by L. C. Tyler
‘The problem is,’ he concludes, stirring in outsized amounts of sugar, ‘when you’re called Malcolm Biggenhalgh, you tend to remember if you run into anyone else called Malcolm Biggenhalgh. That’s why I don’t think I’m going to be much use to you.’ We drink our coffees almost in silence, then Malcolm checks his watch, stands up again and says: ‘Look, if I think of owt else, I’ll phone you.’
We give him mobile numbers but without much hope that they will be of use to him.
When he has gone, Virginia gives a little giggle: ‘“I’ve never had a Daphne and never shall neither.” I can’t wait to tell my mother that one.’
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Don’t be. We had to find out. If we hadn’t spoken to him, I might have spent the rest of my life believing he was my father. I’m sure he’s a nice man, but not at all my mother’s type. As for fathers, I’m not sure I know what my type is any more, but probably not him. A bit humourless, wouldn’t you say? So, we’re no further forward and no further back than we were.’
We find an Internet cafe, where I check my emails. Virginia says she’ll phone her office and wanders outside into the sunshine. I log on with trepidation.
The first thing is an email from Jon.
Chris – I hope you’re picking up emails, wherever you are. We’ve got problems. Digby Spain phoned asking for more information about George Magwitch. When I refused, he said the Society had already set him up with an interview, so what was the problem now? He said he could get hold of GM anyway and rung off. I went storming into Roger’s office to accuse him of interfering and, obviously, told him all I know. He said he hadn’t spoken to DS but he looked a bit worried all the same. I need to know if either of you have had contact with DS so I can try to repair the damage. Pl phone or email soonest. J
Next, Humph:
Dear Chris,
I would be much obliged if you could give me a call at your very earliest convenience re Spain. Yours ever, Roger.
One from Lucy. (Excellent.):
Chris
If you were not going to turn up, you might have at least phoned. How difficult exactly would that have been? And where are you now? Have fun, but don’t hurry back on my account. Lucy
Another from Jon:
Chris – it’s hotting up. A contact in the press office at RCP phoned to warn me that Digby Spain is planning to shaft Magwitch in Thursday’s edition. Don’t know how he knows. Roger is really pissed off. Can you tell me anything? For God’s sake, email me, text me, phone me. J
And from George Magwitch:
Dear Chris,
Roger phoned me to say that this Spain chap might be a bit unreliable. I reassured him that Spain was your choice and that I trusted you 100 per cent. I have had a second chat with him now and I rather think Spain is sound and will do the business for us. If you get a chance, though, phone me. I have one or two interesting bits of info that I don’t want to put into one of these email things.
Yours till the chickens come home to roost,
George
Professor George Magwitch
University of Devon Medical School
And from Dave
Southend v Colchester Saturday. Roots Hall. Are you up for it? Dave.
And from Barbara Proudie:
Christian
This time we’ve got him!!!! We’ve been talking to Digby Spain and on Thursday he is going to tell the truth about Dan Smith – and about George Magwitch and his so-called research. I’ve also told Digby about the number of times I’ve asked your Society to take action and that you’ve done nothing at all. Nothing, Christian. You’ll be losing your Royal Charter and don’t say I haven’t warned you over and over again but do you listen? You’ve nobody else to blame but yourselves. Now you’ll see the truth of what I’ve been telling you all this time. You had your chance, Christian, and now the Society is going down with George Magwitch. It will be no loss.
Barbara
And from Jon again:
Chris – Roger is fuming but won’t tell me anything. Please, please ring me. J
‘Still at it?’ asks Virginia, returning from the fresh sunny lands beyond the cafe door. She is smiling. Something has pleased her immensely.
‘You look happy,’ I say.
‘Do I? I hadn’t intended to. Somebody at work must have said something to amuse me.’
‘Nobody at work had any jokes for me.’
‘Bad luck. So, how are things back at base?’
‘Couldn’t be better,’ I say, logging off. ‘Fancy a walk up Easedale after lunch?’
16
Easedale, 5 May this Year
It’s not a good time of year for people who don’t like blossom. The bush-packed cottage gardens and the flat, improbably green fields are full of apple blossom, pear blossom, horse chestnut blossom, cherry blossom, May blossom. Rich cream, bridal white, baby pink, pastel blue and soft ephemeral yellow are all there somewhere. Everything says: ‘Rejoice! The winter is over.’ You have to go high up into the fells to escape the insistent colour, up into the lumpy brownness of the dead fern, where the odd purple-blue flower, peeping out shyly from the damp moss, can be trodden kindly but firmly under your size nine boot. It may be spring in the valley, but up here you know the glaciers could be back any time they choose. It’s a reassuring place for pessimists to be.
We have parked in Grasmere (but at a considerate distance from Malcolm’s place and far from any restaurants where I might recently have embarrassed myself). Then we have headed for the hills. The valley floor was full of white-faced sheep conscientiously nibbling the spring shoots. They seemed cautiously happy on the whole, as sheep do. Down there everything smells of shit, but in a good way.
