The Breezes (19 page)

And here I am today, on this train now steadily hauling me, through flat, dark, green fields, to Angela.

When I think of her, I daren't think.

It was the same when I arrived home from the brunch. I fell on my bed, thought about Angela and felt nothing but fear.

I fell asleep and awoke at six. I took a shower, shaved and went into town, to the Devonshire Gallery.

I found Simon Devonshire sitting at his desk, drinking from a bottle of red wine. Behind him, in the unlit rear of the gallery, were the scattered shapes of my chairs on the floor.

‘Well, well, well,' Devonshire said slowly. ‘If it isn't John Breeze himself. Come in and have a drink.'

I was too embarrassed to do anything but accept the glass of wine he held up. ‘I'm sorry I haven't been able to get back to you earlier,' I said.

He shrugged.

‘And I'm sorry about the chairs,' I said.

‘Sorry? Why?' He was examining his glass.

‘Well, because …'

‘Because what?' He raised himself vigorously. ‘John, you have made a bold and pertinent statement with your chairs. You've broken new ground.'

‘But– '

‘No buts, John.' He touched a wall-switch, and the back of the gallery lit up like a stadium. ‘Come over here, take a look at what we've done.'

I followed him to where the stools, as though skittled by some passing missile, lay randomly on the ground. He motioned with his arm. ‘Here they are, my boy.
The Fallen
.'

I looked, even though there was nothing to see, nothing but objects that served no purpose other than to take up space. These were not even seats. These were useless, meaningless bits of matter.

‘It's never going to work,' I said. ‘You'll never pull it off.'

Devonshire laughed. ‘Have faith, Johnny. If you tell people that these things are significant, bingo, they'll believe it. It's exactly what they want to hear, it's what they
need
to hear. Why else do you think they come?' He laughed again. ‘No, they'll buy this all right. They'll be queuing up to buy these Breezes.'

I had not heard my pieces described in that way before – as Breezes.

Devonshire said, ‘I want your cooperation on this, Johnny. I want your full cooperation. Do you follow me?'

‘Yes, I do,' I said. I had no option.

‘Excellent,' Devonshire said. He put his arm around my shoulder as he showed me to the door. ‘You want to start believing in yourself,' he said. ‘I promise you, these chairs of yours are wonderful. You've got talent, John, real talent.'

By the time I returned home it was evening, with red clouds scrawled to the west above the mountains.

Angela called at about nine o'clock. She knew that I knew.

‘I'm sorry, Johnny, I'm sorry,' she said. She began to cry. ‘I feel so terrible, I can't tell you how terrible I feel, Johnny.'

I could not say anything. My throat had dried up completely.

Angela sniffed. ‘Just a moment,' she said, ‘I'm just going to close the door.' She returned. ‘Johnny, are you still there? Say something. Johnny? My love?'

‘I'm here,' I said.

‘Johnny, my love,' Angela said. She sniffed again.

There was a silence.

Then I said, ‘Well, I don't know, Angie, I just don't know any more.' My voice was low and very calm.

Angela said, frightened, ‘Johnny?'

Another silence.

Then she said, ‘Johnny, I have to see you. Why don't you come here on Saturday? My parents are going to be away and we could go and stay at their place. It would just be the two of us.'

I said, ‘You want me to drive all the way to you? All the way out to Waterville?'

Angela said quickly, ‘No, I just, I just thought that …' She stopped. ‘I'll come,' she said decisively. ‘I'll get the train.'

‘No, wait,' I said. I had to get out of the flat, out of Rockport. ‘I'll come. I can't say when yet. I'll see you when I see you. At your parents' house.'

‘Johnny?' Angela said. ‘I'll be waiting for you, my love.'

That's right, I thought as I hung up, you bloody wait. You get a taste of what it's like.

I slept badly that night. I was worried about everything. I was worried about Angela and I was worried about Pa and I was worried about what I was going to do with the rest of my days. I was so worried about my life that I wasn't worried about dying.

The train is rumbling slowly forward. The lady is asleep, mouth open, nose upturned, lightly snoring. The man has cast aside his newspaper and is staring dispiritedly out of the window, his shoulder leaning against the side of the carriage. He has abandoned his coffee-stained letter of complaint, which lies crumpled on the floor, there being no litter bins.

