The Undertow

by Jo Baker

  “I’m Madeline,” she says to Will’s dad. “Madeline Hurst.”

  He nods, lets go of her hand. “Billy Hastings.”

  So Will’s named after him, she realises.

  He speaks to his son without looking at him. “Aren’t you going to fetch your guest a seat?”

  “We’re going out, aren’t we?” Will says.

  “Fetch her a seat.”

  A moment. Madeline looks from Billy to Will. “Really, I—”

  Will pushes away from the windowsill, but Ruby bats him back.

  “You sit here, Madeline.”

  She gestures to her own seat, and goes over to the dining area to bring back a chair. Janet hunches on the pouffe.

  Madeline would love to go over to the window, to lean in beside Will and have him reach his arm around her waist and hold her. But he doesn’t beckon her over, doesn’t even catch her eye. So she sits down in Ruby’s chair. The springs creak. She smiles at Janet, who blinks back at her.

  “I like your shoes,” Janet says.

  Madeline looks down at her blue shoes, with their neat strap and button. “Thank you.”

  Will’s dad settles into the opposite armchair. He smiles; he has bridgework there, gold loops on his side teeth.

  “He’s told us nothing, you know,” he says.

  Will gives an exasperated huff. She glances up at him. He shakes his head, looking down at the dizzying Axminster. She doesn’t understand.

  “So what are you studying?” Ruby asks.

  “I’m training to be a teacher,” Madeline says.

  “Isn’t that marvellous?” Ruby says. “Now, Janet’s thinking of teaching.”

  Janet just rolls her eyes.

  “I work in a school,” Billy says.

  “Dad,” Will snaps.

  Madeline looks up at Will. What’s got into him?

  “What? I do,” Billy says.

  “Yeah, but.”

  Billy leans back in his chair. “You can’t say anything round here nowadays without being told you’re wrong.”

  “What does your father do, Madeline?” Ruby asks.

  “Dad’s a doctor.”

  “Gracious me!”

  “Well I never.”

  “Mum works for the practice too. She does all the office stuff.”

  “Isn’t that nice.”

  It is nice. And it’s secure and comfortable and warm. And it means she could ask her dad offhandedly, over a family dinner, about Will’s condition. He’d sucked his teeth and shaken his head, sympathetic. If Perthes disease didn’t resolve itself in childhood, then there was nothing, really, that could be done, other than analgesia as necessary, and exercise to keep the supporting muscles strong around the joint. There was some work going on with joint replacement but that was a long way off. Will would have bad times, and better times, but all in all the lad is stuck with it. She’d asked what the cause was, and he confessed he didn’t know: no-one did. Maternal malnutrition perhaps, lack of calcium or vitamin D. But at least it didn’t seem to be heritable.

  “I’d like a drink,” Will says. “Mads?”

  “Please.”

  “Sherry?” Billy asks, getting up. “Or whisky, or rum?”

  “Sherry’d be lovely.”

  She watches as Billy goes to the sideboard in the dining room and lifts out bottles of Lamb’s and Bell’s and QC. He fills a tiny schooner, and when Will reaches to take it off him Billy just sweeps past him. He brings the glass to her himself.

  “There you go. Don’t want it spilt.”

  She smiles. Sips. The liquid is extraordinarily sweet. She wonders, did he mean spilt because of Will’s limp? She looks to Will; he pours whisky, takes his glass back to the windowsill and drinks it in three quick swallows. Doesn’t say a word. He seems to be sulking. She has never seen him sulk before.

  “So where’s this place we’re having dinner?” Ruby asks.

  “Yes, what delights have you got lined up for us?” Billy adds.

  “It’s called Vesuvius,” Will says. “It’s Italian.”

  “Bellissimo,” Billy says, and Madeline laughs.

