by Stuart Evers
Carter wrinkles his nose. To be one of those nights. Carter in a high pitch of excitement, all filters relieved for the evening.
‘It’s Dagenham Library, Carter,’ Drum says. ‘Old women reading romances. Old men reading the newspapers. The only hotbed is the seat after some tramp’s pissed himself.’
‘I think you’d be surprised.’ Carter takes a sip from his martini. Nothing better to say than this. Nothing better to share than innuendo.
‘Get your mind from the gutter,’ Drum says, almost snapping, but not quite. A softening smile. A whoops-oh-shucks look heavenward. Ooh, you are awful.
‘Shame,’ Carter says. ‘It’s where I do my best thinking.’
The waiter brings oysters on a chipped ice platter, six of them, shells foreboding. Carter takes one, slurps down the clotted innards. Around them, other men, older and redder of complexion, fatter and balder of pate, do the same. Silence and one room-wide gulp and the hitting of the shell on china, a sigh from the room, the waiters filling glasses of champagne and Riesling. Drummond lets Carter finish them all. After last time, best to avoid.
‘Actually, talking of books . . .’ Carter says, wiping his glistened chin. ‘I’ve been asked to write one.’
He picks up his martini and takes a sip, preserving the moment.
‘Well, part of a book at least,’ he says. ‘A friend of mine was having dinner with this writer chap. Terribly clever by all accounts, terribly clever and wondrously fat. Anyway, he’s getting people to write little memoirs of their time on National Service. My friend suggested me to this Bryan and he wrote inviting me to contribute.’
Drummond looks at the oyster husks on the chipped ice, the platter swiftly removed from the table as he’s watching it, as though he’s drawn eyes to the waiters’ inattention.
‘What’ll you say?’ Drum says.
Carter stretches out his arms and leans back in his chair, as though this kind of literary talk is commonplace.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m tempted, obviously. There’s a lot to write about. The first thing that came to mind was Doom Town, of course. I hunted out my old journal and had a look through. There’s so much I’d forgotten. You remember Jerrick?’
‘Yes,’ Drum says.
‘Completely forgotten about him. Total blank. You remember when he scared us to death in that library?’
The hush of the library, a different kind of still to the one in which Gwen worked. The books in there quietly seething, quietly warning.
‘I’ve not thought about Doom Town in years,’ Drum says. Carter will not call him out on that. Will agree, otherwise the night gone.
‘Nor me,’ Carter says. ‘But I set to remembering all that I could, and when I did, I realized no one would quite believe it. There’s more chance of them believing our little stories of Cyprus and the Sudan.’
Carter laughs and the waiter arrives with the wine, uncorks it, lets Carter taste it. The waiter does not look at Drum once. Carter nods, not even looking at the waiter.
‘But then,’ Carter says, the waiter pouring the wine, ‘I started to think of those months right at the beginning, when we were in the kitchens. How lucky that all was. So I thought I’d begin with our meeting—’
‘You leave me out of it,’ Drum says. Carter looks mock hurt, surprised.
‘Well I can’t very well tell the story without you in it, can I?’ he says.
‘I don’t want you writing about me like that,’ Drummond says. ‘Like I was your batman or something.’
‘I’d never do such a thing.’
‘You wouldn’t know you were doing it.’
Carter laughs. Already almost drunk. Already on the way.
‘Well, if you insist,’ he says. ‘I’ll give you an alias then. Like Alan. Alan Spencer. Yes. You look like you could be an Alan. I might start calling you Alan from now on. What do you say to that, Alan?
Drummond thinks of the name Alan Spencer. Who Alan Spencer might be. To be made someone else, just like that, with the change of a name.
‘Well, James,’ Drum says, ‘I’d say you’ve had your ego stroked and you’ll promise fat Bryan something and at the last minute you’ll make your apologies and say you’re too busy.’
Carter smiles, picks up his wine glass and raises it to Drum.
‘Oh, Alan, you know me too well.’
