by Jane Gardam
‘She says I should take you with me abroad.’
‘The trouble with this world is,’ he says, taking more cream, ‘the way people can’t be satisfied with being in one place. If people all kept to their own homes—’
‘If they kept to their own homes you’d never have met Mother.’
‘Well. That was a mistake. My marriage to your mother. All these foreign languages. Foreign tongues. Everything better somewhere else—that’s it, isn’t it? Grass in the next field. Going off to these chocolate-box places.’
He examines the chocolates I’ve brought, prodding them for the soft ones. ‘They can’t even print a key to these things now. They used to put a card in.’
‘Switzerland isn’t really chocolate-box.’
‘It’s picture-postcard.’
‘It’s full of—full of pain. Like everywhere.’
‘Now I’ve got a bloody Brazil.’
‘I went out with a man last week who’d had a hand burned off. At Stalingrad.’
‘Now Stalingrad. That was a very terrible thing. Month after month. How old was the bugger? Must have been my age.’
When I have carried out the rubbish he says, ‘Full of pain, is it? Switzerland? I went there once. Faces like emery-boards. Hard-mouthed Nazis. You’re over-sensitive, that’s your trouble. You’re like me.’
I sit down behind him and cover my face with my hands. I hang on to one good thing—that he cannot mention my marriage.
After a time he says, ‘Where’ve you gone? What you sitting behind me for? I’m in everybody’s clutches.’
On my way to work on Monday I saw the fly again. We met head on, on a corner of the Rue Verconnex outside the shop with the glassy pillars. I side-stepped a moment, avoiding somebody and suddenly there she was, loping forward towards me with her black lost eyes. She was not this time crying but there was all the frenzy there, lashed down but as fierce as at the first encounter. She looked hard at me and passed.
Under my bubble the words flow out. We are on one of the last few witnesses now. This one drones on and on about the wrongs and rights of a machine-tool being employed to dig a dam in Baghdad. ‘As we have stated before’—endless parentheses—‘As we have stated before, in a way quite incontrovertible, whereas the statements submitted on Day Sixteen by Mr. Bronx concerning point number two hundred and forty-seven on the question of costs of the extra-hyper-digger equipment and in conjunction with Mr. Jinx’s evidence concerning point number three hundred and eighty-six, of statement number nine hundred and five on Day Thirty-Six, I will submit that, notwithstanding . . . ’
The words pour from him. The words pour from me, from Helmut, from the other two. The clock on the wall with its twelve dots, its stubby fingers, never seems to move.
Towards the end of the week Helmut is waiting by the door for me at lunch time. ‘You all right? Like some lunch?’ We go over towards the Old Town and passing along the Versonnex, towards the shop with the glittering pillars, suddenly two great lymphatic people appear holding the hands of a retarded child, and I reach out and grab Helmut’s sleeve.
He looks surprised. Nobody touches Helmut. As we go through the Place des Eaux Vives he looks at me again and draws quite close to me. ‘You don’t often see those in Geneva. They keep them off the streets. What is it?’ He takes my arm and we go up over the cobblestones to a restaurant under the arches, warm and dark, red and white table-cloths, Italian, almost empty. As we wait, Helmut takes out a Missal. When the spaghetti comes he puts the book carefully away in his pocket and says, ‘You are beginning to look a little better.’
‘I’m all right. Why?’
‘You look so ill. Is it money, sex or sickness?’
‘It’s none of them. I have no reason . . . It’s just that there’s so much damage. So much pain.’
‘Geneva? Damage? Pain?’
‘Yes. All kept under wraps. Everywhere in the world.’
He pauses with a forkful of carbonara and says, ‘But it’s you who keep yourself under wraps.’
‘I don’t know how not to. But it’s not just fancy. Haven’t you noticed here? It’s a crime to be miserable in public. It is indecent. Indecent to be open.’
He says, ‘You know, I think it is this most bloody of all arbitrations. You need a rest. But I like Geneva.’
