The Alarming Palsy of James Orr

by Tom Lee

  He walked round to the other side of the bed, his side. There was a little table there, pushed against the wall, which had some of his things on it, his watch, a book he had been reading but forgotten about. He slipped off his pants and T-shirt, took hold of the corner of the sheet and pulled it back enough for him to slide in. Immediately, and without touching her, he could feel the heat coming off Sarah’s body.

  She stirred a little, and the snoring stopped. James lay still.

  Now that he was here, he felt even more confident that this was the right thing to do. He had allowed himself to think that it was the palsy that had curtailed their sex life, accepted it as an inevitability, when in fact this lack long preceded his illness. After all, they had made love that first weekend and it had been fierce and satisfying. Thinking of that now, it was hard to see why they had not carried on from there. She had instigated it then and he had failed to instigate it since—and, thought of like this, her recent coolness towards him was actually a kind of provocation.

  Sarah’s snoring had resumed. James turned on his side, edged his way across the bed, and then lay, not touching her, but echoing her shape—back curved, bottom pushed out, legs bent ninety degrees at the knee. Her body seemed to sense this and shifted a little and then resettled, like a subtle, instinctual acknowledgment of his presence.

  James breathed in, flexed his groin forward, and steered his erection between her buttocks. At the same time he reached his arm across her body, and cupped her left breast with his hand.

  Sarah’s body went rigid, and then, a moment later, she cried out and jerked away from him. James was alert and grabbed her wrists, forced them down on to the mattress, and straddled her with his legs.

  “It’s me,” he said, but the noise that came out of his mouth was mangled, incomprehensible even to himself. “It’s me, James,” he said again, clearer this time.

  “James!” she said. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”

  “Midnight Rapist!” he said.

  Even in the weak light he could see her expression—uncomprehending, aghast.

  “Get off me, James! Get off!”

  He held on to her wrists and didn’t move.

  “I said get off!”

  She bucked her hips in the air violently and James was surprised at her strength—or his own lack of it. He held on but he had lost his balance and when she bucked again he was thrown off the bed sideways and onto the floor. Sarah reached out and switched on the lamp by the bed.

  “Mummy?” said a voice behind James. He twisted his head round from where he lay, collapsed on the floor. Laura was silhouetted in the doorway.

  “It’s okay, darling, go back to bed,” Sarah said, her voice a little breathless but composed, “it’s just your father.”

  4

  James didn’t get back to sleep. In the morn­ing he heard the rest of the family get up and begin to move around the house. Around forty-five minutes later he heard the front door as they went out. He stayed in bed for another hour or so and then got up and went downstairs. On an impulse he called his office, his own extension. He let it ring twice, then had a different idea and hung up.

  It was strange to be on the train again. It was well past rush hour, there had been no one else on the platform and now he was alone in the carriage, too. He listened to the familiar litany of station names announced over the PA and leaned forward in his seat so as to better see out of the window. James had always enjoyed this view of the city, its face turned away from you, the backs of houses, industrial units, lorry and train depots, recycling plants. There were blocks of flats with tiny balconies crammed with bikes and barbecues and washing hung out to dry. Among these, one large block was missing an entire exterior wall, exposing perhaps ten floors of identically sized rectangular rooms, like a doll’s house with the front opened up. Apart from the missing wall, these flats looked barely abandoned, each one brightly painted, forming an oddly beautiful patchwork. Most of them still contained furniture, shelves, beds and cupboards. It was not hard to imagine people moving around inside them.

  At the third stop, a group of schoolchildren got into James’s carriage. There might have been thirty of them, a little older than Laura he thought but not much, and they swarmed into the seats around him. The noise was startling, a squall of shouting, laughing and arguing, so self-consumed and oblivious to James that it was somehow surprising that they did not sit directly on top of him. They were all dressed for the weather, bare legs and arms, sandals, some with hats. James was in the heavy boots and mud-flecked jeans he wore to walk in the woods. On the way out of the house he had also grabbed an old black duffle coat with a hood that could be pulled across his face to better conceal the palsy. It had not seemed a problem as he marched purposefully through the shade and relative cool of the woods to the station, but now, in the hot, airless carriage, he was beginning to sweat.

