Chapman's Odyssey

by Paul Bailey

  Harry Chapman, unable to speak because of the equipment in his mouth, nodded assent.

  — You are in the intensive care unit, in case you don’t recognise your surroundings. You will stay here for a day or two.

  A bespectacled woman with her hair in a tight bun appeared at the doctor’s side.

  — This is Nurse Dunckley. She’s in charge. She’ll be at your beck and call.

  — Think of me as Jeanette, my love, said the nurse. I’m a friendly soul, Harry. I may call you ‘Harry’, mayn’t I?

  He hadn’t heard ‘mayn’t I?’ in ages, if ever. Since he could neither smile nor speak, he managed a cursory nod.

  — So we’re Jeanette and Harry, my love.

  — I’ll check up on you later, Sunshine, the doctor promised, and left.

  Why, Harry Chapman wanted to know, was Mr Russell calling him ‘Sunshine’? He would ask Jeanette for an explanation, as soon as he could form a coherent sentence.

  — You’re a very handsome Harry, my love. We want you to stay in the world as long as possible.

  Oh, that was a reassuring observation from the lanky Jeanette, whose inamorato he had inexplicably become.

  — She’s flannelling you, snapped the Clytemnestra of the gasworks and the candle factory. She’s a cold-hearted bitch behind all that smarmy talk. ‘My love’, indeed. Watch her carefully, Harry Chapman.

  What else was there for him to do – cabined, cribbed and confined as he was in this brightly lit ward?

  He longed, now, for the company of Sister Nancy, of Marybeth, of Philip and Maciek, of the dutiful Veronica. They were his new-found friends. He wanted to be back among them, hearing their familiar voices, seeing their concerned or irritated expressions, entertaining them – if that was what he’d been doing – with the poetry he had made his own.

  — We’ll have you up and about in no time, my love. No time at all.

  Had there ever been a golden age in the long life of Harry Chapman? He tried to recall it as he lay – dying, perhaps – in the room reserved for those poised on the very brink. It was a futile question, he soon decided. He’d had, in common with countless others, moments of happiness, of well-being. Moments? No, there were hours, days, weeks even, he could summon up if he applied himself to the task of remembering. One image, and one alone, came to him without effort. He was standing in the courtyard of the Forte Belvedere, looking down on the city of Florence on a May morning, marvelling at the exquisite colours – mostly pink and green – of the Duomo and the Campanile. The day was gradually heating up, but at ten o’clock it was relatively mild. Here was paradise on earth. It was as if his past had been obliterated. Harry Chapman, at the age of thirty-one, was like a slim Cortez, silent upon his very own peak in Darien. He’d smiled at the notion then, and he might have smiled again, had he not been encumbered with tubing.

  This young man in uniform would father Harry Chapman twenty years into the future. For now, though, he was somewhere in France, his son supposed.

  — You suppose correctly. I’m in the land of parlee-vous. But my pal here has shifted off to heaven already.

  — Your pal? Is he dead?

  — As much as he’ll ever be. The Hun’s bullet got him while he was smiling. That’s why he looks like he’s grinning at the moon. I’m sitting alongside him till someone carts him off and buries him. I think he’ll be here with me watching it for the whole night.

  — What’s his name?

  — George. I tell you, boy, if I had pen and paper to hand I’d write letters home to everyone saying how happy I am to be alive. God help me, it takes a pal dying next to you to remind you what a precious thing your life is.

  — What day is it, Dad?

  — Twenty-third of December, 1917. Christmas will soon be upon us. What a laugh. What a bloody farce.

  Then Harry Chapman, ninety years on, saw George’s broken-toothed grin, and Frank’s living hand clutching George’s lifeless one, and then there was nothing but whiteness before his eyes, and then he was conscious of a bespectacled woman assuring him that he was making wonderful progress.

  — You’re a man and a half, my love.

  — Good morning, Sunshine. How was your night?

  How was his night? Well, he seemed to recall that the thirty-one-year-old Frank Chapman had appeared to him, a dead private named George at his side. He was unable to mention this to the inquisitive doctor as he was still unable to speak. Why did Mr Russell ask Sunshine how his night had been, knowing as he did that Sunshine could not reply?

