You Are Not A Stranger Here

by Adam Haslett

  "Now, dear, I hope you'll just help yourself to everything," Mrs. McLaggan says, standing by her chair. He is not hungry but fills a plate anyway and sits. 105

  "Mrs. Lewis is getting on well at the university, then, is she?" she says, once she's served herself and taken a seat.

  "Yes."

  For a minute or two, they eat in silence.

  "I was thinking perhaps you might meet Albert today,"

  she says. "I've told him about you. Difficult to know sometimes, but I think he's keen to see you."

  "Do you do this often?"

  "What's that, dear?"

  "Having guests you don't know--strangers."

  Mrs. McLaggan looks down at her plate and smiles.

  "You're not a stranger here," she says. "In the restaurant the other night . . . How should I say it? . . . I recognized you somehow, not like I'd met you or such, but nonetheless. And then yesterday morning . . ." Her voice trails off.

  "Would you like a glass of wine?" she asks. For years he's had no alcohol because of medication--the warnings and the caveats.

  "Sure," he says.

  She pours them each a glass. "My grandson's not well, you see." After saying this, she pauses, her eyes wandering left, then right, as if deciding how to proceed.

  "Glenda, my daughter--she was awfully young when she had him. Father was some fellow I never saw. Course the old codgers round here never tire of saying, 'Wasn't so back in our day, was it then?' I don't know, though. Seems to me the world's always had plenty of trouble to spare a bit for the girls . . . I suppose what's different is she went off, left Albert with me. Would've been harder when I was young, that 106

  would--a woman going out into the world like that. But there we are. Manchester she went to first. Then London for a spell."

  She sips her wine.

  "You try not to judge . . . Course when Albert got sick I rang. To tell her he'd gone into hospital. Tried the last number I had for her. No answer though, line disconnected. Been three years he's been ill now."

  She looks up at Paul and smiles, wanly. "Here I am nattering on about my troubles."

  "It's all right," he says. He's finished half a glass of wine. With the scent of it, the smell of the house has risen into his head again, but he fights it less now.

  "You seem like a very sympathetic man," she says. When the meal is finished, they return to the kitchen and Mrs. McLaggan puts a kettle on the stove. "Shall we go up, then, and see Albert?"

  "All right."

  She makes the tea and sets it out on a tray. Paul follows her up the stairs. They pass along a narrow hallway. The smell is stronger here. They stop at a door and she gestures for him to open it.

  "It's difficult at first," she says.

  The air in the room is so heavy with stench he feels like he's being pressed to a man's body and made to breathe through the filter of his skin--a familiar scent raised to a sickening power. It's a small space with one eaved window, open at the top. In the corner, a boy of ten or twelve lies on a bed. He wears a blue track suit marked with greasy spots. His face 107

  and neck are red and crusted with dry skin. Wet sores and patches of rawness cover his wrists and the backs of his hands. He barely moves as they enter, shifting his head only slightly.

  "Albert, this is Mr. Lewis. The man I told you about. He's come for a visit."

  Mrs. McLaggan sets the tray down on the bedside table. The boy looks at Paul, his eyes caught in folds of livid pink and red.

  "Have the armchair, there, why don't you?" the old woman says. She perches on a low stool pulled up next to the bed and pours a cup of tea. She holds it in one hand, a spoon in the other, lowering the liquid to the boy's swollen mouth.

  "It's chamomile," she says softly. "You like chamomile."

  The boy strains to raise his head from the pillow; his lips tremble as he sips.

  " 'Scuse him, Mr. Lewis, if he doesn't say much. The pain's been bad lately, hasn't it, Albert?" She turns to Paul. "I swear Job never suffered like this."

  At the end of the bed, he can see the boy's feet, where brownish white calluses thick as hide cover his soles.

  "Remember, Albert? I told you Mr. Lewis is a history man. I'm sure he knows all about all sorts of things."

