Thin-Ice Skater

by David Storey

  ‘I’m looking for Doctor O’Connor,’ I tell him, adding ‘Phil O’Connor,’ stressing the informality of my visit.

  ‘Out.’

  The game recommences, with the same result, the triumphalist figure turning to me again while his opponent once more retrieves the ball.

  ‘What do you want him for?’ he adds.

  ‘I have an appoinment.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘What’s your name?

  ‘Audlin.’

  ‘Gerry’s brother!’

  Resting the returned ball in his palm, his bat is raised to hit it.

  ‘Now I see it. “Audlin” written all over you,’ he says.

  Whether approval or disapproval, hard to tell: I’ve never thought we are that alike.

  Distracted by a call from across the room (‘Fuckhead is painting her tits again!’) he shouts, ‘There are penalties for immoderate speech. No supper for you, wanker. I’ve told you before.’ To me, he continues in his previously modulated tone, characterised by a Scottish accent, ‘He should be here any minute. You don’t play ping-pong, by any chance?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him.

  ‘Like to learn?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You someone who says no to everything?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him, and shake my head.

  The bulbous nose, the pronounced brow, the mauve cheeks, the protruding eyes, the wide-lipped mouth, the bristled chin: examining me a moment longer, he indicates the youth at the opposite end. ‘Patrick learns nothing, despite the lessons I give him. He’s not – definitely not – a challenge. You like challenges?’ he enquires.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you like?’ he says.

  ‘Fuck all,’ I tell him. ‘Certainly not being grilled.’

  ‘I’m Patterson, by the way. Steven, with a “v”.’ Clipping the ball away, for it to be missed the other end, he puts out his hand. ‘How’s Gerry?’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘Always was.’

  He grips my hand firmly, flinging it up as if to place it on his shoulder, flinging it down as if to grip his waist, then tossing it away as he releases it.

  The youth, having retrieved the ball, the game at an end, has joined the group across the hall.

  ‘Been here before?’ Patterson asks, placing the bat on the table.

  ‘No.’

  Giving me a swift glance, he says, ‘I’ll show you round. This is the assembly room. Everything goes on in here when there’s nothing better to do. Through there,’ he adds, indicating a squared-off arch, ‘the dining room. Beyond that,’ indicating a further door, through which several other figures are visible, ‘the kitchen. We take domestic duties in strict rotation. A bit like swearing, about which no one gives a fuck. Overhead are the sleeping quarters. I’ll show you.’

  A flight of concrete stairs leads up: the walls are decorated with the same coagulated image which characterises the surface of the table tennis table: concentric rings depicting a female head, breasts, an infant’s head, its limbs and torso here intact.

  At the top of the stairs an open corridor circles the building: rooms open off on the inner side. Many of the doors to them are ajar, bedding visible inside. In several a figure gazes out, some acknowledging Patterson, without curiosity, the majority not.

  ‘What’s your first name?’ he asks.

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘Abbreviated?’

  ‘Rick.’

  ‘I get it. I get it. To rhyme with.’

  He indicates the interior of one of the rooms, across the floor of which lies a much-stained mattress, the walls decorated with the image familiar from the hall and the stairs.

  ‘This is Ada’s room. She’s the one downstairs. She used to be a nurse and wants to be an artist. Maybe you’ll talk to her, if you get the chance. I got the message you’re something of a poet.’

  ‘Poet?’

  ‘One night I was with Phil at your house. Saw you slip across the hall. Said to Gerry, “Who the fuck was that?” So fast. He said, “That’s the genius who lives upstairs. Spends all his time writing. Like a poet.” Or maybe he said, “That’s the cunt who lives upstairs.” I was high on something at the time. You smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not allowed in here.’

  Perhaps Gerry imagined I’d meet O’Connor somewhere else: he has a house in a northern suburb and a consulting room, allegedly, in Welbeck Street: have, I wonder, our messages crossed, he, Gerry, too busy to notice?