‘I’m frightened, Helmut.’
‘Of what?’
‘I keep seeing this woman. She’s like a fly.’
He regards me, courteously.
After the hearing that day I saw Helmut talking to the English arbitrator who came over to me as I left my kiosk. ‘Bear up,’ he said, ‘not much longer.’
‘This week?’
‘Oh, definitely this week. Maybe even tomorrow. Come for a drink.’
We walked, the elderly man and I, down to the lake-side restaurant on the Rue du Rhône, full of the very young—silky hair, pale suits, Patek Philippe watches. Among them the English arbitrator looked comfortable, shabby and wise. We sat silent, listening to all the talk about money and he said, ‘Sorry. I thought it might be more interesting. Young and gay for you. Why do you keep looking over your shoulder?’
‘Oh—I just thought—I thought I saw someone.’
‘Aha, you are being followed. You are a spy. Something to do with Swedish Sergei of the wooden claw.’
‘I didn’t know he was Swedish. He said he was at Stalingrad. I only had lunch with him.’
‘I’m sure. He’s homosexual. But charming. You were very safe. Did you know that the police in Geneva have a file on every foreigner working here? There’s one about me and there will be one about you.’
‘There’s absolutely nothing they could find to say about me. Oh—!’
The fly was there. Standing outside, looking in at me through the glass.
‘Sweet child,’ he said. ‘What is it? You look nearly out of your wits. Come on—you’re not being followed, you know. Drink your drink. Bear up. We really are almost finished now, and when it’s over I am going to give us all a huge and wonderful party at the Perle du Lac.’
On the Friday—for of course the case lasted out the week: it was to resume for a final day on Monday—he came across again as I dashed for the plane and said, ‘Helmut’s going home with you. Right to your front-door.’
And on my front doorstep—Helmut a little disorganised by three Bloody Marys and St John of the Cross on the plane—I said, ‘What do you think is wrong with me?’ And he said, ‘I think you know.’
‘But I don’t. What?’
He said, ‘I don’t. You do. Somewhere.’
I said, to him, ‘Listen, there is a woman like a fly. I see her everywhere. I saw her this week looking through a window at me at the Rue du Rhône and if you want to know I saw her just now in the luggage hall going through the Goods to Declare. It’s the first time she has followed me home.’
‘I think you will understand in time.’
‘She has little hands and they were clutching the handle of the trolley and her mouth was a cave.’
He said, ‘Krista, all will be well.’
My car wouldn’t start the next morning and I had to take the tube to South Wimbledon and walk over to my father’s. It is a mile from the station so that it was half-past ten by the time I reached his gate and saw the curtains all drawn across the windows and a notice pinned to his front door.
The pulsating bedside light.
It was a typed message inside a transparent plastic bag with a drawing-pin at each corner, neat and straight. ‘Dear Krista,’ the message read, ‘please call immediately next door, number 38, and oblige E. Aylesford.’ I took out my key and went immediately upstairs to my father’s bedroom.
The cats shot out as I opened the door and found him under his old satin eiderdown. He was staring at the ceiling like an effigy.
‘Pa—are you ill?’
No reply. I went to the bedside and sat down and wished that I could bear to hold his hand. He had humped himself over now with his head in the corner, his knees drawn up. He began to cry.
‘What is it? Pa? She said I had to go in next door first—’
At once he was sitting upright in the bed, hair on end, eyes staring.
‘She, what? Who?’
‘Mrs. Aylesford.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know. She put a message on the door.’
‘Which door?’
‘The front-door.’
‘My front-door? With glue?’
‘With drawing-pins.’
‘She stuck drawing-pins in my front-door? I’ll kill that woman. She’s not right in her mind. Where were you last night? What about the shopping?’
‘Why are you lying in bed in the dark?’
He collapsed again and began to whimper into the eiderdown.
‘It’s because it’s all a myth.’
‘What is?’
‘Heaven.’
‘I’d better go and see Mrs. Aylesford.’