  When she has finished with the tea, she puts it aside and unzips the boy's top. His chest is covered in the same red mix of sores and flaking skin. Taking up a cloth, she dips it in a bucket by the stool and begins to gently lather ointment onto Albert's stomach. He sighs as the jelly is spread over him. 108

  "Henry the Second is Albert's favorite. We've just started reading about him, haven't we? Do you know anything about Henry the Second, Mr. Lewis?"

  The stench and the sight of the boy is nearly overwhelming Paul and he feels he might faint.

  "I . . . I haven't read about all that . . . not since college,"

  he manages after a pause. "It was American history I did."

  "But you remember some of the medieval bits, no?" she says, hopefully.

  Breathing through his mouth, he manages to calm the swoon in his stomach. The boy stares at him with a longing that seems to Paul neither desperate nor afraid. It is just a longing, a want.

  "He was a remarkable king," Paul says, transfixed by the boy's gaze. "I remember that much."

  "There, you see. He knows all about him. I'll wager he's got stories you've not heard yet. Perhaps he'll tell you one. Would you tell Albert a story?"

  Paul nods, having no idea what he will say.

  "Has your grandmother told you about Stephen?" he asks, recalling the name from some course taken years before. Albert manages a small shake of the head.

  "Well . . . that's the king that preceded Henry, and he was the son of . . ." His mind goes blank. Mrs. McLaggan raises the cloth onto the boy's chest. Paul sees the little white pustules dotting the red skin; the tarnished gold ring on the old woman's finger; beyond the bed, cartoon figures on the faded wallpaper.

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  "I don't remember who he was the son of, but in any case, they made a deal . . . Stephen could rule if his line stopped with him, and Henry would come to the throne . . ."

  Again Paul fumbles, recalling the giant lecture hall where a man with a German accent had taught early Europe.

  "It wasn't long before Stephen died. And Henry was king, at eighteen or twenty, I think, monarch of the largest empire in Europe."

  When his voice ceases, it seems quieter in the room than when he began, the boy's eyes calmer.

  "He married," Paul says. And again a memory he didn't know he had arrives.

  "Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was the daughter of a man who ruled part of France, and by marrying her Henry added the land to his domain. They had many children. The sons fought with their father, though, terribly. And Eleanor, she sided against Henry as well . . ."

  He tells the boy of Eleanor's first imprisonment in Normandy, describing the cell, embellishing, and the story of how Henry kept her for years at Winchester and Salisbury. As he speaks, the old woman draws the cloth across Albert's forehead. Paul remembers Thomas a Becket, slain at Canterbury, the knights acting on Henry's angry words, which Paul repeats now, as his teacher repeated them to him: " 'Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?' And so they returned to England and stabbed him, inside his own cathedral. Henry's friend since childhood, his conscience."

  Stringing the memories together now, he begins to paint the picture of the restless king who for thirty-five years never 110

  slept in one bed more than a fortnight, ranging over his vast possessions, battling thankless sons. There are the struggles with the barons, the war over France, the last imprisonment of Eleanor. Soon the tale flows easily, of channel crossings and broken treaties, and he opens the Plantagenet world up like a flower for the boy, knowing the hunger for the dramatic statement, the declarations of war, castle sieges, men fighting to the death, victors standing on the ramparts, broadswords held over their heads--all the beautiful wealth and violence of a b
oy's imagination.

  "Better than any book, that was," Mrs. McLaggan says when he is finished. She folds the cloth and places it in the wastebasket. "Your granny can't do that, Albert, can she?"

  There is just the hint of a nod from Albert.

  "I'm sure I've confused some of it," he says. "There's a lot to tell--Richard, and the Crusades."

  The light in the room has begun to fade. Ellen will have left the library now, he thinks. She will have walked to the hotel and found him not there. It seems so unlikely that they are still in the same town, that he has not traveled farther than that.

  "We're going to let you rest now," the old woman says.

  "Perhaps Mr. Lewis will come back tomorrow. Would you like that?" She leans down and touches her lips to the boy's cheek.

  D O W N S TA I R S I N T H E hall, as she is walking Paul to the door, Mrs. McLaggan stops.

