Consolation

by James Wilson

  By the time I reached the park I was so unsteady that I decided to stop for a while. I spread my coat out among the trees bordering the Serpentine, then lay down, wrapped it round me like a blanket and shut my eyes.

  When I finally came to again, it was the middle of the afternoon. I sat up. The vertigo, thank God, had vanished. And – as if, even while I was sleeping, some part of my mind had been continuing to order my thoughts – I knew exactly what I should do.

  It was quite straightforward: Miss Dangerfield was right: I had been a coward, and I must redeem myself. At the next opportunity I had – however unpromising it might seem – I must speak to Mrs. Cooper. Until I had done that, there was no point in even thinking of anything else.

  That evening, I treated myself to dinner at a small French restaurant in Covent Garden, savouring each sip and mouthful as if – instead of merely being a kind of bridge to carry me through to the next day – the meal were itself the whole object of my existence. Then I returned to my hotel, and slept better than I had for weeks.

  *

  I woke early, and was at Victoria in time to take the 7.15 to Gipsy Hill. As I emerged from the station, I noticed a strong cattle-yard smell, and, looking down the road, saw the cows being driven back to the field after their morning milking. I dawdled along in their wake, and loitered on a corner while they were herded through the entrance and the five-bar gate closed behind them. Then I slipped in through the wicket, and set myself up in my usual place under the lime tree.

  Thinking that Emily Cooper and her daughters might come out at any moment, and that I should be ready to follow them when they did, I only half unpacked, and sat with the sketch-book open on my knee, squinting at the horizon as if I had not yet quite decided what to take as my subject. But by ten o’clock there had been no sign of them; and – on the off-chance that someone might have noticed me, and begun to wonder at my strange behaviour – I pulled out the box of charcoal, and started to draw.

  All morning I stayed there, covering sheet after sheet with perfunctory pictures of trees and cows that – as my boredom and frustration grew – came more and more to resemble the scribblings of a two-year-old. When the church clock struck one, and the Coopers had still not shown themselves, I knew that the logical thing would be to give up for the day and go back to town. But I was not in a logical state of mind; and though I tried hard to persuade myself that their failure to appear was just an unlucky aberration, I could not entirely suppress a superstitious fear that Fate might have punished me for squandering my opportunity to speak to Emily Cooper by ensuring that I did not get another one. Perhaps, in the forty-eight hours since I had seen her, she had moved house. Or gone abroad. Or, worse still: been taken ill suddenly, and died in the night.

  These thoughts would not be reasoned away; and as the afternoon went on, they fed on my mounting hunger and despair to become ever more insistent, until eventually they were powerful enough to squeeze everything else from my mind. If I left now, I knew, they would merely pursue me, baying in triumph: the sole thing that would silence them was categorical proof that they were groundless.

  And finally, a little after four o’clock, just as I was beginning to lose hope altogether, the proof miraculously materialized. A cab appeared from the direction of the station and stopped in front of the house. Two women got out, laden with bags and hat-boxes; and as the elder one turned to pay the driver, I caught a glimpse of that unmistakable bird-of-prey profile.

  Instantly, the bugbears that had been battening on me all day were routed. I felt a surge of relief – but tinctured with incredulity that I had allowed myself to be tormented by such gothic-novel imaginings, rather than guessing the obvious, mundane truth: that she had simply broken with her normal routine to go shopping with her daughter. At all events, I had learned my lesson: there was nothing sinister about her absence, and no reason to suppose that – if I came back tomorrow – I should not find her taking her walk to Crystal Palace park as usual.

  I lingered for a few minutes, so as not to give the impression that my departure was in any way connected with their arrival, and then started to pack up. While I was walking to the gate, however, I heard the slamming of a door; and, looking towards it, saw one of the young women coming down the steps with the little dog. As she reached the road, I stopped and waited for her to pass, to avoid the risk of meeting her in the street; but instead of turning right up the hill, she crossed over and entered the field by the wicket.

