A Long Walk to Wimbledon

by H. R. F. Keating

  So at South Wimbledon would there be no danger? Was the last short part of his long walk going to turn out to be simply easy?

  But first to get that far.

  On through the darkness. Marigold talking. Marigold humming. Marigold talking.

  Nothing checked the flow, not even a section of the track alive with squealing, scuttling rats.

  ‘They likes it hereabouts,’ she said when he exclaimed at them. ‘Don’t know why. But they been here a long time. They won’t do you no harm.’

  And they did not. After that first hesitation he simply put his trust in what Marigold had said and walked straight through them. To begin with he did expect to put a foot on a squirming body at each step, or feel a sharp poisonous bite at his ankle, but soon he became perfectly used to them, picking up his coat of happiness again well before they had got beyond the creatures’ domain.

  It was odd. Odd.

  Balham, too, proved uninhabited. He thought again about Dr Satpathi as they made their way along beside its pitch-dark platform. If he had been there now, this would have been where they would have parted. And he himself would have been about to journey on enriched by, not the five or six tales the little Indian had told him, but by dozens. Yet even the few he had were an abundant legacy. Together they gave him a promise that survival was possible, something he had been by no means sure of when he had set out. And it was a promise that had been in no way rendered null by those three reverberating pistol shots. No, human beings, he knew now, were wonderful keepers-going. Nothing was quite too bad for them. Nothing.

  He had learnt that from Dr Satpathi, and from hope-fired spring-leaping Penny, even from those two young lovers he had seen at Mornington Crescent making an arch of their arms over the grumpy old woman going to fetch water. Nothing was quite too bad. Nothing.

  Then, one by one the final stations in his list came up, each separated from the one before by a long spell of blackness and of Marigold’s burbling voice. Tooting Bec. Tooting Broadway. And, soon, Colliers Wood.

  And the next one after that would be South Wimbledon. And then into the light of day, and that familiar, familiar walk from the station along Merton High Street.

  What would that look like now? Heaped ruins? Or still much as it had been, but three-parts deserted? Or would it be like Mayfair, an oasis of deep silence? Or like Lambeth, burnt to a charred desert?

  And the house? When he came to the house, how would that look? That table-top front garden? That pale yellow front door, would the hammered-glass panels of that be still intact, its dinky plastic bell-push with the little picture of a church-bell where you put your finger still operative, the lantern in the cupboard-like porch still have its thick blobs of coloured glass in place, though doubly useless now? And when Mrs Brilling opened the door, what would she have to say to him? That Jasmine after all was dead?

  What time was it? What time was it? But it could not be even near midday yet. There was no possibility of that. There would be three hours to go, or two. Two at the very least. And the house was not ten minutes’ walk from South Wimbledon Station.

  Then, once more, ahead in the impenetrable dark a pinpoint of light broke through, tiny but afflicting the eyes.

  ‘There are people at Colliers Wood,’ he said to Marigold, an inexplicable stir of anxiety snickering through him.

  If, he had reasoned, the world up above was safer because no one needed to take refuge in the whole stretch between Clapham South and Tooting Broadway, then that tiny light-glim ahead meant that here at Colliers Wood there was something above not so safe.

  He remembered the lie of the land there, the small unpretentious station with opposite it a huge office block, charcoal-grey in colour, seventeen or eighteen storeys high, bee-busy in the old days with whatever work was done there, something in the interlaced multi-faceted pattern. What would there be round there? Wandering predators? Dogs? Another half-mad giant like the window-cleaner terrorising the whole area for fun? A truck-load of Happies zooming here and there, carelessly knocking down whoever they happened to come across?

  ‘Yes, ‘course there are people at the station,’ Marigold said. ‘Wouldn’t be no lights there if there wasn’t. Stands to reason.’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, once more just putting his trust in her, though reflecting that reason was exactly what it did not stand to.

  It took them another full five minutes before the light that had been such a pinpoint when it had first pricked at his eyes had widened to become no more than a dim orangey illumination at the far end of the station’s platform.

