by Graham Swift
‘No,’ I said.
‘Right. Come on.’
Quinn got hastily out of his seat and took the file. He was like a boy engineering some mischievous prank. Was he doing all this simply to pass the responsibility on to me? I followed him across the lawn. I thought of him running in the fields of Normandy. We reached an unkempt corner of the garden, beyond the screen of the apple trees. Ivy cloaked the walls, and some neglected trees in a neighbour’s garden arched overhead. Bits of garden debris and cinders strewed the ground, in amongst patches of weeds and nettles. It wasn’t the safest place to have a fire.
The incinerator stood in the corner – a shaky, wire-mesh construction, rusty and scorched. Quinn stooped over it. He did not pause. He took a cigarette lighter from his trouser pocket and then dropped the file into the wire frame, lifting his arm, ritualistically, high. He turned to me for final confirmation.
‘I’ve done all this for you, Prentis, but also to put my own mind at rest. If you think I was wrong, tell me.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, resolutely. It seemed to me this was an answer I would give, boldly, over and over again for the rest of my life.
Quinn looked at me, surprised, approving.
‘Are we ready then?’
He flicked alight the cigarette lighter. Before setting the flame to the file he pulled out some of the documents and spread them loosely to help them burn. The papers blackened, curled and flared up. I thought of funeral pyres. I thought: they can arrest us for this.
I’m not superstitious, but I wondered if at this moment, as the flames licked at File E, Dad would be feeling, at the hospital, a glow of relief; whether others there would see his face brighten – his lips flutter. The smoke curled up through the overhanging leaves. The evening shadows had lengthened and the branches and foliage seemed to press round us in complicity.
… the woods and the trees are always on the side of the fugitive.…
Quinn crouched by the incinerator, poking the fire with a stick. The flames lit his face. He might have been an outlaw in some forest hideout.
‘There,’ he said, lifting the last fragments of paper to make them catch. ‘Now it’s done.’
‘And all this was for me?’ I asked. ‘All those mixed-up files; your – behaviour – at the office? And you might never have told me about it?’
‘Not exactly, old chap. There are others like you.’ He smiled rather sourly. ‘My little flock. I just happened to know you.’
I thought: do I really understand Quinn any better? You penetrate one mystery only to find another. I wondered if at work tomorrow he would behave just as before, as if this evening hadn’t happened. Speak to me gruffly; look down at me from his glass panel; treat me like dirt. I looked at him as he crouched. His eyes were hidden by the reflected flames in his glasses. I remembered my arrival when he stood at the foot of the basement steps and everything was different. I felt vaguely as if I were under hypnosis.
‘Well, shall we finish those drinks?’
He got up and tossed away the stick he was holding. As he did so he struck his hand – the hand with the bandaged finger – against the rim of the incinerator. He winced and clutched the injured finger. ‘The cats,’ he explained. ‘Little beasts. They quite often bite me. Do you like Siamese, Prentis? Just a little bit on the wild side, a little bit devious – you won’t ever show them you’re the boss. I think that’s why I’ve got them.’ A sly look entered his eye. ‘You see, I like animals, but I’m not sure I believe in keeping pets. Don’t you think if you keep pets they should be free to rebel whenever they like?’ He waved the bandaged finger. ‘Come to think of it, they’ll be wanting their supper now.’
We walked back across the lawn. I watched Quinn’s limp. The cats were prowling round the door of the conservatory. When Quinn went in they followed him.
He reappeared after a minute or so with a large bowl of cat-food and another of milk which he put down on the edge of the lawn. The cats began lapping and nibbling at once. Quinn squatted amongst them and stroked the neck of one of them as it ate. It twisted and rubbed its head against Quinn’s hand, but whether out of pleasure or annoyance I could not say.
‘By the way, you’ll be getting official notice of your promotion tomorrow. Starting from when I leave, of course.’
He said this as if it were something merely minor and incidental but at the same time logical and expected. And, at first at least – until I had left Quinn’s and was returning home – this was just how I received it. I nodded, smiled. So much else had happened.
