The Centre of the Green

by John Bowen

  He would not bother, then, to write down the dream. Now he must get back to sleep. He closed his eyes, lay on his back, conscientiously tried to empty his mind, and practised controlled relaxation, beginning with the toes. After about a quarter of an hour of this, he was so tense that he decided to try thinking about something definite instead, and so go to sleep by forgetting that he wanted to. What should he think about? His work? There was nothing much in that to occupy his mind. (Conference Notes. “Harrogate once again made an ideal venue for the annual gathering of the Amalgamated Society of Bathroom Tile and Garden Ornament Manufacturers. An exciting outing to Knaresborough Castle formed the climax of the week’s festivities.”) “What exactly do you do, dear?” his mother had once asked him, and he had replied, “Sub-editing mostly. I check the proofs for stray commas, and try to find attachments for our contributors’ unattached participles.” (Personality of the Month. “Ron Whitstable is the well-loved Secretary of Batter sea Potteries ‘Old Cronies’ cricket team. Although crippled with arthritis for the last twenty years, the game is nevertheless no stranger to him.”) A journalist leads such an interesting life, meeting constantly the people who make the news, and the people behind the headlines.

  He looked at the illuminated dial of his watch. Two-thirty. How many hours to go? This was a Saturday morning, and he would lie in late—about nine-thirty in summer; in winter, it would be much longer. Late on Saturday, late again on Sunday, back to work on Monday—but not, he remembered, this Monday, which was August Bank Holiday. Three days to fill. Not as difficult as Easter though. The weather would be fine. He would go to the Serpentine, and lie in the sun, drugging himself, dazing himself with sunlight, and so the days would pass. A Bank Holiday in the middle of summer was not so bad. Almost, it was something to look forward to. Thinking of the sun, he fell asleep, waking again to the red of sunlight behind the eyes.

  When he awoke, it was day. There was a thick wedge of sunlight on the carpet beneath the window; it was all the direct sunlight that Charles’ basement ever had, and it extended about four feet into the room. Charles rose, and began the day. The radio announcer spoke of showers, but announcers are often wrong. Charles scanned the sky, and saw no sign of showers. He hurried through his scanty shopping, and had reached the Serpentine by eleven o’clock. Already, emboldened by the sun and the clear sky, people were coming from all over Hyde Park to form a queue outside the entrance gate. Teen-agers, married couples, families with children, lovers, pairs of friends, young women on their own, and men of all ages also on their own, they carried towels and bathing costumes, packets of food, inflatable rubber balls, gramophones or radios, beach bags and even (Charles saw at the head of the queue) a guitar.

  The queue lengthened more quickly than the people in it moved forward, but they did move forward nevertheless. Immediately in front of Charles, three generations queued together; the middle-aged mother and father, the three children, and the old lady in black. “I’m tired,” the old lady said.

  “Sit down under the trees then.”

  “I don’t like to.”

  “Nobody’s going to look at you. You’re old,” the mother said. The old lady lowered herself to the ground, and sat in the shade, her black stockings and flat-heeled black shoes stretched out in front of her, while the queue passed on.

  Soon Charles, clad in bathing trunks, was inside, lying face downwards on his towel in the sun. This was what he had come to do. He lay there as on a raft, the sun warm on his back and shoulders, listening to the surge and murmur of the crowd around him. He was in a different element. It had warmth and noise and a scent. He floated in it. It buoyed him up, lapped around him, bounded him on all sides. Yet the noise was not a single noise, the scent not a single scent, but many scents and many noises were blended together, and first one and then another would steal from the general ruck, occupy his attention for a while, and then mingle again with the rest or be displaced by a successor. Suntan oil. Perfume. The distant shrieking of the group by the shower. A shout from the diving board. Sweat. A child collecting empty pop bottles to sell back to the cafeteria attendants. “Aren’t you going to do my back?” Someone on the radio announcing the news. A whiff of the water from someone who had just come out of it. “Well, you are bold, aren’t you? Go on—he’s probably trade.” Happy … happy … happy … where a gramophone needle had stuck in a record. Oranges. Charles lay there, savouring it for a while, then dozed for a while, then tried to read for a while, then dozed again. He looked up, and the soles of a woman’s feet were in line with his eyes. He turned to his left, and there was a gentleman in a silken slip, made, it appeared, from a survey map of some part of China. Beyond this gentleman, a young man and his girl lay holding hands. Beyond them a skiffle group had formed, its members sitting upright in a circle, and chanting, “Freight train! Freight train!” to a steady thrumming from two guitars. From Charles’ right, a voice said, “Thirty-five quid a week actually,” to which another voice commented, “I say. That’s rather a lot to chuck up, even in D’ar es Salaam.”

