The Child in Time

by Ian Mcewan

  ‘I only stayed for the evening, and saw more of his wife. I think he’s well enough, taking things quietly, thinking of writing a book.’

  ‘Did he talk about his political career? Did he mention me at all?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘No doubt you think this is all quite ludicrous since he’s young enough to be my son.’

  ‘Of course I don’t.’ Once more his phone was ringing.

  The Prime Minister glanced at the clock on Stephen’s desk. ‘What I would like you to do, Mr Lewis, is to convey a simple message to Charles. I would like to talk to him, in person, not on the telephone. If he prefers to be left alone, then I shall respect his wishes after one last meeting. It is easier for him to contact me, and he knows how that’s done. Will you be seeing him soon do you think?’

  Stephen nodded.

  ‘Then I will be grateful to you.’

  Though neither of them rose, the interview was at an end. To be alone with the head of Government was an opportunity to give voice to an interior monologue which had been running for years, to confront the very person responsible, and question, for example, the instinctive siding in all matters with the strong, the exaltation of self-interest, the selling off of schools, the beggars, and so on, but these seemed secondary to what they had been discussing, little more than faded debating points to which there would no doubt be well-rehearsed responses.

  Stephen thought of Thelma. ‘I’ll be very happy to pass on your message.’

  The Prime Minister rose, releasing the scent of cologne, and smiled as they shook hands. ‘You signed the form?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I know I can trust you completely.’

  The gentleman with the half-moon specs heard the scrape of the wooden chair; the door opened just before the Prime Minister reached it. Stephen watched the receding back, then, as soon as he was alone, set about making his final preparations to leave. He raked out the fire and bolted the study window. The snow was beginning to pile on the stone ledge. He opened a drawer in his desk and took from the leaves of a blank notebook six fifty-pound notes which he kept for emergencies.

  He stepped out into the hall in time to see the man with the armful of telephones going out the front door. The others followed right behind. The last to leave was one of the security men who, with a theatrical gesture of his hand, indicated that Stephen should inspect his dining room. Everything was back in place, even the dirty teacups and old magazines. Lying on the table was a polaroid of the room just before it had been requisitioned. Stephen turned to congratulate the man on his colleagues’ thoroughness, but he too was gone.

  He turned out the lights, took his bag and used three separate keys to lock his front door. On the next floor down, Mr Cromarty’s flat was in darkness. Stephen had to pause while he searched his bag for the note he had written, and it was while he was pushing it under the door that he heard his own phone ringing upstairs. He hesitated, calculating his chances. Perhaps, just, if he rushed and was competent with the keys. But there had been enough delay. He picked up his bag again and took the stairs three at a time. He ran out towards the roar of traffic, out on to the pavement, his arm already raised for the taxi he had not yet seen.

  He had less than thirty minutes to wait for his train. He was too restless, too squeamishly intent on protecting the random movement of his own thoughts to squeeze into the moist, breathy din of the station café. In the pub next to it serious drinkers were three deep at the bar and someone was shouting. So he bought an apple, posted his letter and wandered up and down the platforms, stamping his feet against the chill of the glistening concrete. He got up close to a diesel which had just come in. In the cab the driver was snapping switches, shutting the monster down. Stephen still had an ambition to be asked up. As a boy he had never dared approach a train driver. Now it was even harder. He stood breathing clouds and eating his apple, trying not to look ridiculously hopeful, and yet unable to move away in case the driver was inspired to invite him. But the man had put a folded newspaper under his arm and was climbing down. He passed Stephen without a glance.

  Further back from the platforms, by the tall doors of the ticket hall, a crowd of beggars clustered round a kicked-in photograph machine. There were more than a hundred of them, driven in off the streets by the cold. Many were wearing Army surplus greatcoats. Still with ten minutes to spare, he wandered in their direction. They were not on the job. It was not allowed in stations, and no one risked giving when there were so many of them about. But a few optimistic types on the edge of the crowd were calling to passers-by without seeming to move their lips. The rest were silent. Only expectation could keep them placid all in one corner of the station. There was a soup kitchen on its way perhaps, or a meal ticket hand-out.

