by Sam Thompson
The streets were almost dark, the daylight retreating into the clouds where it would soon fade, and the evening was colder than he had thought. He pushed his fists into the pockets of his jacket but the wind went through the cotton and the pavement’s chill had infiltrated the soles of his shoes. The migraine was a clenched fist behind his eye. As he stepped off the pavement on the Part High Street the front corner of a single-decker bus snapped at his sleeve and the driver leant on the horn, loosing a long peal of abuse. He looked up and down the road before trying again. Shopkeepers were hauling down loud steel blinds and some of the streetlamps had come on, their glow darkening the air.
On Dapper Street some youths were killing time by the ash-bins, bullying a dog that kept nosing around their ankles. Once he had slightly known a man who died when a group of boys and girls had knocked him down and jumped on his head. Having an aspiration was like carrying a wad of cash in your pocket: they knew by instinct there was something they could take off you. On these afternoons the city was nothing but cold brick and closed faces, and it made him feel that he was no different from the fat bookseller, a shabby clown wandering the streets in search of some delusion. But that was not true. His aspiration was not like that.
It was the earliest desire he could remember. He had always known that there were clues in the city, traces of what he was looking for, certain streets which he was sure would lead him where he needed to go. In childhood he had discovered that anything could be a signal: guano on red brick and white pavement, blackberries under a concrete walkway, water swirling into the mouth of a storm-drain. Gradually he had come to understand that hidden in some fold of every scene was the Flâneur, always moving on around the next corner, and sometimes he felt on the brink of understanding why he wanted so much to follow; sometimes he felt sure that the real mysteries do not conceal themselves but live beside us in plain view. Once he had seen the corpse of a blackbird splayed on the pavement with its body scooped away, leaving the head, wings and feathered ribcage, a shaman’s cloak. Another time it had been a one-eyed yellow tomcat whose punctured orb had shrivelled in the socket like dried egg in the bottom of a pan. These encounters were promises of a kind.
Two seasons ago he had come close, closer than before or since. It had happened at the end of an afternoon like this one when, heading back to Florence’s house, he had lost his bearings. He had kept on walking as the dusk gathered, sure that he must soon recognise a street or a building, but it was as if he had chanced into another city where he saw only dead ends and locked metro stations. He had walked faster, his watering eyes smearing the streets with light. When he saw the figure, it was far off, standing at the other end of an echoing pedestrian tunnel whose walls angled inwards to give a false perspective. For an instant he thought it was another citizen out walking late, but it turned its pale head towards him while beside him a film of dirty water coursed over tiles like teeth, and in that moment his feet tangled so that he tripped and spun and slammed into the wall. He picked himself up and walked away, not quite daring to run, never once looking over his shoulder, half-expecting to hear a lame footfall close behind.
He had never found out where he had been that night, but since then he had been keeping to familiar parts of the city.
Now he crossed the Part Bridge and continued towards the Old Quarter until the Impasto Street metro came in sight. On days like this, days when he decided to leave Florence and begin his search for the Flâneur, it was here, more often than not, that he would change his mind and catch a tram back to Lizavet Heath. When he saw the yellow mouth of the metro station glowing among the smaller lights, he would discover that he was not yet ready for the pilgrimage, and, knowing that readiness was all, warmed by a certain wryness at his own expense, he would pass through the turnstile and buy a ticket home.
As he went down to the platform he thought of Florence. On dull days she often lit the fire to comfort herself and so that the cats could stretch out on the hearthrug. She might still be sitting on the sofa, not turning on the lamps as the room darkened, or she might be trying to read a book or cook a meal: but no matter what she did she would in truth only be waiting, purposeless as a ghost in her empty house, for him to come home. A couple of hours ago this thought would have exasperated him, but now it seemed not so bad. It wasn’t her fault that every time he came back she would greet him with simple relief, unable to disguise how glad she was to have him with her again. He didn’t blame her for that: it was sweet in its way.
This evening the tramcar was empty except for an elderly man seated at the front, gazing into the glass. Simon sat close to the back and as the car began to move he realised that by blessed increments the throbbing in his head was letting go. The poisoned core of the migraine had drained out. It always happened at this point in the journey, he now remembered: it was strange how each time he forgot. The tram jogged, the old man swayed like a doll loose at the neck and Simon’s body copied the movement. He felt good. When he got back to Ectarine Walk he would make it up handsomely to Florence. He would tell her how much she meant to him and do whatever was needed to make her happy, not out of guilt but because he felt now that it was true.
By the time he climbed up to the street at Lizavet Heath he could barely recall the ache in his head. The last of the daylight had trickled behind the rooftops, but a bright sensation spread in him as he walked, beginning as a spark in his chest and soon spilling through his body, translating him into a lighter substance. In a way he did all of this for her sake. He was impatient for the surrender that he would see in her face a few minutes from now.
