Beyond the Arch

by David Evered

  ‘I suppose there’s an element of both involved.’

  ‘Is this a temporary and premature mid-life crisis or is there something more fundamentally amiss in your life? Is it that you feel discontented and sense that you would be better doing something different and, if so, can you define what that “something different” might be?’

  ‘I really don’t know the answers to these questions. If you had asked me several months ago if I was contented with my lot, I should have answered “yes”, probably with no more than a moment’s hesitation. Now I feel a nagging sense of unease which has been brought into sharp relief by the events of the last two months and the challenges which have been put to me.’

  ‘Peter, I can’t resolve your dilemmas for you. I’m happy to listen and share my views of the world, but they are no more than that – my personal views of the world. They are coloured by many things, particularly my Catholic background and upbringing. Even though I’ve rejected the faith, the culture still plays a major role in the way I think. I was educated and spent my childhood in a very different environment to yours. Even our National Service experiences could not have been more different. While Private Rattray was sweating and often shit-scared in the jungle in the Malayan insurgency, 2nd Lieutenant Bowman was much more safely ensconced in Minden in Germany. I know you believe that we both had similar difficulties in adapting to Cambridge, but our responses were inevitably different. There are no covert judgements in what I say. Our long friendship has its foundations in much that we share but we are not identical twins from a single egg. I cannot and should not advise you – or even comment.’

  ‘I accept that. I know I’m constrained by my background and my desire to break away is probably unrealistic and fanciful. I’m sure I’m far from being alone in having escapist fantasies and unrealistic ambitions. You’re right – our genes, our childhood environments and our experiences shape our behaviours and attitudes more than we probably realise, but religious observance in my family was probably just as pervasive as it was in yours. It was low church and puritanical and the spectre of hellfire was ever present as a threat if we transgressed. This might have been at the other end of the Christian spectrum from your Catholic upbringing but Catholicism also has its puritanical elements. There were things that my brother and I were not allowed to do at home on a Sunday. We were not permitted to play games with dice or playing cards, however innocent, like snap. The outcome of such games was dependent on chance and we were taught that chance was the realm of the devil. Conversely, we were encouraged to believe that resolve, application and commitment were essential for our development and that these attributes were the basis of righteousness. These attitudes dominated my schooldays to an extreme degree. Pupils were not permitted to play certain chords on the chapel organ as they were judged to be ungodly and the singing of Jerusalem was banned. I think it was the line “Bring me my arrows of desire” that was the problem. It was thought that such words might arouse unhealthy and lustful thoughts in our adolescent minds!’

  Michael laughed. ‘I can see that you’ve also had some major barriers to surmount but most adolescent minds are perfectly capable of generating lustful thoughts without going to the trouble of singing Jerusalem! But your response was very general and defensive. Can you not enlighten me further about the specific circumstances or events which have brought on this acute attack of introspection? Or are you simply envious, as one of the pre-war generation, that the baby-boomer generation seem to be having all the fun as fully paid-up members of the permissive society?’

  ‘I’m really not sure about that. It goes back to what I was saying about Andrew’s challenges. It raised a question in my mind – do I want to spend the next twenty-five or thirty years locked into my current job and, if not, do I have the courage and talent to succeed as a writer or anything else for that matter?’

  ‘Does Ann know of or empathise with your self-examination?’

  ‘I’ve only discussed it with her briefly but I suspect she regards such aspirations as insane and she may well be right.’

  ‘May I ask, is all well on the domestic front?’

  ‘Oh yes, we have our ups and downs like all married couples but, yes, the marriage is fine.’

  ‘I hope so – but you must know that fine is often regarded as an acronym – “fucking incapable of normal emotions”.’ Peter laughed uneasily but did not respond. Michael continued, ‘It’s far from clear to me where your thoughts and aspirations are leading you and I suspect that they’re not entirely clear to you either. Perhaps I can offer another health warning.’ He picked a book off his shelves and as he thumbed through the pages he said, ‘I’m sure you’re not as familiar with the works of Karl Marx as I am and I’m quite certain that it was not required reading at your posh school! He wrote “Men make their own history, but they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. He was writing about Louis Bonaparte and while I’m not suggesting that you have imperial ambitions, only you can determine if you have the commitment to create an alternative history for yourself unconstrained by the circumstances of the past. I cannot and will not advise, although I am always here to listen and, after your disclosures this evening, I can scarcely wait for the next instalment!’

  ‘Thank you, you’re right. I really don’t know where I want my life to go. I guess I’m in the position of Cromwell when he said “I can tell you what I would not have but I cannot what I would”. But that’s enough of my existential angst for one evening.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s been good to see you but let’s move on to less emotive topics and listen to some music before you go home and sleep off the alcohol which you have ingested today.’

