As the idea settled in his head, so the room settled down to stillness, and the darkness seeped back into the coffee table, disappearing from view, as if it could no longer smell John’s fear of not being able to connect with this world. His blood seemed to rush to one side of his body as if his momentum continued, but the walls retreated a little, appearing less malevolent and threatening. This was the proof he needed. All the men were looking at him with concern.
‘I’m sorry,’ Palmer said and appeared genuinely apologetic. ‘I’ll ask another question – one for Mr Williams about construction so far.’
‘No, I’d like to say something,’ John said, recovering his equilibrium. ‘I am feeling a little unwell, as you know, but, aside from that, I think Pete would be able to answer the question, because conscience cannot allow me to take the full glory of designing the building anymore.’
Pete lowered his manicured eyebrows beneath the rim of his glasses and down as far as they would go, leaving a trail of forehead ripples in their wake.
‘The press have described me, thus far, as being the designer whilst my employees and partner in the firm, Pete Williams, helped complete the details of my vision, but I think everybody should know that Pete had an equal share in the creative process of designing the building.’
John stood, full of nervous energy, and began clapping: ‘Pete Williams, you deserve the credit, too, as joint designer of the building.’
Pete’s eyes widened. Mann and the reporter were still for a moment. John turned to them, clapping, and they began to clap, too. A broad grin erupted on Pete’s face as everybody clapped. John felt the stress of the past minute exit his body through his skin.
‘Now that that’s official,’ John said, glancing at the reporter, ‘I’ll let Pete answer the previous question about the building!’
‘Well,’ Pete said, looking at the reporter, ‘I’ll try.’ He sat on the edge of the chair, clearly overwhelmed by the moment and very happy. ‘May I first have a sip of water?’
‘Of course,’ Mann said. He seemed pleased with John’s outburst, smiling broadly with his large moustache.
The reporter seemed thoroughly satisfied with this interview, too, happy that he was the one to report this announcement. He repeated the question to Pete.
Pete leaned towards the table, picked up the jug of water, poured some water into a glass and sipped. He sat back into the chair, paused a moment and began: ‘Well, the *76h ijhb IUh…’
John stopped listening but kept looking at Pete, knowing how well he would answer the reporter in a creative way – all as the lie that he jointly designed the building. Pete was always a good talker and marketeer: important aspects of being a modern architect, and the main reasons John invited him as a partner in the beginning.
The relinquishing of John’s status as sole designer of the building offered an escape from the darkness. It was a painful solution – one which sickened his heart – because his true, artistic self would never now be fully acknowledged by the world, but what other choice did he have in these moments? It would enable John to be left alone by the media and even by Zenith, because Pete could permanently take over until John’s problems were overcome. John could now concentrate on tackling his amnesia and all other problems related to the building.
The rest of the interview went smoothly, and John left them an hour later to go home. The reporter apparently went back to work, fully satisfied with John’s and Pete’s answers. Murphy was happy too, and had thanked John, Pete and Mann for their help in evading further tensions in Blanworth.
8
At home, after resting a couple of days, John tried redesigning the Zenith building. It would be reasonable to assume that he could begin from where he had lost his memory on the night he crashed his car and commence designing it just as he would have done then. On that night in the moments before he crashed, he had been certain he would design a work of genius that Zenith would have to accept; but now, he couldn’t capture the same ineffable inspiration, and there seemed to be nothing he could do to create a work of genius. The little he was able to know about the building’s design was that it appeared free, but what did freedom look like?
Over the next few months, John’s condition didn’t change, so he allowed Pete to continue working at the site and also permitted him to be interviewed by radio stations and newspapers about the building, which Pete thoroughly enjoyed, utilising his social talent. John was still glad he had announced him as joint architect, because it kept public attention away from himself and indicated to the world that John was not comfortable with fame – so much so that he was now reported as working on other things. Pete had so much of an ego and wanted so badly to be seen as the Zenith architect that it seemed he was willing to believe the lie, himself.
But John’s failure to redesign the building and connect with its architect was giving him a growing sense of unreality in the world – in a way he couldn’t quite describe. There was no imminent threat of darkness, not unless he looked directly at the plans of the building or its actual construction, but the unreality made him feel he had little in common with anything or anybody. In fact, it was reminiscent of the way he had always felt, to a lesser degree, throughout his adult life, never connecting fully with the outside world.
He awoke with his head on the ground. Spitting mud, he pushed himself to a seated position. Woodland birds twittered. His head pounded with pain, and he felt very thirsty. A large oak loomed ahead. The thought of simply leaning against it and closing his eyes gave him some hope of peace.
Where was he? Last night at home, he had despaired of the continual problems since waking in hospital six months ago. With a bottle of whisky, he had left his garden in the darkness and continued into the woods.
