“I love it here in Jethra,” I said. “At this time of year it’s the best place in the world.”
Seri said—Are you going to stay here for the rest of your life?
“Probably.” I saw the sun in her hair, and she was coming closer.
Seri said—“Don’t you feel the urge to travel?”
“Where to? It’s difficult while the war’s on.”
Seri said: “Let’s go to the islands. Once we’re out of Faiandland we can go anywhere we please.”
“I’d love to,” I said. “But what can I do about Gracia? I can’t just run away from her. She’s everything to me.”
“You did it once before.”
“Yes, and she tried to kill herself. That’s why I have to stay with her. I can’t risk that happening again.”
“Don’t you think you might be the cause of her unhappiness?” Seri said. “I’ve watched the way you two destroy each other. Don’t you remember what Gracia was like when you met her in Castleton? She was confident, positive, building her life. Can you still recognize her as the same woman?”
“Sometimes. But she has changed, I know.”
“And it’s because of you!” Seri said, flicking back her hair over her right ear, as she sometimes did when she became agitated. “Peter, for her sake and yours, you’ve got to get out.”
“But I’ve nowhere to go.”
“Come with me to the islands.”
“Why is it always the islands?” I said. “Couldn’t I just get out of Jethra, like I did last year?”
I became aware that someone was standing beside my table, and I looked up. The waiter was standing there.
“Would you mind keeping your voice down, sir?” he said. “You’re disturbing the other customers.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, looking around. The other people seemed unaware of me, busy in their own lives. Two pretty girls walked past the tables; a tram clattered by; on the far side of the boulevard a council employee was sweeping up horse droppings. “Would you bring the same again, please?”
I looked back to Seri. She had turned away while the waiter was there, receding from me. I reached over and found her wrist, gripping it lightly, feeling the substance of it.
“Don’t leave me,” I said.
Seri said—I can’t help it. You’re rejecting me.
“No! Please…you were really helping me then.”
Seri said—“I’m scared you will forget who I am. I’ll lose you.”
“Please tell me about the islands, Seri,” I said. I noticed the waiter was watching me, so I kept my voice quiet.
“They’re an escape from all this, your own private escape. Last year, when you went to your friend’s house, you thought you could define yourself by exploring your past. You tried to remember yourself. But identity exists in the present. Memory is behind you, and if you depend on that alone you will be only half defined. You must seek balance, and embrace your future. The Dream Archipelago is your future. Here, in Jethra, you will just stagnate with Gracia, and damage her.”
“But I don’t believe in the islands,” I said.
“Then you must discover them for yourself. The islands are as real as I am. They exist and you can visit them, just as you can speak to me. But they’re also a state of mind, an attitude to life. Everything you’ve done in your life so far has been inward-looking, selfish, hurtful to others. You must go outward and affirm your life.”
The waiter returned and put down our drinks: a glass of beer for myself and an orange juice for Seri. “Please settle your bill as soon as you have finished, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just be as quick as possible. Thank you.”
Seri had receded again, and for an instant I glimpsed another café: a dingy interior, plastic-topped tables stained with old tea, steamed-up windows, a milk cooler and a placard for Pepsi-Cola…but then a tram went by with a flash of brilliant blue sparks from its conducting antenna, and I saw the pink blossom in the trees, the crowds of Jethrans.
Seri said, returning—“You can live forever in the Archipelago.”
“The Lotterie, you mean.”
“No…the islands are timeless. Those who go there never return. They find themselves.”
“It sounds unhealthy to me,” I said. “An escape fantasy.”
“No more than anything else you have ever done. For you, the islands will be a redemption. An escape from escape, a return to outwardness. You must go deeper inside yourself to find your way out. I’ll take you there.”
I fell silent, staring down at the paving stones beneath the tables. A sparrow hopped between the customers’ feet, looking for crumbs. I wanted to stay there forever.
“I can’t leave Gracia,” I said at last. “Not yet.”
Seri said, receding—“Then I’ll go without you.”
“Do you mean that?”
Seri said—I’m not sure, Peter. I’m jealous of Gracia because as long as you’re with her you’re just using me as conscience. I’m forced to watch you destroy her, and damage yourself. In the end you would destroy me too.
She looked so young and attractive in the sun, her fair hair glowing, her skin mellow from the south, her youthful, unsupported body glimpsed through thin clothes. She sat close beside me, exciting me, and I longed for the day when I could be with her alone.
I paid my bill and caught a tram heading north. As the streets closed in and the rain began, I felt a familiar depression growing in me. Seri, sitting beside me, said nothing. I got off the bus in Kentish Town Road and walked through the mean side streets to Gracia’s flat. Her car was parked outside, crammed between a builder’s skip and a Dormobile with an Australian flag in the window.
It was getting dark, but no lights showed at the window.
Seri said—There’s something wrong, Peter. Hurry!
I left her there and went down the steps to the door. I was going to put the key in, but the door had been left ajar.