Over their main courses, Carter talks of Daphne’s new hobby, yoga (drill exercises for hippies), the work about which he cannot freely speak (one day soon, I’ll tell you all), the new Jaguar he’s just bought (goes like shit off a shovel). He asks Drum about the strike and they spend a needless, mutually unsatisfying half-hour arguing about the union movement, equal pay legislation and other political matters which sound hollow and ill-informed even to Drum, let alone to outside ears.
Their plates are taken away; Carter has eaten little, drunk a lot, smoked more than he drank. The last ten minutes he has been quieter than usual. He lights a cigarette and leans over the table.
‘Are your children scared of you, Drum?’ Carter says. The baldness of the question is surprising, as though this has been the one thing on Carter’s mind throughout dinner.
‘I was scared of my father,’ Carter says. ‘Petrified of him. But my children, they don’t seem to be scared of me at all. Rather the contrary. I think they find me somehow slightly amusing. When I ask them to do something, it’s always conducted with a thin veneer of insolence. Like they know something I don’t.’
Carter pulls on his cigarette, the smoke plumes and he waves it away.
‘I lose my temper with them, I shout and bellow, and they don’t cry or cower. Neither of them.’
‘You want your children to be scared of you?’ Drummond says.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Why would you want them to be afraid of you?’
Drum shouts at his children rarely; when he does they listen. Not through fear, but because they understand when he raises his voice it’s for their own good, their own protection. Is that fear? When Annie cries, is that fear? When Nate cowers, is that fear? No, not fear. Understanding.
‘Because fear is the only way we learn, isn’t it?’ Carter says. ‘No one learns from hugs and kisses. I blame the schools. The bloody teachers. Children aren’t shown any discipline, any kind of rigour these days. Nothing like when I was at school. Nothing like it.’
‘You always said you wanted to burn your school down with everyone trapped inside.’
Carter leans in close to Drummond. Two heads in a booth, dipping down low as though avoiding a train inspector.
‘Fear gives you structure, Drum,’ he says. ‘It gives you a code and a set of principles to live to. Fear is the only thing that keeps us in line. Fear of hell. Fear of shame. Fear of exile. Without fear, there is only chaos.’
He looks around, the other patrons clouded with cigar smoke, deep into brandy and brag.
‘I’ve lived in fear,’ he says. ‘These last years, I’ve become the man I promised I wouldn’t. I’ve become emasculated. But a while back I came to town for a financier’s function. It was ghastly, but the wine was top drawer, so I stayed. I talked to likely people, tried to make myself sound interested in business rates and whatnot, and then at the bar, a woman said to me, “Drinking like a fish out of water?” A good line, I thought. We talked and afterwards we shared a cab. When we got to her place, she asked if I’d like to go up for a nightcap. I said no. I could have said yes, but I said no. And do you know why I said no?’
Drum shrugs, never knowing him say no to anything.
‘Fear,’ he said. ‘That was all it was. Not love, not devotion, but fear. Fear of the consequences, of the repercussions. Fear, that was all. I thought of you at that moment, actually. About how I said I was going to live in the shadows. But I haven’t, Drum. Not at all. And so I wrote to this woman and we started up a regular correspondence. I wrote until I had no more fear left. Until I left fear at the door, chained up like a
dog outside a pub.’
Carter has sweat on his brow, the heat and the food and the wine. Little drops of it, perfect pearls.
‘Fear is what keeps us down,’ Carter says. ‘All of us. Your strike action? That’s all about fear. Fear of getting less than others. Fear of the unions losing power. Fear of being trampled down. We all run on an engine of fear. But I don’t fear any more. There’s no more growl in the gut.’
Beside them, an old man begins to laugh. A laugh that even over the chatter and the service, dominates the room. Conversations pause as it goes on, the haw-hawing coming down then starting up again.
‘How long do you think we can go on like this?’ Carter says. ‘The IRA, the Angry Brigade, the Black Panthers, the Trots and the Fascists? It’s just going to get worse. No one fears the bomb any more, no one’s looking at Russia. They’re looking inwards. Making it all personal, waging war on the system. The queers are kissing in Trafalgar Square. The blacks are citing the fucking Magna Carta in their defence hearings. We’re heading for collapse, Drum. The kids, they don’t fear their daddies any more, they don’t feel it in the same way. And that’s what’s dangerous. The kids will need to be reined in soon. They’ll need to have a new fear. Not of being on the end of an IRA bomb or being beaten by racist coppers, but a real fear, a true fear that will keep them down.’
