by David Nobbs
‘Come on, you can’t say that,’ says William. ‘I’m luckier than you. I have the joy of cooking a meal every night for a man who enjoys his food. Besides, I have my sight. Come off it, Roly.’
‘I don’t feel that I’m unlucky to be blind,’ says Roly. ‘I had my sight. I can remember what the world looks like. I’m so sorry for those who were born blind. Never to know what things look like. Never to know if what they imagine bears any resemblance to what is. How terrible. But I can picture everything. In my world people don’t age. In my world hair doesn’t go grey. In my world paint doesn’t peel.’
There’s a moment’s silence. Timothy and Naomi are happy to eat and drink, and smile, and watch the light fade, and hold each other’s hands, and wait for the next bout of verbal jousting.
‘I most definitely am luckier than you,’ says Roly. ‘I get a marvellous story read to me every evening.’
‘I’m much luckier than you,’ protests William. ‘I have an audience for a work that I wrote. I get the joy of authorship, the gratification of giving pleasure, every evening.’
‘I get the pleasure of it without having had to write a word.’
‘I enjoyed writing it. Every word. What a privilege to be able to do that.’
As the two men eat, they are both pondering their next move.
‘My wife was a lovely woman,’ says William. ‘Yours – don’t take offence, but you told me so – was a bitch.’
‘Precisely,’ cries Roly triumphantly. ‘So I’ve spent the rest of my life being glad she left me. And you’ve spent the rest of your life being sad that you lost yours. No contest, old boy.’
Summer fades into autumn. In a deep tunnel near Geneva, a machine called the Hadron Collider is attempting to replicate the Big Bang that scientists believe created the world. Some scientists thought that this attempt was so dangerous that, the day they switched it on, the world would end at eight thirty-one in the morning. It didn’t. Timothy and Naomi wonder how these people must have felt at eight thirty-two that morning. What’s it like to be proved so comprehensively wrong?
‘I have to wonder,’ says Naomi that morning, ‘how, in the face of such activity by legions of top scientists, any educated person, and particularly the person chosen as vicepresidential candidate for one of the two major parties in the greatest democracy on earth, can still believe in Creationism.’
Timothy shakes his head. He knows that the bee is still there in Naomi’s bonnet. There cannot be complete peace, in Naomi’s life, and therefore in his, until the bee is released. That night – and it’s no coincidence, it must be connected to his worries – he has the dream. He knows that, one day, he will have to tell Naomi about the dream. Maybe that is the only way in which he can free himself from it.
Then comes Remembrance Day. The ninetieth anniversary of the end of the most horrific of all wars.
They’ve been to the Fishermen’s Arms for a couple of drinks. There’s been a good crowd in Wally’s Back Passage. On the way home they’ve bought fish and chips, and eaten them as they’ve walked. It’s not something they do very often, and they’re feeling mellow. Naomi switches the television on. It’s the Festival of Remembrance from the Albert Hall. A clergyman is praying for peace. She switches the television off and turns to Timothy.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she says. ‘I just can’t believe it. Hold me.’
Timothy holds her tight, kisses the top of her head.
She moves away, puts a match to the fire, sits down.
‘I don’t want to be a bore about this,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to be an extreme person. I did that once, and it doesn’t work. But am I going mad, and is it just me, but is the act of praying to God for peace ninety years after he had failed to stop four years of appalling slaughter ridiculous, or is it ridiculous?’
‘I have to say I agree with you, it’s ridiculous. I’ll make some cocoa.’
‘That’ll calm her. Give her cocoa.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know.’
She follows him into the tiny kitchen.
‘They’ll say that God gave us free will and if we choose to slaughter each other, that’s not his fault,’ he says.
‘Even if we often do it in his name.’
‘Yes.’
‘But if God gave us free will, this means that he can’t interfere, and if he didn’t interfere in the First World War, what would ever lead him to interfere? So, if he is not going to interfere, what is the point of praying to him? Am I stupid? I just don’t get it.’
