Abruptly I come to a standstill. Someone—I think it is a major or a captain—treads on my heels and apologizes. I glance about me at a London that suddenly seems as grey and washed-out as though it were coloured by my own despair. Or desperation.
I say the words out loud.
“Oh, fuck my health and future well-being! Fuck the proper balance of my mind!”
And then, almost before I’m aware of it, I have turned and I am running. Bumping into people, almost bumping into things. Sidewalk signs, bus stops, lampposts.
Also, I’m weaving through the traffic: traffic thankfully less dense than usual. Far less dense. Even so I’m provoking not just anger but actual oaths—mainly from two harassed cabbies and a bus driver who leans a long way out in order to harangue me. None of it’s important. I’m breathless and sweaty. Again I catch a glimpse of yellow coat. I see it disappear into the subway. It’s all that concerns me right now: the progress of a yellow coat.
I too, in time, hurl myself into the stormy sea converging on the subway. I do my best to penetrate.
But in the end I can’t get down those narrow steps any faster than anyone else. Why couldn’t she have stayed out in the open?
And then I realize. Oh God. I realize. How long since Tom had finished telling me?
That body on the line.
Here.
At Oxford Circus.
Realize? No—not realize. What’s the matter with me?
A measure of lucidity returns.
“You’re under stress and you’re confused and you’re in shock. You’re only doing all this to have something to aim towards, aren’t you—to find yourself a purpose? You’re only doing all this to channel your aggression and your fury and your impotence.”
All the same, I wish I’d got a closer look. I wish she hadn’t moved away the second I’d laid eyes on her.
“Please let me through! I must get through!”
“Yes, you and a million others,” says the man in front, turning his head ill-humouredly. He’s a labourer with old khaki shirt and unevenly cut grey hair. “So take your turn and stop shoving and everyone will get through a lot happier.”
Someone else, right next to me, is even more aggressive. He’s wearing a dark city suit, red carnation pinned to the lapel, and there’s an aura that’s practically satanic about him. “Just wait your turn!” he snaps.
Then adds in quite a different tone:
“Besides… There’s nothing you can do!”
He gives a queer laugh.
When I eventually make it down the steps, his words seem horribly prophetic. My sweat goes cold on me. I can’t see her.
But there’s a beggar woman on the concourse, holding out her palm to anyone who’ll listen. “Few pennies for a cuppa tea, sir? Few pennies for a cuppa tea, lady?” My eye’s caught by a fold of yellow that surmounts the ring of carrier bags behind her. I know immediately what’s happened.
Yet, dear God. How on earth—how in the name of heaven—how am I ever going to find her now?
The dress! Oh, let her be wearing the dress in the snapshot! Black-and-white there, of course, but I’m well aware the leaves are green. Not brown or russet or any other shade. Bright green, on a white background. Oh, let her be wearing that!
And she is!
She is!
I spot her.
In all that milling crowd I actually do spot her.
But she’s still a long way off: on the other side of a barrier and close to one of the escalators.
I vault the barrier.
“Hey, you, sir! You! Come back!”
The shout hardly registers. Yet when I briefly turn my head I see some outraged official now pointing me out to a colleague; get the impression that they mean to follow. Well, let them, who cares, haven’t they anything more meaningful to occupy their time?
But the coat—the dress—it is you, isn’t it? Yes, it’s got to be! Got to be! If only you’d turn round and let me see your face!
The escalator is jam-packed.
Although it’s a strikingly long one, by the time I get there she’s nearly at the bottom.
I say it only softly to begin with.
“Rosalind…?”
But then I give it every ounce of energy I can.
“Rosalind!”
Yet with all the usual noises of a busy subway (there’s even the distant moan of a saxophone) how far can one voice ever hope to carry? Those who do hear turn and stare at me dispassionately. The men look stupid in their stupid trilbies, the women in their stupid headscarves; all their senses addled by their stupid cigarette smoke.
“That woman down there! Please stop her! Stop her!” But she has now stepped off the escalator. “Please let me through! I must get through!”
People do their best to move over—more embarrassed than anything—but it scarcely helps. Is there another escalator after this? An old guy says there is.
But when I get to it the woman is a long way down.
“Rosalind!”
No response.
“That woman’s going to kill herself!”
A man calls back to me, an able seaman.
“Where? Which one?”
“That woman in the white dress. White dress with leaves on! She’s… Oh, Christ.”
Again she’s just stepped off. Is wholly out of sight.
But suddenly I know what I must do. The down-staircase and its counterpart run parallel. They share a broad dividing band. I scramble onto it. People gaze at me in fascination. Their smiles, their gasps, their staring eyes don’t bother me. I think it’s true that since I glimpsed her on the street I’ve hardly thought about myself.
It’s weird, however…the thoughts that do occur. Up here the lighting seems dimmer and for the first time I notice that the steps have wooden slats. I’m struck by the heavy gloss on Rita Hayworth’s lips—‘Gilda’ is back at the New Gallery. Joan Crawford’s, too: ‘Mildred Pierce’ at the Warner. And some newsreel theatre is showing the Wembley Cup Final, plus Shakespeare’s birthday celebrations. Yes, definitely it’s weird.
