by David Storey
Two policemen appeared at the corner of the square and as they glanced in his direction he got up from the gutter and crossed slowly to the front door and rang the bell.
There was no answer.
He rang again and heard the steps of the two men pause on the pavement behind him.
He knocked on the door, stepped back, glancing at the windows and heard one of the policemen cross the pavement towards him.
‘No one at home, sir?’ he said.
‘There doesn’t seem to be,’ he said.
‘Would you mind telling me who lives here, sir?’
‘Well, I do,’ he said. ‘That is, I did. My wife lives here. That is, my former wife.’
‘Would you mind telling me your name, sir?’
From further along the pavement the second policeman approached, his hands behind his back, his steps ringing out on the pavement.
He suddenly realized it was quite late. No other lights showed from the windows of the square.
‘Well,’ he said.
‘Have you any means of identifying yourself, sir?’ the policeman said.
He felt in his pockets, then glanced back at the house. ‘There should be someone in,’ he said. ‘My children are in there as well.’
The second policeman switched on a torch. He flashed it up at the windows.
‘Doesn’t seem to be anyone at home, sir,’ the first policeman said. ‘None of the curtains are drawn.’
‘No,’ he said.
From his pockets he took several of the forms.
‘Could I see those?’ the policeman said as he began to put them back.
The second policeman flashed his torch onto the pieces of paper. They read them together, the light lowered to the print.
‘You’re not living here, then, sir?’ he said.
‘No.’ He shook his head. The second policeman so far hadn’t spoken. He glanced up at him then back at the paper.
‘These messages, sir: they’re a sort of code?’
‘No.’ He felt in his pockets for some other means of identification. It was all in his room, and what wasn’t in his room was in his house. He pressed the bell again, then knocked on the door.
‘Your name’s Fowler, sir?’ He indicated the forms.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s Pasmore.’
‘I wonder, sir,’ he said, ‘if you’d mind coming down to the station then we could clear this thing up?’
‘If you ask the neighbours, they’ll tell you who I am.’
‘I think we can sort it out at the station, sir.’
He shook his head. ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘All right.’
‘If it’s all as you say, sir,’ he said, ‘then there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘No,’ he said.
They walked in silence through the streets, the policemen on either side. The odd person they encountered turned, pausing, to watch them pass.
At the station the telegrams were placed on the counter before him and, frowning in the light, his name and address and his occupation were taken down.
It was as if he had been expected, or as if this event were a part of his daily routine. No kind of curiosity or interest intruded.
‘Would you mind emptying your other pockets, sir?’ they said.
‘No, I don’t mind,’ he said.
He laid the various pieces on the counter before him.
A little pile of debris was brought to light; many of the items surprised him: bits of paper, tickets. A bar of chocolate. A sweet. A student’s pen.
‘I don’t think any of this is necessary,’ he said.
‘It’s just a formality, sir,’ he said.
They waited.
When it was completed the man added, ‘Now, sir, who would you like to come and identify you?’
‘Any of the neighbours,’ he said, ‘as I told the officer here.’
‘In the square, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you give us a name, sir?’
He thought for a moment, frowning. There was no one’s name he could, at that moment, recollect.
‘I know them by sight,’ he said.
‘How long have you lived there, sir?’
He thought of Coles, in Clapham. It seemed a long way for him to come.
In the end, against all his intentions, he gave them the name and address of Newsome.
He was taken to a small room. It was tiled in white to the ceiling. Two chairs and a table were set down at one side. A barred window, high in the wall, looked out into a lighted courtyard. The barking of a dog and the revving of engines came through the wall.
At intervals steps walked past the door. Somewhere, quite close, was a flight of stairs: he could hear people running up and down and occasionally a voice calling. After a while he began to wonder if he had been forgotten.
Then the door opened and Newsome appeared. A policeman came in behind.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘What a mess.’
‘Could you come this way, sir?’ the policeman said.
His belongings were handed back across the counter. The two younger policemen had vanished.
‘I think it might be as well, sir,’ they said, ‘not to hang around so late at night.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Yet they remained curiously unmoved and had already turned away long before he had reached the door.
‘What a thing to happen,’ Newsome said. His shooting-brake stood in the street outside. ‘Did they tell you they had a call?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Someone reported you loitering in the street.’ He took his arm. ‘Would you like to come home?’ he said. ‘I could do with a drink myself.’
‘I think I’ll go and see Kay,’ he said. ‘I think I should have a key to my own home.’ His grievance slowly burst inside him.
‘She’s not there,’ he said.
‘Who?’ he said.
‘Her mother came down today and took the kids away. Kay and Norman have gone off on their own.’
