New and Collected Stories (29 page)

II

Earphones on, he sat alone in Ivor's room, tuned-in to the Third Programme like a resistance radio operator receiving from abroad instructions that were the life blood of his cause. A fastidious voice was speaking unintelligibly on books and, as if not getting his money's worth, Fred clicked on to short wave and sent the needle rippling over hundreds of morse stations. Sounds chipped and whistled like clouds of tormented birds trying to get free, but he fixed one station and, as if from the fluttering of wings pinned firm at the middle by the hair-thin tuning needle, he deciphered its rhythm as:
MEET ME TILBURY DOCK THURSDAY 24TH STOP AM DYING TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN ALL MY LOVE DARLING – MARY
.

Alistair Crossbanks, 3 Hearthrug Villas, Branley was the lucky man, yet not the only one, since Fred took several more such messages. They came from sea-liners and went to waiting lovers who burned with the anguish of tormented separation – though he doubted whether any had spanned the same long time as Nan and himself before they were married. But the thought of ships steaming through a broadly striped sea at its sudden tropical darkening caused him to ignore further telegrams. He pictured a sleek liner in a thousand miles of ocean, a great circle bordering its allotted speed as, day after day, it crawled on an invisible track towards Aden or Capetown. He felt its radio pulse beating softly in his ear, as if by listening he had some control of it, and the remoteness of this oceanic lit-up beetle set off his own feeling of isolation in this sea-like suburb spreading in terraces and streets around his room.

The room had belonged to Ivor before he had been killed. Wallpaper of rabbits and trees, trains and aeroplanes, suggested it, as well as the single bed and the cupboard of toys that, even so long afterwards, neither had the heart to empty. Ivor had dark hair and brown eyes, and up to the age of four had been sharp and intelligent, thin, voracious and bright, all running and fighting, wanting and destroying. Yet for several months before slipping into the cold pocket of the canal he had turned back from this unnatural liveliness as if, not having such life responded to, the world had failed to get through to him, to make touch with his spirit in a way he could understand. Fred couldn't even regret having ill-treated him – that anyway would have made him easier remembered. All he saw was his wild boy breaking up an alarm clock and screaming off into a corner when the bell jangled his unready ears. But the lasting image of Ivor's face was one of deprivation, and this was what Fred could not explain, for it wasn't lack of food, clothes, toys, even money that gave this peculiar look, but an expression – now he saw it clearly – bound into Ivor's soul, one that would never let him respond to him.

He threw the master switch, and sat in evening silence, overpowered by this bleak force of negative feedback. Trust me to blame an innocent dead kid for what could only have been my fault and maybe Nan's. Ships were moving over untroubled oceans, set in such emptiness and warmth that for the people on them the tree of ecstasy was still a real thing. He switched on and, by the hairsplitting mechanism of the magic box, such poems were extractable out of the atmosphere. Another telegram from
ELIZABETH
said
HOPE YOU BOOKED US A ROOM STOP CAN'T WAIT
, and to break such torment he turned to news agency Tass explaining some revolutionary method of oil drilling in the Caucasus – a liquid cold chute of morse that cleared all passion from his mind.

He stayed undisturbed in Ivor's room, knowing that Nan would sit feasting at the television until calling him down for supper at half-past nine. He felt strange tonight; a bad tormenting cold depressed him: at such times his senses were connected to similar bad colds in the past, and certain unwrapped scenes from them hit him with stunning vividness.

