Chapman's Odyssey

by Paul Bailey

  He remained still as death while Ralph washed himself in the bathroom.

  Two or so hours later, he neither struggled nor protested when Ralph silently insisted on a repeat performance. His attacker was less ferocious and more relaxed and Harry Chapman sensed that he and the feared Ralph were experiencing mutual enjoyment.

  — That’s good, Harry whispered.

  Towards morning, in the half-light, in the room with its patchy carpet and peeling flock wallpaper, Ralph set about his appointed task again when his unfondled, unkissed plaything returned to the bed after taking a lukewarm shower.

  — God, was I drunk last night, said Ralph as he started to dress.

  — Me too.

  — There’s a first time for everything, they say.

  — Yes.

  They left the hotel separately, Ralph having made his goodbyes with another reference to the smallness of the world.

  — Fancy me meeting clever old Skinny Boy of all people.

  Harry saw that the sheets contained evidence of their sexual activity. The spilt semen had hardened and formed itself into what chambermaids call ‘little maps of Ireland’. He counted three of them, and noted that there were traces of blood and shit as well.

  As he journeyed homewards that Sunday morning, he remembered he had given Ralph his phone number in the restaurant.

  — Good evening, Harry, my love.

  (Somehow, at some hour of the previous day unknown to him, Harry Chapman had regained the blessed ability to speak.)

  — Your love? I am not your love. Stop being silly.

  — Temper, temper. Who’s a grumpy Harry tonight? Your friend Jeanette is not going to take offence. She knows better than to do that.

  — Does she really?

  — She does, my love.

  Why was this woman’s vapid banter, with its ludicrous claims to a joint affection, objectionable to him in a way that Nancy Driver’s trivial chit-chat wasn’t? It was a question of character, he supposed. Nancy struck him as genuinely, inherently good, while Nurse Dunckley was a pretend-saint in starched uniform, a beacon of kindness dependent upon a supply of rechargeable batteries. Oh, these suppositions from the sickbed were probably facile, but they seemed accurate to him, for the moment.

  — I’m sorry if I sounded curt, Nurse.

  — Of course you are, my love.

  The funeral of Harry Chapman was being held, surprisingly, in a church. It wasn’t a Low Church either, but one that was undeniably, even ostentatiously, High. Was his send-off taking place, the dead man wondered, in a cathedral? And if so, which? A sudden glimpse of burnished gold prompted him to think it was St Mark’s in Venice.

  Most of the mourners were already seated. Alice Chapman stood out from the others because she was dressed in red, a colour she never favoured for a host of reasons, chief of which was exemplified in the two words ‘scarlet woman’. Rose, weeping softly in the row behind her sister, had donned black for the occasion, in common with everyone else. The Duchess of Bombay had smartened herself up in his honour, which touched her deceased acquaintance. Prince Myshkin, in the thick, hooded traveller’s cloak he always wore in northern Italy, was at her side. They were talking earnestly, the Prince often nodding assent at her observations, and Harry strained to catch what they were saying. The Duchess’s witticisms, which seemed to be delighting the unhappy Prince, were lost on Harry Chapman, whose attention was now diverted by the arrival of Pamela, in a hat D’Artagnan and his faithful musketeers might have favoured, along with three friends he’d made when he was an actor, each kitted out as characters from the commedia dell’arte: Roberta, the comeliest Columbine ever; Gordon, the zaniest Punchinello imaginable; and Ian, a brooding, moody and menacing Harlequin.

  Leo, looking plumply healthy, joined the throng, hand in hand with Eleanor, his proud and loyal wife of four decades and more. Philip Pirrip had journeyed from Calcutta for this sad gathering, and so from the wilds of Africa had King Babar and the veiled Queen Céleste, who placed themselves discreetly in a pew that also contained Jeoffrey, the immortal cat, who had licked his fur with such dedication to feline duty that it glowed like jet or some brilliant black diamond.

  — I would prefer not to be present.

  Harry Chapman, hearing the sepulchral voice, looked about him for its owner. Bartleby was nowhere to be seen.