“Gracia!” I switched on the lights in the hall, hurried into the kitchen. Her shoulder bag was in the middle of the floor, its contents spilling out over the worn linoleum: cigarettes, a crumpled tissue, a mirror, a packet of Polos, a comb. I scooped them up and put the bag on the table. “Where are you, Gracia?”
The sitting room was empty and cool, but the door to the bedroom was closed. I tried the handle, and pushed, but something had been jammed against it.
“Gracia! Are you in there?” I shoved at the door with my shoulder; it moved slightly, but something heavy grated on the floor beyond. “Gracia! Let me in!”
I was trembling, and I felt the cartilage of my knees shaking uncontrollably. With a dread certainty I knew what Gracia had done. I put my weight against the door and pushed as hard as I could. The door moved an inch or two, and I was able to reach inside and switch on the light. Peering round towards the bed I saw one of Gracia’s legs dangling down towards the floor. I shoved the door a third time, and then whatever had been pushed against it toppled over with a crash. I forced my way in.
Gracia lay in blood. She was supine, half on the bed. Her skirt had ridden up as she had thrashed on the bed, revealing the unhealthy pallor of her stockingless legs. One of her boots was pulled uncomfortably over her foot, stuck halfway; the other lay on the floor. There was a metallic glint from a blade, lying on the carpet. Blood pulsed from her wrist.
Gasping with the shock I lifted her head and slapped her face. She was unconscious, and barely breathing. I groped for her heart, but I could feel nothing. I glanced helplessly around the room in terrified anguish. I was certain she was dying. Stupidly, I moved to make her comfortable, resting her head on a cushion.
Then scything through the shock, sense sliced my immobility away. I lifted her savaged arm and tied my handkerchief as tightly as I could above the wound. Again, I felt for her heart, and this time I found its beat.
I dashed back into the hall, picked up the pay phone and rang for an ambulance. Soon as possible. Three mi
nutes.
I returned to the bedroom. Gracia had rolled from the position I had left her in, and was in danger of sliding to the floor. I lowered her, trying not to bruise her, so that she was propped up by the bed. I paced the room, mentally urging the ambulance to arrive. I cleared the chest of drawers from where Gracia had moved it against the door, I propped the front door open, and stood in the street.
Three minutes. At last the distant city sound: the two repeated siren notes, approaching. A blue light flashing; neighbours at windows, someone holding back the traffic.
The ambulance driver was a woman. Two men hurried into the flat: an aluminium trolley left by the vehicle, a stretcher carried in, two bright red blankets.
Curt questions: her name, did she live here, how long before I had discovered her? My own: is she going to live, where are you taking her, please hurry. Then the departure: turning in the street with agonizing slowness, accelerating away, the blue lamp electric, the siren receding.
Inside the flat I used the phone again to call a taxi. While I was waiting I went to the bedroom to tidy up.
I pushed the chest of drawers back to its place, straightened the bed cover, stood stupidly and numbly in the centre of the room. There was blood on the carpet; splashes on the wall. I found a mop and some cloths, cleaned the worst of it away. It was awful to do.
The cab still did not arrive.
Back in the bedroom I at last confronted what I had so far avoided. On the bed where Gracia had been lying were the scattered pages of my manuscript, the typewritten sides facing upwards.
Was it to this my writing had led?
Blood spattered many of the pages. I knew what was written on them, even without reading the words. They were the passages about Seri; her name came out of the pages as if underlined by red.
Gracia must have read the manuscript, she must have understood.
The taxi arrived. I picked up Gracia’s shoulder bag, and went out to the cab. We drove through the evening rush hour to the Royal Free in Hampstead. Inside, I found my way to the Casualty Ward.
After a long wait a social worker came to see me. Gracia was still unconscious, but she would survive. If I wished I could visit her in the morning, but first there were a few questions.
“Has she ever done this before?”
“I told the ambulance crew. No. It must have been an accident.” I looked away to divert the lie. Wouldn’t they have records? Wouldn’t they have contacted her G.P.?
“And you say you live with her?”
“Yes. I’ve known her for three or four years.”
“Has she ever shown any suicidal tendency before?”
“No, of course not.”
The social worker had other cases to go to; he said the doctor had been talking about making out a Section on her, but if I would vouch for her…
“It won’t possibly happen again,” I said. “I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate.”
Felicity had told me that after Gracia’s last attempt she had been sent for a month’s compulsory psychiatric treatment, but she had been released at the end of it. That was in another hospital, another part of London. Given time, the people here would find that out, but hospital casualty wards and the social services were constantly overworked.
I gave the address to the social worker, and asked him to let Gracia have her shoulder bag when she came round. I said I would visit her in the morning. I wanted to leave; I was finding the modern building oppressively neutral and disinterested. What I perversely wanted was some kind of authoritative recrimination, a charge from this social worker that I was somehow to blame. But he was preoccupied and harassed: he wanted Gracia’s case to be a straightforward one.
I went outside, into the drizzling rain.
I needed Seri as never before I had needed her, but I no longer knew how to find her. Gracia’s act had jolted me; Seri, Jethra, the islands…these were the luxuries of idle inwardness.
