Transmigration (5 page)

 

 

It was years since Fletcher had done anything like this, but once it had
been quite common. Nervous, self-conscious, he used to lie recklessly,
not because he liked lying, but because once a stranger made an assumption
he had a terror of correcting the misapprehension. "Yes, that's right,"
he would say, rather than "No, you've got the wrong man."

 

 

"Is the kid dead?" the barman asked.

 

 

"I didn't wait to see. I came away."

 

 

He was more light-headed than ever, although there had surely not been
time yet for the beer to have any effect He wanted more beer, but
he could not have it here. His futile, ridiculous story made escape
imperative. Pretending to go to the toilet, he escaped into the street.

 

 

He had never in his life been drunk. The very idea had always been
repugnant, and it would have been impossible for him to do it on whisky
or gin or brandy, because they all made him sick. Now, urged by the same
shadow-of-the-grave curiosity which had sent him to Baudaker, he thought
he would like to be drunk just once. It was a strange time to choose,
eleven o'clock in the morning, but since he had started he thought he
might as well go on.

 

 

Perhaps it was strange that a man like him, a total failure, had never
sought consolation in drink, not even once. One reason was that he didn't
particularly like the taste of any alcoholic drink, even beer. Another
was his self-consciousness, his horror of being found, or of being seen,
drunk and incapable. Now it didn't matter.

 

 

No, it might be important to get this right: he was not drinking became
he wanted to, or because it didn't matter, or because he wanted to be
drunk for once. He was going to go on drinking because in some way it
was essential, inescapable. The two pints he had already poured into
himself had been as essential as insulin is to a diabetic. He had to go
on drinking, and since it was impossible for him to drink spirits and
he didn't know much about wine, he would have to go on drinking beer.

 

 

In a supermarket he bought a carton containing a dozen cans of strong
ale. The two pints he had drunk already lay deep in his belly like
ballast; he felt he had swallowed a sack of lead shot. Yet the lightness
of his head was not delightful, a pleasure such as he had not enjoyed
for a long time. The lightness of his head and the heaviness of his belly
seemed to represent the freedom of the mind and the bondage of the body.

 

 

He returned to the estuary where he had seen Gerry and Sheila the day
before. When he reached the spot, it was deserted. Although the day was
even warmer than the previous afternoon, half the peoble in the city were
at lunch, a quarter had just finished, and the other quarter were about
to eat. It was too early in the year for picnic parties at the beach,
and there were no holiday makers yet.

 

 

Sitting down on the warm sand, out of the breeze, he tore the strip off
a can of beer. At the supermarket he had had the forethought to buy a
plastic mug. A man drinking from cans of beer drew attention to himself;
a man drinking from a plastic mug would be assumed to be drinking tea
or coffee, and was not worth a second glance.

 

 

He found himself thinking not of Judy but of Anita Somerset. There
was a girl with enough warmth to warm even him. How could it be that
she was free, unclaimed? Well, of course, it couldn't be. Even if she
were older and he were younger, if the age gap were not uncrossable,
if he were not living out his last few hours, his encounter with her
would turn out like all such encounters in the past. If he were stupid
enough to allow himself to become infatuated, as he had not done now for
many years, it would turn out, at the moment of maximum pain for himself,
that someone whom she had not bothered to mention had every claim on her,
was engaged to her, married to her, perhaps the father of her child.

 

 

"
What is wrong with me
?"

 

 

The question roared silently through him. It was not the first time,
by many thousands, it had been asked.

 

 

It was too simple to say that he must fail, was always destined to fail.
His life was full of good beginnings. Even when he had the sweet scent of
decay on him he had interested Anita, had aroused her sympathy, and her
sympathy was real. He did not doubt that. Even when cancer was growing
in him, when he was forty-three and she was nineteen, he could have
responded to Anita's sympathy and interest, until she tired of him . . .

 

 

"
There I go again.
" Inevitably she would tire of him. That there would
be no real feeling involved, that it would be nothing remotely resembling
a love affair, he took for granted. The very thought was ridiculous. But
beyond that, he assumed from the very beginning that even talking further
with Anita, letting her go with him when she wanted to, was bound to
turn out wrong.

 

 

And the worst of it was, try as he might to convince himself otherwise,
he knew he was right.

 

 

That incredible thing she had said returned to him and he puzzled over it.
"
Something good about you.
"

 

 

Unlike him, she didn't tell fatuous, pointless lies, he was sure of
that. She would never have been led into that ridiculous fantasy in
the bar. When she said she had detected something good about him, she
meant it.

 

 

But what could she mean?

 

 

There was, true, his religious background, more or less Scottish Free
Kirk. Although he seldom went to church now, iron rectitude had sat on one
shoulder as long as death had sat on the other. His spiritual ancestors
were Puritans, Calvinists, Presbyterians. The various Homes had all been
grimly religious, but his fear of the Lord dated back before the Homes,
to the early years about which he knew nothing.

 

 

Yet his religious background had never led to good works.

 

 

He could not remember any occasion in his life when he had been altruistic
or philanthropic. He had never been brave or strong or indeed anything
positive. He had never helped anyone else because he had been too tied
up in himself all his life.

 

 

Not only had he never done anything good, he had never even tried.

 

 

Quite gratefully, he lost the thread of his thought.

 

 

 

 

Unaware of time, he sat there as people returned to the beach, scolded
toddlers for going too far into the water, packed up and went home to be
back for older children's return from school. The first indication he
had of the passage of time, other than the necessity to make frequent
visits to the public toilet on the other side of the road behind him,
was the discovery that all the cans of beer were empty.

