The Blind Light

by Stuart Evers

  ‘I won’t die there,’ he’d told her. ‘Don’t worry about that. I won’t allow it.’

  He was still certain of that. Certain of the will of the mind over the body. Sure that a body could run on fumes far longer than any car.

  *

  In late 2011, the doctor had given him six months; doctors always erring on the side of half a year. Assuming the specialist was correct, Drum would be around for the London Olympics, but not for the end of the world. Drum had studied the date, the Mayan conception of the end of times – or the dawn of a new age of consciousness depending on who you believed – and had decided it wrong. The apocalypse was scheduled for 21 December, the end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun, but why not on the 20th? The symmetry was perfect for the end of the world. 20-12-2012. A day out, a day only. Let me live, so I can prove I’m right.

  How often had Dr Ahmed said those words? How often had he erred on the side of six months? Hundreds, thousands perhaps. Drum was now one of a group so large the doctor would not remember were any of them to beat the odds. Drum wanted to beat the prognosis. He wanted to see Dr Ahmed in the supermarket, the one on the ring-road, six or seven years hence and tell him he’d been wrong. He wanted that. He wanted to see the lack of recognition in the doctor’s face. Wanted to leave the doctor confused, wracking brain for who the man was. Looking at the oncologist’s face, Drum knew there was no chance of that. No hope of seeing 20 December. Drum could see it in the doctor’s black and reddened eyes. Just go home, Mr Moore. Let me have the rest of my afternoon.

  After the murmur, Drum had assumed it would be his heart to give out; that at least quick. The clutched chest, knowing this was the big one, the one from which you do not return. That, to him, felt the only way to die. In sleep seemed a cheat, too peaceful a passage. Do I want to go peaceful? No. I want to know. Better the pull in the chest, better the shoot and stab of pain, better the mid-conversational pause and the quick lift of the rug. Carter would not die in his sleep; Carter would not allow it. Were death to come to him, then death would need bigger balls, some proper cojones. Same for Drum. Same for him and double.

  A triple bypass for Carter. Private care, in and out. Right as rain now, though he rarely saw rain these days. A year or so from death, that what the doctor had said, had they not caught it. Living each day now as if it were his last, chasing tail in Spain, fucking the wives of two of his friends. One a younger wife, no more than forty-five; the other in her sixties, depraved in her predilections, or so he said. Living the best life now.

  When Drum came out of the consultation, Gwen was in the waiting room, checking her phone. She was looking intently at it, deliberating single-finger typing, so far away he wished she would stay there. It was one thing being told; quite another to tell. Would that he had the abundant hair of the doctor, his house to go to, to swap their lives over at that moment.

  Gwen looked up from the phone, and too many years, too many days and nights in company to even come close to hiding it. Better to collapse there; better to die right there than have to speak.

  The short steps from the consultation room to her, the small table stacked with magazines between them. Do they censor the magazines? Do they look them through for tales of cancer deaths, heart complaints, loved ones cut down in their prime? Do they screen them for stories that might send you over the edge?

  Gwen stood and placed her hands upon him, her saying, let’s go home, Drum. Let’s talk at home. And he followed her, saying nothing, not a thing, trying not to cry. Walking to the car, her hand in his hand, and nothing now needing to be said. Her going to the driver’s side and opening the car with the remote, and him getting in the passenger side – how much a humiliation that – and Gwen sitting behind the wheel and her crying. Trying not to, but crying.

  The hardest thing that, the hardest thing he’d ever done. Knowing she was grieving for him. He’d never thought about it, never considered this was how it would be. The two of them, and her loving him. Loving him the way he loved her. He had always assumed it was a one-way sort of affair, assumed that over the years, she had become accustomed, rather than actively in love. No shame in that, no shame at all. Close and happy, what more could you ask?

