The Convalescent Read online

  And Sophie? It was a measure of his distraction that he thought (if he thought about it at all) that there was a good chance that she would come with him. That she might find it possible to replace her passion to transform the Montgomery with some other passion. That a relationship which had arisen in the Montgomery – and might only be possible there – could be transplanted. Woman as helper, as ground bass for male achievement: it must have been some such notion, spawned by pride perhaps, that affected him at this time.

  With the approach of Christmas, visitors appeared who weren’t seen during the rest of the year, drawn by the season from the narrow circle of their charity. Some came with gifts, walking the corridors boldly and cheerily, as out of long familiarity with the place, others made no attempt to appear at ease at all, but stood apologetically in the entrance hall, or moved furtively, sometimes bearing flowers, in the corridors. Others still, performing for each other, acted as if they couldn’t understand why they hadn’t developed into regular visitors, as if their negligence was as inexplicable as it was inexcusable. And the regular visitors – those who came at the same time once or twice a week, with the same greetings, jokes and enquiries – became grand in their solicitousness. Strong in the belief that Christmas (this Christmas, next Christmas, some Christmas) could make a lasting difference, that the transcendent could surprise even the demented, they pulled up their chairs in the lounges or dormitories and smiled and smiled and smiled again. Sherries were poured, boxes of chocolates passed around, anecdotes (as if in this, if not in anything else, the Montgomery aspired to unity) carried from lounge to lounge. Family raconteurs got going, the elderly – straining often from an abyss of deafness or confusion – propped up so that they could hear how John or Richard or Betty had elaborated a favourite joke or story. (The day that Aunt Catherine sneezed her false teeth into a cake. The day the vicar fell from the pulpit. The day the garage blew away.) Matron produced a tape recorder and tapes of Christmas carols were played, neither so loudly that conversation was affected nor so softly that some insult to Christmas seemed to be intended. It was one of William’s tasks to see that each lounge had its share of carols each day. An hour, he decided, would be enough. The hour up, he would come in to take the tape recorder away, with the air of one who, left to himself, would have organised Christmas very differently. (If he could not have said what the true icons were – could not even have pointed in their direction – he knew that, whatever they were, they were being suffocated.)

  Another of his tasks was to put up the Christmas decorations. Unpacking the box in which they were kept, he came across, in addition, paper hats and crackers and plastic whistles. The paraphernalia of facile celebration. It could have been a children’s home. Or a rugby club. Dismayed, he put some of the decorations up in the lounges and corridors and entrance hall, then put the box away in a cupboard and locked it. But matron said he had been mean. What was wrong with him? Had he no sense of occasion? Where were the orange suns and the silver stars and the lines of green and yellow ringlets and the bunches of plastic holly? He unlocked the cupboard and got the box out again and, bloody-minded now, put up everything he could find, including a huge plastic cross with jaded paper angels dangling from it. May and Margaret said that they had never seen the place looking so festive, but William, his feeling of offence deep, said that it looked to him like vulgar propitiation.

  His plan to ingratiate himself with the visitors wasn’t going well. He would wait until he saw a male visitor at a loose end, or at the end of his tether (it happened quite often). Then he would ask him if he would like a cup of tea or coffee, suggesting that he accompany him while he made it. Sometimes they came, sometimes they didn’t, but whichever they did, William was dismayed, for he was either treated as a dedicated nurse, to be consulted about medical matters (a lot of the men suffered from dyspepsia, it seemed, and headaches, and one of them had piles), or as an eccentric handyman, a character, to be patronised. To a florid and overweight young man, for example, he confessed, as they waited for the kettle to boil, that he could do with a change. Time for a move. Oh yes. The florid young man just looked at him, however, as if the context of visiting in a home for the elderly made such confessions unintelligible. William repeated his remark, elaborating a little, but with the same result. Eventually, having finished his cup of tea, the young man wandered away. Exasperated, William smashed a plate on the linoleum floor of the kitchen, and then – as in some savage game for the frustrated and dispossessed – kicked the pieces about the room. At this rate, he would be as unpopular with the visitors as he was popular with the patients. Understood by neither, he would spin like a top, his idiosyncrasies would multiply, and he might finally be asked to leave whether he wanted to or not.

