Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart (22 page)

The boys, standing silent and impatient, were the first to realize I was hovering.

“Excuse me,” I said—a little shakily. “I'm looking for the train station.”

I addressed myself to the three of them and left my mother and Mr Dallas to the enjoyment of their mild flirtation. I tried to drink in every detail. As much as the hat which Mr Dallas had admired, the red felt with the dark feathers, I'd completely forgotten her wine-coloured suit and those court shoes made of yellow suede.

Believe it or not, I'd even forgotten she had dimples.

And the boys. When asking for directions I'd looked chiefly at myself but Gordon Leonard very soon took over. I recalled that within a dozen years he would become a pop star and, ten years later on, something big in the City. But while we stood there that afternoon in Chesham Road directing a stranger to the railway station…at this period I considered he was wonderful, felt proud to have him as a friend. Never dreamt that when success came he would drop me.

The man kept staring at me, kept staring at my mother too, kept staring at everything, as though he were playing that game where you have to memorize the objects on a tray. There was something fishy about him, not just the fact he wore no jacket, tie or hat, and that his trousers looked strange. I got the feeling he wasn't even listening properly to what Gordon was telling him; I began to wonder if he was the kind who'd offer you sweets and want to take you on a long walk. But then I realized this was stupid. That sort didn't approach you while you were standing with two friends and your mum and your headmaster. So perhaps he was more interested in the open front door of the school, in casing the joint, as Buck Ryan might have put it. Anyhow. His behaviour was suspicious. He was smarmy, too. He said to my mother:

“May I congratulate you on three such helpful sons? You must feel very proud of them.”

She smiled at me and although her smile was a bit constrained (was it my manner, my appearance, or something oddly familiar in my face; was it the vague suppressing of a mother's instinct?) it made me feel so close to her, so much a part of her young womanhood again.

“Thank you, but only one of them is mine. Perhaps it's Mr Dallas you ought to be congratulating. All three are
his
pupils.”

Mr Dallas himself chimed in. “They told you the way to the station? Ask them to do it in Latin and see how helpful they are then.”

This time we all laughed. So did Zack. “Disgraceful lot of sycophants,” he said.

We were back in the garden. The album lay on the grass, between our deckchairs. I felt reproachful. “Why couldn't we have stayed there longer?”

“Ethan, you can go back any time you wish.”

My readjustment proved rapid. “Though you do realize, don't you? I not only saw me, I
was
me; just for a second or so! It was weird!” I gave a sudden whoop. “But wonderful!”

“I wanted to convince you it was possible.”

“Zack, who are you?”

He smiled. “Not Mephistopheles.”

“No, I wouldn't seriously think that. But… Oh, God, I can't believe this. I can't believe any of it. And yet at the same time I believe it all. I reckon you're an alchemist.”

“Sort of.”

“What would I have to do in return?”

“Why do you assume you'd have to do anything?”

“Well…” I shrugged. “Nothing's for nothing in this life, is it?”

“But what I'm going to ask you isn't really in the nature of a price tag. I need to see how fully you're prepared to trust me.”

I waited for a moment. Obviously he was in no great hurry to continue. “What, then?”

“The thing we were talking about this morning. A case of euthanasia.”

3

I didn't know if he were serious. “Euthanasia?” I repeated, feebly.

“Ethan, it's no big deal. You told me you approved. So long as no one was abused.”

“But the taking of somebody's life!”

“Mercifully. He's ill. He wants to die. You'd be doing him a service.”

“No, I'm not sure.”

“What about?”

“Any of it. It's too…”

“Way-out?”

“More than way-out. Unknown.”

“Yes, of course. I can understand that. Anybody could.”

Half-mesmerized, I watched a black cat creep along the garden wall towards an unsuspecting sparrow. Zack cried out a warning the second before I did. The bird flew off, the cat glared. It served to break the tension.

“Ethan, think it over. I shan't exert the slightest pressure.”