  They had been young, and then they had not. They’d had no children, then they’d had two, then one. He’d not expected her tears. He’d not expected anyone to mourn. But here the tears and here the grief. The deep feeling. Only ever suspected, never quite believing. On the television, years back, watching Billy Liar, all those old memories stirred and frothed, and him remembering the shock of hearing Julie Christie ask Tom Courtenay, ‘Who do you love?’ and her having no doubt as to the answer. A question he would not dare ask, even after fifty years of marriage. How could you be sure? What if the answer was ‘someone else’? What if the answer had always been someone else? But the love, the love in those tears. Almost worth dying over, those tears.

  ‘How long?’ she said.

  ‘Six months,’ he said. ‘It’s always six months, isn’t it?’

  ‘No chance they’re wrong?’

  He shook his head. He handed her the literature, the prospectuses and catalogues, the palliative care options. How many glossy brochures handed out today? How many in the week?

  ‘I want to be at home,’ he said. ‘But they say somewhere like that might help towards the end.’

  She threw the booklets on the back seats; angry now, he could see it, the suppressed fury.

  ‘We’re not talking about that now,’ she said.

  As they pulled out of the car park, he remembered something he’d heard on the radio, one of the many quirky news stories that ended the bulletin on the pop station Nate always listened to. There was a man who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The doctors gave him six months to live, so he decided to live it up. He sold off his house, maxed out his credit cards, and spends, spends, spends. For six months he lived like a king, but at the end, he didn’t die. If anything he felt better than ever. He went back to the doctor and the doctor told him there must have been some mistake: he was A1, not terminal at all. He then sued the doctors for the false prognosis.

  In the silent car home, Drum thought what he would want to do with his last six months. He could not think of a single thing, a single place he would like to go. Except Doom Town. That was where he wanted to go, just one last time. To walk the streets, walk them with Gwen. He would have preferred a four-minute warning. Four minutes fairer, four minutes enough time to say what was needed and leave no room for awkward pauses or doubts. Four minutes ideal. Six months so long to fill. And Doom Town long ago dismantled, built upon: a prison now.

  *

  He had spent his respite in bed or easy chair, sometimes thinking he was back in the bunker. There was something in the quality of the air, the scent from the kitchens, the stoic sense of worry, which took him back there. He took a sip of tea, looked up at the television set, and then heard hushed activity outside his room. Someone, he assumed, must have lately died, but who it was from the dayroom he could not guess.

  Do they revive those who arrest here? Do they save them? Do they give them a few more days’ respite? Or do they let them pass, ready for the next cadaver-in-waiting?

  He would not die there. Not in that bunker, not within those closed walls. He would die above ground; die in his own bed. No, not his own bed. It would be unfair on Gwen. In the spare bedroom, in there, he would die. In Annie’s room.

  Gwen would be there, Nate would be there, Carter would be there, Annie would be there. Annie there, yes. Annie, come back and come home. She would be there and she would say goodbye. He would hear her soft voice and he would know then it was time. Time to welcome the ceasing of the heart, the stilling of the blood, the closing down of the mind. It would be then. Yes.

  He opened his eyes and Gwen was in the room, though he did not recall her coming in. She was made-up and spruce, effort made, clothes pressed and jewellery he bought for her hanging from thin arms and pinked ears. She kissed him
on the lips.

  ‘You must have nodded off,’ she said.

  ‘Did you think I was dead?’

  ‘No, you were making that godawful noise you make when you fall asleep on the sofa.’

  ‘I knew it would come in handy one day,’ he said.

  She looked if not refreshed, then partially revived: colour to her cheeks, a spryness to her eyes. She made tea, talked of something he could not quite hear, the hallway commotion louder now. A death should be quiet; it should have solemnity, not crashes and bangs, the sneaker squeaks of wheels on polished floors.

  The advantage of a retreated life was that with few close friends, there were fewer deaths. His friends were, so far, immortal. Joseph he had lost, but a worker more than a friend, and expected that on account of his age. Younger than I am now, mind. Is that you, Joseph, looking through that window? No, not you, Joseph.

