After he had disfigured the statue enough he made his staggering way down the path to the road. He didn’t know where he was going and he didn’t care. Sometimes he was proud of himself as he walked along, how well he could walk. Sometimes he thought that he must look ridiculous. But most of the time he concentrated on walking, putting one foot in front of the other. He decided, I can’t walk into the city, it’s too far away. I must get a lift. He stopped at the side of the road and waved to cars passing but none stopped. Eventually a large lorry did so and he climbed in. The lorry driver, large and looming, said:
“Had a bucket, eh?” Tom lolled back against the seat.
“Where do you want to get to?” said the lorry driver. In front of him was a half-chewed sandwich.
“Put me down in the centre,” said Tom half asleep. “The centre.”
“Where did you get that skinful?” said the lorry driver.
“Party,” said Tom, “party,” waving a hand vaguely. “Bloody party.” For the life of him he couldn’t sit up straight. “Bloody party,” he repeated monotonously.
“If you say so,” said the lorry driver humorously.
“If you say so.”
Now and again Tom would wake up and say, “Bloody party” as if it were some sort of password. The lorry driver leaned forward and bit into the sandwich. You certainly got them, even at midnight. Even later. No use talking to this one, he was too far gone.
Once Tom woke up and said, “Women, know about women?”
“Women, mate?” said the lorry driver. “Are you asking me if I know about women?”
“Women?” said Tom earnestly, trying to lean forward. “Know about women? Bitches. Unreashonable bitches. Thash what.”
Suddenly he began to sing, Waly Waly. Then abruptly fell silent.
“Unreashonable bitches. Bloody party,” he repeated sullenly. “Not like men, not like us.”
“You’re bloody right there, mate,” said the lorry driver, calmly negotiating a bend. He felt rather superior to this odd boy. Something had certainly happened to him.
“Not like ush,” said Tom again managing to sit up and thrusting one finger forward like a lawyer in court.
“Utterly unlike ush. Bugger ush up. Right?”
“Dead right, mate,” said the lorry driver. “Dead right.”
Tom was bent on pursuing the matter to its ultimate conclusion. “Closher to earth. Children. Cavesh. Right?” His eyes squinted vaguely at the lorry driver and then he sank down again, snoring.
After some time the lorry driver said, “Well, mate, this is the city centre. Where do you want to get off?”
“Anywhere,” said Tom with an effort. “Anywhere, old mate. Anywhere at all.”
Eventually without quite knowing how, he found himself on the street and recognised the railway station. He made his way unsteadily inside and lay down on a bench and went to sleep.
22
HE DIDN’T WAKE up till eight o’clock in the morning and at first he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t feel at all cold though it was chilly. His shoes, he noticed, had blades of wet grass on them and the bottoms of his trousers were damp. Ahead of him he could see a train gently puffing smoke. He had an unaccountable impulse to climb into a carriage without bothering to find out where the train was going. The train, puffing smoke and rocking slightly on the rails in preparation for departure, seemed to be a symbol for some motion in himself. He did not feel at all despairing, rather he felt fresh as if a fever had worked itself out in him. The morning seemed large and clear though chilly and the continual movement of people passing him and the imminent departure of the train interested him. He felt as if something were beginning in him, though he couldn’t tell what it was, as if he had come to some unknown decision in his sleep. Women shushing their children, men reading the morning papers, boys drinking orangeade while waiting for their parents to buy tickets, they were all part of the real world. The bench on which he was sitting, whose green paint was flaking in places, was also part of it.
For some odd reason he had a fantasy about the Prodigal Son which was in some way connected with the bench and the events of the previous night. He imagined the Prodigal Son leaving his home on a bristly autumn morning while his mother waved to him. He was carrying a bag which contained all his worldly goods, he was setting off into the world. There was dew on the thorns, the brown autumn earth was rich and heavy, he walked along in the sharp air humming to himself. He climbed on to a bus which would take him to another country. The bus made its way along between avenues of trees with cold red berries on them. He got off the bus after a long while and began to look for work.
He could not find any and eventually ended up sitting on a bench just like the bench he himself was sitting on. Time passed and it was Christmas, and people were walking past with their parcels clutched in their hands. He saw the warm squares of windows. He himself sat day after day on the bench looking down at his windowed boots. His body was covered by a newspaper so that he looked like a collage by Picasso. His face was bristly. He remembered farms and pigs, he remembered sleeping out, he saw prostitutes passing by on their high heels, priced and unattainable. The whole world was a shop and he had his nose up against the pane but he couldn’t buy anything.
Suddenly Tom got up both in his imagined role of Prodigal Son and as himself. He knew that there was somewhere he must get to. As he walked along he imagined himself going home to his father and brother. When he got off the bus he would see his brother working in the fields with the same rusty scythe that he had always used. He was composing in his mind his new role of humility, that of the penitent returned. He was repeating the words of his speech over and over. There was a party and frail balloons floating in the sky, there were accordions playing. He went to his room which contained a rocking horse and his books and other toys, still lying there undisturbed, the disorderly data of the preconscious. He stood in front of the mirror and practised his speech. He would go to his father and say, “I have come home. I am the Penitent. Call me the Prodigal Son.” And he knew that his father would listen to him though perhaps not his brother. He would settle on the farm, ordinary, common, accepting what the day brought, no longer setting out for unattainable countries, even the ones closest to home.