‘I might enter this quiz,' Steve said. This was yesterday, Friday, morning. Rosie had left for work and I was watching him watching TV while trying to cut his big toenail with a small pair of nail scissors. It was an unequal struggle, the blades flapping fruitlessly against the hard white outcrop. He was always grooming himself in public like this, filing his warts or picking his corns or pushing down his cuticles right in front of you. ‘Bakelite,' he said to the television as he focused on his foot. ‘I could win this thing,' he said. He put down the nail scissors and went to the kitchen to open the cutlery drawer. Returning with the large wine-coloured industrial scissors, he placed his foot on the edge of a chair and concentrated with a grimace. Crack: a solid fleck sprang across the room like a grasshopper. ‘Riyadh,' Steve told the quizmaster.

The phone rang.

It was Pa. ‘Son, I wonder if you would come down to the tennis club with me this morning.'

‘Yes,' I said, surprised, ‘of course.'

‘I'll be round in twenty minutes,' he said.

He hung up without further explanation, so I changed into tennis gear, white shirt and white shorts, and dug out an old wooden racquet with crooked cat-gut strings. Although tennis is not my game, I was happy enough to bat back a few balls to Pa. It was a positive sign of rehabilitation.

But when he arrived he was not in his sports gear; he was wearing his dark suit, a dark tie and clip-on shades over his
glasses. ‘Johnny,' he said falteringly, regarding me. ‘Never mind. It doesn't matter. Don't bother changing. Let's get going, otherwise we'll be late.'

Late for what? I thought, but he was not saying anything. He just chucked me the car keys and fell into the passenger seat.

The tennis club, dreamily secluded in urban woodland, was just ten minutes away. I reversed into a parking space and looked to Pa for an indication of what to do next. He had not spoken during the journey, and now he just wound down the window and rested his elbow on the ledge and looked out at the surrounding scene. Through the brilliant and shadowy foliage you could see the soft orange terrain of the clay courts and the pale movements of players. The pick-pock of tennis balls being struck drifted through the trees. Pa took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, then opened them wide and blinked hard, as though sleep still glued the lids together. Then he laid his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. A neat split had appeared at the exact centre of his flaking bottom lip. Apart from yellow-grey, that red gash was the only colour on his face.

Pa moved his head. A brown saloon had turned into the car-park. He sighed. ‘Come on,' he said.

We stepped out. To my dismay, the saloon yielded the two Rasmussens, mother and son. Pa and Mrs Rasmussen kissed, and then she presented him with an object. Pa accepted it with both hands. It was a pewter urn and he held it by his waist like a bashful cup-winner.

Billy and I shook hands after a moment of hesitation. He must have wondered why I, a complete stranger to him, kept showing up at these most private and solemn moments. He must also have wondered what I was doing all in white, dressed for a spot of tennis.

Pa gave Amy Rasmussen his arm and they began walking.

‘Merv was at his happiest here, when playing with your father,' Mrs Rasmussen said to me as I accompanied them. ‘It was the highlight of his week.'

Pa led us through to the one unoccupied court. On each side, games were in progress. He looked at Mrs Rasmussen, who
nodded. Then he looked at Billy, and I was prepared, after his jokiness in hospital, for an ill-judged one-liner. But Billy said nothing.

Pa removed the lid from the pot and said some words in a tired voice. ‘Merv,' he said, ‘was a fine man. He was a fine husband to Amy and a fine father to Billy. He was a fine friend to me. Merv was a loved man,' he said. He paused. The pause continued. ‘May God rest his soul,' he blurted. In one decisive movement, he tilted the urn and spilled the ashes on to the back of the court, creating a small black and grey mound. Treading carefully, as though afraid to foot-fault, he scattered the rest of the ashes along the base line. Then he shook the pot into the air and the last particles of Merv came forth in a cloud and blew away in a drift of air. Out! shouted one of the players in the adjoining court. Pa crossed himself instinctively and we all remained where we were, contemplating the dust pile that the breeze was already dispersing.

