Concrete Island

by J. G. Ballard

  Proctor nudged his arm. Darting into the oily shadows below the overpass, he scuttled towards the southern end of the wire-mesh fence. He climbed the shallow slope of the embankment and lay on his stomach, his face pressed against the fence. He turned and beckoned to Maitland, pulling him up the slope.

  Lying beside the tramp, Maitland watched him force his scarred fingers through the steel mesh. In the dim light Maitland could see an amorphous mass of gleaming mucilage which lay in a three-feet-high heap across a stack of truck tyres. The nearest edge of this sludge-pile was already oozing through the mesh. Pressing his fingers through the fence, Proctor picked at the slices of wet bread, lumps of fatty meat and vegetable scraps embedded in the greasy avalanche.

  This illicit garbage dump, Maitland assumed, was used by a local restaurant or food mart. Proctor unclipped the mess-tins from his belt. He showed their polished interiors to Maitland, indicating how clean they were. Already he had reclaimed two slices of wet bread and a nub of beef gristle. Although forbidding himself to eat now, he licked his fingers appreciatively. He urged Maitland forward, sliding a mess tin across to him.

  Maitland stared at the fragments in Proctor’s tin. He knew now where Proctor had found their meal that morning. Yet he felt no sense of revulsion, but only a flat pity for the tramp. Despite his own injuries, the insult to Proctor’s body seemed far greater.

  Trying to devise some means of rescuing both the tramp and himself, he waited for Proctor as the macerated food gleamed in the tacky light below the overpass.

  * * *

  When they returned to Proctor’s den the rain had ended. Maitland sat against the shelter, watching the passing traffic. The rush-hour had ended, but a steady stream of cars and buses moved through the sunlight.

  Proctor squatted down happily to this early lunch, eyeing the scraps of food in both mess-tins. After an elaborate pause he made his decision, handing Maitland the larger portion. With his clasp knife he cut the cork from the wine bottle and sat next to Maitland, beckoning him to eat. Despite this generosity, he obviously has no intention of sharing the wine with Maitland.

  ‘Mr Maitland, eat,’ Proctor said firmly, already tucking into the scraps with a strong appetite. ‘It’s good food today, good for Maitland’s leg.’

  He lifted the wine bottle to his lips.

  * * *

  Within ten minutes Proctor was drunk. Although he had swallowed little more than a third of the bottle, even this small quantity of alcohol had bolted through his brain, kicking away its fragile supports. He rolled from side to side, gabbling happily to himself and twisting his face into grotesque expressions. He slid over to Maitland when he saw the untouched food and gesticulated blearily.

  ‘Do you want this, Proctor?’ Maitland asked. ‘I bet it was tasty.’

  The tramp rolled about, dribbling the wine from his mouth. He went through a pantomime of reassuring Maitland that he would never take his food, but a moment later he had seized the mess-tin and was cramming the soggy fragments into his mouth. He touched Maitland on the arm and shoulder at various points, as if identifying him in his clouding mind. He sat close to Maitland, clearly glad to have him as a friend.

  ‘It’s good here on the island, isn’t it, Proctor?’ Maitland said. He felt a surge of affection for the tramp.

  ‘It’s good…’ Proctor nodded muzzily. Most of the wine was running down the furrows of his cheeks and chin. He put an arm around Maitland’s shoulders, testing this new friend.

  ‘When are you going to leave here, Proctor?’

  ‘Aah … never leave here.’ Proctor lifted the bottle to his mouth, then lowered it and gazed sadly at the ground. ‘There’s nowhere for Proctor to go.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’ Maitland watched Proctor stroke his arm. ‘Isn’t there anyone who could look after you – any family or friends?’

  Proctor stared blankly into the air, as if trying to fathom this question. He leaned across Maitland, seizing his shoulders like a drunk in a bar, and said with crafty humour, ‘Mr Maitland is Proctor’s friend.’

  ‘Right. I’m your friend. I have to be, don’t I?’ As the tramp pawed at his arm, Maitland felt the full extent of his insecurity, the fear that his last hiding place, appropriately in the centre of this alienating city, would be taken from him. At the same time, Maitland guessed that the tramp’s mind was beginning to fade, and that he dimly perceived that he needed help and friendship.

