Transmigration

by J. T. McIntosh

  "Anita," he said with sudden desperation, "stay away from me."

  Unexpectedly, she seemed to understand at once.

  "That's what you want?"

  "That's what I want."

  She held out her hand to him. "Goodbye, John," she said.

  He fled from her.

  Fletcher had coffee and a fruit pie in a snack bar. He had thought himself ravenous, but discovered he didn't want to eat. He was light-headed after his sleepless night and the hours of concentration. Whatever the results, the tests had taken something out of him.

  Light-headed already, no longer hungry, not particularly sleepy, he suddenly felt a strong desire for alcohol. This surprised him very much; he rarely drank. He hated all strong drink and could not get it down. When he did have a drink it was usually an iced lager on a hot day, or a stout late at night with bread and cheese, one of his extra snacks.

  Now he wanted beer, lots of it, and the bars were not open yet.

  He glanced for confirmation at the clock over the snack-bar counter and saw to his amazement that it was eleven o'clock. Somewhere, somehow, he had lost several hours.

  There was a bar next door, deserted save for a red-faced barman dispiritedly polishing glasses.

  "Pint of bitters," said Fletcher.

  The barman drew the beer and settled on his elbows opposite him. "Going to be warm again," he said.

  "Yes."

  Fletcher drank the pint of beer in one draught, a thing he had never done before, and ordered another. This he dispatched in the same way.

  The barman's eyes widened. "You all right, mate?"

  "Yes, why?"

  "You're white and shaking a bit, like. You haven't been in an accident or anything?"

  Since the barman volunteered this as a logical explanation for his manner, Fletcher recklessly accepted it.

  "Yes, that's it. I wasn't in an accident, but I saw one."

  "Where, in the street?"

  "No, over at the new block of flats." Improvising wildly, he said: "Where they're knocking down the old tenements. Great chunk of masonry fell on a kid."

  "What was the kid doing there?"

  "Oh, you know kids. He could only have been about four. Not at school yet . . . "

  It was years since Fletcher had done anything like this, but once it had been quite common. Nervous, self-conscious, he used to lie recklessly, not because he liked lying, but because once a stranger made an assumption he had a terror of correcting the misapprehension. "Yes, that's right," he would say, rather than "No, you've got the wrong man."

  "Is the kid dead?" the barman asked.

  "I didn't wait to see. I came away."

  He was more light-headed than ever, although there had surely not been time yet for the beer to have any effect He wanted more beer, but he could not have it here. His futile, ridiculous story made escape imperative. Pretending to go to the toilet, he escaped into the street.

  He had never in his life been drunk. The very idea had always been repugnant, and it would have been impossible for him to do it on whisky or gin or brandy, because they all made him sick. Now, urged by the same shadow-of-the-grave curiosity which had sent him to Baudaker, he thought he would like to be drunk just once. It was a strange time to choose, eleven o'clock in the morning, but since he had started he thought he might as well go on.

  Perhaps it was strange that a man like him, a total failure, had never sought consolation in drink, not even once. One reason was that he didn't particularly like the taste of any alcoholic drink, even beer. Another was his self-consciousness, his horror of being found, or of being seen, drunk and incapable. Now it didn't matter.

  No, it might be important to get this right: he was not drinking became he wanted to, or because it didn't matter, or because he wanted to be drunk for once. He was going to go on drinking because in some way it was essential, inescapable. The two pints he had already poured into himself had been as essential as insulin is to a diabetic. He had to go on drinking, and since it was impossible for him to drink spirits and he didn't know much about wine, he would have to go on drinking beer.

  In a supermarket he bought a carton containing a dozen cans of strong ale. The two pints he had drunk already lay deep in his belly like ballast; he felt he had swallowed a sack of lead shot. Yet the lightness of his head was not delightful, a pleasure such as he had not enjoyed for a long time. The lightness of his head and the heaviness of his belly seemed to represent the freedom of the mind and the bondage of the body.

  He returned to the estuary where he had seen Gerry and Sheila the day before. When he reached the spot, it was deserted. Although the day was even warmer than the previous afternoon, half the peoble in the city were at lunch, a quarter had just finished, and the other quarter were about to eat. It was too early in the year for picnic parties at the beach, and there were no holiday makers yet.

  Sitting down on the warm sand, out of the breeze, he tore the strip off a can of beer. At the supermarket he had had the forethought to buy a plastic mug. A man drinking from cans of beer drew attention to himself; a man drinking from a plastic mug would be assumed to be drinking tea or coffee, and was not worth a second glance.

