Mr Vogel

by Lloyd Jones

  Mr Vogel said nothing. He looked through the window ahead, at an imaginary view. They were on an island, by the sea. An old jalopy was rattling along, and he could smell that heady mix of hot engine oil and the daisy-splattered verdure around them, and the smells of farming – cowpats and silage, and he imagined the aromatic smell of wild flowers prinking the green meadows with fine shades of yellow and cyan and magenta; in his dreamscape he imagined that he lay with Luther in the timothy, the emmer and the spelt under the soporific drone of insects, with the heat of the day glowing on lizard rocks.

  Mr Vogel shook the drying dust off the teddy and toyed with him, turning him round and round in his hands. He had bought the biggest box of chocolates they had in the shop, and a hundred cigarettes. It was the price of unrequited love. He had made theoretical mental sums but still didn’t know what he would have bought Anna if his love had been reciprocated.

  For once, Paddy was useful. Spotting a rake lying on the grass, he rested it over his shoulder and slinked along the path which wound under Anna’s window. They could see him as he tapped on the glass and gesticulated towards the garden outside the ward. He returned, whistling.

  ‘Job done – she’ll be here as soon as she gets herself together,’ he said. ‘That’ll cost you a pint down the pub,’ he added. Mr Vogel said nothing: he was rattling with tension.

  Eventually, they could see Anna coming through the main door. She looked up at them, and then walked to a bench well away from the ward, in the lee of some bushes. She sat waiting. Mr Vogel could see her legs shaking. He straightened his hair and dusted some dandruff off his collar. He looked himself up and down, from his Velcro shoes to his fading Oxfam shirt. Then he stuffed the bear into the front of his jacket, so that just its head peeked out.

  He left Waldo and Paddy and walked down towards her, as quickly as possible so that no-one would spot him. After giving her the chocolates and cigarettes he sat on the other side of the bench, leaving a gap between himself and Anna, and they looked at each other for some time without saying anything.

  The ward was probably quiet right now, thought Mr Vogel. Sylvia the Hoover was probably doing a post-prandial trawl; maybe she had found a tiny piece of reddened tissue paper which had dropped off a shaving cut on the Walrus Man’s chin.

  Anna cried silently and tearlessly, and trembled spasmodically. There were new blood lines on her forearms. Vogel dug into his jacket and put the teddy on the bench between them. Rupert looked small and exposed. Some of his stuffing was straggling from his armpit.

  ‘Well, here’s that teddy bear I promised you – I’m sure you didn’t expect him to be as old as the hills, but he was a great pal to me and I’m sure he’ll be a great pal to you,’ said Mr Vogel.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. Mr Vogel loved the way she said ‘yes’. She sounded so small, so vulnerable. She looked at the bear, and the shaking around her knees got worse.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he said purposefully. ‘Rupert means a lot to me. I’ve told you about him – remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My father gave him away when he took me home from hospital. I’ve got him back now. But it’s time for us to say our goodbyes. I see him in a different way now. Sometimes it’s best to let go of the past. Make a fresh start and all that, you know what I mean. Swap your troubles with someone else. Sort of helps.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you look after him for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m letting him go, but I want him safe. I want him to go to a good home. Perhaps you can keep him in your bedroom – would that make things a bit better?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine. I’m glad about that. You’re really doing me a big favour. There’s one little thing. I want to change his name, because he’s going to be living with a new family, and I want to help him put his past behind him. I want him to be called Mr Vogel. It may sound silly, but it’s important to me. Laying ghosts to rest, and all that. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I come and see him now and again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  Anna didn’t touch people, so they looked quietly at each other for a while. They’d found a great deal in common during their talks. Another time, another place, things could have been different. The last thing she said to him was ‘Yes.’

  He never saw her again. He thought about her often; he searched for her face in crowds and on television. The bear, too, disappeared with her. It was a suitable ending.

