“All I wanted was to offer you my apology,” I said again, more levelly. “The thing is—I’ve had you on my mind.” Since when? This afternoon? Yesterday afternoon? I hoped I wouldn’t need to be specific.
“That’s nice,” he said.
Sarcasm had always been his strongest suit.
Though after I’d heard that he was dead … I’d had him on my mind then too. For weeks undoubtedly; maybe months. I’d despised him but at least I’d thought about him. Felt sorry for things; wished I could have played them differently. Had felt that rather odd mixture of contrition and contempt.
But then bit by bit, of course, I had forgotten.
Had probably done my utmost to forget.
He asked now: “And what am I to do with your apology? Tell me Casement. What would you like me to do with it?”
“Accept it I suppose. Then try to forgive me for the way I behaved.”
“Ah yes. I see. So suddenly everything will be all tickety-boo?”
I didn’t know what else to say. I was very much on my own here. Again Richard or somebody—couldn’t you possibly have primed me just a little?
“Apologize?” he said. Quite equably. As if meaning only to analyse the etymology. “But I must confess there’s one thing about that concept which never ceases to mystify me.”
I waited.
“Well in this case. How could anyone have the gall to imagine any apology appropriate? Let alone adequate? How could he believe himself able to apologize? In any way meaningfully? Sufficiently? Candidly, this problem perplexes me.”
He lost that air of purely academic curiosity.
“Oh yes. Knowing you of old of course. How could I be perplexed?”
So once again I had to struggle to preserve my cool.
“At any rate I’ve done what I came here to do,” I said. “And I’ll repeat it if you like. I’m really sorry for the cruel and thoughtless way I treated you.”
Also I’m really sorry for the way you magnified it out of all proportion. You were crazy and unbalanced, must already have been deeply disturbed to let it get to you as you did.
But I suppose I know absolutely nothing about the things that made you what you are. And if I really understood the nature of those influences and the nature of the personality they molded … well isn’t understanding tantamount to forgiving? (And you can’t possibly be a lesser soul than whoever it was who said that—wasn’t it a Frenchman?)
“Also,” I remarked, “I’m sorry that I appear to have taken up your time so needlessly throughout these years. Your ‘greatest earthly torment’; that must have been difficult to cope with.” Oddly I wasn’t being ironic: I found quite suddenly that I had insights into just how difficult this must have been. “But do I need to stay here any longer? You could be snoozing, whilst the hawker remains quiet.”
There was a further marked pause.
“No perhaps you don’t,” he said—and again the sheer novelty of it seemed for the moment to have brushed aside recrimination. “All this is new. We must put it to the test!” His voice became a whisper. “Now!” he said. “Immediately! Stand up and go!”
The whisper suggested I should accomplish this so stealthily my exit might—just possibly—escape everyone’s notice. Even if only for a while.
But, paradoxically, now that I might be able to escape—just possibly—might be able to escape both him and his surroundings and fill my lungs again with comparatively fresh air, I felt reluctant to appear in too much of a hurry. Despite his own sudden urgency. Or even actually to be in too much of a hurry. My recent insights seemed to have enfeebled me.
“Except before I do go, how about your briefly helping me to try to understand the logic? Even on my first day. After all. You were once supposed to be a teacher weren’t you?” This was meant to be said lightly but contrary to my best intentions (and I was now willing to believe that—yet again, just possibly—he too might have some mildly good intentions) it didn’t come out in the slightest as it should have done. It was no good. He wasn’t at all like Isabella. We were never going to take to one another.
He gave a lengthy sigh. “I haven’t mentioned this but if you’ve killed yourself only somebody who’s done the same can ever set you free.”
Oh sweet Lord! And you’d even wish that upon your mother and your sister!
“Because suicides,” he went on, “are the only people—apart from the irretrievably evil—who can be shown the pathway into hell. Indeed must be shown the pathway into hell. Also, like I said earlier, it needs to be someone who loves you, loves you with the sort of love I think that you and I have never experienced or maybe even heard of … outside of the cinema … because …” Yet it seemed to me he couldn’t say the words.
“Because in order to release you the other person must agree to stay behind?” Well yes he’d already intimated as much.
I reckoned that my own idea of a rota system would have been better. But I knew the type of response I’d get if I repeated it. I said merely, “I would have thought that, anyhow, anyone who came here had to stay behind.”
I had no notion what made me come out with that, except for the fact of my being distracted by endeavours not to answer his comments upon love. But having said it, and somehow having belatedly heard it, I instantly felt faint. I had to grab the edges of my chair—and even at that moment realized there was something nasty hanging from its underside. Felt faint … because until this very point the thought hadn’t occurred to me: that once you were here that was it. No way out. You had to stay.
But his response brought with it greater reassurance than anyone could have imagined. Possibly hard to believe: I could almost have hugged him. Yet now only ‘almost’; it wasn’t like with Clem. However, my faintness was forgotten and my gratitude immense.
For he hadn’t been obliged, even, to give any response. Not so far as I knew. He could have let me suffer.
“No. Don’t ask me why. There are those of us who are condemned to stay. There are those of us who turn up merely on a visit.”
He smiled unpleasantly.
