by Olivia Fane
‘Thomas Marius.’
‘In what capacity are you inquiring?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘To what organization do you belong?’
‘The University.’
June Briggs sighed audibly. ‘What exactly is the nature of your inquiry?’
‘It’s about Josiah’s Nelson’s father. I want his address.’
‘And why exactly is the University wanting to know about Josiah’s father?’
‘It’s my personal inquiry,’ said Thomas Marius.
‘Then I’m afraid the information is confidential.’
‘Would you be able to forward him a letter on my behalf?’
‘I’m sorry, we can’t help you, Mr Marius.’ But then suddenly curiosity got the better of June Briggs, and she asked, ‘How do you know Josiah?’
‘I’m afraid that information is also confidential,’ said Thomas, coldly. He hung up on her. But he was making progress: now he knew for certain that Josiah’s father at least had an address.
Thomas’s self-recrimination became even harder to bear. So intent had he been on their present pleasures, he had never given Josiah the space to talk about his past. In his brutal categorisation of his fellow-creatures, childhoods, like dreams, were only interesting to the people who had actually had them. He’d never even bothered to ask Josiah what he remembered about his mother; he didn’t even know their Christian names, nor whether they’d been kind to him, nor whether they’d been rich or poor. So, had Thomas really expected some sort of confession from his protégé, when it was evident he had so little interest?
In the end Thomas wrote Josiah a note, which he delivered by hand.
‘My dear Josiah, how will you ever forgive me? I am a brute, I know. I deserve to be gagged and kicked. But here is an alternative. Would you like to come with me to Siena this summer, a beautiful medieval city in Italy? Would they let you? We could go away together for the whole of August. What do you think? With affection and huge regret, Tom.’
As soon as Josiah read the letter, he set fire to it under the beech tree. But he couldn’t get it out of his head. The apology was neither here nor there. The image, rather, that kept returning to him was that of a sun-baked road, narrow, dusty, and of himself walking down it, sometimes alone, sometimes with Tom. And he didn’t know or care where it was going but it was of paramount importance that he was on it and it was taking him somewhere else, somewhere other than this; and he needed that road so badly that he thought he would go mad if he didn’t find it. So on the next Saturday morning, with a strange, layered mood that had no centre to it, he set off for his Latin lesson as though there hadn’t been a cross word between them.
Thomas’s delight on seeing Josiah was tempered by the realisation that he was not himself. And Thomas was wise enough not to entirely blame himself on this fact, for yes, he might have been the cause of Josiah’s introspection, but not for the demise of his parents. Thomas had always considered himself a bad tutor; he was not good at dealing with the emotional problems of undergraduates, he didn’t even take them very seriously. But the boy standing before him at that moment he loved. Anything Josiah was enduring, he also endured. And Josiah had a face which made you feel you were looking into his very soul, and even if he were to tell a hundred lies that morning, his face could only tell the truth.
As both were shy and diffident, at first Latin was the theme of the morning. Josiah was almost at the end of Book Three in the Oxford course. How grateful they both were for the exercises which confronted them! There’s a true saying that routine takes the place of happiness, that the smaller satisfaction of getting a translation exactly right is all that most of us are capable of. They went on together till they had covered every article of grammar in the book; and suddenly the books were shut and something needed to be said.
‘Are you still angry with me?’ asked Thomas, after about a minute’s silence, during which Josiah didn’t even look up.
Josiah shook his head.
‘Did you think at all about my proposition?’
‘Yes,’ said Josiah, and gave Thomas a half-smile, but his attempt (which failed) to make it a larger one was the lasting impression.
‘But you haven’t made your mind up.’
‘I have! I have!’ sung Josiah inside himself, but he slunk down in his chair and said nothing.
‘You have months to think about it, that’s okay. No pressure, Josiah.’
Then Josiah began to pack up his books in his rucksack and made as if to go.
‘Look, you don’t have to answer me. But you’ve left me… how do I say this? With unanswered questions. You don’t have to answer me.’
‘My father’s in hospital,’ said Josiah, meekly.
Thomas’s first thought was ‘Broadmoor’. Regular hospitals didn’t have long stay cases.
‘Do you know where?’
