The Big Day

by Barry Unsworth

  ‘I believe in order, Mr Mafferty. Order. By which I mean not so much discipline; that comes into it of course, but smooth running. Smooth running. Things working well, everyone pulling together, like a well-oiled machine, but with, ah, sentient cogs. Everyone seeing his way with absolute clarity, just as I see mine. That will be all, then, I think, for the moment.’

  Exhausted, he watched Mafferty get up and walk away. It was eleven-thirty-two by the clock on the wall.

  Baines was just entering the hospital. He had been dreading the visit, was only doing it from a stern sense of duty, to one of our brave boys, as he would have put it, wounded in action. Immediately on entering he felt oppressed, endangered. The smells and whiteness and long corridors and tubular equipment glimpsed here and there were like the concomitants of an ugly dream, and Baines was already in considerable perturbation of spirit before he got to Kenneth’s ward. This was increased by the fact that the nurse on duty had to point Kenneth out to him – the lad was unrecognizable, bemonstered by bandages.

  ‘Hello, old boy,’ Baines said, with assumed heartiness, advancing towards Kenneth’s bed, past a bed in which a very old man with a grey, bald, head sat staring straight before him, then another which was just a heap of bed-clothes, nothing human discernible.

  ‘So here you are,’ Baines said. Very little of the surface area of Kenneth’s face was visible. The bandage supporting his jaw passed beneath his chin and was bound round the top of his head. Had that been all, it would have given Kenneth the look of a medieval knight in a white helmet; but, in addition to this, the left side of his face, which had sustained the damage, had a large dressing on it, extending from the corner of the mouth, almost where the helmet bandage ended, right up to the left temple, with a thick auxiliary strap completely covering the bridge of the nose. His eyes looked out from this stiff white mask as if they had crept to the surface in order to signal.

  ‘Well, you’re not looking too bad,’ Baines said. Conquering his aversion he looked steadily at Kenneth’s bemonstered head. ‘We shall have you up and out of here in no time … What did you say?’

  Sounds had come from Kenneth, but curiously guttural and indistinct.

  ‘I beg your pardon, old boy?’ Baines said. ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

  Kenneth couldn’t talk properly, he suddenly realized, because the bone structure of his face was rigidly strapped up and immovable; there was no play whatever in his lower jaw.

  ‘Arree – shit arree mush,’ Kenneth said. ‘Tak allsh trull.’

  ‘I didn’t quite catch that,’ Baines said again. Kenneth was being obliged to talk without moving his jaws at all, and this was producing a slurred monotone, very disturbing and disagreeable to Baines, for whom the effort of distinguishing a meaning in these guttural sounds now became part of the general horror of the place, the gleaming surfaces, and the smells, the all-pervasive smells of sickness and healing, the same smell to Baines, and a peculiarly repellent one. Sickness and unseemliness were intimately related in his mind, and he found it very difficult not to hold Kenneth accountable, morally, for his less than A.I condition.

  ‘What was that again?’ he said, leaning forward and looking into Kenneth’s dark, active eyes.

  ‘Arree shit arree mush.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Baines said, nodding, bluffing, thinking how oddly dark and cavernous Kenneth’s mouth looked against the white of the bandage.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’m going to see you have a citation for this; you are going to get the Order of Gallantry for it, old boy.’

  Kenneth nodded slowly.

  ‘I consider it a damn good show,’ Baines said.

  ‘Hankh – hoogh – arreghmush,’ Kenneth said.

  It must have been a hell of a whack, Baines thought. In half-darkness and a limited space, in the midst of brawling and stumbling and a confusion of bodies, someone had laid a loaded stick across Kenneth’s face with what seemed absolute precision. For a moment or two his mind was occupied with a sense of this contrast, the precise, shattering blow amid that chaos, the instant tracery of fracture …

  ‘Have you any idea – ’ he was beginning, when there was an unearthly screech from one of the beds opposite. An emaciated person sat up suddenly and uttered a burst of high-pitched laughter towards the ceiling.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Baines said. ‘What – ?’

  ‘Ersh sherraghich whurrd,’ Kenneth said.