“I’m afraid, you see, that I don’t understand its logic either.”
“And you’re saying I’m just a visitor?” Desperately I needed confirmation. (Already!) “But how would you know that?”
“Because otherwise you’d have been met, provided with quarters, kept under surveillance. Prince Charming on the door wouldn’t have allowed you to come up here unescorted.”
He paused to subject his no doubt flaky scalp to a second vigorous scratch. You’d not have been surprised to see those fingernails draw blood. “In any case I think by this time you are usually gone. Invariably gone. That oaf next door will soon be starting up again.”
“Maybe he won’t.”
“Thank you for that abiding piece of comfort.”
“I mean—who knows what might not happen now?”
“Yes that’s clearly anybody’s guess and very wonderful to think about.”
“Are you in fact … are you sentenced to remain in this place for all time?”
“Yes.”
“No slightest chance of a reprieve? As you’ve said—you’re not an expert. Mr Tibbotson I could start agitating for a complete review of your case. I could couldn’t I? I know people who might help us—people in high office—” I was actually thinking only of Richard—well, apart from my grandmother that is—although naturally I wasn’t at all sure on what level of the hierarchy Richard functioned. But at least he’d be able to advise me and point me in the direction of the people I should really be talking to.
And then of course there would be Brad.
Excitedly, unthinkingly, I laid my hand upon the teacher’s bony knee—and then realizing what I’d done needed forcibly to stop myself recoiling from the contact.
“What people in high office?”
“I don’t know. We’re going to get you out of here Mr Tibbotson!”
“Oh please go away,” he said—now suddenly s
ounding not just weary but exhausted. “I can almost begin to think you may mean well.”
“I do. I swear I do.” And always have, I thought, but couldn’t say it, since obviously there had been times when—stupidly, selfishly, unseeingly—I hadn’t.
“And since this is possibly the last time we’ll be seeing each other I’m inclined to say that I forgive you for what’s passed—why not?—indeed, I think I no longer possess enough energy not to.”
His tone was grudging but I still felt touched.
“Thank you sir! Oh thank you sir!”
I tried to shake his hand. But this remained limp and unresponsive.
“And since, too, that’s the only thing you truly wished to hear, you may now go on your way rejoicing. You leave me marginally better off—no matter if it doesn’t last, this break in the monotony. Such a thought should also make you slide down the banisters and sing out gaily as you go. Might even bolster your self-confidence a little which was always where your problem lay. You see—I even make a joke. So just go in the happy knowledge that I made a joke and allow me, as you said, to maybe take a snooze.”
I didn’t again attempt to shake his hand and he didn’t even stand while I mumbled my goodbye but as I glanced back from the doorway he was already shambling towards the thin-mattressed single bed whose stained sheet and almost transparent blanket, inadequately pulled over, must have provided as much of a welcoming home to bugs as it ever did to man. For an instant I saw him sitting on the platform on Speech Day, in his gown and mortarboard, as erect and bright-eyed and well-groomed as any of those who sat on either side and I saw the incline of his head and tight-lipped smile as the colleague next to him made some small jibe or comment. “We’re going to get you out,” I repeated softly. “Before you know it I’ll be coming back to tell you how.” Then uncertain of whether I felt more saddened or noble I hurried down the stairs and past the spotty desk clerk who looked up from his magazine and must have been giving me his usual obscene smirk as I wrenched open the warped front door. In the deserted street and against one side of the building I had a long-awaited pee (you should’ve seen the state of the lavatory which on my way up I hadn’t been able to bring myself to use) and thought again about the problems which beset me.
But they didn’t seem quite so all-encompassing as before.
19
Before you know it I’ll be coming back. Goddammit could I truly have said that? I was the guy who’d once remarked to Brad, “If people don’t mean things they have no right to say them. This is a warning. Don’t ever tell me you’ll phone me this evening or tomorrow or whenever without doing it.”
“You’re so intolerant.”
“Unless you’ve got some bloody good excuse,” I’d added.
Some twelve months later Brad had appended a footnote. “We’re the two most trustworthy sincere and utterly reliable people whom I’ve ever had the good fortune to run into. Forgive me if that’s in any way tautologous. Who can be deserving of tautology if not such splendid upright folk as we?”
We’re going to get you out of here. Before you know it I’ll be coming back to tell you how.
We? Who’s we? And how were we going to do it? And how long was ‘before you know it’? And dear God please provide me with some answers.
Any, that is, apart from the glaringly obvious one.
I’d rather have ‘Hypocrite’ branded on my forehead. ‘Be warned, you can never take his word for anything.’ I mean literally—quite literally. Branded. Written with a red-hot nail. Without the use of anaesthetic.
Thereby agony undergone for an hour. Searing pain; discomfort—for a week? Shame and humiliation throughout the full remainder of your everlasting life.
As opposed to the daily replay of details that were dreary loveless and uninteresting even to begin with. For all of eternity, endlessly rotational, unstoppably repetitive—Brad forgive me if that’s in any way tautologous?
Well strictly no comparison. Clearly. Torture is the easy option.
Even though I’m scared to death of pain.
