A Serious Man

by David Storey

  The novel is dead; at least, in its humanist tradition – and I have died with it. I wouldn’t wish to argue: my relationships, the few I have managed to sustain, have all but foundered: I maintain, as Vi described it, the residual passions of the morgue. If someone loves me, as I thought she did (though not as obsessively as Mel), I offer them a helping hand: I love – again, as Vi put it – the poor fuckers in return: an engagement which, in my mind at least, evokes the image of a muddy pool: observations on its nature elicit such remarks as, ‘It’s opaque. It’s dark. It appears to contain no life at all.’ Yet, as with most dark pools, a great deal goes on beneath the surface: what the surface reflects the depths conceal. Similarly, what the depressive experiences, by second nature – as freshly and as directly as he sleeps and breathes – is the energised negativity which convinces him he doesn’t exist in any of the ways accredited to a normal human being: absence, rather than a passive, is an active definition, and ‘self’ a misnomer for all he experiences as ‘self’: he is, in short, dehumanised: he doesn’t exist: he experiences his non-existence as active.

  “Dear Maidstone, is the reality, that the depressive is allegedly out of touch with, reality at all, or merely the bourgeois world of good intentions (providence: doing the best you can)? Hell, presumably, is as real as heaven, if not a great deal more closely related to everyday life. The reality which ‘the greatest poet of the twentieth century’ has suggested we can only partake of in very small doses is scarcely the reality to which the psychiatrist would wish us to return – whether by pills, psychotherapy, E.C.T., physical exercise or a change of diet. It might, alternatively, be argued that health for the insane, and for the psychiatrist (therapist, analyst) consists merely of the restoration of that thick skin of which the illness has apparently deprived the luckless patient.

  In other words, is Eliot’s ‘reality’ a misanthropic fiction?

  Or is it the baseline to which no one in their right senses would wish to return? To be capable of relating positively to people (my constant endeavour) might, in this sense, be as shallow an interpretation of reality as Eliot’s perception of it was, allegedly, profound.”

  ‘Do you,’ Etty enquires, ‘often talk aloud, irrespective of where you are or who you’re with?’ and when I reply, ‘Each day and each night I go through extremes of emotion which, even after all these years, I find impossible to describe – a sense of loss, for instance, in which the words “sense” and “loss” are inadequate to convey the degree of awareness, in the first instance and the degree of absence, in the second,’ she hastily responds, ‘It’s a good job I brought you up when I did. Leaving you alone in Taravara Road has done you, as Maidstone suggested, no good at all.’

  ‘I was happy in Taravara Road,’ I tell her, glancing not at the school, nor any longer at the playing-field – stretching beyond farm fields to the isolation hospital above – but at the church. ‘As happy as I was, for instance, sitting in the crypt, in an afternoon daze, the sunlight streaming through the windows, imagining the tribulations and the ecstasies of the saints, men and women caught up in a vision to which,’ I concluded, ‘I intended to belong,’ to which, not listening, she replies, ‘You were living in squalor. The place was filthy. You hadn’t washed up in months.’

  ‘What’s washing-up,’ I ask her, ‘when you’re coming alive? When I was dead,’ I went on, ‘I was always clean. Despite all I appear to have done in my life, I have, in reality,’ I go on, ‘done nothing. Nothing at all,’ I conclude, ‘until now.’

  ‘Have you done any sketches?’ she enquires, glancing at the book beneath my arm (glad, at least, I suspect, that I’ve retained it).

  ‘A tree at Ardsley, a view of Onasett – from the golf-course, one of a hundred, I should think, of that – another of the houses at the back of Manor Road.’ I add, ‘The characteristics of dementia are not to be taken as peculiar to the sufferer but merely to the illness. Characteristics which the sufferer him or herself would like to do away with.’

  ‘The car,’ she says, ‘is over here,’ for, even while she grasps my arm, I have led her back across the lane and re-entered the yard at the back of the church and although, plainly enough, her car is there – parked, I observe, with the engine running (‘I have difficulty starting it,’ she tells me later) – I am leading her to the slope at the side of the church and indicating the square, metal-framed windows which offer a view of the parquet floor of the crypt.

