Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon?

by Simon Okotie

  One may not, of course, always know where one was with it on the ground, so to speak. Even the choice between two options can be agonising when one is lost, especially when one is late for an appointment – a funeral, birth or marriage, say, or an assignation of a sexual nature, which could lead to one, two or all of the other three examples quite directly, given sufficient time. And this, of course, assumes that you know that you are on the right track, so to speak, as you approach the junction. This opens up a whole other area: if you are not sure that you are on the right track at all, it could be that you have a third option – that of going back the way you had come, that is, back along the vertical limb of the T – and indeed a fourth more mind-blowing option, that of being in the wrong part of town altogether, in which case the approaching T junction is almost an irrelevance, a letter floating free in an alphabet soup of possibilities bubbling up in front of you so that you don’t know which way to turn. But, at least at a certain level, you know where you are with the T junction. Where you are is on the vertical limb approaching the horizontal, with the simple choice that that entails.

  And that is where the use of an X for the crossroads falls down, Marguerite thought, as he continued walking down the side road. You just wouldn’t know where you were with that designation. But why not the + junction to denote the crossroads? It had the same brevity and elegant ellipses as the T, but had the added benefit of the absence of the typographical flourishes that had so unsettled him in the use of the latter. It had a lot to recommend it, he thought. Was there some widely accepted rule that he was unaware of which forbade one from using numerical rather that alphabetical symbols as descriptors for types of junction? It irritated him to think that he might have missed this rule during the theory part of his driving test, or during his cycling proficiency test, or when learning the Green Cross Code, each of which took him backwards, chronologically speaking, through some of the stages, at least, of the transport-awareness training that he had encountered during his lifetime. He made a note to check through any notes he may have retained from such training at his earliest opportunity.

  He was by now at the end of the side road, at its left ‘underarm’ – that, at least, was how Marguerite had come to think of it, even though this simile fell down in numerous ways, which he wouldn’t go into now, at least not all of them. Suffice to say, Marguerite thought, that when you hold out your arms in imitation of the T then there is the whole issue of the head to take into account, which is why this particular posture is typically called the cross, after Jesus’ crucifixion, and then (a lesser point perhaps this) there’s the whole problem surrounding the non-right angle between arm and torso in such a pose, although it could be argued that no T junction on the ground forms perfect right angles either. He decided to leave all these matters aside until later. But he couldn’t help noticing a subtle point that had entered his mind in thinking about them. He had always thought of the cross in crossroads as being the type that one would write (in pencil, was it?) on a ballot paper. But perhaps, all along, it had been the cross of Christ that was intended when one talked of a crossroads. This, if it was the case, would overcome his earlier objection about one not knowing which limb one approached the junction from (if we are talking about the X) since it would be so much clearer with the †. But it was still problematic in relation to the criteria for selection of such symbols: could one really say that only alphabetic symbols plus religious iconography could be used in such matters? It would seem somewhat arbitrary. Nevertheless, Marguerite decided at that moment, as he crossed the side road towards the right ‘underarm’ of the junction, that he would write to the Mayor asking him to standardise to the symbol † henceforth in all of the Mayor’s reports and correspondence, and hope that it would gain acceptance in that way. Not that Marguerite was a Christian – heaven forbid. It was just the sheer elegance and clarity of the symbol in relation to road junctions that enthralled him. A footnote to the effect that any previous Christian indoctrination should be put to one side when using the symbol in this way would not go amiss, he thought, and he would add a note to that effect to his letter to the Mayor5.

  5e. You could say that Harold and I’d had a nodding acquaintance with each other before he was seconded there. Maybe he knew my name. But when I’d tried to engage him I found a distance between us. Perhaps he was ashamed of me in some way. Suffice to say that there was an unacknowledged difficulty between us from the start which became more pronounced each time we saw each other.

  10

  He was aware that there was a ladder of streets heading north not far from his present location. That is to say that there were two main roads heading roughly north-south in that vicinity, with roads running roughly east-west connecting them. In fact, there were more than two roads in that district heading roughly north-south with roads running roughly east-west connecting them, but for simplicity’s sake Marguerite focused only on two north-south roads at a time, plus the east-west roads connecting them, and it was this somewhat narrow focus that enabled him to label those particular roads in his mind as ‘a ladder’. And it was only the two closest north-south roads to Marguerite’s present location that were under consideration at that moment, note. In fact, since they were one-way streets travelling in opposite directions to each other, one should, to Marguerite’s mind, more strictly say that the first road on his and, he hoped, Isobel Absalon’s route that afternoon, was a north-south road whereas the second road, on the far side of the ladder of roads one could say, was a south-north road, even though the latter expression was less pleasing, he thought; but that was simply the reality of it. You can picture yourself, along with Marguerite and, just in front of him, he hoped, on the ladder of roads as it were, Isobel Absalon, her friend and baby; in order to be on this particular ladder one must cross the north-south road which, for the purposes of the exercise was considered to be the first point of entry onto the ladder by Marguerite and, he hoped, by Isobel Absalon, her friend and baby. The reasons that it was considered to be the first point of entry (etc) were that: a) Isobel Absalon (with her consort and child) had been travelling due west, very roughly speaking, when Marguerite had last seen them, and he suspected that they would ultimately head towards Isobel (and Harold) Absalon’s house, which was in the north-west of the city; b) the ladder was set out roughly north-south or south-north – perhaps ‘both north-south and south-north’ would be most appropriate here given the already established facts of the two one-way streets and their contrariwise directions of flow – across the path of the women and child in question; and c) the north-south road is the easternmost of the two main roads on the ladder. It follows from the foregoing that (to summarise), given they had taken a westerly route and that the north-south road formed the eastern boundary of the ladder of roads that crossed that route, then it (the north-south road) would be the first point of entry by anyone (including Isobel Absalon, her consort, child and pursuer) making those moves on that grid of streets on that afternoon or any afternoon, providing, of course, that those streets were there in that configuration on any given afternoon.

