A World of Other People

by Steven Carroll

  And so he lies awake in the dark and listens to the engines fade into the night until all becomes silent again. It all fades like another life. Was that him? Was that them — ‘F’ for Freddie? And just as he could when he walked back to the base a few weeks before, he can hear them and see them. He closes his eyes and wishes he couldn’t. There is a country field. A full moon. A voice is calling out in his ear telling him it’s going to go up any minute. All of it. Then everything explodes and the world turns black.

  He hears a bird, opens his eyes and the room is light. At first he doesn’t know where he is and he is numbering the rooms of his life, wondering which one he’s in. And then he sees her. She is wrapped in a blanket and has just flung the window open. She is grinning, eyeing him and looking up from the window at the bird, then back to him.

  ‘It’s a shame to be sleeping. We can sleep later. But not through this. You can’t sleep through this. It’s not allowed.’

  The ARP coat is hanging from the bedroom chair. Their things are either on the chair or the floor. The pillow is soft; there is a faint, flowery scent in the air. The bird sings. It is like music on a Saturday morning. And for a moment he is both here and transported back to his home, to those Saturday mornings past, when the light was always bright — football weather — and the music that was playing was Saturday morning music. Then he remembers it’s Sunday, that he must return to his base soon. His face darkens and she drops the blanket and is suddenly beside him.

  ‘No dark faces,’ she grins. ‘They’re not allowed either.’

  But, she adds, they’re the only rules — because rules also aren’t allowed. Not here. They can do and say what they like in the domain of this room. They are both naked. Here the whole room is lit with a bright autumn sun. Nothing to hide. Everything — birthmark, moles, hair, forbidden frowns — clear as day. So this is it, that secret society she’s never gained admission to. This is it: two naked people in a sunlit room. She reaches out and strokes him, he staring at her, eyes lingering here and there on her body, she studying his like some young art student in a life-drawing class, seeing a naked man for the first time. No words. No desire for words. No need of words. She strokes him, and at the same moment his fingers slip easily into her and she closes her eyes. And just then, quite suddenly, in the no-rules, clear light of the room, just when she’s banished words from the moment, words well up in her. Delicious, forbidden words. Three of them. And she silently mouths them as his fingers push further into her, three delicious, forbidden words: cunt, cock, fuck. She silently hums them, again and again. A forbidden mantra. Almost a game. On and on. Three words. Basic, like bread. Almost like reciting Chaucer. So this is the secret society of love. So this is it. No wonder nobody ever explained it to her, because to explain it, to really explain it, they’d have to speak of two naked people in a bright clear room, and they’d have to use words like cunt, cock and fuck. And nobody does. And nobody has. Not until now.

  Then her mind floats free of her, drifts away … somewhere, words echo. Faintly. Somewhere … there is a room, there is a window, there is a bird … out there. Her mind floats free. Her chin sinks to her chest. Her eyes close.

  Why you? An hour later, half an hour — who knows? — she’s staring at the open window, listening to the same birdsong, giving the question both serious and fleeting thought. He’s holding her hand, eyes half open, or half closed. Why you? Why anybody? Why bother asking? It’s a mystery. And she rolls towards him, once more giving herself over to drowsy, delirious touch … and sight, smell, taste. Lips and skin. And, all the time, his hand holding hers. Did he ever really let go? Did she?

  And so the morning passes in this private world of private declarations, private meanings. And private dominion. A world unto itself. While outside history marshals its forces oblivious of it all.

  It happens quite suddenly, without warning. It is late in the morning and they are walking through St James’s Park to his station, the autumn sun still bright. The day is drowsy, she thinks, or, she corrects herself, they are. Arm in arm, they are just two lovers on a Sunday morning. She has learned over the weeks to accommodate his limp and now barely notices it. Neither of them speaks. There is no urgency in their step, and everything has a dreamy stillness.