Animated, a fresh theory, the first time said, the first run-through. Would get better at it. Would have honed it the next time.
‘Once people think there’s nothing abroad to fear, they’re dangerous. The Soviets know it, the West knows it too. They need people to look again at the skies and not at their lives. They need a real enemy, a real threat. East and West will be a disaster area if not. People will have to start being afraid again. Properly afraid, existentially afraid. It’s the only way. And only the bomb can do that. Only the bomb has that power. It’s coming, Drum. The cold will thaw and then it will be hot. White hot. You mark my words, it’s coming.’
Carter leans back against the booth; Drummond looks down at the just-delivered cheeseboard, the oozing camembert and mould-jewelled stilton.
‘So you’re having an affair,’ Drum says, ‘because the bomb’s coming?’
Carter laughs, full-throttle laugh, head back, almost as loud as the old general on the other table.
‘You always cut to the quick, Drum. Always so very sharp.’
The spread of cheese, the cigarette burning in the ashtray, the cigar clouds gathering. Carter crushes out his cigarette and leaves it with the others, the small pile of them.
‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘Get a drink in somewhere.’
Still the money to go. The few quid he’s promised Gwen. Two quid wouldn’t kill him. Maybe a fiver. Speculate to accumulate. Get the money. Take the money. Food on the table. See us through a while, that. Gwen will be pleased.
‘I should get back,’ Drum says.
‘Oh, come now, Drum, the night’s yet ours. It’ll be worth your while.’
‘Just one then,’ he says. ‘Just a quick one.’
Stand now. Stand now and walk as though not drunk. Drunk though. Wanting home. Wanting home and bedclothes and pounds in the pocket.
4
Nate asleep, Annie with the light off, but presumably under the covers with the torch she thinks Gwen knows nothing about. Gwen goes downstairs, pulls on another jumper, pours herself a gin, lights a cigarette. The gas fire stays unlit, the way it has all week. To put it on now, to turn the dial and hear the gas catch on the flame, just for her and her alone. To do that just once.
Before Nate was born, they redecorated, excised the last of Grandpa in the house, while he was quietly excising himself a few doors along the street. Picture of him and his wife on the mantel, now; pictures of Gwen’s family, her father dead now too, the pictures only lightened by the beaming faces of her children, her niece and nephew she so rarely sees. A picture of Drum and Gwen’s wedding day, black and white, though she remembers it in all its colour. Though not as she drinks gin. Will not look at the pictures, only at the glass on the coffee table, the library books beside them. His books, or at least were. Hers now. For a time, at least.
A year of working in the library; a year under crackling strip lights, static shocks from the shelves, the trundle of trolleys. She wrote to her brother of the new chapter of her life (ha!). Children in school, a salary of her own, an environment of learning and betterment. ‘I can’t ask for anything more,’ she wrote, ‘than a good husband, beautiful children, fine friends and a job where I could spend the rest of my days.’ Meant it too. But should have known. Should have realized such a prideful sentiment would be quickly tested.
In amongst the stack of large-print titles the man checked out, there was always something surprising: The Conquest of the Incas, a V. S. Naipaul novel she was too intimidated to read; a crime novel set at a rugby club; The Female Eunuch. She’d stamp them out, pass them over, offer a smile and a goodbye. The same as for everyone; but for him quieter, her farewells almost inaudible. As though she respected the piety of the library so much she could not bring herself even to whisper.
A rare bird, a man of her own age in the library. On opening, old men settled down with the papers; late morning, the mothers and their broods; the afternoon a mixed bunch, but never men in fine clothes with close-cropped beards who smelled of sandalwood and patchouli, who bent calisthenically to read the spines of low-shelved books. Hen-tooth rare, men like him.
After he returned his books, she’d check them out herself, read them sitting next to Drum on the sofa, thrilling at her fingers touching the same pages he’d so recently held.
