Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart

by Stephen Benatar

  One is so used to following certain lines of thought. Because of this I’d at first planned to drive to his home after work. Work? But then it occurred to me: why not go during the lunch hour? And then it further occurred to me, oh stuff the lunch hour, what’s wrong with the present? Get the thing over with, you’re never coming back, there could be someone else sitting in your place by this afternoon. His name on your door, his accumulation of junk filling all your drawers. So look sharp. Be decisive. Start as you mean to go on.

  There was nothing I had to take with me. Not my briefcase, my raincoat, nor even my umbrella. (Yes, it was still raining but what the hell? Let me get wet, soaked to the skin, let me catch pneumonia. All equally irrelevant.) I felt free, despite my apprehension. I raised my hand in farewell both to Iris and the trio of typists working in the same area. “See you,” I said.

  Yet of course I never would—or if I did, it could only be because something had gone wrong. And with that jaunty little wave I headed on towards the main door. I offered no excuse. No further lies.

  “But Mr Hart. The chairman has been asking for you. I was going to ring your number.”

  I said: “Tough!”

  Then softened it a little.

  “Iris, that’s tough!”

  I’d never been appreciated by the chairman. He had hinted frequently over the past four years that the reference I’d received from my former boss had bordered on deception. My former boss had been the head of a small London agency, which had folded during the ’81 recession.

  “So you can tell Mr Walters, please, he’s a talentless and exploitative bastard who’s only where he is because of a rich and well-connected wife. Talk to him about the milk of human kindness and about trying to get his priorities in order.” Coming from me, of course, that last bit was especially fine.

  But I’d determined I ought to quit this place in style. Start as you mean to go on. My new slogan.

  Her reply astonished me.

  “But where’s your umbrella, Mr Hart? Look out of the window! You want to take care of yourself.”

  “Iris, the umbrella’s in my room. I’d like to make you a present of it.” It was a good one; I hoped it would give her pleasure during the few hours she retained it. “So long, girls. I wish you every happiness—together with long and fruitful lives!”

  It was pleasant to leave them all so open-mouthed. It was childish but at least it would provide them with interest on a particularly drear morning.

  Finish as you mean to go on.

  Brian Douglas lived some way out of the centre of town but Zack had mentioned the name of the area—Sneinton—and a telephone directory supplied the rest. It took me a quarter of an hour to drive there. I found a terraced house much like twenty others in the same street but this one looked better cared for—or was this just its window boxes and attractive curtains? I paced up and down for several minutes before I rang. Then I noticed I was arousing the interest of two women who, in spite of the drizzle, stood chatting on a nearby corner; and the notice of a teenager who was pumping up his tyres. The door was swiftly opened.

  It was some time since I’d seen him; and the weeks had altered his appearance. Always lean, he was now thin, his shoulders bony beneath the open-necked shirt. But he was still nice-looking—in some ascetic way, even more so—and along with the weight had gone that air of complacency…which I might only have imagined in the first place. “You got here very quickly,” he said.

  “You were expecting me?”

  But I suddenly realized he didn’t know who I was. “I’m Ethan Hart, Mr Douglas.” Although he nodded, his handshake remained formal. But it seemed insulting to elaborate further: I’m from the office, we sometimes pass each other on the stairs. It would have been like saying Do you always walk around with your eyes closed?

  He ushered me into his living room.

  “What will you have? Tea? Coffee? Something alcoholic?”

  I could have been the first to arrive at some weekly get-together—this morning, Brian’s turn to play host.

  Which struck me as commendable. But grotesque.

  “That’s very kind but—no, nothing, thank you.” It amazed me that either of us could even be coherent, let alone mindful of the niceties.

  “Of course. No drinking on duty.” I could hardly miss the mockery. “I’ll be having a whisky, though, if you don’t mind.”

  “Then, on second thoughts, may I join you?”

  It was Chivas Regal and we took it neat. I didn’t think I had ever in my life drunk whisky before noon. He had poured doubles. We sat on either side of a fire with cosy artificial coals.

  “Brian?” I said.

  But I looked at the fire and not at him.

  “Are you sure you really want to go through with this?”

  “I’ve never been surer of anything.”

  “Yet suppose they found a cure tomorrow? Some kind of breakthrough?”

  “Oh, don’t! You’ll tell me next that there are flowers and books and music. Sunshine and friendship. No, for God’s sake! Spare me! Have you always worked in advertising?”

  “More or less.”

  “Where were you last, before you joined Peach & Walters?”

  “I set up my own small agency in London. Kept it going for around six years but finally had to bow out. Lost a lot of money.”

  He got up and poured himself another drink, as liberal as before. Anger and resolution and whisky. At least, I thought, unangry and irresolute, if the thing really had to be gone through, there could scarcely be a better recipe. He held the bottle out. I followed his example.

  “I don’t need advice,” he said. “What I need is practical assistance. You know this incident has got to look like murder?”

  “Murder!”

  He seemed to think I had been better briefed than I had.

  “Murder? But why? Is it a question of insurance?”

  I had a hazy idea there were companies which would still pay up even after suicide. If the policy had been in force for long enough.

  “No,” he said.

