A World of Other People

by Steven Carroll

  ‘Are you all right?’

  It is, therefore, something of a jolt when his face lifts, his eyes fix on her with the unnerving intensity she knew all along they would have, and, after what seems to be an interminable pause, he answers.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Under no circumstances do I ever talk about the weather. Or, if I can help it, waste my time thinking about it. His philosophy lecturer had said that. One of those above-it-all statements that struck a chord in those above-it-all years of easy pronouncements before the war. But Jim is thinking about the weather. Endless clouds of it. And if there were someone in the cabin with him he would talk about it. If there were someone alive, that is.

  The park is deep green, the sunshine lush. All around him people stroll, sit on benches, as he does, or stand staring up at the sky soaking up the last of the Indian summer. It is a peaceful scene. For a moment you could almost believe there was no war. Or that this place is a duchy unto itself that has somehow negotiated a separate peace. For a few hours, while the sun sinks and sets. But it is not Jim’s peace. He is in the park, and he is not.

  Jim is flying with a dead man beside him. He is seated in the cabin of a Vickers Wellington. Not on a park bench. From the corner of his eye he can see that one of his engines is on fire. He is the pilot. It is a good plane. And he trusts this plane. But his instruments are gone. All of them, and he is flying on instinct and faith alone.

  All will be well, a voice is quietly telling him. All will be well. Stay true to your instincts. Stay true to your own private radar system. And, all the time, the drone of the remaining engine hums him into a trance. Almost to sleep. A dreamy sleep. For suddenly he is very tired. And he snaps his eyes open and peers hard into the endless cloud.

  All will be well, the voice is reassuring him. The voice that has joined him at some point during the flight. The calm voice of the detached observer. All will be well, this calm, reassuring voice is telling him. The voice is not his, nor that of anybody he knows. And when he looks for the source of the voice it fades. When he looks back to the view in front of him it returns. Calm and reassuring. Somewhere in the park a baby cries, a bus rumbles up Southampton Row.

  He once asked in training what to do in just such a circumstance. Everybody laughed, including the instructor. And he was told that the chances of losing everything were a thousand to one. Less. It had never, to the instructor’s knowledge, happened. He was now in that one-in-a-thousand fix, and if he were to reassemble that same training group and ask the same question, nobody would be laughing.

  He never saw the night-fighter that got them and he lost half his crew in the blink of an eye. The second pilot is slumped in his seat, his stomach opened up. The wireless operator and the navigator behind are gone too, blood and flesh splattered around the inside of the plane. They were six, now they are three. But they are not alone. There is this fourth who travels with them. This uncanny fourth who is there and who speaks in calm, measured tones, soft and soothing, but who fades into silence when Jim looks for the source of the sound, and who returns when he doesn’t. So Jim concentrates on what is in front of him, convinced that if he doesn’t look this uncanny fourth will stay with them and that soft, soothing voice, reassuring him that it is all just a nasty dream and soon he will wake, will not desert him.

  This is the voice that told him what to do in that thousand-to-one fix. And he hears that voice once again coming to him through the green shadow of the drowsy park. You know what to do, you know, it said. Deep inside you, you know. Just close your eyes and it will come to you. And that was when he turned ‘F’ for Freddie (for that was the code name of his plane), all alone in sky, towards the river he knew was flowing through the quiet French countryside below. That was when he turned ‘F’ for Freddie towards the river and the canal that would lead them back to the coast and on to home.

  A man in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat strolls easily along the gravel path, carrying a briefcase. The trousers are perfectly creased, the suit pure Savile Row. But Jim is somewhere over Brighton now (at least he thinks it’s Brighton), watching one of his engines flare as he enters marshmallow cloud. And it is at this point that he would dearly love to talk about the weather, if there were someone to talk to. But the nose and tail gunners are in their cabins so there is no one, only this uncanny fourth telling him that all is well. He believes that voice. And at the heart of this belief is the conviction that it can’t all end here. Not like this. That the moment is not right. That the moment, to use a phrase from his student days, has not been structured this way. That he will know the moment of his death when it arrives, and this is not it.

  So with the tongues of flame now lapping about the right-side Pegasus engine, and with the drone — the almost sleep-inducing, dreamy sound of the remaining engine — humming in his ears, he concentrates on the clouds in front of him (the windscreen smeared where he has wiped the second pilot’s blood from it), convinced that they must surely soon part, that his own private radar system is true, that the voice of this uncanny fourth who travels with them is a wise, knowing voice he can trust, and that all will be well.