  He made a few more attempts, this time working on the wives of the influential-looking sons as well as on the influential-looking sons themselves. Still without luck, however. He was made to feel a fool; a man who didn’t know his place; one who was betraying matron’s trust; one who, if this was how he was going to behave, ought to be cast into outer darkness; one who might even be a little unhinged. He began to dislike the visitors, soon extending this to the world from which they came. Their odours, ambitions, manners, clothes, opinions, gestures: weren’t they horribly characteristic of that world? Sometimes he thought that the visitors actually stank of it. Stank of it as an animal stinks of the place in which it has been foraging. The perfumes, the aftershave, the cigarette smoke, cigar smoke, the gin. Odours of scented plushness, but rank odours, too. More smells than he could name. Smells he hadn’t known in years.

  And with this dislike of the visitors came a renewed pity for the elderly. With sons and daughters, nephews and nieces like these, who could blame them for cowering, losing their memories, fouling themselves, refusing to speak? A world well lost. He thought that his place might be with the elderly after all, exiles like himself, and with a sort of sentimental relish he turned to them conscientiously again, reading as before, joking, helping with the preparations for the Christmas party, even assisting some of the old men to the lavatory (a task he had previously shirked). Sentimental attentiveness: he suspected that he was indeed guilty of this, but wasn’t it better than boredom and indifference, and mightn’t it lead, if not to grace, then to a kind of constancy? To Sophie he joked that the terrible decorations had gone to his head. It was their fault: there were orange ringlets about his heart as well as in the lounges. There were all-purpose carols in his soul.

  So he came to avoid the visitors whenever he could, ashamed that he had hoped to persuade them to help him.

  One day, however, hurrying to his room at visiting hour, he saw someone he knew. He tried to walk past her, but he knew that she had stopped behind him and was wondering if it was really him, William Templeton, that she had seen. He believed that he was going to pass on, nonetheless, leaving her to wonder about this moment by a fish tank in an unlighted corridor forever, but to his surprise he found that he had stopped and was turning, slowly turning. And slowly, very slowly, like one about to float or dance – as if to meet someone again after a long time and in a strange place is to feel that you have cheated time, gravity even – she was coming towards him, quizzical, friendly, head slightly to one side. He didn’t want to appear menial or ashamed; he didn’t want to grip his white jacket and tug it downwards. But he feared that, as if he was a member of the Montgomery first and an individual second, he did just this. Her name, he recalled, was Lesley, her husband’s David, and there were male twins, Oliver and Mark. The wondering slowness of her approach it was that allowed him to remember all this. He was even able to recall the timbre of her voice: gentle and low, very pleasing to the ear, encouraging. The memory of it relaxed him, made him glad. Might even have moved him to embrace her had he not been wearing the white jacket.

  “It is William, isn’t it? William Templeton?”

  “The very man, Lesley. Back from the dead.”

  “I’m glad to see it. How long h
ave you been here? And are you a nurse?”

  “I’ve been here about four months. Not a nurse, no, but kind of. In a place like this, you could say, the intention is all.”

  “I see,” she said, smiling. “I still see Margo, you know …”

  His wish was to be told only a little about Margo. What would he do with too much information?

  “She’s well,” Lesley said carefully, “and will be glad to hear that you are. Are you well?”

  “Yes. Now I am.”

  “I’ll tell her so.”

  At this point the man he had remembered as David approached, sauntering. His name was indeed David, but William realised that he hadn’t remembered him accurately. Or that, since their last meeting, David had changed, been corrupted somehow. He had a casualness, a blandness which seemed to issue from the belief that there were no limits of any kind anymore. That in the worlds of the young, the middle-aged and the elderly anything went. He didn’t recognise William at all, couldn’t get it out of his head that his wife was consulting him about something medical. When, mocking him openly, she pointed out who William was, he tried to hide his embarrassment by shaking William’s hand, but simply communicated it more strongly. Then, his wife half turned away now, he seemed, as in an excess of idleness, to saunter on the spot.