‘Leave her alone. It’s a myth, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They all go on. Churches. Parsons. There’s never anyone to prove it. Nobody’s ever come back. Heaven! When you die you’re dead. Look at your mother.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They’re all gone, aren’t they? All the old ones. Everyone. You stop, that’s what you do. Go out. And all the things you’ve missed. Look at what you missed with Graham.’
And so—he had said it.
I left him and went up Mrs. Aylesford’s path and saw her through her front-room window, waiting for me. Myrtle from number 32 was sitting with her and they were talking simultaneously, nodding their heads up and down. ‘Come in, Krista, we’ve been waiting for you such a time. Would you like a cup of tea?’
It was all laid out ready, with teaspoons and sugar-lumps and a lace tray-cloth. As Mrs. Aylesford went out for the teapot Myrtle lit a cigarette and said, ‘Cold, isn’t it? No sign of spring yet.’
‘Is it something important, Mrs. Aylesford?’
She was fussing with the hot-water jug. ‘Biscuits, Krista? They’re Nice biscuits. Or talking to you I suppose I should say Neece biscuits. It’s funny, you never know how to say it. They always seem so English somehow.’
‘Is it about Father, Mrs. Aylesford?’
She was busy with a tea-strainer. Then she put a little plate with a biscuit on it by my cup. Then she settled carefully in her chair. ‘Well, yes, dear, it is. I’m afraid the time has come for me and Myrtle to speak out. And others agree, down the terrace.’
‘You’re worried?’
‘Oh, very worried. Aren’t we, Myrtle.’
‘We’re distracted sometimes. Distracted.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘you’ve been most terribly good and kind. I know he’s very difficult—’
‘Oh, it’s not that he’s difficult. We’re quite used to difficult people, aren’t we, Myrtle? There’s been half a dozen in the terrace difficult but we haven’t minded. There was poor Mrs. Cross who left me her china, she used to have to sleep sitting up. Well, she died sitting up and I couldn’t get her flat. Her back broke right through. She was worn away to cornflakes, wasn’t she, Myrtle?’
‘Cornflakes. Her bones were cornflakes.’
‘And we had a terrible time with next door the other side, he used to sleep by day and work by night. Do-it-yourself, and all those dogs. I daren’t tell you the state the house was in when he went. Well, we were the ones that found him. It hadn’t happened long. The social services commended us. They said we must have suffered, living so near. It took a fortnight to get the place clean and the bottles out.’
‘How good you are. But you don’t have any of that with Father?’
‘Oh no. Nothing like that.’ They looked in their teacups, spinning it out. The long-planned encounter.
‘Well, Krista, it’s his rudeness. It’s his cruelness.’
‘Oh, he can be cruel,’ said Myrtle.
‘It’s the things he says. The terrible cruel things.’
‘And he’s a bit sexy too. I don’t like telling you this and you his daughter and him so old. You’d think he’d have forgotten. I suppose it must be a sub-conscious thing like Freud. And he’s so miserable. And so horrible.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘that he’s a great pessimist.’
‘Pessimist, Krista, he’s in black despair. And it’s not right because he passes it on. All about no heaven and this life being hell, and all about death.’
‘He never leaves death alone,’ said Myrtle. ‘Never. He keeps appearing in that door. Standing there with his eyes blazing. Here, in Mrs. Aylesford’s front doorway saying, “Where will it end? I’ll tell you where—it’ll end here and now and forever”—doesn’t he, Mrs. Aylesford? “Here and now. Cancer or a stroke. Or an overdose or slit-my-wrists.” It’s terrible.’
‘It’s like a bad angel. We can’t take any more of it, Krista. And then last night—well, that’s when we knew we had to speak to you.’
‘I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get over last night.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re very busy. You have a very busy life with all your foreign travel. Mr. Aylesford and I always found holidays abroad very tiring.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, he wandered off. I’m afraid, Krista, he wandered off and we had to call the police. That’s why he’s in bed today. He had quite a long session at the police-station—talking about sins and you and rubbish. He had to see a police doctor.’