  8

  The telephone rang insistently early the following morning. Peter woke with a start and felt instinctively for the alarm clock but when he was unable to silence the noise he identified the source and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Peter, I was trying to get you last night. Where were you?’ Ann’s tense voice came down the line.

  ‘Me? Oh, I went out to have a meal. You remember, I told you on the phone yesterday evening that I would be late home.’

  ‘Yes, I forgot. Dad died at about 7.30 last night.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. How are you and your Mum coping?’

  ‘She’s devastated at one level but she is managing. As you know, she had been prepared for this for some weeks. I think I shall have to stay up here now for at least a week. I can’t leave her and Jenny to make all the funeral arrangements on their own. I phoned Francis yesterday when it was clear that Dad was on the way out and he agreed that I could stay away from work on compassionate leave until the middle of next week. He wants me then to meet him in Birmingham. I shall have to go there directly from Newcastle. We’re making a documentary programme about the Lunar Society and he wants the whole team to be there. He says it’s important that I familiarise myself with the background and immerse myself in some of the history. Could you bring my briefcase to Newcastle when you come? I shall try and arrange the funeral for next Tuesday.’

  ‘What in God’s name is or was the Lunar Society?’

  ‘This is really not the time to talk about the Lunar Society,’ she said rather irritably, ‘or anything other than getting through the next few days.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. It was just that I was somewhat taken aback by the unusual name. Do you want me to come straightaway?’

  ‘No, and I’m sorry to be so snappy. I’ll tell you what little I know after I’ve been to Birmingham and am home again. That won’t be until the end of next week. There’s no need to come straightaway, but it would be helpful if you could come on Saturday and then stay until after the funeral’s over.’

  Peter repositioned himself and saw from the clock that it was only just after six-thirty. They spoke for a few more minutes and agreed to ke
ep in touch by telephone. He sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands regretting his intemperance of the previous day. It was clearly not worth trying to go back to sleep again. He walked through to the kitchen to make himself some coffee which he drank slowly and took some paracetamol. Breakfast was not an appealing prospect that morning.

  The following days passed slowly. He was still incapable of sustained periods of concentration when alone in his office, responding to the routine business of his clients reflexly and courteously but distantly. He succeeded in keeping up with the inflow of work but it was completed with little interest and even less enthusiasm. At lunchtimes, he would avoid his partners, preferring to eat something in his office or to sit quietly in the corner of a pub lingering over a small glass of wine and a sandwich. On one dry day, he walked home from the office after work, deviating along side streets away from the flow of the anxious, febrile traffic of the homebound city. It was a means of avoiding his own company for too long in the flat. When at home he would spend the evenings aimlessly switching between the television and the record player. One evening he took a pile of scrap paper home from the office and spent several hours filling the pages with maudlin sentiments but he screwed the paper up and then, regretting the gesture, straightened each sheet out. He re-read the sheets once more and finally tore them up before taking the fragments out and burying them deep in the dustbin, apprehensive that the inadequacies of his style and the banality of the content might be seen by others.

  The funeral was planned for the following Tuesday. He decided to drive knowing that this activity, although almost devoid of cerebral stimulation, would be a desirable alternative to a crowded and almost certainly delayed journey on the weekend trains. He was awake early on the Saturday and ready to leave before eight. He had told Sue he would be away for a few days. He had visited her on two or three evenings for coffee while he had been on his own. The first visit he had undertaken willingly but subsequent visits were more out of a sense of obligation. He had thought that the company might lift his spirits and fill the time with a greater sense of focus and worth than he was gaining from the daily routine of the office, but he found that Sue was still constrained by a sense of apathy and inertia which would have been difficult to penetrate at any time. Peter, already withdrawn and uncertain, found that his poor conversational initiatives were drawing monosyllabic responses and that the greater part of the evenings were spent in silent reflection. He would willingly have discontinued these visits if Sue had not pressed him to stay longer as he prepared to leave each evening, insisting that he should return the following day.

