bar takings all boosted by the woman's stay. lt was absurd to think that one

semipermanent guest could transform their fortunes, but for some reason Amy had felt

convinced that she could. She faxed back promptly, confirming the room, and had even

suggested a modest discount for a long stay. The booking and the deposit turned up not long

afterwards. Nick still didn't know about it.

Today was the day Mrs Simons was due to arrive. According to her letter she would be flying

into Gatwick in the morning, and Amy had been half expecting her to turn up from

midmorning onwards. By lunchtime there was no sign of her, and no message either. As the

day crept by she still didn't arrive and Amy had been feeling a steadily growing sense of

mishap. lt was out of proportion to its importance there were all sorts of reasons why the

plane might have been delayed, and anyway why should the woman come straight to the

hotel after getting offa plane? and Amy realized this.

It made her aware yet again how much of herself she was pouring into this unprormsing

business. She had wanted to surprise Nick with Mrs Simons' arrival, tell him about what

she assumed would be a welcome source of income for some

Uri 1

time. lt might even, she had brifly hoped, break him out of his seemingly permanent round of

worry and silent brooding.

She knew that they were both in a cycle of misery, a long period of grief They weren't alone

in Bulverton: most of the people in the town were still grieving.

lt was what Reverend Oliphant had said at the town's memorial service the week after the

disaster that one occasion in her life when Amy had wanted to go to church, and did.

Kenneth Oliphant had said: grief is an experience like happiness or success or discovery or

love. Grief has a shape and a duration, and it gives and takes away. Grief has to be endured,

surrendered to, so that an escape from it lies beyond grief itself, on the other side, only

attainable by passing through.

There was comfort in such words, but no solutions. Like so many others in the town, Amy

and Nick were still passing through, with the other side nowhere in sight.

Sitting on a high stool behind the bar, staring vacantly across at the table where Nick and his

pals were playing brag on a table lightly puddled with beer and under a paleblue cloud of

tobacco smoke, Amy heard a car.

lt came to a halt in the street outside. Amy did not move her face or her eyes, but all her

senses stretched out towards the sound of the idling engine. No car doors opened, and the

engine continued to run. lt was a sort of silence.

There was a metallic grinding of gears being engaged lazily, incompetently, or tiredly? and

the car moved away again. Through the frosted lower panes of the bar windows Amy saw its

rear brake lights bdightening as the driver slowed at the archway entrance, then swung the

car into the car park behind. Amy's heightened senses followed it like a radar tracker. She

heard the engine cut out at last.

She left the stool, raised the serving flap in the counter,

and walked across the room to peer through the window at the street outside. If Nick noticed

her movement he showed no sign that he had. The card game continued, and one of Nick's

friends lit another cigarette.

Amy pressed her forehead to the cool, condensationlined window, rubbed a wet aperture with

her fingers, and looked across Eastbourne Road in the direction of the unseen sea. The main

road outside was tracked with the shine of old rain and the drier strips where vehicle tyres

had worn their paths. The orange light from the streetlamps reflected in distorted patches

from the uneven road surface and from the windows of the shops and flats on the other side.

Some of the shop windows were lit, but most of them were either covered by security panels

or simply vacant.

Christopher Priest - The Extremes

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