  On the wall in Carter’s kitchen in Spain, there was a picture in a frame, a joke Carter must have found funny once and assumed would find funny for a long time after.

  Why Worry?

  There are only two things to worry about: either you are sick or you are well.

  If you are well there is nothing to worry about, but if you are sick there are only two things to worry about: either you will live or you will die.

  If you live there is nothing to worry about, but if you die you only have two things to worry about: either you are going to heaven or to hell.

  If you are going to heaven there is nothing to worry about, but if you are going to hell you’ll be so busy shaking hands with friends you won’t have time to worry!

  Though he’d found it mildly amusing in situ, the print’s simplicity and suppositions now worried Drum deeply. The last line offered little in the way of comfort. It would be all right for Carter, who would be busy for eternity; but Drummond would be out of handshakes in little under a minute. It haunted, this piece of supposed amusement. He saw it in its frame and the Why Worry? seemed so flippant. What else was one to do but worry? There was only one question left, only one last thing to consider: if there is only down or up, which way am I headed?

  In his life, he’d committed few sins. Cardinal sins at least. A keeper of secrets and his own counsel, yes; but this seemed unlikely to be a punishable offence; covering for a friend’s infidelities, for his debts: deserving more of a rap on the knuckles than eternal damnation. A godless life, but a one lived with goodness.

  From there, he warrened backwards into his choices, his decisions. So many binaries, all as simple as Why Worry? Either you married Gwen or you did not. Either you stayed in Dagenham or you did not. What lives could you have lived? You might have married another woman, one less bright, less starry, less interested than Gwen. That thought adulterous. Could not conceive of bedding down with another. There had been another woman, back before Gwen; a friend of Carter’s, her name escaped him, but not her breasts, her nose, her buttocks. Needed and important, that memory. Important not to have been a virgin on meeting Gwen. He couldn’t think why, but knew it was important.

  ‘Nate’ll be over later,’ Gwen said. ‘He wants to bring Molly.’

  Gwen was talking and he was thinking of the birth of calves, the filling of quotas, the wearing of boots, on his fingers he could feel mud and pelt. A life on the factory line or that. No decision at all then, and no decision now. The fear that Gwen would say no. The fear that he would have to insist. But her happy to move; how much happier her here than there. His decision, the right one for them both.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Gwen said. ‘Nate’ll be over later.’

  ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not here. I don’t want Molly seeing this.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Don’t get excited.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ he said.

  Another reminder of the bunker, the way emotions seeped out of innocuous phrasing, the way tensions displayed in small movements, the way they could not talk about the one thing that needed to be discussed. More dreams of the bunker, more daydreams of it now. Not just there, but back at home too. Dreams of the bunker, dreams of the bare streets of Doom Town, dreams of Annie. Annie up and down the times, up and down the country. Annie lost and dirty-kneed sometimes; sometimes the mother from Threads, sometimes the scream-inducing infant. In dreams he said to Annie there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think of you, and this is a truth in the dream and a lie in the waking world.

  If a life is a ledger, this was the biggest weight in the debit column. Her decision. Her betrayal, let us not forget that. What had he done wrong? Was he expected to track her down, though she did not want to be found? Anyway, he did his job; he played his part in her life. Raised her well. To be respectful, to be intellectually curious and practically careful. That she abandoned him, that was all on her. He will forgive her. When she comes, in the night, in the day, he will forgive her. He will forgive her and she will be thankful for his forgiveness.

  ‘I forgot to say,’ Gwen said. ‘Carter sent this over.’

  She held up a CD, and Drum motioned with his head to the small stereo on the dresser. She puts on the CD and he knew what it would be, the hornet sound amongst the space interference, ‘Telstar’, the murder song.

  ‘He made it for you,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s very kind of him.’

  ‘They’ll be back Thursday, I think.’

  ‘It’ll be good to see them,’ he said. ‘Might be the last time.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said.