But wholly irrelevant. Like the cries of those two station officials now in hot pursuit. They’re not getting through any quicker than me, though—their shouts no more effective than my own.
I jump down.
The crowds appear to have thinned a little. But on the platform—a platform which I’ve got onto roughly halfway along—people are standing a good half-dozen deep. I see no sign of her.
“Oh, God. Please help!”
I know the train will come in from the left. Panic-stricken I hear subterranean rumblings; but those are tubes for other platforms. I thread my way towards the edge of this one—reach it—nervously lean forward and look in both directions. She’s over to my right.
Yes, she’s altered, certainly—damaged, bedraggled, bowed down—but just possibly, and for the merest instant, I may smile. “Rosalind, it is you!”
But then I yell:
“No, don’t! Don’t do it!”
Yet she still doesn’t hear and anyway there’s now a roar in the tunnel that’s got to be the prelude to arrival.
“Rosalind! Don’t! I promise you it’s going to be all right!”
She doesn’t hear.
I wave, frantically.
She doesn’t see.
“That woman over there! She’s going to kill herself!”
But no one, absolutely no one, appears to be taking notice; and the roar in the tunnel is growing tumultuous.
“Rosalind, I’m here! I’m here!”
Nothing.
Oh, dear God. What can I do?
The answer comes with quick, storm-centre clarity. Of course! I can create a diversion.
“Me,” I say. “Not you.”
For surely no two individuals ever jumped independently—and during that same small fraction of a minute—in front of the same tube.
The train is now out of the tunnel. Three seconds or less from where I stand.
Those ticket inspectors are pushing their way through the ranks immediately behind me. I feel the hands of one of them reach out to grab my arm.
But he’s too late.
I close my eyes and throw myself forward.
25
Darkness.
There are screams and the grinding of brakes. There is pandemonium.
Which fades to silence.
The darkness starts to swirl, to clear. It turns from black to grey. Becomes a mass of billowing smoke.
Dense, soot-laden, proceeding from the funnel of an engine.
Still pandemonium, yes.
But of a very different order.
26
We are about to leave. At any second the stationmaster’s going to lower his flag, blow on his whistle. He makes me think of that little guy in the church: Jack o’ the Clock, preparing to strike the bell at the start of the new hour. But possibly I’d have thought of this, anyway: Rosalind’s just given me her snapshot, the one taken outside St Edmund’s only minutes before we met.
I’ve reminded her, too (no, not reminded; she didn’t even know) about the photo Trixie took of me last Wednesday afternoon, also in Southwold, when we’d all stepped out of the Sugar Loaf Tearooms and taken hardly a couple of paces before my future wife decided to nip back in, to use their comfort station.
Oh, Lord. The shape of things to come!
“And believe this, darling. Believe this if you never believe anything again. This time I’ll send for you.”
“This time?”
Yes, why did I say that? Unaccountably, I shudder. Someone must have walked across my grave.
“I guess I was woolgathering—thinking how crazy I’d go if anything bad ever happened to you. Oh, sweetie, please don’t cry! I absolutely promise: nothing bad ever will happen to you. I just won’t let it. I think I’d die for you first.”
“Well, if that’s supposed to stop me crying, it isn’t wonderful psychology.”
“All right, I know I’d die for you first.”
“Idiot. Say something heartening, like…‘See you in three months.’”
“No, that’s too long. See you in one-and-a-half. Two at the most. I’ll either send for you, come for you, or arrange with Harry S. Truman…” But then we kiss; we cling. The train is beginning to pull out.
“Please look after yourself,” she calls. “I love you so much! Without you in this world, I couldn’t survive!”
“Same for me,” I say. “I love you, too. Enormously.”
“What?”
“Always,” I shout back. I tap my ring finger. “Always! Always!” And I can see she understands.
Again she calls out after me.
“Always!”
27
We can no longer see the station, it’s hidden round a bend. For the moment I don’t want to talk to anyone—I want only to be left in peace. (And I’ve not the least idea where Walt is.) Squashed into my corner of the carriage I want to concentrate on Rosalind.
But I must be tired; even more so than I’d realized. I suppose I quickly fall asleep.
And have a dream.
Or a vision, or a revelation, or whatever you might wish to call it. For, actually, it’s not like any dream I’ve ever experienced.
Because in it I see some guy who’s a complete stranger. And yet I feel as much concern for him as though he were a member of my own family.
It turns out, after a while, his name is Tom.
Tom? To me, this has always meant my brother—and I’ve already mentioned to Rosalind my hope that if we have a son he will be called Thomas. “Darling, you have my word on it!” she’d said at once.
Yet, anyway, this Tom (who incidentally was wearing a dark blue suit, but one that in some way looked unfashionable) had just returned to his apartment—well, I guess that it was his. And when I say ‘just’, I mean maybe half an hour ago. The first thing he did was call out someone’s name.
“Tex?”
There wasn’t any answer.
Tom merely shrugged. He must have assumed that Tex—do people really call their children that?—might either have taken himself off for a walk or gone to see a movie.