  ‘We’re an outreach of the psychiatry department at the North London Royal,’ Patterson is saying, ‘financed by them as well as by the charity which owns the building, and the local Council whose area we happen to be in. Fifteen of our chums are long-term patients. Here they live without the usual supervision, other than Phil or me, or some other doctor. I’m Doctor Patterson. We have one American and one Canadian medic visiting, with the idea of setting up something not dissimilar over there. In addition we have several volunteers as nurses, our one prescriptive condition is no medication.’

  ‘Does it work?’ I ask, as we return towards the stairs.

  ‘Wouldn’t you agree everyone is normal? Come downstairs. We’ll make some tea.’

  A smell of faeces permeates the landing: one room we pass appears to be smeared with it. I don’t enquire and Patterson makes no comment, other than – assuming I’ve noticed the naked figure curled up on the floor – remarking, once we’ve reached the stairs, ‘Eddie’s going through retraction.’ Adding, as we descend the stairs, ‘That’s a return to birth and back again,’ concluding, ‘Quite jolly,’ as we reach the hall.

  A horror of the place has slowly formed, I wondering if I might leave before O’Connor appears, the thought no sooner established than the man manifests himself in the space before me: small, dark, pale: he hasn’t changed his habitual appearance for his interview with me.

  He has emerged, in effect, from a room at the foot of the stairs: its door had previously been closed: an interior occupied by a double mattress laid on the floor, covered by coloured rugs, a shelf above it stacked with books. Similarly several piles of books lie around the floor, along (conspicuously) with an alarm clock with two enormous bells above the hours recording ten and two, a fist-shaped hammer between them. There is also a suitcase, its contents strewn across its open lid: files and sheets of paper litter the floor as well as the mattress and its rugs.

  ‘Showing him round?’

  ‘Just,’ Patterson tells him.

  ‘Found us,’ O’Connor says to me.

  No handshake required.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘First affirmative I’ve heard,’ Patterson says.

  O’Connor is tired: his eyes, at any moment, are about to close: black suit, black shirt, black tie: an affectation, if not a uniform.

  The (colourless) slit of his thin-lipped mouth – broad, grimacing, expresses pain: thick dark lines, like hooks, link the corners of the same to the blackness of his nostrils: a gargoyle, for a sudden, hallucinatory moment hanging, invisibly suspended, before me.

  ‘Come in the office.’ He indicates the room behind, the softness of the voice is Irish, interrogatory, light: ‘Steve’ll get some tea. Better, make a cup and bring it here. I’ll have one as well. First, there’s a phone call I have to make.’

  He sets off to the entrance, indicating the way to the kitchen.

  Several figures, previously glimpsed, are preparing food: mounds of vegetables are arranged on a trestle table, a cauldron steaming on a gas ring. Three of the occupants are women, one young, two elderly – no telling patient (or ‘friend’) or nurse (or doctor) apart. Two men, both young, are slicing the vegetables, ill-at-ease with their task.

  Patterson, for his part, fills a kettle, pushes two mugs across the table, indicates a tin (‘tea bags: milk in the fridge. No sugar for Phil’) and, setting a flame beneath the kettle, departs.

  By the time I’ve made the tea one of the older
women looks up and says, ‘You new?’

  ‘Visiting,’ I tell her.

  ‘You’ll enjoy it here. Everyone does. Isn’t that right?’ she enquires of the room.

  Neither men nor women answer.

  ‘Welcome to Jubilee Hall. Jubilant by name, jubilant by nature. Isn’t that right?’ she enquires again.

  A murmur of assent follows me to the door.

  O’Connor’s room, if it is his room, is empty, the figures across the hall still preoccupied with the woman painting on the floor.

  I set the mugs by the mattress and examine the books on the shelf. Lucretius, Cicero, Plato, Montaigne, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius (Petrarch, Dante). The remainder are authors I’ve never heard of: Jaspers, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer. There’s a writing pad, open: I stoop to read it as O’Connor appears in the door.