‘You’re not stupid.’
‘But all the millions who believe aren’t stupid either.’
‘Perhaps they need to believe.’
‘But we don’t believe and we don’t feel that our lives are futile. We have purposes galore.’
He hands her her cocoa.
‘Why do people need to believe in a life after death?’ she says. ‘What’s frightening about dying? What can be awful about nothing, unless we have an exaggerated view of our own importance?’
‘I agree with you, Naomi. I just don’t see that there’s any point in our going on and on arguing about it. Especially since I agree. I suggest we enjoy our cocoa and go to bed.’
‘Darby and Joan.’
‘Romeo and Juliet.’
‘Long time ago. I don’t believe, Timothy, that if nobody believed in God – oh, dear, I’m catching your negatives, that won’t do – oh, no, there’s another one – I do believe that if everybody didn’t believe in God, they would not behave any worse than they do now. Oh, no, so many negatives, and I feel so positive. I’ve heard religious people arguing that we should care more about the starving billions in the Third World, and I agree. Atheists care just as much, but have no platform. I know. I know. Bee in bonnet. Got something to show you.’
Naomi puts her mug down on one of the RSPB coasters, and goes upstairs. She returns with the photograph of the impossibly handsome young man.
‘You still have it,’ he says.
‘I still have it.’
‘You’ve been hiding it.’
‘I know you don’t like it. It’s not my secret lover, Timothy.’
‘Well, I know that. It was taken a hundred years ago.’
‘Ninety-four. Just before the beginning of the Great War. It’s my Great-Great-Uncle Thomas. He died at Mons. He died for his country, at the age of nineteen, with his life before him. He was a member of that last generation ever to believe that there’s something noble in war. He died five minutes into his first battle.’
Timothy has gone very white.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asks.
She answers his question, but she doesn’t see how disturbed he is. She’s too busy examining Thomas’s youthful, radiant yet solemn face, the face of a patriot exalted by the fact that he is about to do his duty for his country.
‘I didn’t want to seem to be boasting of him, and how brave he was. It’s just something private, that I never wanted to share with Simon or Colin, and I would have shared it with you happily once we were married, but I sort of…well, I’ve been so happy these last months that I forgot about it, and that’s the truth. He was blown to pieces. Not one part of him was ever found. I’ve kept his picture as a reminder to myself never to waste one second of the privilege of life. I know. That sounds so goody—’
She sees that Timothy is crying, that he has crumpled in on himself, as if he is imploding, just as he had when she had told him she was leaving him. He is gripping his mug of cocoa as if he expects it to explode if he doesn’t. His knuckles are white. She sees him pull himself together. She sees that this isn’t easy for him.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘This is silly.’
‘Darling! What’s wrong?’
‘He was so brave, and I’m a coward. I get a dream. A recurring nightmare. I can’t believe we’ve both made a secret of something, and both our secrets are connected with the First World War. I…I get this dream. Regul
arly. Quite often. I’ve never…never told anyone.’
Naomi sits beside him on the shabby settee and whispers, ‘Tell me, sweetheart.’
‘There’s not much to tell. It’s not much of a dream. It’s just that it’s…very vivid. I’m in the trenches. We’re ordered to go over the top. I can’t. I’m not brave enough. My legs won’t move. The sergeant points his gun at me. I’m stuck. I couldn’t go if I wanted to. My legs are so heavy, the mud is so sticky, I make feeble efforts. He raises his gun to shoot me. I wake up, streaming with sweat. You’ve seen me like that.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Didn’t want you to know what a coward I am.’
‘It’s a dream, Timothy.’
‘I think about it by day sometimes. Would I have gone over the top? Would I have been brave enough?’
‘You might well have been. You don’t know. I think you would have been.’
‘Then why do I get the dream?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s pathetic, isn’t it?’