  “And our own house. They’re pretty good to you out there really.”

  “Must be.”

  “Couldn’t stand it, though. Not any more. I just chucked it all up, and caught a plane back. Cost me a hundred and forty quid actually.”

  “Does the firm know you’re back.”

  “Not yet. I didn’t bring anything with me, you know. It was just an impulse really. Just three shirts and my other suit. Didn’t even bring my photograph album.”

  “Hard luck.”

  “Couldn’t stand it.”

  A pause. Charles cocked an ear to listen. “You know,” said the second voice as if working it out, “you hadn’t even been married a year.”

  “Six months actually. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Well,” the second voice said, “I always thought Eileen was a bit neurotic actually. Sorry, old boy.”

  “That’s O.K.”

  Love, oh love, oh careless love! [the skiffle group sang.]

  Love, oh love, oh careless love!

  Love, oh love, oh careless love!

  See what love has done to me.

  “Sounds pretty mixed up,” the second voice said.

  “Yes. The whole thing’s pretty mixed up actually.”

  “What’re you going to do now?”

  “Don’t know really. I’m pretty mixed up.”

  “Sounds like it. Got a place to stay?”

  “I found a room in Bayswater. Just moved in this morning, and went straight round to see you actually. Funny when you think I was in D’ar es Salaam yesterday. Your landlady said you’d be here.”

  “Oh. Seen any of the other chaps?”

  “No.”

  “Not many left around actually. Except old Gaston, and he’s always busy. He’s with Burridge’s now, you know.”

  “Sounds his sort of thing.”

  “Yes. Works like a black, old Gaston.”

  “Always did.”

  “Yes, he did really. Like a black.”

  “Mind you,” the first voice said. “The blacks don’t really work all that bloody hard, you know.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Not like old Gaston.”

  Nothing to say, [a radio cried.]

  And no one to say it.

  Nothing to say.

  The moment has gone.

  “You know,” the second voice said, “I’ve got to be getting along soon. Promised I’d meet a chap this afternoon. Glad you found me, though.”

  The first voice said, “I’ll stay on here for a bit. Not much else to do.”

  “Look me up.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  Charles heard one of the men get up and begin to gather his things together. Then his attention was diverted. A woman’s voice said, “Oh, you are awful!” and the feminine feet in front of him kicked out suddenly, and struck him on the forehead. A large pink blonde girl in front sat up in easy consternation. With
her was another girl of similar size and colouring, and between them was a man whom Charles took to be Maltese. “I am sorry,” the girl said. “It was my friend, teasing me.”

  Charles said, “It’s all right,” but the girls did not forget the incident. They continued to giggle and whisper about it. Charles did not wish to pretend not to hear them, so he decided to take a swim.

  Stepping delicately between the bodies stretched out on the grass, he noticed a bank of cloud growing in the west. Surely the announcer could not be right after all. He waded over the slippery concrete at the edge of the Serpentine, and into deeper water, swimming out until he could see the clock on the roof of the cafeteria. Only five to two. Rain would wreck his programme for the day; he could not idle it away in rain. He swam to a buoy, sat on it, and watched the gloom in the west move across the sky towards him. So swift a change, it seemed, from blue sky and glittering sunshine to purple and the brown tint of approaching rain. He shivered. Already, he could see, the sunbathers were sitting up, donning shirts and jumpers, and some of them, like early deserters from a beaten army, were making towards the shelter of the trees or the changing tents. The first drops hit the water. Charles submerged so that only his head was exposed, and watched first the widening ripples, and then the whole surface of the water broken and flecked. What would the refugee from D’ar es Salaam do now?—sit alone in his rented room, or pursue old Gaston in the rain? Then Charles remembered his own towel and book, still lying on the grass, and swam swiftly to save them from soaking.

