The Affirmation

by Christopher Priest

  “Anything at all.”

  Then she was gone, and at once I picked up my manuscript. I found the page I had been working on when Felicity arrived; I had written only two and a half lines, and the white space beneath seemed recriminatory of me. I read the lines but they made no sense to me. The longer I worked I had found that my typing-speed increased to the point where I could write almost as fast as I could think. My style was therefore loose and spontaneous, depending for its development on the whim of the moment. In the time Felicity had been at the house I had lost my train of thought.

  I read back over the two or three pages before my enforced abandonment of it, and at once I felt more confident. Writing something was rather like the cutting of a groove on a gramophone record: my thoughts were placed on the page, and to read back over them was like playing the record to hear my thoughts. After a few paragraphs I discovered the momentum of my ideas.

  Felicity and her intrusion were forgotten. It was like finding my real self again. Once I was submerged in my work it was as if I became whole again. Felicity had made me feel mad, irrational, unstable.

  I put the unfinished page to one side and inserted a clean sheet in the typewriter. I quickly copy-typed the two and a half lines, and I was poised ready to continue.

  But I stopped, and it was in the same place as before: “For a moment I thought I knew where I was, but when I looked back—”

  When I looked back at what?

  I read back over the preceding page, trying to hear the recording of my thoughts. The scene was the build-up to my climactic row with Gracia, but through Seri and Jethra it had become distanced. The layers of my realities momentarily confused me. In the manuscript it was not an argument at all, more an impasse between the way two people interpreted the world. What had I been trying to say?

  I thought back to the real row. We were in Marylebone Road, on the corner with Baker Street. It was raining. The argument blew up from nowhere, ostensibly some trivial disagreement about whether to see a film or spend the evening at my flat, but in reality the tensions had been there for days. I was cold and feeling angry, and disproportionately conscious of the cars and lorries accelerating away from the lights, their tyres noisy on the wet road, The pub by Baker Street Station had just opened, but to get there meant we had to cross the road by the pedestrian underpass. Gracia was a claustrophobe; it was raining, we started shouting. I left her there and never saw her again.

  How had I been intending to deal with this? I would have known that before Felicity arrived; everything about the text spoke of an anticipated continuity.

  Felicity’s arrival had been doubly intrusive. Apart from interrupting me, she had imposed different ideas about perceived truth.

  For instance, she had brought new information about Gracia. I knew that Gracia had taken an overdose after our row, but it had not been important. Once before in our relationship, Gracia had taken a small overdose after an argument; even she had said later that it was a way of drawing attention to herself. Then during that chilling doorstep argument with her flatmate, the importance of it had been diminished by the girl. Through her dislike of me, through her evident contempt, the bitter information had been passed, but minimized somehow; it was not for me to worry about it. I took it at face value. Perhaps even then Gracia had been in hospital. Felicity told me she had nearly died.

  But the truth, the higher truth, was that I had evaded it. I had not wanted to know. Felicity made me know. Gracia had made what was probably a serious attempt on her life.

  I could, in my manuscript, describe a Gracia who drew attention to herself; I did not know a Gracia who would make a serious effort to kill herself.

  Because Felicity had revealed a side of Gracia’s character I had never detected before, did it also mean that there were other parts of my life where I made similar failures of judgement? How much truth was I capable of telling?

  Then there was the source, Felicity herself. In my life she was not an impartial figure. It was part of her tactic to me, as it always had been, to present herself as maturer, wiser, more sensible, more practised in life. From the time we had played together as children she had always sought dominance over me, whether it was the temporary advantage of being slightly bigger than me, or the knowingness, assumed or otherwise, of being in adulthood that little bit more experienced. Felicity arrogated to herself a normality that was deemed superior to mine. While I remained unmarried and lived in rented rooms, she had a family, a house, a bourgeois respectability. Her way of life was not mine, yet she assumed I aspired to it, and because I had not yet achieved it she gave herself the right to be critical.

  Her manner since her arrival was entirely consistent with her normal attitude to me: a curious mixture of concern and criticism, misunderstanding not only me but what I was trying to do with my life.

  It was all there in Chapter Four, and I thought I had at last dealt with it by writing of it. Yet she had done her damage, and the manuscript had been halted a few pages from the end.

  She threw into question everything I had tried to do, and there, at the actual interface, the last words I had written, was the evidence. The sentence lay unfinished on the page: “…but when I looked back—”

  But what? I typed in, “Seri was waiting”, then promptly crossed it out. It was not what I had intended to say, even if, ironically, those actual words were what I had been going to write. The motivating impulse had died with the sentence.

  I glanced back through the bulk of the manuscript. It made a satisfactorily heavy pile: well over two hundred pages of type written script. It felt solid in my hand, a proof of my existence.

  Now, though, I had to question what I had done. I sought the truth, but Felicity reminded me of its tenuous nature. She could not see my white room.

  Suppose someone disagreed with my version of the truth?

  Felicity certainly would, even assuming I allowed her to read it. And Gracia too, from what Felicity said, would probably remember a different version of the same events. My parents, were they still around, would probably be shocked by some of the things I had said about childhood.

