“So you made me vanish,” Grey said.
“Not exactly.”
“You said there was an explanation. What is it?”
“Negative hallucination. It sometimes happens that the process of hypnosis, the repetition of words, the soothing advice, the quiet room, all these can lull the hypnotist himself into a light trance, and he becomes as suggestible as his subject. It’s a fairly common occurrence, although there are precautions the hypnotist usually takes. Dr. Hurdis and I are both good hypnotic subjects, and what we think must have happened was that we both became hypnotized. If so, then it’s possible that we both had the same negative hallucination, in which we were unable to see you. It’s extremely rare, but it is the only possible explanation.”
Grey was thinking of something Sue had said, that invisibility depended as much on the unconscious attitude of the observer as the ability of the person making himself invisible. Some can see, some cannot. Was it all a negative hallucination?
Aware of his silence, Alexandra said, “I know it doesn’t sound very likely, but it is possible.”
“Has it ever happened before?”
“I’ve researched it as far as I can. There have been similar cases when a hypnotist was working alone, but I believe there is no precedent for both the hypnotist and an observer to share an experience.”
What would Sue say to that? Was her belief in her own invisibility accountable for in terms that Dr. Hurdis and Alexandra could rationally confirm? He remembered the day they had been out photographing the shoppers, and the people Sue claimed were natural invisibles. He thought of the photographs he had seen of Sue and Niall. The camera could not induce negative hallucinations.
“So do you think that’s what really happened?”
“Unless you actually made yourself invisible,” Alexandra said, smiling. “There’s no other explanation.”
“What about invisibility?” Grey said on an impulse. “Isn’t that possible? I mean—”
“Actual, corporeal invisibility?” She was still smiling. “Not unless you believe in magic. You yourself had a negative hallucination induced by Dr. Hurdis, and you weren’t able to see me. But I wasn’t really invisible, except to you.”
“But what’s the difference?” Grey said. “I couldn’t see you, so you were to all intents invisible. You say that I became invisible to you and Hurdis. Was I still really there?”
“Of course you were. We simply stopped noticing you.”
“But that’s the same thing. You made me invisible.”
“Only subjectively. We made you seem invisible by failing to see you.”
Alexandra began to tell him of another case history, a woman who spontaneously hallucinated negatively, and who was treated with hypnosis, and Grey listened to her. But he was also thinking in parallel, trying to reinterpret everything Sue had told him in these terms.
If what she said was true, and she apparently believed it was, then perhaps it was possible that some people had the unconscious ability to hypnotize people around them so they could not be seen. The failure to notice: was it a natural condition? Or something that could be induced by certain people?
It felt as if it might be right. As Alexandra had said, however unlikely it might be it was the only possible rational explanation, even though the extent of Sue’s claims increased the unlikelihood.
It was difficult to think about this and listen to Alexandra at the same time, and as the conversation became more general he let it go. She asked him about his recovery, how he was adapting once more to normal life, what remaining problems there were. He told her about his recent filming work, and said he had briefly visited Manchester. Somehow, he never mentioned Sue.
When the pub closing time came, they walked together back to his flat. Outside the door Alexandra said, “I must be getting home. Thanks for talking to me about this.”
“I think I’ve learned more than you.”
“I just wanted to confirm what I thought might have happened.”
They shook hands formally, as they had done on their first meeting.
Grey said, “I was wondering … shall we meet again for another drink? Perhaps one evening?”
“Yes, I’d like that,” she said, looking at him with a smile. “But no more interviews.”
They made a date for the following week.
V
Grey visited Sue in the evening, and as soon as he arrived he knew something was wrong. It was not long before he found out what it was: Sue’s mother had telephoned her and told her of his visit.
At first, he tried to lie.
“We had to go to Manchester for some filming,” he said. “I decided on an impulse to look them up.”
“You said you were working in Toxteth. What the hell does that have to do with Manchester?”
“All right, I went specially. I wanted to meet them.”
“But why? They don’t know anything about me! What did they tell you?”
“I know you think I was spying on you, but it really wasn’t like that. Sue, I had to know.”
“Know what? What could they possibly tell you about me?”
“They are your parents,” Grey said.
“But they’ve hardly seen me since I was twelve years old!”
“That’s why I went. Something happened while I was filming in Liverpool.” He told her about the club, and the memory it had prompted of the pub in Belfast. “It made me see everything you had said in a different light— whether, in fact, there might be some truth in it after all.”
“I knew you weren’t believing me.”
“It’s not that. I do believe you … but I have to know for myself. I’m sorry if you think I’ve been snooping around, but the idea came to me on the spur of the moment and I didn’t really think. I just wanted to talk to someone else who knew you.”
“I’ve been invisible to Mum and Dad since I was a kid. The only times they’ve seen me have been when I’ve forced myself to be seen.”
“That’s not the impression I got from them,” Grey said. “You’re right that they don’t know you very well, but that’s because you’ve grown up and left home. It happens to many people with their parents.”
Sue was shaking her head. “That’s just the way they account for it. It’s how people deal with someone who’s invisible around them. They automatically come up with some rational version to explain to themselves what’s happened. It’s a way of coping.”
Grey thought of Alexandra, her rationalization.
“Your mother said she had met Niall.”
“That’s impossible!” But she looked surprised.
“It’s not how it felt to me. You told me yourself that he went home with you once.”
“Niall was invisible the whole time. Richard, they think they saw him. They know about Niall, I told them about him years ago. The only time he’s been home with me was that one weekend. But they couldn’t have seen him because it’s simply not possible.”
“Then why does your mother think she knows him? She’s even got a photograph of him—with you, in the back garden.”
“I know. They took several. Niall would be in them all. Don’t you see, that’s how she explains it to herself! When he was there with me they must have been aware of what was going on. Niall registered with them … even someone as profoundly invisible as Niall is always there. After we had left they would unconsciously have tried to account for all the tension. When they had the pictures developed, the explanation would have presented itself. Thinking back, they would seem to remember having met him.”