The front windows were lit along Ectarine Walk, but Florence’s house was dark. The curtains were open in the bedroom window above and he could see part of the room’s ceiling in the glow of a reading lamp. Otherwise the house might have been untenanted. He mounted the steps to the front door and found a bulky object propped against the jamb. It was his old rucksack. His key would not go into the lock: Florence must have left hers on the other side. He rattled the key back and forth, trying to dislodge the obstruction, then rang the doorbell and waited, then rang again. He opened the rucksack, which was packed with his T-shirts and jeans, neatly rolled. He stepped back into the street and peered up at the window. As he watched, the light in the bedroom went out.
He stood for a long time in the street waiting for some further sign, and then no longer waiting but simply standing there below the dark house. He stood until he had established it fully, because if this was what she wanted then he was going to insist on it: there would be no mistake.
He could no longer see the house, having stared so long that it was only a group of dim flat shapes which hovered featureless behind the streetlamps. He had nowhere to go and night had fallen, but he climbed the steps, picked up his rucksack and, to justify himself the more completely, dropped his keys through the letterbox, becoming aware as he did so of the city’s empty spaces lying open around him in every direction. From somewhere came the echo of an uneven footstep and for an instant he glimpsed water flowing across yellow-white tiles, but the street was deserted. The lamps tilted slow pinwheels of light. He paused and looked back before he turned the corner, but no one prevented him from leaving.
Florence woke earlier than usual. She lay for a few minutes listening to far-off traffic sounds and thinking her way into the morning and beyond it. Dismay stirred at the thought of how much would be required of her in the time ahead, but she told herself to keep her pace steady and spend her energy well. She could not be sure how much she had in reserve, but she was better than before, rested and prepared, and besides there was no delaying any longer. It had been six months of guilt and consternation.
She climbed out of bed and looked down into Ectarine Walk, where the last of the doctors and solicitors were disappearing towards the metro station and the elm trees were dropping their papery fruit to be swept along the street by a damp spring wind. While she stood at the bedroom window the sky seemed to grow a fraction dim
mer as if dusk had been falling since before day began.
Downstairs she let the cats in and fed them while the kettle boiled. After a cup of tea she got dressed and tidied the kitchen. It was important to stick to the established rhythms and routines and still to keep building up gradually, always doing a little more but never too much, but today in spite of herself she found that each household duty was marked with an extra significance. She felt as if she was about to set out on a journey into unknown regions and this was the last time she would rinse the teapot or rub Misto’s head when he came to sniff at her knee.
The kitchen compost box was full, so she stepped into her gardening shoes and carried it outside. The lawn would have been as tall as her waist if the grass had been upright, but it lay waterlogged and buckled under its own weight. The flowerbeds had become thickets and the silver birch was clogged with the pale threads of a climbing weed. She would put all this right eventually, but the discipline was not to worry about it now and only to do as much as she was able. At the bottom of the garden she opened the lid of the compost bin and upended the loose brick of tealeaves, eggshells and vegetable peelings into the hot mulch. Two months ago she could not have managed even this.
After turning him away she had relapsed worse than ever. The old pains had bloomed in her spine and shoulder and the familiar headache had settled back behind her eyes, throbbing with each pulse, indifferent to analgesics; over the days that followed his departure, her muscles grew dull and sore as stones and soon she was submerged and sinking, slowly flailing, into that tranced depth where pressure trapped her head, light rippled down too bright through the surface of the world and every noise was a dissolving concussion, at once muffled and too loud. It was hard to hear what people said, impossible to think straight, hopeless to imagine going outside or reading a book. Time swamped her. She shivered with fever. She wanted only to sleep but lying in bed was a day’s hard work at the end of which getting up to feed the cats would cost her the last of her strength. If this carried on for long it would actually be the end of her: the house would fall into ruin, the unfed cats would leave in search of new homes and she would stay here forever, stranded, insomniac and mad with exhaustion.
She could not explain why things had turned out otherwise, but somehow she had begun to struggle her way back up from the depths of fatigue. It was impossible to imagine, now, where she had found the resources for such an act of will, but one day she had opened the old notebook she had used for her recovery plan the first time. In it she had mapped her life hour by hour, plotting the difference between what she had done when she was well and what she could manage now, forcing herself to be realistic, trying to think of ways to make her tasks easier, instructing herself that it must all happen at a slow pace, step by step. She did a little more each day. Over a week or a fortnight she would begin to feel better; then she would ask too much of herself, staying out too long or trying to set things straight in the house too quickly, and she would slip backwards and have to pick herself up all over again. The months had passed and with intolerable slowness she had improved. And as the fatigue had retreated, it had left behind the immovable, hurtful weight deep in her chest which she had buried there by sending him away.