‘No. You can’t help having a dream. Oh, Timothy, you should have told me. It’s no good bottling a thing like that up. Oh, darling.’
‘It’s not just the dream,’ he says. ‘One day I was walking by the sea, near Whitby. It was rough, there was a gale blowing. I thought how dreadful it would be if somebody was drowning and I had to jump in and I wondered whether I’d dare. I walked away. Walked away from it, Naomi.’
‘Don’t be silly. There wasn’t any it to walk away from.’
‘Supposing the house was on fire and you were inside it and I had to rescue you, would I? Could I?’
‘Oh, Timothy,’ she says. ‘You can’t torment yourself with the hypothetical.’
He stands up, blows his nose, squares his shoulders.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Anyway, I’ve told you about my dream. End of story. But you talk of not fearing death, and clearly I do.’
‘Fearing a rain of bullets in a stinking muddy field crisscrossed by barbed wire at the age of eighteen is pretty natural.’
‘I’m not eighteen.’
‘You are in your dream.’
‘You’re going to tell me that your Great-Great-Great…how many greats?’
‘Two.’
‘…Uncle Thomas wrote a last letter, before he went into battle, saying how scared he was.’
‘No. I’m sure he was scared, but he didn’t have any choice, and there aren’t any letters, and I expect if he’d had the benefit of history and knew what it was going to be like he’d have been as scared as you. Timothy, you can’t spend your life worrying about something that hasn’t happened to you and luckily for you will never happen to you. Now stop it.’
He finishes his cocoa, which has gone cold and lumpy.
‘I suppose millions probably share my fears,’ he says. ‘I suppose millions wonder how they would have coped, when tested. I suppose that’s why football crowds stand so quietly, and natural rebels wear poppies, ninety years after it happened.’
She nods.
‘I should have told you about Great-Great-Uncle Thomas, and you should have told me about the dream. We shouldn’t have secrets.’
She sits him down on the shabby settee, she sits beside him, and she begins to tell him all about the things that have happened to her since the day she told him she couldn’t marry him.
She tells him about her conversations about death with her mother and Emily, about marching down Oxford Street with sandwich boards, driving to Clodsbury at over a hundred miles per hour, waking up in hospital, living with her father, sailing with her father, going up to Coningsfield and finding him gone.
He tells her about the day of Sam’s death, and Hannah going off with Mr Finch, who upped and came, and being embarrassed to talk to his father in the home for the blind, and auctioning off his father’s works, and his mother turning up.
Some of these things they had told each other before, but now they tell them in detail and in sequence. Eventually they fall asleep in each other’s arms, on the shabby settee, and the fire dies, and they wake up cold but happy, and they go to bed at half past four in the morning.
Timothy goes straight to sleep, his breathing regular and unhurried. She puts her lips to his shoulder, and kisses his skin so softly that he would not have felt it if he had been awake, and she whispers, ‘Goodnight, my good, good man.’
On Remembrance Day itself, three men, the last three allied survivors of the Great War, lead the parade at the Cenotaph. They are aged a hundred and twelve, a hundred and ten and a hundred and eight. Naomi watches alone, Timothy, at work, observes the two-minute silence. Thousands of gulls don’t.
That afternoon, Timothy has an idea. But he won’t mention it to Naomi until the time is right.
The opportunity comes two days later. It’s the most lovely winter’s day, a cool breeze, bright sunshine, fluffy clouds, and the air as pure as space.
The trusty, rusty estate car is laden. Timothy has been buying supplies. Naomi has gone with him. She just loves being with him. On an impulse he turns off the main road, drives down to the staithe, parks beside the creek. They walk slowly along the path, past a man with an enormous lens and a huge tripod. On their right are reed beds and marshes. On their left, the tide licks at the glistening mud. They listen to the wind moaning in the rigging of the few boats that have not been laid up for the winter. The halyards sing as they flap into the masts. Gulls complain and argue. Geese fly back to their salty lodgings in a perfect V, noisily discussing their day. A heron lazes towards a line of pines. An oystercatcher pipes, bubbles and trills. The winter sunset smells of woodsmoke and toasted teacake. Timothy turns to Naomi and says, ‘I know what you could do.’
