Mr Vogel

by Lloyd Jones

  ‘Trauma,’ he repeated again. He thought of a car by the side of a road, its front windscreen cracked and milky after being hit by a flying pebble. The basic shape of the car remained the same; its function, however, had been annulled abruptly. That’s what trauma was: a sudden, shocking experience; a big bang which hummed in the ears for ever afterwards. One always drove a little slower than everyone else; the eyes were constantly on the move, waiting for another happening...

  ‘Does that make sense to you Dr Jackson?’

  ‘Yes, that makes sense to me – though traumas are very personal, and your picture isn’t standard.’

  ‘Does my trauma seem large or small in comparison with other people?’

  ‘There’s no sliding scale with trauma,’ he answered. ‘We all maximise our own pain. Like our genes, we have to explore every possibility; we have to probe the full spectrum of pain and pleasure.’

  Vogel was beginning to wilt, and was cheered to see Dr Jackson yawning and settling into his seat.

  Mr Vogel looked out at the garden, and saw a new figure shambling among the patients, helping with the gardening. He had a primitive, hirsute appearance and a prehistoric gait. His shape seemed strangely familiar.

  It was Waldo, the Sumo-bellied builder from the pub, in a white coat reaching right down to his feet. Somehow he had inveigled himself onto the ward, and had come for Mr Vogel.

  Relief spread like alcohol through Mr Vogel’s body; he’d had enough of this internal probing; he felt as though his head had been opened like a tin of sardines.

  Dr Jackson noticed the change in his mood, but was so visibly soporific by now that he didn’t care.

  ‘I think that’s enough for today, don’t you?’ he said wearily.

  ‘Thanks doc,’ said Mr Vogel, getting to his feet. ‘It’s been great,’ he lied. It was no good talking about it. Talking about it was like a rondel, a constantly repeated song:

  Kookaburra sing in the old gum tree,

  Kookaburra sing in the old gum tree,

  Sing, Kookaburra sing,

  Kookaburra sing in the old gum tree.

  It was like Paddy pissed, singing by the bar.

  There was a knock on the door, and Waldo popped his head round.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he said gaily. ‘Nurse said to have a word. I’m ready to see you about those feet of yours any time you like. I’ll be waiting in the staff station. Cheers.’

  Mr Vogel mumbled a goodbye to Dr Jackson and beat a retreat. He knocked at the staff station window and waved to Waldo, who was regaling the staff with some story or other – he could hear gales of muffled laughter through the glass. Waldo emerged, winking.

  ‘Right Mr Vogel, I think we’ll go to my clinic in town – need a good look at those plates of meat down there.’ He turned round. ‘That all right staff?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Debbie. ‘Take him away, give us a rest.’ She was still laughing from Waldo’s joke. Gwydion popped his head round the door and asked if he could walk his friend to the gate. The suddenness of his request took her by surprise: they were in the van and off before she realised what was going on. Mr Vogel sat in the middle, between Waldo and Gwydion.

  A very strange sight greeted Mr Vogel when he looked behind him into the back of the van. Right up close to him was the Blue Angel’s pink plastic pig, the one children played on when it stood outside the bookshop. To make the scenario yet more improbable Paddy was curled up next to it, asleep. And curled up against Paddy’s belly there was another pig – a live piglet, small and pink, also fast asleep.

  ‘The Three Little Pigs,’ joked Mr Vogel, weakly. The piglet looked quite content, and a satisfied smile hovered on its lips, as if this was the entire pig population’s idea of a perfect day out, in transit with four men and a plastic pig from the otherworld. The piglet had tried to suckle the bright pink god-pig but had failed to get any milk from its divine but unteated belly.

  ‘Please get a grip on this story,’ Mr Vogel pleaded with Gwydion, ‘it’s running out of control – it’s becoming too surreal.’

  ‘Mr Vogel my friend, this is no story,’ replied Gwydion crisply, ‘it’s the real thing – this is reality mate, it’s happening to you right now. Touch those pigs and see what I mean. Besides, can’t you smell the authentic perfume of a real live pig?’

  ‘I thought it was coming from Paddy, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Nope. This is all happening to you, so hold on tight and enjoy the ride.’