‘I’ve been up to see him. He doesn’t seem very ill.’
Their four eyes were excited and hostile. ‘“Physically,” the police doctor said, “physically, he’s wonderful”.’
‘It’s mentally,’ said Myrtle, ‘it’s mental trouble. He went on and on to the policeman about his shame.’
‘What shame?’
‘Oh, I’m sure I don’t know. I expect it’s something private to the family.’ They looked uneasy. ‘But altogether—I’m afraid we had to report to the police that in our opinion—and of course we’re not professionals; this is simply the opinion of the terrace—we think he ought to be Assessed. In a home. He’s a damaged man.’
‘In an asylum,’ said Myrtle. ‘Or any rate a Nerve Home.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Aylesford, ‘I mean especially, Krista, if he’s going to start walking away. He went all the way to Wimbledon Park pond and started going for all the lads with their remote controls for being so noisy. He said something very disgusting to them which I’ll not repeat.’
There was a welcome, though unhealthy silence.
I said, ‘I’ll go and talk to him for a bit. I’m so sorry.’
‘I think we’ll have to have something a bit more definite than that, Krista.’
‘Yes, of course. The job I’m doing comes to an end on Monday. I can be here perhaps by Monday night. I’ll speak to the doctor. If you could just hold the fort till then—’
‘You didn’t ever think, Krista, of having him up to live with you?’
‘Yes. I did. I have asked him. He has always said no.’
‘I expect he’s just not wanting to be troublesome.’
‘Well, that isn’t exactly usual. And he does realise I work abroad most of the time.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘But I think,’ said Mrs. Aylesford, ‘that we all have to make sacrifices for our parents, don’t you? I mean money’s not everything and it’s in the Bible.’
‘But I have to work, Mrs. Aylesford.’
‘Yes, it’s hard when you’re not married. But with the money you could get for his house. Or for your house—? Another
biscuit? It would break our hearts here to see him in a Nerve Home.’
The bed was empty when I went back next door but I could see him dressed and out in the back-garden on his walking-frame lunging about at a large tree with the pruning-shears. I said, ‘The dinner’s warming up in the oven. You’ll get cold out there. Come back in.’
‘I’ve never had a cold in my life. Mind, I’m breaking up otherwise.’
‘You look very well. I hear you took yourself off for a walk?’
‘I’ve got five black toes.’
‘Have you shown the doctor?’
‘I know what he’d say. And I know what he’d think, too. Corruption—that’s what it is. Decay. I’m decaying. I’m getting started in good time. For my box.’
‘Pa—will you promise not to go off on your own again. You’re frightening next door.’
‘They need frightening. They need something to get them out of bed in the morning. All they do is sit and yatter. My going off’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to them. Gives them orgasms.’
‘They think you should come and live with me.’
‘I wouldn’t live with you,’ he said, ‘if it was the atomic bomb.’
But, as I finished washing up and hanging up the tea-towels and putting on my coat, he was crying by the fire. ‘You never liked me,’ he said. ‘And I never liked you.’
I said, ‘Oh, Pa. I’ll be back on Tuesday at the latest. I’ll come over and stay with you. I’ll take some time off.’
‘A lot of use you’ll be. What use is anyone? What’s it all mean? You can’t tell me. And I wouldn’t come near that fancy place in Putney bought with Graham’s money, not if you prostrated yourself in the road.’
‘I’m going then.’
‘Where? Now? Leaving me all alone? You’re not going off tonight in that aeroplane? Not after all that’s happened.’
Usually I call him before I leave for Heathrow but tonight, as I stood looking at the telephone, asking for strength, it began to ring and at the same moment the doorbell started ringing, too. I thought, ‘Taxi—I’ll get it first,’ and found instead Helmut on the step muffled up and holding his usual plastic carrier full no doubt as usual with prayer-books, whisky, toothbrush, electric razor, two shirts. No one ever calls for me.