Republics of the Mind

by James Robertson

  The woman who brought the coffee – ‘one of the people here’ – her name is Meg. She called him ‘Mr Stewart’, and smiled at me one of those understanding smiles that go with the job. Most of the residents get called by their first names, but not my grandfather. It is not so much that he is too formidable, rather that there is a sense of propriety about him which defies over-familiarity. Probably this becomes more important as, bit by bit, his physical dignity is stripped away. A decade separates him from nearly all the other residents, a generation or two from the staff, and from me.

  I watch the claw move over the table between us, locating the saucer, then the plate with the biscuits, then one of the pink wafers. Even at such a late stage the brain can still learn new tricks: in this case, how to be blind. Three times I have visited him since I came back, three times in three months, and each time his body is frailer but his face seems stronger, in spite of the sightless eyes. It’s as though the mind has finally lost patience with the useless flesh which encumbers it. My grandfather is ninety-eight. He had a turn last year and everybody thought he was on the way out but now his mind has rallied and, although he doesn’t mention it, he must be aiming for the hundred and that fabled telegram. There were times when people of his vintage feared the arrival of official telegrams, but now the only one he is going to get is a hope and a challenge, growing nearer with each passing day.

  I am only thirty-five but watching him I feel as old as he looks. I am HIV-positive. In the last year I’ve studied my soul from all sides, and every morning I begin the examination again.

  ‘New York,’ he says. He says it as if the novelty has not worn off the name, as if English York should still feel aggrieved at being usurped. ‘It must be very exciting. Of course I’ve never been to any of these places.’ I’m not fooled by the self-effacement – we’re all well used to the implications by now: I’ve never lived, I’ve never done anything except this – this getting to be an old man; you young people today live lives we could never have imagined. This from a man who spent six months being shelled on a beach at Gallipoli, then a year in the mud in France, watching the other young men around him dying, and wondering if the war would be over before his turn came.

  I went from extreme youth to some kind of wisdom in less than ten years. Maybe a war does that for you too, I wouldn’t know. I have to say that we – I mean our community in New York – reacted very quickly once we realised the horror that was upon us. But the damage was already done: we had been too much of a community and we suffered like one of those companies wiped out on the Somme, when all the men came from one town or district. God dispensing justice, some say.

  ‘I’ve never really known any Americans,’ he tells me. ‘Never had much dealings with them. Of course a lot of our people ended up there.’ By this he means the emigrants: our people became their people. ‘A big country,’ he says, ‘with great cities. I should like to have seen some of those cities. A lot of opportunity there, I should imagine.’

  I have known many Americans, and I have taken opportunities and had experiences in their greatest city which if I were to tell him would appal my grandfather, assuming that he believed his own flesh and blood capable of such things. If I were to tell him, but naturally I will not. My years over there, as far as he knows, have been about study and travel and more study, and a little bar and restaurant work on the side to help finance me, and that famous American hospitality. But in reality it was the friends who kept me there, kept me going back. Yes, I have known many Americans, and they have known me. This was in the days of manifest destiny, when we still believed opportunity was there for the taking. Of course we were hated and feared for it. We always have been.

  I don’t know if I will be going back. I’m not even sure if they would let me through immigration.

  ‘A lot of Irish there too,’ says my grandfather. ‘The Scots and the Irish have plenty in common in their history.’ He says this with wonder in his voice, as though it has just occurred to him, although it’s a familiar preamble. It is one of the things that amazes me about him: his constant ability to re-energise old facts and thoughts that have been his companions longer now than any living thing on earth. He never tires of them. Now that I have lost so many, my lovers and other friends, I understand this honing of memory. What was once tedious to me I see has a kind of comfort. I find myself welcoming what comes next: his recital of the league table of national prejudice.

  ‘Always liked the Irish – friendly, open people. Take life as they find it. Tragic as well, of course, their history – like ours – more so. Don’t like the Welsh – never trusted them. The English, well, we all have to get on with the English, don’t we? Spent most of my working life among them. London. Hm, yes, they were always very civil, I have to say. They liked us, you know, when we went to London. We were thorough, exact. What’s the word? Conscientious. Yes, we were conscientious.’

  He pauses. He has dealt with these islands. His mind drifts across the sea.

  ‘I like the French.’ He decides in their favour, as he always does. In the twenties it was a little risqué to like the French, and now it always will be. ‘Delightful people. And the Italians – charming. Never could run anything though, not even under Mussolini.’ The Italians are forgiven their little mistake; it wasn’t really anything they could help. As usual, the fun dries up here. Naturally no one of his generation need even consider the possibility of liking the Germans. And the Germans are about as far as one seriously needs to go in such a line of thought. All those conflicts in the Middle East, all those shades of nation and race – Asia, Africa, the Americas – too distant, too different. And yet once he said to me, shaking his head at some new conflagration, ‘We must, we must try to understand. Otherwise it’ll just go on and on as it always has.’