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  "I'm sorry," she says. "I should have said something about the smell. I didn't want to frighten you."

  "It's all right."

  "You see, Mr. Lewis, my grandson, he's going to die. You'll think I'm a cruel woman, that he should be in hospital, and you'd be right to think it. But he's been there, you see, been there for eighteen months. I'd heard of psoriasis before, I knew sadness and worry and so on could make it worse. But I didn't know it could get this bad."

  She grabs Paul's arm.

  "Mr. Lewis, he wanted to come home. He knew what it meant to leave there, but he wanted to come home."

  O U T S I D E , I T I S nearly dark. Lights have come on in the houses, and in the square the vendors' stalls are gone. He walks slowly through the gathering dusk. At the ends of the streets he passes, views open of sky and water, shelves of cloud floating on the horizon.

  In the room at the hotel, Ellen is waiting for him. She's been crying, he can see, but has stopped now. She doesn't have the same alarmed expression she had yesterday. She's gotten their bags out and some of their clothes are folded inside. For a few minutes they don't speak.

  "I asked at the desk about the schedule," she says finally.

  "We can get a train in the morning."

  "What about the letters you came for?"

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  She glances up at him. He's never seen her look this exhausted before.

  "I've seen them," she says. She sits perched on the edge of the bed, her hands folded on her lap. The way she gestured: that was one of the things he fell in love with. Her hands would turn open, fingers spread, her arms moving in quick arcs and circles, energy that seemed to him miraculous.

  "I'm sorry," is all he can think to say.

  She kneels on the floor and starts packing the rest of their belongings, tears streaming down her face.

  I T I S I N the middle of the night that he wakes and goes to sit by the window. The hotel is quiet and there is no traffic on the street. He can hear the steady, washing sound of the sea and he imagines the blankness of night out there in the northern waters.

  Once, when he was a boy, his parents took him on a cruise ship, and after dinner one night his father and he stood on the deck, and Paul imagined what it would be like if he were to fall, disappearing into that vast, anonymous darkness. He can still remember how his heart thumped in his chest, how he clung to that railing that separated him from death.

  Who could say all that has happened since then, or why? As a man, he has pictured his own end so many times the thought arrives like an old friend, there to reassure him. For an hour or more he sits, listening to the water. He is 113

  calm as he goes to the desk; calm, as he writes his note to Ellen.

  I've been a burden long enough. I hope eventually you will remember the better times. Please forgive me. A TA X I P I C K S them up after breakfast and takes them to the station. They board the front car of the train, storing their luggage on a rack by the door, and then they find a compartment to themselves. The overhead speaker announces the train will be held in the station for ten minutes, just as the schedule that Paul checked said it would.

  Ellen roots in her handbag for something. Paul clutches the envelope in his pocket.

  As she bends forward, her hair, parted in the middle, comes loose from behind her ears. He washed that velvet black hair the week they married, lying in the tub in her apartment, lathering her head as it rested on his chest. They would have three children, she said. There would be closets of toys and winter coats and summer holidays and a home to return to.

  Enough, he thinks, and stops remembering. In Dr. Gormley's waiting room, the coatrack would still persist. The beige watercooler. The dog-eared magazines. The humming. The air without scent. He sees Ellen, alone, walking the aisle of a supermarket, pausing, taking a can from the shelf. He feels incredibly tired.

  From the window, Paul watches as the last of the passen114 gers board at the far end of the platform. The rumble of the engine grows louder. He stands and bends down to kiss Ellen's cheek.

  "I'm just going to use the bathroom," he says, and then can't help adding, "You'll be all right."

  "Sure," she says distractedly, examining their tickets. He moves quickly down the passageway. At the end of the car, he takes his bag from the rack and steps off the train. The conductor is standing there on the platform.

  "There's a woman in number twelve," Paul says to him.

  "Could you give her this?"

  The conductor takes the envelope from him with no apparent interest.

  "I'll see she gets it," he says, putting the whistle between his lips.

  M R S . M C L A G G A N I S just returning from the shops as he enters the lane. She does not notice him until he is there at the door.