I stayed only another five or ten minutes. We finished our drinks, the cats licking and preening themselves at our feet. Most of the time we talked about animals and pets, and, almost as a natural course, about children.
He walked with me to the front of the house to see me off. At the foot of the basement steps he said – and not at all in a voice that carried any of the double meanings and undertones the words might have had in the context – ‘I do hope your father’s condition improves’; and he extended his hand, to grip my own or perhaps to grasp my shoulder. But I had already begun to mount the steps, and when I turned at the top I saw him standing at the bottom, his right hand dropping awkwardly to his side. This was the last image I took away of Quinn. I say ‘last’ as if I never saw him again – which isn’t true. But I have never seen again the figure in sandals and baggy, opened shirt, the figure with his watering-can and Siamese cats, or the figure who ran, to save his skin, in Normandy. For most of the time, you never know the real person. And then there was something about the sight of Quinn, standing, alone, on the front path as I started the car and waved to him from the window, that made me think: he looks like a man you will never see again.
I drove back scarcely conscious of my route. I should have been thinking of Dad, of X and Z, of Shuttlecock, of those three agents who were shot in Mulhouse … And then suddenly – as if I really had been hypnotized and the hypnotist’s fingers had been snapped before my eyes – the reality of Quinn’s words struck me: I was going to be promoted – officially; I was going to get Quinn’s job. And I had this sudden urge to get drunk.
I stopped off at the pub I knew, by Wimbledon Common. I was already tipsy from the gins I’d drunk. I hadn’t eaten all evening and it was by now past the time when, had I been to see Dad as usual, I would have returned home for the supper Marian kept for me. But I stopped at the pub, ordered a large gin and tonic and took it outside to drink. People were sitting at wooden tables, chatting and laughing. It seemed I’d emerged out of some confinement. Perhaps the people were happy because of the warm summer twilight wrapping round them and making the world grow soft and dim. Perhaps it was all a case of the pathetic fallacy. Then I thought: these people are happy because of what they don’t know.
When I got home Marian said: ‘You’re drunk.’ (I’d had more than one drink at that pub.) ‘You’re drunk. You’re late, and your dinner’s spoilt.’ It was like a scene in some hackneyed domestic comedy. I could see in her face her worry about where I had got to; and I could see that she thought the moment gave her a right to wield a little authority over me, to scold me, to have the upper hand. But I could see too that, despite her efforts, she was afraid to do this. She was afraid because I was drunk (I’m not often drunk, as a rule; I’m not a man who goes in much for big drinking) and because I was drunk I might hit her. (Though I won’t hit Marian again, no, never.) But she was afraid, in any case, that if she attempted to scold me I would make her suffer for it. I could see this fear and this desire to have a little power struggling in her face and so I hugged her, kissed her and said, ‘It’s all right.’ She was so surprised at this (it’s a long time since I’ve given Marian a hug on my return home) that she became subdued, even wary. Her blue-green eyes flickered. ‘How’s Dad?’ she said. Then I realized what she might be thinking: Dad’s recovered, Dad’s spoken again. That’s why I’ve gone and got drunk. I thought: in a way that’s just what’s happened. She looked suddenly a
larmed. And so I kissed her again. ‘Dad’s fine,’ I said, ‘fine, fine.’ And then I said: ‘I’m going to be promoted. I’m going to get Quinn’s job.’
