Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  Of course, in England we find it difficult to have a real class war, Mr Whiteley says, because no one can decide who is on which side. He snuffles, shakes his head. As for Violet, he says, I would consider Arthur. He may be no matinee idol, gammy leg and all that, but still.

  Rose turns the pages of a book, waits.

  After all, one has one’s natural instincts, Mr Whiteley says.

  Rose feels Mr Whiteley’s breath rasping on her neck. Should be interesting, that one, he says. Although perhaps you’d prefer something more political? Why do we all live so safely? That’s the question I ask myself.

  Rose picks up another book, flicks through the pages. She feels Mr Whiteley’s head against her as he leans down to put his hand up under her skirt. A tingling starts between her legs as his gnarled hand touches the inside of her thigh. Putting down the book, she rests her head forward against the cool of the bookcase, takes a deep breath, moves her legs apart. Mr Whiteley’s hand fumbles at her smalls and his fingers press up inside her. His breath against her neck rasps in sharp gasps. She feels his tweed-trousered groin against her side, as he rubs himself against her in a hopeless attempt to arouse himself. His fingers dig deeper and his other hand reaches round, pushes up her blouse so that the buttons come open. Fingers grip at her nipple as he rubs himself furiously against her.

  Rose always worries that he might give himself a heart attack but he has surprising energy for a sick man. She feels her curled hair descending, falling across her eyes. Book titles blur in front of her eyes. The Limits of Economics by J. F. Broadbent. The Failure of Paternalism by Roger Derek.

  Mr Whiteley has exhausted himself and staggers back from her, supporting himself against his desk, wiping his hand on his handkerchief. Rose turns around and moves towards him, lays her head against his chest, feels his arms around her. His whiskers touch against her cheek.

  You’re a good girl, he says. A very good girl.

  Rose pulls back from him and smiles, lays a finger on his lips. She’s fond of Mr Whiteley but glad that he’s too old to do anything much. She wouldn’t want to take her clothes off for him but these Sunday afternoon library sessions, which began as soon as she became Violet’s friend, are not unpleasant. Mr Whiteley is an old man who may not have long to live. He’s sorting through his wallet. A little present, he says, and gives her ten shillings. Rose smiles at him, raises her eyebrows. Mr Whiteley draws another ten shilling note out of his pocket and Rose kisses his cheek as she pushes the money into her pocket. There are many ways in which wealth can be more fairly distributed.

  Mr Whiteley turns the key in the lock and, as he guides her through the door, he squeezes her bottom. She turns to him, laughing, as the door closes. Moving towards the stairs, she raises her hand to push her hair out of her eyes. Frank is standing in the shadows of the landing, staring at her. His eyes are hollow, helpless. Rose swallows, clasps her hands against her half unbuttoned blouse but forces herself to meet Frank’s eyes with a calm gaze. Frank has turned bright red and he’s sweating. His collar rubs against that patch of spots on his neck. Rose coughs awkwardly, straightens her blouse.

  I thought you and Violet were off to Binley Woods?

  Frank tries to speak but his voice doesn’t come. He coughs, pulls at his collar, breathes deeply and tries again. No. Violet doesn’t feel too well.

  Oh I am sorry, Rose says. How disappointing for you.

  And she has to look after her father. He hasn’t been at all well this week.

  Rose is aware of the gossip that Mr Whiteley is losing his mind but she suspects that for the first time he might be taking possession of it.

  Frank’s voice croaks again but no words come.

  Oh well. I’m sure you’ll go to Binley Woods another time, Rose says, and tries to move past him. But Frank stands close, blocks her path. All this is very nice for you, Rose, isn’t it?

  Yes, it is. Her eyes meet Frank’s and she pities him. Wearing that too-tight collar, being bossed around by Violet and his mother. She wonders who Frank really is, if there is any Frank. She marvels at the way in which education and wealth leave people with no idea how to operate in the world.

  You could come with Arthur and me tonight, if you like? she says. We’re going to the Peace Pledge Union meeting in the City Hall.