  ‘On that floor we played our games, learned our knots, communed with nature, learned first-aid, chanted our oaths, swore our allegiance (dedicated our lives,’ I conclude, ‘to God),’ but, having scarcely glanced in at the room – a fraction of the size of the one I recall – she leads me back up the grassy slope. ‘We constructed an overhead railway here, each year, when they held the church bazaar and made more money than the Men’s Fellowship, or the Women’s Meeting, or,’ I tell her, ‘both combined.’

  ‘You’re getting more childish by the hour,’ she says. ‘Leaving you in Taravara Road was a foolish step. My mother shouldn’t have considered it.’

  ‘Your mother,’ I tell her, ‘is happy with Albert. And I,’ I go on, ‘am happy for her. I did her a disservice. One,’ I continue, ‘I can never repay. (The biggest mistake of my life),’ to which she responds, ‘In which case, Father, I wouldn’t be here. Neither would Matt, nor Ken, nor Benjie, nor Bec.’

  ‘You were all,’ I tell her, ‘deeply loved,’ and, moments later, ‘You’ll be getting your car stolen, leaving it unattended with the engine running. An open invitation. You can assume, in effect, it’s been stolen already. I suppose you’ve brought no money with you. In which case, we’ll be stranded, stuck up here with no means of getting back. I can’t walk,’ I add, ‘much further in my slippers. “The wise man lives in the house of mourning,” wrote Solomon. The most important book, I might add, in the Bible (the book to end all books, etc.). Talk about the death of the novel: not another word, I might tell you, was needed after that. Whereas I have followed that advice by instinct, not by choice. “The house of mourning,” I told Maidstone, “has been, and still is, my natural abode.”’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I go on, ‘we should have gone down and that man with the bucket might have allowed us to look in the crypt. I know every knot-hole in that wood. The surface of a piece of polished wood is almost as evocative to me as a woman’s skin. Did I tell you when Philistines was revived in New York one of the actors in the company bought me, as a present, a session with a Hollywood astrologist? I sat for an hour in a borrowed apartment in Greenwich village, just off Washington Square, and, having previously given her the three facts of time, place and date of birth, I listened to an account of my life as accurate as I might have given if I’d had three or four years to set it down.’

  I am sitting in the car: how I have got there I have no idea (I don’t recall climbing in or closing the door – an elision that characterises much if not most of my present life), the car turning out of the lane that divides the church from the school and into Alceston Road.

  ‘I might come back to that again, the conjunction of Pluto with the sun at the time of my birth: the god of the underworld (the dead and the dying): a peculiar coincidence when you consider that, during her pregnancy, death dominated my mother’s life and left its imprint on me for ever (her first child dying, at the age of six, six months before I was born – after a sojourn, I might add, in that isolation hospital at the top of the road). God of the underworld as well as the afterworld, this woman described it: a colourful character with a flowery gown and streaming blonde hair and a lascivious way of saying, “Sweetheart” as she extrapolated from a column of figures – her only points of reference – a psychoramic account of my previous life, down to specific incidents to do with Bea, your Grandma, and even Vi. None of them specifically named, of course. “Being born,” she announced, “under the influence of Pluto endows you with the ability to see in the dark. It gives you,” she concluded, “the qualities of a shrink
.” “To probe the unconscious,” I told her, “has always been my line. To go where no man (or woman) has been before, or from where, at least, if they have, they have never returned. Only me,” I told her, “me alone.” (Sole denizen of a world only I can know).’

  ‘Isn’t that what astrology is for?’ she says, and I recall she has, in fact – before we set out from Taravara Road – listened to the tape (the murmur of traffic from Fifth Avenue, a police siren, the barking of a dog, the slamming of a door announcing the presence of someone else – unintroduced – in the flat).

  ‘I live my life,’ I tell her, ‘like Penelope with her knitting. It’s the way,’ I continue, ‘I’ve always worked,’ aware, in the warmth of the car, how cold I am – how mania takes a grip without my being aware.

  As for the death of the novel – a printer’s error: a missing ‘r’ from the word in question.

