INTERCUT: The shot of the lake. Zoom in to a close-up of the figure in the boat till he fills the screen, head to middle: Nik. We watch as he does what he describes in a voice-over:
And it was then the thing I’m trying to tell you about happened.
As I came to my senses, everything suddenly seemed clearer. There were some birds, some ducks, dabbling about on the edge of the lake and their calls seemed sharper than I could ever remember hearing any noise before. They were all I could hear. Everywhere else was complete silence which the noise of the ducks seemed to make intense, so that the silence was like a noise itself.
My hands were resting on the oars and I could feel the grain of the wood, though up till then they’d seemed smooth. The sun had set, there wasn’t a breath of wind. It was the time when you can almost see the dusk creeping in. But that: evening everything stood out sharply as I looked, and the colours, though they weren’t bright like in sunlight, seemed to glow with a sort of purity I’d never seen before.
And as I looked a deep sense of peace came over me, a calmness that wasn’t at all like feeling relaxed, but made me feel full of energy while being quite still inside. And it was as if time was . . . not stopped . . . but waiting. Hanging in the air. I felt I was looking into eternity and that nothing mattered any more because everything was in harmony, like a marvellous tune. Nothing mattered and yet everything mattered, every smallest detail, and all was well at last.
I sat there in the middle of the lake expecting that this strange sensation would pass. But it didn’t. I didn’t move, just stared and stared in a sort of happiness I didn’t want to break. I watched the sky slowly change as dusk turned to night and stars came out, needle-sharp points of light in a darkening, deepening blueblack vastness that made me feel I was shrinking smaller and smaller till a sort of pain came over me, a mixture of joy because of the beauty of it all and sadness because of my insignificance compared with all that unendingness. But I was part of it, however unimportant I was. And I wanted to be totally in it. Absorbed into it, not separate.
And then, when the stars were fully out and it was night, even though there was still light on the horizon because of how far north we were, the strangest thing of all happened.
I started getting a hard-on. Honest! I’m not just being rude. I had an erection! And I wanted it—all that out there, I mean. I wanted all that—I don’t know . . . nature. Peace. Eternity. Whatever it was. Like wanting a girl. I wanted to be in it and to possess it. Wanted to belong to it and wanted it to belong to me. And I wanted to hold it in my hands and feel it with my body. And . . . honest . . . I wanted to come in it!
I know this must sound mad. But it didn’t seem like that at the time. It seemed natural. I wasn’t surprised or ashamed or anything like that. I just felt this overpowering desire. Stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before.
I didn’t think about it. I just stood up in the boat, and quite deliberately, as if I was performing a sacred act, a ritual ceremony, I took off my clothes, one thing after another, folded them up neatly, which I never do usually, and laid them in the stern.
Then, when I was completely naked, I stood erect, everything erect!, and looked around, all around, part of me still expecting this strange mood to pass, but it didn’t. The air was cold by then, northern cold, the cold that comes off snow. And the cold of the air felt as sharp and alive to my skin as the colours and shapes of everything were to my eyes and the sounds and silence, the silence most of all, were to my ears.
And I loved it. Desired it. Was randy for it. Wanted to be in it. And there was only one way. I put a foot on the gunwale, pushed up, and jumped.
I went in feet first, straight down into the dark water. The air felt cold, but the water was freezing. God, it was cold! Knocked the breath out of me like a punch. And knocked down what was standing up as well. Like a fist of ice grabbing the goolies!
As soon as I surfaced I started laughing. And the air felt warm so I splashed about a bit just for the fun of it. Then hauled myself into the boat, shivering, all passion spent!
And I tell you, I shall never forget that evening. Never. It’s as clear to me now as it was then. And I know it will be all my life. ‘That must sound pretty ridiculous,’ Nik said.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Julie said.
‘Every detail,’ Nik said, ‘still sharp. Especially the feeling of happiness and peace and wanting to be part of the vastness. Whatever the vastness was . . . Is.’
‘God,’ Julie said.