[33]
It is over six months now since Quinn left our office. His departure was marked by the minimum of ceremony. A gathering of senior staff in one of the offices upstairs, to which, of course, myself, Vic, Eric, Fletcher and O’Brien and most of our junior ancillary staff were duly invited. Drinks and little sausages on sticks. The presentation of a gift for which I took the initiative for collecting contributions, and which for some time remained a problem until I remembered the battered golf bag I’d seen in Quinn’s conservatory. Golf-clubs are not cheap, and I don’t mind saying that I myself forked out in secret an extra large donation in order to buy the set, complete with bag, that the man in the sports shop assured me was the best. Speeches. A short valediction in which Quinn kept strictly within the emotional limits prescribed by such occasions, not allowing any undue warmth to melt, at the last moment, his traditionally chilly manner; and in which he wished, with no hint of special sentiment, ‘every success to my young and able successor’ in the seat which was ‘by now’ (dutiful ripple of amusement) ‘nicely warmed’. A breaking-up into general drinking, chit-chat and hypocritical well-wishing from which Quinn himself slipped away, scarcely noticed, not deigning to join us in the session which followed in the pub around the corner. I too slipped away from this second bout of drinking while it was still in its early stages, to learn later, from Vic, that it had developed into an orgy of Quinn-bashing, and from Eric – with whom, being now his superior, I found I could not listen to such things without making vague signs that he was being over-familiar – that this same session had led to another in which he had positively and completely explored all the remaining hidden charms of the tantalizing Maureen.
And so to the next Monday morning, and to sitting in that leather chair, which was not warm but distinctly cool (October; the office heating not yet coaxed into life), and which seemed, and still seems, I might add, too big for me.
I haven’t seen or heard of Quinn since. No phone calls or invitations. No chance, passing visits back to his old office. I imagine that is how he wishes it to be. We will cease to associate, like old accomplices who have done the deed and gone to ground. Our mutual silence will be as constant as Dad’s.
But very often, I think of Quinn. I wonder what he is doing; how he is spending his ‘retirement’. For with a man like Quinn, so solitary, so formerly work-bound, there seems no way in which this phrase can conjure up its usual stock of clichés. What will he do? The only picture I can summon of him is of a man walking – no, limping – almost continuously over the turf of a golf course, dragging a bag of golf-clubs which have already lost their new shine, pitting himself, not against the skill of others (for somehow I am sure that Quinn, with his metal foot, is neither a good nor a competitive player), but against his own deficiencies, his own nagging uncertainties, harrying the little ball towards its far-off home. Or I see him, an even more solitary figure, on one of those mythical sea-cruises the newly-retired are supposed to take, gazing from the stern-rail as the sun sets, over Madeira or Tenerife, and yet unable to drink in fully, to be pacified completely by the magic of the scene, because he cannot, ever, quite shake from his mind the memory of all those skeletons locked away in cupboards. I think, one day Quinn and I will meet, like secret agents at some seemingly innocent rendezvous – to feed the ducks on Clapham Common, to watch the animals at the zoo. I think of Quinn when I go to see Dad. Quinn … Dad. One day they, too, must meet.… But all these things, of course, are romantic visions. Lurid imagination. I think again. Quinn has his garden, his conservatory, his Siamese cats.…
And I am left only with the after-image of Quinn’s official self which I wear about my own person by virtue of occupying his desk. I look at the cherry tree through the window (nearly May again; it has passed the peak of its bloom). I summon Miss Reynolds (at first a shy and reluctant servant to a new, young master) on the intercom. I write down instructions. I survey the others (my old place taken by Eric) through the glass partition. I even suspect that I am developing the hint of a limp, and that one day, not far off perhaps, my hair will start to recede and I will simultaneously find myself in need of glasses.
And, what is more, I have the combination to the safe that, previously, was accessible only to Quinn, and I have the right to unseal all those sealed files which, previously, only Quinn could open.
Eric has just looked up. He has seen me standing at the partition, sipping the cup of tea Miss Reynolds has brought me, and his eyes have betrayed that faltering compromise that I know so well from experience: not turning away at once, but hesitating to give the full counter-stare. A tense, awkward look, perhaps lasting two seconds. Then he lowers his head abruptly, with an air of returning purposefully to his work; and then, after a few seconds more, his hand goes up to push the hair from his forehead and scratch his crown – perhaps to give an added impression of industry, but more likely to signal to me in some pleading way (for he knows I am still watching) that he is puzzled. In the last few months this bewildered, anxious, even melancholy expression has crept into the features of Eric, who was never one, in the past, to let the business of the office unduly preoccupy him. Where is the Eric who once boasted of his conquests in the typing pool, and who did not let his wife and family stand in the way of his not entirely plausible adventures with Maureen (of whom he no longer speaks)? A reasonable deduction might be that added responsibility has sobered and perplexed him; that in moving up the ladder from junior assistant number two to junior assistant number one (no huge advancement) he has come up against his own unhappy limitations. But I know this is not the case. He has every reason to be puzzled. Half the items in that file he is looking at now are missing.
