The neutrality of the nod he had given was a none-too-usual alleviation of the unspecific discontent with which he nowadays looked as if he regarded the world. Here was somebody else whose life I did not understand. The weekday routine, mitigated by a lie-in on Sunday mornings, was a tight one: whatever the weather, off at ten sharp into the village ‘to have a look round’ (though whatever there was to be seen there never varied, at least to a townsman’s eye like mine or his), pick up a packet of ten Piccadilly and The Times (which he would not have delivered to the house) at the corner shop, into the Dainty Tea-rooms for a coffee, a chocolate biscuit and a thorough read-through of the paper and along to the Queen’s Arms at midday precisely, there to drink two Courage light ales, make a start on the crossword puzzle and chat to ‘one or two old buffers’ about topics I had found it hard to define when I, on an occasional slack morning, accompanied him on his round. Back to the Green Man at one fifteen on the dot for a cold lunch in his room, and then an afternoon dozing, finishing, or trying to finish, the crossword, and reading one of the crime-and-detection paperbacks I would have got for him in Royston or Baldock. By six or six thirty—here a little latitude was permitted—he would be in the drawing-room, ready for the first of two drinks before dinner, and ready for conversation too, I suppose, because he never took anything in there with him, not even the crossword. But Joyce and Amy and I all had other things to do than go and talk to him, and he would fall back on sending for the evening paper, as tonight, or on gazing at the wall. Whenever I happened to look in and found him like this, again as tonight, I would feel slightly defeated: I could not force him to read, set him acrostics to solve, demand that he learn Latin or take up mechanical drawing, and he would less soon watch television than, in his own phrase, have a lump of vegetable marrow shoved into his skull instead of a brain.
He looked round the dining-room now with a more directed frown than usual, on the point, conceivably, of establishing just what it was about his environment that he found most disagreeable. His eye fell on the dining-table and moved along it.
‘Guests,’ he said with unlooked-for tolerance.
‘Yes, Jack and Diana Maybury are coming in. In fact, they’ve already—’
‘I know, I know, you told me this morning. Funny sort of rooster, isn’t he? I mean peculiar. All this I’m the most responsible and efficient general practitioner in the whole bloody country and a great friend of everybody’s and that’s all there is about me. I don’t think I like him, Maurice. I wish I could say I did, because he’s been very good to me, I mean as a doctor, I’ve no fault to find with him there. But I don’t think I really like him as a man. Something to do with how he treats that wife of his. There’s no love lost there, you know. Understandable enough. That way of hers of going on as if how bloody marvellous you are considering you’ve got no arms or legs. Well, at my age I more or less expect that style of thing, but she does it with everybody. Oh, very attractive, of course, I can see that. You’re not, uh, by the way…?’
‘No,’ I said, wishing I had a drink. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’re a bad lad, Maurice.’
‘There’s nothing wrong in looking at her.’
‘In your case there is, because you’re a bad lad. Anyway, don’t touch it, if you want my advice. That sort of little bitch would be more trouble than she’s worth. There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed. And that reminds me—I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you about Joyce. She’s not happy, Maurice. Oh, I don’t mean she’s miserable, nothing like that, and she does throw herself into the life of the place— you’re very lucky there. But she’s not really happy. I mean she doesn’t really think you’d have gone as far as marrying her if you hadn’t wanted somebody to be a mother to young Amy. And that side of things isn’t working out as well as it might because you’re leaving it to her to do it instead of helping her to do it and doing it with her. She’s a young woman, Maurice. I know you’ve got a lot to do running the pub, and you’re very conscientious. But you mustn’t hide behind that. Take this morning, now. Some rooster was kicking up a fuss because Magdalena had spilt a few drops of tea into his breakfast marmalade, if you don’t bloody well mind. Joyce dealt with him all right, and then afterwards she said to me…’
He stopped, as his ear, no less quick than mine, caught the sound of the outside door of the apartment opening. Then, hearing expected voices, he got up from the dining-chair where he had settled himself, so as to be on his feet by the time the door opened. ‘Tell you later,’ he mouthed and whispered.
The Mayburys and Joyce came in. I went over to the sideboard to see about the drinks for dinner, and found that Diana had followed me. Jack had started being as tolerant as ever to my father, who he seemed to feel could not reasonably be expected to maintain impeccable physical trim at the age of seventy-nine. Joyce was with them.
‘Well, Maurice,’ stated or queried Diana, managing to turn even that short utterance into a fair sample of her unnaturally precise enunciation. She also implied by her tone that she had effortlessly removed us both to a level far different from the plodding to-and-fro of ordinary converse.
‘Hallo, Diana.’
‘Maurice … do you mind if I ask you a question?’
There, again in small compass, was Diana for you. It was tempting, and would have been near the truth, to answer, ‘Yes, I do, by God, if you really want to know, very much indeed,’ but I found that I was looking at or near the low top of her serpent-green silk dress, where there was a lot more of Diana for you, and merely grunted.
‘Maurice … why do you always look as if you’re trying to escape from something? What makes you feel so trapped?’ She spoke as if helping me count the words.