  — We’ll be dismantling some of your scaffolding later today. The catheter will be the first to go.

  The catheter? What catheter? He was unaware that he was cathetered, if such a verb existed.

  — You’ll be your old self again soon, Sunshine.

  ‘Sunshine’: Harry Chapman approved of his new name. No matter that Mr Russell probably addressed all his patients – men and women – in this determinedly cheerful fashion. For the moment, for a day or so, he was Sunshine.

  That afternoon, if afternoon it was, he heard a man saying:

  — I had a left leg twenty-four hours ago. Now there’s nothing there.

  — I know, a woman’s voice responded.

  — You don’t know. You don’t know at all. You’re standing on two feet, aren’t you?

  — Yes, darling.

  — What bloody future have I got? Playing Long John Silver at children’s parties. That’s about the limit of my ambitions.

  — Don’t be silly.

  Harry Chapman had read Treasure Island again during the summer and had been surprised to rediscover that John Silver was a decorous individual, capable of the most disarming courtesy. He had forgotten that the duplicitous sea-cook had a black wife, who kept a tight rein on his ill-gotten money.

  — Eunice, go to a pet shop and buy a parrot for me. We’ll call him ‘Captain Flint’ and teach him to squawk ‘Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight.’

  — Oh, you darling idiot, Johnny.

  — I can’t think of a better alternative right now. Can you?

  Eunice – whatever the colour of her skin – did not reply to Johnny’s question.

  — You can’t, Eunice. You just fucking can’t.

  — There’s no need for that kind of language.

  — Why the fuck not?

  — Oh, Johnny, you’re not sounding like you.

  — It’s not every day I lose a leg.

  — I know.

  — Stop saying you know.

  Harry Chapman, so near and yet so far from one-legged Johnny and hapless Eunice, wanted to know about the life they had led together before yesterday.

  — You’ll leave me now, won’t you? You have a wonderful excuse at last.

  — That’s unkind, Johnny.

  — But true.

  — No, it isn’t. It isn’t true at all.

  That unlikely marriage-guidance counsellor Harry Chapman wished he could be tubeless and upright, free from his invalid’s bed. He had an absurd need to advise the pair behind the screen on how best to accommodate themselves to Johnny’s misfortune. As needs go, this one was so absurd as to be beyond absurdity, he realised. Yet it was there – in his heart; in his mind.

  — How is my brave boy today? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I hope, my love.

  — Oh yes, Jeanette, I’m on top of the jolly old world, as you can see with those bifocals of yours.

  He was anxious to hear what Johnny was saying to Eunice, but the nurse’s twitterings would not grant him that favour.

  — Mr Russell will be along very soon, my love. When he gives us the go-ahead, we’ll take that nasty, nasty catheter away and pull some of those tubes out.

  Forget the catheter, forget the tubes – they were secondary concerns to the man who was being denied the latest developments in the continuing tragedy of Johnny and Eunice.

  The removal of Sunshine’s catheter inspired Nurse Dunckley to new heights, or depths, of skittishness.

&nbs
p; — Nothing much the matter with Harry’s Mr Willy, is there? He’ll be his usual self in a little while, my love. You’re a lucky Harry, you are. Only last week – or was it the week before? You lose all sense of time in here – only last week we had a nice young man in this very same bed who had to have a nasty, nasty catheter too, but in his case it was there for days on end. When we took it out, young Michael’s Mr Willy had swelled up to the size of a vegetable marrow. The poor lad didn’t know where to look, I swear, my love. Oh, it was that bloated. But your Mr Willy’s the same chap he was on Thursday, I’m happy to report. He’ll be a bit leaky for a while, but nothing to worry you unduly.

  — How is Johnny? he asked when the gift of speech was restored to him.

  — He’s not one of my patients, Sunshine. But he’s as well as can be expected.

  ‘As well as can be expected’ wasn’t well enough, Harry Chapman learned from an overheard conversation between another doctor and another nurse in what he supposed was the late evening. A sudden, swift, wholly unexpected heart attack had dispatched the angry man whose leg had been amputated. It was a terrible shame, given that the rest of his body, waist up, had been functioning normally.