  There were two children squashed into the single seat next to him and every few seconds one of them elbowed him sharply in the ribs. Underneath the table the feet of the children opposite him kicked constantly against his ankles and shins. James tried to follow their conversations but they were so rapid and excitable that he found he could only pick out the odd word or phrase, like listening to one of the languages he had learned in school but mostly forgotten. Then, abruptly, the train pulled into the next station, the doors opened, and the children moved off with an odd bustling efficiency, like an insect colony sharing a single, collective intelligence. James listened to the hum of their voices retreating along the platform, the train doors closed, and he was alone again in the carriage.

  The next station was the end of the line and James got off. Instead of heading into the Underground he decided to walk the rest of the way. It was not so far. He used to do it all the time—to cross the river and see the city stretching away grandly along the banks in either direction, to feel the air and collect his thoughts before arriving at work. But as he stepped outside the air-conditioned station concourse, the heat hit him like a wall. It was said that cities were hotter than other places, sometimes by several degrees—the density of people and buildings and traffic—and so it made sense that the nearer you got to the centre, the hotter it was. Around him now the sheer walls of shining steel and glass and white stone seemed to reflect and magnify the sun, concentrating its force, and he felt that if you touched any of these surfaces you might burn yourself. He looked at the people in shorts and sunglasses, sandals and trainers, open-neck shirts and T-shirts, and felt again the inappropriateness of what he was wearing.

  Up on the bridge it was only a little better. The river was low, unusually so, grey-brown and barely flowing, and on either side of it were great banks of mud littered with the hulls of derelict barges. There was a faint breeze but it smelt bad, of stagnant water and drains. He looked upriver and down, but beyond a certain distance, not much further than the next bridge in either direction, everything was lost in a haze.

  On the other side, James became disorientated. He had arrived at a junction different from the one he had expected, as if he had crossed the wrong bridge altogether. Here the roads forked, taking you left or right, when he had planned to walk straight on. In front of him, blocking the way, was a large asymmetrical building that jutted up and out at various sharp angles. The façade was of some odd textured or pummelled metal that appeared to wobble or vibrate very rapidly in the heat. James had no memory of seeing the building before, or even of a construction site in this spot, but this was not entirely surprising. For as long as he had been coming to this part of the city it had been in the grip of a remorseless redevelopment, cranes and temporary boardings and scaffoldings and planned diversions. A testament to its vitality, James had always thought, although now it did not feel so benign.

  Unwilling to stop or go back, James pressed on left, the way that felt the least wrong, but now none of it seemed familiar. It was broadly the same place that
he knew so well, the same essential variety of architectural styles and periods, the same chains of shops and cafés and restaurants, the same grammar of signs and traffic lights and roads and people, but none of it fitted together in the right way, like an incorrectly assembled jigsaw. He walked on like this for some time, never slowing down, refusing to stop and ask for directions or to try and properly orientate himself. At some point, he felt, he must see something that made sense, an arrangement of buildings or roads, an unmistakable sign that he knew where he was. The heat was horrendous. He could feel sweat pooling under his clothes. He could take off the duffle coat but he did not want to stop, and anyway he would only have to carry it under his arm and this did not seem much better. He was tremendously thirsty but he had not thought to bring a bottle of water with him and, he realised, had no money to buy one.

  And then he did see something, a tiny medieval building crammed between two much larger modern office blocks. He had never been in it—some kind of church or chapel—but it was unmistakable, a part of the everyday scenery of his days at work. With renewed confidence he crossed the road and entered the building next to it.

