To begin with everything went quietly. Fay remonstrated with me, but I promised her a new mink wrap out of the savings we made on the house. Secondly, I was careful to keep the volume down for the first few weeks, so that there would be no clash of feminine wills. A major problem of psychotropic houses is that after several months one has to increase the volume to get the same image of the last owner, and this increases the sensitivity of the memory cells and their rate of contamination. At the same time, magnifying the psychic underlay emphasizes the cruder emotional ground-base. One begins to taste the lees rather than the distilled cream of the previous tenancy. I wanted to savour the quintessence of Gloria Tremayne as long as possible so I deliberately rationed myself, turning the volume down during the day while I was out, then switching on only those rooms in which I sat in the evenings.
Right from the outset I was neglecting Fay. Not only were we both preoccupied with the usual problems of adjustment faced by every married couple moving into a new house — undressing in the master bedroom that first night was a positive honeymoon debut all over again — but I was completely immersed in the exhilarating persona of Gloria Tremayne, exploring every alcove and niche in search of her.
In the evenings I sat in the library, feeling her around me in the stirring walls, hovering nearby as I emptied the packing cases like an attendant succubus. Sipping my scotch while night closed over the dark blue pool, I carefully analysed her personality, deliberately varying my moods to evoke as wide a range of responses. The memory cells in the house were perfectly bonded, never revealing any flaws of character, always reposed and self-controlled. If I leapt out of my chair and switched the stereogram abruptly from Stravinsky to Stan Kenton to the MJQ, the room adjusted its mood and tempo without effort.
And yet how long was it before I discovered that there was another personality present in that house, and began to feel the curious eeriness Fay and I had noticed as soon as Stamers switched the house on? Not for a few weeks, when the house was still responding to my star-struck idealism. While my devotion to the departed spirit of Gloria Tremayne was the dominant mood, the house played itself back accordingly, recapitulating only the more serene aspects of Gloria Tremayne’s character.
Soon, however, the mirror was to darken.
It was Fay who broke the spell. She quickly realized that the initial responses were being overlaid by others from a more mellow and, from her point of view, more dangerous quarter of the past. After doing her best to put up with them she made a few guarded attempts to freeze Gloria out, switching the volume controls up and down, selecting the maximum of bass lift — which stressed the masculine responses — and the minimum of alto lift.
One morning I caught her on her knees by the console, poking a screwdriver at the memory drum, apparently in an effort to erase the entire store.
Taking it from her, I locked the unit and hooked the key on to my chain.
‘Darling, the mortgage company could sue us for destroying the pedigree. Without it this house would be valueless. What are you trying to do?’
Fay dusted her hands on her skirt and stared me straight in the eye, chin jutting.
‘I’m trying to restore a little sanity here and if possible, find my own marriage again. I thought it might be in there somewhere.’
I put my arm around her and steered her back towards the kitchen. ‘Darling, you’re getting over-intuitive again. Just relax, don’t try to upset everything.’
‘Upset — ? Howard, what are you talking about? Haven’t I a right to my own husband? I’m sick of sharing him with a homicidal neurotic who died five years ago. It’s positively ghoulish!’
I winced as she snapped this out, feeling the walls in the hallway darken and retreat defensively. The air became clouded and frenetic, like a dull storm-filled day.
‘Fay, you know your talent for exaggeration…’ I searched around for the kitchen, momentarily disoriented as the corridor walls shifted and backed. ‘You don’t know how lucky you—’
I didn’t get any further before she interrupted. Within five seconds we were in the middle of a blistering row. Fay threw all caution to the winds, deliberately, I think, in the hope of damaging the house permanently, while I stupidly let a lot of my unconscious resentment towards her come out. Finally she stormed away into her bedroom and I stamped into the shattered lounge and slumped down angrily on the sofa.
Above me the ceiling flexed and quivered, the colour of roof slates, here and there mottled by angry veins that bunched the walls in on each other. The air pressure mounted but I felt too tired to open a window and sat stewing in a pit of black anger.
