I had not looked at this diary for decades, but something about his name rang a secondary bell, as it were; and then I remembered. There was a book I had much admired when it came out some fifteen years ago by one Robert Hendricks—The Chosen Few. I went to my shelves and pulled it down. You can perhaps picture my excitement when I examined the small author photograph on the back flap and found that it brought back to mind quite clearly the face of a young soldier I had known so many years ago.
My excitement intensified when I sat down to reread the book—which I did in a single sitting, through the night. In chapter five I came across a reference made by the author— you yourself, I believe, Dr. Hendricks—to the fact that his father had been a tailor—as was true of the man I had known in the war.
There was more in this vein, ending with an invitation to visit him. His name was Alexander Pereira, and he was apparently offering me a job.
* * *
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, I went for a walk on Wormwood Scrubs. On the way, I collected Max, my long-legged terrier cross, from the cleaner’s flat in Cricklewood, where he’d been during my absence. Although he was spoiled by Mr. Gomez—who I suspected fed him on paella and biscuits—he was always touchingly pleased to see me; I had rescued him when he was a puppy from a pound in Northamptonshire, and he seemed to nurse a keen sense of gratitude.
We walked round the perimeter of the Scrubs, returning on the long south side by the prison officers’ houses, then the jail itself. I gave half a thought to the wretched men inside, banged up in the warped dimension of institutional time. But only half a thought. Mainly I was wondering whether Annalisa might be free in the afternoon. The odd thing about “relationships” is that it’s often only in retrospect that you seem to have developed one. At the time it may feel more like a series of meetings: a sequence without causality. It was only the possibility of not seeing Annalisa that made me stop and think how much space the idea of her was occupying in my life. For some reason I couldn’t acknowledge the depth of this feeling or call it by a better name.
It was agreed that I would never ring her in case her “boyfriend” picked up the phone, but she was free to call me and frequently did. I shoved Max into the back of the car and went to a telephone box just outside the Scrubs car park. I could pick up recorded messages remotely by dialing my own number and pointing a gadget into the mouthpiece of the receiver as the greeting played. I heard my voice and fired the remote. There were no messages.
Annalisa and I had met some five years earlier, at the osteopath’s in Queen’s Park where she worked as a receptionist. I had had problems with my back since a growth spurt in my teens had left the lower spine unstable; the big muscles felt they needed to go into protective spasm at the least provocation (bending down to turn on the television had once been enough to trigger it). I had tried exercises, painkillers, and yoga, but the only sure relief was a violent manipulation from a New Zealander called Kenneth Dowling.
Annalisa was in her forties, a good-looking woman of apparent respectability, dressed in a smart skirt and sweater. It was not until my third visit that I noticed something in her eyes—a dreamy light at odds with the desk diary and the receptionist’s manner. While we waited for Dowling to free up the previous patient, I talked to her about work and whether she had a long commute. She had a pleasant manner and seemed keen to talk, as though not many people bothered to engage with her. At the end of another visit, I lingered after writing out the cheque. I discovered that she wasn’t needed by Dowling on Tuesdays and Fridays; I mentioned that I could do with an assistant in my private practice, someone to deal with paperwork, and asked if she would be interested.
I did my private consulting from a flat in North Kensington above a convenience store run by Ugandan émigrés. It was not a glamorous location, though it fairly reflected the status of my speciality within British medicine. It was at least a quiet street, and the consulting room itself was airy. There was a kitchenette and shower room as well as a small back office, once a bedroom presumably, where I kept a filing cabinet—and in which I now installed Annalisa at a desk. I disregarded what seemed a gratuitous brushing against me as she went to file some papers; I ignored the way she made no attempt to pull down her skirt when it rose up her thigh as she sat at the desk. People talk about “tension” as though it were palpable, but you can never be certain what’s actually shared and what’s in your imagination.
It must have been on her third day at work that things became obvious. I was standing behind her when she deliberately took a half step back. There was contact. She turned round and touched the front of my trousers at the point where our clothes had met. I imagine it was less than a minute before we were engaged in the act. There was a fractional swelling at her belly; the backs of her thighs had lost the firmness of youth—though I found these signs of frailty both touching and arousing when she leant over the desk.
Annalisa had been married once and now had a long-term connection with a man in his fifties called Geoffrey; she was attached to him and unwilling to jeopardize their domestic life. This Geoffrey was a property lawyer, who, from Annalisa’s description, sounded—I thought—homosexual. I never said so; there was no point in unsettling the arrangements.
That Saturday evening, I took a long bath and drank some gin with vermouth and ice. Then I thought I would go to the party upstairs. I could tell it had begun because the music was trickling down the stairs, though it was nothing yet to frighten Mrs. Kaczmarek. In fact, I’d noticed that the noise from the top-floor flat had changed recently. Ten years earlier the house had shaken with apocalyptic thunderings; now the songs seemed machinelike and unthreatening. I didn’t care for any of it, but this latest sound was easier to deal with, like the background tape at a business convention.
