Now they were nearing a great, grey-skinned poplar with massive, upward-pointing branches and sprays of higgledy-piggledy twigs. Around and beyond the base of it were the white, prone sections of a tree that had been felled and left barkless; dotted in among them, people. Sue and Philip saw the splotch of a blue coat, and a red one; other duller figures stood here and there.
‘Must be it,’ said Sue.
Philip checked the time again and they approached. ‘There’s the boat,’ he said: behind the trunk of the still-living tree and the group of eight or ten people they could see part of the roof of a long barge, with a wind turbine lifted high on a pole, its rotors turning idly. One of the people had weather-beaten features, dreadlocks, stiff combat trousers, heavy boots, a little dog, springy, melancholy. Another had a round, fresh, open face, big cheeks, blonde wisps: she was the one in the bright red coat. There was an elderly couple, he patrician, brusque; she shorter, intense and still. But now someone was walking towards them. Oh it was, oh god – a patient. In jean dungarees, with a loose brown cord jacket over, out of her rugged, pink face, with a hunk of yellow hair pulled back, she began to speak:
‘Dr Newell.’
‘Hel . . .’
‘I’m Janet – Janet Stone’ – she said, seeing the struggle in his face and helping him.
‘Hi,’ he said. Bits of recollection began blocking themselves into place: ADHD. His suspicion of Dr Hibbert. His raising the matter at the practice meeting and his being pooh-poohed by George Emory. God that had been embarrassing. And Sara Kaiser had sat there quietly, lifting her wide eyes for a moment to look at him with an I-told-you-so expession, nodding her head while Dr Emory patronisingly explained ‘we can’t go back over every imperfect piece of procedure. There’s no point. The question is, how is the patient doing now? And under your care,’ he intoned in his dried-plum voice, ‘I am sure the little boy will do splendidly. General Practice’ – and here Dr George Emory had actually wagged his finger – ‘is an imperfect art. Often it’s pretty seat-of-the-pants stuff. I sometimes think’ – he had added, after a moment’s pause and a little smile – ‘that so long as we don’t actually kill someone we are doing pretty well.’ So that had put him, young Dr Newell, in his place, with his fresh face and his suspiciousness and his frankly adolescent naivety.
Janet Stone was speaking again: ‘I wanted to thank you. Because . . . well, have a look!’ She pointed over to the side of them, past the usual tangle of bramble and hawthorn, to where part of the felled trunk lay. A little boy stepped daintily along the top of it. His arms stretched out wobblingly like a marionette’s; and then he had jumped over a ragged, up-sticking obstructive bole and landed again, his legs narrow as a robin’s. Then he had jumped again and was on the ground, and was somersaulting, and was on his feet again, kerching! fists clenched, a speedy, tough, martial arts hero. Then he was running, running, in an arc, in a circle, and again in a narrower circle, and a narrower, and a narrower: he was spiralling; he was water going down the plughole; he had flopped and was lying flat on his back, his limbs stretched out.
‘Look at him. He’s so happy again now. Spontaneous. He’s himself again. It’s down to you, doctor,’ she said, actually reaching out and grabbing Philip’s upper arm so that he felt a muffled pressure through his jacket. Looking up into his eyes, she said again: ‘Thank you.’
‘Oh well it wasn’t . . .’ He was embarrassed, baffled. Surely all he had done was refer them? He asked: ‘How’s school?’
‘Yeh. OK,’ she said, letting go of him, turning, finding Albert with her eyes again. ‘Sometimes he does get in trouble. But they haven’t complained or nothing.’
‘And the . . . behavioural therapy. Is that being helpful?’
‘We’re not doing any of that, doctor. But don’t worry. We’re fine. I’ve got him on a simple diet. No stress. Regular bedtime. We didn’t like the medicine and we don’t want any therapy. We just want him to be able to be himself. And he is. And that’s . . . ace. And next to that, if he messes the odd thing up, it don’t matter. He’s just being him.’
‘What’s he doing now?’ Sue put in. Albert was stalking on stiff legs, his torso bent forwards, his head pointing to the ground.