  Mr Vogel allowed a few more miles to drift by in case a more pleasing version of reality asserted itself. In vain, he struggled with the concept of two pigs and a drunkard lying in the straw behind him.

  There was another thing. His scalp prickled hotly: what was that in front of him on the dashboard, pressed against the windscreen? Did it really have one eye, glaring balefully at him – and were its ears rising slowly, even now, as they dried in the heat of the van’s engine?

  He pretended it wasn’t there – his body was already overloaded with shock.

  ‘The two pigs,’ he mumbled in Waldo’s direction. Waldo had got rid of the white coat and was back in his normal speckled garb.

  Mr Vogel croaked again. ‘The two pigs..?’

  ‘We thought you’d enjoy the symbolism,’ replied Gwydion. ‘The live pig is from the old world, the one that’s gone forever – and besides, we need a realistic-looking porker. The bookshop pig – that represents the modern world. It’s plastic and pretentious. We’re living in an age of euphemisms, after all – double speak, double standards, so we thought we’d bring both of them along.’

  The piglet squealed in the back, and a new odour joined them in the front of the van.

  ‘I wouldn’t fret too much about the pigs – you’ve other worries,’ teased Waldo. ‘You realise that you’ve done a runner, don’t you? Police’ll be after you...’

  ‘Actually, technically I’m being abducted,’ answered Mr Vogel.

  ‘Nope. You didn’t put up any resistance. You’ve gone AWOL mate. Fled the scene. Done a bunk. Run scared.’

  ‘Yes, well that’s how I like it,’ growled Mr Vogel. After all, he was in good company – the Buddha and Christ had both abandoned their homes and their families. ‘For God’s sakes,’ he said. ‘Can we go walkabout?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Gwydion. ‘We’re on a mission, and we have to be back by midnight.’

  As a joke, Waldo was whistling On the Road Again by Willie Nelson, but Mr Vogel didn’t know the tune.

  They motored on, and Mr Vogel couldn’t ignore the bear on the dashboard any longer.

  ‘The bear,’ he croaked.

  ‘Bear?’ asked Waldo, with mock innocence. ‘Want a bear as well, do you? – we’ll have a zoo at this rate.

  ‘No, the bear,’ rasped Mr Vogel again, pointing a distorted finger at the teddy bear on the dashboard.

  ‘Oh,’ said Waldo, ‘I wondered how long it would take you...’

  The bear had arrived out of the blue, a few days previously. Waldo had been sitting in his kitchen, eating his tea, when there was a knock on the door. Walking along the hallway to answer it he’d seen a little face in the lower panes of his front door. Opening it, he found a woman outside, in a wheelchair. She had a parcel on her knees. Her name was Esmie Falkirk. She’d seen the article in the newspaper, headlined mystery ‘walker’ puzzles hospital.

  Waldo had been astonished, almost lost for words. He thought Esmie was fictional – a figment of Mr Vogel’s imagination. But here she was to confound him. There really was an Esmie. Disconcerted, crashing into things, he invited her in.

  She refused a cuppa, wanting to get down to business straight away – she had to be off as soon as possible. She merely wanted to tie up some loose ends.

  ‘I didn’t actually want to see David again,’ she told him.

  ‘David?’

  ‘Yes, I think you all use his nickname, Vogel, is that right?’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right.’

  ‘I hope
you don’t mind me calling on you like this. The hospital gave two addresses – the bookshop down by the docks and yours. There was no-one at the bookshop.’

  ‘Fine, that’s fine,’ said Waldo.

  ‘I’ve got a gift for him, something from his past. I’ve looked after it for a long time.’

  ‘The bear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s mentioned it a lot.’

  She looked round at Waldo’s gaff, a shambolic Edwardian villa with stuffed birds and animals, old artefacts, paintings, sculptures and books. Sitting there with her hands clasped across her lap, Waldo saw that she’d retained her childish attractiveness. Life had failed to dent the upturn in her mouth. Quite clearly, Esmie was the girl who’d arrived outside the Blue Angel at the end of the Vogel Papers, when Sancho Panza was delivering his drunken address to the pub before sitting in a pot of geraniums. She had fine hair stylishly cut and was modishly dressed in black cord trousers and a purple top, startlingly like the garb Vogel wore. Altogether, she wasn’t quite what Waldo expected; he had got used to her as a fiction; seeing her in the flesh was a real shock.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve known you for ages Esmie,’ said Waldo. ‘Or should I call you Little Bo Peep! Mr Vogel would love to see you after all this time.’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t contain myself, once I saw that newspaper story. I just had to get Rupert to his rightful owner. The thing is, you see, I don’t actually want to see David again.’

