by David Nobbs
And Naomi drives on, furiously, determinedly, towards the M1.
The motorway isn’t very busy at this time of the evening, and as she drives north, the traffic becomes slowly more sparse. Now it’s mainly her and the juggernauts. Eddie Stobart. Norbert Dentressangle. Prestons of Potto. Kings of the road. Knights of the night. And Naomi among them. Faster, faster, faster, ninety, one hundred, a hundred and ten, overtaking them all, irresistible, unharmable, queen of all she surveys, fulfilling her destiny at last.
They all have missions – delivery of fridges, of parts for caravans, of a barely imaginable amount of chutney. But Naomi has the most important mission of them all.
PART SIX
A Glorious Summer’s Day 1999
A man in hiking boots stops on the edge of the moor, takes off his knapsack, examines the sheep-cropped grass, selects a patch that looks innocent of sheep shit, and drops down onto his back. He stares up into the sky, which is entirely blue except for the vapour trail from one aeroplane. He can hear the drone of another aeroplane, a light aircraft. It’s making that even, soft, slightly distant reverberation that planes make when the pressure is high and the weather settled. The noise reassures him, makes him feel calm.
The man puts his binoculars to his eyes, and peers up into the sky for several minutes. Then he lowers the binoculars, and rubs his eyes with his right hand. Then he just lies there for…oh, maybe a quarter of an hour. Then he looks up through the binoculars again, but this time he doesn’t hold them so steadily; they are moving, following something. Then he lies on the ground again, perfectly still, he might even be asleep. After some ten minutes or so he stands up, slips the straps of his knapsack over his head, hitches the knapsack higher onto his shoulders, and looks down over the fertile valley below the moor, over the stone walls, the stone barns, the stone houses of this stony land, shimmering in the summer sun. Then he sets off up the hill.
On the face of it these forty or so minutes have not been very exhilarating. They have certainly not been what a film director would describe as ‘action packed’. Yet in times to come Timothy will describe them as perhaps the most important forty minutes of his life and, even more surprisingly, as among the most exciting.
It’s a skylark that he’s watching through the binoculars, a skylark larking in the sky in the English countryside on a perfect summer morning. It’s gloriously unaware that it’s a cliché. Even through his strong binoculars he can hardly see this tiny bundle of feathers and bones, alone in the vast emptiness of the heavens, its little beak parted to emit sounds of astonishing power, amazing beauty, inspiring joy. There are people who say that it’s merely marking out its territory, telling other skylarks that this is its patch. Presumably the same people would say that a Mozart sonata really means, ‘This house in which I am composing this great music is mine, not yours, so there!’
Timothy feels overwhelmed by the emptiness of the sky. He knows, with absolute certainty, that there is no old man up there, with flowing white hair and a huge white beard, looking down on him out of wise, all-seeing eyes. He hasn’t believed in that image for a long time. But now he realises that he believes in no image, no conscious or even unconscious force looking over him and looking after him in his struggles. The doubts that have been assailing him in recent years suddenly cease to be doubts and become certainties.
The bird sings on and on, remaining in the same spot, high above the grass, on swiftly fluttering wings. The bird seems tireless, but Timothy’s eyes are growing tired and he lowers the binoculars. The hum of the light aircraft recedes, a motorbike startles him with its ugly savagery, and the bird sings on. He listens to its seemingly inexhaustible repertoire, its rolling, its whistling, its chirruping – why, it even throws in a passing imitation of the relatively feeble singing of the swallow, it does impressions, this bird. Why should it do impressions but for the joy of life and the love of existence?
Timothy thinks of Naomi, the lost songbird in his life, and a wave of regret shivers right through him. He can almost hear Naomi’s voice, telling him that this bird sees no ultimate purpose in life, seeks no meaning, no pattern, is content to enjoy life’s pleasures, the delights of the moment, the perfection of a fine summer’s day, and to breed, so that another generation of skylarks can enjoy this fleeting pleasure in their turn, and, in their turn, pass it on. It knows nothing of eternity, of rewards for morality, its morality is the morality of the species, which puts the next generation ahead of its own.