  Mr Vogel walked away from the ward, for the last time. Even if it meant becoming a fugitive, he would never go back. He had too much to do. It was a clear evening, with little more than an hour to go before darkness. The sun stirred molten poppies into the sea. Waldo and Paddy were waiting for him and drove him, without saying anything, down the hill, to the docklands. They stopped by the Blue Angel bookshop. Paddy was in an alcoholic haze.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘I thought I saw a parrot flying into the shop.’

  ‘It’s a toy parrot, you pillock,’ said Waldo. ‘One of those stuffed toys hanging in the window.’

  They got out, and stretched their legs outside the shop. A baby robin, speckled and lost, hopped clumsily through the threadbare privet hedge alongside the bookshop, onto the pavement, and wobbled in front of Mr Vogel. It was unaware of the danger: lorries and cars were thundering past it, only inches away. Putting down his stick, Mr Vogel crept up to it slowly, bent down, and scooped it up in his hands. Slowly, he struggled through the hole in the hedge and took the chick to the far end of the garden, away from the traffic, where it would be safe. He felt a wave of relief – he’d saved a little life; he had done one important thing in his slender existence.

  Suddenly, the door of the Blue Angel shook; they could see a face in the window. It was Gwydion, rattling a big bunch of keys in the lock. He stepped out and stood in the doorway with the keys swinging in his hand. He smiled and beckoned them into the shop, and they sat down. It smelt musty in there; the books and their various stories had deteriorated in only a short time, as though the characters had detected a lack of interest in them and had started pining and wasting away.

  Gwydion opened a drawer in the desk and reached inside. He took out a thick sheaf of paper. It was a document of some sort, and it looked like a manuscript, or a report. He turned to the last page and scribbled for a while with a chewed-up pencil, then drew a line and put a last full stop with a flourish, so that the pencil made a pleasing blip on the paper.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘a good ending. We’ve finished it, Mr Vogel. It’s the end of the story.’

  Mr Vogel looked at the document in Gwydion’s hands. It looked like a big story, much bigger than he’d anticipated. He knew what it was, without asking.

  ‘Our story,’ he said. ‘Is it good?’

  ‘Best ever,’ said Gwydion with a broad grin. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  Mr Vogel looked quizzically at him.

  ‘Remember the lame ant? The ant which brought the last seed of flax so they could make a head-dress for Olwen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well we did agree that you would bring in the last seed of our story, didn’t we?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well come on then.’

  Mr Vogel took the pencil, thought for a while, and then wrote:

  March 1: The end of our mission. My story is told. We have travelled many miles across many hundreds of years: I believe I can take the last few steps unaided. We will see. Goodbye. Mr Vogel.

  When Mr Vogel had added his final sentence he sat in silence, imagining the scenes in the Blue Angel in days of yore. Gwydion thumbed through some of the books, and Paddy went up to the window with Waldo to examine the stuffed parrot; Paddy stood on a chair to poke it about and have a silly conversation with it in the who’s a pretty boy and pieces of eight tradition.

  It was at this point that Mr Vogel noticed something which
startled him: between Paddy’s legs he could see a face gazing at him through a bottom pane in the window. He gave a cry and stood up; his stick clattered along the slate floor, but he hobbled towards the doorway without it, his hand outstretched and flapping with emotion. ‘Esmie!’ he cried as soon as he’d opened the door. ‘Esmie! It’s you, isn’t it?’

  Paddy fell off the chair, ripping the parrot from its peg and sending a shower of petals into the air as he fell against a dying geranium in the window.

  By now Mr Vogel was in the street outside, on his knees, his arms around Esmie and the wheelchair. They were both crying.

  I think you can imagine for yourselves, much better than I can describe, the scenes which followed. After Esmie had wheeled herself into the shop, and order had been restored, amid much laughter and tears, Esmie revealed that she’d been unable to go without saying a last farewell to Mr Vogel. He, in turn, was so emotional that he sprained her back with his constant impromptu hugs. She was surprised, and pleased, that he’d wanted to see her so much. Time had changed him. She had remembered an austere, unemotional person who was capable of great remoteness. This Vogel was quite different: warm, expressive. His eyes had seen a great deal, she could tell – they held a rich store of experience.