  A drunken poet in a London street, raising his hand as he sees me pass: ‘Hello, there, famous author! Would you lend me a quid?’ his less drunken companion (definitely not a poet) calling, ‘A fiver would be better!’

  Leading to (his last years with Vi) the sequestration of his funds by the more responsible members of his family:

  ‘He gave it to people in the street,’ (Etty).

  ‘How much?’ the Judge at the enquiry enquired.

  ‘Five hundred pounds in a single day. (Probably more on occasions we never heard about).’

  ‘“The degenerative imperative”,’ had been the defendant’s only reply (by which time, for much of his time, a privileged internee at Boady Hall).

  ‘It’s not the disappearing,’ she says, ‘nor the aggravation you cause to me and Charlie, nor the inconvenience of dropping whatever I have to do to come and find you, as what you might do if one of us who doesn’t know you isn’t around. That woman at your former home, if I hadn’t have been there previously, would have called the police. She must have thought, as it happened, I was mad myself. “If my father shows up,” I said, “will you ring me?” as if I were giving instructions about a missing dog.’

  ‘“Madness” has “sane” in it somewhere,’ I tell her. ‘In my first group therapy at Boady Hall we played, would you believe it, “Twenty Questions”, the most extraordinary version of the game you’ve ever seen. I’d gone, prepared, as per instructions, with an analysis of my state of mind – causes, symptoms, prognosis, et cetera – a mental index with referential points, together with accessible accounts of alternative interpretations – breaking into tears, at one point, as a demonstration of my willingness to involve others. The therapist, however – too young, unfortunately, to know blood from stone – said, the moment we were settled – telling me, incidentally, to blow my nose: “We don’t want cry-babies here,” she told me – announced, “The first object is mineral with a vegetable attachment,” and when someone said, “What is a mineral?” – no great intellectuals on the panel, I have to add – only Isaiah and the Virgin Mary – someone replied, “You buy it in a bottle,” and a third young woman announced – who was there after seven attempts at suicide, “I can get three hundred words out of madness, and one of them is sane.”

  ‘“That’s good,” said the therapist, totally confused.’

  No one rang me in Taravara Road, other than my children, Liam (once), with whom I immediately quarrelled, and Bea twice (‘How are you?’ she asked, and added, ‘That’s good,’ without waiting for an answer) in all of six months.

  I have never told anyone how I feel without regretting it. (‘Why don’t you shut your mouth?’ I say each day to myself in the mirror.)

  ‘Would you like Bryan to come and look at you?’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Raynor.’

  ‘I can’t see that he’ll see much that he hasn’t seen already,’ I tell her, the Park appearing to our right, Onasett disappearing to our left. ‘What did you mean, the other day,’ I suddenly enquire, ‘when you said, “You are going to die”? It sent a chill right through me.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t afraid of death,’ she says.

  ‘Curiously,’ I say, ‘since Vivienne went, I am. Terrified,’ and add, ‘Was it something that Raynor said?’

  ‘It was,’ she says, ‘my own conclusion. If you hadn’t riled me I would have added, “if you go on as you are.”’

  Strung up on the x-ray table with a barium enema plugged up my arse while, to help the under-assisted operator, I examine my intestines on the monitor screen and adjust the reflecting plate to his instructions. ‘Are you the Richard Fenchurch?’ one of the group of trainee technicians enquires (boots, jeans and sandals visible beneath their smocks, acned, suppurating foreheads, cheeks and chins) to which I reply (a definitive), ‘No.’

  ‘Has Maidstone said I’m about to expire?’ gazing at the profile of the town, directly ahead, from the bottom of Westgate as I enquire.

  ‘I only know what Bryan tells me. I haven’t seen your notes,’ she says.

  ‘He’s afraid I’ll go the same way as Vi.’

  ‘That’s not what he says at all,’ she says.

  ‘I should have been warned. I did my best. All Vivienne wanted was an audience.’

  Turning the car towards the centre of the town, she says, ‘That’s not what you said at the time.’