  As good a time as any, she concludes, to tell him about the ring that she still keeps in her drawer, about the young man called Frank who gave it to her and for whom she promised, a long time ago, to wear it when he returned. As good a time as any to tell him that a long time ago a young man she barely knew gave to the young woman she was, and whom she now barely recognises, a ring, which she took and swore to keep, but which was always more a bit of play-acting than anything else. He would write to her because he wanted someone to write to, and she would be the girl at home who wrote back. Something like that. But even as she rehearses what she will say, she is aware of the tug of loyalties; of explaining it in such a way as to clear the air, but also not to dismiss it as a matter of insignificance because it’s not — and, in any case, it would be a hurtful thing to say even if Frank never heard it. It would be wrong to suggest that it was all just a silly business, like two children playing at being grown-ups. So it’s a juggling act. But it’s something that must be said, all the same, and she is determined to get it over and done with. To get it off her chest, for that’s where it seems to be sitting on this dreamy Sunday morning in the park.

  In the distance a woman sits on a bench with a pram. There is the faint sound of crying. The woman, presumably the mother, is attempting to distract her baby with a rattle. But she’s having no luck. And as they walk closer to the bench the wails of the baby become louder. Still, it’s just one part of a perfect morning. Just a detail on the canvas, for it is, Iris imagines, almost like walking through one of those vast paintings that documents a moment in the life of a park or a street. The cries are loud but incidental.

  It is as they approach the pram that she can feel his body becoming rigid. Tense. She looks round to him and his eyes are fixed on it. The sparkle has gone from them. They are, once again, eyes as intense as the times, as intense as she knew they would be when she first met them. And he’s lost to her, or he seems to be. For when she asks, ‘What is it?’, he says nothing. He doesn’t seem to have heard her. His eyes are fixed on the front of the pram. So she shifts her gaze and follows his line of vision. They move closer, and she can see that the mother has draped some sort of clear material, a transparent screen, over the front of the pram so that inside it becomes a kind of enclosed cabin. And Iris imagines (as indeed she supposes the mother does) that this makes everything snug and cosy. And that the baby will be happy in its snug and cosy world. Secure. But the baby is unhappy and the mother, who is calm and almost serene as though she’s experienced this many times before, is peering at it through the transparent material and waving the rattle. As they near the pram, now no more than a few feet away (and the mother still hasn’t noticed them, so intent is she on soothing the baby), the cries become even louder. And more desperate.

  And it is at this point that Jim shakes himself free of Iris and stands gaping at the pram, the screen across the front of it and the screaming baby in the cosy, confined world of its cabin.

  ‘Jim?’

  Her sudden and urgent call catches the attention of the mother who turns to see, for the first time, the rigid, intense figure of a uniformed airman standing no more than a few feet from the pram. From her baby. And he’s mad, she can see that. He’s got the eyes of a murderer, and as much as the woman with him yells at him, trying to get his attention, he ignores her. Or doesn’t hear her. He’s beyond hearing. Beyond recall and on the verge of exploding. And it is just as the mother is about to rise, to wheel the pram to safety, the screams of the child now turning heads in the park, that Jim shouts at her, and the words erupt from him with a guttural savageness that he barely recognises as his voice, as if some monster were talking through him.

  ‘He wants to get out! He just wants to get
out, you stupid woman!’

  And just as he is about to step forward the mother rises and swiftly ferries the pram and the baby away, and both Iris and Jim watch as the pram disappears along the path and the screaming gradually fades and the morning returns to dreamy stillness. Or it would, except that everything has been shattered. And just as the baby’s cries had begun to turn heads, so too has Jim. And Iris, for the first time, is aware of having become a spectacle.

  She stares at him, eyes wide, eyes that suddenly say who are you?, then leads him to the bench that the mother, until a few minutes before, had been happily seated on. He slumps and buries his head in his hands. He’s gone still. He’s a statue. She drops beside him, staring at his immobile form, saying to herself this is where I came in … this is where I …

  She reaches out and strokes his hair and feels his body convulse. The statue is crying. And she waits until the tears subside, and when they do she speaks softly and slowly.