  She obviously had not noticed me before, because when she caught sight of me she stiffened with surprise and dropped the end of the leash. She bent down to retrieve it, but too late: after boggling at me for a split second, the dog twitched into life and started tearing towards me, yapping furiously, his ears flying like unsheeted sails. She chased after him, clapping her hands and calling Stop it! Stop it! Grrr, come here, you bad boy!; but he was impervious to her, and hurled himself upon me, scrabbling wildly with his paws and jolting the sketch-book free of my grasp. To my embarrassment, it fell open at the last drawing I had done: an incompetent jumble of squiggles and smudges that would have shamed a schoolboy.

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped, coming up to me. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry!’ She caught the leash, tugged the dog away from me, then crouched down to pick up the sketch-book.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘Still …’ She shook her head, then stood up and handed me the pad. ‘You’re an artist, I see.’

  ‘Not a very good one. As you can tell.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m not much of a judge, I’m afraid. Pictures are a bit of a mystery to me. Well, modern ones, anyway. I don’t really understand them.’

  ‘Then take my word for it. This is atrocious.’

  She laughed. ‘And as for you, you reprobate,’ she said, wagging her finger at the dog, ‘you’re an absolute disgrace. I’ve a good mind never to take you out again.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That seems rather a harsh sentence.’

  She laughed again. Close up, the family resemblance was quite unnerving: if I relaxed the focus of my eyes for a moment, I could half convince myself that I was looking at Mary Wilson. But not Mary Wilson as I had seen her in the church porch and at Langley Mill: Mary Wilson as I still clung to the hope I might see her yet, relieved of the invisible yoke on her shoulders.

  ‘It wouldn’t be that harsh,’ the young woman said. ‘He’s my mother’s dog, really, and she usually brings him over here herself. Only she’s been up to town today and she’s tired, so she asked me to do it instead.’ She bent over, took the dog by the ears, and gave him a play-scolding shake. ‘That’s why you won’t obey me, isn’t it, you horrid animal? You don’t think I’m your mistress.’ She cocked her head, and gave me a conspiratorial glance. ‘I actually don’t think he’s much more obedient to her, if truth be told,’ she said, in an amused undertone. ‘Only she doesn’t notice, because it’s always dark.’

  Something suddenly seemed to start crawling through the hairs on my forearms. ‘What,’ I said, ‘you mean she walks him here in the middle of the night?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not the middle of the night. But late. Just before bed-time, usually, when there’s nobody else about. I find it a bit eerie then, and lonely. But she likes it. Says it reminds her of when she was a girl, and lived in the country. The proper country, I mean.’

  I nodded. And then – fearing that if I showed too much interest she might think it strange, and mention me to her mother – raised my hat, and said: ‘Well, good afternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  I started towards the gate. Instantly, the dog began barking behind me. A moment later, I heard the girl shout exasperatedly:

  ‘Oh, Largo, come here!’

  I stopped and turned round. She was jerking at the leash, to keep the writhing dog from trying to follow me.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry.’ She gestured helplessly at the spaniel. ‘I was –’
/>   ‘What did you call him?’

  ‘Oh, oh, Largo.’

  ‘Largo?’

  She started to giggle. ‘I know, it does sound rather funny, doesn’t it? We named him after a character in a book my mother used to read us when we were small and we all loved. Mr. Largo Frog. And he’s pretty much as silly and vain as the original. If we’d called him something sensible like Banister or Toppy, he’d probably have been better behaved. Wouldn’t you, boy?’

  Mercifully, the dog started squirming and yelping again, and she was too taken up with trying to control him to see my reaction. By the time she looked up again I had regained power over my face, and was even able to manage a smile.

  ‘Ah, well,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon again. And good afternoon to you, Largo, too.’

  Then, before she could say anything more, I turned back, and continued on my way to the station.