She doesn’t say, ‘About what?’ She knows.
‘You can’t play their games. You can’t preach. You can’t lecture. You can’t badger and bully. All you can do is tell our story and hope.’
‘Hope what? To change the world?’
‘That’s not in your gift, darling.’
Naomi smiles.
‘What are you smiling at?’
‘Nothing.’
They have sworn to tell each other everything, but some things are too small to tell, too silly. She has smiled because she has been thinking how different Timothy’s East Anglian ‘darling’ is to Daphne’s London one.
‘How can I tell our story? How can I tell your story?’
‘We shared enough of our stories the night before last. Of course you can.’
So what will I achieve by telling it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing. You’ll enjoy it. I’ll enjoy it. I’ll be proud of you. Somebody may publish it. Somebody, somewhere may think about what you say.’
‘That isn’t much.’
‘I’m sorry, my love. I think it’s all you can do. And words, Naomi, words are quite wonderful. Who could not want to spend their days with them?’
The magnificence of the sunset fades rapidly. The wind drops with the dusk, as it so often does. An elderly little fishing boat putters and splutters back to port. On the few yachts the halyards are stilled, the rigging is silent. Even the gulls sleep. One last shrill cry comes from a wading bird, out towards the open water, and then it’s night.
‘I’ll have a go,’ says Naomi.
She watches the space where the window is, longing for first light. But you can never see the first light. One moment it is utterly dark. The next moment, the outline of the window is faintly clear.
She can’t believe how long the night is, and how quietly Timothy sleeps. There are no trenches in his head tonight.
At last the faintest of lights fills the tiny room. She can see the oak beam in the middle of the curved, cracked ceiling. She is able to put on her slippers and tiptoe out of the room without waking him.
She goes down the narrow staircase, fills the kettle, switches it on, curses its noisiness, makes herself a cup of tea. She climbs the stairs slowly, passes their bedroom
door, enters the guest bedroom, where Julian has slept with Sarah, Clive with Antoine, Emily with Liam. There’s just room for the computer in the corner, her computer, which Timothy doesn’t use. He doesn’t need to. She is his link to the world.
She switches it on. It’s not in the first flush. It doesn’t like the cold. She has learned not to hurry it.
At last she senses that it’s ready to respond. She clicks onto Microsoft Word. After just a bit of teasing, it provides her with a blank page. Thrillingly blank. Terrifyingly blank.
She types one word – ‘Novel’.
What is she thinking of? This is no novel.
She deletes it, types ‘BOOK’, clicks on ‘Save’. She is given a list of places to choose from. She opts for ‘Desktop’.
There it is, on the desktop, the single, exciting word, ‘Book’.
She clicks on the word and the page comes up, ‘BOOK’. Truly remarkable, still, to Naomi, although one day, and soon, this process will be regarded as primitive.
So far so good. But now comes the first tricky bit, the first potential crisis. The first word. The first sentence. The first paragraph.
It takes courage to begin. It’s like diving off the top board.
She begins.
She hears Timothy’s alarm go, hears him stir, hears him go for a pee. As he returns she calls out.
‘Timothy. Come and look.’
He bends to enter the little room without cracking his head.
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve begun. I think it might be going to be all right. Have a look.’
He bends down beside her, squints at the screen – soon he’ll need glasses – and reads.
Three mighty obstacles threaten the burgeoning love of childhood sweethearts Timothy Pickering and Naomi Walls. They are Steven Venables, a dead curlew, and God.
Author’s Note
All the locations described in Old Compton Street, Peru, Paris, Seville and Guernsey are real and, I hope, accurate. All other locations, including those in Coningsfield, the Pennines and East Anglia, are imagined.