  An aeroplane passes overhead and the man in the Savile Row suit, the mother with the rattle, the whole park — except him; he remains motionless — look up to the autumn sky. He has suddenly been shot back up into the air by some giant catapult, and it is then that he hears the sound of something crashing in the night. He is suddenly face down in the sodden earth of a country field. There are flames. He smells fuel. And a voice, no longer calm, no longer reassuring, no longer detached, is telling him that it’s all going to go up. It’s going to go. Any second. But slow, liquid steps lead him back to the flames. Something takes him back. The branches of the trees rise and fall in the breeze. He is in an open country field. The park around him dissolves. The full, chandelier moon blots out the late afternoon autumn sun. Shards of memory come together and fly apart, fragments of a broken picture, a scattered puzzle that won’t stay still long enough to be assembled: a full moon, a country field, an old farmhouse, echoes of footsteps, a burning engine. Flames, bright yellow flames soaring into the night sky. And heat. He too could ignite with the heat. He shields his eyes. Then everything explodes and the world goes black …

  Childhood sobs. Deep. Inexhaustible. Tears, inconsolable tears. He is convinced that he must be a spectacle. A grown man crying in a public park, but he doesn’t care. He hasn’t cared for a long time. For this is the world he woke to, a world of other people: other people’s laughter, other people’s ease and repose, other people’s happiness — but not his. He left all that back in the country field the night his kite exploded into flames and the world turned black. And now he looks upon the laughter of other people with puzzled eyes. That was me once. I was one of you. But for more than a year he has lived in a world of other people. And when he comes to a park, this park or another, and becomes the spectacle of a man crying in a public place, other people know well enough to leave him alone.

  But today he is aware of someone looking at him. Out there in the park. Out there in this world of other people, someone is staring at him. He is sure of that. Without even turning. But it doesn’t matter. It does not concern him. It is just someone from that world that is not his any more.

  He has no memory of starting to cry, nor any sense of how long he has been crying. He cries easily these days. And both wishes he didn’t and simply doesn’t care. He feels sure he is that spectacle that everybody would rather not notice and can’t help but notice all the same. What, in his philosophy classes at university, the university just over there on the other side of the square (and which he has come to visit), they called the elephant in the room. He is, at this moment, that elephant, the one that everyone chooses to ignore. Tears, the world will tell you, are a private thing. To be spent in private places. But when somebody takes their tears (however much they may not want to) out into a public place, they implicate everybody around them. And nobody wants to be impli
cated in the spectacle of somebody else’s tears.

  All the same, there is a pair of feet in front of him. And legs. White summer legs, under the blue dress of a uniform of some sort. And he knows, without further thought and without doubt, that these are the feet and the white summer legs that belong to the eyes of whoever was watching him.

  But he doesn’t look up. He doesn’t look up because the feet, legs and eyes of whoever this is do not concern him. She, and he can tell from the shapely, muscular legs that this is a young woman, is part of that world that no longer concerns him. He has no choice but to acknowledge the fact of her presence. But even as he is acknowledging it he is wishing she would go away. That she had not approached him. That she, and the whole world for that matter, would leave him alone.

  He has no idea how long he has been staring at those feet and those legs when she speaks.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Where has he heard that voice before? From the moment he hears it he knows that something has shifted. In a world gone wrong, something feels suddenly right. Impossibly right. More right than anything has for a long time. Or ever. But how? The late afternoon sun is strong and in order to speak to her he must stare into it. And at first she is a blur. Her face camouflaged, almost, in sunshine and shadow. Now here, now gone. As elusive as sunshine and shadow. He blinks, and blinks again. The picture clears and a young woman, bright eyes and a brown fringe, materialises in front of him. I come from the world out there. That world that doesn’t concern you any more. But it does. It does. And I have come to lead you back into it. This is my promise. And it is because he knows the moment requires nothing other than honesty that he meets those inquiring eyes directly, and, to her question, answers:

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  No, he’s not. He’s not all right. And she chooses, from the start, not to ask too much. About why he’s not all right. But she has spoken to him and, therefore, entered his world. And he has welcomed her into it with honesty. And so she decides she will be company for a while, for the short time she has left before taking up her duties looking for firecrackers. She will possibly be a distraction for him. Maybe a welcome one. But she will not pry. She decides she has no right to. And she doesn’t particularly want to, anyway. Not because of any lack of concern, but from respect. To ask would be an intrusion. But she can be a comfort. That is different. And so she will ignore, as they say, the elephant in the room.

  It is while she is wondering what to say that she notices his nationality on the shoulder of his uniform.

  ‘You’re Australian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He could go on but he can think of nothing to go on with. Of course, he ought to. The fact is he is distracted. By her. The promise of her. He knows what she is doing and he appreciates it. She is, as they say, taking his mind off things. Keeping him company. Being a good sport. She is asking questions, he is answering, and together they are making conversation. Which is a miracle in itself, for he hasn’t made conversation for a long time now. And it’s not coming naturally. No, he feels a bit like a monkey on a bicycle. The monkey will do it, but it doesn’t come naturally. And he knows what is coming next. She’s going to ask where exactly. Where exactly he comes from. And, when she does, he names his city. But even as he says it, even as he pronounces the place-name, Melbourne, it rings in his ears like a foreign sound. He waits. There is a pause.

  ‘Do you know it?’ He rises from the bench as he speaks. At some point the tears have stopped and now he wipes his eyes.

  ‘Yes, yes. I mean, I don’t know it. But I know of it.’

