The Convalescent Read online

  It was years since he had made love to a woman. What he had done with Sandra Mclehose could hardly be described as that. Either she had been too dry and tight, or he too limp, or both. Bestial nuzzlings merely.

  But Sophie was not dry. And it was this more than anything else – the simple fact that he was desired – that aroused William. That and the extraordinary patience with which Sophie stood there, hands on his shoulders, as he undressed.

  She was as swift and easy in love as she had been in undressing, crying out in painful modesty at her climax. There were cries from himself also. Low ones, as in wonder at the deathlessness of instinct, of desire. He heard them as though they were the cries of another. Risen in hope from broken regions. Risen; subsiding.

  “That’s better,” Sophie murmured. “It’s been a long night.”

  They lay in silence. Dawn was breaking. In the distance somewhere a door slammed.

  “It was my first corpse,” William said.

  “I thought so. Poor soul, she looked the same dead as alive. So better dead. Better dead.”

  “But better this than dead,” William said.

  “Sure,” Sophie responded. “Sure.”

  January 8th, 1983

  I’m on my own now. Nothing else for it. A pleasant enough room. And I’ve found I don’t need much. Most of what I own (owned?) I don’t need. A mistake to believe otherwise. So I was mistaken for years. Oh I know it’s said that drunks need only one thing. But still I think I have a point. The clamour of one’s possessions! Better a silence like this, spaces like these. I’ve little to do either, but, even if I had, would I rouse myself? I doubt it. To do nothing well: that’s the thing. Not to feel it’s ignominious, that there’s help just round the corner. Perhaps I’m too far gone to be able to see how I might be rescued, by whom and for what. For what? I’ve no profession to return to, under whose coat-tails I might start again. (Start again!?) But, even if I had, wouldn’t I soon be sickened? To cling to such coat-tails for all to see – or for all to see who’ve long since climbed them – is not my idea of fun. And if I fell again, fell worse than before?

  My love of exile, of expulsion: it may well be perverse, as Margo says. And I may well spend too much time telling my perversities how splendid they are, how promising. Oh I may, I may. It’s true a lot of my talk is self-justification, and that I talk to myself cockily in the dark. (Cockily in the dark? What else?) Where was I? The longing for expulsion, the perversity of this. Maybe. I’m sure Margo has thought it through, taken advice, read books. But it’s not the whole story. What the rest of it is I don’t know. It tantalises me that I don’t, but I have faith that I’ll find out. Whether I do or don’t, however, I must avoid playing the part of the visionary exile, seeing all from beyond the grave of his first life. I’ve not been drawn from my family, my friends and my job by a vision, its unsettling force, but by drink. Let me not pretend otherwise. But is a drunk merely a drunk? Is that all? Oh God is that all? If not, what else is there? Here we are again – this matter of the rest of the story.

  The future as it becomes the present will be fouled, fouled and fouled again. Poor future. Flowing into the stagnant pool of one’s desperate habits, how could it be otherwise? So there’s no rest of the story. But then (an instant, this, between the lifting of the glass or bottle and the drinking) I think it’s not so certain. The future may surprise me with chances and possibilities. It’s part of the bounty of life that it should be so. I may be swept from the low ground of my foundering to high ground somewhere. My steps may not always be in a narrow circle in a dead neighbourhood.

  My steps today are towards the dole. I’ve found myself without money, you see, since leaving home. Did I expect to be supported? They’re not a mean family, Margo’s, and I can see their point, but I’m a little offended nonetheless. Better to drink with their money than the state’s. (Apart from anything else, there’s more of it.) As if, reduced by the dole, I’d stop drinking! Sobered by disgrace! My arse! My habits will get worse and worse. At home – oh I’m not saying I’d have pulled myself together exactly – I’d have tempered my excesses a little because of the children. Here there’s no reason to. None at all. Absolutely none. See what I mean? Families should stick together. I wouldn’t have thrown Margo out if she’d become a drunk. But of course she’s always had money and so I probably wouldn’t have thought of throwing her out. Money gives even the broken and wretched status, bargaining power. That’s what’s wrong with me. Imagine the most wretched man alive: imagine him first with money, then without. No comparison. The drunk with money is always a somebody; he glitters with his gold. Without, he’s a nobody.