  She explained. She told Waldo about the party at the hospital all those years ago, when she’d won all the prizes and Vogel had been given his bear.

  ‘It was all a clever ploy,’ she told Waldo. ‘But we didn’t spot it, and we were both happy bunnies. Old Agnes Hunt was a very smart woman. I still celebrate my birthday on March the first, and I still have a bonnet for old times’ sake.’

  ‘Did you get any better? Surely you feel some bitterness – it was such a cruel twist of fate, to catch polio in a hospital.’

  ‘No, not really. I’ve been in a wheelchair for as long as I can remember. It’s hindered me in some ways, but you just get on with it, don’t you, after the tiresome twenties. David seems to have got on with it himself – bit of a free spirit, I hear, dreaming great dreams about Wales. He didn’t get much better either, by the sound of things.’

  ‘Oh, no... but he’s a lot better since his stay in hospital. Much better, actually.’

  Waldo tried to make small talk.

  ‘Did you get married, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes, accountant. Got his own firm, very successful. He’s called Jeffrey.’

  So she’d ended up with an accountant. Bloody hell.

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Yes – three, all with degrees, all doing very well, two boys and a girl. How about David?’

  ‘No, never got married. No children.’

  ‘He always was one to keep himself to himself. He didn’t answer my letters, you know. The little tinker. Broke my heart he did, me all alone in the hospital looking after his precious Rupert, not a blinking word from him. Never mind, it was a long time ago. Tell him I forgive him, thousands wouldn’t.’

  She reached for the package by her side, unwrapped it, and put a scruffy old one-eyed teddy bear on the table. It was Rupert. She’d kept him on her own bed all her single life; he had been moved onto the bedside cabinet when Jeffrey came along. Sometimes, when Jeffrey was asleep, she reached over and tugged him into bed. He always went on holidays with them; Rupert had been all over the world.

  She’d put him through the washing machine and put a bright red bow tie around his neck for his big reunion.

  The two of them studied him in silence. He looked old. He’d obviously seen a lot of action; his fur was thin in places and he bulged oddly around the middle.

  Waldo asked her if she wanted anything to eat. No, she had a taxi waiting for her. She merely wanted to deliver the bear, to sort things out. She hadn’t particularly wanted to see Mr Vogel. He was just a figure in the Bayeux tapestry of her childhood. He was long ago. She didn’t want to break the surface of the water, to rupture the shimmering image of her long ago past either. Then was then. Now was now.

  Soon she had gone. The hallway mirror rattled as Waldo closed the door behind her.

  Now, in Waldo’s van, as they drove onwards, Mr Vogel looked at the bear and felt absolutely nothing. This jumble of fur had occupied hundreds of hours in his mind, but now that he was back, here in front of him, Mr Vogel dried up completely. He was scared to look at him. It was like seeing a ghost. He almost felt uncomfortable. Could it be that he didn’t want this to happen? Would the film in his mind, the whole delicate fabric of his fictionalised life, come to a grinding halt because he was actually being confronted face-to-face by part of the myth he’d constructed over many years?

  ‘Welcome back, Rupert,’ he said to the sky outside. He didn’t want to touch him.

  Mr Vogel sat in dusty silence and pondered as the van sped onwards. Where did he want to go first? Like his memories of Rupert, perhaps the old Wales of his childhood should also remain untouched. It wasn’t a golden age. But it had disappeared now, and he was filled with nostalgia. He was almost a fossil. He could feel the mud of new Wales hardening around him. Soon he would become part of someone else’s toy epic; for two generations he would last, and then he would be gone. He had thought once, in a dream, of a word to describe the moment when the last vestige of a memory which had been shared by many people disappeared. He had lived in a house, a large house, which had been demolished to make way for part of Wales’s brave new world, a new Expressway. It was a much-loved house, and a handful of people could remember its doors, its stairs, its windows, its rooms, its smell, its laughter, its tears, its accumulated history. One day, with the death of the last of them, perhaps in the night, many years from now, the last memory would go; it would be a tiny sadness. There should be a word for this.