  For an instant, then, the marriage of Lesley and David was a meteorite from the world beyond fallen at William’s feet. How could he avoid regarding it?

  “We should really go and see Grandfather,” Lesley said, as in retreat from her husband’s foolishness beginning to move away. “Maybe you know him, William? Albert Clow.”

  “Oh yes,” William said. “He told me my teeth and gums were done for.”

  David laughed loudly – a hollow booming laugh – and might have tried to shake William’s hand again had William not been looking closely at his wife. Lesley appeared to walk off with David then, but what she did was to lead him away and station him at a distance. Then she returned.

  “Things won’t be the same again, William,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “They can’t be. You know that as well as anyone. But do write to Margo. She’s a generous woman. She’ll be glad to hear from you. Goodbye.”

  “Tell her you found me, as young as ever, in an old folks’ home!”

  He stood where she had left him, under red, blue and yellow Christmas decorations which looped their way (rustling a little as they did so) like frivolous snakes towards the south lounge, and there – now like strands of hair under a clasp – came together beneath a huge paper bell. Weak sunlight came and went. A declining December sky. Other visitors passed him, the florid young man and his fat young wife among them. He paid no attention to them at all. Only when the last ones – speaking of bananas as the fruit for the elderly (“once they’re peeled, of course”) – had passed did he turn. And then he seemed just a little uncertain of his destination, as if, disturbed both by the Montgomery and the world beyond, he was seeking some other world.

  March 3rd, 1984

  I’m not proud of my room when I consider asking the children here. They’re embarrassed enough as it is when we walk in parks, sit in cafes, go to cinemas. No longer a driver, I can’t take them anywhere they’d find really exciting. A time may come, I fear, when they don’t want to come and see me at all. But until then the arrangement (The Arrangement, as Margo, with regretful emphasis, calls it) will stand. She will honour it, I know, as long as she can.

  Sixty yards or so away the car stops. It’s not a car I ever drove myself, though I drove one like it. Kenneth and Kathleen get out from the back. Do they see me? Anyway, they don’t wave. They are still talking to their mother, receiving instructions. I’d love to walk down and speak to her, but I daren’t, it’s not part of the arrangement. The arrangement requires me to keep my distance now. I stay where I am, hands in the pockets of my raincoat. A slight wind – slight but cold – troubles the space between myself and the children. The grass is pinned back on the bare earth. For some reason, I have an impression of approaching bareness everywhere.

  They approach me slowly, my teenage children, hesitantly, talking to each other. Jokes? Mutual encouragement? Curses? I walk to meet them, suspecting that the bars of chocolate I’ve bought are melting in my pocket. The car has driven off (did Margo wave to me?) and the street with its severe little gusts of wind is deserted except for me and the children. Only sixty yards and yet they seem to take ages to reach me: I who used to say good morning and goodnight to my children in a variety of accents – French, German, American – am now at a loss to know how to greet them. I sway, I think, and fear that they notice, though I’m not bad today, not bad at all. Yesterday I couldn’t have managed it, though of course it might be claimed that had it been yesterday I’d have kept my worst for the day before, or for today.

  I don’t know how to greet them. Neither the tone nor the words.

  “How are things?” I venture.

  Kenneth, face pale, freckles prominent, speaks for them both, smiling as he does so. He has always had the habit of smiling while he speaks. It is as if the child’s thrill at the fact and power of speech has never left him. Add to this the impression he gives of choosing his words with an exceptional awareness of those he is talking to and you can see why I’m charmed.

  No less by Kathleen. She listens to her brother with admiration, as though what he is doing is bringing an approved script to life in a remarkable way. Now and then she smiles at me obliquely, her air that of one drawing attention to hidden depths in his words, depths she personally will be pondering for weeks to come.

  He is giving an account of their week. I am glad of this because it provides me with the context I need if I’m to respond at all. When he stops it will not be so hard for me. Kathleen takes my arm (checking first to see if it really is an arm) even although we are still standing, and even although Kenneth is speaking more and more intently. He is describing the visit by fat Aunt Mary and suddenly, after he has said how difficult she finds it to stand up out of armchairs, suddenly we are walking. It is Kathleen who starts us off and then determines our easy pace, our rhythm. My son in charge of speech, my daughter of movement. One day they will have to be praised for this. How quickly we have come to the end of this street, where the gusts of wind are unsettlingly severe, and are turning into a warmer street, tree-lined and with untroubled houses set well back from the road.