  ‘What did you say?’ Baines leaned forward again. It was warm in the ward and he felt himself beginning to sweat slightly. ‘This is a ghastly place,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ a quavering querulous voice said, a few beds further down. ‘Oh dear, oh my leg!’

  ‘Sherraghuk whurrd,’ Kenneth said again.

  ‘Is there something wrong with his leg?’ Baines started wildly in the direction of the voice. ‘Do you mean geriatric? What, you mean they have put you in with the old people?’

  He looked with horror at his lieutenant. ‘But that is disgraceful,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can get you moved.’

  The white head moved from side to side, very slowly. ‘Ishn’t whurrsh ugh trull,’ it said.

  ‘You mean you don’t mind?’ Baines stared at Kenneth. He felt acutely uncomfortable. The sweat was running down his left side, inside his shirt.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ came again from the bed farther down, followed almost immediately by another screech of laughter from over the way.

  ‘It’s a madhouse,’ Baines said. The smell of aged bodies and medicaments rose to his nostrils in suffocating waves. All his life he had hated age and deformity and people who were crazy or helpless or disabled. Such people made him feel sick.

  ‘They should be put out of their misery,’ he whispered vehemently, bringing his head closer to Kenneth’s white helmet. ‘As soon as people get too old and ah, I mean, reach a certain stage of infirmity, they should be put out of their misery.’

  The heap in the bed next to Kenneth’s moved suddenly.

  ‘Deformed people, too,’ Baines said, keeping his eyes on this heap. ‘Why should we – ?’

  ‘Hargh kark,’ Kenneth said, moving his head cautiously up and down.

  ‘What do you do with excrescences?’

  An arm like a mildewed stick came groping out from the heap of clothes. Pyjama hung from it like the remnants of bark. It clawed briefly at the edge of a sheet.

  Baines took out a large white handkerchief and wiped his sweating forehead and cheeks. ‘You slice them off,’ he said, close to Kenneth’s white mask. ‘You slice them, you slice their ballocks off, you … Metaphysically … A healthy society – ’

  ‘Arghee chorrcet-lurgh.’

  ‘Functioning perfectly. Beautiful, vigorous bodies, disciplined minds. Like a beautiful machine with all its parts in perfect order. The day is coming and it is nearer than some of these anarchist shits think …’

  ‘Ghaarloogh.’

  5

  Rousing himself with an effort from the torpor into which he had fallen after the interview with Mafferty, Cuthbertson decided to leave his office for one of his periodic tours – not of inspection, but of lonely communication with the spirit of the place. However, on opening his door, he found himself confronted by a tall thin figure in a cloth cap and white overalls holding something in its hand. His first reaction, as to anything unexpected these days, was a feeling of fear, intense enough to be momentarily disabling. But his senses cleared, and he made out pale features below the cap, saw it was a paint brush the person was holding, smelt fresh paint.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said, in a passable imitation of his own voice. ‘Are you painting?’

  He found himself being regarded by very pale, vacant eyes. The man was quite young, little more than a youth, in fact. He said nothing, but gestured towards the door with his brush. Cuthbertson turned and looked. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘You are going to give my door a new coat of paint.’ He looked for some moments longer at the g
leaming, immaculate surface of his door. ‘I don’t think it needs one, actually,’ he said.

  The youth shook his head. Reaching past Cuthbertson, he pointed to the word ‘Principal’ painted in small black capitals on the door. Then he raised the paint brush above his lowered left hand.

  ‘I see,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘You are going to make the letters bigger.’ An idea of Bishop’s, he thought immediately. He seemed to remember now having expressed in Bishop’s hearing the wish that the word could be more boldly, more prominently displayed. Bishop was full of little ideas like this, rather touching little gestures of consideration. Surprises. It would be better, though, if he notified one, Cuthbertson felt.

  He surveyed the painter doubtfully. Why did he not speak? He might possibly be dumb of course. None the worse for that qua painter, but there was something in the vacant eye, the ill-nourished elongation of the features, the uncouth silence, which did not inspire confidence. He did not strike Cuthbertson as a craftsman of the highest quality. Still, he must have passed through an apprenticeship of some kind.