‘Fulbright,’ answered Josiah. ‘He’s been there since I was seven.’
‘Do you visit him?’
Josiah shook his head. ‘They won’t let me.’
‘Why not?’
‘They say that I would be bad for his health, and he would be bad for mine. He can’t speak, you see. He’s a mute.’
‘Have you ever wanted to visit him?’
Josiah was crumpling up before him. Here was the boy of a fortnight ago; here was the boy crying silently into his scarf. But this time Thomas was gentle, and he knelt by Josiah and stroked his hair, and every feeling of remorse he’d had these past few days was suddenly released.
‘Josiah, I’m so sorry,’ he mumbled, ‘I’m such an idiot, please forgive me.’
And then, when Josiah just cried into his chest like a small child, he said, ‘Who are these villains, that they won’t let you see your father?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Josiah. ‘The state. The people in charge.’
‘Then the people in charge should be shot, shouldn’t they?’ said Thomas, with more spirit.
‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Josiah, laughing amidst his tears.
‘But you and I, we don’t take any notice of people in charge, do we? We follow our hearts, we follow what is right, don’t we? Nothing will stop us!’
‘No!’ agreed Josiah, looking up in admiration.
‘Right is might! What do you think, Josiah?’
Josiah nodded enthusiastically.
‘Fulbright’s not far from here, is it? I’m going to order a taxi now, what do you think?’
Josiah looked terrified, but Thomas missed it, so keen was he to pursue justice.
A kind of freedom descended on Thomas: a new power, like breaking through the starting tape of a race. No sooner was the taxi ordered than he wished they were walking to the taxi rank, despite the closest being half a mile away. But the taxi arrived promptly, and the two of them slipped into the back seat.
‘To Fulbright Hospital,’ he instructed the driver, and to the boy leaning against him, he said, ‘Let’s go, Jo!’
Josiah had goose pimples and was shivering, and Thomas wanted to put his arm around him, but instead he took off his jacket and put it around Josiah’s shoulders.
‘It’s cold for April,’ he said.
As they entered the gates to the hospital, there were a hundred cherry trees in bloom; even the sun was out.
‘Where to, sir?’ asked the driver.
‘The main reception, please,’ said Thomas. There was no stopping him.
Josiah knew that his parents had met here. They used to have jokes about it, about their fellow patients, and even the staff. The place had been built as a Victorian asylum, and as Josiah looked up from the taxi window at the huge grey stone structure looming before him, it seemed so sad, lifeless, and sombre that he marvelled at his mother’s humour.
‘I don’t know your father’s name,’ said Thomas, as they got out of the taxi and braced themselves for what was to come.
‘Gibson.’
‘Is that his first name?’
‘Yes. Gib
son Nelson. My grandmother’s maiden name was Gibson.’
‘Did you know your grandmother?’
‘My father was quite old. Both his parents were dead when I was born.’
‘Were you close to your father?’
Josiah didn’t answer him, but was visibly trying to hold himself together.
‘I’m sorry. That was a stupid question,’ said Thomas.
Thomas walked up to the reception desk in the main hall. A young, pregnant woman was knitting behind it, and asked them if she could help.
‘We’ve come to visit Gibson Nelson, a patient here. I’m afraid I don’t know what ward he’s on.’
The woman put down her knitting and typed in his name on her computer.
‘Beeson ward,’ she said, smiling. ‘Down that corridor, first staircase on the right, second floor.’
‘Thank you,’ said Thomas, and took Josiah by the hand. ‘That was alarmingly easy.’
They found the staircase, which was narrow and badly lit. Thomas went first and Josiah a few steps behind him. Thomas made a remark about Victorian hospitals but Josiah didn’t hear him and didn’t ask him to repeat it. Thomas wanted to look behind him and see the expression on Josiah’s face, but he resisted. Sometimes privacy is all we have, he thought.
The ward consisted of one enormous room with four dormitories leading off it. There were three vast arched windows, perhaps eight feet high, and if these were a credit to the Victorian age, their skimpy orange crepe curtains put the late twentieth century to shame. In one corner of the room five residents were watching a quiz show on the television: one was persistent in shouting the answers, four in asking him to shut up. A woman of about sixty with hair the same shade as her plain grey serge dress was sorting out socks in a laundry basket at a large table in the centre of the room. It was difficult to tell whether she was a resident or a nurse. Thomas approached her. Suddenly the boldness of his venture appalled him, and he needed to be insulated from it.