  — Where are you, Bartleby?

  — I would prefer to be absent from these proceedings.

  — So should I, my lonely friend. So should I.

  Suddenly, wonderfully, there was music. An unseen orchestra was playing – in St Mark’s? for Harry Chapman’s funeral? – Webern’s orchestration of the fugue (ricercata) from Bach’s The Musical Offering.

  — I chose this, the Duchess of Bombay confided in Prince Myshkin. — This was my choice. Listen, listen. Every note is like a jewel.

  But Alice Chapman was of a different opinion, as she soon made stridently clear to the man next to her.

  — What a bloody racket.

  Oscar Wilde, whose tainted name she had invoked so many times in her son’s childhood and youth, did not respond. He inclined his head to sniff the green carnation in his lapel and smiled to himself.

  — You need to visit a barber.

  The advice was unheeded and Alice Chapman muttered:

  — I told Harry Chapman he would be late for his own funeral one day, and here we are, sure enough, waiting and waiting. He’s making fun of us from beyond the grave, if that’s where he is, though I have to say I have my doubts.

  The glorious fugue stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and an eerie silence descended on the congregation as they faded from Harry Chapman’s view.

  He was convinced that Ralph would never contact him again. The scrap of paper on which he had written his phone number had been thrown out with the rubbish or screwed up into a ball and dropped into the gutter.

  — There’s someone calling you, Christopher shouted up the stairs. — Pick up the extension. He sounds like a moron.

  Harry Chapman waited for the click that came when Christopher replaced the receiver before saying:

  — Hello.

  — Is that you, Harry?

  — Yes.

  — It’s Ralph.

  — You’ve taken a long time to call me. It must be over a year since we met by accident that afternoon.

  — Do you want to see me again?

  Jack, high up in the crow’s nest, was silent.

  — Yes.

  — Same place? Saturday?

  — Saturday’s fine. Six o’clock at Green Park station. Is that convenient?

  — Yes, Skinny Boy. That suits me.

  They met. They went to a pub where the lavatories were designated Gentlemen and Ladies and talked inconsequentially. Ralph was still working as a gas fitter and Harry was still writing the same book he had been slaving over a year ago.

  — I can miss my last train home if you want.

  — Yes, I do.

  — Let me remind you I’m a man, Harry, and don’t you ever forget it.

  — As if I would.

  — Just in case you’ve got other ideas.

  — Not at all.

  — That’s sorted then.

  They ate and drank in a Lebanese restaurant, where Ralph was slightly disconcerted by the hot and cold meze Harry ordered. The food, he pronounced, was ‘fiddly’. After the meal, they checked into another one-night cheap hotel. This establishment had pretensions to grandeur. It was cleaner than its grubby predecessor. The soap in the bathroom was scented with lavender, the favoured smell of his beloved Aunt Rose.

  Ralph did not feign sleep and there was no declaration of drunkenness to excuse and account for his unnatural behaviour.

  He surprised Harry in the shower, clutching Skinny Boy close to him and squeezing the breath out of his once-puny body. Ralph was asserting his brutish authority, but without his long-gone cronies to impress. The two of them were as they were on the day of the race in March 1950,
but the game didn’t end with Harry’s being cast roughly aside. No, it had to continue now, take its logical course, as Harry had wanted it to and – Harry was quick to realise – as Ralph had hoped it would as well. The taunting of Leo Duggan, the jokes about circumcised cocks, the whooping and cheering of Ralph’s followers, were camouflage for Ralph’s real purpose – to dominate the school swot in the only way he knew and relished.

  The game, the ritual, was to be replayed a dozen or more times during the next few years. Some of the one-night cheap hotels were cheaper than others, though none of them was as suicide-inducing as the very first setting for their late-flowering rapture. If Ralph was ever tempted to kiss his plaything, he kept the temptation in check, but fondling became acceptable to the man whose essential manhood Harry was forbidden to forget.