  ‘Proctor needs a … friend.’ He coughed out a spray of wine.

  ‘I guess you do.’ Maitland clambered to his feet. He disengaged his left leg from Proctor’s embrace. Proctor rolled back against the shelter, smiling to himself over the bottle of wine.

  Maitland hobbled away, crossing the central valley to the higher ground on the northern side of the island. The sight of the traffic dulled his hunger. He felt faint and unsteady, but his nerves were calm. He surveyed the green triangle which had been his home for the past five days. Its dips and hollows, rises and hillocks he knew as intimately as his own body. Moving across it, he seemed to be following a contour line inside his head.

  The grass was quiet, barely moving around him. Standing there, like a shepherd with a silent flock, he thought of the strange phrase he had muttered to himself during his delirium: I am the island.

  Ten minutes later, as he reached the breaker’s yard, an orange Toyota estate car emerged from the tunnel of the overpass. It cruised along the west-bound carriageway, its bright bodywork gleaming in the sunlight. Through the balustrade Maitland saw the face of the driver, a blonde-haired woman with a high-bridged nose and firm mouth. Her small but strong hands were held together at the top of the steering wheel in a characteristic pose.

  ‘Catherine…! Stop…!’ Maitland shouted into the air. The car, unmistakably his wife’s, slowed as it approached the rear of an airline bus. Unsure whether he was seeing an hallucination brought on by his hunger, Maitland swung himself rapidly through the grass. He stopped to wave the crutch, stumbled and fell to the ground. By the time he picked himself up, shouting angrily at the grass, the car had accelerated away.

  Maitland turned his back to the motorway. Almost certainly, Catherine had been visiting the office, presumably to discuss his disappearance with his two partners. This meant that none of them realized he had crashed on to a small patch of waste ground literally within view of their windows.

  Gripping the metal crutch, Maitland swung himself towards the air-raid shelter. Somehow, before his strength gave out, he would force himself up the embankment.

  Fifty feet from the shelter, he heard Jane Sheppard call out, ‘Go on, Proctor – now! It’s none of his business. Put it on before he comes.’

  17 The duel

  AS Maitland approached the air-raid shelter Proctor and the young woman were cavorting about in the open air by the entrance. Proctor tottered to and fro, the half-empty wine bottle still clasped in his thick hand. His feet stumbled in and out of the lid of Maitland’s overnight case – Jane had evidently removed it from the car when she searched for his wallet.

  Proctor lurched away from Maitland as the tall man swung himself forward on the crutch. He had taken off his patchwork denims and forced his legs into Maitland’s evening-dress trousers. The sweet scent of hash hung in the air. Smoke drifted from the leaking stub in Jane’s mouth as she knelt at Proctor’s feet, trying to turn up the trousers.

  Proctor pushed back the sleeves of the dinner-jacket, fastening around his wrists the pair of cuffs which Jane had torn from the spare dress-shirt. The collar and a ragged bib of flowered shirt were already around his neck. Maitland’s black tie jutted at a rakish angle under one ear as he wiped the wine from his mouth, simpering happily to himself.

  ‘Right! You look a treat!’ Jane stepped back to survey her handiwork, enjoying this drunken parody of a wine waiter. She turned a funless smile towards Maitland, swaying up to him.

  ‘Don’t look so serious, Mr Maitland. Come and join us – we’re having a party.’r />
  ‘So I see. Who’s the guest of honour?’

  Maitland swung himself forward, striking Proctor’s unsteady feet with the metal crutch. Proctor staggered back, grinning amiably over his bottle. His puckered face, every crease lit by its veins, was a clown’s mask. He looked up at Maitland with an expression of pride and obsequiousness, hostility confused in his clouding mind with a keen need to earn Maitland’s approval. He raised the bottle in a toast, and leaned blearily against the curved wall of the shelter, his overblown belly bursting the top button of the trousers. As he clutched at them delightedly, Jane danced around him, snapping her fingers. She was still wearing the tart’s outfit of the previous night, and her high stiletto heels caught in the stony ground.