Now in daylight, he walked a little way until entering a large farmer’s field with light green grass. He had expected to see the back of his house but was obviously on the wrong side of the wood, so he turned to walk back but stumbled and fell backwards into the field. A blue sky with wispy trails of cloud dazzled him – a rare hot day for spring.
The people of Blanworth and Toxon were making the most of this hot weekend: beer men, fat women, tarty women, blankets in back gardens, sunglasses covering closed eyes, unread books beside lifeless lives, paddling pools, kids with water pistols, and oily-faced men doing up cars – but knowing nothing about cars – with radios blaring. There were boy racer cars, air-conditioned golf clubs, hard-working farmers, teenagers in bed, prisoners playing football, cancer sufferers watching the final stages of a golf tournament on television from the final stages of life, bird mating calls, benefits’ tenants collecting food stamps, and one motorbike fatality with leather burned into the skin. John remembered how he had wanted to move away from Blanworth into the countryside to get away from people and things.
Under tree cover again, he stumbled through bracken, for what seemed several minutes, until he recognised his overgrown lawn and derelict, mucky pond – guarded by the wife’s tasteless gnomes – appearing through the trees. He grabbed hold of the last oak tree, its rough bark grazing his hand, and looked beyond the garden to the back of his house.
Twenty years ago, the previous house was occupied by an elderly couple. Apparently, one of them had left a lit cigarette in the thatched loft. They were saved from the blaze, but the house was completely destroyed, and they went on to a nursing home. John had had the opportunity to design something original, but the wife had wanted a traditional house with slate roof, dormer windows, grey brick and a patio at the back.
Desperate for orange juice, John mounted the hard stone patio on all fours like a crocodile, reached for the sliding doors and fell into the sitting room. The blue, buoyant carpet felt soft on his face, and he remembered how he had believed he was happy when his wife was living with him here. He had designed a house in the countryside – albeit, an unoriginal one – he had his own architectural company, which was reasonably successful locally, and he had a loving family. How co
uldn’t he have been happy?
He hobbled through the door into the stark kitchen with his back bent and drank orange juice straight from the carton. Its coldness compounded his headache, and he dropped the carton which spilled over the pine table. He remembered a note that had once been there:
‘We’re going, John. I hope you can understand, Hillary and Gemma.’
Life obviously hadn’t been happy for them. Hillary had blamed him for not expressing emotion to either her or their daughter – whatever that meant. She’d fed lies to their daughter about him which was why Gemma went with her. Their sudden departure had made it appear that it was his fault.
He proceeded to crawl, painfully, upstairs. On the landing, he looked around the bannister to the door which used to be Gemma’s room. His wife and daughter would laugh and chat together in there; and sometimes, Gemma would cry. John would listen to them occasionally and wonder what it was all about.
He crawled into his bedroom, shed his clothes and stumbled into the en suite bathroom. The powerful shower water fused with his dark yellow piss, and he squeezed gel into his hand.
Perhaps, throughout his life, he had had a sense, an intuition, that he was not experiencing life the way he should, especially when it became apparent that his new house wasn’t satisfying him the way he had hoped, and perhaps this lack of connection with himself and other people was the reason why his family had left him.
In the bedroom, whilst drying himself, the phone rang on the bedside table: ‘Yes?’
‘Hi, John,’ said Janice in her distinctively hoarse voice. ‘I was wondering whether we could do something tonight.’
John shed his thoughts with a shake of the head and wondered what was wrong: ‘Like a restaurant?’
‘That would be nice.’
‘Is it Philip?’
‘I just want to get out of the house.’
John felt reluctant to go if Janice was going to talk about her difficulties with her husband all night, but he did also feel like getting out of the house which today was full of difficult memories that seemed to be dragging him down, on top of his amnesiac problems.
‘I’ll pick you up at 7 p.m. if that’s okay?’
‘Thank you, John, that would be lovely.’
‘Shall I park up the street?’
‘No, he won’t be back until late.’
In the bathroom, he looked at himself in the mirror. His miserable head stared back, still suffering from a pounding headache. The lines of his cheeks and the cracks around his eyes were more pronounced than usual, and his hair, still a little wet from the shower, looked thinner than it did when dry, with noticeable bare skin extending further back over his skull. He tried smiling to practise his sensitive smile for Janice later when they discussed her situation with Philip. The mouth stretched normally, but something was wrong: it looked more like a grin. It extended outwards whilst his eyes remained cold: a sensitive smile required a collective facial effort. He looked away, composed himself, visualised Janice sitting opposite and looked back to the mirror. She was talking about her problems with Philip, and he extended his hand to touch hers, saying: ‘It’ll be alright’. He froze like a photograph and analysed the smile. His eyes were slightly squinted which made the mouth appear genuine.
In the evening light, terraced houses, stacked on the surrounding hills of Toxon, reflected a Martian hue. John parked in a street that faced downwards into the valley, walked up a driveway and knocked on number 24. Suddenly, he wondered whether Janice still lived here. Since waking in hospital, not once had he gone to her house or investigated whether she still lived at the same address.