He said nothing, staring down the lighted street.
A policeman came out of the building behind them, turned up his collar and set off into the night.
‘Why not come home,’ Newsome said. ‘We can put you up easily for the night.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said.
‘I think you should.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘At least let me give you a lift.’
‘I’d prefer to walk.’ Then, as he turned, he added, ‘Did they say where they were going?’
‘No.’ He shook his head.
‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘Good-night.’
Newsome watched him as he walked off, in the wrong direction as it happened, yet he carried on until he thought he was out of sight.
He walked back again, past the station. Newsome’s car had gone. He heard the clocks striking. It was nearly dawn when he reached his room.
Nothing made sense any longer. All those little signs by which he kept in touch with things in and around him had vanished. He had begun to lose all sense of time. When he went down to the street it seemed merely one more adjunct of his confusion, blank, without any opposing existence of its own. He no longer recognized the people around him; they became, simply, embodiments of all those disparate feelings and sensations which poured through his mind, sending him one way then another without any sense of direction or purpose. His head was like a mist. There was no end to himself, no one to appeal to, no one to help him, no one he could even recognize. Everything had been consumed; it was as if he had been eaten up.
Yet he walked, sat down, slept as he had done before.
In a way nothing had changed. However hard he looked he could see nothing beyond it. There was nothing else at all; everything was fastened up in exactly the same way. Nothing had been changed; looking back it seemed it had always been like this. There was no way back, no way forward. He was, he knew now, extinct.
Some days he didn’t eat at all. Other days he made an enormous meal, emptying tins, only to leave the food half-eaten, sometimes scarcely touched, re-heating it next day, eventually clearing it into the dustbins as it turned to mould. The ’phone had been disconnected. His resources, with his diminished appetite, were just sufficient to cover the rent and food. With the weather growing warmer he no longer used the fire. He never put on the electric light. A pile of candles stood by the bedside; the closed curtains during the day filtered down the light.
At night he lay on the bed with his transistor timed to a police wave-length. It was like water rushing through his head. The only coherent sounds were these disjointed voices, the evidence of some other world outside: the news of fires, a burglary, someone maimed or killed, a man apprehended with nothing on. For hours he lay in the darkness listening to the unemotional voices, the clicking of switches and the faint revving of cars.
During the day he sat at his desk and wrote. He found there was very little now he could complete. ‘What would you do if . . .’ ‘In the beginning . . .’ ‘I wondered . . .’ ‘Eventually, he came to the conclusion that . . .’ He took an abstracted pleasure in writing down these phrases, in thinking of them, sucking his pen, in moving on from one to the next, even in repeating them as if something decisive were being plotted.
One day Coles came to see him. The bell rang and peering through the curtains he saw him in the street, looking up directly at the window. He let the curtain fall abruptly. He waited in the darkened room, listening.
The bell rang again. It was hours before he relaxed.
There were periods, too, when he could do nothing but weep. At some point during the day he would sit down, very much as he might do to a job, an imposition, and begin to cry, a low, dolorous sound associated with no particular feeling, his body thrust forward slightly, his arms folded across his knees, the noise drawn up inside his chest.
One morning he opened the street door and found his father waiting on the pavement.
It was almost midday and the street was crowded with shoppers released for their lunch-hour from the surrounding offices.
His father was dressed in a dark, ill-fitting suit, his hair neatly brushed back from his boyish fringe: some embodiment of that nightmare from which the ringing of the bell had dazedly roused him.
Seeing him incapable of speaking he said, quickly, ‘Come on in, then,’ as if he had been waiting for him some considerable time.
‘I came round to see you,’ his father said as he followed him up the stairs. ‘We’re staying at Kay’s.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said.
His father hesitated at the door of the room.
‘No, come on in,’ he said feeling suddenly hospitable, even reassured.
The place was in darkness. After a moment’s hesitation he put on the light.
Nothing happened. ‘I’ve no coins for the meter,’ he said, and laughed.
He began to grin then quite amiably at his father.
‘Don’t the curtains pull back?’ his father said. He had entered the room quite abruptly, walking to the nearest chair and standing by it, his fist clenching its back, his gaze rigidly avoiding the room.
‘Well, I keep them closed,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You never know who they might let in.’
Nevertheless, after a moment, he pulled one back.
‘Your mother’s staying at Kay’s,’ he said.
‘Alone?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You’re staying with her?’
‘Yes,’ his father said. His face had reddened now. ‘We came down to see the kiddies.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said as if this were something he had specifically arranged.
‘We didn’t intend to come here,’ his father said and made some attempt to indicate the room. Its disorder, however, couldn’t easily be ignored.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he said.