  ‘Come on!’ she shouted to Maitland. ‘Stop looking so long-faced. You can’t enjoy yourself!’ She slapped Proctor’s head, only half-playfully. ‘God, look at you both!’

  Maitland waited calmly as they played the fool with him, the girl urging Proctor to pour the wine over him. Proctor staggered about in the burst dinner-jacket, black tie at the back of his neck, cuffs falling off his wrists.

  ‘Come on, you’re going to dance for me!’ Jane shouted into Maitland’s face. ‘Do a one-legged dance! Proctor, make him dance for me!’

  Proctor blundered into Maitland, eyes no longer synchronized. Jane bent down and rooted around in the overnight case.

  ‘There’s a letter here – from a woman doctor. Not a very professional relationship, I must say. Listen to this, Proctor…’

  Maitland stepped forward, pushing Proctor away. The tramp’s acid breath gusted into his face. Proctor fell back against the shelter in a spray of wine. He sat helplessly on the ground. As Jane started to up-end the case, Maitland lifted the crutch and drove it into the open lid, striking it from her hands. Startled, she crouched away angrily.

  ‘What the hell are you—’

  ‘Right!’ Matter-of-factly, Maitland lifted the crutch. and beckoned her from the case. She edged back along the ground, pointing to the recumbent Proctor.

  ‘Wait till he wakes … Believe me, he’ll –’

  ‘He’ll do nothing. Take my word for it.’

  Maitland stepped towards Proctor. The tramp gazed up at him, embarrassed by his own drunkenness. He tried to straighten the bow tie under his ear, smiling apologetically at Maitland. He waited without expression when Maitland stood over him, unfastening his trouser vent.

  As the urine struck his face, Proctor raised his scarred hands. He stared at the amber liquid splashing on to his palms and pouring down the lapels of his dinner-jacket. Unable to move his body, he looked passively at Maitland. The jet of urine hit the tramp’s mouth and eyes, frothing on his shoulders. The hot drops bubbled and seethed in the dust around him.

  Maitland waited until he had finished. Proctor lay stranded on his side in the pool of urine, his eyes lowered. With one hand he tried to clean the dinner-jacket, brushing sadly at the lapels.

  Ignoring Proctor now, Maitland turned towards the young woman. She had watched the episode without moving. He pointed to the scattered contents of the overnight case.

  ‘All right, Jane? Now, gather everything up.’

  Without hesitating, she knelt down by the case. Quickly she replaced the dress-shoes and towel. Sober now, she stared calmly at Maitland.

  ‘He won’t forget that.’

  ‘He wasn’t intended to.’ As she locked the case Maitland beckoned her towards the cinema. ‘We’ll go back to your room.’

  When Jane stood her ground, sharp eyes searching Maitland’s bearded face for any signs of fever, Maitland reached out and tried to cuff her across the head. She stepped back nimbly.

  ‘I won’t help you to get away from here.’

  ‘Never mind. As a matter of fact, I don’t particularly want to get away from here. Not for the moment, anyway.’

  Without looking back at Proctor, lying passively in the pool of urine, he swung himself after the young woman. She walked in front of him, head down, carrying the overnight case.

  18 Five pounds

  ‘WHERE’S the lamp? Let’s have some light in this little hell.’

  Maitland pulled himself through the doorway of the darkened basement room, almost crushing Jane’s shoulders. He sat on the dishevelled bed, his injured leg stretched out like a tattered pole. Holding the crutch in his right hand, he tapped the floor.

  ‘Light the stove as well. I want some hot water. You’re going to wash me.’

  Glancing warily at Maitland, Jane put herself to work. She filled a saucepan with water from the fifty-gallon drum in the stair well, pumped up the paraffin stove and lit the flame.

  ‘That was a bastard thing to do to that old fool.’

  ‘It was meant to be,’ Maitland said. ‘I’ve no intention of being played around with by a senile tramp and a neurotic runaway.’

  ‘It was still a bastard thing to do. You must be a real shit.’

