The Convalescent Read online

  The man lay back in rags on a mattress. Slowly the jeep circled the hollow in which he had been found, heading then for the colony. It was the first time William had only one to watch. He had to concentrate himself: he couldn’t count heads, compare conditions, go from one to the other. To only this one in rags could he give succour.

  Suddenly from the rags the man produced a small pistol. Supine, he raised his right arm and pointed the pistol directly above him, as at a spectre many miles high and rapidly escaping. There was an impression of extraordinary strain, as though, this time, the aim had to be perfect. The pistol went off and the arm that held it fell instantly, the pistol striking the wooden floor in the back of the jeep. The jeep stopped and the driver jumped out. He and William then found that the gesture – as of climactic repayment or vengeance – had been the man’s last.

  Another day William and the driver found ten refugees. William’s touch finer now, born of better patience, they helped them into the back of the jeep. One of them was agitated, though, and wouldn’t lie down. He kept pointing and – palms together, head leaning on them – making gestures which suggested sleep. The driver tried to get him to lie down, pointing at a mattress, himself making the gesture of sleep. But the man, standing up in the back of the jeep, pointed repeatedly towards the desert, making the gesture of sleep so often that William and the driver might have believed that millions slept out there. Millions. At last the driver thought that he saw a mound. Sticking a red flag in the sand beside it, he indicated that they would return after they had taken the ten to the colony. The man seemed to understand.

  The light must have changed, defining the desert differently, giving a clearer impression of space and recession, because when they returned they saw the red flag immediately.

  Kneeling together, William and the driver began to burrow at the mound. Several times a wind whipped sand into their faces. His goggles making the light orange, William burrowed on, more and more tentatively. It was he who was the first to touch a limb, but instead of recoiling – as he had thought he would – he held fast to the limb, his other hand raised, as though to still the wind and register his discovery. Pushing the sand carefully aside – such a terrible absorption in his task! – he uncovered the body of a child. A child of bones. Then another. Then an old woman of bones – or was it a young woman appearing old? For some reason he led the driver in the task. The driver laid the bodies side by side – William still digging – in readiness for the jeep. There were seven in all. When he had uncovered the last one, William felt the area around the mound – a mad repetitive thoroughness in his movements – in case some lay in shallower graves still. But there were no more. On all fours on the sand, then, William let his head hang. A good position for weeping. (But there would be no weeping.) The thought he had was oddly simple: those in shallow graves had been victims of some kind – murder, rape, pestilence, starvation. They lifted the corpses into the back of the jeep then, William remembering Sophie’s remark about the difference between dead and living bodies.

  And then, abruptly, the Commission’s time was up. The bus stood ready to take them to the airport. A wind had been blowing for several days, getting stronger, it seemed, by the hour. William had heard it said that the colony should be fortified. In the old days, apparently, encampments had been protected against the weather. Ignorant of the history of this part of the world, however, he couldn’t imagine what these protections would have been like.

  At Glasgow Airport, he exchanged addresses with Helen, but with no one else. He didn’t think he would see her again – he didn’t think he would even write to her – but their last wave could have been mistaken for that of lovers. Others too waved goodbye in this way. It was as if, in spite of themselves, their isolation from one another, their sense of shame and insignificance, they had become a kind of brotherhood.

  March 4th, 1985

  Some would call Sandra Mclehose a good sort, but I’m not so sure. Here I am anyway. Like me, she was once married, and like me, it’s a long time since she last saw her children. We treat the fact that (to put it mildly) we are in disgrace as a joke. What else can we do? It seems we are powerless to make amends. Powerless. Amends. What do I mean by these words? All they do is sound vaguely in an expanding space that has lost reference points. At this rate my vocabulary will be shrinking. It is shrinking. Sandra’s cannot afford to shrink, I’d say; it’s small enough as it is. Can you tell a bore by the number of words he uses? Maybe. We’re bores together then. Surely we are.