  ‘I admired her. I admire her still. There were times, sitting there, her feet together, gazing out of the window at the tiny yard, that I thought she’d achieved something little short of sainthood. All she’d been through, her body, as she described it, “gone”, her looks ravaged, her hands shaking and, involuntarily, just watching her, I wept. I’ve never seen anyone look so … blessed. I never guessed. I thought she’d have an easier passage. Easier than the one she chose. And yet, would you believe it? I have to forgive her. It’s why,’ I suddenly conclude, ‘she won’t succeed.’

  ‘In what?’ We have reached the centre of the town and she turns down, past the cathedral, towards the river.

  ‘In taking me with her.’

  As if detached from her as well as I, the car careers along a one-way system: down the Springs, around the market, past a newly covered-in section: the cathedral about to be enclosed by a pedestrian precinct.

  ‘I’ve brought you back,’ she says, ‘to get you better. When you are,’ she adds, ‘you can go back to Taravara Road,’ and then, bleakly, ‘I hate to see you in that place. Those streets and that house are not for you. All those brutalised faces. Every other one you meet, brutalised or brutalising.’

  ‘Those,’ I tell her, ‘are the working class.’

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘are the inhabitants of Ardsley. Yet their faces have dignity, tolerance, strength. Not the mangled features of the London cockney.’

  ‘Why don’t we talk,’ I suggest, ‘of something else. My head,’ I tell her, ‘has begun to spin.’

  ‘Those characterless eyes, that pasty complexion, those thin-lipped mouths, the scrawny necks, that bow-legged walk that comes, I suppose,’ she says, ‘from rickets.’

  Whereas it is true I have seen more domestic violence in the street than I have throughout the rest of my life, it is still a place where, if only for the briefest time, Vivienne and I were happy.

  We cross the river, beyond it, moments later, a hump-backed bridge, the canal visible below us: past the street where one of my father’s uncles lived, a colliery sinker with an invalid wife: an only son who was killed on the Somme: ‘a street that hides its dead,’ my father declared, once, as I sat with him, passing on a bus, adding, as if of something he admired, ‘a man who never showed his feeling.’

  ‘So what became of it?’ I said.

  ‘Like all feeling, shown or not shown,’ he said, a bleakness in his life which, if rarely glimpsed, I always knew was there.

  ‘Why don’t you stay up here? You can,’ she tells me, ‘write and paint,’ and when I reply, ‘There was a time when I envisaged doing that, painting amongst the fields around Linfield,’ she suddenly calls out, ‘You’re not old en
ough to give up!’ as if, directly ahead, a door has opened. ‘Even if you’re out of fashion.’

  ‘It’s certainly,’ I tell her, ‘a philistine age, and we can only assume,’ I go on, ‘it has to get worse,’ pausing, startled, at her laughter.

  ‘A joke at last,’ she simply says.

  16

  In his mind’s eye his wife and, with his wife, now someone else’s, her mother, the coppery gold of their two heads, darkening to magenta, like the heads of two gigantic nails pinioning the palms of the crucified Christ: the green-tinted eye of Isabella: the grey-tinted eye of H. J. Kells, leaping, lithe, from his celtic ocean: ‘I wouldn’t say I was a marxist,’ he says to Fenchurch when, in old age, the locust specialist spends his summer days filling in football pools on the lawn, in the sun, at the front of The People’s Palace. ‘I’d say, more nearly, I was marxian,’ putting down his crosses.

  ‘What would you spend the money on?’ I ask. ‘Should you win.’

  ‘People,’ was all he simply replies, and adds – wisps of unshaven hair around his chin – ‘Wouldn’t you say,’ he watches his daughter pruning roses across the lawn, ‘that art, unless it expresses the will of the people, is a waste of time?’

  ‘What is the will of the people?’ I enquire.

  ‘Why,’ he says, ‘you must have noticed, even at a football match, that the crowd is greater than that which congregates for an exhibition of your paintings, or even of the latest prodigal talent on show, shall we say, at the Linfield College of Art.’

  ‘They generate different interests,’ I observe, remarking the angle of Isabella’s back, her waist, the protrusion of her hips (die position of more intimate features within the suspended folds of her blouse), the placing of one foot before the hem of her skirt which subtly reveals the shape of her calf.