‘Do I? Trapped? How do you mean? As far as I know I’m not trying to escape from anything.’
‘Then why do you look as if something’s after you all the time?’
‘After me? What could be after me? There’s income tax, and next month’s bills, and old age, and a few things like that, but then we’re all——’
‘What is it you want to get away from?’
Sidestepping another tempting retort, I glanced over her smooth tanned shoulder. Jack and my father were talking at once, with Joyce trying to listen to them both. I said in a lowered voice, ‘I’ll tell you another time. For instance tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be at the corner at half-past three.’
‘Maurice …
‘Yes?’ I said, not altogether, I hoped, through my teeth.
‘Maurice, what makes you so incredibly persistent? What is it you want from me?’
I felt an individual globule of sweat well up out of the skin of my chest. ‘I’m persistent because of what I want from you, and if you don’t know what that is I can soon show you. You will be there tomorrow, won’t you?’
Exactly then, Joyce called, ‘Let’s start, shall we? You must all be starving. I am, anyway.’
Not bothering to conceal her triumph at the way events had brought her the prize of quasi-legitimately leaving my question unanswered, Diana moved off. I uncapped my father’s pint of Worthington White Shield, picked up one of the bottles of Bâtard Montrachet 1961 the wine-waiter had opened half an hour earlier and followed her. In the last five seconds it had become almost overwhelmingly unlikely that she would meet me the following afternoon, because she was now in the uncommonly rewarding position of being able to stand me up without incurring the odium of having actually broken an arrangement. On the other hand, she was very much capable of following this line of argument and so going along to the agreed corner to find me not there, which would shove me back to the wrong side of square one, not to speak of the questions about why I was so changeable and so selfish, and did I think it was because I was so insecure, that I would have to sweat through as part of the shoving. And, being Diana, to have got that far would mean she would know, without having to think about it, that I would have got as far as it, too. So I w
ould have to turn up anyway. But I had been going to do that all along.
By this time I had poured the drinks and taken my place in my walnut Queen Anne carver, which, though I had one or two older things in the house, is much my favourite piece. I had Diana on my right with my father on her other side facing the door, then Jack, and Joyce on my left. As we ate the vichyssoise, my father said,
‘All sorts of people seem to be wandering about the house these days. I mean up on this floor, where they’ve no business to be when there’s no banquet affair going on. Not half an hour ago there was some rooster clumping up and down that passage outside as if he owned the place. I was on the point of getting up and going to see what he thought he was doing when he buggered off. It’s not the first time in the last few days, either. Can’t you put up a notice or something, Maurice?’
‘Outside the main door here there’s a—’
‘No, no, I mean something at the foot of the stairs, to keep them off this floor altogether. The place is turning into a mad-house. Haven’t you come across this sort of thing yourself, Maurice? You must have, surely.’
‘Once or twice.’ I spoke listlessly, my mind and the edge of my vision on Diana. ‘Now you mention it, there was a woman hanging about at the top of the stairs earlier on.’ I realized for the first time that I had not subsequently seen that woman in the bar or the dining-room or anywhere round the house. No doubt she had found the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor, and left while I was busy standing in for Fred. No doubt. But I half-saw Diana put her spoon down and begin taking stock of my face. I could not stand the prospect of being asked, in those separated syllables, why I was so this, or what had made me so that, or whether I realized that I was so the other. I got up, said I was going to say good night to Amy and went off to do so, ringing for Magdalena on my way out.
Amy’s appearance and posture had changed to the minimum degree consistent with her having been Amy sitting on bed before and being Amy sitting in bed now. On the television screen, a young woman was denouncing an older one who was keeping her back turned throughout, not so much out of inattention or deliberate rudeness as with the mere object of letting the audience see her face at the same time as her accuser’s. For a moment I watched, in the hope of seeing them do a smart about-turn at the end of the speech, and wondering to what extent real life would he affected if there were to grow up a new convention that people always had to be facing the same way before they could speak to each other. Then I went over to Amy.
‘What time does this finish?’
‘Nearly over now.’
‘Mind you put it off the moment it is. Have you cleaned your teeth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good girlie. Don’t forget we’re going into Baldock in the morning.’
‘No.’
‘Good night, then.’
I bent over to kiss her cheek. At the same time, there came a succession of sounds from the dining-room: a shout or loud cry in my father’s voice, some hurried words from Jack, a sort of bumping crash made by a collision with furniture, a confusion of voices. I told Amy to stay where she was, and ran back to the dining-room.
When I opened the door, Victor rushed past me, his tail swollen with erected hair. Across the room, Jack, with some assistance from Joyce, was dragging my father, who was completely limp, to a near-by armchair. At my father’s place at table there was an overturned dining-chair and some crockery and cutlery on the floor. Some drink had been spilt. Diana, who had been watching the others, turned and looked at me in fear.
‘He started staring and then he stood up and called out and then he just sort of collapsed and hit the table and Jack caught him,’ she said in a jumbled voice: no elocution now.
I went past her. ‘What’s happened?’
Jack was lowering my father into the armchair. When he had done this, he said, ‘Cerebral haemorrhage, I should imagine.’