  But we have our diversions. Today, for example, it’s been decided that I cannot wear my clothes any more. They smell so horribly that when I am in my own presence, so to speak, I cannot smell Sandra, and that’s saying something. She has kept her husband’s clothes in a wardrobe, for she had hoped to get round to selling them. Now we discover they fit me perfectly. I won’t say that they too don’t smell, but it is the smell of a man on his way up or at least holding his own. A most respectable smell. I should be honoured. No wonder he left Sandra. After a week or two in his clothes mightn’t I be inspired (inspired!?) to try and leave her too?

  She lies on the bed laughing (not quite the right word, I think: cackling is better) while, unsteadily, I try on shirt after shirt, jersey after jersey, trousers and shoes, ties even. All fit perfectly. The shoes are worn as I like shoes to be worn, and the jackets hang comfortably. Remarkable. But when I begin to act the part Sandra gets angry. I am to remain myself even although the clothes constrain me to make an effort. She shouts that I’m to mind my manners, though I’d have thought that, in my new clothes and with the wardrobe open beside me, my manners have improved. I strut and she curses; hold out my arm as if we are going for a civilized walk and she curses; smooth my lapels and adjust my trousers when I sit and she curses. She shouts that she’ll rip the clothes off me if I don’t watch out. “Remember who you are!” she bellows. Remember who I am when I’ve forgotten who I was! “Was”, “is”, “will be” – all buggered. I may have to drop “I” from my vocabulary altogether. In these, clothes, though, I am changed a little, yes definitely changed a little. It has to be said. It’s hard to be gross and disgraceful in such clothes. I tell her I’ll have to break the clothes in; make them my own. I say to her … I say to her that she doesn’t understand.

  Should I have tried the stage? I mean isn’t this stubborn pleasure in these clothes and what they suggest to be applauded? She shouts at me and struggles to get off the bed. I continue to appear better than I am, more possessed, more purposeful. A flicker of remembered decency in a malodorous house and an even more malodorous relationship. Between three and four drinks Sandra may be a good sort but after that she’s not. After that – and she’s seven or eight after that, I think – she’s an ignorant, dirty, nasty bitch. It is three in the afternoon.

  She gets to her feet and comes at me. It’s not the first time I’ve been attacked, and not the last, I imagine. We struggle and fall to the floor. My shirt – his shirt – is ripped off me and my trousers taken down. Sandra is horribly strong. A real thug. I stop struggling. Everything is ripped off me. Too late she tries to turn it into a sexual game. Straddling me, she lifts up her skirt and cackles. Too late! I lie naked, drunk, exhausted, wondering where my old clothes are, thinking that in their repossession is my only hope.

  I look for them, staggering, find them, put them on. Sandra is sorry now and holds out her husband’s jacket. I charge it like a bull. Holding me by the knees, she moans “Willy!” Now nobody calls me Willy and gets away with it. She calls me it again. “Willy!” (Has she confused me with my cock?) I hit her, hit her cursing face, get hit back. “Couldn’t you just have put the clothes on!” she screams. Apparently not. Apparently clothes change you, give you ideas, airs.

  Back in my own clothes, I cry bitterly. Downstairs Sandra is banging doors. It is Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon. Time for a drink, I’d say. A quarter past three.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  William had been a
way from the Montgomery for almost four weeks, but it seemed longer. He couldn’t get used to it again; he couldn’t take it seriously. The news that Mr. Clow had died of a heart attack at breakfast one day (pitching forwards into his porridge with a little cry) and Miss Adams (asking for William repeatedly, it seemed) of pneumonia barely affected him. And the sight of a new arrival, a Colonel Galston, walking up and down the corridors asking for his aide-de-camp and slapping his left wrist with three fingers of his right hand – a movement at once effete and imperious – barely amused him. Not even the news that the minister had had a slight stroke and was being looked after by matron in her cottage in the grounds made much impression.

