New and Collected Stories (68 page)

They sat with tea and buns, set in their newspapers, or staring into the air which must have been more interesting because they didn't even need print to hold them down. If you look into the air you look at yourself, and that must be better than any newspaper.

The old man was too busy with his tiddly-song to take much in. At the sound of such noise his eyes must have stopped looking at anything. Nobody else seemed to understand that his eyes had come to a dead end, for the few who glanced at him turned away as if they had seen nothing. Some talked together, and didn't even bother to look, though they knew what was going on right enough.

It made her uneasy, being by herself. He sat up straight as a soldier against the wall, a hand on the table beside his cup. By making such a noise he was trying to get in touch with someone, but he did not know who or where they were, which she supposed was why no one could bear to look at him in case it was them. It became more insistent until, to her, it appeared to fill the whole café.

She didn't find the noise meaningless or dispiriting, for it set her memory racing thirty years back to being a child and fading into sleep. Then, as now, she never went from the conscious world straight into sleep like maybe a healthy person would, but into another world between her and deep sleep itself, always a different place through which she had to pass before reaching real sleep, and she only knew she'd done that when she woke up.

She remembered feeling, once in this twilight zone, the horror of being about to die. A huge leaden sphere pressed against her brain as if to crush all five senses at once. As big as the earth, it rolled on to her, till her eyes saw only grey matter and her breath was starting not to pump. She called for her father, who came in and brought her back to full breath by some kind and trivial gesture of distraction.

Because of this outcome it was not a bad memory that the old man's noise had set off, yet now it began to annoy her, for she had come into the café for a cup of tea as a break from the grind of buying scarves for the children, and hadn't been in five minutes before bumping into this.

An older woman sitting on the other side had wire glasses and straw-blonde hair, and puffed a fag while looking out of the window as if to burn her way through the glass with the acetylene smoke of it. She was nearer, but Margaret couldn't imagine her being bothered by him in a hundred years – till she had the strange idea that maybe everybody else in the café had their heads filled with the same thoughts and words that she had.

Her laugh at this interrupted the noise coming from the man's mouth, her face turning red with shame because he must have heard her and imagined she was laughing at him. She was almost relieved when the rattle started again.

His tie-knot was slightly below the join of the collar. A hand was limp by his side, while the other jerked at the half-empty cup. She thought it a pity he'd let the tea inside get cold, then leaped up and opened his coat, trembling with embarrassment at her big belly getting in the way but acting as if it was the only thing left to do in her life: ‘Are you all right? What is it then? Tell me, for God's sake?'

He wanted help, and she wanted help in order to help him, for her voice wavered at his eyes rolling, and the sound of finger nails scraping on tin coming from his clenched lips, pressed tight as if trying to stop something getting out for the last time. She was frightened at the sight of his convulsed body.

She pulled down the knot of his tie and flung it open, snapped his collar at the stud though it wasn't in any way tight at his withered neck: ‘Where do you live, duck?'

Trouser-legs chafed at the supports of the table, as if they could stop him falling down to earth, because the bench he sat on was not enough. She looked from the double-white world of his pot-eyes and shouted in a panic: ‘Can't somebody give me a hand, then?'

A waitress came over, more, Margaret reflected later, because she thought I might start to give birth if she didn't, than to be of much use to the old man. ‘Is he badly?'

The noise stopped, and he was dead.

‘You'd better call an ambulance,' Margaret said, ‘and a copper. But he's still more alive though than you bleddy lot in here.'

The Second Chance

A swathe of Queen Anne's lace was crushed in the front wheelspokes as he pushed along the edge of a field, producing a summer smell pleasant to the nostrils. At the lane he climbed on to the machine and followed the lefthand rut, but when it became too deep and the pedals scraped its sides he balanced along the dry hump in the middle, hitting an occasional stone but staying on track. The thin blue-and-black band of a Royal Air Force pilot officer decorated each sleeve.