  After the reunion, during a lull, before everyone became self-conscious and started detaching themselves, Gwydion jerked his head towards the interior of the shop.

  It was dark inside, and they could smell its accumulated history enveloping them. All those books, all those words... and before that, all those travellers coming and going, all those tales, the laughter and the gossip.

  Gwydion dragged a stepladder from a corner, put it in position under a hatch in the ceiling, and then opened the hatch.

  He climbed down the ladder and gesticulated upwards with his thumb.

  He held out a packet wrapped in twine, and indicated upwards, again, this time with his eyes.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to take it to its rightful place. You know where that is, don’t you?’

  Mr Vogel realised, with a hot flush of blood to his brain, what Gwydion meant.

  Of course. The finished story. It had to go into the roof-space of the Blue Angel, in the gap in the wall by a purlin. Of course. It all made perfect sense now. Gwydion was a genius. Where else would they put it? The story would be there for the future – for anyone who found it, many years from now, the story of the cripple and his quest, the great walk around Wales, all of it... and he would put it there, no-one else. Gwydion passed the parcel to him, and he jammed it into his jacket, just as he’d jammed Rupert there when he went to see Anna.

  He climbed, slowly and shakily.

  In the last few minutes of the day, after Esmie had gone, Mr Vogel and Gwydion and Waldo sat looking at the boats. Paddy was out cold.

  Gulls dropped to the ground around them, expectantly. A lone sandpiper sped across the mouth of the estuary.

  Waldo had driven down to the port, and they had sat in wonderful, glorious, happy silence together.

  ‘I’ve got a little surprise for you,’ said Gwydion after a while. ‘The idea came to me a year ago, but I didn’t do anything about it. It’s been dormant since then, but you’ve acted as a catalyst – I’m going to do something about it. Perhaps you’ll come with me!’

  Gwydion had been walking in Abercastell Bay and had seen a fantastically fat man struggling miserably into a wetsuit. He had diving gear, and a chic look-away couple, trying hard to appear cool, were waiting for him. Gwydion had felt an intense dislike consuming him. He repressed it and moved on, but his eye was caught by a sheet of paper covered with cellophane which had been pinned to a stile. A proud local had typed out some neighbourhood history for passers-by: this bay had been the landfall on August 12, 1876, of one Alfred Johnson, the first man to sail across the Atlantic single-handed; he had crossed in a boat which was a mere 15 feet six inches in length. Gwydion had started thinking about all the other adventurers who had helped to write the story of Wales. Suddenly the sea filled with galleons and flats and schooners and sloops. And there were Welsh footsteps all over the world; he thought of Edgar Evans, the Welshman who had died with Scott in Antarctica’s drifting snow, now buried in Rhossili’s drifting sands.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ said Gwydion, and they got out. Waldo also descended from the van. They walked along the harbour wall, and then they all stopped and stared in unison at a boat tethered to a stanchion.

  ‘Come and have a look,’ said Gwydion chirpily. ‘This is why I need the industrial paint stripper.’ He dropped down into the boat.

  ‘It’s an old lifeboat,’ he said – needlessly, since the orange and blue colours gave it away, despite the fact that someone had painted over the RNLI logo.

  ‘I was really intending to buy a new one,’ he said lamely, ‘but I didn’t have enough money. It’ll be fine after a coat of paint and all that.’

  ‘Well don’t expect me to come anywhere near it,’ said Paddy from behind them – he’d woken up in one of his blustery moods. ‘Not bloody likely. I’d rather sail with the owl and the pussy cat in a pea-green boat. Get real Vogel. If you’re thinking of going on a trip with Huw Puw in that frying pan you’re madder than I thought...’

  Waldo jumped down on the deck and nosed around.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘don’t shoot any albatrosses. You’re going to need all the luck you can get in this tub. What’s the plan anyway?’

  ‘Sail round Wales,’ said Gwydion. ‘Completely round. Including the canals.’

  ‘In your dreams,’ said Waldo.