  And Sophie: to her he could respond least of all, so concerned was she to get him to put his trip to Africa behind him, to involve him once again in the life of the Montgomery. She had viewed his decision to go abroad unfavourably, a piece of bravado at best, a sign that he was at the mercy of the minister at worst, and he hadn’t been able to persuade her otherwise. Now, if she referred to the trip at all, she did so as if it had been an ill-considered holiday. She would remark on his suntan, his cracked lips, his fatigue and what she called his “faraway look” or his “tragic look”. But she wouldn’t ask any questions. She acted, too, as if – with the minister ill and matron frequently away, tending to him – the Montgomery was on the verge of happier times. Her theory seemed to be that if the minister had a second stroke and died matron would take early retirement. William told her that she shouldn’t hope for another’s death, death being willing enough, as he had recently seen. And he would annoy her further by calling her Queen of the Montgomery and by singing, under his breath and wearily, “When I shall be King and you shall be Queen.”

  His dislike of her absorption in the Montgomery (the very absorption he had once admired); her dislike of his detachment from it: after a few days they were barely speaking. “Why dream of things to do over there,” she would ask impatiently, “when there are plenty of things to do here?”

  “That’s not really how it is,” he would reply, equally impatiently. “You don’t seem to understand.”

  The only thing that touched him was a letter from Margo, written in reply to the letter he had sent her before going abroad.

  “Dear William,

  I can’t describe how good it was to hear from you after all these years. I’d heard from Lesley that you were alive and well and working as a nurse (she liked your white jacket!). But to have it confirmed by you was important. I won’t say I ever gave you up for dead, but there were times when it was close. When you feel ready for it, recovered even further, you must meet us all again. What a strange thing to say! But I mean it. Even after your final outings with the children – over which I think we should all agree to draw a veil – they asked after you, asked when they could see you again.

  I have my own life now, more or less, and it’ll stay that way. I do hope you’ll understand. How much there is to say! At this stage, though, and on paper, it seems hard to say it. But it’ll come, I’m sure.

  Please write again soon, and continue to take care of yourself.

  Love,

  Margo

  William replied almost immediately, surprised to find that after a few sentences something of his old manner with his wife – the manner of their best years – returned.

  “Dear Margo,

  I was delighted to get your letter. It was waiting for me on my return.

  I’d love to see you all again, and it shouldn’t be too long before I can manage it. Don’t worry, though, I do appreciate that you have your own life now. (Come to think of it, so have I!) It would be best if we didn’t conceal anything from each other, I think. Certainly I don’t expect you to feel that you have to conceal anything from me. Not even at my most irrational did I imagine that you would wait for me, look forward to the time when I would return to heal your wounds. Another’s hands were bound to do that. Good luck!

  After this month away I feel terribly unsettled. How to get going again after such an experience! Here, they live longer than they want to and frequently refuse their food; there, they die before their time because they have no food. I feel quite displaced. It is a common reaction, I suppose, but I have no one to talk to about it, so excuse me for going on. The minister who set up the opportunity for me is ill, so I can’t talk to him. Not that I’d have been inclined to anyway, for his motives are suspect. Very suspect. I think, you see, that my ruin was his objective: by sending me to a “refugee colony” he hoped to terrify me into drinking again. (I’ve even thought that there may be something suspect about his interest in the starving – not to mention the old. God help me, but are there people who like others because they – the others – are about to become corpses?) But I’m as sober as I’ve ever been – all senses. The only other person I might have spoken to is a nurse I’m friendly with (her name is Sophie) but she thinks my going abroad was an ego trip. I expect time will return me to myself and show me my place again, but at the moment it doesn’t seem like it.

  Actually, I do remember my last “outing” with the children. It’s one of the few things I do remember from that time. Terrible!

  I’ll write again soon.