  Billy watches the slim twist of her figure against the faded pattern of the armchair as she turns to look at Will, to include him in the laughter. Her hair catches the light and glints red. He’d promised himself he’d try, but now the opportunity is here, he can’t do it. The boy is steaming away without a backward glance, with nothing standing in his way, with no idea of just how lucky he is, no idea of what this has cost. It’s all been handed to him on a plate. An education. A chance to make something of himself. And a girl like her, gazing after him, thinking he’s the bee’s knees. And, so far at least, there’s been no war to come along and knock it out of his hands.

  Billy swallows a bolt of rum. There never was any talking to him anyway. Collecting words like other kids collected insects. Baffling you with them. He’s all right; he’s doing all right for himself. Getting on in the world. Which is better than they could have hoped for, in the circumstances.

  The streetlights sweep orange across Will’s face as they pass. Hands clamped to the steering wheel, he looks tired, the shadows deep beneath his eyes. He must have had at least a bottle of wine at dinner. And the whisky before that. He reaches up and digs his fingertips into his neck, trying to ease out stiffness.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish you’d let me drive.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Then silence. She watches the light flickering across his face. He frowns out at the road ahead. She wants to tell him to stop being so moody, but can’t quite bring herself to do it. She wants to tell him to take himself off for a swim tomorrow, get some exercise for that leg.

  “You never told me you were named after him.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Family tradition, though. I like that.” She slips off her shoes, curls sideways, knees crooked over towards him.

  “Not so much a tradition as a paucity of imagination.”

  “That’s pretty harsh.”

  Will shrugs, loosens his fingers then regrips the steering wheel. “Or maybe it was rationing. We only got the one name and had to make do. He was named after his dad, you see. The father he never had. The guy who died at Gallipoli. So we’re both named after this great gaping hole in existence, this dead guy nobody knew.”

  “It’s special.”

  “It’s boring. I was considering changing my name, actually.”

  “What to?”

  “Arthur. It’s my middle name. Art.”

  She snorts. “I am not calling you Art.”

  Will shifts in the seat, lifting himself on the knuckles of his left hand, then settling himself again. His face creases with the pain. It marks him out, his pain, makes him different from other people. It’s like a kind of faith, or talent, a strange gift: he has a whole other side to himself you don’t see, not immediately.

  “I love you,” she says.

  He glances round at her. The creases soften and shift. A smile spreads across his face. It’s lovely.

  St. Giles, Oxford

  December 11, 1967

  WHEN HE COMES OUT of his tutorial at St. John’s, the street is bustling with end-of-day shopgirls in their short skirts and rib-knit tights and office-boys in trilbies, their overcoat collars turned up against the damp. He tucks in his scarf and buttons up his coat. In a fuzz of satisfaction and sherry, he moves out into the chill of the city, amongst the ordinary people.

  His hand in his pocket, pressing against his thigh, he makes his way down towards College. The pressure of his palm against his leg mitigates the pain, which fires down his thigh with each step he takes. Long hours in the library, long hours just sitting still. The muscle’s wasting, he knows it is. It hurts. He’ll take himself for a swim tomorrow, though that will hurt too, after so long. He’s been careless of his exercise, of his physical self.

  But the upside—the payoff—is worth it.
/>   In solitude, in silence, his thoughts grow and proliferate, and in silence and in solitude he tends to them. When required to, he picks them carefully, one or two, and brings them out into the light. He watches to see what is made of them. Today, his tutor didn’t just nod, and frown, and pinch his upper lip. He didn’t just come back with shades, with nuances, with suggested further reading. Today, along with sherry and cigarettes, he offered Will a fellowship. If he gets the First he seems destined for, Will can stay on, with a stipend, a set of rooms, and pursue his research. Which is why Will now moves through the humdrum, everyday bustle, cushioned with light.

  He’s almost back at College when he sees the tramp, sitting on a doorstep, his feet stick out onto the pavement. Passers-by stream along and he just sits there, still, in the edge of the light cast by a streetlamp, like he’s just dabbling his toes into the world. Will has his hand in his pocket anyway: he feels expansive, can afford to share in his good fortune. He starts to rake the coins up in his pocket, slows his pace.