  He found himself thinking not of Judy but of Anita Somerset. There was a girl with enough warmth to warm even him. How could it be that she was free, unclaimed? Well, of course, it couldn't be. Even if she were older and he were younger, if the age gap were not uncrossable, if he were not living out his last few hours, his encounter with her would turn out like all such encounters in the past. If he were stupid enough to allow himself to become infatuated, as he had not done now for many years, it would turn out, at the moment of maximum pain for himself, that someone whom she had not bothered to mention had every claim on her, was engaged to her, married to her, perhaps the father of her child.

  "What is wrong with me?"

  The question roared silently through him. It was not the first time, by many thousands, it had been asked.

  It was too simple to say that he must fail, was always destined to fail. His life was full of good beginnings. Even when he had the sweet scent of decay on him he had interested Anita, had aroused her sympathy, and her sympathy was real. He did not doubt that. Even when cancer was growing in him, when he was forty-three and she was nineteen, he could have responded to Anita's sympathy and interest, until she tired of him . . .

  "There I go again." Inevitably she would tire of him. That there would be no real feeling involved, that it would be nothing remotely resembling a love affair, he took for granted. The very thought was ridiculous. But beyond that, he assumed from the very beginning that even talking further with Anita, letting her go with him when she wanted to, was bound to turn out wrong.

  And the worst of it was, try as he might to convince himself otherwise, he knew he was right.

  That incredible thing she had said returned to him and he puzzled over it. "Something good about you."

  Unlike him, she didn't tell fatuous, pointless lies, he was sure of that. She would never have been led into that ridiculous fantasy in the bar. When she said she had detected something good about him, she meant it.

  But what could she mean?

  There was, true, his religious background, more or less Scottish Free Kirk. Although he seldom went to church now, iron rectitude had sat on one shoulder as long as death had sat on the other. His spiritual ancestors were Puritans, Calvinists, Presbyterians. The various Homes had all been grimly religious, but his fear of the Lord dated back before the Homes, to the early years about which he knew nothing.

  Yet his religious background had never led to good works.

  He could not remember any occasion in his life when he had been altruistic or philanthropic. He had never been brave or strong or indeed anything positive. He had never helped anyone else because he had been too tied up in himself all his life.

  Not only had he never done anything good, he had never even tried.

  Quite gratefully, he lost the thread
of his thought.

  Unaware of time, he sat there as people returned to the beach, scolded toddlers for going too far into the water, packed up and went home to be back for older children's return from school. The first indication he had of the passage of time, other than the necessity to make frequent visits to the public toilet on the other side of the road behind him, was the discovery that all the cans of beer were empty.

  He had drunk two pints and twelve cans of beer, without eating. And he was unused to alcohol.

  Suddenly he was anxious. It seemed a long time since his last visit to the toilet, and then he had been extremely unsteady.

  Could he still stand?

  After a fashion, he could.

  He left the carton of empty cans among the dunes. The task of carrying it was obviously beyond him. Perhaps more than ever before in his life, he wished he had a friend. Other drunks always had friends, people who at least tried to look after them.

  He wished he had been able to drink in his room. But Judy always knew he was there.

  "Weakness."

  That was the answer to the only question that mattered. He failed because he was always weak. He always took the weak way out. He avoided all showdowns, all conflict, all humiliation.

  He had been right to drink himself to a stupor, because he had found out the truth. John Fletcher was nothing but a straw in the wind, and he didn't care.

  Time, which had been going by stops and starts since he went to the university, was still up to its tricks. He found himself in a main street far from the beach, and it was beginning to get dark. The trouble was, he had to cross the street.

  Like a wounded animal, he had to get to his lair. In such extremity he could ignore Judy. His door would be locked and she could knock till her knuckles were sore.

  There was only one place he could go, and he had to cross the street to get to it. He might in his present state, desperate rather than drunken, have gone to Anita, but he had no idea where she lived. There was nowhere to go but his lodgings. And he had to cross this street.

  The glorious lightness he had enjoyed for much of this vital day was gone, and his head was aching again. He was tired, but that was nothing. There was nothing to stop him walking a mile, two miles, five miles, to cross this street. Still, somewhere he had to cross it.

  He was not incapable. He was not staggering. Nobody looked at him. If he tried, he might be able to speak intelligibly. But crossing this street was the most difficult and dangerous thing he had ever had to do.