  It might help the reader to know how Marguerite referred in his mind – and out loud if anyone had asked him (which they didn’t) – to the roads that travelled east-west (and, indeed, west-east) in the ladder of roads currently under investigation: he referred to them, momentarily, as ‘rungs’. In fact it was only because he didn’t know what the long sections (in wood or metal) of a ladder were called – that is, those sections at right angles to the rungs – that he hadn’t referred to those long sections by name; he wasn’t keeping this word from the reader.

  Although unsatisfied that he had taken this line of inquiry to its proper conclusion, Marguerite decided that his investigation in this regard was detaining him unduly and that he should refocus his attention more directly on his pursuit of Isobel Absalon (etc). He thought this and then he acted to pursue her (etc).

  11

  He turned
a corner, onto the ladder of streets, noting that the first street was, in fact, two-way, at least along this portion, and immediately saw them. Isobel Absalon emerged from a shop just in front of him, followed by her child and friend, and moved across the pavement to hail a taxicab passing on the other side of the street. To be clear, the friend in question was a friend of Isobel Absalon’s rather than of the child; at least, she (the friend) was primarily a friend of Isobel Absalon rather than of Isobel Absalon’s child; this was not to say that she was unfriendly to the child, it was just to say that: a) the child was perhaps too young to develop friendships, at least reciprocal ones, and b) the relationship of Isobel Absalon and her friend (the one in question) must, to Marguerite’s mind, have started long before Isobel Absalon’s child was born, meaning that it was better established, although that was not to say that quantity can be a substitute for quality in such matters. Marguerite felt that a thesis on this particular topic would make a particularly good read and made a mental note to initiate some research, some proper investigations, in this area at the earliest opportunity.

  This was all, of course, predicated on the fact that the person in question, whom Marguerite had, until then, been calling ‘a friend’ was indeed a friend of Isobel Absalon’s. Marguerite realised at that moment that this had been speculation on his part: he had never seen the ‘friend’ before that day, when his investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon had led him onto the trail of his wife (and he let the personal pronoun slip in this instance, for the time being at least, for the sake of brevity, amongst other things that he would also not enumerate, for the sake of brevity, amongst other things, etc). The woman in question could simply have been an acquaintance of Isobel Absalon’s. A further alternative was that she was with Isobel Absalon in some official capacity – perhaps she was also investigating the disappearance of Harold Absalon6, had been sent from another agency to do so, an agency, moreover, that had not informed Marguerite’s superiors (or inferiors or peers) of their parallel operation, thereby potentially compromising Marguerite’s own operation, with which he had made so much headway (as he hoped was clear), especially in tracing the progress of the missing man’s wife around the city in question. He realised then that he had made a big slip in his investigation by making the assumption that he’d made; he was ashamed of himself, perhaps; surprised at himself, certainly. But he realised that this slip did not completely sink his investigation – too many clues had already been amassed for that to be the case. But what he did realise was that he would have to go back through his (mental and physical) notes and amend them in the following way: wherever he saw the word ‘friend’ – with reference only to the woman in question, of course – then he would have to make an amendment, with the necessary signatures and counter signatures to verify his identity in doing so (to show that his evidence, in short, had not been tampered with by someone else). He resolved to refer to the woman in question simply as ‘Woman A’. He looked at her more closely to double check that she was indeed female. As far as he could tell, she was. He was satisfied, finally, that in referring to her as ‘Woman A’ he was in line with the protocols that he had learnt during his extensive covert and overt training; for this reason he was also satisfied that all in the hierarchy of his organisation (to use that slightly shorter hand) would indeed be satisfied with him making the aforementioned amendments to his records.

  But how, he now wondered, did he know the baby was the Absalons’?

