The Society of Others

by William Nicholson

  “He’ll go far,” I say.

  I don’t tell her how the baby hates me. That’s between him and me. Also to tell the truth I’m quite shaken by it. So I drink my Bellini up and leave the room, to go to have a piss and to regroup.

  I don’t go directly back to the party. I decide to take a short break. So I go to my room and lie down on my bed and look out of the window at the pigeons. These pigeons are forever flying down onto the ledge outside my window and then flying up onto the roof next door and then back to my ledge. What’s going on? There’s nothing to eat in either place. You’d think they’d stay put and conserve some energy.

  Then this one pigeon looks at me through the window. I look at the pigeon and it looks back and I get this creepy feeling that it knows me. I don’t go anywhere and the pigeon doesn’t go anywhere and we look at each other and I feel that premonition again about being wanted, only this time it’s the pigeon. The pigeon is calling me. The pigeon wants me to do something.

  “What do you want me to do, bird?”

  I say it out loud. Why not? There’s only me and the pigeon to hear.

  The pigeon gets up and flies away. That annoys me. I can see it, sitting on the roof ridge of the house next door, ignoring me. Well, I don’t care.

  Then it comes back. Only this time instead of flying down onto the window ledge it flies bang into the glass.

  Thob! The sound is not as loud as I had been expecting.

  How stupid can you get?

  I can’t help feeling it had intended to come into my room and tell me what it wanted me to do. Only now it’s lying stunned in the gutter outside my window. Probably it’s dead. I can see it lying there.

  Life is hard and then you die.

  So I open the window. The air is bitter cold outside. I reach down for the pigeon and take it in my hands. The puffy feathers are unexpectedly soft. I cradle the bird in my hands, and feel a tiny heartbeat. Then it begins to twitch, little involuntary movements, as if it has been dead but life is returning.

  “Are you alive after all, bird?”

  Suddenly it starts to thrash its wings. Then it bursts out of my hands and up into the white sky. My empty hands feel cold.

  I follow the bird’s flight. It zigzags drunkenly over the neighbour’s roof, swoops down almost to the gravel of the drive, and then climbs up, up, up, and flies away towards the railway line.

  So it hasn’t died. And it hasn’t told me what it wants me to do. It has got away.

  I go back to the party. Gemma’s in the kitchen swabbing Joey down with my mother and Sheila and Cat in attendance. My father’s talking with dear old Emil and I know from the way Emil looks at me as I come in that he’s working this like a Yiddish matchmaker. So he shuffles off to sit with my grandfather and my father heads for me like a heat-seeking missile. Emil will have primed him with six words to say to me. It’s a set-up. But it’s not going to work because my father’s said it all before and I’m not saying my six words.

  “Emil’s been telling me I’m a possessive father,” he says.

  What did I tell you?

  “How’s that, dad? You’re not exactly round much, and when you are, you’re always telling me to get out.”

  “That’s what I thought. But Emil says I’m clinging on to you without realising it.”

  “What does he know?”

  “He can be very perceptive sometimes. Anyway, I have to let you go.”

  “It’s okay. I’m going.”

  He looks surprised. I feel annoyed. I’d meant to make a bigger moment of this, but here it is trickling out as if it’s Emil’s idea.

  “You’re going?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I thought I’d go to Nepal with Mac.”

  His face clears. This is the sort of thing people like me are supposed to do when their father gives them a thousand pounds to have an adventure. So all at once he feels I’m normal after all.

  “Good idea. Sounds great.”

  It’s not that great. It’s also not true, but he doesn’t need to know that. I’m going alright, but not to Nepal, and not with Mac. I made the decision all of five minutes ago, when I saw that pigeon fly off. I decided that was the pigeon’s message to me, and it had made this really big effort to deliver the message, so I should do something about it.

  The message was: get away.