  Partially blocking the wavering glow – it was clear now that it came not from lanterns or candles but from a small fire at the very far end – were the outlines of several men. Hard to tell in the distance, but it looked as if there might be half a dozen of them.

  One, as they got a little nearer and presumably a little noisier, rose up, turned and came towards them. A big fellow, moving slowly.

  Marigold kept steadily on till they reached the beginning of the platform. Then she swung the shopper bodily across from its supporting rail over to the platform edge. With hardly a pause she set herself to scramble up beside it.

  As he had done on each such occasion in the course of their long dark trip, he put his hands underneath her sharp little elbows and gave her a gentle heave. Otherwise, small as she was, getting up on to any of the platforms was a considerable physical feat. He clambered up beside her on to his knees and then pushed himself upright.

  Turning, he realised in one stomach-sinking glance just what the balloon-like figure coming lumbering down towards them was.

  He jabbered it out to Marigold. ‘It’s a zomby. A zomby.’

  ‘ ’Course he is, dearie. What you think he was?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. He’s a zomby.’

  He was able then to look steadily at the oncoming figure. He was a very big fellow, as many of the zombies were, a full six-foot tall and very broad and fleshy. It was impossible to make out his face properly, though a halo of blond hair, curling and twisted, framed it. Yet there could be no doubt, just from his swaying drifting walk, as if he was filled with air, that he was a zomby. In the days when they had first been released after undergoing their operation and had had that cruel yet accurate name tagged on to them they had been so conspicuous that their characteristic bearing was stamped on the memory. A zomby. Someone shambling, loose-limbed, puffy-fleshed, simple-minded and not to be trusted.

  But with Marigold beside him he felt no hesitation in going forward to encounter the swaying figure.

  They met about half-way along the platform, peering at each other in the dim and flaring light from the distant little fire, its flames sending big shadows rising and falling across the rounded wall of the tunnel, lighting up at instants different parts of the tattered remains of the posters that had been there since the distant days when there had been goods to sell and people urgent to buy. A vast bronzed face puffing at a huge white cigarette. A half-glimpsed scene from a film, a naked man brandishing a vicious trident-like weapon. A family sheltering beneath a giant umbrella of insurance promises.

  Insurance. The belief that there would be a future when past savings would be needed, would be available, would mean anything at all.

  ‘Hello there,’ he greeted the swinging-armed zomby, his features with the light behind them still difficult to see.

  ‘ ’Lo.’

  He sounded neither friendly nor unfriendly. Merely responding.

  ‘Just going through. On our way to Wimbledon.’

  ‘Huh.’

  But it was communication. One human being sending out a message to another and receiving a message back, if a muted one.

  Then, moving with new swiftness, the zomby lurched rapidly towards him. He imagined in an instant his body held and carelessly crushed in huge over-muscled arms.

  He recoiled.

  But as quickly he checked himself. The move towards him had not been hostile. He h
ad sensed it not to be. It had not been.

  He stood and let the thick blunted-fingered hands come to rest on his sides. He smiled as slowly they pressed into him and began to slide downwards.

  ‘What is it then, ducks? What you want then?’

  Marigold’s voice in the dimness beside him was bright and inquiring, and reassuring.

  To both of them.

  The zomby gave a grunt in answer to her. But it was not possible to tell just what it meant.

  The paw hands continued their heavy caressingly searching movement.

  ‘What is it then, ducks? Tell Old Marigold.’

  The hands left his body. The zomby put one of them to his mouth again and again in a clumsy repeated gesture.

  ‘You’re hungry,’ Mark said. ‘Hungry, are you?’

  He turned to Marigold.

  ‘Can you spare some – ‘ For a moment he gagged. ‘Can you spare some rat-meat?’

  ‘Got more’n that,’ she answered. ‘Got a nice big bunch o’ carrots. Found ‘em growing just as I was going into the Palace yesterday. Old Buck’nim Palace.’

  She went up to the zomby, peering into his face. Her head came only just above his middle.

  ‘You come along into the light,’ she said, in the same talking-to-a-pet voice she had used to him on more than one occasion. ‘Got to have a bit o’ light, see what I’m doing. You come along to the fire, eh?’