The sit-up-and-beg pushbike rattled incurably and had no three-speed. Chalk dust covered his shining toe-caps, but a few quick brushes with a cloth would bring the glisten back. It wouldn't do for the old folks to see him less than impeccable. Why a bike was thought to be more convincing in his approach he did not know. A bull-nosed Morris of the period would have been more in keeping, and in any case he wouldn't have cycled all the way from his airfield, as they liked to imagine.

At the stile he took the War Revision sheet from his tunic pocket. Major Baxter had folded it in the manner of a trench map from the First World War, so that a gentle pull at two corners brought the whole thing open. Sweat on his forehead cooled under the peaked cap. Dotted lines of the bridle path were clearly marked, but there were no signposts on the lanes. If, as was likely, the old man wielded his field service binoculars from the upstairs window he would already have seen him. He made an observable pause to look at the map before heaving his bike over. To do so was a clause in his instructions, and for the money he had made there was no point in skimping them.

It was an effort to lift the bike without spoiling his uniform but, putting his strength at the saddle and handlebars, he tilted the front wheel to the sky and sent it to the other side. The afternoon visit was preceded by a few hours of intense preparation, mostly the perusal of a refresher course which made him properly familiar with the person he was supposed to be.

He sat on the stile before climbing after his bicycle. White feathers of cirrus in the west were as yet only a wispy tenth or two, but a meteorological front was expected, and his study of such matters led him to predict rain by nightfall. He wasn't to know for sure. Perhaps the storm wouldn't come till tomorrow. There were no weather forecasts on the wireless in the days he was supposed to be living in.

Out of the next field came sharp stuttering cries from a score or so of sheep. The noise of ewes bewailing the loss of their lambs was continuous, and he felt better when the intensity of their distress was lessened by distance.

The old man brought Helen to the window so that they could witness him coming towards the house. At the next corner of the lane he would see them waving when he leaned his bike against a wooden gate and took off his cap to rake a hand through short fair hair. The telegram said he could only stay for tea, but they would be glad enough of that, living in a world where any sight of him could be their last.

‘If you must go,' Baxter had said, ‘and you must – we all know that, don't we, Helen, my dear? – then don't for God's sake join the army and have to march along those horrible
pavé
roads in France!'

He laughed, as he was meant to while they looked at the hump-haze of the Downs. He was genned up to the eyebrows: ‘You don't go from a university air squadron into the infantry!'

Instead of marching at two-and-a-half miles an hour on cobblestones towards the Front as in the olden days Peter had flown at almost a hundred in a Tiger Moth, and later at over three times that in a Spitfire. They welcomed him at the gate as a perfect memorial to their twenty years of happiness – while he knew himself to be nothing of the sort.

Major Baxter found the features so similar, and mannerisms so close when he first noticed him at the bar of the pub-hotel in Saleham that he stood shaking his head as if not wanting to believe what he saw, while knowing it was likely that he would have no say in the matter. The uneasiness of sensing that he should draw back, mixed with a confused vision of what would happen if he did not, vanished like the sort of dream that couldn't be remembered on waking up.

The ordeal of seeing this spitten image of his dead son was so great that he forgot why he had come into the hotel. There was a smell of beer, dusty sunshine and olives (or were they pickled onions?) and a reek of tobacco smoke. He stood and patted the outside of each pocket to locate his cigarette case, which gave time, and saved him being noticed while in a state close to shock. To be caught staring would make him think he'd done something immoral, so he took out a cigarette and had, thank God, to search for a match.

He felt he might be going to faint, and the last time he had known such a sensation was when a shell splinter struck his thigh near Trones Wood in France, too long ago to bother. Having gone unhurt through so many dangers made him also proud of the fact that he'd never been stricken by an illness. Not even as a child had he broken bones or got put to bed.