  Peter was glad to escape the city and reach the Great North Road. He settled back in his seat as he accelerated up to and just beyond the legal limit. He switched the radio on and relaxed as he held the wheel in the tips of his fingers, an affectation that created for him a sense of masterful control. The signs listing the distances to various northern cities and one which simply and unambiguously stated that the road led to “The North” were challenges as he envisaged himself controlling the vehicle through the miles and across the pages of the road atlas. His vision was focused on the road as it continuously widened and disappeared beneath the front of the car. The drab changing colours of the road surface, the vibration transmitted through the tyres and the monotone of the wind all contributed to his introspection. The sentimental and simplistic words of the songs emanating from Radio 2 appeared suddenly to be imbued with deeper meanings which matched his mood. The aspirations and ambitions expressed through the trite and vapid lyrics acquired a significance which was enhanced by his altered receptivity. He started to think of alternative paths ahead for himself but with more urgency than previously. He was persuaded that there was an inescapable need to re-evaluate his life and this was starting to add clarity and refinement to his thoughts. He was thirty-five and had acquired, achieved or, perhaps, accidentally stumbled on a solid conventional respectability with an occupation and income beyond the aspirations of many. It would be possible to come to terms with this life and achieve a level of fulfilment through work completed with competence. It might be possible to write in the evenings to satisfy his alter ego. This would be an attractive compromise but one, he felt, which would almost certainly not achieve anything of substance.

  The alternative would require him to take time away from home and his practice and deny himself at least some of the material benefits which he had acquired. He would be forfeiting these things to follow a shadow or a chimera, working towards objectives which he could only dimly perceive and which might prove to be wholly illusory. Natural caution and bourgeois inhibitions would counsel against setting out along such a path which would demand skills and competences which were untested and unknown. He could perhaps embark on such a course if he were to leave his firm for a year, leave London and lead the life of a recluse away from familiar haunts. This would be an attractive possibility although he was aware that leaving a line of retreat open behind him suggested a certain lack of commitment and confidence. He started to reflect on the practicalities of such an arrangement and was suddenly brought out of his musings by an awareness that he had scarcely thought of any of this in the context of his marriage.

  He could not claim with any justification that he was unhappy in his marriage although it had not really provided the excitement or the level of happiness which, in his naiveté, he had hoped to find in a lasting relationship. It was difficult, indeed impossible, to be sure if that deficiency should be attributed to Ann or himself or the precisely ordered nature of their married state. It was most likely attributable to all three factors in indefinable proportions. Perhaps it was inevitable that the intensity of emotion in a marriage would diminish over time. Any action which would alter their present mode of living and the equilibrium of their marriage would ineluctably exclude Ann from a large area of his life. It was difficult to envisage the alternative of a formal separation. Peter shrank from the thought of ever raising such a topic. In the abstract, he found the notion of establishing an independent existence appealing although he recognised that his own loneliness during the previous week was in part a consequence of their enforced separation and, in part, the aftermath of the events of recent weeks. It would only be possible to consider a separation if each was patently unhappy or if one had formed an attachment to someone else making a rupture of their own relationship imperative. It would be quite another matter to coldly plan a separation simply to relieve a sense of unease and to damage or destroy a marriage to try and fulfil an uncertain dream.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when he arrived in Newcastle. As the flat did not have room to accommodate him, he needed to stay in a hotel. Ann and Jenny were sharing the second bedroom. He was disconcerted that Ann would not join him but had chosen to remain in the flat to support her mother and sister. He drove up to Cowgate to join the family as soon as he had checked into the hotel. He greeted them and, over tea, was brought up to date with the details of the funeral arrangements. He had been delegated various tasks, principally those which he could carry out most easily as he had a car. Peg and Graham Robson had been intermittent churchgoers and had attended the Dilston Road Methodist Church close to their old home in Hartington Road. The funeral was to take place there so it was agreed that they would all go to the church the following morning and review the arrangements after the service with the minister. It was also agreed that Peter would take Ann to the station after the funeral so that she could catch a train to Birmingham. He would then drive Jenny back to London as she had a further interview on the following Monday.

  The day of the funeral was cool, bright and clear. The undertaker’s car arrived to take them to the church shortly before ten-thirty. There were few mourners; no more than fourteen including two distant cousins and Peg’s widowed sister. Peter was not familiar with the words of the funeral service and he became progressively more dispirited as the service proceeded. Finally they reached the word
s of the committal: ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death.’ He could think of few more depressing words for the family nor a more abject and inaccurate summary of a life, of almost any life, but he reflected that they simply mirrored the attitudes of a religion which has all humanity cast as sinners in need of redemption as its default mode.

  It was a sombre group that gathered in the hall adjacent to the church after the ceremony for a cup of tea and after a short time they started to disperse. Ann whispered in Peter’s ear, ‘I must go.’

  ‘You’re in very good time for your train.’

  ‘I know but I must get away from here. I really can’t take any more reminiscing and the occasional comment on the length of time that I was away from home. Please, just take me to the station and then come back and take Mum home before you and Jenny drive back to London.’

  He drove Ann to the station in silence and hugged her when she got out of the car. ‘Will you be alright?’