  Huh.’

  The big swollen-limbed fellow shambled round and set off towards the far end of the platform. Marigold followed, squeaking the shopper merrily.

  The others round the little flaring fire – there were, he saw, four of them, big nodding-headed zombies all – stumbled to their feet as they came up. But it was not their presence that made the impact, enormous though each of them was and oddly similar though they looked with their ungainly bodies and the heavy growth of hair and beard that was another of their traits. It was not their looming presence: it was the smell.

  Ten yards from the fire it had become overwhelmingly apparent. The stink of excrement. And as they had got right up its cause became clear. The whole corner of the platform behind the little pile of flickeringly blazing wood had been used and used again. It was trodden and muddy as a pig-sty, and much fouler smelling.

  Marigold however seemed quite happy to put up with it. So he in his turn determined not so much to ignore it as to forget it.

  In a few moments Marigold had unearthed from the shopper both the familiar bundle wrapped up in that copy of The Times and an ancient plastic carrier-bag – it had the word ‘London’ on it and a crude picture of Big Ben in a mixture of jazzy colours – from which she pulled in triumph a large bunch of carrots, their feathery tops still springy and fresh.

  ‘No, no, boys,’ she said sharply, as three or four ham-hands reached out. ‘You sit down nicely and Marigold’ll give you each a share.’

  The hulking creatures obeyed like so many kindergarten girls. Marigold turned to him.

  ‘An’ you sit too,’ she said, as sharply.

  He squatted at once between two of the balloony zombies. He had been expecting that Marigold would simply have given out the food and that then they would have left. But he found he was willing to accept her decision that they should not. And, even though he was aware at the back of his mind of every minute trickling away from the time that remained till Jasmine’s noon hour, he was still pleased to be joining in the impromptu meal. Besides, there was not all that much to eat. They could not be too long about it.

  He took a carrot and munched at it happily, for all that he felt fragments of earth crunching between his teeth. But the rat slivers he waved away, and Marigold did not insist.

  It was a convivial occasion. The zombies chewed and grunted and belched and from time to time went into long peals of laughter till tears came into their eyes and rolled down their broad thick-featured faces, glinting in the firelight. And they nudged one another and nudged him – painfully heavy elbows – and looked at the tiny figure of Marigold, darting about serving them all, with the awed respectfulness of just-trained puppies. And he, too, laughed for no particular reason and poked happily back at the huge rib-cages of the two hunkered on either side of him. He felt euphoria bubbling softly through him. The heat of the fire was delicious after the dank chill of the black tunnels and, squatting as he was, the weight of his body no longer throbbed along his calves.

  But soon the food was finished and he knew he must abandon this temporary refuge of contentment.

  ‘Marigold,’ he called to her above the grunting and the spasmodic soft undirected laughter.

  ‘Marigold, I’m sorry, but I think we ought to be making a start again.’

  She came round to where he was and looked down at him.

  ‘It ain’t we,’ she said. ‘It ain’t we no more now.’

  ‘Marigold, what do you mean?’

  But he knew.

  ‘You’re on your own now, Billy boy. Old Marigold’s going to stay here for a bit. We need some looking after here, we do. What a niff, eh? What a niff.’

  ‘Yes. But, Marigold … But, Marigold, I need you too. I’d never have managed this far without you, I see that now.’

  She gave a cackle of laughter.

  ‘ ’Course you wouldn’t. Oh, the things you’d of done. Dogs as you’d of gone right up to. An’ people as you’d of run a mile from.’

  He gave a quick glance to the squatting, gurgling laughing figures round.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I would have run a mile. I did run miles before, from that window-cleaner fellow I told you about, and all the time he was swimming in the sea I was drowning in – I see that now. “Beats windows,” he said. Did I tell you that? “Beats windows this life” – and I ran from the arrack drunks, and there was no need, and from the Happies. From them, in a way, fastest of all. But I know better now, Marigold.’

  ‘ ’Course you do. That’s why. That’s why, Billy boy. ‘Ere.’

