“Especially with regard to me!
“Isn’t it strange how in the space of just two days I met the two people who would become the most important in my life? And that I should actually have met them in the order of their importance?
“Why don’t you do what you said on Christmas Day that you might: look for a wife and start a family? Otherwise, it’s such a sad, appalling waste. I know you’d make the very best of fathers. I only wish I had the slightest hope of ever discovering myself, even remotely, in the same league as you.
“In any case, don’t be unhappy. I’m not worth it.
“With my deepest love—my really deepest love—and my sincerest, heartfelt thanks.
“John.
“PS. I’ve just seen the roll of banknotes in your desk and have taken a hundred pounds. I’ll leave an IOU! I’m sure you won’t mind—you being you. But I feel I shall probably need it to get us through the immediate future. (On second thoughts I’m going to make it two hundred.)
“PPS. It has only this very minute struck me that simply because I’m getting married there’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t still meet up. On our own, I mean. And frequently. Did you ever see that Billy Wilder film, ‘Love in the Afternoon’?
“After all, there’s no need to become all moral suddenly—all tediously stuffy—just because I’m getting hitched.
“Anyway, I shall ring you the moment we get back. (And you must, without question, be our first dinner guest! We’ll be living in Gloucester Place.)
“See you, then, extremely soon.
“John.”
I didn’t really want to stop. Unexpectedly, once I’d begun, I had actually enjoyed writing it. And the last bit especially had made me feel more cheerful. I read the whole thing through and reckoned it was all right. Even rather good. I thought it struck a balance between being maudlin and matter-of-fact.
So I made a fair copy and put a row of kisses underneath my name—screwed up the sheet with all the crossings-out and shoved that inside the pocket of my jeans. At length I put the letter in an envelope, sealed it, wrote ‘Oliver’.
But then I had a disquieting thought: could it have come across as sounding a shade literary—especially in the tidied-up version?
Yet what could I do? I was, in a sense, a literary person. Oliver was a literary person. And the content had been anything but insincere—dear God!—absolutely anything but the basis for some exercise in style. Every sentence, every sentiment, had come directly from the heart. I didn’t want to think about rewriting it.
No. I left the envelope propped against one of the Buddhas. He would see it almost at once.
Following which, I finished my mother’s letter; addressed, stamped and also stuck that into a pocket—but, this time, the breast pocket of my jacket, which was hanging over the back of my chair.
It took me ten minutes to pack: an unpleasantly suspenseful period. Twice I imagined I heard steps outside the door and once, when the telephone rang, it not only startled me, it made me break into a sweat. I had forgotten its bell would not be audible inside the studio.
At the end of those ten minutes I stood in the centre of the room, looking around as if for the last time and trying to imprint it on my brain forever. It was a strange and melancholy thought that I should never be seeing it again as its rightful occupant, never lie warm in bed on first awakening and gaze up only half-consciously at the splendidly convoluted mouldings on the ceiling, trying drowsily to trace patterns; never see again, at that hour of the morning, the tops of the trees that lined the river. It wasn’t even half a year that I had slept in this room; and yet, somehow, it seemed more a part of me than the bedroom I had had since birth.
Then I went and stood in the sitting room. I remembered the first time I had walked into it; for an instant saw it again with fresh eyes, as if I was just at the beginning, not the end. I even felt the weight of those six books in my left hand.
I was about to go back into the study to take one last look at that as well, when I suddenly thought: no, this way madness lies. I turned abruptly, put on my sheepskin jacket, retrieved the suitcases and opened the front door. As I did so I heard Oliver call out, “Is that you, James?”
I shut the door with frantic stealth and began to run (I hadn’t time to wait for the lift), the older of the cases banging uncomfortably against my leg. On the fifth floor I listened. And on each of the next four floors, also. There was no sound of pursuit.
Outside the entrance I met James.
I saw the man’s swift glance take in my luggage and saw the question mark flash in his eyes.
But I brushed past him with a quick nod and hurried on into the garage beside the flats. So much for our one brief moment of sympathy. I almost hated him again. Him and his tortured fingernails.
Once upon my way, however, amidst the seeming protection of the traffic, I began to feel more relaxed. I turned on the radio. “Oh, Mr Porter, what shall I do? I wanted to go to Birmingham but they set me down at Crewe…”
Oh Christ, I thought. I hadn’t thanked Oliver for the train set.
22
I put this right shortly afterwards. On reaching Gloucester Place I found his doorkey still in my pocket. I immediately wrapped it in tissue, then searched for a strong envelope. Before licking down the flap—and taping it—I added two lines: “Forgot to leave your key. Forgot, also, to thank you for the train. It was a sweet thought. I love you very much. J.”
Hurried, badly written, totally unplanned, but I was glad I’d thought of it.
I put that and my mother’s letter on the kitchen table, where I’d be sure to notice when I left the flat.
Having taken the clothes out of both cases, I repacked the pigskin one with the things I knew I’d need. For some reason I had an urge to travel light.
Even so, it would have been wiser to take the larger piece of luggage. Almost automatically, I chose the smaller.
