by Graham Swift
‘I live alone.’ Fewer and fewer people now knew, or remembered, why he said this. One of them was Janice, the receptionist, the veteran uncomplaining Janice, right now guarding his office.
Why had Janice, who was not dead, sprung suddenly into his mind?
Because, he realised, she’d almost certainly be the first person, not counting Grant himself (who was still wittering on), he’d have to confront after having received this news.
And then . . . and then he’d have to confront Mrs Roberts, whom he’d never met. Mrs Roberts: 5.15. Mrs Roberts who was on the brink of that troublesome process, or precipice, known as divorce.
Why was he thinking of his office—in Grant’s ‘office’? ‘Eliot and Holloway’. He pictured it for a moment like some distant light seen in a dark forest. Why was he thinking of Mrs Roberts whom he’d never met? But he knew now. He knew now why he’d kept his 5.15 appointment, despite Janice’s puzzled and concerned gaze. ‘Why don’t you get me to move it?’ she’d almost said. He’d read her thought: Why, if your appointment’s at four, don’t you just take the afternoon off? A fair question. But he’d insisted. ‘I’ll keep my 5.15.’
‘I live alone.’ Would he say it to Mrs Roberts? And in the same cryptically smiling way as ever?
I live alone. Did that fact, too, save him, come to his rescue now?
Grant was gabbling on, so it seemed, like a man put on the spot. And he was listening to him, hearing him out, like some silent patient judge. It came to him that what Grant was saying might be a fabrication, a ruse. He knew it wasn’t. Little Howard Clarke had proved it. Nonetheless, the idea was somehow to be seized. There also came to him, in this meeting of two professional men bound by rules of confidentiality, the phrase he sometimes used, with a certain solemnity, in his own profession: ‘Nothing need go beyond this room.’
He saw the cubicle of a room he was in like some locked vault in a bank. It was a very important room—it was the room in which he’d learnt the most important fact of his life—but nothing need go beyond it.
Except himself. He saw that it was vital that in a moment he should get up and leave and in passing through the door, crossing the waiting room, signing out at the desk, then exiting through the glass doors be absolutely no different (though he absolutely was) from the man who’d walked in.
And he was no different. How could he be different, even to himself? He was the same creature, with the same legs beneath him, the same mobile, thinking, breathing vessel that contained all he was.
He did get up. It wasn’t difficult. He didn’t totter. It was 4.25. He may have shaken Grant’s hand. He may have shaken Grant’s hand in a way he’d never shaken anyone’s hand before. He may have looked him in the eye and nodded obligingly in response to some further reassurance on his part about ‘what should happen next’.
But what should happen next was that he should put one foot in front of the other. That was the most important thing. One foot in front of the other. He walked, feeling the extraordinary exactness of his steps, to the desk in the waiting room. The nurse smiled at him. She couldn’t possibly know. It was an ordinary smile. But the fact that she’d smiled so simply must mean that his own face looked ordinary. So—Janice was not, quite, the first and he’d proved that the thing could be done.
There was a name tag over the nurse’s left breast: ‘Gina’. He noted this fact and the smooth skin of her throat.
When the glass doors slid open and he emerged into the cold and darkening air of a November afternoon it was a sort of shock, but also a kind of cancelling continuity, to know the world was still there.
He began at once to walk, buttoning his coat: across the forecourt, through the main entrance, turning left onto the pavement. One foot in front of the other. He knew this was the walk of his life. He knew he could have picked up one of the taxis that dropped incoming patients by the glass doors, or just got the bus. He’d got the bus on the way and now he knew why. The company of other, living people. But now he knew he must walk.
Across the city, beyond the cathedral, to his office. There was time. He knew he must walk, to prove he was healthy and alive and able to place one foot in front of the other. And to give himself time, while his legs worked beneath him, to cement and seal up inside him the great secret he’d just learnt. If the secret could be successfully hidden from all but himself (and Grant) then it would be as though the secret—even perhaps to himself—might not be real.
Win-chester Cathedral . . .
He walked. It would take half an hour, perhaps a little more. He wouldn’t disappoint Mrs Roberts.
Dry leaves scurried along the pavement like small alarmed animals. The lights of passing traffic glared. He couldn’t drive any more, of course, because of his mysterious blackouts, and he’d supposed it was a temporary prohibition. Now he knew it wasn’t. So he should sell the car perhaps. But what did it matter now to sell it or not? Six months? Eighteen months? Scores of practical considerations and decisions, as if he were being a good solicitor to himself, suddenly rose before him, then scattered meaninglessly away like the leaves at his feet.
He’d sold the Marinella quickly enough. That hadn’t been a protracted decision. It had come with the force of a gale behind it, if not like the gale—but it had been more than a gale, it was a mad murderous whirlwind brewed up by a gale—that had smashed through the sea around them that afternoon, ten miles off the Needles, and picked up the Marinella like a toy boat and tossed it over. And tossed them out of it.
Hours later, close to freezing and like a drowned rat, he was winched up on the end of a wire, clutching a man in a helmet who’d said, ‘Hold me, hold me,’ like a lover.