  *

  I awoke the next morning in an almost narcotic state of calm. For a while I lay there, listening to the world getting up around me, my body so light and relaxed that when I closed my eyes again I felt as if I were levitating. The dawn chorus of what ifs and hold ons and but supposes that had greeted me every day for the last few months was quiet. There was nothing to debate any more: I had made up my mind. I would return to the field in Gipsy Hill that night, and if Emily Cooper was there I would speak to her.

  I had a leisurely bath, then carefully reviewed my wardrobe, trying to decide what to put on. I finally settled for my homeliest suit and a well-loved old shirt that was starting to fray around the cuffs. She would be unable to see it, in all probability; but – just as a crown will enable an actor to transform himself into Henry V – I thought the mere feel of it against my skin would help me to be the man I wanted to present to her: a quiet, modest, unassuming fellow, whose experience of life had knocked the fresh-starch sheen from him, leaving him sadder but full of a gentle understanding of human weakness.

  It was only when I took out my nail-scissors and sat down in front of the glass to trim my moustache that my mood changed. The man gazing back at me looked sad, all right; but so shockingly alone and out of place that he appeared to belong to a different reality altogether.

  All at once the silence around me seemed not restful, but frightening. I was suddenly acutely aware that – now that the clamour of voices in my own brain had stopped – I could hear no voices at all.

  To whom could I turn for help, or encouragement, or approval – or even just a wave and a breezy good luck? My only true confidante, Miss Dangerfield, had gone; and though I did not doubt that she, more than anyone else in the world, was genuinely concerned for me, I could not help remembering the look of pained constraint on her face when she talked about Mary Wilson, and feeling it as a mute rebuke to what I was doing. Jessop? My only means of reaching him quickly would be by wire – and, in any case, for all the sympathy he had shown when I embarked on my quest, I could not expect him to follow me through the labyrinth into which it had led me since. I briefly thought of telephoning Miss Robinson; but there was something so repugnant about the idea of trying to draw vital strength from a frail old woman twice my age that I abandoned it again – even before I had got round to considering the practical problem of how to get her number.

  I could not think of anyone else. Finally, I retreated to the bed again, shut my eyes, and murmured: ‘Well, at least you’re still there, anyway, aren’t you, old fellow?’

  I could have imagined it, but I thought I felt a tiny tightening in my temple, like the contraction of a small animal rolling itself into a protective ball.

  ‘Don’t you want to meet your grandmother?’

  There was no response. I waited for perhaps fifteen minutes, alert to every flicker of light or sound. Nothing but the distant music of the city, and the slow procession of brilliantly coloured shapes drifting in front of my eyelids like globules of oil on water.

  I gave up, feeling troubled and oddly aggrieved. I had an early lunch, then spent the afternoon wandering in the park, losing myself in the crowds, drawing from the warmth of their bodies the spurious sense that I had rejoined the human race.

  *

  Just before bed-time, the girl had said. But I had no idea when bed-time at Oaklands was; so, to be absolutely certain, I took the 8.25 train, and was back in Gipsy Hill by nine. I thought if I went to my usual place under the lime I might be seen in the light from the street-lamp; so instead I waited by the entrance at the top of the field, leaning on the five-bar gate and exchanging curious stares with the cattle congregated just below it.

  It was as well I hadn’t left it any later. I had not been there ten minutes when I heard the sound of a door in the distance, followed by the thin clip of a woman’s footsteps. Shortly afterwards, a figure emerged into the street, leading the dog. For a moment I could not be certain it was her; but then – as if she sensed, somehow, that she was under surveillance – she began peering around her, craning her neck into the darkness, and I caught a glimpse of the hawk-beak nose and heavy mouth.

  I held my breath. After a few seconds, apparently satisfied, she nodded, and crossed the road. I hid behind a tree until I heard the clang of the wicket, then quickly walked down and followed her in, taking care to cushion the gate with my fingers as I closed it, so as not to alert her to my presence.