Egypt was a land of colds, brought on by a yearly inundation of the Nile widening its valley into a sea of water and mud. Triangular points of the dark brown pyramids that reared beyond appeared sordid, like old jettisoned cartons fallen somehow in such queer shapes, and looking from this distance as if, should a prolonged breeze dry them of rain and flood-water, a more violent wind might uproot and lose them in the open desert like so much rubbish. In Cairo he had been a champion at morse, writing it at thirty-two words a minute and reading it at thirty-six. His brain, perfect for reception, drew in streams of morse for hour after hour and jerked his fingers to rapid script with no thought barrier between, work from which other less dedicated operators were led glassy-eyed and muttering to some recuperation camp by the blistering bonny banks of the Suez Canal. Fred enjoyed his fame as speed king, which, though pre-supposing a certain yoga-like emptiness of mind, demanded at the same time a smart brain and a dab hand. Yet in nothing did he look speedy: his sallow face made him seem always deep in slow thoughts beyond the understanding of his noisier pals – who were less efficient as radio men. Their respect for him was for his seriousness as much as for an uncommon rate of morse, which must have been so because even those in the cookhouse, to whom signalling prowess meant nothing, didn't bawl so sharply when a gap lay between Fred and the plate-filling man ahead. He was a priest of silence among blades of bed-tipping and boozing, singing and bawling and brothel-going. Some who didn't muck in were subjected at least to apple-pie beds, but Fred was on good terms even without trying. He was somehow found congenial, and would often have tea brought back for him from the mess by someone who came off watch at a late hour. When Fred returned this favour it was even more appreciated for being unexpected.

Mostly he would sit by himself in the library writing long letters to Nan, but the one friend he made was flown up one day from Kenya in the belly of a Mosquito fighter-bomber – which dropped its extra fuel tanks like turds somewhere over the desert. The shortage of good operators was so desperate (at a time of big offensive or retreat – nobody could ever tell which, since all differences were drowned in a similar confusion) that Fred was working a hundred hours a week. Not that he felt shagged by it, but the Big Battle had started and another man was needed, so in stepped Peter Nkagwe, a tall cheek-scarred black African from Nairobi – freshly changed into clean pressed khaki drill and smiling a good afternoon boys as he entered the signals office. The sergeant assigned him a set, and Fred amazed, then envious, saw his long-fingered hands trembling the key like a concert pianist at an evenness and speed never before seen.

Peter Nkagwe was no ascetic sender and receiver like Fred, but smiled and looked around as he played the key with an accurate, easy, show-off proficiency. He not only read Reuter's cricket scores from Australia but, which was where Fred failed, his fingers were nimble enough to write them down, so that his sheets of neat script went from hand to hand around the base until falling apart.

One day Fred called over, words unrehearsed, ignited from such depth that he didn't even regret them after he'd spoken: ‘You beat out them messages, mate, like you was at a tom-tom.'

Peter, unflinching, finished the message at his usual speed. He then took off his earphones and stood over Fred in silence.

Fred was uncomfortable at the length of it: ‘Lost owt?'

‘There's a look in your eyes,
MATE
,' Peter said, ‘as if your head's full of shit.' He went back to his radio, and from then on Fred's signalling championship was divided. They became friends.

Night after night at his communications receiver, Fred hoped to hear messages from his old HQ unit that, though long closed down, would magically send the same signals rippling between familiar stations. He might even pick up the fast melodious rhythms of Peter Nkagwe, that vanished ghost of a friend who, somewhere, still sat keying out indispensable messages whose text and meaning, put into code and cypher by someone else, were never made known to him. He turned the dial slowly, hoping to recognize both callsign and sending prowess of his old friend. It was impossible, though much time at the set was spent shamefaced in this way as if, should he try hard and stay at it long enough, those lost voices would send out tentacles and pull him back to the brilliant sun-dazzle of the Mokattam Hills.

His lean face, and expert hands moving over the writing-pad, were set before his multi-dialled altar, the whole outlined by a tassel-shaded table lamp. If I'd had this radio in Ivor's day, he laughed, the little bogger would have been at it till the light didn't shine and the valves packed in. Talk about destruction! ‘Destruction, thy name is Ivor!' He remembered him, as if he were downstairs drinking tea, or being bathed in front of the fire, or gone away to his grandma's and due back next week. Anything mechanical he'd smash. He took a day on a systematic wipe-out of the gramophone, then brought the pieces to Fred, who suggested he put them together again. Ivor tried (I will say that for him) but failed, and when Fred mended it he was so overjoyed at the record spinning loud and true once more that he treated it as one thing to stay henceforth free of his hammer.

Ivor with a round, empty-eyed happiness, took huge bites of bread, and wiped jamstains down his shirt. Fred couldn't keep the sarcasm from his voice when telling him to stop, so that the bites had changed to tiny, until Fred laughed and they returned to big again, relaxing the empty desperation of his tough face. Such memories were buried deep, going down like the different seams and galleries of a coalmine. In the few months before his birth Ivor had moved inside Nan, kicking with life that had been distinct enough to wake Fred at night – and send him back to sleep smiling.