 

 

He had drunk two pints and twelve cans of beer, without eating. And he
was unused to alcohol.

 

 

Suddenly he was anxious. It seemed a long time since his last visit to
the toilet, and then he had been extremely unsteady.

 

 

Could he still stand?

 

 

After a fashion, he could.

 

 

He left the carton of empty cans among the dunes. The task of carrying
it was obviously beyond him. Perhaps more than ever before in his life,
he wished he had a friend. Other drunks always had friends, people who
at least tried to look after them.

 

 

He wished he had been able to drink in his room. But
Judy always knew he was there.

 

 

"
Weakness.
"

 

 

That was the answer to the only question that mattered. He failed because
he was always weak. He always took the weak way out. He avoided all
showdowns, all conflict, all humiliation.

 

 

He had been right to drink himself to a stupor, because he had found
out the truth. John Fletcher was nothing but a straw in the wind, and
he didn't care.

 

 

Time, which had been going by stops and starts since he went to the
university, was still up to its tricks. He found himself in a main street
far from the beach, and it was beginning to get dark. The trouble was,
he had to cross the street.

 

 

Like a wounded animal, he had to get to his lair. In such extremity he
could ignore Judy. His door would be locked and she could knock till
her knuckles were sore.

 

 

There was only one place he could go, and he had to cross the street to
get to it. He might in his present state, desperate rather than drunken,
have gone to Anita, but he had no idea where she lived. There was nowhere
to go but his lodgings. And he had to cross this street.

 

 

The glorious lightness he had enjoyed for much of this vital day was gone,
and his head was aching again. He was tired, but that was nothing. There
was nothing to stop him walking a mile, two miles, five miles, to cross
this street. Still, somewhere he had to cross it.

 

 

He was not incapable. He was not staggering. Nobody looked at him. If he
tried, he might be able to speak intelligibly. But crossing this street
was the most difficult and dangerous thing he had ever had to do.

 

 

After waiting for the right moment, he started to cross. Then he saw
the white car. First he retreated to let it pass him. Then, when it
still came at him, he stepped forward to let it go between him and the
curb. From the middle of the road he darted back. There was a screech
of brakes. He took three more quick strides.

 

 

The white car came to a halt six inches from him. The driver stuck his
head out of the window. "What the hell do you think you're playing at?"
he bawled. "If you want to get killed, try the railway. The trains
can't dodge."

 

 

Somehow Fletcher reached the other side, drenched with sweat. For weeks,
months, he had been perfectly prepared to die. But this glaring imminence
terrified him. To die in six months, to die next week, even to die
tomorrow was a prospect quite easy to face. To die in the next three
seconds was another matter.

 

 

He knew what had happened, he knew how the ballet of death between him
and the white car had come about. The driver didn't know. No wonder he
had shouted in his anger and his fright: "What the hell do you think
you're playing at?" No wonder he had added the reference to the railway.

 

 

Fletcher had moved where he knew the white car must go. Instead of trying
to avoid it, he had waited until the driver must change course and then
moved into the new course. If he had walked blindly, heedlessly across
the street, the driver of the white car wouldn't have turned a hair.

 

 

Fletcher, or a part of Fletcher, had tried very hard to make the driver
of the white car kill him. And he had been frustrated only by the skill
of the driver.

 

 

 

 

There was no reason why Fletcher should go home by way of the
half-demolished tenements where a new block of flats was to be built.
There was certainly no reason why he should go through the now deserted
demolition site, ignoring all the barriers and the warning signs.

 

 

On the other hand, the fact that the construction site lay directly
between him and Beechview Gardens, where he lived, offered an excuse to
go that way, and an excuse was apparently all he needed.

 

 

The bartender to whom he had told those ridiculous lies must have already
found out that there had been no accident at the building site.

 

 

But there might be one now.

 

 

Suddenly Fletcher knew he was never going to see his room again, or Judy,
or the sun.

 

 

There was nothing forcing him to go through the danger area. Yet he
couldn't help it. He was in a curious state of intoxication in which
his mind was clear but he could not remember anything. Although he knew
perfectly well where he was and what he was doing, the effort to remember
where he had been and what he had been doing five minutes ago was not
worth while.

 

 

No doubt there was a watchman somewhere on the site. Fletcher had no
difficulty in avoiding him.

 

 

When he heard the cracking sound, looked up and saw the chimney block
falling, he started to run. Then his brain took over.

 

 

Recent events had shown him that if he ran he would run directly under
the falling masonry. He would be able to judge it precisely, adjusting
his position carefully until he was in the most suicidal spot.

 

 

He did possess one very special talent. Baudaker and his helpers had
proved that, as if he hadn't known it already. He could be wrong with
total fallibility.

 

 

With a desperate effort, he closed his eyes and stood still. If he had
stood still at any time when the white car was coming at him, the driver,
who had proved himself to be skilfull, would have had no difficulty in
avoiding him. Now . . .

 

 

There was a fearful crash, the ground shook, and rubble showered him. But
it was only rubble. He opened his eyes. The masonry had fallen some
yards away, exactly where he would have been had he continued running.

 

 

He remembered what he had told the bartender . . . "great chunk
of masonry." It hadn't been a hundred per cent lie; he had merely
anticipated the masonry fall by a few hours.

 

 

Why, he wondered, was it so important that he should die, and so soon?
He was humorless and seldom laughed, but he found himself sniggering
hysterically at some half remembered sick joke about a man drinking
poison and plunging a dagger into his heart as he jumped off the top of
the Empire State Building in New York, to make sure.