The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days

by Juliet Conlin

  To begin with, I like my clients to tell me a little bit about themselves, the therapist says, and you don’t get it at first that she means you, because a client is someone who has a bank account or an insurance policy. The therapist crosses her legs and leans forward slightly. Her necklace clicks. So, she says, people are a little worried about you. Your mom especially.

  You know your mom is worried about you going crazy. This makes you sad and guilty and ashamed. This makes you want to slice your thigh with a razor blade so you don’t feel the sadness and guilt and shame as much.

  And that’s why your paediatrician sent you here, the therapist says, for a little chat. To see if I can help fix what’s wrong. She picks up a pencil and notepad from the low table next to her. How do you feel about coming here today? she asks, holding the pencil over her notepad, hovering there, ready to start writing. On a scale of one to ten.

  You say, I don’t know.

  The therapist writes something down. Do you have friends? You nod. And then you start making up names without knowing why you’re making them up – Marlene and Hollie and Isobel and Heidi – but you can’t stop yourself. You used to have real friends. Jessie and Aisha and Hannah. But you don’t say this to the therapist. You don’t know why you just lied to the therapist about your friends’ names. You made a promise to yourself before you came here that you would do your best, tell the truth, pay attention and try and get better. You promised your mom, too. When your mom told you about the appointment, she looked away and you could tell she was trying not to cry, which was actually worse than if she had been crying.

  And how about a boyfriend? the therapist says, her pencil twitching, and your face gets all hot and you shake your head and the therapist smiles and says, Nothing to be embarrassed about.

  She leans back in her seat. For this to work, Brynja, you’re going to have to talk to me, let me know what’s wrong. Otherwise I won’t be able to help you.

  Part of you feels like telling the therapist all the stuff that’s inside your head – like the first time you dragged the scissors up and down your arm and how amazing it felt! But that now the voice-woman makes you do it all the time. Or how you wake up in the morning already crying and just can’t stop. Or that sometimes you can’t get out of bed before you’ve counted all the leaves on the tree that grows outside your bedroom window because the little girl voice makes you. Or about the voices telling you how dumb you are, telling you to pinch the neighbour’s baby really hard whenever no one’s looking – but then the therapist will know how evil and crazy you are and you might get locked up. And that if you tell her anything, the voices will punish you.

  Then you realise that you haven’t been paying attention to what the therapist is saying, which happens a lot because you find it very difficult to concentrate sometimes, which is a problem especially in school and the teacher is explaining something, let’s say, the effects of the Vietnam War on the global economy, and your mind drifts to the dandruff on Zoë Stewart’s shoulders, who sits in the row in front of you, and to the fact that Zoë has really dark eyes, black almost, and the voice-woman comes and tells you to think about what it must be like to turn blind overnight, just wake up one morning and everything is dark. Everything. And then there are people who are blind and deaf –

  – and then you get into trouble because you’ve been listening to the voice and thinking about dandruff and blindness and deafness rather than paying attention to the teacher, and in the last three months the principal has invited your mom for a talk at least five times. Saying, she’s not a troublemaker, quite the opposite, what a good girl she’s always been, I appreciate it’s a difficult age, but she must really pay more attention in class, and by the way, she looks as though she’s lost quite a bit of weight recently, or is that just the puppy fat coming off?

  The therapist is telling you that it’s okay to feel confused sometimes. You don’t think it’s okay, the therapist obviously doesn’t know what it feels like to be confused. But you don’t say that. You don’t say anything. The therapist continues, I can see you bite your nails Brynja, and you feel a bit embarrassed but are glad that you stopped cutting your arms and switched to cutting your legs, because it’s easier to hide the scars, even though the voice makes you cut your thighs so deep that it hurts for days, sometimes.

  Are you being bullied? the therapist asks. At school, maybe?

  The therapist says, You can tell me anything. I won’t tell anyone what you say in here. Go on, give it a try.