  ‘Jim. Jim, is it over?’

  And he looks up and takes in the park as if seeing it for the first time that morning.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, still looking round the park, the heads that had turned in his direction now minding their own business again. ‘It’s gone.’

  They sit together saying nothing, he wiping the tears from his eyes, she taking his hand and silently repeating this is where I came in … this is where … And when she finally speaks again it is with that air of vacancy she’s noticed in those who have just survived a bomb explosion.

  ‘What was it?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was it the screams?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not the noise?’

  ‘No.’ And he turns to her with a deeply puzzled look in his eyes. ‘What happened?’

  She shakes her head slowly and almost smiles. ‘I was hoping you’d know.’

  He gazes once more around the park, that deeply puzzled look still in his eyes. And when he speaks it is almost as though he is telling her a story. Or about a dream he had.

  ‘I’m flying through cloud. So much cloud. There doesn’t seem to be any end of it. One of my engines is on fire. Then the cloud breaks and I’m flying over open country. There’s a full moon. A big moon. It’s like somebody has turned on a big light. Suddenly I’m in a country field, and there’s an explosion. Then everything turns black.’

  He pauses for a moment, staring ahead, then turns to her.

  ‘That’s it. Every time. It stops there. There’s something on the other side of that darkness. But what is it?’ He stares at her intently, as if she just might know. ‘It’s like the story with the missing page,’ he adds, the faintest smile on his face.

  ‘But it’s the one you’ve got to find. Or it’s going to keep happening, again and again. You know that.’

  He nods and there’s a faint raising of the eyebrows. ‘How?’

  There they are again, eyes as intense as the times, staring straight back at her. But also inviting her in, saying show me how, inviting her to share that intensity. And as much as part of her is calculating the short time they have known each other, and as much as she is also contemplating the question of who are you? — and why you? — she steps in anyway because she is already in his life. But that feeling she had in the park when she first spoke to him, that feeling of talking to a time-bomb, is back again.

  ‘When you came round, who was there? The doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ask him. He might know something.’

  He shakes his head. ‘There’s no time. They’ve got lads dying on them. They’re dead on their feet, anyway.’

  ‘Was there anyone else?’

  He shrugs. ‘Uniforms and suits.’

  She doesn’t push him and he doesn’t add that they have a name for it. Lack of Moral Fibre. That if you haven’t got a leg or an arm shot off, you’re all right, aren’t you? Well, get back up there. Everyone’s got their private war and this is no time for cry-babies.

  He looks away across the park, unblinking. Then he closes and screws his eyes up for a moment before opening them again.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks.

  He continues staring at the park and just when she thinks he hasn’t heard he speaks without turning to her.

  ‘All the way back I could see from the corner of my eye — and believe me, I didn’t want to see — but I could see Fleming, my engineer, sitting in his seat beside me, his … his insides … on his lap … Fleming, for God’s sake, who told me often enough that it was just as well I could fly because I couldn’t tell a joke.’

  He looks down at the ground, a slight shake of his head, then falls silent.

  She can find nothing to say. There they are. Just another couple in the park, spending a pleasant Sunday morning on a bench. But no. One look at him, one look at her too, she suspects, and anybody passing would know that this was no pleasant Sunday morning and they’re not just another couple.

  In time she helps him rise from the bench and they continue on the course they were set upon before the incident, but all Iris’s thoughts of saying what she intended to say just a little while ago, all those carefully rehearsed sentences, have evaporated. The moment was right, but the moment is not right any more. The mother and the pram have long since disappeared from the park. She takes him by the arm. They could have been just any two lovers in the park on a Sunday morning. But the morning has lost its dreaminess. His body feels heavy beside her and she’s conscious of his limp in a way she wasn’t before. For a moment it feels as though he’s leaning on her. Together they make their way out of the park, under the Admiralty Arch, past the ugly grey mound of the public shelter at the foot of Nelson’s Column, and on to his station. And when she kisses him goodbye he’s got that lost dog, puzzled look in his eyes, then he kisses her again and a hint of the sparkle she put there is back.