Nik snorted. ‘I knew you’d say that.’
‘Sorry I’m so predictable.’
They had arrived at Julie’s car. She unlocked the passenger door. As Nik stooped to climb in, she kissed him lightly on his passing cheek. Nik checked himself and turned his head, hoping for more. But Julie was already on her way to the driver’s seat.
†
Tom waited. After his talk with Sharkey he’d felt pleased, spending the time since then running and rerunning his performance, rewriting the script where he felt he had done badly, storing away the better moments for use again in future. What excited him most was the prospect of hooking Sharkey as a regular snout. His first, and quite a catch. As ageing leader of the town’s least prissy teen squad, Sharkey knew everybody that mattered among the juves, and was well placed with the grown-up pros. He’d be a prime source of hot gossip.
A wary predator, was Sharkey, and, true to his name, always on the move. But, thought Tom, predators can be preyed on. Kept alive, given enough time, enough rope, they led you to more tasty fish. Already there were the makings of a useful relationship. Act the clever weakling, Tom told himself. Let Sharkey snap and bite and play the big man all he wants. Make him believe he can break free whenever he likes, and flatter him. But every now and then give the line a jerk. Then he would spit out the juicy gobbets he’d swallowed, no trouble at all.
There was one thing all sharks and all pack leaders feared: that the rest of the pack would find out their weakness and turn on them. Back-bite time.
As he stared at the view from the Hill Pauls car park, Tom decided that Sharkey’s weakness was that he was a romantic.
For people like Sharkey, being a leader, and believing they were champion of a cause, mattered almost more than anything. They didn’t really care who they led, or what the cause. Those things were often as much a matter of accident as of choice. Sharkey led the Sharks because that was the best of the gangs that played around the streets where he lived. And he was a villain who thought he was Robin Hood because he’d been born into villainy and taught the Robin Hood garbage by his petty criminal dad. If he’d been born in the plusher parts of town he’d maybe have organized the lads into a computer club and been a gospel Tory. It wouldn’t have mattered so long as he was the leader and believed himself in the right, fighting against the odds.
Take away their self-righteous confidence and people like Sharkey were lost. Undermine their position as a leader, or better still, disillusion them about their cause, and they were finished. Not just in the eyes of their pathetic followers, but in their own eyes. Take away their belief in themselves and their destiny and they self-destructed. Romantics love failure as much as—even sometimes more than—success, so long as they fail as martyrs.
Take Sharkey in, send him down for his petty crimes as martyr to the cause of the ordinary bloke against an oppressive system, and he’d survive his porridge proudly, come out a bigger hero than he went in, and be all the better prepared for villainy because of what he’d learned inside. But show him how you can leave him on the streets a reject with no following and he would do anything you want to prevent it. Sure, he would twist and turn and snap a lot, and you would have to slip him some nicely laundered reasons why he should do the dirty on himself and his kind, but in the end he’d give.
And you know what the really chuffing thing is, Tom thought, smiling to himself as the game became clear. The really chuffing thing is you get him anyway. Because in the end he gives himse
lf up. Play him long enough, make him do the dirty often enough, and finally he goes to pieces because the disillusionment about himself gradually corrodes his self-respect. And his romantic soul can’t stand that! Then there’s nothing left except the humdrum boredom of self-disgust, or the romantic’s last resort: a nasty little romantic death. Suicide. The Roman way of getting your own back—on a world entirely against you, and on yourself for being a weak twittish human being like everybody else.
I don’t like romantics, Tom thought. Don’t just dislike them, I despise them. They’re just as dangerous as psychos and worse than straightforward, out-and-out villains whose only motives are excitement and greed.
At which moment Sharkey appeared, his heavy frame hunched, his pasty face puckered, reminding Tom of a nocturnal animal, used to the cover of darkness and tangled undergrowth, that’s been flushed out into open country in bright sunlight. Though in fact this was one of those moist grey days that make slugs happy. So, thought Tom, why not Sharkey?