‘Is he going to die?’
‘Yes, it’s quite possible.’
‘Soon?’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘What can you do about it?’
‘Nothing that’ll prevent him dying if he’s going to.’
I looked at Jack, and he at me. I could not tell what he was thinking. He had his finger against my father’s pulse. My body, I myself, seemed to consist of my face and the front of my torso, down as far as the base of the belly. I knelt by the armchair and heard slow, deep breathing. My father’s eyes were open, with the pupils apparently fixed in the left-hand corners. Apart from this he looked quite normal, even relaxed.
‘Father,’ I said, and thought he stirred slightly. But there was nothing to say next. I wondered what was going on in that brain, what it saw, or fancied it saw: something irrelevant, perhaps, something pleasant, sunshine and fields. Or something not pleasant, something ugly, something bewildering. I imagined a desperate, prolonged effort to understand what was happening, and a discomfort so enormous as to be worse than pain, because lacking the merciful power of pain to extinguish thought, feeling, identity, the sense of time, everything but itself. This idea terrified me, but it also pointed out to me, with irresistible clarity and firmness, what I was to say next.
I leant closer. ‘Father. This is Maurice. Are you awake? Do you know where you are? This is Maurice, Father. Tell me what’s going on where you are. Is there anything to see? Describe how you feel. What are you thinking?’
Behind me, Jack said coldly, ‘He can’t hear you.’
‘Father. Can you hear me? Nod your head if you can.’
In slow, mechanical tones, like a gramophone record played at too low a speed, my father said, ‘Maur—rice,’ then, less distinctly, a few more words that might have been ‘who’ and ‘over by the …‘ Then he died.
I stood up and turned away. Diana looked at me with the fear gone from her face and stance. Before she could say anything I went past her and over to Joyce, who was looking down at the serving table. Here a tray had been placed with five covered plates and some vegetable dishes on it.
‘I couldn’t think what to do,’ said Joyce, ‘so I told Magdalena to leave it all here. Is he dead?’
‘Yes.’
At once she started to cry. We put our arms round each other.
‘He was awfully old and it was very quick and he didn’t suffer.’
‘We don’t know what he suffered,’ I said.
‘He was such a nice old man. I can’t believe he’s just gone for ever.’
‘I’d better go and tell Amy.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘Not now.’
Amy had turned off the TV set and was sitting on her bed, but not in her previous posture.
‘Gramps has been taken ill,’ I said.
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes, but it was all over in a second and it didn’t hurt him. He can’t have known anything about it. He was very old, you know, and it might have happened any day. That’s how it is with very old people.’
‘But there was so much I meant to say to him.’
‘What about?’
‘All sorts of things.’ Amy got up and came and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry your father’s dead.’
This made me cry. I sat down on the bed for a few minutes while she held my hand and stroked the back of my neck. When I had finished crying, she sent me off, saying that I was not to worry about her, that she would be all right and would see me in the morning.
In the dining-room, the two women were sitting on the window-seat, Diana with her arm round Joyce’s shoulders. Joyce’s head was lowered and her yellow hair had fallen over her face. Jack handed me a tumbler half-full of whisky with a little water. I drank it all.
‘Amy all right?’ asked Jack. ‘Good. I’ll look in on her in a minute. Now we’ll have to get your father on to his bed. You and I can do it, or I can go and fetch someone from downstairs if you don’t feel up to it.’
‘I can do it. You and I can do it.’
> ‘Come on, then.’
Jack took my father under the arms and I by the ankles. Diana was there to open the door. By holding him close against his chest, Jack saw to it that my father’s head did not loll much. He went on talking as we moved.
‘I’ll get young Palmer up here as soon as we’ve done this, if you approve, just to put him in the picture. There’s nothing more that needs doing tonight. The district nurse will be in first thing in the morning to lay him out. I’ll be along too, with the death certificate. Someone will have to take that in to the registrar in Baldock and fix things up with the undertakers. Will you do that?’
‘Yes.’ We stood now in the bedroom. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Blanket.’
‘Bottom drawer there.’
We covered my father up and left him. The rest was soon done. All of us managed to eat a little, Jack rather more.
David Palmer appeared, listened, said and looked how sorry he was and went. I telephoned my son Nick, aged twenty-four, an assistant lecturer in French literature at a university in the Midlands. He told me he would get somebody to look after two-year-old Josephine and come down by car with his wife, Lucy, the next morning, arriving in time for a late lunch. I realized with a shock that there was nobody else to inform: my father’s brother and sister had died without issue, and I had neither. By eleven thirty, a good three-quarters of an hour before the last non-residents would ordinarily have been out of the place, word of the death had spread and everything was quiet. Finally, the Mayburys and Joyce and I stood at the doorway of the apartment.
‘Don’t come down,’ said Jack. ‘Fred’ll let us out. Have a good long sleep—Joyce one of the red bombs, Maurice three of the Belrepose things.’ Speaking neither briskly nor with emotionalism, he added, ‘Well, I’m sorry he’s gone. He was a decent old boy, with plenty of sense. I expect you’ll miss him a lot, Maurice’
The Green Man Page 3