‘We’re looking for the ward sister,’ he said, suddenly wishing he’d managed things more officially. For this particular woman, whoever she was, wouldn’t have understood that the boy beside him was about to see his father for the first time in seven years.
‘She’s having her lunch break. I always say, we’re all entitled to a lunch break.’ The woman laughed. Her yellow teeth made Thomas think she was mad, but he corrected himself. She was wearing a uniform.
‘Of course,’ said Thomas, uneasily. ‘When are you expecting her back?’
‘Do you mean Daphne? She’ll be off till quarter past one. Or give her another twenty minutes if she takes tea.’
‘Does she usually take tea?’
‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no,’ said the woman sharply, as she continued to sort out the socks into pairs.
‘Would you happen to know where we might find Gibson Nelson?’
‘Gibson?’ said the woman looking up. ‘Yeah. He’ll be in that room over there with the blue door.’
‘Thank you,’ said Thomas.
The woman waited by her basket, smirking, hands on hips. ‘There’s no need to knock,’ she snickered. ‘No one ever knocks here.’
Inside the room were three lavatories without doors.
‘Isn’t he sitting on one of them?’ she squealed, suddenly helpless with laughter. ‘I would’ve bet my own baby daughter that that’s where you’d have found him. Well p’raps he’s over there through that door, with the ladies.’
By now the woman was bent double, her face creased like a premature baby. One of the quiz-watchers told her to shut up and turned up the volume of the TV.
‘Gawd, they’ve got no sense of humour,’ she managed, trying to straighten herself up. ‘You’ll find Gibson in the men’s ward. Over there.’
No sooner had she divulged the information, than she was reduced yet again to such hysterics that she could only vaguely gesticulate towards Gibson’s dormitory.
Josiah didn’t even recognize him. The large bulk of a man in the doorway with expressionless eyes was no-one he knew. He’d remembered his father as strong and well-built, but now his stomach bulged over his belt and an open shirt button revealed white, overhanging flesh. He’d remembered his father with thick, brown hair, but now it was thin and grey. He didn’t make any attempt to speak, but breathed though his nostrils, which made him sound like an old, neglected animal.
But Gibson recognized Josiah, and life began to suffuse his face. He attempted to smile, but his muscles had forgotten what to do, and he nodded instead.
‘This is your father, is that right? Is this Gibson?’
Then Gibson said quietly, ‘Jo.’
It suddenly occurred to Thomas that no one had ever properly known the boy’s name: that he himself was a mere mimic, and when he heard his father speak it, he knew immediately that he was listening to its originator, its rightful owner. The twenty feet between them were like a sea; the voice, a siren; the walk to his father, a journey. Josiah lay his head on his father’s chest and waited for the remembered hands to hold him there; and when they didn’t come soon enough, he cried. He closed his eyes and felt the tears pouring down his cheeks in a continuous, silent stream, and when the hands eventually came nothing could have stopped their flow.
‘Jo,’ said Gibson again.
Gibson took hold of his son’s hand and took him into his dormitory. He made him sit down on his bed while he began rummaging in his top drawer. Josiah watched his hands, fumbling, uncertain. There was a man asleep on the bed next to him, mouth agape, and another sitting on an upright chair beside the bed opposite, filling in a crossword.
At last Gibson found what he was looking for and he sat down on the bed next to him. He looked as happy as an unsmiling person could, and he began stroking Josiah’s cheek. Then he thrust the contents of his hand into Josiah’s, eyes ablaze, and for a full minute Gibson’s large hands held Josiah’s between them. He nodded, and Josiah said, ‘Thank you, Dad.’
It was not until they were on the bus home that Josiah understood the significance of his present. It was a crumpled pack of Horringays’s lilac seed, dated October 1991, the month they took him away. His father had been going to plant them that very morning.
Chapter Eleven
WHILE THOMAS AND JOSIAH were planting lilac seeds in a neglected bed in his garden, Greg was watching from the window.