But he seemed disappointed. You could tell this by the way he walked into the sitting room—even by the way he poured himself a Jameson’s, sat down and took a wristwatch from his pocket. It was a Rolex. I have one like it—although when in this dream (for want of a better word) I shot back my cuff with a view to checking the resemblance, mine wasn’t there.
I couldn’t help wondering why he’d keep a Rolex in his pocket.
Then I decided he must have collected it from the repair shop. Probably within the last hour or so. Because when his sleeve rode up I saw something a good deal cheaper—presumably a stopgap.
And he had evidently missed it, the Rolex! He seemed to be admiring it now as he must have done when it was brand-new. Even when he reached out and activated some machine which apparently recorded phone calls in your absence—even then, he was still looking at the watch.
On the machine, there was a message he had clearly been waiting for. He looked expectant as he settled back.
“Hi! Herb Kramer here, from the embassy.” (Which I guess means the American embassy, since the caller sounds like a native of New England.) “Have the information you wanted, Tom, as regards your friend, Mr Matthew Cassidy, of New Haven, Connecticut.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake! Dear Lord! Is my subconscious really that egotistic?
(Well, yes, actually—I suppose it is!)
“And most of it checked out, exactly as you gave it: meatpacking business, older brother who died in ’42, Cassidy himself over here from ’43 to ’45, lieutenant in the United States Air Force, stationed at Boxted, then at Halesworth—both in Suffolk. And he married a Marjorie, too: a Miss Marjorie Carpenter, daughter of a very rich and eminent Connecticut family. All spot on. Except for one thing. No children. Also…and here’s the heck of a coincidence. Admitted into hospital, in deep coma, last Monday. Condition critical. In fact, I put through another call some five minutes ago, 4.55pm British time. Old guy appears to be sinking fast; only an hour or so left, the doctors think. So I don’t know where in hell that leaves our young amnesiac, do you? Why is life never simple? Call me as soon as you can, we’ll try to figure something out.”
Well, now!
Oh, my God!
Beat that!
So much detail. And so concise—so coherent! So memorable! How can it possibly be a dream?
And above all…so accurate!
(Except that, obviously, I am not going to marry Marjorie, and therefore whether or not the pair of us would have had children is irrelevant. But apart from this and the startling fact that I appear to be dying…plus the similarly wacky reference to some young amnesiac…apart from these three perplexing yet—one hopes!—fairly tangential things, the accuracy is phenomenal.)
But why, I wonder, why on earth should Tom have been asking about me?
At all events. He didn’t listen to anything else. For several minutes he simply stayed put, still gazing at the wristwatch. Now not so much in admiration. More in sheer bewilderment.
Then he got up and went into the hall. Quietly opened the door to what was clearly a small bedroom. I guessed he must be looking for this mysterious Tex character; guessed it had occurred to him that Tex might have been there all along, sleeping.
Is Tex ‘our young amnesiac’?
Though, whether he is or not, he wasn’t on the bed. Tom stood in the doorway for a minute. He seemed to be reviewing the few personal possessions he saw lying on the carpet and the chest of drawers.
“But no children! Tex, that’s absurd. We only had to glance at that photograph of Trixie’s…”
He leans against the doorjamb.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! You looked so much like him you could practically have been him! And Kramer’s seen the photograph! How can he say you aren’t the man’s son?”
Slowly, he goes back to his
armchair in the sitting room, retrieves his drink. Listens to see if there’s any further message—at least, one of the kind he wants. There isn’t. He stares at the telephone as though suddenly willing it to ring.
“But Tex? Why au revoir? And what made you leave your watch?” He bites his lip.
I know what’s in his mind. Were these things significant? And—if they were—why didn’t I realize it?
“Some sort of payment?” he says, aloud. “No, that’s nonsense! And you know I wouldn’t have wanted payment. Not one penny.” He smiles, a little wryly. “Not one red cent.”
A moment later, he repeats that earlier phrase. “Au revoir…?”
Until the next time, he must be thinking. Yes… Until we meet again.
He takes a further slow sip of the whisky. He swallows it, notices his glass is almost empty, is about to drain it—probably contemplates refilling it—but then…
He disappears.
Tom simply disappears.
One second he’s there.
The next…he isn’t.
Well, I suppose in a dream a character can do anything he likes.
In a dream, yes.
But I still can’t believe it was entirely that—even though, bit by bit, I’m being forced to accept it might have been.
Yet if I have dozed off for a while, here in this crowded carriage, I don’t want any of my comrades to realize I’m awake. All those astonishing details, so clear to me a minute ago, they’re already beginning to slip away. And it strikes me as important: I’ve got to do what I can to hold onto them.
For instance, I know Tom lived in a flat that unexpectedly transformed itself the instant he had vanished: suddenly possessed murals and stained glass and parquet flooring. What would any dream-expert make of that, I wonder—assuming, of course, I was still able to describe it? Stupidly, the only thing I can now recall with total clarity is the presence of a wristwatch. And I guess that’s only because it was a Rolex—the sort I’m wearing now. (Yes, and I am wearing it. Why on earth should I ever have dreamt otherwise?)
Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart Page 15