‘Good news?’ Tom asked.
‘Sommat funny goin on,’ Sharkey said, eyes busy for overseers.
‘Don’t look like you’re dying of laughter.’
‘Everybody’s heard but nobody knows nothin.’
‘Come on, Sharkey, you can do better than that.’
‘No, honest. Nothin. Can’t understand it myself.’
Tom said with deliberate whining scorn, ‘All your connections and you can’t come up with anything?’
Irritation flickered round Sharkey’s eyes. For a moment Tom was sure he was going to hit him. But instead he slouched against the wall and said, ‘You’re full of shit, Tommy.’
Tom grinned. ‘And you’ll be full of porridge before long.’
Sharkey sniffed. ‘Yeah, well, I need more time. Nobody who’d really know is around yet. Too early.’
They stood side by side in silence, Sharkey waiting for Tom, Tom turning over his next move. Was Sharkey testing him? Trying him out for size? Or maybe he’d heard something and was holding back till he was certain he really did need to give it away? Should he push him hard now, or play him along?
While they stood there the sun found a break in the cloud and, like a theatre spot, cast a beam that fell on a window in a house across the valley, which reflected a brief flash of light at Tom’s thought-glazed eyes, making him blink and attracting his attention.
As if the sunflash was a heliographed message, the event perked up his senses, sharpening his mind. Not that he knew at once what the message was. But he knew something important had come to him. A clue to the answer he wanted, if not the answer itself.
Natural instinct—the instinct that would make him a talented cop—as well as his yet unfinished training told him to stay silent for a minute till he could act without betraying any of this to Sharkey.
Then he said, ‘Look, suppose I can keep the super happy, how long do you want?’
Sharkey shrugged. ‘Dunno, do I? Till tonight when there’s more of the lads around. Half-seven? How about then?’
Tom pretended doubt. ‘Risky. Not sure I can hold him off that long. I’m putting myself on the line for you, Sharkey, if I do this. You’ll have to turn up something. Okay?’
‘Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re a big mate, Tommy. All ready to go down with me, aren’t you.’
‘Best I can do.’
‘Best I can do as well. And I don’t like meetin like this neither. Can’t you think of nowhere better?’
‘How about the nick?’
‘Very comic!’
‘Seven-thirty sharp, bottom end of the railway car park, back of the old goods shed. Nobody’ll spot you there. Okay?’
‘I must be a proper mug,’ Sharkey said, and slouched off, leaving Tom to nod at his back unseen, and grin to himself with satisfaction. Hooked or not as a regular, Sharkey was damn good practice, a useful rehearsal for bigger shows.
ADVANCES
JULIE: Dear Nik: Today they took the bandages off my chest. Not the ones round my eyes or hands, though. So I still can’t see or do anything for myself. But isn’t this good news?
They drugged me beforehand, of course, and clucked and cooed, trying to reassure me, like midwives at a rebirth. And it did feel like a kind of resurrection.
Afterwards, I asked Simmo to tell me honestly how I look. She said the wounds are healing very well but that it’s too early to tell how bad the scars will be.
At first I was so glad to be rid of the bandages I wanted to shout for joy. I can’t tell you how good it was to feel air on my skin again, and to move my arms and legs without being fettered by those suffocating wrappings.
But this afternoon I slept for a while and woke up feeling very low. Depressed about everything again. A kind of emotional relapse, I suppose, or perhaps just a hangover from the drugs. Whatever it was, I began to loathe myself. I kept imagining my body covered in repulsive scars and gashes, and my face disfigured, and my hands paralysed like claws, and my skin all scaly like a reptile’s. I was sure I’d turned into a freak, something hideous that people wouldn’t be able to look at without feeling ill. It seemed as if I’d been bandaged up a reasonably normal human being, and had somehow changed, like a caterpillar in its chrysalis, but instead of coming out a beautiful butterfly, I’d come out a monster.
After going on like that for a while, I began to hate myself all the more for being so defeatist.