  “So why would you want a murder hunt?” I had to clear my throat. “And one that could possibly cost tens of thousands of pounds?”

  “Yes, I feel sorry about that. But in the last resort I care more for my parents than I do for the taxpayer.”

  I intimated that I didn’t follow.

  He said, “It’s simple. It would almost finish them to realize I was homosexual. Yet that’s not the worst. They believe suicide to be the greatest sin on earth, a sin that would annihilate my chances of salvation. And they would blame themselves for it entirely; never feel that they could find forgiveness. Now do you understand?”

  “Though if their beliefs are wrong…?”

  “Of course their beliefs are wrong. What difference does that make?”

  “You’re obviously a good son.”

  It may have struck him as banal but at least it was sincere.

  There was a pause. “Do you have children?”

  “I had a boy who… He died when he was twelve.”

  I hoped he wouldn’t pursue it. I shuddered. If I couldn’t bear to think about a loss due to accident, how could any parent bear to think about a loss due to murder?

  “What did he die of?”

  “Run over,” I said.

  And yet, if I knew that I was going to get him back, why then, yes, naturally I could bear to think about it. It was just a matter of determination. Guts. I had the pattern right before my eyes. Brian Douglas wanted to die. I wanted to live. I wanted Philip to live. Surely I, too, should be capable of summoning up the strength.

  “A good son…,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Ironic.”

  “Why? Just because you happened to be gay?” Are you sure they’re worth it, those bloody parents of yours?

  “No, I don’t mean that. I think I have been a fairly good son. Give or take.”

  “What, then?”

  “Oh,
nothing. I was remembering a dream, that’s all.”

  I’d have asked him to expand on this but suddenly he stood up. “So let’s get on with it,” he said.

  For a moment I was paralysed. He started to push over chairs and tables, to hurl things to the floor. “Pull open those drawers,” he commanded. “Tip out the contents.” I stumbled when I rose to help.

  But it wasn’t drunkenness. Or, rather, if it was, I knew my head would all too swiftly clear. “And then? What happens then?” The words were barely croaked into existence.

  “And then? My God! Haven’t you been told anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “And then,” he said, “you’re going to drown me.”

  I forgot that he was meant to be the pattern right before my eyes.

  “I can’t!”

  “Oh, yes, you can! You’ve got to. Bloody well got to.”

  “Drown you?” I had a vivid picture of trying to hold his head down.

  I had imagined (although even then I had done my best not to) a polythene bag. I would first bind his hands, tie in place a polythene bag, then rush headlong from the room. I wouldn’t need to watch him die. In fact I wouldn’t ever need to return. With his final exhalation, I hoped, would come my own renewed inhalation. That was vaguely the way I’d understood it.

  I said, “I want to use a plastic bag.”

  “Christ, no!”

  “But drowning…?”

  “They tell you it’s a peaceful way to go. There even comes a point when you’d feel reluctant to be saved.”

  “Yet how long before you reach it?”

  That was vile. It was unspeakable. “All right,” he said. And for the first time, his voice betrayed signs of what he must be going through: a terror which even my own terror could only dimly comprehend. “D’you think I don’t know? I’m sure the situation can be different in the open sea, when you’ve swum out so far that you’re exhausted.”

  But then he stopped. Regained control.

  “And if it’s true you see your whole life pass before you…” He smiled, albeit twistedly. “Then at least it gives you something else to think about, doesn’t it?”

  I was forced to have a second go. “Is there no one? Are you sure?”

  “Except my parents? No. No one who could give a damn.”

  I wanted to attest that I could. But, of course, it would have sounded glib. And anyway? Could I truly have given sufficient of a damn to stay with him through every stage of his disintegration—scarcely a case of being required simply to hold onto his hand? At that moment I might have believed my answer to be yes. But that moment was charged with an emotion which would have made any sacrifice seem easy.

  Except the one he really wanted.

  “Drowning,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Well, that should do it.” For a second I misunderstood. But he was referring, I soon saw, only to the state of the room.

  I followed him upstairs. “I’m going to get undressed,” he said. “You run the bath.”

  I draped my jacket and tie over a chair, rolled up both shirtsleeves, unfastened the top button, did everything but use my elbow to test the temperature of the water—it might have been Philip I was going to see to, sail his boat with or his yellow plastic ducks. Then we’d play this-little-piggy-went-to-market while I dried him, repeatedly parting my knees to let him fall through, loving to hear his unremitting squeals of excitement. I could still hear them, very clearly. I did my utmost not to let them go.

  Douglas came in wearing a bathrobe, yet did so long before the water was deep enough. “It’s always slow. I should’ve thought of doing this earlier.” He sounded matter-of-fact. He had been down to the kitchen and collected me an apron, the kind that butchers wore. I took it from him but didn’t put it on.

  He sat on the edge of the bath. After a moment I did the same, at the opposite end, facing him. A picture of domestic harmony. Companionship.

  I noticed he had knobbly knees.

  “Another drink?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He went downstairs again, brought up two filled glasses, resumed his seat. “Don’t worry. They’re clean. No risk of contagion.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  I had to turn my head and look the other way. And then I thought, oh what the hell? If I ever knew I was within minutes of my own death, I should like to see that somebody cried for me.