He stretched and yawned; reluctantly stood up.

“All this sunshine. It must be tiring. I know it couldn't be the beer.”

“Do you have to go?”

“Or the good lunch,” he added. “Yes, I think I'd better. Give you a little breathing space.”

“When shall I see you?”

“Whenever you like. A week from now? Two weeks? Longer?”

I, too, had risen. I squatted to pick up the album, heard the click in my left knee joint. “I was thinking more of—say—tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Or isn't that possible?”

“But what about Ginette? Won't she be expecting that you spend the evening together?”

“No. We often go our own ways.” Why hadn't he realized?

“What, even on your birthday?”

“Oh,” I said, “we don't celebrate birthdays. Not any longer.”

“Well, if you're sure. I think that's sad.”

“Back at the pub?” I asked.

“No—you'd better come to my place.”

We went indoors. He wrote down his address.

“Zack? If I really did decide…”

“Yes?”

“To go back…”

He waited; carefully returned the Biro to its place on the worktop.

“Would I have to look the same?”

“Why? What's the matter with the way you look?”

I hesitated.

“I'm not talking of radical changes. Just a bit more handsome, that's all. A bit better built.” I watched him playing with an orange, lobbing it from hand to hand. “A lot better built, actually.”

“Isn't that something you can always work at on your own account?”

“But I couldn't make myself taller,” I said. I smiled. “I couldn't increase the size of my penis.”

“You seem to be under the impression you're placing an order at Harrods. What about the size of your brain?”

But then he held his hand up, fast.

“No, that isn't on offer. I suppose at a pinch I can agree to those other things. Provided you don't attempt to add to them.”

In any case a higher IQ might change one's personality and I wanted—maybe this was arrogant—to remain essentially myself. It was also a paradox. I felt little love for the man I had become. I knew I was often small-minded and stingy and old-maidish.

But these, too, were things which I could work at. And
would
work at. Oh, my God, given a clean slate, how I would work at them!

“Hair dark instead of indeterminate?” was the one other thing I tried to slip in, hoping it might go unnoticed, yet at the same time subconsciously be taken note of. Verbally, he offered no comment, but in fact it made him laugh.

Before he left I asked what would happen when I had once more reached my present age. I was told I'd go on living until the day appointed for my death. “Which, I can assure you, is a very long way off.” It had been unnecessary for him to add that; and I found it comforting.

But after death?

“I repeat, Ethan. Your soul is not at risk as a result of today's meeting.”

“And what will happen to Ginette?”

“Ginette? Well, if she never married you, she'll clearly have travelled a very different path. She could be anywhere. Let's hope at least she's happier.”

“Could scarcely fail to be,” I said.

I went with him to the corner, stood in the sunshine watching him walk down the hill. He turned and waved just once before he disappeared. I felt a huge sense of happiness and energy and quiet excitement. All the more potent for its being so unaccustomed.

Ironically, it was only as I re-entered the comparative chill of the house, that I remembered something.

I had agreed to kill a man.

4

One wall and ceiling in his flat depicted a fiery sunset: crimson, orange, yellow—with whorls of gathering black. Another ceiling conjured up the night sky: velvet soaring dome, deep blue, pricked out with stars. In his bedroom, lucent waves lapped round the skirting boards, and stretches of silvery sand were fringed with palm trees. He had done it all himself. I hadn't been prepared for it. I'd walked past the pair of wheely-bins flanking an unimposing entrance, climbed the dreary staircase which served both upper flats, wondered why landlords so
routinely
perpetrated neglect, and then—suddenly—

Exotica!

It wasn't all so colourful. Zack himself was dressed in black. Shirt, trousers, socks, loafers…tonight he could have been in mourning. And yet once, when he turned away from me to draw some ink-coloured floor-length curtains and his blond hair was the only thing which for that instant remained visible, it made me think of the Olympic torch, burning brightly in a place of darkness.

Showing the way forward.

