It was raining busily away when I started on my disagreeable journey. I took the Apfelsine through the middle — straight down the hill, along past the office, across Blackfriars Bridge, to the Elephant and into the Old Kent Road. Very likely other routes would have been cleverer, but that morning the thought of even trying to be clever seemed dreadful, not to be borne. At first the traffic was so light that I looked like getting there in about ten minutes, but then an almost stationary Belgian container-lorry, stuck trying to back into a side-turning and so gigantic it must have been built for laughs, put my mind at rest. South of the river I was on home ground, or not far off. By the time I got to New Cross I had come to within five miles of where I had been born and brought up.
For all I knew, this part and that part had been different then, built at different times with different ideas, anyhow not interchangeable. That was no longer so, if it ever had been, unless perhaps you happened to have an eye for churches. Not that I cared, of course — I had left South London for good as soon as I had the chance. And yet in a sense what I saw from the Apfelsine was the same as ever, was cramped, thrown up on the cheap and never finished off, needing a lick of paint, half empty and everywhere soiled, in fact very like my old part as noticed when travelling to and from an uncle’s funeral a few weeks back. Half the parts south of the river were never proper places at all, just collections of assorted buildings filling up gaps and named after railway stations and bus garages. Most people I knew seemed to come from a place — Cliff Wainwright and I got out of an area. This might have spared us various problems.
On Shooters Hill I picked up a sign for St Kevin’s and was directed across some strikingly unrepulsive parkland through a couple of open gates in a low red-brick wall surmounted by railings. Following further signs I found myself winding through what added up to another park, though this one was in full fig with lawns, flowerbeds, shaped hedges and ordered groups of shrubs, all looking cheerful enough even if fairly well saturated just now. But most of the view consisted of houses, again in red brick, probably of the Thirties, and enough in size and number to shelter a great many people, in fact a small New Town of loonies and their attendants. That sounded like the sort of novel by a dead foreigner that got reviewed in the Sunday Chronicle, not with Susan doing the review, of course.
The car park was right at the end, at the back of a one-storey building with a husky-looking creeper trained along it. Having duly parked I walked round to its front, not hurrying because I was early and the rain had stopped for the moment. I turned the corner to find that an ambulance had drawn up outside the entrance and the two crewmen were helping down an old fellow who was going on like a madman in a Bela Lugosi movie. Shock-headed, wild-eyed, wrapped in a grey blanket, he was spreading his hands jerkily about in front of him as he shuffled forward, not actually screaming but crying out in a high wordless voice. The men told him he was fine and doing great. I was trying to look like a piece of the wall and had no idea how he saw me, but he did, and swung and swayed round.
‘Hoo-oo!’ he howled, pointing a shaky finger. ‘Urhh!’
The man quickly soothed him and the younger one steered him through the glass door. The older one came over to me. He had a very long neck and small ears and was blinking and frowning.
‘Nothing for it, just got to stare, have we?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Reflex action, is it? See a nut and goggle like a kid?’ He gazed past me and let his lower jaw hang to help to show me what he meant.
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I was waiting to go in here myself.’
‘I mean he’s not a bloody freak, you know. He’s a poor old man who’s a little bit confused and a little bit frightened, and he don’t need very ignorant people gawping at him, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘My son’s in here somewhere.’
‘Oh, well I expect you’ll learn then, won’t you?’ He looked me up and down once or twice before letting me off whatever he still had up his sleeve for me, and hurried off into the building, stopping abruptly on the way to light a cigarette.
Something prevented me from following him for the moment. I stood muttering excuses and looking vaguely about, soon catching sight of someone in a white coat who peered out of the entrance of the house opposite, probably a woman, but the white brimmed hat like a cricket-hat made it hard to be sure. Two pairs of eyes met for I suppose two seconds, then the figure threw up both hands and waved them and started towards me, crossing the threshold on widely separated legs. That sent me indoors all right. There was a desk and a girl there, and the ceiling struck me as unusually low.
‘I’m looking for Rorschach House,’ I said.
She scratched her neck and said without looking up, ‘This is it.’
‘No really?’ I had been fully expecting to be sent on a hike back to the front gate.
‘It’s over the door,’ she said, sighing. ‘Was there somebody you wanted to see?’
We went into that and I started walking down a narrow, dimly lit corridor with doors along the sides made from extremely cheap wood and the floor loosely spread with white cotton lengths like the ones decorators put down. I saw nobody and heard no sound before I knocked on a door of similar quality at the end of a section of passage. Like the others it had a number on it but no name.
On request I went inside, and nearly went straight out again on failing to recognize the female sitting behind the metal table with her back to the window. Then I saw that the dark-rimmed tinted glasses, swept-back hairdo and old-style office get-up belonged to Trish Collings — so too with a vengeance did the thin funny-shaped mouth, where I should have looked first. She held out her hand, which I shook, and asked me to sit down, which I did, on one of the kinds of chair you never see in a private house.