He turned from his own image in the mirror, hair and moustache silver, tanned face gone pallid. A force that ached in his heels urged him to get set for the door and run, but he was unable to move for the moment, merely telling himself he must not speak to the young man sitting alone at the bar who, if he had worn an RAF officer's uniform with a pilot's white wings on his breast above the left pocket of his tunic, would have been none other than his actual son.

Baxter knew it was useless to say never because no sooner did the word manifest itself than the action began which drove him towards what he had decided not to say or do. To determine never to take a certain course deprived you of that flexibility of mind needed for solving a problem, and laid you open to doing exactly what you had resolved to steer clear of. He knew those ‘nevers' all right! A soldier and a man of business had always to be aware and to beware of them. At the same time he realized that, as in every crisis, the necessary action would demand a combination of will, judgment and luck, a trio of factors he had rarely managed more than two of at any one time.

He had come into the hotel because his cigarette case was almost empty. His vigour made him more likely to admit that he had ‘seen things'. But he hadn't. Yet having acted, even in so small a fashion, the shock was no longer disabling. To do anything at all would clear at least one part of the mind, and suddenly he found himself as far as the bar.

He was a large man, stout but erect, and a one-handed grip at the rail, vital to his pride, allowed him to appear nonchalant when the waiter came through an archway. The young man who looked like his son spoke before Major Baxter could give his order. ‘A pint of your best bitter.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I have the most raging thirst.' When he drew out his wallet and opened it wide to pull a five pound note from an inner pocket Baxter's sharp eye took in the details of a formally lettered business card.

‘It's the first hot day of the year,' the waiter said, robbing Baxter of saying the same.

‘We waited a long time for a touch of the sun. Always have to in this country, I suppose.' The voice had a tone of lassitude and disappointment which Peter's never could at the age he had died. Yet it made him seem even more as if he might be Peter, who hadn't grown a day older in appearance but who, having seen everyone else put on the years, reflected the fact in his voice.

Baxter stood so that he could see the young man's face in the glass from both angles. Different images shifted and confirmed the exactness. But he questioned whether it was such a likeness, whether he hadn't in the space of twenty years forgotten what his son looked like, and whether the young man merely resembled one of the photographs in the snapshot album.

At sixty-six Baxter recalled how true it was that a few years after Peter's death he had, out of an inner and ever-burning grief, forgotten the precise shape of his son's features. Yet nowadays he was able to see people and events of twenty or even forty years ago with a sharpness that hadn't been possible when nearer to the circumstances themselves. Thus he remembered his son's face as if he had seen him only five minutes before, and knew it was the same in every part as that of the young man lifting the glass of beer to his mouth.

He asked for cigarettes, and a double whisky so as to make sure his impression was correct, and to convince himself that he wasn't going absolutely bonkers. He had little philosophy of life beyond the injunction to check everything once, twice, and three times – which was periodically necessary if you were to get anywhere, and defend yourself against the world.

‘Passing through?'

He knew that the neutral and jovial tone was characteristic of himself. His left hand shook, but was controlled the moment he was aware. He hoped no one would have noticed the inner shaking of veins that led to his fingers. But by holding even his elbow still in its tracks he was afraid the whole limb might turn to stone. He saw his own features, and how the much whitened eyes bulged even more from their sockets, causing him to reflect that he always did look like a bloody fish, with too much eye and bristle.

The young man noted Baxter's smile, as well as his blue and white striped shirt, the grey tie and blue alpaca cardigan, and the heavy black horn-rims that looked like National Health specs but that no doubt cost a bomb-and-three-quarters at some posh optician's. He saw that he had grey hair, a moustache half hiding lips which he thought to be too thin, and deep blue eyes. Small town pubs were full of such lonely old souls, though Peter felt he had nothing to lose by answering:

‘Driving to Brighton. I get so thirsty on the road, not to say bored.'

He wore a good jacket, and a shirt without a tie. Wouldn't allow it in the evening, Baxter told himself, even these days – conceding however that he looked smart enough. His hair had the close and even waves that had been his son's, and was similarly short. He clipped his words in the same way.