I continue gazing at Eric, sipping my tea, knowing what my next move will shortly be. When my tea is finished I will open the rear door of my office and call out, like some captain on the quarter-deck, ‘Eric – can you spare a moment?’ (For, unlike Quinn, I cannot run – not with Eric, at least – to the barking of full-blown orders. But my words are a command – and a provocation – nonetheless.) And Eric will step up, and I will see the apprehension on his face, for he knows what is coming. ‘Isn’t it about time you were finished with that file?’ I will sink back in my chair. And Eric will offer up some vague excuse about the fragmentariness of the evidence, the difficulty of establishing connexions – all of which I will cut short by saying, with a faint sigh, ‘All right – leave it with me.’ And it’s then that I will see, beneath his confusion, a look of aggression enter Eric’s face; and it’s then, as he betrays himself by a momentary glance round my office, that I shall see the substance of that aggression. Envy; envy and hate. For I was once a junior like Eric; he and I were virtual equals. We stood each other drinks at lunch-time and swopped each other’s jokes. And now I sit behind a big desk, with a salary to match, promoted by an extraordinary stroke of luck (or, some say, secret machination) to a senior rank in my early thirties; and why shouldn’t Eric, who is no different from me, and only a year younger, have and deserve these things too?
I stand by the partition with this scene already scripted and rehearsed, as it were, ahead of me. But it is not really Eric I am looking at. And all that I’ve said so far about how I treat Eric – how do you know that I haven’t made it up, it’s not all in my imagination? It’s not really Eric I’m looking at. For, after all, Eric sits in my place, just as I sit in Quinn’s, and what I see are only the reproduced symptoms of a year ago. It is my life I see through the partition. My life. For this new role that has been mine for six months is not my life. I go through its motions, I wear its mask, but inside is a man just like Eric. And I like to think that it was just the same for Quinn as he stood in this same spot looking at me. Perhaps that is why he had the partition built – in order to see better, to get a clearer view.
So how little Eric knows wha
t I am really looking at as he bends over his work. And how little he knows if he thinks in his bewilderment, beset by all those misleading files, those gaps in the shelves – for perhaps, after all, I was not making it up – by my ever increasing strangeness (has Prentis really gone loopy like his Dad?), that the confusions cease, the mysteries stop, when promotion lifts you up into the rarefied air.
The mysteries don’t stop.…
Marian and the kids look at me each night when I return home, with the thankful expression of people who no longer have to doubt or disbelieve what they see. Perhaps my transformation is a mystery to them, too. Or perhaps their explanation – the explanation which relaxes the looks in their faces – is simple. All Daddy needed was a little power. When he didn’t have it, he tried to make up for it by acting the tyrant with us. But now that he has it, we go free. Contentment is just a fortuitous apportioning of power. And they don’t ask – any more than they did before – what I do in the office. And that is just as well. For I don’t tell them, either. They don’t ask if I am tormenting some poor underling in their stead. Why should they, if that is the price of their comfort?
But I don’t believe this explanation alone will ever satisfy Marian, for whom I am not so much a transformed as a reformed man: the man I was, years ago, before Mum’s death and Dad’s breakdown, before the kids grew up. I don’t believe she thinks it is power. And perhaps she even has some inkling – sometimes I feel it on those evenings when I work particularly late – of what I’m really doing at the office; that what I am doing is not just what I’m required to do. And what I’m doing isn’t just another, idiosyncratic version of power, whatever Quinn may have said – for he could afford the luxury of a little self-reproach, the rescue-launch of retirement standing by. It is only the sort of furtive, underhand and not even original daring of a man who isn’t really powerful or daring at all. The sort of daring that knows sooner or later – does Marian know this too? – it will be found out. For one day Eric may say: ‘Look, perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but …’