Michael Frayn - Skios

And at the back of the audience more shadowy new faces were still arriving.

* * *

The moon put its head cautiously above the hills to the east of the foundation, was evidently reassured by the peacefulness of the scene, and emerged completely from hiding.

On the hillside to the west, from behind the screens around the site where the new swimming pool was being built, something else no less cautiously began to emerge to face the moon. Something not gracefully round, but obstinately rectangular.

Evidently reassured, like the moon, it slowly, slowly rose into the whiteness of the moonlight beneath the sheltering arm of the contractors’ crane. More and more of it, vaster and vaster. Not two feet high, like the moon. A crate. Not five feet high, though, like the crate of marine diesel spares. Seven feet, eight feet. And still, inch by inch, it came. More and more of it. Nine feet, ten feet. Now a stencil, just legible in the moonlight. Not marine diesel spares this time. Refrigeration plant.

“Come on, come on!” whispered Reg Bolt urgently into his walkie-talkie as he watched. “They’ll have finished the lecture before she’s halfway down the hill!”

* * *

Dr. Wilfred became aware that Mrs. Toppler had turned towards him, and heard in retrospect the recently spoken words that were still hanging in the air around her: “… not come here to listen to me … without further ado…”

There was the sound of applause, and of people coming back to life. Someone was leaning over and moving the microphones to stand in front of him.

He rose. He smiled and brushed the hair away from his eyes. He nodded his acknowledgment to Mrs. Toppler, then to the audience. He waited for the applause to die away, and then raked the agora with his soft brown eyes, from left to right, from front to back. He suddenly felt not like Dr. Wilfred at all, but like the old Oliver as he had been so many times before, with the familiar abyss opening in front of him, now deeper and darker than ever. The earth’s gravitational field reached out to him from the depths, dragging him down, pulling on the nerves of his legs, of his stomach, of his whole body.

He took two good lungfuls of air and opened his mouth.

So all the many elements were now in place that would shape the culmination of this year’s Great European House Party. The various story lines were obviously about to come together to produce a single event of great complexity and significance. A showdown. The grand dénouement.

Exactly what form this event would take no one at that point knew or could know. Most of the participants no doubt had expectations of some kind, but even these were confused and indefinite, and hopelessly mixed up with what they intended to happen, or hoped would, or feared might. In any case, none of them had more than the most partial knowledge of the factors involved — nor much time to think about it, since the present moment of stasis while Oliver was drawing breath and opening his mouth to speak was so brief.

If they had been living in a story, of course, they might have guessed that someone somewhere had the rest of the book in his hands, and that what was just about to happen was already there in the printed pages, fixed, unalterable, solidly existent. Not that it would have helped them very much, because no one in a story ever knows they are. And even Dr. Wilfred, with his doggedly Newtonian faith in causality, wouldn’t claim that future events in the real world have that kind of already achieved actuality. Even if he had known the position and movements of everyone involved, and understood all their feelings and intentions — even if he hadn’t been so involved in the proceedings himself — he would have conceded that, according to the present state of scientific thinking, what the previous state of the universe had determined for the future was a set of probabilities. The bishop of the Hesperides Archipelago, for that matter, whose public pronouncements sometimes suggested that God possessed very clearly established plans and purposes with which he himself as bishop was well acquainted, would have had to agree that even these were probabilities rather than settled states of affairs, since God surely had the right and the power to change his mind at the last minute, just as a mere bishop like himself might.

Nevertheless, those probabilities, as both Dr. Wilfred and the bishop saw them in their different ways, must themselves have been real entities. They existed already in that brief moment between Oliver’s standing up and beginning to speak, when the event would become simply part of the established furniture of the universe. They must have existed! Surely. What kind of a probability is it that doesn’t actually exist?

If someone with a mind as synoptic, comprehensive, and swift as God’s had attempted to catalog them they would surely have been these:

Dr. Wilfred will be forced to his feet by Annuka Vos to deliver the real Fred Toppler Lecture from the text that he has so carefully kept with him through all the vicissitudes of the trip. He will be disconcerted, however, to find that Oliver is not wearing orange skateboarding trousers, and will hesitate for a fatal fraction of a second himself, which will allow Georgie time to realize that the Dr. Norman Wilfred at the lectern is her missing boyfriend, whereupon she will be unable to resist waving to him. This tiny anomaly in the proceedings, insignificant in itself, will be like the last crystal dropped into a supersaturated solution. Around it the whole invisibly overloaded mass will change its state, because:

Stavros, spotting Georgie as she waves, will step forward to demand the thirty-two euros she owes him;

Georgie, looking round for someone to borrow the thirty-two euros from, will see the real Dr. Wilfred, and beg him to help her out;

the real Dr. Wilfred, now even more confused to find Georgie holding his hand and looking up into his eyes, will fumble for his wallet;

Spiros, seeing Dr. Wilfred finding the thirty-two euros for Stavros, will demand the thirty-two euros that Dr. Wilfred and Annuka owe him;

Annuka Vos, ready to shout down any opposition to Dr. Wilfred, will take time out first to demand that Georgie return the suitcase she has stolen;

Georgie, at the sight of Annuka, will give a cry of alarm, and warn Dr. Wilfred that this is the cleaning woman from the villa, whose extreme religious convictions make her a danger to society;

Nikki will hurry discreetly forward to deal with the disturbance;

Georgie, believing Nikki to be in Switzerland, will be unable to prevent herself crying out in astonishment, “Nikki!”;

Nikki, no less astonished, her normally greater self-control briefly failing under the accumulated strain of events, will reply “Georgie!” almost as loudly;

several members of the audience will indignantly try to hush them, and whisper for everyone to sit down;

Patrick, nevertheless, seeing Nikki with her clipboard and air of authority, will slip twenty euros down the front of her bra and ask her to find him a table, even though the place is so busy, with four Carlsbergs while they’re waiting;

Georgie, at the sight of Patrick, will give another clearly audible gasp of surprise, and say, “You!”;

Patrick, at the sight of Georgie, will gasp in his turn and say much the same;

Oliver, as he watches the developing chaos in front of him, will brush the tangle of blond hair out of his soft brown eyes and say nothing;

somewhere about now Christian and Mr. Papadopoulou will produce the two incriminating passports … the police will be called … Oliver Fox will be arrested … Dr. Norman Wilfred will have a stroke … Annuka will deliver the Fred Toppler Lecture on his behalf … Christian will reclaim his kingdom … Eric Felt will enter into a civil partnership with him and become his formal heir apparent … Mr. Skorbatov will conclude whatever secret business it is that he is engaged upon with Mr. Papadopoulou … Nikki will marry one of Patrick’s drunken yachting companions … Georgie will take the veil … prices will rise … rain will fall … a cure for baldness will be found … and so on and so on …