  As soon as she has said these words, Rose wonders why she asked. She needs to offer Frank something but not that. Frank has no interest in politics. He went to grammar school and is part of the management or will be soon. Violet would be furious if Frank even thought of it. He’s still standing very close and she can hear the snatching of his breath.

  I might do that, he says. Yes, I might.

  You’d be very welcome.

  From below she hears the Sunday afternoon sounds of the house – the ticking of the clock in the hall, the clatter of a plate, the murmur of a radio. A door opens and shuts, unseen. Frank is still close to her, red in the face. She wonders why he doesn’t move. The thought comes to her that he is a small and frightened boy in the body of a tall and confident man. He has no idea what to do with his beauty. As yet, it is merely burdensome, an embarrassment. She swallows, looks down at that open button on her blouse, then up at Frank. Perhaps he has been drinking? It’s rumoured that he does drink although Rose finds this hard to imagine. But still his eyes are thunderous, he might suddenly hit her or shout.

  You won’t spoil my happiness, will you, Frank?

  He breathes in deeply, takes a step back.

  No, Rose. I won’t spoil your happiness.

  Thank you.

  She walks on down the stairs, feels his eyes clinging to her.

  See you tonight perhaps? she says.

  10

  NOW

  Jay – Istanbul, February 2003

  Dear Granmollie,

  I’m sending you this from Istanbul which is a really cool city although we’re only in the outskirts and so I haven’t seen much. Really friendly people here all crowd round the buses and cheer and push food and drink on us even though we can’t understand a word they’re saying. Also a guy took me into his house last night and so I slept in a proper bed for the first time and that was really, really good. I have to be quick because someone lent me this computer just for a while but they need it back and actually I’m not sure the message is going to send but I just hope it does.

  It is hard to hear yourself think with all the arguments going on, so much talk about peace but it’s certainly hard to get any here. There’s this stupid prat who has managed to offend everyone in this whole town. Too many nutcases on this bus, one with food intolerance and he can’t eat anything with grain which is pasta and pizza and he obviously hasn’t noticed that we left London some time ago. And all these journalists saying that all this is a complete waste of time and a stupid publicity stunt because Saddam is hardly going to take any notice of what a bunch of wacky-baccy smokers from Hampstead think, even if they are standing in front of a school waiting to get bombed. And part of me agrees with that and part of me doesn’t but anyway there is no other way to get into Iraq right now so that’s why I’ve come with them.

  And this guy he was in Vietnam and he talks about how it was the worst experience ever but then he’s turned up here – he can’t keep away. I don’t know. You probably heard that our self-appointed leader Ken O’Keefe who you’ve probably seen on telly decided to burn his passport because he doesn’t need it any more. He’s a citizen of the world. Only problem is that the Turkish authorities have decided not to buy that shit and so he’s stuck at the border and can’t get anywhere. What I know is that the proper story is not being told and no one is actually listening to the people in Iraq. No one is consulting them or asking them what they want. So I just want to spend some time looking around, understanding what it’s really about, what the real story is, and writing it down, not for the press because they never publish the truth but just for some people, somewhere, who might want to know. I just think we’ve all got a duty to try to understa
nd. Say to Mum – it’s just about Iraq, that’s all it’s about. As usual she’s got some big theory, as she always has and she’s been getting in touch with everyone and telling them that I’ve got to come home, that I’m mentally ill, ringing the frigging Foreign Office and then leaving four messages a day. All I’m asking is that she should just let me exist. I’m not going to come back. Somebody has to do something about this. It’s not OK just to let this happen. IT IS NOT OK. The morons and bullies who are doing this for their own ends, for oil and accusing everyone of having WMDs when they’ve got piles of the bloody things themselves. One rule for them and one for everyone else. There is this very good website called Voices of Truth you can look at. Wilf and Spike will show you and it has real stories from Iraq, written by ordinary people there, and then you can begin to understand. And Mr Stanmore. You know him? He says empathy is the only hope for changing the world and for healing people. I know she’s a very good mother, I know she’s made every sacrifice for me, I know that she only wants what is best for me and all that shit. I love you, Granmollie, and I don’t want you to be frightened. You and me both know that what I’m doing is the right thing. Even if what I do is only helpful to one person then one person is enough. Yeah and there’s a guy called Kevin who is probably looking for this CD I borrowed and I left it on the dresser in your kitchen underneath the radio. Got to go.