‘Stay here,’ instructed Thomas. ‘There’s something I should have done a long time ago.’
Greg saw him coming and sat himself down at the kitchen table with Thomas’ newspaper. He was ready; in fact, he was surprised he hadn’t been driven out weeks ago. After all, grooming a boy for the purposes of having sex with him was an imprisonable offence. He’d even let most of the engineering department know of his suspicions, but no one there was quite sure of Greg himself and hadn’t taken his accusations seriously. He’d say, ‘I’m thinking of calling the social services about it,’ but no-one rose to the bait, and he never did.
Thomas found him and said, ‘You know what, Greg. You snoop. I don’t like it. I believe I have to give you a month’s notice.’
‘I don’t snoop,’ said Greg, defiantly. ‘It’s you who behave so… obviously.’
‘This is my house.’
‘And I pay you effing rent,’ said Greg. ‘I never asked for the effing peep show to be thrown in.’
‘The peep show’s in your effing head, Greg. So have your little fantasies. I just don’t want you to have them under my roof. Do you understand?’
‘What I understand,’ said Greg, standing up and reddening, ‘is you need privacy.’
‘Thank you. For a man who understands so little, you’re being surprisingly sensitive.’
‘I’ll pack, then,’ said Greg. He walked out of the room, and twenty minutes later Thomas and Josiah heard the front door slam.
Greg’s bedroom was badly in need of purification: but those two did it. Within twenty-four hours the purple walls had had three coats of brilliant white an
d even the carpet had been taken to the dump.
‘When I’m sixteen I can legally live with you. I can be your lodger. That’s only fifteen months time, you know,’ said Josiah, lying on the mattress with arms folded behind his head.
‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Thomas, looking down at the boy from the doorway.
‘What do you mean you’re “not sure”? Not sure it’d be legal or not sure you’d want me here all the time?’ Josiah sat up to ask his question, and he suddenly looked so sad that what could Thomas do but sit next to him? And nor could he resist putting his arm about the boy’s shoulder; today it was an instinct too profound.
‘Would you mind what other people thought about that particular arrangement?’ Thomas asked him.
‘Nope,’ said Josiah, simply. ‘Would you?’
‘I hope I wouldn’t,’ said Thomas.
‘I want to go to Italy with you,’ Josiah suddenly exclaimed, nuzzling his head into Thomas’ jumper. Thomas took his arm away, but returned it a few seconds later to stroke the boy’s hair.
‘And I want to go with you,’ he said, with feeling.
The summer term began in earnest. Thomas’ workload greatly increased: both those he tutored and supervised, Samantha included, were stressed by looming Finals, and a steady stream of them came to see him in his rooms in Corpus. Samantha was humbler, sweeter, and for the first time Thomas noticed she was actually very pretty. She even had a steady boyfriend, or so she claimed. But what was really preoccupying him were his lectures on Marcus Aurelius. There were only four of them; but his spring holiday had been eaten up with well, other considerations, and he had to settle down to work.
As he skimmed notes that he had been writing for years, well beyond the submission of his PhD thesis, he was struck by how dualist an interpretation he had made: always reason was supreme, the body a mere irritation. When Marcus Aurelius wishes death upon himself as the only sure means of ridding himself of all desire, Thomas had argued that he had spoken as a Stoic philosopher: this was his way of drumming his point home. But Thomas’ mood in that spring of 1999 was strangely different. When he read, ‘Let no emotions of the flesh, be they of pain or pleasure, affect the supreme and sovereign portion of the soul,’ Thomas suddenly understood that Aurelius had made this demand upon himself. “See that it never becomes involved with them: it must limit itself to its own domain, and keep the feelings confined to their proper sphere.” Yes, Aurelius, resist, resist! And yet, even in the next sentences Aurelius softens, and he can’t resist: “If, (through the sympathy which permeates any unified organism) they do spread to the mind, there need be no attempt to resist the physical sensation; only the master-reason must refrain from adding its own assumptions of their goodness or badness.” What a U-Turn! And in the same paragraph too! There should be no attempt to resist the physical sensation, for touching, thought Thomas suddenly, was truth, was unadulterated truth.
