A World of Other People

by Steven Carroll

  He has a room to himself now. They made him an officer, just for staying alive, he assumes. And the room came with being an officer. It’s a small one. But enough. He nods to the guard at the gate, and although they are perfectly familiar with each other, nobody takes any chances and nothing is taken for granted, and so he shows his papers, the barrier lifts and he enters the base.

  Night fell sometime between taking the fork in the path and showing the guard his papers, but he knows his way in the dark and is soon standing at the door of his hut. Inside, as he is shelling out the loose change from his pocket, his keys, his lighter, his watch, he pulls the rose out as well and wonders where on earth to put it. Silly thing. Silly business. And he contemplates dropping it in the bin with the waste paper and the used packet of cigarettes, but instead places the deep crimson of those velvet petals in the pages of a thin philosophical tract sitting on the small table beside his bed, shaking his head as he does so, as if to remind himself it really is a silly business.

  At some stage in the night he finds himself in an open country field. The trees raise the brows of their branches, the moon rolls its eyes. And he feels the heat, shields his eyes from the flames, and smells the fuel. And fear. But his legs take him back to the source of it all the same, back to the flames. And a voice cries out, telling him that it’s all going to go up. Any minute. All of it. Then everything explodes, and the world turns black. As black, he notes, his eyes opening and with no clear memory of either slumping on his bed or falling asleep, as black as the night out there. And then he hears the first of the bombers coming back. One, two, three … And he lies there, awake and counting until they are in. And when they are, he calculates how many didn’t come back and knows that sooner or later the same hand that chalked up ‘F’ for Freddie will chalk up on a blackboard — and for as many times as may be required — the word ‘Missing’.

  It’s like watching the prow of a giant liner coming towards you. Very slowly. Iris thinks of it like that because a young poet, one of those young poets she meets in the pubs they go to, said that that was what it was like to meet Mr Eliot. And he had, this young poet, really met Eliot, who had read his poems, and although he wasn’t going to publish them he spoke kindly of them. Everybody wanted to know what meeting Eliot was like (and Iris played along, keeping quiet about already knowing him). That was when he said it was like watching the prow of a giant liner coming towards you. It was a good way of putting it. And this is how it feels right now. And she’s a dot on the pier as the giant ocean liner of Mr Eliot nears.

  They are standing on the rooftop together. The night is quiet. The air mild. There is nothing to do. And because, over the last year or so, they have come to know each other a little — or, rather, shared each other’s company and made small talk (for one doesn’t, she is convinced, ever get to know Mr Eliot) — she has ventured to ask what he meant by something he once wrote in an essay she recently read. And that is when he goes quiet and grave and, in his face and his whole bearing, becomes a giant ocean liner gliding very slowly towards her. And even when it docks, even when it comes to a stop in front of her, its hooded eyes staring unblinkingly at her, the ship pauses before responding.

  Iris is staring into those eyes and wishing she’d never asked the question. She’s relieved when he finally speaks.

  ‘Heaven only knows. Perhaps I knew when I was younger and it was easier to be sure of things. Perhaps I’ve just forgotten. The truth is,’ he says, in a voice like a poet at a lectern, ‘I’m not interested in theories I once held. Especially twenty years ago.’

  And it is then that he is called away by one of the other watchers, but not before his eyes glint with a playful light. It is there and it is gone. A playfulness that says that is the official version. But because we have shared these hours together on this rooftop, you will, no doubt, have expected a little more.

  She has, she knows, broken an understanding that has been largely observed over the months — that they will not talk of his work. For she has noticed that he likes to keep the conversation light. And, what’s more, that he is very good at controlling it. A little like a schoolmaster saying, ‘Now, we all know the rules.’ And Iris has just broken the rules, which explains the answer. For it is an answer that says don’t come too near and don’t ask too much. She has been politely told that rules are rules. And that that won’t happen again. It is all part of the game, the game of pretending that they could all be just anybody, just any band of fire-watchers on a designated roof filling in the time between signing on and signing off. Yes, they all know the rules of the game, but it’s Mr Eliot who has made them up.