  The tramp clocks Will. He pushes back his hat, watches him approach. His beard is dirty-white, streaked with yellow. He’s wearing an ancient overcoat, buckled at the waist with a leather belt. These past two years in Oxford, Will’s seen more vagrants than he ever did in London. It’s like this city is some kind of crossroads, a way-station on their unmarked routes around the country: they all seem to pass through here. Will comes up to him, picks through the change in his palm. Even from a couple of yards away he can smell the old man’s stink.

  “Evening,” Will says.

  “Evening.” The tramp watches Will’s hands.

  “Cold night.” He’ll give him five bob: he’s feeling generous.

  “Certainly is.”

  The tramp holds out a hand and it is filthy, thin as a monkey’s.

  Sod it. He can afford it now. Will scoops all his coins together, drops them into the thin palm.

  “Get yourself a hot meal,” Will says.

  The old man glances at the heap of coins, then it’s gone, tucked away inside his coat. He struggles to his feet, pushing up against the doorframe. He reaches out for Will with his dirty monkey paw. Will doesn’t want to shake it, doesn’t want to touch it.

  “It’s fine,” Will says, backing off. “Really, it’s nothing.”

  But then the tramp grabs his arm, catches Will mid-step, jolts him. It hurts. He looks at the hand, then at the tramp.

  “What?” Will asks.

  The tramp’s face is ancient, tanned and dirty. His eyes are stark. He narrows them.

  “I know you,” he says.

  Will recoils from the poison of his breath. He’s mad. Clearly he is mad. But for a moment Will almost believes him.

  “No,” Will says. “You don’t.”

  He grabs the tramp’s wrist—a bundle of bones—and twists. The old man’s hand turns and the fingers peel off his coat.

  Will drops the filthy wrist and drags his handkerchief out of a pocket and wipes his hand as he walks away. He brushes at his coat-sleeve where the tramp had gripped it. He should have kept his head down, kept his money to himself. He shouldn’t have got involved.

  The old man’s still stumbling after him. “Hey! Hey!”

  “Look, just leave it, will you?” Will calls back at him.

  People are staring. He grits his teeth against the pain flaring down his thigh; he pushes his handkerchief back into his pocket and presses his hand against his leg. But it’s just a few yards now to the College gates and he can duck in there and that’s that. The tramp won’t be allowed in there. He’ll lose interest and wander off. Fixate on someone else.

  Will ducks through the gate, into the entrance archway, into the cool quiet of the College. The door into the porter’s lodge is just to the right. The flagstones are worn from centuries of feet. He glances back round the edge of the gate, and sees the old man skittering up the street towards him, one bootsole flapping loose, coat fluttering around him like ragged wings. Will’s very conscious that passers-by are slowing to watch, that at any moment one of his tutors, one of his fellow students, could come sauntering up the street, or across the quad. The tramp bundles up to the doorway, his chest heaving, eyes wide and bulging.

  “You can’t come in here,” Will hisses. He bars the way with an outstretched arm.

  The tramp’s hand flaps in the air, spit spindles from his top to bottom lip.

  “But I know you. I do know you. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Will feels it in his core: He’s right. All this time he’s been pretending, play-acting. He’d thought he was doing a pretty convincing job; the fellowship was evidence of that. But this mad old man sees through him. Lunatics and fools; they see the truth; at least, they always do in Shakespeare. He’s not an Oxford man, not really; he never will be. He does not belong.

  Will looks more closely at the tramp: does he know him? He tries to see through the dirt and hair. Might it be someone from back home, from years ago, who’s fallen off the bottom of the ladder? But he can’t connect this man’s features with any memory.

  “I earned my place,” Will says.

  He glances to the porter’s lodge. Any minute and they’ll be out here to clear him off, and it’s going to be embarrassing.

  “I know you.”

  “Look,” he says, hands out, trying to be conciliatory. “You’re thinking of someone else. We’ve never met. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

  The old tramp looks at Will’s soft white hands, looks up at his face. He frowns.

  “I remember …” he says. He’s struggling now, losing his certainty. “I …”

  His eyes cloud.