As he walked along immersed in his story he smelt the odour of bacon and eggs and realised that he was hungry. He went into the cafe and ordered some breakfast knowing that he had only ten pounds or so left. But he did not feel worried because deep down he had come to a decision though as yet he didn’t know what it was. He ate his bacon and eggs quickly and when he had finished walked out again. He knew that if he let himself go he would be taken to where he ought to be. All he had to do was to let his body work. He did not feel at all frightened. So he let himself walk and as he walked he recognised where he was going. He recognised a part of the city which he had not visited for a long time. He passed a large prison with high grey walls and a school with dull brown walls. It was a part of his past, disorderly and dirty, certainly not the White City of elitism and culture.
Once a beggar came up to him and asked him for a few pence, pulling at his cap and calling him Sir. He didn’t give him anything because he needed all the money he had. Nor did he feel any sense of guilt. He was quite rigorous about his refusal and quite realistic. He knew that the man was trying to con him, and he didn’t feel any anger but he wasn’t going to give away his money uselessly. It was as if he were awakening from a long dream or sickness and in the light of reality he saw the world as it really was, not condemnable but inevitable. He passed a bookshop but did not stop at it. He was impatient to gather together what he had been, what he was.
Once he stopped and looked for a long time at a man who was burning an old railing away with an acetylene torch. The flame hovered bluely in the blue chill of the day. The man who was wearing a yellow helmet was whistling gaily as he concentrated on his work. What he was doing was burning away an old railing and that was good enough for h
im, it was his job, it was what he was trained to do, he was absorbed in his work. He did not look at all self-conscious while Tom stood staring at him and at his torch as it ate away the old rusty brown railings, the blue flame hissing and burning powerfully.
Tom moved on through the maze of streets. He remembered this place very well. He had often passed it on the way to the cinema which was called the Scala. It was old and cramped, contorted, crowded with slums. There used to be a lot of drunks wandering about here, he remembered. As early as this in the morning, however, there weren’t many people about. There was an air of emptiness about the place, as if it had exhausted itself, there were advertisements on the walls, one in particular which said forlornly, FIGHT HEATH. He walked steadily on, seeing in the distance and to his right great cranes high up in the sky, tall factory chimneys belching out smoke.
It was after nine o’clock when he stopped outside the school. There was the same stony playground, the same long sad windows. At the back, he knew, were the streaming privies with the nicknames of pupils and assorted obscenities scrawled on the walls. The bicycle shed was still there with bicycles racked in it. Did he really want to go in there? Was this where his feet had led him? For a long time he hovered, now he would go in, now he wouldn’t. Once he walked on for a few yards but then retraced his steps. It wasn’t that he had liked the place, rather he had disliked it. It wasn’t even that he expected to find any revelation here. Even now he could smell damp clothes drying on radiators, urine in boys’ browned lavatories. But it was as if some secret voice were telling him that he must go in, that there was a solution hidden here somewhere, though he couldn’t imagine what solution he was looking for; that there was some obligation on him to make some discovery which would be important to him. Hesitantly he pushed open the gate and entered.
When he opened the main door he found himself in the hall and there by astonishing chance met his old English teacher Richardson. He stood there for a moment staring at him, in his long coat, staggered by the conflicting feelings that swirled about in him. Richardson had changed and yet was still the same. He had grown older and dimmer, but he still bore about with him an air of hauteur. He seemed larger, more florid, coarser, lacking in definition, and yet at the same time he still seemed to convey the idea that one must consider him exceptional. He was carrying some books in his arms and was clearly going to his room with them. He looked at Tom who was standing hesitantly in the hall.
“Are you looking for someone?” he asked. And then as he recognised him he seemed to flush and lose his poise.
“Spence,” said Tom automatically. “You printed some of my stuff in the school magazine some years ago.”
“Of course,” said Richardson. “That coat … for the moment …” He seemed confused and dithery and gestured vaguely, forgetting that he had books in his arms, so that he nearly dropped them.
“Changed days? What are you doing now?” His voice had assumed a slightly mocking sardonic quality as if he were practising a tone he had forgotten.
“Nothing much, I’m afraid.”
“I see, I see.” Richardson seemed to hover as if he didn’t quite know what to say and then added, “And what do you think of the old place, eh? Still recognisable, I suppose?”
“Just the same,” said Tom. He was filled with a vast unease as he regarded this figure whom he had once adored, who was still, however, jauntily wearing a bow tie, still striving to be witty.
“Still the same Miltonic pillars, eh? The same cloisters? And were you just passing?” he asked ironically.
“That’s right,” said Tom, “just passing.”
“Good, good,” Richardson said heartily. “Good to see pupils. One of them came to see me the other day. He’s working on physics. A thesis. Naturally I couldn’t make out what he was talking about. He seemed very prosperous and eager. These poems of yours, have you continued with them?”
“Not much.”