  Love you. Jay

  11

  NOW

  Oliver – Brighton, February 2003

  So the Great Trickster has appeared again, like a travelling salesman with a bag full of cheap temptations. But why now? And why that woman with her clicking high heels, swinging handbag and shrill voice? Every time he shuts his eyes, he sees her hands. Those hands, which looked as though the skin had been peeled from them but then were clear and smooth as rainwater. In the church he polishes brass, mops up the water that drips in through the roof, juggles with bookings and keys, tries to forget.

  But it’s no good because The Dying are back as well. Oliver sees them everywhere and they cry out to him endlessly, calling for help. You are our last chance. If you can’t save us, who will? He knows The Dying well. They first appeared after Grace’s death – balanced on balconies, stepping down perilous stairs, hanging in stairwells, feet dangling, kicking and twitching, desperately trying to secure a foothold. But after a while they had receded. Or he had forced them away, by keeping his mind steady, sticking to the simple, the material, believing in nothing, hoping for nothing. But they too saw that woman’s hands.

  He needs to be vigilant. One never knows when or how they will appear. There are such varied ways to die. The world bristles with risk. Now, standing at the window of his room, up above the church, Oliver looks down into the street and watches as a young man decides to cross the road. The night is treacle black and slippery with rain. The young man wears dark clothes and a wool hat pulled down over his ears. Oliver watches him slide between two parked cars and he sees the battered white van, which is speeding to meet him, to run him down. It glides down the street, splashing through puddles, its headlights glittering funnels. Oliver hears fear beating inside his head, imagines a screech of brakes and the thump of metal on bone. But the van passes and the young man – unaware of Death beside him – saunters across the road.

  Oliver turns away from the window and goes into the kitchen, pours himself a glass of wine, grips the stem firmly to stop his hands shaking. Then he presses his head against the wall, feels the plasterwork against his forehead and nose, breathes deeply.

  But when he opens his eyes, hands are outside, clinging to the windowsill – thick-fingered brown hands which grip like claws to the stonework. His heart bashes against his ribs, he opens his mouth to cry out. Someone must have fallen from higher up the building and they’re hanging on here, about to drop to the pavement below. The bones and muscles of the hands strain, struggling to maintain their grip. Oliver knows that he should pull the window open, try to catch hold of the man, lean down and grasp his arms, haul him to safety. But instead he shuts his eyes, breathes deeply again and moves away from the window. When he dares to look back, the hands have gone. But The Dying still wait in the shadows. And he is responsible – responsible for them all – and now for the boy as well.

  In the sitting room he starts to read, trying to calm his mind. His book is called Facets of Time and it examines several theories as to what time is. Oliver has read several times the pages about concurrent time – a theory which suggests that everything is actually happening simultaneously. Time is a construct in the minds of men, a system that they invent in order to organise events and make sense out of them. Oliver is aware that the arguments put forward in favour of this idea are all spurious, but at another level he suspects that the theory is right.

  He reads a few sentences but he can’t settle. An image comes to him. It is one he knows well. A great ship lurches in a tempestuous sea. The waves rise as high as the ship, crash down around it. The wind rips, the ship tosses and bucks, tipping wildly, deluged with water, barely staying afloat. The crew of the ship cling to railings and ropes. The captain is absent, no one is in control, the wheel spins wildly, the ship will soon go down. Oliver pushes the image away.