  My big news is round the family in no time, and everyone starts to beam. This is quite offensive in its way. Evidently they all thought I was sick or something and now it turns out I’m alright. Old Emil nods his head. He thinks he managed the whole business.

  Sheila says, “What’s this about Nepal?”

  “Somewhere different,” I say.

  “Will you go overland? Do see Ephesus if you’re crossing Turkey.”

  “Okay.”

  “Send me a postcard.”

  “Sure.”

  What is this thing about sending postcards? Back in the days before cheap travel I suppose it was quite a thrill to get a postcard with a picture of Vesuvius or something. Nowadays everyone’s been there or seen it on TV and anyway the sender of the postcard came home weeks ago and showed you his ten thousand holiday photographs already.

  My grandfather says, “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken—”

  Why does he think I want to hear his quotations? I haven’t bought a ticket.

  “Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific, and all his men—”

  Cat comes over and says, “You’re not going to Nepal.”

  “Looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.”

  This seems to be it. My grandfather totters off.

  “That’s just bullshit,” says my sister.

  “How would you know?”

  “Mac would have told me.”

  “I only decided today.”

  “And anyway, Mac’s already gone.”

  “I’m meeting up with him in London.”

  Cat stares at me suspiciously. She doesn’t believe a word of it.

  “Oh? So when do you go?”

  “In the morning.”

  This is my second surprise. It’s even bigger than the first. My family go into meltdown. All this time they’ve wanted me out of my room and now that I’m going they act like I’m about to die. Their idea of going somewhere is talking about it for weeks and making lists and going shopping for stuff and counting down to the day of departure. I hate all that. Even waiting till the morning makes me itchy. Either do it or don’t do it.

  My mother’s having a spasm about inoculations. Apparently I’m going to die in India. What about all those Indians? They don’t all die. Also I’m not that agitated about dying, to tell you the truth. I’d rather die now than live on into the dwindling away of dreams.

  Only dear old Emil thinks my plan is okay because he thinks he made it all happen. He even gives me this dear old wink that says he knows my secret. I pretend not to see the wink. He doesn’t know my secret. Only the pigeon knows.

  So I’m going to get away.

  I’m not showing it, but I’m actually almost excited. I had thought when my father gave me that money that I could escape the job problem by going somewhere, but I kept on failing to decide where. Every scheme collapsed under the weight of my lack of enthusiasm. Macchu Pichu, Goa, Bali, Kathmandu: how do you choose? Anyway I have a problem with choice. I’m better at having to put up with situations I haven’t chosen. Once you choose, it’s like if you don’t like it, it’s your own fault. Even catching a programme on TV is better for me if I’m for example in someone else’s house and the TV’s on and the other people are watching and I’m looking over their shoulders. Once I turn on my own TV in my own room to watch something I thought I wanted to watch, it’s always a disappointment.

  The breakthrough was this: I don’t have to have a destination. I can get away without going anywhere. The pigeon didn’t go anywher
e. Just away.

  You’re thinking, how can you go away and not go somewhere? The answer is, you go, but you don’t know where. That way when you do get somewhere, it’s not your fault. If you don’t like it, that’s no big surprise, because why should you like it?

  This strikes me as the cleanest, purest, lightest, leanest plan in all existence. No destination. No baggage. No expectation. No arrival. Journey without will. Roll like a pebble, fall like a leaf, sail like a cloud.

  Don’t ask me your questions. Don’t suck me with your sad eyes. Don’t burden me with your hopes. Look aside and talk among yourselves. Before you know it I’ll be gone.

  THREE

  I’m sitting in the service station by the motorway servicing myself with a coffee and a Danish pastry, watching this young mother with two screaming kids and wanting to kill her. There’s a boy of maybe six and a girl of maybe four and the mother’s got chocolate bars in her bag that they want while she has a cup of tea. They scream for the chocolate bars and she screams back and they cry and she smacks them and they cry louder and she gives them chocolate. They gobble it up and scream for more, and it all happens again. I simply can’t believe it. I’m watching small human creatures being systematically wrecked for life. She might as well just shoot them both now. But she’s got this limitless supply of fun-size chocolate bars and they know it. They won’t stop screaming until they’ve had them all, by which time they’ll be so sick and smacked and weepy and snotty they’ll wish they were dead.