5

On the Monday morning I ran up to her bedroom. She was brushing her hair. She looked round in surprise. Normally I merely shouted from the hall.

“Have a good day, Ginette.”

“You too, Ethan. Not that I imagine either of us will, especially.” She turned back to the mirror and continued with her slow and rhythmic strokes.

Perhaps I would never see her again. I tried to feel something. I tried to remember her as she had been during the early years of our marriage, when she had still loved me and been passionate: forever thinking up small treats, gastronomic or otherwise: forever thinking up new ways to make me happy. I tried to picture her lying on the floor and helping Philip build Meccano. Running back down the shingle, bikini-clad and squeaking, ice cream dripping from the three cones.

But it didn't help. These were all memories from too long ago, incidents that seemed to have happened in another world and to different people. I couldn't remember them as real.

I said: “I'm sorry you have to work at such a boring job.”

“Ah, well. That's life. I daresay most people's jobs are boring.”

“I'm sorry that things haven't worked out better.”

She appeared to have no answer to that; of course, there wasn't any. “Don't stop me or you'll make me late. Besides being late yourself.”

“I'll wait if you like and give you a lift. It won't be any fun your having to walk through this.” It was raining. Our freak springtime summer had come and gone in just one day.

“Good heavens, I won't melt! And I'd only feel hustled and imagine you were growing impatient.” Her shop—which regarded itself as being exclusive—didn't open until ten. “There. Now you've made me smudge mascara.”

My farewell to our home was equally bathetic. All I could manage was to speculate a moment on what other family might be living in it shortly—maybe in a sense already was—and how different it could all look by tonight, without anyone having rearranged a single ornament, far less picked up a paintbrush or had to mix adhesive.

Arriving at work I asked for Brian Douglas.

“Not here yet, Mr Hart.” Iris, who operated the switchboard, seemed mildly surprised by my inquiry.

Zack had told me that in all probability Brian Douglas wouldn't be there today.

I asked again some half-hour later.

“No, he hasn't rung in.”

Alone in my office I meant to tie up loose ends, clarify things for my successor…until I realized how idiotic I was being.

I had no affairs to put in order.

I didn't have to send off any cheques; make any apologies; ask for anyone's forgiveness.

It would have been nice to draw out all our money and rush with it to Oxfam. (The whole hundred and forty-seven pounds and thirty pence of it!) It would have been nice but it would have been dishonest. Almost flippant. That money would surely disappear at the very instant I did.

Incidentally I hoped that, at that same second, Ginette wouldn't be in the middle of serving a customer. The thought actually made me smile.

Because I was now totally committed—even if, admittedly, for the moment all the excitement had drained away; been replaced by trepidation. This wasn't on account of my life to come. Not at all. Whenever I thought of
that
I was fleetingly sustained. I'd have been distraught had the chance been unexpectedly withdrawn. No, it wasn't my new life. It was what still needed to be done in my present one. The very last thing which needed to be done in my present one.

I trusted Zack—trusted him implicitly—but I only wished he hadn't asked me to give him proof.
Why
had he? Why on earth?

Yet when he said it was a fine thing I'd be doing for Brian Douglas I unreservedly believed him…despite that one insistent and perverse association: that contentious line between mercy killing and murder.

But, all the same, it wasn't
this
which worried me the most. It was more the notion of my assisting at a death, of possibly being called upon to be the prime mover. By nature I was squeamish. If injected in the arm I looked the other way. If exposed to violence on TV—or to scalpel or to forceps—I stared into my lap.

Whether it made things better or worse that I should know the person was debatable. It wasn't as if Brian Douglas was a friend or as if I'd ever had much to do with him. Apart from the odd good morning on the stairs, our paths had never crossed—and as far as I knew we had little in common. He worked in another department, was thirty years younger than me and in his natty suits and shirts and ties, his expensive, possibly handmade shoes, I'd always thought of him as something of a yuppie. I suppose that I'd been jealous; had hoped to fool myself by simulating mild contempt.