The Convalescent Read online

  It wasn’t easy. Even those with little sense of occasion seemed to William to register offence – if only by laying down their gifts beside their plates of turkey and staring into space.

  He caught up with the minister outside the dining room, cornering him before he could hurry away to take off his Santa Claus outfit. All that he could see, between the top of the huge white beard and the bottom of the hood, were his eyes. Sweating eyes. Jealous eyes. The eyes of a master of ceremonies. First they showed surprise, then alarm, then annoyance at betraying alarm: William was as sure of the sequence as he was of the fact that many of the elderly who were being pushed or helped past him by Sophie, May and Margaret had wet or fouled themselves and on a normal lunchtime would not have done.

  “So we’re a lover of disguises are we, Reverend?” he heard himself say. “And we love acting it up with the very old and, I dare say, with the very young do we? I’ll thank you to confine your dressing up in future to your dog-collar. Understand? And what about a bit of consultation? Or has that gone too? Condescension and tyranny! Condescension and tyranny right down the line! Screw the folks and screw your colleagues until the cows come home! Well I’m not going to allow it, Reverend, for eventually the cows do come home – not to mention the elderly – and there has to be someone to meet them. Not someone in disguise, either. Not some fraud.”

  “You’re being very impertinent, Mr Templeton,” the minister said, throwing off his hood. “Very impertinent indeed!”

  Matron’s office, high up in one of the wings of the Montgomery, had been converted by the minister for his own purposes. And they were peculiar purposes. Entering, William thought of it as a sort of coda to Christmas Day, a presentation of credentials, a declaration. Spread across the desk and on two tables beside it and pinned to all four walls were photographs of the starving. They were of many different sizes, some in colour, some in black and white. William hadn’t seen colour photographs of the starving before, and he was horrified. By conveying weight and space and atmosphere so much more powerfully than black and white, by showing the effects of disease so much more vividly, as though for medical posterity, colour made it appear miraculous that the starving could stand or sit at all. Even as he looked – forced to acknowledge the photographs before he acknowledged the minister (of how many ceremonies a master?) – the limbs seemed to buckle a little more, the staring astonished eyes to become a little more sightless. One photograph in particular held him: in some hollow of the desert an old woman was dying, attended by a young woman with a baby strapped to her back. Behind them, darkened spray against the light, sand had been blown upwards from the rim of the hollow.

  “More surprises from Santa Claus,” William said, nodding, pointing. “Wind and death, I’d call that one. But what are you trying to say? I’m not ignorant of the world.”

  “I didn’t imagine you were,” the minister said, regarding the photograph William had pointed to. “I think you may be ignorant about me, though. You see me as one whose enterprises begin and end here, in the Montgomery. You see me as provincial. Isn’t that so?”

  “A big fish in a small pond, but one who has known bigger ponds,” William said, trying to divide his attention between the minister and his photographs.

  “And in what pond did you drown, William?” the minister countered. “I’ve always thought, you see, that you have the mark of one who has known drowning.”

  “Oh really,” William said, as if the minister would have to be much more interesting than this if he was to hold William’s attention.

  “What you are trying to do, I’d say, is about the hardest thing one can do. Particularly in this culture.” The minister had sat down, and William noticed that – as though it was to be worn again that day – his Santa Claus outfit was on the back of the chair. “Yes, to try and remake yourself in this culture is heroic, really. I take my hat off to you. Really I do! But observing you in the last few weeks I’ve thought … would you like to know what I’ve thought? I’ve thought you’ve looked cramped, as though you need more space, considerably more space, to complete your recovery. Many get so far and no further, you see. The last stages are the real challenge. Ah yes!”

  “Are you trying to say that we don’t have second chances any more? If you don’t succeed the first time round, you’ve had it?”

  Though he had looked away from the photographs to ask this, William appeared to be speaking from under their shadow. His left arm, as though to clear a space for himself, was slightly but insistently raised.

  “There are second chances, but only the exceptional take them. The rest are broken.” The minister spoke swiftly, summarily, as if any other manner might have allowed his words to get back at him. “But can I ask you – are you essentially the same the second time round as the first? Or very different?”