  ‘I suppose you’ve got stencils for the letters?’ he said. A watery smile came to the youth’s face, and he gestured again with the brush.

  ‘Well,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘I suppose you know your own business best.’ He moved past the youth and along the passage, still worried, however, at what he was leaving behind.

  Distrust of the painter continued to nag him for some minutes longer as he moved around the School. He thought of checking with Bishop, then decided not to, on the principle of never appearing anything less than sanguine before subordinates – one of the cardinal rules of Leadership.

  Gradually, as he proceeded, reaching out occasionally to touch with finger tips the smooth surface of wall or window sill, his qualms subsided, the familiar atmosphere of the School settled round him. He met no one in the corridors, as he padded noiselessly about. Everyone was in class at that hour of the morning.

  He stood for some moments at a landing, looking out over the gardens behind the house, the neat lawns, trim alleys – that had been a marvellous idea, the intersecting box hedges, obliging the students to walk sedately during the breaks, precluding any possibility of horseplay … Order and method, he thought. System, symmetry. A voice within him eagerly asserted, Yes, Donald, yes. This started up a dialogue which proceeded at an accelerating speed. A place for everything, everything in its place, place was a wilderness when you first saw it an embarrassment to the estate agents I built it up with my own hands a wilderness you saw the possibilities a rat sat up a big brown fellow looked at you me …

  Cuthbertson laid his forehead against the cool glass of the window. Words, voices receded. He rested thus for a while, then, when he felt calm again, continued on his way. Now and again he paused outside classroom doors, listening. Industrious silence, or the monologue of the teacher, came to him. The place was a regular hive, no other way of describing it. No small achievement, by one’s own unaided efforts, to have created this great corporate enterprise dedicated to self-improvement. Once again he was surprised, almost awed, at the diversity within monumental unity that he had created, all these people going in their various ways about life’s great business, the acquiring of qualifications … In classroom four, however, there seemed to be something of a rumpus going on. Voices were being raised in there.

  Classroom Four was the one in which Mafferty was conducting his Literary Appreciation Class. He had been so shaken by Cuthbertson’s threats of dismissal that he had gone over to the Black Lion immediately after the interview and had downed a couple of pints, much too quickly. Once in front of the class he had begun to feel the effects of this. Nevertheless, he had adhered to the hasty plan for the lesson, devised on the way back from the pub, and had written slowly and carefully on the blackboard:

  O rose, thou art sick!

  The invisible worm

  That flies in the night

  In the howling storm,

  Has found out thy bed

  Of crimson joy,

  And his dark secret love

  Does thy life destroy.

  This done, he surveyed the class with a sort of glassy benignity, encountering as he did so the stern gaze of Mustapha, the Turk, in his accustomed corner, and the clerkly gleam of Hans beside him. Across from them, in the next row, he saw the fuzzy hive of Abdu and the dark Semitic face below it. There was a new student beside him, an elderly grey-haired man with a hearing aid, who looked like a northern European. In rapid review Mafferty took in the others: round-faced, small-featured Henry from Derby and beside him the other Englishman, Mr Butler, who rarely spoke and whose reasons for being there were obscure; in the desk behind them the gentle smile and silky moustache of Taba, from Iran; in the front row as usual, Javier, the keen Mexican.

  For a moment or two Mafferty considered them in silence. The fact that his students desired to be instructed always puzzled him a little, perplexed his cynicism: they should only have been interested in obtaining what they had paid for, the certificate, the document; yet here they were, wanting to learn something.

  ‘I want you,’ he said, ‘to read this short poem, and tell me what you think it means. It is a very well-known poem. I daresay you recognize it, Henry?’

  Henry looked blinkingly at the board. His mental processes were very slow. ‘Seen it before somewhere,’ he said at last.

  ‘It is by William Blake.’ Mafferty arranged his face into an expression of academic shrewdness. ‘I have chosen it,’ he said, ‘because it does exemplify what I’ve been saying to you lately about meaning. What do we actually mean by meaning? In poetic terms of course.’