  The sweet reek of unchanged clothes and methylated spirit was strong even in this frozen air. A thirty-foot ventilator grill had become a packed dormitory. Stephen walked its length. If they could hang on another month or so for the warmer weather they had every chance of making it through to the following autumn, when the sifting would begin again. Tonight the minority without greatcoats would have trouble. He had reached the end of the row of bodies and was looking down at a familiar face. It was hard, small-boned, for a moment ageless. It belonged to a figure curled up on the iron bars, knees drawn up to make space for a large old man. The dulled eyes were open and stared past him. It was an old friend, someone from his student days, Stephen was beginning to think, or someone from a dream. He had always known that sooner or later he would run into someone he knew with a badge. Then he saw her – the girl he had given money to the year before, ten months ago. He recognised, beneath the nylon anorak, the yellow frock, now grey. The face, though unmistakable, was transformed. The mocking liveliness was gone. The skin was pockmarked and coarsened, pudgily slack around features which had edged closer together for safety. Her arms were crossed over her chest.

  He had decided to give her his coat. It was old, and he was about to step into a warm train. He removed it, set down his bag and, crouching down, shifted into her sight-line which she was too tired or indifferent to adjust. He tried to remember how he had seen Kate in this girl. He put his hand on her narrow shoulder. The man next to her had propped himself up on an elbow. For such a large body the voice was squeaky and depressingly cheery. ‘Oi, oi. Fancy that, do ya? She’s not interested.’ He laughed.

  Stephen spread his coat over the girl and touched her hand. It was as cold as the surrounding air. He touched her face and the eyes continued to stare, their indifference confirmed in absolute terms. He picked up his bag and straightened. To retrieve the coat now was impossible. He could not remember whether he had emptied the pockets. Behind him a whistle blew and a train creaked into motion. By the station clock he could see he had less than a minute and a half.

  The man was watching him and the coat. ‘Go on,’ he said shrewdly, ‘or you’ll miss it.’

  Stephen knew that if he reported the matter he would not be leaving London that night. He dithered a moment, backed off, turned and walked quickly, then broke into a run when he saw a guard on his platform walking the length of the train slamming the doors. He did not look back until his hand was resting safely on an icy door handle. Over a hundred yards away, obscured for a moment by a passing mail cart, the man was on his knees holding the coat aloft and feeling through the pockets. A shudder ran through the train. Stephen jerked the handle and climbed on, and began his customary search for the loneliest seat.

  Only four people got out at the unstaffed Suffolk station two hours later. While Stephen searched the length of the badly lit platform and then the front of the station for a phone box, his fellow passengers drew out of the car-park in three cars. The snow had stopped falling and lay four inches deep, diffusing the smoky light of a moon wrapped in wispy cloud. The station was on the edge of town, virtually in the countryside, on a road marked by what looked like single domestic light-bulbs strung high on poles. Stephen pau
sed a moment, struck by the novelty of total silence. Then he turned up the collar of his jacket and set out for the hotel in the centre. From the deserted bar he phoned for a taxi and sat drinking by an electric coal fire.

  The driver was a friendly, motherly woman who insisted on fastening his seatbelt for him. She had taken over the work from her husband, who had been banned two Christmases before. Now he ran the house and, according to his wife, loved the work. And she had discovered a new life. She talked on and drove with exaggerated caution so that it took them forty-five minutes to cover the fifteen miles. Stephen basked in blasts of hot air on his legs and face. He slumped deeper into the nylon fur of the seat cover, mesmerised by the flow of undemanding talk and the swaying furry die which hung from the rearview mirror.

  The driver agreed to take her car up the Darkes’ rutted track. It was half-past eight when she left him at the edge of the wood. Again, he paused in the silence. He watched the tail lights recede bumpily, and took in the stillness, the startling bareness of the trees. Thelma and Charles would have heard the car, and he was expecting a light through the trees, a voice calling. He waited, but there was nothing. He picked up his bag and walked towards the front gate which was no longer concealed. The snow in front of it was undisturbed, nor were there footprints along the path that ran between the parallel lines of high, naked shrubs – the dark green tunnel in summer.