  There it is. My grandfather is like the rest of us, caught between history and hope, but history weighs heavy in his scales now, and every year it feeds faster and faster, gobbling up hope. He looks back on his life and it isn’t just that he’s had the best years of it, it’s that it’s over, actually over, and all he can do is sit in his armchair which faces the spot where the portable TV used to be and wait for a royal telegram and whatever it is his faith has promised him.

  Anyway, it’s nonsense to say he has not lived! Quite apart from the war. He worked in London for nearly four decades as an accountant, maybe not the most glamorous of professions but – what decades! The twenties, thirties, forties and fifties! In the twenties, when the civil war was on, he went to Dublin every year to oversee an audit for a client company there. He used to play golf with the company chairman. ‘You’ll be fine with me, don’t you worry,’ the chairman would assure him – a Brit in the new, bloodily born Free State. On the ninth tee the chairman pointed to a dyke running alongside the course and said to him, ‘Just last week I was playing here, there was a foursome up ahead on the fairway, these three fellows with guns came out of nowhere, took one of the foursome away and shot him against the wall. I tell you, it shakes you up, a thing like that. We didn’t know whether we should finish our round or not.’ That’s the Irish for you, says my grandfather. He chuckles at the memory.

  When he had his turn last year his memory went into overdrive. My mother had it partly from himself, partly from the staff. They would find him at night in his pyjamas in the corridor, fuelled by something so powerful that it made him able to walk completely unaided. It was a struggle to persuade him back to bed. Once he was looking for his wife. Once he said he was trying not to step on the faces of the dead men on the floor. Perhaps this is how we prepare for death, by revisiting the people that were dearest to us, or whose being taken from us was the worst to bear. Perhaps we have to apologise for surviving.

  I’m not ready to do that yet. My people are not far enough away.

  My grandfather grew up in and around Dundee. As the century turned he was five, then six. One day his father, who was a lawyer and well-connected, took him on an expedition with a friend who
had just bought a motor car. They drove all the way to Perth and made a telephone call to say they had arrived safely. Then they had tea at the Salutation Hotel before setting out on the return journey. My grandfather reckons he must have been one of the first people to make that trip by car. I consider this to be a miraculous story; so simple, so innocent. I always encourage him to tell it.

  ‘Of course, nowadays people fly all over the world and don’t think anything of it!’ he says. ‘Like you. You’ve been to all sorts of places, done all sorts of things.’

  How can I tell him, how could he believe me, that I long to be that little boy, ecstatic on that dusty road beside the Tay? How can I tell him that I think I know what lies between that happy, excited trust in the transport of the future and the tough old bird who sits opposite me now, his claw neatly placing the wafer biscuit on the saucer? How can I tell him that I would willingly travel back and forth on that road for eternity, and never tire of it? I would like to try to explain, to say that I’ve been in the trenches too, that I have held the heads of my dying friends and that the wound I have carried home with me has not bought me safety. He’s so incredibly old. Nothing should surprise him anymore.

  Instead we sit and talk about jobs I might do, places I might go next. I’ll say this for him, he has never criticised my lack of career. There is envy in there of course. He never had the chance. But then again, he believes life is for the taking. ‘Take it!’ he says. ‘You’ve nothing to lose.’

  Then something goes wrong. He puts his cup and saucer down too suddenly, and a little spurt of coffee and pink wafer shoots out over his chin and stains his tie. His face seems to collapse and drain of colour. He hunches forward. ‘I don’t feel well,’ he says. The words are small and childlike.

  There is a bell which I press for help, and while we’re waiting I reach out and take his hard hand in mine. ‘It’s all right, someone’ll be here in a moment.’ The trouble is, in spite of everything, I’m still useless in these situations. I don’t know what to say or do, except to touch. The door opens and it’s Meg who enters. ‘Now, Mr Stewart, are you not feeling well?’

  ‘He seemed fine,’ I tell her, ‘and then everything suddenly seemed to stop.’

  ‘It sometimes happens,’ she says, ‘He just needs to lie down for a while. He gets terribly tired, you see.’

  Between us we help him over to the bed. He keeps saying he is very sorry to cause a fuss. Meg quiets him, gently lays him on the bed. Suddenly I see the fear swirling in his milky eyes. ‘Who’s that, who’s that?’

  ‘It’s only me,’ she says. ‘It’s Meg.’ I feel helpless and afraid too, and draw back a little. Too many things are flooding in. Meg sits beside him on the bed, stroking his hand. This is a country where it still falls to the women to save us. To bear us, to tend us, to take our hands, to comfort us even to the grave.

  ‘Will he be okay?’ I ask. She holds me with a look – there is kindness in it, I think, and maybe scorn too, it’s hard to tell – as if she can see me exactly as my grandfather cannot, as if she knows what’s going on in my heart. Maybe she’ll gossip over her tea downstairs: ‘That grandson of his, he’s a bit, you know … Doesn’t look too well himself either.’ The kind of things my own mother can’t admit. Meg looks about ages with her. She’s probably got a son too, in the army or something.

  Then she smiles at me and says, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just sleep, he just needs to sleep. It’ll be all right.’