  The saddened Harry Chapman was diminished by loss again, as he had been on Tuesday – was it Tuesday? – with the news that Iris Gibson, his sensible, cheerful comforter, had not survived the night. Iris had spoken to him, sensibly, from across the ward, but Jonathan Cooper had been out of his line of vision, as had the suffering Eunice, who was unable to give her husband or lover the immediate solace he craved. He wanted, now, to mourn them – the woman so determined to persuade the anonymous patient opposite her that she was only moderately unwell; the man grimly fantasising about his future as an entertainer at children’s parties, impersonating Long John Silver with the parrot he’d trained to squawk ‘Pieces of eight’. Harry Chapman could imagine the boys and girls, faces stained with chocolate, mouths bursting with cake and jelly, pretending to be terrified of the one-legged pirate with the talking bird on his shoulder. But their happy terror was not to be.

  Harry Chapman hadn’t heeded the ship-boy’s warning on that October Saturday in 1982.

  — Harry, I have fears for you.

  The danger looming on his horizon was standing yards away, buying razor blades and shaving foam when Jack alerted him. Harry Chapman had recognised the heavily built man after only a moment’s hesitation. He was in the presence of the middle-aged Ralph Edmunds, whom he had last confronted when the bully and the bullied were both sixteen. The gruff voice, deeper now, was almost the same as he remembered it, and the thick lips, and the ears that seemed to be pinned close to the head.

  — Take care, Jack advised. — Take the greatest care.

  Harry Chapman paid for the toothpaste and shampoo he had selected at an adjacent till. His eyes met those of the man he knew to be Ralph Edmunds.

  — Do I know you? Do you know me?

  — Yes. I was at school with you.

  — You’re Harry, aren’t you?

  — I am. And you’re Ralph.

  — That’s me. Well, it’s a small world.

  — Yes, it is.

  Jack, alert at his post, told Mister Harry to end the conversation and walk off, free, into the busy street.

  — I saw your face in the paper once. I showed it to my mates at work and said you was in my class.

  — Are you on your way somewhere, Ralph? Have you time for a drink?

  — Always got time for a drink, Harry. If someone else’s paying.

  There was a pub nearby called the Tudor Rose. Its oak-beamed saloon bar reeked of stale beer and cigarettes and a lethal disinfectant, recently sprayed. The men’s lavatory had been renamed Ye Knightes, the women’s Ye Damsels, in the interests of historical authenticity.

  — What will you have?

  — Seeing as how you’re paying, I’ll have a whisky.

  — Large?

  — Why not?

  They seated themselves at a corner table and clinked glasses.

  — Cheers, Ralph.

  — Bottoms up, Harry.

  Ralph smirked, and said:

  — Talk about a small world. Who’d have thought I’d bump into you? You’re not as skinny as you used to be. Good living, eh?

  — Good enough.

  — Still at the writing lark?

  — Yes. I’ve been teaching, too. I’m not long back from America. I was in Minnesota for a couple of years. And you? What’s your job?

  — I’m a gas fitter. Dirty work sometimes.

  When Ralph excused himself and disappeared behind the door marked Ye Knightes, Jack whispered to Harry:

  — Go now. Go while the going is good.

  — I’ll be careful, Jack.

  Then Ralph returned, and Harry invited him to tell his story. Was he married, for instance?

  — Was. ‘Was’ being the word. I got shot of the bitch. Do you smoke, Harry?

  — No.

  — Mind if I do?

  — Not at all.

  — We had a little girl. She must be twenty now.

  — You don’t see her?

  — Only if I go to Spain. That’s where her mother took her when we split up. She’s been taught to hate me. Her mother’s seen to that.

  — Have you found another woman?

  — Not looking, Harry. If I need a fuck, I buy a tart. When I’ve got some spare dosh to blow.

  Ralph winked at Harry, and remarked again what a small world it was.

  — You’re not a woman man yourself, Harry. Is that true?

  — It is.

  — I guessed as much at school. Do you have a regular mate?