  6. What I found happening, after a while – and this is something that continues to perplex – was that the success of Harold Absalon’s career seemed to be inversely proportional to my own; to spell it out: the more influence he had over the project, the less my own contribution was valued or even noticed. When Harold Absalon entered the office – and he continued simply to visit us from time to time, rather than having a permanent desk there – there seemed immediately to be an atmosphere of celebration, welcome, deference towards him. At the same time my colleagues, who had hitherto at least acknowledged me, even if they didn’t laugh at my jokes – started shunning me, even actively ridiculing me. How would you have responded in that situation?

  12

  The taxi driver did not stop immediately – that might have been dangerous; after all, hailing was very different to the emergency gesture of flagging down, as it is known (even though no flags are involved). Instead the taxi slowed down and the driver looked at Isobel Absalon quizzically through the side window, pointing in the direction he was travelling, namely south, and raising both eyebrows. He wanted, then, to know which direction she (or they) wished to travel in. Isobel Absalon pointed in a generally northerly direction and the taxi driver gave her what is known as the ‘thumbs up’, although only one of his thumbs was involved in this instance, presumably, again, for safety reasons. Marguerite took this gesture to mean that the taxi driver understood her indication and would turn his taxi around, assuming, that is, for the time being, that the taxi was actually his. After a short period of continued southerly travel, which allowed a number of vehicles to pass it in a northerly direction, the taxi started turning around with that impressively tight turning circle that such vehicles tended to have, at least in the city that Marguerite was then inhabiting.

  Marguerite found it fascinating that there was a convention, in that situation, as in so many, which was instantly understood by both driver and potential passenger alike: the driver knew to ask the question ‘which direction do you want to travel in?’ if appropriate, and the potential passenger knew that there was a possibility that such a question would be asked, and that they didn’t even need to be primed or prepared in any way (mentally that is), they could just respond to the question in the most appropriate manner when it arose, and they may not even have been asked the question before; in fact that might have been the first time that Isobel Absalon had been asked the question; Marguerite didn’t have anything in his files on her having been asked this question in the past, he was pretty sure, which is not to say that she had not been asked the question; his files were not exhaustive. All he could say with some certainty was that Isobel Absalon had not been asked the question in all the time that he had been following her on that particular day. It is not the sort of question that one was asked without having first requested a taxi, specifically, he thought. He could not, however, rule out conclusively that she had not been asked the question when she was in the hotel with her baby and Woman A and they were having lunch. There was a ‘window of opportunity’ as he termed it, when Isobel Absalon et al had been in the hotel, for her to have been asked by someone (Woman A being the most likely candidate) which direction she was travelling in, perhaps when she was getting up to leave, having paid the bill. The reference to the bill raised a number of other issues worthy of investigation and resolution in Marguerite’s mind, the first of which was the fact that the waiter or maître d’ were also candidates in this scenario for asking Isobel Absalon which direction she was travelling in, but only if she had requested a taxi to be ordered by them or by another member of staff at that hotel or its restaurant, thus providing the context for asking the question, a context that was immediately established in the case of the taxi driver when following a correct interpretation of a raised hand as an instance of being hailed. That was one point. The other, which Marguerite knew would have to be put to one side for now, was the similarity between raising one’s hand to hail a taxi and raising one’s hand, perhaps then followed by a scribbling flourish, that international call sign, that near universal signal for requesting the bill (or check). And perhaps therein lay the difference between the two: one was just a raised hand and the other was a raised hand with the addition of a scribbling flourish reflected either quizzically by the waiter or maître d’ (followed by an affirmation by the customer), or performed more definitively by the customer, that is to say the diner (or recent diner, depending on how one defines them), in which case just a nod of the head from the waiter
or maître d’ would suffice as a response. What Marguerite realised, with relief, as the taxi pulled up, as it is known, alongside Isobel Absalon, her baby and Woman A, was that Isobel Absalon was highly unlikely to have been asked, in the restaurant by Woman A, the waiter, the maître d’ or by anyone else, the question in the silent way that the taxi driver had just asked it. This satisfied Marguerite: he felt justified, finally, in asserting that it was highly unlikely that Isobel Absalon had been asked that question in the silent way since he had been trailing her on that particular day.

  Marguerite made a brief clarification at that point, as Isobel Absalon held open the cab door for Woman A: in saying ‘in the silent way’ he did not mean that there was silence in the road where Isobel Absalon had hailed the taxi; the silence referred, rather, to the taxi driver’s voice and, more specifically, to how much of that voice entered the hailer’s (that is, in this instance, Isobel Absalon’s) ears and also aural perceptions; it could be that the taxi driver had actually vocalised the question ‘Which way you going, love?’ or something like that, rather than just mouthing it, but if this hadn’t been heard by the hailer then it could be said to be silent from the hailer’s point of view. So, the clarification in Marguerite’s mind was that the reference to ‘silence’ simply indicated that the hailer could not hear the driver’s question, regardless of whether that question was vocalised or not and regardless of any other noises that were entering the hailer’s aural consciousness at that moment. Marguerite felt confident enough to proceed given these important clarifications.