  The shower was over within fifteen minutes, but the sky did not clear, and the grass was wet. There was no point in staying any longer. The day had gone wrong. Charles, who had planned to spend it in the sun, and go to a movie in the evening, now had to use the movie to fill his afternoon. It was an English movie, of the kind which has stars and starlets in it, instead of actors and actresses; there were bosoms and blondes and a bursting dam. The second feature consisted of three television playlets about Scotland Yard strung together, and had been made in England by an American company with a largely Canadian cast. There was also a newsreel in which the Queen Mother returned from one Dominion, Princess Margaret visited another, the Duke of Edinburgh wore academic dress, Prince Charles and Princess Anne played with a corgi, and the Americans launched a new atomic missile at Cape Canaveral.

  Charles left the cinema at seven thirty. He went to a coffee bar, sat alone at the counter, and ate a “Continental Sandwich”, in which only one slice of bread was used instead of two, and on it were arranged a thin piece of ham, half a gherkin, a segment of tomato, some wilted lettuce, and parsley that smelled of fish; it cost two shillings and sixpence. He ate it quickly, drank a glass of milk, and walked home. Alone in his room, he read a book until eleven o’clock, then made himself a cup of tea, and went to bed. So much for Saturday.

  *

  So much for Saturday. At the cottage, it was a difficult, fiddling sort of day. Mrs. Baker did not bother to cook any lunch, since there was nobody but herself to eat it, and for much of the morning she had nothing to do. Thereafter it seemed pointless to take her usual afternoon nap; she was not in the least tired. Her routine was broken, and the day emptied of its usual trivial occupations.

  Of course she could have watched television during the afternoon, but she did not wish to become one of these addicts you read about. She never allowed herself to switch on until six o’clock for the News. The afternoon was spent restlessly. It was not the day for dusting, but she dusted the drawing-room. She put on a wide hat, and took a basket, and pulled what weeds she could find from the borders. She made a pot of tea, and drank one cup of it. “Never more than one cigarette” a day was her rule; she usually smoked it after supper, when she could really enjoy it. But this afternoon she had one cigarette with her tea, and several afterwards, until at five-thirty she switched on the television set, and watched the last half hour of a children’s programme.

  Later on, as dusk settled over the countryside and the room grew grey, Mrs. Baker made more tea and cut herself some bread and butter, which she ate from a tray where she sat watching television. She sat on silently in the darkened room, with the only light coming from the bright flickering screen in the corner, and the voices, the images, seemed to flow easily into one another, asking nothing from her, meaning nothing to her, just the grey light and the faraway unimportant noises soothing and relaxing her nerves.

  Only one thing was missing. For some time it worried her, as she cast about in her mind to identify it. She was used to it; it was a necessary accompaniment to the light and the voices. It took her a long time before she realized that what she missed was the steady, dependable irritation of her husband’s clearing his throat, hrrmm! hrrmm! hrrmm! hrrmm! as distracting and habitual as a cricket in the wall.

  *

  It is nothing much. It is no more than a shadow in the mind, but it can spread. You lie in bed, gazing at the window, and you do not want to get up, and you do want to stay where you are. You can see the blank wall of the area, and the railings above it, and on the pavement beyond the railings a pair of trousered legs and the bottom of a raincoat. The legs go by. You hear cars passing, and the clop and rattle of the milkman’s horse and cart. You cannot see the sky, but the railings are wet, and the pavement is wet, and the light is dull, so you know what sort of day it is outside.

  You lie there, and your watch tells you that the time is five to ten, and there is no more than a faint shadow in your mind. There are plenty of things to do if you set yourself to think of them. There is coffee to make and drink, the Sunday papers to read, a beer at the local, lunch somewhere, listening to the speakers in Hyde Park, a cinema again in the evening. And as you construct this list in your mind, after each item a small voice asks, “And then?”

