‘Oh, you’d be surprised. There’s a Home there. For people who are handicapped one way and another. There’s a fellow whose mother went into hiding in a sewer, gave birth to him there. He’s been so damaged by it all that he’s in this Home now. It’s an extraordinary story. I heard about what happened to the mother — it’s got to be a major strand of the film. But the woman’s dead and I can only talk to this son. I’m just hoping he won’t be too damaged to be of some use. Hell, I don’t mean to sound that cynical — ’
‘I’m sure you didn’t. Listen, take it as read. You’re a decent guy with an honest heart and no intention of ripping anyone off. OK?’
Abner felt himself go pink. ‘Hell, you see what’s happened to me? I’ve got so defensive, I just don’t know. Anyway, I’ll let you know Wednesday how I got on. And Monty — ’
‘Yeah?’
‘Thanks for taking me on. You won’t regret it.’
‘I don’t intend to,’ Monty said. ‘Wednesday then. Have a nice day.’ And the phone clicked in Abner’s ear.
Twenty
He drove out of London via the Marylebone Road, climbing to the crest of the motorway at its western end with a sense of elation that made him feel like a boy again, and settled down for the long straight run the map had shown him lay ahead. He had found the radio on the dashboard and was playing BBC Radio Three, and the Haydn concert that it was offering added a sense of peace to the elation, so that he felt better than he had for a long time. He sat there behind the wheel watching the roofs beside the road flash by and thought, Dave was right. It did help to talk about bad feelings. He was still ashamed to remember how badly he’d behaved this morning, but it seemed like another life now. Everything had changed since then. Now he was one of Monty Nagel’s clients officially, and the combination of the sense of real involvement, at last, that that gave him and the relief that had come from pouring out all his feelings worked as powerfully in him as the gas did in the Rover’s engine. And, of course, he had wheels. That was almost the most exhilarating thing of all. In his teens he’d been crazy about cars and though he’d outgrown the passion, there were enough remnants of it left to make this trip in a powerful, elegant vehicle through the early afternoon of a hazily sunny February day feel good.
The suburbs came and went, streaming past him in a very North American way; this could be any of the turnpikes at home, with factories linked by low cost housing and used car lots and service stations, all sewn together into a continuous necklace with billboards; but then the buildings became more occasional and fields began to show themselves between naked spidery trees and rough bushes and he could see the shape of the land itself, and it was not at all American, and his sense of wellbeing moved up another notch. He’d seen hardly anything of England yet but London, he told himself; this should be a great afternoon, whatever happened when he got to Roseacres, and he looked around as carefully as he could, consciously registering all that he saw, carefully storing it into his memory. Maybe he’d need it one day for a movie, another movie, the one that might emerge long long in the future, post Postscripts.
He glimpsed a tall obelisk with a carved eagle on it, a surprising object to find at such a place, he thought, and on an impulse took the next exit so that he could pull off the road to look at it; and was almost unbearably moved. It was the Polish War Memorial, a record of the men of Poland who had died as serving members of Allied forces during the war; and he read all of the names aloud, one after the other, stumbling a little over the pronunciations, and then got back into the Rover and made the complicated turns necessary to get back on to his road, feeling even more certain that his film had to be made. And made well. He owed that to so many people. He wasn’t going to make any reference in it to dead Polish pilots or navigators, but all the same, they were part of it. A war from half a century ago still affecting lives today, he told himself. That’s what it’s all about. My piece of it is the people of the camps. Theirs was what happened when Germany invaded their homes. The difference is huge, but negligible too. I must make my story right. Please God, let this fella at ‘Roseacres’ have something to tell me.
The road went on swooping between grey-green fields dusted with the thin gold of the sunshine and past muddy green pastures where cows wandered and he felt the shape and look of it all seep into him. Such small fields; such neat little houses. He had seen something like it before here in England, of course he had; how could he have forgotten the train journeys to Oxford? But this looked different; better, because the sides of the road were clean, not littered with garbage and wrecked buildings the way the sides of the railroad lines had been, and he whistled softly between his teeth as the road dipped into a miniature chasm and then opened out to a sprawling softly curving landscape again. He was having a wonderful afternoon.