I burnt the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket—without reading it still another time, although I’d felt strongly tempted to do so—and dropped the ashes into the otherwise clean and empty kitchen bin.
Then I had a simple lunch of honey, digestive biscuits and black coffee. It wasn’t a lot, but even getting that second biscuit down proved difficult.
I had hardly finished, and was about to wash my cup and plate and spoon, when the doorbell rang.
It made me jump—almost literally—like the phone at the Embankment. My heartbeat quickened and I flushed. I knew that it was Oliver.
After ten seconds there was another ring: longer, more insistent: a finger left pressed upon the bell. The appeal of it was all but irresistible. Damn it, I wanted to answer. How I wanted to answer!
A third long ring. Pause. A fourth. Each an electric shock, snatching you up, flinging you down, yanking at your heartstrings. If there’d been a fifth, I might have lost control.
But no. After that … silence.
In its different, insidious way—second after second after second—the silence was as hard to endure. Maybe harder.
I couldn’t believe that he had gone. I could feel his presence looming as if the door were made of frosted glass and his shadow spread-eagled across it and pushing its way through. I strained for the sound of footsteps. Had he gone? I thanked providence there’d been no parking space nearby and that I’d had to leave the car down a side street. But for this I should certainly have been trapped.
Half of me, that was, thanked providence.
I thought now that, after all, he might head for the Savoy. The first thing to do, then, must be to warn Elizabeth. I picked up my jacket and the case. I would phone her as soon as I reached the car.
There was another peal at the bell. It lasted for five seconds, maybe ten. It was agonizing.
Had he been standing there waiting or had he taken a turn around the block? He couldn’t know that I was there, surely? Unless, of course, he had actually found the car.
Oh, Oliver.
Wh
y are you doing this to me?
If it was instinct which told him to keep ringing—or instinct and desperation both—then his instinct wasn’t the only one at work.
Mine told me that if I saw him again within the immediate future—had to look just once into his face—my resolve to leave him would not only weaken, it would disappear. I couldn’t bear to meet him now and not go back with him.
In any case, I didn’t feel that I could take much more of this.
Yet this time there was only the one ring. Nothing but the noise of the traffic—muted, usually unnoticeable—disturbed the silence after that.
The racking silence.
Five minutes later I began to move; no longer stood there irresolute. I again picked up the case, threw my jacket over my arm, and left the flat.
There was no sign of him. I stood in the centre of the pavement and stared in both directions. The pavement wasn’t crowded. Then I walked steadily towards the car. No sign. I drove back to the callbox and double-parked while I telephoned Elizabeth. I asked her to leave the hotel at once; if possible by a back entrance. I said that Oliver might be arriving there at any moment in order to warn her parents.
She hadn’t even finished lunch.
I said she was lucky to have been able to eat any.
While they’d paged Elizabeth (luckily the Sheldons had been having their meal in the Grill) they’d kept me waiting for at least a minute. But the only person I found by the car when I came out of the box was an admiring schoolkid.
“Sir, isn’t that the latest model?” He asked it with round eyes and West One confidence.
“Last October,” I said.
“Automatic?”
“No. With overdrive.” I paused. “I’d give you a ride but (a) I’m in a hurry and (b) your parents mightn’t like it.” While I talked, my eyes searched the pavement on both sides of the road.
“I’m going to have a car like this one day.”
“Then you’d better start saving.”
“May I just sit behind the wheel a second?”
His second was more like a minute but he got out obediently enough the moment I requested it.
“I shan’t forget this, sir. Thank you so very much.”
I didn’t think that I should forget it, either.
Twenty minutes later I picked up Elizabeth on the corner of the Aldwych. Her eyes looked watery but in every other way she appeared calm.
She had two enormous suitcases. “And even then I had to leave stuff behind. I’ve no idea what’ll become of it.”
She said it quite matter-of-factly, yet, added to a momentary image I had, in which I saw her struggling determinedly across the Strand—for neither of the cases came with wheels—the remark caused her to seem a bit pathetic. Brave but pathetic. It was the best thing that could have happened. My initial sympathy gave place to a sensation of tenderness and warmth, almost of love. I again felt I wanted to take care of her.
Shortly afterwards we were doubling back the way I’d come. We drove up Gloucester Place—I pointed out the flat in passing—and soon we had reached the Finchley Road. Heading north.
It was about an hour later I remembered the two envelopes still sitting on the kitchen table.
I felt tempted to go back. Really tempted. More for Oliver’s—only three lines though it was—than for my mother’s.