  And as she watches him retreat and join the other two in light and easy talk of a detective mystery one minute and the sad loss of their favourite French cheeses the next, she can see that he is at home with light talk. Relaxed. Just, she suspects, as he is in a public place. In a lecture hall or at some crowded public event. For he is, she suspects, one of those who hides best in plain view. And the dark three-piece suits, the hats, the umbrella — the uniform of someone who could be just about anyone — are all part of the official version. The uniform of the public figure, the best kind of camouflage because nobody notices you — while the ‘you’ gets on with its private life in plain view. But because they have shared these hours on the rooftop over the last year — on and off, for there are times, frequent enough, when he stays in that country house in which he spends half his week — he recognised that she expected something a little more than the official version. Hence the glint in his eyes, fleeting as it was. For he knows that she has witnessed and seen roused into inspired, animated life the unofficial version inside the uniform of ordinariness. Nonetheless, she won’t make the same mistake again and leaves them to it for the time being. Not that she is put out, and it is not so much a slight as a playful reminder that rules are rules. The glint in his eyes is all she gets. All the same, written into that almost conspiratorial glance is the hint, the consolation, that it’s more than most get.

  She stares out across the square, in darkness now, pondering that brief encounter in the park and wondering who on earth the young man might have been. This young man who seems to have been dropped into her life, sort of parachuted into it. What is his name? She never got his and he never asked hers. Does it matter? There’s every chance they’ll never meet again and she tells herself she’ll be relieved if they never do. Still, and she smiles to herself, no ‘official version’ there. No games. No play. No rules to break because he broke them all. No, she corrects herself, they broke them all, for she approached him, and acknowledged the elephant. When she recalls his eyes, it’s not the colour or the shape or anything of that kind that she recalls, but the intensity that she always knew would be there. Eyes as intense as the times. Eyes that played no games. And insisted on no rules.

  As she joins the rest of the watch, glancing back at that dark square opposite — the summer foliage, the lawn, the pathways round it, and the rich, deep red of the roses, all sleeping now under cover of night — she is asking herself once again if there really are such things as casual promises. Or is it on such things, airy words thrown up in haste to make a quick escape, that whole lives turn?

  She’s watching Pip. Pip, whom she’s known since her first year at university. They were in the same year. Stood together for the same group photograph. All women. All feeling special. And so they were. And those first encounters, Iris and Pip and all the others from that class of 1937, never felt incidental, for they were — and they all knew it — a bit special just for being at the university. And so there was always this feeling that friendships — lasting, important friendships — could be made. Pip, she knows, will be there when Iris marries (if she ever does), has children, turns fifty and dies — if she ever does.

  It was Pip who found this flat — she’s good like that. Finds the impossible, and usually in the most impossibly casual ways. In this case getting a boot fixed, on the spot, by a shoemaker. An ancient Jewish
shoemaker. She’d been tramping about the city all day looking for a place, she told him, for something to say or as a way of explaining her exhausted look, and now she’d gone and worn her boots down. Of course, nobody wears their boots down in a day, no matter how much walking they do, but the old man nodded and smiled faintly. And he must have had some sort of sympathy for her. Or must have judged that, tall tales aside, there was something trustworthy in her. Whatever it was, when he put the boots back on the counter, resoled, glued and fixed, he told her that he had a place — and that they could walk to it from his shop, if she wanted. If she wanted? He’d owned it for years and for some mysterious reason hadn’t bothered increasing the rent in years as well. Whoever was previously in it was gone; Pip never asked why. It was hers if she wanted. They never signed a lease. No paper. Just a shake of the hands. A flat, an old brewer’s stable, just off St James’s Park, and for a song. That’s Pip for you.