  Everyone in the place wishes they were dead already. There’s a couple of women keep sneaking looks and wagging their heads, and a fat man in a ski jacket eating an all-day breakfast who glares at them, but nobody actually does anything. I’m ready to go and I’ve paid and everything and I’m actually heading on out when the screaming and smacking starts up again, and my feet turn about and carry me over to the table with the kids.

  I squat down so I’m not towering over them and say, “Hi.”

  They’re so surprised they stop screaming and stare at me with their big wet eyes. They have chocolate all over their faces as if they’ve been trying to push the chocolate bars through their pores.

  “When I was your age,” I tell them, “when my mother gave me a chocolate bar, I would first lick off the chocolate on the outside. That takes time. You have to go slow. Then I’d bite the inside part, in big chomping bites. That part goes fast. I loved to do that. Slow and licky, then fast and chompy.”

  They’re staring at me like I’m a visitor from a distant galaxy.

  “You should try it.”

  “You leave them alone.” Their mother thinks I’m molesting them.

  “Madam,” I tell her. “You’re all they have in the world. You’re their sun and their moon. They live for you and they’ll die for you. Use your power gently.”

  Then I stand up and leave.

  I don’t hear any more screaming as I go, but I’m not looking back. To tell you the truth I feel quite confused. I’m not at all sure why I did that. I just couldn’t take it any more. Those scared chocolatey faces. Children aren’t the problem. All they want is for someone to tell them they’re doing okay. I’ve not forgotten that.

  Outside it’s raining. I pull up the hood of my coat and head past rubbish bins and petrol pumps to the slip road. There’s another guy standing here hitching already. He’s got no head covering and looks like he’s drowning. I go past him with a nod and a grunt and take up a position about twenty metres beyond. That way he gets first shot at any lift. This is correct hitching etiquette since he was here first. However he looks insane with his long hair plastered to his head and I don’t give him much chance.

  So we stand in the rain, the other hitch-hiker and me, and cars come out of the service station and spray us with their tyres and speed off onto the motorway. The drivers don’t look at us. They’ve seen us, you can tell that from the way they don’t look at us. That really focused not-looking is a kind of looking. They’re thinking, I don’t have the time to pull up, and I’m not going where they want to go, and they’re probably mad people anyway, let out of their padded cells to be cared for by the community that doesn’t care. I don’t mind. It’s all true. Time is running out and there are mad people roaming the streets. Be afraid.

  I am travelling light. I have a small canvas kit bag over one shoulder which contains a second pair of jeans, a second T-shirt, a second pair of socks, a navy-blue fisherman’s jersey, and a wash-bag. No maps, no guide books, no mobile phone. Before leaving home I took my phone and called Am to tell her I was going, and when we were done, without ending the call, I dropped the phone down the lavatory and flushed it. It went down fine. These days phones are about the size of a turd. So I suppose it’s working its way through the sewers to the sea, still listening out for Am’s last words.

  A big truck comes juddering by and I’m looking at its side which says Hilton & Son, the Complete Home Removal Service, and imagining them taking away the house along with the furniture, when I realise it’s stopping. The other hitch-hiker comes running past me, because he’s first in line, but the truck driver’s waving him away and pointing at me.

  “But I was here first,” protests the hitch-hiker.

  “My cab,” says the driver, “my rules.”

  He beckons me.

  “Jump up.”

  I give a shrug of apology as I go by the other hiker. He turns away, bitter at the rejection.

  “Fucking bum-bandit,” he says.