‘Hang on a minute, John,’ a raspy voice said, behind the door.
He sighed and, half a minute later, the door opened. She looked casual and pretty, her auburn hair flowing past her shoulders.
‘Where to?’ he said.
‘I thought The Fox and Hounds.’
He was glad she made the decision. If tonight she wasn’t happy, then at least she couldn’t blame him on the location. Perhaps his wife’s old criticisms, however, were still on his mind – even after so many years – because he couldn’t imagine Janice complaining about such things.
They drove along the top of the valley where peripheral houses obscured the view of the town below. On the other side, farm fields undulated beyond. In the pub car park, Janice was slow to get out the car so, to get her moving, John did the gentlemanly thing and opened her door. She smiled but did not say anything.
Inside the relatively old pub built of grey stone and slate roof, they were shown to their table and given menus. The décor had recently been refurbished, losing the building its old charm and becoming more like a restaurant catering for families. Two lads at the bar, who didn’t acknowledge the new family-friendly atmosphere, were drunk and laughing loudly, irritating the barman standing opposite. The barman, short but stocky and also head of staff, ignored them, as much as he could, while he observed the new boy delivering consistent errors and sending dinners to the wrong tables. The new boy, probably straight out of school, adopted a careless approach to his new-found profession but, nonetheless, feared his boss. The combination of fear and carelessness – a lethal catalyst – resulted in a profound ineptitude: ‘Useless,’ the barman muttered, before directing his gaze back to the drunken wankers opposite.
John ordered the drinks as Janice sat, rather sombrely, opposite him.
‘There are complications over the divorce,’ she said, finally.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Emma doesn’t know yet. I hope it doesn’t mess with her studies.’
Emma was her daughter. John moved his hand across the table, touched her arm and tried the smile he had practised in the bathroom earlier: ‘It’ll be alright. Things will work themselves out. Emma’s got her own life at university now, so she won’t be affected too much.’
Janice hummed quietly in agreement and looked away at another table. John followed her gaze. There were families at large round tables and young couples at small candlelit tables. One young lady and boyfriend sat close to a family that demonstrated a lack of parental discipline, with loud and unruly kids aiding confirmation of the young lady’s ambition to become a better parent. Staring directly into her boyfriend’s eyes, she applied a sterner voice. The boyfriend, sensing both her agitation and ambition and afraid of the road ahead, erratically twitched his right leg and restlessly moved his eyes, avoiding contact with hers and the family next to them.
John remembered wanting to live in the countryside away from people but of still not feeling satisfied when he did. After his family left him, he couldn’t find satisfaction on his own, either.
‘Have you got a divorce yet?’ Janice asked.
He felt a little unnerved by her attention suddenly directed to him: ‘No, we never got round to it. I still pay her monthly instalments.’
‘Aren’t you going to sort it out?’
John shrugged.
‘Perhaps you don’t want to let go,’ she said.
John didn’t know.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.’
‘There seems to be a futility in wanting things to be better,’ he said, by way of explanation.
Janice looked down at the table, slightly dejected.
‘Of course, in your situation,’ John said, ‘things will be better when you get a divorce, because you’re obviously having a bad time. But in my case, life seems to go on and on, and it doesn’t matter what I do to change things because, in the big picture, things remain the same.’
He was surprised by the meaning and weight of his words. They were real and significant, encompassing the reality of all his life, not just the recent problems of his amnesia.
‘Whatever happened to the person who designed the Zenith building?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You seemed so changed during that period.’
John hadn’t talked much about that time with Janice, because doing so
would risk revealing his amnesia, and she had never intimated anything particularly interesting or surprising about that period. In fact, he had tried to imagine that period, himself, as if he could remember it, creating his own truth, but with little believable success, because he couldn’t risk talking to others about it: ‘How do you mean changed?’
‘I don’t know. I guess, enthusiastic about the building.’
John remembered the moments before he crashed his car, how enthused he was about the prospect of designing the next Zenith building before all this media attention and politics: ‘Well, obviously, I was happy when working on the building.’
‘I guess so,’ Janice said, slowly.
John detected she was alluding to something else, something about him during that time, and he didn’t want to let this opportunity go: ‘I mean, you didn’t see me when I initially designed the building, because I did it on my own at home.’
‘But you did come into the office a few weeks later to show your designs to Pete, and you kept coming in afterwards.’ She looked down a moment, remembering: ‘Odd, it was, how you changed so much. I mean, obviously it was the building that gave you this new lease of life, but there seemed to be a real, deep-seated change in you, too.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’re asking me as if you’re not aware, yourself, or as if you don’t remember that time or something.’
He smiled and shook his head to disguise his amnesia but wanted to be as truthful as possible to try to understand what she was saying: ‘In a way, I don’t really remember that time, because I don’t have the creativity I had then. I can’t remember how I was able to design such a building.’
The Freedom Building Page 8