  Harry Chapman, startling himself with his honesty, replied that he lived with a man who was far gone in gin and only stayed with him out of pity. He took his pleasures, such as they were, whenever and wherever he could find them.

  — Sounds as if we’re both lonely. I mean, you write books and I’m a gas fitter, but when push comes to shove, we’re lonely bastards, aren’t we, Skinny Boy? Remember me calling you Skinny Boy?

  — Yes, Ralph.

  Harry paid for a second round of drinks, despite Jack’s cautioning speech as he did so.

  — Very civil of you, Harry. Very civil indeed.

  — My pleasure.

  They talked, then, of schooldays, of Harry’s performances as Emma Woodhouse and King Henry, of teachers and fellow pupils.

  — Are you happy, Ralph?

  — A bit.

  It was decided – Harry Chapman recalled as he lay awake in the middle of the night with only the machines of healing for company – that the writer should treat the gas fitter to dinner. In the Italian restaurant, Harry persuaded Ralph to share a bottle of Chianti Classico.

  — Wine’s a drink for ponces, Harry. But, as it’s you, I’ll try a drop.

  They consumed two bottles and had a grappa each at the end of the meal.

  It was almost midnight when they left. As they made their unsteady way towards Marble Arch, Harry explained that, drunk as they were, Christopher would be drunker.

  — My last train’s gone, Skinny Boy. A taxi from here will cost the bloody earth.

  What madness, what alcohol-induced madness, possessed Harry Chapman next? Bully and Bullied had stopped outside a drab hotel.

  — Shall we try here? Harry Chapman heard himself ask the swaying Ralph Edmunds.

  This was one of those establishments where no questions were asked and no means of identification demanded. Cash was all that was necessary to procure a double room on the third floor.

  The yawning receptionist handed him the key and said that a Continental breakfast would be available between the hours of seven and nine thirty. He recited this information as if by rote, and then increased the volume on his transistor. It was tuned to a foreign station: Harry heard, through static, the sounds of a language – Slavic, perhaps – that he didn’t recognise.

  The room was as inviting as a coffin. Harry Chap
man could not help but think of the lost souls who had taken refuge in its dinginess. Why was he here? Why was he here with his tormentor of decades past? Was he out of his mind?

  — Christ, I’m pissed.

  — So am I, Ralph.

  He went into the bathroom. The bath was stained yellow and the porcelain chipped in places. There was a rusty shower connection and a plastic curtain.

  He washed his face in cold water and dried himself with a rough towel.

  His bully of yesteryear was undressing by the faint light of a bedside lamp with a pink shade. The body, Harry saw, was bulkier now, and the stomach had run to fat. Ralph was no classically perfect Adonis. His figure was less than Greek, was virtually misshapen, might even become gross with time.

  What a small world it was and no mistake, what with him and clever Harry Chapman bumping into each other out of the blue and getting into the same bed together because they’d had a skinful, the pair of them, and what with their being the worse for wear and that was the truth of it in a nutshell . . .

  Harry Chapman, naked, pulled back the bedspread and got between the sheets, which he doubted were totally clean. Soon Ralph Edmunds was lying alongside him in the darkness.

  I am Ishmael, and he is Queequeg, the harpooneer, thought Harry Chapman, never at a loss for a connection between literature and life. Ralph doesn’t carry a tomahawk and there’s no trace of a scalp and he isn’t adorned with decorative tattoos, but he is primitive in his way. So primitive, in fact, that the once-taunted Skinny Boy, with the fake Jewish cock, felt afraid and apprehensive. He realised he was too frightened to give his fear expression.

  Then he heard Ralph snoring and reasoned that he was safe. Even so, he heard Jack beg him to make a speedy escape. But it was too late. Ralph was bound to wake up and ask what he was doing.

  He dozed off, and what caused him to regain consciousness was the agonising pain he was enduring. Ralph was taking him with a fierce determination.

  — This is what you want, you clever queer.

  The clever, queer Harry Chapman wanted to scream, but stayed silent and immobile.

  — You’re a freak, Skinny Boy.

  Ralph Edmunds let out what sounded like a cry of pleasure and bit his victim’s ear. This, thought the captive beneath, is a sign of affection, or the nearest thing to it.