  The cottage was in darkness but for a yellowish glow at a downstairs window. He knocked quietly and, hearing nothing, pushed the door open. Thelma was sitting facing him at the dining table in the light of two candles. Her face registered no shift in expression.

  ‘I’m sorry I took so long.’ The room was cold. He sat down beside her. ‘What’s wrong? Where’s Charles?’

  There was a wet sound, loud in the country silence, as Thelma sucked her lower lip. A minute passed, long enough for Stephen to regret giving his coat away. He was beginning to shiver, he needed something to happen, if only to keep him warm. He covered her hand with his own. It was as if he had touched a switch. She turned her head from side to side, quite wildly, then stopped and began to cry. The child in him was disturbed by an older woman in tears. She did not want comfort from him. She had pulled her hand free to cover her face, and she shrugged when he touched her shoulder.

  He pulled a blanket off an armchair and put it round her. In the living room he found a heater and brought it in. While Thelma continued to sob he set about lighting the stove whose ashes were still hot. He looked out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses and fetched a jug of water from the kitchen. The room was warm by the time she had quietened down. She kept her hands over her face, however. Then she stood abruptly and, murmuring Sorry, hurried upstairs. He heard her in the bathroom. He poured a drink and sat down by the stove to prepare himself for the bad news.

  She reappeared twenty minutes later with a thick cardigan over her arm and carrying a torch. She put these items down on the table and came and sat by Stephen’s chair, taking his hand and pressing it between her own. She looked calm enough now, but weary, used up.

  ‘I’m very glad you’re here,’ she said.

  He waited.

  To say what she had to say, she rose and stood by the table, and half turned away from him. She pinched the woollen folds of the cardigan between her finger and thumb. She spoke in a rapid monotone, trying to outdistance the words. ‘Charles is dead. He’s dead. He’s out there in the woods. I’ve got to bring him in. I can’t have him out there all night. I want you to help me carry him.’

  Stephen had stood up. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘By his tree.’

  ‘Did he fall?’

  She shook her head. The tightness of the movement suggested that if she was to remain in control of herself she could not speak.

  ‘I’ll need a coat,’ Stephen said, ‘and some boots.’

  For the next few minutes they were silent and practical. She showed him into the scullery where an old donkey jacket and a sweater hung on a nail. There was also a pair of gumboots heavy with dried mud. He found a length of rope on the floor and, with no clear plan for its use, stuffed it in his pocket. Before they left the house he built up the stove.

  The moon had risen clear of the clouds and the torch was only necessary where the track curved into shadow. Stephen held back his questions. The only sound was the squeak of trodden snow and the rustle of their clothes.

  Then Thelma said, ‘He went out this morning and didn’t come back at lunchtime which was unusual. Eventually I went looking for him and found him just as it was getting dark. I don’t remember coming home. I think I must have run. Then I phoned you.’

  They walked on, and when it had become clear that Thelma was not going to volunteer more, Stephen asked cautiously, ‘How did he die?’

  Her tone was uncertain. ‘I think he just sat down.’

  By a frozen brook they passed the slab of rock under whose covering of snow, deep in the fissures, were the ingredients of a miniature tropical forest. Even by moonlight it was possible to see fat and sticky buds, and unassuming ground plants raising tiny spears through the snow. One season was piercing another. In the smoothed-out spaces between trees, profusion waited its turn. The track turned towards the centre of the wood. They descended into the hollow towards the rotten oak, an unchanged feature from the summer before. They turned right on to the path that joined the track at this point. Thelma had slowed her pace by the time they reached the clearing. On the far side mature trees, indistinguishable in shadow, rose up like a vast mansion. She had pocketed the torch and was warming her gloveless hands on her breath, and then crossing her arms into the folds of her coat. Stephen could think of nothing to say that was not another question. In the pocket of his jacket he had found a marble which he rolled between his fingers, guessing absurdly at its colour. It was comforting to remember that this was not a wilderness; the nearby town threw up brownish light all over one part of the sky; on the road a mile away two cars went by; the land they crossed was heavily tended, fenced and coppiced. Only the temperature was as it would have been if no one had ever existed.