This was something also that he’d never seen himself doing, or having done to him, in his life.
But Anne was never winched up. The last he’d seen of Anne alive, as a huge wave lifted her then took her sweeping away, was her face and outstretched arm—as he’d seen it in Grant’s office, as he’d seen it countless times. Hold me, hold me. But she’d been too far away for holding, even reaching. Then she was gone.
He’d sold the boat, after the salvage team had brought it in and the damage was repaired and paid for. He’d never stepped in it again, would never sail again. He’d been a sailor once, to his surprise, a lawyer and weekend sailor, a solicitor and occasional marine adventurer, but he’d never be those things again, except the solicitor, and he’d never know again the joy of being married to Anne and of riding with her, in the boat of their marriage, the high, astonishing seas.
‘I live alone.’ Some who heard him say it understood. After all, the thing had been in the papers.
And now he’d never even drive a car again. Though, in any case, now he must walk. Now he must feel beneath him his own motor efficiently propelling him forward.
And so he did. He crossed the city, here and there taking short cuts he knew through back streets, away from traffic, so that he could even hear the rasp of his breath and steady scuff of his footsteps. Even now, there was the feeling like a patent disproof: look, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Win-chester Cathedral . . .
He seemed to be walking back into all the previous bodies—which were only this same body—that had once been his. His younger stronger imperishable bodies. So that at one point the legs beneath him even seemed to be—he could feel them there again—the little stick-like but superbly alive legs he’d had when he’d once hurled a cricket ball and had, soon afterwards, resolved that Howard Clarke, who had similar stick-like, immortal legs and who’d so spontaneously applauded his spectacular throw, should become—perhaps when they all returned after the summer—his friend.
And as he walked he couldn’t help noticing, within this body, this fifty-nine-year-old motor that was himself, the central pulsing component that kept now thumping out its rhythm as never before. He could feel it, hear it. Surely others must hear it. How was it possible that he’d carried this same beating thing inside him all this time, since he w
as a boy with stick legs? How was it possible that it had kept up its persistent and so often unappreciated beat all this time, as if it would never stop?
He reached his office. It was now completely dark and the lit-up windows and railed frontage—a fine Georgian centre-terrace converted, like others in the row, into offices—struck him, as it sometimes did but now more than ever, like a stage set, like a doll’s house. ‘Eliot and Holloway’. He seemed to see, through the windows, the swallow-tailed and crinolined folk who’d once inhabited it.
Janice knew, of course. Janice knew what ‘I live alone’ meant. Janice had been there when . . . Janice had watched and known ever since. And Janice had been there some nine months ago when he’d had that first extraordinary, and extraordinarily embarrassing, blackout in his office. She was there beside him—he’d never seen her knees so closely—with a glass of water, looking down at him on the office carpet as he came to. She’d called an ambulance. Janice was there, and he’d recognised her face, among the others (Alan Holloway looking a bit white) pressing round and looking down, before he’d even recognised who he was himself.
That’s Janice. What on earth is she doing? And then he’d seen rapidly disappearing from Janice’s face, but not so rapidly that he couldn’t notice it, her horrified conviction that he was dead.
Janice looked up at him now as he walked in. He knew that how he looked back at her and how he spoke to her was of the utmost importance. Even so, he wondered if she could see—surely Janice must see—through his gaze and his words.
‘Nothing new, Janice, don’t even ask.’
Did he sound sufficiently disgruntled?
‘Same as last time. More tests. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if they know what they’re doing.’
When Janice kept looking he said, ‘I walked. I walked all the way back. Did me more good than going there.’
He eyed his watch. Ten past five. He took off his coat. Alan had closed shop for the day, so it seemed. Good. Well, Alan would be ruling the roost before long. He peered into the open door of his own office as if into a room that some other person had left.
‘So, Janice, we have . . . er . . . Mrs Roberts.’
As if Mrs Roberts hadn’t become his unexpected lifeline.
Even as he spoke a figure in a black coat and red scarf entered where he’d just entered, a woman of forty or so, not unattractive, but etched by an anxiety she was clearly trying to hide.
Was it so difficult then, to wear a disguise?
‘Mrs Roberts?’ he said and, when she said yes, held out a hand and smiled. ‘David Eliot.’ How strange his own name sounded. ‘And this is our receptionist, Janice. You’ve caught me on the hop. I’ve just returned from an appointment of my own.’ She only blinked at this. ‘So then—’
And now he extended an ushering arm, in exactly the same way, he realised, as Grant had done at his consulting-room door, just as all professional people habitually do.
He’d quickly made his assessment: Well, she’s not one of the hard-bitten ones, out to grab all she can. She’s one of the ones (he seemed to see this more clearly than he’d ever done) who thought this sort of thing could never happen to her, not to her—that her marriage, her life was all soundly, safely in its place. She’s putting up a good front of businesslike poise, but really she’s lost, she’s all at sea. She’s looking out over a gulf which was never meant for her and which she has no idea how to cross.
They sat down. He made some lawyer’s small talk. He looked at her, at the notes he had. Then he leant back patiently and attentively in his chair.