Though why in the name of fuck am I even going on like this? Am I just trying to convince myself I’ve got a heart like anybody else and don’t merely dismiss a matter out of hand … before at length I let myself dismiss this matter out of hand? Please Brad. Tell me what you think. Tell me it’s the greatest load of crap you’ve ever heard. Anything. Just talk to me. I really do need to have you talk to me.
It really isn’t any of my business is it? Still less any of my responsibility? How can it be? It may sound hard but in the last analysis Tibbotson’s tragedy is simply that. Tibbotson’s tragedy.
You always said that for an honest bloke I went in for such an awful lot of bullshit. You were right.
You always said it would have been nice if I’d finished my education; had really got to know John Donne and Alexander Pope and other minds as fine as theirs; had read some of the great philosophers and maybe managed in the process to discard a few of my more woolly ways of thinking.
You always said that one day I should honestly try to get off my backside and just do something about it.
And to think I actually put up with all that kind of talk! You wouldn’t have found many as forbearing and as sweet-natured as I. As me? I love you Brad; love you, respect you, need you, want you. All the time; for ever and ever. I’d like to make you proud. I really would like to make you proud. Just tell me what I ought to do.
Well first and foremost get something to eat. I can practically hear you saying it. How you used to carry on—and on—about blood sugar levels, most frequently mine!
I looked about me. (Instant obedience!) Found a snack bar on the corner which wouldn’t have won any prizes for hygiene nor have got written up in the Good Food Guide but the nourishment was free and—yes you’re right—now if at any time I was going to need to keep my strength up. And if my mouth and teeth should afterwards feel furred with grease … well at least cholesterol isn’t an issue I have to worry over any more, so there are blessings to be counted even in such a crude, ketchup-splashed—blood-splashed?—none too warmly recommended little eatery as this. (Well certainly not recommended by myself: you should have seen the way the plate was almost thrown down on the table, the cutlery picked up off the floor, the fork tines literally encrusted.)
Then after that the coach station.
The coach station is on the outskirts of town right at the end of Main Street. Here we’re not talking Wells Fargo, more National Express or Greyhound. But who ever uses them? Are they there only to tantalize: so near and yet so very nearly impossible? Otherwise—well, what? Allegedly there are buses leaving for every destination known to man but the location of the countless bays is hopelessly confusing even when they’re all as empty as they are at present. However by dint of much perseverance (and anyway having nothing else to do) I finally discover the embarkation point for Pack Hill tucked away between those for Manila and Santa Barbara. On the concourse there is often litter blowing round your ankles. Yet despite such frequent currents of well-nigh freezing air, jets of it almost, the atmosphere remains invariably heavy with the reek of petrol and vomit, a reek which sits on your stomach, stirs up its contents—in my case hamburger and chips and onion, half-cooked and probably done in lard—and is clearly self-perpetuating: it can’t be long before even the most determined will add at least one further small puddle. Large puddle? I say ‘invariably’. Following my meal at the snack bar I have spent more than twelve hours in this terminus and more than twelve hours spent in such a place seems practically the same as always. Supposing, I thought, this was to form a part of your cyclical hell: the time passed mainly on broken insanitary benches in a dark stench-laden terminal, with a stomach chill and a thumping headache but not so much as a moment’s real sleep throughout the whole long night. The whole long night following on from the equally interminable late-afternoon and evening? It didn’t bear thinking about. It just didn’t bear thinking about.
It had
to be thought about.
I told myself almost whimsically that it had to be thought about. Why? Because there wasn’t so far as I could remember a single really worthwhile thing—both generous and disinterested—that I had ever done in the entire course of my life. Not totally, totally disinterested.
Would this one be disinterested? (I asked myself whimsically.) Even that guy in A Tale of Two Cities who knew he was doing a far far better thing knew also that he was heading for a far far better place. Not for him straight from the guillotine into a bus station. Or a room with mouse droppings and bedbugs and a pail of piss. (And worse.) His act wasn’t disinterested. I’m not saying it wasn’t very nice of him and all that but the thought of almost guaranteed gold stars must at least have momentarily occurred to him. In those circumstances, having myself led a thoroughly useless and dissolute existence, perhaps I too would have taken another chap’s place in the tumbrels—especially someone’s whose earthly life appeared so chock-full of promise. (It struck me that Dickens had somewhat stacked the cards but all right.)
Yet the difference was that I—here in another kind of hell, in fact the hellish prototype of every once-and-future variation—I would not be notching up any cluster of gold stars. There just wouldn’t be a real incentive any longer. No praise, no rewards. If I chose to stay then that was it. I stayed.
And stayed for somebody whom I had never liked and whose own earthly life had never seemed to promise very much, certainly not from the outside. So why should his heavenly life merit outside sacrifice, anyone’s, even mine? The spared man in the book had had a lover waiting. I had a lover waiting. Did Tibbotson?
But then I remembered that the sacrificing fellow in the book hadn’t much cared for that fellow he was liberating; and besides—as he would no doubt have reminded himself as he moved forward to redemption—judge not lest ye be judged and in the eyes of our maker every one of us is just as precious as absolutely any other. (Undiscriminating or what? Take even me and Brad.)
On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory Page 15