The road he was on bypassed Oxford, taking him west towards Cheltenham, according to the signboards, and he relished the sound of the name of the place on his tongue, murmuring it aloud, Chel-ten-ham. It was a way of keeping his mind away from how close he was to Oxford and, therefore, to Miriam. It would be very easy to go back to the last roundabout, which had indicated Oxford off to the left, and take that road. He’d find her at home, sure to, and then they could …
But he pushed all that aside with resolution, and again said the name of the place the road was going to; Chel-ten-ham, and after a while, pulled over to the side to consult his map again.
‘Roseacres’ was just outside a small place called Burford. He peered at the map and worked out the road numbers and then set off again, and less than half an hour later pulled over again to stare at the place he had found.
Burford ran before him in one long street falling gently from a small hill, a street that was wide and handsome, lined with greyish-yellow stone-built houses and shops that were quite the most pretty he could remember seeing. This place looked like some sort of calendar, for God’s sake, or those jigsaw puzzles the grandfather of one of his childhood friends had been addicted to. The trees that lined the street were tall and elegant; the shops were attractive, the people walking along beside them comfortably dressed in warm country clothes and he took a deep breath of sheer pleasure as he looked at it all.
He stopped at a pub halfway along the main street of the town and ordered a half pint of beer and one of those ploughman’s lunches he’d learned to enjoy, and they brought it to him beside a big, open log fire. Abner sat there and ate and drank and let himself think of Miriam. How could he fail to think of her, when they had shared just such a lunch the first time they’d met? Around him the pub murmured gently as the few people there talked quietly, and the fire crackled a little and then hissed in a companionable fashion; his sense of contentment increased and bubbled in him until it reached his head, and he thought, I can call her. I can’t be this close to her and not call her, can I? And it was as though he heard Dave’s voice again: Oh boy, but you’ve definitely hit that mother lode, it said cheerfully, It’s worse than anything — you’re in love, mister. God help you.
Yeah, Abner had said. God help me.
Well, was he? He didn’t know. He’d found girls before he’d cared about, a great deal for one of them. Frances had been -well, never mind. But this girl was different. How could you tell if you were in love with someone as sulky, as awkward, and altogether as unpredictable as Miriam Hinchelsea? And he closed his eyes against the brightness of the fire and tried to reach the inner side of his mind, to find the answer there, and couldn’t.
Instead he got to his feet and went to find the phone. Calling her was a must. He had to do it.
‘Where?’ she said when he tried to explain. ‘Oh, God, Burford? Right in the middle of the tourist trap.’
‘It’s a lovely spot,’ he protested. ‘Pretty and charming and — ’
‘I’ve heard people say the same about Disneyland,’ she said. ‘Still, if you like it.’
‘I didn’t come for the scenery,’ he said then. ‘I’m doing research. I’ve discovered t
hat there’s a camp survivor — well, in a way, though he was a baby. Anyway, there’s someone who may be able to give me some information. He’s in a home, the other side of this place. I’m on my way there. I thought, could we meet afterwards, and have dinner? Here, perhaps? They seem to have a restaurant.’
‘In Burford?’ she said, and there was a jeer in her voice. ‘No, I don’t think I can handle that. I loathe Burford. I know somewhere that’s even more Disneyish, if you fancy it. More like Brigadoon, really.’
‘Brigadoon?’
‘My father always said that it was too pretty to be true. That it probably disappears when no one’s there, and only turns up again when people look for it. I could see you there, maybe. That’s got a pub with a restaurant.’
‘Anywhere you say.’ He was absurdly elated. And grateful and excited. ‘Anywhere at all.’