Mother arrived just then. She’d come over because she knew about the unveiling. They’d told her yesterday, apparently, when she rang as usual to ask about me. They didn’t tell me they were going to do it until they were ready to start this morning. Mum had thought they might take the bandages off my eyes as well and wanted to be here so I could see her if they did. That’s what she said. But I know that really she was worried I might be blind, and wanted to help me through the ordeal.
[Pause.]
Well, I still don’t know. And I can’t use my hands because they’re covered in what feel like boxing gloves. Now I know what it’s like to be incapable, and totally dependent on other people for even the simplest things. Worst of all is that they have to do all your most private things for you. Everything from wiping your bum to picking your nose.
Don’t laugh!
[Chuckles.]
You’ll think it a bigger joke than Sister Ann in church, but they do! Even pick your nose, I mean. They use those little sticks with cotton wool on the ends. Though, to be honest, they aren’t entirely successful. When Simmo does it, she gets on with it, using her own finger! ‘Let’s see what we can find up here,’ she says, matter-of-fact as always, just as if she were clearing out a cupboard. But I can’t tell you what a relief it is. I never thought picking your nose is so important. But if you don’t do it . . . well, I suppose you’d clog up and always have to breathe through your mouth, which would be awful.
At school there was a girl who always seemed to breathe through her mouth. We used to hate her sitting beside us. Though, I have to say it was more usually boys than girls who did it. And then we made fun of them. Used to call them Gobgasper. How rotten we were! Perhaps they’d never discovered about picking your nose. Because it’s one of those silly things that everybody must do but nobody talks about.
Well . . . I’m talking to you about it now, I know. But that’s different somehow. I’m allowed to because of the state I’m in. Sick people—or very sick people anyway—are allowed to break the rules a bit, aren’t they? They are in here. You can tell how sick people really are, no matter what the doctors tell them, by how much they’re allowed to get away with, like being rude to nurses or messing the bed or shouting all night long and keeping everybody awake. If you aren’t very sick, you’re soon told off.
Just as dying people can tell the truth about themselves no matter how bad they’ve been, and everybody thinks they’re wonderful for confessing, and forgive them at once. Whereas if they’d stood up in a crowded room and confessed when they were healthy and strong they’d have been arrested. Or e
lse become one of those sordid people who appear on TV talk shows and tell about their criminal or wicked private lives while the audience ogles and gasps and thinks how daring they are.
[Pause.]
I’ve lost myself, as usual. Where was I . . . ? Oh yes—picking my nose, and what an affliction it is not to be able to do it.
I keep thinking about affliction. Only natural I suppose. And I did say I’d try and make it into my God-work, because I couldn’t do anything much else.
Actually, I said I’d think about pain. And affliction isn’t the same thing. One of my discoveries. I might as well tell you about it because talking to you is raising my spirits again, and talking about what I’ve been thinking might help me sort it out better than just keeping it in my head. I’ve found I can only get so far thinking to myself. The thoughts start going round and round, getting nowhere and confusing me more than I was before I started.
As a matter of fact, I found that out before. And I used to write my thoughts down, which helped make me sort them out so that I could think clearly in my head again. But as I can’t write in my present blind and boxing-gloved state, perhaps saying what I’ve been thinking will have the same effect. If you don’t want to be bothered with it, just switch off. I’ll never know if you do, so you won’t upset me.
Usually I give my written thoughts a title in the book I use to write them in. I’d better do the same now. So let’s see . . .
[Pause. Then in a more formal, thoughtful voice:]
Meditation on the Nature of Affliction
The best example of affliction I know of is Christ nailed to the cross.
She wasn’t ill. She hadn’t committed any crime. She didn’t nail herself up. She was put there by other people. Not because of anything dreadful that she’d done, but because of what she was.
She was Christ, just as a man is a man, a woman is a woman, a black person has black skin. These are not choices people make for themselves. They are accidents of birth. Inescapable facts.
Nik: Now I Know Page 10