  ‘I’ve dreamt about it quite a lot, actually.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Waldo. ‘Ramsay Sound will make you look like a bit of cherry blossom going down a drain. And Bardsey Sound... my God, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Let’s go before you tell me any more about it. I’m feeling seasick already.’

  They ended up in a pub. Paddy lay down on a seat in the bay window and went to sleep. Mr Vogel found himself a stool in the corner.

  ‘I like this place,’ he said. ‘Could become a habit.’

  They could hear the landlord working his way up the cellar steps, his boots clanking heavily on the old wooden stairs. They waited, in an eerie silence, for him to kick the doorframe and emerge holding his head in his hands. It didn’t happen.

  The place filled quickly and soon there was an air of bonhomie and conviviality. An artist unfurled a roll of canvasses and started selling them: Mr Vogel bought a crayon drawing of a cliff-top scene, with seabirds wheeling and diving around a headland. Paddy woke and started singing filthy ditties. Soon he was thumping the bar with his boot in time with his hoarse tunes.

  Gwydion and Mr Vogel chatted about their story. It was Gwydion who had drawn up the first chapter and they had studied it with their heads together, striking out a word here and adding another there. They had shown it to Waldo, who had read it out loud:

  Mr Vogel was the winner.

  When boisterous spring sprayed its leafy graffiti in the trees which struggled upwards past his grimy kitchen window, Mr Vogel was given a new existence.

  Like the supine earth he had been through a deep winter, distanced from the heat of the sun; like the obscure artist who lived at the end of the street he had sat for too long by his fireside in a torpor, gazing into the embers of the past as his life cooled and dimmed. Now, suddenly, the rising sap jolted him from his stupor; the jumbled fields all around him lay breathing again, like cardiac patients shocked back to life and left to recover; he sat watching them, sprawled under their bedspreads of bright green grass embroidered with warm yellow suns and fresh flowers.

  Mr Vogel kept a few truths to himself but the townspeople quickly snatched his news and carried it far and wide, to every attic and cellar, every nook and cranny; swiftly forming themselves into a sinuous street collective they ladled hot gossip from their babbling furnace and moulded nuggets of news about Mr Vogel into fabulous tales for ancient, hairy
lugholes and lullabies for tiny shell-pink ears. Cunningly they distorted the daily bulletins radiating from the bar of the Blue Angel and created a misty amalgam of half-truth, tenuous fact and five-pint fuddle. The streets hummed with speculation and Mr Vogel smiled with grim amusement when he heard the various versions of his legendary existence. Indeed, by the end he hardly knew truth from fiction himself, such were the cunning twists and embellishments added to the original plot.

  And as the shoots of fiction grew and the tendrils of conspiracy entwined, Mr Vogel paid for the celebrations and started his quest.

  After all, he had won a very large sum of money, an island croft, an elegant house, a beautiful garden and an orchard.

  ‘And a pagoda,’ said Mr Vogel. ‘I want to win a pagoda.’

  ‘Right you are,’ said Gwydion. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s how I became a cripple,’ said Mr Vogel. ‘I fell from the pagoda at Kew Gardens – that’s why it’s closed to the public now.’

  ‘Christ, that’s awful,’ said Gwydion.

  ‘Only joking,’ said Vogel.

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘I just happen to like them. Am I allowed to have a pagoda or not?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Gwydion, ‘you can have a pagoda.’

  ‘And another thing,’ said Mr Vogel, ‘you can cross out that bit in the introduction, the bit about the robin chick being run over and squashed in the tarmac, like an ivory inlay in a table.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Gwydion gleefully. ‘You saved it, didn’t you! You saved the robin chick Mr Vogel! Well done!’

  It was time to go. They paused in the doorframe and faced the glimmering nightfall. Huge storm clouds were rolling in from the sea. They watched them blacken the sky; then a thunderstorm broke suddenly in the hills around, sending bullets of rain scudding down on them. Offshore they could see a yellow rescue helicopter hovering above the water; a gang of boys sped past on bikes, shouting excitedly that a dinghy was drifting out to sea with two small boys in it. They could see a man – the father perhaps – standing forlornly on the shore, waiting for the rescue.