  It was a question William had sometimes asked himself, and, as before, the answer took the form of a set of images, a reverie. He was in what looked like the garden of the house from which Margo had banished him. A tall fire was burning, and, in it, were his possessions. There were two presences, in the foreground himself, in the background a dark figure in the process of stealing away. His feeling was that it was imperative to identify the figure. But, awed by the fire in which most of what he held dear was being consumed, he couldn’t move. A dark figure and himself watching it through the relentless fire. Sometimes (this time being one of them) he became able to move stealthily to the right round the fire; but the dark figure moved at the same time, always at the same time, into the shadow of some trees, where it paused as though awaiting him. At which he paused too. And so it remained: the fire burning and these two arrested figures.

  “I sometimes think,” William said, appearing to attend to the photographs again, “that the short answer to that is the only answer. The first time round I was a drunk; this time I’m not.”

  There was a silence. The minister seemed to be hoping for more, but William, wondering why he had spoken, said nothing. He had spoken as if to himself, but he couldn’t understand why, for wasn’t he in the presence of a lover of weaknesses – a spy, if you like? This was how you spoke to friends, or to a wife. He looked up defensively, to find the minister regarding him indulgently, as if he knew what William had left unsaid.

  “Do not regret speaking, William,” he said. “Your secret will be safe with me. Though it could be said that I knew of it already.”

  “Why, though, are we sitting here surrounded by all these photographs?” William asked, his manner as he stood up exasperated and challenging. But then he looked at them more closely, as if he had seen that the answer to this lay with them, if it lay anywhere.

  “They hem you in?”

  “One is aware of them.”

  “And so we should be – continually. They increase daily, the starving, did you know that? Or don’t you have an opinion?”

  “I’d have said, no, I’d not have thought they were increasing,” William answered, made to feel that an absence of opinions on starvation was a kind of consent to it.

  “The Church to which I belong isn’t indifferent to these matters. It is widely engaged. And our emissaries aren’t dressed up as Santa Claus either. There are other sides to our ministry besides the pulpit and Santa Claus. Oh yes! We don’t just step from the one to the other and back again.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Santa Claus was a mistake, if I may say so.”

  “You already have – very rudely too. One doesn’t always attire oneself appropriately, I admit, but there are worse crimes than what you obviously regard as folksy sentimentality. Aren’t there?”

  “In my view,” William said, standing over the minister, “Christmas has been ruined by two things – commercialism and sentimentality. A minister worth his salt should be saying so. Again and again. His pulpit …”

  “But I have no church, William,” the minister said softly, almost appealingly. “That is my secret. I have The Church, but not a church. Parishes are at a premium,
so why entrust one to a man in his late fifties and in poor health? I have blood pressure problems, you see. A giddy pulse.”

  Having said this, he appeared briefly to lose all interest, a kind of pained blankness overcoming him.

  “High blood pressure?” William said slowly. “High blood pressure? I see.”

  For a moment he had the air of one who thinks he may be on the verge of a discovery. High blood pressure, alcoholism, amnesia, senility, heart disease: might there be an essential link between these conditions, light shed on one proving to be light shed on all? Himself, the minister, the elderly explained by the one law? He raised himself on his toes, lightly, as if to hasten such a vision. But then, appearing to see more folly than promise in it, turned to the photographs once more. As though to be chastened; instructed in the elements of a darker vision.

  “It may not be as unrelated to the photographs as one might think,” the minister resumed, coughing. “As I was saying, the Church to which I belong isn’t indifferent to these things. There is a Commission, of which I’m a member. I’ve been a member for sixteen years. Indeed, I was one of the founders … Once or twice a year we go abroad to apprise ourselves of what is happening. We visit colonies of the starving. We make reports. We give money and try to see to it that it is well spent. But we haven’t been noticing improvements … Did you know any of this?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because you’ve been too concerned with saving yourself. But let us assume that you are saved now. As saved as you will ever be. As intact. As ready. Let us assume that. Now I have a proposition to make … Engaged in remaking yourself, as you undoubtedly are …”

  Here, as though troubled by some impulse behind his words, he broke off.