  So truth was subjective, but I had never pretended otherwise. The manuscript aspired to be nothing more than an account of my own life, honestly told. I even made no claim for the quality or originality of my life. It was not unusual in any way, except to me. It was all I knew of myself, all I had in the world. No one could disagree with it because events were portrayed in the way I alone had perceived them.

  I read the last completed page again, and scanned the two and a half lines once more. I began to sense what I was about to say. Gracia, in her guise as Seri, was at the street corner because—

  The outside door banged, as if a shoulder was being rammed against it. I heard the handle rattle, and sounds from outside poured in. Felicity came into the room, laden with a rain-sodden paper carrier bag which she cradled in her arms.

  “I’ll cook lunch, but after that you’d better pack. James says it’s best if we go back to Sheffield tonight.”

  I stared at her incredulously, not because of what she said but in amazement at her timing. It beggared belief that she should twice interrupt me at precisely the same place.

  I looked down at the retyped page. It was in every way identical to the one it had replaced.

  Slowly, I wound it out of the typewriter carriage, and put it in its place at the bottom of the manuscript.

  I sat silently while Felicity moved about the kitchen. She had bought an apron in the village. She washed the dirty dishes, put some chops on to cook.

  When we had eaten I sat quietly at the table, retreating from Felicity with her plans and opinions and concern. Her normality was an infusion of madness into my life.

  I would be fed and bathed and brought back to health. It was Father’s death that had done it. I had flipped. Not much, according to Felicity, but I had nevertheless flipped. I was not able to care for myself, so she would take over. I would see by her example wh
at I was denying myself. We would make weekend forays to Edwin’s cottage, she and I and James, and the children too, and we would bustle about with brooms and paint brushes, and James and I would clear the overgrown garden, and in no time at all we would make the house habitable, and then Edwin and Marge would come and see it. When I was better we would all visit London, she and I and James, but perhaps not the children this time, and we would see Gracia, and the two of us would be left together to do whatever the two of us needed to do. I would not be allowed to flip again. I would visit Sheffield every two or three weeks, and we would go for long walks on the moors, and perhaps I should even travel abroad. I liked Greece, didn’t I? James could get me a job in Sheffield, or in London if I really wanted it, and Gracia and I would be happy together and get married and have—

  I said: “What are you talking about, Felicity?”

  “Were you listening to what I said?”

  “Look, it’s stopped raining.”

  “Oh God! You’re impossible!”

  She was smoking a cigarette. I imagined the smoke drifting about my white room, settling on the new paintwork, yellowing it. It would reach the pages of my manuscript, discolouring those too, setting down a layer of Felicity’s influence.

  The manuscript was like an unfinished piece of music. The fact of its incompleteness was bigger than its existence. Like a dominant seventh chord it sought resolution, a final tonic harmony.

  Felicity started to clear away the plates, clattering them in the kitchen sink, so I picked up my manuscript and headed for the stairs.

  “Are you going to pack?”

  “I’m not coming with you,” I said. “I want to finish what I’m doing.”

  She appeared from the kitchen, suds of washing-up liquid dripping from her hands.

  “Peter, it’s all been decided. You’re coming back with me.”

  “I’ve got work to do.”

  “What is it you’ve been writing?”

  “I told you once.”

  “Let me see.” Her soapy hand extended, and I clutched the manuscript tightly.

  “No one is ever to see this.”

  Then she reacted the way I had expected before. She clicked her tongue, tilted her head quickly back; whatever it was I had done had not been worth doing.

  I sat alone on the shambles of my sleeping-bag, holding the manuscript to me. I was near to tears. Downstairs, Felicity had discovered my empty whisky bottles, and was shouting up at me, accusing me of something.

  No one would ever read my manuscript. It was the most private thing in the world, a definition of myself. I had told a story, and had crafted it to make it readable, but my intended audience was myself alone.

  At last I went downstairs, to discover that Felicity had lined up my empty bottles in the small hallway at the bottom of the stairs. There were so many I had to step over them to get into my white room. Felicity was waiting there.

  “Why did you bring in the bottles?” I said.

  “You can’t leave them in the garden. What have you been trying to do, Peter, drink yourself to death?”

  “I’ve been here for several months.”

  “We’ll have to get someone to take them away. Next time we come here.”

  “I’m not leaving with you,” I said.

  “You can have the spare room. The children are out all day, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “You never have yet. Why should you start now?”

  She had already taken some of my stuff and put it in the back of her car. Now she was closing windows, turning off taps, checking the plugs, I watched her mutely, holding the manuscript to my chest. It was spoiled now forever. The words would have to stay unwritten, the thought remain unfinished. I heard imaginary music in my head: the dominant seventh rang out, forever seeking its cadence. It began to fade, like the run-off track on a gramophone record, music replaced by unplanned crackle. Soon the stylus in my mind would settle in the final, central groove, indefinitely stuck but clicking with apparent meaning, thirty-three times a minute. Eventually someone would have to lift the pick-up arm away, and silence would fall.

  5

  Suddenly the ship came into sunlight, and it was as if I had broken with what lay behind me.