‘Birds,’ said Janet Stone. He’s being a wader. Oh’ – he had switched pose and gone galumphing off, legs bent, his fists at his armpits, his elbows flapping awkwardly – ‘it must be that magpie’s set him off, do you hear it?’
They both, Sue and Philip, became aware of a faint industrial clatter in the air, a pile-driving clank-clank.
‘How wonderful,’ Sue said, ‘that he’s so responsive. I’ve never seen anything like . . .’
‘Yes,’ Janet Stone said decisively. ‘It is.’
People were moving towards the boat.
Sue asked: ‘Are you coming to this too?’
‘I’ll stay out here with Albert,’ Janet said: ‘Heard it all before.’
‘It’s really good to see him so happy,’ said Philip, pleased. He signalled farewell with his smile and the two of them, he and Sue, joined the queue to be handed on to the deck. A man stood with one foot on the bank, one on the gunwale. He had a shaved head, the pepper-specks of follicles darkening the brownish gleam. He wore a rough, orange, woollen smock-like top, and baggy yellow trousers.
‘Welcome,’ he said, as he took Sue’s hand in one of his and placed his other hand under her elbow, supporting her across. He was lithe, practised.
‘Welcome,’ he said again to Philip, his arms hovering near him in case of a slip. Sue found her way down narrow steps into the bowels of the boat; inclining his head, Philip followed. The interior was bigger than they had expected. It was wider than a canal-boat, in fact twice as wide. Portholes on either side let in good light. It was possible to stand up straight. The floor was polished, narrow planks. Slim shallow beams spanned the ceiling. An assortment of wooden chairs were lined up in rows, pointing forwards, as though for a lecture. The occasional stool. A bench. In front of them, a couple of rugs, and cushions. Room for maybe twenty people. At the end was a white projection screen, with a small wooden table to one side. The two of them took their places on chairs somewhere in the middle. I can’t believe – Philip was thinking – I can’t believe they’re not engaged in a programme of behavioural therapy. There was a scraping of chairlegs as the patrician couple found seats in the row behind.
‘This is a very practical setup,’ said the woman in a jovial tone.
Because even if things seem OK for the moment they’re not necessarily going to stay that way and they need to have resources. What can the clinic . . . ? Tremors went through the floor as the guy with dreadlocks thudded past, his dog skittering and snuffling behind him, all the way to the front where he went down awkwardly on one knee and then reclined on a cushion, his legs stretched out, his dog rotating and then flopping down, pushing its head into his tummy. But then maybe they didn’t go to the hospital. They didn’t go to the hospital! That must be it. They didn’t bloody go this time either just as in fact they maybe hadn’t gone for Adam Hibbert! Yes, which would make what Adam did maybe a bit more understandable. The woman in the puffy red coat slipped in nimbly across the aisle from him and looked around smilingly. She put a hand up to her face and pushed a wisp of hair behind her ear. There was tightness in his throat and at the top of his chest as a spurt of anxiety went through him. But it wasn’t his, absolutely wasn’t his fault. The calm clipped voice of his trainer from a couple of years before came into his head. ‘Patients are responsible adults. We advise but we can’t compel. It can be very frustrating. When they are dead-set on doing something that is bad for them and you can’t get them to change their mind. When you agree a course of treatment with them, or think you have; and then you never see them again. That’s the most frustrating of all. Because you just don’t know what’s happened to them. Until maybe they turn up in A&E.’
But now the lithe man with his shaved, tanned head and bright, Buddhist clothes was edging round t
hem, pulling shutters across the portholes. Calm, said Philip to himself. Leave them be. There is only so much you can do. One by one the circles of light went out. He became aware of Sue again beside him and turned his head to look as shadow spread around them. Her head was moving slightly as her eyes flicked here and there.
The lithe man was at the front now.
‘Thank you,’ he was saying, in a soft, probing voice. ‘Thank you so much for coming. It’s good of you to be here’ – his eyes were looking round the room, trying to fix each one of them in turn – ‘and good I hope will flow from it.’
He was half sitting, propped against the edge of the table.