  Love,

  William

  William hadn’t been to matron’s cottage before (few of the staff had). It was hidden from the Montgomery by trees, and through these trees, a cold March wind blowing, William now walked. His collar was turned up, his hands were deep in his pockets. It was evening. Clouds scudded across the face of a full moon; a cloud-bank obscured it entirely; then it sailed free again. The effect of such intermittent moonlight, William felt, was to make the trees, the path through them, the swaying branches, the high wall and even matron’s cottage seem provisional (as if there by grace of the moonlight, not otherwise). He paused before knocking at the cottage door, and was then obliged – such was the noise of the wind – to knock three times.

  It was the minister who had asked to see him, though since matron insisted that the patient wasn’t to be troubled with difficult news, William didn’t see what his visit could achieve. She had asked him to be light and general about his time abroad, to avoid details – in short, to hold back from the worst. He had offered to wait until the minister was better, but matron, ruffling her hair, had said it had to be now.

  The minister, bent slightly, was sitting in an armchair at a coal fire. His chair – as if to warm the side that had been affected by the stroke – had been turned sideways. Seeing William, he lifted his right hand in greeting and pointed to a chair opposite. William said that he was glad to see the minister well, at least recovering, and sat down. For a moment matron stood in the doorway – William had the impression that she was holding her breath – before withdrawing to make some tea.

  “A nuisance, this,” the minister said, shifting in his chair, grimacing.

  “It’s just a matter of rest.”

  “So Alice tells me. But rest is time out.”

  “Time out of what?”

  “Of life. And to wait for life to begin again is to realise, at least at my age, that it may have other plans.” There seemed to be more saliva than usual in the minister’s mouth: his words were heavier, a little slurred.

  “You’ll be all right,” William said, more casually than he had intended, reaching over to adjust a yellow tartan rug that was slipping from the minister’s waist.

  “You think so?” It wasn’t asked uneasily, but aggressively, as if it was the minister’s hope to discredit William’s opinions one by one.

  “Matron is sure of it.”

  William, still adjusting the rug, was discovering the extent of the minister’s portliness. The flab was packed above and below the waistline, and between two rolls of this (whether by accident or not he couldn’t easily have said) William poked a finger.

  “Oh leave it!” the minister said, grasping William’s wrist and lifting it away. “Don’t fuss; it doesn’t matter. Tell me now …”


  Then he broke off, looked away, William remembering how something similar had happened during their interview on Christmas night. Uncertain cerebral activity, he supposed, giving an impression of preoccupation, enigmatic hesitation.

  His eyes when they recollected themselves had forgotten their purpose. But they had found another one. William was to be observed: posture noted, complexion checked, steadiness under scrutiny considered. It was as if in his uneasy convalescence the minister had got it into his head that his chief business was to reassess what was normally taken for granted. And just as the word “protectress” had once occurred to William in relation to matron, so now the word “reassessor” occurred to him in relation to the minister. He sat very still, so still, in fact, that he seemed to have consented to join with the minister in this scrutiny of himself. But at last he smiled, as though, so far as he was concerned, he had passed the test easily, had come over as fit, ready, resourceful, dignified. But the minister wasn’t so pleased.

  “I suppose when I’m stronger,” he said, looking into the fire, “you can tell me how you managed it. For it is remarkable …”

  “How I managed what?”

  “How you’ve been able to return from your trip so sanguine, so collected. I never could.”

  “But I haven’t, Reverend,” William said. “I’m fatigued and unsettled.”

  “How odd,” the minister went on, as if he hadn’t been listening, “that it should have been I who remained behind who was struck down.”

  “I wouldn’t say that you’ve been struck down. That’s putting it too strongly.”

  “As you wish,” the minister muttered.

  There came another blankness then, another void, and when he returned from it – returned to the room with its flickering firelight and matron entering prettily with the teatray – the minister had lost interest. He was bored now, indifferent. And so, William felt, it would probably continue, the blankness alternating with the petulance, the rages with the inertia, until the minister either recovered or, rising up from his chair with a great shout (William could imagine this very easily), died.