  But you can’t just squeeze out words. That’s like trying to go for a shit when you don’t need one, and this thought makes you panic because now you are worried that if you say anything, the voice-woman will make you say shit and all words that rhyme with shit. That what’s started to happen recently when you hear a curse word, then that’s all she lets you think about. That word and all words that rhyme with it. Like fuck: muck, suck, duck, puck, buck, yuck, tuck, luck. That’s why you don’t dare squeeze out any words.

  Okay, the therapist says, I’ll be honest with you here Brynja. If you don’t cooperate, there’s no point in you being here, is there. Then you’re wasting both our time.

  At other times, the voice twists your mind to the opposite: makes it stick to one single thing like glue, and you can’t think of anything else. Like now, all you can focus on is the saliva in the corner of the therapist’s mouth, the way it starts out as a tiny speck and after a few minutes of the therapist talking, gradually becomes this huge glob, and then there’s the red tongue, darting out like a frog’s to lick it off. Talk, talk, saliva, tongue – talk, talk, saliva, tongue.

  The therapist looks at her watch and says, Good grief! Look at the time. She smiles as though she’s really pleased about something. We’ll wrap it up there shall we? she says, and there is a soft knock on the door and your mom comes in. She asks if it’s time and the therapist says, Yes, we’ve had a good chat haven’t we? Brynja, would you mind waiting outside so I can have a word with your mom?

  So you go and sit in the waiting room and stare at a picture on the wall opposite of a sun that’s bleeding around the edges and wait for the voices to arrive.

  1955 - 1958

  Alfred, Isobel and John had taken a trip to the seaside – their first family holiday together – staying for three nights at a small B&B in Colwyn Bay. The room was cramped and not particularly clean, but it was cheap and they intended to stay outdoors at the beach for most of the day. It was on their second day there that it occurred. Isobel and Alfred had rented a deckchair each, and John played close to them in the sand. The weather was fair; now and again, a chill breeze blew in from the restless, pewter sea, but most of the time the air was still, and they felt the force of the white July sun on their skin. Isobel wore a pretty floral cotton dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and Alfred had rolled up his trouser legs, stripped down to his vest and fashioned a cap from a knotted handkerchief. He felt perfectly calm; it was good to be sitting here, doing nothing but read the newspaper and occasionally look out to the horizon. Isobel had a novel with her, its cover featuring a blonde woman and an Arab sheik entwined in a tight embrace, and every now and then, she would let out a sigh, or emit a sharp intake of breath. Presently, though, she rose from her deckchair. ‘I’m off to get an ice cream,’ she announced. ‘You coming, Johnnie?’

  But the boy shook his head. He was playing with the remnants of a sandcastle built yesterday by some other child. (In just under a day, John had succeeded in alienating all other children on the beach by destroying their sandcastles and throwing handfuls of sand at them.) He was trying to dig a trench from the sandcastle to the edge of the water, using his hands to scoop through the wet sand.

  ‘I’ll watch him,’ Alfred said, and after a brief hesitation, Isobel walked off across the sand towards the promenade.

  Alfred looked over at John; he was wearing only his shorts, and the skin on his shoulders was turning slightly pink. Alfred made a mental note to tell Isobel to get him
to put on his shirt before he got sunburned. He went back to his newspaper, but was too drowsy to read. He folded the paper up and closed his eyes, resting his head against the back of the chair. Then he heard John speak. It was just two words – ‘I know’ – spoken quietly, but clear enough for Alfred to hear. Thinking the boy was addressing him, he opened his eyes and raised his head. But John was fully concentrated on his trench. Then,

  ‘No! Not like that.’ His voice was still quiet, inaudible to anyone five yards away.

  Alfred sat up.

  ‘I’m doing – ’

  A pause.

  ‘All right then.’

  A strangeness came over Alfred as he watched his son; he held his breath and tried to listen in. It couldn’t be, the boy was only four-and-a-half years old. Alfred opened his hearing, but apart from the hiss and curl of the waves lapping the beach, and some excited shrieking coming from a group of children playing twenty yards away, he heard nothing.