‘My name is Ash. I want to start with a moment of reflection. If you would gather your attention here into this space. You may find it helps to fold your hands in your lap. To breathe deeply. Slowly.’
Again the searching eyes were touching each one of them in turn. ‘Become aware of your body. Here. With all its sensitivity. Make your mind present here too.’
Philip’s hand reached for Sue’s, found it; and then he did indeed become aware of his fingers squeezing hers, the flexores digitorum contracting, skin slipping over skin, the resilient flesh compressing as phalanges interlocked. He was wanting to say: Christ Sue what have you brought us to? Nudging her shoulder against his arm, she seemed to receive and accept the message.
‘Because your mind too is sensitive on many levels’ – Ash was pressing on. ‘Sensory, rational, sympathetic, imaginative, spiritual. I would like all that energy to be focused here in this place. We need it. The earth needs it of us.’
Philip was a thoughtful and humane modern doctor. He did not believe medicine and technology could cure all human ills. He believed in treating the whole person. But this sort of New Age bollocks really was too much. Still. Try to look upon it as amusing. The prickles of his irritation softened and a feeling of forbearance spread. Sue must be interested in it from an Art point of view. It was warm here and the chair was OK and they had been walking for a while. And anyway it was a local thing and they’d been complaining that in The Willows there was no feeling of community. But that was partly because wherever he looked he saw a patient, or a potential one. Can’t really relax with the footie down the pub when you’ve recently been intimate with the fat man’s piles or the loud girl’s genital warts. As actually here too with Ms Stone and Albert. What were they doing here? At least they had stayed outside.
‘I’m sure you all know these pictures,’ Ash was saying. ‘Our beautiful earth.’
It was the familiar image, the great stretches of blue sea, the continents arthritically swollen and twisted, the swirls and striations and speckles of cloud.
‘The glaciers that are receding. 1978’ – a valley filled with choppy grey ice. To Sue it seemed like actual stormy water swirling down, as though someone had clicked their fingers and some rapids had flash-frozen. Cryogenically stilled, the arc of the water’s energy held there ready to leap again when the switch was pressed the other way. But actually really it couldn’t be like that. Actually really this must be the look of slow and grinding movement. Millennial pressure.
‘And here it is last year.’
Definitely shorter, thought Philip.
‘A warmer sea makes bigger storms. New Orleans. Here’s the hurricane.’
Its ammonite swirl.
‘And here’s the damage.’
Tranquil water dotted with the tidy roofs of houses. The roofs like rafts. Or like the tops – Sue thought – of palatial dwellings for future civilised beavers.
‘You’ve seen these images,’ Ash continued matter-of-factly in his soft voice. ‘And I am sure you have responded. You have turned down your thermostats. You have replaced lightbulbs. You have installed loft insulation where appropriate. You use the car a bit less often and you make sure the tyres are fully inflated when you do. You switch off appliances at the wall instead of leaving them on standby. You put less water in the kettle. You’d be amazed’ – there was a chuckle in his voice – ‘how many people haven’t, all over the place, not only middle America. A couple of weeks ago I was down south, Maidstone, where apparently it is still the 1970s. They barely have recycling. They all drive everywhere. The town is mainly multi-storey car parks. In that kind of place you have to start from basics. You have to say: no it’s not a hoax. If we do nothing, this’ – the map came up – ‘is what the UK will look like in 2080. A bigger version of the Outer Hebrides. Can you see Maidstone?’ The voice was harsher now. ‘No you can’t. It’s underwater.
‘But that was there,’ he carried on, his posture relaxing, the voice settling back down to its tranquil norm. ‘Here I know I am with friends. So I would like to share with you . . .’
He paused; smiled; his gaze rested on Philip for a moment and then, as soon as Philip was feeling uneasily as though something were expected of him, slid to rest on Sue’s pale face which smiled brightly in reply.