  He thinks of that boy – the one who has gone to Iraq, a boy whose soul lay close up under his skin. Of course because he’s only twenty, he doesn’t really believe in death, has no sense of the love that others have invested in him or how they would be damaged by his loss. Thin, with a shock of curly red hair, with an old corduroy jacket and baggy trousers, a striped scarf, a ring through his ear. Oliver tries to imagine that boy in Iraq and allows himself a frivolous moment of feeling a little nervous on the Iraqis’ behalf. Have they not problems enough? The boy’s grandmother comes to the church often. Tiny and elegant, she makes her responses passionately in a deep and resonant voice and lights a cigarette before the service is over. She’s determined that everyone should understand her as dotty and dim but Oliver isn’t convinced. Wilf says that the boy has been in touch with her now but Oliver knows no more than that.

  He should never have talked to that boy, of course, but he couldn’t leave him alone there, sitting at the table in the Community Centre café, weeping damply. The habit of caring is hard to shake off. And so he’d gone up to him, sat down. The boy’s eyes were startling – so that Oliver had asked himself whether those wide pupils had some chemically induced significance. He talked as though words were a currency fast being devalued. The normal catalogue of teenage grievances expressed in the clichéd language of the young. I can’t understand my family, he said. Why are they all acting their lives rather than living them?

  All Oliver had to do was listen. He’d had years of practice at that.

  That’s the problem with the world we live in now, the boy had said. We’ve got too much information and everything is too interdependent. You just want to buy a packet of green beans from Kenya in a supermarket but suddenly it’s a life-and-death issue. If you buy the beans then you’re responsible for ruining the environment and causing earthquakes, famine and floods. But if you don’t buy them then people in Kenya will lose their livelihoods.

  Yes, Oliver had said. Uuum. Yes. I do see. Yes, I understand.

  Then the boy had stared at him, pinning him down with those aching eyes.

  But it doesn’t matter, actually, does it? Any of it, I mean.

  Oliver had considered this question, made an effort to speak the truth. No, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a question of how to fill the time, and if you live in this part of the world then you might have some pleasure, but if you live in some other part of the world then you’ll have a lot of pain.

  So it might be worth trying to reduce some other person’s pain?

  Yes, that might be worth it.

  He felt uncomfortable with this conversation. This boy was too young to know these things. He felt frightened by him and for him. Once again he regretted ever having engaged with him.

  That’s what
I want, the boy had said. That’s all I want. But no one believes I can. They think you have to be a doctor or someone to do that. But I do help people. Only in small ways but still… Why don’t they believe I can help?

  Oliver considers the boy. He must not lie to him. He must tell him that no one can help anyone else, that to think otherwise is a dangerous delusion of power and control. But there was something so plaintive in the boy’s voice that Oliver couldn’t resist offering a little comfort, although he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t. Of course you can help people, he said. Of course you can. The ability to empathise has a tremendous power to heal. There may be professionals – doctors and hospitals – but every day, through empathy, we all have the power to heal.

  After the boy had gone he’d found the photograph lying on the café floor. Had it dropped from the boy’s bag? It showed forearms and hands with the palms turned upwards. The arms were covered with crooked strips of lint secured by plasters. The lint stained with patches of blood. Something about the photograph attracted Oliver. Its honesty, perhaps, for these were certainly real arms, real wounds. Oliver had kept the photograph, meaning to return it to the boy when he saw him again. But then the news came about Iraq. And Oliver had propped the photograph on his desk, for reasons he couldn’t explain.

  Now he turns to the photograph, looks back on that conversation with a rising feeling of horror. Why had he sold that boy the cheap philosophy of the power of empathy? Why had he spoken to him at all? Usually he takes more care. People are always looking for him. Bald cancer victims, the mothers of disabled children, people with chronic skin conditions or twisted by arthritis. He avoids all of them, hides in his room upstairs, never answers a letter, or returns a phone message. It’s best that way. Oliver gets up from his chair, paces across the room, remembers the boy’s mother. Maybe he should get in touch with her again? But there is no need. She’s moving towards him as certainly as the bullet moves towards the boy heading to Iraq. Both will find their target. It’s only a matter of time.