Part Two
23
If their Stop Press hadn’t been on the front page I mightn’t have seen it. I’d been walking down towards the river, glancing idly at the headlines. I was about to turn the page when I noticed a green wooden bench and for some reason decided to sit. Perhaps a part of my brain had already registered—but not yet communicated—might have been preparing me. Delayed reaction. I saw the name ‘Oliver Cambourne’, almost illegible in smudged print, and thought at first it was an optical illusion brought about by my having Oliver so continuously in mind; then in a split-second of disbelief saw the words surrounding the name. ‘Identified as … well-known society artist.’ The rest of it built up in slow motion around that same hard core. ‘Late last night … man’s body … retrieved from Thames. Late last night … Mr Oliver Cambourne … Late last night … man’s body … Late last night … Foul play not…’ I let the paper slide from my knees; bent and picked it up. Read again: ‘Late last night … man’s body … Mr Oliver Cambourne … retrieved from…’ It remained unchanging. I looked up and stared across the road. There was a whitewashed tollhouse with a hoarding in the garden: ‘Late last night…’ After a moment the words there did reshape themselves: ‘…house famous for Gretna Green runaway marriages.’ There was another sign above the door. ‘Over 10,000 marriages performed in this marriage room.’ My eyes went from hoarding to front door. I couldn’t seem—quite—to make sense of either statement, although I read them both repeatedly, with dazed determination.
The paper had again slipped from my knees. Abruptly I stood up, stooped down, crumpled it. Savagely. My brain saw this as a ploy—savagery! A lifesaver, something to hold on to. I shoved the paper into a bin; viciously pressed it down. “How feeble! How bloody feeble!” An old woman passed me with an umbrella—I became aware it was raining—it was only from the look on her face I realized I must have spoken the thought out loud. I didn’t care. “I always knew you were weak,” I cried at her bent, retreating figure. “I never guessed you were that weak!”
I stood there for a moment—immobile, irresolute, numb. And yet not numb in the least. When I started back to the B and B I strode there as though only the rapidity of my motion, along with the anger which I clung to, could get me back at all. If I ran out of anger, ran out of speed—what then? Would I for all time simply moon about the fields and moors, the hidden byways: an endless wanderer, eternal tramp? Yes, fuck you, Oliver Cambourne! Fool! Fool! You spineless fucking fool!
So it got me back. I ran up the staircase, rapped on Elizabeth’s door. It was half-past-eight. She was standing by the window, brushing her hair. When I went in she put down the brush and came towards me holding out her arms.
“Good morning, Johnny. Sleep well?”
“Yes. Yes! You?”
How could I mouth such inanities?
I stepped into her arms, largely because I didn’t want her to look into my face.
“Darling, you’re wet!” She felt my jumper, felt my hair. “You’ve been out!”
“Went for a paper. Wondered. Anything about us.”
“Was there?”
“No. Didn’t buy one.”
“Quite right—certainly not worth it if there wasn’t anything about us! But you mustn’t go catching pneumonia!” She touched my hair again and held me tight. “What made you think the papers might get hold of it?”
“I told you: just wondered—”
But suddenly my voice broke.
She pulled apart, immediately. “What’s the matter, Johnny? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re not disappointed, are you?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! I choked, that’s all.” I saw her face. “I’m sorry. These past few days—they’ve been a strain.”
She accepted this at once. “Oh, sweetheart, you do look off-colour. We’ll try to take it easy for a while. Don’t want you falling sick.”
She added brightly: “Let’s go down and have some breakfast.”
My God. Breakfast!
24
We’ll try to take it easy, she had said. I didn’t want to take it easy; couldn’t bear to. That morning we went sightseeing, inspected the Sark Tollhouse. We paid sixpence each to be shown around the small, cluttered Marriage Room and view the relics of a bygone age: dusty stovepipe hats, black ties, creased certificates, prints of anxious runaways being chased by angry fathers. On the walls were notices declaring war on the blacksmith’s shop a few miles away; it turned out we weren’t actually in Gretna.
We went to see that blacksmith’s shop. It was covered in posters. It had a turnstile that was clicking busi
ly even at eleven on a Wednesday morning. We gazed at an anvil said to be the very one over which successive blacksmiths had formerly forged marriage unions. We listened to the tale of one so-called romantic escapade after another.
Most of the time I really did my best to concentrate, although I fleetingly wondered whether someday other eager tourists would hear about the young man who had come to Gretna with an American heiress and thereby driven his lover to suicide. Romantic enough for anyone.
Elizabeth voiced my own sentiments.
“I don’t like this,” she whispered. “It’s claustrophobic. Let’s get out of here.”
Outside it was still drizzling but now we had raincoats and umbrellas and she took a deep breath.
“All those fortune-hunters and abductors … and we’re expected to feel glad they got away with it!”
“But they didn’t,” I said. “Not for the most part. I suppose it depends what you mean by ‘got away with’.”
Then I bit my lip. As Professor Joad might have said… It was my first indication of the way attack could come. Without warning.
That evening Elizabeth phoned her parents from Dumfries. It was the prototype of several long conversations which only had the effect of tiring and distressing her. It consisted of a series of appeals and heated arguments on either side. Those of her mother, mingled as they were with tears and free of the abuse her father used, were naturally far harder to resist. By Theodore Sheldon I heard myself described as playboy, parasite, adventurer and—yes, obviously—as someone who was solely after her money. I heard all this because I was sitting next to Elizabeth on her narrow bed. At other times I knew I’d have been tempted to seize the phone and respond in kind but now, at this time, what did it matter? What could anything matter? It was rather touching to witness Elizabeth’s indignation on my behalf, both on and off the telephone, and afterwards to have her pour out her apologies. Rather touching yet it scarcely touched me.
The Man on the Bridge Page 15