A taxidermist is very conscious of death. No taxidermist is likely to believe that the morality of the natural world could go any way towards solving the problems of existence. It’s a harsh world, full of inter-species carnage on a huge scale. Even skylarks kill insects and worms But he believes that this tiny bird is not frightened to die, indeed it may have no concept of death. None of this constitutes in itself an argument for there not being a God, but it does convince Timothy that if inability to believe in eternity, and in life after death, and in an overall purpose and design to our existence is a failing, then the whole of the natural world has that failing. To suggest that life without an overall purpose is futile is to condemn every mammal, every bird, every reptile, every insect – and, Prince Charles might add, every flower, every leaf, every branch, every twig – to a life of futility.
He knows now that he has long wanted to admit to himself that he is not a believer, but that he has refused to admit it, because he has believed that life without belief will be more difficult, and that the inability to believe is due to some lack in himself. Now suddenly it occurs to him that it is the inability not to believe (there are still a lot of double negatives in his life) that hints at a lack of faith – faith in himself, faith in the human race.
He feels such a desire for Naomi that it almost burns him. He decides, there and then, that while it is unlikely that he will ever be able to see her again, let alone live with her and marry her, he really does want to leave Hannah. He is still fond of her, but she is slowly, perhaps unintentionally, stifling him. He must find the courage to do so. Why does he find courage so difficult? Look at that little bird, still singing its heart out. He peers again through the binoculars, can’t find the bird for quite a while, locates it at last, watches it entranced, even blows it a little kiss, he loves it so much. Can he not find something of that bird’s spirit?
He is very moved that this tiny bird can have achieved what the huge shock of Sam’s death could not achieve. But he realises now that Sam’s death may well have delayed this moment, this epiphany of disbelief, this miracle on the road from Damascus. He could not allow himself to believe that his loss and grief were without purpose. They had to have a meaning. Now he cannot think of any meaning that has a shred of dignity or value. Now he faces what he has tried to avoid. Sam has gone for ever, and for no purpose. It was an accident.
And then, as he watches, the bird begins to descend, still singing, wings still fluttering frantically, down and down it goes, he has a real job to keep track of it in the binoculars, and then, just before it reaches the ground it falls silent, it folds its wings, the job is done, the performance is over, it drops gently to earth, making a soft and perfect landing.
He recalls the prayer that he made in Seville, the doubts that he expressed then. He prayed to God to let him meet Naomi again. It didn’t happen, until he went to see her himself. He asked for help in overcoming his grief. Well, to a great extent he has overcome it. But, as he lies there, above the hazy valley, he believes that God gave him no help, that he overcame it, to the extent that he has overcome it, by his own courage, his own powers of rational thought, his own need to relate to other people, by the sheer persistence of time’s beating wings, and because of the brutal fact that there was no alternative. Because to have taken his own life would have brought undeserved sorrow to several people. Appallingly difficult though it would have been, it would have been too easy.
He doesn’t know how the bird feels, but he is exhausted from just watching i
t. He lies back, and suddenly sees his house, number ninety-six, which has been so much updated now at Hannah’s instigation and to her design. The avocado bathroom suite has sailed away in a skip, the birds and animals so proudly made by Roly in his heyday have been banished to the top floor, the cellar and the outhouses. The house has been modernised, lightened, feminised, sanitised. It has been done gradually, and he has found nothing to argue against at any stage. But, now that the job is completed, he sees that the atmosphere of the strange old house has been lost, its history has been destroyed, his father’s life has been erased. It is now a house that tries to hide the fact that it is a place where a taxidermist conducts his business.
Taxidermy. The skylark has revealed another important fact to Timothy, a fact that really excites him on this perfect summer’s day. He wants to work with live birds and animals, not dead ones.