  “… undoubtedly are. Yes. But why stop here? In the Montgomery? Will your passion for the elderly endure, deepen? How d’you know you’ll not weary of them, with their fads, their monosyllables and their smells? (Maybe you’ve done so already?) Is this really your vocation? How d’you know that in ten years time at Christmas you too will not be dressing up as Santa Claus? Anyway, how, I ask you, do you bring the gospel to the elderly, the confused, except by …”

  “Santa Claus today was an insult as I said,” William muttered, as if his mind suddenly was on greater insults still. “And if I should ever find myself dressing up as Santa Claus …”

  “You’d take to the bottle again. Yes, you probably would, wouldn’t you? But before then, before then – and I’m offering it to you because, with my uncertain health, I’ve been advised not to go again – there’s the Commission. You could go as my representative. You could keep me informed. You could help a little, too; the understaffing is unbelievable. It’ll make you or break you, William.” Here the minister paused and looked away, giving William the impression that he might take as much pleasure in the thought of him broken as in the thought of him restored. “See it, if you like, as the final stage in the remaking of yourself. Refuse the offer and let me tell you that you’ll understand what it means to be stuck. Stasis! Stasis! Santa Claus in a cul-de-sac awaiting you with open arms!”

  “How long for?” William asked, feeling that he had been mistaken for someone else, that there had been a confusion of destinies.

  “A few weeks.” Then, suddenly smiling – one of those smiles which, knowing it is not really a smile, postures in its falseness – the minister added: “But I should say that, if you don’t go, it’ll not be easily apparent why matron should want to keep on a bloodless assistant.”

  He started to roll up the photographs of the starving then, putting an elastic band round each of them, patting their ends – a pedantic dismantling of the scene which, William was now sure, he had prepared with angry relish. The scene in the garden came to William again, but this time the fire was dying down and there was apparently no reason to watch it anymore. Beside the trees the dark figure, always with his back to the concerns of the firewatcher, stood waiting.

  “And so,” the minister said, appearing extremely composed, “Santa Claus can give you the experience of a lifetime – can whisk you from this obscure corner of Lanarkshire to the fires of the desert and the moans of the dying. Of course, you can play safe …”

  “Oh no,” William answered sharply, hoping to conceal the fact that, at that moment, his commitment was not so much to the starving as to the idea of commitment. “I’m on my way. Make the necessary arrangements.”

  November 15th, 1984

  From nought to nought. That’ll be it. A logical step, if step it is. To have come to nought, though? Had I another destination? Apparently. Can I say what it was, now I’m here? Apparently not. A craving to shed encumbrances – that has been clear. But for what? For what? To drink alone and with occasional others to my heart’s content? No heart now to be content with. How to be content anyway after so much? Heartlessness: as well not to afflict others. Astonishing after the early signs of a fullness to come. Illusions, clearly. Tedious this. Tedious too the resolve to end it. Tedium out of heartlessness.

  The landlord is away. I have the house to myself, or rather a back room in it to myself. Such a neglected back garden! It is as if the landlord’s ambition is to be able to walk head high in nettles. I could lie down in the nettles rather than in my bed. Easier for them to find me there than in or on my bed. More appropriate too. His last bed one of nettles.

  What clothes? Not much choice now. Wear what’s to hand. What’s not to hand is not. Sometimes in the mirror I’ve glimpsed myself dressing. A lunging figure who seems never to have dressed before. Lunging, plunging. When dressed and moving I note the scared way my feet fall. Part of my condition, apparently (peripheral …?), but also fitting. To walk as if banned from the earth, every patch of it.

  Notes? Margo, the children! Nonsense! “I thought it best …” “No alternative now …” “Too many mistakes, sorry …” It won’t surprise Margo; she once feared as much (or as little). To her nonetheless a note. Saying? Regrets too easy. Too easy. Anyway, what regrets? To kick the bucket without being clear about these – how irresponsible! Why bother though? Responsibly to try and account for one irresponsibility while the pills stand ready and the clock ticks – absurd.