  But at least on one level this wasn’t of assistance. I noticed his bottom lip tremble. I said abruptly: “Zachary Cornelius. Do you know him?”

  “Who’s Zachary Cornelius?”

  It wasn’t a question to which I could provide much of an answer. The bath still wasn’t ready. I babbled on about my meeting with Zack but panic was again threatening to paralyse me. Philip, I thought. Philip.

  “Tell me of that dream you mentioned.”

  “What?”

  “You said you had a dream.” This made me think of Martin Luther King.

  “Oh, that. Nothing to tell. Frankly, it’s risible. I dreamt I had a son.”

  I hadn’t realized he had meant that sort of dream. I’d supposed he was referring to some unachievable ambition.

  “But I’ve dreamt it repeatedly and that’s what makes it odd. Each time it’s exactly the same. You’d think it was prophetic.”

  I seized on this last word. Almost with gratitude.

  “Well,” I cried, “supposing it was?” The bath appeared to be filling faster. “Supposing you were going to have a son? Supposing that dream was somehow meant?”

  He shrugged. His shoulders looked less bony beneath the woollen robe. “Then it would be a miracle,” he said. “I have never—not once - never in my life made love to any woman.”

  “And yet you keep on getting this message. If it’s that persistent how can you ignore it?”

  “You’re not suggesting that a man with AIDS should now go out and propagate?”

  “No. But…” I wanted to say that on the very rare occasion—one could hardly rule it out, surely?—miracles might occur.

  He uttered a harsh laugh. “Of course, you could always place bets on whether I or the woman or the child died first. That would be interesting.”

  “Fostering?” I murmured. “Adoption?” I must have been drunker than I realized. These options sounded feasible.

  “Mind you,” he said, “that would have been the rational part.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Guess who my son turned out to be.”

  “Prime Minister? President?”

  He shook his head.

  “King?”

  “No. But you’re getting warm.”

  The phrase was unfortunate. Sweat was running down my neck and torso. I had to turn off the tap. I tried to make the movement look casual.

  “You’ll have to tell me.”

  “My son,” he said, “turned out to be Arthur.”

  “Arthur?” I repeated, stupidly.

  “King Arthur.”

  “King Arthur? Goodness!” I really couldn’t think of anything more to add.

  “But you know the story, don’t you? That when Britain finds itself on the brink of destruction King Arthur will return to save it?”

  “Oh,” I said, “yes, of course! Isn’t he sleeping in a cave somewhere? Glastonbury?”

  “What, with his trusty steed alongside? When we need him he’ll wake up and leap into the saddle? Ride hell-for-leather down the motorway?”

  “Well, it’s only a legend,” I replied. I sounded practically defensive.

  “Then tell me, why should I have dreamt—dreamt a dozen times over—that he was born again, and went to school, and led a normal childhood, here in Nottingham? And that, in addition to all of this, he was born on my twenty-seventh birthday?”

  His voice had actually risen in excitement. It was indescribably dreadful how he suddenly remembered. How we both suddenly remembered. I believe that for fully fifteen seconds each of us had f
orgotten our surroundings; certainly the reason why we sat in them. For fully fifteen seconds he had seemed inspired. More than inspired. Elated.

  But now, abruptly, he stood up. Took off his bathrobe.

  He looked at me and shook my hand again.

  “Oughtn’t we to pray?” I suggested.

  But the few sentences I managed to come up with sounded unnatural, false. He nodded his Amen. We hugged and then he stepped into the bath. “Thank you,” were his last words. He raised his knees and let his head slip underneath the water. My sweat and my tears and my concentration on the future (scenes from a life I hadn’t yet lived passed unconvincingly before me)…my sweat and my tears and the peeing of my pants—nearly, but not quite, the shitting of them too—all played their desperate part in the drowning of a man I used to say good morning to upon the stairs, and had never greatly liked.

  6

  So it was done.

  So it was done and I was still here.

  Zack was a fake.

  He wasn’t only a fake. He must be evil. He was inwardly as black as he was outwardly beguiling.

  I had just spent the most horrific minutes of my life. Killed someone. Held a man’s head under water and watched his frenzied splashings for survival, watched the bubbles streaming to the surface with tenacious, terrifying vigour. Been forced to watch because if I’d looked away I should undoubtedly have lost my grip—my God, how he had threshed and seemed to possess a strength belied by his frail body. My God, how it had lasted. And why? Why had I done it? I couldn’t even feel any longer he had really wanted to die, not after all that flailing, those wild, reverberating thumps. More than once I had nearly stopped. But how could I have stopped, when the worst, or half the worst, or a quarter of the worst, had had to be over by then, when he was perhaps a split second away from that hoped-for review of his brief time on earth? How could I have raised his head only—it was possible—to have to re-submerge it?

  Yet I was scared, scared now that it was over and his eyes gazed up at me quietly through the water, now that the bathroom lino was awash and my shirt and shoes and trousers were all drenched, my socks and underwear as well. Scared that he might have changed his mind. Scared that what had started out as suicide would now, in the eyes of the Law, have taken on all the aspects of a murder.