  A nobody. There are nobodies on the dole. The Law cannot help them (though it hovers, I do assure you, over the line of those waiting to sign on) and I cannot help them. Always as I wait my turn I look upwards, as though examining the yellow ceiling, and address The Law. And almost always there are assurances: he who tries will be given a hearing; his words will be patiently listened to; pains – yes, pains – will be taken to interpret them as charitably as possible; in due course there will be a ruling. It is this, in fact, this rather fantastic notion of The Law, that prevents me from feeling a nobody too. How would I define a nobody? He is one who doesn’t look to the side, doesn’t look at the ceiling, doesn’t look down. (Who doesn’t look at all, one might say.) He never starts a conversation in case he finds (as he surely would) that he has nothing to say. He often apologises, but for what and to whom is not clear. His walk alternates between a scuttle and a pathetic imitation of resolve. He has a squeaky cough. He wears tight gloves which he fumbles to remove when he has to shake hands or sign on. If – God knows how – you were to get him talking, you’d find that he believed in everything and nothing. To get a job, he’d betray his best friend. Only he has no friends. Or enemies.

  I brood about nobodies because it helps me to feel that I’m too sly and arrogant to become one. Having signed on, I pocket my dole card and, lifting a hand to The Law to show that I know It’s there (but that it can’t be buttonholed – oh never can be buttonholed), I leave the office of The Department of Health and Social Security. Have I said that I’m rather drunk? Well, I am. I proceed with caution because of the snow and ice. And then I see him. So perfect an embodiment that I doubt my senses. A nobody. He is supporting himself at the entrance to the grounds in which the dole building stands. There are two pillars there, joined by a wrought-iron arch with an obscure golden crest. (Most of the entrances to hell, they say, are fancy ones.) Against one of them, still with his gloves on, he leans. Is he drunk? Ill? (I wonder suddenly if a nobody is beyond even drink.) I go to his assistance, enquiring sympathetically if I can help. He nods, but so briefly that I don’t know if he’s dismissing me or admitting me. I stay. He stands stock still then, not even leaning against the pillar. In his unseeing eyes there are tears, but that could be the cold. Then, suddenly, he is bent double and vomiting. Unsteadily I put out a hand to steady him, telling myself that I’ve helped my children and my wife to vomit (Margo vomits grandly, waving her hands in irritation). Soon there’s a pile of multi-coloured vomit on the snow, steaming a little. Still unseeing, the nobody apologises and walks away. To scuttle away from one’s own vomit – isn’t that a terrible thing? I think so. It is probably what makes me feel suddenly sick myself. If only he had cursed! I curse him for not cursing. But still feel sick.

  I may vomit too, in the next fifty yards, but I shall do so grandly, waving my hands in irritation.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Leafless, the trees no longer protected the Montgomery from the imagined gaze of the world. A relentless gaze (or so the encircling silence, reaching right up to the walls, lapping against them, suggested). On clear days, William could see the farm, even some of the hamlets, a place, he now appreciated, in which he had moved, however faithfully, in decreasing circles. Another few weeks and he would have been stalled utterly. Mired. How had he passed his time there? He could hardly remember, so crow
ded were the hours in the Montgomery, so varied the challenges. All that remained was an atmosphere: heat, silence, waiting.

  His relationship with Sophie continued (several times, and always in a funny voice – as if it was a joke or a riddle – she said that he was the man she had been waiting for), and he was refreshed. He walked the corridors with eagerness and elation, whistling for the first time in years (old tunes, but freshly conceived), singing, rediscovering the clown in himself. He clowned only in snatches, however, for extended clowning, he found, could exhaust the elderly. One morning, indeed, he discovered that he had it in his power to make them die of laughter. He got the ladies in the east lounge laughing, and then, with the same piece of clowning (an imitation of the minister eating porridge), those in the north lounge. But when he returned to the east lounge he found that the laughter had died, and that the old ladies were coughing, wheezing, distressed. Through laughter to desolation; and through desolation – a paroxysm or two away from it merely – to the grave.