  I narrowed my eyes against the brilliant sky, and saw that the cloud was some effect of the land, for it ran in a clearly defined east-west line. Ahead, all was clear and blue, promising warmth and calm seas. We headed south, as if propelled by the cold wind blustering from astern.

  I felt my senses extend, and awareness spread around me like delicate nerve-cells reaching for sensation. I became aware. I opened.

  There was a smell of diesel oil, of salt, of fish. The cold wind reached me, even though I was protected by the ship’s super-structure; my city clothes felt thin and inadequate. I breathed in deeply, holding the air for several seconds, as if it might contain cleansing agents that would scrub out my system, refresh my mind, rejuvenate and re-inspire me. Beneath my feet, the deck was vibrating with the grind of engines. I felt the pitching movement of the ship in the swell, but my body was balanced and in tune with it.

  I went forward to the prow of the ship, and here I turned to look back at what was behind me.

  On the ship itself, a few other passengers huddled on the fore deck. Many of them were elderly couples, sitting or standing together, and most of them wore windcheaters or plastic rain proofs. They seemed to look neither forward nor back, but within. I stared past them, and beyond the ship’s superstructure and funnel, where silent sea-birds glided effortlessly, to the coast we had left. The ship had turned slightly since leaving the harbour, and much of Jethra was visible. It seemed to spread along the coast, sheltering behind its quayside cranes and warehouses, filling its broad, estuarine valley. I tried to imagine its daily life continuing without me there to see it, as if everything might cease in my absence. Already, Jethra had become an idea.

  Ahead was our first port of call: Seevl, the offshore island I had never visited. It was the island of the Dream Archipelago closest to Jethra, and for all my life had merely been a part of the scenery. Dark, treeless Seevl dominated and blocked the view to the south of Jethra, yet to all but a few people with family connections, Seevl was prohibited to Jethrans. Politically it was part of the Archipelago, and while the war continued neutral territories were inaccessible. Seevl was the first, the nearest; there were ten thousand neutral islands beyond.

  I wanted the ship to go faster, because while Jethra lay behind I felt I had not truly started, but the sea at the mouth of the estuary was shallow, and the ship changed course a number of times. We were approaching Stromb Head, the great broken cliffs at the eastern end of Seevl, and once we had rounded this all that lay ahead would be unknown.

  I paced the deck, impatient for the journey, cold in the wind and frustrated by my fellow passengers. Before boarding I had imagined that I would be travelling with many people of my own age, but it seemed that almost everyone who was not crew was at retirement age. They appeared to be self-absorbed, heading for their new homes; one of the few methods of legal entry to the islands was by buying a house or apartment on one of a dozen or so listed islands.

  At last we rounded the Head and sailed into the bay outside Seevl Town. Jethra disappeared from view.

  I was eager for my first sight of an Archipelagan town, for a glimpse of what other islands might be like, but Seevl Town was a disappointment. Grey stone houses rose in uneven tiers on the hillsides surrounding the harbour, looking untidy and drab. It was easy to imagine the place in winter, with the doors and shutters closed, the rain slicking the roofs and streets, people bent against the sea wind, few lights showing. I wondered if they had electricity on Seevl, or running water, or cars. There was no traffic that I could see in the narrow streets surrounding the harbour, but the roads were paved. Seevl Town was quite similar to some of the remote hill villages in the north of Faiandland. The only obvious difference was that smoke was pouring from most of the chimneys;
this was a novelty to me, because there were strict anti-pollution laws in Jethra and the rest of Faiandland.

  None of the passengers disembarked at Seevl, and our arrival caused little stir in the town. A few minutes after we had tied up at the end of the quay, two uniformed men walked slowly down and boarded the ship. They were Archipelagan immigration officers, a fact which became clear when all passengers were instructed to assemble on Number One deck. To see the other passengers together gave me the opportunity to confirm that there were very few young people aboard. While we were queuing up to have our visas cheeked I was thinking that the nine days it would take to reach Muriseay, where I was leaving the ship, might turn out to be lonely. There was a youngish woman in the queue behind me—I guessed her age to be in the early thirties—but she was reading a book and seemed incurious about anyone else.

  I had seen my voyage to the Dream Archipelago as a break with the past, a new beginning, but already it seemed as if the first few days, at least, would have to be spent in the same sort of half-hearted isolation I had grown used to in Jethra.

  I had been lucky. Everyone I knew said it about me, and I even believed it myself. At first there had been parties, but as we all began to appreciate what had happened to me, I found myself more and more cut off from them. When finally the time had come to leave Jethra, to travel to the Dream Archipelago to collect my prize, I was glad to go. I was eager for travel, for the heat of the tropics, for the sound of different languages and a sight of different customs. Yet now it had started I knew that it would be more enjoyable in company.

  I said something to the woman behind me, but she merely replied, smiled politely and returned to her book.

  I reached the head of the queue and handed over my passport. I had already opened it at the page where the Archipelagan High Commission in Jethra had stamped the visa, but the officer closed it and examined it from the front. The other sat beside him, staring at my face.

  The officer looked at my photograph and personal details.