The small lamp gave one-tenth light, leaving most of the room in darkness. Fixed at the muttering radio and reaping an occasional message out of the air with his fast-moving hook of a pencil, Fred felt his mind locked in the same ratio, with that one-tenth glimmer unable to burst like a bomb and explode the rest of himself into light. He composed silent questions about Ivor, like sending out telegrams that would get no answer. Why was I born? Why didn't I love him so that he stayed alive? Could I love anybody enough to make them stay alive and kicking? Would it have made any difference if I'd loved him even more than I did? He couldn't lift the dominating blackness from his brain, but struggled to free himself, ineffectually spinning the knobs and dials of his radio, fighting to keep even the one-tenth light in his consciousness.

He opened the radio lid and peered in at the valves, coloured lights of blue flame deep in bulbs as if he had cultivated in his one-tenth light a new shape of exotic onion. Thoughts passed through his mind, singly and in good order, though the one just gone was never remembered – only the sensation remained that it had been. He tried to recall the thought or picture slipping from his mind in order to lynchpin it to the one now pushing in – which might, he hoped, be seen to have some connection to the one following. It turned out to have nothing in common at all.

‘Never mind, sweetheart,' I said, when Ivor was drowned. ‘Never mind' – rocking her back to sense. But she turned on him, words burning now as if he had taken them down in morse: ‘Always “My sweetheart”,' she cried. ‘You never say “My wife”.' He was hurt and bitter, unable to understand, but saw now that not saying ‘My wife' and never getting through to Ivor with his love, were the same thing.

The earphones blocked all sounds of children, traffic, next-door telly, and he wrote another message from the spot-middle of some ocean or other, a man-made arrowhead of peace steering from land to land:
ARRIVING HOME 27TH CAN'T WAIT TO SEE MY MUMMY AND DADDY
–
LOVE JANET
. The big ship sailed on: aerials sensitive, funnels powerful, people happy – sleeping, eating, kissing or, if crew, heavy with work. He saw himself in a smaller craft, marooned in a darkening unmapped ocean where no one sent messages because he was the only passenger, and no person would think to flash him a telegram anyway. Neither could anyone wish him a good journey because he had never announced his port of destination, and in any case no one knew he was afloat, and there was no one to whom he could send a marconigram stating his imminent arrival because even if he were going somewhere he wouldn't even know where nor when he would get there, and there was even less chance of anyone being at that end than from where he'd started. All he could do was fight this vision, and instead keep the big jewel-lit liner in his mind, read what messages flashed to and from it.

Earphones swung from the jacks-socket, and in the full overhead light he snapped open Ivor's cupboard. Horses and trainsets, teddy bear and games and forts and tricycle were piled where the boy had last thrown them. Morse sounds no longer hit him like snowflakes from his lit-up fabulous ship. He stared blindly as each toy was slung across the room, towards window, door, fireplace or ceiling, until every limbless piece had found a new resting place. He went back to his wireless as the stairfoot door snapped open and heavy sounds thumped their way up at his commotion.

The ship remained. Its messages of love and arrival for some, godspeed for others, birthday wishes and the balming oil of common news, still sped out from it; but such words from the black box made a picture that he couldn't break like the limbless toys all around him. His breath scraped out of his lungs at the real and coloured vision mercilessly forming. The ship was off centre, but he was able to watch it slowly sinking, the calm grey water of tropical dusk lapping around it with cat-like hunger, as if finely controlled by a brain not apparent or visible to anyone. The ship subsided to its decks, and the endless oil-smooth sea became more easy-going and polite, though kept the hidden strength to force it under. As the ship flooded, people overflowed the lifeboats, until nothing remained but an undisturbed grey sheet of water – as smooth and shiny as tin that can be used for a mirror – and a voice in the earphones saying something Fred could not at first decipher. It was a gruff, homely, almost familiar tone, though one that he knew he would never be able to recognize no matter how long he concentrated.