  It is no more than a shadow. Soon it will be gone, like the morning taste in your mouth. You get up. Each movement seems to be made in a vacuum, dead and complete in itself. There is no reason for one movement to lead into another, because there is no reason why you should be doing anything at all, except that the act of doing it eats a little time.

  Charles took his Sunday Times, Observer, and News of the World from the pile on the hall table. Today’s milk had not yet arrived, and yesterday’s had already gone sour in the humid air. Charles brought his coffee from the kitchen to the front room, and drank it black while he worked through the papers.

  It took an hour and a half. The Sunday Times was serializing the autobiography of the only British general who had not published one already; this week’s instalment was headed “Memories of New Delhi”, and Charles did not read it. The Observer carried a long challenging article, with pictures of some Matabele, called “Spotlight on West Africa”; Charles remembered that there had been a spotlight on East Africa last week, and a note in italic type at the bottom of the page told him that spotlights on South, North and Central Africa would follow. The dramatic critic of the Sunday Times was writing about a new play in Paris, and the dramatic critic of the Observer about a new play in New York. The Sunday Times film critic began her column, “I have now seen this Japanese film five times, and am beginning to find it heavy going,” and the Observer’s film critic had been to Studio One to see a film about a small child and a dog; she wrote that if only there were more films about small children and dogs, the industry wouldn’t be in such a bad way. In The News of the World, Charles found a news item about an insurance agent, who drove his Humber Hawk between Pinner and Pall Mall wearing nothing but a plastic mac, his shoes and socks, and the cut-off bottoms of a pair of grey worsted trousers sewn to the plastic mac. His nakedness had been noticed by a garage attendant, and he had been arrested by the police. Questioned in court, the man had replied, “We all have our little peculiarities. This is mine.”

  Charles had read the papers. He lit a cigarette. “And now?” said the voice, “And now?” He washed up, made the bed, and tidied his basement flat. “And now?” He took a book, and walked between showers to
the local for a drink. The little tables outside were deserted, for all the seats were damp. Instead, the Sunday customers of the local were packed into its three bars; the air reeked of damp raincoats and expensive scent. Most of the young men who went there for a drink on Sunday mornings, wore Daks trousers, hacking-jackets, white shirts, and silk squares knotted at the throat. Their wives and girlfriends laughed either a lot or not at all, and said “off” instead of “off”; many of them wore tight tartan trousers, and pullovers belonging to the young men. On a sunny Sunday, the local was a pleasant place for Charles to idle away an hour. There would be somewhere to sit down, perhaps the scent of lilac, cold lager to drink, and everyone decently dispersed at the little tables. But now, when all the young men and women were crowded together, and most of them were shouting, and Pimms and pink gins passed hazardously from hand to hand, Charles found it almost unendurable. Trapped half-way between the entrance and the bar, he had to control an impulse to fight his way out again. A voice said, “And then mummy died, so of course we moved in right away.” All these people! “Goes like a bird, old man,” somebody else said, “like a bird.” He didn’t want to be with these people; he shouldn’t have come. You can’t be part of a group, unless you’re one of the group. He would do better to drift around the streets for a while, and then have lunch. “And then?”

  He walked slowly, looking at the houses, examining shop windows, reading some of the postcard advertisements on the boards outside newsagents shops—“Doris is back at the usual address, and will always be glad to welcome old friends.” “Attractive, eighteen-year-old photographic model ….” “Bed-sit. Suit two. No coloureds.” Should he bother to have lunch at all? He was not hungry, but it would be something to do. What am I going to do today? How am I going to get through it? But he must see things in proportion. There was no reason for hysteria. The day would pass. Sundays had come and gone before—why, there was one every week! “The well-stocked mind is never bored,” he thought. No? Scraps of academic cant came floating into his mind; “accuracy of taste”, “the appreciation of true ideas”. To Dr. Leavis, he supposed, boredom was never a problem; he simply read D. H. Lawrence all over again.