There was not much in the room, and nothing personal or unnecessary, no photographs, newspapers, flowers, books except what looked like textbooks and reference works, none of the usual desk-clutter. Except of course there was no desk either, just the bare table with a couple of files, a couple of wire trays, a couple of loose papers, a telephone, a canteen saucer for an ashtray and a white plastic institutional wastepaper-basket. Not so much as a typewriter — but a small voice-recorder on a shelf. Strip-lighting gave an effect much more like daylight than any electric light ever did, and at the same time not like daylight at all.
Collings allowed me plenty of time to take this in by finishing, or so far just going on with, the letter or note she had been writing when I came in, my second reminder of the world of the cinema since parking the car. When the wall-clock, one of the sharp sort with no face or hands, just figures, showed 09 11 she looked up at and said, ‘Mrs Hutchinson is late.’
‘I know, it’s incredible,’ I said incredulously, ‘I can’t think what can have happened to her.’
‘Usually on time, is she? I suppose with her —’
‘No, I’m sorry, no, she isn’t usually on time. She’s always late, you see. It’s because she’s a … Er, I don’t think we’d better wait for her. Tell me, how’s Steve?’
‘He’s all right, he’s quiet, no cause for alarm.’
‘Can I see him?’
She hesitated. ‘Later. For now you might answer a few basic questions.’
The basic questions started with one about the date of my birth, but its precise hour was not required, which ruled out the casting of my horoscope. They went on with ones about things like whether I had had a serious illness, all from what looked like some sort of form. Necessary for her theory? Possibly. Or then again she could have been softening me up for a sudden really rotten one slipped in after one about my grandparents. If so she had still not got to it when at 09 22 there was a knock at the door and Nowell came in.
She was smiling with demure triumph at having made it on time — well, 22 minutes late was on time unless you were going to start being foul to her. At 10 22 she would have gone on in just the same way, plus being ready, if anyone started being foul to her, to state wonderingly that she
was sorry but she had been asked for 10 00. She had on a very upstanding kind of suit in some khaki material, and with her short hair reminded me of the ATS girls I had seen during the war. Collings got up and Nowell went across and I could have sworn they were going to kiss, but without going that far they made it clear enough that they got on famously together. Then they both turned and looked at me. I knew that look, I would have known it even if I had never seen it before — it was the look of two women getting together to sort a man out. And on the way here I had said to myself well anyway, it would be fun to see those two wills battling against each other. My trouble was that I kept mixing women up with men.
Nowell came conscientiously over and kissed me on the cheek. Then she went and sat down on a chair just like mine but ended up rather nearer Collings than me, underlining the two-to-one effect. Intentionally? Not a useful word when talking about Nowell.
‘Well,’ said Collings in chairpersonal style, ‘let’s get on, shall we? What I’m trying to do is put together an informal biography-in-depth of Steve so far. I’ve managed to get quite a lot from him — oh yes, it’s not that difficult if you know what to look for — but I’ve hardly started on you and Stanley, Nowell. Let’s go right back to the time he was born.’
She could have meant me but she really meant Steve. The first twenty minutes or so went suspiciously well — at least no physical blows were exchanged. Collings took quite a few notes, which reminded me that I had not seen her take any on the Monday. Nowell went on being conscientious, but in a different style. From the events of Steve’s life up to puberty, such as they were, the talk shifted to parental relations. In general, had he got on reasonably well with his mother? On the whole yes, Nowell thought. Did I have any comment on that? No, that seemed fair enough to me. What about how he and I had got on?
‘There again,’ I said, all systems on full alert by now, ‘I think reasonably well.’
‘You confirm that, Nowell, do you?’
‘I… think …’ said Nowell, dripping with objectivity, ‘I think … that that’s putting it … rather too low. Stanley and Steve seemed to me to get on … considerably better than the average father and young son. In fact I’d go further than that. In my view the two of you had a … quite remarkably close relationship. Considering how little you saw of each other.’
I stared at her with a sort of grin. ‘What? We saw a hell of a lot each other. Don’t you remember how every evening I —’
‘It’s perfectly understandable, darling,’ she said, and gave Collings an I-told-you-so smile. ‘Nobody’s blaming you. As I say, it was a great success —you got on marvellously well whenever you did actually set eyes on each other. I often remarked on it at the time.’
‘This is ridiculous. It wasn’t like that at all. For instance, what about those weekends when I —’
‘We have here the standard behaviour-pattern in the situation.’ Leaning over her work-table and blinking her eyes pretty fiercely, Collings marked the important words by tapping on it with the butt of her black ballpoint. ‘Again, it’s the norm for young primogenitors with strong external drives, not necessarily producing negative effects.’
Something that might have been the strip-lighting was making a high-pitched humming noise. There was no view through the window, just a flat brownish surface which filled the space and was probably the outside of more of the building, and nothing on the walls, not even a calendar, not even a list or a timetable. All this and the grey paint on those walls made the room seem a long way from anywhere much, like a satellite tracking station in the Mojave Desert, say. I looked over at the two females and saw that, quite naturally really, they were looking at me, Nowell with a hesitant smile and her own, wider-eyed style of blinking, Collings with her usual mish-mash of expressions and what might not have been expressions at all. Much sooner than I had expected, the three of us had reached the point I had foreseen ever since this meeting was proposed, foreseen it intermittently and vaguely and yet with certainty.