  This is seriously not the right approach to hitching. You have to stay sunny. Let yourself get bitter and the bad vibrations stream out of you in psychic waves and nobody stops for you. However now is not the time to pass on my insight.

  The driver has reached across and opened the door for me. It seems a long way up. As I climb into the cab I say, “Thanks,” and he’s the fat guy in the ski jacket from the service station.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asks, putting the truck into gear again.

  I’ve planned this moment carefully.

  “I have options,” I say. “Where are you headed?”

  He says the name of some place, but at the same time the engine is roaring as he picks up speed on the slip road, and I don’t catch it. As it happens this is not a problem.

  “That’s fine,” I say. “Drop me off there.”

  He throws me a quick look of surprise.

  “Long journey,” he says.

  “Let me pay something towards the diesel.” You have to make the offer. They always say no, it’s on the company bill, but it makes them feel you’re not a total loser. “I don’t want payment in money.”

  Ah. Maybe he is a fucking bum-bandit after all. I check him out as discreetly as possible. Not a big guy, but wide. Even so I calculate I can handle him.

  “I like to talk,” he says.

  I start to un-tense.

  “About what?”

  “Philosophy.”

  Jesus in a jockstrap. I’d almost rather be buggered. Several hours listening to a lonely truck driver searching for the meaning of life is going to give me a serious crick in the neck.

  “I don’t know anything about philosophy.”

  “Then isn’t this your lucky day.”

  I look round the cab, which is not so much a cab as a home. The part we’re in is like the living room, with the windscreen playing the part of the TV. On a box between the front seats there’s a small fridge and an electric kettle and a mug that’s had tea in it. Behind our seats there’s a bunk bed with blue check curtains that draw right across. There are even portraits on the walls, which are actually postcards of people who turn out to be great philosophers: René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Immanuel Kant. Fun names, fun people. There are books on the floor by my feet. The Last Days of Socrates. The Social Contract. The World as Will and Idea.

  “These three-day jobs,” he says. “You need someone to talk

  to.”

  Three days. That means deep into Europe. I try to reme
mber how long it took to drive to Venice that time. We stopped at Neuschwanstein to see the mad castle, which added a day. Truck drivers don’t stop to do the sights. I could always ask again where we’re going, but the idea of not knowing excites me. I decide there and then not to look out for road signs, not to anticipate any part of the route. When at last we get there I’ll say very casually, “So where are we now?” and he’ll stare at me and say, “You mean you didn’t know?” Maybe I won’t ask even then. Maybe I’ll say, “Don’t tell me. I prefer not to know.”

  “My name’s Marker,” he says. “Arnie Marker.”

  “Right,” I say, not giving my name back.

  This Marker turns out to be an unusual man. Not that he looks it. I’ve said he’s fat, but more accurately he’s stocky. His head is stocky too, like a cube, with florid skin and not much hair at all. You’d say he was a pig farmer until you catch the look in his eyes. They’re little piggy eyes, but the look in them is something else. Most people don’t look at you, they look at their own reflection in your expression. They’re wanting to know, does he like me? Is he a threat? How can I use him? They’re not looking to see you at all. But Marker’s eyes are interested. He’s curious, and when he finds things out, he thinks about them. This makes him an unusual man.

  We go along the road in the travelling home that is Marker’s cab, watching the movie on the screen before us that is the Kent countryside in the rain, though somehow all I register is the place-names on the road signs: Charing, Challock, Chilham. We are going to none of these places so it doesn’t matter that I read the names. They are some of the infinite number of destinations that will not be mine. Even Ashford, which I read before I can stop myself, is not our destination. We will pass through Ashford and our windscreen wipers will wipe it away and our journey will barely have begun.

  Marker is self-educated. More precisely, he is in the process of self-education. He is doing a correspondence course in Western Philosophy, sent to him in monthly packages by the Cambridge College of Advanced Learning. I don’t tell him that this college is probably a single mother in a basement flat with a photocopier. He seems happy with the course.