‘Now, in your own words, in your own time, tell me all about it.’
ARTICLES OF WAR
HE HAD THE wretchedest of coach journeys, a grey relentless drizzle shrouding everything, clogging the roads when they should have been at their firmest and denying him any farewell visions of apple-hung orchards or golden stooks. Harvest time and every field sodden. And all the while the familiar desolation claiming him, like some awful return to school.
They changed horses late in Totnes, and night had fallen when they arrived. It had been falling all day. So, he would have to wait now till dawn. It was always some small relief when you first saw the ships. He saw a distant twinkle of lanterns, through the gloom, out on the Sound.
So, he must wait. And then no doubt—he must wait. It was his experience that you sped upon their lordships’ bidding only to languish indefinitely pending further orders. His chest was taken into the Bell. He had intended making some better arrangement for his shore quarters only to fall back on the known devil. It was convenient. It was convenient to say, ‘I am at the Bell.’ He had no money for grandeur.
He was shown to his chamber. He knew it—or one like it. He had been confined here before, as had God knows how many others like him. It was strange that it felt so immediately incarcerating when it was bigger by far than any pitching cabin.
He took off his hat and cloak and at once felt chilly. He inspected the supply of candles. There was a meagre fire that appeared to have been unwillingly lit. It was only just September after all. September, 1805. In August, three weeks ago, he had passed his twenty-fifth birthday. So—he would not have to note it solely to himself at sea. Was it noteworthy?
He removed his gloves. He resisted an attack of the ancient urge to chew his fingertips. He pissed into the chamber pot. It was too early to sup, and if he supped—then what? He would sit by this skulking fire with this cheerless companion who was himself. He would commence the melancholy business of writing letters—letters as if written on the eve of sailing, though the eve of sailing might be three weeks hence.
If he made himself visible and if he were lucky (or unlucky) some other soul in blue and gold might hail him and invite him to dine. This might allay or aggravate his dejection. ‘Wives and sweethearts—may they never meet.’ But he had neither. He was the Navy’s wholly. So (he always told himself ) he was spared the much-sung pangs. He had only these other pangs that came from some deep and solitary place within him.
Or, not to mince the matter: he had his mother and his two older sisters, Emily and Jane. His two older brothers, Arthur and George, moved in spheres beyond him and were both of an age, it sometimes seemed, to have been his father. And then there was his father . . .
He was, in short—and he would only dwell on it in these dire intervals before embarkation—the youngest: the late and unexpected addition, the afterthought (though no thought could have gone into it), a plaything for his sisters, a thing of no account to his brothers and a conundrum to his parents.
Yet to the womenfolk at least he would write his fond, unmanning, still shore-bound letters—disguising his real misery—as if he were still the weeping schoolboy who had forgotten to pack his handkerchief. My Dearest Emily . . . My Dearest Jane . . .
How little they knew how their pet rag-doll could rasp out an order. He had sea legs (if he were allowed to find them) and sea lungs to go with them. And of what should he write to them now, long as it was since he had last beheld them? Of a perilous expedition by coach from Bridgwater?
One day his father had summoned him to the library and had spoken to him as if from an immense and patient height. It was so that he would be told the modest nature of his allowance, but it was also so that he would be given words of general advice. He had trembled before this seldom-seen figure as he would one day tremble before admirals. He would remember—as he remembered now—how his father’s face briefly softened as if in recognition of his discomfort.
His father had said, ‘My dear Richard, you are a member of the Longridge family. You are neither a king nor a commoner. You will understand all you need to know for your conduct in this world if you understand these words: know your place.’ His father’s features had hardened again and his eyes had seemed to probe him, as though behind the words, clear and implacable enough, were some other message.
The library clock had chimed, painfully, the morning hour. So distant had he felt from his f
ather at this point that his father might as well have been a king and he himself the lowest of commoners. Or his father’s bastard child. It had dawned on him afterwards—gradually but with a nagging lucidity—that, though the matter was apparently being charitably concealed, this might indeed be the truth of it. It was not in his interest to question anything. It was in his interest to conspire in the deception and be grateful—to write milksop letters to his mother and sisters.
He was perhaps, though it was not in his interest ever to verify it, what his schoolfellows had called a ‘fitz’.
He prodded the disobliging fire with the poker. He recalled his mother’s once constant refrain to the maid, like some further, if unwitting, piece of parental advice: ‘A feeble fire, Betty, is worse than an empty grate.’
He saw again his schoolfellows, remembered their plaintive names. Ashmole, Palgrave, Wilkes . . .
Since he had not, even with the advantages of education, overcome by his own ingenuity the problem of his essential superfluity, it came down to the Army, the Navy or the Church. He preferred blue to red, and preferred either to the black-and-white absurdity of being a parson in a pulpit.
He hadn’t thought much, strangely, about a thing called the sea. He was acquainted with it now. And he hadn’t known that service in the King’s Navy, even when he was commissioned and sea-seasoned (even more so then) would involve these vile periods of limbo and of dismal self-exposure—a creature neither of land nor sea, caught between a dubious homesickness and three or four days, depending on the course and the weather, of actual vomiting.