  Kathleen isn’t really listening to Kenneth now. I realise that their plan is that he shouldn’t stop talking. Always a good talker, he is exploiting his ability in circumstances they clearly consider to be desperate. To keep me speechless. But what might I say that would be so terrible? Or is it what I don’t say, haven’t said, can’t say? Immediately I realise what they’re up to I feel weak and can’t think of anything to say at all.

  By the end of our time together (one and a half hours, four o’clock to five-thirty) I notice that there are beads of sweat on my children’s foreheads. I have exhausted them. Not by talking too much or by remaining fearfully silent (eventually I was able to mention moments from our past that I think will never lose their significance). I have exhausted them by being what I have become. What I have become but once was not. Once not what I now am. By being what I have become which is not sufficient and with hardly a hint of a comeback anymore. With this and doubtless with other things I have exhausted them, my children.

  They leave me where they met me and go to the car. The door is opened from the inside – something horrible about this. They get in but – how strange! – they wave more feelingly than they get in. The car, as in consideration of my solitary station, goes the length of the street in first gear. Vanishes.

  The evening of this day I’m bad again and going towards what used to be my home. Not even its lights, charging at me over the head of the pillar box, charging, receding, charging, are familiar. The gravel is hard to fall on but the lawn when I gain it is a delight. The fiercely lit rectangles in the house so high above me are all I n
eed. For what? For what I can’t exactly say, but it’s preferable. To what? To what I can’t exactly say either, but I’m here and here, tilting and drowning, tilting and surfacing, I’ll stay. For haven’t I stayed before – many more or less uninterrupted years and my wife grown more generous than ever? My wife. I’ve rung the bell, I realise, and, looped over the railings a little, I see that Margo is answering it. Everything inside is lit with a terrible, an insistent, an exclusive brightness. I think I see the children – poised as in eternal expectation of bad news – half way up, or down, the stairs. Bad news. The worst news. Am I not that again? Margo is saying “no” and “no more” and “not now” and I know from the tone of her voice that … What? I stand upright, stand to attention, salute. My last joke for a time. Forever? I strongly suspect it but can’t say why, which makes it seem more certain still. So the last joke is a line over which you trip, falling with the sounds of polite strained and appalled laughter behind you? Lines in both directions, though. As ever, choices. I had hoped, apparently, to cross one which divides here from there, there where Margo and the children are. How would it be if I were taken back? Terrible obligations! Ghastly pursuit of the gods of renewal! Maybe therefore it’s just as well I’m being led by someone (who? oh who?) across the lawn and the gravel and then out. Out.

  This is a lane now. The most backward of back lanes. And that is a full moon, blood red over the troughs of heaving refuse.

  There is surely a cat around. Yes, but I cannot rise to stroke it. As well, for it doesn’t want to be stroked. Its wish is to forage. It is fat, it is gorged. On what? That I couldn’t say with any confidence. I too was full but have been sick it seems.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  On Christmas morning in the darkness William woke not once but three times, the first with dread, the second angrily, the third with a feeling of defeat. Three selves, three awakenings. And each time the wind howling and the curtains, as if addressing those in bed, appealing to them, seeming to billow insistently inwards. In the corridors such a wind – some freakish pagan pentecost – would agitate the decorations and, after a time, cause them to fall. All would fall and Christmas would be cancelled. There would be no such wind, however, no such cancellation. Christendom, standing to attention, would sing and pray as usual. He had wakened first, though it was Sophie who delighted in Christmas. Propped on one elbow, he stared at the door, listening. His apprehension about the day was extraordinary, its roots, he supposed, in some region of the spirit it would take him months to uncover. Gently he shook Sophie awake, amused at her excitement when told what day it was, but embarrassed that he couldn’t share it with her. Couldn’t share it at all.