  She trotted over to her shopper and delved among its many jars and packages and parcels once again.

  In a moment she had found what she wanted. She came back over to him and thrust out her skinny hands, cupped together.

  In them lay a stub of candle, a good big thick one, and two matches, their clean wood white in the firelight.

  ‘You’ll want these,’ she said. ‘Getting up top at South Wimbledon.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Marigold. Thank you for everything.’

  A voice in his head told him how ridiculously like the words were to some vague party farewell from the old, old days. He heard Jasmine saying them. He had heard her saying almost those exact words hundreds of times in the days when they had gone to parties together. But deeper in him he knew that, for all the outward poverty of the phrase, it had told Marigold what he wanted to tell her.

  Thank you for being what you are, it had conveyed to her. For showing me by being what you are that there is something more even than surviving to making one’s way through a world like the one above, danger-filled, unaccountable. That, though surviving is important and can be done – Dr Satpathi had pulled that dormant belief in him to the light, taught it to him with his tales – there is something else as well. That he should never have clung as he had done, clung long, obstinately and hysterically, to what he had seen as a right certainty. That he had been mistaken, mightily, to have pushed away from him so frantically what he had seen as a wrong whirling mad uncertainty. Whirling, mad and uncertain it was, but it was not wholly to be rejected.

  Mad Marigold had half the right of it.

  He took the candle stub and put it quickly into the pocket of his burberry and then plucked one by one the two thin match-sticks from her gnarled palm.

  She would have forgotten him in an hour or two, he guessed. Perhaps, if ever in some unlikely future they chanced to hit on one another again, she might recall who he was, as she had recognised the woman at the Oval Station with her legs ‘all swolled up’.
But unless they did happen to come into contact like that again he would be in her memory only one more of the floating fragments that would occasionally surface in her happy bubble of disconnected talk as she wandered through the vast ruin of the city. Poor Marigold: happy Marigold.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said again.

  And then it came to him that now he knew, if only in a dim and half made-out way, what answer there was to the question which the sight of Jasmine dying would put before him.

  Part Eleven

  He entered the tunnel that would take him from Colliers Wood Station to South Wimbledon almost as unconcernedly as he had entered behind Marigold the last four or five tunnels on their long under-the-earth trek. There had been no obstacles in the darkness before, except that one easily passed area of scuttling squealing rats: he did not expect any obstacles in this final stretch. He positioned himself so that his right leg just came into contact with the dead live rail running down the centre of the tunnel and set out.

  He found that the trustfulness he had inherited from Marigold was still valid. He had no hesitation at all in stepping into the sooty blackness. At every other short pace he felt the rail just brush his leg through his draped burberry. He progressed.

  He felt free enough even to think. To marvel at the situation he had quite suddenly found himself in.

  It had never occurred to him as he had made his way through the interminable hours of darkness that Marigold would not come with him right up to the little pebbledashed house, now not so far away. The times when he had plotted to part from her seemed distant as last year. He trusted her completely in the end. But, he found, he trusted her now yet more for having been dismissed by her. She had been right: somehow he was fit to be out on his own.

  Now he knew what it was really like.

  And this was the knowledge he was going to have with him when, soon enough after this moment, he would enter once again that little box of a house, walk up the stairs – the beige-coloured wallpaper with its pimples of silvery white there still no doubt as it had been for years, and the big reproduction painting in its broad curlicued golden frame at the turn whose subject he could never remember from one visit to the next – and would at last confront his dying ex-wife. What exact words he would say to her he did not know and felt no need to rehearse. They would depend on what she might say to him, just what she might ask of him, what, if it should turn out after all to be almost too late, she might ask of him perhaps with a look only. When the time came the words would come. They would not be the easy forgiveness Mrs Brilling expected, feeble agreement to regard the past as if it had not taken place. But they would not be either an iron condemnation, the condemnation he had carried with him like a heavy weapon, unwilling to acknowledge even to himself that he had it concealed about his person, all the way since he had walked through the tangled confusion of the garden in Highgate until – until, really, Mad Marigold had sent him off.