We picked our path on a whim and followed a beck that was so clear it seemed to have no depth at all. Much higher up we could see the same stream as it pitched over the grey rocks in thin, apparently motionless, snowy threads. This illusion appeared to offer us a frozen and silent realm. It seemed the right way to go.
Now we are up by the same waterfall, and the cascade is no longer a distant and soundless blemish on the rocks but an immediate and powerful rush of icy water that threatens to suck you in if you stare too long at it. We stare for as long as seems safe. Then there is another half a mile or so of easy walking and we finally find ourselves seated on a rough sandstone boulder looking across the tarn and towards the grim arc of hills behind. The hills seem close until you look at the bright little specks of hill-walking humanity working their way slowly up the track that slants lazily across them. A no-nonsense northern breeze is blowing across the tarn. Although the sun is shining, it is cold enough to remind you that summer never gains more than a toehold at this altitude.
‘It’s strange,’ I say, ‘the way water looks like everything except water. It’s all reflection. That tarn looks a bit like the sky, a bit like the hills behind it. Even the ripples you can see are more about the wind than the water itself.’
‘Whatever you say, Puppy,’ says Virginia, as she does when I’m talking crap. Her mind is on other things. Only mine is free to roam (a bit like that Wordsworth’s, really) gathering images that I shall file away.
‘Still thinking about Malcolm?’ This is a pretty safe guess on my part.
‘Wherever he is.’
‘We’ll find him,’ I say.
Virginia shifts her weight slightly. It’s not the softest of rocks we are sitting on and Virginia (in spite of what she fears) does not have a vast amount of natural padding. Her eyes take in the hills, the dots making their slow way diagonally up to the col, and the smooth sweep of the tarn, broken only by a solitary rock that barely raises its head above the surface several hundred yards out. Somewhere in the distance a dog barks, then there is just the sound of water lapping the shingle below us.
‘At least this is solid and real,’ she says.
‘Do you think so?’ I say.
‘Obviously.’
‘Has it never occurred to you tha
t this might all be in your imagination?’
‘No,’ says Virginia. ‘I bet it’s occurred to you though.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘What’s that like then, living in your own imaginary world?’
‘On the plus side, all this belongs to me. On the minus side, I’ve got nobody to whom I can brag about it.’
‘You know, Chris, I sometimes think your mind must be a bit like a join-up-the-dots-puzzle but without the numbers.’
I nod. She’s right. It is a bit like that.
‘But why shouldn’t all this exist?’ asks Virginia.
This is, of course, a tricky one to explain. I summarize Cartesian Dualism in a few well-chosen sentences, but the ideas seem strangely small set against the irrefutable massiveness of the fells. Virginia is not convinced.
‘So, Descartes starts by suggesting that everything might be imagined, but concludes that it is real after all?’
‘Because God wouldn’t lie to him.’
‘But he can only be certain of God’s existence because he is certain of the reality that God has just endorsed?’
‘More or less. It’s the Cartesian Circle – a sort of merry-go-round for philosophers. You can play on it as long as you like.’
‘So he doesn’t prove God exists?’
‘He thought he did. The only real proof of God’s existence is, however, Fat Dave’s.’
‘Fat Dave’s?’
‘That’s right. I’ll summarize it for you.’
17
Fat Dave’s Proof of the Existence of God
Look, Chris, it’s like this. [Burp.]
There are only two mutually exclusive possibilities. God exists or God does not exist. Right?
Let’s take the possibility that God does not exist. If that’s the case, then what do we have? The solar system is a minute speck in the universe and our sun is an almost invisible pinpoint of light in the middle of it. Round this pinpoint of light a completely irrelevant speck of dust rotates once every 365 days. Living on this irrelevant speck of dust are these nearly invisible micro-specks, which survive as a race for approximately one blink of the celestial eye. Nothing that happens to the irrelevant speck can possibly count for anything and the micro-specks are, individually and collectively, so unimportant to the universe that nothing they could do would make the slightest difference, even during the brief flicker of an eyelid that is allotted to them. Logically, therefore, it does not matter if we treat each other well or badly. The very best we can do, the worst we can do, is all over in a flash and the universe is unchanged. Logically it does not matter if we steal, kill, rape, set up concentration camps, park on double yellow lines or support Colchester United. [Burp. Significant pause.]
Why then does every known society believe in the rightness of a morality that goes beyond tactics for survival – that is to say, beyond a policy of ‘I won’t do it to you if you won’t do it to me’? Why do we think it’s commendable to help other people, even if there’s nothing in it for us? Why do we believe that anything matters beyond the simple enjoyment of what we can lay our hands on?
The fact that we do believe in a just and moral world, in spite of overwhelming logical arguments for pure self-interest, is the proof that God exists. I can’t tell you whether he eats bacon sandwiches, or whether he actually likes you that much, but he’s out there somewhere.
If you get your round in now, it will be proof that there are also miracles, but in the meantime we can at least be sure there is a God.
18
Easedale, 5 May this Year
‘It’s original,’ says Virginia.
‘Not really,’ I say. ‘Kant said something similar. So did Sartre.’