A voice was raised in a shout. ‘Oi! You there!' A man was approaching from the direction of the clubhouse. ‘What do you think you're doing?' he demanded loudly, so that by the time he reached us people were watching. I guessed, from the broom he was brandishing, that this was the groundsman. ‘You can't just come here and dump this dirt all over my courts.'

Pa said weakly, ‘These ashes are Mervyn Rasmussen's.' He hesitated. ‘He's a member here, like me. He came here a lot, you'd know him if you saw him.' Pa clumsily hunched his back in an attempt to trigger a memory in the groundsman.

‘I don't care who you are,' the groundsman said, ‘and I don't care who this rubbish is.' He began sweeping up the ashes towards the drainage ditch at the side of the court. ‘This is my court and you don't put nothing on it, not without special permission'

Pa said, ‘Please, don't, listen– '

Billy Rasmussen moved forward and snatched the groundsman's collar with his left hand and his wrist with the other hand, forcing him to drop the broom. ‘Billy!' Mrs Rasmussen cried, ‘don't!' Billy lifted the groundsman's small frame into the air, carried him forward and then threw him down hard
beyond the doubles tramlines. Then he stepped towards the remains of his father and, knee-deep in a cloud of dirt, furiously kicked and stamped at the ash-heap until it had irrevocably scattered and petered out. ‘Are you happy now?' Billy shouted at the groundsman. ‘Is this what you want?'

All that was left of his father was a thin dustiness in the air above the court and black dust-stains on his clothing that a single low-temperature wash would remove. Billy turned and ran away across the courts, elbows beating like flippers, his champion swimmer's bulk ungainly in its movement over land.

My father escorted Mrs Rasmussen back to her car, and then he and I got into the Volvo. This time, he took the wheel.

After we had been on the road for a few minutes, I asked him whether I might have use of the car the next day.

‘What for?' he asked.

It was a routine question, but I wished he hadn't asked it. ‘I need to get to Waterville,' I said. I hesitated. ‘To see Angela,' I said.

He didn't respond.

I felt I owed him an explanation. ‘I need to see her. We need to talk about– '

‘Take the car,' Pa said, cutting me short.

I said, ‘I– '

‘Take the car,' Pa said. ‘I don't want to hear about it.'

We drove on. The day's brightness had turned my father's sunglasses almost black, obscuring his eyes. With his white shirt and dark tie, he almost resembled a secret serviceman.

We stopped at a traffic light and Pa reached up and opened the sunroof. He leaned back in his seat and tilted his head against the headrest, relaxing his neck muscles.

‘It's green,' I said. ‘It's green, Pa,' I said.

The Volvo lurched forward, then stalled as he mistimed the clutch. We caught the red again.

‘I tell you, John, this car is in need of a service,' Pa said. He was sweating as the sunlight poured directly through the sunroof, and he wiped away a moustache of droplets with his sleeve.

He looked away, into his wing mirror. He said, ‘John, I want
to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me truthfully.' He coughed. ‘You were there just now, you saw what happened to Merv.' He coughed again. ‘Well, I've been trying to figure a lot of things out recently.'

‘What is it, Pa?' I said.

‘What I'm going to say may sound stupid, John. But I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.'

He adjusted his glasses in his embarrassment, then drove forward as the lights changed colour. ‘Do you think – do you think that Merv, do you think, well, do you think that Merv will, I don't know … I mean, what's going to happen to Merv?'

He gave me a quick, anxious glance to see how I would respond. My poor father was deadly serious.

‘I don't know,' I said, looking straight ahead. ‘I think …' I stopped. ‘I don't know,' I said.

‘You don't think that, well, that it's impossible that, you know, Merv is alive elsewhere?'

I didn't answer immediately. I was thinking of heaven, the habitation of God and his angels and the beatified spirits, of a cloudland with a pearl-studded gate supervised by St Peter, of harp-playing, winged souls at immortal play, of cherubs and of the ninefold celestial hierarchy. What a limitless machine of fantasies was the human mind.