  He notices when she speaks that her voice has something plummy about it. Not upper-class, more of a university plumminess. Not strong, not faint, but there. A way of speaking with which he is familiar enough: the universal voice of the educated.

  ‘There’s an Australian girl in the office where I work. She came here in ’39 and sort of got stuck. She wants desperately to go home but she’s afraid of submarines and won’t leave. Shall we walk?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  ‘This way?’ and she points to a flower bed in a far corner of the square, a miniature rose garden she’s marvelled at before.

  ‘Yes, wherever. Something like that happened to me.’

  As they take off she notices his limp.

  ‘Got stuck here?’

  ‘Not exactly stuck. Got involved.’

  ‘That’ll teach you. Never get involved.’

  And with that, a shot at some sort of playfulness, she ventures an inquisitive glance. As much as to say have I judged this right? Something tells me you and I are of a kind. Have I judged it right? And she is relieved when he responds, as much to the sky as her.

  ‘Nothing teaches me.’

  Then he turns to her, catching the glint in her eyes, the life in them. The hint of play. This is how it was once. This is how I was. You see. I can still do this. And perhaps one day it might come naturally again. As naturally as it did in those above-it-all years before the war when we made pronouncements about the weather, and how under no circumstances was it to be spoken of.

  But all the time he wants to tell her that something has happened. Five minutes ago he was sitting on the bench, watching — as he has on so many park benches, in so many waiting rooms and crowded streets over the last year — yes, watching the world, but not in it. Five minutes ago that was him. Five minutes ago nothing had changed. Then everything changed. In an instant, and he felt it then as he feels it now. Someone has come along. He knows it. The right face at the right time. And the right voice. Something has happened. She must know this too. How can she not? But perhaps she doesn’t. And never will. Unless he tells her. Somehow, he must. But they are making conversation, at least. They are making conversation for now, and when he turns, his eyes upon her, they say look, I can do this … this conversation thing. And I will, for now. But there’s something else I have to say.

  Oh, she thinks, looking back into those eyes that are as intense as she knew they would be, you can do it, all right. Just like anybody else. But you’re not, are you? And with that thought she lingers on the intensity of his eyes longer than she ought to. For those eyes, direct and completely without artifice, could draw you in, if you weren’t careful. Eyes as intense as the times. And she knows she could be drawn in by them, as she is by Roman churches, if she’s not careful.

  But even as she imagines being drawn in by the eyes of this curious stranger, and as much as she knows these things happen — people, total strangers, suddenly colliding and staying stuck — she dismisses the thought as an idle one. One of those daydream thoughts that the mind throws up then tosses away. For, above all, she is aware of having started something she doesn’t know how to finish. She must leave soon to start her shift. But she did, after all, approach this young man. And now the matter must be seen through. Awkward, though. It will be difficult to take her leave casually, as it were. Already she’s beginning to curse her wretched pity.

  She could talk of flying, for he is wearing an RAF uniform and she can tell from his wings that he’s a pilot, but something tells her not to. For with that limp, she doubts he’s flying any more. So she talks of Australia, or what little she knows of it, and suddenly she wishes she knew more. She finds herself saying silly things about space and how there must be lots of it, and she knows they’re silly even as she speaks. And he says, yes, there is, lots of it. But his heart doesn’t seem to be in it. Nor his mind really on it. And so it goes. On and on. Until they reach a flower bed with climbing roses, and she’s suddenly got nothing left to say. They fall into silence. At first it is merely an awkward silence. Then it becomes unbearable because he is staring at her. And he’s going to say something. Without looking at those eyes she knows he is staring at her, and she has no wish to meet them. To break the silence, to stop him from saying whatever he is about to say because she knows whatever it is she doesn’t want to hear it, and, as much as anything else, as a parting gesture, she def
iantly plucks a rose. And so, with her hands occupied and doing something at least, she meets his eyes and, clearly in the manner of a parting gesture, makes an offering of it.

  ‘Here, give this to someone. Now, I really must—’

  Now I really must go, she was about to say. As well as adding that if there is no one to give it to, then keep it for yourself. It’s such a lovely rose, this one. Such a pretty shape. And such a deep red. But she never says any of this. She never gets the chance because, with no warning (although she will later note that she should have seen it coming), she stops in mid-sentence just as she is about to turn and leave. She stops because — and it happens in an instant — he has her hand. All speech and movement have been arrested. He is holding her. His hand is around hers. She can feel the warmth of that hand. And although it is a firm grip, although there is a brief shock in that sudden physical contact (and she catches her breath as she feels his hand clasp hers), it is not so firm a grip that she couldn’t shake herself free if she chose. Not so firm a grip that she calls it a nerve or the sort of unwanted pass that immediately consigns those who make them to the ranks of the seedy and the predatory. No, he’s not the type, she is certain of that already. It is simply a spontaneous act of, well … reaching out. This is how she chooses to take it. Although the grip is firm, there is neither threat nor presumption in the act. But he has no sooner reached out and held her hand than he releases it, buries his nose in the rich, deep red petals of the rose, then looks up to the sky.