The door was opened by a smiling girl with black-rimmed eyes and hair that looked dyed blond. “Hiya. I’m Misty. Come in.”
She fetched me some wine from one of a variety of bottles I could see lined up on the kitchen counter.
“There you go. Château Oblivion.” She had the cheery Australian inflection I’d foreseen, as did “Sheeze,” the flatmate who came bounding up next. Misty was shorter and prettier, with neat little features and flawless skin where Sheeze’s face was blotched; in other respects they were like twins, with blue eyes and the undimmed hopefulness of youth. They looked as though they expected to be happy.
Their friends were also young, accomplished, and confident, or so it seemed to me. The music was getting louder, but I could still hear all right as I introduced myself to a circle of strangers and began that cycle of self-revelation and licensed curiosity. I didn’t like to tell people what I did because it seemed to unsettle them; I said I worked in general practice, and that was well received. Then I tried to steer the conversation towards less personal topics: a curious item I’d heard on the radio or a film that had just come out.
I had never been quite certain what was expected from me at parties. Growing up in the English countryside, I had been to village dances and people’s houses for birthdays or at Christmas. Some of these evenings, like the one at which I kissed Paula Wood, could be quite louche, even then, back in the thirties. Often there was an occasion or event: a tennis tournament at the recreation ground or a village fete at the big house. In the summer, people would slope off into the darkness, and there seemed always to be rhododendrons for cover. I remember the glowing cigarettes, laughter, the rustling leaves underfoot, and the feel of a cool bare thigh.
“Robert, come and meet a friend. This is Mandy. She’s a nurse.”
Perhaps it was the medical connection that made my hostess think I would get on with her friend. This nurse was a woman who made it easy for me because she talked without stopping. I presumed there was a complicated argument that needed to be built up. But after my attempts at helping her to focus had been rebuffed, I saw that she had no point to make; she was merely scared of silence.
Soon the music had reached a point where conv
ersation was no longer possible, except in the narrow kitchen. Thinking it rude to leave before ten o’clock, I checked my watch and resigned myself to fifteen minutes jammed up against the washing machine. I talked to a young man in a red check shirt who said he was a tree surgeon, and to his brother, who was a travel agent.
It seemed to me that they were both drunk. They were friendly towards me in a puzzled way, as though surprised that I would choose to come to a party. I felt a rush of envy at what I presumed of their domestic life: a commotion of willing girls with young breasts and white teeth.
“So I just put the client on hold while I dial up the airline and photocopy the schedule,” said the travel agent, helping himself to red wine. “It’s not exactly brain surgery.”
“It’s not even tree surgery,” I said.
Neither brother registered my attempt at wit, and when I turned to refill my own plastic glass I found myself face to face again with the nurse.
“Can I ask you something?” she said. “Do you take private patients?”
I looked at her closely—the dilated pupils, the glassy irises. “No, I don’t.”
She pressed her hand against my chest. I feared she might be going to vomit, but it seemed she was merely steadying herself.
“I know someone who needs help. He has this terrible depression and—”
“I told you. I’m a GP. I don’t do that stuff.”
“Oh. Because Misty said—”
“Forget what Misty said. I only met her a couple of hours ago.”
I elbowed and squeezed my way out of the kitchen, paused to thank Sheeze for the party, and made my way out onto the landing. Back in my own flat, I turned on the television and poured myself a deep whisky before sinking into the reclining armchair. The babel of the last hour fell from my shoulders; I lit a cigarette and put my head back. There was time to watch a film on tape, and halfway through it I would take a sleeping pill. When it was over I would block out the last of the music with wax earplugs, pull up the bedcovers, and set sail for the morning.
It was only twenty minutes later that there came a cautious knocking at my door.
“Can I come in?”
“How did you know I live here?”
It was the nurse, Mandy. “Misty told me.”
“Are you all right? Do you want a glass of water?”
She sat on the sofa in the living room and began to cry. “Sorry, Robert. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s just that because you’re older … and you’re a doctor. I’m in a mess.”
I sat down next to her. “How much have you had to drink?”
“I don’t know. I had some wine before I came to the party.”
“Do you want me to get you a taxi? Where do you live?”
“Balham. Can I stay here for a bit? I feel … the world’s spinning.”
“I’ll make you some tea.”
The important thing, I thought as I clattered kettle and cup, was to get this girl out of my flat as soon as possible. When I returned with the tea, I saw that she had taken off her shoes and put her feet up on the sofa. A strand of hair was stuck to the side of her face, and there were damp-looking patches showing through the soles of her nylon tights.
“I’ll ring for a taxi while you drink this.”
“I’ll get one on the street.”
“I doubt it.”
“I’m sure I can. It’s not even eleven yet.”
If it came down to it, I thought, I would just take her back upstairs to her friends: she was their responsibility. Mandy pushed herself into a sitting position and bent down to pick up the cup, causing her skirt to ride up her heavy thighs.
I walked over to the window.