I said, ‘Of course it's not impossible, Pa. Look up there,' I said, gesturing at the sun in the sky. ‘Now that's impossible – a gigantic spinning ball of fire which gives life to a lump of rock millions of miles away. And yet there it is. What it's doing up there, I don't know, but it's there.'

‘It is, isn't it?' Pa said.

I spoke with conviction. ‘That's right. Everything is impossible, Pa, and yet everything is right here. Who's to say, if that sun is up there, that Merv isn't too?'

‘That's true,' Pa said. ‘You can never rule it out, can you?'

‘I don't think you can,' I said, looking ahead.

We arrived back at the flat. He took his glasses off. His eyes were as red and dark as ever. ‘Well, thanks for coming along, son. You've been a comfort to your old man.'

‘No problem,' I said, stepping out. ‘I'll see you tomorrow morning to get the car. You really don't mind?'

‘Of course not,' he said. ‘You do what you have to do.'

That night, Angela rang up.

‘Hello there,' she said.

I was calm with tiredness. ‘Hello,' I said.

‘I – I just wanted to make sure you were coming,' she said.

‘I'm coming,' I said.

She said nothing for a moment. ‘Are you driving over?'

‘Yes,' I said.

She said, ‘What time do you think you'll be here? I don't want to rush you or anything,' she added quickly. ‘I mean, get here when you can. Any time is fine for me.'

‘Lunchtime, I suppose. Maybe a bit later.'

‘That's fine. That's great.'

There was a noise as she moved. She would be sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, her feet neatly tucked together in front of her. She never made use of chairs.

She said, ‘How is your father?'

‘He's OK,' I said. ‘All things considered.'

‘That's good,' she said. There was another pause. ‘I've always admired him, you know,' she said with feeling. ‘I've always thought he has a wonderful outlook on things.'

‘Right,' I said.

Angela said, ‘We need to talk, you know, my darling. About us, I mean.'

‘I know,' I said.

‘This is horrible, John. I'm so sorry about everything.'

I didn't reply. Then I said, ‘Well, I'll see you tomorrow, then.'

‘Bye, Johnny. Bye, my darling.'

Steve turned in at about midnight and I stayed on alone in the sitting-room, watching television. I was too exhausted to go to bed and too exhausted to think.

I watched a sitcom, I watched a late-night chat show and then, as I was on the point of dropping off, a cartoon appeared on the screen. It was my old pal – old Wile E. Coyote.

It was the same old story, with Wile E. compulsively embarking on a succession of ruses which resulted in a succession of devastating own goals. But then something remarkable
occurred. Disgruntled with his failed attempts at interception and entrapment, Wile E. Coyote decided to meet head-on the roadrunner's great advantage, speed, and to this end he procured a rocket, which he lined up in the direction of his prey. He then straddled the missile, ignited its fuse and, perched like bronco-buster, screamed successfully towards the roadrunner at great velocity; too successfully, in fact. The bird ducked and, overpowerful and unstoppable, the rocket propelled the coyote beyond the horizon and through the stratosphere and so deeply into outer space that our faint planet dwindled behind him to darkness. Then abruptly the rocket exploded like a firework, sending a shower of sparks into the black heavens, and the jinxed dog vanished into the nothingness. I contemplated the impossible: Wile E. Coyote, a goner?

Not so. The scintillations from the explosion settled into a grid of stars; a fresh constellation appeared in the night in the shape of a wolf with a bow.

I sat there in thrilled wonderment. He had done it. He had got out.

I went to bed uplifted.

I actually dreamed of Merv. I dreamed of him as a bunch of stars: the Hunchback with a Racquet.

The train is moving more smoothly now, sliding through the stony purple uplands that lie to the east of Waterville. We'll be there in less than twenty minutes. I'm glad, now that I'm here, that I allowed Pa to talk me out of coming by car.

I went to pick up the Volvo at about ten o'clock this morning. Trusty was dozing contentedly on the sofa, but he wasn't about. I went upstairs to his darkened room to find him: Pa?

No reply from the form in the bed.

There was a rough dawn as I pulled open the curtains. ‘Right, come on, let's go.' I shook his dangling white leg, with its vandal's spray of burst veins. ‘Come on, up we get. Come on, Pa.'