  ‘But if I dig here, then it’ll – ’

  Alfred leaned forward. He didn’t want to disturb the boy.

  ‘Oh. Yes, I see.’ John took his small spade and began to dig a second channel. ‘Yes.’ It seemed as though he were following instructions to keep the trench from collapsing into itself.

  A sudden gust of wind made goose bumps appear on Alfred’s arms.

  ‘John,’ he said quietly. John frowned and continued to dig. ‘John,’ Alfred repeated, more loudly.

  John looked up at him. His eyes were grey, like Alfred’s, but had the roundness of his mother’s.

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice soft and inviting.

  John held his gaze for a moment and then looked away. ‘No one.’

  Alfred got up from his deckchair and went to kneel beside John. ‘Johnnie, who are you talking to?’ He spoke calmly, although he could feel his heart beating strongly in his chest.

  John pressed his lips together.

  ‘Are you talking to someone in your head?’

  For a moment, John seemed poised to speak. But then, ‘No. No one.’ Then he sighed. ‘I’m building a trench,’ he said. ‘You see? So the sea can make a moat around the castle.’

  ‘Yes. Very good,’ Alfred said. He put out his hand and stroked John’s hair. He didn’t want to frighten him. For a while, they sat there in silence, as John continued to carve his trench out of the sand. But soon, Alfred couldn’t stand it any longer.

  Is that you? he asked silently. Are you talking to John?

  A wave crashed noisily onto the sand, sending the group of nearby children into fits of squeals and giggles.

  Is that you? he shouted in his head. But there was no response. He moved in closer to John. ‘Johnnie? You know, son, some people can – ’

  ‘I’m back!’ It was Isobel, carrying three cones of ice cream. ‘Quick, they’re melting,’ she said, lifting her hand to her mouth and licking the creamy drips from her fingers.

  John got to his feet and took a cone off her. ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Yes, Johnnie?’

  ‘When I’m grown up and get married I’m going to marry you.’

  Isobel bent down and kissed him on the nose. ‘I think your dad might have something to say about that, eh Alfie?’ She looked down at Alfred, who was still kneeling in the sand.

  ‘Aye,’ Alfred said, and added, ‘I think he should put his shirt on before he gets sunburn.’

  And so, over the following years, Alfred watched his son, this time in some amorphous anticipation of what he had witnessed on the beach to repeat itself. He asked the voice-women again and again if they’d spoken to John – this seemed the most obvious way of finding out – but they remained frustratingly silent about it. He lingered outside John’s bedroom when he was playing there alone, in the hope of catching him talking to himself again, and invented bedtime stories that featured princes and talking faeries and wood-nymphs (inspired, in part, by his own experience of first hearing voices). But the incident didn’t repeat itself, at least, not in Alfred’s presence, and as time passed, he began to wonder if he might have imagined the whole thing, or prescribed some significance to it that wasn’t really there. Then John started school and began to develop into a normal, physically healthy young boy. And although Alfred knew he should be grateful for this, in truth there was an aching space inside him that should have been filled with pride, but was instead filled – sickeningly – with disappointment.

  On a wet, prematurely dark afternoon in July 1958, Alfred waited until Claxton had left for home, and then removed his muddy boots at the side entrance of March House. He was heading for the library; three of the plum trees in the orchard had become infected with some fungus he couldn’t identify, and he was hoping to find some book on how to treat them. He stepped inside and almost bumped into Emma, who was polishing one of the many mirrors that adorned the entrance hall.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘I’m going to the library,’ he added.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘But they’ve got some guests coming later. Friends from London or whatever. So don’t be making a mess.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’ He padded across the hall, self-conscious in his stockinged feet, hearing Emma mumbling ‘Why they don’t just have one big bloody mirror like normal people, I’ll never know,’ as he slipped through the oak door and into the library.