  He found himself, his popularity growing with his happiness, reading several books at once in the different lounges. He would put down Great Expectations or Oliver Twist here and take up Emma or Wuthering Heights there. In the south lounge there was even a request that he read the one book – Vanity Fair – to everyone, but he declined. He didn’t like the book and the thought of eight old people being read to day after day, week after week, upset him.

  They weren’t children, he pointed out, and they had individual tastes. Once he looked up from Jane Eyre to find Sophie, as if she had just understood the importance of stories, standing in the doorway, listening intently. It made him stop reading. A silence fell. At last a cracked old voice asked if William read to her too, at night, and there was laughter. Sophie said that that would be telling, but, laying a hand on William’s shoulder and smiling, she told nonetheless. One of the old ladies got it into her head then that they would be leaving soon to get married and that they would never come back. She wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise, weeping as William continued with Jane Eyre and Sophie held her hands. Soon her weeping spread to the others, who wept – it had to be assumed, for they were quite unable to speak – for husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children, friends. Wept for the flatness of the land, even. For the frequency of the winds. For their childhoods, so much more present to them now than their middle years. For the hour of their death.

  There were weeping sessions in all the lounges at this time (the elderly rarely sobbed, not having the strength). They were usually brought about in the same way, one of the patients, for no apparent reason, starting to cry, and the others, after an ineffectual attempt to comfort him, following. Once under way, the weeping couldn’t be stopped, but had to run its course. (There was one afternoon, William could have sworn, when all the patients in all the lounges, as in response to some calamitous intimation borne on the wind, wept simultaneously.)

  It was after one of these sessions that William – he had known that something was approaching, some storm of the body or the spirit – lost control. It was as though, after the weeks of happy clowning, of strange friendships with so many of the elderly, of lovemaking now diffident, now passionate, of the weeping sessions and the profound still silences which came after them, he had become too rich. Too expectant in spirit. Sometimes he could tell when he was about to be overcome, and he would withdraw, the fit of mirth or sadness taking place in his room. His lovemaking with Sophie had perhaps begun it all, but for all her sensuality and idealism she couldn’t contain it. It went beyond her, sweeping sometimes through the lounges, leaving the elderly as confused and awed as, weeks before, they had been entertained and delighted. Wondering if he was going off his head, William stalked the doctor on his visits. Should he consult him or keep his own counsel? Several times he was on the verge of addressing him, but always he passed by instead. How he did so was remarkable: with relief, waving his hands and smiling, as though, at the last moment, he had been sure that this neat and bespectacled man, fussy with himself and fussy with the elderly, wringing his hands more often than he used them, could tell him nothing he didn’t know already. The seizures were a stage in recovery. The sudden spring after the long winter; the chaotic thaw after the deadly frost. A kind of delirious loosening. He explained to Sophie that this was how he understood it, but she was suspicious, uneasy, afraid that this middle-aged man she had become involved with was disturbed. So, not wanting to put her off, to lose her, he learnt to hide what he was feeling when he was with her. And soon the pretence that he had recovered himself was complete (even he himself occasionally almost taken in).

  He had rarely known such extremes. Incomprehensible drives into mourning and celebration. There would be the sounds and smells of the distant past – a setting for grief; and then, as if a switch had been thrown, of the recent past – a setting for gladness and celebration. The impression was not of arbitrariness, though; it all seemed to be happening for a purpose, one of which he needn’t be afraid. Should he visit Miss Friel again? An extreme creature herself, she might understand the purpose of extremes. Might even be moved to speak on the subject, if not on any other. He toyed with the idea, but always passed by her door (a new notice, “Silence for All Souls”, had appeared), as he had passed by the doctor.