  And that’s how Iris comes to be here, staring at Pip, her hair piled high, standing over the toaster in the kitchen. But as much as she’s staring at Pip, she’s also thinking of the park the previous day. And far from forgetting the young airman, as she thought she might or vaguely hoped she would, she’s dwelling on him more than she imagined. And she can’t say why, can’t explain it, except for an ill-defined feeling that something has happened. But what? Looked at simply, a young man cried in the park and she asked if he was all right; he said he wasn’t; they talked; she gave him a rose; he clasped her hand … no, there was no way of looking at it simply.

  Pip inspects the toast and pronounces it done. She spreads margarine over it, followed with mustard and slices of cheese. She calls it Welsh rarebit. And as Iris sinks her teeth into the toast she contemplates telling Pip about the park. But she doesn’t. Not this time. They are friends and they tell each other things, but this time she thinks twice. And for no other reason than that she wants to keep it to herself. For a little longer. And with that impulse concludes that something may well have happened — and may well be going on.

  ‘Well?’

  Pip is looking at her and she is about to reply ‘Well, what?’, when she realises Pip is asking about the toast. What’s her verdict? For an answer she bites into the toast a second time and raises her eyes to the heavens deliriously.

  ‘But where,’ she says, when she has finished munching, ‘did you get this cheese?’

  ‘I know a man who knows a man. Don’t ask.’

  That’s Pip. As they finish the toast, having devoured a second serving, and Pip is licking the mixture of margarine and mustard from her fingers, she raises an eyebrow at Iris and says, ‘Pub?’

  And as they step outside into the tiny laneway, Pip asks if there is word of Frank, for she too knew him at university, and it occurs to Iris that she hasn’t even thought of him. Not today. Not yesterday. Her mind has been elsewhere, and as they stride off in the dusk towards the park and a favoured haunt in Soho, she’s glad she didn’t tell Pip after all. Not for the moment.

  Throughout the next week she does all the things she usually does. She moves between her home and work and back. And she’s noted at some stage that the talk in the corridors isn’t so jittery any more. No end-of-the-world talk followed by a wink that says you never heard this from me. Not since the bombs stopped falling. Even though it’s been over a year since the last raid there’s still that lingering feeling that this can’t last. Maybe tonight’s the night. And each day brings her nearer to the day she promised to meet the young man whose name she never learned.

  The curious thing is she’s conscious that the days are passing. More and more slowly. And she’s beginning to wonder if, amongst all that dutiful sense of obligation, of keeping one’s word and fulfilling a promise, some part of her is anticipating the day as well. She tells herself it is absurd. She doesn’t even know the man and he may very well not be there. And if he is there’ll probably just be ten minutes of awkward conversation. And so when the day arrives and she enters the park it is in a come-what-may state of mind.

  She quickly looks about and there he is. On the same bench. Same attitude. That of a thoughtful statue. Staring down at his feet. But when he looks up and spots her, it’s the eyes she takes in. The eyes, a sparkle in them that wasn’t there before, that say it all; the eyes that say you’ve come. You’ve come, after all, and I never thought you would. For what’s a casual promise? And he is about to stand when she approaches and tells him to stay just where he is. That there’s no need to get up. And as much as the voice of her cautious nature, the voice of the reserved Iris, is warning her to be careful, the devil-may-care Iris is in the ascendancy, and as she stands in front of him staring down at his motionless form, she knows exactly what to say.

  5.

  THE SECRET SOCIETY OF LOVE

  It’s the girl in the ARP coat that he’s looking at. There’s a circle of dancers, but she shines, and it’s her he’s looking at. They’re playing a sort of musical chairs. Everybody’s cleared a space and the pub is large enough for the game. Somebody’s playing a piano in a corner behind a veil of smoke, and the chairs, six or seven, have been arranged in a line in the middle of the room. The chairs are shelters, and there are always two or three unlucky sods left standing when the music stops and the bomb goes off.