  Inside, it was more or less as he remembered. The high, bright atrium, the polished wooden floor, the collection of leather sofas and chairs for visitors to wait in, the glass curve of the reception desk and the bank of lifts to one side and the stairs to the other. James turned and began to walk towards the lifts but somebody stepped in his way.

  “Sir?”

  James had made a habit, when he was working, of getting to know all the security guards’ names and exchanging a nod or a word with them when he came and went from the building. It was basic politeness. This one, however, he did not know, although given the time he had been away, this, again, was not particularly surprising.

  “Can I see your ID, sir?”

  James patted the pockets of his duffle coat, and then held up his hands.

  “I haven’t got it with me, I’m afraid.”

  “May I ask who you are here to see, sir?”

  “I work here. Or at least, I do usually—I haven’t been . . .”

  “Sir, if I can ask you to step over here with me.”

  The guard—John, his name badge said—took James by the arm.

  “That won’t be necessary,” James said, and planted his feet further apart to better balance himself. He gave the guard the name of his firm but this produced no reaction. It occurred to him that it was the sound of his voice that was the problem. He had got used to it himself, the slight mangling and slur of what he was trying to say, but he had forgotten how hard it was for other people to understand him. He pulled back his hood.

  “I apologise. I am not making myself clear. I have a small issue with my mouth.”

  He repeated the name of his firm, more slowly this time, enunciating the sounds carefully, and then gave Deborah’s name as well, but still this did not seem to register. Was it possible that the firm had changed its name? This had happened once before when they merged with another company. Could it have moved offices? These things were possible, but they did not happen overnight, and surely he would have been informed? What about Deborah, his manager and mentor? Could she have left the company? This seemed more plausible—she was ambitious, after all—and perhaps he just hadn’t caught up with the news.

  “Would it help if I wrote it down?”

  Another security guard had arrived—Robert, this one was called—and he felt the first one’s grip tighten at his elbow. He thought of his colleagues up on the top floor, ten short steps and a lift ride away from where he was now, sitting at their desks, standing talking in the kitchen or perhaps all together in the meeting room, his own empty desk by the window.

  James felt a familiar dampness on his left cheek and he reached up to touch it with his fingers.

  “Excuse me,” he said and pushed the patch up on to his forehead. The tears that had gathered under it rolled down his face. “It’s not what you are thinking. I am not crying. If you look, the tears are only coming out of one eye. They are tears but I am not crying. It’s only one eye!”

  At that moment James saw, crossing the atrium towards the lifts, a familiar figure—a familiar walk, a familiar haircut and carrying a handbag he recognised too. She had not left the company after all, and the company had not moved. He tried to move forward but his arms were locked tight against the security guards.

  “Deborah!” he shouted. “Deborah!”

  “Time to go, sir,” said one of the guards, and James felt himself lifted ever so slightly off the ground between them and then turned around. They started to walk him back towards the entrance, his feet gliding weightlessly over the polished floor. He twisted his neck around to look back over his shoulder.

  “Deborah!” he shouted one more time. “It’s me, James Orr!” Finally the woman had turned around and was looking at him curiously across the atrium.

  It was not Deborah. Of course it was not.

  5

  Later, at home, James tried to nap. He had been awake since dawn the previous day. The trip into town had been traumatic and exhausting. He remembered being escorted from the building by the security guards, but after that everything was a blur. Somehow, apparently, he had found his way home and now the most important thing seemed to be to get some sleep. Normally, he did not find this difficult in the daytime, but Kit was cutting lengths of wood on a workbench set up on the pavement outside his house and every time James felt he was about to drift off, the rasp of the saw—so loud that it seemed to be there in the room, next to his head—jolted him awake. He tried in the spare room, then on the sofa downstairs, but wherever he was the sound seemed to follow him and eventually he gave up.