This thought brings a brief surge of exhilaration, a joy such as he has rarely felt. But soon the guilt floods in. The thought seems to him to be a betrayal of his father. The thought contains an implicit acceptance of the world’s view of taxidermy as not quite a wholesome occupation for a man. The old joke. A dying art. Recently, he knows, he has become bored with all the work he is having to do to drum up business, all the little gifts he sends to influential men in zoos, to tempt them to point dead lions and cheetahs in his direction. And slowly, year by year, fewer dead animals are coming his way. Other taxidermists, men with more push, are getting the best.
Only the other day, when, as bad luck would have it, Hannah was in the house on her own, she had to take delivery, with great reluctance, of a dead wombat. She’d been ashamed to look the driver of the van in the eye.
‘Why did you want a wombat?’ she had asked him drily when he got home.
‘They offered it. I’ve never done a wombat before. It’s a new challenge.’
‘Has anyone ordered a wombat?’
‘No.’
‘Does anyone around here want a wombat?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘We need a new carpet for the dining room, you say we can’t afford it, but you’ve bought a dead wombat.’
‘It’s business. That’s different.’
‘Is it going to be snapped up? Are wombats trendy? Are the young of today going to be known as the Wombat Generation? Is it the Chinese Year of the Wombat? Do half the children at the grammar school come from two-wombat homes?’
‘Of course not.’
‘It isn’t very good business if nobody wants it.’
They had eaten their stir-fry in near silence that evening.
‘Anything on the telly?’ Hannah had asked.
‘Shouldn’t think so.’
‘Fancy a game of Scrabble?’
‘Sorry, no. I think I’d better unpack my wombat.’
He’d known better than to make sexual advances that night.
And then there were the phone calls late at night, not many but always at the wrong moment. The last one had come when Hannah was on the point of orgasm. She hadn’t wanted him to answer it but at one a.m. it might have been an emergency. It had been drunks who’d looked up Yellow Pages and got confused. A slurred voice had said, ‘We’re outside the Lamb and Flag.’
He’d felt very angry, had been very naughty, had said, ‘We’re very busy tonight. We’ll be there in three-quarters of an hour.’
And Hannah had rebuked him. ‘That was cruel.’
He couldn’t win with her.
A dying art. So unfair. It’s a living art, giving life beyond death. Except that it isn’t life. But look at Roly’s best work and tell me its eyes don’t follow you round the room. Oh, hell, that brings me back to the curlew. Oh, Naomi, Naomi, if only I could uncurlew my life and start again. Oh, Mr Finch, please stop being up and coming, it’s about time you upped and came. Up and come into Hannah and enable me to leave her with a clear conscience. For I am off, off to pastures new, off to a completely different life. I have only been a taxidermist because my father was. I do not share his love for it. I do not share his talent for it. In my hands it is a dying art. That’s why I get the wombats, and not the lions. It’s a blow to my pride. Who ever heard of a pride of wombats? It’s time to leave. I am now happy to take responsibility for my life, and no longer burden God with it. Oh, thank you, brave skylark.
The Timothy who stands up, on that perfect summer morning, is not the Timothy who laid himself down on the grass, barely forty minutes ago.
William Walls is a good man, but he has sailed through life on a following wind. There have been few white horses on the sea of his personal experience. There has always been a sense that he is in the family, but not of it. The fact that he went sailing every August and was therefore not part of all the family holidays that are so important to young children, had an effect on his relationship with the family throughout the other eleven months. He has been a slightly distant figure. He has faced other people’s crises, of course. There’s been no escaping them. Generations of schoolchildren remember his kindness to them at moments of personal difficulty. But he has never needed to face his own crises. He always had Penny to face them for him. Now Penny has gone, and a crisis is coming.
It’s a lovely summer morning in East Anglia, just as it is on the moors outside Coningsfield. William’s house is small and damp. It’s built of uncompromising red brick. Like William with his family, it is in the countryside, but not of it. If there were fifty other similar houses around it, it would not look so odd, but on its own it almost shouts its angularity, its ugliness, its lack of grace. But to William it is paradise, because out of the guest bedroom, which doubles as his study, he can see the estuary, he can see the sailing boats and dream. Every wall is covered by the paintings of sailing boats that once adorned L’Ancresse.