‘. . . to share with you some concern about the quality, the depth of our response. Each of us has made these little tactical adjustments. Now we watch the news, waiting for governments to make their little tactical adjustments. What is it to be? Wind farms? Tidal arrays? Nuclear? James Lovelock’s tubes in the sea to bring up nutrients and make algae bloom, thereby absorbing carbon dioxide? Let’s paint’ – now the voice was sing-song – ‘our roofs white. Let’s pray for the development of carbon capture. Nuclear fusion. Artifical photosynthesis. Let’s float enormous reflective umbrellas in the sky. Make artificial clouds. It’s all quite fun. But what I wonder’ – the voice had dropped now, gone back to its flat meandering original tone – ‘is whether we are really hearing, really properly understanding, the cry of the earth.’ His head bowed. Quiet. Water lapping at the edges of the boat. A see-saw and chuckle of birdsong, great tit and robin. But it was as though Ash were listening for something beyond what their ears could hear.
‘Look at this place.’
Philip shifted, crossed his legs: it was, what was it, in the Gulf, Dubai, that artificial island.
‘Palm Jumeirah. Look at it. A logo in the sea. For people to live on. Here are the houses.’
A close-up. Lego blocks crammed together. A road, a line of houses, an artifical strip of sand. One tree per mansion.
‘Here are the sort of people who have bought these houses and enjoy living in them.’
A stocky, white man, curly straw-blond hair, blue polo shirt, white shorts, hairy upper legs. Eye-sockets in shadow but his chubby cheeks shine. Beside him a tanned, slim, oval-faced, younger woman, long straight black hair, a slinky sort of dress. Cat – Philip thought – and cream.
‘Here is one of the 100,000 Indian and Pakistani and Bangladeshi slaves who worked 12–hour shifts in the desert sun or through the night to construct their luxury residence.’
Blue overalls. Red helmet. Trim Charlton Heston moustache. ‘Many died.’ One eye open, its chestnut iris gazing out, a gleam. The other eye narrowed, seems to be looking askance. A human being – Sue thought – saying: here I am, a human being. She slid her hand out of Philip’s grasp and folded it in her own other hand upon her knee. Behind the Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi slave were skyscrapers and lights, the night, a candlelit terrace, a western couple, his hand on her hip. Adverts. Such glassy smiles.
‘I can find no image of the slave-servants who do the cooking and cleaning. It appears that there is twenty-four-hour maid service with no actual human maids.’
A white illuminated rectangle. The whirr of the projector which – oh of course it must be behind the screen.
‘It is easy to scorn them. It is easy to say: that’s very bad but it is over there. A long way away. Geographically but also spiritually. It is easy to say: those are the corrupt, and those are the exploited, and it is very bad, but here things are better, here we are lucky, and can manage to live in reasonable equity. And that is doubtless true.’
He bowed his head. All still.
‘And yet when I look
at this man and woman.’
The cat and the cream again.
‘And ask how they can fail to see this man.’
The eyes.
‘I ask myself what I fail to see. When I look at these obviously misconceived places to live.’
The Lego blocks.
‘Large lumps of concrete designed to separate people from one another. Designed to isolate them from the natural world. Air-conditioned. Built on artificial mounds which even now are sinking. In a place where there is no natural fresh water to drink. With the result that every drop of drinking water has to be artificially desalinated. With the result that residents of Dubai have the largest carbon footprint in the world, much larger even than Americans. To enable people to live in these enormous bunkers surrounded on the one side by concrete roads which reject life, which are like endless gravestones stifling the earth. Surrounded on the other by artificially constrained sea which even now is thickening with algae and filling with shit.’
Again that acid in the voice.
‘When I look at these isolation units I wonder about me. I wonder how isolated I, too, am, even in this fragile boat which gets cold when it is chilly and hot when it is hot, which bobs up and down in the currents and wanders here and there, which is visited by birds and home to insects and snails and waterweed and lichen, and which is open to anyone like you . . .’
A pause, the voice subsiding to a slow pulse, the eyes moving from listener to listener in time with it.
‘. . . people . . . here . . . who come . . . in the name . . . of our suffering earth. Because even I, even here, find it hard sometimes not to think of myself as just myself. An individual. Walled off from the world by this . . .’
. . . he slapped the back of one hand with the fingers of the other and the sound of it ricocheted around . . .
The World Was All Before Them Page 8