  The pills stand ready. (And the clock ticks.) A toast to them, to bring them closer. Last night … last night these same bottles moved upon the shelf in a slow dance, between the ants and the beetles. Never been so calm as when the world fractures. Watch as if privileged. What would we say it meant if we all saw it? None but the brave do though. I mean none but the damned – remarkable though I’ve sometimes felt the damned to be. (They don’t butter you up; don’t kid themselves.)

  The bed or the nettles? Dressed as I am or in pyjamas? Does it matter? Always thought it foolish, such theatrical fussing about appearances. Won’t be around to see myself dragged from the nettles or lifted from the bed. The bathroom floor or the bath then? The living to be considered, I think; to be spared, though not entirely. Ridiculous this need to be discovered! Memorial corpses: Whoever finds me will understand nothing. The sea, then, the salt breakers of childhood? Cradled in the Gulf Stream? No; fear of water as deep as the need to be found.

  The first pill. The second. The third. Perhaps they are duds. The fourth. The fifth. A drink again. And again. The sixth. A high valley with graveyards. The seventh. A drink. Graveyards again. Dull thoughts. Imps behind the gravestones. Why expect visions? God after such despair? The eighth. The ninth. Nothing. (A letter to Boots …?) A hint of swooning to come though. A face … not a face, no, a presence. Whose? Some grace in it. A formal dance. The tenth. What a tedious method. A revolver or a knife? The eleventh, or was that (counting never my strong point)… the twelfth. Why count for God’s sake? Dying not to be measured. Sweep them into a pile and gobble … Might be sick. Might be … Twenty now? Thirty? All of a sudden past the foothills. Graveyards again. How monotonous, but to the point, I suppose. Certainly a dullness now. Another handful. That presence again. Grace in it, yes, much grace. W
hen did I last see mother? Months? Years? Unremarkable she should appear to me now who was never shocked by weakness or perversity. Peeing out of the window that summer and father raging! “At least it’s the back window, Charles, and not into the wind.” My mother the wit. Dead calm as often as not. A lovely evenness. A grace … (What do I name by that word? Wrong question.) To her a letter maybe. Too late! Too late! A darkening dullness. The yards, the feet going. Inches merely. Glass over. Done.

  “Oh what have you done, Mr Templeton?” The salesman lodger bends over me, a girl beside him, bending too. A nightdress. Half darkness. “Call the ambulance, Barbara! The phone’s in the hall.”

  Neither in my bed nor in the nettles but on the floor by the door apparently. I had been on my way somewhere it seems when dying. Wherever I move my hand I feel vomit. Here and here and here and here.

  “Not much,” I mumble. “Not enough. Sorry!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Church Commission met at Glasgow Airport in mid-February. Most of its members were ministers, and most of these greeted each other loudly. William waited until the excitement had died down, then introduced himself as the Reverend Alan Walsh’s representative, smiling at his willingness to use a description which at first had struck him as ridiculous. But what else was he so far as these people were concerned?

  Overnight bags and suitcases had been boldly labelled. The occasion, it seemed to William, had something of the air of an annual excursion, a welcome break in the monotony of day-to-day pastoral work. He sat quietly with his coffee in its plastic cup, noting that the group already had its joker, and that this joker already had a particular fan. A minister from Edinburgh, he walked and talked at the same time, and, as his punchlines approached, bore down on his fan, who laughed in extravagant appreciation. The fan, also from Edinburgh, was pale and young, and might have been pretty had she been able to relax. But her concern to please made her lips tight and her eyes move restlessly. (A horizon without people, William thought, would have thrown her into a panic.) The group also had its gruff member, who participated by appearing to find his companions unworthy of any kind of attention. He too was a minister, who stooped even as he sat, the heel of his right shoe cocked nervously on his left knee. A few times, whistling under his breath, he glanced at William as if here at last was the individual he had most dreaded to meet – the individual who, by moving effortlessly to the centre of the group, would require everyone to ask himself what he was doing there.