‘Didn’t Kant say that God was dead?’
‘That was Nietzsche. Fat Dave says that God can hear the phone ringing but can’t be arsed to pick up. It’s the sort of deity Fat Dave can relate to.’
‘Why do you call him Fat Dave?’ asks Virginia.
‘Because he’s fat?’
‘No, he’s not. If anything I’d say you were carrying a few more surplus pounds than David.’
‘I don’t look as though I work out at the gym?’
‘Your flat is on top of the gym. Working out at the gym and living over it are not the same thing, Chris.’
‘He used to be fat at school,’ I say. ‘Well, plump anyway. Nicknames stick. Once a fat bastard, always a fat bastard in my book.’
‘Do you imagine,’ says Virginia, ‘that if you are gratuitously rude about your friends other people will like you better?’
Now, even I realize that the correct answer to this question is not an enthusiastic and unqualified ‘yes’. It’s just that I’d never really thought about it in those terms. Obviously I am rude about Dave because he is a mate. That’s how things are. As far as I can see, I’m no ruder about other people than they deserve.
‘You and Dave are not good influences on each other,’ she continues.
This too is a new one. Dave is clearly a bad influence on me – that’s what I like about him – but I can’t see how I am a bad influence on him. I point this out.
‘No,’ says Virginia. ‘You are both reasonably normal alone. It’s when you get together that you both cease to resemble educated adult human beings.’
I say nothing.
‘I mean,’ she continues, ‘you seem to have only three topics of conversation.’
I think about this. Sex and football, obviously. What’s the third one? We did discuss Nietzsche the other day, but I’d scarcely admit that to anyone.
‘Three?’ I say.
She looks at me pityingly. ‘I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.’ She stands up. ‘Time to go back down.’
I pick up the rucksack. ‘Then down we go,’ I say.
* * *
We have not gone far when my mobile phone rings. It makes me jump because I’ve had it switched off for the past couple of days, not wishing to know if Lucy or Humph or Jon is on my case. I wouldn’t say ignorance is bliss exactly, but it’s actually not that bad.
Virginia is for some reason a little way ahead of me – far enough ahead that, if this is Lucy, I could do the decent thing, take the call and face up to my responsibilities. (As if.) I check the screen cautiously. It’s not Lucy or Humph or any other number I recognize. I press the button decisively and take the call.
‘It’s Malcolm,’ my phone announces, and for a moment I think Virginia’s father has miraculously found us. Then I realize it is not the real thing but the bucolic pseudo-father.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ he says. ‘That’s not my way. But I’ve just remembered something.’
‘Ah . . .’ I say.
‘Is that young lass of yours with you?’
‘We’re walking back down Easedale. She’s a bit ahead of me. I’ll call her.’
‘No, no,’ he says urgently. ‘It’s you I want to talk to.’
‘Ah . . .’ I say again.
‘You remember I said I couldn’t think of anyone else called Malcolm Biggenhalgh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, maybe I do after all. I was thinking back. It was at Ray’s funeral – Ray my second cousin. There was somebody there I didn’t recognize. That’s how it is at funerals – all sorts of people you know quite well plus a few distant relatives you see once in a blue moon plus one or two others you don’t know from Adam.’
I agree that funerals are a bit like that, but I can’t quite see where this is going.
‘So was there another Malcolm at the funeral . . .?’
‘Not Malcolm – Martin. Young chap – about twenty or so then. I’d never set eyes on him before. I can’t remember how he was related to Ray or to me, but his name was Martin Biggenhalgh.’
‘Still not with you, Malcolm,’ I say. For somebody who did not beat about the bush he is at least having a darned good try.
‘One or two people there were talking to h
im about his father – Mally, they called him. Mally – short for Malcolm, do you see? Didn’t really register on me at the time – his father’s name and mine being the same. They all kept saying Mally.’
‘Ah . . .’ I say for a third time. I wonder whether to tell him that Mally, having the same number of syllables as Malcolm, can’t be short for anything. But I just say: ‘And where does Mally live?’
‘Well,’ says Malcolm, ‘that’s the point. They were all asking how Martin and his mother were getting on since his father died.’
‘So, the other Malcolm – our Malcolm – is dead: that’s what you’re saying?’
‘Seems like it,’ he says. ‘Maybe it’s best if you break the news to the young lass.’
‘Maybe,’ I say. I am trying to gain a bit of time and think this through, because I don’t really want to break the news to Virginia that she is an orphan all over again.
Malcolm is saying his goodbyes and about to ring off when I say: ‘Hang on, where does Martin live?’
‘Horsham,’ he says. ‘He told me he lived in Horsham. Small world, eh?’
* * *
I have, for all sorts of reasons, been walking slowly, and it is not until Virginia stops that I catch her up.
‘Come on, slowcoach,’ she says cheerfully. She smiles and I suddenly realize that I have the power to make her very unhappy and that I cannot decently avoid doing it.
I check that there is nobody approaching us on the path and likely to overhear us before I say: ‘That was Malcolm from Grasmere.’
‘What did he want?’