  He saw a frown of mingled displeasure and incomprehension on the face of Mustapha, and went on hastily, before the Turk could intervene with a question.

  ‘This poem has a very, er, potent central symbol, one which we may disagree about, but I’m sure that whatever the disagreement in detail, what will finally emerge will … Well, perhaps you’d better all read it first.’

  He sat down at his desk and rested his head in his hands. The room, which had originally been quite a large one, had been partitioned into two by Cuthbertson, in order to accommodate more students, and the material of the partitioning was not as soundproof as its designers had asserted. Beyond the partition Mr Binks was taking his Civics Class, a process which consisted in discussing some prominent feature of the day’s news. In this interval of silence they all heard Mr Binks’ high-pitched, deliberate voice through the partition, saying, ‘We shall take as our subject today this latest bomb outrage.’ There were some indeterminate sounds, feet moving, chairs scraping. Then Binks’ voice came through again. ‘No, I do not propose to discuss the arrangements for the Royal Wedding. Bombs are of more immediate concern than Royal Weddings.’

  Mafferty looked up. He noticed at once with a preliminary, sinking feeling of boredom, that Taba, the most vocal member of the group, was regarding him with a sort of restrained, respectful eagerness. He delayed inviting Taba’s answer for some minutes more, while they all listened to Binks, who was obviously reading from a newspaper:

  The bomb, containing at least ten pounds of explosive, went off without warning just inside the main door. The front of the building was ripped apart. The room immediately adjoining, where some twenty people were drinking, was reduced to a crumpled wreckage of shattered furniture, glass and rubble, amidst which fragments of human bodies –

  ‘Well, Taba?’

  ‘This poem is, in my own opinion, one of corruption in the core,’ Taba said, smiling gently. ‘The rose is representing the whole of human condition and all our life when we are in the innocent conditions. The worm, it is knowledge?’

  ‘Rubble?’ they heard Binks saying. ‘What means rubble? You should not say, “What means rubble?” You should say, “What does rubble mean?” ’

  ‘That is a very interesting interpretation,’ Mafferty said, ‘and one which – ’

  ‘The worm comes creeping and ea
ts all up, so destroying the innocent conditions.’

  ‘Yes, as I say, that is a most – ’

  ‘Excuse me, please, is wrong,’ interjected Javier, moving his large head restlessly. He nearly always took issue with the Iranian; a sort of rivalry existed between them. ‘Is quite wrong,’ he said. ‘Is a poem about the materialized society. All we care for is the goods, the merchandises, and that is why the poet he says our life destroy. Is not knowledge, as says Taba. Is the philosophy of Gross National Product.’

  ‘Gross National Product?’ Hans said, turning to the others in his stiff, courtly way. ‘The Gross National Product does not mean nossing to William Blake.’

  ‘You think I don’ know heem, William Blake?’ Javier demanded indignantly. ‘I know heem.’

  A doctor who lives only a few hundred yards from the scene of the explosion …

  ‘You take the social and economic aspects,’ Mafferty said, soothingly, ‘as opposed to the moral. Well, it is a tenable point of view.’ He glanced down at his watch. Still half an hour to go. He paused, wondering who to ask next.

  …. most horrific sight of my life and I’ve seen a few in the past few years. Four of the people who had been flung out on to the pavement were clearly dead. One of them was just a torso …

  ‘Well, Abdu?’

  ‘Excuse please.’ Mustapha raised a hand. ‘What means “torso”?’

  ‘You mean, “What does ‘torso’ mean?” ’

  ‘That is what I am asking you.’ Mustapha said, with dignity.

  ‘It is this part of the body,’ Mafferty said, indicating. ‘Now could we get back to the poem? What do you think, Abdu?’

  ‘It is the Imperialist State,’ the Libyan said, in his hoarse voice. Then he paused, looking round at the class, as if inviting approval, or exacting complete attentiveness before resuming.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, it is the trunk of the body. T-r-u-n-k, yes, that’s it … No, I don’t think we can call it a torso if there are arms and legs attached, certainly not if there are legs, no, the presence of legs would disqualify it from being a torso. As to arms …’