The cats met her halfway down the garden and stalked her heels back up to the house. She scrubbed out the compost box in the kitchen sink and set it upside down in the rack. The weight hung in her chest now as always. It tightened her breathing as if she was about to panic – she had to remind herself that this was not panic but something harder to name – and now, as often, she asked what kind of person she must be to stand here with such a weight in her, drying her hands on the tea towel and gazing out of the window behind the sink. Questions like this did not help. She did not know whether she had the energy to spare for a walk to the grocer’s but she had given the cats the last of their tinned food this morning, so she found a cloth shopping bag, put on her coat and went out. There was no need to hurry. Everything that needed doing would be done in its time.
Standing on the pavement she glanced up to make sure that the bedroom window was closed, and set off along the street, not trying to walk too fast. Through these last months there had been nothing of her to spare, she had been consumed by the work of recovery: but then one day she had looked back at that evening half a year ago and found that her guilt no longer scorched thoughts away to nothing. She could look steadily into the past and ask herself why she had done it. If she ever really caught a glimpse of herself it wasn’t when life unfolded to plan but at those moments when she didn’t know what in the world she was doing, when she was drowning in some hurt, some desire or resentment or regret. She knew it now: now that she lived this orderly life with one hurt swelling endlessly inside her.
She remembered the Gaunt exhibition, their first outing together. He had walked into the gallery as if he expected to be arrested – it had been obvious that he’d never heard of Albert Gaunt before that time in the library when he’d made her smile by using the printmaker’s name so clumsily to strike up a conversation – but when they started looking at the pictures he had forgotten his nerves. He had studied the small, dense lithographs and pointed out details which Florence had never noticed. He’d taken no interest in the information placards beside the prints; she on the other hand was always reprimanding herself for reading the text first, as if she needed to be told what to see. When they walked along the river afterwards it was as if they’d already known each other a long time. Slow learner that she was, it had never quite occurred to her that you could walk around all afternoon and into the evening with someone you had known for a day and already liked better than you could understand. On her way home she had reflected that there must be certain people in the world, a very few, with whom you’ll never need to search for what to say, and you know you’ll never reach the end.
Turning on to Lizavet High Street she passed the veterinary practice and thought of Emmie, whom she had finally taken to the vet three weeks ago because along with the yowling the poor old thing had started wheezing painfully and dragging a paralysed back leg around the house. Florence had stroked her as the vet had given the injection. Simon would have refused to understand why she had waited so long.
She bought six cans of catfood in the grocer’s and paused to rest in the café next door before going home. She sat in the window, at the table where they had often spent hours together looking out at the au pairs with their pushchairs progressing along the ten or twelve shopfronts which made up the high street. Once, after swallowing another in the series of espressos which he liked to drink while she took her time over a pot of tea, he had waved a hand dismissively at the street and told her that this place wasn’t real. That had made her suddenly furious. She had wanted to argue with him and prove what a stupid thing it was to say, but as usual she hadn’t. She knew he’d win because arguing made her tongue-tied and she would run out of indignation first; but as she fumed she had realised that he was not going to change. He would never completely believe in ordinary things, the things he could touch. That had been the moment at which she had betrayed him, she supposed, by losing interest in his point of view. She had done her best to be patient, and to wait for him to see that though he took such pains to demonstrate that his heart was elsewhere, his life with her told a different story. In the end, though, she had not been able to show him that he already had what he needed, that what was real was the heath, the house, their meals, their bodies, the days and years they spent together.
Well, it meant that he had something to forgive her, and she had something to forgive him too. If they could both manage it they would be able to begin.
She left the café and started for home. A week ago here on the high street she had run into Henry the bookseller, of all people, emerging from one of the charity shops with two plastic carrier bags full of paperbacks. When she had said hello he had shuffled and stammered and looked hopelessly shifty in the way that always made her first warm to him and then wor
ry she was being patronising. He had kept on glancing up and down the street, seeming suspicious of the fundraisers with their clipboards and the paired policemen. Then, his brow creasing, he had leant closer and told her that he had seen Simon.
It had happened early one morning in the Grand Terminus: as Henry was queuing to buy a cup of coffee in the concourse, he had recognised a figure standing motionless in the flow of arrivals from the dawn train. There had been no mistaking who it was. He had appeared to be waiting, or listening, and when the station was quiet again he had cast around aimlessly for a while, peering at the floor as if he had lost something. Finally, after picking up a trampled carnation which had fallen from the flower barrow, he had disappeared into the metro. That was all Henry could tell her.
By the time she got back to the house she was beginning to flag, so she put the tins on the kitchen counter and lay down on the sofa. When she woke, she sat up in alarm to find it almost dark in the parlour and the sky outside the colour of slate, but she had only slept for an hour. The days were short but there was still time. She wouldn’t go far at first. She would search for only a brief while today, but tomorrow she would continue for a little longer and then longer again the day after until she was searching all the time, and she would not stop until she found him. What would happen after that didn’t seem to matter. No doubt by then he would have another story to tell, but she would not be anxious to hear it. She wanted no more tellings, no reiterations. She only wanted to begin.