Starting with the set of my shoulders, I did my best to look and sound like the very picture of meekness, goodwill, sincerity, tolerance, respect and disposition to admit mistakes, and lumbered off on what had to be done.
‘Now I take it the reason we’re all here is that we want to do the best we possibly can for Steve.’
‘Of course we do, darling,’ said Nowell reassuringly, showing that she really was on her best behaviour, because I instantly saw that opening had been far from brilliant after all — I might easily have been getting ready to tick her off for being there for some other motive.
‘For the moment I’m afraid I frankly don’t understand just where our, er, inquiries are leading, but maybe I will later, and anyway I’m sure there’s a reason and a purpose to them.’ In the meantime I was pushing my hands down between my thighs and crossing both sets of fingers.
‘You bet there is,’ said Collings with a couple of peals of laughter.
I struggled on, addressing myself to her because I had to. ‘Obviously, if — er, for the best results we’ve got to get as near the facts of what happened as possible, it’s some years ago now and people forget things, of course they do. But, for Steve’s benefit, that’s all, Nowell is mistaken when she says I saw rather little of him during his childhood. I could give you the names of friends who would describe to you the situation as it was in fact. Neighbours, parents of school friends. Why, before he could walk I—’
While I was speaking, Nowell had been looking from me to Collings and back and giving little quiet puffing and grunting laughs. Now she said, ‘Oh Stanley, you are being rather a bore, darling. You do go on, don’t you? And there’s no need to, you know. Okay, now it’s come up you feel bad about having neglected Steve a bit. Forget it! Nobody blames you. It’s normal, as Trish told you. It’s all over. Past history, old boy. Now could we possibly all manage to be sensible and get on with the job, yes?’
Having been brought up not to interrupt I kept quiet, against my inclination, until the end of that. When I started, my voice sounded like something off very early radio, or disc, or cylinder. ‘In this context I have nothing to feel bad about. It was you, not I, who neglected Steve. One instance. The evening I —’
‘Stanley, please.’ Collings had got to her feet, and I had to admit, very unwillingly again, that the old rough tones had some authority in them. ‘Can I prevail on you not to conduct your private quarrels in this office?’
I said slowly and quietly, and as I guessed afterwards sounding this time incredibly sinister, ‘That’s not what I was up to, Dr Collings, whatever it may have sounded like to you. I was trying to get the facts straight, not very cleverly it seems, but surely … Now presumably you hold some theory or whatever you prefer to call it about the state people like Steve get into being something to do with the way their parents treated them when they were small. Fair enough. But a theory can only give the right answer in a particular case if the facts of that case are properly established. It will give the wrong answer or no answer at all if the information supplied is incorrect for any reason. So in the case of Steve, if the received information says that I —’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ cried Nowell after a leave-this-to-me look at Collings that went on for less than a second, ‘Steve isn’t a case, he’s your son! He’s a human being, not a bloody motor car! You and your information supplied and theories and answers, I don’t know how you can … Etc.
There had never been any hope at all for my side, from how far back you bleeding trembled to think, but in peace no less than in war hopeless efforts must be made. This one had been such a blow-over for the opposition that Nowell had had no need to send in the second wave by asking me why I was being so foul to her, nor Collings to hit me with science. Even so I continued to resist sporadically as the story swept, or rather slouched, on. For instance what kind of school experience had Steve had?
How did Collings mean? Had he been a success at school? No, he had not — he had left with a si
ngle ‘0’ level, in biology.
‘Were you disappointed with that result?’
‘Well I wasn’t, Trish dear, I tell you frankly,’ said Nowell. ‘But then I don’t happen to think exams are important. I think what matters is what a person’s like. I know Stanley doesn’t agree with me.’
‘No,’ I said, still quietly. ‘I think both are important. Sorry, of course that’s not agreeing with you. No, exams get you jobs, that’s the point.’
‘I must say I haven’t noticed them getting youngsters much in the way of jobs in the last couple of years,’ said Nowell in a concerned, caring voice.
Collings cut in before I could answer that, which was probably just as well. ‘So you were disappointed with the result, Stanley. Did you let Steve see your disappointment?’
‘You bet I let him see it. It was his second try. I wanted him to have another go, but they —’
‘And had you put pressure on him beforehand to do well? Not only for that exam but for earlier ones too?’
‘Yes I had. Of course I had. Short of tortures and death-threats, I’d better say. Plus rewards for success. If any.’
‘It used to worry the poor little thing to death,’ said Nowell.
‘And when Steve didn’t do well, you made it clear you were disappointed in him, you thought he’d let you down.’
‘I was disappointed with the result. I don’t think I gave him a bad time, I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t go round pretending I hadn’t noticed either. Perhaps I was a bit disappointed, in him, but you get that. There were other ways he was so much more than I’d ever expected.’
‘But surely you must have realized he wasn’t academically orientated?’
‘I could see he wasn’t Einstein, but I still wanted him to do his best. Like English ‘0’ level. He sometimes talked of being a writer. You’d think he’d have had the interest.’