“Do you live alone?”
“No, I live with two other girls. But they’re not there. What about you?”
“Yes. Alone,” I said.
“You’re not married?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Look, Mandy, why don’t we just get you into a taxi and safely back to Clapham?”
“Balham. What’s the hurry? It’s Sunday tomorrow. And I just … I need some company.”
“What’s your problem?”
There was a story about a man, some indignation, an attempt on my sympathy … but there was no connective logic and I tired of looking for it.
“… so I’m thinking, What about me? You know, isn’t it time I had a say in all this? And … What’s that?”
“Someone at the door. Someone else.”
I went to the hall and buzzed open the front door. It was Annalisa, and her face was so full of conflicting emotions that it made me shudder.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said, pushing past me into the hall and then the sitting room, not even pausing for a kiss.
She stopped and stared. I made an awkward introduction.
The events of the next minute seemed to play out like a cartoon, like the images on the screen of the plane from New York. There was shouting and there were accusations. Annalisa clearly thought I was about to sleep with the nurse and that I’d brought her down to my flat for that reason.
The partition between love and anger is thin. I suppose it’s a need to protect the self from further wounding that makes people scream at the one they love.
Eventually, both women left. I sat down heavily on the sofa. I am so alone, I thought. All the connections I’ve made with people over more than sixty years of living can’t conceal the fact that I am utterly alone.
TWO
I awoke early the next morning, reeling from a dream of violence. As I shaved and cleaned my teeth, I struggled to escape from the tentacles of my unconscious and to get on with a waking life. This was a pretty normal start to the day for me.
After I’d fed Max and read the paper, my thoughts did finally seem to align themselves, but they were not on Annalisa. It was the letter from this Alexander Pereira that preoccupied me. Pereira claimed that he had known my father; but I hadn’t known him at all. I was two years old when he died, shortly before the Armistice. Although there was a photograph of him holding me as a baby, I had no memory of him.
My mother was my shield and provider. She was a short, thin woman who feared the worst. She worked hard as the office manager at a mixed farm, but at the end of the week, when she collected her pay, she always expected to be sacked. She saw monthly bills as evidence that the milkman or the electricity company was persecuting her personally; we never had people round for tea because she didn’t “hold with” entertaining; she was suspicious of the motives of those who asked us to their houses, so we seldom went out either. She told me that her parents had run a boardinghouse somewhere on the south coast, but there had been a fire. I think they had separated or divorced, but she used the natural disaster as a cover. She had met my father at the house of an aunt near London. Before the war he had been a tailor, though by her account much more than a short-sighted man with a needle in a back room: although he was only thirty when he volunteered in 1915, he already had six people working for him in his high street premises. She had a photograph of them on their engagement day; her face had a smile I had never seen in life, though a look of faint uncertainty as well.
My father had had an elder brother, Uncle Bobby, who lived in an institution. After my father’s death in 1918, my mother went to visit my uncle every year at Christmas, and once, when I was about seven, she took me with her. There were long bus rides before we came to the outskirts of the county town. A last bus coughed and hauled us up a hill, where we got out in front of a row of tumbledown shops; a hundred yards down the road was a tall pair of iron gates with a wooden lodge, where a porter sat beside a smoking brazier. He nodded us through.
“What’s the matter with Uncle Bobby?” I said. “Why does he live here?”
“He’s a bit ‘off,’” said my mother.
There was a driveway flanked by acres of open park. In the distance I could see what I thought were farm buildings and a yard where smoke
came from a tall brick chimney, like a factory in miniature. The main building itself was almost the length of a street. We went in through the central door and up to a glassed-in box, where a woman took our names. The hallway was a bright area with a skylight in a dome high above and a stone floor. I was glad for Uncle Bobby that it looked so clean.
We began to walk. At intervals to our left were windows overlooking the park; to our right were closed and numbered doors, from behind which came odd noises. Eventually, we came to another open area, like the main hall but not as large, which led to a room on the back of the building, where Uncle Bobby was expecting us.
This lounge had a dozen or so chairs that had seen better days. A man in a long brown jacket, like a storeman at a furniture depository, stood with his arms folded. He ticked our names off a clipboard and nodded to a man who sat by the window in one of the better armchairs.
Uncle Bobby looked to my seven-year-old eyes to be “grown up” or even forty. He had dark brown hair that had thinned out, and he wore glasses with smeared lenses; his suit was old, and his tie shone with wear.
“Hello, Bobby. We came to see you. How are you?”
It was hard to tell how Bobby was because he didn’t answer questions directly, which is not to say he wasn’t talkative. He called my mother by her correct name—Janet—two or three times, as he told her what other people had said or done. She nodded encouragingly and tutted or clucked where it seemed appropriate.
My mother tried to include me in the conversation, but Uncle Bobby’s eyes slid off me, as though he couldn’t register another person. There was a relentless quality to his stories, which, whatever their content, were all on the same note. It was as though he were reading out loud from a language he didn’t understand.