  Mr Vogel thought about where he really wanted to go.

  To the west coast to hear the choughs, perhaps. To the north to see the seals. To the east to see the badgers’ metropoli on the dyke. To the south to see the great rusty cliffs of Glamorgan. He wanted to walk past the power station at Aberthaw, on the southernmost tip, and smell coal on the salt spray; to walk past Penarth’s implausible pier and see Flat Holm change places with Steep Holm; to meet the men in the bar of the Prince of Wales at Kenfig; to shout from the blessing stone by the netpool at St Dogmael’s and wait for the echo. He wanted to see the medieval pilgrims’ graves at Llandilo-abercowin and feel the springy green moss on their stony feet; to sit in secretive Porthgain and imagine the lime kilns in full flow; to stand on Mawddach bridge in the spring when the sapphire tide swirled seawards; to walk on a sad day by Dysynni – he wanted to see a bluster of April dog-winds shepherd sunshine down Cader Idris and chase spindrift clouds along the raven ridges. He wanted to visit his Garden of Eden: to watch the Ursula C loading her cargo at the pier in Llanddulas; to get away from all nonsense and fashions and politics and human misery; he wanted to sleep in the church porch at Tallarn Green and watch the bats and the shooting stars; to drink frothy coffee in the pavilion café – where the minstrels once sang – in Llanfairfechan when the yacht stays clanged in the breeze; to see the ancient corn-weighing stone in the church at Mainstone; he wanted to stand on the devil’s pulpit high above the Wye gorge and look down on Tintern Abbey’s ruins, pitted like caried teeth; to tiptoe past the empty lighthouse buildings precarious on Nash Point, wondering if the world would tumble into the sea; he wanted to walk along heron-priested shores and smile at names like Ogmore-by-Sea; Mr Vogel wanted to see the faded pictures of Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole in the bar of the Ship in Lower Fishguard; to sleep in the youth hostel lofty in an eyebrow of gorse above Pwll Deri; to talk to an artist in Llansteffan and watch the blacklegged kittiwakes nest on Mumbles’ creaking pier. He wanted to swim like a fish in Wales’s containable beauty; she was not so vast as to be incomprehensib
le, but big enough to be mysterious.

  He told Waldo about his dream.

  ‘I get your drift, Vogel,’ said Waldo. He also wanted to see these places, courtesy of the combustion engine. ‘Not today though,’ he said.

  Rupert’s ears were rising slowly as they dried in the heat.

  ‘Look,’ said Gwydion. ‘His ears are going up, just like the bear in the Vogel Papers.’

  Mr Vogel closed his eyes and basked in the cab’s hothouse sleepiness.

  He daydreamed, briefly, a new scene in the story he and Gwydion would complete soon. It went like this:

  March 1: As we speed away in his van Waldo points to the locker in front of my seat and says:

  ‘Couple of postcards for you there.’

  ‘Postcards?’

  ‘Open the locker. One from John Williams, our man in Tasmania, and one from Anwen Marek.’

  I open my eyes grumpily and scrabble in the locker.

  The first postcard shows the great cathedral at Santiago del Compostella in Spain. It says:

  Hi! I’ve finished my great pilgrimage as promised. Dr Williams is here to see me home. We’ve become friends during your quest. He has played Ahab to my Moby Dick – though I’ve lost a huge amount of weight on my trek. Have you finished yours yet? Fondest regards – your little sparrow has brought me unexpected happiness. AM.

  ‘Well fancy that,’ says Waldo ruminatively. ‘Williams and Marek getting it together. Truth’s stranger than fiction for sure. I wouldn’t have put a pound on that at a million to one.’

  Waldo has been to Santiago and has seen St James’s pilgrims arrive in the cathedral. No-one, not even the most hardened atheist, could fail to be moved by the aura, the supernatural frisson around them as they touch the great pillar in the cathedral; so many have touched it over the centuries that deep holes have been worn by their fingers and thumbs in the stone column.