  I hand him one of the mugs.

  ‘How do you like it?’

  ‘The room?’

  ‘The place as a whole.’ Taking the mug, he returns it to the floor, kneeling on the mattress; then, turning round, he sits with his back propped against the wall, indicating I do likewise.

  Moving several books aside, I take up a similar position on the adjacent wall.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Food’s monotonous. I’m trying to get them to ginger it up.’ He reaches across, retrieving his tea: something companionable about the gesture. ‘You live pretty comfortably,’ he adds when I fail to respond.

  The slit representing his eyes emits an eerie glow: I recall the ‘iconic presence’ Gerry referred to when I once naively objected to O’Connor coming to the house. ‘What’s “iconic”?’ I asked, evidently a word provided for him by someone else.

  ‘I’ve known Gerry for quite some while,’ O’Connor goes on. ‘I can’t say I know him well. You not at all. I did see you at that place you had in Hampstead.’

  His suit, its neatness; his leanness: the severity of his gaze: the sense of someone reduced to essentials. I observe the smallness of his hands, dark hair emerging from beneath the sleeves of his jacket: a simian presence, not ‘iconic’.

  ‘You like your brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Small teeth are visible inside the thin-lipped mouth: the bloodless lips, the bloodless head: something reptilian, too; smiling, he waits for my reaction.

  A figure appears at the door which, since O’Connor’s arrival, has remained open.

  ‘Can I smoke?’ the youth who has been playing table tennis enquires.

  ‘What’s the rule?’ O’Connor says.

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘What if I want to?’

  ‘You have to put up with bad luck, whenever and wherever you find it.’

  ‘If I go outside.’

  ‘You’re not allowed outside.’

  ‘If I go with Steve.’

  ‘Steven hasn’t the time.’

  ‘If he has.’

  ‘Ask him.’

  The youth glances at me.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘A guest.’

  ‘Whose guest?’

  ‘Mine. Close the door. I want to talk to him. Ask for Steven.’

  Swinging round, the youth closes the door with a backward flick of his heel, as if used to his dismissal.

  ‘Patrick,’ O’Connor says. ‘He makes not smoking difficult, though I’m sure he’s never tried.’

  The small-toothed smile reappears.

  Only now, with the door closed, is it apparent how confined the interior is.

  ‘Let me,’ he leans back, ‘talk about you. Or is there something you’d like to ask?’

  ‘No.’

  He smiles again: disarmed or disarming, impossible to tell.

  ‘You’re seeing Marjorie Pelling?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘We’re in the same profession. If it is a profession. She’s been here once or twice. How do you get on?’

  ‘She’s more at ease with men than women.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Could be hard on women,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Somewhat softer,’ I tell him, ‘with men.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I could be wrong.’

  ‘You could.’ He smiles again. ‘I’ve talked to her. Told her that Gerry asked me to see you.’

  ‘Unusual.’

  ‘With her I’d say not. Talk to her. Next time you see her. Tell her what you think.’

  Someone crashes against the door: ‘Sorry!’ followed by laughter. I recognise Patrick’s voice.

  ‘You live here all the time?’ I ask.

  ‘Three or four nights a week. I share the shifts with Steve. One doctor has to be present all the time. Terms of our agreement. Fancy staying?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No privacy.’

  ‘You’d soon get used to it.’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  His figure realigns itself against the wall.

  The more I listen the more relaxed I feel: how significant this is I’ve no idea.

  ‘How’s your sister-in-law?’ he says.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘You like her?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘She feels the same, I’m told, about you.’

  ‘She shows no sign.’

  ‘I’m sure she does.’

  ‘She’s been that way,’ I tell him, ‘since I’ve known her.’

  ‘What way?’

  He’s leaning back, drawn up against the wall.

  ‘Nuts.’

  ‘You give Gerry,’ he says, ‘a very hard time.’

  ‘The equivalent of what he gives me,’ I tell him.

  ‘You like him,’ he says: instruction or enquiry.