‘No.’ He shook his head.
He glanced hurriedly about him, at the crumpled bed, the litter of paper, tins and rubbish. He moved towards him suddenly as if all this had been designed to humiliate him and turn him from his course.
‘You’re breaking their hearts,’ he said.
‘Whose?’ He had gone to sit on the bed, remote, as if suddenly unaware of his father’s presence. He glanced up, nervously, at the opened curtain.
The door of the room was still open.
A moment later he began to tremble, his arms shaking, as if he didn’t know what was going on.
‘I’m talking about your kiddies,’ his father said.
‘They’re away on holiday.’
‘Holiday. They’ve been back for weeks.’ Then he added more quietly, ‘I could fair kill you now. And bloody swing for it. I would.’
He could think of nothing to say. Then, as if reminded, he said, ‘I don’t think you could. They’ve abolished hanging. At least, for a trial period, I believe.’
His father raised his hand; he seemed to explode.
An enormous weight had crashed against his head. For a moment he could see nothing of the room at all.
‘I was just about to go out shopping,’ he said as if nothing whatsoever had occurred. He looked round for the basket and the money he might need.
‘Well, then,’ he said, smiling again, ‘I’d better be going. At this time, you know, it’s pretty crowded.’
He looked round, vaguely, trying to locate his father.
When he went to the stairs he heard him descending behind him, breathing heavily down his nose.
‘See,’ his father said. ‘Are you going back home?’
‘What?’ he said.
‘Are you going back to your children?’
He had turned round in the street doorway to look at him, half-surprised.
‘Look, I live here alone,’ he said. And as if his father had contradicted him added, ‘No, I really do. You can keep a watch on the door if you like.’
His father watched him suspiciously, perhaps even frightened.
In the same reasonable tone he went on, ‘I shouldn’t come here again. I shan’t open the door. I should go home if I were you and forget I existed.’
‘Yes,’ his father said. ‘You’d like that.’
‘I would,’ he said. ‘But, naturally, I can’t force you.’
His father looked round him, at the street, at the stalls and the people. ‘I’ve given up all my life,’ he said, ‘so that you can live here.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘You handed it over. Don’t ask me to get it back.’
He saw his father’s eyes expand. His look was black. Some wholly inarticulate violence began to erupt from his father’s mouth.
He scarcely heard it. What he did hear, far more clearly, was a kind of high-pitched wail, a sound attached vaguely to a variety of words, but more certainly to a hugeness of feeling he had never experienced or even imagined could exist before. He seemed to descend with it, crying, as if, finally, he had lost his grip on everything and he were falling, physically and in his entirety, through the ground.
Twelve
He saw, first of all, a black disc. It was like a hole; but then a hole without dimensions. It was merely an absence of things. He felt himself sliding towards it. It was, on the one hand, like a hole in the top of his head; it was, on the other, like a hole in the ground. It was both within him and without. He felt himself slipping over the edge. He was drawn into it and consumed by the darkness.
His presence was ignited, by flames, by a heatless inferno; he appeared to pass on into some other dimension. It was a pit, yet the sides were indiscernible: it was bottomless, yet there was no movement either up or down. It was merely an absence and somewhere, at its centre, he hung there, in torment.
Some days Coles came to see him. Usually he sat in silence by his bed, gazing at him through his heavy lenses, occasionally taking his glasses off to clean them, holding them against his knees, his eyes white-rimmed, sightless, gazing blindly down.
He seemed curiously at ease in the disordered room, picking up a chair, setting it down by the bed with the beer or the food or the paper he had brought with him. From the street would come the same shouts, the noise of traffic – and the sound he associated most of all now with the room: the shuffling of hundreds of feet.
Sometimes Coles lit a cheroot.
This was a recent habit, prompted perhaps by the unpleasant odours of the room. ‘How long have you been smoking them?’ he asked him.
‘Oh, it’s fairly recent,’ Coles said, looking at the cheroot in his hand, as if he were still curious about it himself.
‘Any more new vices?’ he said.
‘No.’ He shook his head.
‘Socialism, the Revolution,’ he said one day to Coles, ‘has always intimidated me, you know. In the end it seems to be little more than a reassertion, if in profounder terms, of an existing event: that obsessional relationship one has always known to exist between people and the objects they possess.’
The light glinted from Coles’s glasses, hiding his expression.
‘The only revolution, in the end, conceivable to me,’ he said, watching Coles from the pillow, ‘is one which breaks down such a partnership. In a sense I suppose it couldn’t be called a revolution. It can only be disseminated by word of mouth, by the touch of one person with another. We’re in the hands of revolutionary simpletons. The public event.’