She did not tell anyone of the rare bird (what she called him, though she knew his name was Ray, and that the large-print books were for a mother or aunt, as he had no wedding band). Not recently divorced Patty, nor her friend Bridget. He was for her alone. She would have told Nick, though. He would have enjoyed the suspense. Was still enjoying it, no doubt.
Mid-morning, mid-March of the previous year, in amongst the stack of large-print titles, nothing for the rare bird. She looked up and he was holding out a chit.
‘I have an inter-library loan,’ he said.
In the loans cupboard his surname was written on a slip of paper around the spine of a thin hardback. She looked at the faded jacket image, the dustcover chipped and foxed. Heart and stomach in tandem, off downhill. She handed him the book and he inspected the inside cover blurb.
‘This is the one,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
There was always God. One of her invention, one to whom she never prayed, but knew existed. A Welsh God, part beard, part gorse and heather; a hydra of Yehova and the tales of the Mabinogion: terrifying, placating, elemental. She now saw a different side to him: a trickster, huckster God. And alongside him, pointing down from his oraculum, an accomplice, a bawdy ally: Nicholas Oldman, bouncing with delight as she read his name on the book’s cover. His name in the rare bird’s hand. The audacity of the plan, the mendacity of it, the sheer nerve of it.
‘Do forgive me,’ Gwen said. ‘But can I ask why you ordered this book?’
The rare bird wore a black roll-neck, the wide-lapelled tweed jacket. His beard needed a trim.
‘Research,’ he said. ‘My editor recommended it. It’s a classic of its kind, so she says.’
Designed for further questioning, that. Are you writing a book? Have you written a book? Are you a writer? To be wary of such men. Those who suck you into interest, though you have no interest in them. Superb control of the social contract: ask a question, receive an answer, ask a further question.
‘Why? Have you read it?’ he said. ‘I must confess I’d never heard of it.’
Say no. Say no, just say you liked the cover.
‘I knew the author a little,’ she said. ‘The book’s very much like him. Full of himself.’
The rare bird laughed, a low, library-minded laugh.
‘I’ll make sure to tell you how I get on with it, then,’ he sa
id.
The rare bird flew the library, his black trousers tight at the seat, Cuban heels clacking on the polished concrete floor. You won’t get away with this, mischievous Nick. Why shake trees like this? Why from on high, reach down? She finishes half her gin before heading upstairs to check in on Annie, her blankets illuminated from within, her room still a state, the shame of that room.
‘That’s enough now,’ she says. ‘Sleep time, now.’
The light goes out and Annie emerges from the blankets, face just visible from the streetlamp outside.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘I’m worried about the nightmare.’
Gwen sits down on the edge of the bed, strokes her thin, light-slatted hair.
‘I’ll stay for a little while,’ she says. ‘If you think that’ll help.’
Gwen lies beside her daughter, shushes her and calms her, the nightmares she complains of all about her father. Father leaving. Father dead. Never her, always Drum. When Gwen was the same age, she’d had a dream about the local dentist playing a penny whistle only she could hear. Still sends a shiver. Happy to lie there, comfort her, send her off to unmet sleep. Dozing herself, thinking it all through. Hoping her thoughts do not bleed from pillow into her daughter’s ear. A dream where her mother leaves, not her father.
He skipped a week, the rare bird. She did not look for him, did not check the door when it opened, did not wander the stacks when returning from tea-break, did not check the loan cupboard to see if The Regional Forecast had been returned. None of that. Thinking of what they would eat for tea, which books to take home for Annie, what to read to Nate last thing. Thinking of those things.
She read The Regional Forecast again, the copy Nick had sent her. She wondered what the rare bird was making of it, the passing of the seasons in a small town, the gossipy, self-indulgent tone. She imagined the rare bird looking for her in the text, seeking her out, finding her as the barmaid. He’d know it was her. He’d see that. Though it was not her. Not her at all.
The next week the rare bird returned his mother’s books, and she did not say anything to him. So many patrons of the library, so many questions, how could she be expected to remember—