  He’s not coping with the world, Will thinks. He needs to be looked after. He should be in a home.

  Anyway, he shouldn’t be here.

  “Go on,” Will says. “You should get out of here. Before they sling you out.”

  Will puts a hand on his chest, and pushes gently, and the tramp steps backwards, out into the street, and Will follows after, propelling him.

  But then there are voices from behind, and Will glances round to see Ollie and Geoff striding across the quad towards them in full evening gear. Coats and silk scarves and everything, heads back, hooting over a shared joke. And then Ollie spots Will, and the tramp; and his lips turn up at the corners. And Will’s fellowship, Madeline, all the pretence, everything that he’s struggled for, puffs out of existence. Ollie steps out through the open gate, saunters up to Will, Geoff following in his wake. Ollie knocks his knuckles into Will’s arm, nods to the tramp.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  Geoff snorts. The tramp’s eyes flicker from one to the other. He looks actually afraid now.

  “Oliver Harrison,” Ollie says. “My father’s the MP for Beaconsfield.”

  And Will recoils inwardly at this: Know me by what my father does, by who my father is. The tramp is looking away, shaking his head, cowed. It makes Will wonder what treatment he’s had before, from the college boys. Sleeping rough in this town: late at night, a shop doorway, a bunch of tossers like Ollie and Geoff on their way back from a drinking club. Not nice.

  “And you are—?”

  “Sully,” the old man says. He straightens himself, drawing himself together. “Leading Stoker George Sully.”

  He looks to Will as he says this, as though it’s expected to mean something.

  “Old friend of the family?” Ollie asks, all innocence.

  “He’s ill,” Will tries to explain, but it’s hardly worth it. This is meat and drink to them. From now on, every time he sees Ollie or Geoff they’ll have some jape, some jibe about his family, his acquaintances. They’ll be chuckling over this.

  The tramp looks from one of them to the other, timid. Any minute now and he’ll have dragged enough confidence together to start on again about knowing him, about Will not belonging there. He pushes the tramp again, lightly, in the chest, and he staggers backwards, and gives Will a wounded look. Will fee
ls for him. But he can’t stay here, babbling, humiliating him.

  “Go on, go and get yourself some dinner.”

  “Oh you didn’t give him money, did you?” Ollie asks. He nudges Geoff, jerks a thumb towards the porter’s lodge. Geoff nods in reply. “You shouldn’t give them money. It just encourages them.”

  Geoff ducks through the College gate, into the lodge.

  Will thinks, you make it sound like money is a little thing, not a necessity. That it isn’t, for some people, a pressing need, a matter of life and death.

  In an instant Geoff is back, the porter following.

  “Sorry, sir, I thought it was just you gentlemen.” He taps his bowler onto his head, sidesteps Will. “Excuse me, sir.”

  The porter takes the tramp by the shoulder and the wrist, and then has his arm twisted up his back. The tramp struggles, flapping, in his grip. The porter winces at the smell.

  “Place is getting lousy with ’em.”

  Geoff slips up beside Ollie and says, “Are we for the off?”

  “Ah yes. Well then, Will, old fellow. Cheerio.”

  Ollie and Geoff head on up the street into town, a flutter of scarves and coat tails. Ollie says something to Geoff and the two of them burst into laughter.

  Will steps back inside the College gates. He lingers in the archway, looking out at the dark bowler-hatted figure of the porter, the ragged bundle of the tramp, all fight gone out of him.

  The porter looks up the street, lets go of the tramp’s shoulder for a second to put his fingers in his mouth—Will flinches at the thought of the grimy coat they’d just been touching—and whistles. A whistle in reply: a bobby’s footfalls clatter down the street.

  Will watches as the old man is handed over.

  “Making a nuisance of himself. Been giving him money, the young gentleman has.”

  Will feels hot. Ashamed.

  “He’s not well,” he calls out. “He should be in a home.”

  The bobby and the porter both glance round at him, an are-you-still-here kind of look. The tramp doesn’t look round.