  Maitland let this pass. His new-found aggressive role, although completely calculated, had subdued the young woman. He pulled off his shirt. His arms and chest were covered with grease and bruise-marks.

  ‘You ought to clean out this room,’ he told the girl. ‘Did you have your miscarriage here?’

  ‘It was nothing to do with this room!’ Bridling, she stood up. With an effort, she checked her anger. ‘Are you trying to play on my sense of guilt? I take it that’s your grand strategy now?’

  ‘I’m glad it’s that obvious.’

  ‘Well, don’t. I feel bad enough without you turning your two-edged sword in the wound.’

  Maitland kicked the packing-case, rattling the pans inside it. ‘I need some food – let’s see what you’ve got. And none of that infant feed you keep bringing for me. I’m not going to play the part of your baby.’

  Stung, the girl retorted, ‘I suppose you think that’s why I’ve kept you here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m not deriding your little maudlin outbursts, they’d be very sweet in the right place, but I’ve got other things on my mind. One, two and three, I want out.’

  Jane rolled up the grimy dress-shirt. ‘I’ll wash this for you. Listen, I’ll call for help – when I’m ready. You keep thinking of yourself all the time. Can’t you understand that I may have problems of my own?’

  ‘With the police?’

  ‘Yes! With the police!’ Furiously, she pulled a metal pail from beneath the bed and poured the hot water into it.

  ‘What was it?’ Maitland asked. ‘Drugs, abortion – or are you on the run from a remand home?’

  Jane paused, her hands motionless in the water.

  ‘Clever,’ she commented quietly. ‘You must do very well in your business, Mr Maitland – but not so well in your private life, I’d guess.’ She added, in a limp voice, ‘I borrowed some money. From a friend of my husband. Rather a lot of money, in fact. Lousy bastard.’

  She began to wash Maitland, her hands soaping his bruised skin. When she had finished she found a cosmetic razor and shaved his beard. Maitland sat on the edge of the bed, enjoying the gentle pressure of her small hands moving across his skin like submissive birds. He was surprised that it had pleased him, even slightly, to humiliate the young woman, playing on her muddled feelings of guilt and deriding her in a way that he had never thought himself capable of doing. By contrast, his humiliation of Proctor had been entirely calculated; he had degraded the old tramp in the crudest way he could. But even this brutal act had given him a certain pleasure. He had relished the violent confrontation, knowing that he would make both of them submit to him. In part, he was taking his revenge on Proctor and the young woman, although he was well aware that both of them, by some paradoxical logic, were satisfied by being abused. Maitland’s aggressiveness fulfilled their expectations, their half-conscious estimates of themselves. Much as he distrusted himself for enjoying these small cruelties, Maitland had deliberately egged himself on. Determined to survive above all else, he would exploit this str
ain of cruelty in himself in the same way that he had earlier exploited his self-pity and contempt. All that mattered was that he dominate the senile tramp and this wayward young woman.

  He let the girl towel him down. Her hands, steering between the bruises, calmed and soothed him.

  ‘What about your father?’ he asked her. ‘Could he help you?’

  ‘He’s not my father any more. I don’t think about him.’ She gazed at the sunlight coming down the stair well, clasping her hands in what seemed to be a Masonic grip. ‘Suicide is … a suggestive act, it runs in families, you know. When someone in your family reaches the point where they cannot just kill themselves, but take a couple of years over it – really take their time, as if it was the most important thing they’d ever done – then it’s difficult to stop seeing your own life through their eyes. Sometimes I’m nervous of my mind.’

  She stood up with a brave flourish. ‘Come on, strip off and let’s get you washed. Then we’ll have some food and I’ll fuck you.’

  * * *

  Later, after Maitland had been washed by the girl, he lay on the bed in her towelling dressing-gown. He felt fresh and revived. He had stood naked in the stair well as Jane worked away at his legs and abdomen with her strong hands, rubbing at the bruises and oil-stains. As she prepared a small meal he watched her moving around the room, happy in this domestic retreat. She took out her smoker’s kit and rolled a cigarette for herself.