‘It’s called the Old Swan. At Minster Lovell. Anyone’ll direct you if you can’t find it on the map. It’s old Minster Lovell you want, by the way. There’s another place, same name, not so fancy. The pub’s at the start of the village street. I’ll call them and book a table. See you there around seven-thirty or eight. I’ll pay for myself.’ And the phone clicked and went dead even as he opened his mouth to argue with her.
Well, he could sort that out later; right now he had an exciting few hours ahead of him dealing with David Lippner and then he’d meet her; and he whistled softly as he paid his bill and went out into the amber afternoon.
‘Roseacres’ managed to look even better than the photograph in the charity brochure and that cheered him. He knew only too well how creative photography could make the dingiest of places look passable. This place, however, looked genuinely attractive, whereas the photograph of it on the torn sheet that Abner held in his hand was bleak and rather uncompromising. He parked the car cheerfully and made his way round a crunching gravel path to the entrance.
The woman who answered the door showed no surprise when he asked to see David Lippner. She opened the door wider and invited him in with a silent inclination of her head and then said, ‘If you’d wait here a moment please,’ and went padding away, leaving him to look about.
Some of the charm he’d felt outside at the sight of the rose-red brick building sitting in the middle of its well-trimmed lawns dissipated. There was an undoubted institutional air about the place; wheelchairs were parked against one wall of the hallway in which he was standing, and there was a long set of hooks on the wall on which coats and walking sticks were hanging untidily. The floor was covered in a heavy oilcloth, which looked scuffed, and the stairs were carpeted in the sort of heavy, dark drugget he remembered from his school days. There was a smell of disinfectant and urine in the air, a queasy mixture that was again familiar. The latrines at summer camp had been a bit like that.
A man in a high-buttoned white coat that made him look like an advertisement for toothpaste came bustling along the corridor into which the woman had disappeared, and nodded affably at him.
‘You’ve come to see one of our residents? We don’t usually have visitors except at weekends, but, of course, we don’t make any restrictions. Only too glad when people take an interest — some of our people sadly never see anyone from outside.’
‘I should have called first, maybe,’ Abner said, a little alarmed. Surely there’d be no problems over seeing the man? It hadn’t occurred to him that there might be. ‘It was just that I happened to be in the area and — ’
‘You’re an American,’ the man discovered and beamed, and Abner smiled back, glad to use his status as a foreigner in any way that was useful. ‘Well, fancy that! It’s so exciting when one of our residents hears from relatives from so far away.’
‘I’m — er — ’ Abner began and then stopped. If that was the assumption the man wanted to make, why argue with him? He’d let something like this happen before, after all. ‘I’m grateful you don’t mind me coming at an awkward time.’
‘Oh, it’s not awkward,’ the man said sunnily. ‘All of the older ones like a little schloof in the afternoons, you understand. But for a visitor from America — well, I dare say whoever it is won’t mind. Who do you want to see?’
‘David Lippner,’ Abner said. ‘If he — ’
The man’s brows snapped down at once. ‘David? But no one ever visits David! I mean, not since his poor mother died, ala va shalom — I thought he didn’t have any relations apart from her.’
‘Oh, you’re right,’ Abner said hastily. ‘I didn’t say I was related. But his mother, rest her soul indeed, was ah — ’ He swallowed. Why was it so hard to tell a lie in such circumstances? One of these days he’d learn to be as crooked as everyone else.
He didn’t have to lie. The man’s face cleared at the obvious distress he recognised on Abner’s face. ‘You were a friend of his mother? There, there, don’t upset yourself. It happens to us all, and it was for her a happy release, they tell me. David took it bad, I can’t deny he took it very bad. He had one of his turns that first night he was told and after that, well, it happened several times a week. It’s a bit easier now. Mind you,’ — the round brow crumpled a little — ‘maybe talking about her again will upset him.’
‘Oh, I’ll try not to,’ Abner said earnestly. ‘It’s the last thing I want to do. I just want to talk to him to — to — well, to talk to him.’