  She was already almost at the bottom of the meadow. I started after her, moving as quickly as I could without making too much noise – although even if she heard me now, she would not be able to escape, because she could not get back to the gate without passing me. When she reached the fallen oak, she sat down on the trunk, and – thinking, presumably, that she was now far enough away from the cattle for the dog not to be tempted to chase after them – bent forward to release him from his leash. He tore around for a few seconds, then caught my scent and started running towards me. I squatted down to greet him. Whimpering with excitement, he levered himself up on my knees and began licking my face.

  ‘Largo,’ I heard her calling. ‘Largo! Come here!’

  He took no notice of her. She got up, and bustled over to us, folding the leash-strap in two and then snapping it against itself so that it made a sound like a whip-crack.

  ‘Where on earth did you spring from?’ she said, in a tone that suggested that her failure to control her dog was my fault for being there rather than hers for not having trained him properly.

  I pointed towards the gate. ‘But don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Largo and I are old friends.’

  As if to bear me out, he slithered back on to the ground and rolled over on his back. I started to rub his stomach.

  ‘Really?’ she said. Looming above me, her face was just a featureless black aberration in the faint silver of the night sky; but I could feel the intensity of her gaze as she squinted at me through the gloom, trying to tell if she knew me.

  ‘I met him yesterday,’ I said. ‘With your daughter.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re the artist, are you?’

  I went on petting the dog for a few seconds, deliberately taking my time. Then I gave him a valedictory pat and got up.

  ‘I’m not an artist,’ I said. ‘My name is Corley Roper.’

  She hesitated a moment. ‘Corley Roper the author, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Now that I was standing up, and she no longer appeared silhouetted against the sky, I could see the puzzlement in her eyes. She was reluctant to believe me, clearly – but couldn’t imagine why I should be lying.

  ‘That’s very strange, if you are,’ she said finally.

  ‘Because of the dog, you mean?’

  ‘Ah, Muriel told you, did she?’

  I nodded. ‘Very gratifying.’

  ‘Well, you’ve no idea how much those books meant – mean – to all of us …’ she said – the words trailing off as the thought that I might not actually be Corley Roper, after all, reasserted itself.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I took a few steps towards the fallen oak. ‘I’m
going to sit down, if you don’t mind.’

  She shook her head. ‘It isn’t mine.’

  ‘Still, you were here first, weren’t you?’

  She gestured at the tree with a graceless flick of the hand. I sat down. I was, I knew, taking a chance; but I was pretty certain that – however unsure she still felt about me – she was too curious now simply to walk away.

  I sighed, and looked up at the stars. At the edge of my vision I could just make out the glint of her eyes as she stood watching me, like the gleam of coal in a scuttle. She seemed to be wrestling with the urge to say something, and I hoped she might be going to clear the way for me by asking what I was thinking about. But she held her tongue, and in the end I said:

  ‘Shall I tell you a story?’

  She did not reply. But, hearing my voice, Largo slunk up to me, and I began stroking him again. As he inched nearer, nuzzling my leg with his wet nose, I discreetly hooked a finger through his collar. She would not leave while I still had her dog.

  ‘I don’t know if you take The Times?’ I said.

  Still she said nothing. I went on:

  ‘Only if you do, you might have seen the announcement. A few months ago. My daughter Elspeth. Scarlet fever.’

  I glanced towards her. She shook her head.

  ‘No? Well, at all events, when it was over I took myself off to the Sussex downs and lived like a savage in the woods for a while. I still don’t quite know why I did it. To be wet and cold and hungry, to feel bark grazing your skin and stones sticking through your boots … Those seemed the only terms, at that moment, on which it was possible to go on living.’

  I looked at her again. This time she nodded.

  ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘one miserable evening, when I hadn’t slept in a bed or had a proper meal for a couple of days, I had a … an experience that made me think I’d better go in search of food and somewhere to stay. So, as darkness fell, I slipped and stumbled down through the trees, looking for an inn, or even simply a farmhouse, where I might spend the night. And eventually, just as I was beginning to give up hope, I saw, in the distance, the faint yellow glow of an oil-lamp.’