  Because the room was dark, Alfred perceived the smells in here all the more keenly. He waited a few seconds before switching on a light, taking in – like some initiation ritual – the musty odour of old books and stale pipe smoke, undercut by the sharpness of beeswax and furniture polish. (Her brusque manner aside, Emma was a highly conscientious cleaner.) Not wanting to disturb the dark calm produced by these smells, Alfred decided against the shrill light of the huge chandelier and instead switched on only a small pearl-fringed Victorian table lamp closest to the shelf housing the gardening books. The lamp gave off a burnt-orange light, just enough to decipher the titles on the book spines. Alfred quickly found two books that looked promising – Tree Fruit Growing by Raymond Bush and The Plum and Its Cultivation by Edward Barker – and slipped them off the shelf. He then scanned the shelves of Alice Singer-Cohen’s section superficially (he knew the collection well enough by now to spot any new additions straight away) and was turning to leave, gardening books in hand, when his eye was drawn to a book he didn’t recognise. The spine was Egyptian blue with silver-embossed lettering, but impossible for Alfred to read at this angle. He pulled up a footstool to get a closer look. A Comprehensive Introduction to Icelandic Mythology, the title read. He slid his finger down the spine. The book was undoubtedly quite old, the blue fabric worn through to reveal a fluff of cardboard at the corners. It was curious he’d never seen it here before . . .

  . . . but then you’ve never looked properly.

  ‘Looked for what?’

  Exactly.

  ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  There was a pause, filled with the intermittent crackle of voices, like waiting for a caller to come through on a bad telephone line. Then –

  You have to look more closely, Alfred.

  Hush. You’ve said enough now.

  He must have been standing there longer than he thought, because he suddenly became aware of voices – real, human voices – coming from the other side of the room. It was two women talking. Alfred hadn’t heard them come in, and he froze, with his fingertips still touching the book. The women continued talking as though he wasn’t there; they evidently hadn’t noticed him.

  ‘Könnest Du Dir das vorstellen, hier auf dem Lande?’

  ‘Auf keinen Fall. Natürlich ist es wunderschön, aber ich weiß nicht, wie sie’s hier aushalten.’

  They were speaking German. They were wondering how the Singer-Cohens could stand to live in the countryside. Alfred held his breath. He hadn’t heard any German being spoken in what seemed like a hundred years, and although he felt a little shameful about eav
esdropping, he longed to hear more of this strange-familiar language. Very slowly, he turned around. Through the gloom, he could make out two elderly women, elegantly and expensively dressed.

  ‘Aber für Kinder wäre es herrlich,’ one of them said. It would be wonderful for children.

  ‘Aber nur solange sie noch klein sind,’ the other answered. Only while they are small. ‘Und Alice wird ja auch nicht jünger.’ And Alice isn’t getting any younger.

  These must be the visitors that Emma had referred to. Alfred stepped off the stool as quietly as he could, wondering how he could make his presence known without letting them think he’d been eavesdropping. But the floorboard he stepped down on gave out a shuddering creak, making one of the women gasp aloud.

  ‘Ist da jemand?’ she called in a wavering kind of voice. Is somebody there?

  ‘Oh, ich wollte Sie nicht erschrecken.’ I didn’t want to scare you. Alfred moved forward into the light. ‘Entschuldigen Sie bitte vielmals,’ he added quickly, the German words of apology slipping fluidly and automatically from his mouth. One of the women – with deeply tanned, wrinkled skin – raised her eyebrows, but before she could question him further, Alfred folded his arms around the two gardening books and hurried out.

  He dropped into bed heavily that night, taking a while to find a position that eased a nagging pain in his lower back he had been suffering for weeks now. Isobel lay with her back to him, snoring very slightly. He felt the voice-women bristling at the edge of his consciousness, trying to snag his attention, eager to chat with him about something or other, but before their voices took on shape, he’d fallen asleep.