  It’s a sort of rumba, and they’re all in a circle dancing round the chairs: a Canadian, a couple of Indians, a Polish pilot — uniformed and un-uniformed dancers from all over the place, each with their hands on the hips of the dancer in front of them, singing along with the piano and rotating slowly around the line of chairs in the middle of the circle. But it’s the girl in the ARP coat that he’s looking at: her head thrown back, a cigarette hanging from her lips one minute, singing the next. And he’s convinced that everybody else must be looking at her too. She’s got this life in her, that life he first saw in the park. In her eyes. Everything. She’s bursting with it.

  And when the music suddenly stops and the whole pub — all the onlookers, all of those like Jim, seated at tables or standing round the circle of dancers — shouts in a deafening chorus, ‘BOOM’, and the mad scramble for the chairs begins, he becomes tense. He knows it’s just a dance. Just a game. But his eyes stay fixed upon her, willing her to find the shelter of a chair, and he does not relax until she does. For she is quick. No, swift. She’s played this game before. In more innocent parlours, in more innocent times. Once in the chair, she takes a deep breath, eyes alight, face beaming. The scramble is over. The dead shuffle off into the pub to rejoin their friends or manoeuvre their way to the bar.

  And in that uncertain time between the aftermath of the ‘BOOM’ and the music’s starting again (like the eerie silence between the end of a raid and the resumption of the working day), she stands, one hand on her hip, the other holding a cigarette. A picture, he imagines, of triumph. At the same time he’s noting again the sheer youthfulness of her, and that whole pose — the hand on the hip, the smoke expelled into the air — has a touch of the young actress, trying it on for the first time and finding she can almost do it. And as she draws on the cigarette she looks about the room and then looks directly at him, face beaming, blowing smoke into the air as if to say it takes more than a bomb to stop me. Then the piano starts up again and they’re off. The dancing, the singing, the slow circle round the shelters of the chairs starting all over again.

  Three weeks before, he’d sat in the park, in that small square, at the appointed hour, convinced that he was wasting his time and he would wait in vain, when she appeared, only a few minutes after him, wearing the same ARP coat she’s wearing now. She walked up to him, stood before him, and with perfectly pitched irony asked: ‘Are you all right?’

  And he’d laughed. Laughed, for God’s sake. And he was about to say that oh yes, he was all right. More right than he’d been for a long time. More right than he’d ever been. But he didn’t because the laugh said it all. And she sat beside him and gave him half her sandwich. That was when he learned that her
name was Iris, and she learned that his was Jim. And she was a bit disappointed in that, she told him. Thought it might be something more interesting, more … more like him. Because Jim wasn’t right for him. In fact, she refused to know anyone called Jim (even if she couldn’t really say why), and so they played around with different names, but nothing fitted. And even though she told him that he didn’t have the eyes of a Jim or a James, that he was more a Hugh or a Rory, that his parents had displayed a singular lack of imagination, she agreed to make an exception this time. Jim it would be. And when he told her that he was named Jim because his father was a Jim and that together they’d been ‘big’ and ‘little’ Jim, she pulled a face and said she’d almost changed her mind. But she was definitely an Iris. They agreed on that. And when they’d finished her sandwiches and finished with the whole business of names, she glanced at her watch and cried, ‘Dear me.’

  That was three weeks ago. There are, he imagines, two types of time. There’s everyday time that contains everyday minutes, hours, days and weeks. And this is the type of time that slips by and is gone before you know it because you’re not looking. People live their whole lives like that. Not looking, that is. Then there is special time, time that contains incident and meaning in ways that ordinary time doesn’t. Time that is measured — he read this recently in a book of criticism and it stuck — by its value. Time measured by value. Almost sounds like an equation, he thinks, and a good one. And the incident and meaning that constitute its value might be good or bad, uplifting or devastating. But we don’t measure it the way we do ordinary time. It moves both slowly and quickly, like coming back from a holiday far away and feeling as though you’ve travelled in time upon returning. The last three weeks, since meeting Iris that second time in the park, have existed in this time. The type of time that doesn’t come along very often. And they are still in it. Time measured by value.