  ‘I’m dazzled by him.’

  ‘Dazzled?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone who moves so fast.’

  ‘Would you like him if he wasn’t your brother?’

  ‘Half-brother,’ I tell him.

  ‘How about your father?’ He opens his hands – much as if he were opening a book.

  ‘How would I feel about that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Affable: I think his eyes have closed: the light, however, a moment later, flickers beneath the lids: his tongue, briefly, wipes his upper lip.

  ‘I’d feel,’ I tell him, ‘very odd.’

  ‘Assuming you had the choice, who would you choose to be born inside?’

  I glance across.

  ‘Man or woman.’ He shrugs.

  ‘The only one would be Martha,’ I tell him.

  ‘How often do you see her?’

  ‘Not as often as I should.’

  ‘Why “should”?’

  ‘As she deserves,’ I tell him, and see, for the first time, where he’s going – calmly, indifferently, not turning a hair: a sensation like liquid runs up and down my spine.

  I’m aware of sounds outside the door: the scuffling of feet on the concrete stairs: an air of indifference dominates the place, casual, elusive.

  Someone overhead is crying.

  A voice calls out, ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Would that,’ he says, ‘be your only choice?’

  ‘As a surrogate.’

  ‘For real.’

  ‘Biological?’

  ‘Biological.’

  Propped there, his presence removed from the room, something other in its place.

  ‘Is this for real?’

  He spreads out his hands as if to indicate not only us but the building: he might have said, ‘What’s real?’ Instead he says, ‘That’s right.’

  Sitting, straightened, he clasps his hands about his knees: compact, homely: I’m aware how clean his shoes are, the congruity of his socks (black, like his suit: the whiteness of his calf exposed): he doesn’t give a fuck about anything: it leads him into extraordinary places, fearless, unt
roubled. Aloof and, at the same time, eerily ignited.

  ‘Why did Gerry never tell me?’

  ‘Because of your mother.’

  ‘Martha.’

  ‘Or Geraldine. You have your choice.’

  Again the flicker beneath the lids: a reciprocal flicker, below, of his tongue.

  ‘Is she my mother?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  The enquiry comes from behind my head: from anywhere other than the thin-lipped mouth.

  ‘All this time.’

  ‘Some problem,’ he concedes.

  ‘Afraid I’d go that way myself.’

  ‘That,’ he says, ‘and her studio contract. Children not allowed. Except to a studio-approved husband.’

  Why, I reflect, do I wish to embrace him? The bearer of indifference: news.

  ‘I reassured him that you wouldn’t. Go that way yourself. Of course,’ he adds, ‘I can’t be sure. You have every reason not to. He invited me to the house. You may remember. Had me have a look at you. Asked me, if an appropriate moment came, I’d tell you. Couldn’t bring himself to do so.’

  ‘He took a lot on trust.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  Statement, not enquiry: moment to reflect.

  ‘He thought I might go nuts like her?’

  ‘More chance if he didn’t tell you. Or someone did it for him. He thought of Marjorie Pelling, but came back to me. I’ve visited your mother several times. Like you,’ he adds, ‘a remarkable person.’

  A sound disproportionate to the room erupts around me.

  It impels a silence beyond the door.

  A similar silence overhead.

  His arm, the next moment, is across my back.

  ‘Quite a thing,’ he says, his voice beside my ear: an embrace, in that instant, more intimate than Clare’s, more bonding, even, than my brother’s …

  BOOK THREE

  1

  Gerry isn’t in: no doubt he’s made a point of not being there; perhaps, by now, he’s rung O’Connor and been informed that Richard is a rejuvenated (renovated) figure (better keep out of his way until he can be sure: no knowing what he might get, if not already has got, up to).

  I consider going round to his office: could ask Gavin for his views on the same; only Gavin (probably like Gerry) will be at Pinewood. On the other hand, I could ring my aunt. Or uncle. Create a precedent: announce – after all these years – my succession. Formulation. Coming out.