  Harry Chapman looked forward to their liaisons, packing a small suitcase in advance with a change of socks and underwear, a fresh shirt perhaps, and his washbag, in case he felt like shaving in the morning. Ralph did the same. Their luggage was evidence of the overpowering passion they shared and gratified in anonymous rooms and suites on stolen Saturday nights.

  One element, and one alone, was missing from these entanglements, Harry Chapman was shocked to acknowledge. The fear that had possessed him and, to be truthful, excited him when Queequeg had switched off the pink light and the tremulous Ishmael had lain expectantly beside him in the darkness was never to be replicated. Jack’s warning whispers had been silenced. The anticipation of immediate pleasure was undiminished, but the terror – yes, he had felt terror in that seedy, flock-wallpapered room on the third floor – belonged now and for ever to the past.

  — Good morning, Sunshine.

  — Good morning to you, Doctor.

  — Have you had a comfortable night?

  — As far as I know, which isn’t very much.

  — You’re on the mend, I’m happy to tell you.

  Mr Russell and his team walked on, and Harry Chapman dreaded the imminent appearance of the ghoulish Nurse Dunckley. To his surprised relief, it was Nancy Driver who came to comfort him.

  — Hello, Harry.

  — Oh, Nancy, am I glad to see you.

  — The feeling’s mutual.

  — What are you doing in here?

  — You and your questions. I’m here, Mr Chapman, to give you the good news – good for us, that is – that you will be returning to the Zoffany Ward later today.

  — Thank God.

  — We’ll expect a poem or two in exchange for our services.

  — I’ll try my best.

  — That’s our Harry. I’ll leave you in peace now. Goodbye for the present.

  He had survived for a whole week – was it, in fact, as long as that? – without a book or books. All he had read was the newspaper Pamela had given him, with the obituary of Leo, the kindest and most cultivated of his friends. Nothing else. He must be getting well again for what he craved now was the printed word.

  It was the same craving he’d had in childhood. During his long silent convalescence, the nurses had brought him comics to look at.

  One of them – her name was lost to memory, but her face would reassemble itself whenever he willed it – pointed at, and spoke, the funny words in the bubbles coming out of the mouths of Desperate Dan or Dennis the Menace. Back in the house near the gasworks and the candle factory, he gabbled their exclamations in his childish treble on the precious afternoons when his sister Jessie, returning from school, handed him the garishly coloured copies of the Dandy and the Beano, his first means of escape into the imagination.

  — Take your head out of that rubbish. Your dinner’s on the table.

  — Just a minute, Mum.

  — Enough of your minutes. That’s how days and months and years go by with nothing done. Minutes add up, Harry Chapman.

  Oh, the blessed days, months and years when Harry Chapman did nothing more adventurous than reading and wondering, the two in harmony with the old enemy Time out of sight and of no immediate concern to his giddily occupied mind.

  The last hotel in which Ralph and Harry passed a night together was neither cheap nor dismal.

  — You gone mad, Harry? This place is the lap of bloody luxury.

  — Are you complaining?

  — Can’t say I am.

  They breakfasted on scrambled eggs, toast, coffee, orange juice and champagne, brought to them in room 535 by a knowing Filipino, who winked at Harry when he signed the bill.

  Ralph had never mentioned that he had a sister called Beryl. Harry Chapman heard of her existence when she phoned him some weeks after the assignation in luxurious surroundings. She had news for him, she announced ominously. He invited her to his home that evening.

  — What a beautiful house you have, Mr Chapman.

  — Thank you.

  He led her into his study and brought her the glass of sherry she asked for. It was her one and only tipple, she confessed.

  — What is your news, Beryl?

  — I had to tell you face to face.

  He waited.

  — We’re face to face.

  — Ralph’s dead. He did himself in. He did away with himself.

  He wanted to know how and why, but was restrained from questioning her by embarrassment or tact – he couldn’t decide which.