  ‘I’d better go,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I think so. And don’t worry.’ No scorn, then, just kindness. I think I’d rather have the scorn.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I say to him, but of course he doesn’t hear. I touch his hand, but he probably thinks it’s Meg, if he notices at all. Suddenly I wish I was away, and never coming back. I can’t stand the thought of invalids. Of being at the mercy of others.

  Bastards

  Across the way, on the corner, Shandon saw the lights of a bar. The streets around here were deserted. He’d been wandering block after block, trying to get his mind round things, round something. Now there was this bar across from him. He felt like he was standing at the edge of one of those lonely-looking downtown American paintings by Edward Hopper, all streetlight and shadow. It was cold, and the bar offered warmth. He crossed over and pushed in through the door.

  The place was almost empty, the lights were up and there was no music playing. Probably the lights had never been dimmed, and there was no evidence of a jukebox or any other sound-system. It was ten to eleven.

  The man behind the bar was reading a paper. He didn’t look like he was expecting a last-minute rush. Shandon thought, if I was the publican I wouldn’t bother applying for a late licence for the place, not midweek anyway.

  ‘Still serving?’ he asked.

  The barman raised his head. ‘Aye,’ he said. His tone was mildly indignant, as if he’d been asked to justify his presence.

  ‘A double whisky, then. No, wait a minute, what malts have you got?’

  The barman half-turned and pointed to a row of bottles on the gantry. ‘That’s them.’

  There was nothing very unusual up there. Glenmorangie, Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glengoyne. Well, Glengoyne. ‘A Glengoyne,’ Shandon said. ‘A double.’

  He turned around while the barman measured it out, and took in the other people. A man was sitting further down the bar with a pint, staring into space. In one corner there was a young couple, their glasses empty. They were shrugging on their coats, getting ready to go. In the opposite corner another man and woman, older, maybe in their sixties. What was notable about them was that they were in evening dress. The man had on a black dinner-suit and bowtie, the woman a blue dress with a stole. Pearls were at her neck and ears. They weren’t talking to each other; they were looking over towards him.

  ‘Two pound eighty, please,’ said the barman. For a moment Shandon was taken aback at the price but then he shrugged and got the money out and pulled the glass towards him. Glengoyne. Lowland. Unpeated. Quite good, he seemed to remember. He made himself wait for it.

  If you got twenty-six drams to the bottle and say it cost twenty pound in the shops, but a bar would get it cheaper, say eighteen, that was eighteen divided by twenty-six, which worked out about seventy pence a dram. That was a healthy mark-up, a hundred per cent no less. Jesus. No wonder the place was empty, everybody was drinking at home.

  He raised the glass.

  Ah, but it was a good one right enough. Glengoyne. He’d forgotten it.

  He had to ask himself what he was doing. Had he left her or had he not? And for what, if he had? Physically, of course, he hadn’t left her. He’d be going back tonight, of course he would. But had he not left her in every other sense? And how much longer could he not physically leave her, in that case? Jesus.

  And what about her, what was she thinking? They never asked each other anymore.

  He’d gone out halfway through the news, just stood up and said he was going for a walk, maybe a drink, he’d be back later; thinking as he said it that maybe he wouldn’t be. She hardly acknowledged his going. On the screen a small country was breaking up; there were bodies everywhere; women and children were herded and huddled together; houses burned; patriots defended what they were doing. He couldn’t stand it. But she watched on. What was she thinking?

  ‘What time do you close up at?’ he asked.

  ‘Quarter to twelve,’ said the barman. Shandon was surprised – it hardly seemed worth it. But he knew he’d be staying till the end.

  ‘I’ll take a half-pint of heavy,’ he said. Usually he said please and thank you but not tonight. He wasn’t in the mood for it.

  ‘Sixty-five,’ said the barman. He wasn’t wasting his breath either. That was fair enough.

  The young couple had left. Only the empty glasses proved that they’d ever been there. The old couple still weren’t talking. The man was staring ahead of himself, the woman was fiddling with her necklace. The man down the bar finished
his pint and ordered another. Then there was the barman and himself. Christ, they were a right bundle of laughs, the lot of them.

  He took his drink in silence. He couldn’t think about her. You came out to think about one thing and you ended up thinking about something else. The future. What the hell he was doing with his life, going to do with it. He was angry at himself for being self-indulgent. All over the world folk were simply surviving, or wishing they were dead, one or the other, and he didn’t even know what he was doing. What was the point of his life? And why did it go by so fast? And the life that he was leading with her, that she led with him, why did they go on tolerating it? They would have to stop. If they didn’t stop it their lives would never have the chance to restart.

  He was aware that the man at the far end of the bar had come up beside him, and was addressing his profile:

  ‘I know you. I know who you are.’

  Shandon thought, Christ, here we go, some fucking eejit, I’m not in the mood to humour some other drunk bastard.

  ‘No you don’t,’ he said, and carried on drinking. Didn’t even look at him.

  ‘Aye,’ said the other man. ‘Aye, I do.’ There was something menacing in his voice that made Shandon turn to see if he should recognise him after all. They both eyed each other for a few seconds, and then just as his pinched cheeks and scraggy moustache and slouched shoulders were beginning to look familiar the man said, ‘You’re the cunt my wife left me for.’