  Outside, James went quickly down the steps and across the road to avoid being seen, but as soon as he was through the gate in the laurel hedge and into the woods he dropped his pace. He had walked through there earlier in the day, to and from the station, but on the way he had been thinking only of getting to work and he remembered almost nothing about the journey back. Before that it was nearly two weeks since he had been in the woods, the night he had run around in a panic looking for Sammy, and straightaway he saw—and felt—that everything had changed. It was as if, in his short absence, and even though it was still early summer, the year had peaked and spent itself. It had been hot and dry for so long that the leaves had already begun to wilt and lose their colour. The grasses were trodden down and the paths were hard and dusty. The birdsong was muffled and listless. The flowers were all gone but for an unfamiliar violet-coloured weed that had sprung up wherever he looked. The air was thick and soupy and the light seemed to blur the edges of everything.

  This did not dismay James, it was just part of the natural cycle after all. After the growth and vigour of the first part of the year, other forces had set in, of decline and decay. And as he walked—up and past the old foundations, down along the dried-up stream bed, alongside the bleached fairways of the golf course, the echoless crack of balls being struck in the dead air—he felt his exhausted and inflamed senses attune themselves powerfully to the momentum of this great and subtle process. He stopped and peeled a strip of desiccated bark as long as his arm from the trunk of a birch tree. He watched a leaf drop from a hawthorn bush and he caught it in his hand. In every direction the unfamiliar weed was spreading out ahead of him.

  He did not know how long or how far he had walked in this exalted state when he turned onto a path and saw, fifteen yards or so ahead of him, a large animal blocking the way. It was Sidney, the Fullers’ dog. Strictly speaking the trust’s rules did not allow dogs off the lead in the woods—there were signs at every entrance—let alone unaccompanied, as Sidney appeared to be now. Still, it was not so surprising to see him there. No doubt he had bolted out of the Fullers’ front door or jumped the back-garden fence, as he had many times before.

  Sidney himself gave no sign of be
ing anywhere he shouldn’t be. He was rooting around in the bushes at the edge of the path, following a scent or perhaps, James thought, deciding on somewhere to do one of his enormous shits. He hadn’t noticed James. Even at a distance, James was struck, as he always was, by just how big this animal was. He was a good four foot high, perhaps six when he was up on his back legs, his paws were barely smaller than James’s own hands and he might easily weigh ten stone. James knew that he cost the Fullers a fortune in food. From somewhere the sun was penetrating the woods and catching in his wiry grey coat and he stood ahead of James in the middle of the path in massive, glowing outline.

  James had stopped to observe Sidney but now he stepped forward. The dog sensed him—saw or smelt or heard him—and immediately, but unhurriedly, turned and lifted his head, his huge grey eyes, to look at James. It was a look of utter indifference. He registered no surprise or alarm at seeing James there on the path but nevertheless held his gaze, blinking slowly, blandly, as James continued to approach. Then, when James was around six feet away, Sidney turned his head away and, without shifting the position of the rest of his body on the path, began once again to forage in the bushes.

  A small log, around two feet long and as thick as James’s leg, lay to one side of the path. He picked it up with both hands, raised it in the air, and took two more steps forward. At the last moment, the dog withdrew his head from the bushes and turned again to look at James. Again, their eyes met and James recognised the feeling Greg had described in the slaughterhouse when he prepared to fire the bolt gun, a profound intimacy, a communion of souls. And then I killed the bastard, he thought.

  It was easier than he might have expected. James caught him well the first time, precisely between the eyes, and felt something give, the skull he supposed. Sidney’s eyes widened a little, his nostrils flared and his ears seemed to prick up, as if in some final rush of sensory awareness. Then his legs gave way, feebly, not so much from the force of the blow but as if from some command—or failure of command—from the animal’s brain and he toppled, massively, into the bushes, dragging branches down with him, the flattened undergrowth cushioning the sound. James stood over the body and brought the log down three more times on the dog’s head. It hardly seemed necessary. Underneath him, he felt Sidney draw in a sharp breath, like a gasp, release it slowly—and then nothing.