  ‘Call tomorrow,’ she says. ‘Call me at work. You’ve got the number?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He even smiles this time as he speaks, and then turns to the Underground.

  ‘You won’t forget?’

  ‘No.’

  Then he’s gone. It is the last day of September. There is a sudden chill in the air. And as she watches him disappear into the gathering crowd at the turnstiles she whispers an inaudible ‘BOOM’ and could almost cry herself — because, suddenly, she’s only got the energy for one.

  The train takes him to North Huntingdon, then it’s a bus to the nearest village and a short walk from there. He follows the familiar path across the common that eventually leads to his base. It’s clouding over. The fields have lost their autumn glow and the green, sodden look of winter is already settling in. But as much as he may be looking at the surrounding countryside, it’s the park and the pram and the baby’s screams that preoccupy him. There he was, happy one minute, a mess the next. And no warning. It dropped on him like a night-fighter. Out of nowhere. And the question he asked Iris on the bench is the question he now asks himself: what happened? And the reply is the same: I was hoping you’d know. He pushes his way through a rickety wooden gate and a grey line of Nissen huts comes into view. He’s back. There are three of them on the table beside his bunk when he enters his room. Letters from home. And from the moment he looks at the envelopes, the stamps and the distinctive character of his father’s handwriting, he is overcome with a nostalgia that he never knew was there. It’s an ache. But a sweet one. And the moment retrieves a certain kind of happiness. A simple happiness that he had once, but doesn’t any more. The very look of the letters does that. And he no sooner holds them than he sees his street. An ordinary, middle-class, suburban street. Wide and leafy. Lawns, driveways, flowers nodding over fences. And above it all a suburban sun, brilliant through the trees, that only shines that way on a Saturday morning. Football weather.

  Such is the power these stamps and envelopes possess before they have even been opened. His father is a newsagent and Jim knows exactly which part of the
shop the envelopes came from, for he has sold them himself in that once-upon-a-time world that the envelopes conjure up. And he holds them as if he were holding a small miracle. For they have not only come from a distant place, but, after everything, from a distant time. He pauses, taking the moment in, before opening the sealed flap on that time and place that he once called home.

  On closer examination he sees that the letters have been written over a period of some months: the first dated mid-July, the second written in August and the third just recently. But they’ve all come in one batch and he decides to read them in sequence. The first begins in his father’s hand, then the letter was obviously passed to his mother, and her hand takes over. His father talks of the football, and although his father is no great enthusiast, he knows that Jim is. And as he reads he clearly sees once more that Saturday morning sun, and himself, Jim, closing the front gate and stepping onto the footpath, holding his bag containing his boots and gear, setting out on that easy stroll to the ground that someone, in a moment of inspired invention, called Windy Hill. His mother says there’s no great news, except that an old school friend, who lived just four doors up, has been killed in New Guinea. And it is at this point that Jim puts the letter down, for he can picture that friend, Lionel (who was never really much of a friend) — podgy, glasses, never played sport, a genius at maths. So, Lionel not only went to war; Lionel got himself killed. Killed, for heaven’s sake. It seems inconceivable that he was ever born to be killed in a war. For, as odd as it seems, Jim can see some people, more than others, as the stuff of death in war. And when the likes of Lionel not only go to war but get themselves killed it’s as though nature has made a mistake. A sort of bureaucratic blunder of the natural world. A slip-up. And as much as he knows it is fact, he still can’t see it. Can’t conceive of Lionel as dead. But he is, and Jim’s recollection of that leafy suburban street that was once his is altered.