  — He was very cut up, Beryl continued. — He found out his daughter Christine – she was the world to him – was in London, but she didn’t wish to see him. That was the final straw, Mr Chapman –

  — Harry, please –

  — As I say, the final straw. The little cow, if you’ll pardon my French, told him she hated his guts. I blame that cast-iron bitch of a wife of his. Mum and me warned Ralph that he was heading for trouble in spades if he went to the altar with Denise, but he wouldn’t listen to us. ‘Denise is the bee’s knees,’ he liked to joke. I haven’t told her and Christine that he’s gone. Let them find out for themselves if they’re interested, which I bet they’re not.

  — Have you had the funeral?

  — Yes, we have. Very quiet. Very private.

  — I am so sorry, Beryl. I am so very sorry. What I don’t understand is what you’re doing here, why you’ve come to see me –

  — It was his wish, Harry. It was in the note he left. He had a high regard for you. He said he was over the moon when he met you again after thirty years and what a small world it was that you were both in the same chemist’s at the same time.

  — You are kind, Beryl. I am touched by your kindness.

  Beryl produced a sealed envelope from her handbag.

  — This is for you, Harry, from Ralph. You open it when I leave. Ralph told me and Mum that you had more brains than were good for you when you were schoolboys.

  — Did he, really?

  — He really did.

  Then Beryl said that Norman, her husband, would be in a tizzy because his supper wasn’t on the table, and Terry, their bone-idle son, would be staring at the oven as if it was a spaceship from Mars. Typical men.

  Harry Chapman kissed Beryl on both cheeks and she responded in kind.

  — I’m afraid he hanged himself, Harry. In the stairwell of those awful bloody lodgings he ended up in. My lovely Ralph.

  It was late in the evening when he opened the envelope. On a scrap of lined paper, Ralph had written:

  Dear Harry

  Words and myself dont get along but here goes. We got along fine we did with me doing something that took yours truly by surprise. I thank God it is a small world we live in. Here is a token of my esteem for you Harry and wear it to remember me. Your gas fitter mate and chum is getting out of it all.

  Ralph

  Underneath his signature, Ralph had added a solitary ‘x’. An afterthought, perhaps? No, it was an expression of genuine affection.

  Ralph’s ‘x’, set down in extremis, denoted the kiss he had never conferred upon Harry; the kiss the clandestine lovers had been too wary or too frightened to share.

  Th
e token of Ralph’s esteem was a ring that was too large for even the thickest of Harry’s fingers.

  Sunday

  — Well, you’re a survivor, Harry Chapman. I’ll say that much for you. Not like your father, who gave up the ghost between two blinks of an eye.

  — That’s a monstrous thing to say. Dad was worn out, and with good reason. He fought in the Flanders trenches, Mother, in case you’ve forgotten. Private 36319. I’m still here thanks to the advances in medicine that have been made in the sixty years since his death.

  — I didn’t ask for a lecture.

  — You’re getting one just the same. If Dad were alive now, and ill, and in this hospital, the chances are that he would be lying where I am, listening to you telling him that he’s a survivor –

  He opened his eyes and within minutes was aware that he had been transported – somehow, at some time unknown to him – back to the Zoffany Ward. It was almost like being home.

  — I’m the welcoming committee, Harry, said Marybeth Myslawchuk. — Your other friends have the day off.

  — Which day is it?

  — Sunday. And a pretty wet and chilly one at that.

  — I think I need something to read.

  — I can get you a paper.

  — I’d prefer a book.

  — I’ll see what I can find.

  The beds on either side of him were unoccupied. He felt strangely sad not to have the company of the infirm at close hand.

  — You could always picture me, spewing up blood.

  — No, Christopher. Please rest in peace.

  — Not while you’re alive I won’t. I’m here to gnaw at your guilty conscience.

  — My guilty conscience? You were hell-bent on self-destruction.

  — And you were the ideal accomplice. You more than aided me in my mission to wipe Christopher Riley off the face of the earth.

  This was a patent untruth, since it was the pitying Harry Chapman who had nursed the ungrateful Christopher during his final, gin-free illness. He had wanted the man who had declared and delivered his obsessive love for him twenty-two years earlier to go on living, and to be well enough, what’s more, to go on living alone, with his victim Harry safely stowed elsewhere.