‘Listen, don’t worry. We’ve looked after David Lippner over ten years now. No one knows his turns better than we do. Come along then. He’ll be in the garden room, I dare say. He usually ends up there!’ And he laughed cheerfully and led the way down a long corridor that smelled this time of floor polish and bleach as well as the disinfectant and humanity of the hallway.
The garden room was at the far end, a small afterthought to the main building, made of glass and white painted wood and filled with plants. It smelled different; of damp earth and a slightly cloying scent and as Abner looked round he saw the source of that; a tub of flowering lilies set in one corner.
‘We used to get the gardner in to look after these, when he had finished in the grounds, you know? Until we found out how good David was at them,’ the man said brightly. ‘He really has a great gift for plants — some of them do, you know. They seem backward but they have special gifts. God can be good to the afflicted.’ He said the last sentences in a piercing whisper that made Abner cringe as he looked across the green-tinted room to the wheelchair at the far side. A thin bent man was sitting there with a rug round his knees and lying on the rug was a pair of secateurs and a roll of green raffia together with a few small garden tools, a trowel and a miniature fork, on the top of them. He stared at Abner blankly and then at the round man in the white coat who smiled brightly at him, as though he were a child rather than a man on the way to being fifty.
‘See, David? You’ve got a visitor all the way from America! Isn’t that nice? Now you sit down Mr — er — and I’ll go and fetch a nice cup of tea for you both, hmm? Then you can talk nice and comfortable.’ Again he produced the piercing whisper loud enough for someone halfway along the corridor to hear, let alone the silent man in the wheelchair. ‘There’s a bell here, if you get worried. He’s all right most of the time, but if he has one of his turns, just you ring that bell and we’ll come running. Now, here’s a chair.’
At last he went away and Abner sat down in a gingerly fashion and looked at the man facing him. Thin, certainly, with bony cheeks and temples and neck as scrawny as a half-starved chicken’s. I hope they feed them well enough, Abner thought uneasily. I hope this fuss they’re making of me isn’t just for show — and then pushed the idea away. The little round man may be a bit on the pretentious side, dressing himself up in a fancy white coat so that he could look vaguely medical, but his goodwill seemed genuine enough. David Lippner had shown no sign of any fear of him, and surely he would have done were he being ill treated. And anyway, he looked well cared for; his face had been carefully shaved and his sparse hair neatly cut and arranged. He was wearing a white sh
irt under a dark red open-necked sweater, which showed the whiteness of the shirt clearly, and the shoes on his feet, arranged on the step of the wheelchair, had been well polished. Abner looked at his hands then, knowing what a giveaway they could be and relaxed even more. The nails were short and properly cut and though there was peat on the fingers, David Lippner was clearly usually very clean.
The man in the chair stared at him for a long time with apparently blank eyes and then opened his mouth. The voice that came out was rough and deep and that startled Abner; for some reason he had expected it to be thin and reedy.
‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Abner said. ‘But I’d like to know you, if you’ll let me. My name is Wiseman. Abner Wiseman. I’m a film maker.’
He braced himself, waiting for the usual television inspired excitement, but the man said nothing, just looking at him, and now he was getting used to that seemingly blank stare, Abner could see that it wasn’t as empty as he’d first thought. There was a lively intelligence and a sharp awareness here and he relaxed his shoulders, which had tightened with anxiety, and tried a smile.
‘I’ve come to ask you for some help, Mr Lippner,’ he said then, as formally as he could. ‘I’m researching for an important new film and I need to talk to people who have experience of the sort of material I need to use.’
David Lippner stared at him in silence and then the thin lips seemed to curve a little. He wasn’t precisely smiling, Abner thought, but there was something there. And then as the words came out, he knew what it was. Scorn.
‘You’re making a film about epilepsy, are you? About people who have disgusting fits and bite themselves and mess their clothes and then get attacks of fury they can’t handle, is that it? They’ve sent you to talk to me about that?’
The anger in him was unmistakable. He was furious and Abner warmed to that. It was something he understood.
Postscripts Page 22