  "Mr. Lewis," she says, glancing down at his bag. "You've come for a visit. How good of you, Albert will be so pleased."

  Again there is the high, rotting odor as they step into the hall, the terrier trailing behind. In the kitchen, he watches Mrs. McLaggan take her tins and vegetables from her cloth bag.

  "Colder this morning," she says. "The haar will be here soon. You won't be able to see a thing in a day or two for all the mist and fog."

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  The groceries put in place, she fills the kettle at the sink.

  "Albert enjoyed that yesterday, really he did."

  "How do you manage?" Paul asks. "Knowing he's going to die."

  She arranges milk and sugar on a tray.

  "It'll sound odd, I know, but the idea's not so peculiar to me actually. I used to nurse on a ward, you see. Before you were born, dear, during the war. They were desperate for people. Adverts up in all the shops about how the young women had to come south. I'd never been. A hospital outside Southampton's where they put me. We got the ones who weren't going back. Most were healthy enough, just lost a leg or an arm . . . There were others, though, dying ones. Not much to do for them really but keep them comfortable if you could. Some of the nurses, they were young, you see--we all were--and they would tell the dying ones things would be fine. But I have to say, Mr. Lewis, I couldn't bring myself to reassure them like that. Struck me as a lie."

  She pours boiling water into the pot.

  "The beds had wheels on. After the doctors' rounds I'd roll the sicker ones up next to each other so they could talk. They were just glad someone else knew, I think."

  The kettle is rinsed and set back on the counter. Once again, they ascend the stairs, Mrs. McLaggan carrying the tray. Albert is asleep, his red face turned to one side on the pillow. Mrs. McLaggan sets the tray down on the side table.

  "I'll leave you with him now," she says, laying a hand on Paul's shoulder.

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  When she has gone, he perches on the stool by the bed. Here, he can make out the boy's features hidden beneath the rotting skin: the thin lips and pointed nose, the bony forehead of his Celtic ancestors, the corners of his skull showing at the temples. Paul lets the stench rise up into his nostrils, breathing it in freely. It will not be long now, he thinks, for either of them. The boy's head moves slightl
y on the pillow and he wakes.

  "Would you like to hear another story?" Paul asks. Albert nods. It is not thanks Paul sees in his expression but forgiveness.

  "Tell me about the kings."

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  R E U N I O N

  2

  W H E N I T F I N A L LY arrived, the minister's letter came in a typed envelope bearing no return address. It was signed at the bottom in careful script. The request had been seen to, the arrangements made. The local council would require a check; an address was given. James read it on the stairs up to his flat. When he'd found his keys and got inside, he put the letter on the mantel to make sure he wouldn't forget. 118

  Simon, his manager at the estate agents, had initially thought it odd that James should want his holiday at such short notice, and all four weeks at once. But it was midsummer, nothing selling, the time as good as any. He'd said James could leave right away if all his work was in order, which it was--he had seen to that before making his request. He stood now in his living room, removing from his briefcase the bits and pieces he had collected from his desk, placing the framed picture of his father on the side table.

  "How 'bout a drink before you head off?" his redheaded colleague, Patrick, had offered. He had been kind and helpful from the beginning, yet James was caught off guard by his suggestion, a first in their yearlong acquaintance. What would he have to say, sitting in a pub with this fellow he'd spent time thinking about? Over the partition, colleagues had looked on.

  "Perhaps another time," was all James had managed to respond. The groceries put away, he showered, and afterward stood before the mirror, wrapped in a towel. Three or four times he drew the razor over the taut flesh of his chin before he was satisfied the stubble was gone. Shaving made him look younger than twenty-five; with his hair cut the right way he could still pass for a university student. He examined the skin beneath his eyes, noticing a little flaking, the hint of a rash just below the surface. As he stepped back from the mirror, the latter disappeared, and he observed his smooth face with a modicum of contentment; not so bad, he thought. In his bedroom, he found a clean T-shirt and pair of boxers, folded neatly in the bureau drawer. The room, as usual, 119