  The high wall of trees that leaned over the clearing seemed aware of what it contained and why they had come. As they crossed into its shadow, Thelma gave Stephen the torch. She was hanging back. By the time he had drawn level with the first of the beeches, she was standing still, several yards behind him. She raised a hand to indicate that he would have to go in alone.

  Like many of his generation, Stephen had had little experience of death. As he walked towards his second corpse of the day, he imagined a smell, tasted it in his throat, of damp parlours, black cloth, the trapped gas between organs seeping through the pores of larded skin. It was an impression with no basis in memory or fact, but it was hard to dispel. He breathed the odour out into the clean air. To persuade himself that he had simply come to do a job, carry a heavy weight for a friend, he took the rope from his pocket and attempted to coil it efficiently as he went along.

  He arrived at the small clearing sooner than he wanted. The yellowing beam of the torch cut across something blue. He stood still and let the light travel back. His breath left him in clouds. There was a shirt, a midriff, the waistband of corduroy trousers which were, mercifully, long ones. He was not ready to point the torch upwards to the face, so he picked out the legs, and then the bare feet whose toes were erect and splayed. To one side was a pile of clothes, a sweater on top of a coat and, spilling off the pile, shoes and socks.

  His dependency on a narrow cone of light made him uneasy. He switched the torch off and circled the clearing, keeping his back to the trees and his gaze on the vague form on the other side. Its stillness scared him, but so too did the idea that it might move. Charles was sitting with his back to the tree in which he had built his platform. A foot above his head was the smudged silhouette of the first nail. When he was less than three feet away Stephen switched on the torch. A two-inch layer of unmelted snow sat on Charles’s shoulders and in the folds of
his shirt along the arms. It had drifted deep on his lap and sat wedge-shaped on his head. It was on the line of his nose and across his upper lip. The effect was comic, nastily so. Stephen swiped at the snow with a cupped hand, dusted the head and shoulders clear and used his forefinger on the nose and lip.

  It was the brief contact with this last, the lip, which made him draw back. It was too pliable, it slid across the gum, and he thought he had felt warmth. He stood in front of his friend, six feet away, and shone the torch in his face. The eyes were closed. That was a relief. The head was resting against the tree and the expression, if there was anything at all, was one of tiredness. Charles’s legs were stretched out in front of him, and his arms hung straight down, the palms resting flat on the snow, the back of the hands obscured by it. The top three buttons of the shirt were undone.

  Stephen poked the pile of clothes with the torch. If there was a note, Thelma had found it. He stood about, delaying the moment when he would have to pick the body up. He took the rope out again but he could conceive of no use for it. At last he knelt down by his friend’s feet, put his hands round the waist and pulled forwards. As he straightened he tipped Charles up, gripping his thighs to drape the body over his shoulder.

  When he was standing erect, and turning clumsily to find the path, he heard from behind him, where Charles’s head nudged the small of his back, a long sigh of disappointment, whispered through the letter ‘o’. Stephen yelped and skipped sideways across the clearing as he dropped Charles in the snow. Now he had to drag the body back, prop it against the tree and repeat the most difficult part, which was to put his face up close to his friend’s. When he straightened with the weight the second time there was no sound.

  If he changed direction too suddenly he staggered. Otherwise it was a manageable load because it was evenly spread. He was in decent shape from his tennis. He set off down the path, realising as he left behind the relative brightness of the clearing that the torch was trapped in his pocket. But the moon was almost directly overhead, the shadows had shrunk. Initially, it was not the weight of the body that oppressed him so much as the chill it communicated through its bulk to the bones of his shoulder and down his back. It drew the heat from him greedily, as if they might soon change places and the corpse, warmed to life, would carry Stephen’s cold body to the cottage.