“They were very gloomy I remember. Strange how adolescents write such doom-filled poems. Are your poems still gloomy or doomy?”
“I don’t write many now.”
“I see, I see.”
Unspoken thoughts hung between them. Tom was thinking how hollow Richardson’s words sounded. Had he always been like this really? If Tom had been old enough, would he have sensed their hollowness even then? But surely they hadn’t been hollow in those days? Surely not. Richardson shifted his books awkwardly. There seemed to be a draught in the hall rippling the old worn linoleum.
“Well,” said Richardson at last, “must feed the maws. Glad to have seen you. I’d shake hands but I can’t, you see, with these books. You should carry on with your writing. It’s always something to do. I didn’t recognise you at first. It must be the clothes. That’s what it must be. Well, cheerio.”
Tom stood there for a moment staring after him, then left the hall and went outside. He was thinking how different the school was from Ann’s, how dead and dull, how lifeless, how infinitely dreary; but something else was troubling him as he walked along. At the back of his mind a clue was niggling, yet he couldn’t make out what the clue was or what puzzle it would serve to unlock. But at the same time he did feel like a detective trying to piece together a crime from scattered errors, flashes of recognition.
He knew it was something to do with Richardson and he tried to remember what he could about him. Richardson’s were quite simply the only classes he had liked. In those days Richardson was different from what he had evidently now become. He had been enthusiastic and eager, he had about him an air of hauteur and wit. It wasn’t a cold wit, it was rather a spontaneous wit that welled up from a surplusage of life. He would enter a class as if bearing gifts, as if he were some emissary sent to make the school less dull, more vibrant. He had noticed Tom’s essays and stories, he had drawn attention to them, sometimes he had read them to the class. At a time when Tom felt he was no good at anything Richardson had helped him to survive. He had wanted to be like Richardson, a pure flame of the mind, of himself alone.
Richardson was completely unpredictable and worked to no system except his own, as if he believed that his own mind and its workings, freed of any curriculum, was bound to be of interest to others. Sometimes he would enter during a period scheduled for some dreary author and say, “We won’t do that today. I’ve just been reading a book on surnames.” Then he would go round the class and find out the surnames and they would spend a happy period trying to disentangle their meanings. That had been a particularly hilarious period, and Jean as usual had been entranced with admiration. Jean? who was Jean? He stopped, wondering. Why had Jean come into his mind now? She seemed to float, pale-faced, up to his mind, and yet he couldn’t remember her surname. She always wore a white blouse or at least that was the impression he had, if he was thinking of the right girl. He could see her tight bum which had often attracted him but he couldn’t remember her full name. He simply had the impression of Richardson lecturing—for that was what he did—emitting intellectual sparkles, self-glorying, humorous, while Jean sat in the next seat to his own, her face cradled in her hands, openly adoring.
He tried to visualise the blackboard while Richardson scrawled across it. Nothing was ever written systematically. The blackboard was a disordered mess of fragments of lessons on surnames, Browning (whom he liked) and snatches of ideas from scientific books. Tom felt that the surnames were important. Spence. A spence of spirit in a waste of shame. Sir Somebody Spens. What was the man’s first name? Surely it wasn’t Tom. Sir Thomas Spens. It didn’t sound right.
Jean what? It was impossible, he couldn’t get the name right. It was all very puzzling and almost painful as he made the effort of remembering. What did he know even about Richardson? Nothing much. He had been animated and alert and interesting but Tom didn’t know anything about his background. He didn’t even know whether he belonged to the city. And did Jean belong to the city? He couldn’t remember that either. And there must be a reason for that since he could reme
mber quite vividly her freckled face, white blouse and trim bum. He could see her entering the room late while the class were working on a lesson. She always seemed to be late, it must have been something to do with a bus, in which case she might not have come from the city at all. It was during the time of puberty that he had felt that terrible lust for her, so she must have been in the same class as him for perhaps two or three years.
Why in fact had he visited the school at all when it was disturbing him so much? But no matter how hard he tried to concentrate he could hear only the quick jesting voice of Richardson and see Jean with her face cradled in her hands which rested on the desk. He couldn’t even remember much that Richardson had actually said. It had been more a matter of atmosphere, of airy nothings, of transitory witticisms.
Though he could remember nothing much about Jean he felt that he was on the trail of something that was important to him. Richardson’s blond hair was also important, though he couldn’t think why. It was painful to try and use his memory as intensely as that, as if there was a block somewhere. Perhaps he didn’t want to remember, perhaps that was it. Of course Richardson’s hair wasn’t so blond now, in fact he seemed to have very little hair at all. Also he hadn’t spoken so brightly, so gaily. Perhaps he had settled down like fizzy lemonade, become flat. And yet he had admired Richardson so much, he had thought of him as a free spirit, sui generis. It was a pure mind at play, it was like water sparkling in sunlight. He had seemed to him so unlike his father. He stopped as if he had stepped on a mine. Why his father? Richardson wasn’t remotely like his father. Not physically at any rate. Was it perhaps that he had thought that Richardson was making real use of his books while his father was scribbling his ridiculous jejune notes? Was that it? It might easily have been that.
Goodbye, Mr Dixon Page 14