  ‘When it happens, after the funeral and all that, promise me you’ll stay with them for a bit. A month or something.’

  She laced her hand in his. She kissed him on the cheek, on the mouth.

  ‘You could come home tonight, if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling better.’

  ‘A week, they said. They know what they’re talking about. It’s better for both of us, a little break.’

  ‘I brought you some books,’ she said, putting a bag on his lap. ‘Old favourites.’

  Old favourites. In amongst them, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. An old edition, like the one they had both read, bought for his sixtieth birthday.

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Now this I want to read.’

  How foxed and old everything was, how slanted and bumped. He leaned over to kiss her. That old red lipstick, that open handbag, the book looking up at them both, the night they met. The way she smelled then, the tightness of her hair, the thinness of her smile. How simple his life, when looked at in those terms. How very straightforward. A pub, a girl, a book. Three things, and all came from then.

  How many such moments were taking place at that exact time, as he sat and held the book and held his wife’s hand? These moments are the miracles we wish to protect; these the miracles we defend with guns and tanks and bombs. These the moments the reasons for ordinance; these moments the reasons for fortification. He cried at the realization, the harmony and magic of the human world around him. Not broken, not spindled like a smashed pane, but intertwined and woven. The sear and yawn of his heart as he cried for the joy of that.

  ‘Is he all right, nurse?’ he heard Gwen, faraway Gwen, say.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Moore,’ Alina said, even further away. ‘Just the medication. He’ll be right in a little while.’

  A straw was in his mouth. The straw cool, the water cold in his mouth. Either it would be the apocalypse or a new era of consciousness. A new evolution, a new era in civilization. On 20 December 2012. Maybe that. Yes, let it be that. Let me be around for that. Will it to happen. Mind over matter. No chance of death before then. No chance at all.

  Sunday, 4 March 2012

  Drum always drove the long distances; never a discussion about it. Could not remember the last time she’d driven on a motorway; how odd it was to have eyes on the lanes, on the cars cutting in front, the cars coming up at back, and not on the meridian or the roadmap, not on fellow passengers.

  ‘Remember, do not die on the road.’


  She’d said this aloud on entering the motorway. Keep vigilant, alert to the silver cars weaving without fear, makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how there are not more fatalities, how the roads are not clogged with the dead; how, with the sheer danger of the roads – look at him now, undertaking, speeding back – we don’t all just come to a complete stop?

  There was a sign and she followed it, saw the service station glowing green under the bright sunlight, its glass eaves and a glass proboscis on a big glass tetrahedron, a big sign: WELCOME. All the same, these places. Pre-fabricated. Dropped with the coffee concessions already intact, the lavatories ready for plumbing, the ovens a supply of electric.

  She got out of the car into the cool and light. The service station was warm inside, the gaming machines and tiled floors, the coffee and bakery waft, the drift of cigarette smoke from outside the automatic doors. She walked straight to the lavatories, deafened on entry by the blast of the hand dryers, their howl loud even inside the cubicle.

  She sat down. On the door, two-thirds from its foot, someone had carved their name. Elise. The dedication to score the letters into the door. How long had it taken? And for what purpose? An act of love, or of vanity? She looked more closely. It was Elise herself, she decided. Elise declaring herself. Here I am. She wondered how many women had seen it. Thousands! Hundreds of thousands! How would it feel if Elise came back to see her name still there? A vindication? Or worse, to look for it expectantly and find the door had been replaced and her name erased. Would it haunt? She touched the letters, ran her finger across them. She wanted to remember Elise. Remember her as she no doubt wished to be remembered herself.

  The coffee queue was long, the machines huffed and hissed, Elise faded into their steam. There were tables of families and couples, a few men reading newspapers, a few watching the subtitles stutter across the News24 television feed.

  ‘All human life is here,’ Drum had said once, taking the same table on which she was now setting down her tray. ‘The service station, the great leveller. All races, creeds, ages, classes!’