William’s friends at the school felt that he was making a big mistake in retiring to a house more than two hundred miles away from them. They didn’t know, and would have been very hurt if they had known, that the distance was one of the great factors in his decision. ‘Everyone’s been so kind,’ he had explained to Naomi once. ‘So kind. It’s killing me. They invite me to bridge suppers and pair me up with spinsters who are either spinsters because they have hairy legs or have hairy legs because they are spinsters, I can never quite decide which. Mrs Wynne-Ellison brings me what she calls “my legendary blancmange”. “It slips down so easily, William. Even an old cynic like you will have no trouble swallowing it.” Graham Coldcall rings me up to ask for help with The Times crossword, because Tilly Coldcall has told him to. I can hear him listening to my tone of voice to see if I’m depressed. Wally Hampsthwaite invites me to rugby matches, and won’t take “no” for an answer. I sit there, in the freezing drizzle, with a force seven north-westerly blowing straight into my phizog, watching thirty-two excessively muscular legs straining against each other in the mud. Eighty minutes? More like eternity. Ghastly. Terence Pullman calls for me “on the off chance”, takes me to the worst pub in Coningsfield and, over two pints of flat beer, which I can hardly force down, proves to me that he and I have nothing whatsoever in common. I haven’t even got onto Dot Partridge. Oh, my goodness me, Naomi, Dot Partridge. Overflowing with concern. Unstoppable. Insists on doing my laundry. When she brings it back, she lays out sets of matching clothes to see me through the week.’
He had lowered his voice, and coloured slightly. Naomi knew that, for the first time in living memory, he was about to touch on the subject of sex.
‘She’s asking for it, Naomi. Begging for it. I’d rather go to bed with an anchor chain. It’d be softer.’
‘You’re cruel, Dad,’ Naomi had said, and he had smiled wryly.
‘I know,’ he had said. ‘I know. But you see, I have to be so nice to them all the time. Everyone says how nice I am. Everyone says what a gentleman I am. So I have to be. I am imprisoned by my reputation. They say this is a harsh world, Naomi, but I am slowly being strangled by kindness.’
This morning, William reaches
the only kind of climax that is available to him now – a literary climax. He writes the last sentence of his description of the Battle of Salamis. It has been a bit of a purple passage. Maybe he will have to go back and tone it down. Maybe he will have to shorten it. He has reached page 543, and there are still several centuries to go in his History of Ancient Greece.
He goes to the window, and opens it. The air that drifts into the room is sweet and salty, warmed by the sun, cooled by the estuary. It’s finer than any cocktail man has yet devised. William drinks it in. Enjoy it, William, then make your cheese sandwich – Wensleydale, your favourite – and enjoy that too, because, shortly after you have finished your sandwich, Colin will ring.
In some respects, William and Colin are similar. ‘We’d better ask your mother,’ the catchphrase in Colin’s life, could have applied to William too. And they are both writers now. But William doesn’t like Colin’s writing. His tolerance of Get Stuffed is minimal. A ‘friend’ in inverted commas once asked him what he thought of it, and was delighted when he said, ‘I lost interest during the second word of the title.’ William cannot forgive Colin for putting Naomi into it, and then giving her nothing to do. He has never watched her, he couldn’t bear it, but he has been told that she has nothing to get her teeth into.
There is a skylark in William’s world too, but he barely notices it. Birds aren’t boats. He goes downstairs and begins to make his cheese sandwich, at exactly the moment when Timothy is opening his knapsack to get out – you’ve guessed it – a cheese sandwich.
It would be hard to say which of the two cheese sandwiches is the more ungainly.
William finishes his cheese sandwich, makes himself a cup of tea, goes out into his minuscule and somewhat neglected garden, sits on the unscrubbed rustic bench at the edge of the scruffy lawn, sips, and thinks about the next chapter of his book.