Yet by the same token, I was less able than ever to cope with the complex real world. Gracia’s terrible attempt on her life, my complicity in it, the destruction Seri had warned of. I shied away from them, appalled at the thought of what I might find in myself.
I walked down Rosslyn Hill for a few minutes, then a bus came along and I caught it, getting off at Baker Street Station. I stood for a while outside the entrance to the Underground, staring across Marylebone Road at the corner where Gracia and I had once before reached an ending. On an impulse I walked through the pedestrian subway, and stood in the place. There was an employment agency on the comet, offering positions for filing clerks, legal secretaries and P.A.s; the high advertised salaries surprised me. It had been a night like this the last time: Gracia and I at an impasse, Seri waiting somewhere around. From there I had found the islands, yet now they seemed to be beyond reach.
The evocations of place: it was as if Gracia were there with me again, rejecting me, willing me to leave her and propelling me towards Seri.
I stood there in the drizzle, watching the late rush-hour traffic accelerate away from the lights, heading for Westway and the Oxford road, the countryside far beyond. Out there I had first found Seri, and I wondered if I would have to go there to find her again.
Feeling cold, I paced to and fro, waiting for Seri, waiting for the islands.
18
This much I knew for sure:
My name was Peter Sinclair, I was thirty-one years old, and I was safe. Beyond this, all was uncertain.
There were people looking after me, and they went to great lengths to reassure me about myself. I was totally dependent on them, and I was devoted to them all. There were two women and a man. One of them was an attractive, fair-haired young woman called Seri Fulten. She and I were extremely fond of each other because she was always kissing me, and, when no one else was around, she played with my genitals. The other woman was older; her name was Lareen Dobey, and although she tried to be kind to me I was a little frightened of her. The man was a doctor named Corrob. He visited me twice a day, but I never grew to know him very well. I felt rejected by him.
I had been seriously ill but now I was recovering. They told me that as soon as I was better I should be able to lead a normal life, and there was no chance of a relapse. This was very reassuring to know, because I was in pain for a lot of the time. At first my head was bandaged, my heart rate and blood pressure were constantly monitored, and a number of smaller surgical scars on other parts of my body were protected by plasters; later, one by one, these were removed and the pain began to ease.
My state of mind, described broadly, was one of intense curiosity. It was a most extraordinary feeling, a mental appetite that seemed insatiable. I was an extremely interested person. There was nothing that bored me or alarmed me or seemed irrelevant to my interests. When I awoke in the mornings, for just one example, the sheer novelty of the feeling of sheets around me was enough to hold my full attention. Sensations flooded in. The experiences of Warmth and Comfort and Weight and Fabric and Friction were enough sensations to entertain my untrained mind with all the permutations and nuances of a symphony. (Music was played to me every day, exhausting me.) Bodily functions were an astonishment! Just to breathe or to swallow was a miracle of pleasure, and when I discovered farting, and that I could imitate the noise with my mouth, it became my funniest diversion. I quickly worked out how to masturbate, but this was just a phase which ended when Seri took over. Going to the lavatory was a source of pride.
Gradually I became aware of my physical surroundings.
My universe, as I perceived it, was a bed in a room in a small chalet in a garden on an island in a sea. My awareness spread around me like a ripple of consciousness. The weather was warm and sunny, and during most days the windows by my bed were opened, and when I was allowed to sit up in a chair I was put either by the open door or on a small, pleasant verandah outside. I quickly learned the names of flowers, insects and birds, and saw how subtle were the ways in which each depended on the other. I loved the scent
of honeysuckle, which came most pleasantly at night. I could remember the names of everyone I met: friends of Seri and Lareen, other patients, orderlies, the doctors, the man who every few days mowed the grass that surrounded the little white-painted room in which I lived.
I hungered for information, for news, and I devoured every morsel that came my way.
As the physical pain receded I became aware that I lived in ignorance. Fortunately, it seemed that Seri and Lareen were there to supply me information. Either or both of them were there with me throughout the days, at first nursing me while I was most ill, later answering the primitive questions I framed, later still spending painstaking hours with me, explaining me to myself.
This was the more complex, intangible, inner universe, and it was infinitely more difficult to perceive.
My principal difficulty was that Seri and Lareen could only speak to me from outside. My sole question—“Who am I?”—was the only one they could not answer directly. Their explanations came to me from without my inner universe, confusing me utterly. (An early puzzle: they addressed me in the second person, and for some time I thought of myself as “you”.)
And because everything was spoken, so first I had to understand what they said before I could work out what they meant, it lacked conviction. My experience was wholly vicarious.
Because I had no choice I had to trust them, and in fact I depended on them for everything. But it was inevitable I would soon start thinking for myself, and as I did, as my questions were directed inwards, two things emerged which threatened to betray that trust.
They crept up on me, bringing insidious doubts. They might have been connected, they might have been quite distinct; I had no way of knowing. Because of my passive role, endlessly learning, it took me days even to identify them. By then it was too late. I had ceased to respond, and a counter-reaction had been set up in me.
The Affirmation Page 18