  After waiting for the right moment, he started to cross. Then he saw the white car. First he retreated to let it pass him. Then, when it still came at him, he stepped forward to let it go between him and the curb. From the middle of the road he darted back. There was a screech of brakes. He took three more quick strides.

  The white car came to a halt six inches from him. The driver stuck his head out of the window. "What the hell do you think you're playing at?" he bawled. "If you want to get killed, try the railway. The trains can't dodge."

  Somehow Fletcher reached the other side, drenched with sweat. For weeks, months, he had been perfectly prepared to die. But this glaring imminence terrified him. To die in six months, to die next week, even to die tomorrow was a prospect quite easy to face. To die in the next three seconds was another matter.

  He knew what had happened, he knew how the ballet of death between him and the white car had come about. The driver didn't know. No wonder he had shouted in his anger and his fright: "What the hell do you think you're playing at?" No wonder he had added the reference to the railway.

  Fletcher had moved where he knew the white car must go. Instead of trying to avoid it, he had waited until the driver must change course and then moved into the new course. If he had walked blindly, heedlessly across the street, the driver of the white car wouldn't have turned a hair.

  Fletcher, or a part of Fletcher, had tried very hard to make the driver of the white car kill him. And he had been frustrated only by the skill of the driver.

  There was no reason why Fletcher should go home by way of the half-demolished tenements where a new block of flats was to be built. There was certainly no reason why he should go through the now deserted demolition site, ignoring all the barriers and the warning signs.

  On the other hand, the fact that the construction site lay directly between him and Beechview Gardens, where he lived, offered an excuse to go that way, and an excuse was apparently all he needed.

  The bartender to whom he had told those ridiculous lies must have already found out that there had been no accident at the building site.

  But there might be one now.

  Suddenly Fletcher knew he was never going to see his room again, or Judy, or the sun.

  There was nothing forcing him to go through the danger area. Yet he couldn't help it. He was in a curious state of intoxication in which his mind was clear but he could not remember anything. Although he knew perfectly well where he was and what he was doing, the effort to remember where he had been and what he had been doing five minutes ago was not worth while.

  No doubt there was a watchman somewhere on the site. Fletcher had no difficulty in avoiding him.

  When he heard the cracking sound, looked up and saw the chimney block falling, he started to run. Then his brain took over.

  Recent events had shown him that if he ran he would run directly under the falling masonry. He would be able to judge it precisely, adjusting his position carefully until he was in the most suicidal spot.

  He did possess one very special talent. Baudaker and his helpers had proved that, as if he hadn't known it already. He could be wrong with total fallibility.

  With a desperate effort, he closed his eyes and stood still. If he had stood still at any time when the white car was coming at him, the driver, who had proved himself to be skilfull, would have had no difficulty in avoiding him. Now . . .

  There was a fearful crash, the ground shook, and rubble showered him. But it was only rubble. He opened his eyes. The masonry had fallen some yards away, exactly where he would have been had he continued running.

  He remembered what he had told the bartender . . . "great chunk of masonry." It hadn't been a hundred per cent lie; he had merely anticipated the masonry fall by a few hours.

  Why, he wondered, was it so important that he should die, and so soon? He was humorless and seldom laughed, but he found himself sniggering hysterically at some half remembered sick joke about a man drinking poison and plunging a dagger into his heart as he jumped off the top of the Empire State Building in New York, to make sure.

  The funniest thing of all was that he didn't want to die. Condemned to death anyway, and trying to kill himself in every way he knew, he still fought it.

  He was through the demolition lot now, and the remaining streets were quiet. Already accepting the fact that he would never reach his rooms, he wondered how his execution could be accomplished now.

  When the end came, it was really too simple. There was no time to fight himself, warn himself. Tired, a little unsteady through drink, he leaned on the railing as he climbed the steps to Mrs. MacDonald's house. But what he leaned on was not the railing, it was the gate to the basement entrance, and the gate was unlatched.

  He missed the stone stairs and plunged headfirst to the well beneath, landing on the top of his head.

  CHAPTER 2: JUDY

  He was in bed, and he had never felt better in his life. Never before had he known quite such comfort, such luxurious well-being. Although he had thought he had had no pain, it was suddenly clear that his life, or at least his last ten years or so, had been lived against a background of minor discomfort; an imperceptible malaise that had dulled everything for him.