  He spent more and more time in the garden (though he knew it wasn’t the time of year for such work), because his new energy demanded outlets. And gardening allowed him to collect himself. He particularly liked digging, for with each thrust or cut of the spade he could call out, sing, laugh, curse, and there was no one to hear him. There was a long border, uncultivated for years, which he dug over again and again, and in which he planned to plant leeks and onions and sprouts. Here especially – piling the earth, shaping the border into a perfect rectangle again – he was able to convince himself that his strange new energies were subject to laws as agreeable and far-seeing as those which governed other tides, other cycles.

  Just occasionally, though, the closeness of his behaviour to the most erratic episodes in his past alarmed him. Drink had done something like this to him once – that exhausting familiarity with the poles of his being – but now it was happening without drink. Was he damaged? Deprived of the ability to act moderately? Doomed for the rest of his days to move senselessly between woe and ecstasy? Thinking that he might have destroyed whatever made equability and moderation possible, he thought again of speaking to the doctor. Again however, nodding proudly, he passed him by. As if toying with his expertise in order to assure himself that he had no need of it. That his condition was not of the body but of the spirit. (Stages in the soul’s descent, in its check and recovery: those wouldn’t be the doctor’s terms, William was sure, were he to stop him in one of the corridors and unburden himself).

  Then he began to get better. And soon he was sure that it had passed. To those who asked, he gave conventional explanations: it had been difficult to adjust to so much old age and death; he had become overtired; his mother’s murder had affected him belatedly. Conspicuously, the minister was not one of those who asked, though he had made it obvious, walking round William like an unsolicited consultant, that he knew that something was wrong. William had sensed that he had a diagnosis to offer, and that it would be as relevant, probably, as the doctor’s would be irrelevant. But he hadn’t wanted to hear it. Why consult a lover of weaknesses? A connoisseur of the fallen world?

  As if, though, his excitement had subsided too far, he recovered his composure only to lose it to boredom. The place became too small for him. Perhaps, in his excitement, he had glimpsed possibilities for himself not to be realised in the Montgomery. He walked the corridors as if to show that they led nowhere. Sat in the lounges as if awaiting release, repatriation (but where was his country?). It got so bad that he didn’t see why he should read to people who understood so little; help them to eat if they didn’t want to eat – let them die instead; help them to the lavatory if they didn’t care whether they soiled themselves or not; po
st letters for them if the letters were full of senile gossip and the recipients (if they hadn’t died long ago) would be bored or distressed to read them. Surely he was intended for something higher? To be neither one thing nor another was to be insulted. Not quite a gardener, not quite a nurse, not quite an entertainer, not quite a waiter: “not quite”, he feared, qualified him almost entirely. Sure that he was meant for something else, he withdrew to his room whenever he could. When he tried to imagine the world beyond the Montgomery, however, the world in which he might do this something else, he found that he had lost the ability. What he pictured was a vastly expanded version of the Montgomery. The world as an institution, the poison of time in everyone’s veins. Multitudinous debilities. In squares and corridors the sick tending the sick. In recesses, the dying. But this, he felt sure, couldn’t possibly be right. Alarmed, he attempted, using each of his senses in turn, to recover the world he hadn’t known he had lost. (What sights? What sounds? What smells?) But he didn’t succeed; and so remained shut in, an exile; but an exile without an exile’s memories.

  Then he thought of a plan. He would get to know some of the visitors – influential-looking sons, for example – in the hope that one of them might offer him a job, or know of someone who might be able to do so. He would cultivate such visitors, relatives, assiduously. Almost all of the professions were represented, Sophie had told him. The cream of Scottish middle-class life (what else?) filtered through these homes. Senile ex-businessmen still discussed stocks and shares with their astute sons. Still got serious about shooting and property. Surely therefore he would find something for himself soon? He imagined the conversations he would have, the ways in which he would present himself, and he imagined a proud but unobtrusive departure. The thought of departure: it was this that relaxed him and allowed him to become almost himself again, attentive, amusing, industrious.